Our best fiend.

Over the past few months, I’ve watched all the remaining Herzog films with Klaus Kinski as lead, ending in My Best Fiend.

I was lucky to see Aguirre, the Wrath of God over boozy brunch at the Nitehawk in Brooklyn.

I had the pleasure of seeing Fitzcarraldo several months ago, as a double feature with Burden of Dreams. The experience of watching both was part of the inspiration for watching all of Herzog’s films.

Cobra Verde I got to see about a month ago, pretty sure I drank a whole bottle of wine by myself during the film. Whole essays have already been written about it, so I won’t do it here. I’ll say though: Bruce Chatwin is behind the scenes in his chapter on Herzog in What Am I Doing Here and his descriptions of Kinski are scarce yet perfect: one instance he sees Kinski off sitting in satisfaction, in contrast to his usual rambling and agitated state. A crewmember whispers to Chatwin: “He’s happy because he has successfully pissed off absolutely everyone.”

But out of all these films, I was shocked at how moved I was watching Woyzeck. There’s no wildly spectacular location, no daring feats of human struggle. Just Kinski’s wide eyes and quiet gradual maddening. This film is absolutely worth watching, and I can see it being overlooked in comparison to the infamy of the aforementioned three features. I had no idea that this story had such a wide reach, perhaps because it seems to be a quite specifically German niche play. It was left unfinished in the study of Georg Buchner, a poet and dramatist who died at age 24 in 1837, so it is the job of subsequent artists to finish it. Herzog creates a compelling character study in a tale of infidelity, madness, and revenge.

(I wanted to do a whole post on how the character Woyzeck is akin to Bill Dauterive of King of the Hill. A cuck who is also an army barber? Did Mike Judge study Woyzeck at some point? Maybe I’ll investigate that later.)

My Best Fiend has fun tidbits of film facts, for the nerds. Kinski showed up to filming Woyzeck totally exhausted from filming Nosferatu. The exhaustion does the character well, he is certainly more subtle

In My Best Fiend, you also get some autobiographical bits of Herzog’s life, such as when he lived with Kinski in the same apartment, portioned into a dozen rooms. Herzog shared one room with his 3 brothers and mother. Kinski would rage and convulse for days on end and abuse everyone around him. What a character in himself! Although there have been critiques of this film as being unfair to Kinski because it was created after his death, I feel that it is quite human, and quite loving of Kinski.

Lastly, Nosferatu the Vampyre. I’m not gonna lie, on Halloween I literally fast forwarded through whole sections of the film. It’s slow and a bit gooberish. I’m sorry. I tried to get into it erotically, but I just can’t. It’s a fucking snooze-fest.

tl; dr: Watch Woyzeck. You’ll be pleasantly surprised (and a bit disturbed).