Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo is long and slow, leisurely in its most tense moments, and contains images of bold, strange beauty. It is difficult to watch in one sitting. If you take an intermission, like it is an opera, it is easier to watch the second half, but if you watch it all the way through, without any breaks, you feel like you are along for the journey.

Here is the plot. In Peru, in the early 20^th century, an opera-loving failure named Bryan Sweeney Fitzgerald, whom the natives call Fitzcarraldo, is bankrupt from trying to build a trans-Andean railway and now makes ice, which no one buys. He has ‘one dream’. This is the opera. More specifically, to build an opera house in the filthy rubber boomtown of Iquitos, which does not even have paved roads yet, and have Enrico Caruso sing in it. He has a vision and a will, but no money. The other white men in Iquitos, rich from rubber, have no vision and do not want to invest in his. So Fitzcarraldo takes money from his girlfriend, buys a broken-down steamship, recruits a crew of drunks and oddballs, and sets off to exploit a parcel of rubber-tree land, which lies beyond the impassible Pongo das Mortes (the Rapids of Death). His plan is to haul his steamship over a land bridge from the Pachitea River to Ucayali River, the latter of which runs past his destination. He succeeds at this with the labor of a mysterious tribe of native indians, who willingly help him. This act of dragging the steamship over land is the subject of the movie.

Do you think you could do that? Why not? Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald thinks he can. A real eccentric, he lives on bananas, wears the same white linen suit and floppy hat in his hut, in the jungle, and to the opera, and inspires love, affection, and devotion in almost everyone who knows him.

For example, his brothel-madam girlfriend, Molly, gives him the money for the ship and crew, sleeps with him when he describes his crazy plan to her, and defends Fitz’s previous endeavors by saying, ‘the idea was a bold one’, and, ‘It is only the dreamers which move mountains’ (or things over mountains). When she gives him a substantial wad of cash to lease land he cannot even reach and buy a steamship, a crew, and equipment, does she really believe he will succeed? (this time?)

Fitz buys the boat from the premier rubber baron Don Aquilino, a buffoon who struts around in a gun belt swabbing his brow with a kerchief. At the poker table, the homely nouveau riche all laugh heartily at his jokes, and he taunts Fitzcarraldo by bragging about how much he enjoys losing money, whether at poker, feeding it to fish, anything but building an opera house. Don Fitz and Don Aquilino ostensibly have nothing in common except ambition, but Don Aquilino has to admit, ‘You’re a strange bird, but I must say I like you’.

There’s also the most poignant scene in the movie, when Fitz’s steamship reaches a remote station of his failed trans-Andean railroad, deep in the Amazonian jungle, where the boxcars sag under vines, the tracks rust away, and a shabby little man among the ruin responds to the visit of ‘Don Fitzcarraldo’ as the return of a god. Don Fitz is just there to take the train tracks to use for his new project. The sad little man, Fitz’s forgotten loyal employee, still believes in Fitz’s trans-Andean railway despite reality. Such is the power of Fitz’s dreams.

And let’s not forget the indian children who protest Fitz’s incarceration and follow him everywhere, nor the Jivaros native indians, who behead Jesuit missionaries but agree to haul Fitzcarraldo’s steamship over land.

Many of Fitzcarraldo’s memorable images result from the unlikely mix of cultures which come from colonization, with barefoot indians crowded around the entrance to the Manaus opera house, the towering engine mechanic clad in a rough tunic sipping from an exquisite stem glass, mud about the hem and cuffs of Molly and Fitz as they step through the streets of Iquitos, indians dipping spears and arrows in champagne, and so on.

A central image of Fitzcarraldo is that of Fitz first making contact with the invisible Jivaros. Along a stretch of the Pachitea, on either side deep in the jungle come war drums and battle cries. A black object drifts toward the boat, a missionary’s umbrella. The crew load guns and unpack dynamite. Fitz climbs into full view at the top of the steamship with his phonograph and plays his scratchy record of Enrico Caruso to the wild. Caruso’s voice gradually meets and pacifies the war drums, and Don Fitz changes his stance from cautious to triumphant as he floats through the Amazon. His crazy idea has worked.

Do we really have two cultures meeting in scenes like that? We have two extremes meeting, that’s for sure. This is evident in Fitzcarraldo’s first shot, of the rain forest shrouded in mist as thunder roars and an opera chorus booms (‘Cayahuari Yacu, the jungle indians call this country, “the land where God did not finish his creation”’–and the landscape does look half formed.) In spite of the charisma his spirit lends him, Fitz is too extreme to fit into his society, and the Jivaros are referred to as ‘bare-asses’ by the other indians ‘who can’t read and don’t know how to wash their clothes’. Don Fitz and the Jivaros do not understand each other, but after threatening each other, they become collaborators (although for different reasons). Fitz communicates with the invisible Jivaros through opera (in which Fitz has unshakeable faith) and they come in peace and work for him. Earlier, when Fitz plays his Caruso record at a party to wake the philistine rubber barons to the magic of opera, not only do they refuse to support him, they kick him out of their party.

At the start of the film Fitz feels charged with a sacred mission by Enrico Caruso himself, who, during the course of an opera in Manaus, points to Fitz sitting in the audience. Does Fitz succeed in building an opera house? No. Like God, he does not finish his creation. After the steamship is pulled overland to the Ucayali River, the indians cut it loose and release it into the Pongo das Mortes (Rapids of Death) with Fitz and his crew on board, a sacrifice to ‘soothe the demons’. Miraculously, all on board survive, and once they wind up back in Iquitos, Fitz does the only sensible thing. He sells the bent-nose steamship and uses the money to pay a European opera company to come to Iquitos and perform The Puritans in the open air on the steamship in front of a jubilant crowd, lining the coast. Fitz has the sole seat on deck, the place of honor, and as the town applauds their beloved dreamer, back from his dream, he smiles and points to the opera, as if to say, ‘thanks, but look at my dream!’ The scene is resplendent and joyful, with Fitz and his opera basking in golden sunshine before an exultant crowd. ‘We will do what no one has never done,’ Fitz tells the government lawyer at the outset of the journey. And at this he succeeds.

Herzog has always valued ‘marvelous images’ over plot, and his camera technique is guided by this principle, resting still to behold the images he finds most fascinating, such as the stately steeple of the village church, Fitzcarraldo’s pet parrot, or the flaming mass of the ship’s rotor, being cast in a smithy’s. Although landscapes, things and animals are beheld, so too are the actors, and they frequently face the camera and audience, looking directly at them. This can sometimes be unnerving, especially with an actor as intense as Klaus Kinski. (In many of Herzog’s films, one of the actor’s favorite tricks is to surprise the audience by suddenly entering the frame, up close. He does this in Fitzcarraldo’s bell-ringing scene).

The pacing is handled well, smooth and contemplative, but capable of building suspense, as when the Molly Aida slowly enters the dark jungle, and the crew, poised for action, endure the drumbeats of an unseen enemy. Herzog saves his most beautiful landscape shots for transitions between scenes, which imbue the film with a strong sense of place.

Sometimes, though, a funny or positive scene is abruptly followed by a shocking or upsetting scene. An example of this is the scene where Fitz and Juerequeque are dancing with joy at the progress of the ship up the mountain, oblivious to the fact that the cable has broken and the ship is now backsliding into its original position. This is funny. What isn’t funny is the scene just afterward, when we see the two indians in agony, crushed beneath the ship. This can be jarring, and may be why some viewers find the tone of Herzog’s films to be strange.

The film always looks great, with the light reflecting off the river in a blinding dazzle, or soaking into the muddy jungle. The sounds are real and new, beyond the imagination of sound engineers. The sweeping thunder of a falling tree is real, as are the poundings of the splitting planks on board the Molly Aida when they haul her up. The sound has been redigitized on Anchor Bay’s DVD, and stands out strongly, opera and all.