Directed by: Werner Herzog
Starring: Klaus Kinski, King Ampaw, and Jose Lewgoy
Reviewer: Brett Gallman
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“I haven’t tried it yet.”
Reviewer's Rating: *** (Three Stars)
The final collaboration between Herzog and Klaus Kinski finds the latter in the role of a Brazilian rancher-cum-bandit who ends up as a farmhand for a powerful sugar baron. After knocking up not one, but three of the mogul’s daughters, he’s shipped off to Africa under the pretense of reviving the dormant slave trade (in reality, it’s an intended death sentence--no white man has returned in ten years). Cobra Verde falls in the latter end of the Herzog/Kinski spectrum, but it interestingly resists and capitulates to the usual dynamics of the “noble savage” tale. Kinski once again acutely portrays a madman driven by obsession: he ascends from a lowly, mud-faced rancher to a notorious bandit accompanied by fire and brimstone before becoming a conquistador. Ironically, he really accomplishes nothing, as his soul is ultimately unsatisfied and his head full of impossible, lyrical fables of a snow-capped promised land.
Though Kinski is the star, Herzog’s presence is indelible--his trademark use of powerful imagery and a sense of foreboding fatalism are palpable. It’s an impeccably shot work--few are able to capture landscapes and make them a presence as deftly as Herzog, and Cobra Verde is no different. Despite the lack of a tightly-constructed or riveting plot (the middle act particularly sags under the weight of listlessness), Herzog finds some glorious images that highlight his protagonist’s alienation and madness.
One of them almost feels meta-fictional: at one point, we see a broken Kinski’s futile attempt to shove his boat out to sea. Here is a man who once hauled a steamship over a mountain who is now defeated by the elements--an alarmingly fitting end to one of cinema’s most intense and productive collaborations.
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