Herzog's Other Obsession

I just watched Werner Herzog's 1987 Cobra Verde over a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream - a great combination. I highly recommend it. The film is nowhere near as good as The Enigma of Kasper Hauser or Fitzcarraldo or Aguirre, but there's no shortage of gorgeous scenes. I read that Kinkski got completely fed up with Herzog over his handling of the film extras while on location in Ghana, though I'd say it was to great effect (Klaus getting pissed, not the alleged exploitation). He bristles like a Ferrel cat in just about every scene. Raging and preening about (if one can do both at the same time) he engages a field of Amazon warriors in frenzied army drills. The effect astonishing and grandly absurd. African women (the free Africans or newly- enslaved, those who have not yet been forced to leave their homeland) figure heavily in the film, though their narrative presence is not well - defined. Still, there insertion intimately informs the films' deeply troubled conscience.

I was disturbed to read this review that tries to make Kinski's da Silva a sympathetic character. I mean this is a film about a raping, murdering bandit turned slave trader - a self conscious RMBRS as some closing dialogue suggests, but what's the point really for such observations? Does a criminal's capacity for introspection and moral ambivalence make him a lesser tyrant? I suspect this mindset serves as the fulcrum point for many of our current social problems. Herzog has made a brilliant career of exploring ideas about human culpability.

I'm becoming more than a bit obsessed with Herzog's tangential obsession with disability. Cobra Verde is bracketed by images of disabled people. The film opens on a blind Brazilian troubadour plucking a violin and ends with Kinski's da Silva collapsing on the shore in despair as a man bent with polio approaches from the distance, walking on all fours. The new king and former ally of the slave trader da Silva has sent a number of young polio survivors to the slave fort in a symbolic gesture (as in, the slave trade has crippled the nations of Africa, or something along those lines). But its easy to overlook this heavy - handed "message" when confronted with these unforgettable young men.

My viewing was colored by the knowledge that Herzog (as is his custom) used real polio survivors as opposed to actors portraying disabled people. This awareness took me out of the film in a way that defied all my expectations about narrative filmaking. Instead, my reaction was something like, "Oh shit! People still contract polio in Africa! Someone should make a film about THAT, and why the fuck people still suffer from totally preventable diseases!" This was quickly followed by, "People are big colonialist assholes!" A smashing example of what the director calls "ecstatic truth" in filmaking, but one that ironically speaks to the ndustry's idiotic refusal to cast disabled actors. Of course, casting directors seem incapable of wrapping their heads around even the simplest physiological concepts, like normal female lifespans and body types. So what can you expect?