movie poster for FITZCARRALDO

Flicks ID

89

Cert

PG

Running time

157 mins

Country

Format

DVD

FITZCARRALDO (1981)

WERNER HERZOG

Plot

Herzog's epic movie about a man's obsessive attempt to bring opera to the Indians living deep in the Peruvian jungle. To do this he must take a steamship/tub way up the Amazon river system, a monumental task, at one point involving transporting it over a not unconsiderable hill, with the help of a system of pulleys and massed Indian labour. A surreal comment on madness, power and vision. There is also a documentary, Burden of Dreams, about the notoriously fraught making of the film.