 |  | Only pretending to be mad |  |
This is just as great as the other Herzog/Kinski films. I saw it when it first came out, over twenty years ago, because I'd read the Chatwin book and had been hugely impressed. However, the film doesn't have that much in common with the book, and I came out rather baffled and disappointed. The imagery was still fantastic, nevertheless, and has stayed with me. Watching it again, having forgotten most of the book, I think as a film it has matured, and I was better prepared by having also just run through the others, Aguirre, Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu. These films have to be absorbed as a succession of ultra-powerful images. There is no great narrative continuity or explanatory plotting in any of them. You have to fill in the gaps for yourself. But the performances and the visuals are fantastic. In fact, you have to relax your built-in linear thought-mode, and just let the pictures soak in. Not that there aren't some good lines, many good lines actually. Slavery was a standard economic fact of life ever since humans invented the concept of property. African tribes enslaved each other readily, and thought nothing of it. There was nothing racist about this, it was just dog eat dog. Nature's way. Britain's abolition of the slave trade is slowly being recognized as the most remarkably altruistic political act since the beginning of history. Every picture in this picture burns into the memory. The ending. Those singing girls. That enormous derelict fort. The Prince who was only feigning madness. Thanks to the reviewer who explained the foot in the ocean --- I hadn't twigged it.
September 15, 2008It is a good film, but not nearly on par with such classics as Aguirre: The Wrath Of God, Nosferatu, Phantom Of The Night, nor Fitzcarraldo, and it is a film even Herzog has expressed dissatisfaction with. The film was written by Herzog, who adapted it from a novel by Bruce Chatwin, The Viceroy Of Ouidah; but it's probably the least affecting screenplay of the major Herzog-Kinski films, as well as the film the two made together that has the least for Kinski to do- i.e- strut his stuff and dominate whole scenes. Things move far too quickly and illogically, there is little explanation of scenes and events, and little in the way of character development, in either the lead character or the few minor characters that say anything. The cinematography is- as usual, excellent, and there are often quotable snippets of dialogue, but, as a whole, the film fails to capture the imagination the way the above named films do. Cobra Verde (the character as written- not Kinski's superb acting) is simply not that compelling a figure, for he has no grand divide within him. He is a brute and a scoundrel, and little more. After this film, Kinski and Herzog had a final falling out, and Kinski died a few years later.... Kinski shows he is a great actor throughout the film. Cobra Verde declares that he does not trust shoes, women, horses, and little else, and has that glower that only Kinski could do. That alone is mesmerizing enough. Had only there been more such moments in this hour and fifty minute film the film may have achieved greatness, but as the main character is never fully realized and the narrative is patchwork- at best, the film is merely a good but uneven work of art. Yet, despite this, a little perspective is needed, for a flawed film by Werner Herzog is significantly better than most any other film a lesser filmmaker will make. By mortal standards, this is not a bad film, at all, but from this great filmmaker and his legendary star- who together left three indisputable masterpieces: Aguirre: The Wrath Of God, Nosferatu, Phantom Of The Night, and Fitzcarraldo, as well as the excellent and enigmatic Woyzeck, it is a bit of a disappointment. Too often it steals the best ideas from earlier and better Herzog films, and never reinvigorates them adequately to suit their inclusion in this film's cosmos. Perhaps it is this knowledge that is behind Herzog's final disappointment with his own film. If so, he is correct in his assessment, and that very awareness is the reason Herzog is such a great artist, for understanding greatness is a deeper and rarer thing than achieving it, for, as I have said, `Greater than transcendence is its recognition.' Herzog has done both in his career, although only one shall have to suffice in Cobra Verde.
September 10, 2008 | | "God, in his perplexity, pretends it's his will" | |
At the beginning of "Cobra Verde," a defeated rancher, Francisco Manoel da Silva (played by Klaus Kinski), looks at his drought-ruined land and says "The water, the earth, and the sun turn black. God, in his perplexity, pretends it's his will." This couplet seems to be not only the theme of this final cinematic collaboration between Herzog and Kinski, but indeed the theme of most of Herzog's films. Nature, although awesome and sometimes lovable with a fierce, savage love, is never trustworthy. The same goes for men and women: those with power will usually wield it to their own advantage. Even God, if there is a God, can only stand by and watch, puzzled, impotent, victimized.
"Cobra Verde" offers a parable of this red-in-tooth-and-claw world by following the career of the rancher turned bandit da Silva, a strange and ruthless man who leaves Brazil for Africa to jump-start the slave trade. While there, da Silva (whom the Africans call Cobra Verde) encounters a deeper, more primordial savagery than even he can harness, and eventually is defeated by it.
The film is spectacular from a cinematic perspective, particularly the final scene. The colors are vivid, the longshots rarely tedious, and the composition, especially at the African king's adobe court, sometimes breathtaking in their geometrically proportionate perfection. But the film overall has a patchwork feel to it. There are gratuitious scenes in the film--the dwarfish tavern keeper mysteriously talking about the land of snow and ice, for example (perhaps this scene, if it's in the Chatwin novel on which the film is based--a novel I haven't read--makes more sense in print). More disappointingly, it's obvious, even before listening to Herzog's lament in the accompanying DVD discussion that Kinski wasn't really artistically present on the set, that Kinski's performance is lackluster. Kinski is typical crazy Kinski in a couple of scenes, and chillingly brilliant in one at the beginning of the film where he murders a mine foreman ("Wake up. I want you awake when I kill you!"), but for the most part seems detached, slightly bored, and weary of it the project.
All in all, then, "Cobra Verde" is the least satisfying of all the Herzog/Kinski collaborations--in hindsight, it's good that the two decided to call it quits--and one of the least satisfying of all of Herzog's films. But let's face it: even a bad Herzog film is better than most others. So "Cobra Verde" still rates three stars.
July 6, 2008| | | As powerful as it is disturbing | |
Aesthetically, this is probably one of the most visually stunning movies ever made. Many of the scenes are unforgettable and are a true tribute to the cinematographic genius of Werner Herzog. But as always with Herzog, this movie comes with strings attached. This is as far from "Roots" as you can get. There are no heroes here, just villains and victims, and as always, Kinsky's presence in the center of it all is as intense as it is disturbing. Even the contribution of some African tribe leaders to the slave trade is exposed without any complacency. Greed and desire for power drive men and events, with little or no room for human redemption, or even basic decency. If you can accept an uncompromising vision of slavery through the eyes of a slave trader, then this movie may provide you with the most realistic sense of how it was perceived by those who carried it out without a second thought at the time. This movie is extremely powerful and leaves a print on your mind. How you interpret that print is left to you, as in most of Herzog's movies...
November 11, 2007| | | "I can not hear what you are saying, for the thunder that you are." | |
The last and least of his volatile collaborations with Werner Herzog, Cobra Verde is possibly the one movie where Klaus Kinski isn't the maddest person on screen - he's out-madded by not one but two African kings who make him look a model of logic and reason: when even Werner Herzog describes one actor as a "very odd man," you'd better believe it. After a hypnotic opening the first third is sluggish at best, but once Kinski's South American barefoot bandit ("I don't trust shoes") reaches Africa to reopen the slave trade - more in his employers' hope that he'll be killed than any belief he might succeed - it's a rollicking yarn and the most spectacular of Herzog's films, ending with an image that's almost Fitzcarraldo in microsm as Kinski struggles to pull a longboat into the sea while a native cripple watches him. It's a mad film in many ways, with Kinski finding himself leading an army of Amazons because the men simply aren't good enough warriors, but like all Herzog films it has its rewards, including some striking and haunting imagery, not least a shot of Kinski in the sea watching the sky.
Sadly, this has the least satisfying transfer of any of Anchor Bay's Herzog films - acceptable, but with niggling image problems, particularly in the early scenes. Extras are limited, though Herzog's audio commentary is, as always, captivating.
June 8, 2007More reviews at Amazon.com ...
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