Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Werner Herzog tells a story of trying to shoot a scene from his 1982 classic Fitzcarraldo. The scene featured the film's massive boat being tossed around in the rapids. Because Herzog doesn't do anything halfway, the scene required that the ship, loosely tethered by steel cables, actually toss in the rapids. It was a dangerous shot and Herzog asked for six cameras to be placed around the boat so that nothing was missed. He told his star Klaus Kinski that he wasn't necessary for the shot, but the actor responded, "If you sink, I shall sink too."

And that story is Herzog's documentary My Best Fiend in a nutshell. Ostensibly, My Best Fiend is set up as Herzog recounting his experiences with Klaus Kinski, the talented star of five of the filmmaker's best efforts (1972's Aguirre: The Wrath of God, 1979's Nosferatu and Woycezk, Fitzcarraldo, and 1988's Cobra Verde). If you've seen any of those films, you've witnessed the raw brilliance of Kinski's acting style. But the madness Kinski could tap on screen was just a hint of the madness he showed when the camera wasn't rolling (and sometimes when he didn't know it was rolling). Herzog's documentary is set up as a series of anecdotes about his love/hate relationship with Kinski, in which he paints the actor as a remarkable lunatic. But is that what the film is really about?

Yes. Partially.

But Herzog is no Prince of Sanity either. Although the subject of My Best Fiend seems to be Kinski, Herzog is just as interested in turning the camera on himself. Delving into the dementia of his favorite collaborator is just an excuse to touch on his own brushes with the bonkers stick.

There are unlikely couples and then there's Herzog and Kinski. Herzog's best films are about worlds on the brink of madness and the people you're apt to meet in such places — men without control over nature (or over their own natures), but trying, with inevitable futility, to master the unmasterable. So Kinski was the perfect hero for Herzog. If Werner couldn't star in his own movies, Klaus was a wild-eyed avatar.

You don't need to have seen any of Herzog's films to appreciate My Best Fiend. When films are discussed, clips tend to be show. And when clips are shown, Herzog tends to set them up adequately. But My Best Fiend only uses Herzog's films are cases in point. And the filmmaker has tons of others to go with on the side.

The film opens of footage of Herzog in live performance, part of his Jesus Christ tour. On this tour, Kinski would basically go from concert hall to concert hall pretending to be Jesus, but only enough to get people in the audience to shout at him and question his divinity, opening the door for Kinski to rant back at them. This isn't performance art at its strangest, but it's certainly towards one perplexing extreme.

Footage like this this, unguarded footage, provides a major piece of Herzog's argument. Watch Kinski rail at the production manager of Fitzcarraldo about the inferior quality of the set catering, ignoring the fact that the crew was off in the middle of the jungle. Even in a totally controlled environment, though, Kinski's reaction is out of any kind of proportion to the offense. The question in moments like this is did Kinski know that the camera was rolling? Was he performing for the cast and crew? Were there other offenses that weren't caught on film that led up to this explosion? Or was the dude just wacko? Certainly the Indian extras on the side look at the actor like some kind of Demon God, with a mixture of fear and respect. Herzog mostly tends to let the footage speak for itself.

The clips from the various films that Herzog shows compliment these candid moments of extreme behavior. There's Herzog on the bell tower in Fitzcarraldo yelling frantic demands for an opera house. There's the fabulous final scene of Aguirre: Wrath of God (one of the great finales ever) with Herzog pacing a raft talking to a pack of howler monkeys. And there's Kinski in Nosferatu obsessively terrifying Isabelle Adjani with his passion for her love, her blood, her soul. What's amazing is that for all of the instability that serves as a common denominator in Kinski's performance, he never repeats himself. The longing, the soul wrenching torture, the out-of-his-mind glee... these elements change with ever role. It's amazing.

Herzog also brings in outside parties to discuss their memories of Kinski. This produces decidedly mixed results. After all, if Kinski was a wacko on camera and on set, who knows what loony activities Herzog didn't even know about. He travels down to Lima to talk to Justo Gonzalez, who played on of the soldiers in Aguirre. Gonzalez tells of the time Kinski was enraged at the extras eating from the buffet (more problems with the catering) and attacked them with his sword, smashing Gonzalez in the head. The former extra turned tour guide is convinced that Kinski meant to hit him, but only smashed his skull because he knew Gonzalez was wearing a helmet. He still has the scar. Gonzalez also described a time that Kinski fired three shots into a tent of extras playing cards. Fortunately, only one man was injured, losing the tip of a finger.

More generous comments come from Kinski's female co-stars. Eva Mattes, who appeared opposite the actor in Woycezk remembering how the actor's intensity spurred her to a performance that was awarded at the Cannes film festival. Fitzcarraldo's Claudio Cardinale also has positive things to say about working with Kinski.

Mostly, though, this is Herzog's show. Other people may be qualified to tell a story or two about Klaus Kinski, but only his director can do him justice.

Herzog first appears onscreen knocking on the door of his childhood flat, greeting the people who now live there. It was at this plat that Herzog first met the young Kinski. This old German couple stands watching Herzog tell his story (about Kinski locking himself in the bathroom for two full days and destroying everything inside), gesticulating, raising his voice. The look on their faces suggest they don't know whether to laugh at Kinski's strangeness or to fear the stranger who's actually standing in the living room.

As director and storyteller, Herzog chooses how he presents Kinski, just as he always did in how own films. His take on Kinski is a study on how documentary filmmaking can exist in its most subjective mode. This movie may be about Kinski, but it can't be about the *real* Kinski, nor does it claim to be a proper biography or unfiltered document of Kinski's life. It's examines how Kinski can be filtered to audiences through the perception and memory of Werner Herzog.

Nowhere is this concept of distorted memory better displayed than when Herzog recalls his first awareness of Kinski as an actor. It was from the film Children, Mothers, and a General, which also featured Maxmillian Schell. Herzog explains that while the film had more striking scenes, what he recalls most vividly is a ten second shot of Kinski waking up. At first it doesn't seem remarkable, but Herzog repeats the scene three times, each time cutting off more of the action surrounding Kinski's gesture until finally we're only watching Kinski wake up. Our memories have now fused with Herzog's.

Even when other characters are speaking, Herzog takes control of *their* memories. Justo Gonzalez, for example, speaks neither English nor German, so when he tells his stories in Spanish, rather than subtitling them, they get dubbed over, predictably, by Herzog. Another set of Indian extras sit next to Herzog for ten minutes while he tells a story about Fitzcarraldo, but never even open their mouths. Even the stories of others become his stories. Case in point, his discussion of Kinski's notorious autobiography, which apparently insults Herzog on nearly every page. But rather than being offended, Herzog laughs and observes that he and Kinski used to laugh and talk about possible insults for that autobiography. In this way, Herzog is able to retain control both for his own second hand representation, but also for Kinski's first hand accounts. In this situation, Herzog makes it sound as if he wrote both himself and Kinski.

Klaus Kinski, of course, cannot speak for himself on this film. The actor died of a heart attack in 1991. He is the sum of the documents and people he left behind. And as always happens the selectivity of the documentary filmmaker is what actually shapes our impressions of the subject. Herzog front-loads My Best Fiend with the most horrifying images of Kinski that he can find, but by the end it's clear that he's missing his collaborator and adversary. It's clear that his film isn't intended to eviscerate Kinski, but rather to show how an artist and his subject can feed off each other. And he softens. Home video footage from the Telluride Film Festival, show Kinski and Herzog, arms around each other, joking at a press conference. And the film's final shot of Kinski (no point spoiling it) is as sensitive a depiction of the man as you could possibly imagine. In finding Kinski's heart (if only sporadically), Herzog again justifies himself.

My Best Fiend is a beautiful movie, though its splendor comes from the complex storytelling and not from any visual depictions. Herzog seems to be avoiding spectacular formalism. He may be sitting at the foot of the mountain from the opening scene of Aguirre, but he doesn't seek framings to accentuate his surroundings. The camera remains squarely on the filmmaker, with only a nod to the physical beauty around him. The ebb and flow of voice-over and soundtrack has some nice technical moments, but if you aren't pay attention, you might just let them slip by. Herzog knows that with this film, it's the subjects that are important and not the technique and he's quite correct.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD