“One of the great visions of the cinema, and one of the great follies. One would not have been possible without the other.” – Roger Ebert

Werner Herzog is the reigning champ of impossible real-life adventures undertaken in the name of cinema. And this masterpiece is the epic flipside to Aguirre: The Wrath of God — a backbreaking epic that ecstatically treads the line between a portrait of madness and a genuine expression of maniacal obsession. Fitzcarraldo casts Herzog’s muse (and of the true madmen of cinematic acting) Klaus Kinski, as the real-life South American rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, who pursued a crazed, quixotic mission to establish an opera house in the Peruvian jungle. But construction can can only be accomplished by hauling a gigantic river boat over a mountain. No special effects here — this is the real deal, with the impossible results executed before your eyes. Cited by Akira Kurosawa as one of his favorite films, Fitzcarraldo remains Herzog’s most quintessential vision, a work of mad hubris in the service of ecstatic truth or, as Herzog would bluntly call it, a “conquest of the useless.”

Arkadin does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. However, we encourage researching titles to determine if a screening may contain content that could be upsetting to you. Please feel free to contact us for guidance on specific films. Information about content can also be found on Common Sense Media, IMDB and DoesTheDogDie.com, as well as through general internet searches.