An entrepreneur (Klaus Kinski) with wild dreams of bringing opera to the jungle, searches the Andes for already depleted supplies of rubber during the early 20th Century boom. When it is reported that untapped acres of the plant exist on an navigable river, a river which is separated from the main waterway by only a few hundred meters at one point, the off-kiltered businessman hires scores of natives, devises a lever and pulley system, and determines to pull his ship over hill from one stream to the other. Notoriously filmed on location and unsimulated, Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo is a mesmerizing and arresting vision of madness with wide-eyed Kinski in one of his best collaborations with the director.
**** out of ****
