{"id":105707,"date":"2016-12-09T17:58:48","date_gmt":"2016-12-09T22:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=105707"},"modified":"2016-12-09T21:43:13","modified_gmt":"2016-12-10T02:43:13","slug":"terrors-in-the-jungle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/09\/terrors-in-the-jungle\/","title":{"rendered":"Herzog in the Jungle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Still<\/a>

Still from Fitzcarraldo<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

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When Werner Herzog was filming Fitzcarraldo <\/em>in the late seventies and early eighties, he kept a series of journals, which \u201cfor reasons that could not escape me\u201d he didn\u2019t reread until twenty-four years later. We published a selection of them in our Spring 2009 issue<\/a>. They are weird, fascinating notes, full of frightening stories from the Amazon\u00a0and, of course, Herzog\u2019s marvelous fatalism. As in, \u201cFog-panting and exhausted [the trees] stand in this unreal world, in unreal misery\u201d and \u201cI did not see God today.\u201d For some reason, an assortment of farm animals make appearances: \u201cthe chickens are not doing well, ditto the rabbit,\u201d he writes from Iquitos on March 31, 1981. \u201cLittle Michaela was riding the albino turkey today,\u201d he said on April 27 in Camisea. But, like in his movies, there\u2019s the sublime at work in the darkness. Here\u2019s a scene from June 6, 1981, when his crew\u00a0has made its first attempt at towing the old steamship\u00a0through the jungle:<\/p>\n

\n

The first attempt to tow the ship did not go well, but at least we filmed the failure. After a few meters, the ship tipped and got hung up, and I heard the mighty steel cables in the block and tackle creak strangely and make unhealthy sounds. Finally one cable, as thick as a man\u2019s arm, snapped, having heated up internally from the strain. It lay smoking on the ground. At the point of breakage I could see that the inner strands were glowing bright red. The ship gently slid backward, and it looked good, even if that does not help us much. The main actors in our disturbing drama, surrounded by the indifferent jungle as our audience, are no longer human beings but the steel cables, the Caterpillar, the winches, the tree trunks, the mud, the river, the rain, the landslides.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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A selection from the journals Werner Herzog kept during the filming of \u2018Fitzcarraldo.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":973,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1188],"tags":[564,16304,364,79,13963,26167,5088,5706,22284,26168,81,2067,23354,2216],"class_list":["post-105707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-archive","tag-amazon","tag-archive","tag-essays","tag-film","tag-filmmaking","tag-fitzcarraldo","tag-herzog","tag-journals","tag-jungle","tag-letters-and-essays","tag-movies","tag-portfolio","tag-sublime","tag-werner-herzog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFrom the Archive: Werner Herzog\u2019s Jungle Journals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A selection from the journals Werner Herzog kept during the filming of \u2018Fitzcarraldo\u2019.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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