Plot

The love-hate relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, the deep trust between the director and the actor, and their independently and simultaneously hatched plans to murder one another.

In the 1950s, an adolescent Werner Herzog was transfixed by a film performance of the young Klaus Kinski. Years later, they would share an apartment where, in an unabated, forty-eight-hour fit of rage, Kinski completely destroyed the bathroom. From this chaos, a violent, love-hate, profoundly creative partnership was born. In 1972, Herzog cast Kinski in Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972). Four more films would follow. In this personal documentary, Herzog traces the often violent ups and downs of their relationship, revisiting the various locations of their films and talking to the people they worked with.—L.H. Wong <lhw@sfs.org.sg>

The film opens with shots of Klaus Kinski performing, after his own interpretation, the role of Jesus. Kinski harangues the audience for not paying attention to him, curses wildly, has the microphone taken away from him, and, screaming, steals it back. This is the tour Kinski left to star in Herzog's film Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972). This was the first of five films that the two would make together, the others being Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979); Woyzeck (1979); Fitzcarraldo (1982); and Cobra Verde (1987). After this opening, Herzog tours a substantially renovated apartment that he and his family shared with Kinski and other boarders. Herzog then tours some of the countries he and Kinski filmed at. He looks at the first film clip he ever saw of Kinski and presents footage from the sets of their various movies. He recounts the heated and sometimes violent altercations between them, including the oft-repeated story of how he threatened to shoot Kinski should he leave the production of Aguirre. He also draws on footage from Burden of Dreams (1982), a documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo, which was a particularly difficult film for their relationship. At the same time, Herzog expresses deep respect for Kinski's acting talent. Interviews with two of the women who starred opposite him, Eva Mattes (from Woyzeck) and Claudia Cardinale (from Fitzcarraldo), suggest that the actor had a calmer side. Herzog also meets with Beat Presser, a photographer who has displayed many photos of Herzog and Kinski. One of these photos is used as the film's poster. The final sequence in the film shows Kinski playing with a butterfly in the Peruvian jungle. Herzog describes Kinski's death as the result of having lived so strenuously and fully, describing him as "like a comet." His voice is heard over the final scene of Cobra Verde, in which Kinski collapses in the surf as he tries to pull a large boat out to sea.