Klaus Kinski

When I survey the world of film today I am distressed that there are no men like Klaus Kinski currently working. The studio execs are as complacent as investment bankers and somewhat less artistic, they do not bleed for their art, nor do the majority of the filmmakers, so enthralled are they with the privilege of making films professionallythat they forget to actually make anything worth watching, they would rather masquerade as the middle-brow intellectuals they aspire to be. And as for the actors: low-key seems to be the dominant tone, perhaps it suits our times that actors of this mode are received with acclaim, whether their name is Zach Braff, Elijah Wood or Tobey Maguire. All a bunch of little pussies. Just imagine what a young Jack Nicholson would have done to these pansies if they were competing for a part: he would have choked them out like he did Rip Torn to get the part in Easy Rider. When you watch the previous men act, you know full well that they are actors, pretending to be how you ought to feel in this disconnected postmodern world of ours. I don't feel like that. I don't feel numb.
That is why Kinski is my favourite actor. He enters the scene and holds your attention with the sheer intensity written across his face, the fierce gaze, beaming with the same level of emotion in the moment of murder as in the highest expression of love. His energy was relentless, whether he was smashing Herzog's shared childhood bathroom absolutely to bits, on full day yelling sprees or before the camera, he brought an intensity to his life that translated perfectly to the screen, especially under the direction of Herzog, who, if he didn't understand him, knew how to put him on celluloid, which is why I focused on their collaboration. In Aguirre: The Wrath of God he is simply electric, the embodiment of might makes right for men in the wilderness and, by extension, society as a whole with or without god. But with what tenderness does he examine the monkeys that swarm his wayward raft, just as rapidly as they scurry before his hateful strides. In Woyzeck, the sheer pathos of the title character as perfected, bruises and all by Kinski, is heartbreaking. Similarly, in Fitzcarraldo, we see Kinski in full flight, bringing all his enthusiasm for life to the character of the undercapitalized Irish rounder in Paraguay who did the unthinkable and became a god. But in Cobra Verde, one of his final films and his last with Herzog, Kinski delivers the finest scene I have ever witnessed. Cobra Verde, the indomitable thief, has done the impossible for a cadre of brazilian plantation owners who intended to send him to his death for impregnating a few of their daughters. He arrive salone on the slave coast, where he proceeds to unite a shattered kingdom with an army of women and impregnate a few dozen locals - before the whole world it seems turns on him in a ban on slave transport and his kingdom collapses in on him. Having already done the impossible again and again and swam so valiantly up the falls of society, Kinski is now alone on an African beach waiting for his Western captors to come and kill him, or the Africans he once ruled to end his life. For several agonizing minutes, Kinski strains to pull a boat that would require 40 men to launch it off the beach, to make one last impossible escape. Finally, after an excruiating effort, Kinski collapses in the surf, broken by destiny. Of the last scene filmed in the movie it is said that after it was wrapped, Kinski told Herzog in an exhausted voice 'Werner, I am done'. He died a few years later, having brought nothing approaching the same magnitude to the screen in the meantime. In one unbelievable effort he put his whole life into the scene - where it remains, for those of us who remember to watch a man whose life was consumed by his art.