There is a good thing about this time of year - there is more time to contemplate.
There are certain things I love to contemplate, to think of, to savour, to tease out of...
In both films Herzog uses music as a divine instrument to gear our attention, to set us into the scenery of magical possibility and impossibility, scenery filled with symbols which mark the theatre he builds. Like a Baroque funerary theatre - Theatrum Funebris with objects that call for pensive pose, for a melancholic stance, for a moment of silence in the face of human solitude.
My thesis is that W. Herzog is an artist of baroque sensibility, baroque in its purest and most elevated form and that Bavarian Film Noir is a direct descendant of that historic period.
In Fitzcarraldo, Kaus Kinski's - protagonist presses into the unknown of the jungle, Enrico Caruso's voice carries him like a spell among the savages and away from civilisation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6m1QDBx5ec
It gets even better than this. In my opinion, the opening sequence of The Enigma of Caspar Hauser is simply unmatched, it is sublime!
I hope nobody minds the rest of the sequences are in Spanish, we have no problem about that, right?
