The Exquisite Madness of Klaus Kinski

There’s a certain fascination apparent in beholding an artist so entrenched within the aura of the dysfunctional, so beyond our reach that they exude through their art an intransigence, a very real mystique. The German actor Klaus Kinski is one such figure – a deranged genius who was the intense power pervading through the magic of director Werner Herzog’s masterworks.

To watch some of the finest films that they created together is to witness an austere tour de force that is at once arresting as well as startling at how scarcely has such a figure been equalled in Hollywood cinema.

In the seminal classic ‘Aguirre – Wrath of God’ (1973) Kinski is astonishing as the quietly menacing Spanish soldier who leads an army of conquistadores in the search for the legendary city of El Dorado and inadvertently the Amazonian ‘heart of darkness’ whilst finally succumbing to his own insanity.

It is the final scenes that linger long in the mind, with Kinski holding aloft a small jungle primate with electric fervour coursing through his body all the while spewing out his futile plans of conquering the world that has caved in around him.

Often though it is his brilliance at displaying simmering emotion underlying a frantic rage that shines through; every nuance of his face providing the unfolding blueprint of his character’s inner torment, almost as if he were an actor blessed with double the faces of any other! In his experimental ‘Jesus’ theatre performances you can see the fury blazing in his eyes, the taut ferocity rippling through the parameters of his features and words with a dangerous rage that off-stage would frequently erupt into fits of unbridled egomania that Herzog often found himself on the receiving end of.

You can see the same dynamic exuberance in ‘Fitzcarraldo’ (1982) where Kinski, as the title character, repeatedly strikes the church-tower bell, all the while screaming his dreams and visions of building his own opera house for all the town to hear. In the closing scene of ‘Cobra Verde’ (1987) – the final film that he and Herzog collaborated on – Kinski’s harrowed character struggles in a crazed desperation to push his boat from the beach and into the sea before collapsing amidst the rolling waves in a beautifully tragic sequence. It strikes an additional chord of poignancy considering that they were the last shots ever filmed of Kinski (save for his own seldom-seen indulgence ‘Paganini’) before his death of a heart attack in 1991.

It is perhaps appropriate that his best friend and nemesis Werner Herzog should claim the defining words on the legacy of Kinski in his docu-biopic ‘My Best Fiend’ (1999). He closes the film with raw footage of Kinski in the jungle on the set of ‘Fitzcarraldo’ delicately playing and flirting with a butterfly, revealing a touching glimpse of the tenderness and pure spirit that lay beneath the often-mythologized anger and passion that stole centre stage.

In those defining words of Herzog, “He had spent himself. He burnt himself away like a comet.”