The history of cinema is a history of crazy and crazy dreams. In this treacherous and turbulent river of history, there are many madmen who have sailed in boats, constantly searching for the possibilities of images deeper and deeper into the waves. Among them, there is one lunatic who stands out from the rest and has a boat that deliberately takes an unusual path. His footsteps have taken him to all continents and islands of the world, through cold plateaus, dangerous jungles and desolate Gobi.
He once ate his own leather shoes in a willing gamble to inspire young directors. He once stole a camera in a cinema to finish his film.
He once urged all young people to “go into real life, go to a nightclub as a bouncer, go to an insane asylum or a slaughterhouse as a guard. Walk on foot, learn a language, learn a craft or business that has nothing to do with film. Be your own film school.”
In one of his films, he once transported a boat from land to river by hand, just to record the “miracle” first hand.
He is one of the four greats of the new German cinema, the legendary director with the most insane name in the history of cinema, Herzog. This film, this “boat”, is “The Boat on Land”.
Bergman once said, “If film is not a record, it is a dream”. Herzog spent four years to write a real dream. The wild and primitive pulsations of South America are captured in the most unique images ever made.
In this film, Herzog’s will is personified by another legendary “madman”, Kinski, and together they accomplish an astonishing feat: land boating.
If a man can row a boat for two days to see an opera, it is not surprising that he moves a boat across a piece of land. If a woman is willing to sit beside him and row two boats with him, then it is also destiny that she loves his madness and follows his footsteps.
The faith of Fitzgerald, who defies all odds in order to build the opera house in the film, is self, the faith of Molly is love, and the faith of the Indians is primitive nature, the gods of heaven and earth. The conflict between civilization and savagery is not the point, but the fierce blossoming of their respective beliefs on the banks of the turbulent Pongo River is the core of the dream. What the director wants to tell is a crazy but romantic and beautiful tropical group of people who reach the absolute spirit with their mortal bodies.
Fitzgerald, such a role that melts the director’s strong personal will, is synonymous with madness and obsession: for Caruso’s aria to echo in the rainforest, while making ice, going to prison, transporting rubber, he can climb up the tall bell tower and shout, understand him, follow him, are innocent indigenous children, is the wild blood that only the wild can understand.
His lover, Molly, could go and open a brothel, could give all her money just to support the irrational dreams of her lover. She smiled as she sent off his big ship full of crew, she smiled as she greeted his decrepit, humble and ridiculous shipboard opera.
And the Indians, the Indians who drove the ship across the land, persistently pursued a purest goal from the beginning to the end, calmly but firmly believed in their lives, they were silent, silently gazing at all the vestiges of colonization and invasion, they were the madmen and supermen of the land.
When the boat finally sailed into the shallow water after the longest bumpy ride, the song at that moment, the chorus of Caruso and the Indians, was a true reflection of the miracle coming to earth. When Fitzgerald nodded uncontrollably next to the red chair, when the choir sang forgetfully, when Molly waved proudly in the crowd, this absurd to the extreme madness, finally ushered in its victory and glory.
In the middle of the movie, Fitzgerald and the Indians sailed the big boat from land to water by human power. Outside the film, Herzog really commanded the completion of the “land boat” in order to complete the most realistic record, he is the real Don Quixote, the real author-director, willing to do everything for the sake of the film can and can not do, to interpret the amazing collision of nature and human power. Film has become the most crazy and tolerant field, carrying the most daring and frightening adventure. Nowadays, images have become the most accessible things in our lives, and this most primitive madness seems to have become historical smoke and dust, because of this, this era needs some madmen to open up the unknown jungle of images, to move the dusty land boat.