My Best Fiend

File:My Best Fiend Cover.jpg

Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski (My Best Fiend) (literally My Dearest Enemy) is a 1999 documentary by Werner Herzog about his tumultuous yet productive relationship with German actor Klaus Kinski and was released on DVD in 2000 by Anchor Bay.

Summary

"People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder."[1]

Template:Spoiler The film opens with shots from one of Klaus Kinski's Jesus tours, in which he performed--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. Kinski had to leave one of these tours in order to star in his first Herzog film, Aguirre: The Wrath of God. This was the first of five films that the two would make together including: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979); Woyzeck (1979); Fitzcarraldo (1982); and Cobra Verde (1987).

Herzog presents selected pieces of Kinski's biography. He tours a substantially renovated apartment in which Kinski lived, looks at a film clip of the first time he ever saw Kinski, and presents a large amount of footage from the sets of their various movies. Herzog recounts the heated arguments and sometimes violent altercations between them. For example, the oft-repeated story of Herzog threatening to shoot Kinski should he leave the production of Aguirre. He draws heavily on footage from Burden of Dreams, a documentary of the making of Fitzcarraldo, a particularly difficult film for their relationship.

The Kinski that Herzog presents, however, is not solely the raving madman he is sometimes remembered as. Herzog has a deep respect for Kinski's acting talent (else why should Herzog work with such a difficult man on five different projects?). He also displays a tenderer side of Kinski. From interviews with two of the women who starred opposite him, Eva Mattes (from Woyzeck) and Claudia Cardinale (from Fitzcarraldo), one would get the impression that Kinski was a loving and gentle, indeed a calm man. Perhaps most moving is a series of shots of Kinski playing with a butterfly in the Peruvian jungle.

My Best Fiend ends with a shot from Cobra Verde of Kinski collapsing in the sand as he tries to pull a large boat out to sea as Herzog describes Kinski's death as the result of living so strenuously and fully. The film, then, is something of an elegy to Kinski, Herzog's dear friend and sometimes foe. Template:Endspoiler

External link

• Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski at IMDb