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“Have You Ever Seen a Shrunken Head?”: The Early Modern Roots of Ecstatic Truth in Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Richard John Ascárate
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Abstract

Shortly into Werner Herzog's South American film Fitzcarraldo (1982), the Peruvian rubber baron Don Aquilino (José Lewgoy) asks the eponymous protagonist (Klaus Kinski) if he has ever seen a shrunken head. This paper argues that Fitzcarraldo's short, fumbling response (“Yes. I mean, no. Sort of …”) calls into question both the European tradition of representing the New World and the very status and nature of the film image. Close analysis of a single visual from the film also demonstrates the difficulty of constructing images endowed with what the director has called over the years “ecstatic truth.” Though critically praised for his unique vision, Herzog affiliates himself through Fitzcarraldo, however unknowingly, with a constellation of texts and practices having colonialist aims, extending all the way to Warhaftig Historia (1557), the controversial captivity narrative of the would-be German conquistador Hans Staden.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 122 , Issue 2 , March 2007 , pp. 483 - 501
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2007

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