Fitzcarraldo by Lutz Koepnick, and: Phoenix by Brad Prager, and: Wings of Desire by Christian Rogowski (review)

Fitzcarraldo, Phoenix, and Wings of Desire, all published in 2019, constitute three titles in a new series on German classic films edited by Gerd Gemünden and Johannes von Moltke, and published by Camden House, an imprint of Boydell and Brewer. Each slim volume is roughly the same length and contains ample illustrations, mainly still shots from the individual films under consideration. According to the publisher's website, the "jargon-free and accessible style" of these books is intended to appeal to both specialists and non-specialists. By opting for minimal front matter, endnotes over footnotes, and no bibliography or index, the books achieve a satisfying flow that draws the reader into these "book-length essay[s]," though the absence of a table of contents was disorienting at first. Headings, which are employed to considerably differing degrees in the respective volumes, provide welcome organizational structure and metacognitive scaffolding. What is striking about all three books is the depth and breadth of coverage. Each film is explained in extraordinary detail. Anchored in historical, political, cultural, and cinematic contexts, readers—even those with intimate knowledge of the films—discover new insights into the films themselves as well as the filmmakers' inspirations, challenges, and triumphs from conception to creation and beyond.

In Fitzcarraldo, author Lutz Koepnick provides myriad behind-the-scene details for one of director Werner Herzog's most critically acclaimed and harshly criticized films. Released in 1982, the film chronicles Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald's obsessive attempt to build an opera house in the Amazon. Koepnick, who acknowledges that readers—whether they have seen the film or not—are likely familiar with Fitzcarraldo's storied and exploitative production and the troubled relationship between Herzog and lead actor Klaus Kinski (whom Koepnick refers to as "best f(r)iends" in reference to Herzog's 1999 documentary Mein liebster Feind – Klaus Kinski), notes the "blurring of lines between fiction and reality, between character, actor, and director" (5). This volume helps isolate those lines and enables readers to disconnect the film from its baggage and focus on "what the film itself tells, shows, and knows independent of its own maker's visions and intention […]" (11). Divided into seven sections ("Spectacle in the Forest"; "Dreams [That Money Can't Buy]"; "Beyond Nature and Culture"; "Flow"; "The Sounds of Music"; "On Dangerous Grounds"; "In the Wake") and accompanied by nearly 50 color images, Koepnick's volume examines the historical, geopolitical, and cultural contexts of Fitzcarraldo from its conception and production to its release and reception. In "The Sounds of Music," for example, the reader is reminded that the film is, in essence, about the "power of sound and music to express emotions, channel desire, connect different bodies, minds, and souls, and—most importantly—build alternate worlds within and in opposition to the dreary routines of the real" (49).

Throughout the book, the author draws extensively on philosophical and literary texts, scholarly works, interviews with Herzog, and Les Blank's extraordinary makingof documentary Burden of Dreams (1982). The final section ("In the Wake") addresses colonial domination and the romanticization of "exotic" cultures and landscapes by examining Herzog's own nonfiction work and filmmaking seminars, a multi-channel video installation by two Polish artists, C.T. Jasper and Joanna Malinowska, and a recent novel by Florian Wacker. Wacker's Stromland (2018) tells the story of a German woman searching for her long-lost twin brother during the mid-1980s in Peru, where he went missing after having worked as assistant to the cinematographer on the film crew of Fitzcarraldo. When commenting on how Stromland's narrative ends not in the Amazon but in Germany, Koepnick concludes: "What is wrong with neoand postcolonial settlers, explorers, desperados, junkies, happiness seekers, operative entrepreneurs, and filmmakers...