Best Fiends Season: Cobra Verde (Dir. Werner Herzog, 1h 51m, 1987)

The surf rolls in as the man struggles, the breakers cascading across shot, the golden sand, the grey-blue sky. Stretching off screen is the subject of his toil-a colossal wooden canoe, drawn up on the beach, from where it arrived nearly an hour of screen-time ago. Now, the man is trying to escape from encroaching forces and his own fate in it. He tugs insistently at the rope, putting his whole weight into it, or tugs at the prow of the boat. His only companion, aside from us, the viewer, is the figure of a polio-stricken man who watches, impassive, from a distance on hands and knees. The toil begins to tell-the figure clings, like a drowning man, to the side of the boat, or tugs, increasingly crouched. Then the inevitable happens.

He falls, and seems to lie there in the surf, an enfeebled figure, desperately trying to swim, to right himself, even as the surf brings him to shore, relentless waves crashing over him until we cannot tell if he has succumbed, whether he is drowned, or simply resigning himself to his fate to be buffeted this way and that until the forces after his head eventually catch up with him. His fate is unknown. What we are seeing, though, is far more than a man resigning himself to the inevitable, or doing battle with forces far beyond his control one last time before his luck runs out. What we are seeing is the end of a friendship, of a working relationship, of a director and his muse, on film. This, after all, is the ending of Cobra Verde, the fifth and final film Werner Herzog film to star Klaus Kinski. This final battle against the impossible is the final few grains of sand falling through the hourglass of their time together.

Cobra Verde, a film about a fictional rancher turned bandit turned slave-trader turned warlord, with Kinski in the starring role as the titular Cobra Verde, Da Silva, is not merely a meditation on man's inhumanity against man, or the corruption of Africa by the opportunistic and the brutality meted out by cruel men upon the continent, nor is it merely a portrait of power of a man who rides fate from continent. It is the end of over a decade and a half of collaboration. It is, arguably, the final truly great film that Herzog would make as a director of narrative, rather than documentary films. It is the end of these best fiends' story together.

By 1987, Herzog and Kinski are in very different places to where they were at the end of Fitzcarraldo. Kinski's career between Herzog's films may have been restricted to bit-parts and occasional leading roles in American films, but he remained a fixture of German cinema; however, as with Herzog, his legendary hair-trigger temper and equally legendary outbursts precede him. This comes to a head with Kinski starting no fewer than six fistfights, and essentially holding production hostage to his whims on the set of schlocky horror movie, Crawlspace (also released in 1987), leading to director David Schmoeller later releasing the nigh-legendary short, Please Kill Mr Kinski, outlining the very real discussions between Schmoeller and producer Roberto Bessi, of simply having Kinski murdered for the insurance money. He is, by this point, a wildly unpredictable but bankable star.

Herzog, meanwhile, has had a productive four years; one major film, the underrated Where the Green Ants Dream sees Herzog mix fact and fiction in his depiction of Aborigines trying to protect their land from the encroaching mining operation of the white Australians, whilst the two documentaries of the period, both made for German television, sees Herzog tackle child soldiers in perhaps his most political film of his entire career, Ballad of the Little Soldier, and the exploits of Italian mountaineers against the fearsome Gasherbrum I and II mountains in The Dark Glow of the Mountains. His attention turns to his next feature film, and here, Herzog crosses paths not only with explorer and essayist Bruce Chatwin (later the subject of Herzog's 2019 documentary Nomad), as Herzog seeks to adapt his book, The Viceroy of Ouidah, but, in perhaps the most 80s moment imaginable, David Bowie, who Herzog beats to optioning the novel.

Following the fictional Cobra Verde/Da Silva through his history, from ruined cattle rancher in Brazil-Kinski is introduced in arid surroundings, on hands and knees, dead and dying cattle around him-to, in the matter of a cut, becoming an infamous and feared bandit, the titular Cobra Verde (Green Snake). From here, he quickly gains notoriety, before, unexpectedly, becoming the right hand man of Coutinho, a wealthy sugar baron, after he subdues a slave attempting to make their mistake. This, though, quickly unravels once Da Silva's indiscretions with the three daughters of Coutinho are unmasked. Rather than simply kill him, though, Coutinho and his friends instead send Da Silva on the suicidal quest of resuming the slave trade in West Africa

Arriving, and soon finding the ruined keep of the Elmina Castle, the former stronghold of the slave trade, so Da Silva soon becomes friends with Taparica, the last survivor of the previous slavery campaign in the area, who, helps him re-establish the trade, and, in turn, introduces him to the complex situation in the region, dominated by Bossa Ahadee (King Ampaw), who essentially acts as Da Silva's foil for the latter half of the film. The local lord soon has Da Silva and Taparica brought before him on trumped up charges, and is only saved by Ahadee's nephew, whose political ambitions coincide with that of Da Silva, who proceeds to train and lead an army of native women to attack, and dethrone Ahadee. This victory is short-lived, as the alliance between the nephew and Da Silva peters out, Portuguese outlaw slavery, and the British put a price upon Da Silva's head. His flight from West Africa ends in clouded mystery, the film ending with the slaver seemingly perishing to the waves.

At first glance, Cobra Verde may well feel like Herzog's other three major films with Kinski. The undercurrent, though, is entire seas away from the director's usual, fairly balanced portraits of the brave, the mad and the heroic risking everything. It is a portrait of a largely irredeemable, lonely figure. It is also the duo at their most barbed, at their most, for lack of a better word, political, their depiction of this merciless, utterly depraved slave trader barely degrees from Kinski essentially playing himself. Da Silva is, certainly a far more violent man, a hardened criminal, a rapist, a, after all, slave-trader who enslaves and steals men and weaponises women to save his own neck. Cobra Verde is not so much a film that ends with a parting of the ways between Herzog and Kinski as it is a film informed by their collapsing friendship. It is a film where Herzog hates his protagonist, and is growing to hate the actor playing him.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the worsening personality clashes of Kinski and the production team. Kinski, it's fair to say, was never easy to work with-his entire life is littered with breakdowns, with shouting matches, with films stymied, with few exceptions, by his personality clashes with the people that made films run behind the scenes. Herzog was no stranger to this, either riling his star up, or letting him channel his fury into the production. By 1987, though, the actor's already volcanic temper was positively pyroclastic, and starting to adversely affect-as we have already heard from Crawlspace-the production of almost every single film he worked on. Cobra Verde, thus, is a film made at a point where its crew were undeniably suffering from Kinski's unpredictability, with the most infamous incident, recounted in 1999's My Best Fiend, being the exit of Herzog's cinematographer of choice. Mauch. The inciting incident is lost to the sands of time, but five days of Kinski was enough for a cinematographer that had previously made two films with the actor, and in his place, Czech-born Viktor Růžička has to step into the breach.

The biggest impact, though, is how Cobra Verde feels, compared to Herzog's previous work with Kinski. Compare, for example, how Kinski plays Verde, and how Herzog depicts the character compared to Aguirre. Both are violent, and ultimately power-crazed men that will ride their fates to their utter destruction, confident at their outcomes, but we feel nothing for Verde for vast stretches of the film, whilst we cannot tear our eyes away from Aguirre's fury. There's something unpleasant, despicable about Verde in a way that the other film makes electrifying and the centre of the entire narrative. In Cobra Verde, the entire performance feels muted and, but for Kinski's outbursts, strangely uninteresting.

The film around Verde also feels curiously episodic, and in places oddly stunted-it's not so much that Herzog is uninterested in the narrative; there are moments of great impact throughout the film, and of spectacle-Cobra Verde's meeting with a crippled bar keeper has moments of Herzog's usual idiosyncratic cinema, whilst the pure size of some of the battle scenes between Ahadee's forces and the women are, indeed, breathtaking. They feel, however, oddly ill-at-ease in a film that seems neither completely confident with its protagonist, nor the narrative journey he is going on. It is a film into which flashes of brilliance, of cinematic genius occasionally shine, but all too often they are blotted out by the shadow of Mr Kinski.

It's...impossible to say-I've looked through interviews with Herzog, watched all of the superb My Best Fiend, and even, with my limited knowledge of German-to know exactly when Herzog and Kinski met for the last time. There are no photographs of the premier of Cobra Verde, the limited press that remains online from this period does not really mention Kinski's relationship with Herzog in the years between 1987 and Kinski's death in 1991 from a heart attack. Kinski's legacy has been tainted by his actions in life, his anger and temper and the darker side of this maniacal man, the same vein of bottomless fury, meting out the unspeakable against his daughters. Herzog hasn't spoken at any great length about the actor in nearly two decades, and in the intervening 32 years, has perhaps surpassed his epic depictions of the limitless potential of fictional men and women in documentaries that focus on the-very real-accomplishments of humanity, and the limits of the world we live in.

It doesn't really matter where their off-screen friendship finally broke-only Herzog now really knows anyway-their on-screen collaboration ends with Kinski broken, left for dead as the notorious Cobra Verde in the surf of the West African coast. In their wake, between Klaus and Werner, come some of the greatest films ever made. At the centre of them, glaring, plotting insurrection, or desperately seeking solace and an escape from the immortal or risking everything for their beloved opera to come home to their city, or riding the winds of fate, stares Klaus Kinski, blue, piercing eyes cutting deep into the soul, ready to spring to fury or wild ecstasy of ambition at a moment's notice. Herzog stares back.

If I could ask Herzog one question, it would be this.
"Why did you work with Kinski five times". And yet, I already know the answer. Because Herzog, in Kinski, saw the perfect avatar, the perfect vessel, to tell tales as wild, as unpredictable, and as elemental, as the storm he saw as a child tossing its way across his apartment. Because, in Kinski, Herzog found his muse. Because, in Kinski, Herzog found, for all his faults the only man he felt could stand up to the impossible, glare back, and rage against it. Because, in Kinski, Herzog found his best friend, and worst enemy.

Rating: Recommended.

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