Cobra Verde

Cobra Verde_360P

Trailer—Cobra Verde

source: Cobra Verde

Lesser Herzog / Kinski collaboration about a bandit turned slave trader (Klaus Kinski) in Africa suffers from a muddled script. Kinski's performance is good, but far below his work in Fitzcarraldo or Aguirre. Still, the obvious talent of these two men makes the movie watchable, with some excellent sequences. Definitely worth a watch for Herzog fans, although it can't compare with much of his earlier work.

Herzog is a miracle. Somehow he himself dives deep enough into wildness to bring it back to us. Every affair is a voyage on the fringes of madness. He uses Kinski to help us focus, but the thing starts with a doomed or perverted struggle to which he attaches extraordinary images with saturated engagement. To those images he attaches deep, deep sound, both indigenous sounds and hypnotic voices. Within this fabric, we have 1000 wild Amazons and wild Kinski. The transcendence of the thing depends on the transcendence of the original struggle. In his river projects, that vision is life-altering. Here it is stilted. Colonial madness he handles well, but here the scope is too broad; there's too much story for the thing to cut you deep. The stolen mistress, sugar, skulls, angry women, crazy kings, a line of flags, 62 children, and before the whole thing falls apart, a choir of young non-slave girls. That near-last image is the hopeful part, and it sticks. But its apart from the dark voyage. Watch "Hearts of Glass" first, I think. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

"Cobra Verde" is probably the less brilliant movie that Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski made together. It's the story of a Portuguese bandit that eventually becomes the Viceroy of some African region (when Portugal had some colonies over there). This time the making of the film wasn't as chaotic as it was in "Aguirre" or "Fitzcarraldo", what let Herzog recreate himself filming the deserted landscapes and the native women, and that's precisely what spoils the movie's rhythm. It looks like Herzog fell in love so much with those African natives that he couldn't help to fill dozens of sequences with their rites and their dance (and that stuff does not contribute in anything to the story). Anyway, "Cobra Verde" is just a MUST SEE for those who really like the madman Kinski (just like I do) , because he released his temper and his anger one more time in this performing. You can never know when Kinski is gonna explode. *My rate: 6/10

Just finished watching. Strange one. Have never seen any other Herzog. I have been left in thoughts... The fact that there's no narration - the director leaves the images to do the job - might be making this strange to me - but this is no easy story either. Don't be fooled, I 've seen dozens of REALLY strange films, check my review list to check this out- yet, this at times visually stunning film, with surely powerful material has left me puzzled. Maybe this lack of text/dialogue based narration is what Greenaway is after with his opinion for different use of the cinema medium. This film is not politically correct, as others have said, but it has a message, when we reach the ending line. The message of course comes too late... At some points I wondered whether I was watching some kind of exploitation film. After the ending, and after some thoughts, I figured out that was not the case. Of course not. this film has depth. Nudity was not sexual. Violence was not overdone. No sadism. I don't know (and I don't care) whether this has some historical accuracy, but it looks as if it does. yes, it's its realism that puzzled me. And of course the general weirdness of lead character, Kinsky(plus lack of background information on him). Overall..... I dunno if I should recommend this.... this looks like a somewhat historical epic, but in fact, its a personal demented tale through slavery era.

This film is not nearly as engaging as previous Kinski-Herzog films AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD and FITZCARALDO. Once again Herzog has found stunning locations at the very ends of the earth but his story does not complement the use of these places. Kinski is amazing as he always is when working with Herzog. He plays a complex, nuanced character(some would say mad) but the script lets him down. The story is a very brutal exposition of the 19th century slave trade. White men are seen working hand in hand with African kings. The Kings want weapons and power, the whites want slaves to work their vast plantations. Cobra Verde(Kinski) is essentially really only a pawn in this horrible game, only he does not fully realize it until it is too late. Unfortunately the film's greatest weakness is its visual narrative. There are too many moments when a situation is set up and we are left to figure it out on our own. I was also perplexed by Cobra Verde's motivation. Why does he accept to go to Africa. Does he really see himself as invincible? He is fearless, but surely he did not survive so long as a bandit by being stupid? So why does he make the journey in the first place? This being said, the film also has some stunning moments. Witness the army of amazons being whipped into a frenzy by the blood-thirsty Cobra Verde. There must be 400 actors in this scene alone. Kinski revels in the chaos and confusion and this adds greatly to the impact of the scene. The final scene is also quite haunting. It is really too bad that there are not enough moments like these. Overall worth seeing if you like Kinski and Herzog but definitely not their best effort.

In the documentary 'My Best Fiend' Herzog says that when directing Kinski in this film he found him 'uncontrollable'. I was surprised when watching it to sense that Kinski was burnt out and actually seemed too old for his role. The film opens with a Brazilian folk musician starting to sing us the 'Ballad of Cobra Verde'. Then we enter the story proper with an extreme close-up of Kinski's forehead which flows without a cut into a panoramic shot of an arid wasteland dotted with innumerable skeletons of cattle. Herzog's use of landscape in his films is as amazing as ever. Unfortunately after this very promising start the film loses its way. We next see Kinski labouring in a mine (apparently to pay the debts on his ranch); cheated of his wages he becomes a bandit; then he's taken up by a sugar planter because he can control slaves; he makes the planter's daughters pregnant and is sent on a suicidal mission to buy slaves from a mad African king. Surprisingly he succeeds and overthrows the king using an army of women but is cheated when Brazil outlaws slavery. He dies attempting to escape to sea once more. As you can see this plot is unremarkable and not really enough for a two-hour running time. Too often the film stops for local colour, especially in the African sequences when the scenes of local pageantry at the mad king's court seem to go on forever. There isn't really anything we haven't seen in previous Herzog/Kinski collaborations (obsessive dreamer seeks another world which is as flawed as the 'real' world, if not more so), Kinski seems tired and really can't carry the film alone. By any other standards this is not a bad film, but from this partnership it's a bit of a disappointment.

Klaus Kinski in all his craziness cannot save this visually stunning, but ultimately boring movie from Werner Herzog. I have seen travel films with more substance, and there is very little meaningful dialog. This plays like a film on African customs, with Kinski just happening to be in almost every scene. The story lacks cohesion, many scenes go on for way too long, and there is zero character development other than Klaus Kinski. Though it portends to be an epic like "Aguirre" or "Fitzcarraldo", it is not even close to the entertainment value of those films. "Cobra Verde" is little more than a string of exotic visuals. - MERK