Cobra Verde

This movie is very absorbing: the cinematography is excellent, and the movie is full of eye-popping scenery and images, as well as intense exchanges of dialogue. One just doesn't find this combination at the movies very often.

Parts of the movie have such vivid but exotic imagery, that it seems surreal (the segment where the Amazon warriors are gathering for battle is a case in point!). Other parts seem almost operatic - especially the exchanges between Francisco Manoel da Silva (Klaus Kinski) and the mad African king, who has taken da Silva prisoner and plans to kill him.

Klaus Kinski is totally compelling in the lead role as Cobra Verde, a swashbuckling bandit-rogue who, partly through fate, partly through crooked machinations of those around him, gets sent off to a Brazilian slave fortress on the coast of West Africa to scout for slaves to bring back to Brazil. I had forgotten how old a man Mr. Kinski was, and was curious to find out his age when he made this film. I checked his stats, and to my astonishment I discovered that he was 62 years old when he made this film. His performance is truly amazing. Would that I have that much fire and energy when I am 62!

I heartily recommend this movie to anyone who is sick and tired of the usual pap that too often fills the screens these days. Though this film was made in 1988, nothing in it seems dated. Just based on its subject matter, it already has a built-in "timeless" quality to it. I think it will hold up well over the years. Go rent it!

By the way, for those of you who like these sorts of films, then another movie that I would recommend as a companion piece to this film is James Ivory's "Heat and Dust" (1982). Though much more "tranquil" and sans the fiery acting of a Klaus Kinski in the lead role, that film, set in India, too had excellent cinematography and a compelling, historically-based story with memorable images and characters.

In principle, I would feel tempted to give it only a six. Except that then there are "buts"... But there is Werner Herzog. But there is the sociopathically brilliant Klaus Kinski. But there is that unforgettable final scene. But there is the historic memory behind the story. But there are silent scenes of sheer contemplation. But there is the image of the fortress of Elmina (originally Ajudá, or Ouidah), that lingers long after you have seen the movie. But there is the amazing sensuality of all those female-warriors in beautiful war outfits. But there is that young girl singing near the end, the lavish, teasing, provocative, self-assured look on her face, the expression in her eyes, the crystalline/aggressive sound of her voice. And 'but' there is the music. If you have read Bruce Chatwin's novel, you will be able to add up some details to the story line. The horror of the Kingdom of Daomé, for instance, is far from what BC described himself - and actually far from what history books tell us. In fact, you could build endless stories inside this movie. That's what makes it so good: all the things missing. It could have been a better achievement, but for all it's worth, it's really not the kind of movie you're likely to forget after a few weeks!

'Cobra Verde' is a really great movie!!I was surprised because i never hear this film praised by critics.I've been an avid Herzog fan for years and even after all these years his films still have the power to shock me. there are many bizarre and stunning images in this film.It's really a fascinating movie,and would be good to use in a world history class.Klaus kinski is really great in the title role ,and Herzog's trademark visuals have never been better.Some of the visuals I found to be very disturbing,One scene in particular that is straight out of a jodorowsky film. The film has a very powerful ending that will have great impact on anyone who likes films.See it even if your not into herzog's movies.

Cobra Verde is the last time Kinski went mad for Herzog. He probably continued to be a raving lunatic to his end, but this was the last time something meaningful was siphoned through his madness. Herzog said that after the film was wrapped, Kinski was spent, he had given all he had to give. Kinski struggled with his delusions of grandeur in his own film Paganini, but for all intents and purposes this is the swansong. Strangely and fittingly this is reflected in the character he plays. There's colorful grim adventure in it but at its best Cobra Verde is a coming of age drama.

This slavetrader incarnation of Aguirre has matured, the waters are stiller and run deeper, he's more ambiguous, as though the delusions of grandeur have been melted away by advancing age and we're looking at a broken human being who is probably past the point of being able to be made whole again, a man who went mad at some point or other but has made his peace with his madness.

Here's a man who is a confessed criminal but not a raving monomaniac anymore like Aguirre or Fitzcarraldo; now he's the romantic who yearns "to cross over to another world". Perfect. Here's closure to a trilogy of sorts about different characters who could very well be the same person in different times.

Cobra Verde does that, it crosses over to another world, it's a glance stolen over the bulwark of a boat off the African coast and through the bushes of the savanna and now we're peering at a small village of huts and cabins and wild black men are dancing a feverish dance around a fire, they're waving sticks around them, bodies shining with sweat, their movements odious and harmonical with some of the spasmodic suspended quality of a coiled spring, and then Klaus Kinski has his face painted black by figures with horned headpieces, his face is framed by unruly blonde hair so that he looks like a demon figure straight from Japanese mythology - for the black man the devil is white. Cobra Verde is all that, it's like an ethnographic document of something that may be even partly fictional yet feels wholy true in its savagery and otherworldliness, of something that was lost and now found again, it's not Discovery Channel's version of black Africa, it's like something straight from the pages of a Joseph Conrad novel, a bit sensationalist but also very mystical, with traces of something at once horrible and wonderful.

We get echoes of Daniel Plainview at the beginning. Cobra Verde is digging for gold in Brazil, he's ruthless and vengeful. We enter an empty bar in a small pueblo owned by a midget and we get discussions about lost paradises on earth where the snow is light like feathers. Cobra Verde ambushes a palanquin and a mysterious black girl in a white dress gets out and dances a sensual dance.

Now we're on a boat off the African shore looking at a deserted slave fortress through an eyeglass, inside the fort a tattered survivor of the black militia of the fort cackles mysteriously and we enter rooms filled with bats and crabs. The movie is very stylized so far, when Kinski makes an appearance in the plaza of the pueblo with his poncho and a rifle, he looks like he stepped back into a spaghetti western for a shootout. But there are also residues of mystery and nameless rage and violence that seem to come from a different place, destruction and abandonment, and the first hour of Cobra Verde is among Herzog's finest work, because all that is kept just out of sight.

The African part of Cobra Verde is less, and maybe that is all Cobra Verde does wrong, that the mystery is peeled back and we're looking at things too much. We're looking at things too much like we're a visitor in a local tribe and the tribesmen are performing dances and chants for our benefit, they wave flags and stage fights, they crowd rooms and walk in lines. When the jungle showers down wooden arrows upon Kinski and his group in Aguirre, the attackers remain unseen. Here they're rushing out to meet us.

It's all a bit like Herzog's tribal docu Woodabe - Herdsmen of the Sun with a Kinski protagonist and a little bit of plot.

Another plot line is invoked at the last minute to make order out of the wild, something about the brother of the local king (one of the most fascinating movie characters of the decade, a man who constantly puts on a show for his people, he's parts cheeky badass, pompous buffoon, and stark raving mad) wanting to usurp the throne, and Cobra Verde leads his insurrectionist amazon army, but it's all a bit scattershot. The protagonist has matured but Cobra Verde the movie lacks Aguirre's the singleminded forward- pushing sense of a journey into the heart of darkness.

Like with most of his movies, Herzog saves the best for last - another unforgettable image of a desperate Kinski, now the alonest of the alone, trying to tug a piroge into the ocean to get away from that godforsaken African shore. A crippled black boy afflicted with polio walks towards him across the shore, then pauses and turns. Here's a tragic man alone at his end now, an outcast beyond help or reprieve or even vengeance, and now he's truly ready to cross over to another world. This is heightened reality, it is Herzog's ecstatic truth, or in his words, sometimes truth comes out clearer out of fabrication.

From famous German director Werner Herzog - a man who's cinematic penchants usually include documentary-style visuals (stark but not shaky!), stories centering on man's loss of sanity, destructive ambition (or lack thereof) and outsiders, and larger than life characters - comes his last "big" film. To put it more aptly, his last film with famously bonkers actor Klaus Kinski. Both men had a famously sadomasochistic relationship and in this last effort, Kinski was reputedly totally out of control.

"Cobra Verde" marks the breaking point between these two great man. the point where Herzog and Kinski moved too far apart to ever consider working together again, the director evolving into too much of a control adept, and the leading man moving way beyond the safe boundaries of sanity. Yet the film is an extreme as a result and will divide audiences. But in truth how can this be a negative aspect: a film you either love or hate is at least interesting in most cases.

The story of bandit Cobra Verde, sent to Africa - by his former employer as a punishment for impregnating most of his daughters - to reestablish slave trade and battle an opposing bloodthirsty African tribal king, is in itself interesting and unusual enough to arouse interest, but barely suffices to convey the numerous delicacies within the film. Kinski's possessed turn may not be an adequate incarnation of the character, yet it is a powerhouse performance if only for the sheer energy deployed. And for once, Kinski is not the only raving lunatic and Herzog peppers the screenplay with often creepy and dark but hysterical lines and memorable situations and characters.

What may disturb many beyond the chaos on show is the casual cruelty on display at times. It is adequate for once. The black man is treated with as much political correctness as must have been the case in real life at the time (perhaps even somewhat less). On the other front, watching this you actually feel the suffocating heat that slowly burns away the dignity of these characters and makes them animals, sometimes far less than that. The film's mood is perfectly rendered and Herzog's visuals are surprisingly artistic and classy at times, for a film-maker preferring a more "cinéma-vérité" approach.

In the end, "Cobra Verde" is a cinematic oddity because of its taste for extremes (though they never hurt the film's own coherence and internal logic) in every sense. Nonetheless, neither Kinski nor Herzog ever displayed such artistic courage (or sheer lunacy) at any other point of their respective careers, and that's saying something!