My Best Fiend: Klaus Kinski (1999)*** 1/2 (out of 4) Director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski made a total of five films together, which might not seem a lot compared to other director-actor combos but then again not too many directors wanted to work with Kinski more than once. The two had a very troubled love-hate relationship that might have caused plenty of drama on the sets but fans of the two were treated with some remarkable movies. AGUIRRE THE WRATH OF GOD, FITZCARRALDO, NOSFERATU, WOYZECK and COBRA VERDE were the films and it could be argued that three of them are masterpieces. There are countless documents or interviews out there with many directors talking about how horrid of a person Kinski was to work with but it's interesting to see Herzog mention that while he was awful the two of them really needed one another. MY BEST FIEND tells a great many stories about the trouble that happened behind the scenes and ever so often we're greeted to some actual video footage of Kinski having one of his rants. There's an audio example too as well as getting to see Kinski on stage where he was playing Jesus and going off on one of these crazy rants. This documentary is so strange because it really is a touching hand out from Herzog to Kinski but at the same time most of what's being talked about is bad stuff. Kinski certainly isn't shown in a good light but at the same time you can't help but smile at his madness and in reality start to like him even as the bad stories pile up. MY BEST FIEND is far from a great film. I think one problem is that more good stories about the two probably would have helped. I think the film also lacks so much footage be it on the set of these films or other stuff that you can't help but also wonder how many of the stories are true. With that said, MY BEST FIEND is an interesting document to say the least and a fitting tribute to the madness of both Kinski and Herzog.

I walked into this one completely cold: I'd never heard of Kinski or Herzog before. I was completely blown away and the artist-on-artist format was as appropriate as it was effective: only a talented director could hope to communicate a little bit about someone as unique as Kinski. Many amazing scenes and lines are highlighted in this compilation and Herzog generously lets several film production secrets slip, some on purpose and some indirectly. It's my very limited assessment that Kinski only "acted" while off-camera, and what he did while it was rolling was not "acting" at all: he may have simply been one of the most intense and honest people ever to have lived.

This is an interesting documentary, at least for those like myself who have seen and are fans of the cycle of films starring Klaus Kinski and directed by Werner Herzog, who helms this largely autobiographical and highly subjective documentary as well. It retraces the steps of their friendship to unlikely places such as a boarding house in Germany where Kinski shared lodgings with the adolescent Herzog and his family. It follows the production of each of the 5 films Herzog and Kinski made together in order, spending perhaps 15 or 20 minutes on each.There is some very fascinating footage here from the filming of both "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" and "Fitzcarraldo", the duo's most impressive collaborations. Also Herzog interviews various co-stars such as Claudia Cardinale (who recalls an odd episode where Kinski became very frustrated with a small animal) and Eva Mattes (who brings up a poignant story about Kinski mentoring her in a moment of distress while filming "Woyzchek"). Herzog travels to some of the locations where they filmed in South America and recalls Kinski's sometimes extravagant demands.A lot of interesting aspects of Kinski's craft emerge, such as his way of entering the frame with a swivel to avoid showing the side of his profile, and his seemingly unstoppable need for drama. But the film on the whole is about Herzog and Kinski working together, not about Kinski himself. It's about a work relationship and a friendship, and if we're to believe Herzog the two of them sat together thinking up insults of Herzog for Kinski's autobiography. There have been many great collaborations in cinema, but few where the two artists so often attempted to anger or even kill each other. Herzog and Kinski seem to have seen each other as insufferable egomaniacs, and Herzog describes how Kinski would create tension on the set to ensure that all attention was focused on him. At times Herzog says that he instigated arguments with Kinski because it was the only way to get Kinski's energy down to a level appropriate for the character, specifically on "Aguirre." And Kinski's anger, which we witness in more than one filmed tirade, is indeed a thing of terror and strange beauty.Fascinating film for fans, and I even suspect that those with no familiarity at all with these films will want to seek them out afterward.

My Best Fiend, a take on the working relationship and history between filmmaker Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski (by Herzog himself), puts on the facade of a documentary as Herzog interviews some of the participants- actors and at least one crew member- in the productions of the films (Aguirre, Woyzek, Nosferatu, Fitzcarraldo, and Cobra Verde, only the first and third seen by me). But it's less that than a kind of confessional from Herzog, a collection of anecdotes, horror stories, and in general psychologically breaking through the general perceptions regarding their collaborations as actor and director. Part of that perception, of course, is totally correct. Herzog, always a filmmaker wanting the utmost control of his stories about madmen obsessed with goals that seemed impossible or in subject matter that was marked as dark and disturbing as possible (without being too graphic), had to contend with his own kind of 'character' in the form of Kinski, who could be a little frightened being scared of a wasp one moment, and the next acting like someone killed his child when in reality the coffee was lukewarm.Kinski, in most of the footage that is put forth in this film- even the footage that is basically taken right out of the Herzog works themselves- add to the profile of what this man might be. It's alternately funny and unnerving to see the one big outburst of his anger at a production manager on the set of one of the films, when as Herzog says 'compared to his other outbursts this was mild'. Equally jarring is seeing him doing some kind of Jesus-play or a weird sermon at the start of My Best Fiend, where he comes off like he's half a rock-star and half certifiable. But at the same time a little of the footage, along with some of the anecdotes, also give him the light of something of a schizophrenic, who on the one hand could be extremely demanding and ultimately ego-maniacal if not at the center of attention, and on the other could be the most professional actor this side of a Howard Hawkes picture. Interesting too is seeing the two interviewees who have the best things to say about Kinski- his female co-stars from Woczek and Fitzcarraldo. Maybe there's something of Kinski being the prototypical male as opposed to just being an escaped anger management patient. He's described as being sweet and kind and very polite to his co-stars of the opposite sex. But with the male ones, who knows.The testimonials from Herzog build to something quite fascinating, not just as a subjective profile of an actor and a quasi-friend (err, fiend); it's also a movie about Herzog too, about how he sort of found out more about himself from having to tame the beast, so to speak. The near legendary story of Herzog threatening murder and suicide if Kinski walked off Aguirre, for example, perhaps showed to his star not exactly that his own director was as nuts as him, but that he took what he was doing just as seriously, if not more so, than he on a professional level. There's even an easy-going scene (the only one with both of the men speaking in English) where they seem most down to earth about why they work together so often. If there is anything that might be lacking from all of this it's that we get to see so much of certain sides of a few of their productions, while Nosferatu and Cobra Verde are either left out altogether or just mentioned in brief towards the end. There's also an unnecessary scene where Herzog is reminiscing over a gallery of photos of Kinski and himself. And the balance between telling one side or the other of the actor's persona seems to not always be shifted totally in proportion; by the end we almost want to see more and find out more than has been presented.But what is in My Best Fiend is pretty close to priceless for die-hard fans of the director and actor, and as one who's getting more into the filmmaker's career (and finding Kinski to be Germany's much more crazy answer to Al Pacino- an actor with the intensity and passion and skill of twenty actors all in the eyes and mannerisms), it's a very good work to also be seen by people who have not even seen one of the five films by the director and star. It's a very bizarre, very on-edge, but ultimately fruitful collaboration that now has made for a kind of mix of expose, memorial, and elongated denouement. And it also is very funny as well.