ABSTRACT
The logical impossibility that lies at the heart of opera organizes the film’s logic. Opera is the film’s form and its content. Opera as both an institution and sonic manifestation defines the film’s narrative structure, particularly its overtly exaggerated situations, as well as the character of its principal protagonist. The role of technology, as a fundamental constituent of modernity, helps to organize the film’s narrative; technology, as a component part of the narrative, accounts in part for the documentary look of Fitzcarraldo. The Utopian charge of opera in Fitzcarraldo is anchored in the insistence to hear life sung, and notwithstanding the myriad instrumentalities of opera’s own material-institutional foundations. Werner Herzog’s point, in a way, is to mark the fallibility of seeing in order to make audible the truths of hearing: hearing music. The advantage of opera is that it accomplishes both tasks at once.
