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Overview

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My Best Fiend, 1999

Starring: Claudia Cardinale, Eva Mattes, Werner Herzog, Isabelle Adjani

Directed by: Werner Herzog

Written by: Werner Herzog

Language: German, English, Spanish

Country: UK, Germany, Finland, USA

Runtime: 95 min

MPAA Rating:

Rating:7.8

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Profile of My Best Fiend

My Best Fiend can be described as contemplative, gloomy, and witty. The plot revolves around the life of an artist, filmmaking, and social misfits. The main genres are foreign, documentary, and period. In terms of style, My Best Fiend is talky. In approach, it is serious and realistic. The storytelling is slow paced.

Summary of My Best Fiend

Werner Herzog directed this documentary about the puzzling relationship between himself and actor Klaus Kinski. Beginning with their apocalyptic first meeting at age 13 and continuing through AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD and their subsequent films together, MY BEST FIEND reveals the deep trust involved in maintaining such a powerful love-hate relationship as the glue that keeps them from following up on their plans to murder each other. Candid and intimate interviews with Kinski's costars are interspersed with rare and compelling behind-the-scenes and behind-the-camera footage from such classic Kinski/Herzog collaborations as AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD and FITZCARRALDO.

Herzog himself dryly narrates as the magnetic and destructive energy that resulted when Herzog and Kinski clashed is contrasted with footage depicting their, at times, gentle and brotherly love, in this portrait of two artistic visionaries feeding off each other. From his early days as an aspiring and intense young actor to stints as a ranting and raving performance artist taunting audiences with claims that he was Jesus, Kinski's extraordinary and extravagant persona comes across strongly in Herzog's double-edged love letter of a film.

Details

Language:	German, English, Spanish
Country:	UK, Germany, Finland, USA
Release date:	3 September 1999
Runtime:	95 min

Cast and Crew See all

Claudia Cardinale

as Herself

Eva Mattes

as Herself

Werner Herzog

as Himself - Narrator / Interviewer

Isabelle Adjani

as Lucy Harker

Photos See all

My Best Fiend (1999)

Clips See all

My Best Fiend: Official Trailer

Critics Reviews See all

Entertainment Weekly

Herzog's fascinating, rambling, love-hate documentary about their friendship and creative partnership, and in its discursive, anecdotal way it gets at the essence of one of cinema's indelible crackpots. Full Review

|
by: Owen Gleiberman

San Francisco Chronicle

One of the great portraits of artists fighting, even with murderous rage, to reach the sublime. Full Review

|
by: Peter Stack

Users Reviews See all

This is informative and offers some compelling interviews with Kinksi's contemporaries. It unfortunately contains a lot of material from the fantastic Burden of Dreams documentary, whose subject is Herzog and Kinski's film, Fitzcarraldo. Burden of... Read and rate it

30.March.2009
|
by: deckard0
deckard0 rated this movie6/10Okay

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