jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Palm Pictures is releasing this made-for-TV documentary about photographer Peter Beard in August. It’s an unassuming portrait of a versatile artist that made me feel that it would be lovely if TV was in the habit of introducing fascinating people every day instead of carpet-bombing us with familiar bores. An adventurer, playboy, fashion photographer, and friend of Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, and Mick Jagger, Beard moved down the road from Karen Blixen and documented his life in Africa in photographs and gorgeous collage diaries. A little googling reveals a fact the documentary politely omits: Beard was born to a wealthy family and could afford to concentrate on his art and travel thanks to a large trust fund. Good for him.

Scrapbooks from Africa and Beyond. Guillaume Bonn and Jean-Claude Luyat, 1998. ***

• Peter Beard’s Official Site
• Peter Beard: Fifty Years of Portraits
• Men’s Vogue Interview with slideshow
• Books by Peter Beard

An exciting action-adventure before the backdrop of the African diamond trade. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a South African rogue who smuggles weapons for rocks, Jennifer Connelly is the earnest journalist who falls for him, and upstanding father Djimon Hounsou struggles to reunite his family in the Sierra Leone civil war. Don’t expect to learn more than the most basic bullet points about child soldiers and the bloody reality behind your engagement ring, but the 143 minute running time flies by.

Blood Diamond. Edward Zwick, 2006. ***

• Rotten Tomatoes: 63%

For once, a life worthy of a memoir. Leni Riefenstahl tells the gripping story of her rise from dancer and star of silent mountain films during the Weimar Republic to Triumph of the Will, Olympia, and “Hitler’s filmmaker,” followed by her long fall after the war, the Nuba, scuba. Riddled with contradictions, dubious statements and suspicious omissions, the book is also a thorny tangle that raises complicated questions about moral responsibility, political culpability, aesthetics, and ambition. Leni’s extreme unreliability (I had the uncanny sense that she started lying around page 5, about a playground incident) adds a layer of uncertainty that makes the book even more intriguing, down to the heartbreaking (or calculated?) last sentence.

After the war, when landmark achievements and intimate meetings with the Nazi elite–Goebbels, Göring, Hitler, Speer–give way to frustration and a string of canceled projects, the book slows down considerably. As Riefenstahl faces increasing hardship, it becomes difficult not to admire her dogged vitality and feel a certain degree of empathy for her. Regardless of your opinion on her life, work, and guilt, this book is bound to muddy some certainties. I’ll have to look at the two new biographies to see how some of her assertions hold up (not well, apparently), and I’m rewatching The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl for yet another take, but I don’t hope to come to terms with the confounding implications of the case Riefenstahl any time soon. Riefenstahl died in 2003, at the age of 101.

Leni Riefenstahl, A Memoir. 1987. ****

Previously on Muckworld:

• The Blue Light
• The White Hell of Pitz Palü
• Triumph of the Will

Leni

• Leni Riefenstahl - Official Site
• Leni Riefenstahl’s Photography at Fahey/Klein Gallery
• Leni Riefenstahl on Wikipedia

The New Biographies

• Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl by Steven Bach
• Leni Riefenstahl: A Life by Jurgen Trimborn
• Sleeping with ‘Hitler’s filmmaker’
• Clive James’ dismissive review in the Sunday Times
• Michikio Kakutani’s review

The diving sequence from Olympia:

It’s not difficult to argue that all Herzog/Kinski films are attempts at making and remaking the same movie — Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu and Woyzek less so — but that’s the beginning of the discussion rather than its conclusion. After all, most romantic comedies are remakes of the same movie, too. This final collaboration is no less vital than the other films. Kinski plays a Brazilian bandit who comes to the African West Coast as slave trader. Again, here’s the white man in a dangerously alien environment, again, here are Kinski’s borderless mania and passion. We’ve been familiar with Herzog’s grand shots at least since the Machu Picchu opening of Aguirre, and if anything, the extended takes of hundreds of extras in tribal gear are even more breathtaking, as much ethnography as they are drama. It’s also the first time we’ve seen Kinski lead an army of black amazons into battle, a sight that’s not easily forgotten. Take that, 300.

Cobra Verde is playing at the IFC Center right now, and here’s A.O. Scott:

Watching “Cobra Verde,” you feel at times that Mr. Herzog, like a figure out of Joseph Conrad, is in danger of losing his way, or even his mind. His eye, however, never deserts him, and the final third of this film contains sequences of horrifying sublimity and ethereal beauty, moments that have a clarity and power beyond the reach of reason.

Cobra Verde. Werner Herzog, 1987. ****

• Klaus Kinski: Ich Brauche Liebe
• My Best Fiend
• Kinski on YouTube

Beautifully shot and movingly told coming-of-age tale about an African kid with a pet cheetah. I cried a little in the end but nobody noticed, so whew.