True to the documentary ethics employed by Werner Herzog, My Best Fiend offers little that could be termed “factual,” even if its subject is one Herzog should know better than anyone: his tumultuous relationship with volatile actor Klaus Kinski, star of five Herzog films, including Aguirre the Wrath of God, Nosferatu, and Fitzcarraldo. Made a number of years after Kinski’s death, My Best Fiend offers almost nothing in the way of biography and makes little room for Kinski’s voice. (Herzog does read a passage from Kinski’s autobiography at one point, which amusingly describes Herzog in the same egomaniacal terms Herzog has been using to describe Kinski.) This is hardly a hatchet job—there is an extensive section detailing the love the men felt for each other, despite their history of disagreements and confrontations—but there is still something more troublesome than usual about Herzog’s “ecstatic truth” approach this time around, wherein melodramatic expressionism is intimately applied to another person’s life and art. Still, My Best Fiend fascinates as a deeply personal project; you get the sense Herzog is still trying to work out his feelings about Kinski even as he’s making the movie.
(10/20/2023)
