Cobra Verde (1987), like so many Werner Herzog films, sticks with me. With Klaus Kinski in the lead, the viewer gets a double bill. Watching Kinski (10/18/1926-11/23/1991) is always intense, but working with Herzog, a real treat.
Filmed in Brazil and Ghana (and Colombia), Cobra Verde follows nineteenth century rebel Francisco Manuel da Silva from Brazil to Ghana, where he becomes a spectacularly successful, but vulnerable, slave trader.
Overall, it's a crazy tale, mesmerizing, eerie at times, and complex; the slave trade itself is depicted as far more complex than as often treated in popular culture. For one thing, da Silva establishes a bizarre alliance with local Africans, including a king who delights in making war on a neighboring tribe, and then either sends POWs into slavery in exchange for rifles and other goods, or drinks from the skulls of the conquered. Global competition over the slave trade is also acknowledged, ranging from Portuguese to British and Arab. Except for those while in captivity traded as slaves, everyone shares some level of agency.
In Cobra Verde, everyone seems to be either crazy or pretending to be crazy; cynical; or rolling with the punches -- mesmerized by nature and theatrical group activities. Let's not forget the Dahomey Amazons or Mino, women warriors who enjoyed fighting men.
Francisco Manuel da Silva is based on the real Francisco Felix de Sousa (1754-1849), and Cobra Verde is based on a novel, The Viceroy of Ouidah (1980), by Bruce Chatwin (who incidentally died of HIV/AIDS complications in 1989, aged 48, just a couple years after the initial release of Cobre Verde).
It turns out that when the Obamas visited Ghana earlier this month, they toured Fort Elmina, the slave fort featured in the African segments of Cobre Verde. I recognized the fort!
Da Silva (Kinski) leads an attack of the Amazons. "Stay back! His wives will strangle him now . . ."
Today's Rune: Strength.
4 comments:
don't tell my old lady I said this but that picture eerily reminds me of my mother in law.
I have not seen this but it definitely looks interesting. I've like a fair number of films with Klaus in them.
Erik, I've missed this one but it seems interesting. The chief needs to stop picking fights and make love not war, all hippie style!
Sounds like alot of politicking went on during the slave trades. Couldn't imagine it another way.
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