Werner Herzog’s My Best Fiend isn’t just a documentary. It’s a psychiatric case file, a necromantic love letter, and a whispered confession muttered into the mouth of madness. It’s the story of a friendship forged in fire and screaming, between Herzog, the philosopher-poet of existential dread, and Klaus Kinski, the volcanic maniac who made every film set feel like a hostage situation.
The film opens with Herzog recounting how he lived in the same boarding house as Kinski as a teenager. You can almost smell the wallpaper peeling. Herzog describes Kinski as a storm barely contained by human flesh — a man who once locked himself in the communal bathroom for two days and destroyed everything inside. Not redecorated. Destroyed. As an introduction to your leading man, that’s not bad. Most people start with anecdotes. Herzog starts with demolition.
What follows is a journey through the strangest, most combustible creative relationship in cinema history — a tale of mutual respect, mutual loathing, and the shared delusion that art was worth dying for, or at the very least, screaming at for ten straight hours while crew members sobbed in the corner.
Herzog doesn’t hide his contempt or his admiration. That’s the genius of My Best Fiend. It isn’t a tribute or a takedown. It’s both. It’s the cinematic equivalent of saying, “He was a son of a bitch, but he was my son of a bitch.”
Kinski, of course, is pure chaos. Blonde, bug-eyed, and constantly vibrating with nuclear-grade intensity, he comes across like Nosferatu on cocaine. Herzog shows us clips from Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, and Woyzeck, and every time Kinski is on screen, it feels like he’s going to leap out of the frame and stab someone. It’s magnificent. It’s terrifying. It’s Kinski.
And offscreen? Even worse.
Herzog recounts — with the calm tone of a man describing a baking recipe — how Kinski would fly into tantrums so violent, he once shot the finger off an extra. (Allegedly.) Another time, a crew member offered to kill Kinski for Herzog. He declined. Not because he didn’t want it done, but because “he still needed him for two more scenes.” That’s the kind of practicality you get when your muse is one missed cigarette away from a full psychotic break.
But for all the carnage, there’s something beautiful here. It’s hard to admit, but Herzog and Kinski needed each other. Like a bomb needs a fuse. Like whiskey needs regret. Herzog, ever the ascetic poet, wanted to scrape at the core of human existence. And Kinski? Kinski was that core — raw, screaming, impossible to ignore. Together, they made masterpieces. Apart, they were just two lunatics yelling into the abyss.
The footage is mesmerizing. Behind-the-scenes clips from the Amazon set of Fitzcarraldo show Kinski pacing like a rabid wolf, shrieking at the crew, throwing tantrums that make Christian Bale’s outburst look like a kindergarten nap. And yet Herzog, stone-faced and weirdly parental, absorbs the storm. Sometimes he yells back. Sometimes he just waits it out, like a therapist with a machete.
Herzog doesn’t romanticize the abuse — not really. He just tells it like it is. Kinski was impossible. Brilliant, yes. But impossible. He once demanded that the set be silent for an entire day so he could meditate, and then, when a bird chirped, he demanded the jungle be silenced. That’s not diva behavior. That’s full Nietzschean breakdown. And yet… you kind of admire it. Or at least respect the lunacy.
The best parts of My Best Fiend are when Herzog stops narrating and just shows. He lets the footage speak. Kinski on stage, ranting like a televangelist who swallowed too much LSD. Kinski in interviews, comparing himself to Jesus. Kinski on set, throwing things, crying, demanding perfection, and somehow, god help us, delivering it.
Because that’s the thing: for all the madness, the man could act. Kinski’s performances aren’t just intense. They’re dangerous. You feel like he could explode at any moment. Like the camera barely survived the take. And Herzog, more than anyone, knew how to bottle that chaos. He wasn’t just Kinski’s director. He was his handler.
The film’s title — My Best Fiend — is no joke. It’s an admission. A confession. This wasn’t friendship in the normal sense. This was something darker. Something more elemental. They hated each other. But they needed each other. That twisted co-dependence, that creative sado-masochism, produced some of the most haunting films ever made. And it also made them both miserable. That’s showbiz, baby.
Herzog visits Kinski’s grave at the end of the film. It’s quiet. Almost tender. He doesn’t cry. He just stands there, talking about how Kinski would have hated the peace and quiet. It’s perfect. A closing scene as strange and lovely as the rest of the film. No closure. Just acknowledgment.
And maybe that’s the point of My Best Fiend. There is no closure with people like Kinski. Only echoes. Yelling. Footprints in the madness. The film is a monument to obsession — to the kind of artistic hunger that devours everything around it and still wants seconds.
Final Verdict:
My Best Fiend is the funniest tragedy you’ll ever see. A documentary with the heart of a horror film and the soul of a love letter written in blood. Herzog doesn’t ask you to understand Kinski. He barely understood him himself. He just asks you to witness the wreckage — and maybe, if you’re brave enough, appreciate the fire that caused it.
It’s not just a film about Klaus Kinski. It’s a film about Werner Herzog too. And about what happens when two artists push each other past the point of reason, into something terrifying and unforgettable. Like watching a snake charm a lightning bolt.
Five stars. Bring a crucifix, a Xanax, and a life jacket. You’re about to wade through one hell of a friendship.
