My Best Fiend Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

My Best Fiend Blu-ray Movie Review

Portrait of two artists as combatants.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 20, 2014

Note: This title is currently available as part of Herzog: The Collection.

Has there ever been a more fascinating figure in film than Werner Herzog? This much debated individual, one who elicits both hyperbolic accolades and equally exaggerated derision, has been a seeming force of nature in film for decades, helping to define the New German Cinema (a somewhat later analog to the French New Wave). Herzog’s filmography is rather breathtakingly diverse, traversing both traditional fiction, quasi-biographies, and a large number of documentaries. Through it all, Herzog himself has become the subject of considerable controversy, at times seeming to be as obsessively motivated as some of his film subjects. The auteur’s off kilter blend of nihilism and often black humor has given him and his films a decidedly unique place in contemporary media, to the point that a supposed note Herzog jotted off to his cleaning lady became an internet sensation (it’s actually a brilliantly written parody by Dale Shaw). Shout! Factory, a label which repeatedly stubbed its corporate toe on its last big deluxe boxed set built around the talents of one person (Bruce Lee: The Legacy Collection, the only time in my reviewing career I have had to start over from scratch due to a complete recall and reissue) may seem to be throwing caution to the wind by upping the ante with this release. Here there are no fewer than 16 films by Herzog, housed in a handsome hardback booklike case that also features a wealth of text and information about each of the films. Fifteen of the films are new to Blu-ray (Shout's horror imprint Scream Factory released Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre as a standalone a few months ago), and the offerings here cover both iconic films in Herzog's oeuvre as well as some oddities. The extremely handsome packaging offers a 7.5" x 7.5" x 1.5" hardback book exterior casing which houses heavy cardstock pocket holders that contain the discs. Also included are The Werner Herzog Condition by Stephen J. Smith, an appreciation of the director's work with essays about each of the films. The films get even more text in write-ups by Chris Wahl and Brad Prager. Each of the pocket holder pages details the film (or in some cases, films) on each disc, with audio options and special features listed.

One is confronted with the fact that Werner Herzog is perhaps going to engage in something akin to a hagiography of his frequent nemesis and collaborator Klaus Kinski in My Best Fiend, the often incisive documentary Herzog made detailing their long and often volatile relationship. Normally, one might expect Herzog to engage in trenchant observational analysis, and yet there is Kinski in a ragged looking piece of archival footage, proclaiming himself the Messiah before a group of disbelievers. It is of course Herzog’s trenchantly observational way of opening the documentary, not some attempt to place Kinski on a divine pedestal and adore him from afar. Kinski, in a clip that is both hilarious and disturbing, is playing Jesus, but as the actor did so frequently during his career, he takes his role very seriously.

Cynics might aver that there’s just the slightest whiff of Herzog saying, “Okay, you little bastard, you’re dead now and you’re mine” running throughout My Best Fiend, for despite the director’s usually calm, seemingly straightforward air about Kinski, the on screen footage serves as a “audition reel” of sorts for a laundry list of the actor’s boorish behavior. Admittedly, Herzog also provides little glimpses at the actor’s softer side in both some “first person” moments with Kinski as well as surprisingly heartfelt reminiscences from some of his costars.

Many casual filmgoers weren't overly familiar with the contentious relationship between Kinski and Herzog until Les Blank's startling documentary Burden of Dreams, which charted the dissolution of their relationship during the long, tortured production of Fitzcarraldo . (That documentary unfortunately is not included in this new Shout compilation, but does evidently make it to the BFI set of Herzog films that is due shortly.) That "warts and all" inspection of the two may have been ostensibly more objective than this one, but My Best Fiend has the gut wrenching truth of someone who has lived through hell and is still around to talk about it.

My Best Fiend Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

My Best Fiend Is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (mostly) in 1.78:1 (some of the archival footage and clips from various films are in different aspect ratios, as should be expected). The fact that the film is compiled from various sources leads to expected variances in sharpness and grain structure, but overall this is probably one of the softer looking documentaries included in the new Herzog set. Once again there are compression artifacts that pop up from time to time, but otherwise the image is stable, if never really brilliantly defined. Colors tend to be tamped down most of the time here as well, including some of the snippets from the films which in their original states are more vivid.

My Best Fiend Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

My Best Fiend features lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono tracks in both German and English. Interestingly, the English track has Herzog reciting over the original's Herzog in German. The German track arguably has slightly better clarity, especially in the midrange, but the difference between the two is really pretty negligible. Both offer excellent fidelity and deliver the voice over and onscreen verbiage effortlessly.

My Best Fiend Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:31)

My Best Fiend Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A fascinating dissection of a long collaboration, albeit an obviously one-sided one, My Best Fiend doesn't pretend to be especially objective in its approach or discussions, but it still provides an incredible up close look at one of the titanic egos in the annals of film (I'm talking Kinski here, in case anyone is wondering, though the description no doubt fits Herzog as well). The video here is on the soft side, but otherwise My Best Fiend comes Highly recommended.