Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

by Werner Herzog

Then an unbelievably powerful and steady rain came down over the jungle; language itself resists calling it rain. Foamy white brooks formed in the sand along the riverbank below my cabin and streamed into the brown river, which pulls everything to it and carries everything away: tree trunks, broken-off limbs, the drowned man, earth, pebbles. The pebbles clunk and roll and bang against each other, as if the entire base of the earth were washing away. In the meantime an immeasurable misty vapor spread among the treetops, which stood there rigid and patient, from time immemorial. All the birds are silent; the rain is having the last say.