transient travels

There is a song by a band called The Frames that I love called Fitzcarraldo.

I learned the inspiration behind the song in a concert. Lead singer Glen Hansard mentioned it was inspired by a Werner Herzog film called Fitzcarraldo. From what I remember, he said the movie is about a man whose dream was to get a boat over a mountain in the Amazon. Hansard’s brief recap left me curious- why would the man want to get a boat over a mountain and more importantly, what about the movie moved Hansard to write a song about it?

In case you’re curious…

The convenience of Netflix has finally motivated me to end my long lost curiosity and watch it. That is how Mike and I spent our last Saturday morning.

I learned that the man’s real dream was to build an opera house in the middle of the Amazon and the boat was merely a tool to reach that goal. Long story short, he heads to a location that was rife with rubber trees that had yet to be conquered by a man who otherwise had a monopoly over the natural resource. There he could produce rubber to raise the money to acheive his dream of an opera.

To get to this location, he had to take the boat upstream through an area where native Indians were known to kill passerbys viciously. Shockingly, Fitzcarraldo and his crew ended up cooperating with the Indians, who joined them on their boat under the pretense that it could have been a god that would lead them to peace.

When the boat came to a place where it would have to pass through rough waters, Fitzcarraldo came to the decision that they would need to drag the boat through mountains to skip that section of the river – so that’s what Hansard was referring to!

Miraculously, the Indians helped them. Through language and cultural barriers, they worked together toward the same literal goal, but in the end we learned that their motivations were vastly different.

It was the ultimate clash of civilizations.

Both groups were swept up in their own game plans, blindly working in cooperation for different reasons. Neither side reached their ultimate goal, but instead had to settle for little victories.

I couldn’t decide if the movie was about opera, capitalism or even something as simple as don’t give up on your dreams.

But by the end, I took away that you’ll end up sending yourself and your dreams down the river if you close yourself off to other cultures.

Last week, I blogged about the challenges of language barriers. What I didn’t mention is that cultural barriers can be more of a challenge and not overcoming them can lead to more than a misunderstanding.

In the meeting among G-20 leaders, it is said that President Obama served as a peacemaker during an argument about tax havens between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Hu Jintao, President of the People’s Republic of China. They actually came to an agreement.

Isn’t it amazing what can happen when you take a step back to understand the big picture?