Review of Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) by Kenneth L — 05 Aug 2012

This was one of the earliest movies from Werner Herzog, one of the world's greatest and most prolific directors, and it seems like a perfect prototype for much of his later work. It's not a conventionally satisfying narrative, but it sustains a sense of doom and madness for its entire running time and has some truly amazing images. If you only saw one Herzog film (though of course you should see many), it should probably be this one.

The story, which is loosely based on a real historical journey, is about a conquistador's doomed quest for the fabled gold city of El Dorado along the Amazon river. Gonzalo Pizarro sends a search party up the river to look for El Dorado. Unfortunately for everyone, the search party includes the delusional Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), who will not stop searching for the city even if it means getting everyone killed along the way. Aguirre manipulates the group in various ways on their road to doom.

The only actor worth talking about in the movie, really, is Klaus Kinski as Aguirre. You've never seen anyone crazier-looking than Klaus Kinski, especially in this movie. Apparently he actually was pretty much out of his mind, but that helps make his performance that much more convincing. The rest of the cast varies from okay to kind of wooden, but it doesn't really matter, since the film is more about their situation than it is about the characters themselves.

Herzog shot on location deep in the jungles of Peru, and it's abundantly obvious throughout the movie, There are some scenes involving animals, particularly a horse and tons of monkeys, that I suspect wouldn't clear SPCA regulations if the movie were made by an American today. But the images from those scenes are among the movie's best. The soundtrack, by a German band called Popol Vuh, seems both ecclesiastical and very eerie, and is not like anything else I've heard. It's hard to describe exactly what makes this movie so great - it's not any sort of conventional pleasures you get from it. It's more just like the movie is a weird, quiet, scary place that you could visit from time to time to contemplate human folly and the cruelty of the universe. Or something like that. Now that I think about it, it's kind of like a less violent version of Blood Meridian. No wonder Herzog and Cormac McCarthy got along so well in that radio interview they did. Maybe Herzog should direct the Blood Meridian adaptation.