Review of Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) by Mark N — 15 Nov 2007

It may be presumptious of me to say that this movie has the greatest ending ever, but, then, I've not the sense of thoughtless humility, whose absence in my bleeding heart so thoroughly distinguishes me from my contemporaries, that would otherwise compel me to abstain from forming such strong opinions.

Disclaimers aside, this movie effectively articulates the vehemence mankind once felt for nature and everything therein with breathtakingly meditative and overbearingly melancholic scenes, such as the one where Aguirre punches the horse in the face and pushes the long-faced fellow into the river.

There is no glorification of man or nature in this film, no heart-rending realizations of any metaphysical truth or spiritual justification for their suffering and hardship. Death is not some grim spectre haunting them and hanging over them; it is not so elevated and abstract a concept.

Instead it is cold and sober, and altogether more discomfortingly convincing as an irrepressible force and haunting inevitability, for the jungle itself possesses the contours of death and drearily determines the fate of Aguirre and his men long before it condemns them to the madness and fevers which slowly consume their minds and bodies.

I became so resentful of jungles and rainforests after seeing this movie that I personally led a firebombing expedition into the heart of the amazon, gleefuly wiping out millions of acres of rainforest and, with knees to the ground after the deed was done, I stared into the billowing smoke which rendered the sky dark as pitch from horizon to horizon and cried at the majesty of mankind's greatest feat and ultimate act of catharsis.

Surely, the fact that this movie inspired such a noble and self-affirming act is a testament to its greatness. Those who disagree with me on this point will be thrust back into the fires from whence they came; Those who do not listen shall perish and be excised from the pages of history.

Fare thee warned be thee, says I.