Aguirre - Wrath of God [DVD] [1973] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

I first saw Aguirre: Wrath of God in August 2005. I had heard a lot of good things about it and I was looking forward to watching it as I had an interest in that period of history. I must admit that at first I was disappointed, and after having watched the film I left it on the shelf until earlier this year when I decided to give it another go.
The second time round I enjoyed it a lot more, but it should be noted that this film is certainly not for everyone.

The plot is based very loosely on the Francisco Orellana's journey down the Amazon River in the 1540s. In this version of the tale Gonzalo Pizzaro's expedition to find El Dorado, the city of gold, ends in disaster. The conquistadors have spent many fruitless weeks pushing cannons and heavy equipment through deep, dark and impenetrable rainforest with nothing to show for their troubles. Before the expedition heads home Pizzaro decides to take one last gamble. He orders Pedro de Ursua to take a small band of explorers further down the amazon basin on water rafts. His second in command is Don Lope de Aguirre, a shifty and aggressive character who haunts the others in the background, constantly looming over them like a beast. It isn't long before Aguirre begins to show his true colours. He hijacks the expedition and orders the conquistadors to push on and on until they find and plunder El Dorado. Blinded by his lust for gold, and growing increasingly paranoid and insane, he threatens to lead his men to destruction.

The plot seems very simplistic but it is often rich in symbolism, with some interesting themes on delusion, greed and megalomania. At other times you can just marvel at the terrific looking rainforest, or gawp at some of the more surreal scenes.

The film rests almost entirely on the shoulders of Klaus Kinski (Aguirre) and the director, Werner Herzog. The background of the film is as legendary as the film itself, and it might even have been more exciting to glimpse what was going on behind the camera, rather than what was going on in front. Klaus Kinski was almost as mad as the character he was portraying, and there were rumours he even shot the cameraman after a heated argument, amongst other things. It is this intense maddness that gives Aguirre much of its strength. Kinski is a strong screen presence, and in the latter half of the film he could easily convince the viewer that he was genuinely insane. The other actors come up a little short beside Kinski. Some are ok, while others seem to be sleepwalking through their roles. I wasn't too surprised when I heard that Herzog had simply picked up some cast members randomly off the streets, as in most cases it does show. Aguirre's daughter for instance was played by a girl that Herzog had seen at a local school.

I think the biggest obstacle for the some people's enjoyment of the film is the extremely slow and plodding pace. Several drawn out scenes contain nothing more than the conquistadors sitting on the raft with nothing to do or say. For the majority of the film nothing terribly exciting takes place. Instead the film decides to show the characters long, painful slide into insanity. If you've come here expecting some Hollywood style action scenes then you shouldn't bother. There's virtually no action at all in the film.

Herzog's directing stretches from the sublime (the first scenes and the ending) to being amateurish (the scene where Inez's chair slips into the swamp and you can see his hand stretching behind the camera to hold it up). Herzog should also be thankful for Florian Fricke's Popul Vuh for providing the atmospheric and other worldly music. Aguirre simply wouldn't be the same experience without its soundtrack.

The DVD is very poor. The picture quality makes it look as if it's straight off a 20 year old video cassette. The sound is often muffled, but that might also be the film's original sound FX. There's also a few errors in the subtitles, while some of the special features mentioned on the back of the box (such as a Theatrical trailer) don't even appear on the DVD.

This film is a must watch for serious film buffs. But no doubt the film will leave audiences divided. Some will see it as a masterpiece, others will say its the most boring film they have ever seen. I didn't enjoy the film when I first saw it, but I'm glad I gave it another chance. I still don't think the film is a masterpiece, but I do think it deserves to be watched at least once.

DVD Features:

Region: 0 (will work on all DVD players)
Language: German with English subtitles
Running time: 95 minutes
Special Features: Kinski and Herzog Filmography.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God, is Herzog's ultimate jungle adventure, continuing on from the trancelike and hypnotic Fata Morgana and Signs of Life (which aren't necessarily jungle films, but do have a similar approach to the strange and the exotic), whilst simultaneously prefiguring the more traditional narratives of Fitzcaralldo and Cobra Verde. It also has certain similarities to Chris Marker's excellent film Sans Soliel, with the combination of mystical realism and otherworldly forces, alongside an almost documentary approach to the art of filmmaking. Like Marker's film, Herzog takes the viewer on a journey, not only into the Peruvian jungle, but also back in time, to the days of the Spanish conquistadors, and deep into the heart of darkness. He introduces us to a collection of characters that will be our guide throughout the film, but, despite this, we're never really allowed to learn anything about them. To Herzog, their personalities are unimportant... to him, the film is about something deeper; it's about greed, it's about brutality, it's about obsession, and ultimately, it's about the corruption of the human soul.

Right from the start we are captivated by the haunting and hypnotic mood that the filmmaker creates; with the film beginning on a close-up-detail of an enormous mountain peak, partially shrouded by mist. The evocative music of Popol Vuh then drifts in as our eyes focus on a small band of adventurers and their guides making their way down the side of the gigantic, monolithic rock... disappearing beyond the horizon, only to reappear on the other side. Here, as Herzog establishes the notion of nature as a symbolic obstacle or uncontrollable force, he also sets up a sense of eventual foreshadowing of that climactic image and the theme of man against nature. To reinforce these notions, Herzog makes his film as episodic as can be, with little explanation into events and little to drive the characters besides the wild-eyed obsession and ferocity of Aguirre himself. As with Fitzcaralldo and Cobra Verde, the film is driven by its central character - as opposed to being driven by plot - which works exceptionally well with Herzog's approach of stylised-documentary-drama, and of course, works even greater when personified by the manic Klaus Kinski. Here, Kinski's task is to instil Aguirre with an animal force and psychotic obsession... to push this band of weary soldiers down the river, with the promise of the ultimate reward in the shape of the city of gold.

For me, this is possibly Kinski's greatest performance (the emotional flip-side to his pained and sensitive turn in Herzog's other great film, Woyzeck), as he stalks the tiny raft - which becomes our main location - like a caged tiger, alternating between screaming, ferocious rants and moments of quiet contemplation that will eventually lead to a implied sense of complete self-destruction. Herzog's camera has an intruding intimacy about it that makes it impossible to imagine a film-crew actually standing around capturing this. It feels so real... like nothing has been staged. It also makes the drama all the more interesting, as characters die or break down, whilst Kinski just continues to scowl and grown through furrowed brow and clenched teeth... descending into madness with his eyes completely vacant. As the film moves towards it's inevitable climax, Herzog's direction becomes more and more surreal... like he's capturing some kind of fevered dream, as boundaries between fantasy and reality, truth and fiction, man and nature, all start breaking down. Throughout these closing sequences, Herzog offers up a number of images that define the style of Aguirre... whilst also lingering in our sub-conscious for months on end.

These images include a boat resting atop an enormous tree, a decapitated head that continues it's count from one to ten, a woman wandering into the jungle never to be seen again, and the butterflies that flutter and perch on the shoulders of the slave Okello, moments before he is shot through the heart with an arrow. Much of the violence of Aguirre is surreal, capturing that same fever dream ideology and happening at a point when the characters are at their most removed from reality. It also shows Herzog's talent in creating scenes of simplistic beauty from the most unexpected sources... tying in with the whole "shot-on-the-run" simplicity of the editing and cinematography, with the camera constantly roving from person to person, finding a composed moment of tranquilly before curiously pushing on. Unlike the work of his contemporaries (Fassbinder, Wenders, etc) Herzog is able to captivate his audience, not simply through narrative, but through the creation of a dense, dreamlike and hypnotic atmosphere and a character of immense, obsessive proportions. Aguirre, along with The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, is probably his ultimate masterpiece, a film that is constantly changing from one extreme to another, drawing you in, then pushing you away, making you want to go back and experience more and more of this landmark adventure.

For me, Aguirre, the Wrath of God is a film of monumental proportions... climaxing with a final shot that stands as one of the most breathtaking final images in European cinema, with that downward spiral managing to embody both the lunacy and obsession of the filmmakers and the fate of the ruined Aguirre. It is as much a testament to Kinski's brilliance, as it is to Herzog's, making this film (and the whole of the Herzog/Kinski box-set) an integral purchase.

This film is now commonly viewed as Werner Herzog's international breakthrough. Which unfortunately is another myth that has sprung up around the film. Lauded and adored by critics and academia perhaps, the general cinema going public were and still remain unaware of Herzog's work. But it certainly is a creative breakthrough and the reasons for this, is that by Herzog standards this is a very conventional piece of story-telling. It is replete with action, conspiracy, adventure and danger and from a narrative perspective owes a good deal of debt to classic Hollywood adventure films. Where it differs is in Herzog's own unique lexicon of film language, his use of camera, editing and soundtrack combine to give the film a documentary feel. This often works in an opposite way in Herzog's cinema as well, with his documentaries having the heightened, fantastical lucidity of a fictional narrative. The film also highlighted to a wider audience Herzog's propensity to take risks and the efforts he goes to in order to achieve the `ecstatic truth' he has sought throughout his career. In AGUIRRE this is best represented by the breathtaking opening sequence.

This film also establishes the twin themes that have been present throughout Herzog's work since, that of colonialist expansion and the effect of western civilisation on the African continent and the exploration of dreams. In this case the dreams of AGUIRRE are negative and fuelled by a slowly burgeoning insanity. And a major delight of this film is KLAUS KINSKI'S towering performance of scheming malevolence. Rarely has an actor dominated a film quite as much. Herzog also painstakingly presents nature as harsh, unforgiving and beyond the mere comprehension of a man, a theme he still explores successfully to this day as his recent film GRIZZLY MAN illustrates. If one can ignore the mythical tales of hardship and insanity that dog this film, it is an incredible experience that makes a fine companion piece to both Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS and Herzog's own FITZCARRALDO.

Anchor Bay's DVD is unfortunately devoid of the type of extras we have become used to from the company. But we should be glad that they have taken of the task of re-mastering Herzog's films and bringing them to the attention of the DVD generation of film collectors. The commentary track is good value for money, Herzog remains as always fascinating listening.