• Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes)

4/25/26 (Sat)

Werner Herzog’s lavishly praised 1972 film, inspired by real-life tales, is a piece of pretentious garbage in minimalist style pretending to profundity.

A Spanish soldier is ordered by the conquistador Pizarro to sail down the Amazon and find El Dorado. The group includes officers as well as a priest and nobleman, along with the commander’s mistress and junior commander’s daughter. The second-in-command, Aguirre, becomes obsessed with the quest to the point of insanity. He stages a coup d’état, ultimately killing the captain and claiming the land for himself rather than for the Spanish crown. The group must deal with unfamiliar and extremely challenging terrain on an unsteady raft, largely unseen Indians (who tend to make themselves known through sudden poisoned arrows), and insufficient resources. Though riven by infighting, fear, and mutual distrust, the group has little choice but to follow their leader. The heart-of-darkness story turns tragic when the crew members begin hallucinating ships in trees and are killed by a hail of arrows from nowhere. The ship is overrun by monkeys, who Aguirre imagines as his subjects as he proclaims himself master of the world.

The film has a spectacular opening as the soldiers and their Indian workers march down a precipitous slope carrying gear, cannons, palanquins and more. The camerawork and staging were awe-inspiring, setting a high standard that quickly fell apart with the first bit of dialogue. The cinematography in general was impressive in that Amazon setting, and certain shots, especially long takes of the raft and river, were memorable. Story-wise, though, there is no character development or realistic personalities. Aguirre is a Captain Queeg type from start to finish, so his trajectory is nonexistent. Similarly, the priest was unrealistically cruel in murdering an Indian couple who didn’t understand the Bible that they were given; the scene was trying to make a point about imperialism and Catholicism, but needed to be more grounded to make any sense. That was true throughout.

The acting was unbearably wooden as performers barely changed their voices regardless of the situation. One black slave expresses a desire to be free with such blandness that he sounded like he was talking in his sleep. Klaus Kinski plays the title role as a wild-eyed Richard III, but while he has the right scary look, he just doesn’t have the charisma to do it justice. (I kept thinking what Mifune Toshiro would have done with the role.) Others aren’t worth mentioning. The multi-national cast apparently performed in English, but the film is dubbed for some reason in German – if they were going to dub it anyway, why not Spanish to fit the setting? The delivery was monotonal and boring. Evidently Kinski didn’t even dub his own lines back into German, though that might have had more to do with what seems a very low budget. There was some uncomfortable cruelty to animals, including a horse knocked to the ground and a baby monkey manhandled and flung aside.

This satire – the murderous priest, the entitled nobleman, the crazed Aguirre – can’t work without characters that feel real. It comes across as a dumb fantasy. Other than the great cinematography, I have no idea why this is considered such a masterpiece. Not recommended at all.