Based loosely on historical fact, Werner Herzog's Aguirre: the Wrath of God is a very special piece of cinema. As the credits roll you'll be left feeling like you've just watched something quite spectacular.
Set on the Amazon river, and surrounded by the claustrophobic Peruvian jungle, the film details the mutiny of the greedy, villainous Don Aguirre (played by the always excellent Klaus Kinski), a Spanish conquistador who overthrows his leader to pursue his own twisted quest to reach El Dorado, the mythical city of gold.
Aguirre's obsession is his own downfall as, through intimidation and fear tactics, he forces the group under his command to follow his dream and set sail down the river to their inevitable destruction.
The film opens with a shot of the original group of conquistadors as they trudge through the fierce jungle, over mountains, and through rivers. There are hundreds of them and this shot is both beautiful and overwhelming.
Eventually realising that they are hopelessly lost and by now many men down, their leader decides to send out a scouting party to recover food and supplies. Aguirre is one of the men chosen to go on the mission and the cogs in his devious mind turn as he sees this departure from the main group as his chance to overthrow the new, smaller party.
After days of journeying, Aguirre makes his move, mortally wounding the group's leader and declaring himself the scouting party's new master. At first, the men rebel; they demand that another man be put in charge, not Aguirre, and with surprising diplomacy the mad Spaniard agrees. But Aguirre has other plans, using the new leader - Don Fernando - like a puppet, he convinces the rotund Fernando to seek out El Dorado.
As they set out of their new mission, it becomes apparent that Aguirre's plan is doomed.
The direction Herzog brings to the film is magnificent. There is an air of hopelessness to the entire film; there is just no way Aguirre's plan can end well, and Herzog fills the film with scenes of brooding madness. There is an edge-of-the-seat quality to proceedings which can be attributed to the music and the ominous sounds of the jungle, but also to Kinski's portrayal of the insane Aguirre. No one dares overthrow Aguirre; he will not back down, and he will hurt and kill anyone who tries to make him.
This film directly influenced Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and this is obvious from the outset. The restrictiveness of the raft that the expedition calls its home for the majority of the film is also used to great affect in Coppola's film.
Aguirre: the Wrath of God is bursting at the seams with memorable, poignant scenes. In one, the former leader Aguirre injured earlier in the film is led deep into the jungle to be hung by Aguirre's more loyal supporters. Herzog cuts back to the raft where the doomed man's wife sits looking out across the river. She knows she'll never see him again. And all of this in the name of one man's obsessive greed.
The final scenes of the film show the remaining few on the raft starving to death, hallucinating. As they slowly die, Aguirre finds himself alone. The raft has been taken over by tiny monkeys which playfully surround Aguirre who angrily chases them around the barely floating vessel. Grabbing one, he looks into its eyes and gives the famous speech in which he declares himself 'the wrath of God'. A pathetic end to a pathetic plight.
Aguirre is the victim of his own megalomania.
10/10
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