Summer Homework - Film Review #3 - German New Wave - Aguirre, The Wrath of God

 Aguirre, the Wrath of God: Herzog's 16th Century Documentary



As if Herzog and his crew had travelled back in time to the 16th Century to make a documentary, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, is a shakily-shot and unreliably-told tale of the delusions of power, the mania of religion, and the pointlessness of hasty warfare and colonialism. Power-crazed Aguirre, played by the brilliantly creepy Klaus Kinski, is willing to destroy everything and anyone, including himself, in order to achieve fame and glory and riches and, in a landscape rooted into the reality of actual Spanish colonialism at the time, fails to reach the supposed grandeur of his Cortés-like predecessors. 

Comically absurd and increasingly insane, Aguirre, is a film which makes you feel like you are actually there in the jungle, slowly losing faith in reality and God as the old hierarchies and laws don't make any sense once any semblance of a power structure fails to work. The faux-documentary style leads to a greater criticism of greed and megalomania and colonialism, whilst also allowing for some great comedic moments too, although perhaps at the expense of fully-formed characters.

Popol Vuh's hypnotically spiritual soundtrack is fantastically alluring and creates a sense of foreboding and mystery from the get-go, as the mythical El Dorado remains nothing more than a fantasy. Herzog makes that clear throughout: there was never any chance for success, and its hard not to feel glad that their mission failed so spectacularly given what they stood for and the awful things they would have done had they somehow succeeded. The characters who spoke sense were shut down or killed, and the ones who took charge, did so only for themselves and led to their own demise.

Herzog goes into the past to explore issues still prevalent in the present and came back with something to go on into the future as a cautionary tale and a wonderfully catastrophic adventure.

Comments

  1. Lisa SocratesSeptember 14, 2021 at 1:28 AM

    An engaging read which adopts a suitable voice and review style. What do you believe makes the film part of the GNW? what does it break away from and what does it invent? A strong cinematic review which does not use jargon unnecessarily.

    ReplyDelete

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