Coming off a recent vacation trip to Costa Rica, I was struck by the similarity of the Peruvian locations serving as the backdrop to this story. Our tour group had a couple of rain forest hikes along with two wildlife spotting river cruises, and if I didn't know better, I would have pegged the muddy brown, tranquil river in the movie as the Rio Frio. What struck me though was that the long views of the riverbanks in the picture offered no animal or bird life, which was in abundance on my excursions. Anyway, enough of that.The film begins with an impressive looking descent down a steep mountain pass, and as a harbinger of things to come, director Herzog chooses to focus his camera on long establishing shots, often times unnecessary as in the drawn out view of the turbulent river rapids early in the story. These serve to pad out the length of the picture, which is only a tad over an hour and a half to begin with. With the title acknowledging that the principal character is named Aguirre, it takes some time for Klaus Kinski to initiate the mutiny that takes over the expedition hunting for the mythical El Dorado, the ancient Inca Lost City of Gold. Aguirre is a fanatic, but allows some semblance of composure as second-in-command while undermining the authority of both the original leader Gonzalo Pizzaro (Alejandro Repullés), as well as that of Don Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerraas), the leader of the smaller expeditionary group.What's perhaps most revealing in the story is how difficult it must have been in an a pre-machine age for explorers to make their way through uncharted jungle territory. Watching men drag along cannon and Ursua's mistress (Helena Rojo) aboard a throne-like sedan chair seemed like an incredible waste of energy that eventually ended in a failed mission. And then one has to consider that the director, actors and film crew had to endure these same hardships for the sake of their craft. A 'making of' picture detailing the effort probably would have been as compelling as the film's narrative.I'd consider myself a Klaus Kinski fan, even though I've mainly seen him only as a villain in off-beat Western movie roles. He doesn't quite carry the entire picture here as the principal actor, but his presence does create an eclectic magnetism of a man obsessed by the idea of power, fame and riches. As his men are decimated by unseen arrows, spears and poison darts, his fateful descent into madness is complete, forever to be defeated by the relentless force of an unforgiving environment.

South America, 16th Century. Spanish explorer Don Lope de Aguirre leads an expedition down the Amazon river to find the fabled city of El Dorado. Beset on all sides by unfriendly natives, the journey will turn out to be a treacherous one. An even bigger enemy to the party is themselves, as they start to turn on each other. Even more problematic is their leader, who is quite oppressive and does not appear to be entirely sane.Brilliant movie, written and directed by famed German director Werner Herzog. Herzog slowly and deliberately ramps up the intensity and insanity. Plot starts conventionally enough but then as things get more intense, becomes more unpredictable, mirroring the mindset and actions of the protagonists. Powerful, profound ending.Excellent work by Klaus Kinski in the lead role. Role suited him perfectly, as he himself was hardly a paragon of stability. This would be the first of five collaborations between Herzog and Kinski.

Herzog's third fiction feature, made when he was only 30, AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD is a genuine astonishment in the world cinema and its status as the magnum opus among Herzog's eclectic canon has been here to stay 45 years on. The sublime aerial shots which open the film ram home that the painstaking endeavor is the real deal, the crew does go off the beaten path into the ethereal mountains, a mesmerizing hands-on style of filmmaking which has its built-in allure simply because who will not be in awe of a film takes so much human labor against the elemental force to make itself happen (the legendary Herzog-Kinski pair would go to extremes in FITZCARRALDO, a decade later), particularly at a time when the preponderance of offerings hitherto had been studio- bound, steeped in artificial aesthetics.In search of El Dorado, in the mid-16th century, a gold-crazed contingent of Spanish conquistadors goes deep into the Peruvian rain forest, lead by Pedro de Ursúa (famed Portuguese filmmaker Guerra), second-in-command Lope de Aguirre (Kinski), Brother Gaspar (Negro), a rotund nobleman Fernando de Guzmán (Berling), among others, two females, Inés (Rojo), Ursúa's wife and Florés (Rivera), Aguirre's teenage daughter, and many Indian slaves. Most of the time, the team steers their route on rafts, but comes in for successive adversities in the hands of the unfathomable nature mother, one raft trapped by an eddy among the rapids causes a horrific aftermath, just when Ursúa commands to abort the scouting mission and backtrack, Aguirre precipitates a mutiny, keeps a wounded Ursúa as prisoner and puts Guzmán on the throne as the emperor of the new kingdom, because he firmly believes, they will find the gold, then their mission continues.Story-wise, the film is pretty garden-variety, and decidedly trimmed down to the nexus, Aguirre and co. are real historical personages, the expedition and mutiny are true happenings, but Herzog fictionalizes their journey en route and the grim wind-up. Barely landing their feet on solid soil, the conquistadors are singled out one by one by unseen enemies hidden in the forests through poisoned arrows, often proceeded by dead silence.However, in Herzog's method, the suspense and dreadfulness is toned down by his dispassionate temperament, which would be made into great play in his equally robust documentary filmmaking. Merely watchful and often centering on Kinski's distinctively fierce and emotive visage, the camera expends more time perusing the biome's vista (the ship snagged on top of a tree is a coup de maître of the then young filmmaker, flagging up its powerful metaphoric impact and ludic whimsy) than engaging in the narrative proceedings as their ill-fated destiny lurking ahead, until the final majestic 360-degree twirling shot sending the megalomaniac stranded with numerous skittish monkeys on the raft, paranoid, bereft and dream-dashed.In any fair sense, the film is less potent as a character analysis of an outrageous madman than a gorgeous landscape porn, utterly otherworldly for those outsiders, but Kinski still hounds you with his muted aggro, lunacy and repellence (by dint of Herzog's tactful maneuver, who deliberately lets Kinski rip in his more frenetic performance, but saves the actual shots for the moments when he is abated or simply worn out), which would go beyond the pale in FITZCARRALDO, but here, the final impression is much more balanced and nuanced.One cannot finish the review without mentioning the acclaimed score composed by the West German avant-garde band Popol Vuh, it is unearthly but not intrusive, a bespoke incident music which leaves its repercussions long after the film reaches its finish-line.

My expectations going in to this film were pretty high given its critical acclaim and reputation. Grizzly Man is the only other Herzog film I have seen and it happens to be my current favorite documentary of all time, so needless to say I was quite excited to see another film by him. And I'm happy to report that, although on a first viewing I didn't love it to quite the same degree as Grizzly Man, Aguirre: The Wrath of God definitely did not disappoint. I was quite interested to see what Herzog's style would be like as a filmmaker working with his own script and actors rather than as a documentarian. Based only on this film, he definitely seems to have a very deliberate, methodical air to his direction. The entire film is very even-toned and it slides along at a steady pace that feels neither fast nor slow. There is definitely an emotional coldness to the film that feels almost Kubrickian. None of the characters are very relatable or likable; quite the contrary in fact - they are consumed by greed, selfishness and delusions of grandeur, our "hero" in particular. Thus, there is an emotional distance between the audience and the characters that is definitely reminiscent of a Kubrick film.And ironically, despite the fact that I turned to this movie as my first Herzog non-documentary, the film almost feels like a documentary. The way the film is shot with hand-held camera and without any pomp or dramatization makes everything feel so real and authentic. It's very obvious that everything in the film was done for real on location and that is to its advantage as you really feel like you're there with these men rather than just watching a dramatization.This ultra-realism also works very well in bringing the themes of the film through and making them resonate. The film is clearly about man's misguided and even delusional thirst for power. Aguirre embodies this more than anyone in the film - a man with very clear delusions of grandeur who fancies himself a god despite clear evidence that his expedition is futile and doomed to failure. Klaus Kinski gives a spectacular performance in this role which is even more impressive given his relatively minimal amount of dialogue. He just has such an ominous presence on screen, his face perpetually twisted in a snarl, and he becomes almost hypnotic to watch as the film goes on.And it isn't just Aguirre. Essentially every Spaniard in the film engages in treachery at least once, including the holy man who utters one of the most searing lines of the film: "You know, my child, for the good of our Lord, the Church was always on the side of the strong." Ouch. These men commit mutiny, elect "emperors", make grand declarations of land ownership, and hold trials with their only audience being the indifferent tangle of vegetation and the raging river. The realism of the film perfectly captures how delusional these men really are as they parade around with their notions of power and fame in the middle of the jungle. Nothing could be further from the truth as they slowly succumb one by one, lost in a foreign and foreboding land. And their impossible goal of finding El Dorado, the imaginary city of gold, is the perfect metaphor for their delusion. A great strength of the film is that the way this theme is executed feels so universal. Herzog isn't just showing us the madness of these particular men in this particular scenario, he's showing us the madness of man in general. He showing us that these illusions of power are just that - illusions. In the grand scheme of the world and the universe, the titles of men are meaningless and transient.Aguirre: The Wrath of God is a powerful film and an impressive achievement from a filmmaking perspective. However, it is definitely not a movie that is out to entertain or dazzle its audience. It is a film of ideas rather than plot or spectacle. Really the only criticism I can make of the film on a first viewing is that there were some moments of humor which felt a bit out of place given the tone of the film - a man makes a quip after being shot with an arrow or a decapitated head speaks its last word. There is definitely an absurdity to the film and you could argue that these scenes play to that, but I felt these moments perhaps went a bit to far and were too cartoony to mesh well within the film's fabric of realism. Regardless, it's a minor complaint which does very little to sour an otherwise excellent film.