Aguirre takes place in 1561, after the Spaniards, under Gonzalo Pizarro(Alejandro Repulles), have conquered the Incan empire in Peru. The story is loosely basedon actual events, although writer/director Herzog uses historical characters freely. Its maincharacter, Don Lope de Aguirre, is really not much more than a footnote in the history ofthe Spanish conquistadors, but Herzog turns him into a symbol to represent theself-destructive human desire to conquer the unconquerable.

The film opens with an amazing long shot of a line of soldiers and explorers making theirway down the face of a mist-enshrouded mountain. The shot immediately establishes oneof Herzog's central themes: the smallness of man in the face of nature. Shot on location inthe rain forests of Peru, Aguirre is a film of great scope, even though it was madeon a relatively miniscule budget of only $360,000. Herzog, only 28 at the time, demanded agreat deal from his actors and the other filmmakers, and the result is a nightmarishevocation of greedy, determined men forging into the unknown and being swallowed wholeby a nature they were arrogant enough to think they could vanquish.

The main narrative follows a small group of Spanish explorers who are searching for thefabled golden city of El Dorado. They are led by Don Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra), whosesecond-in-command is Aguirre (Kinski). Other members of the party include Ursua's wife,Inez (Helena Rojo), Aguirre's 15-year-old daughter, Flores (Cecilia Rivera), a fat noblemannamed Don Fernando de Guzman (Peter Berling), and an African slave named Okello(Edward Roland). The group also includes Brother Gaspar de Carvajal (Del Negro), aCatholic monk whose diary entries supply the narration.

Travelling deep into the heart of South America on large wooden rafts, the explorersencounter setback after setback. Early on, one of the rafts gets caught in the rapids and isstranded on the opposite side of the river from the rest of the party. When the othersmanage to cross the river, they find that everyone on it has been mysteriously slaughtered.Later on, the river rises 15 feet in one night and sweeps all the rafts away. Native Indiansare constantly hiding in the forests along either side of the river, and many of the explorersare killed by silent arrows and spears that appear to come out of nowhere.

Eventually, Ursua proposes that they turn back, but Aguirre wants to press on. Fueled byfeverish dreams of wealth and power and invoking previous conquerors like HernandoCortez, he launches a mutiny in order to keep the exploration going. With Guzman installedas his puppet leader, Aguirre drives the conquistadors deeper down the river, destroyinganything that might stand in his way.

Disease and madness begin to set in on the remaining members of the party, and Herzogallows the film to slowly lose its grip on reality, becoming more detached and surreal (thereis a definite connection here to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and FrancisFord Coppola's Vietnam reimagining of it in Apocalypse Now). The final shot is astunning evocation of Aguirre the unrelenting madman, surrounded by the corpses of hisfollowers, still standing tall on the decrepit remains of his raft, ranting about his newkingdom that we know has been an illusion all along while hundreds of spider monkeysswarm around him.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God is a film of great power and raw brutality. Herzogbrings it to life in stark, realistic terms by shooting on location; he makes incredible use ofthe natural jungle, turning it into its own character that overwhelms all others. In the titlerole, Klaus Kinski does not often speak, but he has an overwhelming presence. With hisstrange, stilted walk, his fierce blue eyes, and his extreme, chiseled features, Kinski is aformidable presence on screen. He is, as Herzog once described him, "the only true demonof the cinema."

As much as Aguirre is a strikingly visual film, Herzog also pays close attentionto the soundtrack. In addition to the haunting, forlorn, electronic human choir that suppliesthe music (which was written and performed by Popol Vuh), Herzog uses the naturalsounds of the jungle to great effect. Not only does he create a sense of ambience with thevarious chirpings and cries of birds, but he makes silence work for him. There are longstretches of silence at various points in the film, which are usually followed by sudden,unexplained bursts of violence.

It is this quality of suddenness juxtaposed with the otherwise carefully paced narrative(Herzog often holds shots for an uncomfortably long period of time) that gives the filmmuch of its power. Like its insanely resolute protagonist, Aguirre, the Wrath ofGod is unstable and unpredictable, yet absolutely unswerving. It is a masterpiece ofhaunting existential cinema.

Copyright © 2000 James Kendrick