Imagine five weeks spent under the weight of heavy leather, steel chest plates and helmets, slogging through sludge and dodging volatile rapids in the dizzying heat and humidity of the Amazonian jungle. Writer-director Werner Herzog’s third feature, Aguirre: the Wrath of God is a well-lauded masterwork, its success due in part to Herzog’s unbridled approach to production.
The film opens with a master shot of the Andes Mountains, small dots trickle down a lush green mountainside, and the camera zooms in to reveal a line of conquistadors and enslaved Indians struggling with every step as they descend from Quito into dense jungle. The shot overwhelms the viscera because what we observe is a documented event -- the film’s cast and crew relive the sweat and toil of the historical moment, and the result is astounding.
“The story takes place in the Peruvian jungle – you have to go there, there’s no alternative to that.”
With a budget of $360,000, a stolen camera, and a crew of no more than eight people at a time, Werner Herzog makes one of the most important and relevant works of recent history, committing images to celluloid that would eventually inspire Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and arguably Mallick’s entire oeuvre. Aguirre: the Wrath of God covers the tale of an ambitious and impossible Spanish expedition led by conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro in search of El Dorado, the lost city of gold. Convinced that they’ve veered off path, Pizarro puts together a small group of men, led by aristocrat Don Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra, an accomplished Brazilian filmmaker in his own right) with Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) as second in command, to continue traveling along the river before the expedition is terminated for good. The group includes the asinine Fernando de Guzman, Padre Gaspar de Carvajal, and Aguirre’s beautiful daughter Inez, along with a handful of slaves and soldiers. Eventually Aguirre will undermine Ursua’s power and lead the group by force, threatening any dissidents with death. Handheld camera follows at eye level, observing the group as they fumble through thick foliage and muddy swampland. Four of the Indians are forced to carry (and balance) a ridiculous sedan chair housing the beautiful Flores (Helena Rojo), wife of Ursua. There is an immediate sense of disconnect between subject and setting that remains throughout the length of the film.
Hardly anything is known about Lope de Aguirre. At most fifteen pages worth of material exist on the historical figure, giving Herzog enough room to create moments within which characters are developed filmically. Freed from the constraint of historicity, Herzog creates believable scenarios intended not to advance the storyline necessarily, but to convey an inner mood by testing the limits of physical and mental endurance against all odds. He admits to having done little to no research prior to writing the script (which in prose form was swiftly finished within two days), which is mind-boggling. The filmmaker entrusts location with the task of spurring undeniably authentic moments, the life of the film exists within the individual’s relationship to the surrounding environment.
Furious nature gains an independent life in the close up. Herzog deviates from the narrative and closes on a raging river; the shot is held for about a minute. By slowly pulling into focus, cinematographer Thomas Mauch calls attention to the entropic movement of the murky, rolling waves. A mesmerizing and haunting soundtrack by long-time collaborators Popol Vuh links the landscape to the mindscape, and we begin to observe the group’s inevitable downward spiral as Aguirre loses his mind in favor of megalomania and delusions of grandeur.
Camera as participant
On a turbulent trip down a river, one of the large rafts gets stuck in an eddy. The rest of the group waits on shore for the cornering current to give way. Several shots are fired overnight and the following morning everyone on the raft is dead, while two native oarsmen are missing. This event as observed is never given a proper explanation; it remains as mysterious an occurrence to the viewer as it was for the rest of the group.
Herzog advances the notion of the Unseen by deliberately keeping the enemy out of view. The Indians are present but never seen, and there is a sense that the spectator is also not safe. A soldier trekking through the forest steps into a trap and is swept up and out of frame. The only indication of murder is a sprinkle of arterial blood against a bright green leaf, as observed by another soldier who runs in a panic to warn the others.
Pizarro’s men awake to find the river has risen fifteen feet overnight. The rafts they’ve built have drifted away. This was not staged – the river had indeed risen during the shoot and the rafts were lost. Herzog understood it was necessary to make this problem a part of the film. Having conflicts such as this arise organically results in sincere expressions of confusion and frustration as the men scrounge for iron with which to hold new rafts together.
One of my favorite moments is when Aguirre stands against the edge of the frame opposite a slave playing a panpipe. Beside the music, everything is silent, Aguirre is thinking. This shot serves little purpose in the context of the story, but it is essential to advancing the inner mood. Klaus’ face in this respect is pivotal to the impact of the film. Often the camera stops to observe his expression, which becomes more and more unhinged as we move farther into the jungle.
Aguirre: the Wrath of God follows a doomed mission. When the men march down the steep mountainside they are descending into the depths of hell. Hunger, isolation, exhaustion and fear will soon drive them to death or madness. In the face of impossible odds, to the very end Aguirre’s eyes express an insatiable greed and want of power; he looks toward the horizon with confidence as everything crumbles.
There will be a screening of Aguirre: the Wrath of God on Thursday, October 30 in Hodson 303. Don't miss it!
Aguirre: the Wrath of God (1972). Written and directed by Werner Herzog. Starring Klaus Kinski, Del Negro, Ruy Guerra, and Helena Rojo. 100 minutes. Available on DVD, presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio.
Herzog excelled in using silence as an unsettling factor in much of the film. While this movie was very enjoyable to me, the German accents and language was offsetting to me having studied Andean and Incan history of the South Americas. The pointless relentlessness of Aguirre in the face of nothingness reminds me of the unsettling conclusion of "All Quiet on the Western Front."
Posted by: PE | November 02, 2008 at 11:50 PM