Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

One of the true greats, this, an adven­ture saga about the ulti­mate futil­i­ty of exis­tence. Wern­er Her­zog accom­pa­nies his not-so-mer­ry band of trav­ellers through the low-clouds and down the dead­ly wind­ing trails of a moun­tain in the Ama­zon. They are indis­tinct specks on the land­scape, con­sumed entire­ly by nature’s all-con­quer­ing awesomeness.

The year is 1560, and Span­ish con­quis­ta­dor Don Fran­cis­co Pizarro has been giv­en his orders by the king of Spain to enter the heart of dark­ness and locate the myth­i­cal, gold-plat­ed par­adise of El Dora­do. When rations run low, he pass­es the reigns over to Klaus Kinski’s Don Lope de Aguirre who drags his advance par­ty to the verge of insan­i­ty and beyond.

List­ing this film’s plea­sures is an activ­i­ty to which you could ded­i­cate entire life­times, so here we’re just going to focus on one: Klaus Kinski’s mirac­u­lous cen­tral per­for­mance. It takes a while for him to become the cen­tral focus of the film, as his team of explor­ers is duly whit­tled down in the film’s open­ing acts. He’s ini­tial­ly ret­i­cent to take cen­tre stage, even after fronting a coup which suc­cess­ful­ly ousts the de fac­to leader (who, with loath­some cow­ardice, wants to turn back).

Kin­s­ki projects vio­lence through actions rather than words. He throt­tles his com­rades with his eyes, trans­mit­ting sub-son­ic hate bul­letins via his brusque body lan­guage which state that any­one who dares affront his iron will might find them­selves on the busi­ness end of his infi­nite ire. Democ­ra­cy doesn’t stand a chance against Kinski’s laser eye, as seen in the river­side vote scene where Aguirre doesn’t so much intim­i­date the elec­torate as psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly fill their bal­lot papers in for them.

So he’s some­thing of a com­bustible pres­ence, then. Yet there’s some­thing strange­ly pathet­ic about Aguirre, that his spindly frame might not ful­ly sup­port his sple­net­ic bursts of anger. He has bizarre, simi­an hunch. He gal­lops inel­e­gant­ly rather than dash­es when the raft occa­sion­al­ly docks. It’s like a ref­er­ence to Richard III, a mal­formed tyrant whose per­son­al con­cerns leave him entire­ly divorced from the pri­mal desires of the remain­der of the human race. With his shoul­ders at a con­stant angle, Kin­s­ki address­es his procla­ma­tions to the skies as much as he does his sup­port­ing cast, as if he’s in a direct dia­logue with God. It real­ly is a per­for­mance that’s been tele­port­ed in from the silent era.

He intones that famous line, ​“I am the wrath of God!”, while momen­tar­i­ly star­ing direct to cam­era. For a split sec­ond, Aguirre’s hubris sud­den­ly extends beyond the closed world of the film and takes on a chill­ing uni­ver­sal­i­ty The pow­er that his Aguirre wields will be the cause of all pain and suf­fer­ing, not just his sub­jects in El Dora­do. It’s a chill­ing moment, glar­ing into those eyes and being told that you will be crushed by Aguirre. Time and geog­ra­phy offer no escape for nature’s indif­fer­ent brutality.

And per­haps best of all is the haunt­ing final scene where our ​“hero” is now left alone on his raft, blind to the onslaught of the cos­mos and the slings and arrows being flung by the invis­i­ble indige­nous tribes. Has he suc­cumbed to mad­ness or is this the full expres­sion of his nat­ur­al state?

There’s cru­el­ty in the way he picks up the mon­keys and casu­al­ly casts them into the riv­er. But there’s sad­ness too, as his uncor­rupt­ed self-belief remains, even in the light of over­whelm­ing odds. Unlike, say, Antoine Doinel who reached the edge of the world and was forced to turn back, Aguirre doesn’t even make it far enough to con­firm that there was noth­ing there in the first place.