by
Douglas Messerli
Werner Herzog (writer and director) Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, The Wrath of God) / 1972, US 1977
Werner Herzog (writer and director) Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, The Wrath of God) / 1972, US 1977
If nothing else you have to give Werner Herzog credit for working, five times no less, with the near-mad actor Klaus Kinski, as well as discovering and featuring the difficult to deal-with actor, Bruno S. But then Herzog clearly liked the challenges of doing near-impossible movies.
As we know, mostly from the writings of a
Gaspar de Carvajal, a Spanish monk ministering to the Indians and the Spanish,
most of those involved never returned, and the men, women, and native Incans
who Pizarro sent down river to check out the feasibility of the remaining of voyage
all were either killed or went mad before they were destroyed by natural
causes.
Several critics have written about the
early scenes of Herzog’s near-miraculous film; as the camera begins in a broad
view of Spaniards, dressed in helmets and metal plates, who slowly make their
way with a procession of chained Incans down the mountainside, women carried in
gilded hand-coaches, the music by West German progressive/Krautrock band Popol
Vuh plays an ethereal score, as if suddenly the heavens have opened up to
celebrate these new gods’ trek from the high country into the verdant jungle
below.
It is only when the camera moves in on
the party as it begins to reach that jungle growth that Herzog reveals how
arduous is their voyage and how absolutely ridiculous the participants of this
voyage are. The Spaniards, barking out German-language orders, attempt to save
their
foodstuffs, their cannons, and particularly
their women from the mud in which they are now engulfed. But, by the time their
reach the river, they are exhausted, and the force of the Amazon is so powerful
that it’s clear they must travel downstream even if they might wish to make the
voyage of quickly constructed rafts. Even the vain Pizarro perceives the
impossibility, holding most of his retinue back, while sending some of his
strongest men ahead to check out whether such a route is possible.
From the beginning the trip down river
does not go well. One of the four rafts is soon caught up in an eddy, and
cannot be moved across to join the others who have made an encampment. By
morning they discover all the occupants of the raft dead, shot by local tribal
Indians. Ursúa demands that others attempt to cross to bring back the bodies,
but Aguirre, determined to move forward, orders Perucho to send a cannon blast
to the trapped raft, spilling the bodies in the heaving river.
By morning, the river, having risen during
the night, has taken away the other three rafts. Ursúa determines that there is
no way of moving forward, and orders the group to return through the jungle to
Pizarro and the others to tell them the route is impassable.
Quickly maddened by the legends he has
hear, Aguirre shoots Ursúa and another supporter, and takes command, giving the
title of the “King of Spain” to the fat and quite ignorant Guzmán. But even
Guzmán will not order the death of the recovering Ursúa, although both he and
his mistress know it is only a matter of time before Aguirre will attempt to
kill him. When Inés dares to ask Carvajal why he not spoken out in the name of
the Church against Aguirre’s acts, he explains that the Church has always
supported the strongest, never the weak, restating a theme that will be
expressed time and again in Herzog’s films. Society and religion are never to
be trusted when it comes to the individuality of the human being.
Constructing one larger raft—brazenly
hand-built by Herzog and his crew for the film
itself—we sense the very real danger the
characters and their actors must undergo to reach their destination—the end of
the film itself. To make things worse, Kinski and Herzog grew increasingly
disenchanted with one another, and film legend will never quite be rid of the
notion, later denied by the director, that he threatened to shoot Kinski if he
dared to leave the set. No matter, Kinski clearly took the entire company
(including the local natives acting in the film) hostage in his fits of
tyrannical anger. In order to get a quieter performance out of the volatile
Kinski, the director would purposely anger him before shoots, allowing his
temper to dissipate before moving forward, in short, detonating the fuse before
its on-screen explosion.
Aguirre’s madness, nonetheless, becomes
increasingly clear, as, one by one, his fellow raft-mates are killed around him
by native arrows, and he, himself, plans to marry his own daughter in order to
create “the purest dynasty the world has ever seen.” Like the original Aguirre,
he ultimately kills her himself, declaring his acts as the “wrath of God.” It’s
hard today to not perceive metaphorical comparisons to Aguirre’s behavior in
one of our major political leaders.
The film ends in one of the most
startling images ever put to screen, as Aguirre, the lone survivor, is
surrounded on his “raft” kingdom as his floats wildly to sea with hundreds of
squealing monkeys, as if the very project that Herzog had created had run amok.
The memorable images call our attention to the actor and director more than the
character: who would ever think to create such a totally mad vision of the
world, we can only ask. We have our answer, of course, in the figures who have
dared to make Aguirre come into
being. This is a private war of madness, which, by the very end of the decade,
would be revisited as a public war of madness in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalyse Now. Both reveal the deepest
“heart of darkness” imaginable.
Los Angeles, September 24, 2017
Los Angeles, September 24, 2017
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