Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

The saved Indian speaks grimly to the last survivors of a Spanish expedition in search of El Dorado, the city of gold. A priest gives him a Bible, “the word of God.” He holds it up to his ear but hears nothing. Around his neck hangs a golden trinket. The Spanish tear it from him and dangle it in front of their eyes, hypnotized by the belief that now, finally, El Dorado must be at hand. “Where is the city?” they yell at the Indian, using their servant as a translator. He waves his hand vaguely toward the river. It is farther away. Always farther off.

As much as the music is important to “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” so is Klaus Kinski’s face. He has unnerving blue eyes and wide, thick lips that would look sexy if they weren’t pulled back in the grin of madness. Here he plays the most stubborn of the conquistadors. Herzog told me that he was a youth in Germany when he saw Kinski for the first time: “At that moment I knew it was my destiny to make films, and his to act in them.”

When Pizarro fears that his expedition is a folly, he selects a small party to spend a week exploring farther up-river. If they find nothing, he says, the attempt will be abandoned. This smaller party is led by the aristocrat Don Pedro de Ursua, with Aguirre (Kinski) as his second in command. Also in the party, along with soldiers and slaves, are a priest, Gaspar de Carvajal; the fatuous nobleman Fernando de Guzman; Ursua’s wife, Flores; Aguirre’s daughter Inez, and a black slave named Okello, who sadly tells one of the women, “I was born a prince, and men were forbidden to look on me. Now I am in chains.”

Herzog does not hurry their journey or fill it with false episodes of suspense and action. What we sense most profoundly is the vastness of both river and forest — which provides no shore because all shore has been flooded by risen waters. Consider how Herzog handles an early crisis when one of the rafts gets caught in a whirlpool. The slaves row furiously but cannot move it off dead center.

Herzog’s camera stays across from them on another river bank; their desperation looks distant and insoluble. Against Aguirre’s scornful orders against any rescue attempts from their side of the river, a party is sent out from the other side. In the morning, still floating in one place, the raft is found to hold all dead men.

How did they die? I have an idea, but so do you. The point is that death is this expedition’s destiny. Ursua (as we have already been told) has been relieved of his command; Aguirre arranges for Guzman to be elected “emperor.” Soon both are dead. His last meal is fish and fruit, which as acting “emperor” he eats greedily while his men count out a few kernel of corn apiece. A horse goes mad; he orders it thrown overboard; men mutter darkly that it would have supplied meat for a week to those on shore patrol. Guzman’s dead body is found soon after.

Aguirre rules with terror. He stalks about the raft with a curiously lopsided gait, as if one of his knees will not bend. There is madness in his eyes. When he overhears one of the men whispering about plans to escape, he cuts off his head so swiftly that the dead head finishes speaking its sentence. Death occurs mostly off screen in Herzog movies or swiftly and silently arrows fly softly out of jungle into necks and backs but not always: A Kinski figure hanged himself during production another time.

So there can be no doubt that when Aguirre at last turns on God Himself (“If we don’t find Him in El Dorado”), things will go hard with anyone left alive. The final images show Aguirre alone on his raft surrounded by hundreds of little monkeys chattering away while he talks about them planning and plotting new empire.

The filming of “Aguirre” is a legend in film circles. Werner Herzog, the German director who speaks about the “voodoo of location,” took his actors and crew into a remote jungle district where fever happened frequently and there was every likelihood of starving. It is said that he held a gun on Kinski to make him act Kinski denies this in his autobiography and adds darkly that he had the only gun but no matter who was right, the fact remains that they were all on rafts like those we see, with actors, crew members and cameras, and often, “I did not know the dialogue 10 minutes before we shot a scene,” Herzog told me.

Not driven by dialogue anyway, or even by characters except for Aguirre himself whose personality is created as much by Kinski’s face and body as by words spoken through them; I think what Herzog sees in this story is what he sees in many of his films: Men haunted by vision towards great achievement which in daring pride commits sin against itself only to be crushed down under it by an implacable universe. Steiner wanted to fly for ever; so good did he become that there was danger lest he should overshoot landing area and crush himself against stones or trees ski-jumper documentary comes readily to mind.

Among modern filmmakers there are none more visionary than Werner Herzog nor yet any greater theme-obsessed one too; no wonder then that among his many operas directed etcetera. Enough said! However while some may feel tempted either tell plotted stories record amusing dialogues neither such wants lift us up into realms of wonder instead.

Only few other movies possess equal boldness vis-a-vis their visions from among contemporaneous ones with these two examples being “2001 Space Odyssey” or else still “Apocalypse Now.” Oliver Stone could be described as messianic figure among currently active directors since hardly any other individual talks about work such manner which suggests being indifferent towards accolades derived from conventional forms success but aspiring for transcendence nonetheless.

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