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Richard III and the monkeys: "What is a throne, but a plank covered with velvet?" The opening is an inspiration from Chaplin and Mann, an endless line of conquistadores, monks, shackled natives, damsels in sedan chairs, horses, llamas and rusting cannons going down the Andes, from Heaven into Hell or maybe the other way around. It's 1560 and Pizarro (Alejandro Repulles) leaves the Peruvian highlands for the Amazon jungle in search of El Dorado, Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) is the stringy Thor seething among the mortals, skulking and twisting and dreaming of empires. Werner Herzog is on his wavelength, reaching for the Promethean and making everybody share the agony and ecstasy—his masterpiece is a visualization of a medieval priest's diary, the galvanic corpse of a Curtiz swashbuckler, a documentary about bewildered actors and crew members reacting to unruly vegetation, sludgy raging rivers, an errant butterfly. "The great traitor," Aguirre takes over the expedition, cages the nobleman (Ruy Guerra) and crowns a slob Führer, with himself as the reptilian Goebbels. Aboard the slowly drifting raft, he orders his minions to open fire to break the silences that precede hails of poisoned arrows, an imperially hooded horse watches from the river banks as the fools float away. A camera forever off-center, scuttling in tandem with ragtag explorers as they swarm about the remains of a cannibal village, terrain so tangible it's metaphysical. Ships on top of trees, poetry at the noose: "Little mother, two by two, wafts by the wind of my hair." Herzog the possessed seeker, the modernist in a trance, dismantling and erecting myths alongside best fiend Kinski. An essential hallucination, subsequently mined by Coppola and Weir and Boorman but unsurpassed in its vision of the withering yet liberating madness underneath the armor: When Aguirre lastly announces his mania in the corpse-strewn boat, the circling camera mourns, mocks, and exults. Cinematography by Thomas Mauch. With Del Negro, Peter Berling, Helena Rojo, Edward Roland, and Cecilia Rivera.
--- Fernando F. Croce |