Aguirre,
The Wrath of God
ALEX
Two forces stand out most prominently in this film: the jungle, and Aguirre himself, who only gradually rises into focus and power out of the numerous Spanish soldiers. He begins as a whispering force of dissent, speaking out the side of his mouth and glancing out the side of his eye. The more time that the camera spends with him, the more I fall under his spell. Aguirre exudes a charismatic insanity that I’ve seen few actors achieve. It seems he was born for this role.
JADE
When I think of conquistadors, I think of European soldiers outfitted in armor, stampeding through the new world with force. Aguirre reshapes that image in my mind from the very beginning. In the first scene, a group of explorers is indeed a visible force in the jungle. They are a river of people, quite in contrast with the jungle surrounding them. As the group descends jungle-covered mountain paths, they appear to be swimming through the many levels of ground and the wetness of the jungle air. They are a wave of human force crashing through undulating green waves of jungle. They are less like a military and more like a group of ants, overburdened with seemingly absurd objects. So much suddenly appears inessential: a statue of the Virgin Mary, a noblewoman’s beautiful regal gown typical to courtlife in Spain, even the armor of the soldiers, all appear as non sequiturs here, expressions of an attachment to a distant culture and a distant narrative, which now weighs them down more than buoys them to reality.
ALEX
A narrative that weighs them down… This, I think, points to the allure of Aguirre himself when he begins to rally the soldiers behind him in defiance of the Spanish Crown. They are all so far from home that the only thing that can keep them sane is the creation of a brand new hierarchy of power that fits with their new circumstances. Over the course of the film, Aguirre becomes intoxicated by the opportunity he senses here: in the absence of a uniting myth, he feels a god-like ability to provide the caravan with a myth of his own. He rightly points out that Cortez was just as much a rebel, and was able to become rich and famous by this willfulness.
There’s a balance to be struck on such a crusade, between the insanity of Aguirre which can lead them confidently into the unknown, and the apparently absurd attachment to things like the Virgin Mary statue, which nevertheless keeps them mentally anchored to a myth of stability and home.
JADE
Yes, the carried statue is a piece of home and acts as a magic token. Similarly when the monk encounters a native, he clutches onto his bible for his own sense of stability. His face becomes fierce: “Does he understand that this is the word of God?” he demands, after the translator explains that the native expected these men to come because his myth speaks of “sons of the sun” arriving with “rods of thunder”. In this scene, one myth or narrative force confronts another.
It strikes me that these explorers arrived expecting to fight man to man, but instead they are confronted with the challenge of man against nature. They fall into complete absurdity in this context, proclaiming their new leader “Emperor over all the land to their left and all the land to their right.” It is as if they are so completely overcome by the natural force they work against, they cannot even see it as “what they are fighting.”
ALEX
Contemplating the terror of being in a strange jungle makes me completely understand every trivial thing they brought with them: noblewomen, a priest, farm animals, a cannon on wheels. It blows me away that expeditions like this actually happened. Is this the power of a central religious myth? These men sailed across the world, to wander through the wilderness, hoping to maybe stumble upon gold somewhere. Is it courage, or insanity? Does believing wholeheartedly in a God that will lift you up and smite your enemies lend the Spanish Conquistadors a bravery which we can only contemplate from afar?
JADE
This makes me wonder if a Christian myth could extend all the way to another planet, another solar system, or galaxy. How far out do you have to go before your myth is overextended? Of course, the forced conversion of natives came with massive atrocities, reminding me of the bloody scenes of the inquisitor in The Fountain.
ALEX
In the colonial legends we’ve grown up with, it wasn’t enough to believe in a loving God. It seems the most successful crusades had to marry religious fervor with an aggressive impulse for conquest, spreading the word of God by the sword.
JADE
Yes, Aguirre, calling himself the “wrath” identifies strongly with the sword-bearing dimension of Christianity. He becomes obsessed with this fantasy of himself as the maker of history, but he isn’t so interested in actually executing it. Wrapped up in his own myth, he’s disconnected entirely from reality by the end. Floating on a sinking raft growing with algae and overrun with monkeys, he’s emperor of nothing at all. He’s entirely landless.
Herzog’s critiquing colonialism, displaying the delusions inherent within colonial thinking. This is natural to his time. This film is a part of the postmodernist movement, declaring the absurdity of religion and human narratives and the dominance of brutal nature. What has this done for Herzog himself? He is like Aguirre, lost on a wayward raft of his own postmodern thinking. His beautiful film Cave of Forgotten Dreams with its revelations of ancient cave paintings, suggests a spiritual and narrative union between all past and present humanity, but is tragically appended with a cynical addendum about ecological decline: basically ending this epic, psychedelic journey through ancient human art with an “oh well, we’re all screwed anyway.”
ALEX
Aguirre is also an epic, psychedelic journey. As a product of his time, he uses it to communicate the impotence of man when pitted against superior forces, within and without. It’s dangerous for an artist to persist in this messaging, because it can lead him to hate his fellow man. Maybe a hero’s journey plot would have had the priest-narrator wrest control of the crusade out of Aguirre’s hands. But the concise running time of this film allowed for one main plot development only, and Herzog is masterful in displaying this course against the pitiless and beautiful jungle.
I was expecting a much more taxing experience from this ‘descent into madness’ film, and it was very heavy to witness these conquistadors on their fruitless quest, but the beauty of the jungle provided a wonderful balance.