Aguirre, The Wrath of God

[applecorped]

I finally got around to seeing this movie recently. I have read several reviews that described the film in very positive terms.

From Wiki - J. Hoberman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Hoberman) has written that Aguirre "is not just a great movie but an essential one...Herzog's third feature...is both a landmark film and a magnificent social metaphor."

I don't know if I had my hopes to high or I'm missing something but I was underwhelmed. Has anybody else here seen this movie? Would you rank this film as great?

[gerdbonk]

I saw it a couple of years ago and seem to remember being underwhelmed as well.

I just checked my Netflix rating for it. I gave it 2 stars out of 5.

[applecorped]

OK, well it least it's not just me. I checked several popular movie site and the first two loved it!

IMDB - User Rating: 8.1/10 (12,296 votes)

Rotten Tomatoes - 97% Positive

However, Filmcritic.com was not as flattering:


http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/reviews/Aguirre-the-Wrath-of-God

"Someone tried to explain to me after I had sat through this film, which I sincerely believe to be a fair representation of the phrase “boring you to death,” that so-called cinematic genius Werner Herzog’s use of the slow pace of the film was in some way representative of the fact that, while on a raft in the Amazon for months on end, there is nothing to do. To this, I say the following: Look, Mr. Herzog, I have no problem with deeper meaning and symbolism in film as long as said deeper meaning and symbolism doesn’t make me search for the nearest Smith & Wesson."

While the film had many beautiful shots of the jungle that was it for me. Maybe quiet, slow-paced films are a thing of the past in this day and age.

[ElMondoHummus]

I tried to like it, but I fell asleep.

Seriously... I'm not just being snarky. I really tried. Someone I trusted recommended it highly to me, so I went and got it, popped it in, got past the first 15 minutes, then woke up 3 hours later. Just to make sure it wasn't me being sleepy, I tried again the next day after being well rested. Nope... dozed off again. Honestly.

I thought less of that friend's opinion after that. :D

[zigaretten]

Well I loved it. I'll admit it is long and somewhat slow moving. And these are exactly the things which Hollywood avoids like the plague. But some of my favorite movies of all time are long and slow.........Fitzcaraldo.........Wages of Fear........the first 2/3 of Seven Samarai.......

I feel that these movies cause me to pay more attention to the characters because the nature of the character is more important than any action which is going to occur. Watching Kinski descend into madness as his "new world" fantasy slowly disintegrates, both literally and figuratively, is incredible..........My film library is about 40-50 films (I don't know if that's large or small) and Aguirre has been there about 15 years..........

[grayman]

:slp:

[applecorped]

Well I loved it. I'll admit it is long and somewhat slow moving. And these are exactly the things which Hollywood avoids like the plague. But some of my favorite movies of all time are long and slow.........Fitzcaraldo.........Wages of Fear........the first 2/3 of Seven Samarai.......

I feel that these movies cause me to pay more attention to the characters because the nature of the character is more important than any action which is going to occur. Watching Kinski descend into madness as his "new world" fantasy slowly disintegrates, both literally and figuratively, is incredible..........My film library is about 40-50 films (I don't know if that's large or small) and Aguirre has been there about 15 years..........

How can a movie that is only 1 hour and 40 minutes (according to Wikki) seem so damn long? Ghandi seemed shorter in comparison!

[zigaretten]

How can a movie that is only 1 hour and 40 minutes (according to Wikki) seem so damn long? Ghandi seemed shorter in comparison!

It's all in the mind.............

[roger]

My favorite movie of all times.

Since you were bored by it, you probably won't take this suggestion, but if you want some insight into the Herzog/Kinski team rent My Best Fiend sometime. Kinski's presense on the screen is extraordinary, as are some of the techniques he uses. Herzog's ability to channel Kinski's madness is very impressive. Ifind the combination riviting. But, this is clearly a movie where you have to be into the craft of movie making. Seeing how Kinski swings himself in front of the camera (he would stand beside it, one foot facing away from the camera, the foot nearest the camera turned 180 degrees toward the camera, and then he would just pivot and loom into view) is worth the price of admission by itself.

However, the movie ain't 'entertainment', exciting, anything like that. It's a painfully evocative exploration of a man's descent into madness, which was happening as much in real life off screen during film as it was on screen.

Did I mention I love this film?

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

I have mixed feeling about Werner Herzog's films. I enjoyed Grizzly Man very much, loved his documentary My Best Fiend, consider Fitzcarraldo, with all its flaws, a great film, would even marginally recommend Cobra Verde and enjoyed Aguirre enough to give it a 9 out of 10 on IMDB when I saw it.

However, I'd agree with Pauline Kael's complaint that "the deliberateness of Herzog's pacing can put you in a stupor" and her comment that his movies have great images but the shots are held too long and that you have to exercise alot of patience with the dragginess.

Edit: It's a funny thing, though. I wouldn't argue too much with anyone who said that his movies with Klaus Kinski leave them cold, says that they are boring or anyone who just plain dislikes them but I'd say that even if you hate them, they are unforgettable. Hundreds of good movies are instantly forgettable and thousands of bad movies even more so but I don't think anyone who's seen Aguirre has forgotten it, even if they hated every minute of it. Enspecially if they hated every minute of it.

I'd second the recommendation of My Best Fiend and would urge anyone to check out Grizzly Man. Those are his two most accessible and enjoyable movies, of the ones that I've seen.

[applecorped]

It's all in the mind.............

Touche'

[applecorped]

My favorite movie of all times.

Since you were bored by it, you probably won't take this suggestion, but if you want some insight into the Herzog/Kinski team rent My Best Fiend sometime. Kinski's presense on the screen is extraordinary, as are some of the techniques he uses. Herzog's ability to channel Kinski's madness is very impressive. Ifind the combination riviting. But, this is clearly a movie where you have to be into the craft of movie making. Seeing how Kinski swings himself in front of the camera (he would stand beside it, one foot facing away from the camera, the foot nearest the camera turned 180 degrees toward the camera, and then he would just pivot and loom into view) is worth the price of admission by itself.

However, the movie ain't 'entertainment', exciting, anything like that. It's a painfully evocative exploration of a man's descent into madness, which was happening as much in real life off screen during film as it was on screen.

Did I mention I love this film?

God, I love a heartfelt recommendation! Thank you! I don't mind slow. I don't mind deliberate. I just find enough to tie it all together in a narrative I could appreciate. Good film though.

[JoeEllison]

I know I'm supposed to be a fan of Herzog... but I'm not. I'm just not. Dull, plodding pacing and a complete lack of any interest or inclination to entertain. A lack of discipline throughout. Sticking a camera in the general vicinity of a psychopath doesn't equal "genius filmmaker" in my book. His movies range from "mildly not horrible" to "Herzog owes me my money back plus a couple of hours of hard labor in my yard to make up for the time I wasted watching his movie."

And he directed Invincible, the single most pointless movie involving Nazis that has ever been made.

[applecorped]

A letter to Werner Herzog:
In praise of rapturous truth

/ / / November 17, 2007


Dear Werner,

You have done me the astonishing honor of dedicating your new film, “Encounters at the End of the World,” to me. Since I have admired your work beyond measure for the almost 40 years since we first met, I do not need to explain how much this kindness means to me. When I saw the film at the Toronto Film Festival and wrote to thank you, I said I wondered if it would be a conflict of interest for me to review the film, even though of course you have made a film I could not possibly dislike. I said I thought perhaps the solution was to simply write you a letter.

But I will review the film, my friend, when it arrives in theaters on its way to airing on the Discovery Channel. I will review it, and I will challenge anyone to describe my praise as inaccurate.

I will review it because I love great films and must share my enthusiasm.

This is not that review. It is the letter. It is a letter to a man whose life and career have embodied a vision of the cinema that challenges moviegoers to ask themselves questions not only about films but about lives. About their lives, and the lives of the people in your films, and your own life.

Without ever making a movie for solely commercial reasons, without ever having a dependable source of financing, without the attention of the studios and the oligarchies that decide what may be filmed and shown, you have directed at least 55 films or television productions, and we will not count the operas. You have worked all the time, because you have depended on your imagination instead of budgets, stars or publicity campaigns. You have had the visions and made the films and trusted people to find them, and they have. It is safe to say you are as admired and venerated as any filmmaker alive—among those who have heard of you, of course. Those who do not know your work, and the work of your comrades in the independent film world, are missing experiences that might shake and inspire them.

I have not seen all your films, and do not have a perfect memory, but I believe you have never made a film depending on sex, violence or chase scenes. Oh, there is violence in “Lessons of Darkness,” about the Kuwait oil fields aflame, or “Grizzly Man,” or “Rescue Dawn.” But not “entertaining violence.” There is sort of a chase scene in “Even Dwarfs Started Small.” But there aren’t any romances.

You have avoided this content, I suspect, because it lends itself so seductively to formulas, and you want every film to be absolutely original.

You have also avoided all “obligatory scenes,” including artificial happy endings. And special effects (everyone knows about the real boat in “Fitzcarraldo,” but even the swarms of rats in “Nosferatu” are real rats, and your strong man in “Invincible” actually lifted the weights). And you don’t use musical scores that tell us how to feel about the content. Instead, you prefer free-standing music that evokes a mood: You use classical music, opera, oratorios, requiems, aboriginal music, the sounds of the sea, bird cries, and of course Popol Vuh.

All of these decisions proceed from your belief that the audience must be able to believe what it sees. Not its “truth,” but its actuality, its ecstatic truth.

You often say this modern world is starving for images. That the media pound the same paltry ideas into our heads time and again, and that we need to see around the edges or over the top. When you open “Encounters at the End of the World” by following a marine biologist under the ice floes of the South Pole, and listening to the alien sounds of the creatures who thrive there, you show me a place on my planet I did not know about, and I am richer. You are the most curious of men. You are like the storytellers of old, returning from far lands with spellbinding tales.

I remember at the Telluride Film Festival, ten or 12 years ago, when you told me you had a video of your latest documentary. We found a TV set in a hotel room and I saw “Bells from the Deep,” a film in which you wandered through Russia observing strange beliefs.

There were the people who lived near a deep lake, and believed that on its bottom there was a city populated by angels. To see it, they had to wait until winter when the water was crystal clear, and then creep spread-eagled onto the ice. If the ice was too thick, they could not see well enough. Too thin, and they might drown. We heard the ice creaking beneath them as they peered for their vision.

Then we met a monk who looked like Rasputin. You found that there were hundreds of “Rasputins,” some claiming to be Jesus Christ, walking through Russia with their prophecies and warnings. These people, and their intense focus, and the music evoking another world (as your sound tracks always do) held me in their spell, and we talked for some time about the film, and then you said, “But you know, Roger, it is all made up.” I did not understand. “It is not real. I invented it.”

I didn’t know whether to believe you about your own film. But I know you speak of “ecstatic truth,” of a truth beyond the merely factual, a truth that records not the real world but the world as we dream it.

Your documentary “Little Dieter Needs to Fly” begins with a real man, Dieter Dengler, who really was a prisoner of the Viet Cong, and who really did escape through the jungle and was the only American who freed himself from a Viet Cong prison camp. As the film opens, we see him entering his house, and compulsively opening and closing windows and doors, to be sure he is not locked in. “That was my idea,” you told me. “Dieter does not really do that. But it is how he feels.”

The line between truth and fiction is a mirage in your work.

Some of the documentaries contain fiction, and some of the fiction films contain fact. Yes, you really did haul a boat up a mountainside in “Fitzcarraldo,” even though any other director would have used a model, or special effects. You organized the ropes and pulleys and workers in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest, and hauled the boat up into the jungle. And later, when the boat seemed to be caught in a rapids that threatened its destruction, it really was. This in a fiction film. The audience will know if the shots are real, you said, and that will affect how they see the film.

I understand this. What must be true, must be true. What must not be true, can be made more true by invention. Your films, frame by frame, contain a kind of rapturous truth that transcends the factually mundane. And yet when you find something real, you show it.

You based “Grizzly Man” on the videos that Timothy Treadwell took in Alaska during his summers with wild bears. In Antarctica, in “Encounters at the End of the World,” you talk with real people who have chosen to make their lives there in a research station. Some are “linguists on a continent with no language,” you note, others are “PhDs working as cooks.” When a marine biologist cuts a hole in the ice and dives beneath it, he does not use a rope to find his way back to the small escape circle in the limitless shelf above him, because it would restrict his research. When he comes up, he simply hopes he can find the hole. This is all true, but it is also ecstatic truth.

In the process of compiling your life’s work, you have never lost your sense of humor. Your narrations are central to the appeal of your documentaries, and your wonder at human nature is central to your fiction. In one scene you can foresee the end of life on earth, and in another show us country musicians picking their guitars and banjos on the roof of a hut at the South Pole. You did not go to Antarctica, you assure us at the outset, to film cute penguins. But you did film one cute penguin, a penguin that was disoriented, and was steadfastly walking in precisely the wrong direction—into an ice vastness the size of Texas. “And if you turn him around in the right direction,” you say, “he will turn himself around, and keep going in the wrong direction, until he starves and dies.” The sight of that penguin waddling optimistically toward his doom would be heartbreaking, except that he is so sure he is correct.

But I have started to wander off like the penguin, my friend.

I have started out to praise your work, and have ended by describing it. Maybe it is the same thing. You and your work are unique and invaluable, and you ennoble the cinema when so many debase it. You have the audacity to believe that if you make a film about anything that interests you, it will interest us as well. And you have proven it.

With admiration,
Roger

[applecorped]

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071117/PEOPLE/71117002

[Aitch]

I tried to like it, but I fell asleep.

Seriously... I'm not just being snarky. I really tried. Someone I trusted recommended it highly to me, so I went and got it, popped it in, got past the first 15 minutes, then woke up 3 hours later. Just to make sure it wasn't me being sleepy, I tried again the next day after being well rested. Nope... dozed off again. Honestly.

I thought less of that friend's opinion after that. :D

That's the film with the soundtrack by Popul Vuh? Maybe it's the music that sends you to sleep. ;)

[Pardalis]

I enjoy Herzog alot, well mostly his 70's films. I think he hasn't made a good fiction feature since "Cobra Verde", but I haven't seen "Rescue Dawn" yet, and I'm anxious to see how it differs from his documentary "Little Dieter...".

I saw a retrospective of his documentaries a few years ago at the Goethe Institute, and I think I prefer his documentaries. He misses the mark more often in his fiction ("Invincible", "Cerro Torre"), while almost all the docs of his I've seen are trully amazing. His documentaries give him material to feed his fiction works later on, but sometimes the fiction doesn't live up to them. Fiction allows him to express his obsessions in a more symbolic way, it allows him to speak in allegory, but sometimes he pushes it too far and it becomes dodgy. He's the sort of director who always does the same movie, films about madness and the pursuit of things that can't be reached, and always his movies have to be a physical ordeal for him personally, like a pilgrimage, and I respect that. But he did true masterpieces, "Kaspar Hauser" being the ultimate, IMHO.

He's a one of a kind director, and you can't dismiss one film without seeing a couple of others. He's obsessed with his themes, and each movie informs and gives insights about the other. His movies literally get better as you see the others, since they are all the same movie.

[ElMondoHummus]

Hmmm.. haven't seen Little Dieter, so I can't tell you how Rescue Dawn compares. I saw it as similar to albeit less engrossing than Bat 21. Rescue Dawn just didn't stick in my mind that well. When I finished watching it, I at the time didn't think wasn't a bad film at all; I just felt that it wasn't as compelling as I figured it would be.

Unfortunately, someone afterwards directed me towards that Rescue Dawn the truth (http://www.rescuedawnthetruth.com/) site, and now that movie's ruined for me. So if I'm to judge Hertzog's work, I'll need to cruise other films, since I'll have a hard time judging that one fairly.

Maybe I'll caffienate and try Aquirre again. :) But seriously, what would the "recommended" films by this director be? Anyone got any suggestions?

[applecorped]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_Man

I liked this film.

[Pardalis]

But seriously, what would the "recommended" films by this director be? Anyone got any suggestions?

"The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071691/)" is his best. "Heart of Glass (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074626/)" is quite beautiful too.

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

I saw Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night recently and loved it; it's one of my favorite films of his.

It's one of the few films Herzog has made where the long shots of the landscape don't drag and drag endlessly; it's as though he finally managed to marry the fetishistic images of the mountains and the forest with a very nice pace.

I still have very mixed feelings about his movies but I'll say one thing for the man: from his public appearances, he seems like a wonderful person. Likable, very good humored, fun, funny and really sweet to most of the people he meets.

He reminded me a little of my father when my father was younger... allthough I have a feeling that if my father had ever met him, he'd regard Werner Herzog as a mad lunatic.

[TexasJack]

I liked Aguirre, The Wrath of God, although I don't consider it his best work. The Kinski/Herzog "collaborations" have brought forward some great cinema.

[tomwaits]

I have only seen clips of this movie, but it is pretty crazy to just watch Kinski's face. He is a complete madman.

[thesyntaxera]

I finally got around to seeing this movie recently. I have read several reviews that described the film in very positive terms.

From Wiki - J. Hoberman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Hoberman) has written that Aguirre "is not just a great movie but an essential one...Herzog's third feature...is both a landmark film and a magnificent social metaphor."

I don't know if I had my hopes to high or I'm missing something but I was underwhelmed. Has anybody else here seen this movie? Would you rank this film as great?


Herzog is the :cool:

[JohnG]

Since we're talking about Herzog and this site deals with cryptozoology, I hope it's not too much of a derail to ask if anyone saw Incident at Loch Ness? Herzog did not direct it but he cowrote and starred in it. I should have loved this sort of movie, but I found it really stupid. It was a real "jump the shark plesiosaur" movie for me in terms of mockumentaries.

[Travis]

This is one of my favorite films of all time. I first saw it as a young kid when my dad accidentally rented it from the video store. I was transfixed by the opening images of the Conquistadors and their captives descending from the Andes down lush hillsides into the enigmatic Amazon basin with enchanting music accompanying it all the while. I was spellbound as the expedition disintegrated into madness and was compelled to continue only by the ironfisted rule of Aguirre even as he falls prey to delusions as well. As the crew stumbles on its last breath in the imposing jungle a sailing ship appears before them high on a tree serving as a kind of mystery as well as a portend of their eventual fate at the hands of a cruel, indifferent nature and exploitative violent humans. Watching it you can not help but speculate that this film is where much of the Mise-en-scène of Apocalypse Now originated.

So you can call it "slow" or "dull" and I will continue to think of it as "revelatory."

[applecorped]

Watching it you can not help but speculate that this film is where much of the Mise-en-scène of Apocalypse Now originated.



Francis Ford Coppola's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Ford_Coppola) 1979 film Apocalypse Now (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now), a movie based on Joseph Conrad's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad) 1902 novella (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novella) Heart of Darkness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness), was influenced also by Aguirre, as it contains seemingly deliberate visual "quotations" of Herzog's film.[37] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguirre,_the_Wrath_of_God#cite_note-36)[38] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguirre,_the_Wrath_of_God#cite_note-37)[39] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguirre,_the_Wrath_of_God#cite_note-38) Coppola himself has noted, "Aguirre, with its incredible imagery, was a very strong influence. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it."[40] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguirre,_the_Wrath_of_God#cite_note-39)