11/27/2002 Entry:
"Aguirre: The Wrath Of God - Werner Herzog (1973)"

I can't believe it took me so long to get to this, the first of Werner Herzog's films I've seen. I really really loved it, although it was a lot different than I expected.

I went into Aguirre knowing pretty much nothing about it. I had read some stuff about Herzog, and I knew about the famous Errol Morris shoe-eating story and stuff. I had heard some stories about him and Klaus Kinski. I really didn't know much about his films though, except everyone cites them as great. Aguirre was much more fluid and ethereal than I expected. Its influence on Apocalypse Now seems obvious. The opening shot really sets the mood. The stream of soldiers weaving their way up and down the landscape with the score by German pop group Popol Vuh wafting through the background. The music and the images seem somewhat disjointed. This score lent to my enjoyment of the film greatly. There is an entry on IMDB decribing the device used to create it. It is very atmospheric and moody, without it the film would be something else entirely. I have read that Herzog uses Popol Vuh to score his films quite often, which I find to be pretty exciting. There was a lot of non-score sound design which helped this film out quite a bit too. For instance, as the voyagers are getting picked off on their raft, they quite often die silently. No sound of the dart, no scream. The darts and spears will sometimes simply fly in from the side of the screen out of nowhere. This all keeps up the somewhat surreal and off-center feeling which ties back to Aguirre himself.

The lighting in Aguirre was really interesting to me. The film is quite beautiful, shot almost entirely on location in the jungles of the Amazon. The landscape is almost interminably colorless - dark browns and greens. The only real color in the film is related to the two women, who wear blue and red dresses and ride in carriages of the same color. Oh, and Kinski's blazing blond hair. It is pretty impressive that Kinski and his cinematographer Thomas Mauch were able to light such bleak surroundings in such a way that they were so beautiful. It is even more impressive that they did it in the middle of nowhere, often shooting from a raft in thje middle of the river. I would love to see some ppoduction photos from this shoot, I can't even imagine what it must have been like. Too bad there isn't a Hearts-Of-Darkness-like documentary about the making of Aguirre.

The camera work is truly great as well. The film is largely handheld, and it is done very well. I've noticed that in all the films that do handheld well, the cinematographers seem to embrace the camera's constant motion rather than fight it. A lot of badly done handheld seems to stem from people trying to keep the camera steady, which is impossible. In a film like Aguirre, the camera is always moving and following the action. Even on a static shot it is slowly moving from angle to angle. It adds not only a subtle energy to the film, but it also brings a kind of off-kilter aesthetic, which helps to stress Aguirre's eroding mental state. This is especially noteworthy during the final segment, as we follow Aguirre around the raft with the monkeys.

The final shot, obviously done from a boat, circling the raft as Kinski stands at the front alone, those monkeys scrabbling everywhere, that score going in the background, is truly great. There is something about that camera swirling around the subject which just hit me really hard. Typically, this is a type of shot I really like though. Assayas used it in Irma Vep during the Sonic Youth sequence. Oddly enough, the other place I always see this is on ER. It seems like whenever some set of characters gets into a heated discussion in the hallway, there is always a steadicam circling them. Those monkeys are the perfect new companions for Aguirre as he sails into nowhere.

I also can't complete this entry without mentioning Kinski. This was my first time seeing him perform, and man was he great. I loved how his studded armor just sort of hung off his arms, he was constantly reminding me off Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie. His scowling face was so perfect for this part, and combined with the weird angled off-kilter way he walked and moved he really brought this character to life. I am really looking forward to seeing him in more films, as well as reading more about his exploits with Herzog, which seem to be legendary. I remember reading some of that when My Best Fiend came out, but I'll probably wait on watching it until I see more of the films. Anyone want to recommend some more? Fitzcaralldo seems to be the one to see next.