Marked: Aguirre

I knew only Grizzly Man among Werner Herzog's films upon entering the Red Vic this afternoon for a screening of Aguirre, The Wrath of God, a bleak 1972 tale of an ill-fated conquistadores expedition through the Amazon rainforest in 1560 and 1561. A slow-moving, green and moist opening sequence initially spurred memories of the gentle Old Joy (seen in the same screening room eleven days earlier), but Aguirre would soon reveal itself as a violent, dark story of greed, envy, and misguided colonialism.

The story centers on a splinter expedition intended to save a larger group led by Gonzalo Pizarro, whose crew includes holy men, nobles and slaves. Bogged down in the Amazon's muddy headwaters, Pizarro sends forth three rafts and a couple of dozen men in order to find a populated area downriver and report back in two weeks. Their chances for survival seem slim-to-none within a day or two, as the group encounters hostile natives, rough rapids, and most prominently, dissension within the ranks. Aguirre, originally second in command, leads a mutiny in the hopes of finding the city of gold, El Dorado, and eventually finds himself in charge of a raft floating into near-certain peril, fever and insanity.

Aguirre seemed to combine elements of both Apocalypse Now and Blood Meridian, though it preceded both. Like the former, it distills the jungle madness from Heart of Darkness; like the latter, it takes the shine off a once-glorified era of conquering the savages and forging a new America. Herzog's characters are made to look preposterous when they wave around a Bible and execute a confused native for blasphemy. Their words turn into black humor, ripe with irony in the context of the familiar story of Christian settlement and civilization in the animalistic jungle.

Reportedly shot with only one camera, Aguirre is full of how'd-they-do-that moments and unrepeatable takes. Its final shots are frighteningly memorable, as are various others in the story; I was not disappointed to learn that it is primarily a work of fiction. And I will certainly keep my eyes peeled for another upcoming Herzog screening in the same movie house.

Side note: Something about watching the Spanish explorers shout at each other in German was hilarious. Like it'd be more realistic if they were speaking English, of course.