Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30731 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-02-28
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: German
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Video Description
DVD Special Features

Interactive Animated Menu
Film Flash
Actors Filmography
Director's Biography
Scene Selection

Synopsis
Based on the journals of Brother Gaspar de Carvajal, AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD is director Werner Herzog's hallucinatory tale of Spanish colonialists searching for El Dorado, the legendary city of gold, in 16th-century Peru. When the travellers reach an impasse, a scouting party is assembled to search for any traces of the mythical empire. As they attempt to forge their way through the dense jungle, more and more of the party falls ill while their ruthless leader, Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), grows increasingly insane.
Widely considered to be Herzog's finest film, AGUIRRE, which shares much in common with Francis Ford Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW, highlights the director's visionary approach to filmmaking. Like Coppola's film, accounts of AGUIRRE's shooting are laced with legendary incidents, such as the time Herzog reportedly held a gun to Kinski's head to get him to finish a scene. Whatever transpired between Herzog and Kinski, it made for astonishing cinema, as evidenced by the actor's haunting performance and the entire film's powerfully hypnotic mood.

Customer Reviews

One of the true masterworks of the German New Wave
Aguirre, the Wrath of God, is Herzog's ultimate jungle adventure, continuing on from the trancelike and hypnotic Fata Morgana and Signs of Life (which aren't necessarily jungle films, but do have a similar approach to the strange and the exotic), whilst simultaneously prefiguring the more traditional narratives of Fitzcaralldo and Cobra Verde. It also has certain similarities to Chris Marker's excellent film Sans Soliel, with the combination of mystical realism and otherworldly forces, alongside an almost documentary approach to the art of filmmaking. Like Marker's film, Herzog takes the viewer on a journey, not only into the Peruvian jungle, but also back in time, to the days of the Spanish conquistadors, and deep into the heart of darkness. He introduces us to a collection of characters that will be our guide throughout the film, but, despite this, we're never really allowed to learn anything about them. To Herzog, their personalities are unimportant... to him, the film is about something deeper; it's about greed, it's about brutality, it's about obsession, and ultimately, it's about the corruption of the human soul.

Right from the start we are captivated by the haunting and hypnotic mood that the filmmaker creates; with the film beginning on a close-up-detail of an enormous mountain peak, partially shrouded by mist. The evocative music of Popol Vuh then drifts in as our eyes focus on a small band of adventurers and their guides making their way down the side of the gigantic, monolithic rock... disappearing beyond the horizon, only to reappear on the other side. Here, as Herzog establishes the notion of nature as a symbolic obstacle or uncontrollable force, he also sets up a sense of eventual foreshadowing of that climactic image and the theme of man against nature. To reinforce these notions, Herzog makes his film as episodic as can be, with little explanation into events and little to drive the characters besides the wild-eyed obsession and ferocity of Aguirre himself. As with Fitzcaralldo and Cobra Verde, the film is driven by its central character - as opposed to being driven by plot - which works exceptionally well with Herzog's approach of stylised-documentary-drama, and of course, works even greater when personified by the manic Klaus Kinski. Here, Kinski's task is to instil Aguirre with an animal force and psychotic obsession... to push this band of weary soldiers down the river, with the promise of the ultimate reward in the shape of the city of gold.

For me, this is possibly Kinski's greatest performance (the emotional flip-side to his pained and sensitive turn in Herzog's other great film, Woyzeck), as he stalks the tiny raft - which becomes our main location - like a caged tiger, alternating between screaming, ferocious rants and moments of quiet contemplation that will eventually lead to a implied sense of complete self-destruction. Herzog's camera has an intruding intimacy about it that makes it impossible to imagine a film-crew actually standing around capturing this. It feels so real... like nothing has been staged. It also makes the drama all the more interesting, as characters die or break down, whilst Kinski just continues to scowl and grown through furrowed brow and clenched teeth... descending into madness with his eyes completely vacant. As the film moves towards it's inevitable climax, Herzog's direction becomes more and more surreal... like he's capturing some kind of fevered dream, as boundaries between fantasy and reality, truth and fiction, man and nature, all start breaking down. Throughout these closing sequences, Herzog offers up a number of images that define the style of Aguirre... whilst also lingering in our sub-conscious for months on end.

These images include a boat resting atop an enormous tree, a decapitated head that continues it's count from one to ten, a woman wandering into the jungle never to be seen again, and the butterflies that flutter and perch on the shoulders of the slave Okello, moments before he is shot through the heart with an arrow. Much of the violence of Aguirre is surreal, capturing that same fever dream ideology and happening at a point when the characters are at their most removed from reality. It also shows Herzog's talent in creating scenes of simplistic beauty from the most unexpected sources... tying in with the whole "shot-on-the-run" simplicity of the editing and cinematography, with the camera constantly roving from person to person, finding a composed moment of tranquilly before curiously pushing on. Unlike the work of his contemporaries (Fassbinder, Wenders, etc) Herzog is able to captivate his audience, not simply through narrative, but through the creation of a dense, dreamlike and hypnotic atmosphere and a character of immense, obsessive proportions. Aguirre, along with The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, is probably his ultimate masterpiece, a film that is constantly changing from one extreme to another, drawing you in, then pushing you away, making you want to go back and experience more and more of this landmark adventure.

For me, Aguirre, the Wrath of God is a film of monumental proportions... climaxing with a final shot that stands as one of the most breathtaking final images in European cinema, with that downward spiral managing to embody both the lunacy and obsession of the filmmakers and the fate of the ruined Aguirre. It is as much a testament to Kinski's brilliance, as it is to Herzog's, making this film (and the whole of the Herzog/Kinski box-set) an integral purchase.

Aguirre, Wrath of God
One of Werner Herzog's most influential masterperpieces sees him once again team up with an actor whose ability and talent places him in an elite far beyond the wildest hopes of most actors we see on our screens today. This film was done in one take, and the difficulties in which it was shot are a testament to Herzog's resiliance and self-belief as a director with mesmerising genius.

Aguirre is a film that captures the hopeless mania of Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness', as well as the stunning beauty of the Amazon jungle and misty Peruvian mountains in which it was set. Even hours after viewing this film, I was left feeling overwhelmed by a feeling mixed with pleasure, satisfaction, and deep wistfulness. Films of this order are not made very often, I would urge anyone with a passion for film not to neglect this gem.

a journey into the heart of darkness
This is a film probably unlike anything you will have seen before (unless you are a Werner Herzog fan, in which case you will have seen it already). From the opening shot of a precipitous mountainside down which a small army of Spanish conquistadores are making their slow and perilous descent into the waiting jungle, this is a film about man at war both with himself and his environment.
The film deals with a group of 17th century conquistadores in South America who are searching for the fabled El Dorado, the legendary City of Gold, which of course, does not exist. After crossing the Andes they descend into the waiting jungle (which is where we come in). Needless to say, untold wealth does not await them, merely madness, disease and death. As their situation goes from bad to worse, they rapidly turn on one another, venting their frustrations in a series of violent outbursts, both verbal and physical.
Our main protagonist throughout the film is the titular Aguirre, played with riveting conviction by Klaus Kinski. It is true to say that Herzog and Kinski had something of a love hate relationship (some would describe it more as hate hate), but there is no denying that together they did some of their best work (think Fitzcaraldo, Nosferatu et al) and this one is no exception. Kinski's Aguirre is obviously unstable right from the start, with designs of his own, so when the opportunity for power presents itself he grabs it with both hands, leading himself and his compatriots to their doom. Aguirre's delusions gradually become grander and grander, his ultimate vision that of the entire continent under his godlike rule, but his true power is merely that of a man, small and ultimately insignificant. As the others die one by one, either at the hands of violent natives or the machinations of Aguirre, his delusional empire is reduced to a small raft floating downriver, his subjects nothing more than monkeys.
Right from the start, Herzog sucks us in with visions of surreal beauty as the conquistadors slog their way through the jungle, and then we are along for the ride, as the lines between fantasy and reality blur and merge, and Aguirre descends into his own personnel heart of darkness. Utterly riveting.