When he was planning Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Herzog never intended to make an historical retelling of the life and times of Lope de Aguirre. Here, he demonstrates his own mania by carrying out this ambitious motion picture, not by filming on a studio lot or safer location, but by driving his production to follow his subject into the heart of darkness. Herzog understood more than most about these obsessions he later experienced them filming Fitzcarraldo (1982), and several other narratives and documentaries like Aguirre, the Wrath of God. They yearn for an impossible achievement, perhaps out of an errant pride or vanity, but they are finally consumed and regurgitated by Nature. After all, what history better represents the idea of madness itself than conquistadors setting out in a very specific direction, with hundreds of men and resources in tow, hoping to discover a place whose location is unknown, and ultimately does not exist? Many of Herzog’s greatest films are about rebels against both humanity and Nature. But upon closer inspection, the entire picture takes place in a maddened fever dream of obsessive drives. On the surface, the film appears to be a classical period adventure about the conflict between Humans and Nature, wherein Spanish conquistadors head into the unknown to find treasure, yet they are beaten by the unconquered jungle. His 1972 release charts a doomed Spanish expedition to locate El Dorado, the fabled Incan city of gold. Aguirre, the Wrath of God was his first such film, and it was also Herzog’s first international success outside of his West German homeland. He remarked on his good fortune, “It was on this day that I definitely came to know my destiny.” Ironically, it was that kind of wild determination and pretense of fate that drove his film’s fanatical protagonist, Lope de Aguirre, played by Klaus Kinski, to his own oblivion.īefore Herzog was known for making documentaries like Grizzly Man (2005) or Encounters at the End of the World (2008), about people possessed by passions in distant, impossible locations, he made narrative films about that very subject, therein proving he shared their obsessions. Herzog got his shots, capturing a line of actors, mere specs within the frame, moving down the Incan stairway between a sharp mountain slope and a mass of fog. Then the clouds dissipated and daylight broke through. The haze was so thick that his camera could only see a couple feet out. When they finally reached their destination, Herzog worried that it was all for nothing. Herzog had to convince his people to keep going, to keep climbing higher and higher along a vertical drop of about 2,000 feet. At an altitude of 14,000 feet, even the local upland natives became sick with vertigo, while the actors braved these conditions wearing their heavy costume armor and Spanish conquistador dress. Visibility was nil, as clouds enveloped the entire mountain, shrouding everything in thick, damp fog. Together his troupe slogged an ancient stairway that Incans carved in the rocks centuries ago, passing through heavy jungle on steep footing made slippery by pouring rain. He led his cast and crew, some 450 people, along with a procession of horses, pigs, and llamas, up the side of the mountain. To achieve the opening shots of Aguirre, the Wrath of God, director Werner Herzog sought a location atop a mountain near Machu Picchu, in Peru.
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