Werner Herzog
Aguirre, Furore Di Dio

The film was the first to fully reveal the visionary talent of the German (of Slavic origin) director Werner Herzog, reviving the career of Klaus Kinski, who had been previously relegated to marginal roles in B-movie westerns. "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972) still leaves the viewer amazed and bewildered.

The plot of the feature film is rather thin: a Spanish expedition gets lost in the Amazon in search of the mythical city of Eldorado. The command of the group is taken by the ruthless leader Lope de Aguirre, who plans to become the undisputed ruler of those unknown lands. His fury will lead everyone to ruin.

Like all masterpieces, Aguirre lends itself to being interpreted from multiple points of view, based on different interpretive keys.

At a purely "extrinsic" level, considering the cinematographic language, Herzog's film stands out for its extreme realism of the representation, through the constant use of handheld cameras, and for the depiction of the Amazon rainforest and Central American rivers. Far from being didactic or merely documentary, it starkly renders a hostile and destructive environmental context. The suffering of the actors is evident from the first shots, in which the expedition is depicted on a difficult mountain path, as well as in the scenes shot in the heart of the humid jungle, or in the final part of the film, where Aguirre and his men descend the river that will lead them to nowhere. Over all this, the electronic music by Popul Vuh has an absolutely disorienting effect, tightening the viewer's throat in what can rightly be called a thriller of the soul.

The same depiction of nature reflects, on an "intrinsic" level, the possible meanings of the film. In Aguirre, in fact, it is precisely nature that is the true protagonist of the film, the only subject that remains constantly on stage throughout the feature film. It is nature that excites, weakens, and destroys the ambitions, dreams, and lust for power of men, reducing to nothing the expedition of the valiant and violent Spanish conquistadors, breaking down every internal relationship within the group, and dissolving the social and legal bonds of organized society. It is the contact with nature that brings out, within the group, the subject most equipped for command and power, the "Alpha male" or pack leader, destined to overthrow the pre-established order and become the dictator of his (fragment of) people. It is nature itself that drives the leader insane when he realizes his inability to dominate it, while at the same time proclaiming himself god on earth, master of the world: "if I, Aguirre, want the birds to fall down dead, the birds must drop dead from the trees! I am the wrath of god. The earth I tread sees me and trembles." The god Aguirre is opposed, mute and unreachable, by the true God, the Deus sive Natura of Baruch Spinoza.

Aguirre's journey and his expedition into the heart of the Amazon, thus shaped by nature, is also a journey without return into the heart of darkness of the human nature itself. In this, the Conradian model of "Heart of Darkness" greatly influences the development of the plot, as would later happen in Coppola's "Apocalypse Now," which, in my opinion, owes much to Herzog's archetype (see also "Fitzcarraldo," also on Debaser). The contact of man with nature, revealing the same mortality of the individual compared to the eternity of the forest and the river (different and yet always the same, as Heraclitus of Samos would say) awakens in the individual that "cupio dissolvi" which will lead Aguirre and his men to destruction.

Finally, and still on the subject of the film's literary models, it can be observed how Aguirre's journey, which began with almost picaresque tones and ended in the face of the true God, recalls, for the development of the plot and the laconic, terrible ending, Edgar Allan Poe's Gordon Pym, where the protagonist's spirit of adventure has the same destination as Aguirre's: nothingness.