Aguirre, the Wrath of God ( 1972 )
This was another offering from our old friend Werner Herzog ( see grizzly man review ) and stars Klaus Kinski as Aguirre, leader of a rebel band of Spanish conquistadors who are travelling down the Amazon river to find Eldorado- the legendary 'city of gold'.
The party weave their way across treacherous mountain paths, through swaps and overgrown rainforest dressed in full body armour, dragging cannon and carrying Aguirre's 15 year old daughter in a sedan chair.
As ever Kinski makes for compulsive viewing - just because he's such a mad looking enigmatic fxcker ! .. but aside from this the film is good anyway. Like fitzcaraldo, the only way that this film could be made was for Werner to get the actors to actually as the conquistadors did. The treacherous mountain paths were real, and so was the huge iron cannon that they dragged along it. This was a film made before the days of digital effects when the only way to get these amazing shots was to go on location and shoot them.
'Futility' was definitely the buzz word of the film and seems to be a subject dear to Werner's heart. The whole mission is inevitably doomed to failure and steeped in ridiculousness.
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