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Why is there no existing thread on this movie?
I know that lots of members have seen this movie. And I'm sure some of you have reviewed it. How to find your reviews? Maybe you can paste your reviews in this thread as well....
I just watched this superb movie for the first time - thanks to various MoFo members whom I've seen rate it highly here and there.
It's late and I'm tired, but I want to discuss this movie so I'm starting a thread.
There's so much to say about Aguirre. How did Werner Herzog achieve this? First, how did he make this film on such a tiny budget - 370,000 dollars, including filming on location in Peru and paying Klaus Kinski a third of the budget?
How does Herzog pack so much into such a simple film? It's certainly not through dialogue alone. The film's full of long sweeping shots in which there's no dialogue at all. But when someone does say something, every word counts.
I thought constantly of Apocalypse Now while watching Aguirre. And then I read the Wikipedia page on Aguirre, and sure enough Coppola cites Aguirre as a great influence on Apocalypse Now. But, dealing with pretty much the same themes, Herzog managed just as powerful a film on a fraction of Coppola's budget, a fraction of the production time, and a fraction of the screen time.
There's imperialism, greed, corruption, megalomania, madness, complicity of the church, treachery - all floating on a tiny raft down the Amazon. And on the one hand the constant menacing animalistic threatening presence of Kinski's Aguirre - a truly brilliant performance - and on the other hand, the terror of the virtually unseen 'savages.'
Like Apocalypse Now, the bizarre nature of the project/expedition pervades everything. The wryness in Herzog's film at times extends to camp - 'Long arrows are becoming a fashion,' remarks a character as he gets shot; the mouth of a disembodied head continues to count a final number - but it all works, seamlessly reinforcing the bizarre.
Another thing I read is that Herzog was inspired not just from the accounts he read by or about conquistadors, but also by John Okello, the ruthless leader of the anti-Arab uprising in Zanzibar. This adds a further twist to the story: a tale of colonial folly in the 1500s - viewed totally from the perspective of the colonialists themselves - partly inspired by an anti-colonial revolution that occurred 400 years later.
Finally, how did Herzog film the final scene? The quick circling shot around the raft on the still river without creating a ripple in the water...?
A masterpiece: 9.9/10
It's in my top 50 films but I've only seen it once, you make me want to watch it again 
