Starring: Klaus Kinski, Del Negro, Peter Berling.
In the late-16th century Spanish conquistadors
travelled across South America in order to claim the land for their empire. One
such group ends up being divided and when a team rises up into mutiny against
the Spanish crown, the man behind the mutiny, Don Lope de Aguirre (Kinski)
leads them on towards the mythical El Dorado.
After having made a small name for himself producing
avant-garde and documentary films, German filmmaker Werner Herzog scored his
first of many international hits with this downbeat historical adventure epic.
The film also marks the first of five collaborations with the difficult star,
Klaus Kinski. Kinski had had a prolific career with a few notable film credits
(namely Doctor Zhivago (1966) and A Few Dollars More (1965)) but this is a
collaboration which would ensure Kinski’s notability and notoriety. Although a
fictional historical film, Aguirre is almost documentary-like in its style.
Narration provides diary dates and personal feelings, the rafts are rickety
(and scenes of them tearing through, and almost being destroyed by, Amazonian
rapids are 100% genuine) and the similarities between Kinski and his character
Aguirre (both of them are borderline maniacal sociopaths, Kinski a genuine
case) gives the film a realistic immediacy. A testament to the talents of
Herzog and Kinski (as well as the film’s cinematographers and the music of
Popol Vuh) Aguirre is one of those titles that everyone should see at least
once.
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