Aguirre, the Wrath of God (; ; ) is a 1972 epic historical drama film produced, written and directed by Werner Herzog. Klaus Kinski stars in the title role of Spanish soldier Lope de Aguirre, who leads a group of conquistadores down the Amazon River in South America in search of the legendary city of gold, El Dorado. The accompanying soundtrack was composed and performed by kosmische musik band Popol Vuh. The film is an international co-production between West Germany, Mexico, and Peru.
The film used a minimalist approach to story and dialogue to evoke madness and folly, counterpointed by the lush but unforgiving Amazonian jungle. Although loosely based on what is known of the historical Lope de Aguirre, Herzog acknowledged years after the film's release that its storyline is a work of fiction. Some of the people and situations may have been inspired by missionary Gaspar de Carvajal's account of an earlier Amazonian expedition, although Carvajal never accompanied Aguirre on any of his expeditions.
Aguirre was the first of five collaborations between Herzog and Kinski. They had differing views as to how the role should be played, and they clashed throughout filming; Kinski's rage terrorized both the crew and the locals who were assisting the production. The film was shot entirely on location, and has itself become famous for its difficulties. During an arduous five-week shoot in the Peruvian rainforest, Herzog filmed on and near tributaries of the Amazon River in the Ucayali region. The cast and crew climbed mountains, cut through heavy vines to open routes to the various jungle locations, and rode treacherous river rapids on rafts built by local craftworkers.
Aguirre opened to widespread critical acclaim, and quickly developed a large international cult following. It was given an extensive arthouse theatrical release in the United States in 1977, and remains one of the director's best-known films. Several critics have declared the film a masterpiece, and it has appeared on Time magazine's list of "All Time 100 Best Films".
Plot On Christmas Day, 1560, several scores of Spanish conquistadors under Gonzalo Pizarro and two hundred native slaves march down from the newly conquered Inca Empire into the Amazon rainforest in search of the fabled El Dorado. The men, clad in half armor, pull cannons down narrow mountain paths and through dense, muddy jungle.
On New Year's Eve, Pizarro orders a group of forty men to build rafts and scout down the river. If they do not return to the main party within one week with news of what lies beyond, they will be considered lost. Pizarro chooses Don Pedro de Ursúa as the commander of the expedition, Don Lope de Aguirre as his second-in-command, portly nobleman Don Fernando de Guzmán to represent the Spanish crown, and Brother Gaspar de Carvajal to bring the word of God. Accompanying the expedition, against Pizarro's better judgment, are Ursúa's mistress, Doña Inés, and Aguirre's teenage daughter Flores.
One of the four rafts gets caught in an eddy while traveling through river rapids, and the others are unable to help free it. That night, gunfire erupts on the trapped raft; in the morning, the men on board are found slain by arrows from Indigenous tribesmen, with three missing. Ursúa wants the bodies to be brought back to camp for burial. Knowing this would slow down the expedition, Aguirre suggests to a soldier, Perucho, that the cannon is rusty and needs firing. Perucho aims at the raft, destroying it and abandoning the bodies in the river.
During the night, the remaining rafts are swept miles off course by the rising river. Time has run out for the scouting mission, and Ursúa decides that they must return to Pizarro's camp. Aguirre leads a mutiny against Ursúa, telling the men that untold riches await them ahead, and reminding them that Hernán Cortés won an empire in Mexico by disobeying orders. Ursúa orders Aguirre arrested but is shot and restrained by the mutineers. Aguirre nominates Guzmán as the new leader of the expedition and has his men renounce their loyalty to the Crown, proclaiming Guzmán "emperor" of El Dorado. Ursúa is sentenced to death in a show trial but Guzmán unexpectedly commutes the sentence.
Aguirre remains the true leader of the mutiny, so oppressive and terrifying that few protest his leadership. Only Inés has the courage to speak out against him. Knowing that some of the soldiers are still loyal to Ursúa, Aguirre ignores her. The expedition breaks up the rafts to make a single large one and continues on downriver.
An Indigenous couple approaching peacefully by canoe are captured by the explorers, and when the man expresses confusion upon being presented with a Bible, Carvajal personally kills them for blasphemy. Guzmán insists on being fed first while the other men starve and has the expedition's only remaining horse pushed off the raft because it annoys him; soon afterwards he is found dead near the raft's privy. Aguirre proclaims himself leader and has Ursúa taken ashore to be hanged. He orders an attack on an Indigenous village to obtain food, resulting in several men being killed. The distraught Inés walks into the jungle and disappears.
On the raft, the group of slowly starving, feverish men begin disbelieving everything they see even as arrows are fired at them. The group stares in disbelief at a wooden ship perched in the highest branches of a tall tree. Aguirre orders that it be brought down and refurbished, but Carvajal refuses. In a series of attacks by unseen assailants, all of the remaining crew except Aguirre, including Flores, are shot dead with arrows. Monkeys overrun the raft as Aguirre deliriously imagines conquering the New World and founding an incestuous dynasty with his slain daughter. Picking up a monkey, he asks, "Who else is with me?"
Cast
Production The idea for the film began when Herzog borrowed a book on historical adventurers from a friend. After reading a half-page devoted to Lope de Aguirre, the filmmaker became inspired and immediately devised the story. He fabricated most of the plot details and characters, although he did use some historical figures in purely fictitious ways.Herzog, Werner. Aguirre, the Wrath of God DVD, Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2001, audio commentary.
Screenplay Herzog wrote the screenplay "in a frenzy" in two-and-a-half days. Much of the script was written during a bus trip with Herzog's football team. His teammates got drunk after winning a game and one vomited on several pages of Herzog's manuscript, which he immediately threw out the window. Herzog claims that he cannot remember what he wrote on these pages.
The screenplay was mostly shot as written, with only minor differences. In an early scene in which Pizarro instructs Ursúa to lead the scouting team down the river, in the script, Pizarro mentions that in the course of the expedition Ursúa could possibly discover what happened to Francisco de Orellana's expedition, which had vanished without a trace years before (see "Historical Accuracy" section). Later in the screenplay, Aguirre and his men find a boat and the long-dead remains of Orellana's soldiers.
Further down the river, they discover another ship lodged in the treetops. In the screenplay, Aguirre and others explore the boat but find no sign of Orellana or his men. Herzog ultimately eliminated any such references to Orellana's expedition from the film. The sequence with the boat caught in the upper branches of a tree remains, but as filmed it seems to be simply a hallucinatory vision.
The finale is significantly different from Herzog's original script. The director recalled, "I only remember that the end of the film was totally different. The end was actually the raft going out into the open ocean and being swept back inland, because for many miles you have a counter-current, the Amazon actually goes backwards. And it was tossed to and fro. And a parrot would scream: 'El Dorado, El Dorado. This ending was eventually adapted for Cobra Verde, Herzog's final film with Kinski.
Herzog and Kinski Herzog's first choice for the role of Aguirre was Klaus Kinski. The two had met many years earlier when the then-struggling young actor rented a room in the same boarding house as Herzog's family, and Kinski's often terrifying antics during the three months he lived there left a lasting impression on the young Herzog. Years later, the director remembered the volatile actor, who had by then become a familiar face of European cinema, and knew that he was the only man who could possibly play Aguirre, and he sent Kinski a copy of the screenplay. "Between three and four in the morning, the phone rang", Herzog recalled. "It took me at least a couple of minutes before I realized that it was Kinski who was the source of this inarticulate screaming. And after an hour of this, it dawned on me that he found it the most fascinating screenplay and wanted to be Aguirre."
From the beginning of the production, Herzog and Kinski argued about the proper manner to portray Aguirre. Kinski wanted to play a "wild, ranting madman", but Herzog wanted a "quieter, more menacing" portrayal. In order to get the performance he desired, Herzog would deliberately infuriate Kinski before each shot and wait for the actor's anger to "burn itself out" before rolling the camera.Knipfel, Jim. Aguirre, the Wrath of God DVD, Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2001, liner notes.
On one occasion, irritated by the noise from a hut where members of the cast and crew were playing cards, the explosive Kinski fired three gunshots at it, blowing the tip off of one extra's finger. Kinski subsequently decided to leave the jungle location over Herzog's refusal to fire a sound assistant, only changing his mind after Herzog threatened to shoot first Kinski and then himself. The latter incident has given rise to the legend that Herzog made Kinski act for him at gunpoint; however, Herzog has repeatedly denied this claim during interviews, saying he only verbally threatened Kinski in the heat of the moment in a desperate attempt to keep him from leaving the set. This incident is parodied in the 2004 film Incident at Loch Ness, which Herzog co-wrote.
Filming The film was made for $370,000 (), with one-third of the budget going towards Kinski's salary.Herzog, Werner. Herzog on Herzog, edited by Paul Cronin, Faber & Faber, 2003. It was filmed on location in the Peruvian rainforest, Machu Picchu (the stone steps of Huayna Picchu), and on the Amazon River tributaries of the Ucayali region. Aguirre was shot in five weeks following nine months of pre-production planning. The film was shot in chronological order, as Herzog believed the film crew's progress on the river directly mirrored that of the explorers' journey in the story. The director and his cast and crew floated in rafts down the Huallaga and Nanay rivers through the Urubamba Valley.
All of the actors spoke their dialogue in English. The members of the cast and crew came from sixteen countries, and English was the only common language among them. In addition, Herzog felt that shooting Aguirre in English would improve the film's chances for international distribution. However, the small amount of money that had been set aside for post-synchronization "left Peru with the man in charge of the process; both absconded en route". The English-language track was ultimately replaced by a higher-quality German-language version, which was dubbed after production was completed. According to Herzog, Kinski requested too much money for the dubbing session, and so his lines were performed by another actor.