Aguirre, Wrath of God

Dir: Werner Herzog: West Germany 1972 (93 mins)    (Member’s Request)

From its opening shots of an ant-like column of Spanish conquistadors and their enslaved indigenous porters scrambling perilously down through the clouds on a sheer pass in the Andes, it’s immediately clear that Werner Herzog’s account of the quest for El Dorado will be something extraordinary. As the pious but ruthlessly ambitious invaders pursue their fantasies of riches and power they soon fall prey not only to the Amazonian forests, rivers and Indians but to their own ludicrous delusions of recreating European society in an indifferent wholly alien landscape. The film’s images are breathtaking in their beauty, mystery and sense of scale. This is a very special film and I am delighted to be showing it for a second time.

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