March 18, 2009

Aguirre: The Wrath of God

Title: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes
Year: 1972 (Germany), 1977 (US)
Director: Werner Herzog
Writer: Werner Herzog
Starring: Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo
Music: Popol Vuh
Distinctions: formerly on IMDb's Top 250
Synopsis: a mad conquistador takes over a failed expedition and sets out to conquer South America single handed by floating down the Amazon
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), March 2008
Subjective Rating: 2/10 (Terrible).
Objective Rating: 4/10 (gets points for the concept, characters, special effects/design and acting) c. 2.0/4 (Indifferent).

Extremely boring. And very German. You would think, given the concept, that this would be a lot of fun, but no. Despite all of that potential, there's somehow not enough material for a feature film, and not much particularly memorable/interesting happens. Just the swarm of monkeys.* I'm generous giving it a point for characters. The title character is good, but there is remarkably little development of supporting characters considering how much time they had to do so. The "effects/design" are amazing; I assume they must have filmed on the real location. None-the-less, the look of the film is completely unimpressive. There was a lot to work with visually, but they didn't take advantage of it. The acting was the only real saving grace. One look at Kinski and you pretty much know his whole character.

*In the end, everyone decides that the world is a fever-induced hallucination and nothing matters, whilst, and at the same time, they are over-run by a swarm of monkeys. That's not really a spoiler. The hope that there will some day be a swarm of monkeys, far from spoiling anything, will be all you have to hold on to while enduring this movie.

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