This announcement proves to be about as truthful as the claim of authenticity that kicks off the Coen brothers' masterful , or those same filmmakers' insistence that owes its allegiance to Homer; which is to say Herzog's claim is an amusing bit of auterist fabrication which reminds us that, for all its attempts to recreate historical reality, is a movie, filtered through the perceptions and preconceptions of one man. And what a man this is. As Outlaw Vern might note, one masterful filmatist; to the rest of us, one Werner Herzog.
Once one moves beyond this opening bit of posturing, it is tempting to assert that Herzog’s theses in are completely realized in the film’s opening and closing scenes. Of course, to do so would be to underestimate the power, magnificence and importance of the film’s intervening 90 minutes, but still, the temptation remains. As I am, like Oscar Wilde, able to resist everything except temptation, why not explore it?
The film’s rightfully famous opening shot, with the camera mounted at a discreet distance, gives us a stunning image of an Andean mountain through a hazy mist, and is followed quickly by a stately zoom in that appears to show us a trail of ant-like creatures working their way down the mountain. As we get closer, it is revealed that these are not ants, but men, conquistadores, in fact, in full military regalia, winding their way down a rugged path, to the accompaniment of Florian Fricke’s ethereal and haunting score. The men move down, down, down, through the clouds, but paradoxically remain in a fog throughout.
Most of the laborious carting of materials appears to be done by both llamas and natives, some (most? all? this is unclear) of whom are chained together, while the conquistadores carry only their armor and weaponry.
It is entirely appropriate that all that these men bring to this wilderness are instruments of death and destruction. Early on, a cage crashes down the mountainside, its contents splattered against the unforgiving rocks. Later, a cannon also falls to its doom, exploding in a fireball at the mountain’s base.
The jungle looks on impassively, absorbing the relics of human refuse as if we were infinitesimal fossils trapped between layers of Cambrian rock. And the men march on. Trailing the expedition is the man we will come to recognize as the film’s titular character, played with typical gusto by the irrepressible Klaus Kinski.
Holding onto the delicate hand of a young lady we later learn is his daughter, Flores (Cecilia Rivera), Aguirre guides the fair maiden through the wilderness. Does she symbolize the expedition’s dreams of bringing all that is great about European culture—beauty, purity, religious faith—to the jungle? Or is she inserted by Herzog as an offering to the pagan gods for a golden harvest?
It’s hard not to be affected by Aguirre’s obvious adoration of his daughter; that is, until in his madness he also talks of marrying her. Five minutes pass, and no one has spoken, and when the men finally reach the river, Herzog’s first shots are of a brood of young swine drinking deeply. And what to make of the film’s final moments?
The expedition now clearly doomed, Herzog’s camera circles the raft in ever-shrinking concentric circles. Like a cubist painting, which shows us all sides at once, Herzog presents the remnants of the expedition from every conceivable angle, so there can be no hiding, and no doubt about what has become of this once apparently magnificent array of humanity. All but Aguirre are dead.
Like murder victims trapped in an Agatha Christie plot, they have fallen in eerie succession to invisible executioners. These men, while certainly in it, are not creatures of this world. They stuck out like Courtney Love at a Lilith Fair concert.
And in a bit of genius, Herzog replaces Aguirre’s crew of men with monkeys. So reminiscent of the army of hideous rats that swarm the vampire’s ship in Herzog's 1979 remake of , the monkeys serve also as a warning, almost comically delivered by Aguirre in a moment reminiscent of Hamlet holding Yorick’s skull aloft: From whence we came, so soon we will return. A film that has a lot to say about the destructive forces wrought upon mankind and nature by people who choose to impose their lunatic visions upon us, is both anthropologically and historically allegorical, as the many fantastical and unattainable quests of man to achieve immortality through fame and wealth inevitably lead to Ozymandian dust.
The moment in mid-film when one of the rafts is caught in a whirlpool straight out of Homer’s , Herzog’s philosophy goes to work. These men’s attempts to find the mythical land of El Dorado, to become medieval alchemists and establish a golden kingdom here on Earth, is a the sort of tail chasing effort that is forever doomed to failure.
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