Meditation on Madness

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD

Directed and Written by WERNER HERZOG

In 1560 a party of Spanish explorers, pursuing their curious national dream of El Dorado, are stopped by the fierce mountains and jungles of Peru. The commander detaches a smaller group to proceed down a rather forbidding river to see if they can discover some easy way out of this bad country.

The leader of this party is a gentle spirit, dignified and impractical. To him there is nothing ridiculous in the sight of his men toiling along treacherous trails, weighted down by armor, struggling to transport an entirely useless cannon. He has brought his wife with him and his second in command's daughter. What begins as an obviously dangerous journey soon turns into a manifestly self-destructive one. The rafts built to navigate the river are inadequate to its currents. And then, of course, there are the Indians, always in the shadows, picking off stragglers. But the worst danger derives from the Spaniards' delusions, and the most deluded of all is that second in command, the Aguirre of the title. He foments a mutiny, places the one nobleman present in nominal charge of the expedition and, acting in that pliable gentleman's name, proceeds to tyrannize his ever dwindling band.

Before long, he creates a government, complete with constitution and courts. He declares independence from Spain and claim to the vast land he and his group are dreamily yet viciously floating through, starving as the Indians grow bolder. In the end, no one is left but Aguirre, who is last seen shouting his plan for the conquest of the entire continent to the indifferent jungle, as hundreds of marmosets swarm over his waterlogged raft.

It is a magnificent image of the will to power running mad. But it is only one of a hundred such images distinguishing this singular and haunting film. Director Werner Herzog, 35, is German. and it is clear that he was drawn to this story, which derives from a historical incident, because he sees in it a parable applicable to his country's recent past.

That, however, is not something he insists on, any more than he insists on the absurdity of the activities he patiently, unemphatically records in a movie that unfolds slowly but never slackly. The most admirable thing about Aguirre may be the discipline with which Herzog tells his tale. He does not indulge himself in any comments on the action or insist, as most historical dramatists do, on the obvious parallels between his material and modern issues. He does the audience the honor of allowing it to discover the blindnesses and obsessions, the sober lunacies he quietly lays out on the screen. Well acted, most notably by Klaus Kinski in the title role, gloriously photographed by Thomas Mauch, Aguirre is, not to put too fine a point on it, a movie that makes a convincing claim to greatness.

Richard Schickel

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