Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Aguirre, the Wrath of God is a 1972 German film directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski. The music is by Popol Vuh. The film is on Time's list of 100 best films.

This is one of those films that really needs to be seen on a larger, better-quality screen than I have, but the entire film is available on youtube:


The film is one of Roger Ebert's "great movies". He calls it "one of the great haunting visions of the cinema". Senses of Cinema has an article. Slant Magazine says the film "stands a mythic portrait of colonial conquest run amok". The New York Times says, "This is a splendid and haunting work." Images Journal says it's "a stunning film that brought him attention from film circles around the globe." FilmReference.com has its usual extensive list of resources and describes it as "Herzog's hypnotic epic of megalomania and delusional myths". The Guardian's reviewer opens with this:

Here is a true classic, a gem from an era of high-wire cinema, a cinema of breathtaking ambition - a film about a folie de grandeur , the making of which has passed into cinema lore as hardly less daring, and hardly less mad, than its subject matter.

The movie has its own Facebook page.

HT: Film Studies for Free

7/5/2009: Parallax View has a review.
6/1/2010: Only the Cinema has an article that includes still shots and describes the movie as "a poetic, dream-like film".