So there's the man, Herr Herzog. This photo was obviously taken when he was in the heart of the Amazon jungle, perhaps filming Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, The Wrath of God, 1972). This film was the first time Herzog was to work with the tempestuous Klaus Kinski. It would, of course, not be the last.
I watched Aguirre for the first time last night. It's based on a true story. Set in the sixteenth century, Aguirre, a Spanish conquistador, is convinced that he will find El Dorado (the land of gold). Having become a renegade, declaring independence from Spain, Aguirre and his weary crew of men are doomed, as they float down the Amazon river on makeshift rafts. Driven by greed, the desire for power, and fame, Aguirre convinces his men to believe in the illusion of a land overflowing with gold and other spoils. Of course, these illusions quickly turn into delusions. Anyone who dares to challenge Aguirre is slaughtered mercilessly.
While it's gruesome, there are moments of hilarity. That's the last thing that you'd expect, given the subject matter. I realize that Herzog has a sense of humor, but these moments struck me as odd - it adds a type of campiness to the tone of the film. Herzog, I realized, is quite a ham. I won't go into the details, as I hope you watch it yourself, and enjoy a chuckle here and there. Hint: it's obvious when you're supposed to laugh.
The ending is masterful and highlights Herzog's adoration (mixed with a type of hatred) for the jungle, confirming his idea of the "ecstatic truth" in nature. The films he makes after this one, even expressed as recently in the tragic documentary, Grizzly Man, attest to Herzog's firm belief in truth expressed through chaos. In a word, the unpredictably of nature fully illuminates the Truth. We, as human beings, are forever doomed by hubris, foolishly believing that we can either conquer (Aguirre types) nature or peacefully commune (as in the case of Timothy Treadwell) with it. Although separated by centuries, both men radically different as a result of their given historico-cultural contexts, Aguirre and Treadwell are similar. Only Herzog could manage to convince his viewers, even one with a profoundly historicist perspective, that these two men can be divorced from historical specificity and reveal this universal truth: "man" is doomed to fail and nature wins out every time. We may think that by living in cities, surrounded by concrete and steel, we are somehow us impervious to the elements. But such assuredness, as the recent catastrophes in New Orleans, the tsunami of 2005, etc. demonstrate, is just plain stupid. (I know that a few of my scholar buddies, if they had the time to talk to me, would be up an arms about my usage of "nature," but I'm not gonna delve into tiresome and irritatingly, po-mo questions like, "what is nature?" or whatever . . . I leave that type of quibbling to the "real" scholars).
Of course, for both Aguirre and Treadwell, it wasn't nature alone that led to their untimely deaths. But if I even attempt to delve into psychological factors, this blog will devolve into its own form of chaos.
The picture below is from the last scene from the movie. Aguirre has lost everyone (all remnants of "civilization" disappear at specific moments as the story progresses). Here, he is a man devoid of his world, and yet he still thinks, albeit delusional, he's going to take over all of New Spain. Aguirre's men are rotting on the boat, which has now been overrun with dozens of little monkeys. (I get it. I really get it!).
On a funny, and equally, disturbing note, this monkey was pissed off when Kinski picked him up! It squirms in his hands and looks at the camera angrily. Kinski is quite violent when he tosses this monkey aside - he flings its little body so hard, one wonders if the creature lived. I don't imagine an animal rights activist was on set. Let's assume they had been on the set. By the time this final shot had been filmed (assuming that the movie was shot chronologically), they would've already been dead, as a result of the earlier scenes with the horse. It's pretty unnerving.
Once the film was over, I flipped through the extras. Overall, these "extras" were pretty lame and paltry. I own a box collection of Herzog's films, and the other DVDs have way more added stuff. I realize that that's not entirely crucial, but I've enjoy these additional tidbits. I find Herzog fascinating and he interviews very well. In any event, this particular DVD only had brief bios about Herzog, Kinski, etc. Sadly, I wasn't able to satisfy my hunger, as the other sets allow me to eat up the tones of Herzog talking about the "Juuu-ngla" in his weird, mellifluous Bavarian accent. No such luck with this one.
But I did find my now all time favorite quote, so I can't be too critical of the dearth of extra information. As I mentioned, Kinski had a reputation for being insane. While he was making Count Dracula (1969), with director Jess Franco, Kinksi exploded; he was enraged that certain scenes weren't being filmed in an actual sanitarium. The director retorted, "I had planned to shoot it in a real cell but then it occurred to me that they might not let you out!"
Kinski and Herzog had a "love/hate" relationship, too. It's documented on film, as they had outbursts on set constantly. (Wish I had been Kinski's make-up artist. Sheesh. That would've been one of the worst gigs in modern labor history - hey! Somebody should write a labor history of people who worked for Kinski. Now that's something I'd read. You see, I don't read. I'm actually illiterate, and that's why this blog is extra special. It's a miracle that I'm even writing). As I was saying, Kinski and Herzog had this weird relationship, justified by the we're-fucking-crazy-intellectual-artist-types-so-what-do-you-fucking-expect? attitude. Naturally, both of the men spoke quite openly about this fact. But Kinski always had the most outrageous things to say about Herzog. This quote, as I said, is now my all time favorite. When asked about Herzog, Kinski hissed:
"I absolutely despise this Herzog . . . Huge red ants should piss into his lying eyes, gobble up his balls, penetrate his asshole, and eat his guts."
Whoa! In one sentence, Kinski refers to red ants, piss, lying, balls, innards, and (my favorite) Herzog's asshole! While I bet that sounded way funnier auf Deutsch, I laughed so hard, I peed my pants.
I should wrap this discussion up with a decent conclusion, but it's a blog, and I've spent too much time perfecting conclusions. Again, that's amazing, too, given the fact that I'm illiterate, can't/don't read, have managed to get through grad school, and am wrapping up my first novel. What can I say? God works in mysterious ways.
On mundane note, I'm sick of looking at Harvard's cupolas. When the sunlight hits them, they really do look like Ivory Towers. Blech. Maybe I should go back to my grad school prison. I'll think about that over another cup of coffee. Although I hate reading, and just confessed that I neither comprehend writing, Proust is calling for me. He's obsessed with memory.
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