The 4th Man

After a consideration of his filmography, even detractors must note that few filmmakers are as brazen as Paul Verhoeven. Though he might not give utmost consideration to the depth of a character, he will always try to combine entertainment with a consideration of intellectualism. That is, though he clearly prides himself on his work as producer of entertainment, he wants to work with film as a duplicitous medium as well, analyzing paranoia and delusions as a characteristic of the human condition, even if he shortchanges that analysis on occasion.

With The 4th Man (1983), however, he bridges those two ideals fairly evenly, allowing a consideration that rises above the dualism of humanity that is suggested in the opening symbolism with a spider climbing over a statue of Jesus. While some might view this as simple lip-service to Bergman’s metaphor in his religious chamber trilogy, it’s paramount to a thematic consideration of the hybridity, rather than mere dualism, of The 4th Man, for the film seeks to undermine these notions of either/or with its analysis of Christine Halsslag (Renée Soutendijk), a woman who can initially be viewed as causing the murder of her previous husbands or be viewed as a helpless pawn in life’s misfortune. This accusatory viewpoint is complicated in the paranoia of our protagonist, Gerard Reve (Jeroen Krabbé).

Between Gerard’s paranoia and delusions, Verhoeven creates an indeterminancy that adds greater psychological weight to the affair and makes the story into more than a film noir and femme fatale picture. Verhoeven’s aesthetic is perfect for a scene in which Gerard learns of the fates of Christine’s previous spouses vis-à-vis a film projector, and Gerard’s simultaneous disgust and intrigue is matched by own captivation for how Verhoeven manipulates his sordid material. And though Bergman analogies are a bit heavy-handed, they are overall in tune with the goals of the film and work in nice contrast to the Mary metaphors. Very good stuff, and it features some very interesting expansions into film noir, specifically a treatment of homosexuality and androgyny within the genre.

The 4th Man: 8/10

Ikiru

There is an incredible humbling power felt whenever filmmakers resolve to explore the end of one’s life, since the looming presence of death impels all to reconsider life and to reevaluate how one’s myopic and self-centered vision might be better spent building toward a more communal ideal. That is, death is the ultimate equalizer, where the powerful realize their weaknesses and transgressions that were used to achieve power, and the attempt to humble oneself becomes paramount in the face of death.

As such, few films leave as indelible a mark upon the viewer as Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), wherein a listless bureaucrat, Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), eventually finds spiritual motivation within the discovery of his stomach cancer and impending death. Yet Kurosawa knowingly does not suggest that sweeping displays of remorse and redemption are possible, since Japanese culture has long been accustomed to an internalization of illness and news of one’s own death; rather, Kurosawa focuses on a very minute and miniscule demonstration of individual will over empty bureaucracy: to build a park for the citizens.

In Watanabe’s defiance and subversion of the conventional runaround, we see Kurosawa make his philosophical plea for man to dedicate himself to a communal way of living, but moreover to understand that you are defined by what you do and what you contribute, and these choices that you make, of lack thereof, dictate how others view you. Thus, we understand that because Watanabe’s estrangement with his own son is far too gone, his failure there can only be reconciled by an improvement of the neighborhood space. As a result, a life that was once built around ceremonial, though futile, assembly becomes transformed by a spiritual desire for giving and charity.

At once a film that cinematically critiques the sanitary conditions of postwar times, a plea for human goodness, and an examination of how communities mistakenly appropriate one’s goodness for the sake of their own profit, Ikiru never fails to humble and overwhelm one’s senses.

Ikiru: 10/10

The New World

Terrence Malick’s films have always been about the struggle for wholeness, redemption, and transcendence, with the image being linked to startling revelation vis-à-vis music or voiceover rather than traditional plot. In The New World (2005) more so than any of his other films plot is incidental, which for some generates a disinterest as the most formal of cinematic devices is shed, yet the plot, such as it is, is still advanced through thematic considerations and circular, modulated images.

This is a film that masks its observation of the Indians in transcendentalist musings, sifting through Captain John Smith’s (Colin Ferrell) voiceover that reveres the harmony of the native people. Yet in the same manner that Private Witt in The Thin Red Line idealized the island people and believed there to be no inner conflict or animosity, here we find Smith similarly romanticizing. We later understand that conflicts are if not constant, then they are at the very least chronic, and it is Smith, and not Malick, who fails to consider this reality. Likewise, Rebecca/Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Filcher) finds her father casts her out of the tribe because of the Europeans’ betrayal, which she has helped foster, and so here as well Malick refuses to sentimentalize the natives. We also receive the critique that the men with power (here the colonialists) seek to remake new worlds in the image of their own, to the detriment of those already peopled there.

In the film, action is often viewed through objects/doorways that filter and obstruct the totality of one’s vision, allowing for a romantic and idealized interpretation of what one sees, which allows Malick the opportunity to mix naïve romanticism with a more critical and judicious eye. For instance, in the opening we find Captain John Smith chained below the deck since the crew had already mutinied, and his vision of the new world is filtered through the tiny window that he gazes out of. Similarly, this same idea will later be seen and modulated when John Rolfe (Christian Bale) gazes upon Rebecca / Pocahontas through a doorway and fetishizes her beauty as opposed to realizing her lingering attraction to Smith, as well as in other instances.

Ultimately, this film becomes a consideration of what Pocahontas is meant to be read as—is she to be seen as Indian or European, or does she exist beyond the parameters of either/or? Though her freedom is most celebrated when she is in her Indian apparel, the film is not locked into an idea that she is caged after she is brought to Jamestown and Europeanized. Once she has born a son to her husband and becomes Europeanized, similarly to how North America is Europeanized, are we to feel betrayed, resentment, or gratitude? Ultimately, despite the romanticism of the natives, it must be decided that Malick celebrates and understands both the benefits and restrictions that followed such a move, and the vestiges of the past make way for the wholeness of the present.

For me personally, there have been few experiences as great as seeing The New World on the big screen twice, letting the film’s emotions wash over me in both small waves and large crescendos. Serving as the opening, middle, and climax of the film, the prelude to Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” receives the same transcendent treatment that Kubrick gave Richard Strauss’ “Thus Spake Zarathustra” in 2001, creating a poem of music and images that cumulatively leaves me euphoric after every viewing.

The New World: 10/10

Katie Tippel

Despite his shortcomings as a director, Paul Verhoeven typically circumnavigates his weaknesses by telling stories that are sensational even if they occasionally veer into the histrionic performance-wise. Well, Katie Tippel (1975) manages the unenviable task of being the first Verhoeven film that is thoroughly mediocre on every fundamental level, so that even though there may be a beautiful moment or sequence, it never truly adds to any tension or development in the film since the film ultimately becomes a cinema of static characters.

While lead actress Monique van de Ven is probably one of the most beautiful women ever captured with a camera, the film surprisingly lacks tension, character development, and actual interest. Most of the film is governed around the politics of late 19th century Holland, with lower class unrest and the agony of immigrants trying to build their pot o' gold, forcing their children, including the titular Katie (van de Ven) into prostitution, but the film largely doesn't work because Tippel, herself a real person, is too much of a nonentity with regard to her value of political upheaval. That is, she is portrayed in a fashion that upholds her own vain and conceited ideas, but lacks any true compassion toward others. Thus, once she finally transcends her lowly status, she disregards any of those in her former class; yet she herself is disregarded by the man she loves as he too works to climb the social pecking order. These parallels, while existent, never become anything more.

Yet while even this aspect of being a nonentity could make for fascinating social critique, the film never tackles this facet onscreen. In the commentary, Verhoeven mentions how the production planned to show Katie’s explicit lack of growth or consideration from where she came from, but decided against it, much to his dismay now. Such a change would have elevated the material and built a stronger narrative, complete with subtlety and a critique of the complicity of the lower class that ascends their former status. This is, unfortunately, a rather pedestrian film.

Katie Tippel: 5/10

In the Mood for Love

This high rating to In the Mood for Love (2000) should not come as any surprise to anyone, since this film is not just necessary to an understanding of viewing Wong’s later 2046, but is itself more nuanced and invested in the possibility of expression rather than foreclosure. Moreover, whereas the latter film examines the issue of suppressed desire circling in upon itself, this film is more thematically vital because it analyzes a desire that still has the possibility to be consummated and not simply become pathological, as 2046 does.

In the Mood for Love finds two cuckolded spouses in the 1960’s, Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-Zhen Chan (Maggie Cheung), working to disassociate the affair their respective partners are carrying on with each other by acting out and fictionalizing the affair via role play with each other. This reversal lets the cuckolded spouses secure control of their lives as they alone animate the actions of their partners. This act, however, finds complication when Chow finds himself attracted to Su Li-Zhen and discovers that the attraction is not shared. The emotional damage sustained at the hands of the unfaithful partners leads each to a place of avoidance.

Moreover, the residue of Su Li-Zhen is a stand-in for Chow’s adulterous wife. He enacts a form of transference between Su Li-Zhen and his wife, whereupon his attraction to Su is negotiated through the initial love he received from his wife, but is elevated by the additional virtue that Su possesses, in that Su rejects the possibility of their ever descending to the same unfaithfulness that his wife demonstrated. This is the very essence of Chow’s paradox: he loves Su precisely because she will not love him. Instead, Chow unconsciously introjects the heartbreak that his wife caused him and substitutes Su Li-Zhen for her. With this disassociation, Chow denies any psychological suffering that his wife caused him, since she is inscripted through the melancholic gaze that Chow thrusts onto his remembrances of Su. As such, Chow still denies himself any possibility for recovery by not being honest with himself, but it is honesty and integrity that suffers, becoming barricaded as a secret that promises to haunt him ever after.

In the Mood for Love: 10/10

2046

In 2046 (2004), Wong Kar Wai most illustrates his growth as a filmmaker, as he returns to the main protagonist of In the Mood for Love, Chow Mo Wan, and examines the discursive ways in which Chow is still haunted by both the betrayal of his wife and his inability to disassociate himself from the repercussions of his desired affair with Su Li-Zhen. While Chow works to free himself from the delayed emotion and residue left by the loss of his wife and Su Li-Zhen vis-à-vis fictional reenactments, 2046 explores the recursive nature of Chow’s dysfunction so that the substitution of these traumas lead Chow to his pathological narcissism. Thus, Wong’s 2046 details the hyper-attachment that Chow finds in his memories of Su Li-Zhen, over-investing himself in the fantasies of testimony since he cannot find peace in his acts of testimony. As a writer, Chow tries to write himself out of his over-investment through fiction, but each attempt in fact further delineates his imprisonment into melancholy. Consequently, Chow’s writing exists as an obsessional impulse, one that recursively feeds itself, becoming a narcissistic addiction that centers Chow even as it deprives him of emotion.

By camouflaging the pain, he reveals his pathological mania, in that he internalizes that which is forgotten, and is unable to comprehend the deeper workings of his unconscious memory. Thus, these cannibalistic acts on Su Li-Zhen’s memory merely repeat Chow’s traumatic experience, denying him recovery. His memories are embedded in science fiction narratives, with his alter ego unable to elicit passion from the mechanical and emotionless robots, all of whom—while modeled on various women he has romanced—embody his concept of Su Li-Zhen as unresponsive and indifferent. Yet Chow is not cognizant of the purpose behind this impulse, preferring to situate such fantasies as ways in which his writing can be marketed rather than understanding them as potential outlets of mourning. Because of this misconception, he becomes imprisoned in the deadlocked grip of melancholy.

This narcissistic ease in his own mythomania thus serves as his refuge, for he does not possess the resiliency to move outside his imaginary identification. Rather, he continues to act out his obsessional impulse in fiction, treasuring the fact that he can turn to fantasies to realize his ideal vision. Chow’s fiction, then, becomes his symbolic mirror, without which he has no reference to code his life or gain closure. Yet this act itself denies working through. As psychologist Judith Herman notes, the patient needs “integration, not exorcism.” When Chow returns to his object-loss in fiction, he aims to extricate its pain from his being, rather than integrate himself with it. As such, the release found in his stories never actually becomes a release, but instead merely quells the pain until a future experience calls back the earlier loss. Through this circular interplay, Chow’s fiction becomes its own imprisonment.

In the Mood for Love and 2046 embody Wong Kar Wai’s films about the 1960s, examining the over-investment of memory that clouds and envelops his characters, leaving them with only a residue of their former lives. With 2046, however, Wong’s oeuvre seems to have reached the end of its first stage. Wong has, at least for the time being, turned to fashioning his next several films in America. While his cinematic preoccupations may not face a fundamental change with the turn to filmmaking under the Hollywood system, it is obvious that Wong has reached the logical conclusion of his preoccupation with time and traumatic memory in these Hong Kong films. His characters in these films about the 1960’s are inextricably tied to their obsessional impulses, fabricating reconciliation rather than honestly and truly working to achieve emotional recovery. Chained to their internal captivity, Wong’s characters expose the fatalistic surrender of never working through traumatic experience.

2046: 10/10

Starship Troopers

In a continuation of viewing all of Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven’s work, however accidental such a plan came about, it must be noted that Starship Troopers (1997) is a fascinating continuation on Verhoeven’s critique of the celebratory and gung-ho response to violence. Crafted as a film about intergalactic crime with insects (i.e. nature) fighting against man, this is a film that is adamantly political and critical of the military response to potential threats. As such, though its surface acts as a soap opera tale about Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) a man trying to prove himself to the woman he loves, Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards), Verhoeven and screenwriter Ed Neumeier appraise the 1940s propaganda pictures by refashioning them here as blindly patriotic and fascist toward any other/Other.

As such, the film becomes a stark critique on the desensitization of individual thought processes which leads to the mobilization of herd mentality and blind submission to a "higher" government authority. Johnny’s patriotism, as well as the other thousand’s patriotism, lead to mindless deaths from bugs that a newscaster notes didn’t even start the war. Yet, as the film shows, Johnny doesn’t care to consider such technicalities, but instead assumes a trigger-happy and heroic stance against the enemy, spouting clichés and empty rhetoric. As such, the film has a resonance in the political climate of many eras (WW2 [remember Verhoeven’s Soldier of Orange], the Korean War, Vietnam), and even allows one to supplement today’s political critique into a film where the critique didn't yet work.

These political issues are bookended by a propaganda piece for the Mobile Infantry campaigning righteously and declaring their point of view against the bugs, wherein the film gains some of its best and easiest critique simultaneously. Verhoeven has never been a subtle director and here the film’s vision embraces its excess concurrently with his mise en scene, exploring richly colorful and materialistic cities on the humans’ planet, and highlighting the alien yet strangely beautiful and austere quality on the aliens’ planet.

While this underscores the political angle, the film also has its eye on gender critique as well, with the alien brain trusts composed of giant vaginas. While this bit isn’t elucidated fully, it doesn’t like too much to suggest that the alien killer bugs are male and that the queens are that which keeps the species in good government.

If all of this is ignoring the mediocre acting on display, then welcome to the typical American Verhoeven release. His critical approach to American consumerism and materialism seems to have translated into a refusal to orient himself with quality actors and allowing their vacant or inappropriate performances to likewise exist as critique. Here it’s largely Denise Richards who suffers, as the supporting cast members are all quite good, including an excellent Michael Ironside.

Though the film works as a statement of how these archetypal characters display a lack of mourning and instead sublimate any internal reaction into obedience to “higher” military ideals, the film simply is a subversively thrill as the creatures storm the men in the final hour. It’s exciting action filmmaking and visually impressive even today, even as it subverts its normative society into a hypocritical war-driven society.

Starship Troopers: 8.5/10

The Third Man

Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949) is one of the pinnacles of British cinema, and Reed made certain of it. Graham Greene’s script originally conformed to a happy ending which would have circumvented much of the film’s central force and Reed combated this idea, so that the film truly begins and ends at a cemetery. Likewise, Reed fought for this cast, denying then godhead David O. Selznick his vision. Moreover, Reed brought local musician Anyon Karas to provide the soundtrack, introducing the now famous zither into scenes and allowing the film its sole spryness.

Largely, this film is an elegy to the innocence of time gone by and the manner in which people lose their lofty idealism after the war. Western novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) holds no pretensions toward greatness, but when his friend Harry Lime rescues him by flying him over to Vienna, Martins looks forward to the reunion. Alas, Lime and the city are old empires now in ruins. Lime has been struck dead by a car and Vienna itself is in the throes of a black market that can secure medical comfort and wares that are otherwise absent from daily life.

The corrupt city is swollen with paranoia and weariness, and this expressionistic quality is matched seamlessly by the cinematography, which is similarly tilted and askew. As Martins tries to negotiate a life in this barren yet opportunistic city, he also tries to solve who the third man was that pulled Lime off the road. This leads him to Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), Lime’s mistress who habitually confuses Holly for Harry. Though Martins wants to make good, he also has shortcomings and seeks to impress upon Anna his love and moralistic vision, which just pushes her away.

The less mentioned about this film the better the viewing experience is, for its loaded with peerless set-pieces, chases, speeches, and memorable shots all around. This film is a certifiable classic, and among the few post-war films that captured the zeitgeist of a generation, laying claim to the spirit of betrayal that masquerades as loyalty.

The Third Man: 10/10

My Life as a Dog

Lasse Hallstrom’s My Life as a Dog (1985) is an interesting film in that it is alternately touching and maddening brainless. This latter quality is thankfully only truly embedded in the opening fifteen minutes, as our protagonist young Ingemar, commits every sin imaginable to further destroy his ailing mother’s health. Whether it’s getting his penis stuck in a glass bottle, accidentally setting whole trash heaps on fire, or knocking over dinner preparations after getting in a fight with his older brother, everything is manipulated to garner the deepest trauma to his mother even as young Ingemar looks on in bewilderment. Yet Hallstrom’s staging of it all feels overly designed to ratchet up the sympathy for the uncomprehending Ingemar, which soon becomes ludicrous.

Thankfully, Hallstrom transitions out of these scenes quickly enough and allows a more appreciating sense of childhood and growing maturity to develop. Once Ingemar is shipped over to live with his uncle, most of the cloying material evaporates and a more honest and credible story begins to take shape, documenting Ingemar’s ascent into adulthood and introspection, even as he still grapples with family responsibility and his affection for the young adolescent girl, Saga, who masquerades as a boy because she enjoys it more.

Ingemar’s coping mechanisms for all the loss in his life is through displacement, through a gradual process of introjecting his traumas and matching them against larger traumas known worldwide. Thus, he avoids his issues by finding appeasement that his life isn’t the catastrophe of others. However, when he realizes that his beloved dog Sickan is dead, attacked with this knowledge by an avenging Saga who wishes to injure him with the same dislocation he attacked her with earlier, his resolve in holding life’s traumas at arm’s length disintegrates and he is finally overwhelmed. Here and elsewhere toward the end, the film avoids the cloying sensibilities that permeate the earlier sections, though the film does have a tendency to rely on the sugar more than it needs.

Regardless, Hallstrom’s direction and mise en scene are bathed in a sense of beatific wonder at the beauty of 1950s Sweden, even as it hints subtly at fissures rupturing the commoners in Sweden. While Hallstrom circumvents some of the more traumatic issues by sustaining a comedic tone, the film overall succeeds because the characters eventually are fully drawn and developed. Thus, even at cloying moments the characters are actually consistent, even if they are consistently average. Overall, the film works for me, but not on any superlative level.

My Life as a Dog: 6.5/10

Mouchette

Robert Bresson is one of the most idiosyncratic directors in cinema, fascinated more by the purity of theme than by embellished or larger-than-life actors, so he always enlisted non-actors and directed with a stoic style, preferring impressionistic, blank expressions to contortions of anger or joy. This rigidity crafted far more than one masterpiece, since A Man Escaped is well worth anyone’s time in its indictment of the prison systems in France, but perhaps Bresson’s most humane work lies in the story of a put upon young girl by the titular name of Mouchette (1967). This is a film that chronicles the degradation inflicted upon the young girl, who is left to either channel that pain out onto others, or to introject and absorb all of the agony into her very person.

Yet despite the seeming fatalism of the end, the film itself is not fatalistic. There are beautiful segments that express vindication and sweet euphoria for young Mouchette. Specifically, the bumper car sequence, long cited as a demonstration of the town taking out its frustration on her, does yield the potential for joy, in that the boy who's expressing his attraction to her through continuous car humping doesn't seem like that bad of a man, all things considered. Rather, it's the systemic denial of autonomy from her family that largely precludes her ability to find an alternate voice to liberate her.

Furthermore, the gentleman who rapes her even seems to almost exist as that harbinger, since his presence initially offers Mouchette a secret and thus private knowledge apart from her familial ways. Of course, the denial of that possibility comes in how he abuses her (though my sole complaint is that she could have run out the door rather than chosen to hide under the wooden table). Regardless, the communal degradation that she feels offsets this mild criticism, since the case could be made that she allows herself to be treated as the inferiority that she's internalized from everyone, which gives her cause to not escape such a fate.

The ending, then, speaks of the power Bresson could utilize when he wanted, as there's still that glimmer, that potential, for reconciliation that gives the film its humanity. Mouchette simply turns the same blind eye to that potential that others have turned toward her, finally introjecting her lack of possibility into a liberation of her spirit.

Mouchette: 10/10

Robocop

Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop (1987) is a decent action film, and its full of good ol' Verhoeven excess and critique of American capitalism, but any consideration of it being a classic of its genre is predicated largely on its introduction of explicit gore into American households (squib packs, gore galore, et ceterea). In terms of cultural critique, though, Showgirls shows up this film any day of the week. Whereas that film allows several of its characters to rise beyond blatant stereotype, here there's not a single character who seems to exist independently of what they're called to do in the script.

As such, most of the critique on American capitalism is wedged into the outer edges of the narrative. The sections with the newscasters cheerfully reading off the day's news, even with polite repartee despite the wanton chaos and catastrophes going on around them, possess the trademark satire expected from Verhoeven. Moreover, the ads that intercut the news broadcasts exists as even stronger critique, with toys that market global destruction and chaos, extending the old Battleship ideas into a nuclear holocaust scenario and perfectly undercutting the naïve delivery behind corporate attitudes of news as it's presented on newscasts. That said, since it's more tangential and world-building than integral to the plot, one cannot privilege or elevate the material simply because of this point.

It's really the blandness of the two principle characters, Murphy (later the “completely” mechanical robot of police enforcement, Robocop) and the female cop Lewis, that lessens the film's impact. Both Murphy and Lewis are largely uninvolving characters, which damages our core sympathies. While this very detail precisely underscores Verhoeven's intent of offering a human but dehumanized world of the 80’s, it’s just dramatically underwhelming. The corporate climber who creates Robocop exists as a wonderful debasement of 80's excess culture, doing anything and utilizing every little edge he can to get ahead in the corporate world. But then he is killed off, and so ends that satire.

In order to work more fully, the film needs a bit more articulation of the inner drama as Murphy realizes that his return to life means that his personal life is devoid of meaning since his wife has moved on. This doesn't demand a complete shift from machine to human concepts of emotion, but a bit more interplay would have been fascinating. We get a bit of this during Lewis' caring for Murphy at the factory, but the plot and its predications hinder some of the explored characteristics that could have been vital to fleshing the two out more. Perhaps Verhoeven wants to subvert the notion that all action heroes need a woman as love interest and that's why the film underplays these ideas. But given the rest of the film's focus on excess, I find myself a bit unconvinced of the relationships these two hold for one another.

The oily corporate climber and Boddicker were the two most interesting characters, and so I find myself a bit depressed when the former bites it relatively early and the latter isn't involved in the final countdown. That said, the finale is rather clever, articulating an endpoint out of Murphy's former inability to harm the higher-ups at the corporation. I like that, but the last lines felt a bit too comic-booky in their wrap-up, as opposed to the exaggerated realism of the rest of the film. Taking it as a comic-book type of film, one can overlook some of the lack of character dynamics since they do fit comfortably into the archetypes of heroes and the individual's quest. Yet the films asks in the beginning to be read as exaggerated realism and not lightweight fantasy despite the premise, so its final tone feels off and thus dehabilitating...

Robocop: 7/10

Aguirre, The Wrath of God

In an attempt to free himself from stereotype as perhaps not the most appealing director to work with, Werner Herzog decided to stage an adaptation of man finding peace and harmony within nature. After realizing that such a vision would not earn him legendary status, however, ol’ Herzog scrapped those plans and headed into the Peruvian jungle to piss off a lot of locals, expose his crew to various illnesses and epidemics, and liberate monkeys. And really, what self-respecting blog is complete without a film liberating monkeys?

Which bring us to Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972), Herzog’s epic about Spanish conquistadors hunting down El Dorado. Such a journey antagonizes the local slaves that have been captured en route and endangers the Spanish crew, as the wilderness and those that lie in it, both nature and man, threaten to pick the men off before such a conclusion can be reached. While not initially in charge, Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) manipulates his way into the symbolic head of the expedition, killing those who oppose him while making sure others bear the literal title of leader so that if anything goes awry, they absorb the vengeance and the blame rather than him.

This is a film that examines the singular focus of a narcissistic mind that dreams of an empire. El Dorado forces Aguirre headlong into a grandiose vision as projected liberator, losing himself in ideals even as his men threaten mutiny. Yet Herzog’s overwhelming thesis states that even though man has the power to silence others into obedient submission, man cannot silence the stoic and resolute eye of nature. The greed of Aguirre’s perception only blinds him to the inconsequence of his expedition against the more dominant force of the land itself which denies him comprehension. Thus, his conceited envy can only extract empty pleasure of ownership over a raft that is swiftly losing its membership.

Few images possess the stark humanity of the women slipping off into the jungle and, eventually, into the throes of death, so that Herzog subverts Aguirre’s mission to devalue the project of the expedition itself. As a result, Herzog leaves the viewer with that masterful rotating 360 shot around Aguirre as the raft is overrun with wild monkeys and drifts slowly, inexorably downriver with one last madman standing. But he too will soon fall and nature will consume all of man’s precious wanderings.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God: 10/10