Counter-Currents
Guide to Kulchur, Episode 11
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Counter-Currents Radio
143 words / 1:31:49
John Morgan and Survive the Jive join Fróði Midjord on the latest Guide to Kulchur to discuss the German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s masterpiece, Aguirre, the Wrath of God. After Fróði discusses the upcoming Scandza Forum conference in Stockholm, the three analyze the film, which is about a mad Spanish Conquistador, played by Klaus Kinski, in the sixteenth-century Amazon who is on a quest to locate the legendary city of El Dorado. The Guide to Kulchur team discuss what the film says about colonialism and the Faustian nature of Western man, its surrealism and symbolism (including a surprising reference to Nordic mythology), and how it fits into Herzog’s oeuvre as a whole. The episode is available on both YouTube and Spreaker (see below).
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4 comments
I liked this film as well. Kinski is a friggin’ mad man. This guy was one Hell of an actor. I always wondered why there are not more films made about the Conquistadors. Instead we get lame ass super hero fare & crappy films about boring historical occurances.
You’re right. Kinski is a mad-man. In terms of volatility and terribly-charismatic screen presence, he makes Jack Nicholson look like a naif. Kinski was drafted, at 15 or 16, into the Wehrmacht in the last days of the war. He went AWOL. The obedient kids in his unit all died. To save himself from starving in Occupied Germany, he thieved food.
You can see the trauma of apocalypse in Kinski’s eyes. That’s why, I think, Germans related to Kinski even as they disdained his lack of manners. They got him. They knew, “He’s one of us, albeit broken.” Yet their deeper understanding, censored and unspeakable, was that the Faustian in Kinski was never broken. He lived to shake his fist at the gods.
Thanks for this pod-cast. I’m anxious to give it a listen.
Yeah… I read a very funny comment… regarding W. Herzog and Kinski… to wit, all this “drama” with Kinski was just an act (for marketing)… because otherwise: who would watch this art house crap of movies haa ha ha !
I´m not a cineaste and don´t feel qualified to judge these films from a cineaste perspective, may be there is value… but the above view makes a lot of sense to me.
Kinski was a terrible actor but “Fitzcarraldo” is my favorite film, nonetheless.
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