543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
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What is the story behind Aguirre, the Wrath of God?
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I am the great traitor. There must be no other. Anyone who even thinks about deserting this mission will be cut up into 98 pieces. Whoever takes one grain of corn or one drop of water more than his ration will be locked up for 155 years. If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees, then the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the wrath of God. The earth I pass will see me and tremble. Whoever follows me on the river will win untold riches. We will control all of New Spain and we will stage history as others stage plays. I, the wrath of God, will marry my own daughter and with her found the purest dynasty ever known to man. Together we will rule the whole of this continent. I am the wrath, the wrath of God.
So that was Klaus Kinski, the great German actor, as Lope de Aguirre in the film Aguirre, the Wrath of God, which was made in 1972, directed by Funster Werner Herzog. And Loosely based on, I mean, one of the most remarkable episodes of European exploration in history, a 16th century Spanish band of conquistadors venturing into the Amazon rainforest in search of El Dorado. And it doesn't end well. And it's one of the maddest films ever made, partly because, of course, the Conquistadors speak in German and we know that they would have spoken in English. But also, Dominic, I guess because it ranks alongside Francis Ford's Coppola's attempt to finish Apocalypse Now as a kind of cinematic folie de grandeur, doesn't it? It does indeed. Because they go into the jungle and it's all terrible.
And Herzog tries to kill Kinski. Kinski's going mad. He's got his great bulging eyeballs. Yeah. The making of the film is carnage. It is.
And it's holding a mirror up to the carnage of the original 16th century expedition. Exactly. It's very like Apocalypse Now in that sense. So they shot it in the early 70s, as you say. They shot it on location in the Peruvian Amazon. And Herzog at one point threatened to shoot Kinski, his lead actor, and then turn the gun on himself. And that's sort of been reported as he was basically forcing Kinski to film scenes at gunpoint, which I think is a slight exaggeration. But the filming of it was demented. But that actually, of course, reflected the subject matter, which is, as you say, this expedition. Yeah. That's very, very Heart of Darkness, actually. The 16th century expedition. It's about European colonizers, colonialists, conquistadors. In Heart of Darkness, which we did a podcast on a few weeks ago, they go up the Congo. Joseph Conrad, his narrator, Marlow, goes up the Congo. He's in search of this guy, Kurtz, who's lost his mind. Well, in this story, it's the people who are going up the river who lose their minds.
And particularly this bloke, Aguirre, who I think it's fair to say is one of the strangest and most unsettling characters we've ever done on this podcast. It's really interesting. The books about him are often written by, some of them are by professional historians. But one of the best, for example, is by a guy called Robert Silverberg, who's actually a science fiction writer. Yeah, he did.
So all those books with kind of giant spaceships.
Yeah. And he wrote an absolutely brilliant book called The Golden Dream, a history of quests for El Dorado. Like, very scrupulously researched, very serious book. And he describes Aguirre in this book. He says he's the single most villainous figure in the annals of the Spanish conquest, which is, you know... It's quite a high bar to clear. Yes, it is. And then there's the great historian of the Amazon, John Hemming, who wrote a brilliant book about the fall of the Incas. And he says of Aguirre, simply, cruel, psychopathic, a man of unmitigated evil. Yeah, so people are going to enjoy this. Yeah. Yeah, it's always good to have a character like that on the podcast.
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