Aguirre, the Wrath of God Provides Pandemic Catharsis

There’s a number of humorous deaths in Aguirre, the Wrath of God. But my favorite is an easy choice. Earlier in the film, while the doomed Spanish conquistadors are under attack from natives, one is killed with a short poison dart, something that seems to surprise our protagonists. This sets up my favorite fatality several scene later, when after being mortally wounded by a traditionally lengthed spear, one character comments that the long ones are in fashion now before dying.

Aguirre has that pitch-black sense of humor for most of the film. Before the first shot, we know the mission will end in catastrophe for the Spaniards. The film’s opening text informs us that they’re in search of the golden kingdom of El Dorado, a fiction told to them by the oppressed Inca civilization after their lands had been sacked. The only surviving relic from the mission is the diary of the monk that accompanied the journey, Gaspar de Carvajal.

Typically movies about known failed expeditions are played with a much more somber note. Apocalypse Now borrowed heavily from Aguirre later in the 70s; I was also reminded of the recent excellent first season of AMC’s The Terror, itself about a doomed English voyage in the arctic in the 1800s. In both Apocalypse Now and The Terror, we see characters picked off slowly (by elements, enemies, starvation, and the like) while going increasingly mad. Neither are comedies or remotely funny. And while Aguirre isn’t a traditional comedy either, it does take a gleeful approach in terrorizing the colonizers.

There’s so many elements of dark, slapstick humor that it’s hard to keep track. One of the three rafts floating down the river is trapped in a jetty, spinning those on-board for hours until they’re eventually killed by natives. Rather than recover the corpses, Lope de Aguirre — the power hungry second-in-command to Pedro de Ursua — orders a cannon to blow up the raft they don’t waste time retrieving the bodies. A potential mutineer is beheaded while counting and the head continues the count while lying in the dirt. Peaceful locals that could provide aid are killed because they are confused by the Bible. A horse is left behind because it annoyed somebody while they were eating.

Aguirre is responsible for the massacre of all his men (and daughter, who joins the trip down the river). He mutinies against Ursua when Ursua wants to turn back after sensing the mission will fail. He murders dissenters and insists they will succeed even though there’s little food remaining and everyone left is sick with fever. Aguirre’s narcissism and rage were shockingly reminiscent of Donald Trump. I thought I may have been forcing the comparison until the film’s conclusion, when in the full throes of a narcissistic breakdown after he is the last survivor of the mission states “I, the Wrath of God, will marry my own daughter, and with her I will found the purest dynasty the world has ever seen. Together, we shall rule this entire continent. We shall endure. I am the Wrath of God… who else is with me?” He’s talking to monkeys on the raft, his only devoted followers now. The symbolism writes itself.

Werner Herzog, amusingly best-known now as the guy that wants to kidnap Baby Yoda, obviously didn’t have Trump in mind when he directed this film. He probably had no idea who Trump was in the early 70s (lucky him!). But he did have disdain for the conquistadors, who used religion as a pretext for slaughter. So, he made a movie that tortures the oppressors in increasingly amusing ways. It’s cathartic to watch now in particular, given how we’re being led into catastrophe by incompetent leadership.

It reminded me a bit of Inglourious Basterds. Basterds isn’t a comedy, but it’s still really fun to watch a bunch of Nazis explode and see Hitler’s face turned into Swiss cheese. Or, Hell, I even see some Saw and Final Destination in Aguirre. Those later movies aren’t as good and the death scenes are much more elaborate, but people watch those movies to watch the killing. The amusing deaths are the star. Aguirre has more to offer than that, but I do think it was a predecessor for movies that put their characters in the ringer.

I’ve been on a bit of a Stephen King kick the last several years. I don’t really have much time to read — or at least I didn’t before the quarantine — so now when I do I just want an entertaining page-turner. There’s plenty of unread Serious Literature on my bookshelf that I bought in college and now want nothing to do with. I read the Dark Tower series over the course of a year and finished right before the 2017 It movie came out. Even though I’m not really a horror fan, I had enough positive vibes from the Dark Tower that I gave It a shot. I liked it fine enough and now I’m currently reading It even though it’s over 1100 pages (I’ve been reading it for 6 months).

I haven’t seen many adaptations of Stephen King’s stories, but I’m more open to it now than before I started reading him. I forgot which movie podcast I was listening to but they mentioned The Mist was a pretty good movie. That was reason enough for me to check it out.

And…it is a pretty good movie. The plot is simple: a mist hiding carnivorous monsters descends upon a small town in Maine, trapping some people inside a grocery store. But it has more going on than a typical creature feature. That’s not necessarily a compliment. As the situation becomes more dire for the survivor it becomes a little overstuffed. It’s a criticism of the military! And religion! And mob mentality! And it’s like, fine man, but I just want to see some people get eaten by cool monsters. There’s no reason this needs a 126-minute runtime.

And yet, it’s still worth checking out. The monsters are cool and scary (alien spiders with acid webs!) and the ending is a total nut-kicker. Like I mentioned with Cache a couple weeks ago, it’s also a good quarantine movie. The characters are literally trapped indoors because of the threat outside.

The hardest thing to stomach while watching it? Seeing how well-stocked that grocery store is. I might be willing to battle mist monsters if it meant getting my hands on some rigatoni.