Top 250

Aguirre, Der Zorn Gottes (1972)
Number 240 on IMDb's Top 250

A few decades after the destruction of the Inca Empire, a Spanish expedition leaves the mountains of Peru and goes down the Amazon river in search of gold and wealth. Soon, they come across great difficulties and Don Aguirre, a ruthless man who cares only about riches, becomes their leader. But will his quest lead them to the golden city of El Dorado, or to certain boredom? Hilarity ensues briefly then dies of that boredom.

Trivia: Although the opening titles claim the film was based on "the diary of the monk Gaspar de Carvajal", director Werner Herzog has stated that there is no historical basis for the story and that the monk's diary was invented to lend it more credence. However, a diary of Carvajal does in fact exist, but Carvajal was not part of any expedition with Aguirre, but rather part of one 20 years earlier to the interior. Near the end of the shooting, Werner Herzog thought he had lost all the negatives that the film was shot on. He later discovered that the shipping agency at the Lima airport had completed all paperwork that accompanied the transportation of the film cans, but had not actually shipped them. The cans were thought lost for several weeks before the oversight was revealed. Werner Herzog claims to have written the screenplay in two and a half days (That long?). He wrote a good portion of it while traveling with his soccer team, during games and on bus rides. Following one game, the team was very drunk, and the player seated behind Werner Herzog vomited on his typewriter, ruining many pages of the script. Werner Herzog was unable to salvage the pages, and tossed them out the window. He was also unable to recall what he'd written on them. Many of the scenes depicted in the film were unrehearsed and unstaged, and the dividing line between the cast acting in character and simply reacting to their situations as people became very blurry. For example, in one of the opening scenes, when the carriage holding Aguirre's daughter tips over and threatens to collapse, a hand comes in from the right side of the frame to assist the actors in steadying their hold. That hand belongs to director Werner Herzog. Herzog did not storyboard a single frame of the film. All of it was shot and framed spontaneously.

Man, this movie was boring! Excruciatingly. What in the heck is this movie doing in the Top 250? It was horrendous. Here is a description about 95 percent of the movie. The camera shows a soldier/Indian/monk/one of two superfluous female characters (added to make the movie slightly less boring I guess...didn't work)/Aguirre staring pensively into the jungle wondering if there are any Indians about to kill them with poison arrows or spears as the raft they are on drifts slowly down the river. You would think that a movie about an expedition through the jungle of South America could be exciting at times when the Indians attack and stuff...nope. Even the kills of the soldiers were boring. They would be talking and then the camera would show a soldier slumped over with a poison dart in his neck (although the Indians were very good shots with the poison arrows, every one of the shots hit a soldier in the neck, but not only that, in the same place on the neck). Or suddenly a soldier is shown flat on his back with a spear sticking out of his side. Even the death of the final superfluous female was like that (you can see it in the DVD cover art above, there is a large arrow stuck in the girl but you never see it hit her). You would also think that a dead comrade would upset the still living ones...nope. They don't even show any reaction to it. The title in English is Aguirre: The Wrath of God, evidently He wasn't very wrathful at the time. DON'T SEE THIS MOVIE...unless you are suffering from insomnia.