Passion and Insanity on Celluloid: Aguirre, The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, Germany, 1972)

The Cinema of the German New Wave was originally conceived as an initiative that rejected the “Old German Cinema” in favour of the new, emerging one. Influenced by the French New Wave, such directors as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, Harun Farocki, Volker Schlöndorff, Helma Sanders-Brahms, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Margarethe von Trotta and Wim Wenders made names for themselves and produced a number of 'small' motion pictures that caught the attention of art house audiences, then a rarity in Germany. Films such as Kluge's Abschied von gestern (Yesterday Girl, 1966), Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Fassbinder's Fear Eats the Soul(1974) and The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), and Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) found international acclaim and critical approval.

Among these, Werner Herzog’s Aguirre stands out in particular, not least because of its peculiarly haunting vision, and the cynical light in which it seems to portray human ambition. While the rest of the films at least partially concern themselves with being a critique of the extant social milieu, Herzog evades specific societal examinations by basing his film in the 16th century, with a group of German actors cast as Spaniards lost in an Amazonian forest. What initially sounded like a badly staged character gimmick (Aguirre was received very harshly in its opening days) subsequently catapulted Herzog to the attention of cinephiles worldwide, and to his obligatory status of an auteur vibrant with ingenuity and passion.

“Aguirre” narrates the account of a group of Spanish conquistadors in search of the fabled cities of El Dorado. The film opens with a sequence of extreme long shots following a long chain of nondescript men donning shabby armours and helmets as they snake their way around gigantic, mist-covered mountains. An ethereal tune sung by a church choir echoes through the forest. Herzog typically chooses the bookends of his films as springboards to provide the audience with a detached look at his characters, the humanity that they embody and the often futile universality that their journeys hold. It is a trick that, despite being repeatedly used throughout his oeuvre, has retained its originality and impact to this day. The opening of Aguirre marks one of its most evocative instances. We watch the optimistic inception of an adventure purely innocuous in its undertaking, even as its proponents struggle in comical fashion against the vermin and thick foliage of the hostile land. Suddenly, a cannon goes off, and after what seems like a choppy edit, we find ourselves on earth, looking up at the ominous smoke rising from the blast. We have now been plunged into the narrative. The cannon has killed the singing choir, and the naked sounds of the forest fill our ears instead. A close-up of Aguirre’s crooked face as he ruminates about the future of the expedition. And lastly, a static shot of a river gushing wild, unbridled, uncaring, much like the minds of the men that now attempt to traverse through it. Herzog initially considered rolling the credits over this image of a gushing river, but later refrained from doing so. The entire sequence, although inconsequential at first glance, acts as a tacit display of Herzog’s insights into the subtle craft of storytelling.

Aguirre is as much Klaus Kinski’s film as it is Werner Herzog’s. Well-known throughout the German film industry as a versatile actor of manic energy, Kinski’s reputation as a madman often preceded him. His trademark tantrums and rants on set made it difficult for directors to work with him. It took a visionary of Herzog’s calibre to see a maniacal 16th century mutineer where others saw an uncontrollable and uncooperative liability. Eccentric casting choice would later come to be seen as a virtue decidedly Herzogian in nature. For, to a filmmaker who has fallen in love with life itself, passion is the pulse of cinema, not sauve acting chops or prestigious theatre credentials. Loyally enough, Kinski nails Aguirre in all his cock-eyed madness. His menacing presence swells almost exponentially as the film progresses towards its dark denouement. Much of the oddball humour in “Aguirre” comes from the way Kinski fleshes out the sheer physicality in his character, from the queer, lumbering gait to the sudden emotional outbursts to the impossibly dogged tenacity with which he carries himself in the face of certain death. Indeed, were it not for his violent and psychotic ways, Aguirre would certainly be someone worth admiring for his sheer will. A will that, fittingly enough, often mirrors the director’s own. For, later films would reveal that it is not the recklessness and amorality that bind Herzogian protagonists together, but their restless, obsessive search for that elusive element that has evaded them their entire lives. Be it the trigger-happy Aguirre, or the spurned Opera lover Fitzcarraldo, the care-free befriender of bears, Timothy Treadwell, or even the blood-sucking Nosferatu, Herzog’s renditions have always brought out characters that seek some form of transcendence through seemingly unabashed transgressions. As it happens, Aguirre’s transgressions by far outweigh his spiritual merits, and so it takes the grandiosity of a long, revolving tracking shot at the end of the film for us to get a peek at the light that he so fervently seeks.

As a film, Aguirre can be said to consist of one part Herzog, one part Kinski and three parts the Amazonian wilderness. Shot completely on location, without the aid of miniature models or the luxury of special effects, the film perfectly highlights and foreshadows Herzog’s extreme filmmaking methods. Considering the fact that almost all of the footage has been shot on handheld, the compositions are quite admirable. The visuals portray the jungle in all its violence and ferociousness, emphasizing perfectly the insanity of Aguirre himself. Despite being a primarily visual director, Herzog has been known to excel in sound design as well. Here, he populates the film with a healthy mixture of stark, loud sounds and an equally disconcerting silence. The end result stands as a testament to the virtues of purely physical filmmaking; not even Coppola's elaborately staged montages from Apocalypse Now can compete with the raw energy of Aguirre.

Finally, a couple of observations about the iconic 360-degree shot that ends the film. The raft itself represents a microcosm of society throughout the entire movie. The group of people live, eat, and sleep together on that small raft. There are rules, ethical codes, values, and a class structure. When the raft comes to a standstill in the final scene, society itself has come to an end. There was no progression throughout the movie, only a slow, inevitable downfall. The monkeys bring an end to this society when they dominate the raft. Nature has literally taken over; the water is still, and the monkeys infest that which once belonged to Aguirre and his crew. Herzog places an image of the sun before the 360-degree rotational shot of the raft to further the notion that nature has taken over this society.

The idea of circling the raft here is significant on many different levels. At this point, the raft appears to be at a standstill. The men are on the cusp of death, if they have not already passed on, and are suffering from delusions and severe hunger. The relentless circling of the camera represents the ongoing struggles of the crew since the beginning of the movie; it is as if this is Herzog’s final way of driving home his message to the viewers. The camera movement here also represents their journey in the sense that it feels as though these men have been travelling in circles—one character even goes so far as to make that very remark. The 360-degree shot also shows the final result of the raft. It appears on the screen lifeless and unmoving as Aguirre stands with his men, either dead or dying, around him. Most of the raft is broken down and has become infested with monkeys. Those who are still alive are delusional and do not wish to continue any further. The camera shot serves as a physical and metaphorical finale for Aguirre’s conquest of El Dorado. This is the end for Aguirre.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God, possibly Werner Herzog’s most popular and critically acclaimed work stands as a hallmark of his cinema, and contains most of the themes that would find recurrence in his later work.

References:

Werner Herzog Aguirre Q & A [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBJaJe7akXc]

Reel American History [http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/reel_new/films/list/0_66_8_5347]

Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguirre,_the_Wrath_of_God]

Paul Cronin, Werner Herzog - Herzog on Herzog [2003]

Primal Fear (1996)

The basic premise of “Primal fear” carries all the usual tropes and tenets that make a classic whodunit in the vein of Poirot and Mason: a heinous act of murder, a controversial victim, lawyers with blatantly ulterior motives, a convenient lack of eyewitnesses and the obligatory two and a half block long foot chase. The plot gradually thickens as hitherto unknown motives become clear and fragments of dark pasts are revealed.

The film’s protagonist, Martin Vail (Richard Gere) is initially set up as that vile, self-serving, nihilistically cold cod of a lawyer who will take every measure to cover up a genocide as a rare instance of mass suicide. He naively believes that truth is what you make of it. His first lines paint a concise portrait of his unabashedly cynical character: “When your mother says she loves you, get a second opinion.” In the same scene, he offers his six pence on the hopelessness of the judicial system to a baffled magazine interviewer. “It’s for a cover story, right?”, he clarifies earnestly, before dismissing his secretary with a perfunctory wave.

We follow Vail as he goes about his daily courtroom negotiations. Gradually, his despicable demeanor diminishes, and a much more human, fleshed-out character takes center stage. Someone we can reasonably relate to. By the time a mentally scarred altar boy is charged with the brutal murder of a prominent priest, we have already begun seeing the world through Vail’s eyes. By taking on the difficult role of the boy’s defence attorney, Vail puts himself at great professional risk and instantly transforms into a traditional hero.

Even though the boy, Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton), is the only known person believed to be present at the scene of the crime, with all evidence pointing against him, Vail stands relentless in his defence. And given that Vail has, at this point in the film, become the sole moral centre in a cornucopia of ethically ambiguous characters, we as an audience see little choice but to agree with him.

Martin Vail’s best instances of character development are brought out in his interactions with Janet Venable, the determined and dogged prosecution who always figures out where he’s coming from and continually tries to change his views. Vail sees her as an ideological nemesis, a victim of the bureaucratic machinery. He tries to offer her a way out in several ways: he tells her boss to cut her loose; he tries courting her in a bar; he puts her in a difficult situation concerning a big piece of evidence. Every time, his misgivings about the system are only reassured; each time, he derives motivation from the fact that the defendant is being charged unjustly.

The most pertinent moment in Vail’s dramatic arc is also his most vulnerable one. After a particularly harrowing episode with Stampler, Vail visits his interviewer in a bar. What he says to him there sounds more honest than anything he’s said till then. “I believe some very good people do very bad things. I believe in the basic goodness of people.” Vail has reached a point where his moral confusion closely mirrors that of the audience. We want to believe him now.

There are two climaxes in the film. In the first one, Stampler, the boy charged with the priest’s murder, conspires with Vail to get out of the seemingly unfair trial. This is an ending that provides maximum comfort and minimal thought for the ending. The quintessential courtroom drama where justice prevails, however unconventionally. But when Vail visits Stampler in his cell later that day, Stampler reveals his true identity - the innocent scapegoat was in fact the killer all along. The discovery is enough to shake Vail to his roots, and hence the audience.

In summary, Primal Fear delivers a subversive courtroom drama, a la a 12 Angry Men turned on its head. The arc of the traditional hero has never looked so untraditional.

A Scene from "Umberto D" (De Sicca, 1952)

Throughout the runtime of De Sicca’s neorealist film “Umberto D”, we watch helplessly as an elderly Umberto struggles with his growing financial crisis and impending destitution, all the while bearing the brunt of an almost completely solitary existence. His tribulations seem to know no end. As if the threat of eviction and the sudden emergence of a (possibly psychosomatic) fever aren’t enough, he has to survive by selling off family heirlooms one by one. His dog is taken up by the dog pound and is almost executed. Groping his way through all these ordeals, he finds company in the sole person of Maria, his housemaid. His scenes with her establish them as having a warm rapport. To Maria, Umberto is the wise and benevolent father figure. She is the loving child that he never had.

One of the most significant sequences of the film focuses on Maria’s own loneliness. This seems somewhat jarring to us, since until then we have automatically identified Maria with the role of Umberto’s calming spirit, or, as it were, the much needed Yin to our grumbling protagonist’s Yang; most of the comic relief in the film comes from her. And yet, about thirty minutes in, we get an exclusive, voyeuristic peek at her daily morning routine.

The scene starts in the wee hours of the day, with a rather highly strung Umberto calling the local clinic to send over someone to take him to the hospital. Maria’s small figure is seen getting up in the background. Umberto leaves the frame, and this time, we focus on Maria instead. Her eyes gaze upwards at the ceiling; a lone cat totters along the high glass roof. Maria sleepily sits with her head in her hands, and mutters what seems to be a line from a song. She gets up and enters the kitchen; a profile shot of her shows her lighting a match against a patch of wall that has been inundated with scratches made over years of drudgery. Suddenly, Umberto’s problems seem to pale in comparison. She walks over to the window, and once more sees the white cat, a dream that appears to be too good and too distant to be attainable. For a moment, she seems to have been transported somewhere else; Umberto, her client, friend and guardian of several years, is leaving with an illness, possibly for good. She is about to become the mother of a child whose father has yet to be identified. Her employer and her friends, like the ants above the sink, indulge in meaningless bourgeois pursuits and ignore her completely. She now comes back to the present and turns away from the window, her eyes moist. She walks over to a small rotary machine, and starts grinding away at her pain. Silent tears stream out, and she stretches her petite body to shut the door, unable to turn her back to her duty for a second.

Perhaps the scene, apart from providing a glimpse into Maria’s character, also serves to universalize Umberto’s misery. Refraining from a regression to the final shot of a faceless Roman crowd at the end of bicycle thieves, De Sicca resorts to filming the inside of a filthy kitchen, an image that conjures up a much more intimate association with the suffering of the people of Italy, and of the lower class in general.

On the Soundscape in Majid Majidi's "The Colours of Paradise"

Majid Majidi’s “The Colour of Paradise” opens, fittingly enough, with the sound of an arabic prayer being chanted against a completely black screen. That ancient practice of silent contemplation with arms folded and eyes closed shares common ground with the plight of the story’s blind protagonist. “You are both seen and unseen”, the voice proclaims, even as we are placed into Mohammed’s shoes. The rest of the film intermittently keeps taking us back to this dark, empty void; Mohammed’s being is plagued by a crippling loneliness that also proves to be a source of great depth and understanding for him. We see this intuitive profundity of his translated through calming, hypnotic visuals, paired with a rich soundscape.

Mohammed’s narrative is littered with natural sounds and patterns that help him establish a relation with and understand the world around him. This is held in strong contrast against, say, a drab classroom lecture concerning nature, where the only sound audible is the mundane click-clicking of needle on paper. It is seen here that the use of colour is heavily underplayed; the panels look somewhat desaturated and are filled mainly with hues that are harmonic with nature and the environment. Instead, it is sound that guides and holds the viewer’s attention. Some of the characters even have well-defined leitmotifs - Mohammed’s father, for instance. At times, events are portrayed or foreshadowed through the use of sound. Interestingly, there are only three instances of non-diegetic music playing in the film,and all of them concern moments that hold high emotional significance for the characters.

One of the first instances of prominent sound usages in the film is the scene in which Mohammed is waiting for his father in the deserted driveway of his school. After a long time, a strong longing for home starts settling in, signified by the disturbing absence of children’s voices in the school. Then, just as his homesickness is taking over, Mohammed hears a cat in the adjoining wilderness. He shoos it away, and scurries into the trees to rescue a baby sparrow that lies helpless on the ground. This is where the audience is first exposed to Mohammed’s immense sensitivity and intelligence. He climbs a tree, returns the barely visible sparrow safely to its mother, and listens in contentment as the reunited family cackles on in joy. This experience proves to be quite cathartic for little Mohammed. The sounds that he hears then are referenced several times throughout the movie. In particular, we hear the singing of the sparrows drown out the mundane music at the pawn shop, even as his father makes a deal with the broker over his son’s head.

The absence of sight makes Mohammed’s other senses come alive. He makes use of sound and touch to feel his way through the world and make sense of it. He feels the grass and the flowers, he runs his finger over the crops in the field, listens intently to the diligent woodpecker, and tries to decode individual grains of sand on the beach. Futile as his efforts may seem, we nevertheless relate to his struggle of trying to find meaning in a universe that appears to be evolving towards an increasingly chaotic state of suffering and madness. Perhaps Mohammed senses this despair as the movie progresses; perhaps his perception of human nature is as keen. as astute as that of the physical environment. This is made evident through a somewhat redundant outpour of emotion in which Mohammed shares his frustration with his blind teacher.

An equally fascinating aspect of the film’s versatile soundscape is the way it shapes the overall narrative structure. “The Colour of Paradise” may as well be seen as the story of a father who goes blind to what is truly essential in life, almost gets consumed on account of his wounded ego and, through a redemptive streak at the end, finally regains sight. This would not be an entirely unsubstantial interpretation, since after multiple viewings, it is clear that the sounds that characterize the father’s world are significantly different from those that define the son’s. The chirping of birds and insects is much less prevalent. It is an eerie, almost malevolent silence that mainly dominates here. Indeed, on four separate occasions, the father’s suppressed conscience tries to rear its head into his view through a series of wild, desperate and bloodcurdling cries of an unseen creature. They are consistently ignored, until finally, disaster strikes. Mohammed is swept away by an overflowing river. The father goes numb with fear, and the only sounds we hear are his desperate screams, barely audible over the deafening sound of the water. The following couple of minutes are a hard watch, with the father swimming  wildly downstream, searching in vain for his son. At long last, we cut abruptly to a beach that the father has been washed onto. Silence has superseded the agonizing roar of the river. The piercing cry of seagulls becomes audible gradually as the father regains consciousness and lumbers over to Mohammed lying a few meters away. The family has incurred a lot of loss, but stands united now, and much the wiser.