Word: herzog
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...rest of the film, Herzog does not make much more effort than this to help the audience understand the plot. From time to time a voice reads from the fictional diary of a monk who accompanied the fortune-hunters, but for the most part we are forced to rely on sparse dialogue and a relentlessly searching camera for our information...
...conquistadors' story is also presented without judgment. Herzog, the enfant terrible of the German film industry, is widely-known for his existentialist treatment of his subjects, and Aguirre is no different. Herzog's view of the Spaniards' abuse of the Indians they found in Latin America is offered through juxtaposition of images--four chained Indians struggle under the burden of a gaily-decorated sedan chair while its occupant looks on impassively; the monk impassively kills two Indians who fail to understand his efforts to proseletize. But the filmmaker's views are rarely more articulated than this, as if he accepts...
...Aguirre is little more than an extraordinarily beautiful enactment of an historical event. Herzog tells us little that we didn't already know, though he shows in magnificent detail the physical odds against which the conquistadors struggled in their desperate search for gold. If Kinski were a different kind of actor, Aguirre's steadily increasing megalomania might have provided a dynamic for the film, but he fails to project the reasons for his ruthless brutality. (The problem may be that the actors speak in German, and subtitles hardly aid in character development, but is more likely that Kinski...
Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan was one. So were his Cabinet colleagues, Ezer Weizman and Ariel Sharon. So were former Labor Premier Yitzhak Rabin and his Foreign Minister Yigal Allon. D.M.C. Leader Yigael Yadin held the rank, as did United Nations Ambassador Chaim Herzog, Tel Aviv Mayor Shlomo Lahat and Israel's Chief Rabbi (Ashkenazi) Shlomo Goren...
That, however, is not something he insists on, any more than he insists on the absurdity of the activities he patiently, unemphatically records in a movie that unfolds slowly but never slackly. The most admirable thing about Aguirre may be the discipline with which Herzog tells his tale. He does not indulge himself in any comments on the action or insist, as most historical dramatists do, on the obvious parallels between his material and modern issues. He does the audience the honor of allowing it to discover the blindnesses and obsessions, the sober lunacies he quietly lays...