Wednesday, February 6, 2008
I wouldn't really be Kommitted to Klassiks at all if I didn't try to see some more Werner Herzog. I had only seen Nosferatu and Grizzly Man before this, both of which I enjoyed but neither of which I could quite call great.
If I was actually reviewing movies and not just briefly posting, I might try to draw out some suspense here about how Aguirre stacked up. But fuck that noise. I'm not a professional. I thought this was a great movie.
Madness, that's the running theme I'm seeing in Herzog's films. Not just in the characters, per se. The movies them selves seem a little crazy. And this here one goes fucking nuts. Not in some wacky, up is down, omg the dog is talking sort of way. Just, the movie and all the characters slowly lose their grip on rationality. It doesn't get all zany or fast paced or intense or action packed. Although there is a part where a guy is counting and someone cuts his head off and it rolls across the ground, lands upright and counts one more number.
The visuals in this movie are astounding, although not in that well lit, perfectly framed, saturated color kind of way. It's shot straightforward, but what we see is incredible. It's more like Herzog is tapping us on the shoulder, pointing, and saying, "Look at that! It's a bunch of explorers on some weird rickety raft travelling down a river in the jungle and they have a horse on the raft walking around. Can you believe this shit?"
I will certainly have to see more by this crazy German bastard.
2 comments:
When I watched it, dad came down and watched it for like 25 minutes and was like "this is boring" and then left.
I'm assuming he watched the early part where it's just people riding down a river mostly, and not during the part when, say, that one guy gets hit by a spear and says "the longer spears are coming into fashion" and then falls over and dies.
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