From the initial haunting scene descending from the mists of the mountainside into the depths of the Amazon jungle, we're taken on an odyssey of insanity. Watching the film, one senses the terror of being trapped in a whirlpool, hoping against hope for a way out. It never comes.
Kinski is the perfect vehicle for this madness, a single-minded agent of destruction whose purity in thought lies in its absolute devotion to power. His way must rule! Only when it's too late does anyone stand up to his beloved delusions.
I had a chance to view it on the big screen at the famed Texas Theater last week. And, boy, did it blow my socks off. Not just its enlarged presence on the big screen, but as a commentary on the suicide of our time. I can't tell you how many moments I wanted to scream out loud, "This is us!"
"This is us!"
The more dire the situation the more they cling to vain illusions of a future: passing laws, nominating a king, instituting a social structure. In stubbornly adhering to these rituals signifying nothing, the more they seal their fate while floating down a river into oblivion; running out of food, driven onward possessed by a false sense of entitlement. This is us.
Our pretense is everywhere, ceaselessly propagating our madness can continue forever. We're all supposed to be in on the joke, congratulating ourselves on our cleverness of lying and "getting away" with it. But just like the grotesquely doomed party of Aguirre, we only become more pathetic, more ridiculous, and more farcical by the day - until nothing is left.
BONUS FILM REVIEWS:
Anatomy of a Fall 7.5
I had my doubts while watching this on where exactly it was going with the story. Turns out my fears were mislaid by a rewarding ending. The film is an outstanding commentary on how peoples' lives look from the outside as compared to the inside. Or, at least, that was the intent. It does succeed in many ways but they failed to fully flesh out the story. The wife keeps saying there was more to their marriage than just the negative aspects that came to light. Fair enough. SHOW IT. Show us what brought you two together and the flower of love once nurtured. That would have been a home run instead of a triple.
The Holdovers 4
What a mess this film was. For some reason it was set in 1970 but the dialogue is very 2023. That's just the beginning of the contrivances for characters that have no real grounding and a story with no underlying truth. This was written wholly with the audience in mind as to what will get the most applause from moment to moment. These people simply had nothing to say regardless of how badly the film wanted to believe it has something to say.
Napoleon 1
Another Ridley Scott spectacle film. This will thrill the mouth-breathers who will be taken in by the huge battle scenes and allegedly kinky bedroom dialogue. Good for them! But while Scott is many things, he never has been and never will be a storyteller. I'm a huge Blade Runner fan and his broken narrative style worked perfectly for that film but only in an outlier case like that does it excel. The director is also highly defensive about his utter lack of historical accuracy and as a Napoleon fan I can tell you I don't know who that character is up on the screen, but it's definitely NOT Napoleon (or even a hint of Josephine).
Instead, the names were used as outlines to be filled in whole cloth from whatever commercial fantasies the filmmaker dreamed up. Scott's offensive response to those who criticized this approach was to say, "Get a life!" I suggest he should take his own advice to prevent any further waste of time and energy (his and ours).
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