“Wherever life is dynamic, wherever life touches us most directly, that’s where you’ll find the cinema.”
I saw
Aguirre my
sophomore year of college - I was still undecided at the time - in a film class that I took, and the moment the movie ended is when I decided to pursue a degree in film. During the viewing I had a sort of out-of-body experience, as if the images on the screen had absorbed my very essence. I no longer felt like I was watching a film, I felt like I was living it. It felt as if the film itself had become a living organism and swallowed me whole into its flickering belly.
I had always been a movie buff growing up but this was the first time I really became aware of the artistry of the medium, and the depth of the power to which it has the ability to affect us. The awareness felt as if some great change in my brain had begun, like I was experiencing my perceptions about life slowly begin to re-write themselves.
Seeing Aguirre was years away from the exact turning point in my life, but it acted as the catalyst that sent me on the path to discover that I could find a deep spirituality and solace, and even a sense of self in art (whatever medium it may be), which was a big deal because I abandoned religion at the age of 18, and for the years and years before this discovery, I had felt like I was wandering anxiously, aimlessly in the dark trying to figure out what the hell I was all about. This realization didn’t just give me a core though, it also showed me the power of art to act as a practice in empathy. In other words, when we’re completely willing and invested (an active participant rather than passive viewer/listener) in the artwork, it allows us to simulate the artist’s emotions, experiences, perceptions and beliefs as if they were our own, providing us the opportunity to connect with and understand people from all walks of life.
I’ll end with a
quote from the mad genius himself,
Werner Herzog: “Wherever life is dynamic, wherever life touches us most directly, that’s where you’ll find the cinema.”
I lied about that quote being the end though. Maybe you want to know what the movie is about!
Aguirre, the Wrath of God follows a group of conquistadors as they attempt to navigate the Amazon jungle in order to discover
El Dorado. The film is a meditation on the idea that man’s desire to conquer nature is a form of madness: a theme paramount to Herzog’s filmography. Herzog also seemed to hold the very
existentialist belief that the only certainty about life is that it’s absurd.
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