Zorach, Cecilia Cazort. "Geographical Exploration as Metaphor in Recent German Narrative." The German Quarterly 59 (1986 ): 611-627.

    Zorach’s article analyzes the symbolic meaning of geographical exploration specifically within the context of German culture. She states that it is a long-standing theme throughout German narrative, heavily tied to the fact that historically Germany did not play a major role in any of the great explorations. Zorach argues that exploration is a way of exploring the boundary between civilization and nature, with the explorer acting as a figure between these two worlds. Exploration also acts as a metaphor for artistic expression, with creativity imagined as the last frontier and the outcome of conquest. On a whole, the exploration is never about contributing to society or advancing knowledge, but is conceived of as a more personal and subjective experience in which irrationality is a common theme. The journey is not a progression to discovery, but a haphazard product of individual consciousness in which the problematic searchers become far more interesting than the successful heroes.

    As this article points out, the geographical quest in Aguirre is about far more than finding El Dorado. The search for the Golden City is a MacGuffin or plot device that keeps the narrative driving forward but has little to do with the actual actions portrayed. Instead, Aguirre carries out this predominant theme of German narrative in the ways that Zorach suggests. The subjectivity and irrationality that she highlights as key elements are present in the manic figure of Aguirre as well as in the confusion between illusion and reality that occurs at the end of the film in the form of the ship in the tree. The journey is one man’s quest to carve a place for himself in history and follows a psychological rather than physical trajectory. At the same time, the idea that geographical exploration is a metaphor for artistic expression is reflected both in the character of Aguirre and the process of filmmaking. When Aguirre discusses his desire to “make history while others put plays upon the stage,” he is declaring the direction of history as his own form of creative expression. Zorach further argues that, in a way, he is talking about filmmaking. By disregarding the real expedition of Lope de Aguirre, Herzog is purposefully defying logic to create his own world that places art above historical fact. The goal of the geographical exploration of the film as a whole can be viewed as making history itself into a form of artistic expression.

Rosenstone, Robert A. "Inventing Historical Truth on the Silver Screen." Cineaste 29 (2004): 29-33.

    Rosenstone argues that dramatic history films merit consideration as historical documents, though they do not “do history” in the same manner as traditional sources. He takes issue with the idea that historical writing is viewed as incontrovertible fact, suggesting that it is really more of a genre of writing that cannot ever be read as the ultimate truth. Films dealing with history therefore cannot be expected to act as a window onto how the past really was, but must be judged as a construction in which the filmmaker selects certain facts as the most important, links the story to a broader context, and even makes up a few things. Rosenstone states that it is this process of invention inherent in the historical film that gives it its strength, for it provides a “counter-discourse” within history in which the insight of the individual filmmaker adds to the ongoing process of making meaning from the past. We can never truly know the past, but films that portray historical events are valuable as alternate interpretations of history and as reminders that the work of recording history is itself largely a construction.

    The ideas of historical truth and invention figure heavily into Aguirre, a film based on actual events but which is also very divergent from the recorded accounts of Lope de Aguirre’s journey in the Amazon. Judged by the criteria of historical writing, Aguirre fails due to its many inaccuracies, exaggerations, and inventions. Yet Rosenstone’s article allows one to view Aguirre as a valuable historical document because it offers another way to understand Spanish colonialism through Herzog’s personal vision, a perspective that is unique largely because of the creative liberties he takes. On another level, Aguirre can be viewed as a commentary on history that supports the same issues Rosenstone raises. The theme of illusion that runs throughout the film is linked to the notion of creating history. Just as the perception of Aguirre and his men is clouded at the end of the film, unable to distinguish illusion from reality, in recording history one can never claim to be giving an objective representation of the past. By playing with and even creating history in Aguirre, Herzog shows that standardized history is itself an illusion and that the job of historical documents is to simply offer different ways to think about the past.

Davidson, John E. "As Others Put Plays upon the Stage: Aguirre, Neocolonialism, and the New German Cinema." New German Critique 60 (1993): 101-130.

    Davidson notes the intersection of various forms of history within the New German Cinema movement, Herzog’s work, and Aguirre in particular. He argues that New German Cinema emerged from the country’s complex and changing relationship to colonialism, centered on the idea that Germany became colonized by American culture and lost its own form of artistic expression. Thus, the film movement was founded on a myth of starting from “ground zero,” trying to regain a voice distinct from Hollywood but at the same time allowing the country to regain its place within Western culture. In addition, the films would serve as a promotional tool in Third World countries with a shift to the neocolonialist emphasis on portraying Western culture favorably to the previously colonized nations.

    Within this historical context, Aguirre functions as a commentary on German film history and the process of moving into a new era. Davidson cites the opening scene of the film as a kind of homage to German film heritage, stating that the descent of the conquistadors down the misty mountainside recalls both the tradition of German mountain films and the opening scene of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. Yet as the film progresses it both reformulates and rejects this canon as the Spaniards must leave behind all of their relics, symbolizing the “baggage of history.” Aguirre picks up on New German Cinema’s myth of starting fresh, allowing Herzog to formulate his own kind of new historical reality. In addition to referencing the histories of colonialism and German film though, Aguirre offers a commentary on the act of creating history and the illusion inherent in the process. The Spaniards record their journey and lay claim to land throughout the film by writing it down in a completely futile manner, which Davidson argues suggests that the writing of history is an empty illusion. Thus, even as filmmaking may be creating an illusion of reality, it is in fact similar to the process of creating history. In effect, as a filmmaker Herzog does what Aguirre claims he will do: to “make history” as opposed to others who merely “put plays upon the stage.”

Bachmann, Gideon. "The Man on the Volcano: A Portrait of Werner Herzog." Film Quarterly 31 (1977): 2-10.

    Bachmann takes a look at the personality of Werner Herzog in an effort to understand the man behind the films. In particular, he examines Herzog’s penchant for storytelling in his own life and the way in which he tends to exaggerate reality in recounting his experiences. Bachmann states that Herzog draws no line between fact and fiction and does not see this embellishment as fictionalized invention. In fact, the author claims that the secret to Herzog’s films is his “ability to convince the viewer that Herzog’s version of the truth is in fact truth.” The man has the ability to create a reality and bring fantastic visions to material fulfillment. He is opposed to the idea that filmmaking is a kind of manipulation and does not believe he alters the objectivity of people or situations by incorporating them into his works. Herzog's ultimate goal is to produce images that enlighten and broaden human understanding, and he feels compelled to go to spectacular ends to force these visions out of himself for the world to see.

    Herzog’s relationship to fiction and reality plays a key role in understanding Aguirre and the way in which it handles history. The film deals heavily with concepts of illusion and the difficulty of distinguishing between fact and fiction, particularly in the final scenes of the film when the men on the raft lose all hold on reality. Yet taking a step back, Bachmann’s notion of Herzog as an inventor (though he himself rejects this characterization) must be considered in relation to how the film seeks to portray history. As several of the other articles in this project stress, Aguirre plays with real historical events and fashions a new story out of an amalgamation of facts and Herzog’s own personal vision. The film truly tries to create an illusion of historical reality, suggesting that the recording of history can never be viewed as a representation of objective truth. While one can examine the character of Aguirre and his quest as a work of illusion within the film, Herzog’s personal process of filmmaking can also be seen as uniquely tied to the creation of an illusion of reality, perhaps even more so than the basic illusion inherent in cinema as a mechanical production. Aguirre and Herzog’s overall style can be viewed as an allegory for history itself, which is truly all about creating the illusion that one version of the truth is the truth.

Sharman, Gundula M. "The Jungle Strikes Back: European Defeat at the Hands of the South American Landscape in the Films of Werner Herzog." Journal of Transatlantic Studies 2 (2004): 96-109.

    Sharman examines the complex relationship between Europe and South America by analyzing European interactions with the jungle in film. In particular, he focuses on how the jungle can be interpreted as the victor in Aguirre, considering how the characters in the film and even Herzog himself interact with it as a character of its own. For Sharman, the use of the jungle by European filmmakers is a kind of “post-colonial colonization” in which Europeans continue to exploit the resources of South America by trying to co-opt its spiritual and expressive qualities. Throwing man against the jungle and having him lose is a way for the Western world to resolve its anxiety over the advances of science and the possibility that humans may destroy themselves through technology. Thus, even as the Amazon is being destroyed by man’s advances, European filmmakers and Herzog in particular use the victorious jungle to create a new myth in which nature always wins. Sharman warns that this use of the jungle to satisfy a European “metaphysical need” is undoubtedly still a form of exploitation and threatens to further use up the resources of the natural world by fetishizing it as a kind of spiritual object.

    While Aguirre is often viewed as mainly critical of European colonial tendencies, Sharman’s analysis complicates the relationship between the film and the portrayal of Spanish conquest in the Amazon. It is clear that the jungle is the victor in the film, and the completeness of the its triumph is most evident in the final scene when all but Aguirre have fallen and monkeys begin to overrun the raft as the lone survivor makes an eloquent yet futile speech about how he will determine the course of history. But Sharman points out that this European failure, put forth as a representation of historical truth, is “at best an illusion,” a theme that runs throughout the film itself. With the failure of Aguirre, Herzog and the European psyche are able to triumph and find release by using the primitive power of the jungle to deal with their own postmodern disillusionment. Thus, while the original forms of colonialism may be criticized in Aguirre, the film can in fact be viewed as exercising a new kind of cultural colonization through the exploitation of the symbolic power of the jungle. This article establishes the importance of analyzing Aguirre within the historical context of colonialism to understand how a portrayal of the interaction between the West and the jungle in the past reflects and complicates present-day cultural relations.

Kania, Andrew. "The Illusion of Realism in Film." British Journal of Aesthetics 42 (2002): 243-258.

    Film as a technological medium is entirely based on an illusion: the illusion of motion. In this article, Kania addresses the ambiguity that exists between illusion and reality when viewing a film and highlights two different kinds of illusionism involved in cinema. Weak illusionism is simply the perception that the images being projected on the screen at 24 frames per second are moving. On another level, strong illusionism occurs when viewers become part of the imaginary world they see on the screen. Kania tries to dismiss claims made by others that cinema represents a special kind of illusion in which the images really are moving in some kind of “higher-order” sense. Granting this to be true places all visual perception on a slippery slope, for if something is deemed to be real simply because it seems real, every illusion in the world becomes real and all distinctions between these two spheres break down. Acknowledging that reality only exists in opposition to unreality or illusion, Kania concludes that in the case of film we must accept that it is an illusion to avoid complicating matters unnecessarily.

    Kania’s article is useful in understanding the theme of illusion running throughout Aguirre, especially the break down of all sense of reality that occurs towards the end of the film. The characters on the raft experience the very confusion that Kania deals with in the article surrounding how one can know if an illusion is real or not. When the men see a ship in a tree, they argue over its existence while Herzog at first holds the vision back from the audience. While the viewers do not see the image, it is easy to dismiss the ship as the delusions of men approaching insanity. Yet when the ship finally appears in the tree before the viewers’ eyes, they are forced to question their own ability to distinguish between reality and illusion in film. This is the strong illusionism that Kania refers to, which allows viewers to grant the possibility that the ship is there in the imaginary world created on the screen. While other articles have highlighted how the theme of illusion in Aguirre ties into the creation of history, this article allows one to see a similarity between cinema and creating history by highlighting the illusionism involved in filmmaking itself. The confusion of the characters combined with the uncertainty of the viewers regarding the images in Aguirre make us aware that the process of watching a film must always involve entrance into an ambiguous state between reality and illusion.

Godfrey, Brian J. "Regional Depiction in Contemporary Film." Geographical Review 83 (1993): 428-440.

    Godfrey analyzes the style and cultural implications of depictions of the Amazon in several recent films, including Aguirre. He argues that the jungle serves as a site of negotiation for the relationship between nature and culture, offering a particularly rich basis from which filmmakers can express their unique perspectives. While the insights of often auteur-style directors attracted to the Amazon are valuable, Godfrey warns of several biases inherent in regional depiction in film: the personal vision of the director, the production circumstances, the necessity of meeting audience expectations regarding genre and box office success, and the political and cultural concerns of the society to which the filmmaker belongs. It is this last bias that fundamentally shapes a film’s ideology and leads Godfrey to conclude that outsiders bring the themes of their own culture into the Amazon without letting the voice of the Amazon region itself come through in films.

    In considering Aguirre’s treatment of history, it is important to acknowledge the fact that the geographical location of the film carries its own story, which must in some way figure into the film’s portrayal. Herzog is often considered to be an auteur with a distinct personal vision, and Aguirre demonstrates the biases of regional depiction that Godfrey attributes to the cultural and personal beliefs of the filmmaker. Throughout the film, the natives of the Amazon and the jungle itself merely serve as a background to the central focus on the Spanish conquistadors. Godfrey argues that this element reveals that the Western mind cannot fully encounter or experience the Amazon because it functions on a level outside of the linear and rational schemes of the men blinded by their search for El Dorado. Aguirre’s treatment of Amazonian history is therefore a questioning of the biases inherent in all forms of history, for just as filmmaking cannot be viewed as an objective act, the cultural context of those recording the past will always influence the nature of their account.

Waller, Gregory A. "'Aguirre, The Wrath of God': History, Theater, and the Camera." South Atlantic Review 46 (1981): 55-69.

    Waller cites history and theater as the two main forms of activity occurring throughout Aguirre and explores the relationship between the two. He argues that Herzog uses the camera to combine both spheres, setting it up both as a theatrical framing device and as an instrument for recording history. Throughout the film, the camera plays a number of roles including those of a narrator, a judge, and a kind of diary-keeping figure. It even seems to be a member of the expedition when it jerks about with the conquistadors as they journey through the swampy jungle. Yet Waller argues that the camera's primary role is that of a witness, to both the play unfolding before it and the history being created. His main point is that the character Aguirre uses dramatic staging to attain his goal of forging history by keeping up the performance of Spanish society on the decaying raft.

    For Aguirre, creating a play is a form of control. By using the raft as his stage and crafting roles for the other men on his expedition, he keeps up an illusion of normalcy and order while pushing further into the disorder of the jungle and gaining power. Waller’s article connects well to Levine’s theory of persuasion, as he suggests that Aguirre uses El Dorado and the play-world around it as tools of manipulation and illusion in pursuit of his ultimate goal. For example, he sets up Guzman as King of the New World, draws up a document formally breaking with Philip II, and enforces class divisions in living areas on the small space of the raft. All of this is of course meaningless, and long shots revealing the small raft floating in the middle of the huge Amazon River show the absurdity of this dramatic enactment. Similar to the way in which many of the other articles in this project align filmmaking with creating history through the illusion involved in both, Waller’s article shows that these two forms also have inherently theatrical qualities. In its treatment of historical content, Aguirre the film does what Aguirre the character attempts to do in staging a dramatic story to influence the process of approaching and understanding history.

Koepnick, Lutz P. "Colonial Forestry: Sylvan Politics in Werner Herzog's Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo," JSTOR: New German Critique: No. 60, Special Issue on German Film History, p. 133

According to Koepnik’s essay “Colonial Forestry: Sylvan Politics in Werner Herzog’s Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo,” Herzog’s films both set an encounter between the imperialist West and what he calls the “sylvan otherness of the Peruvian jungle” (134). The idea of sylvanism is that uncontrolled nature represents the negative image of civilization, and that the purpose of the colonial endeavors is to domestic the wild jungle.  Both films are said to tell the story of Western colonialist who fail in their adventures and enterprises because they cannot escape the imagination of the West, which cannot capture the complexity and treachery of the jungle. Yet while in Aguirre the protagonist cannot escape the certain death of his adventure, Fitzcarraldo shows its hero embracing opera in order to confront the abyss between the West and the other (135).  Herzog’s Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo also succeeds at avoiding become ethnological sketches of the natives, meaning that the movies keep the viewpoint of the colonialist, creating for the spectator a clear view of the limited worldview of the would-be colonialists.

The article examines one of the central themes of Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo through the central dynamics of its narrative, while at the same time examining how Herzog uses cinematic language to reinforce the theme of colonialism against the unbending power of nature. The similarity between the two films is examined by Koepnik, while examining how Fitzcarraldo is able to escape from the death circle that Aguirre and his men finally succumb to.

Alkan Chipperfield. "Murmurs from a Shadowless Land: Fragmentary Reflections on the Cinema of Werner Herzog," Senses of Cinema http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/15/herzog_alkan.html

This personal essay of a film curator on Herzog’s body of work states that Werner Herzog “the world is transfixed, rendered hopelessly, exquisitely weightless, ultimately diffusing beyond grasp the solid structures within which tragedy or satire can take root.” The essay examines the propensity of Herzog to examine the inscrutable and the remote landscapes of such films as Aguirre: Wrath of God and Heart of Glass. The essay uses both the poetic language of his films and Herzog’s own attempts at explaining his wondrous films.  Herzog seeks “a landscape with almost human qualities” that contains both the individual human being and the vast, inhospitable world that surrounds it. The jungle becomes for Herzog the last villain in the story of mankind, as seen in Aguirre’s story.

His films are seen by Alkan Chipperfield as laying within a Heart of Glass whose shadows they never escape from. This “heart of glass” represents a preoccupation with “states of being” rather than narrative action as in traditional Hollywood films. This focus gives his films a mythical, prophetic quality that seeks to find the interior nature of man. His films exist within a dream landscape that escapes categorization, making his films work only within a strata of myths and dreams. The author conclusively states that trying to understand Werner Herzog’s films outside of this level, say through political or historical analysis, is to capture little of the effectiveness of his films.

The essay gives a personal and emotional analysis for Herzog’s films. It helps understand the place of landscapes in Aguirre: Wrath of God and how that same element works within Herzog’s wider body of work. The essay defends Herzog’s films from attacks over its historical and/or political irresponsibility by stating that it works at a higher metaphysical plane that escapes political explanation or categorization. His films are ultimately about exploring the inscrutable in the human experience within a dangerous and mythical landscape.

Waller, Gregory A. "Aguirre: The Wrath of God: History, Theater and the Camera ," JSTOR: South Atlantic Review: Vol. 46, No. 2, p. [55]

Gregory A. Waller’s essay argues that Herzog sought to present through his film Aguirre: Wrath of God that Aguirre’s own sense of history and theater are illuminated by including into the analysis the participation of the camera within the story’s events. The use of the camera by Herzog allows the spectator to see “the camera’s relationship to the forging of history, to the producing of plays, and, finally, to the possibilities of creating cinema” (55). The telling of the story of Aguirre is fictionalized in the same measure as Shakespeare’s Richard III.  Yet the narrative seeks to argue for different conceptions of history, with the old European order of play-making conflicting with the Great-Man theory of Aguirre. Aguirre’s thunderous soliloquies speak to both the power of theater and its limitations, as in the end he is alone and has failed (though his obsession does not let him accept this). The camera’s purpose in Aguirre is as a witness, as if history is being recorded for posterity.  Whether active or passive, its purpose is to remain as part of the expedition. The author says one can argue that the final scene shows the camera’s liberation from this position as an escape from the self-defeating existence of both Aguirre and his countrymen. Yet the camera remains on the raft still part of the limits set by the will of Aguirre. Ultimately the camera cannot escape into the jungle and overcome the cruel realities of Aguirre’s wrath.

Waller’s essay on Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God gives a deep study of the film’s narrative and the meaning of Herzog’s cinematic approach as embodied in his use of camera to both represent Aguirre’s bold soliloquies and the jungle’s entrapment of its would-be conquerors. The film is analyzed for its shaping of history to serve themes that both focus on and undermine the figure of Aguirre, whose unbending will to power and glory is examined for its representation of human nature. The essay further seeks to present an understanding of the connection between the historical setting of Aguirre and the filmmaker’s purpose, which has been a source of great controversy in critical circles.

Berman, Russel A. "The Recipient as Spectator: West German Film and Poetry in the Seventies," JSTOR: German Quarterly: Vol. 55, No. 4, p. 499
    This essay seeks to explore the connection between poetry and film in West Germany during the 1970s, as both began to resurge there during that period. The author argues that the connection between the new realist poetry and the New German Cinema of Wenders and Herzog arise from the similarity in their constructions that seek a common recipient, meaning the “pure viewer” (501-502). The cinematic language of Herzog’s films work in the same way as the poetic language of Theobaldy’s poetical language. Regardless of their thematic differences, they both share a similar desire of creating images that confound the spectator, as Theobaldy attests to. Herzog denies a specific language of realism in film while creating a passive receptor of images (the spectator). Berman argues that this proves to be a corollary to the poetic realism of Theobaldy’s poems. Both converge in the production of a viewer that is transfixed by the impossibility of communication. Furthermore, the inability of communication stems from both the New German Cinema’s and the New Realist Poetry’s attempt to define themselves as oppositional forces to the status quo in Western Germany, becoming forms of counter-cultural institutions. Yet these forms of cultural resistance are themselves forces of commodified entertainment that cannot escape the commercial demands of capitalism.
    As pertains to Aguirre: Wrath of God and Herzog’s body of work the essay helps to create connections between Herzog’s work and the artistic flowering in other genres that arose in the 1970s. “The Recipient as Spectator” also helps to condense an understanding of the poetic quality that is inherent in Herzog’s image, especially in Aguirre, where the overwhelming images Herzog creates makes any attempt at a complete understanding of their meaning difficult if not impossible. The study of Herzog’s opus along with the concurrent poetry movement of the seventies help also to grasp the historical context of his films as a measurement of the wider movement for a redefinition of art across genres in West Germany.

Hedges, Inez and John Bernstein. "History, Style, Authorship: The Question of Origins in the New German Cinema,"
JSTOR: Journal of Contemporary History: Vol. 19, No. 1, Historians and Movies: The State of the Art: Part 2, p. [171]

    This article explores how notions of film criticism such as style, authorship and originality are conditioned by history and uses the films of the New German Cinema to examine its theory. Inez Hedges and John Bernstein argue that the films of the New German Cinema, including Werner Herzog’s films, are shaped by history in the following ways: in that their originality stems from literary precedents, that its cinematic style arises from anxiety over origins, and that giving the films an authorial understanding is misplaced. The essay rests its case largely by analyzing Andre Bazin’s seemingly contradictory belief in both a cinema of realism and a cinema of auteurs. They argue that this contradiction between authors and realism can be resolved by understanding that both reside in the phenomenology of perception, namely that the spectator decides what is realistic and what is shaped by the auteur’s vision.
    The New German cinema sought to partake of a radical new expansion of Bazin’s vision by exploring new avenues of reality that were left unexplored by past cinematic movements. The new movement seeks to create a cinema “founded upon the impossibility of expression,” a cinema that seeks to allow Germany to create a new identity that turns away from the Nazi past. This is seen especially acutely in Aguirre: Wrath of God where Aguirre represents the madness of Germany’s Nazi past. A way away from silence can be found in Herzog’s Kaspar Hauser and Woyzeck where the protagonist seeks to communicate with the world even as he is becoming an anachronism. Their stories can be found in the literature that has influenced them, and thus deny the overarching auteurism that seem to dominate one’s understanding of Herzog’s films. Yet after the destructive ends of these characters the only image left for the spectator is those conjured up by Herzog’s style. As pertains to Aguirre the essay helps clarify what many critics consider is Herzog’s historical attempt to create a new German identity that creates in 1945 a “Year Zero” event where Germany is reborn from its destructive past.

Bachman, Gideon. "The Man on the Volcano: A Portrait of Werner Herzog," JSTOR: Film Quarterly: Vol. 31, No. 1, p. [2]

    Gideon Bachman seeks to analyze Herzog as both a man and a filmmaker. He considers separating Herzog the person from his films as difficult if not impossible. Herzog has created a public image of himself that subsumes and merges with an understanding of his films. The enigmatic and charismatic figure of Werner Herzog as a public persona determines the style of his films. From his documentaries to his fiction features, Herzog seeks to create an art that uncovers universal human truths while at the same time subsuming his themes within his own personal vision. Herzog describes how his own personality plays a part in the development of the stories of his films, as his own desires are embodied in the images he creates. These images depict “man alone” in the wilderness, even within civilization.

    Yet Bachmann also considers that the themes of Herzog’s films point toward the futility of his own attempts at greatness. Herzog considers himself as a great artist whose films will be seen 200 years from now, as if he is pursuing a grand mission that will fundamentally shape at least the future of cinema (8). This seemingly messianistic grasp for immortality is bounded up in both his films and the anecdotes that define his public persona. Whether in his brave (or also foolhardy) attempt at filming from a volcano only moments from eruption to the monstrous dangers that flow from seeking to film the jungle landscapes of Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo, his travails show a seriousness of intention (or madness) that embody Herzog’s filmmaking.

    Bachmann’s analysis of Herzog the filmmaker helps inform the important relationship between Herzog the auteur and the product of his work, especially in the case of Aguirre: Wrath of God. The importance given to the relationship between Herzog’s persona and his films exists with both his supporters and detractors. The “portrait” of Werner Herzog at a relatively early part of his career (in the mid-70s) allows for a clear understanding of his relative standing as an important director in that period of time.

            Producing Herzog: from a body of images has as its central argument that Herzog is “the essential fatherless child of contemporary cinema: where politics and history tend to vaporize in the substance of images which represent them and where the critical viewer is always and only threatened by his or her own fantasies” (19). Timothy Corrigan’s essay cements the importance of Herzog’s own persona into his films, as his auteur status seeks to shield him from presenting works that are responsible to a set of politics or a sense of history instead of only his own artistic vision. While his auteur status is a commercial fabrication, it is essential in constructing the Herzog film like Aguirre and Nosferatu. The magical and unreal elements of his films seek to foster a world separate from reality, in which images matter more than words and ideas.

Herzog avoids entertaining a language of cinema that is supported by filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and instead seeks to develop a cinema of images as found in filmmakers such as Terrence Malick. His films avoid literate irony in favor of imagistic irony.  Favoring the image over film language flows from his dictum that cinema is an art of the illiterates, an art that must be experienced not analyzed intellectually.  Yet his films do not seek to be merely populist works as they strive to achieve a deeper meaning while revolutionizing the way film is experienced.

            The essayist helps to situate Herzog’s films within the wider context of not only New German Cinema but within the wider debates encompassing all art cinema. Corrigan analyzes how the politics and historical contexts of his films are unimportant to the purpose of the filmmaker as he seeks to uncover a deeper reality through his films. As pertains to Aguirre: Wrath of God, the essay helps examine the wider themes and elements that belong to Herzog’s body of work. Corrigan’s essay answers criticism of Herzog’s lack of political and historical specificity by identifying his own intentions, no clearer than in Aguirre.

Davidson, John E. "As Others Put Plays upon the Stage: Aguirre, Neocolonialism, and the New German Cinema," JSTOR: New German Critique: No. 60, Special Issue on German Film History, p. 101

    This 1992 essay argues that Werner Herzog’s Aguirre serves a neocolonial purpose by legitimating the West’s attempt at dominating historical discourse over imperialism. The author situates Werner’s films as attempting to create a new German identity as part of the New German Cinema movement. This pursuit, however, seeks to both shroud and prolong Germany’s historical desire of creating a distinctive cultural definition of itself as superior to others, this time by subsuming the excesses of colonialism and creating a new discourse that unwittingly transforms the relationship between the civilized world and the other into a neocolonial one. Davidson, the essay’s author, further argues that Herzog seeks to imagine his work as transcendental to history, precluding any attempt at analyzing his work as neocolonialist. Any attempt at considering Aguirre as an anti-colonial film is wrong, as any such analysis does not contextualize Werner Herzog and is films as mere neocolonialist fabrications. Herzog’s films are only minor literature that will become subsumed underneath its ill-advised, noxious and regressive politics.

    The argument made by John E. Davidson constructs the post-modern critique of Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: Wrath of God. The essay deconstructs what critics of Herzog consider is his superficial anti-colonialism by reconsidering Herzog’s purpose at constructing the story of Aguirre within a context that is alien to modernity. Taking up a leftist stance, Davidson considers Herzog’s films as dangerously regressive. By denying film as possibly existing only for its own sake (“art for art’s sake”) the essayist attacks the seemingly apolitical tact of Herzog’s films, opposing Herzog’s attempts at making his films as purely works of art. This critique of Herzog ultimately seeks to make apolitical films as normatively inferior to political films, in many ways recreating the critiques made against Fellini by Marxist film theorists enamored with Italian neorealism.

Godfrey, Brian J. "Regional Depiction in Contemporary Film," JSTOR: Geographical Review: Vol. 83, No. 4, p. [428]

    Geographic analysis is presented for three films: Aguirre, Bye Bye Brazil and The Emerald Forest. The essayist seeks to portray film as a “promising medium” for the analysis of popular depictions of the geography of regions. While accepting that auterism creates a subjective aspect to depictions that both filter and distort reality, the geographer Brian J. Godfrey considers films as useful in examining the relationship between culture and nature. He examines how nature is depicted in film, specifically the Amazonian rainforest that plays an important part in Herzog’s film as well as in Bye Bye Brazil and The Emerald Forest. He further questions why Aguirre: Wrath of God is fictionalized, considering that Aguirre’s historical reality suffers a fate similar to the film’s version. He concludes that Herzog made this choice for both cinematic and abstract reasons, citing Herzog’s own foray into post-modernism by questioning the objectivity of historical sources. He further examines the story as exemplifying the punishing nature of the rainforest and the cultural chasm between the Spaniards and the native indigenous peoples. The geographer also examines the other two films by analyzing their depiction of geography and its connection to human society. Godfrey concludes that the films’ realism suffers from the auteristic visions of their directors, but most importantly suffer from not taking into account the viewpoints of the indigenous people by not given them agency. All the films see the rainforest and its inhabitants from the viewpoint of outsiders and are thus are limited in their portrayal of the Amazonian reality.

The essay helps to give a geographic analysis of Aguirre by focusing on the interaction between nature and man in Herzog’s film. The rainforest plays a central role in Aguirre by taking on a personified dimension as the destroyer of men’s ambitions. By adding a geographer’s analysis to an understanding of the film, this essay aids in achieving a fuller picture of the many dynamics within Herzog’s narrative.

Sharman, Gundula M. THE JUNGLE STRIKES BACK: EUROPEAN DEFEAT AT THE HANDS OF THE SOUTH AMERICAN LANDSCAPE IN THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG. Journal of Transatlantic Studies; Spring2004, Vol. 2 Issue 1, p96-109, 14p

In Herzog’s films “individual endeavor is invariably overcome by the omnipotence of the jungle”. The adventurer is inevitably destroyed in his attempts to control and tame his environment (97). Yet the reality of South America’s rainforests is their destruction by the forces of modernization. This essay examines whether Herzog’s films Aguirre: Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo can be considered anti-colonial films as they do not contend realistically with the problems of the neocolonialism. Contrasting Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo with Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams the writer finds that Werner Herzog puts his vision ahead of the needs of both the environment and the native populations that play essential roles in both of Herzog’s films. The South American landscape is scarred by the West’s encroachment on its environment, rather than the environment swallowing up and defeating the colonial pretensions of visionaries such as Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo. Rather than creating progressive pictures, Sharman considers Herzog as politically negligent in creating fantasies that serve his own metaphysical needs rather than that of criticizing the exploitation of the jungle at the hands of the West.

As pertains to Aguirre, the essay analyzes the difference between reality and the film’s representation of it, as well as examines Herzog’s seemingly apolitical approach to film. “The Jungle Strikes Back” questions the morality of films made by auteurs that do not take into account the social, political and economic realities of the environments where their dreams are envisioned and filmed. The perilous process of film production in both Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo must also factor into the analysis of a film’s worth as it develops the potentially morally and politically dubious visions of its directors. The essay chastises Herzog’s lack of social and moral responsibility, questioning the validity of his films as art for art’s sake in spite of the resulting dangers that spring from a film’s creation as in Aguirre.