Aguirre: The Wrath of God

Made these comments a couple of days ago in a different venue. I stand by them:

Fifteen years ago, my history teacher suggested a different approach to learning about the conquistadors and the colonization of South America. He dragged in an old TV in the classroom, closed the curtains, and started up a VHS tape of crummy quality with a movie about the subject. We were baffled. Everybody spoke German, yet they were all supposedly Spanish. And most of the time, they were just stuck on a river, on a raft; occasionally they were attacked by natives, at times they seemed to go insane. They fought, they died. And that was it, for ninety minutes. My teacher then passionately proclaimed to the class that this was his favourite movie ever, but most just looked at him and wondered what this guy was on. I was entranced. The images stayed with me for years, I couldn't shake them. What the hell did we just see?

I never remembered the name of that film, but I had a pretty good guess. And so, of course, when I watched Aguirre again recently, it all came back. What was a startling experience back then, in the worst possible watching conditions, was even more so now. Beautiful, crazy, hypnotic film.