Directors cut-Herzog & Aguirre, wrath of God.

Different from Kasper Hausman, which was lyrical and poetic, this film is mythical and ‘epic’. And I think some lives are like this, epic. Others are subdued. Issues of quality or validity don’t arise, only the yardstick of value fulfilment.

Listening to the director’s commentary in the DVDs extras section is an experience. The creator explaining, showing and sharing method, motivations, feelings. Post my departure of the physical plane perhaps my plane-review will be something like that, but with my motivations more clearly known to me. In my ‘life as the event’ things get pretty seamless, I forget I am in charge and quite capable (the forgetting is nowhere near as pervasive as it used to be).

A thing that stands out,was that because of a lack of finances ,most of Aguirre was ’one shot,one take'. The idea of the perfect shot or retakes were inconceivable.
I aware of how many times in reality creation, not getting things perfect or my version of ‘close to perfect’ I have gone over them and done them again? Sometimes a single issue has occupied me for years. What if I had had the attitude of reviewing, shrugging, then moving on? Although I tell myself no time has been wasted (this is something I comfort myself with) I do know that time could certainly have been differently used and misused. And then there is the intensity of Kinski as man and as charcter. That will have to be another post, since Kinski features in a number of Herzog’s films.


When asked how he managed to do it, he was only 28, had a small budget and a large cast and a location in nature, which was uncompromising. Herzog says,
“I had a clear perceptive and I was fortified with a strong philosophy to get through all of this”

My interpretation of this is that he had a strong mental blue print of the endeavour as well as a conviction borne out of a strong sense of personal and artistic value fulfilment. And so his cast and casting choices followed suit. The difference stance of ‘the director’ and my sometimes attempts to create my own reality is that, the film director is conscious. A film is an event of conscious creating. In traditional reality creation there is often a stumbling, even bumbling from one event to another? No film director, involved in such any endeavour, would dream of believing that any film of any merit could be made with such ‘inattention’.

I could talk about Aguirre for ages, its one of my all time favourite films. Probably before my Herzog as practise season is complete I will return to it, because within it, again I get a sense of how to do a life less ordinary.