Aguirre, The Wrath Of God’s Enigmatic Ending Wasn’t Werner Herzog’s Original Plan
Werner Herzog Filmproduktion By Shae Sennett/April 28, 2022 3:08 pm EST
Werner Herzog is renowned worldwide for his films featuring ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams locked in unwinnable battles against nature. “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” is the acclaimed 1972 entry in his directorial catalog. The period piece centers around a Spanish soldier, played by the notoriously tempestuous German actor Klaus Kinski, who leads a group of conquistadors on an ill-fated journey through South America in search of the fabled city of El Dorado.
Herzog has since revealed in an interview with Offscreen that his epic historical drama originally had another ending planned. Both the current ending and his initial idea offer a mystical and thought-provoking conclusion to the award-winning film, so it is hard to say which would have made for a stronger denouement. Either option would prove technically challenging, but anyone familiar with Herzog’s work knows that extreme difficulty is only a form of motivation for the director.
Aguirre, The Wrath Of God’s Enigmatic Ending Wasn’t Werner Herzog’s Original Plan
Werner Herzog Filmproduktion
By Shae Sennett/April 28, 2022 3:08 pm EST
Werner Herzog is renowned worldwide for his films featuring ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams locked in unwinnable battles against nature. “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” is the acclaimed 1972 entry in his directorial catalog. The period piece centers around a Spanish soldier, played by the notoriously tempestuous German actor Klaus Kinski, who leads a group of conquistadors on an ill-fated journey through South America in search of the fabled city of El Dorado.
Herzog has since revealed in an interview with Offscreen that his epic historical drama originally had another ending planned. Both the current ending and his initial idea offer a mystical and thought-provoking conclusion to the award-winning film, so it is hard to say which would have made for a stronger denouement. Either option would prove technically challenging, but anyone familiar with Herzog’s work knows that extreme difficulty is only a form of motivation for the director.
Herzog has since revealed in an interview with Offscreen that his epic historical drama originally had another ending planned. Both the current ending and his initial idea offer a mystical and thought-provoking conclusion to the award-winning film, so it is hard to say which would have made for a stronger denouement. Either option would prove technically challenging, but anyone familiar with Herzog’s work knows that extreme difficulty is only a form of motivation for the director.
Man vs. nature
Both endings were heavily symbolic
The raft failing to sail out to sea would have made for a powerful ending, but it likely would have presented some technical difficulties in the shooting process. A countercurrent might be difficult to capture clearly on film, whereas a stagnant set-piece like the boat in the tree creates a striking still image. Herzog adds that there was no way of getting materials like papier-mâché or plaster in the jungle. Instead, he hired a group of locals to build a boat around a large tree. It is up for debate as to whether the boat is real or a hallucination within the world of the film, but this confirms that the boat was real in a material sense.
Those interested in learning more about Herzog’s process would be well-advised to check out “Burden of Dreams,” a must-watch documentary about filmmaking that follows the shooting of his subsequent collaboration with Kinski, “Fitzcarraldo,” and the many insurmountable challenges that came with it.
