AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD / FITZCARRALDO

ABOUT THE FILMS:

AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD, 1971, AGFA, 95 min, Germany, Dir: Werner Herzog. 

In the mid-16th century, after annihilating the Incan empire, Pizarro leads his army of conquistadors over the Andes into the heart of the most savage environment on earth in search of the fabled City of Gold, El Dorado. As the soldiers battle starvation, Indians, the forces of nature, and each other, Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), “The Wrath of God,” is consumed with visions of conquering all of South America and revolts, leading his own army down a treacherous river on a doomed quest into oblivion. Featuring a seething, controlled performance from Klaus Kinski, this masterpiece from director Werner Herzog is an unforgettable portrait of madness and power.

FORMAT: DCP

FITZCARRALDO, 1982, AGFA, 158 min, Germany, Dir: Werner Herzog.

Werner Herzog is the reigning champ of impossible real-life adventures undertaken in the name of cinema. And this masterpiece is the romantic flipside to AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD — a backbreaking epic that ecstatically treads the line between a portrait of madness and a genuine expression of obsession. FITZCARRALDO fictionalizes the mad, true-life mission of South American rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald to establish an opera house in the Peruvian jungle — which can only be accomplished by hauling a gigantic river boat over a mountain. No special effects here — this is the real deal, with the impossible results executed before your eyes.

FORMAT: DCP

ABOUT THE TWILIGHT WORLD: 

The great filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his first novel, tells the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War II

In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and would meet many times, talking for hours and together unraveling the story of Onoda’s long war.

At the end of 1944, on Lubang Island in the Philippines, with Japanese troops about to withdraw, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was given orders by his superior officer: Hold the island until the Imperial army’s return. You are to defend its territory by guerrilla tactics, at all costs. . . . There is only one rule. You are forbidden to die by your own hand. In the event of your capture by the enemy, you are to give them all the misleading information you can. So began Onoda’s long campaign, during which he became fluent in the hidden language of the jungle. Soon weeks turned into months, months into years, and years into decades—until eventually time itself seemed to melt away. All the while Onoda continued to fight his fictitious war, at once surreal and tragic, at first with other soldiers, and then, finally, alone, a character in a novel of his own making.

In The Twilight World, Herzog immortalizes and imagines Onoda’s years of absurd yet epic struggle in an inimitable, hypnotic style—part documentary, part poem, and part dream—that will be instantly recognizable to fans of his films. The result is a novel completely unto itself, a sort of modern-day Robinson Crusoe tale: a glowing, dancing meditation on the purpose and meaning we give our lives.