the wrath of god, or this loco cabron on the amazon

The Werner Herzog film Aguirre, the Wrath of God details the disastrous 1560 adventure into the Amazon by some Spaniards (and their indigenous slaves) from Peru in search of El Dorado, a city full of gold to be stolen.  Of course El Dorado was just made up by clever indigenous people who knew exactly what to tell the Spaniards to give them a monetary hard-on.  Also, of course this was not the first disastrous expedition by greedy Spaniards.  There had been more than a few others that turned up nothing and got them lost, killed, or both.  In this particular adventure, the expedition is taken over in a mutiny by one Lope de Aguirre and things get real bad.  The film and real life (or what can be constructed from letters and testimonies from the time) agree on some points.  However, the departures are interesting and in my opinion they serve only to give a more negative opinion of Lope de Aguirre (not that I’m saying he deserves to have a good opinion about him).  However, knowing more gives me a somewhat less awful opinion about him.  For one, maybe because the confines of the movie did not allow him to do so, there is no exposition of Aguirre’s past.  Knowing that he was one of many adventurers who came to Peru to make it big and didn’t kind of puts his mutiny in perspective.  It makes it see somewhat more radical, especially after reading his letter to Phillip II.  Additionally, knowing that he killed the commander, Ursua, right away instead of holding him captive after wounding him and then later hanging him, makes his actions seem more human, less insane.  Lastly, the end of the film is wildly inaccurate, and Herzog seems to go out of his way to make him see crazy (which I’m sure he was, a little bit anyway)