By Dan Jardine
The pre-credits sequence of Werner Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God informs us that the film is based on the journals of the monk Gaspar de Carvajal, who accompanied the 16th century expeditionary forces of Spain’s Gonzalo Pizarro. This announcement proves to be about as truthful as the claim of authenticity that kicks off the Coen brothers' masterful Fargo, or those same filmmakers' insistence that O Brother, Where Art Thou? owes its allegiance to Homer; which is to say Herzog's claim is an amusing bit of auterist fabrication which reminds us that, for all its attempts to recreate historical reality, Aguirre is a movie, filtered through the perceptions and preconceptions of one man. And what a man this is. As Outlaw Vern might note, one masterful filmatist; to the rest of us, one Werner Herzog.
Once one moves beyond this opening bit of posturing, it is tempting to assert that Herzog’s theses in Aguirre are completely realized in the film’s opening and closing scenes. Of course, to do so would be to underestimate the power, magnificence and importance of the film’s intervening 90 minutes, but still, the temptation remains. As I am, like Oscar Wilde, able to resist everything except temptation, why not explore it? 
The film’s rightfully famous opening shot, with the camera mounted at a discreet distance, gives us a stunning image of an Andean mountain through a hazy mist, and is followed quickly by a stately zoom in that appears to show us a trail of ant-like creatures working their way down the mountain. As we get closer, it is revealed that these are not ants, but men, conquistadores, in fact, in full military regalia, winding their way down a rugged path, to the accompaniment of Florian Fricke’s ethereal and haunting score. The men move down, down, down, through the clouds, but paradoxically remain in a fog throughout. Most of the laborious carting of materials appears to be done by both llamas and natives, some (most? all? this is unclear) of whom are chained together, while the conquistadores carry only their armor and weaponry. It is entirely appropriate that all that these men bring to this wilderness are instruments of death and destruction. Early on, a cage crashes down the mountainside, its contents splattered against the unforgiving rocks. Later, a cannon also falls to its doom, exploding in a fireball at the mountain’s base. The jungle looks on impassively, absorbing the relics of human refuse as if we were infinitesimal fossils trapped between layers of Cambrian rock. And the men march on.
Trailing the expedition is the man we will come to recognize as the film’s titular character, played with typical gusto by the irrepressible Klaus Kinski. Holding onto the delicate hand of a young lady we later learn is his daughter, Flores (Cecilia Rivera), Aguirre guides the fair maiden through the wilderness. Does she symbolize the expedition’s dreams of bringing all that is great about European culture—beauty, purity, religious faith—to the jungle? Or is she inserted by Herzog as an offering to the pagan gods for a golden harvest? It’s hard not to be affected by Aguirre’s obvious adoration of his daughter; that is, until in his madness he also talks of marrying her. Five minutes pass, and no one has spoken, and when the men finally reach the river, Herzog’s first shots are of a brood of young swine drinking deeply. Does this really require interpretation? 
And what to make of the film’s final moments? The expedition now clearly doomed, Herzog’s camera circles the raft in ever-shrinking concentric circles. Like a cubist painting, which shows us all sides at once, Herzog presents the remnants of the expedition from every conceivable angle, so there can be no hiding, and no doubt about what has become of this once apparently magnificent array of humanity. All but Aguirre are dead. Like murder victims trapped in an Agatha Christie plot, they have fallen in eerie succession to invisible executioners. These men, while certainly in it, are not creatures of this world. They stuck out like Courtney Love at a Lilith Fair concert. And in a bit of genius, Herzog replaces Aguirre’s crew of men with monkeys. So reminiscent of the army of hideous rats that swarm the vampire’s ship in Herzog's 1979 remake of Nosferatu, the monkeys serve also as a warning, almost comically delivered by Aguirre in a moment reminiscent of Hamlet holding Yorick’s skull aloft: From whence we came, so soon we will return. 
A film that has a lot to say about the destructive forces wrought upon mankind and nature by people who choose to impose their lunatic visions upon us, Aguirre: The Wrath of God is both anthropologically and historically allegorical, as the many fantastical and unattainable quests of man to achieve immortality through fame and wealth inevitably lead to Ozymandian dust. The moment in mid-film when one of the rafts is caught in a whirlpool straight out of Homer’s Odyssey, Herzog’s philosophy goes to work. These men’s attempts to find the mythical land of El Dorado, to become medieval alchemists and establish a golden kingdom here on Earth, is a the sort of tail chasing effort that is forever doomed to failure. However, Aguirre is not merely a curious historical anecdote; the film is just as clearly referencing the here and now, as while Herzog filmed his masterpiece in the jungles of the Amazon, there was another war raging in the jungles of Southeast Asia that was heading in a similarly dismal direction. Further, it is clear that there remain men hungry for power and glory in the world today who lead us into doomed quests and futile conflicts. Despite his respect for the power and indomitabilty of nature, Herzog is not a late 20th century hippie, but a 19th century romantic; nature reminds us of the transience of human endeavor, and the futility of searching for permanence in a world where all things must return to dust. Ultimately, Herzog argues, the colonist gets reabsorbed into the colony, the oppressor swallowed up by the object of his oppression. The madness of Aguirre -- his belief that he is God’s instrument of vengeance -- has both precedence and modern relevance. 
I certainly do not mean to devalue the rest of the film, which is brilliant and horrifying, and never less than thoroughly captivating. I could not for a second imagine this world without Kinski’s arachnid-fueled performance, or Thomas Mauch’s striking cinematography, not to mention the shots of the men on the rafts wandering aimlessly down the river, with the jungle staring them down like a vengeful god. Nor would I want to forget the tableau of the mock coronation of Don Fernando de Guzman or the subsequent shots of his gradual degradation, as he sinks deeper and deeper into his appetites; the disappearance of the golden-garbed princess, one stately and dignified step after another into the apparently inchoate wilderness; the symbolically-freighted death of Aguirre’s virginal (sacrificial?) daughter, and of course, that damned boat, sitting atop that bloody tree. Has there ever been a better metaphor for hubris and the pointlessness of so much human endeavor?
Aguirre was my first cinematic experience with a Conrad-ian journey into this heart of darkness, and it remains my favourite. Ben Livant astutely identified Herzog’s later foray into the Amazon, Fitzcarraldo, as a footnote to the grand text that is Aguirre. I would go a step further to suggest that Coppola’s own jungle initiative, Apocalypse Now, and much of the oeuvre of Terrence Malick, are also footnotes—however grand, impressive and flawed they may be—to Herzog’s seminal work. Aguirre: The Wrath of God went there first, did it better. Herzog’s film does not merely stand the test of time, it both inhabits and transcends time (not to mention place), in ways that only the truly great films, like Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, Kubrick’s 2001 and Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, ever do. It is ironic that a film that decries man’s attempts to achieve immortality should be timeless.
____________________________________________________
Dan Jardine is a contributor to The House Next Door, the publisher of Cinemania, and a contributor to Cinemarati. Aguirre: The Wrath of God plays Oct. 20-25 and Oct. 30-31 at Film Forum in New York City.
Friday, October 20, 2006
From Whence We Came, So Soon We Will Return: Werner Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
24 comments:
This is a magnificent and unsettling movie, to be sure -- though I'd predictably disagree that Terrence Malick never equaled Aguirre (I think he managed it twice, in Days of Heaven and The New World, and in parts of The Thin Red Line as well -- his vision of humankind put in its proper place by Nature equals Herzog's in grandeur, though his vision is warmer and more embracing).
That said, I don't think Malick would have been possible without Herzog, specifically Aguirre. Yours and Ben's observations about Fizcarraldo and Apocalypse Now being footnotes to Aguirre are hard to argue with (though those movies are amazing, too, in their own ways).
Along those lines, I find it curious that both Herzog's Fizcarraldo and Coppola's Apocalpyse Now flow so obviously from Aguirre (Coppola even asked Herzog's permission to copy a few shots directly from Aguirre before he began shooting his Vietnam epic -- the shot of the wrecked Huey gunship hanging in a tree is among them). Furthermore, both movies were plagued by production difficulties related to jungle locations and a lack of foresight by their respective directors, and eventually succumbed to a baby version of the Vietnam syndrome they set out to chronicle; both movies also began production with particular leading men in place (Jason Robards in Fizcarraldo, Harvey Keitel in Apocalypse Now) and ended up recasting those roles during production; and both epics ended up being the subject of documentaries (Les Blank's The Burden of Dreams and George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr's Hearts of Darkness) that some consider to be the equal of the fiction films that inspired them. (At the very least, the two documentaries are warped mirrors of their fictional inspirations, with the visionary madman director occupying roughly the same place in the production narrative as the obsessive fictional heroes.) All in all, the chain of influence is exciting and inspiring: Herzog feeds Coppola feeds Herzog feeds Les Blank feeds Hickenlooper and Bahr, and meanwhile Malick keeps incidentally and purposefully answering Aguirre in four films made over the course of 22 years.
Also, I couldn't agree more with this: "Ultimately, Herzog argues, the colonist gets reabsorbed into the colony, the oppressor swallowed up by the object of his oppression. The madness of Aguirre -- his belief that he is God’s instrument of vengeance -- has both precedence and modern relevance."
Like you said after your description of the swine drinking deeply, does this really require interpretation?
I think both documentaries that you cite, Hearts of Darkness and Burden of Dreams, are actually superior to the films they are covering. Both show us, with brutal honestly, the degenerate effects of maniacal self-absorption on the creative process.
We (critics in particular) are often guilty of romanticizing artists, of allowing them to do whatever they damn well please in pursuit of their art. But isn't self-discipline and humanitarian concern for others (such as the people who are working with you on the movie set) an important and worthy part of the creative act? Should we excuse cruelty and self-involvement merely because the "artist" must be allowed to single-mindedly cling to his/her "vision" of "The Truth?"
I think not.
I believe that both Fitzcarraldo and Apocalypse Now would have been better, perhaps even much better, films if the people making the pictures (and I include actors like Kinski and Brando as well as the directors Coppola and Herzog in this grouping) had been a bit less wrapped up in themselves (whether through drugs or monomania, or both), and a bit more inclusive, humanitarian and community-minded.
The idea that all art could benefit from careful application of The Golden Rule flies in the face of most recieved wisdom about the creative process -- particularly the hardcore version of the auteur theory, which excuses pretty much any sort of bad behavior if it results in an interesting film. But I suspect that any 2nd assistant director who's been roused from REM sleep at 3 AM to go fetch Tony Scott a particular kind of poppy seed muffin would back you a hundred percent.
Auteurs need not be fascists. Great collaborators can be fine artists too. Mike Leigh, anyone?
AGUIRRE remains a touchstone for me as well, Dan; not my first exposure to Herzog (that'd be NOSFERATU if I recall correctly), but the first sign of how far, really, a film could go.
I see I was just about to single out the same quote about colonists and oppressors that Matt did. Must be a good one.
Matt: "[Malick's] vision of humankind put in its proper place by Nature equals Herzog's in grandeur, though his vision is warmer and more embracing"
Warmer (and as great as Herzog) I'd agree, but Herzog strikes me as pretty much all-embracing, in that at least he doesn't seem to find any human action foreign or unimaginable. His protagonists can be deluded monsters, but they don't do things by half-measures, and he seems to respect them that at least. However tragic the end of AGUIRRE, it isn't pitiable; Kinski's dementia has shot right past tawdry, every day madness to the mythic, and the crew of gibbering monkeys is a comeuppance worthy of a Greek king. (Compare the equally stunning but more human-scaled end of COBRA VERDE, a distant, dispassionately viewed portrait of bullheaded flailing dribbling out to impotence and exhaustion.)
Dan: "I believe that both Fitzcarraldo and Apocalypse Now would have been better, perhaps even much better, films if the people making the pictures (and I include actors like Kinski and Brando as well as the directors Coppola and Herzog in this grouping) had been a bit less wrapped up in themselves (whether through drugs or monomania, or both), and a bit more inclusive, humanitarian and community-minded."
Mike Leigh can spend a year with his cast because they're not going any further than the corner pub, but I think you'd need at least a touch of monomania to drag a cast and crew through the wilderness. By all accounts I've read Malick, for example, is a patient and generous on-set presence, but ask Adrien Brody or Wes Studi about how good a "collaborator" he is.
I think rather a lot of things could have made APOCALYPSE NOW a better film, though.
I remember seeing this film five or six years ago and just sitting, agape and horrified, when it was over. It's unforgettable. I can still recall the final images perfectly.
True dat.
My point isn't that filmmakers don't need a vision, or that they shouldn't be driven. Rather, it is that wise directors recognize that they are working with a large number of people, many of whom are intelligent and perhaps even gifted themselves, and that said individuals could prove immensely helpful in sharpening the auterist's focus, resulting in a more vivid and memorable product.
Also, workers are happiest and most productive when they believe that they save some control over the workplace. Happy and productive workers are, generally speaking, more likely to produce work that is memorable (not to mention in service of the artist's grand vision.)
I could never figure out how they did that final shot circling the raft so smoothly and without making waves, so when I had the chance, I asked Mr. Herzog about it. He said that a boat guy had taught him a certain way of steering the boat at a speed and angle that minimized the wake, and that he (Herzog) then drove the boat with the camera himself.
If you look carefully, you can see the boat's wake. But, yeah, it's still a great shot, regardless of the anachronism of the synchronicitous wave action.
Re-reading this line again, I am not sure I quite agree with it (if in fact it's a correct interpretation of what Herzog's getting at): " Ultimately, Herzog argues, the colonist gets reabsorbed into the colony, the oppressor swallowed up by the object of his oppression."
That's surely true, but it works the other way as well, no? That's why French is spoken throughout much of Africa and the Carribean, and why you can't go to an Ethiopian restaurant without finding pasta on the menu. The partial or complete subsuming of the conquerer into the conquered results in a hybrid organism; the conquerer's partial loss of identity -- and the pain and suffering that results from the act of conquering -- is cosmic payback for the decision to invade another civilization and acquire its riches.
But in Aguirre we don't see a whole lot of the other side of that equation. That's not a criticism of Herzog, just an observation, one that could easily apply to Fizcarraldo, Apocalypse Now and many other movies mentioned in this piece and in the comments thread. Movies about imperialism and/or culture clash are nearly always produced by industrial powers, and the subject is often some variant of, "Look what becomes of us (or our fictional stand-in) when we do this." One conspicuous exception is The New World, which alternates voice-overs and POV's throughout, and ultimately settles on Pocahantas as the main character, since she comes to physically embody the forced marriage (literal and figurative) of two cultures.
The "others" were purposefully (nearly completely) elided from Aguirre in order to create the eerie effect of the men being felled by invisible jungle demons. The Spaniards not being able to see the natives works in both a literal and metaphorical way. Plus, it's just damned good theatre.
And, yes, I'd agree that the colonized are absorbed as well.The natives are viewed as being no different from any of the creatures who inhabit the land, objects to be tamed and bent to our will. I think for Herzog the point is that we're all, both colonist and colonized, ultimately subservient to the natural world, which will keep doing its own thing, pretty much ignoring our bold attempts to carve our immortality out of her.
It's a great film, pure in its insanity (I remember the story going around that Herzog pointed a gune at Kinski's head to keep him from leaving; then I read Kinski's version). I agree compared to this, Apocalypse Now is a rehash.
Ultimately it's a film about the triumph of entropy - none of the colonized take on the features of the colonizers because Aguirre's expedition is such a spectacular failure.
There's a scene in Burden of Dreams that has always stuck with me. Forgive me if I misquote it or don't remember it right. Herzog is talking about the difference between Klaus Kinski and himself. He points to some kind of jungle orchid. He says that Klaus thinks the flower is erotic, but "I just think it's vulgar." Herzog looks so haggard and half mad when he says that. You can feel his frustration with a Nature that impedes his will. It's a real struggle, and Nature is a critter that just keeps on comin'.
No doubt, Herzog's a bit mad:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081746/
He's also one tough nut:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_4680000/newsid_4681000/bb_rm_4681050.stm
With superhero tendencies:
http://www.postchronicle.com/news/entertainment/tittletattle/article_2125393.shtml
Wow. Most parties, you come late and there's nothing left to eat or drink. Not so for the Aguirre shake happening at this House. The table is overflowing with good stuff. Where to begin?
Seems to me you folks have laid out at least three main courses so far. One, the political ramifications of collective creation in film-making generally. Two, the political implications of this film's colonial setting. And three, the implicit metaphysic regarding nature that is the context for the film's presentation of human assertion in the world.
One: Well shucks, I don't know how to democratically square the circle of individual artistic expression. All I know is that “auteur” is a misnomer because film-making is hardly a solitary pursuit like authoring a book. Even notoriously controlling directors have long-standing partnerships with a team, an inner-crew that works together towards a common vision. I also know that most of the time, the hierarchical division-of-labour that attends film production is determined less by autocratic authority coming off the person of the director and more by larger economic forces emanating by the structures of the industry. The buck stops here and all that. As for Herzog making Aguirre and even more so Fitzcarraldo as well as Coppola making Apocalypse Now, I refer to these as cases of method-directing.
Two: Much as it goes against my tendency to shine a spotlight on all things political, I don't believe that Aguirre takes any sort of stand with respect to it's colonial setting. I won't go so far as to say that it's conceptually irrelevant, simply included as a matter of atmosphere. The El Dorado campaign and the myth behind it are central to Herzog's treatment of wilderness and its discontents, if I may turn a phrase and anticipate topic three. But Aguirre has essentially nothing to say about imperialism as such, either from the perspective of the oppressed or the oppressor. There is nothing said about national conquest, cultural domination, penetration of a proto-capitalist money-system which is in turn the basis of militarist navel expansion, and so on. More fundamentally, there is no actual social struggle of any kind in Aguirre. The human conflicts in the film are but particularized expressions of the abstract contradiction between human nature and the rest of nature.
Bringing me to Three: I have to give top points to jeffmcm for saying that Aguirre is about entropy. I don't think this is just metaphorically correct. For Herzog, in this film at least, human activity is negative energy dissipation. Not so much useless in the pragmatic sense or absurdly meaningless in the atheist existential sense but rude in the classical Greek sense; literally, violation of what is given to us. For the classical outlook, this meant uncivilized, because our nature is to be civilized. This Hellenic shoe does not fit on Herzog's foot, however, because 3,000 years later, he ain't too impressed by civilization. And he ain't much comforted by the Romantic critique of it which would have us all get-back-to-nature, because he recognizes that the Greeks were at least correct about civilization being our nature. That's right, it's a bleak circle, a black hole, entropy. And it seems to be coming from an unfulfilled longing for spiritual unity. Think Kierkegaard, except rather than God, the hopeless quest is for a perverse sublimation, gold, and instead of freezing to death in a Northern attic, Aguirre boils himself in his own oil, fries his brain in a steel hat down in the tropics.
Then - Ben
Hello. I enjoyed reading the piece but I could not possibly disagree more about Herzog's supposed affinity to Malick. AGUIRRE is one of those acknowledged great movies that I never seem to be able to connect to- due to its eye-rolling acting style, too-facile view of what motivates human endeavors, etc. And I generally have a blind spot toward German cinema, which I find, stereotypically speaking, lacking in lightness and finesse.
Malick's THE NEW WORLD, which is often compared to AGUIRRE, to me is a kind of anthropological account of different cultures' ways of relating to nature, mixed with a kind of fairy-tale account of a mythical character's life, whereas AGUIRRE is a macho tale of madman's (or humankind's by extension) desire to conquer nature (a dominant Herzog theme), or achieve immortality as you say, or whatever. To me comparing Herzog with Malick is like comparing Scorsese with Truffaut, or Kurosawa with Mizoguchi (you get the idea-like Mizoguchis and Truffauts, Malick's films are often centered around perspectives of women, not men).
Which is not to say I like Malick's work unconditionally. But I find his works growing on you as time goes by more than any films I can think of. Initially, like most people, I found THE THIN RED LINE just moony, but after seeing the film many times over the years, I'm increasingly moved by how it deals I think very honestly with frailties and uncertainties in life. I generally feel the same with THE NEW WORLD-I mean Malick's films are just not going to hit you in the gut at first sight.
Once on a business trip my boss declared this film as his favorite. He perhaps was thinking of the opening shot of Machu Pichu and a trek hwe made with his wife in the 70's. I immediately recognized it as a template for his management style. Not a day passes when I do not think of Aguirre floating down the river on a raft full of monkeys.
I watched this film the same evening with Herzog's documentary about Kinski, "My Best Fiend", A great double feature.
Mark, whether you lack affinity for German cinema is neither here nor there for me. However, your dismissal of the connection between Malick and Aguirre seems peremptory. I'll grant you that Herzog's style is more in your face, but there's a bit more to the equation (subject matter, thematic concerns, visual style, elliptical and lyrical approach to storytelling) than that.
Hi, Dan. Thanks for the response. Yes, I agree that NO affinity would be a wrong response-opposed temperaments would be more like it.
I mean I don't want to dismiss Herzog altogether either- I didn't equate Herzog with Michael Bay, and for all I know people probably like Kurosawas, Scorseses and Herzogs better than Mizoguchis, Truffauts and Malicks (and I don't want to deny the differences within each group either). But granting all the differences within and between the groups, I just prefer the "temperaments" of the latter group. I want my movies to have a bit of looseness and distance, that's all.
I guess I don't see any of these--Mizoguchi/Kurosawa, Herzog/ Malick, Scorsese/Truffault--as either/or dichotomies. I like much of the work (and dislike some of the work) of all of these directors. Tight, loose, in your face, or at a comfortable distance, I just like a good film, and will take it any way I can get it (go ahead, ya mooks, take yer best shot.) Gimme a coherent expression of a cinematic vision, and I'll go to bed happy every time.
I think Mark is right to propose that an introductory comparison of Herzog and Malik should set out to show how they are different and not the same. While I would point out that Herzog examines the "macho" impulse to dominate nature with an intense degree of critical opposition, revulsion even, it is correct that his worldview is decidedly male. Mark likes Malik for what he regards as his "lightness and finesse" as well as his dealing "honestly with the frailties and uncertainties in life," which he associates with a female outlook. Personally, I would not attribute such virtues to Malik as I find him rather flaky and given this, because I am ideologically committed to feminism, I am reluctant to blame what I take to be Malik's shortcomings on him attempting to adopt a woman's point of view. Still, it does seem valid to say that Herzog is INSIDE masculinity, insanely fighting to get out in order to purge nature of its rotten part, just to shed enough light to make it through the night; whereas Malik is much more OUTSIDE of masculinity, wondering how to get back in, so as to reunify all of nature's parts in holistic daylight.
Then - Ben
In a pea shell: Malick's a poet, Herzog's nuts. Both have their appeal.
Hello. Well, I don't want to say the directors whose temperaments don't agree with mine are "bad" directors. I mean I think one can disagree with what an artist is doing without questioning his integrity. But I think one CAN question the artist's integrity, SOMETIMES.
Excuse me for using Scorsese, not Herzog, as an example of this, because I saw more of his movies, and I think he is the prime case of a director who's lacking in perspective when he's dealing with his characters, or showing something excessive on screen. Again, it would be laughable to say that he's a bad director-I mean we all know he can knock off a movie like CRASH in his sleep. But when Scorsese has Jake LaMotta or Howard Hughes going nuts on screen, to me it comes close to revelling in their behaviors, not observing them.
The way he shows violence reflects this too-I mean I have NEVER seen a scene as nasty, vicious, and gratuitous as the head in a vice scene or Joe Pesci and his brother death scene in CASINO, ever, in a movie directed by someone as respected and sophisticated as Scorsese. Not in Kubrick's, Peckinpah's, Coppola's, or even Lynch's, De Palma's or Tarantino's (none of them exactly a "feminine" director by any stretch). Call me a pansy but what exactly justifies something like that? Scorsese can say this is how these people are but if dispassionate depiction is what he's after, again, I think he comes closer to revelling in their behaviors, not observing them. And restraint, or distance, or however you want to put it, is not as uncommon as you think: GODFATHER 2 is surprisingly lacking in violence, and most deaths are kept offscreen. I mean without being judgemental about the quality of the movies, one has to laugh when critics say Chanwook Park movies are the most disgusting things they've ever seen, and call GOODFELLAS exhilarating. I'm not sure if I WANT to be exhilarated when Scorsese says next to nothing about how we should feel about that exhilaration (unlike Kubrick, Coppola and Peckipah, I would say).
And yes, you can probably see plenty worse in horror movies, and obviously there are different levels of realism with movie violence, but with Scorsese, because he IS a guy who's held to a different standard, I'm really surprised people have given him a complete pass on this, when a guy like De Palma is being constantly berated for something like that.
(Again, I'm not saying my rant against Scorsese applies equally to Herzog-just making a general point that sometimes the excessive becomes just for the excessive's sake, which I think is clearly the case with Scorsese.)
Post a Comment