Quote:
Originally Posted by Make Them Die Slowly  Works for me, they are my favourite parts of the film. I think it is something that West excels at...stretching the normal out to the point of boredom but for me it never feels like filler as it would in another directors work. It is very much his style which just clicks with me. |
I'm a house of the Devil fan as well. Thought the slow build up worked well. It slowly ratcheted up the tension.
Got a start on the Herzog BFI bog. Not a fan of the invitation to scratch packaging but the contents are excellent!
Aguirre Wrath of god.
The Film that got me into Herzogs work. The slow march down into the mist shrouded valley accompanied by the haunting score really stuck in my mind. The tale itself is of a group of Spanish nobelmen entering deep into the jungle in search of El Dorado. Splitting off from the main group, a smaller group head down river on rafts only to be consumed by madness and killed by Natives.
As the raft heads down stream the film decends into a strange fever-dream as the group slowly loses its mind to heat and illness. The film deals with the idea of man trying to tame and conquer nature, a theme he would return to in later films including Fitzcarraldo, and the futility and arrogance of mans attempts to do so.
Aguirre is a haunting and beutifully shot film that was mad on an astonishingly low budget with a stolen camera. Klaus kinski demonstrates why, in spite of being mental, he had a lengthy career in film. His central performance as lope de Aguirre is phenomenal (apparantly Herzog directed him to walk like a crab) and really underpins the whole film.