Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

This 1972 masterpiece returns to the big screen as a cause for major celebration and one of the true greats, an adventure saga about the ultimate futility of existence. Kinski’s performance is teleported from the silent era in its intensity.

Werner Herzog’s mad masterpiece from 1972 still has its hallucinatory charge and is an awesome feat of filmmaking. Watch it for Kinski’s performance and a succession of haunting images.

Herzog's film is a masterful study of madness, greed, and man's futile conflict with the Amazon jungle, sparked by the nightmarish production involving Klaus Kinski. The director captures nature as a vast, destructive force that reduces the conquistadors to insignificance.

This re-release of Herzog's 1972 classic depicts a 1560s Spanish expedition to El Dorado that descends into madness. The film powerfully merges landscapes and characters in a way that makes it unforgettable.

Herzog’s hypnotic film is a fevered descent into madness and myth, blending hallucinatory Romanticism with Brechtian realism as a haunting allegory of imperialist ruin. It remains unrivalled in its evocation of colonial avarice and folly.

The critic praises the restored 1972 film as one of the great folies de grandeur of 1970s cinema, a Conradian nightmare of colonial madness. Kinski's performance as the paranoid, visionary conquistador is singled out as that of a natural-born tyrant whose delusions drive the expedition.

Herzog has made a mesmerizing film about blasphemous power and a mad invader driven by delusions of empire. It singles out the visual style and the oppressive atmosphere created by unseen enemies for praise.

Herzog has created a rivetingly shot odyssey and parable on the human need for power. It singles out the larger-than-life acting, especially by Klaus Kinski, and the exciting visuals for praise.

The film is one of Herzog's most accessible and horrifying works, an obsessive story of a doomed 16th-century expedition driven by greed and madness. It singles out the intense performance by Klaus Kinski and the physical reality of the river journey for praise.

Werner Herzog's 1972 film follows Spanish conquistadors on a doomed jungle trek for El Dorado while descending into hallucinatory strangeness. Klaus Kinski's mad-eyed performance as the title character stands out as particularly unhinged and memorable.

The critic celebrates the BFI re-release of this restored classic as an intoxicating vision of man disregarding nature and meeting his doom. They single out the visceral quality of filming deep in the Amazon jungle and Kinski's feverish performance.

The retrospective piece rates the film A+ and describes it as a meticulously captured descent into madness during an ill-fated jungle journey. It singles out Kinski's all-timer performance, the dangerous real locations, and the haunting Popol Vuh score.

The review calls the film breathtakingly visual and epic in its ambitions, with a raw documentary-like authenticity from on-location shooting. It singles out Kinski's haunting, magnetic performance as the deranged conquistador for particular praise.