Old Joy, and Aguirre: The Wrath of God are the two films that get reviewed in this post. Two absolutely wonderful movies that capture nature and all its beauty through the theme of friendship in one, and the theme of madness in the pursuit of power in the other.
Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, USA, 2006): If you've seen Wendy and Lucy (or Meek's Cutoff, which I will be reviewing very soon), then you know what to expect from a Kelly Reichardt film. Her films are completely minimalist in terms of plot and style, but still lyrical and mesmerizing. Old Joy is a 76-minute film about two old friends who go visit some hot springs and then come back home. That's the whole movie. But the relationship between these two men and the mood that Reichardt creates are perfectly realized. One of them is a man with wife and kid on the way, the other man is kind of a free-spirit who can never settle in one place. They go on this trip and try to rekindle what seems to have been a strong friendship in the past. The characters don't speak much, but the acting and directing do so well to tell us that these guys are going to have a pretty difficult time becoming friends again because of their wildly different lifestyles. Reichardt never goes after the free-spirited lifestyle, instead she makes both lifestyles seem sad and both of them seem refreshing in their own way as well.
Much of why I love this film is the sparseness of it. Reichardt lets silence, nature, and the environment do much of the work. She lets the natural world around the characters breathe and create a solemn tone. The movie celebrates the natural world and it frequently silences all dialogue and music and just lets the natural sounds of the world fill the soundtrack. The mood is so important to this story because it creates this peaceful and contemplative mood, and if that mood was absent, this movie could have felt much more conventional than it really is. The relationship between the men and the setting are all set up by Reichardt's expert directing. The movie is slightly too short to truly make a the greatest impact I think it could have made, but Reichardt nonetheless proves her immense talent as a director. I've seen three of the four films she's made so far and I truly think she is one of the most underrated directors in America today. American independent movies are known for being sweet and emotional, but sometimes too cute and kind of plot-driven. But Reichardt is a completely unique American indie director because she has the talents of lyrical and meditative European directors and also the knack for making characters that are strong and real in an American setting.
Grade: A-
Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, Germany, 1972): Ambition can sometimes lead to madness. That is what happens in this early and great film by Werner Herzog. Klaus Kinski plays a man who is leading a group of conquistadors from Spain in the Amazon and decide to run off on their own way and create their own land and country in the city of El Dorado. Kinski obsesses with the search for wealth and also power in this movie partially inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The movie is an astonishing portrayal of the madness that stems from the pursuit of power. That theme is not all that original, you can see many villains in stories that have that same quality, but Herzog had made a movie that is immensely powerful. Kinski's performance is scary and so real as a sociopathic man hellbent on conquering a land that is not his. In a sense this is a film that is partly about the pointlessness and perils of colonialism. The conquistadors conquer untamed land, and "savage" people who do not understand the act of conquering, then the movie questions what difference it really makes to conquer that land that does not want you.
Besides Kinski's character, the other main character in the movie is that land itself. The environment of this was famously difficult to navigate as depicted in the movie, and the crew filming the movie had to also undergo the same experiences as the conquistador's in the movie. The film sets up in the first half hour a harsh and difficult environment that is filled with danger, but also has much beauty. The Amazon rainforest is filled with large trees, beautiful running water, but that water and those steep hills are all incredibly dangerous. Kinski's mad character is obsessed with taking it all over, but he does not realize the dangers associated with the beautiful land and the people that already inhabit it. A large part of why this movie is so unique is a minimalist and quiet tone (at least minimalist for this type of wild jungle movie). You can see the influence this film may have had on someone like Terrence Malick, especially with the way the camera pans away from the characters to show nature and its beauty. Another filmmaker who was even more obviously influenced by Aguirre is Francis Ford Coppola and his great war film Apocalypse Now. Coppola's movie is set in Vietnam, but the brutal realities of the beautiful jungle and river and the madness that comes with the ambition of power is all very evident in that film as well. It's not a surprise that this film has influenced so many because with Aguirre Herzog created a beautiful and brutal masterpiece.
Grade: A
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