Aguirre, the Wrath of God · reception & legacy
1972 · Werner Herzog
How Aguirre, the Wrath of God has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Barely made a ripple in Germany on release, but a marathon run in a Paris arthouse turned it into a European sensation, and by its late-70s US release it was hailed as a masterpiece — now it's a fixture on greatest-films lists and the standard entry point to New German Cinema.
What's debated
The perennial debate is how much of the legendary Herzog–Kinski chaos behind it is true versus Herzog's own self-mythologising — and whether loving the legend has swallowed the film itself.
Its footprint
Kinski's crazed sidelong glare and the delirious final raft shot are among the most referenced images in art cinema, and Francis Ford Coppola openly cited the film as an influence on Apocalypse Now.
Where it stands
A capital-C canon staple and cinephile rite of passage — the 'you must have seen this' Herzog, and the film most often used to induct newcomers into the Herzog–Kinski mythos.