“I am the great traitor. There must be no other.” A descent into madness fueled by delusion of grandeur and incompetence. Certain films touching the theme of “discovering new worlds” tend to sensationalize or romanticize these aspects, taking away from what actually happened and what was done in those places, usually by giving us a hero that changes sides and realizes their actions were wrong. There are no heroes in Aguirre, nor there are any redeeming qualities in its characters. It is full of delusion, greed, subordination and obsession, hunger for power and riches being lead by ignorance. Aguirre show us how our social structures fail outside the places we know, or outside its natural context, and how not questioning those structures and failing to adapt lead us to our own demise. An emperor with no power, a priest with no followers, an empire constituted by a raft and no land.
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