Going Medieval: 25 films to watch while waiting for Game of Thrones season 8

6) Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972)

Let’s hedge into the Renaissance/Age of Discovery period and check out the conquistadors! Like Valhalla Rising, the German-made Aguirre, The Wrath of God is a slow, violent and hypnotic journey into a heart of darkness.

Set in the 16th century, the ruthless and increasingly imbalanced Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) leads a Spanish expedition of exploration into the New World. He’s looking for El Dorado, the legendary city of gold, and as he plunges deeper into the jungles of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, he plunges deeper and deeper into insanity.

Aguirre gets a 98% reviewer rating on Rotten Tomatoes, pretty good for a movie this dark and self-absorbed. The film was well-received upon it’s theatrical release (though, strangely, not so much in Germany) and rapidly became a cult favorite. Critic Richard Schickel of Time said “[Director Werner Herzog] does the audience the honor of allowing it to discover the blindnesses and obsessions, the sober lunacies he quietly lays out on the screen. Well acted, most notably by Klaus Kinski in the title role, gloriously photographed by Thomas Mauch, Aguirre is, not to put too fine a point on it, a movie that makes a convincing claim to greatness.”

Aguirre ,The Wrath of God is a tricky movie to describe, but I’d say the Rotten Tomatoes Critic Consensus nails it: “A haunting journey of natural wonder and tangible danger, Aguirre transcends epic genre trappings and becomes mythological by its own right.” It’s a difficult movie (who says becoming “mythological” is easy?) but it’s well worth the effort.