AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD

On Christmas Day, 1560, several scores of Spanish conquistadors under Gonzalo Pizarro and two hundred native slaves march down from the newly conquered Inca Empire into the Amazon rainforest in search of the fabled El Dorado. The men, clad in half armor, pull cannons down narrow mountain paths and through dense, muddy jungle.

On New Year's Eve, Pizarro orders a group of forty men to build rafts and scout down the river. If they do not return to the main party within one week with news of what lies beyond, they will be considered lost. Pizarro chooses Don Pedro de Ursúa as the commander of the expedition, Don Lope de Aguirre as his second-in-command, portly nobleman Don Fernando de Guzmán to represent the Spanish crown, and Brother Gaspar de Carvajal to bring the word of God. Accompanying the expedition, against Pizarro's better judgment, are Ursúa's mistress, Doña Inés, and Aguirre's teenage daughter Flores.

One of the four rafts gets caught in an eddy while traveling through river rapids, and the others are unable to help free it. That night, gunfire erupts on the trapped raft; in the morning, the men on board are found slain by arrows from Indigenous tribesmen, with three missing. Ursúa wants the bodies to be brought back to camp for burial. Knowing this would slow down the expedition, Aguirre suggests to a soldier, Perucho, that the cannon is rusty and needs firing. Perucho aims at the raft, destroying it and abandoning the bodies in the river.

During the night, the remaining rafts are swept miles off course by the rising river. Time has run out for the scouting mission, and Ursúa decides that they must return to Pizarro's camp. Aguirre leads a mutiny against Ursúa, telling the men that untold riches await them ahead, and reminding them that Hernán Cortés won an empire in Mexico by disobeying orders. Ursúa orders Aguirre arrested but is shot and restrained by the mutineers. Aguirre nominates Guzmán as the new leader of the expedition and has his men renounce their loyalty to the Crown, proclaiming Guzmán "emperor" of El Dorado. Ursúa is sentenced to death in a show trial but Guzmán unexpectedly commutes the sentence.

Aguirre remains the true leader of the mutiny, so oppressive and terrifying that few protest his leadership. Only Inés has the courage to speak out against him. Knowing that some of the soldiers are still loyal to Ursúa, Aguirre ignores her. The expedition breaks up the rafts to make a single large one and continues on downriver.

An Indigenous couple approaching peacefully by canoe are captured by the explorers, and when the man expresses confusion upon being presented with a Bible, Carvajal personally kills them for blasphemy. Guzmán insists on being fed first while the other men starve and has the expedition's only remaining horse pushed off the raft because it annoys him; soon afterwards he is found dead near the raft's privy. Aguirre proclaims himself leader and has Ursúa taken ashore to be hanged. He orders an attack on an Indigenous village to obtain food, resulting in several men being killed. The distraught Inés walks into the jungle and disappears.

On the raft, the group of slowly starving, feverish men begin disbelieving everything they see even as arrows are fired at them. The group stares in disbelief at a wooden ship perched in the highest branches of a tall tree. Aguirre orders that it be brought down and refurbished, but Carvajal refuses. In a series of attacks by unseen assailants, all of the remaining crew except Aguirre, including Flores, are shot dead with arrows. Monkeys overrun the raft as Aguirre deliriously imagines conquering the New World and founding an incestuous dynasty with his slain daughter. Picking up a monkey, he asks, "Who else is with me?"

Aguirre’s quest for El Dorado ends in total ruin, with Aguirre left alone on the raft, surrounded by corpses and monkeys as his mind unravels in the wilderness.

The conclusion underscores the futility and madness of Aguirre’s ambition; his single-minded pursuit leaves him isolated, with nothing but delusion for company. Herzog’s final images transform the jungle from a land of promise into an indifferent force that swallows all who challenge it. Aguirre’s monologue to his imagined empire cements the film’s exploration of obsession, power, and human folly.