In this stress on incommensurability that you describe well, I think that _Aguirre_ is much different from _Heart of Darkness_, which has Marlow in its framing story speak of England (and by extension the 'West') thus:
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
_Heart of Darkness_ lays out a psycho-geography of primitivism that maps out the fear of Europeans who are haunted by the idea that beneath the thin layer of 'civilization' there beats a 'primitive' heart of 'darkness.' This is the 'secret' that Marlow (and Conrad) protects from Kurtz's beloved (though they think that they are protecting _her_ from the 'secret'). The narrator of the framing story who listens to Marlow and the implied male reader of _Heart of Darkness_ are asked to share this 'secret,' and the fearful sharing of the 'secret' genders them and makes them 'white' & 'European.' (There may be still readers who think of this 'secret' as truth that makes _Heart of Darkness_ 'deep' and 'penetrating,' though I hope we've moved beyond such a reading.)
Since there has been some discussion of irony on the list, let me ask some (non-ironic) questions here. Do you (or does anyone else here) think that the passage below is ironic? Is there a distance between Marlow and the narrator, Marlow and Conrad, and/or the narrator and Conrad in it? If not, why not? If so, how do we know that it is ironic? If there is irony, how does irony work on the reader? To what effect? Is there a difference between an ironic and a non-ironic reading of the passage below? If so, what's the difference?
"Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower -- "Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency -- the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force -- nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind -- as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea -- something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to..."
>Herzog took a lot of heat from the left for his unflattering
>portrayal of the Sandinistas in their conflict with the Miskitos.
I don't think that Herzog is very sympathetic to Marxism, though I don't know of his views on the matter at all. Here his emphasis on incommensurability (which seems to me to work interestingly in _Aguirre_, _Fitzcarraldo_, and _Every Man for Himself and God Against All [aka The Mystery of Kasper Hauser]_) must have prevented him from presenting a nuanced portrayal of the conflict.
>His film on slavery is a predictably scathing look at the African-Brazil
>slave trade,
>showing it in its brutality, injustice and insanity.
You mean _Cobra Verde_? I haven't seen it. Isn't that based on a book by Bruce Chatwin (which I didn't like when I read it, or so I remember)?
>On the downside, I think Herzog hammers home his theme "only the dreamers
>move mountains" a little bit too much.
I agree.
>> I might also mention here Pasolini's _Porcile [Pigsty]_ (in which Pierre
>> Clementi plays a fine young cannibal who kills his father in the Middle
>> Ages as well as a son of a fascist industrialist who allows himself to be
>> devoured by pigs) as one of my favorite films.
>
>Pasolini was great too, until the fascists got him. Ever seen Salo?
Yes, and I think that _Salo_ is one of the exceptional films that seem to withstand that postmodern retrovirus of recoding anything & everything made in the past for campily humorous & condescending readings (which are often mistaken for 'irony').
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