I will start by giving a brief account of the burkean physiological sublime in order to relate it to Kinski's performance at three interrelated levels: 1) the idea of 'large form' 2) the ideas of loss of boundaries, infinity, terror and the self and 3) the appearance of the physiological sublime in its Dionysian formula.

Through his performance Kinski establishes a close relationship with the landscape, creating an experience of exaltation, self-transcendence and disruption. I will further argue that, in this film, the physical components of the aesthetic experience are a pathway to the foundation of a new subjectivity, to which Kinski physical performance is fundamental. I will try and demonstrate that, in the strictest use of his bodily gestures, presence and physical features Kinksi reaches an overwhelming sensation of non-separation between his body, his mind and the landscape, transcending the idea of the individual self towards self-transcendence. My plan for uniting Aguirre with the thought of Edmund Burke is to discuss the role the body plays as a central aesthetic element. This essay discusses Klaus Kinski's performance in Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972) and explores how, in this film, Kinski incorporates Edmund Burke's physiological sublime. Starting from the director ’ s body itself, I will proceed to the examination of physicality in his oeuvre in the light of hitherto little explored historical and aesthetic connections with New Wave and New Cinema movements, in particular the Nouvelle Vague and the Brazilian Cinema Novo. In this chapter, I will investigate the nature and validity of Herzog ’ s claims to difference, its relation to physical filmmaking, and the kind of realism resulting from his mode of address within and beyond the realm of representation. Reality thus becomes synonymous with difference, a fact embodied by the legions of extraordinary beings who populate his entire output. However, physicality, in his case, seems to derive from an irretrievable loss of identity, a rupture between the human element and its environment through which the materiality of the former comes to the fore. Firmly rooted in the New German Cinema and akin to all New Wave movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the oeuvre of Werner Herzog also relies, perhaps more intensely than that of any of his contemporaries, on a physical approach to filmmaking. It is typical of New Waves and New Cinema movements to resort to physicality as a means to establish a material link between cast/crew, the profilmic event, and the resulting film, so as to generate a sense of belonging and identity.

Wrath ella james