El Dorado (1988 film)

Infobox Film
name = El Dorado


image_size =
caption = DVD cover
director = Carlos Saura
producer = Andrés Vicente Gómez
writer = Carlos Saura
narrator =
starring = Omero Antonutti
Lambert Wilson
Inés Sastre
Eusebio Poncela
music = Alejandro Massó
cinematography = Teodoro Escamilla
editing = Pedro del Rey
distributor =
released = 20 April, 1988
runtime = 149 min
country = flagicon|Spain Spain
language = Spanish
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0095053

"El Dorado" is a 1988 Spanish film written and directed by Carlos Saura.

ynopsis

The film is about an expedition down the Orinoco and Amazon rivers in 1560 by Spanish soldiers searching for the fabled city of gold, El Dorado. Taking some followers and family along on the journey, they descend into madness and end up dying from the environment and each other.

Critique

The film is 142 minutes long, and has been criticized for its plodding plot, with brief moments of action where the travellers must survive the crises of jungle life and human frailty. Filmed on location in South America, the river and jungle scenery dominate the characters, who are over-dressed for the heat in their old world clothes and armour.

The protagonist, Lope de Aguirre, is played by Omero Antonutti, who plays an actual historical character with quiet, understated menace. Directed by the award-winning Carlos Saura (who also wrote the screenplay), the film was made just a few years after the end of Francisco Franco's dictatorship. Thus the search for political themes and symbols is mandatory for all.

Because of a similarity in plot and characters, the movie suffers by comparison with 1972's "Aguirre, the Wrath of God", but stands on its own as a less fantastic version of the same journey of obsessed explorers.

External links

*imdb title|title=El Dorado|id=0095053