El Dorado is a 1988 Spanish film written and directed by Carlos Saura. It was entered into the 1988 Cannes Film Festival.
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.
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 Costa Rica, 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
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