Burden of Dreams

• Director: Les Blank
• AMG Rating:
• Genre: Film, TV & Radio
• Movie Type: Film & Television History, Biography
• Themes: Filmmaking
• Main Cast: Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski
• Release Year: 1982
• Country: US
• Run Time: 94 minutes
• MPAA Rating: R

Plot

Documentarian Les Blank, who filmed Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, trained his cameras on Herzog again, as the eccentric German filmmaker made his epic, Fitzcarraldo, in the Amazon rainforest of Peru. Herzog's production is in trouble right from the start. He begins filming with Jason Robards playing the title role, and Mick Jagger playing Fitzcarraldo's sidekick, Wilbur. With 40 percent of the film shot, Robards becomes ill and goes back to the states, where his doctor will not let him return. Because of the delay, Jagger, with album and tour commitments, is forced to quit the production. Thinking no one can fill the rock star's shoes, Herzog jettisons Jagger's role. He eventually casts his frequent collaborator Klaus Kinski as Fitzcarraldo and begins shooting again. Violent tribal disputes and unpredictable weather hinder the shoot, but the biggest obstacle is Herzog's own quixotic and dangerous determination to film one antique boat smashing down the Amazonian rapids, and the dragging of an identical boat over a mountain from one river to another. Blank interviews members of the cast and crew, including the impoverished Indian extras, and captures the troubles of the seemingly cursed production, but his interviews with Herzog are the focal point of the film. "If I abandon this project," Herzog explains at one point, "I would be a man without dreams, and I never want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project." Herzog later made his own documentary about Kinski, My Best Fiend, which adds to the lore of this infamously difficult shoot. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

Review

Les Blank's film about the making of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo is a fascinating portrait of a filmmaker pushed to the outer edge of sanity by a difficult film shoot, and by his obsession with seeing his vision captured on the screen. Just as the film Herzog is making shows a man (Fitzcarraldo, played by Klaus Kinski) whose passion for opera drives him to a mad and self-destructive act of incredible hubris, the film Blank has made shows a man (Herzog) whose passion for his own art drives him to a similar mad and self-destructive act. Like Hearts of Darkness (Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper's invaluable document of the making of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now), Burden of Dreams paints a somewhat troubling picture of a fiercely intelligent and supremely talented, but megalomaniacal filmmaker, who will stop at nothing to see his brilliant vision realized. The profound respect that Herzog professes to have for the tribal culture Amazonian Indians stands in sharp contrast to the way they are treated on his set, and Blank effectively captures this disparity. He also captures the degradation of Herzog's keen mind, as the jungle apparently begins to drive him mad. "Nature here is vile and base," he explains, as the elements threaten to derail his film, "The trees are in misery. The birds here are in misery. I don't think they sing -- they just screech in pain." Late in the shoot, as the filming hits snag after snag, Herzog laments, with a rueful smile, "I shouldn't make movies anymore. I should go to a lunatic asylum right away." Burden of Dreams is a tale of obsession as compelling and disturbing as the film it documents. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

Cast

• Werner Herzog
• Klaus Kinski

Claudia Cardinale; David Perez Espinosa; Miguel Angel Fuentes; Paul Hittscher; Jason Robards, Jr.; Jose Lewgoy; Mick Jagger; Thomas Mauch; Walter Saxer

Credit

Les Blank - Director, Maureen Gosling - Editor, Les Blank - Cinematographer, Les Blank - Producer, Maureen Gosling - Sound/Sound Designer, Mike Goodwin - Screenwriter

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