Burden of Dreams

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(c) A.J. Malouin 2010

(Rating: 1 by The Film Snob.)
(See our side-bar page “How We Rate Movies”)

(1982/USA. Directed by Les Blank, with writing and narrartion by Micheal Goodwin.)
Here is an incredible film about the making of an incredible film.

Some time after creating the fabulous film “Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes” [“Aguirre: The Wrath of God”], Director Werner Herog returned to the Amazon to attempt the making of the film “Fitzcarraldo.”

Production problems interrupted the filmmaking six months into it. There was a delay of a year before resuming production. The whole project took four and a half years to complete.

In addition to problems with the remote jungle locations, indigenous-Indian warfare, and the whimsy of rising and falling rivers, the long production schedule cost Herzog two of his lead actors: Klaus Kinski and Mick Jagger.

It’s incredible that Herzog had the will to continue.

It’s incredible that any movie ever gets made at all.

And it’s fortunate for us that filmmaker Les Blank was there to document the whole ordeal.

“Fitzcarraldo” tells the story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, a man determined to build an opera house deep in the Peruvian Amazon. He wants to bring Enrico Caruso to a location where the nearest trace of European civilization is five hundred miles away through solid, soggy, swampy jungle.

The obstacles to such an endeavor are extreme. In the real-life story, Fitzgerald disassembled a steamboat on one Amazonian river, had the indigenous people haul every piece of that steamship over a small mountain, then re-assembled the ship on another Amazonian river.

In the film version, Fitzgerald has the indigenous people pull the steamship over the mountain intact!!!

“Burden of Dreams” tells the story of the making of the film version.

We are repeatedly shown that the obstacles to the making of the film “Fitzcarraldo” seem insurmountable.

The film crew’s supplies had to be flown in from Miami, delivered by small planes that landed on a grass runway.

The jungle’s moisture and mud made walking difficult and threatened the clean operation of the movie cameras on a daily basis.

Political problems among the digenous people working on the film stiffled its progress at every turn.

The lead actor on the project had to be replaced halfway through it.

Pulling that intact steamship over a mountain seemed to be more than human technology could accomplish.

And yet Herzog persisted, and Blank documented it.

Herzog talks often about the intrusion of civlization and cities into pristine parts of the world like the Amazon.

He regrets that the jungle is disappearing and that we will one day, all of us, be living in cities which destroy the culture through which he is dragging his steamship.

At one point, he says to the camera, “We are losing this culture and soon everyone will be living in cities, in skyscrapers, in the same identical culture, like in America.”

Yet Herzog also personifies the jungle as “evil.” He also speaks of the choas he sees in the nighttime sky, where the stars in the Southern Hemisphere are upside down.

Throughout the film, we are shown the struggle of man against the entire rest of Nature.

Throughout the entire film, we get the impression that “Fitzcarraldo” will never be made. As we see one production road-block after another, we are stunned that Werner Herzog has the strength to continue. His heroism in undertaking this is truly mind-boggling — and Director Les Blank has captured it all perfectly.

At another point in the film, Herzog says to the camera, “I do this because my dream is also your dream, and the only difference is that I can articulate the dream.”

We are glad he can.

We are glad, more than that, that Les Blank was there to document the articulation.

Don’t miss renting this film!

(1 hr 35. Not rated in the USA. In English, mostly, with a little Spanish and German, and few subtitles. With Huerequeque Enrique Bohorquez as himself & Huerequeque Bohorquez; Claudia Cardinale as Molly & herself; Carmen Correa as herself; Nelson De Rio Cenepa as himself; Elia De Rio Ene as himself; Alfredo De Rio Tambo as himself; Miguel Ángel Fuentes as himself; Father Mariano Gagnon as himself; Werner Herzog as himself; Paul Hittscher as himself; Evaristo Nunkuag Ikanan as himself; Mick Jagger as Wilbur; Klaus Kinski as Fitzcarraldo & himself; José Lewgoy as himself; Laplace Martins as himself; Thomas Mauch as himself; David Pérez Espinosa as himself; Ángela Reina as herself, and; Jason Robards as Fitzcarraldo)