BURDEN OF DREAMS
US, 1982, 95 minutes, Colour.
Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale.
Directed by Les Blank.
Burden of Dreams is a documentary about the making of Werner Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo. It is the work of American documentarist Les Blank. Blank has had a successful career in making documentaries with a special interest in American music. He visited Peru while Herzog was making Fitzcarraldo and observed him. The result is a fascinating documentary observing Herzog at work, showing the filming of a feature, highlighting the nature of the Peruvian jungle and its beauty and horror, focusing eventually on Herzog's desperation and obsessions as he wants to make his film painstakingly - sharing the obsessive vision of his hero. There is a background of interaction with the local Indians ?culturally and politically.
There is a great deal of material in the film: there is much observation of the filming and the background to the filming. It has been excellently assembled in chronological order but also with a great deal of background comment and critique.
The film was several years in the making. There were financial difficulties in pre-production. The initial locations were rendered useless because of the politics for local Indian groups and their wanting to have propriety of their land. There were clashes with the film group and the producer - even to the extent of headlines about Herzog and his crew exploiting the Indians. Reports like this were found in German papers and magazines. Forty percent of the film was made with Jason Robards as Fitzcarraldo and Mick Jagger as his assistant. With delays in production and moving locations, and with Jason Robards' illness and his being forbidden to return to South America, the film became an obsession and a dream. Klaus Kinski, who appeared in Herzog's Aguirre, Woyzek and Nosferatu, became the new central character. There are some excerpts from Robards/Jagger material as well as scenes with Kinski and Claudia Cardinale.
But the film is very interested in the atmosphere of the Brazilian and Peruvian jungle and is filmed with a great attention to detail. Much is made of the remoteness and inaccessibility of the locations with the effects on cast and crew. Boredom, the changes of the seasons, the rising and falling of the river. There is a problem of boredom and interrelationships and the employing of several prostitutes (with the approval of the Dominican missionary who opted for this advice to preserve the women in local villages). There is also an emphasis on the boats used for Fitzcarraldo, several boats as well as a mock boat set. The climax is the transferring of a boat a mile over a hill, with a 40 degree angle. This becomes an obsession with Herzog and there is a great deal of material on the engineering difficulties, the physical dangers and the eventual success of filming this sequence. A great amount of time was spent by the cast and crew in the jungle.
The film is interesting as giving a portrait of Werner Herzog as writer and director. He is a man of ideas, vision and poetry. At times this seems full of insight, at other times pretentious. He is a man who controls every aspect of his film making and this is shown in his relationship with camera men, crew and with the stars. Klaus Kinski has the opportunity to give very forthright opinions about his experience of making the film, working with Herzog and the difficulties of the jungle. Herzog speaks of his love/hate relationship with the jungle? He also shows his obsessive dreaming with wanting to film the boat moving at 40 degrees up a hill? He confronts the engineering difficulties as well as the dangers to life. He also appears always in control of situations and is said to have had a sense of responsibility for holding cast and crew together. He employed many local Indians for many
of the sequences.
The finished film Fitzcarraldo embodies Herzog's achievement.
The film is a fine example of documentary film making, a record of an unusual project filmed in very difficult circumstances. The title of the film sums it up and shows the intensity of Herzog's burden of dreams, not with full approval but highlighting social implications, human implications and a critique of obsession.
