grantt Review of Burden of Dreams

Burden of Dreams (1982)

an exceptional documentary about behind-the-scenes film-making

[10/10 · 18 August 2000]

Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo" is a fine film which broke most artistic, logistical and financial conventions of good film-making. Herzog set out to take great liberties with the history of an historical character, a 19th century Irish Peruvian rubber tapper--and then, incongruously, abandoned the cinematic art of illusion to undertake some very dangerous filming in remote Amazonian jungles of Peru. One of the unfortunate consequences is that little of the danger is self-evident to uninformed audiences accustomed to illusion. That's where Les Blanks filled in the blanks with his extraordinary documentary, "Burden of Dreams"--an essential companion to "Fitzcarraldo". There are obvious comparisons to be drawn with Eleanor Coppola's "Hearts of Darkness", about "Apocalypse Now"--especially as a study of directorial obsession. Blanks's film reveals "Fitzcarraldo" to have been a much riskier and crazier project than "Apocalypse". This first class documentary should be in DVD.