Well, I've seen "Fitzcarraldo" and listened to Werner Herzog's audio commentary, and now I've seen Les Blank's documentary on the making of the film. "Fitzcarraldo" itself I found to be about one of a kind. "Burden of Dreams" is equally interesting but in a different way.
Herzog's comments on "Fitzcarraldo" deal mainly with the events we see on the screen. How did the crew get the boat up the river, what travails did they experience, what were the Indians like? "Burden of Dreams" tells us much more about Werner Herzog, the director and the man whose dream "Fitzcarraldo" is about.
I think maybe if I were to compare Blank's documentary to the work of another contemporary director it would have to be Terence Malick -- "Badlands," "The Thin Red Line." The reason is that there are so many scenes in the work of both men in which nature itself intrudes, independent of human transactions. Blank's film has shots of plants and animals, sometimes illustrating a point in Herzog's narrative, sometimes in a kind of stylized silence. I have never seen a film with so many large and colorful butterflies, so many garish parrots.
Herzog -- looking comparatively young -- is surprisingly thoughtful and articulate. He speaks German, English, and Spanish. "Fitzcarraldo" itself was filmed entirely in English because it was the most common language among the cast. Sometimes what he says is funny and sometimes his dicta have tragic implications, yet he never laughs. There are moments when he describes his Weltanschaung when he sounds half insane. You ought to hear him sitting there, describing his feelings towards the jungle and its relationship to humanity. I can't quote him but I can describe it roughly.
He's been shooting at an extremely isolated location. If you want to get out of the jungle from where he and the camera are now, you have to travel between 500 and 2000 miles, depending on your direction. The jungle is a foul butcher shop of disorder. Everything is mixed up. Even the stars in the sky are a mess. Compared to the jungle, human beings are like a few fragmented phrases in a book full of stupid sentences. If Herzog believed in God, he would believe that God created the jungle in a rage. Still, Herzog doesn't hate the jungle. He loves the jungle. If I had to compare Herzog to another artist, it might be Beethoven.
I admit I was laughing like hell by the time he was through with this unforgettable diatribe. I'd never heard anything like this from a man who was intelligent, talented, and in possession of his faculties.
Not that he's any sort of misanthrope. He's concerned about the plight of the Indians he's worked with. They have no clear claim to the land they've always lived on. Lumber, oil, or rubber interests can move in, clear the forest, boot off the inhabitants, and virtually own the territory. The Indians are interested in the money he's paying him but they responded with more enthusiasm when he offered to help them attain title to their own land. He's worried about the fate of the Amazon rain forest, too, and for good reason.
He admits that he is not an ethnographer. The Indians he filmed were told to groom themselves in a certain way and to perform roles. And here they all are -- Herzog included -- up to their knees in mud, shot at (and sometimes hit) with arrows from less acculturated tribes, sloshing around in a yellow river, being bitten by insects, with no electrical power except that provided by a noisy generator, and nothing to amuse themselves with except beer and some prostitutes that the local Franciscan missionaries advised be brought into the camp. And I happen to be a cultural anthropologist, and I'm thinking of my own field work on a couple of Indian reservations and an island in the South Pacific, and I'm silently thanking God I didn't choose to live with the Indians who live in that unfinished wilderness. The only aspects of the location that appealed to me at all were the beer and the prostitutes. I'm entirely certain I would have come back an alcoholic with some kind of dreadful disease that turns your nose into a turnip.
Whatever the location lacked in civilized appeal was more than made up for by the documentary's explication of Herzog's character. What a man -- philosopher, artist, and mensch extraordinaire. The feature, the documentary, the quest, and the feat itself, all memorable.
Herzog's comments on "Fitzcarraldo" deal mainly with the events we see on the screen. How did the crew get the boat up the river, what travails did they experience, what were the Indians like? "Burden of Dreams" tells us much more about Werner Herzog, the director and the man whose dream "Fitzcarraldo" is about.
I think maybe if I were to compare Blank's documentary to the work of another contemporary director it would have to be Terence Malick -- "Badlands," "The Thin Red Line." The reason is that there are so many scenes in the work of both men in which nature itself intrudes, independent of human transactions. Blank's film has shots of plants and animals, sometimes illustrating a point in Herzog's narrative, sometimes in a kind of stylized silence. I have never seen a film with so many large and colorful butterflies, so many garish parrots.
Herzog -- looking comparatively young -- is surprisingly thoughtful and articulate. He speaks German, English, and Spanish. "Fitzcarraldo" itself was filmed entirely in English because it was the most common language among the cast. Sometimes what he says is funny and sometimes his dicta have tragic implications, yet he never laughs. There are moments when he describes his Weltanschaung when he sounds half insane. You ought to hear him sitting there, describing his feelings towards the jungle and its relationship to humanity. I can't quote him but I can describe it roughly.
He's been shooting at an extremely isolated location. If you want to get out of the jungle from where he and the camera are now, you have to travel between 500 and 2000 miles, depending on your direction. The jungle is a foul butcher shop of disorder. Everything is mixed up. Even the stars in the sky are a mess. Compared to the jungle, human beings are like a few fragmented phrases in a book full of stupid sentences. If Herzog believed in God, he would believe that God created the jungle in a rage. Still, Herzog doesn't hate the jungle. He loves the jungle. If I had to compare Herzog to another artist, it might be Beethoven.
I admit I was laughing like hell by the time he was through with this unforgettable diatribe. I'd never heard anything like this from a man who was intelligent, talented, and in possession of his faculties.
Not that he's any sort of misanthrope. He's concerned about the plight of the Indians he's worked with. They have no clear claim to the land they've always lived on. Lumber, oil, or rubber interests can move in, clear the forest, boot off the inhabitants, and virtually own the territory. The Indians are interested in the money he's paying him but they responded with more enthusiasm when he offered to help them attain title to their own land. He's worried about the fate of the Amazon rain forest, too, and for good reason.
He admits that he is not an ethnographer. The Indians he filmed were told to groom themselves in a certain way and to perform roles. And here they all are -- Herzog included -- up to their knees in mud, shot at (and sometimes hit) with arrows from less acculturated tribes, sloshing around in a yellow river, being bitten by insects, with no electrical power except that provided by a noisy generator, and nothing to amuse themselves with except beer and some prostitutes that the local Franciscan missionaries advised be brought into the camp. And I happen to be a cultural anthropologist, and I'm thinking of my own field work on a couple of Indian reservations and an island in the South Pacific, and I'm silently thanking God I didn't choose to live with the Indians who live in that unfinished wilderness. The only aspects of the location that appealed to me at all were the beer and the prostitutes. I'm entirely certain I would have come back an alcoholic with some kind of dreadful disease that turns your nose into a turnip.
Whatever the location lacked in civilized appeal was more than made up for by the documentary's explication of Herzog's character. What a man -- philosopher, artist, and mensch extraordinaire. The feature, the documentary, the quest, and the feat itself, all memorable.