Les Blank's 1982 documentary, Burden Of Dreams, is a film that, like Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, follows the near-obsessive drive of a great filmmaker to bring a great film to fruition. In the latter film, Eleanor Coppola detailed her husband Francis Ford Coppola's will to bring Apocalypse Now to the screen. The former film details the similar drive that compelled German filmmaker Werner Herzog to make Fitzcarraldo. While the two fictive films are both great, the Coppola film is likely the greater film than Herzog's, but, as far as the documentaries are concerned, Burden Of Dreams far outstrips Hearts Of Darkness. The latter film is a good film, but there's nothing that lifts the film above the Making Of sort of documentary that's since become de rigueur with DVD releases. In short, the film is pointless if you've not watched Apocalypse Now. Not so with Burden Of Dreams. While not a perfect film, it acts as not just a Making Of film, but a film that details a good portion of the sociological and anthropological nature of the natives that Herzog and his crew lived and worked amongst. And, the reason for this may lay in the fact that Blank got a grant from PBS, and the film was originally shown on American television in a truncated 60 minute version, rather than the extended 95 minute long release from The Criterion Collection.
Burden Of Dreams is a very good documentary that does a rare thing, it illumines not only its subject matter, but all those things about its subject. That's a two for one deal Hollywood just doesn't make these days, and it's precisely why this documentary and DVD is such good viewing.
Burden Of Dreams is a very good documentary that does a rare thing, it illumines not only its subject matter, but all those things about its subject. That's a two for one deal Hollywood just doesn't make these days, and it's precisely why this documentary and DVD is such good viewing.