Burden of Dreams

Rating NR Formats DVD Genre documentary Starring Jason Robards, Claudia Cardinale Directed by Les Blank Publisher Criterion Collection External Links Criterion Collection

What is it about boats, rivers and film directors?

In 1951, John Huston put Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in a leaky boat and took off down a disease-infested river in The African Queen. For Huston, though, the reason for doing this had little do with his commitment to the script. He had always wanted to shoot an elephant and making this movie in Africa offered him that opportunity. In 1975, the equally obsessive Francis Ford Coppola took his cast and crew to the Philippines to shoot Apocalypse Now. This river shoot was even more dangerous - one cast member had a heart attack while another was attacked by a lion - and Coppola, in his own words, "little by little went mad."

Given two such legendary tales of caution, one might have thought that German director Werner Herzog might have second guessed his choice to make Fitzcarraldo (1982). After all, the boat in his jungle movie was not a little scow or a gunboat. It was a 75 ton passenger ship and his script called for it to be hauled over a mountain using nothing more than ropes and pulleys.

Then again, Herzog was never a very cautious man.

For nine months, Herzog drove his German and American crew members and Peruvian day laborers through torrential rains, substandard sanitation, rotten food, bouts of malaria, numerous delays, and a revolution to create Fitzcarraldo. At no point did the irony escape him that his obsession was the same one as that of his main character: Fitzcarraldo needs to get the ship over the mountain so that he can bring an opera to the Peruvians. Herzog needs to get the same boat over that mountain so that he can make a movie.

With Les Blank's landmark documentary, Burden of Dreams (1982), obsession is compounded. Probably the first honest, non-p.r.-oriented "making of," Blank's film details Herzog's unrelenting quest in an equally compulsive fashion. The result is an obsessive documentary about an obsessive director making a film about an obsessive hero. Just considering this trail is likely to have the viewer reaching for the closest available bottle of Ritalin.

Burden of Dreams is a classic "fly on the wall" documentary. Blank and his co-director Maureen Gosling reveal the everyday life of the crew by filming them not only at work but also at play. They capture arguments, impromptu parties, injuries, clowning, all of the activities that naturally occur when a people are cut off from civilization and have no one but each other to rely on. A real life version of reality TV, this group doesn't have the luxury of voting each other off the river. If they had, Herzog would have been the first to go.

Driving himself as hard as his crew, Herzog gives the viewer an object lesson in the difficulties of directing. Long considered a glamorous position by people who get their news from E.T., the daily life of a director on display in Burden of Dreams is physically and emotionally harrowing. Herzog must constantly consider the needs of his film and its backers against the human cost of any possible misstep. At one point, his engineer quits, convinced that the rig cannot support the weight of the ship. If the rig fails, many people could be killed. After a moment's consideration, Herzog forgets the engineer's warning and calls to start hoisting the ship.

While watching Burden of Dreams it is impossible not to note that there are two crews on this set, the Fitzcarraldo crew and the one for Blank's documentary. Furthermore, Herzog's crew become the actors in Blank's movie. Although it is never stated in Burden of Dreams, the two crews must have lived side by side during this ordeal. Each shared the same food, the same working conditions, the same isolation. And paid the same price of each director's obsession.

Criterion Collection has packaged Burden of Dreams with a good 1:1.33 transfer and an excellent selection of extras. Included among these are a longform 2005 interview with Herzog where he presents his own perspective, another short Blank film, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, a commentary track, and various deleted scenes. The best extra, though, is the 80 page book of excerpts from Blank and Gosling's production diaries. These provide a unique look into the documentarian's process. It should come as no surprise that obsessiveness plays a pretty big role.