Review of Burden of Dreams (1982) by Kevin M — 21 Jan 2009

Only of interest to those who've seen "Fitzcarraldo" or are fans of Herzog. The legendarily troubled production is only glossed over by Les Blank, a tourist on the Amazon set for five weeks out of the nearly year-long shoot, not counting the aborted Jason Robards version. We see footage from that first shoot, with Robards playing the insane rubber baron as a lovable old carmudgeon, and it just doesn't work. It seems fate planted Kinski into the role; Herzog was hesistant to cast him after his experiences shooting "Aguirre" (another hellish production that makes this one look like a cakewalk). Over the months spent cooped up in the jungle with native labor/extras with no access to nightlife or autobahns, Kinski would have insane, irrational shouting fits on a daily basis, driving the natives to hatch murder plots.

Les Blank is obviously an anthropologist first and a documentarian second, so he spends most of his time interviewing natives about domestic squabbles, watching them mash yucca plants and make arrows. This is all well and good, but his analysis of filmmaking is shaky at best, not understanding Herzog's central tenet of "voodoo of location", and thinking he's recording some mental breakdown, when in actuality the intense stress of the project just had him in a nihilistic mood. There's a legendary speech about the essential Godlessness of the jungle, and a lot of great location photography. But not only does Kinski come across as sane and workmanlike, the greatest developments are smoothed out with perfunctory voiceover, not to mention some accounts are just ignored. There was a crewman leveling trees with a chainsaw who got bitten in the ankle by a poisonous snake. Knowing the venom would cause cardiac arrest within 60 seconds, he sawed off his own foot to save his own life. Is this mentioned even once? Nope, but at least we know all about the two Brazilian prostitutes keeping the male crew members from fighting each other. The scenes are also shown out of order; Cinematographer Thomas Mauch is seen with a bandaged hand near the beginning, but we only see how he contracted the injury during the rapids sequence 10 minutes from the end. His surgery was done without anesthesia, since it was all used to treat an arrow wound which is shown somewhere in the middle of the film. Very confusing.