Film Review: Burden of Dreams
August 15 2008 at 12:37:20 AM  "I'm tired of it all and could care less if they move the stupid ship – or finish the fucking film." - Les Blank, Saturday, June 13, 1981 Problems during the making of a Werner Herzog film usually involve something quite different from shooting inside a studio or on a Hollywood back lot. By the time he undertook a second fated voyage to the Amazon jungle in 1979 for his latest picture Fitzcarraldo, the notorious “Bavarian madman” had already scaled an active volcano in the Caribbean with hopes of interviewing several locals who refused to flee from oncoming disaster and, while filming Aguirre, The Wrath of God ten years earlier along the Amazon river, had threatened a murder-suicide because star actor Klaus Kinski refused to cooperate on the set. That Fitzcarraldo is known to have had the most tempestuous life on and off the camera of any of his films is particularly significant. From nearly the moment Herzog and his crew stepped off the plane the production became racked by political turmoil, fatigue against the elements and a vicious rumor campaign against the film itself. In the middle of all this came Les Blank, a filmmaker and friend of Herzog’s, who traveled to Peru during the first months of production to film the reality of what has become a near-mythic ordeal. According to Blank, whose corpus includes short films on everything from Cajuns, tea and garlic to the lives of bluesmen Lightning Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb and Sonny Rhodes, it was Herzog who hand-picked him to chronicle the venture, a claim which Herzog has in later years denied. Nevertheless, their styles are complimentary and their relationship is of a distanced but amiable collaboration (So much so that footage originally shot by Blank of the Andes’ misty treetops was used in the opening shot of Herzog’s final cut). Because the entire process of shooting Fitzcarraldo was itself a kind of meta-experience for all involved, Burden of Dreams leads inevitably to both directors telling nearly the same tale of one man hopelessly facing down the primeval forces of nature, further enriched by what Blank has captured of local customs and Herzog’s increasing melodrama. Fitzcarraldo's premise is rooted in perpetuating hardship: Set in Peru in the early part of the 20th century, a failed entrepreneur (Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, called Fiztcarraldo by the natives) dreams of building an Opera house in the Amazon jungle. Eventually, he gains financing through a local rubber baron. But to accomplish his goal and at the ideal location, he must enlist the local Indian tribe [played by The Aguarunas and Machiguengas] to pull a three-story steamship across a mountain set between two rivers - a task that evokes all of Melville, Conrad and Sisyphus, and which Herzog believes must be achieved authentically, actually – “truthfully” - to carry any weight on film. It's a dangerous line of sensationalism, self-promotion and heroic adventure upon which the director often treads. The actor Klaus Kinski plays the part of Fitzcarraldo on screen but it's Herzog who ultimately reflects the character's passions and compulsion. As Herzog himself explains on camera (almost always while in the mud or the rain or engulfed by the forest’s monstrous leaves), the historical inspiration for the story involved the much simpler task of disassembling and then reassembling a boat while crossing an Isthmus in the jungle. The real Fitzcarraldo, far from the film’s pathetically weedy and unfortunate character, was himself a rubber baron, born Isaias Fermin Fitzcarrald. Fitzcarrald was a ruthless and daring tycoon, who traveled throughout the Manu region of Peru, bloodily dispensing with many Indian workers on a quest to establish a rubber trading industry. He died at the age of 35 while shipwrecked along the Urubamba River. Today, the remains of his ship are a local tourist attraction. Instead, Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo is scripted to experience a more bittersweet triumph on screen. The resulting drama is subsequently described by Herzog as his most personal filming experience, to the point that he was prepared to step in as an actor if more cast members pulled out. (Casting for the role of Fitzcarraldo first went to Jason Robards, seen here in early production footage with Mick Jagger. Both actors were eventually forced to quit due to illness and an upcoming tour. The part was then accepted by the notorious Kinski, never failing in his infamous fits and easily triggered tantrums on location.) But it's Blank's background as a video anthropologist that yields something more here than just a document on filmmaking. It becomes, in part, a time capsule of a gradually fading culture, expressing this to a much greater extent than his subject. As Herzog goes on to explain, "Fitzcarraldo is not an ethnographic film…they [the Indians] are acting.” Indeed the “subject” is continually expanded through Blank’s lens. His camera lingers unobtrusively over the daily routines of Indian life, from the gathering of fruit, weaving of garments and arrow making, to the preparation of Yucca root and its use in the ritual libation, masato. Several short folk songs are also recited on camera, however, not everything is so romantically benign. In one interesting cutaway an Indian women challenges another to a fistfight over an issue involving her husband. We also glimpse a more perilous side to the endeavor in the aftermath of an attack by an enemy tribe on two workers from Herzog's camp. The men are badly wounded, but survive and Herzog keeps the weapons as a gift for his young son back home. Throughout the film, a voiceover is used to highlight the effects of rapid deforestation, the encroachment of oil companies into the area and the escalation of a border war between Peru and Ecuador. And while these series of events threaten more serious harm to the region than making a movie, the underlying compulsion and need to control is shown to be as much apart of the artist as it is the businessman. The most striking aspect of Blank’s film is in chronicling the stages whereby even the nobler passion exacts its price in this delicate balancing act between the respect of autonomy and a battle to subdue nature for celluloid. In one scene, we learn that Herzog is adamant enough about not further "contaminating" Indian culture that he's ordered separate camps built in order to maintain isolation whenever possible. (He does first admit that it's best for the Indians not to become too curious and involved as his team works out the technical aspects of shooting.) However, the narration also points out that extended time in close living arrangements have helped add to the tension we see among the Indians. Other incites into the film's production include a group of journalists who travel from Germany distributing photos of Nazi concentration camps to the already skeptical Indians in an attempt to sabotage the film (they half-succeed); a particularly candid moment as a Herzog reveals a local priest has suggested employing prostitutes on the set to help boost morale (he complies) and an engineer who leaves disgusted over the risks Herzog is willing to take in moving the ship. Blank also captures plenty of the fecund and mud-sunken surroundings, leading to Herzog's famous and mesmerizing rant on nature as "Misery…obscene…asphyxiation…a harmony of overwhelming and collective murder."  Even after witnessing the frequent mishaps and delays, the insects, the accidents (including news of a plane crash and two deaths by drowning), travels through dangerous river passages (where Herzog's cameraman, Thomas Mauch, suffered a severe gash on his hand after the steamboat nearly capsized with all its crew on board), there is still nothing as captivating in Burden of Dreams as watching Herzog become slowly digested by the indifferent savagery of this, in his words, "unfinished" world. His pressures shape our perspective; his film crew, primarily Europeans, simply does not belong there, but forges ahead as the director begins other such rants about God, the devil, chaos, America and "universalism." Amidst all this we watch Herzog gather his native army to uproot trees and man a crude but effective pulley system, which carries the boat to its hilltop destination. To his credit, Herzog is seen pulling alongside the others, but the contraption fails and work begins all over again. To be sure, the pressures of filming in the jungle were not confined to Herzog’s crew alone. Nor was the experience of working around the director regarded as any less stressful. During the relative calm of night, Blank and editor Maureen Gosling recorded their thoughts amid these mounting frustrations. Included in The Criterion Collection’s DVD release of Burden of Dreams is a copy of the team’s journals, wherein Blank writes on Herzog’s dark musings as "Typical hubris, which calls for tragic punishment by the Gods." Kinski’s explosions during the making of Fitzcarraldo, while more odious by comparison, receive little mention here or in the film’s original release. However, one such naturally unprovoked outburst can be viewed in the DVD’s supplements as well as in Herzog’s lukewarm biopic, My Best Fiend. Although still only a brief extract of four years worth of production and filming - Herzog would not complete Fitzcarraldo till a year after Blank and Maureen Gosling returned home - Burden of Dreams presents an equally fascinating view of consuming artistry and of a culture that will eventually become, like so many before them, erased by time and progress. Today, the Machiguenga tribe owns the title to their land and is protected from the oil businesses found along their boundary. They have also become slightly more Westernized, preferring now to wear t-shirts and shorts instead of the traditional garments seen in the film. Their protection is a partial vindication for Herzog, who excitedly reports in a series of bonus DVD commentaries that all of the forest area cut down during the making of Fitzcarraldo has since grown back, leaving no trace of his entry. It's unlikely that Herzog would fail to realize how lucky he is to have survived in body and reputation throughout all this. Today, much to the chagrin of his detractors, he offers not repentance, but more stubborn rationalizations of the danger involved. To expect more is to have learned nothing. It's what helps sustain Burden of Dreams as one of the most puzzling yet inspiring looks into the limits of man's obsessions. [Todd DePalma] Les Blank Trailers: Burden of Dreams All In This Tea Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers The Blues According To Lightning Hopkins Spend It All Comments (0)
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