Title: Burden of Dreams
Director: Les Blank
Screenwriter: Michael Goodwin
Cinema: Les Blank
Editor: Maureen Gosling
Sound: Maureen Gosling
Year: 1982 (95 minutes)
Synopsis: For nearly five years, Werner Herzog struggled against all odds to complete his most ambitious project: Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man’s attempt to build on opera house in the Amazon jungle. Blank captured the unfolding and unraveling of the overzealous filmmaker and his project. Named one of the 100 best films of the 20th Century, Burden of Dreams remains an extraordinary document of the filmmaking process and provides a unique look into the single-minded mission of one of cinema’s most fearless directors.
Review: Les Blank is one of the most respected documentary film makers in the world. He has been honored with several awards and numerous retrospectives. His films often focus on the unusual passions people possess and the lengths they will go to in order to satisfy those passions. Burden of Dreams is one of those films.
In Burden of Dreams, Blank focuses his camera on a young Werner Herzog, who at the time was trying to film Fitzcarraldo, an ambitious motion picture about one man’s passion to bring opera to the Amazon jungle. In the film, Blank makes it clear that Herzog is one man with unusual passions going to great lengths to film a movie about another man with unusual passions. I think it’s safe to include Blank in that mix as well.
At this point, I should confess that I am not a fan of Werner Herzog. Because of this, I had a hard time separating my feelings for Herzog from my feelings for Burden of Dreams. In the film, Blank goes to incredible lengths to document the work being done by Herzog. From that perspective, the film gets high marks.
But I just can help getting the feeling throughout the film that Herzog is playing to the camera, something he became famous for in his later works. And because of Herzog’s later films and his reputation, I had a very difficult time simply enjoying Burden of Dreams and judging it on its own merits.
The truth is, if I had seen this film in 1982 when it was released, I think I would have had a much higher opinion of it. But because I didn’t see it until 27 years after it was released, I didn’t find it as appealing.
I feel strongly that this review, while as honest as I can make it, is unfair to Les Blank and his work. In the future, I will be viewing more documentaries from Blank to get a truer sense of the man and his movies.
(3.0 out of 5.0)
Film website: http://lesblank.com/main.html
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