"But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment."
-- Werner Herzog, from an interview in Burden of Dreams

So many things have to go right to make a film shoot go smoothly that it is a wonder that any do. There are just so many "moving parts" in making a film -- so many arrangements to be made, so many things to be coordinated -- that problems are inherent to the process.

Every shoot has its challenges, but there are a few that rise to the level of legend. At the top of that list must be Werner Herzog's amazing film, Fitzcarraldo, whose shoot was documented by filmmaker Les Blank in Burden of Dreams. Filmed in the Amazon basin in Peru (near the Ecuadorian border), the Fitzcarraldo shoot spanned an agonizing four years and went through two casts as everything that could go wrong, did.

Fitzcarraldo tells the story of Brian Fitzgerald (pronounced "Fitzcarraldo" by his neighbors), an Irish expatriate and opera lover in Peru at the turn of the 20th century who longs to bring his idol, Enrico Caruso, to sing there in his jungle town. To do this, he must first build an opera house worthy of the master's presence, and to do that, he must find a fortune. This he does by deciding to becoming a rubber baron, and using his proceeds to finance his dream by trading with people along an otherwise non-commercially navigated river. How to get a riverboat onto that river, however? Ah, he finds his answer: An isthmus that separates his intended river from one already well traveled, and all he must do is have a triple-decked riverboat dragged over a hill.

That's all. And that, of course, would be a major engineering feat in the forbidding conditions of the Amazon basin. To shoot this -- to capture Fitzcarraldo's dream -- Herzog was convinced that he had to share the dream, to film it exactly as it happens, without miniatures or models, without special effects, without anything other than what Fitzcarraldo had at his disposal.

Of course, part of the problem was Herzog himself, as he freely admitted (and still does admit, to this day). Herzog, as he tells it in interview footage from Blank's film, did not believe that he could make a convincing film about Fitzgerald's obsession and feat without reproducing what he and his team of locals actually did.

So reproduce they did: Herzog worked at first with a Brazilian engineer to come up with a way to move a 320-ton steam ship uphill over an isthmus, but the engineer backed out, unwilling to sign off on such a risky venture. Herzog pressed on.

In fact, "Herzog pressed on" defines the momentum throughout Burden of Dreams. Over the course of four long years, Herzog and his team battle the Amazon rainy season, rain forest flora and fauna, indignant locals, injury, disease, and -- perhaps most notoriously of all -- the ego machine known as Klaus Kinski, who played the lead (after disease felled the originally cast Jason Robards, and the schedule killed the participation of Mick Jagger). Kinski, who made a grand total of five films with Herzog (a small body of work given both men's prodigious output, yet they are indelibly identified with one another, as Herzog's own documentary about Kinski, My Best Fiend, makes clear), delivered stunning performances in each of those films, but they came at a high price: the guy was the king of drama queens, if not certifiably insane. Indeed, in My Best Fiend, Herzog recounts how one native offered to kill Kinski during the shoot for Herzog; the director politely reclined, pointing out that he needed his actor to finish the film.

Then there is the also-famous "runaway ship" scene, wherein Herzog decided to film onboard a ship as it was being propelled downriver, crashing into the banks and injuring crewmembers along the way. It's breathtaking. It's also just plain nuts.

At one point, Herzog is compelled to return to Germany to meet with investors and explain why the production is dragging on. One asks him whether he intends to finish, given the seemingly endless hardships he faces. "If I abandon this project, I would be a man without dreams, and I never want to live like that," Herzog recalls responding. "I live my life or I end my life with this project."

Fitzcarraldo, the film that eventually emerged from this daunting process, is an excellent film, arguably one of Herzog's masterpieces. Regardless of one's opinion of it, however, it is mythic in reputation. Even as Les Blank's documentary seeks to show the reality behind the myth, it only emboldens the myth. That's because, at least for this film, that's where Herzog dwelt as an artist, and where everyone involved in making Fitzcarraldo had to dwell, too.

 

Dreams come at a high price sometimes, and it is the daring artist who fearlessly plows ahead, no matter the cost. Les Blank captures that cost in stunning detail throughout Burden of Dreams, making for one of the most compelling films about filmmaking anyone is likely every to make.

Criterion Collection release information for Burden of Dreams

IMDB.com entry on Burden of Dreams

Trailer for Fitzcarraldo (1982)

 

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