I wasn't even sure if I should write this up here, because Burden of Dreams is a documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo. So basically this is an injunction to see Fitzcarraldo if you already haven't.
Note: Spoilers for Fitzcarraldo ahead
We've all watched a movie with someone who points out, during a particularly harried action sequence, something like 'that's a cool special effect'. I've always felt things like this are strange to say, because it is composed of two parts, both of which are kind of opposite; that A: that special effect very well replicated how real life is and B: that special effect very well replicated how life should be. These two conflicting claims get at what film itself is trying to do, but of course in doing so, it reveals that we are, of course, watching a film.
Fitzcarraldo makes a viewer confront this 'I'm watching a film' phenomenon with its incredible sequence where Fitzcarraldo and his native followers manage to lift a boat across a mountain. The question of 'How did they do this?' works both within the film and outside of it - how the hell did they do it? Burden of Dreams is unfortunately silent on this, mostly because it seems the documentary-makers themselves were forced to give up on the very project they were filming. It does, however, show that the man hired to engineer this feat walked off the set because he felt it would endanger people's lives.
What's striking about Burden of Dreams is that it reveals just how difficult it was to use natives in the film. Herzog decides to shoot the film thousands of miles from civilization 'to get performances out of his actors that he wouldn't otherwise' - but he's also employing lots of natives whose language Herzog does not speak and who have not been extras in a film. The documentary is filled with complications such as these, and we are left to wonder - how was it even possible to make this film?
Filmmaking is such a strange art - a filmmaker needs to employ dozens of other people to make his vision come to life. In Burden of Dreams, we learn how much suffering is undergone by everyone involved to make one man's mad vision exist forever.
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i think 'burden of dreams' is a great companion piece to 'my best fiend'. when you watch herzog's own documentary about making films with kinski, you get the impression that kinski is a madman, and herzog is merely unusually persevering in trying to get his films made right. when you watch someone else's documentary about herzog making a film with kinski, you get the impression that herzog is a madman, and that kinski is merely one of his more idiosyncratic props.
ReplyDeletealso: pretty insane how much worse those jason robards scenes were, isn't it?
yeah, i still have to see my best fiend; it'll be a while before i do, i kinda want to slow it down on herzog. but yeah herzog's line about how birds don't sing on the jungle, they screech in anger absolutely killed me. 'it's the one place where creation isn't finished, god made it in anger', and so forth. kinski really only has one scene in the documentary.
ReplyDeletere: robards - i thought they were awful too at first, but in thinking about it, robards seemed to be playing him more like a holy fool than a demented, insanely passionate man. i think the holy fool descends into insane passion angle could've worked - kinski is not very convincing as a failed entrepreneur, quite honestly, and i think robards is. kinski IS more convincing as a demi-god who decides to employ hordes of natives to lift a boat over a mountain.