burden of dreams

THE FLICK: Werner Herzog is a man whose personality is as overtly dramatic as his films. Stubborn, inspired, prone to flourishes of verbose exaggeration and outrageous generalities, the director cut quite a swath through the ‘70s with films like Aquirre, The Wrath of God and Nosferatu. But Fitzcarraldo remains the seminal expression of Herzog’s cinematic tenacity and also serves as an infamous legacy of on-set arguments, production overruns, political tension and disasters both natural and man-made – all of it captured in Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams. A documentary filmmaker in the truest sense, Blank is by no means the progenitor of the current rash of marketing department fluff. In fact, as Herzog points out in a new interview, many of the most interesting aspects of Burden of Dreams have nothing to do with the making of Fitzcarraldo. But it was under those auspices that Blank traveled to Peru to document the challenges faced by Herzog’s crew, not the least of which involved dragging a full scale steamship up the side of a mountain. The troubled production faced many delays in shooting, which allowed Blank’s camera to linger on seemingly ancillary subjects. Natives dressed in Saturday Night Fever t-shirts, a local prostitute visiting the set, swarms of fire ants and colorful jungle flora. Set against this backdrop, Herzog’s interviews seem fabulously overblown as his film suffers tragedy after tragedy. “Even the birds do not sing here, they just shriek in pain and misery,” he pontificates. One must alternately snicker and sympathize with the director’s situation. But Blank’s style is so unobtrusive, Herzog’s literally digs his own grave. Dreams does touch on some of the more typical Hollywood problems like casting changes (original stars Jason Robards and Mick Jagger both dropped out after 40-minutes of the film was shot) and technical know-how (the steamship was towed uphill with an ingenious rope pulley system and plenty of native man-power), but the film doesn’t dish as much dirt as you might expect. Especially when it comes to the notorious Klaus Kinski, frequent Herzog collaborator and well-documented egomaniac. Herzog’s own film My Best Fiend is a much better source for such material, although one of the actor’s tantrums does make the cut as a deleted scene from the Dreams shoot. THE FEATURES: Criterion’s package is much more than just a DVD experience. Besides the well written liner notes, the set includes a 77-page reprint of Les Blank and editor Maureen Gosling’s on-set journals which brings even more depth their tumultuous experience. Herzog joins them on a commentary track that mixes serious first-person perspective with more jovial reminiscences (such as Blank’s dismay at having to make a single joint last the entire trip). Dreams and Burdens is a new 38-minute interview with Herzog and the director does not disappoint. Among the wild revelations: he doesn’t know the color of his own eyes and has never had a dream while asleep, no matter what the psychiatrists say. The filmmaker is generous in endorsing Blank’s work, warts and all, but does take the opportunity to clear his name as far as his safety record on film sets. And finally, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe is a 20-minute short by Blank that playfully records Herzog living up to a bet he made to director Errol Moriss.