Friday Night Flicks: The Burden of Dreams
“I live or end my life with this project.”
Such is the sentiment of this week’s flick The Burden of Dreams, a documentary about one of the most ambitious undertakings in cinema history: Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo.
Fitzcarraldo follows an ambitious but naivë European foreigner - the titular “Fitz” - as he pursues his lifelong dream of opening an operahouse in the Peruvian Jungle. On paper, the film falls under the “epic” category, but “epic” feels like the wrong word. When I think of “epic”, I think of long-players like Lawrence of Arabia, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, There Will Be Blood - visceral, emotive films that meander in a way, are grand in their scope, and high in action and/or suspense. Fitzcarraldo is none of these.
Yes, imagine that: the movie about pulling a boat over a mountain isn’t exactly a nail-biter. Seventy-five percent of its runtime is swallowed up by shots of a frazzled-looking Klaus Kinski pacing around the poop deck. (side note: My Best Friend, a documentary that traces Kinski’s and Herzog’s turbulent yet fruitful creative relationship over the years, is also worth a watch).
On the other hand, the story behind the making of Fitzcarraldo is so insane, it’s almost unbelievable. Movie magic didn’t haul that boat over the mountain; Herzog of course insisted on completing the task by hand, enlisting the (willing and compensated) help of the indigenous Aguaruna people, who, at the outset of production, were caught in the crosshairs of a cold war between two neighboring villages. Two plane crashes, a few arrow raids, one chainsaw amputation, and one village-immolation later, Fitzcarraldo was finally completed.
Mick Jagger may or may not make an appearance at one point, too. —Jackson Todd
““The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing. They just screech in pain.””
