Burden of Dreams (made by the late, great Les Blank) is one of the most grueling. making-of documentaries ever made. It reveals the madness of legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog’s gargantuan attempt to make his 1982 epic Fitzcarraldo, no matter what happens. It also depicts how ego and ambition can really make or break you, especially when making movies.
Buy Burden of Dreams (Criterion Collection)As Blank intimately shoots Herzog’s exhausting will to make his film, obstacles pile up (recasts, tribal assaults, bad weather, stubbornness, and most importantly, hauling an old-fashioned steamboat over a mountain using nothing but manpower) and everyone’s patience wears thin. Herzog is no different from the lead character Fitzcarraldo (manically played by the late Herzog regular/friend/enemy Klaus Kinski), meaning that both men grow insane while trying to do the impossible.
Kinski isn’t in it as much as you think, but it was interesting to see him play the almost sane one next to Herzog’s crazed genius, despite their legendary and highly tumultuous actor/director relationship. This film may not be as emotional as Coppola’s Heart of Darkness (1991), but it still packs quite the punch and leaves you just as sweaty and stunted as everyone involved in it.
Being re-released on 4K and Blu-ray from Criterion, it contains the same great commentary by Blank, Herzog, editor and sound recordist Maureen Gosling, as well as vintage but worthwhile supplements such as interview with Herzog; Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980), a short film by Blank; deleted scenes; behind the scenes photos by Gosling; and trailer. There is also the same wonderful essay by film scholar Paul Arthur and a book of excerpts from Blank’s and Gosling’s production journals.
If you are looking to upgrade your previous DVD of the film, and/or love the works of both Herzog and Blank, then this one is definitely for you, assuming you’re ready to be driven insane by Herzog.
Other releases:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 4K UHD (Warner Bros): Milos Forman’s classic 1975 Oscar-winning dramedy starring the great Jack Nicholson as Randle McMurphy, a brash prisoner transferred to a mental institution who rallies patients to take on the oppressive Nurse Ratched (a sublimely sinister Louise Fletcher), who rules the place with a very iron fist. Read Greg Hammond’s review of the movie.
Spotlight (Shout Factory): The 10th Anniversary of Tom McCarthy’s stellar Oscar-winning film that tells the true story of the Boston Globe investigation into the Catholic Church’s cover-up of child abuse. Read Mat Brewster’s review of a previous Blu-ray.
Together (Neon/Decal Releasing): Real-life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco star in this wild and gory trip into a fractured marriage as their characters trigger a supernatural event that alters relationship, existence, and even their physical flesh.
The Naked Gun (Paramount): Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson bring the chemistry and laughs in this hilarious reboot of the 1988 classic police parody, where Neeson is the son of the legendary Lieutenant Frank Drebin, and Anderson the sister of a software engineer whose death may or may not be a suicide.
