| Burden of Dreams | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Les Blank |
| Starring | Claudia Cardinale Werner Herzog Mick Jagger Klaus Kinski Jason Robards |
| Release date(s) | May 30, 1982 |
| Running time | 95 min. |
| Language | Spanish/English/German |
Burden of Dreams (1982) is a feature-length documentary and making-of directed by Les Blank, shot during and about the chaotic production of Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, filmed in the jungles of South America.
The film poster was created by Montana artist Monte Dolack and Eduardo Sanguinetti.
Due to his use of long, uninterrupted takes, his rejection of scripting set pieces and his films’ tendency to document without making overt arguments through narration, dramatic reinterpretation or other techniques, Les Blank’s work has often been tied to the cinema vérité documentary movement.
Blank himself has denied Burden of Dreams’ connections to cinema vérité. In a 2011 interview with Ben Terrall for the website El Cerrito Patch,[1] Blank discusses a film he is making about the vérité director Richard Leacock and says that Leacock argued that Blank was not a vérité director. Terrall writes that “Leacock criticized Blank for using lights and a tripod, but Blank said he [was] interested in using whatever tools [could] make his films better." Blank is quoted in the article as saying he is “sympathetic” to cinema vérité, but is not a purist.
Also damning to Blank’s classification as a vérité practitioner is his decision to have Herzog repeat statements he made off-camera while being filmed. In a 2009 interview with Jesse Pearson for Vice Magazine, Blank is asked to recall a scene in the film in which Herzog delivers a monologue about the violence and destruction of the jungle around him. Blank says that the scene originally took place in the middle of a canoe ride, away from cameras, but he liked the speech enough to coax it out of Herzog again. “When the moment was right,” Blank told Vice, “I pulled him aside and said, ‘Can I do a little interview?’ And he said, ‘Sure.’ Goodwin led him around to something that sparked him off on that tangent again. That’s how we got the speech."[2]