In 1972,German film maker Werner Herzog & associates filmed 'Aquirre:The Wrath Of God' in the jungles of South America. Aquirre is a film about the obsessive search for the valley of Gold,by the Spanish explorer,Pizarro,that featured a bravura performance by Herzog regular,Klaus Kinski as a power mad Spanish warrior,Aguirre. The jungle setting acted as the perfect backdrop for madness. Several years later,Herzog returned to South America to film his next epic,'Fitzcarraldo',a fictional tale of a rubber baron who wants to bring opera to the jungles of South America. The film was to star Jason Robards as Fitzcarraldo & Mick Jagger as his side kick. When Robards became deathly ill,and had to be pulled off the film under doctors orders,and Mick Jagger had to leave production,due to prior commitments with the Rolling Stones,Herzog had to scrap the original premise & start over from frame one. After re-writes,he ended up casting his old friend/nemesis,Klaus Kinski as Fitzcarraldo,Claudia Cardinale as his lover & a cadre of others,including some of the various Indian tribes as cast members (as well as crew). Most,if not all of this was filmed by legendary documentary film maker, Les Blank,with a scenario written by Michael Goodwin. This is a tale of obsessive film making about a film project that seemed to be cursed from the word "go",but Herzog none the less,pressed on,for three tortured years,from 1979 to 1982 to finish his film (and the reward in the end),that ranks along with documentaries such as 'Hearts Of Darkness:The Making Of Apocalypse Now',about another kind of obsessive film maker (Francis Ford Coppola, in this case,who became legally insane during the filming of what was being called,"Coppola's folly" during the production). Despite a few obvious flaws in this film (I would have loved to have seen more footage of Robards & Jagger,as well as Cardinale being interviewed)'Burden Of Dreams'is still worth a look see,if you enjoyed 'Fitzcarraldo' as much as I did. Narrative in English (with production footage spoken in English,German & Spanish with English subtitles,alas no English subtitles to translate the various Indian dialects). Not rated by the MPAA,this film contains some brief,strong language & intimations of sexual going's on during production.
Review of Burden of Dreams
