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Special Features
- Audio commentary by director Les Blank, editor and sound recordist Maureen Gosling, and Werner Herzog
- Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980), an early short documentary by Les Blank
- New video interview with Herzog
- Deleted Scenes
- Gallery of set and location photos by Maureen Gosling
- A book featuring excerpts from Les Blank & Maureen Gosling's journal entries on the set of Fitzcarraldo
- Theatrical Trailer
Editorial Reviews
For nearly five years, acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete the most ambitious and difficult film of his career-Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man's attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Documentary filmmaker Les Blank captured the unfolding of this production, made all the more perilous by Herzog's determination to shoot the most daunting scenes without models or special effects, including a sequence requiring hundreds of natives to pull a full-sized, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain. The result is an extraordinary document of the filmmaking process and a unique look into the single-minded passion of one of cinema#s most fearless directors.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
46 of 47 people found the following review helpful
By Anita
Format:VHS Tape|Amazon Verified Purchase
Or maybe it will sink its teeth into you. The most compelling dreams are not neat and tidy and are not easy to understand, not even by the person who has and fulfills the dream. That's the case with Werner Herzog's dream of filming the story of Fitzcarraldo. If you liked that movie, this documentary is a must-see, a fascinating look at all the problems Herzog had during the making of the movie. The film is not just about the obvious difficulty of moving the steamship over a mountain in the middle of a jungle. First, there are problems with local Indians that cannot be resolved and so the first location must be abandoned. At the new location, with 40% of filming complete, the star of the movie Jason Robarbs becomes sick and goes home to recover. His doctor forbids him to return. Then Mick Jagger drops out because he can't stay the extra months needed to reshoot the film. (I was disappointed that there was only a minute or two of footage showing Robarbs and Jagger).
Back in Germany, Herzog's investors ask him, Do you have the strength or the will or the enthusiasm to continue? He replies, "How can you ask this question? If I abandon this project, I would be a man without dreams. And I don't want to live like that." Filming continues and there is one more delay and problem after another. Herzog has three ships so he can shoot at different locations and two of them run aground, due to low river levels and the driest season in years. The film does a good job of showing both Herzog's reactions to these problems and his determination to continue in spite of huge financial and personal costs.
Most of my criticisms have to do with the limitation of films generally, namely that I wanted to know alot more about this story. I wanted to understand more of Herzog's complex relationship to the jungle, I wanted to understand why he continued to try moving the ship after his engineer walked away and predicted that people might be killed. I wanted to see more of Herzog in action and have a more intimate glimpse of his creative process. But for a ninety minute documentary, I basically can't complain, it did the job of telling the story of the making of Fitzcarraldo.
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
Fans of Apocalypse Now or Hearts of Darkness should check this out. It is a documentary detailing the madness Werner Herzog went through in making his film Fitzcarraldo in the jungle. This movie is great because it shows how Herzog's struggles in making his movie parallel those endured by the main character in Fitzcarraldo. Both figures attempt to drag a huge riverboat literally over a mountain in the middle of the Amazon. If you enjoy behind the scenes documentaries or believe in man's obsessive nature, you should see this.
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
First, Anchor Bay gave rain to our parched Herzog-loving throats with the release of many of the eccentric German maestro's greatest feature films. And now, Criterion offers Les Blank's astonishingly beautiful and gloriously weird documentary on the desperate creation of one of those classic titles, Fitzcarraldo. A production that started off starring Jason Robards and Mick Jagger wound up with the director threatening to murder star Klaus Kinski if he walked off set! See Herzog obsessively orchestrating the movement of an entire steamboat over a treacherous mountain in Peru! No special effects for this master.
"Without dreams we would be cows in a field, and I don't want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project." If every filmmaker thought this way, do you think we'd have to sit thru Son of the Mask?
As a five-star added bonus, we get "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe," a brilliant short doc by Blank which chronicles Herzog actually cooking and devouring his boot after promising Errol Morris to do so if Gates of Heaven was ever completed! Herzog also uses the opportunity to declare war on American television!
God bless Criterion - here's hoping they follow up this exciting release with some unavailable Herzog docs like La Souffiere, Dark Glow of the Mountain, or Wings of Hope, and some other Les Blank rarities like Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers and In Heaven There is No Beer...
"Without dreams we would be cows in a field, and I don't want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project." If every filmmaker thought this way, do you think we'd have to sit thru Son of the Mask?
As a five-star added bonus, we get "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe," a brilliant short doc by Blank which chronicles Herzog actually cooking and devouring his boot after promising Errol Morris to do so if Gates of Heaven was ever completed! Herzog also uses the opportunity to declare war on American television!
God bless Criterion - here's hoping they follow up this exciting release with some unavailable Herzog docs like La Souffiere, Dark Glow of the Mountain, or Wings of Hope, and some other Les Blank rarities like Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers and In Heaven There is No Beer...
Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Eh, Not My Thing
My boyfriend wanted to watch this with me, I didn't care for it. I found it dry and dull, and rather depressing. But to be fair, I have no interest in this subject matter. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Leila Hill
5.0 out of 5 stars
Harp Man
I previously wrote a review. It was a gift to a friend who liked it very much.End of Story OK?
Published 6 months ago by RKL
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating, if not quite as emotional as I expected
I really enjoyed this. It's a fascinating meta look at film-making.
An obsessed, driven director (Werner Herzog) is trying to make an almost impossible film about an... Read more
An obsessed, driven director (Werner Herzog) is trying to make an almost impossible film about an... Read more
Published 7 months ago by K. Gordon
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good
Les Blank's 1982 documentary, Burden Of Dreams, is a film that, like Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, follows the near-obsessive drive of a great filmmaker to bring a... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Cosmoetica
5.0 out of 5 stars
A hero is who makes possible the impossible!
The stubborness(understood as a synonym for rebellion for all that most people considered unlikely), constancy, obstinacy and the power of will are by themselves,intrinsic... Read more
Published 20 months ago by Hiram Gomez Pardo
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION
Documentarian Les Blank's wonderfully titled BURDEN OF DREAMS is a cool, somewhat detached portrait of Werner Herzog's work during the perversely difficult five-year production of... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Robin Simmons
1.0 out of 5 stars
DISAPPOINTED
VERY POOR QUALITY, HISSING SOUND HALF WAY THRU THE FILM. SEEMS LIKE A CHEAP RECORDING OF AN ORIGINAL. POOR PICTURE AND POOR SOUND. NOT WORTH THE PRICE PAID.
Published 23 months ago by Patty
5.0 out of 5 stars
Into the Wild
"Burden of Dreams" is an electrifying documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo. Like the fictional character Fitzcarraldo who is driven to open an opera house in the Amazon... Read more
Published on July 31, 2010 by Amaranth
5.0 out of 5 stars
An ego gone amok
Everything a documentary should be - showing you fascinating scenes without telling you what to think. Read more
Published on April 1, 2010 by harlingford
5.0 out of 5 stars
Herzog is the MAN!
Some of the reviews discuss how slow the film is, and that is true. I think the editing is slow for two reasons. Read more
Published on January 11, 2009 by E. Woodard
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