Burden of Dreams (1982) on Netflix
NR19821h 37mDocumentary
A camera crew follows the making of Fitzcarraldo in the Peruvian Amazon in 1979. Casting problems, tribal struggles and accidents mount, and a huge steamboat is dragged up a mountain.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.9/109,300 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
On location in the jungles of Peru in 1979, a film crew works on the production of Fitzcarraldo while a second, smaller crew records what happens around it. Problems tied to casting, struggles with the local tribes and a run of accidents keep interrupting the work, and the hardest task of all is hauling an enormous steamboat up a mountain; the German filmmaker at the center of it goes forward along a path of a certain madness so that his vision can come true. The documentary team itself comes out of the experience exhausted and exasperated. Its reserved director, unable to keep up with the antics around him, even coaxes the filmmaker into repeating a monologue about the jungle's violence and destruction that he had first delivered away from the cameras.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Burden of Dreams (1982)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Werner Herzog's monologue about the violence and destruction of the jungle was first delivered during a canoe ride, away from cameras; Les Blank liked the speech so much that he coaxed Herzog into repeating it, and he often asked Herzog to restate things he had said off-camera.
- Filming in the Peruvian jungle wore down the reserved, introverted Les Blank: by the last week of shooting Burden of Dreams he feared he would come out of it "like some Viet Nam veterans, horribly calloused".
- In 2022 Burden of Dreams was spoofed by the Emmy Award-nominated mockumentary series Documentary Now as the two-part episode Soldier of Illusion, about German filmmaker Rainer Wolz (Alexander Skarsgard) shooting in the Russian Ular mountains while directing a sitcom pilot.
