Burden of Dreams

Fitzcarraldo remains something of a lumpy curiosity, a wished-for masterpiece but not an actual one. Which only makes Blank’s documentary more interesting.

Les Blank’s movie about the making of Fitzcarraldo is dumbfoundingly precious.

At best "Burden of Dreams" offers a superficial, inconclusive impression of an esoteric project whose distribution is bound to be haphazard.

Les Blank's Burden of Dreams is one of the most remarkable documentaries ever made about the making of a movie.

The film is at once funny and, in its depiction of the scant differences between art and megalomania, somewhat frightening.

Blank’s brilliance lies in watchful matter-of-factness, highlighted by Candace Laughlin’s sporadic narration, as Herzog and his crew try—among many self-imposed misadventures—to pull a 300-ton steamship overland through the Amazon rainforest.

It is the rare “making-of” document that many consider better than the completed project itself.

Gramophone music soothes the savage breast, and operatic human excess defines director and obsession as well as his lead character.

O retrato extraordinrio de um cineasta que, como o protagonista de seu filme, se entrega obsesso por amor Arte.

Remarkably candid behind-the-scenes documentary.