Burden of Dreams

Eleanor Coppola’s Hearts of Darkness and Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams are two fine examples of a rare and underappreciated genre: the “making-of” film. As historiography is to history, the “making-of” is to the feature—one film dedicated to the appreciation of another—moviemaking an order removed. Ordinarily, the “making-of” is a niche product aimed at enthusiasts and buried within the nether regions of DVD extras. But this pair of feature-length documentaries are so much more than accouterment.  One need not have seen the original to appreciate a peek behind the scenes. There is something of Keeping Up with the Kardashians in each of these films: outsized personalities, gossip and accusations, contradictory accounts of the same event—it’s entertaining stuff. And informative too. It is a rare and unique privilege to watch a great director at work and these films feature two of the best: Francis Ford Coppola and Werner Herzog. Hearts of Darkness begins with a monologue in which Mr. Coppola recalls working on Apocalypse Now: “We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.” Werner Herzog’s experience on Fitzcarraldo was no less turbulent. The production was forced to abandon its original location when indigenous tribespeople set fire to the set, a fatal airplane accident cost the lives of several crew members, and production was stalled when Jason Robards—who was originally cast in the leading role—contracted dysentery, was evacuated to United States for treatment, and forbidden by his doctor from returning to set. Ultimately, Herzog would replace Robards with Klaus Kinski and shoot many of the scenes again. And yet, two masterful films emerged from chaotic and disorderly origins, an achievement that attests to the resolve and ingenuity of each director. If you’re interested in directing movies, this pair of films will either prove inspiring or make you want to reconsider careers—this work is not for the faint of heart!

Hearts of Darkness – Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola (1991)

The remarkable thing about Hearts of Darkness is the unusual proximity between filmmaker and subject. The film’s principle videographer, Eleanor Coppola, is Francis’ wife. Incidentally, the couple met on the set of another movie. The film was Dementia 13, a 1962 low-budget horror flick directed by Francis on which Eleanor served as an assistant art director. Eleanor insists that she was hired by the Apocalypse Now production less as a professional contractor than as a pretense to accompany her husband during what promised to be a long and difficult shoot. But Eleanor’s humility is somewhat misleading, she is a actually highly capable videographer who documented the production with precision and detachment.

Although production for Apocalypse Now wrapped in May1977,  work on Hearts of Darkness began more than a decade later, when Eleanor provided two young filmmakers—Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper—with a heap of archival footage in 1990. It isn’t clear whether the Apocalypse Now team foresaw the production of a feature length “making-of” documentary, or simply collected footage for their own purposes. This contrasts with Fitzcarraldo whose production retained an acclaimed documentarist, Les Blank, for the express purpose of creating a “making-of” documentary that would be released concomitantly. Despite the ambiguity of Eleanor’s position and the uncertain fate of her material, she clearly intuited that the Apocalypse Now shoot was noteworthy and that her records would provide a valuable record of what transpired. In addition to recording video, Eleanor covertly recorded private conversations between herself and Francis using surreptitiously hidden audio recorders. These conversations, in which Francis expresses doubt about the commercial viability and artistic quality of Apocalypse Now provide some of the documentary’s most revelatory moments. Under ordinary circumstances, a director would never willingly concede his deepest insecurities in the midst of production—lest he risk disenchanting cast and crew—and yet this is exactly what happens in Hearts of Darkness. The proximity between man and wife, filmmaker and subject, allows for an intimate and multifaceted portrayal of the great director at work.

Burden of Dreams – Les Blank (1982)

The opera-loving protagonist of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo intends to build a theater in Iquitos, an isolated and marginally settled trading outpost at the foot of the Amazon Basin. Lacking the patronage of the town’s wealthy rubber barons, Fitzcarraldo resolves to amass a personal fortune and finance its construction himself. He buys a remote parcel of land at a bargain price from an industrialist who believes that the land—which sits above treacherous rapids—is impossible to access. Fitzcarraldo devises an ingenious, if farfetched, solution to this problem. He discovers a point at which the principal waterway approaches a second, more easily navigable, river and proposes moving his steamship overland to the adjoining waterway, a maneuver that will enable him to circumvent the rapids and deliver his goods to port. When Fitzcarraldo ventures upriver to prospect his newly acquired land, he discovers that what appeared on the map as a short gap between waterways, was in fact, the site of a mountain. In the face of seemingly imminent failure, Fitzcarraldo follows through with his plan as intended, enlisting the help of thousands of indigenous people in his frantic bid to move a ship over a mountain.

Fitzcarraldo is a film about the nature of passion. A film about a quixotic and tenacious opera lover directed by a man with an equivalent passion for unconventional cinema. Herzog clearly identifies with his protagonist, specifically his willingness to make physical, emotional, and financial sacrifices in order to achieve a singular goal. In fact, its an understatement to say that Herzog identifies with Fitzcarraldo, he is himself a version of the character. And in his film Herzog attempts something equally improbable: to transport a real 320 ton steamship over the mountain, without the use of special effects. In doing so, Herzog literalizes the film’s central metaphor: that he who is truly determined can accomplish that which appears impossible to others.

The French critic Jacques Rivette once proposed that every film is a documentary of its own making. A quote which suggests that the cinematic image—which is constructed, layered, edited, and distorted—nevertheless retains a fundamental truth. His point is that nonfiction elements are inevitably transmuted into fictional films, and vice versa, and that the distinction between documentary and fictional films is not always clearly defined. Fitzcarraldo is a perfect example of the ways in which film genre becomes confused. Is it a fictional film about an opera-crazed industrialist? Or a documentary about an engineering project deep in the Amazon? Is it worth making the distinction? Can it be both?

The irony of Fitzcarraldo that unless one is familiar with Burden of Dreams, it is reasonable to assume that the stunt was faked. The more one learns about the making of Fitzcarraldo, the more impressive the film becomes. This runs counter to the way we typically thing about Hollywood films. Usually, the more we learn about the trickery, the less likely we are to appreciate its result. It becomes difficult to convince oneself of the illusion of spectacle when the CGI is reveal and the city is shown to be a  1/16th  scale set, its skyscrapers reduced to papier-mâché models. Indeed, it’s quite possible that Burden of Dreams is actually a more interesting film than Fitzcarraldo because we experience the challenge of moving a ship over a mountain alongside the director. Watching Fitzcarraldo without having seen Burden of Dreams is like being shown an exceedingly complex mathematical solution without the accompanying proof. It is clear that something unusual and impressive is being shown, but not entirely clear what. The magnitude of its achievement can only be understood after context has been presented.