386 - Burden of Dreams, United States, 1982. Dir. Les Blank.
What if Ahab filmed Moby Dick?
If I abandon this project, I would be a man without dreams. - Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog is standing in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. It is two thousand miles that way to the exit, fifteen hundred miles that way, fifteen hundred miles that way, and five hundred miles that way. We know because he is pointing and showing us.
And yet somehow in the middle of this jungle he is filming a movie.
He flies in people and equipment from Miami to regional airports. Then he flies them by small plane to cow pastures. Then he puts them on boats and brings them upriver.
Then the problems begin.
His star, Jason Robards, gets sick, is sent home, and is forbidden by his doctors to return.
His co-star, Mick Jagger, leaves as well, as he now must go on tour.
He recasts the lead role with his go-to man Klaus Kinski, who has already starred in three films with him. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Woyzeck (1979), and Nosferatu the Vampire (1979).
He writes out the co-star role.
Then the Indian tribal war starts.
They move more than a thousand miles to a new location.
The region experiences the least rainfall in recorded history. The riverbank is down. The one boat gets stuck on a sand bar.
The natives are living in close quarters. They have one soccer ball, and it has a hole in it. They have nothing to do. Some of them start fooling around. Herzog is advised to hire a woman to keep them occupied.
And now he must pull the other boat over the mountain, using ropes, pulleys, and a large bulldozer that slips in the mud. He is burning through 150 gallons of fuel a day. His engineer quits.
Will this movie ever get made?
Les Blank is one of the great documentary filmmakers. And this documentary film is itself a great film. It is more than mere BTS footage, more than a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a movie. It is itself a movie.
It showcases the drama of a man with a singular vision, and the focus and the willpower to carry it through to completion regardless of the obstacles that stand in the way.
It is the story of the human will.
What if Ahab filmed Moby Dick?
"I live my life, or I end my life, with this project."
* * * * *
My belief is all these dreams are yours as well. And the only distinction between me and you is that I can articulate them. And that is what poetry or painting or literature or filmmaking is all about. It's as simple as that. And I make films because I have not learned anything else. And I know I can do it to a certain degree. And it is my duty, because this might be the inner chronicle of what we are. And we have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.
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