Burden of Dreams

Burden of Dreams (1982) is Les Blank's documentary you can watch online on iFILM — the record of Werner Herzog shooting Fitzcarraldo deep in the Peruvian rainforest, and very nearly losing his mind alongside his hero.

Blank spent close to a year in the jungle while Herzog's crew hauled a real riverboat over a mountain, with no special effects and no shortcuts. He films the parts productions usually bury: a lead actor swapped out partway through, illness, injuries, friction with the Indigenous communities hired as extras, and weather that wrecks every schedule. The camera also catches Herzog mid-rant, calling the forest not a paradise but a place of overwhelming misery and obscenity.

The result is that rare making-of that outlasts the film it documents. It is a study of obsession — the blurry line where an artist's will ends and recklessness takes over. If you have seen Fitzcarraldo or Aguirre, this is essential; the story is incomplete without it. Stream Burden of Dreams (1982) online on iFILM.