The film is a making-of documentary about the chaotic production of Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo. It was filmed on location in the jungles of Peru during production of Herzog's film.
During production on the documentary, director Les Blank and his small crew became exhausted and exasperated from the stress of the work. Blank said he felt "unconnected to the people around me".[2] Keeping up with the antics of Herzog and Klaus Kinski (the star of Fitzcarraldo) proved difficult for the reserved, introverted Blank. By the last week of the shoot, he was so burnt out that he feared he would come out of production "like some Viet Nam veterans, horribly calloused". He wrote in his journal: "I'm tired of it all and I couldn't care less if they move the stupid ship – or finish the fucking film".[3]
Blank often asked Herzog to repeat statements while being filmed that he originally made off-camera. In a 2009 interview with Jesse Pearson for Vice magazine, Blank was asked to recall a scene in the documentary in which Herzog delivers a monologue about the violence and destruction of the jungle around him. Blank said Herzog had originally made a similar monologue in the middle of a canoe ride, away from cameras, but Blank liked the speech enough to coax it out of Herzog again. "When the moment was right," Blank told Vice, "I pulled him aside and said 'Can I do a little interview?' And he said 'Sure.' Goodwin [the interviewer] led him around to something that sparked him off on that tangent again. That's how we got the speech."[4]
The film's poster was created by Montana artist Monte Dolack.[5]
Onreview aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Burden of Dreams has an approval rating of 89%, based on reviews from 18 critics, with an average score of 8.7/10.[6]
Roger Ebert awarded the film four out of four stars, writing that "Blank...is unafraid to ask difficult questions and portray Herzog, warts and all".[7]
In 2022, the film was spoofed by the Emmy Award-nominated mockumentary series Documentary Now as the two-part episode Soldier of Illusion. The spoof involves acclaimed German filmmaker Rainer Wolz (Alexander Skarsgard) trying to film a documentary about residents of the Russian Ular mountains, while simultaneously directing the pilot of an upcoming sitcom called Bachelor Nanny.[10]
