Burden of Dreams

I find this movie to be oddly relatable.  True, I’ve never been to the rainforest.  I’ve never bartered with native tribes in order to capture more realism.  And I’ve never worked someplace where drinking the water would result in a hospital visit.  Still, it was very relatable.

I once heard that the natural state of a movie is “unmade” and that the movie will do everything it can do fall back into its natural state.  Now let’s add to that all the complications of filming in the jungle.  Yep, Werner done bit off more than he can chew.  In a way I respect his undying dedication to the vision of his film.  Without a level of that nothing would get done.  But when you reach a certain point there’s no respectability or nobility in bullheaded like that.  At a certain point, that point probably being when people are getting hurt, you’re just an idiot for not coming up with an easier solution.

As far as the filmmaking of the documentary itself goes I did notice some odd choices.  Specifically I’m referring to the cut away shots that really didn’t seem to match the context of the scenes that were happening.  Like, why the hell did we have to stare at a chicken’s butt for so long?  Did the filmmaker just have a thing for chickens?  Oh wait, it was Gonzo.  Yep, everything makes sense now.  Well, apart from my muppet theory I did reason out a few excuses for the odd choices.

1. Something went wrong with the film.  It happens.  Maybe the roll got flashed by daylight.  So they have the sound, but not the footage.  So they just throw on whatever B-roll they shot during that time.  May not match the story, but it’s better than a black screen.

2. They missed the shot.  Again, it happens.  They had one camera that couldn’t be everywhere at once.  So again, throw on whatever you got.  But the way it sometimes cut away during a scene that got me reasoning about the third option.

3. The scene being shot could potentially have been used as Exhibit A.  Plenty of times in this film it feels like the law is being broken.  There’s a good chance that the filmmakers decided to protect their subject and not include incriminating incidents.

 

This brings me to Werner’s rant.  I was expecting more.  It had been built up so much that I figured he straight up lost it.  Really he was very calm.  He had been push too far, but he was very calm.  Don’t get me wrong though, the words he uses I can see coming out of the mouth of any living filmmaker.  I know I’ve been to that point.  I’ve thought things very similar to his rant at the end of a few particularly hard shoots.  

So overall, while I can relate to how he felt, I can’t see myself ever going through that much trouble for a film.  I especially can’t see myself disregarding the wellbeing of people for a film.  Especially when it’s a film like that, a film that very few people are going to see to start with.