Dreams are the only things that separate men from cattle. I love plots where men go crazy chasing a dream into a jungle or a desert or the ocean or into space. Because this is life. Fitzcarraldo trying to build an opera in the Amazon rainforest. The failed railroad magnet who was also an ice dealer. Much like Sam Hamilton produced an item or Harrison Ford in Mosquito Coast. Ice, the perfect symbol of man's dreams, it melted his hands. Fitzcarraldo has to sail up, reverse, cross a mountain, lugging a boat to cross land. What's to bring opera into wild nature? He is able to parade a production of Richard Wagner down the Amazon river. And this is sort of like Marty Supreme, he ultimately fails, but he achieves his dream. Fitzcarraldo, though ending with Wagner in the forest, sort of serves as a prologue to Apocalypse Now in which the air cavalry brings Wagner's part of Valkyries into the rainforest. Fitzcarraldo, those boat has to brave the rapids to conquer the evil spirits. This really echoes what Nietzsche says about Schopenhauer and the birth of tragedy. Schopenhauer has the concept of a boat being thrown around in a raging tempest in the waves. Man is his own principled individual being tossed about, but by the whims of nature, this is Moby Dick. Captain Ahab and Fitzcarraldo are inverses of each other. Fitzcarraldo, though, wants to bring music, supplemented human art into the wilderness to conquer nature, but Ahab wants to kill it. He spits at the white whale and wants to stab it through its arc, and here Melville anticipates Nietzsche by 25 years. Because Ahab rants about stabbing through the mask to peer into the heart of nature. Speak not to me of blasphemy, I strike the sun that insulted me. This talk of masks predates Nietzsche, which he says the Apollonian mask is thrown over the Dionysian obscure mass of unity. Apollo the god of dreams and form, the veil of Maya which conceals the terrifying unity, the eldritch horror, the Lovecraftian terror of the whale, of the jungle. As Cormac and Garthy points out, whale sort of serves these old gods. To gaze upon it is to kill the self. Ahab's harpoon also serves as a noose. This is the Promethean act, and this is the part of Prometheus, where these humans cross space to behold their maker, and the old gods tear out the eyes of his creations and kills them. This is the call of the void, the same thing happens in Event Horizon, where you cross the threshold into the unknown, and unlock a demonic, satanic realm. Or like in Star Wars when you get hyperspace rapture. From staring into the void for too long it drives one mad. But that is a dream to place a mask over water to build, and opera in the jungle to hunt the white whale. And as Herzog saw points out in the burden of dreams, he can't give up, he'd be nothing without his dreams. He'd be a farm animal. The jungle is misery, but he has a beautiful vision to be born in it. Same thing with T. Lawrence, the dreamers of their dangerous man, he operates in the desert where it is clean and sterile where it destroys Ozymandias. The desert, the ocean, jungle space, it's all trying to destroy the sands of time, destroy the dreams of men. And perhaps in that final form of a madman lustful civilization of Captain Nemo, crossing the globe beneath the surface of the waters, escaped from civilization in his only last refuge beneath the waves, where there is no turning. Baptism is a drowning and a resuscitation, and Nemo just floats beneath the surface like an old god himself. The waves no longer perturb him, he just sinks beneath it, like Captain Kurtz at the end of the river. He's gone mad if he's gone. He has unified with the primordial force. You look around you at every mansion, every building, every opera house, and it's all ice, it's all sea foam. It's going to be dust one day. And that's the burden of the dream is that it says, wait, listen, as transient as foam, but yet it will break your back. The whale disappears underwater, and the ice that crushed you will melt into the sun, and it'll look like you died from nothing at all.
Miller's Bukowski-titled meditation — "Find what you love and let it kill you" — treats dreams as the sole separator of men from cattle, and follows men who go crazy chasing those dreams into jungle, desert, ocean, and space because that's life itself. Fitzcarraldo (failed railroad magnet/ice dealer, ice melting in his hands as the perfect emblem of dreams) dragging a boat over a mountain to parade Wagner down the Amazon becomes the spine; he fails yet achieves, and Herzog calls this burden of dreams the refusal to be a farm animal. Set against him is Ahab — inverse twin: Fitzcarraldo wants to bring art into wilderness, Ahab wants to kill wilderness — and Melville's "strike through the mask" prefigures Nietzsche's Apollonian mask over Dionysian unity, the veil of Maya hiding Lovecraftian terror. Via Schopenhauer's boat in a tempest, Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, Prometheus/Event Horizon/Star Wars hyperspace rapture, and Werner Herzog, Miller argues dreams are masks placed over void, and crossing that threshold is Promethean: old gods tear out the eyes of those who stare, call of the void drives mad, yet without the dream you're cattle. T.E. Lawrence in clean sterile desert, Captain Nemo beneath waves like an old god (baptism as drowning/resuscitation), and Captain Kurtz at the river's end show the final form — unified with primordial force, sunk beneath perturbation. Closing image: every mansion/opera house is ice/sea-foam, transient yet back-breaking; the whale vanishes, the ice melts in sun, and it looks like you died from nothing at all — but you died from the dream.
Miller glorifies the white-knuckle, Herzogian dream — boat over mountain, opera in jungle — as the proof of being human, but not every dream deserves to let it kill you; some dreams should die in the jungle because they were vanity, not vocation. The film crew's suffering behind Fitzcarraldo (and Aguirre, Mosquito Coast) wasn't noble to those exploited; the burden of dreams can become a burden on others. The missing ethic is whose ice is melting, whose back is breaking, and whose jungle is being paraded through — the dream that separates men from cattle can also separate men from their neighbors if the mask of art is used to aestheticize harm.