In fact, there may be the tiniest hint of feminine fantasy in the film's stew of supportive masculinity--made all the more suspect by the knowledge that Powell's second memoir (forthcoming) chronicles her extra-marital affair.
Huston said of directing: "[...] I try to direct as little as possible. The more one directs, the more there is a tendency to monotony. If one is telling each person what to do, one ends up with a host of little replicas of oneself" (260).
The act of reviewing carries with it a strain of judgment, and when reviewing a documentary it is hard not to feel as though one is judging the subject and not just the artists' presentation of him or her. Which of us would dare judge Eva Moses Kor?
Several times while watching Waltz With Bashir I thought about the notion that by the measure we judge we shall be weighed, and I don't doubt that contributed to my dissatisfaction with the film.
In an interview republished in the anthology Interviews With Film Directors, Jean Mitry cites John Ford's desire to balance innovation and aesthetics with populist appeal. "Directing is craft," Ford is quoted as saying, "If a director's films do not make money, he cannot expect to retain the confidence and good will of the men who put up the wherewithal" (195).
One problem, of course, with a great books (or great films) curriculum is that we get students to equate "classic" with dull, uninteresting, or obsolete.
The moment that caught my attention in Nicholas Ray's 1956 melodrama Bigger Than Life is when Ed Avery (James Mason) walks in on his son watching television. At first he appears to have a slight, almost sociological interest, then asks the boy, "Doesn't that bore you?" Followed by, almost to himself, "It's always the same story."
The main character in Le petit Soldat is tortured. At one point, in voice-over, he calls torture "sad" and "boring" and it is a small wonder that Godard is able to convey an experience of it that is more sad than thrilling, more banal than pregnant with significance.
What is your favorite Stephen Frears film? And why do you think he doesn't get the love and acclaim of some of his contemporaries?
John Donne once wrote, "I am a little world made cunningly," suggesting that the complexity of the world is contained in microcosm in the human spirit. There is a depth and complexity to Joan that is evoked through her words and transcends the wit or cleverness that might be conveyed were the film to try to show it directly rather than by implication.
