Um Filme Para Nick

Lightning Over Water began as a collaborative idea to tell the story of a dying painter who steals art from museums and replaces them with his own forgeries. Suffering from terminal cancer himself, Ray's health quickly deteriorates during the project. The film eventually ceases to be a work of fiction and becomes a documentary of Ray's finals days in which he fittingly spends making film. In reflecting over his career and life, Ray ponders his successes and failures as a film maker who is best known for Rebel Without a Cause (1955). A poignant and often disturbing film, Lighting Over Water is ultimately a painful homage to a film maker and to a friend (Klaus Ming March 2013).

In this film documentary, Wim Wenders comes to New York City to visit film director, Nicholas Ray, who directed classics like Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean. Ray lives in a Soho loft with his younger wife, Susan Ray. You could see the twin towers that once stood at the foot of Manhattan long before it's destruction in 2001. Nick Ray is stubborn and determined to make a final film. In some ways, it's his last chance in the cinema. Wim Wenders knows time is of the essence sine Ray is dying of cancer. There are candid moments of Ray dying but not letting his cancer destroy him. Wenders is a friend and film director. This documentary is really more of a tribute than anything else to a fine film director even though we didn't get to really know him. I haven't seen any of his films to date. The documentary might be dated but it's important to recognize a man who was really a genius in the film industry even thirty years later. He didn't live like a millionaire. He lived quite modestly and on his own terms which is how he died.

Not being in the habit of viewing snuff films I experienced what was, for me, a strange, rather unique emotion roughly five minutes into this documentary. Put into words it was, "I should not be watching this." And this feeling only deepened and broadened as the doc continued. I know the subject approved of it and that it was done with his full cooperation but I still felt as if it was obscene for me to be watching it. Even in our voyeuristic, surveiled world, where everything, it seems, belongs to someone or something other than oneself, some things are simply too private for sharing. Such as a real person's actual last, cancer ravaged moments. So I pulled the plug right after the "Lusty Men" clip which is definitely something I should be watching.

Nicholas Ray is dying when Wim Wenders come to visit him. They start to make a motion picture about his death.

With Wenders and Ray credited as co-directors, I'm left with the question of who is in charge. I'm left with the conclusion that it must be Wenders, and then with another question: what is it about? I think it's a love letter from one quirky and independent director for a friend who was also a quirky director, and the baffling and often filing efforts to make films that say something about something.

Does it succeed? As a love letter, yes.

As for the rest, I just don't know. Which is probably how Wenders feels.

Painful but beautiful, poignant but disturbing, this film is unmissable for anyone loving Nick Ray's spirit and features. This director was not a Hollywood yes man, the common boot licker facing the moguls. His entire director life was a dog fight, and because he was a very sensitive and brilliant, intelligent but fragile man, he became a drug and many other substances addict, including sex and women. That slowly destroyed him. In this film, you watch him dying, filmed by his friend Wim Wenders. Useless to say that is not for all audiences, only die hard Nick Ray's or Wenders fans. It's more a document than a fiction feature. It's better to watch it on DVD with the director's comment, with all the indications and explanations; useless to see the "naked" movie, as it better for most of regular, ordinary movies. The thing that moved me the most was Nick's eyes, glance, the eyes of someone very intelligent, someone certainly not full of emptiness. The eyes of someone very alive. Very lucid. And believe me, this film is eveything but peeping tom oriented. No, Nick Ray totally agreed to be filmed, and not dying alone. So painful. RIP Nick.