dean-schneider

I saw this film last night at the Weekly Japanese Cinema screenings held at the Chifley Towers in Sydney, held by The Japan Foundation. It is a film about a boy who lives with his nanny while his mother is sick. His life is happy, but he has to return home, and here is where the film becomes very moving and touching. Sentimental, yes, but not sickly or forcedly. It does drag out towards the end, but the ending itself was quite moving, and although my friend fell asleep occasionally during the film (it was an evening showing), he still liked it. Very much like an Ozu film, and interesting the filmmaker seems to have made few films (if you go by the IMDb).

I give it three for showing some archival footage of him at work on set. But everything else, all the interviews, the music, the sentimentality, is way too much and over the top. Even when they show photos they are only to help serve this image of an 'angel' who could do no wrong.

Everything Falk, Rowlands, and the other actors he worked with is nothing but comments on 'how great he was', or how touching, or how much of a 'genius' he was. But we get this in every other documentary about filmmakers! The best ones do their best to avoid it. This one indulges in it. Even the people who we know to have smart things to say (like Ray Carney) have their words spun to fit into the context of this 'great' man.

Am I to believe this man was so flawless? If someone made a documentary about me or one of my friends like this I'd burn every copy I saw.