Remake
This film opens with McElwee declaring that he used to be a documentary filmmaker. In so doing, he is making a statement about the depths of the consequences of the event at its centre, a tragedy for McElwee and those around him that also involves a psychological complexity that one should not expect him to be capable of resolving.
Nevertheless, he has made a film and he has released it to the world (whereas in the past he made a film, the one about adoption, that he withdrew from the world), and so audiences would seem to have been given the “right” to say what they think about what he has done and the moments and thoughts he depicts. And there are things to say, I believe, but putting those things down in writing feels almost impossible, because why, coming from the outside, seeing only what we are shown, and knowing only the glimpses of the story we are let into by his camera, would we want to pronounce something like a judgment, and how would we dare to pronounce it?
And so I won’t say most of those things that perhaps could be said. Still, I do want to at least say, even though it already seems too harsh, too judgmental (which was decidedly not McElwee’s problem in relation to his son, even though one might well say that he seems to tend to snipe at him in an unhelpful way, but really, it was all so difficult, if not hopeless, and it all went on and on for so long, that it is ultimately very easy to believe that short-hand forms of interaction probably became an inevitability), that it seems to me that this film exposes – in spite of the filmmaker’s self-exposing style as much as because of it – Ross McElwee’s limits: as a father, as a man and as a filmmaker. Probably he knows that, but perhaps he doesn’t quite know it in the right way, or all the way to the bottom. But one should not expect him to.
One other necessary thing to say is that, for this viewer, the scenes featuring the glorious Charleen Swansea were far more affecting than anything else (but even here, one can’t help but think that if she had been asked, earlier in her life, whether she would consent to being filmed in the condition she is shown in here, that there is every chance she would have said no). One has the feeling that perhaps what McElwee does really know, despite how he chooses to end his film, is that neither the filmmaker nor his son could ever really find a way to live with the kind of passion – that is, the pathos, in its full Greek meaning – that she called for, and called out to him for, with such passion of her own. What devastation.
Nevertheless, he has made a film and he has released it to the world (whereas in the past he made a film, the one about adoption, that he withdrew from the world), and so audiences would seem to have been given the “right” to say what they think about what he has done and the moments and thoughts he depicts. And there are things to say, I believe, but putting those things down in writing feels almost impossible, because why, coming from the outside, seeing only what we are shown, and knowing only the glimpses of the story we are let into by his camera, would we want to pronounce something like a judgment, and how would we dare to pronounce it?
And so I won’t say most of those things that perhaps could be said. Still, I do want to at least say, even though it already seems too harsh, too judgmental (which was decidedly not McElwee’s problem in relation to his son, even though one might well say that he seems to tend to snipe at him in an unhelpful way, but really, it was all so difficult, if not hopeless, and it all went on and on for so long, that it is ultimately very easy to believe that short-hand forms of interaction probably became an inevitability), that it seems to me that this film exposes – in spite of the filmmaker’s self-exposing style as much as because of it – Ross McElwee’s limits: as a father, as a man and as a filmmaker. Probably he knows that, but perhaps he doesn’t quite know it in the right way, or all the way to the bottom. But one should not expect him to.
One other necessary thing to say is that, for this viewer, the scenes featuring the glorious Charleen Swansea were far more affecting than anything else (but even here, one can’t help but think that if she had been asked, earlier in her life, whether she would consent to being filmed in the condition she is shown in here, that there is every chance she would have said no). One has the feeling that perhaps what McElwee does really know, despite how he chooses to end his film, is that neither the filmmaker nor his son could ever really find a way to live with the kind of passion – that is, the pathos, in its full Greek meaning – that she called for, and called out to him for, with such passion of her own. What devastation.
Mini Review: This film opens with McElwee declaring that he used to be a documentary filmmaker. In so doing, he is making a statement about the depths of the consequences of the event at its centre, a tragedy for McElwee and those around him that also involves a psychological complexity that one should not expect him to be capable of resolving.