Lightning Over Water
Picture: B-
Sound: B- Extras: B- Film: C+
Wim Wender’s visits and co-directs the last days of
veteran director Nicholas Ray in Lighting Over Water (1980) with Ray
himself. Or does he? Ray is supposed to be the subject of the
film, but it also lands up being about Wenders.
The film is supposed to be a film with scenes of fictional narrative
solely written by Wenders, but those moments eventually break down and pale as
compared to the documentary moments.
Those scripted moments are docudrama, further confusing the matter.
In all this, Wenders gets overrun by his own pretensions
and nearly trivializes Ray and his final days in the process, obviously
unintended. Film is inner-spliced with
very bad analog videotape footage, a forerunner of the most visually
pretentious thing going on in cinema right now, even if the video is
digital. But it is Ray that is the sole
reason to watch, even when that becomes very hard to do.
For all of Wender’s admiration and film knowledge, it is
most disappointing that Ray’s film career is not addressed at any length. This may be a way of being different, but
doing this would further explain Ray’s falling-out with Hollywood. Many have tried to say it was over his 1963
film 55 Days in Peking, where he needed help to complete the film from
director Andrew Martin. He had
alcoholism problems that did not allow him to complete the film as he should
have, supposedly giving him a bad reputation, but many establishment figures
were gunning for him after subversive works like Johnny Guitar (1954)
and Rebel Without A Cause (1955), but you will find out little about
this in the film.
There is the commentary by Wenders, where he discusses
what he should have talked about in the film.
Does this guy love to do everything backwards and different or
what? There are brief bios on both
directors, but the part of the entire disc is a 38-minutes-long piece called Nicholas
Ray: Especially For Pierre, shot on the same lousy, early color videotape
featured in the film. It is the meatiest
part of the DVD, where he makes his final reflections on his career and life,
which makes the DVD worth getting if nothing else.
As for the film, the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1
image is not bad, except when the videotape kicks in. Ed Lachman is credited as cinematographer,
though “videographer” is never added.
Does this mean the footage does not count, or that they were not ready
to consider that footage legitimate?
Could they seriously mean they felt the film and video was equal? Yet another unanswered question that makes
one wonder if they may have been “winging it” just a bit too much. The film’s sound is in Dolby Digital 5.1 AC-3
and 2.0 Pro Logic surround, like The American Friend DVD is (reviewed
elsewhere on this site), but the 5.1 is a bit better, but not by the margin on
the other DVD. His commentary is once
again 2.0 Mono. Why these older films
from Wenders are in 5.1, while the recent M-G-M DVD of the later Wings of
Desire is only Pro Logic surround is another oddity. This review might just set a record for them.
Finally, though, the most important question is if Ray
actually co-directed the film, or was Wenders just being nice? Well, Ray was the subject and will always be
a better filmmaker, while merely including footage form Ray’s The Lusty Men
(1952) may not be sufficient for a co-direction credit. However, there is enough of Ray here in some
kind of control that the credit is valid enough, especially since Wenders seems
so lost. This is a film only for the
most curious. This is also available as
one of eight films in Anchor Bay’s second volume of Wenders’ works, reviewed at
the following link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4776/Wim+Wenders+Collection+–+Volume+Two+(Scarlet+Letter/Wrong+Move/American+Friend/Lightning+Over+Water/Room+666/Tokyo-Ga/Notebook+On+Cities+&+Clothes/A+Trick+Of+Light;+Anchor+Bay)
- Nicholas Sheffo
