I've long had the idea that in order to be a great director, you need to have a poet's soul. So many times I saw good directors miss or mess up moments that could have been beautiful...or just not be able to rise to the level the script needed in order to become great. My favorite comparison is Before Sunrise against Frost/Nixon.
Before Sunrise follows a young man and woman around Vienna as they talk and connect and maybe fall in love. It's just over a hundred minutes long but captures the ins and outs of two disparate people seeking something more and finding that even though he is American and she is French, they have a lot in common. Very simple. Very sweet, helped by the natural performances of Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke...and by Linklater's carefully crafted direction. Look at the simple elegance of this scene...
The poet unto himself. A line between Ethan and Julie...him close to crossing it but not quite...until the poem is read. Linklater appears to have learned his craft from elegant filmmakers like Jean Renoir and Francois Truffaut and Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirô Ozu and John Ford, all of whom knew how to build to a moment that could dip into your psyche and tear you up in ways wonderful and heartbreaking. Hell, Ozu even hated to move his camera, at all, and consistently placed it just 3 feet above the ground...but that added to the poetry of his loveliest works, like Late Spring and Tokyo Story.
Frost/Nixon is about the machinations leading up to the interview between David Frost and Richard Nixon. This happened during an intense time in America, not long after Nixon resigned in disgrace, with both men maneuvering to use the broadcast interview to their own advantage. It was initially a play, but I never saw that performed so don't know how much was changed, other than opening it up.
Michael Sheen as Frost and Frank Langella do all they can with the script, and are very good, but Ron Howard is of the ham-fisted school of film, rather like Steven Spielberg and Sydney Pollack. He's a great craftsman of simple emotions but not a poet or artist, and it shows in how he just shoots scenes and does little to add to them...right up to the biggest revelation of all, which should bring chills to anyone who sees it -- when Frost gets Nixon to do something he's never done...admit he believed that the president was above the law.
This scene should tear across the screen, become two men fighting for supremacy of the moment, with one thinking he's winning while not realizing he's set himself up for complete collapse. But Howard keeps the audience at a distance from it, keeps Frost jammed into a corner by Nixon's shoulder, cuts to the two of them and a camera monitor, cuts to people watching as Nixon implodes, has Nixon's aide wait and wait before bursting in to stop it all...lovely to look at but devoid of real meaning or emotion.
This is what I've always felt and maybe was part of the reason I never really pushed hard to become a director, just always thought it would be nice to do...but that deep down I didn't have a poet's touch. But last night I re-read part of The Vanishing of Owen Taylor...mainly the end, as Jake comes to terms with the truth...and have come to think I was wrong about myself. Stupidly wrong. Easily wrong.
Maybe I have been afraid all my life...not of failure...not of success...just not of achieving what I see not only in my mind's eye but in my soul. I halfway think that would have destroyed me. No...I'm sure it would have...and it's sad to think it took all these years to finally see that.
So what does all this mean? How hell should I know? I'm just a writer.
Before Sunrise follows a young man and woman around Vienna as they talk and connect and maybe fall in love. It's just over a hundred minutes long but captures the ins and outs of two disparate people seeking something more and finding that even though he is American and she is French, they have a lot in common. Very simple. Very sweet, helped by the natural performances of Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke...and by Linklater's carefully crafted direction. Look at the simple elegance of this scene...
Frost/Nixon is about the machinations leading up to the interview between David Frost and Richard Nixon. This happened during an intense time in America, not long after Nixon resigned in disgrace, with both men maneuvering to use the broadcast interview to their own advantage. It was initially a play, but I never saw that performed so don't know how much was changed, other than opening it up.
Michael Sheen as Frost and Frank Langella do all they can with the script, and are very good, but Ron Howard is of the ham-fisted school of film, rather like Steven Spielberg and Sydney Pollack. He's a great craftsman of simple emotions but not a poet or artist, and it shows in how he just shoots scenes and does little to add to them...right up to the biggest revelation of all, which should bring chills to anyone who sees it -- when Frost gets Nixon to do something he's never done...admit he believed that the president was above the law.
This is what I've always felt and maybe was part of the reason I never really pushed hard to become a director, just always thought it would be nice to do...but that deep down I didn't have a poet's touch. But last night I re-read part of The Vanishing of Owen Taylor...mainly the end, as Jake comes to terms with the truth...and have come to think I was wrong about myself. Stupidly wrong. Easily wrong.
Maybe I have been afraid all my life...not of failure...not of success...just not of achieving what I see not only in my mind's eye but in my soul. I halfway think that would have destroyed me. No...I'm sure it would have...and it's sad to think it took all these years to finally see that.
So what does all this mean? How hell should I know? I'm just a writer.
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