Having just watched the bewildering and deeply flawed Southland Tales, how was I not going to watch how this film was made. I had no doubt that Kelly had lost control of his project but also knew that there was greatness within it which he had not been able to translate beyond the idea and indeed had lost more and more with each bit of development. So I looked to the making of to tell me what the film was meant to be and also see if I could understand where it went wrong. Problem is, while this is what I wanted, it is clearly not what the makers of this documentary thought that the viewers of Southland Tales would be thinking about. No, what they envisaged the viewers discussing over the end credits were the subjects of how the film made it look like they cut a guy's hand off, or how you make a car impact look realistic and so on.
I kid not these two parts of the film take up a lot of time when really I cannot imagine that a desire to find out industry effects tips has brought anybody to this documentary. And I mean "anybody". And still that is more people who will be glad that the film also spends time talking about the costume and set design for the US-IDENT scenes or the challenge of dressing the Marxist terrorist HQ. The topics of what the h*ll it was all about are touched upon with the cast and crew but it is not given a concerted effort. However the nuggets that we did get only confirmed my view that this was a project with potential that Kelly never really got control of and had nobody else step in to reign him in. The things Kelly talks about as his goals for this film are clear but the end product also confirms that the fractured and "bullet-point" goals he had more than likely were responsible for the way the film came out. Likewise the cast all talk about how interesting it is to be involved in the project but at the same time nobody has much to say about what it is all about or what it means. Most of them come just witter on generally without saying much.
The "making of" film just about has sufficient clues in it to be worth seeing as a companion to the film and getting a very brief insight into why the film was as messy and incoherent as it was. However why so much time is spent on things like set dressing and specific special effects I have no idea particularly when one thinks that this film was completed for release two years after Southland Tales had been released and the critical and audience response had been fully received; surely in this environment a film more tailored to that could have been made. Like the feature itself then moments of interest but mostly not very good at all.
I kid not these two parts of the film take up a lot of time when really I cannot imagine that a desire to find out industry effects tips has brought anybody to this documentary. And I mean "anybody". And still that is more people who will be glad that the film also spends time talking about the costume and set design for the US-IDENT scenes or the challenge of dressing the Marxist terrorist HQ. The topics of what the h*ll it was all about are touched upon with the cast and crew but it is not given a concerted effort. However the nuggets that we did get only confirmed my view that this was a project with potential that Kelly never really got control of and had nobody else step in to reign him in. The things Kelly talks about as his goals for this film are clear but the end product also confirms that the fractured and "bullet-point" goals he had more than likely were responsible for the way the film came out. Likewise the cast all talk about how interesting it is to be involved in the project but at the same time nobody has much to say about what it is all about or what it means. Most of them come just witter on generally without saying much.
The "making of" film just about has sufficient clues in it to be worth seeing as a companion to the film and getting a very brief insight into why the film was as messy and incoherent as it was. However why so much time is spent on things like set dressing and specific special effects I have no idea particularly when one thinks that this film was completed for release two years after Southland Tales had been released and the critical and audience response had been fully received; surely in this environment a film more tailored to that could have been made. Like the feature itself then moments of interest but mostly not very good at all.