This film is a real curiosity. It's the work of a successful documentary filmmaker who seems to have wanted to document what happens in a chaotic film production by creating a chaotic film shoot and then filming it.
There are three camera crews, one to shoot a series of actors performing a two-person scene, one doing a basic "making of" style documentary that watches over the filming process, and a third crew there to film a more general making-of-the-making-of film.
As the days go by, the camera crews become increasingly frustrated, unsure of what the director has in mind and wondering if they are possibly working on a disaster. They decide to film themselves discussing this, with arguments as to whether this is all part of the director's plan and whether, if it is, it's a good plan.
It's certainly a different sort of documentary, but I didn't find it all that interesting. It's slow moving and wanders aimlessly.
Is it, as some people feel, a profound meditation on reality? I found it hard to feel it is. What reality are we looking at? Actors struggling with bad dialogue? A crew frustrated by a lack of purpose and direction? These things might be interesting in a documentary of an actual movie, but this is more like one of those movies that tries to emulate bad movies and fails because it's too precious. The reactions provoked by someone trying to provoke reactions are closer in spirit to a TV reality series like Survivor than to something that tries to document a real situation.
Like a lot of avant-garde filmmaking though, what you bring to this movie is more important than what this movie brings, which is why some people are blown away by it.
I will say that I think the director got the movie he wanted, so it can be seen as a successful experiment. But I found it virtually unwatchable.
There are three camera crews, one to shoot a series of actors performing a two-person scene, one doing a basic "making of" style documentary that watches over the filming process, and a third crew there to film a more general making-of-the-making-of film.
As the days go by, the camera crews become increasingly frustrated, unsure of what the director has in mind and wondering if they are possibly working on a disaster. They decide to film themselves discussing this, with arguments as to whether this is all part of the director's plan and whether, if it is, it's a good plan.
It's certainly a different sort of documentary, but I didn't find it all that interesting. It's slow moving and wanders aimlessly.
Is it, as some people feel, a profound meditation on reality? I found it hard to feel it is. What reality are we looking at? Actors struggling with bad dialogue? A crew frustrated by a lack of purpose and direction? These things might be interesting in a documentary of an actual movie, but this is more like one of those movies that tries to emulate bad movies and fails because it's too precious. The reactions provoked by someone trying to provoke reactions are closer in spirit to a TV reality series like Survivor than to something that tries to document a real situation.
Like a lot of avant-garde filmmaking though, what you bring to this movie is more important than what this movie brings, which is why some people are blown away by it.
I will say that I think the director got the movie he wanted, so it can be seen as a successful experiment. But I found it virtually unwatchable.