REVIEW - In the Valley of Elah (2007)

I have just put up a review of Paul Haggis' In The Valley of Elah.

I was blown away by it when I saw it in the cinema but, after watching it a second time, my views on it have cooled as the film's flaws become more obvious.

Interestingly, I blame the book's DVD extras for this because as shot the film allows a lot of blanks in the narrative that I interpreted quite sympathetically.  However, upon watching the extras and realising that my interpretation of the film was not the same as the director's intended meaning, I realised that I was being overly charitable and that the scathing critique of American foreign policy I perceived in the cinema was in fact largely in my own head.



This raises a couple of interesting questions :

Firstly, I recently completed editing Martin Lewis' review of Roz Kavenay's From Alien to The Matrix (2005) for Fruitless Recursion and Kavenay seems to think that the arrival of DVD extras and Director's Commentary tracks marks a "thickening" of the film texts but I'm not sure.

Secondly, after attending The Kawakita Centenary Symposium at the BFI Southbank, I was surprised by the extent to which film critics are still very much all about the director as 'auteur' and there has definitely been no death of the author for film critics who continue to pay attention to the backgrounds and politics and intentions of directors.

These two points kind of come together into the following idea : Is a text not 'thick' in so far as it contains possibility?  Some texts are thicker than others because they can be read in different ways and so stuff like DVD extras and commentary tracks do not so much 'thicken' a text as 'thin' it of its semiotic possibilities.

Comments

[Max Cairnduff]

I certainly don't think DVD extras constitute a thickening, rather they constitute a mechanism for enabling studios to charge more for DVD sales than might otherwise be viable. They are a commercial, not an artistic, element to the work.

A DVD commentary is simply one interpretationm placed by the director and perhaps some of the actors on the work. We don't know if it's the director's only interpretation, we don't know the extent to which they've chosen not to comment on issues that might be controversial, we can be pretty sure the studio has approved the commentary though.

On a different occasion, the director might have commented on their work differently, and that's not even getting into death of the author issues. I think it's definitely a thinning, it's reducing a work filled (hopefully) with complexity and nuance into a single commentary tract recorded on a particular occasion.

That and many DVD commentaries go as follows:

Director: "The guy with the moustache in that scene, he's a great character actor, I was really pleased to get him involved, I think he's very convincing as a frightened ordinary joe in this scene."

Lead actor: "Yeah, Tim Condale, great guy, he really adds a lot to this scene."

Which I'm not persuaded adds much to life.

Novels don't come with an author's commentary, pictures with a painter's one. The work speaks for itself, it stands on its own. Film does likewise, director's commentaries are simply a means of justifying getting a few more quid/dollars from the DVD buying public. Personally, I recommend ignoring them, if the work cannot speak for itself, it's not worth listening to more of the director's thoughts.

[Jonathan M]

Yeah, that's pretty much precisely my attitude. I can't remember the last time I properly listened to a commentary track. By and large I tend to prefer separate talks about the films. The japanese films I reviewed recently had them and they worked quite well. Also the ltest DVd edition of Fellini's Casanova has this great long commentary by Donald Sutherland and it's full of stuff about his interpretation of the piece and some anecdotes but it isn't tied to the action on screen and as a result there is less of a need to point out the secondary actors all the time.

I agree with you that artistically, commentary tracks add very little to films. When they first appeared they were novel but a few years down the line, I can't think of that many that are actually any good and which add anything to the film.

[Max Cairnduff]

I watched Eastern Promises last night on DVD, the Cronenberg film. I can't remember if it had a commentary or not, but it had a couple of short pieces about the film, which I thought much more valuable (well, in that they had minimal rather than no interest).

The film was I thought Cronenberg's best, and in fact one of the more interesting films of the last couple of years, and it was interesting in the short piece to hear him talk about how he felt it connected to his larger body of work and what he saw as the themes he liked to engage with in his work. That added some value for me.

But as you say, that's a separate talk (albeit on the DVD), not a commentary. I also would question whether the director is the best person to give the talk, not due to death of the author issues but because of closeness to the subject matter.

It can be valuable to hear someone well informed talking about the work on a separate occasion, but to me that's more a job for critics than for the artists themselves.

Generally, I have mixed views on the impact of DVDs on film. I love the luxury of watching at my convenience and at my comfort, but the tendency toward directors cuts of films which had no meaningful studio interference in the first place can lead to the final form of a work being a self-indulgently padded version of the original work with a bunch of meaningless commentary attached, which I'm not sure is the best outcome for film as a meaningful art form (which I firmly believe it is).

Remind me to tell you on another occasion about the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna, you would I think enjoy it.

[Jonathan M]

Actually, the best example of a padded and self-indulgent DVD was also the DVD that killed commentary tracks for me and that's the Lord of the Rings on DVD. It's been pointed out that the cinematic releases have massive plot holes in them and lines of dialogue that make no sense if you a) aren't familiar with the text and b) aren't watching the extended edition. Also the DVD extras were just everything in the kitchen sink regardless of whether they were interesting or not and this justified the DVDs selling for higher prices than normal.

[Max Cairnduff]

The LotR DVDs were I admit a particularly excessive example, predictable in that case though given the fanatacism and completist mentality of much of the fanbase.

[Jonathan M]

I think it's pretty much the definition of "fan service" :-)

Eastern Promises is a very good film indeed. As was a History of violence. I am definitely liking the Cronenberg's work recently. In some ways I think he's become more accessible but he's kept that same desire to engage with left-field ideas.