Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Absolute Wilson / USA / 2006

A pretty standard documentary about a very non-standard and unendingly creative man. But only after the arrival of Philip Glass and Susan Sontag and, eventually, Tom Waits and William Burroughs does Katharina Otto’s little picture pick up. By then, though, it has almost ended.

But the greater difficulty with this film—and, it seems, with almost all theatre-based documentaries—is the utter lack of universe. If you like a documentary about Hitchcock or Renoir or Spielberg, you can drive to a local video store or log-on to Netflix and find their entire oeuvre; even most libraries today carry the entire works of great filmmakers, though sometimes scattered across counties. With films about stage directors such as Wilson, though, there is no great vein of cinematic output to look for; rarely if ever today, outside PBS and the works of Brian Large, are Broadway performances readily distributed as DVDs. Katharina Otto presents us with stunning excerpts from Wilson’s long-exaulted Einstein on the Beach and A Letter from Queen Victoria, among others, and all of which must exist solely for us as excerpts. Sometimes distributing them commercially seems impossible and will almost always end up as sacrilege—the staged version of Deafman Glance is around seven hours long; the version produced “for television” lasts 26 minutes—but could be done. I’d love some day to see a fully realized version of Wilson’s Olympian epic The CIVIL WarS released in much the same way Facets released Syberberg’s 450-minute Our Hitler this year. But, like always, I’m not expecting much.

by Adam Balz | Source: New Yorker DVD
17 Dec 2007 8:22 PM | Submit Comment