#23 Post by movielocke » Mon Apr 25, 2016 4:35 pm

"Out in the woods" is a brilliant and haunting short film from Gosling. The sound design gives you a sense of how she probably felt working for an out of control boss in the relative isolation of grand lake for two years. The creeper minor key of the sound design contrasts with the "put a good spin on it" chipperness of the text to her parents, I loved it.



"A poem is a naked person" is a strong journeyman first feature hampered from being great by some typically first feature conceits.



Fundamentally, the film doesn't seem to respect Leon Russell the way Les' earlier films respected lightning Hopkins or mance and this is because of both the editorial decisions to rudely break away from some performances and to rarely include Leon in the films first half. I think the producers who hired Les always wanted his style, meaning the local color digressions to contextualize Leon, Tulsa, and the new record label--and the opening couple is perfect in every way in this respect, as is the bit featuring the spooklight. But so much of the film just seems to reject its subject that the film seems fairly insulting. Whether it is the building demo, the snake or the glass chewing, the film selfishly foregrounds directorial style over substance of subject. Although the snake is worth every fight to keep it in the film, it is illustrative of the overall problem. And none of the other directorial conceits succeed the way the snake succeeds. Finally, the film ends on a quirky song by a random kid that speaks only to the experience of the director in making the film, even though the back half of the film actually was about Leon Russell, Blank couldn't resist the final chance to make it about himself and also insult Leon one last time. As Harrold points out in the extras, the ending was reedited to end on Leon singing over the music clearance credits, but it still doesn't quite make up but it does help take the sting out.



The features are all excellent and help contextualize a lot of the films quirks. Unlike the repeated statements in the extras, I don't find it a masterpiece mostly because the directorial hubris prevents a masterpiece from emerging, but also because Blank has several better films and definite masterpieces in his filmography.



I bought this as a les blank fan, I know almost nothing about Leon Russell although I recognized several of his songs I had never seen him perform before. It does fill an essential gap in his development as a filmmaker and clarifies by her absence how essential it was to have gosling be his editor as she is far superior at shaping his films in a way to yield Blanks unique voice without him Getting in his own way. In a way, this film makes "burden of dreams" possible because I think blank's experience on poem informed his avoiding pitfalls on dreams. And it gives me even more respect for Herzog for agreeing to be a les blank subject, as I think only he and Leon were the only les blank subjects who were widely known without being les blank subjects and it didn't turn out very well for Leon. In a way this perspective of mine is also informed by the bitterness of the maestro in the box set extras, who didn't like the way he was filtered into becoming a les blank subject in the final films. Given the inherent subjectivity of his approach, this film, Poem, raises more questions about blank and his subjects than it answers, in my opinion.