#60
Post
by colinr0380 » Sat Nov 15, 2008 4:20 pm
I haven't yet reached the Teshigahara set in my to watch pile yet, but it sounds like you would like the selected scene analysis by Christopher Faulkner on The Rules Of The Game, which does the same thing of fitting the specific sequences being discussed to the commentary and repeating them over if the sequence finishes before the discussion of it does (I noticed a similar technique used for Juliette Binoche's select scene comments on the Miramax discs of Three Colours: Blue).
I suppose that is the difficult situation with commentaries though - stick too close to the on screen material and you run the risk of people saying that you are just redundantly narrating the action on screen (I suppose this all depends on the understanding of the audience though as to whether they react with happiness that a detail, or the meaning of a detail, has been pointed out to them which they had not previously noticed, or whether they react with boredom and frustration that a "so called expert" is talking them through things they had already figured out from the film themselves. It must be a difficult balancing act to pull off), go into details that diverge away from what is occuring on screen and you get comments about why you felt it necessary to talk over a film in the first place when you could have put it all in another form.
I can understand those reactions but I think some people don't look at the commentary as its own thing - as a chance for a person knowledgeable on the subject to have a couple of uninterrupted hours to speak about how they made the film, or the ideas behind the film, or what makes the film stand out for them etc. I understand the wish to have a commentary reduced to the salient points over select and relevant scenes but that might also incur extra expense in editing material together into a featurette, not to mention the space needed to encode the featurette onto the disc that may detract from the bit rate which the film itself is encoded at, or the space left to add other extra features compared to just running an alternate audio track over the film itself.
There will always be problems of getting filmmakers in to comment over their films (or others) when they have little of any note to say (e.g. William Friedkin), or getting 'experts' in to comment on films who turn out to just narrate the action without insight (e.g. on Once Upon A Time In America), but to say that is a fault of commentaries as a format seems extreme. Even documentaries can be packed full of irrelevant 'celebrity fan' comments or insight-free insights - that doesn't mean that all documentaries are useless and should be dropped, just that there needs to be more care and consideration chosen in who can provide an interesting and relevant commentary, as well as knowledge that just pushing someone in front of a microphone and expecting them to produce two (or four) non-stop hours of consistently witty, informative and sparkling banter is not entirely realistic.
I agree that there should be courage to not produce a commentary when it seems like the material does not warrant it, or if the filmmaker cannot or will not talk about their work in that form, rather than forcing a useless commentary (or documentary) on there just because of the 'added value'. However there should be just as much courage to produce a commentary (or two, or three as on Slacker) when it feels justified and there is a chance that that commentary track might stand as the longest piece of criticism or analysis that the film may ever receive and be an important resource which can also place a film into its historical context for the future.
Yes it was, I got over excited and lumped it together with Tybjerg's other commentaries without checking first! 
