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Jonathan Demme: Films
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[T]he direction by Jonathan Demme is overly stylized, for no reason connected to the narrative, and he doesn't even stick with any single style. There are *many* scenes where the camera is needlessly jittery, and Tak Fujimoto's cinematography manages to waste the setting of Paris. The film strikes as though Demme wanted to make an action picture, with his slam cuts and obviously handheld camera. However, interspersed between these scenes are ... realistically staged scenes, and the juxtaposition of these styles only serves to draw the viewer out of the narrative. The very last segment of the film, after the climax, involves a sequence that goes completely against the style and nature of anything the viewer has heretofore been shown.
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Although this will be the latest in many Young documentaries, the partnership with Demme is of significance because of his track record. In 1984, he directed Stop Making Sense, the widely heralded Talking Heads film.
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Tomorrow night at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, Demme will take questions after a 7:40 screening. U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat from Saugerties, N.Y., will run the question-and-answer session.
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Jonathan says he felt it was critical to document the heroism, struggles and triumphs of the survivors of Katrina. Getting people to open up and share their stories, he says, was remarkably easy because of the extraordinary circumstances they had endured. "If you say, 'How's it going, what's up, what's on your mind?' They're going to come forth because they're burning with stuff," Jonathan says. In this way, rather than conducting formal interviews, Jonathan says he got more feedback and raw emotion from candid conversations with the people he met and filmed.
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Early into Demme's sharply crafted portrait, filmed over three months in late 2006 and early 2007, Carter, riding along a country road near his home, notes that this property has been in his family for more than 170 years. "The precious nature of land," as he puts it, has been in the Carter bloodstream for generations. Tagging along as he visits neighbors and a local church cemetery, you can feel how deeply rooted he is in this particular red clay soil, its cultivation and the human and animal life it supports.
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Demme asked for and received constant, intimate access to the 39th U.S. president, and ensured his subject that he intended to make a "warts-and-all" film about him. Turns out, Carter is a thoughtful, decent man who's kind, warm and engaging with everyone he meets, whether he's at a book signing, church barbecue or lunch with the honchos from Simon & Schuster.
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