Fulvue Drive-In.com
Current Reviews
In Stores Soon
 
In Stores Now
 
DVD Reviews, SACD Reviews Essays Interviews Contact Us Meet the Staff
An Explanation of Our Rating System Search  
Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Biography > Literature > Politics > TV Mini Series > Sweden > The Freethinker – Special 2-Disc DVD Set (1992 Telefilm/New Yorker)

The Freethinker – Special 2-Disc DVD Set (1992 Telefilm/New Yorker)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Telefilm: B-

 

 

Once in a while, every auteur tries to stop being one because of some political belief, a sense of peaking as an artist or an evasion of self.  Brian De Palma and Robert Altman went back to film school as teachers to do film projects in group form, but when Jean-Luc Godard abandoned the French New Wave for his “Maoist” films and then some advanced analog video experiments, it was the biggest rejection of artistic success any director ever pulled.  He returned to film, but the two new cycles were not as prolific as the first, especially the Mao works.  Feeling he peaked and concerned with the world at large, Peter Watkins did the same thing.

 

After a series of films so groundbreaking that they faced censorship at every turn up to 1971’s Punishment Park (reviewed elsewhere on this site) abandoned filmmaking for good and retreated to TV in 1975 with his portrait of Edvard Munch we have now reviewed in two versions on DVD.  The Freethinker is the 6th of 7 TV projects he has made to 2000 that try an anti-media pattern and have far more Leftist leanings than his films ever suggested.  Unfortunately, this comes with the usual failings and trappings of such thinking and trying to do productions as group efforts means he loses control of any points beyond the obvious you would get from such works.

 

Never drifting into Stalinism, the subject of this portrait is of Johan August Strindberg (1849 – 1912) who became a major writer of novels and plays, known for being groundbreaking and innovative.  This included psychologically complex content and criticism of the 19th Century society that is so ahead of its time that many still do not know who he is.  Watkins and company did new research to find out more about the man and the result is a document that uncovers new facts and expresses new ideas about his life, focusing in particular on his first marriage.  The result is a priceless document on the man, but unfortunately, a very long work that runs over 4.5 hours!

 

He also used innovative visual tricks and images in his plays, some of which Watkins recreates here, but this is just far too long and choppy to be as effective as it could be.  By fighting against the multi-media “monoform” his TV works have been working against, he has (accidentally?) created a new Monoform with which important ideas are rendered ancillary and gives new meaning to “too many chefs spoiling the soup” as the long-way approach just is not the scenic route it should be.  If you have immense patience, you will want to give this a look.  Otherwise, you are on your own.

 

 

The 1.33 X 1 image was shot in Beta SP and it shows, with softness throughout, color limits, stills with detail loss, slight yellowing here and there and very hard to tolerate at 274 minutes!  It plays like “Mr. Linear History” Ken Burns works for PBS, minus the institutionalized racism and with a brain, but Watkins fared better with La Commune (also on DVD from New Yorker) despite many of the same content and form issues.  He ought to go back and redo the still footage.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound is better, but still shows its age.  The combination is trying, making the drawn-out aspects of this presentation even more so.

 

The DVDs have no extras, but the case contains a 16-page booklet with production information, self-interview, copyright statement and new letter about how he is less optimistic about the world situation versus when he made this fifteen years ago.  I think the real change will arrive when his older filmed work is restored & rediscovered, but that cannot happen soon enough.  We’ll wait for more.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


Marketplace


 
 Copyright © MMIII through MMX fulvuedrive-in.com