Stone Reader (Documentary)
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: B Film: B
Review
after review, this website has been consistently adamant about the condition,
preservation, and restoration of film and music. While that is a battle that has become more
popular thanks to the DVD boom, books have had a crisis of their own. Thousands of libraries are seeing thousands
of books rot and turn to dust, most of which are no longer in print, and these
bastions of free information cannot save them through photocopying because of
copyrights that still exist on the books.
Add to the very long list of great books forgotten and many gems that
have gone mostly unheard of and it could be said that true literature and the
deepest reference and informational text are in their own crisis.
Stone Reader (2002) is a key documentary that
deserves all the attention it can get.
Running over two hours, it tells the true story of director Mark
Moskowitz’s intensive quest to find out about Dow Mossman’s novel The Stones of Summer. This is a book he tried to read a quarter
century before and could not get through.
In a recent rereading, he realizes not finishing it was a personal
mistake he needed to rectify beyond just finishing what he was certain was a
great book.
Literally
driving all over the country, especially the East Coast, Moskowitz visited
dozens of literary experts, and much to his shock, even they had not heard of
the book. He also tries to find the
author of the book itself. Because of
his love and enthusiasm for this book and literature in general, his
persistence becomes almost infectious.
For those of us here who battle over lost treasures of cinema, we could
relate.
Eventually,
he finds a few people who know the book and meets Mr. Mossman himself. The result is that the book is now reprinted
for the first time in a quarter century, it is finding a whole new audience,
and Moskowitz has launched a website and organization to find more great books
that need to be relaunched. It is great
that he pulled this off and has used this as a launching point for a whole new
generation of readers. We hear how books
like Harry Potter are setting sales
records while encouraging much-needed book literacy for a generation that will
need it badly. This is far from sufficient,
however, for any and all generations.
Obviously, the pathetic state of commercial films in recent years have
helped spur this on, but books will never be replaced by the internet or
television, any more than video will ever replace film. This is because it is not just merely
content, but presentation that counts and Stone
Reader is the ultimate testimony that greatness endures, no matter how many
ignorant people try to write it off.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is from 16mm shot by Moskowitz and
co-cinematographers Joseph Vandergast and Jeffrey Confer. Moskowitz also wrote his voice-overs,
produced, co-edited (with Kathleen Soulliere), and directed the film. This looks really good for a 16mm production,
proving once again the format’s superiority over the best digital High
Definition video, and adds authenticity in that a film about books would be
shot on the more artistically competent medium.
There are some limits in definition and color here and there, but that
is because it was being transferred thinking documentary and not dramatic film. There is video in the extras section, though. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has no major
surrounds to speak of, but is so newly recorded and well-recorded that it makes
the film additionally engaging. Robert
Goodman’s score is just right.
The
extras are spread out between two DVDs, with Disc One offering a
Moskowitz/Mossman commentary that feels like one for books more than film. If it was not done to the film, it would feel
like an old radio network revival. It
also gives out web resources and offers favorite book lists, something that
continues on Disc Two, which offers a huge selection of additional footage that
Moskowitz had from all of his filming.
It demonstrates how rich the world of books is and how unexplored
filmmaking has left it, even if we include adaptations of good books, whether
they made good or bad films. Besides
deleted scenes (13 minutes) and a photo gallery that are often typical of a
second extras-only DVD, there are new featurettes made of the extra footage
with specific interviewees (Betty Kelly (14 minutes) and two with Leslie
Fiedler (one at 6 minutes, one from a 50-minutes-long of the TV series Firing Line in 1974)), British TV host
A.S. Byatt and Toni Morrison (also 6 minutes), a “further conversations” (25 minutes)
segment, Henry Roth: Connections Across
Time (30 minutes), Janet Maslin & Mark Moskowitz (20 minutes from a
discussion on 10/6/02, after a screening of the film), a “writer’s panel” split
into reference text on the authors and 13.5 minutes of video footage of the
actual conference, a “what happened next” segment (32 minutes), a too-short (12
minutes) segment of Roger Ebert’s Ebertfest featuring overlooked films, a short
film by Cindy Stilwell called First Story
(11 minutes) and a theatrical trailer of the film. Trailers for a few other New Yorker titles
are on DVD 1. This great wealth of
extras is immense and intense, all good.
Everyone
needs to see this film, but for book lovers, it is mandatory! We here at the site strongly applaud what
Mark Moskowitz has achieved, something that may land up being as important to
the printed page as the efforts of Robert A. Harris and James Katz (et al) has
been to film restoration. Beside
strongly encouraging you to get your hand son this DVD set, we urge you to
visit the website where the fruits of all these actions are taking root:
www.lostbooksclub.org
The
printed page lives!
- Nicholas Sheffo
