Some DVDs will supply you with the bonus of a Director’s Commentary. Something that every cinephile looks forward to. Most of these tracks are disappointing. Either the Director would rather be somewhere else for whatever reason or there is a whole gaggle of people along for the commentary ride. This only serves to muddle the narrative.
My favorite Director’s commentaries include those of Wim Wenders. He really knows how to tell a story. He seems so pleased you are listening and sort of invites you in. He’ll explain through personal anecdotes about his own life (I grew up in this valley) and funny ones (the Cinematographer fell asleep with one eye on the viewfinder in this scene), or critical aspects of the movie (we waited a day for this one-way mirror to be installed and it became the most iconic scene in the film). As opposed to a lecture or spoiler about how things were made, it’s much more a sharing and a conversation, in a sense. Since you never see the Directors, they seem quite at ease. For example, in the Director’s commentary for The Thing, you can hear the ice clinking in John Carpenter’s whiskey glass.
Schnabel will tell you that he couldn’t make any of his films by himself. However, there is no doubt about his stamp, his signature. He is a physical Director, in the style of Werner Herzog. This makes his Director’s commentary compelling. One scene in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly finds an actress submerged, going deeper and deeper under water, holding on to the person in the diving bell. Schnabel says, “They wanted me to put weights in her jacket, so she could stay down there. I wouldn’t allow it. I was down there with them.” Of course he was! As I have been researching my 7th annual Winter Film Series, for which I selected four Schnabel films, what comes across to me is how he is someone who weaves himself physically into the film. As much as an oil paint becomes inextricable to a canvas. In behind the scenes you see Schnabel diving off a pier to prove to Javier Bardim in Before Night Falls, that it’s safe to jump into this part of the sea—you also witness an injured Schnabel being wheeled around in a make-shift hand cart. In the commentary he will throw away facts like, “That’s my shirt.” or “That’s my hat.” But without the commentary, you would not have the insight that 0n-set, Schnabel gives everything.
During one of the soliloquies in Diving Bell, Schnabel opines in the commentary, “It would be a crime to speak over this.” This is the greatest form of Director’s commentary. Actually experiencing the film along with the audience. At another point in the film, during a gut-wrenching phone call by Jean Dominique Bauby’s father (Max von Sydow) Schnable is moved. He lets you know he watched the scene just like the audience. He says of the father, “Who talks like that?”
If you’ve never watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, or read the book, I highly recommend both. It’s on the surface, an incredible story of a person who is paralyzed but can still communicate through blinking. But what it is truly about is the power of the human imagination and the dignity of creating an active and healthy inner-voice for oneself. Another one of Schnabel’s themes seems to be the artist’s ability to transmute mortality, to live on, through their work. The final shot of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is actually during the credits. Schnabel says that the entire film was inspired by this shot of massive glaciers violently crashing into water. Except that in a surreal but soothing twist, the footage is moving in reverse. The glaciers, healing, repairing and transforming back into their once glorious states. Schnabel won’t say but for me it’s a hopeful message that no matter how seemingly broken someone is, with imagination we can envision them anew and with promise.
The Winter Film Series is held annually, December through March, at the 602 Club in Appleton, Wisconsin. https://the602club.wordpress.com
L&D Report 