Genres

Visitors Review

2012-05-24 07:38:16

American Gothic within the American Pastoral

Richard "Dickie" Rogers (1944-2001) was born to a life of privilege--most of the footage presented here is of the Hamptons & Harvard-- but he always felt guilty that he did not do more to earn that privilege. So although he shot more than 200 hours of footage of the Hamptons in the years between 1944-2001 & some very choice footage of Harvard in the 70's, his feelings about these locales were always complicated. These locales certainly had much to tell him about himself, and the kind of self that he assembled had much to say about these locales, but he never assembled all of this ripe footage & commentary into a cohesive documentary that would also have been a cohesive autobiography. In some ways Dickie's narrative, or at least the collection of narrative strands assembled here by Alexander Ochs, is not an uncommon one: privileged son feels oppressed by his own family history, feels pressured to accomplish something & do the family name proud, but feels woefully inadequate to live up to the precedent that's been set & so rebels by retreating into the world of art, but ultimately finds he cannot escape the past (especially not the family money) & must come to terms with it. There are two possible outcomes to this familiar story: prodigal son finally breaks free by defining himself by his own actions/accomplishments or prodigal son finally become comfortable/complacent with the life that was readymade for him. Both endings are equally cliched and Dickie knew this. One of Dickie's biggest assets/liabilities was his ivy league education that made him painfully aware that whatever direction his life took would be equally cliched. The only way to avoid cliche was to avoid living/telling any story at all. There is an undeniable beauty in this film because Dickie had an undeniable visual sense. Since his own self & story were always too painful to fully inhabit, he seems to have found a way of using his camera as a way of transcending or erasing the self: when the camera was rolling he did not exist. So the few images of Dickie that are included here show a man at odds with himself, with his own presence in the world. When Dickie found out that he only had a short time to live, he greeted this almost as welcome news. Finally, he had no more future to worry about, no pressure to become anything, and the fact that he knew he had so little time left made his existence, at last, seem tolerable.

2012-05-23 19:38:36

Forgettable...

I didn't respond to this self-indulgent, unnecessary, misguided yawn of a film. I can sympathize with the effort to give exposure to the film maker by his student/biographer, but the product was, to me, a dull, almost silly, attempt to present a 'serious' philosophical piece. I can't say anymore, mainly because I'm boring myself with the effort.

2012-05-22 12:57:02

Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

"The Windmill Movie" is a compelling documentary about Richard Rogers, a Harvard professor of film, who tried to make his own autobiographical movie. It remained in pieces... and in this movie, Rogers' former student, as well as his friends Wallace Shawn (My Dinner with Andre (The Criterion Collection)) and Bob Balaban (A Mighty Wind) try to portray Rogers as the man in full. Rogers complains of his privileged WASP background, as if growing up in the Hamptons rendered him incapable of being a true art film director. We see very little of his documentaries-but we do see his incomplete "Windmill Movie",with Rogers explaining his upbringing.Rogers' complicated relationships with women comes to be crucial to understanding him. His father expected him to keep his affair with his secretary a secret. In turn, Rogers was having a longtime relationship with photographer Susan Meiselas, but also carrying on with a performance artist, Noni. He lists the women in his life- Janet, Ann-Marie, Tina, but he sees himself as the center of attention and incapable of true emotional intimacy with a woman. Susan let him be with other women when she was off on assignment. Ironically, in the end, Noni and Susan became friends, and Susan married Rogers shortly before he died from cancer.Mortality makes Rogers reflective. He ponders his severed toes, watches himself wither away. Death brings closure to his project that he couldn't. "Windmill Movie" is an elegaic portrait of an artist as an old man.

ltyr2001 2012-05-22 11:16:30

Self absorbed.

There's something about people who come from wealth and hate it, yet keep using that wealth to do whatever suits them.This is that kind of film and subject.This is an indulgent, narcissistic look at indulgence and narcissism.My suggestion: Read your own diary and look at your own videos, then talk to yourself in a mirror about all the crap life has given you. And VOILA! You too are an artist!

2012-05-10 19:56:00

more than a movie about trying to make a movie

At first I thought this movie was going to be too clever for its own good--a biographical movie about someone trying to make a movie about someone who spent decades trying to make his own movie, an autobiographical movie about his own life. Alexander Olch's finished movie about an unfinished movie by Dick Rogers is all of that, but then it stops drawing attention to that clever conceit and instead becomes much more profound. In the process of showing that Dick Rogers had trouble making a movie out of his own life primarily because he had trouble making any coherent sense out of his own life, this movie says a lot about life in general. Or at least, about life, as well as death, as experienced by very privileged people. What does life mean, what is life's purpose, and what is there to strive for, when you already have what most people still wish they had? This movie is also about acting, both in movies and in real life. Raw footage and narrated journal entries reveal that Rogers wasn't comfortable in the life that his family provided for him, and then tacitly expected him to lead as an adult. Roger merely acted the way he was supposed to, all the while knowing that he's acting, and hating himself for obeying the social milieu that tells him how he's supposed to act. Knowing full well that all such revelations about himself and other WASP elitists are totally clichéd didn't seem to help in his quest to create something more meaningfully original.A murky undertow of guilt comes also through in this movie's patched-together portrait of Rogers. I think it's a guilty conscience--a gnawing awareness of the sort felt by some members of the American old-money elite, an awareness of the sort that's explored much more fully in Wallace Shawn's work. It's a sense that despite Utopian appearances, there's something rotten in the Hamptons. And so, how appropriate it is that Shawn appears in this movie (he and Rogers had been friends in "real" life), helping Olch to ponder, and even to act out at times, the search for a more meaningful life that such a stricken conscience compelled Rogers to undertake. This movie, then, like Shawn in many of his writings, is more firmly honest than Rogers seemed capable of being, about who and what he himself was--a man who never earned all that he had, and a man who may have basically refused to embrace it because he knew he hadn't earned it, and therefore felt he didn't deserve it.

Chris Knipp 2012-05-10 13:13:59

The search for a self among found remnants

Alex Olch, who is only 28 and a clothing (necktie) designer andcolumnist as well as director, has made his first feature-length film,a documentary, using unfinished film footage shot by his late mentorand friend Richard P. Rogers, former director of the Film Study Centerat Harvard, and incorporating that into a dramatization of the latter'slife, with Wallace Shawn and Bob Balaban as occasional actors. Olch andRogers, who became friends and remained so till the latter's death in2001, had much in common. As a NYTimes article by Lily Koppel explains,"Mr. Olch and Mr. Rogers attended exclusive Manhattan private schools,graduated from Harvard, shared a love of film and neckties and grew upin adjacent buildings on East 74th Street. As adults, they lived on thesame block on Mott Street. At a similar age, their faces even lookstartlingly alike, both with eyes like cameras, each with rusty hair."Besides, Wallace Shawn knew Rogers "from the sandbox" and shared asimilar privileged preppy (Dalton School) existence. The incestuousnature of the production continues with Olch's working side by sidewith Rogers' widow Susan Meiselas in her studio, with her producing thefilm and he directing. In the film, Meiselas is (briefly) played byCynthia Nixon, who plays Miranda in "Sex and the City." Olch describedhimself as working in "a strange zone between fiction and nonfiction"in making his film.This project crept up on Olch, whose main interest is in fiction films.After Rogers died of cancer, the young man left a note under the doorof the Mott Street loft for Meiselas (a well known Magnumphotographer), who was off on assignment, saying he hoped everythingwas okay. She said she could use some help organizing her latehusband's films. This involved reviving his old editing machine, andsorting through some forty or more years of footage, material for anautobiography on film that Rogers, who made 18 films, could never bringto fruition. One thing led to another. In his own way, Olch completedRogers' autobiographical film. That's what 'The Windmill Movie' is.It's a Shandian ramble that looks at old Super 8 film made by Rogers'father, shows Shawn impersonating Rogers, Rogers' mother sitting out onthe lawn in summer in a mink coat, and films of various girlfriends,lawn parties and tennis matches in the Hamptons, and plane flights toexotic Latin American places. Rogers only married Meiselas when he wasabout to die, after thirty years together, and had no children--one ofhis regrets. Just as 'Tristram Shandy' is about the stops and starts intelling its hero's life, 'The Windmill Movie' is about theimpossibility of Roger's doing his autobiography on film--of everfinishing this lifelong project. The seamless editing is instinctive or"subconscious" in its decisions rather than logical, as was, Olch says,his choice of music, which includes a recurrent passage by Schubertplayed on the piano by Robert Humphreville. Olch skirts the edgebetween fiction and non-fiction in his credits, which denote the filmas "Inspired by the unfinished work of Richard P. Rogers." The windmilladjoined the tennis courts in Wainstcott, in the Hamptons, where Rogersgrew up in the summers and inherited a house. In going back to thewindmill in his title, Olch follows Rogers, whose original aim was tomake a fim about the place, rather than just about himself. Oftenaddressing the camera--or in voiceovers read by Olch from Rogers'writings--he talks about the world of wealth and privilege, or being"too rich and too white," that Rogers worries will make hiscomplaints--of being dissatisfied, unhappy, unfulfilled, always lessthan others--sound spoiled and annoying.Rogers' family was dysfunctional, or as his mother says, "nutty";immediate relatives all went astray in some way. Wainscott society wasalcoholic. The film tells much about confusion and discontent andlittle about Rogers' palpable successes, the teaching at Harvard, wherehe was admired and influential, the documentaries and films for PBSthat were tidy and well made and won awards. He is not onlydiscontented, but discontented with being discontented. At one point hesays all he can do is make conversation and play tennis. Rogers' motherwas antisemitic and when he brought Meiselas to visit, she would up bydriving them both out of the house. He vowed never to go back toWainscott. But in the press conference Meisela indicated that she nowowns the house which he later inherited, and keeps it in memory of him.In the end there is little of Wally Shawn; this is an exploration thatincludes its false starts, because Olch thought a fictive or actedelement would be important but it turned out not to be. The fascinationof the whole film is how it moves in crabwise, by fits and starts, by agradual accumulation eventually providing a clear picture of, well,almost, something like, what it was like to be this warm, humorous,self-deprecating, somewhat unhappy man.Shown as part of the NYFF, along with Dick Rogers' Sixties first film'Quarry,' a black and white short made near Quincy, Massachusetts withbeautifully composed rocky landscapes and shots of young people worthof Robert Frank's 'The Americans.' Documentary has not always seemed tobe the NYFF's strong point, but this one has the undeniable strength ofbeing sui generis and unusually thought-provoking, a wise marriage ofartist and subject.