Cinema: The Approach of BluRay Commentaries
Disclaimer, I’ve done one.
In following a number of BluRay commentaries recently, I’ve realized why, for quite a while, I hadn’t bothered to pay them much attention. The experience of revisiting these “extras” prompted me to ask what we might expect from them, what we might reasonably hope for, and what, in general, we get.
I’ll start with that last thought by applauding the erudition of the best contributors. Film history, background of the movie in question, other movies by the same filmmaker, facts about the director — there are some highly informed scholars and commentators out there whose enlightening discourse might serve to carry us along as the movie plays. (I’m coming to the problem this invariably leads to.) There are other folk of more moderate resources. Over this inconsistent spectrum, some can be engaging, some indifferent, some downright boring.
But most — of whatever calibre — rarely seem to mention is what is actually happening on the screen.
If they do, this will be largely a reference to actors, not so much in terms of performance, for example in relation to camera, but more a matter of which stars might have been considered for the part or any previously attached. There are notable occasions however when an actor’s preparation is discussed, especially when this has been of a singular nature, and this can be intriguing.
Often what we find are details of a film’s industry background — not so much the behind the scenes production circumstances that can be of interest but more the meetings, hesitations, maneuvering and machinations of the corporate high-ups. The perfect way to ruin one’s engagement with the screen.
Contributors seem to want to display familiarity with the business, their vicarious way of saying “I belong”. They seem to want to cleave to orthodoxy, to groupthink as though that reveals their authority. They are insiders, they imply, never outsiders.
The screen might be portraying traumatic mayhem or sublime wonder while the commentary drones on about which bigwig had lunch with which bigwig, as though the speaker is paying no attention to the events we are witnessing or the emotions they are conveying — perhaps because they’re not looking at the film or perhaps because, if they are, they don’t experience cinema in the manner most of us experience it.
But even if the commentary is related more to the movie itself, shouldn’t the commentator refer — at lease from time to time — to what we are seeing? Fundamentally, mightn’t they offer insights into the filmmaker’s cinematic language? Shots, camera, framing, angle, movement, editing, imagery, soundscape, score? Wouldn’t it be an idea to talk about emotion, information, story and storytelling? Then there are those moments that can’t be explained or reduced in any meaningful way yet come across to the viewer with profound effect. Let’s hear them noted, celebrated, marveled at.
There’s complex, inventive narrative and visual connective tissue in a good film. The revisiting of shots, compositions, angles, stagings — let’s have the architectural glue of these memes revealed.
And passage of time — how does the filmmaker modulate this? Through editing. Through transitions. Through ellipses. Even within a single shot — what changes out of frame before a moving camera returns to show the same space (see the end of The Taste of Things).
And how is sound used? For subliminal effect, for tonal dissonance, to heighten emotion, to orchestrate eye trace, as an element in the articulation of narrative point of view, to heighten suspense, to narrow or broaden the “focus”of a scene. A commentary might reveal specific examples of these aspects .
Commentaries that fail to relate to the progression of images on the screen are surely more easily digested, and indeed enjoyed as audio essays elsewhere in the “extras” rather than as a talk that arbitrarily accompanies a movie Watching image, action, drama while listening to largely unrelated narration tends to result in cognitive overload — at least if a film means anything to the viewer.
The image and text correlation I find so helpful and so natural is, it has to be admitted, rare in book form also. Indeed, production of my latest book was agony as I struggled to get the production company to mesh screenshots with sentences and paragraphs in the precise configuration set out in the copyedited manuscript. (One or two instances excepted, we finally got there).
I’m by no means arguing for dry, dispassionate analysis. Commentaries can be dry and dispassionate even without the analysis. I’m asking for the excitement of informed appreciation, nothing too technical or esoteric but an articulate, tonally welcoming, clearly communicative exploration of the filmmaker’s navigation of their medium throughout a movie that might appeal to fellow filmmakers, to film scholars, and to film lovers also — most of whom probably never having set foot anywhere near a film set.
A film is not a novel, not a play, not a poem (although it might be the latter visually), it’s a film — and just as novels and plays and poems can most usefully be appreciated as novels and plays and poems, so films can surely best be appreciated as films.
Those who offer commentaries (and critics too) — please don’t take the film as a film for granted, as if it’s no different from any other narrative form.
Why not discuss it as a film?
Peter Markham
August 2024