They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018) - Movie Review

 

I feel like I shot myself in the foot with my last review. The one time I make it a point to highlight the necessity for context and putting a film into a larger perspective, to the point where I wind up writing about it than the film itself, and it turns out that someone else managed to do a far better job at that than I could ever have managed. I watched this film right after watching The Other Side Of The Wind, the result of which was a personally surreal experience where I felt like I was being schooled in how to talk about film. A lesser man would abandon this review entirely, go back to the other one and do some sneaky reworking to ease that inadequacy. It’s all in the editing, after all. But no, instead of making this entirely about me, I’ll just make it partially about myself as we take a look at this phenomenal making-of documentary.

The Other Side Of The Wind (2018) - Movie Review

 

Part of what I do here with these reviews is trying to put singular films into a greater context. The wheres and whys that surround each production can often help make sense of the product itself, for better or for worse. And in the realms of American cinema, few directors can lay claim to being such utter fonts of cinematic context as Orson Welles.

Film as any of us know it simply doesn’t make sense without considering his contribution to the art, something that can easily be taken for granted when looking at his seminal classics in today’s light. From the revolutionary visuals of Citizen Kane to the ground-breaking editing of F For Fake to the character wizardry of Chimes At Midnight, his work has influenced so much of what would come afterwards that it's frankly staggering. He is one of the few filmmakers I can recall where it feels necessary to separate entertainment value from the legacy of the art itself. This film, a posthumous completion of one of the many productions Welles never lived to see completed, is no exception.