March 09, 2006

Oscar Night

It Sort of Belongs More to Poetry

Eroll Morris' Oscar Night The film can be seen for free at the following link: Oscar Night by Errol Morris

One could go into a bunch of theory about "mise-en-scene" or montage and how these things make film different from other methods of storytelling (and believe me, I'm tempted to do so...) but I'm no authority on the matter and Morris' film, which I'm hoping you just watched, does it all in a matter of minutes.

Morris, is in my opinion, one of the best filmmakers that I've ever come across. He's best known for his documentary The Thin Blue Line, a work so effective that it actually got a man out of jail.

Part of his greatness stems from his ability to find eccentric people and sit them down in front of his camera for an interview. But, his films are just as effective when he's interviewing Joe Sixpack from down the block whose dog just died. Unlike most documentarians what sets him apart is that he's less concerned with what people have to say and more concerned with how they say it. He finds more truth in the way people carry themselves than in the things they choose to tell the guy yelling at them from behind the camera. He's a masterful narrative filmmaker working in documentary. He recognizes the significance of body language, the inflections in ones speech, framing, overlapping sound, pacing, and all the other things that make watching a film such a unique experience.

His mastery of cinematic technique makes it fitting that he would be the one to make such a beautiful and moving celebration of cinema with his short film, Oscar Night. He does this with the use of the aforementioned techniques and by casting a wide net and interviewing people of all shapes and sizes to emphasize the popular nature of the movies. The short clips of each interviewee manage to capture their personalities and spread the infectious enthusiasm they have for the films they talk about. In much the same way that people are said to look like their dogs (Morris even seems to hint at this at one point in the film), the people interviewed have the movies they mention written all over them. Morris' most brilliant moments come in his simple framing of Donald Trump and his brief interview with Mikael Gorbachev. His rhythmic editing ties everything together into a film lovefest that threatens to boil over into cheesiness but instead reminds you of all the times you've had your breath taken away by a movie.

With this small film, Morris has summed up why film is such a special artform and why I went to film school. He's also illustrated why I write for this blog: sometimes you just love something so much that all you want to do is talk about it.