Discovering a director.

There is probably no bigger rush for me than discovering a director. From someone I had heard about forever and finally saw a film by (John Cassavetes a couple of years back for me), to stumbling on someone for another reason, a new director to watch and explore helps to remind there no matter how many films I have seen and all I might think I know there is so much more.

Currently the object of my affections is Michael Winterbottom. I saw Tristram Shandy when it came out on video last year and it blew me away. But I saw the film for Steve Coogan and the concept, I had heard of but knew nothing about Winterbottom. Then today I watch Road to Guantanamo and I had that feeling, that since of personal discovery. There are some filmmakers that I love that I have to get attuned to (like Godard) and some that I feel immediately (like Malick) but few that instantly work for me intellectually. Winterbottom might fall into that category. With the two films I have seen I get the feeling that I am having a conversation with a man that thinks the same way I do.

Godard was too esoteric, to intimidating for me to love immediately (even Pierrot seemed off putting at first), though now I think he is the greatest filmmaker of the 20th century, and perhaps the 21st if I could only see more of his current films. With Malick there was little to know thought at all: the films wash over me as pure audio-visual experiences. Winterbottom, with his loose Cassavetian style and his instance on politics in his work, reminds me of sitting in college with my friends and talking art and news. With Tristram Shandy he talked about the nature of cinema and of the politics of celebrity, and Coogan should have won some award simply for allowing himself to be portrayed as such a fucking bastard. The film is a free ranging discussion on forms of art and of human relationships, while being damn funny as well.

Instead of the leisurely, joyous and sad intellectual discourse of Shandy, Road to Guantanamo feels like a friend just burst into your room shouting "listen to this". Yes, the film does hash out many things I have heard and seen before. No, it does not reveal any new grand facts that we all didn't know about the national shame that are those camps. But what does is call you to action. Weather that is to write a letter or renounce your citizenship is up to you, but it leaves you changed just because of the direct appeal of it. It functions in certain ways like Dancer in the Dark for capitol punishment. Say what you will about that film but when I saw it growing up in a tiny Texas town it immediately changed my opinion on the death penalty. All I can say is that Guantanamo spoke to me in exactly that way, and I hope there is a kid in a tiny town somewhere that sees it, maybe on a whim, and feels differently afterward.

Winterbottom speaks to me with a direct voice, and hearing it for the first time makes me ready for more, and with 24 Hour Party People on my shelf and A Might Heart in the theaters that should be soon. Thank God for Austin, with Vulcan and I Love Video, that it is easy for me to find his and other's films, new and obscure. Thank God for Netflix and Greencine for providing those kids in small towns with the same access. Thank God for movies for surprising me with those new voices and making me feel that rush of discovery.

Oh and to top things off, a list of five directors I hope to get to know as soon as I can:
Jean Eustache
Samuel Fuller
Tsai Ming Liang
Eric Rohmer
The Dardenne Brothers