At an absurdly self-indulgent student film festival, the directors of the (mostly terrible) short films start getting killed off one by one and a budding British documentary filmmaker decides to investigate.
26 Nov The Auteur Theory (1999)
Murderous
I am deep into a study for a book on folding in film. “Folding” is a general term for various types of self reference, awareness, self-creation and reflection. The very idea behind my study is that this is a very useful thing to understand and use because it makes things more powerful. When exposed as the point of the art — as in “Adaptation” or any number of similar films — it serves as a fun playground, for particularly intelligent games.
This film puts the lie to that. It doesn’t work. It isn’t fun. It DOES march through a few of the folding types I have categorised: films about other films, films that make themselves, films about the pretence of folding, films where the game of detecting gets wrapped up in both the story and the story about the story. Judges judging judges. Metadocumentaries.
But there isn’t a shred of cleverness, not a speck of fun. Even “Final Cut” was better. What could have made this work was better reflection between the two panels of judges and the revelation that the redhead executive was the murderer for reasons having to do with artificially enhancing the folding.
Posted in 2003
Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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