Simply A Masterpiece

One of my all time favorites.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

In 1977,Nicholas Ray was part of the cast of "der Amerikanische Freund" as Derwatt,a painter who made forgeries .In this movie,Ray tells the story of a painter who steals the masterpieces in the museums and replaces them with forgeries.I have always been a Ray fan from "they live by night" to "run for cover" to "party girl" to his final epics which were looked upon by pretty much as failures.I must admit that I do not go much for Wenders' stuff ,which is much too intellectual for me .Its not a documentary movie,it's cinema verite depicting a man who is dying.The courage the director displays in front of death commands admiration but I wonder whether this movie should have been released:it's an intimate one,which should have been reserved for the circle of family and close friends.And I'm sure that many of these prefer to keep a picture of a healthy man .If you have seen four or five movies by Ray ("rebel without a cause" "Johnny Guitar" "The savage" ) a piece of advice:try and see the lesser known Ray works:"wind across the everglades "born to be bad" "on dangerous ground" or "knock on any door" .The best homage to an exceptionally gifted director.There are two good moments in "Lightning over water":The "lusty men" extract happens to be my favorite in this classic:Mitchum come s back home,an old house where he finds back a comic and a money box:In "Lightning " ,Ray hints at "coming back home,seeing my mother's face" Childhood was an obsession in his work :just remember Dean playing in the gutter ("Rebel) or Cagney trying to make Derek his "son" in "run for cover" .THe diary which Wenders reads is in German which makes sense since it's his first language;the shots of the wings of the plane are fascinating.

Two video versions of this film exist, both roughly the same length. The first was released by Pacific Video on VHS in 1987, the second just this month (1/03) by Anchor Bay on DVD. According to Kathe Geist's book "The Cinema of Wim Wenders: From Paris France to Paris Texas," Wenders was so depressed by the filming of "Lightning" and Ray's death that he handed the footage over to his editor, Peter Przygodda, who spent a year fashioning it into a version shown at Cannes; apparently this is also the version released by Pacific Video in 1987 and which I first saw around that time (and have watched many times since). Wenders supposedly found this version obscure and depressing and re-edited, adding a voiceover (his own) and superimposing passages from Ray's diary; this is the version just released on DVD, and is considered by some the definitive edition. But I find Wender's criticism of the initial cut confusing, for it's the LATTER cut (his own) which is murky and depressing. Nick Ray's final scene, for example ("Cut...Don't Cut.") is tortuous (we're watching a man dying), and there are sequences edited so bizarrely as to be almost incomprehensible. The first cut, in contrast, has a narrative flow and progression that make it easier to absorb, though it's still tough going as we witness Nick Ray's suffering. Also, Wender's narration in the 2nd version (absent in the initial cut) actually adds little to the film. The first version is unfortunately out of print but is worth tracking down because it's the superior one.

Wenders gives the viewer the impression that this is a simple movie, but it is not. Fans of Wenders will recognize director Nicholas Ray's apartment as a location for the film, American Friend. But not only is Ray simply dying, he dies, and the "documentary" has to change, and so it does, with grace, pain, uncertainty, and a host of other emotions and observations. The music, much of it featuring Ronee Blakley, doing what sounds like an attempt at light punk rock and country-folk rock, with a definite Patti Smith influence, is very effective. Like every film I have seen by Wenders, it looks beautiful and often unusual, and the pacing is leisurely, and by Hollywood standards, slow. However, anyone who likes Wenders and likes Ray--and let's face it, if you say you are a fan of American film, and you neither like nor know Nicholas Ray, you are an ignorant piker, poser--will benefit from screening this movie, and probably be moved like hell by it.

This is not a movie for Wenders fans as much as it is for Nick Ray fans. In fact, I wouldn't recommend it unless you felt connected to the director. And I don't mean that you've happened to rent Johnny Guitar, In a Lonely Place or They Live By Night. See it if you saw a theme in Ray's work, one that made you go back and learn about his life. See it if you re-watched his films, trying to understand every cut and what it told you about the man behind the camera. See it if it bothers you that he will never make another film. Because in Lightning over water Nicholas Ray invites you to share his death with him, and, if you see it, you must be prepared to grieve. I saw this movie late one night in my college dorm room (a college with a featured role in the film, but that is merely tangential). I didn't let anyone watch it with me. The previous summer my grandfather had died in the same drawn-out manner. He was surrounded by family from the time of his diagnosis to the time of his death. Wenders and his crew are Nick Ray's family -- a love of the director's work is the blood connecting them. Wenders carries a camera with him because he knows that others -- even those who never heard of Nicholas Ray until he was dead for 18 years -- have the same blood in them. Wenders gives us the chance. But it is Nick Ray who we come to see.