Lightning Over Water

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walter m "Lightning over Water" is an intriguing documentary/fiction hybrid that begins with a jetlagged Wim Wenders arriving in New York to help his friend and hero Nicholas Ray complete one last film before he succumbs to lung cancer which he is in the painful final stages of. So while those preparations are being made, occasionally a handheld Super 8 camera is used to show the film crew working behind the scenes. While digressive at times, especially one sequence involving rehearsals for a Chekhov play, "Lightning over Water" has some very good thoughts on the subject of mortality and how truly inescapable it is. Not only that but the movie is also concerned with the changes that go along with the passage of time like when Ray and his crew travel to Vassar, now co-ed, to screen one of his old films. Plus, we are also treated to a neat view of bygone New York City, circa 1979. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member This is a wonderful companion piece to Bunuel's Las Hurdes. While this seems to be more chaotic, it is obviously scripted, and both are savage in questioning the ethics and aesthetics of documentary film-making. It makes a fitting end to Nicholas Ray's career. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/22/23 Full Review Audience Member Documentary of last days of directore Nicholas Ray. It is sort of collebrative effort so that the whole film crew is credited as film makers. Wim Wenders is very much in the film and it doesn't follow any certain form and this makes it fresh and it hits emotional core of mine. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/13/23 Full Review Audience Member The beautiful farwell letter from the legendary director Nicholas Ray. It's about a Nicholas Ray who have decided to make his last picture about himself, together with the young german director Wim Wenders. The picture feel so authentical, so real, all the details,Nicholas Ray's appartment with all the film equipment and the Mickey Mouse alam clock. Wim Wenders, who was one of Ray's closest friend at the end of his life, narrating his feeling and thoughts in the most poetick way. the metafilm Lightning Over Water is Ray's 8 1/2. Cut, Cut! Is Ray's last word in this film. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/08/23 Full Review Audience Member It's it a documentary? A docu-drama? A work of fiction? I don't know. Is it really interesting? Yep. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/23/23 Full Review Audience Member This is a highly eclectic and formally eccentric work. At first, it announces itself a documentary about the last weeks of the great Nicholas Ray but it's all obviously scripted. Then it sort of mutates into a "film" that Ray and Wenders are making together or rather keep trying to make. Throughout Wenders throws in peculiar Brechtian kinks that distance us from both the "documentary" and the "film." It's all very fascinating but one qualm (and it's a superficial one to be sure) is that it doesn't really tell you much about Nicholas Ray. It's more an essay about the nature of collaboration and artistic influences. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Lightning Over Water

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