I have always maintained that the director is not a primary artiste. The actor, story writer, music composer and cinematographer are all primary artistes. The director amalgamates their work into a composite experience to create a specific emotional impact on the audience. Watching a film should be an emotional
experience. It should make you laugh, cry, scared or feel like falling in love.
The story’s function is to make several of its moments work. If you recall the films which have affected you, you won’t remember the story in detail. You will remember certain scenes, certain moments. A director’s craftsmanship is in his ability to realise those moments.
If you give the same content to 10 different directors they will shoot in 10 different ways. Crafting an effective moment, or a scene has to be the director’s forte. You can see this in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws — in the scene where the actors respond extremely dramatically to the enormous size of the shark. In Martin Scorsese’s, the sequence of Jessica Lange getting up from her bed and seeing the menacing Robert de Niro is another example of creating maximum impact through direction. Scorsese broke every rule in the film grammar book to make De Niro’s character forceful and intimidating, and he did.
Spielberg and Scorsese are legendary filmmakers but this doesn’t mean that only they or other highly respected directors, the world over, can sculpt emotions. I’ve chanced upon some obscure films, with unimaginably brilliant craftsmanship, in the DVD stores. The overall film might not have worked for several reasons but you cannot deny the brilliance of their craftsmanship.
Recently, I saw the little talked about Spanish thriller called Buried directed by Rodrigo Cortes. The entire film is set in a coffin that has been buried. An American soldier has been buried there by the Iraqis. We see no one else in the film but the soldier who is attempting to break out of the coffin. He has nothing with him but a cellphone and a lighter. How this story has been executed by all the various departments makes it truly amazing. The director could not have brought the clever concept to life if he could not coordinate the other aspects, particularly the low-key cinematography in this case.
In the horror genre, besides the great scare movies of all time — like The Exorcist, Omen, Poltergeist — superb work has been done in the B-grade movies also. Some of them become cult movies, some are forgotten.
Robert Wilson’s Dead Mary does not deserve to be forgottten. It is one of the best photographed slasher flicks I have ever seen, relating the story of a group of girls who go to a lakeside cabin to chill out. The simple plot picks up pace immediately when an evil force begins to stalk them. So if anyone tells you that the director is the captain of the ship, don’t believe it. After all, no ship can be captained alone.