Nick's Film - Lightning Over Water

In this film documentary, Wim Wenders comes to New York City to visit film director, Nicholas Ray, who directed classics like Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean. Ray lives in a Soho loft with his younger wife, Susan Ray. You could see the twin towers that once stood at the foot of Manhattan long before it's destruction in 2001. Nick Ray is stubborn and determined to make a final film. In some ways, it's his last chance in the cinema. Wim Wenders knows time is of the essence sine Ray is dying of cancer. There are candid moments of Ray dying but not letting his cancer destroy him. Wenders is a friend and film director. This documentary is really more of a tribute than anything else to a fine film director even though we didn't get to really know him. I haven't seen any of his films to date. The documentary might be dated but it's important to recognize a man who was really a genius in the film industry even thirty years later. He didn't live like a millionaire. He lived quite modestly and on his own terms which is how he died.

Lightning Over Water began as a collaborative idea to tell the story of a dying painter who steals art from museums and replaces them with his own forgeries. Suffering from terminal cancer himself, Ray's health quickly deteriorates during the project. The film eventually ceases to be a work of fiction and becomes a documentary of Ray's finals days in which he fittingly spends making film. In reflecting over his career and life, Ray ponders his successes and failures as a film maker who is best known for Rebel Without a Cause (1955). A poignant and often disturbing film, Lighting Over Water is ultimately a painful homage to a film maker and to a friend (Klaus Ming March 2013).

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.

Nicholas Ray is dying when Wim Wenders come to visit him. They start to make a motion picture about his death.

With Wenders and Ray credited as co-directors, I'm left with the question of who is in charge. I'm left with the conclusion that it must be Wenders, and then with another question: what is it about? I think it's a love letter from one quirky and independent director for a friend who was also a quirky director, and the baffling and often filing efforts to make films that say something about something.

Does it succeed? As a love letter, yes.

As for the rest, I just don't know. Which is probably how Wenders feels.

One of the most painful movies I have ever seen, but so beautiful and human. It felt like sitting by the bedside of my best friend who is dying of cancer. Ray's past is referenced, but does not take over the movie. Instead, what is in focus is his disease and his body. This is not a movie about Ray, it's about cancer.

The friendship between Ray and Wim is so interesting too. Their conversations, their honesty, their love. It makes the pain of the movie bearable for us too.

This is a movie that let's you fall, but catches you. It is very slow, so if you are not used to the pacing you might not enjoy it.