For as long as art has been created, there have been filmmakers people peering over the shoulders of writers, painters and even fellow directors trying to get a sense of what makes them tick or at least how they do what they do. Sometimes when the curtain is pulled back far enough, the results can be a little unnerving, as was the case when Terry Zwigoff pointed his cameras at Robert Crumb and his family. Other times, the result leaves unanswered questions and dull stock footage that doesn’t add up to much.
There are others still that dig into the creative process, leaving both the filmmaker and the viewer more enlightened and enraptured by what an artist is capable of. Steven Cantor, a young documentarian who has made films about nightclub bouncers and co-directed a fascinating look at the reunion of the rock band, Pixies, has made just such a film. Or rather remade just such a film.
In 1992, Cantor and his camera filmed photographer Sally Mann as she created her most striking and infamous works to date, a series of portraits of her children that were entitled "Immediate Family". The short feature, which delves into Mann's visual world as she turns these seemingly ineffectual photo sessions with her daughters and son into breathtaking works of art, was nominated for an Academy Award and put Cantor on his path as a TV producer and filmmaker.
The director was not done with Mann and her world, though, as he continued to visit the photographer on her gorgeous Virginia farm, filming the sometime arduous and fascinating steps that she takes to get her shots. The result is
What Remains, a multi-faceted work that takes in so much of Mann's past, present and future that it manages to capture the essence of her art and of the artist.
From the outset, it is easy to see why Cantor is so enamored of Mann – other than just the work that she does. In her talking head interviews, Mann speaks so plainly and matter-of-factly about how she comes up with the themes of her work as well as her marriage and upbringing that it, frankly, starts to border on the egotistical.
It would be almost unbearable to deal with if the proof of her brilliance wasn't being shown to us again and again on screen. The strength of her photographic compositions, which have the depth of field and love of a landscape similar to Ansel Adams alongside the love of the imperfection of the photo process a la the Starn twins, are palpable, especially as we see her methodology through her steady gaze.
What this film fails to do is give us anything besides her work to really care about. The aspects of Mann's life that are presented for emotional purposes – the rare muscle disorder afflicting her husband, the cancellation of a gallery showing in New York – are randomly flopped out for our perusal. Moments like that add some to this already multi-faceted portrait, but slip away as quickly as they came.
The real emotional weight of the film comes from watching Mann and seeing how her creative impulses come about and come alive. Would that more artists be given the same heartfelt and understanding biographical sketches like this, it might just many others to express themselves creatively.
The picture varies as it bounces between video and film stock, which makes for occasionally jarring shifts in the tone and mood of a particular moment in the film.
Blood Ties - the 1994 Oscar-nominated short about the creation of Sally Mann's Immediate Family series
Photos from Mann's Deep South, Immediate Family and What Remains series
Eight deleted scenes
Mann's lecture excerpts from a 2003 Photojournalism Conference
