Lightning Over Water: In too Deep

There’s no positive way to start or stop writing a about a subject that hasn’t yet settled into the grasp of my comprehension. I will be asking myself why I watched this film for a long time to come. I was resistant to the idea of sitting through it, so I told myself I could just turn it off. I told myself this as I sat through the long and painful hospital sequence (the real one) and then again when I was watching the even more terrifying film-set hospital scene. I couldn’t simply turn it off. I kept saying out loud, “why doesn’t someone stop this?” and then I realized… I was still watching. People would still be watching.

Just after Ray yells, “cut” I let my mind wander onto the set where the cameraman keeps rolling as Wenders tells him to. I try to identify with the crew huddled around a dying man. I stop myself from seeing only Nicholas Ray. Instead, I turn my attention to the people behind the camera and attempt to imagine the looks on their faces. Are they smiling? Are they crying, or worse, are they fully fixed on simply making a film?

Film sets uniquely showcase a fragile side of humanity that many mistake as strength. They work, for logical reason, to be flawless at their endeavor and are often blinded by this singularity. I imagine this crew and I see a sad monotony, something I’ve seen too many times before.  

There is a hint of what Ray sees as he looks past the cameras. For a moment a look of terror, disgust, and confusion contorts his face. Maybe he too recognizes something in the room. Maybe he sees the narrowness of their attention and loses faith in his ability to captivate. He could be miles away imagining about a million different things. He could be in the kind of pain that stops the most vivid imagination from functioning. Maybe this is a futile attempt to make sense of that one look. The beauty and agony is that I won’t ever know.

What I do know is that this film was painful to watch. It still hurts to think about. It’s sad that the film exploits a dying man in a rare circumstance, even worse that it’s Nicholas Ray. Ray’s obsession with defining his life in a cinematic way drags an eerie emptiness beside him wherever he goes. Wenders’ ability to capture this is unsettling but his ostentatious voice-over and eager involvement ruins even the quietest moments.

Truly captivating moments exist in the film, but viewing it feels like sacrilege. It reminds me of the kids who bought Kurt Cobain’s journal after he died. There is something strikingly wrong about invading the privacy he couldn’t protect. That’s how I feel about Lightning Over Water and more specifically about the final hospital scene. Ray, desperate to piece his life together, is blinded by his singularity (as so many filmmakers, including Wenders, often are.) I still can’t entirely process what I saw. I’m not sure I want to. I think maybe my analysis (and this film) are better left on the shelf.