De Palma is a one hundred nine-minute documentary, which was culled from thirty hours of Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow interviewing Brian De Palma. The filmmakers are all friends in real life and Baumbach and Paltrow basically had the brilliant idea that the world needed to know what it was like to share a meal and be friends with a legendary director. For the sake of continuity, De Palma wore the same shirt for a week. Usually when professionals are friends or family and get together to make a film, we get some crap like Grown Ups or Tammy so viewers should not take for granted the fact that they were right, of course, as if it is a no brainer. It is not.
If you love watching movies and are familiar with all the aforementioned names, you can just go ahead and skip this paragraph and the following two, but for the rest of you who may be thinking, “Who the hell are Brian De Palma, Noah Baumbach or Jake Paltrow and why should I care,” I will elucidate you. Yes, there are more Paltrows than Bruce, the daddy with good taste who married Blythe Danner, and Gwyneth, actor turned alleged snake oil salesman. Jake Paltrow is the least famous in his family and of the filmmakers involved in De Palma. He seems to primarily work directing television episodes of series such as NYPD Blue (never saw) or Boardwalk Empire (loved), but I did enjoy his flawed, but ambitious and memorable sophomore feature film, Young Ones. He did the camera work and provided the set, i.e. his home in Manhattan (jealous), to make De Palma. If you watch the documentary, you may say to yourself, “He stuck the camera on a tripod.” Yes, but the lighting and framing are perfect. It is a talent to know that less is more and not to distract from your subject. For a third feature film, he should be proud. Think of all that nepotism and a healthy dose of talent, but he has only made three films, two of which are solid. (I never saw the first, The Good Night.) I feel better, and history may look back and judge Jake to be the best Paltrow of all.
You probably know Noah Baumbach, and his name may sound vaguely familiar, but if I listed his movies, and you looked them up, you would probably remember them fondly: Mr. Jealousy, Kicking and Screaming, The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg, Frances Ha, While We’re Young, Mistress America and The Meyerowitz Stories. I still have not seen Marriage Story, but it may be the one that most viewers are familiar with because it premiered on Netflix last year and starred Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, which actually repelled me away from the movie. I also need to get around to seeing Highball. He is one of my favorite directors and actually seems to be improving as he gets older. When De Palma compares and contrasts himself by saying “you,” he is probably referring to Baumbach, who did the sound for the documentary. I am completist and want to see all of Baumbach’s films so I would have seen De Palma regardless of my actual interest in the titular director.
I cannot conceive of a world that does not just know De Palma by name, but anything is possible. If you saw Carrie starring Sissy Spacek, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, Casualties of War, Mission: Impossible or Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark video with Courtney Cox, you know him. If you are unfamiliar with those movies, you should probably not watch this documentary. I do not know how anyone could read my reviews and not know these movies at least by their titles, but you have other priorities, and those priorities do not include learning more about a director.
For everybody else, De Palma is a must see documentary. The auteur talks the entire time, and when Baumbach and Paltrow are not showing footage from De Palma’s week long interview, they include clips from his films, films that inspired him or montages of personal photographs. It is a(n auto)biographical, participatory documentary where the viewers get to vicariously live Paltrow and Baumbach’s life seated at the feet of a great learning about all the movies that you love. While some may argue that it is not a participatory documentary because Paltrow and Baumbach are never seen or heard, De Palma is clearly interacting with them in a conversational tone. Their presence is felt.
If you are interested in learning more about filmmaking, De Palma explains his process, what he is trying to accomplish when he uses certain shots and the importance of making the most dynamic cinematic choice in moving a story forward. Hearing him talk about long shots and split screens was invaluable.
Even if you are not into movies beyond watching them, if you are interested in randomly learning about people, their professions and the logistics of how they work, De Palma is perfect for you. It is interesting to hear his thought process on stubbornly sticking by his original artistic vision in Scarface regardless of the consequences, but knowingly making compromises in Bonfire of the Vanities because he wanted to remain employable. De Palma was worried about job security! This movie is a marriage of the quotidian and the equivalent of Olympus for directors. I was most surprised by how autobiographical De Palma’s work is considering how violent it is, and how ordinary he is. There is also a political thread to his films that I intuited, but could not definitively conclude until watching this film. De Palma is refreshingly practical and frank in the way that he approaches his art while also having a vision.
I related to De Palma the most as a litigator when he said the following, “Being a director is being a watcher in the sense that you have a lot of egos in the room, and you have to sort of watch how they interact with each other. Because when you’re on a set, you’re basically concentrating on what’s happening at the moment, and you’ve got to look at everything….Your job as the director is to get the movie made. You know, if somebody loses their temper, or you lose your temper, everything stops.” Instead of movie, use the word court order, and instead of egos, substitute litigants, including your client, anyone actually not handling the case, including your colleagues, anyone at court. Being a lawyer is like being a director in the way that you have to get people to see things the way that you do to achieve your goal.
If I had to criticize De Palma, I would gently slap the hand of the person who did the subtitles. Anyone can mistakenly use Steven instead of Stephen King, but when the novel cover appears shortly thereafter, shame on you. There was another noticeable slip up when transcribing the dialogue from The Untouchables and a racial slur was completely misspelled.
De Palma is about to be removed from streaming on Netflix on November 21, 2020 so stop dilly dallying and watch it immediately!
