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INCIDENT
AT LOCH NESS
6/10
USA
2003 : Zak PENN : 94 mins
The first
film to be directed by prolific Hollywood screenwriter (and rewriter)
Penn - whose credits include X-Men
2, The Last Action Hero and Behind
Enemy Lines - is an engagingly odd kind of cinematic beastie,
part straightfaced-spoof documentary in the Christopher Guest improvisation
tradition, part Charlie Kaufman-ish exercise in post-modern movie-within-movie
cleverness. Specifically, it's a distant cousin of Kaufman's Being
John Malkovich in that it crucially depends on the participation
of real-life legend of cinema, willing to play himself and thus simultaneously
lampoon and embellish his own mythos.
In this instance,
that means veteran maverick Werner Herzog whose latest far-fetched project,
we're told, involves trekking to chilly Scotland (where he expects to
find "urchins in cellars") in search of the fabled Loch Ness
Monster. To say any more would spoil the fun - but the laugh-count is
at least as high as in anything Mr Guest has come up with lately (ie A
Mighty Wind, Best In Show),
and as a satire of movie-making dynamics and creative tensions this is
much more likeable than, say, David Mamet's State
& Main.
Trump-card
Herzog, meanwhile, is typically good value in front of the camera - a
role he's previously occupied in "straighter" documentaries
like Burden of Dreams and his own My Best Fiend. It's entirely
appropriate, of course, that Herzog should find himself roped into such
an unlikely enterprise - he's always delighted in muddying the waters
between fiction and documentary, rejecting "authenticity" in
search of "ecstatic truth." His own results have been somewhat
mixed - see Land of Silence and
Darkness for how this approach can get out of hand.
Incident
of Loch Ness aims rather lower, however, with more pleasing results.
That said, the levels of humour and invention do tend to diminish in the
second half, with Penn going overboard (ahem) a little in his attempts
to pad the material out feature length. But it's very hard to dislike
any film which has the flair to give Crispin Glover, of all people, what
may amount to the most fleeting cameo in cinema history.
6th September,
2004
(seen 25th August : Cameo Edinburgh : press show - Edinburgh
Film Festival)
click
HERE for our full coverage of the 58th Edinburgh Film Festival
by Neil
Young
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