A LETTER TO TRUE [6/10]

USA 2003 : Bruce WEBER : 78 mins

Bruce Weber has been so wildly successful as a photographer that he’s able to fund intimate, agreeably tangential, wildly self-indulgent little diary/journal/essay/scrapbook home-movies which then get picked up by the film-festival circuit and end up obtaining worldwide arthouse distribution.

Retaining the free-floating structure of Chop Suey, Weber’s noodling musings here are very loosely held together by his affection for dogs—True being one of his beloved pooches. It’s a four-legs-good fondness which happens to be shared by several of his celebrity pals, including Dirk Bogarde and Elizabeth Taylor, who get a ‘chapter’ each before Weber drifts on to the next thing to grab his attention, like a beachcomber ambling along the sands of Montauk—the secluded, upmarket Long Island enclave where Weber and his canines prefer to frolic.

Some of A Letter To True‘s subjects are social/political “issues” about which the film-maker seems genuinely concerned: the state of America post-9/11, the plight of Haitian refugees, etc. But his narration is never anything other than a gentle, slightly soft-headed, naive, child-like ramble. Needless to say, the sprawling mess of a confection that results won’t be to everybody’s tastes, and there’s certainly no shortage of trite, naive juxtapositions along the way.

It does feels mean to criticise Weber, however—to do so feels rather like scolding one of his puppies, tail-wagging and desperate to please. And in these days when American non-fiction film tends to fall squarely into the investigative, confrontational Michael Moore / Morgan Spurlock camp, it’s perhaps quite healthy that such a different kind of voice can still be heard – even if it is that of a multi-millionaire who’s cobbled together an ornately decadent soapbox out of flimsy celluloid.

Neil Young

7th September, 2004
(seen 20th August : Filmhouse Edinburgh : public show – Edinburgh Film Festival)

click HERE for our full coverage of the 58th Edinburgh Film Festival