On Saturday, I saw Ed Harris strolling casually down the middle of Pacific Street; later, I watched a woman outside the Galaxy Theater flirt shamelessly with French actor Edgar Ramirez, star of the remarkable Carlos, the five-and-a-half hour epic about the infamous terrorist. No one seemed to notice Ramirez as he tried gracefully to escape the woman’s clutches. On Sunday, James Franco, costar of the recent Eat, Pray, Love, quietly chatted with a couple of industry types about his latest stint on General Hospital as he waited to join a panel discussion about the use of nature’s elements in cinema. Interestingly, none of these actors generated the buzz or excitement that fest-goers reserve for directors, who are the real stars of Telluride. Director sightings are a hot topic of chit-chat in restaurants, bars, and while waiting for the next movie to start, whether someone has seen them introducing their films, participating in panels, or just walking around town. One of my fellow cinephiles in my group literally stumbled over Werner Herzog–a fest favorite–during a screening of Errol Morris’s Tabloid. It was a story we all relished.

I am sure other film festivals venerate directors, but I have never attended a fest in which the audience members are such auteurists. That makes Telluride the perfect festival for me. Having grown up on the movies of the Film School Generation, I am a card-carrying advocate of the auteur theory, though the idea that the director should be the creative center of the film has fallen out of favor, both in academia and in the Hollywood industry. On Saturday, I spent the day listening to directors talk about their work, and it was  exciting, enlightening, and, at times, exhilarating.

PETER WEIR

This year, Telluride paid tribute to director Peter Weir by previewing his new film The Way Back and by showing one of his older works, The Plumber. In a special program that featured an hour of clips, Weir talked about his career, his films, and his influences. Ever since I saw Picnic at Hanging Rock, he has been one of my favorite directors, and I realized I have seen all but two of his films. The discussion brought out his key themes, which he was reluctant to acknowledge at first, but once he began talking about them, he was very articulate. Weir’s films feature protagonists who are outsiders in environments that are foreign, mysterious, threatening, or exotic–sometimes all at the same time. His characters are out of place, uncomfortable, out of their element–whether they realize it, or not. Weir often paints these environments as mysterious, ethereal, or even mystical. I say “paint” because I noticed while watching the clips that his compositions reminded me of paintings. They are so elegantly composed, and the lighting sometimes recalls that of classical masterpieces. Weir speculated that he is drawn to the outsider protagonist because of his background as an Australian–a country originally founded as a penal colony. Consequently, few native Australians want to look backward at their family histories. This left Weir with questions about his heritage that no one could answer and with the feeling he wasn’t really at home in Australia, or anywhere. He feels he has always been the perennial stranger in a strange land.

Weir’s latest film, The Way Back, tells the story of a group of men who escape from a Russian gulag in Siberia during WWII. They journey thousands of miles on foot across Siberia, Mongolia, and Tibet, finally reaching their destination in India. The film is the ultimate example of outsiders navigating landscapes and environments that are foreign to them. This dramatic struggle against the relentless elements stars Ed Harris, Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan,  Jim Sturgess, and a variety of beautiful if inhospitable landscapes. More than the Communists who imprisoned them, nature is the villain in the film–the foil to their harrowing escape to freedom. Yet, the vistas of nature, depicted in well-composed long shots by cinematographer Russell Boyd, are as beautiful as they are unforgiving.

JACQUES TATI

After the tribute to Peter Weir, I wandered into The Magnificent Tati, a documentary about the French director whose unique comedies inspired one of the new films showing at the fest, The Illusionist. Tati, an uncompromising director who demanded creative control over his films, began as a music-hall performer whose schtick was more mime than music hall. I knew little of his background, and while the documentary was fairly conventional, I learned a lot about him.  His masterpiece Playtime is widely regarded as a seminal work in cinema history, but it bankrupted him at the time. This massive disappointment combined with failing health made the rest of his career a slow and painful decline. I came away with the idea that he was a true artist who was ahead of his time.

Next, I raced to another theater just in time to catch Letter to Elia, Martin Scorsese’s documentary about the great–but still controversial–Elia Kazan. In one of the most personal director bios I have ever seen, Scorsese eloquently talks about how Kazan’s films, particularly On the Waterfront and East of Eden, touched him personally, inspiring him to be a filmmaker. The film covers Kazan’s notorious decision to “name names” during the HUAC hearings and the controversial decision to award the director an honorary Academy Award. But, it also asserts that Kazan made his best films–those most authentic to himself–after the hearings. Fortunately, this documentary will air on American Masters in October. I highly recommend it.

I finished my day of directors with Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff. This was a bit of a cheat because Cardiff was a legendary cinematographer who specialized in color, but he did try his hand at directing, most notably Sons and Lovers in the mid-1960s. Cardiff was the first British cinematographer to be trained in Technicolor. He was selected as a trainee and then taught by such established American cinematographers as Hal Rosson. In many ways, Cardiff surpassed their work because he took up with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who made some of the most imaginative color films of the 1950s, including one of my favorites, Stairway to Heaven (aka A Matter of Life and Death), and The Red Shoes. Cardiff’s command of lighting makes the color seem to glow from within, an effect that will be lost to some degree when watching his work on DVD. Cameraman actually influenced me beyond learning about Cardiff and his career. I admit that I am a true film enthusiast, meaning I dislike digital cinematography on principle. However, in the Q&A after the movie, director Craig McCall said that Cardiff was always looking forward in regard to technology, and he was thrilled to work with digital cinematography, feeling no nostalgia for photographic processes of the past. Cardiff maintained it was all about controlling the light, no matter the technology. I thought if someone who had a 80-year career in the industry could embrace new digital processes, then so should I. Cameraman is making the rounds of the festival circuit and will play at the Chicago International Film Festival in October. This is another film I recommend, especially to cinephiles.

JACK CARDIFF WRANGLES THE CAMERA TECHNOLOGY OF THE PAST. DECADES LATER, HE EMBRACED DIGITAL CINEMATOGRAPHY.

In thinking back over the filmmakers I encountered throughout the day, certain themes or ideas were repeated. All of the directors, whether in person or on film, were adamant that creative control should be in their hands. Even Cardiff revealed that no matter his expertise in cinematography, he was there to serve the director’s interpretation of the material. This is not an idea that contemporary Hollywood embraces, something that came out in the discussion with Peter Weir. Another common thread was the determination to tell a compelling story visually. Weir talked about the flack he took from the producer for eliminating dialogue in Witness in order to let the close-ups do their jobs, while Kazan noted that pictures should tell the story themselves and not merely hang on the story. One repeated idea was a surprise to me, which was the influence of painting and fine art on the work of some the filmmakers,  including Weir, Tati, and Cardiff. The latter, a painter himself, talked about how he looked at the paintings of certain artists on specific films, such as Vermeer and Van Gogh on Black Narcissus. Knowing that adds another layer of depth to their work and another window of access for understanding .

The more I thought about my day with the directors, the more correlations I found between their work, but instead of sharing them here, I am going to spend my time watching more films. There’s one day left to the festival . . . so many films, so little time.