Microcinema DVDs - Words for the Dying

2009-04-21 www.movingpicturesmagazine.com
By Elliot V. Kotek

In 1989, Brian Eno and John Cale traveled to the Soviet Union (tempted by the opportunity to work with musicians of merit who demand little compensation) to record Cale's "The Falklands Suite" - an album built around four Dylan Thomas poems. Nilsson and company were supposed to make a film of the foray, but this "something which happened" is what happened instead.

Cale's '60s had him as constituting part of The Velvet Underground, a group closely associated with Andy Warhol that featured the similarly loved Lou Reed; leaving the group in 1969, Cale traveled the world from 1972 to 1986 playing avant garde rock. With the '89 recordings tying the film together, the movie dances through a mostly black-and-white handheld haze of inconsistent footage, all of which adds to the arthouse energy and artistic status of a messy, loosely organized flick. Nilsson teases us with tastes of behind-the-scenes insight into Cale's and Eno's creative mindsets. And, by speaking with local musicians and artists, Words at times also explores the current lack of interest in the dissident expressions of culture that captured the imagination of the nation prior to Perestroika.

If the audience can stick with it, their vision is lulled and hypnotized into Nilsson's untraditional portrait of Cale that strikes this viewer as being akin to a Francis Bacon image; that is, it's full of movement but not identifiable as any one thing. Ultimately, the rewards, albeit rare, are rich in tone and timbre, and Cale's side-trip to his place of birth in Wales is accompanied by an interesting and emotional errand-run to his mentally-failing Ma.

That the film is twenty years old yet seems as modern as recent films about Joe Strummer or Joy Division (although it's not of the caliber of these more complete pictures) is a testament to the filmmaker, whose "something which happened" is something to experience. -MPM

2009-02-11 Video Librarian
By K. Fennessy

Filmmaker Rob Nilsson introduces—via title card—his fly-on-the-wall music documentary Words for the Dying as “an interpretation of something which happened.” Shot mostly in b&w, the documentary details the collaboration between musician John Cale and producer Brian Eno for Cale’s 1989 album Words for the Dying, an interpretation of four Dylan Thomas poems. Nilsson follows Cale on a flight from Amsterdam to the Soviet Union to record “The Falklands Suite” for the album, intercutting along the way footage from Cale’s days in the Velvet Underground (1965-1969), as well as interviews with Dutch critics, who fear the musician is losing his edge. Once in Russia, Cale and Eno lay down instrumental tracks with an orchestra, but while the former is comfortable with Nilsson’s small film crew, the latter is not (Eno, who never gave permission to be filmed, says at one point, “Get that bloody camera out of my face.”). Nilsson agrees to stay out of Eno’s way as much as possible, relying on surveillance cameras, for instance, to capture the pair at work in the recording studio. As the process continues, Nilsson alternates the focus between the central duo and their musical collaborators. After the USSR trip, Cale travels to his native Wales, where he records vocals with a boy’s choir and visits his frail mother. Neither a thorough examination of a particular album nor an entire career, Words for the Dying offers a snapshot of an ambitious artist at a turning point in his life (the cinéma vérité sequences with Cale’s wife, daughter, and mother present a softer side of a man best known for his brooding look and sound). DVD extras include a 2008 interview with the director, and a featurette on Nilsson’s “Direct Action Cinema” workshop. Although the visual and audio qualities for this 1990 documentary are not optimum, this will appeal to fans of Cale, Eno, and Nilsson (whose Heat and Sunlight is an indie classic).

2009-01-13 Salon.com
By Andrew O'Hehir

I guess bringing together former Velvet Underground member John Cale, experimental-pop avatar Brian Eno and indie-film pioneer Rob Nilsson (one-time winner of the Cannes Caméra d'Or and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize) struck somebody as a natural combination. But the result, Nilsson's 1990 documentary "Words for the Dying," is a highly unstable concoction, always teetering on the edge of disaster. As the film opens, Nilsson is literally standing on his head, trying to overcome Eno's implacable resistance to any form of cooperation, while Cale cackles on a sofa in the background. Certainly the former two come off, at first, as different stripes of pompous ass -- Eno in an arch, snarky, oh-so-English fashion and Nilsson in an earnest, searching, oh-so-California fashion. "Words for the Dying" (long unavailable, and just released on DVD by Microcinema) eventually escapes this inauspicious start, or rather incorporates it into an awkward but searching black-and-white odyssey that encompasses the last days of the Soviet Union and the forced sale of Cale's childhood home in a rural Welsh village. Along the way Cale and Eno record the latter's masterful choral-orchestral "Falklands Suite" (for the 1989 album that shares the film's title), we hear Cale and his ancient mum speaking Welsh, and the Eno-Nilsson cold war gradually morphs into something like a running gag. An extraordinary music documentary and time capsule of late-'80s bohemia

2008-09-23 Earplug
By Steve Marchese

John Cale's creative process can be as puzzling to other artists as it is to his audience; whether as a catalyst for the Velvet Underground or as a celebrated producer and solo artist, he's often leaped blindfolded into the deep end. To be released on September 30, the new Words for the Dying DVD offers a revealing cinema-verité portrait of Cale in collaboration with equally enigmatic producer Brian Eno, exploring the forces that propel and prolong the creative process. In the film, the pair prepares to record "The Falkland Suite," the work at the core of Cale's 1989 album Words for the Dying.

Given its limited run when released in the early '90s, Words for the Dying had gone largely unseen until Provocateur Pictures and Microcinema International teamed up to distribute the picture on DVD. Instead of a typical, "making-of" movie, director Rob Nilsson — a winner of both the Camera d'Or from Cannes and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance — fashions the narrative as a character study, following the collaborators across Moscow, London, and Wales while struggling with Eno's increasing reluctance to take part in the film. For Cale, meanwhile, the film proves an experience as enlightening and frustrating as the creative process itself.

2008-06-19 Bay Guardian
By Dennis Harvey

WORDS FOR THE DYING is a great documentary. One need only compare it to the superficially similar Phil Joaneau’s US: RATTLE AND HUM to see how far under the skin Nilsson has gotten. This fine movie deserves a place beside D.A. Pennebaker’s DON’T LOOK BACK about Dylan and the unreleased Stones film COCKSUCKER BLUES as brilliantly accurate life-of-rock musician portraitures.

2008-06-19 Melody Maker Magazine

Whatever you think of THE FALKLANDS SUITE itself, the resulting film, shot in grainy black and white, is gloriously compelling; witty, charming and intense at the same time. It will be running at London’s ICA for a week from Monday, February 26, in a double bill with IMAGINARY LANDSCAPES, an equally fascinating short film.

From the outset, American director Rob Nilsson was beset with obstacles. Firstly, even in the age of perestroika, Western film crews are regarded with some suspicion by the authorities. But this is nothing compared to the suspicion with which they are regarded by Brian Eno. Cale had given the go-ahead for Nilsson and his crew to follow him and Eno to Russia and into the studio. Evidently, however, no one had thought to forewarn the man who re-invented U2. When he found out, the reaction was one of purest horror- “I thought we were going to make a record, not a bloody movie. Cale looked like he was going to be sick.

In a final interview at the end of the recording, Nilsson asked his adversary, “After all the battles you and I had, do you think there’s any chance that this could turn out to be an interesting film in the end?” Long pause. “I don’t really see how…” He was wrong, of course.