This is a review of In No Great Hurry : 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter (2012)
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29 June
This is a review of In No Great Hurry : 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter (2012)
* Contains spoilers *
I had not expected simply to enjoy so much Tomas Leach’s documentary, In No Great Hurry : 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter (2012).
These comments are a snapshot why – if they speak to you at all, I hope that you will see this film:
1. Leiter has a cat – the cat was deliberately incorporated into the film (although not introduced), as if to say something about him, e.g. when comically spread on its back with its paws in the air
2. The stills that we were shown, full screen against black, were very, very effective, very beautiful
3. We were shown Leiter taking photographs, but the temptation was resisted to show us what he took, although he did show us – on the preview screen of his camera – the brilliant shots that he captured of the knees of the girls on the bench
4. We were treated as if this were a feature, and who Soames (Bantry) was, and what she meant to Leiter, was carefully revealed
5. There was a candid provisionality in the shooting as to whether Leiter would approve and allow what we knew that we were watching (and therefore that he must have done)
6. Leiter is an immense trickster, with an unfailing comic timing, which put the largely impeccable Woody Allen in relief
7. We were allowed to watch, but not to forget that we were watching with a licence, with permission – that mattered, and counted
8. The slightly off-putting – because seeming pretentious – sub-title about lessons in life just meant that the film was delicately punctuated by thirteen innocuous captions, often after a moment that had made my companion and me roar aloud
9. This was a better portrait than of Morten Lauridsen, because Leiter’s humour was infectious, his candour and humanity to the forefront
10. At the same time, Leiter’s putting things off, of piling things up, of not throwing things away, was a greater treasure, and he was noble and honest in revealing how such things defeat him, if he starts on a clear-out
11. And all those photographs, those boxes, those contact-sheets – the integrity of keeping on creating, but the immensity of the task of seeking to order it all
12. That inchoate state mirrored Leiter’s willingness to be filmed as incoherent, to start a sentence that he could not finish, or which he interrupted to death
13. Finally, just his photographs again, those aching pictures of his father, his mother, of Soames, with a different intensity from his equally wonderful fashion portraits
Thank you, Tomas and Saul !
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