Thirteen kinds of comment : A review of In No Great Hurry : 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter (2012)

This is a review of In No Great Hurry : 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter (2012)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

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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Morten and Eric

This piece is about Shining Night : A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen (2012)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

3 March

This piece is about Shining Night : A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen (2012)

Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen are huge names in the sacred choral music tradition in America.

To-day, on a Sunday afternoon, the latter is in Cambridge, conducting a rehearsal just now before a screening of Shining Night (2012), a new film about him at 4.00, complete with a Q&A with the director and him. (Later, the concert for which the rehearsal.)

There may be more relevant and compelling things to ask in the wake of the film, but my question, as presently envisaged, is:

If you agree that certain composers have a distinctive voice or sound, is it fair to characterize that as their harmonic language, and, if so, what are the elements in your harmonic language are of which you are aware, and, if not, how would you describe what makes your compositions yours ?


Michael Stillwater's film gave an affectionate appreciation of Lauridsen the man, the composer, and the participant in rehearsals where his work is being performed, as well as of Waldron Island in Washington, where he lives part of each year, looking across to Canada. Certain messages, apart from the power and cohesiveness of the work, came across very clearly :

* Lauridsen is almost a poet in his approach to composition, as well as a sociological and historical scholar in putting the texts that he sets in context

* Indeed, as he revealed in the Q&A, he reads poetry every day, and begins every class at university with a poem (and the opportunity for others to share poetry)

* He is quite aware of musical language, and so, in setting O magnum mysterium, says that he did not want anything to interpose itself between the text and the hearer

* He alluded to a wealth of notes 'discarded' to get 'the right ones'

* The natural world and the silence of where he chooses to live are supremely important to him

* The sense, as he later confirmed, of being a private person, but one who feels deeply for history, for those who will hear his compositions, and for those who sing them, having deliberately made Lux Aeterna within the capability of choirs of competent singers, rather than just highly skilled ensembles

* Having to pawn one of his two instruments or his typewriter to get by, he had not had things easy in early days


Initially, Lauridsen answered questions from two members of the music society at Queens' (his hosts that day).

When I got to ask a question, I asked whether being front of the camera and talking about himself had felt intrusive - in a very long answer, he was quick to say (and quite defensive in saying so) that he is used to talking in public as a university teacher. However, the fact remains that there was at least one moment that Michael Stillwater had caught on camera in his documentary where Lauridsen looked choked by what he was remembering or talking about.

What I had wanted to know was whether Stillwater had had to do anything to make the experience easier for Lauridsen, especially at those moments, but he wanted to suggest that he was not even aware of the camera.

He said that, when he had responded to Stillwater's approach to make a film, he had freely invited Stillwater to film him in rehearsals and performances, first in California, then in Scotland, but it sounded as though he hoped that he would not have to be filmed on his retreat in Washington, in an unquestionably beautiful location that Stillwater's cinematography showed to good effect (despite the limitations of the digital capture of certain qualities and characters of light).

Stillwater was equally clear that he had felt - rightly - that, in effect, the heart of the film would have been missing without Waldron. Good for overcoming both Lauridsen's reluctance, and for making the presence of the crew a happy one for other residents !

As for whether one is with those such as Giles Swayne who do not regard Lauridsen as 'a real composer', I believe that how one views his work is a matter of opinion, but that his conviction and integrity when it comes to what he views as important in life and in his work (inseparable as they may be) come across and deserve not to be denied.


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