It almost comes across as outsider art. A director who understands the craft effortlessly but isn't interested in it. He is too above it. Too intuitive. Reminding me of Welles. But what is here is that ingredient in genius, who knows what that is. Cinema technicalities are all here in droves but the movie isn't concerned with them as the end all, as the trap auteurs fall into. For one that it is adapted from a book shows a respect for storytelling leading the cart, in fact, a critique of vulgar auteurism that was all the rage in the moment. Directors of that era were attempting to work in comic satires, such as Richard Lester, Ken Russell, or Robert Altman, making them culminate in the dark; todays directors start, end, and brush with aesthetic, unconcerned with anything else. You can name them. Rush's film is in the MASH mold, with its preoccupation with grotesque warfare, vietnam, and murderous social politics, alongside its lightness, is saying something about capitalism and the arts. It is fatalistic, but also joyful and celebratory. Like Freebie and the Bean, during many stretches you feel you are watching a masterpiece, but also like it, a defiance against film as a formal artform.
Review of The Stunt Man
