Like a giddy lover, The Eyes of Orson Welles only has eyes for Orson Welles. Mark Cousins’ latest cinematic essay is a swooning, engaged, delightful dive into Welles’ career and personal life and, in particular, his practice of looking, his visual vocabulary as expressed in mostly-lost drawings and, of course, the construction of those fabulous frames. If the film is also under-edited and at times over-earnest, then this can be forgiven. Anyone who’s ever penned a love letter knows how easily they can get away from you. The Eyes opens with a sealed box, a mystery like Rosebud, retrieved from…
-
-
Experimentation has never frightened Mark Cousins. He doesn’t cling to form and narrative the Eway many filmmakers and most of us mere mortals do, instead he challenges the medium and the audience. In Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise he has created a kaleidoscopic visual history of the atomic age that is part music video, part documentary, part avant-garde film, part dream and part nightmare. Accompanied by an illuminating and introspective score from Mogwai, that gives an even greater resonance to the film’s images, the result is pure cinema. Created in 2015 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the bombings…