Broken “completeness”

 Meryl Streep in "The Iron Lady"

Aren’t you tired a bit of the films that have wonderful elements and yet fall apart, films that amaze with certain aspects of filmmaking while leaving us with the lack of overall satisfaction?   

Recently I watched two of those and both left me wondering what happens to the accumulation of brilliant minds involved in big, well financed productions.  

For example: “The Iron Lady” dazzles with acting and very clever dementia/reality inner plays but does not really say much about the subject itself.  And the subject is awesome.   The Best Actress On The Planet does her job according to her well deserved title, but somehow the whole disappoints.   

Similar thing happens in “Youth Without Youth” - extraordinary technique and breath-taking sequences in the hands of Maestro Coppola Himself do not add up to what they promise - the film  simply breaks apart, probably due to the inner flow of the original novel, which however is no consolation or excuse at all.  

Why do things like this happen?  Even if you like the above mentioned film and disagree with my opinion, you surly can come up with other titles to fit the formula according to your taste.  Is it because a film production is ultimately driven by the biggest ego around and such an ego being a singular sensitivity often can’t embrace the whole, the “bigger picture’?  Perhaps the driving ego can’t see the whole but being the “buck stops here” reference point does not (consciously or just through a production context) allow others to really contribute, or others are simply too afraid to rock the boat.  

Of course to come up with a perfectly articulated story is difficult like hell and many films are dudes.   There are however clusters of filmmaking brilliance here and there and those single or collective minds continue to give hope for something close to perfection.   The films like “Good fellows”, “The conversation”, “Stalker”, “Blow up”, “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”, Pulp Fiction” or “Irreversible” (or whatever films you cherish for their completeness) happen often enough to give hope for more achievements in internal coherence, power and elegance of the way a story and its themes are executed.   Yet, too often within those fabulous creative assemblages things do not add up and fantastic potential does not deliver.  

Is it that the clarity of mind, esthetic, dramatic and intellectual stamina as well as fearfulness are the rarest commodities around?