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William Eggleston In The Real World (2005)
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Reviews Counted: 18
Fresh: 16
Rotten:2
Average Rating: 7.3/10
Runtime: 84 mins
Genre: Education/General Interest
Synopsis: In 1976, at the age of 37, unassuming photographer William Eggleston shook the foundations of the art world with his show of color photographs at the Museum of Modern Art. Three decades later, filmmaker Michael Almereyda seeks to capture... In 1976, at the age of 37, unassuming photographer William Eggleston shook the foundations of the art world with his show of color photographs at the Museum of Modern Art. Three decades later, filmmaker Michael Almereyda seeks to capture the photographer's singular vision of elevated mundanity, despite the professed inability of both to evoke it in words; he is largely successful because he was given unprecedented access to the shy, retiring artist. Almereyda accompanies Eggleston on a trip to Kentucky, where he photographs Gus Van Sant's childhood home, as well as to a show at the Getty Museum in L.A. But most telling are the moments spent in Eggleston's hometown of Memphis, as well as a comprehensive look at photographs from throughout his career. [More]
Director: Michael Almereyda
Director: Michael Almereyda
Reviews for William Eggleston In The Real World
As a subject, he's reluctant to navel gaze, and his words -- subtitled because of his low, mumbling speech -- rarely provide an insight into his talent.
There is a sense of impromptu genius, of exactitude colliding with suddenness as the seemingly banal is rendered, for a moment, vividly permanent. Eggleston's photos force the viewer to behold the beauty of the commonplace.
Watching "William Eggleston in the Real World" is frustrating but intriguing.
Eggleston is obviously wired a little different than most of us, like all real artists, he sees things most of us don't...
An uncannily revealing portrait of a major American artist at work, all the more remarkable for the deceptive casualness with which it unfolds, as if Almereyda had just shown up.
William Eggleston in the Real World offers an admiring and affectionate, if also unillusioned, view of its subject at work, play, and not much of anything (a suitably Egglestonian activity).
At times, the cinema verite style suggests the 'psychic disarray, intimately observed' (Almereyda's words) of Eggleston's own 1970s video project, 'Stranded in Canton'...
The result isn't particularly mesmerizing, but it does offer a well-rounded portrait that will be of particular interest to photography lovers.
Without slavishly imitating the photographer's distinctive style, Almereyda also manages to connect his own images to all that's 'Egglestonian' in the photographer's world.
Eggleston's rigor might be mistaken for languor, but Almereyda has just the temperament to get it right.
What Almereyda sees in Eggleston's work are the things that seem to drive Almereyda's films: life as a continual paradox.
Ultimately, biodoc is less about Eggleston living in the 'real world' than about Almereyda filming there.
Consistently more intriguing than Almereyda's recent documentary of a Sam Shepard play rehearsal (This So-Called Disaster), in part due to the subject's taciturn nature and his disinterest in the hows and the wherefores of his craft.
In this sublimely bleak documentary, the photographer William Eggleston allows the video camera to follow him on a shoot in Mayfield, Ky.
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