The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018)

(On Cable TV, April 2020) I’m usually a good audience for documentaries, but The Eyes of Orson Welles lost me along the way. In theory, the idea of exploring Orson Welles through his private art (drawings, sketches, paintings) is intriguing—but then writer-director Mark Cousins takes a very stylized approach to the topic by narrating the film as if to Orson, penning thoughts and wrapping up movie excerpts, location footage, an interview with one of Welles’s daughters, and so on. I will defend that choice on novelty alone, but it is intrusive and showy to an unusual degree. As a film-length musing on a beloved subject, it’s immensely detailed: Cousins weaves in and out a dizzying number of very pointed comments about Welles’s life that clearly show his understanding of his topic. But while I can appreciate the intent, I had a surprising amount of difficulty in remaining interested. (Lack of closed captions on a noticeable Irish accent did not help.) It gets wilder: Cousins wraps a critique of his own work by having Welles (via impersonator) answer back at the end of the film. By that point, though, I was pining for dull and boring objective documentary rather than what The Eyes of Orson Welles ended up becoming. A disappointment, then, although I suppose that some will like it more than I did.