A Modern Day Fleming?
Wednesday, May 2, 2012 at 1:48PM
Jose in Kate Winslet, Nicole Kidman, Oscars (00s), Stephen Daldry

Jose here. I am fully aware that Stephen Daldry isn't among the most beloved filmmakers in the world; however, I feel that he's earned a bad rep on some extremely unfair bases, given that he excels at a kind of filmmaking that was the norm during Hollywood's golden age. His entire career seems to have been made to piss off auteur theorists, and today on Mr. Daldry's 52nd birthday, I couldn't help but wonder: is he a modern day Victor Fleming?

How dare I compare the meek Stephen Daldry to the almighty man who won an Oscar for directing Gone With the Wind, you ask? Easy, I'm not comparing him to Fleming in particular but to an array of studio-commissioned directors whose names passed into history because they won the favor of powerful producers. Think about it, can you mention more than two movies made by Frank Lloyd, Norma Taurog, Frank Borzage, Michael Curtiz and Victor Fleming? Except for the latter two, all the others are mostly unknown names to cinephiles, yet they all won Best Director Oscars (Lloyd even won it twice!).

We never hear people talking about the psychological undertones in a Borzage movie, or the expressionistic camera work in a Victor Fleming production, do we? Then why are Daldry's movies always accused of being so devoid of personality? Is there really anything wrong with not wanting to be an "auteur"?

The auteur theory claims that a director's signature should be identifiable in each of his works. With Daldry, it's completely undeniable that you can't tell any of his movies were made by the same person, at least not in purely aesthetic terms (let's not even go into the whole politics of awards season hatred). The most recurrent criticism with Stephen Daldry's works is that they are tailor made for Oscar (beloved literary piece is transformed into efficient, personality-less cinema acted by pedigree cast) and truth be told, is there anything essentially wrong with this? The idea that cinema should be high-brow art is debatable (this coming from someone who lives and swears by Tarkovsky) and it has been a pet peeve of mine when it comes to Daldry. His movies may not be transcendental or life-altering, but they are efficient and rarely fail to entertain (heck he even got the best Meryl Streep performance in well over two decades!).

If we must play the game of "give everything a profound or intellectually stimulating" meaning then I leave you with the following questions: have you all noticed the use, or lack of use actually of Nazi symbols in The Reader and how it underplays on the contraposition between literacy and semiotics? Or have you thought of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close as a study of how to manipulate certain human emotioncs based on collective history? I'm not saying that Daldry is the second coming, I'm just saying that we should cut him some slack.

Are there any other film directors you think people hate on unfounded/shallow/insane/random/WTF reasons? Share with us! 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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