What Remains (2005)

User Rating:

8.3/10   

Director:

Steven Cantor

Release Date:

2005 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

A look at the creative process of celebrated photographer Sally Mann. |

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Sally Mann	...	Herself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Karen Bailey	...	Herself - friend
Richard Jantz	...	Himself - forensic anthropologist (as Dr. Richard Jantz)
Emmett Mann	...	Himself
Jessie Mann	...	Herself
Larry Mann	...	Himself
Virginia Mann	...	Herself
Hunter Mohring	...	Herself - friend
Elizabeth Munger	...	Herself - Sally's mother

Runtime:

UK:80 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

Stick Figure Productions

Compelling, arresting, lyrical, and astonishing

This film premiered at Sundance '06 and I was one of a privileged few who chose an 8:00 am screening of something that sounded, on the face of it, macabre and grotesque. A friend who grudgingly accompanied had even lower expectations than I did.

We were blown away.

American culture as a whole has a neurotic, practically phobic relationship with death. The miracle of Cantor's film-making in "What Remains" is that, like his subject, he manages to create art that takes as its subject on of our last remaining taboos, wringing beauty from a subject matter that, taken on the face of it, seems the polar opposite.

I will be purchasing the DVD when it is released, and setting my TIVO to capture this when it premieres on HBO. I will be one of those maddening people who forces friends, family, heck, even total strangers to watch something they have no desire to watch--and I suspect that by the end of a first viewing, they, like the friend who saw the film with me, will have been deeply and permanently moved by the experience.