Forgotten Silver
This inspired mockumentary comes to us courtesy of New Zealand director
Peter Jackson (Heavenly Creatures). Appearing on camera, the
beerhall-bellied Jackson immodestly claims to have discovered the missing works
of a New Zealand silent-film director who rivals America's champ, D.W.
Griffith, for his astounding artistic output. We're talking the amazing Kiwi
auteur Colin McKenzie.
The movie is filled up with straight-faced pseudo-interviews with stolid New
Zealanders tracing McKenzie's nonpareil career, in which he discovered sound
and color long before their time. There are also pseudo-testaments to
McKenzie's international stature, including talking-heads words from movie
historian Leonard Maltin and Miramax Films boss Harvey Weinstein. Forgotten
Silver climaxes on Jackson's H. Rider Haggard-like trip into the New
Zealand deep to uncover the lost cine-city constructed by McKenzie for his
silent masterpiece, New Zealand's bombastic answer to Griffith's
Intolerance. It's Heart of Darkness lite. At the
Brattle.
-- Gerald Peary
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