Review: "The Eyes of Orson Welles" (2018)

Created by Mark Cousins, this film is possibly the most intimate documentary I have seen on a filmmaker to date and I'm quite shocked that more people have not seen it. I have this film on DVD and honestly, each scene is a smooth-cut, well polished, watchable documentary that calms and eases the mind for late-night viewing and also shows you deep and personal things belonging to Orson Welles that have probably not been shown before on documentary television/film. From asking questions to making statements, from showing us items to showing us drawings, from deep personal information to family life and his mother, Mark Cousins structures the life of Orson Welles brilliantly from start to finish and leaves out no details that are appropriate to cover for his career and to understand who he really was.

I want to say that the documentary itself seems almost prophetic as if it is covering all of the artistic features of things Orson Welles did that led us up to his filmmaking. Mark Cousins reads us his diary entries with Orson Welles’ trip to Ireland being one of the most complex of them all. Showing us many of Orson Welles’ drawings whilst telling us about his dramatic arrival in Ireland, giving us a reason to think that maybe his calling was influenced not only by these prophetic drawings and his interest in ageing, but also through his travels over the world.

Orson Welles, as we know, was a larger than life figure, and I think that through Mark Cousins’ use of question and answer, use of rhetoric and use of the simplicity of the wording seems to capture the complex nature of Orson Welles almost perfectly as a man that was gaining in strength and personality as he traveled, as he drew and as he created. And in this film he is not just a filmmaker - he is also a man who created and recreated. He was a man who was entering a whole new world. Mark Cousins makes this clear from the very beginning when he asks Orson Welles what he would do with the internet.

My favourite thing about this documentary is the way it is scripted. It is scripted seemingly like a long and compassionate, almost worshipping letter of appreciation to Orson Welles which is littered and detailed with pieces of his life in chronological order, making reference obviously, to later and more well know events of his career. Mark Cousins really hit the nail on the head with the fact that he knows that not everyone who watches an Orson Welles documentary is like me (absolutely pretty much obsessed with him) and some do not know as much about him - I think that for that reason the conversation-type script works more to the advantage of the film than Cousins probably realises. Along with the flashes of the modern day place in comparison to old photographs and drawings, the audience can definitely see where Orson Welles was in comparison to where we are now. It is just a further state of connection that is established between us and him, with Mark Cousins being like the glue that holds us together.

The filming style is so smooth and brilliant, with various images from around the world, clothes and items of Orson Welles’ property, drawings from Orson Welles and places he frequented in his life, it is like watching something that has been purposefully polished in order for us to imagine what it would be like if Orson Welles was alive today in our own time. This obviously hearkens back to the narrator asking Orson Welles what he would do with the internet - in that amazing vision of Times Square.

All in all, this is possibly the best documentary about Orson Welles I have ever seen and I am so glad I have it on DVD and not on Netflix, Prime etc. I will definitely be watching this again because not only has it taught me about Orson Welles even more than I have already learnt on him, but it is also the new-age documentary that I have been talking about and waiting for whilst years have been passing.