APRIL 18 — As defined in Wikipedia, the “auteur theory holds that a film reflects the director’s personal creative vision, as if they were the primary auteur (the French word for “author”). In spite of — and sometimes even because of — the production of the film as part of an industrial process, the auteur’s creative voice is distinct enough to shine through studio interference and the collective process.”
Of course this can and has been debated ever since Francois Truffaut made the term popular in his article titled A Certain Tendency in French Cinema which was first published in the January 1954 issue of the Cahiers Du Cinema magazine. There are various interpretations of the theory out there, but I find myself most often agreeing with Andrew Sarris, an American champion of the theory who wrote for The Village Voice, especially his belief that a director’s work should be judged on its artistry rather than the subject matter.
This paragraph he wrote when recommending Andre Bazin’s classic book What Is Cinema? for The Browser simply said it best, “Before I became familiar with the work of Bazin, I felt that film had to be ambitious and socially conscious to be valuable. Bazin and Cahiers helped me realize that cinema was sui generis, that film didn’t have to prove its social relevance, and that film should be judged on its own terms. But back then, bucking mainstream American criticism and showing appreciation for commercial pictures was a risky proposition.”
As great as the auteur theory is, it has now become stagnant, as film critics worldwide are just content with showing appreciation only for films and directors that have already been inducted into the canon or are current staples of the arthouse and international film festivals. There’s nothing safer than singing praises for Michael Haneke, Abbas Kiarostami, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Lars Von Trier, Andrey Zvyagintsev or any number of currently established auteurs out there. Where’s the appreciation for today’s equivalent of Howards Hawks, Samuel Fuller, Nicholas Ray or Anthony Mann?
The reality is that even now it is risky to show appreciation for commercial films. Just take a look at the Fast And Furious films, even though the majority of them are quite bad, it is an undoubted fact that The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift was a sensational genre picture, and its director Justin Lin deserves some examination and recognition for his auteurship of the current behemoth that is the Fast And Furious franchise. How about current comedy kings Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat) or Adam McKay (the Anchorman films, The Other Guys)?
I’ll probably write about these guys in the future but for now let me present to you the case for the most unlikely of today’s auteurs, a certain fellow making movies almost strictly for the Direct-To-Video (DTV) market, Dutch director Roel Reine. If making DTV movies are already disreputable enough, how about making an unusually large number of DTV movies with the number 2 or 3 in them? As the great John Hyams (Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning) once mentioned in an interview, he became agent-less the minute people found out that he’s now making DTV movies instead of “real” movies for the cinema.
So imagine the kind of kiss of death that landed on Roel Reine, who’s now looking more and more like the go-to guy when it comes to DTV sequels. So far he’s made The Marine 2, 12 Rounds 2: Reloaded, Death Race 2, Death Race 3: Inferno, Seal Team 8: Behind Enemy Lines 4, The Scorpion King 3: Battle For Redemption and his latest contribution The Man With The Iron Fists 2. That’s 7 DTV sequels in the 10 years since he first moved to the US from the Netherlands in 2005!
Before he more or less became king of the DTV sequels, he made other movies, some of them DTV and some of them not, like the Steven Seagal flick Pistol Whipped and his debut The Delivery, for which he won Best Director at the Dutch equivalent of the Oscars, The Golden Calf. But those 7 DTV sequels, which doesn’t include the non-DTV sequels he’s made since 2005 like Dead In Tombstone, The Lost Tribe, Deadwater, Drifter, the aforementioned Pistol Whipped and the upcoming Dutch film Admiral meant that he’s made 12 films in 10 years, an astonishing amount for a pretty much unknown director working on the fringes of the Hollywood system.
Even more impressive is how the DTV sequels are never pale shadows of the original movies, some of them even surpassing the original like The Marine 2, 12 Rounds 2: Reloaded and The Man With The Iron Fists 2. His Death Race films (prequels in narrative although technically sequels in terms of release date), surely much lower on the budget scale than the original Death Race (itself a sort of remake of Death Race 2000) are no slouch either, which is not something to snigger at.
It’s this kind of work rate, similar to the old Hollywood studio system in which directors championed by the supporters of the auteur theory usually churn out 2 to 3 movies per year, that brings out signs of the director’s authorship of his movies, despite the factory-like working conditions and the collaborative nature of filmmaking (i.e. working from someone else’s script or idea, producer control etc). In the case of Roel Reine, his case is helped even further by the fact that he’s also the Director Of Photography and the ‘A’ Camera Operator in practically all the movies he’s directed.
There’s even a recurring theme to his work, especially in the DTV sequels, as almost all of them are about stoic and solitary men who are forced to deal with a high pressure situation that’s out of their hands. But most of all, it’s his instinctive way of tailoring different aesthetic approaches according to the needs of a particular movie that marks him as an auteur in the vein of studio journeymen like Raoul Walsh or Richard Fleischer. Like those auteurs, his films are not always great, but the great ones will wow you and stay in your mind. And dare I say, that is enough proof that in his own way, making his kinetic little DTV movies (surely today’s equivalent of the B movies of the studio era), Roel Reine is already a treasure, And yes, an auteur.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
