Netflix explores the visual essay’s potential with the David Fincher-produced Voir
Ironically, the most effective installments of this series exploring the transformative power of cinema are also the most traditional
TV Reviews Essay
What makes visual essays notably different from their written brethren? The idea of images accompanying an argument or a story is nothing new, but with the rise of YouTube, the format has become much more democratized from the days when PBS leavened chats between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell with still frames and video clips germane to the discussion. So Voir, the new six-part series produced by David Fincher and streaming on Netflix, is mostly notable for how familiar it feels. In the era of explainer videos for every subject and stylized true-crime reenactments on a hundred channels, the only real difference here is slightly better production values.
With the average installment running just under 20 minutes, this short collection of “visual essays… for the love of cinema” (as they’re described in the opening credits) are just that—TED talk-style arguments overlaying visual aids in the form of movie clips. This isn’t surprising, given two of the main contributors, Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou, spent several years doing exactly these kinds of videos themselves, under the name Every Frame A Painting. Voir feels like the continuation of that project, albeit with some collaborators bearing rather different takes on the material.
The series saves the best for last. Walter Chaw writes and narrates “Profane And Profound,” which makes the case for Walter Hill’s 48 Hours as a landmark—not of buddy comedies, as it’s usually pegged, but as a treatise on racism in the United States. Connecting the defense mechanisms Eddie Murphy’s Reggie Hammond employs against racist encounters and institutional oppression with his own experiences growing up Asian-American, he argues the film occupies a potent middle ground between the somber “message” movies of In The Heat Of The Night and the race-relation comedy of Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder’s films. Thoughtful and incisive, it does good work by making viewers look at a well-known property through a different lens.
On the other end of the spectrum is critic Sasha Stone’s initial offering. “Summer Of The Shark” is the most autobiographical and impressionistic of the episodes—less an argument about how Jaws changed cinema than a reflection on how coming of age alongside American blockbusters in the tumultuous ’70s and ’80s was its own kind of distinctive transformation. (“I needed distraction,” she says of these Hollywood spectacles, while noting how adolescence seemed to fragment her and her friends’ fascination with movies along gendered lines.) The only installment to feature impressionist reenactments of a personal narrative (directed by exec producer David Prior), it’s visually engaging, but less intellectually compelling.
The remaining episodes, from Zhou and Ramos (as well as one from critic Drew McWeeny), are all prototypical examples of the “explainer video” tradition—like Chaw’s entry, if not as strong. McWeeny narrates “But I Don’t Like Him,” a smart if not terribly challenging visual essay that uses Lawrence Of Arabia as the basis to explore the value of unlikable characters. (Shocking no one, Martin Scorsese’s oeuvre comes in for special consideration.) It’s stolidly in the Every Frame A Painting mold, providing just enough insight on the topic to feel fresh even for cinephiles likely well-acquainted with such arguments.
Zhou and Ramos’s three episodes are the most reliably straightforward, but they also end up providing the worst of the bunch. On the plus side, “The Duality Of Appeal” is a lively breakdown of how animation works to create appealing characters, going behind the scenes of the process to highlight the unusual challenges in creating two-dimensional characters—and how the shift to CG has changed the nature of the art in unexpected ways. And “The Ethics Of Revenge” finds Zhou using the superb Park Chan-wook film Lady Vengeance as a tool to break down the unwritten rules of revenge narratives, from the intentionally reductive victim characters to the sliding scale nature of the ethical cost.
Unfortunately, there’s also the fifth episode, “Film Vs. Television,” a comparatively facile look at the increasingly blurry line between cinema and television. Yes, movies employed technological gimmickry and big-money allowances to compete with TV, but the essay doesn’t enlighten, and ends with a limp shrug—horses for courses, and all that. Still, at least it doubles as a meta comment on this slim but mostly engaging docuseries; when it comes to choosing TV over film, Ramos argues, “The tradeoff is that you might not get an ending that satisfies you.” Luckily for Voir, it ends on Chaw’s intriguing “Profane And Profound” story, not this one.
19 Comments
I like Every Frame a Painting for a while, but it quickly became a turnoff how they went out of their way to insult the Marvel movies in almost every video. You could make a decent betting game out of what point the video would turn into “and this is why a Marvel movie is bad at today’s subject.”
I never noticed they were doing that.
Videos where they criticized Marvel in relation to a subject:Jackie Chan – How to Do Action Comedy
Akira Kurosawa – Composing MovementHow Does an Editor Think and Feel?The Marvel Symphonic UniverseThat’s what? 4 out of 28 videos? Try harder next time.
Happily, there is nary a mention of Marvel in the new series.
I’m not trying to do a “hot take” here, but Marvel movies are pretty bad at storytelling. I went on a bit of a binge recently alternating between Marvel and Star Wars fare and the juxtaposition was alarming. The Star Wars films had structure and grace while the Marvel world was all spectacle and quirky characters. The Marvel stuff is still enjoyable but they reject emotional payoff in favor of escalating action and an explosive climax.
Fair enough, but if you’re talking about gourmet cuisine you’re probably going to have to contrast it with the fast food. There’s nothing wrong inherently with MCU movies – they’re just mac n cheese. Comfortable, good, but not doing anything all that interesting with the medium. The most damning thing about them is that you can go in and come out saying, “Yeah, that was pretty good”, just like going to a McDonalds anywhere in the world.
Crymore fanboy, people who actually follow cinema tend to dislike mcu crap
I mean it’s kinda hard to create a youtube series focusing on film form and not criticize Marvel movies from time to time.
Yet another reason to love Every Frame a Painting.
Pandemic or not, my teenage son doesn’t watch that many movies, but movies and TV shows about the MCU are still loved by him, so I’m glad Marvel stuff can still keep him away from watching YouTube videos all the time.
I was wondering if I was the only one that noticed that. No, it’s not in many of their videos, but when they do it, it often feels really shoe-horned in, as if they have some sort of axe to grind. This is most apparent in one of (the?) their final videos, the “Marvel Symphonic Universe”. The shift in the tone from starting from a place of positivity, talking about a great example of film-making, to “here’s why these billion-dollar movies suck and you’re a dummy for liking them” felt almost like a betrayal of the series. I could almost tell they were burnt-out and jaded from making the videos, and when I heard they were quitting I wasn’t surprised in the least.
I was wondering if I was the only one that noticed that. No, it’s not in many of their videos, but when they do it, it often feels really shoe-horned in, as if they have some sort of axe to grind. This is most apparent in one of (the?) their final videos, the “Marvel Symphonic Universe”. The shift in the tone from starting from a place of positivity, talking about a great example of film-making, to “here’s why these billion-dollar movies suck and you’re a dummy for liking them” felt almost like a betrayal of the series. I could almost tell they were burnt-out and jaded from making the videos, and when I heard they were quitting I wasn’t surprised in the least.
“Ironically, the most effective installments of this series exploring the transformative power of cinema are also the most traditional”Not irony, Alanis.
Ahhh, Drew “Moriarty” McWeeny. Brings up sweet memories of the ancient, peak years at Aintitcoolnews when it was a Fanboy Mecca.
David Prior directed “The Empty Man”, which more people should check out. It’s WAY better than the title suggests, due to dreck like “Slender Man” and “The Bye Bye Man”.
Fantastic little flick. Took me by surprise.
I am compelled to create an account for this website to mention how much I absolutely hate Every Frame a Painting. The Chuck Jones “Evolution of an Artist” video that he did is one of the shallowest and most misleading video essays that I have ever seen. For some reason he wastes most of the video explaining what comedy “setup” and “payoff” means (???) instead of actually discussing what made Jones so singular when compared to his contemporaries like Avery and McKimson and Freleng. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if many people clicked off that essay thinking Jones did all the Looney Tunes cartoons himself! Many people consider Jones’ late period work to be scattershot and generally disappointing, but there’s no mention of it in the essay. There’s no mention of how he responded to the budget limitations imposed on him, or what the film landscape looked like when Jones was directing cartoons, or why Jones’ cartoons were so successful in the 40s and 50s when compared to the Disney cartoons of the same era. I get it, the guy doesn’t claim to be an expert on Jones or anything, but the video is just plain lazy. Maybe his other videos are better, but I haven’t bothered to find out.
I feel like Drew McWeeny and Myles McNutt hang out together and share kombucha recipes and shit
Oh wait, this is the every frame a painting people? I’ll have to check this put because they’re the GOAT. Nice to see that they’re getting paid.