User reviews

Lightning Over Water began as a collaborative idea to tell the story of a dying painter who steals art from museums and replaces them with his own forgeries. Suffering from terminal cancer himself, Ray's health quickly deteriorates during the project. The film eventually ceases to be a work of fiction and becomes a documentary of Ray's finals days in which he fittingly spends making film. In reflecting over his career and life, Ray ponders his successes and failures as a film maker who is best known for Rebel Without a Cause (1955). A poignant and often disturbing film, Lighting Over Water is ultimately a painful homage to a film maker and to a friend (Klaus Ming March 2013).

In this film documentary, Wim Wenders comes to New York City to visit film director, Nicholas Ray, who directed classics like Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean. Ray lives in a Soho loft with his younger wife, Susan Ray. You could see the twin towers that once stood at the foot of Manhattan long before it's destruction in 2001. Nick Ray is stubborn and determined to make a final film. In some ways, it's his last chance in the cinema. Wim Wenders knows time is of the essence sine Ray is dying of cancer. There are candid moments of Ray dying but not letting his cancer destroy him. Wenders is a friend and film director. This documentary is really more of a tribute than anything else to a fine film director even though we didn't get to really know him. I haven't seen any of his films to date. The documentary might be dated but it's important to recognize a man who was really a genius in the film industry even thirty years later. He didn't live like a millionaire. He lived quite modestly and on his own terms which is how he died.

Two video versions of this film exist, both roughly the same length. The first was released by Pacific Video on VHS in 1987, the second just this month (1/03) by Anchor Bay on DVD. According to Kathe Geist's book "The Cinema of Wim Wenders: From Paris France to Paris Texas," Wenders was so depressed by the filming of "Lightning" and Ray's death that he handed the footage over to his editor, Peter Przygodda, who spent a year fashioning it into a version shown at Cannes; apparently this is also the version released by Pacific Video in 1987 and which I first saw around that time (and have watched many times since). Wenders supposedly found this version obscure and depressing and re-edited, adding a voiceover (his own) and superimposing passages from Ray's diary; this is the version just released on DVD, and is considered by some the definitive edition. But I find Wender's criticism of the initial cut confusing, for it's the LATTER cut (his own) which is murky and depressing. Nick Ray's final scene, for example ("Cut...Don't Cut.") is tortuous (we're watching a man dying), and there are sequences edited so bizarrely as to be almost incomprehensible. The first cut, in contrast, has a narrative flow and progression that make it easier to absorb, though it's still tough going as we witness Nick Ray's suffering. Also, Wender's narration in the 2nd version (absent in the initial cut) actually adds little to the film. The first version is unfortunately out of print but is worth tracking down because it's the superior one.

Nicholas Ray is dying when Wim Wenders come to visit him. They start to make a motion picture about his death.

With Wenders and Ray credited as co-directors, I'm left with the question of who is in charge. I'm left with the conclusion that it must be Wenders, and then with another question: what is it about? I think it's a love letter from one quirky and independent director for a friend who was also a quirky director, and the baffling and often filing efforts to make films that say something about something.

Does it succeed? As a love letter, yes.

As for the rest, I just don't know. Which is probably how Wenders feels.

Wenders gives the viewer the impression that this is a simple movie, but it is not. Fans of Wenders will recognize director Nicholas Ray's apartment as a location for the film, American Friend. But not only is Ray simply dying, he dies, and the "documentary" has to change, and so it does, with grace, pain, uncertainty, and a host of other emotions and observations. The music, much of it featuring Ronee Blakley, doing what sounds like an attempt at light punk rock and country-folk rock, with a definite Patti Smith influence, is very effective. Like every film I have seen by Wenders, it looks beautiful and often unusual, and the pacing is leisurely, and by Hollywood standards, slow. However, anyone who likes Wenders and likes Ray--and let's face it, if you say you are a fan of American film, and you neither like nor know Nicholas Ray, you are an ignorant piker, poser--will benefit from screening this movie, and probably be moved like hell by it.

Painful but beautiful, poignant but disturbing, this film is unmissable for anyone loving Nick Ray's spirit and features. This director was not a Hollywood yes man, the common boot licker facing the moguls. His entire director life was a dog fight, and because he was a very sensitive and brilliant, intelligent but fragile man, he became a drug and many other substances addict, including sex and women. That slowly destroyed him. In this film, you watch him dying, filmed by his friend Wim Wenders. Useless to say that is not for all audiences, only die hard Nick Ray's or Wenders fans. It's more a document than a fiction feature. It's better to watch it on DVD with the director's comment, with all the indications and explanations; useless to see the "naked" movie, as it better for most of regular, ordinary movies. The thing that moved me the most was Nick's eyes, glance, the eyes of someone very intelligent, someone certainly not full of emptiness. The eyes of someone very alive. Very lucid. And believe me, this film is eveything but peeping tom oriented. No, Nick Ray totally agreed to be filmed, and not dying alone. So painful. RIP Nick.

This is not a movie for Wenders fans as much as it is for Nick Ray fans. In fact, I wouldn't recommend it unless you felt connected to the director. And I don't mean that you've happened to rent Johnny Guitar, In a Lonely Place or They Live By Night. See it if you saw a theme in Ray's work, one that made you go back and learn about his life. See it if you re-watched his films, trying to understand every cut and what it told you about the man behind the camera. See it if it bothers you that he will never make another film. Because in Lightning over water Nicholas Ray invites you to share his death with him, and, if you see it, you must be prepared to grieve. I saw this movie late one night in my college dorm room (a college with a featured role in the film, but that is merely tangential). I didn't let anyone watch it with me. The previous summer my grandfather had died in the same drawn-out manner. He was surrounded by family from the time of his diagnosis to the time of his death. Wenders and his crew are Nick Ray's family -- a love of the director's work is the blood connecting them. Wenders carries a camera with him because he knows that others -- even those who never heard of Nicholas Ray until he was dead for 18 years -- have the same blood in them. Wenders gives us the chance. But it is Nick Ray who we come to see.

this is a film i forced myself to watch in order to complete a speech in german about wim wender's amerkiabild. it is all about the death of a cancer ridden man. that is about all of the plot i could figure out.

the images, as is usual with wender's films, are striking and pungent to the hollywood-movie-goer senses. the scenes in this movie are about the slowest i have ever seen. i did find a few rewarding scenes here and there scattered throughout the chaos. the graduate monkey, the speech at vassar college, and the alarm clock scene to mention a few.

that is about all i know on this one.

i give it two riders of the apocalypse.

Not being in the habit of viewing snuff films I experienced what was, for me, a strange, rather unique emotion roughly five minutes into this documentary. Put into words it was, "I should not be watching this." And this feeling only deepened and broadened as the doc continued. I know the subject approved of it and that it was done with his full cooperation but I still felt as if it was obscene for me to be watching it. Even in our voyeuristic, surveiled world, where everything, it seems, belongs to someone or something other than oneself, some things are simply too private for sharing. Such as a real person's actual last, cancer ravaged moments. So I pulled the plug right after the "Lusty Men" clip which is definitely something I should be watching.

In 1977,Nicholas Ray was part of the cast of "der Amerikanische Freund" as Derwatt,a painter who made forgeries .In this movie,Ray tells the story of a painter who steals the masterpieces in the museums and replaces them with forgeries.

I have always been a Ray fan from "they live by night" to "run for cover" to "party girl" to his final epics which were looked upon by pretty much as failures.I must admit that I do not go much for Wenders' stuff ,which is much too intellectual for me .

Its not a documentary movie,it's cinema verite depicting a man who is dying.The courage the director displays in front of death commands admiration but I wonder whether this movie should have been released:it's an intimate one,which should have been reserved for the circle of family and close friends.And I'm sure that many of these prefer to keep a picture of a healthy man .

If you have seen four or five movies by Ray ("rebel without a cause" "Johnny Guitar" "The savage" ) a piece of advice:try and see the lesser known Ray works:"wind across the everglades "born to be bad" "on dangerous ground" or "knock on any door" .The best homage to an exceptionally gifted director.

There are two good moments in "Lightning over water":

The "lusty men" extract happens to be my favorite in this classic:Mitchum come s back home,an old house where he finds back a comic and a money box:In "Lightning " ,Ray hints at "coming back home,seeing my mother's face" Childhood was an obsession in his work :just remember Dean playing in the gutter ("Rebel) or Cagney trying to make Derek his "son" in "run for cover" .

THe diary which Wenders reads is in German which makes sense since it's his first language;the shots of the wings of the plane are fascinating.