Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
As his life comes to its end, famous Hollywood director Orson Welles puts it all on the line at the chance for renewed success with the film The Other Side of the Wind.
This Netflix documentary about Orson Welles's final, decades-long struggle to complete 'The Other Side of the Wind' is a genuinely distinctive portrait of artistic obsession and Hollywood mythology. Its novelty lies in the rich archival material, the fascinating meta-narrative of a filmmaker chasing redemption, and its release timed alongside the completed film itself. The cinematography is serviceable documentary work — competent but unremarkable. The narrative structure is engaging if occasionally unfocused, and the ending, while poignant given Welles's death and the film's incompletion, feels somewhat open-ended by necessity. Acting is not a meaningful category for a documentary of this nature, earning a middling score. Its greatest strength is its singular subject and the irreplaceable footage of a legend at work.