Burroughs: The Movie Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Burroughs: The Movie Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 30, 2019

William S. Burroughs has remained a cultural icon of sorts for several generations now, and in one way at least, that may be at least a little odd. While Burroughs' literary achievements are of course outstanding, and some aspects of his personal life frankly unbelievable, if you were to actually have seen Burroughs tooling about during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Burroughs: The Movie was shot, you might be forgiven if you had mistaken the elderly but spry individual for being something like an insurance salesman. There are some supplements on this disc which get into the kind of almost "quiet" provocateur status that Burroughs was able to assume, and part of that may indeed have been due to his kind of weirdly unassuming appearance.

Burroughs: The Movie is often revelatory, but perhaps not in exactly the way some people might expect from a supposedly "biographical" documentary. The film does get into data points about Burroughs' life, many delivered by Burroughs himself, but the film has arguably more visceral impact from either simple confessionals delivered by people like Allen Ginsburg, or what amount to quasi-home movies showing Burroughs interacting with a variety of people, including his own son. As such, seemingly "major" events like the horrifying death of Burroughs' wife (if you don't know the details, it's rather shocking) are dealt with almost like asides.

Burroughs: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Burroughs: The Movie is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.34:1. This is another Criterion release that substitutes a folded sheet for an insert booklet, but that sheet contains the following information on the transfer:

Burroughs: The Movie is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 [sic]. On widescreen televisions, black bars will appear on the left and right of the image to maintain the proper screen format. This new high definition digital transfer was created on a Spirit DataCine film scanner from a 35 mm print held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, and warps were manually removed using MTI's DRS, while Digital Vision's Phoenix was sued for small dirt, grain, noise management, jitter, and flicker.

The original monaural soundtrack was remastered at 24 bit from a 35 mm soundtrack print. Clicks, thumps, hiss, hum, and crackle were manually removed using Pro Tools HD and iZotope RX 4.

With an understanding that this was sourced from a print, and that as with most documentaries cobbled together from a variety of sources this has an unavoidably heterogeneous appearance at times, this is a very pleasing looking transfer. The palette can seem just a trifle wan at times, with kind of pale pink flesh tones predominating, but in close-ups, detail levels are surprisingly intact. Some of the archival video is understandably pretty ragged looking. Grain fluctuates as well, some of which I'm assuming is due to different source elements, not to mention the fact that the "contemporary" footage was shot over the course of several years and in variant circumstances. As is usually the case with Criterion releases, I noticed no problematic compression anomalies.

Burroughs: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Burroughs: The Movie features an LPCM Mono track which capably supports a documentary that really doesn't have outsized ambitions in terms of sound design. A lot of the film is in fact Burroughs speaking, either in the "contemporary" footage, or via a variety of archival video. There are a number of other first person confessionals and/or interchanges between various people, and all spoken material resonates clearly and cleanly without any problems regarding distortion or dropouts.

Burroughs: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary is by Jim Jarmusch, who ran sound on this picture, and who offers a ton of interesting background information, as well as tidbits about both Burroughs and director Howard Brookner.


• Howard and Uncle Bill (1080p; 15:35) is an appealing reminiscence by Howard Brookner's nephew Aaron Brookner, himself a filmmaker. It's a little funny that Burroughs is referred to as Uncle Bill, since Jarmusch in his commentary talks about how funny he found it when he met Aaron, since Jarmusch had always referred to Howard Brookner as Uncle Howard.


• Howard Brookner (23:48) is an audio supplement with Brookner being interviewed by Burroughs biographer Ted Morgan.


• Outtakes

  New York City (1080p; 20:22)

  
  

  Weapons (1080p; 14:04)

  
  

  Nova Convention (1080p; 8:11)

  
  

  Interviews (1080p; 15:34)

  
  

  Travel (1080p; 11:23)

• New York Film Festival (1080i; 26:47) features Aaron Brookner, Tom DeCillo and Jim Jarmusch in a Q&A following a screening at Lincoln Center.


• Robert E. Fulton III Edit (1080p; 23:38) is a pared down, "Art House" take on some of the footage that Fulton did at Brookner's request, but which was never officially released. This is a very odd "redaction" of the source material, one that seems to suggest Fulton had some "meta" idea in mind, but which is kind of haphazardly presented here in what amounts to a bizarre video collage, which may be kind of appropriate, given the "real" documentary's passing focus on Burroughs' "cut and paste" proclivities in terms of "constructing" texts by cutting up pages and reassembling them.

As mentioned in the Video section, this has a folded sheet in lieu of an insert booklet, with a kind of photo collage on one side, and an essay by Luc Sante and technical information on the obverse.

Burroughs: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As Jim Jarmusch mentions in his appealing commentary, there may be other films ostensibly about Burroughs, but Burroughs: The Movie gets at its subject from "the inside". Those wanting a straight ahead, chronological biography with tons of background information should in fact probably look elsewhere, but for those already acquainted with Burroughs, or who simply want to get "up close and personal" without a ton of interstitial material getting in the way, Burroughs: The Movie is a really fascinating piece. Technical merits are generally solid and the supplementary package very enjoyable. Highly recommended.