F For Fake (VHS, 1995)

There is something for everyone and every generation in this movie. Like a good book it is worth a rereading by those who may have seen it in their youth. A wise and experienced old man of the cloth once said that none of us makes it out of this life without a few physical and/or mental scars. In his movies Orson Welles always creates or shows individuals who carry such scars. However he never stops there. I believe the greatness and hidden talent of Orson Welles was how he, like a wise parson who knows we are all created as functioning moral beings, weaves a morality tale into each of his movies that has the net effect of uplifting humanity as they view his movies even when they thought that they were being merely entertained. In F For Fake, made with a minuscule budget during the dog doo doo 70's, Orson slips in what has to be one of the most profound critiques of the direction that western civilization had just taken in his description of Chartres. The inherent beauty of the editing of this sequence; the cadence of his discourse which at times takes on the characteristics of a soliloquy and even of a personal confession in the midst of what would otherwise be mere entertainment and diversion is so profound that no one who still has a functioning intellect can help but be moved. In a certain way F For Fake is an updated version of of Canterbury tales with all the various protagonists ruminating on their moral mechanisms. The greatest fakery of all was that the clever old fox was delivering profound truth in a fake wrapper to a generation that to a large extent for a decade and beyond had ceased to profess or even acknowledge the existence of ultimate truth. God bless you Orson, poor "forked radish", for recognizing and pointing out profound truth in the midst of a modern barbarism, for caring, and for swimming against the stream and creating a movie that was and is both entertaining and profound when a lesser man would have just gone with the flow. A movie that both entertains and informs the intellect - what more can one ask for ? Get this movie and prepare to be surprised and delighted by a master artist!