2021 Directed by Mark Cousins
Joining Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas on his annual pilgrimage to the Cannes Film Festival, filmmaker Mark Cousins gives an intimate glimpse into the life of the legendary icon behind some of the most controversial and acclaimed films of all time.
Jeremy Thomas, una vida de cine, 大製片家
France
Cannes Film Festival
UK
USA
Spain
Taiwan
UK
France
Spain
Taiwan
UK
USA
Quite a fascinating deep dive into the mind of Jeremy Thomas. The man has worked on some of the finest films I have ever seen and worked with some of my favourite directors. Cousins approach made me lose connection with Thomas as he was overindulgent about himself.
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Premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival this documentary follows the award winning British producer Jeremy Thomas on his annual visit to the Festival accompanied by director Mark Cousins who is filming him on the journey from his home in England. Film clips of many of the films he has produced are included (The Sheltering Sky, The Last Emperor, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and Eureka to name a few), and actresses Tilda Swinton and Debra Winger are interviewed.
Enjoyed seeing the film clips but overall I was slightly disappointed. Watched as part of the London Film Festival 2021.
6/10
#02 - The Storms of Jeremy Thomas, dir. Mark Cousins
Rebecca O’Brien: He is the producer’s producer.
Thoroughly enjoyed Mark Cousins’ characteristically exhaustive and creatively conducted documentary on legendary producer Jeremy Thomas, the man behind classics such as Crash, The Last Emperor, Eureka, and more recently Takashi Miike’s wackadoodle wonder First Love. Cousins’ passion is infectious, his insight near-peerless, and while I knew of Thomas prior to watching this, Cousins’ journey with him to Cannes revealed such great depths in a man whose evident shyness would be impenetrable if approached by any other filmmaker. Instead, because of Cousins’ incisive questions and insatiable curiosity, Thomas talks and talks at length about his illustrious career and lifelong…
i am simply begging mark cousins to turn off auto-focus and auto-exposure on his camera!!! the irony of this doc that promises a portrait of jeremy thomas is that it veers so far into cousins's free associative nonsense (broadly, and literally—cousins goes full psychoanalysis with thomas in here purely because he produced cronenberg's A DANGEROUS METHOD) that the man himself is still an enigma in the end. but then jeremy thomas came out for a q&a after our screening and was actually a grounded, funny guy with stories about how he had to sync sound on the rushes for THE LAST EMPEROR because the assistant editor got sick. i appreciate mark cousins's passion for his subjects but his abstraction is so uninteresting to me. just let the guy talk and listen to rufus wainwright!!! at least i could nap during part of the movie so i was more alert for the q&a.
how did i literally see like none of these guys films? 90 minutes of feeling embarrassed
LFF 2021 - FIRST LOOK
If anything, Cousins is the one that comes away with this with the most substance and change of perception. Casual audiences will find this utterly impenetrable to access, and even those fond of the more internalised of filmmaking documentaries will be hard-pressed to continue through its thick crust of indulgent, those who become embroiled in Cousins’ passion will find that same mood to be intoxicating, the very few however indeed.
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FULL REVIEW AT CLAPPER + SUPPORT CLAPPER ON PATREON AND OUR CLOTHING STORE
Jeremy Thomas is one of the greats, a “producer’s producer” who made happen some of the boldest independent films of the 70s, 80s and 90s (and of course, he’s still a tremendous force today in his 70s). A portrait of Thomas is a portrait of a form of filmmaking for adults that’s increasingly hard to find in the era of IP, Marvel, AI and streaming.
In true Mark Cousins style, this portrait is a very personal and idiosyncratic essay film. It overlays the audio from a discussion between the two over footage of a road trip to Cannes they undertake in the producer’s Alfa Romeo. There are really only two other interviewees, Debra Winger and Tilda Swinton (who manages to…
Se la toma más como un viaje para conocer a la persona a través de la desfragmentación dispersa de sus logros, que como una biografía estructurada y metódica en la que todo queda más sólido. Funciona evidentemente por esa pedazo de persuasión que tiene la voz de Cousins y por el empeño y la sensibilidad que respiran las intenciones de un documentalista inigualable.
London Film Festival 2021 - #1
A true British icon. My watchlist is bulging because of this film.
A love letter to the films of Jeremy Thomas and to life itself.
Different to what you’d expect from Cousins, but it still has the same hallmarks that make up his unique style. At this point, it’s hard to say whether he can put a foot wrong, because he truly operates in his own lane.
Cousins' poetic style and selfie-cinematography come at too great of a disconnect here. His high-minded talk of tempests jars with the footage we get of a nice man driving through the countryside, listening to alt-dadrock. Thomas has a great filmography to his name, and the notion of viewing the career of a producer as the career of an artist is a novel one, but what worked for Welles doesn't fly for Thomas.
