DVDFile

Criterion / 250 Minutes / 1980-1992 / Unrated / Street Date: January 17, 2012

Calling these three documentaries 'popular' is a bit of a misnomer, but this Eclipse Series 31 DVD box set is nevertheless completely in keeping with Criterion's previous releases on the label. Known for his collaborations with Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin gives the impression on this collection as being an idiosyncratic and heady filmmaker, one who is as uncompromising in attaining his vision as he is tough to pin down.

We start with the best documentary on this set: Poto and Cabengo (1980) is an investigation into the nuanced and often alien verbal interaction between two twins, Grace and Virginia Kennedy. The way Gorin puts himself into the narrative fabric of the doc is, frankly, quite annoying - like Herzog, he has the dubious tendency of liking to put himself at center stage in many of his works - but his gaze into the mysteries of communication are nevertheless often exceptionally illuminating.

The other two docs here are intellectually notable, but not nearly as compelling as Poto and Cabengo. Routine Pleasures (1986) looks at both Gorin's sometimes collaborator Manny Farber and a collection of model train enthusiasts from Del Mar, CA, and My Crasy Life (1992) takes aim at a Samoan street gang in Long Beach, and neither are convincingly accomplished. Gorin definitely has an eye for off-kilter subject material, but as a filmmaker, he doesn't flush things out in an dramatically fulfilling way.

No, like so many other Eclipse sets, this Three Popular Films by Jean-Pierre Gorin collection is an intriguingly quixotic but non-essential standard-def entity, a release that will entrance art house patrons but not completely satisfy them. Criterion continues to deserve applause for allowing films like these to be seen - talk about works that are hard to find - but a hard sell is a hard sell.