The Outsider
Directed by Nicholas Jarecki
The Outsider asks the question: "What is an independent filmmaker?" Director Nicholas Jarecki's answer is James Toback-a better answer than that glorified clubhouse president, Richard Linklater. Toback's movies, from Fingers in 1978 to 2004's When Will I Be Loved are not hipster pep rallies designed to shore up an in-crowd consensus. Rather, Toback's films are conceived artistically, which is to say, personally. How Toback gets financed is no more relevant to the content of his films than it is relevant to the real meaning of "independent filmmaker" because it's Toback's individuality and personal integrity that makes him truly independent. That's the virtue missing in the Linklaters of the film world whose movies are as conformist and unoriginal as if they sprang directly from timid investment banks.
Knowing this, Jarecki pursues Toback's career history and his provocative personality. Toback is shown to be garrulous but always perceptive and inquiring which is what gives his movies distinction. He's less interested in mere storytelling than in examining personality traits of characters who are very much like himself-cagey, ambitious and ruthlessly honest with themselves. This is the fascinating aspect of Jarecki's portrait. It only goes wrong when it turns into a celebrity-hunt; ceaselessly interviewing Toback's famous acquaintances is a version of name-dropping that seems to do more for Jarecki than it does to clarify Toback's artistry.
In last year's The Beat My Heart Skipped, a French remake of Fingers, Toback's originality was sorely missed. Worse, critics misunderstood that the Fingers story was not classical noir; it worked because it was personal and obsessive-Toback expressing himself through noir. There is no American director who is better on race, sex and privilege, but the commentary Jarecki includes from Roger Ebert utterly lacks insight about Toback's films. Watching The Outsider circle around Toback's movies only increases curiosity about them.