Terribly directed, edited and photographed...a disaster almost saved by Christopher Young's music This is a perfect example of what happens when you have a no-talent, clueless director trying to tell a story, working from a decent script, but not having the slightest idea of how to make a good movie out of it.
Jeff Bettancourt's editing is absolutely horrid, too -- hundreds of shots too long or too short -- mostly too short. Didn't we learn ANYTHING from Stanley Kubrick??!!!
Guess not.
But even worse than the incompetent directing and horrendous editing is the vomit-inducing photography from Tom Stern. The courtroom scenes look like something from an industrial video. I've seen porno that looks better than this. There are tons and tons of murky, underexposed and grainy shots. Then there are lots of horrible Shakicam shots, the type Stern would later use to completely destroy "The Hunger Games."
I mean, was someone actually looking at the rushes each day, staring at this garbage, clapping each other on the back and saying: "Yeah! Yeah!! Perfect, Tom! Looks fantastic!!!"
And don't even get me started on how he lit Laura Linney! She should have sued for malicious defamation of image. If Dietrich or Garbo or Monroe had been photographed like this, they would have ended up extras. If'd shot anyone like this in film school, they would have thrown me out of the department after whipping me for wasting precious film stock.
What Tom Stern does -- what he's always done -- is use high-speed stocks, then underexpose them by using almost no lights. I guess that's his attempt to emulate the "Prince of Darkness," Bruce Surtees. Nice try, Tom -- It didn't work. The resulting image is almost always dark, blurry, grainy and horrifically underexposed. It basically looks like someone shot a 16mm industrial film on 20 year-old unrefrigerated ECO stock, then decided to push it five stops. The drag it through mud. Great work, Tom. How much were you paid again?
But I don't put the blame solely on Stern. I blame it on the idiot director -- the half-wit responsible for one of the worst films in the history of cinema, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" remake.
Somehow Stern did a good job on films like "Gran Torino" and a number of other excellent Eastwood films.
What was needed here was someone with just a fraction of Eastwood's talent and taste, telling Stern what he wanted.
A great cinematographer, like Deschanel or Roizman or Storraro or Zsigmond or Bartkowiac, naturally knows how to do fantastic work that helps tell the story in a dramatic and powerful way.
Stern, on the other hand, is basically a gaffer, thousands of miles away from the brilliance of these world-class DPs.
And when you have a gaffer basically responsible for telling a story on film, you better have a genius director supervising and telling him what you want. Or at least someone smart enough to say, "These dailies like complete crap, Tom -- get on the ball, fast, or you'll be cleaning the studio toilets by tomorrow night."
If someone doesn't say things like this, a film cab get into serious trouble.
Hence, "Emily Rose."