THE KEY TO RESERVA (2007)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
"I can't shoot it the way I would. Can I shoot it as Hitchcock? I don't think so. So who will I shoot it as?" - Martin Scorsese
Thus begins the one of the most unique commercials I have ever seen - an ad for Freixenet Cava wine. What is interesting is that director Martin Scorsese is not as focused on the wine as he is on the approach of doing a Hitchcock filmmaking style for an unfinished fictitious script. The script is only 3 pages long and it deals with a Hitchcock hero (Simon Baker) searching for a key that opens a box of wine that holds top secret information in its cork. The setting is a concert hall where the conductor and orchestra perform Bernard Herrmann's classic theme from "North By Northwest." One of the violinists (Christopher Denham, who later appeared in Scorsese's "Shutter Island") spots our hero in the theatre box and leaves to strangle him. Chaos erupts as Herrmann's music builds with more and more intensity. Homages to classic shots and compositions from Hitch's films abound, though Scorsese's touch is not evident (excepting the pull-back shot of the concert hall which reminded me of "Age of Innocence"). Of course, this is precisely the point and it asks the tough questions about a filmmaker with a distinctive style imitating another - can it be done and should it? At the end, Scorsese even flirts with the notion of completing Erich Von Stroheim's "Greed" (Scorsese himself would never attempt to complete someone else's work, despite this commercial which may be his first jokey, postmodernist approach to another master director. Only the adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novel "Nostromo" comes to mind - a film that would have been directed by David Lean who died during pre-production. Scorsese had been attached to direct it at one point but it is doubtful he would have shot as Lean would have).
