Don’t Expect Too Much (2011)

Don’t Expect Too Much (2011), directed by Susan Ray, 3 stars

“Don’t Expect Too Much” is a documentary that looks back at the making of a student film, “We Can’t Go Home Again,” that Nicholas Ray directed and subsequently pieced together as a faculty member at Harpur College in the early 1970s.  Obsessed with the definitive assemblage of myriads of film canisters, Ray spent much of that decade trying to piece together this work in a meaningful way.  The documentary includes interviews with alumni of the Harpur film program who look back after 40 years on their experience working with Ray.  In addition to the student interviews, director Jim Jarmusch weighs in briefly on an seminal encounter he had with Ray, as does editor Walter Murch, who mistakes Ray for a street person when he sees him in the company of director Francis Ford Coppola.

All of the students interviewed considered Ray a passionate artist and a man with a unique talent for ferretting out the best from the people with whom he worked.  One clear example occurs in the original film during a scene in which a character shaves his beard.  In the documentary, he explains that he did this because he had been beaten up by rednecks on his way back from Florida.  Shaken by the experience, he decided then and there that he would sacrifice his personal appearance rather than risk further violent confrontations in the future.  The tears he displays are real, and they pour out of him under Ray’s gentle direction, which can be heard on the soundtrack.

Despite the documentary’s many insightful moments, I still came away feeling that I knew far less about the film and filmmaking process than I would have liked.  I want to learn more from the students about their (or Ray’s) original intent, what it was like to develop the script(s), and how it was determined what would be shot.  To hear the students tell it, Ray rarely shared his thoughts with them. One wonders, given the huge amount time the students spent on their class project, where they found time to study for other courses.

“We Can’t Go Home Again” and “Don’t Expect Too Much” are very much companion pieces; they are meant to be seen together and in that order.  Susan Ray has done an excellent job assembling a cross-section of cast members and getting them to talk openly about their experiences.  But what “We Can’t Go Home Again” really needs in my opinion are subtitles (the dialogue is often poorly recorded and, therefore, difficult to understand) and a commentary track—maybe more than one—performed individually or as a group by the student filmmakers Susan Ray interviewed for her film.  “Don’t Expect Too Much” does provide quite a few insights, but I can’t help thinking that there remains quite a bit more that can be learned by further encouraging the student filmmakers, now 40 years older and wiser, to weigh in in more detail on their experience working with Ray during that seminal period of his and their lives.