David Holzman’s Diary

Unapologetically experimental, David Holzman’s Diary follows L.M. Kit Carson’s title character as he decides to shoot his day-to-day life and surroundings. It’s a purposefully uneventful and low-key premise that’s employed to exceedingly erratic effect by Jim McBride, as the director delivers a meandering drama that’s devoted almost entirely to the protagonist’s less-than-enthralling exploits – although, having said that, there are a few stretches here that are undeniably quite fascinating. (The movie often works best as a time-capsule record of New York City in the 1960s, as McBride’s camera pans across entire neighborhoods to a degree that’s generally rather spellbinding.) It’s the pervasive lack of consistency that ultimately sinks David Holzman’s Diary, as the movie, which runs a short-yet-not-short-enough 74 minutes, has been littered with a lamentable assortment of painfully padded-out sequences that are virtually impossible to justify. (This is never more true than of an interminable early sequence in which David’s friend Pepe delivers an extended monologue about the project’s usefulness.) The ongoing inclusion of relatively compelling segments, including David’s interview with a sassy New Yorker and his pursuit of a random subway patron, goes a long way towards periodically buoying the viewer’s dwindling interest, and yet it’s impossible, ultimately, to label David Holzman’s Diary as anything more than a terminally uneven bit of avant-garde filmmaking.

** out of ****