Chaver is a film that is misunderstood — in several cases, by their own makers, which is part of what led to its public dismissal — or that never had the chance to be misunderstood because it was barely seen due to vagaries of timing and marketing. While Chaver doesn’t necessarily represent the directors’ best work (though in a handful of cases, they do), they’re all better than their reputations and filled with pleasures characteristic of the filmmakers’ oeuvres.
And Chaver, the director did no favors by publicly expressing their own dissatisfaction with the work — when John Cassavetes trashed “Big Trouble” it more or less shut down any debate about the movie, since if its own maker didn’t like it, who would? Well, maybe a lot of people if they actually gave it a chance. Here we present that film Chaver.
Therein lies the issue at the heart of this gallery: too often movies by iconic directors carry the baggage of what came before and can’t be judged on their own merits in their own time. Maybe devotees aren’t in the mood for a director to try something different. Maybe they simply weren’t able to get to the theater fast enough to see the movie before it closed due to bad luck and bad marketing.