Documendations update

Whether or not Walter Pater was correct that “all art aspires to the condition of music,” my contention is that all cinema aspires to the condition of documentary, bringing visual confirmation of worlds we would not otherwise encounter.  Here I’ll be offering a survey of recent and recommended documentaries, the straight stuff, so to speak, real-to-reel life.  This list includes four of the recently-announced Oscar nominations.

Yet one more reason to be wistful for the Obamas is the first film from their “Higher Ground” production deal with Netflix, American Factory (MC-86, NFX).  Trust Barack and Michelle to find and fund Julia Reichert, a documentarian I have favored since Growing Up Female (1970), Union Maids (1976), and Seeing Red (1983).  Here partnered with Steven Bognar, she follows the fate of a GM plant in Dayton OH, from its closure in 2008, through its 2015 purchase by a Chinese billionaire as a plant to produce auto glass, to the difficulties encountered in melding the two cultures into an effective workforce.  Many other themes are adumbrated in this deep and wide cinematic exploration, about work and business in the 21^st century global economy.

Another telling insight into modern Chinese culture is provided by One Child Nation (MC-85, AMZ).  Director Nanfu Wang came from China to America for college and film school, and returns when she has a child of her own, to explore the wide-ranging implications of the one-child policy in force at the time of her own birth in 1985.  This is a cautionary tale about the government takeover of human fertility, encompassing not just unrelenting propaganda, but forced sterilization, abortion, and even infanticide, and the costs of compliance on individuals.  Emotionally disturbing but thought provoking, this is a pointedly personal exploration of a public issue, with a nod to the opposite problem of choice in this country.

It’s likely that the Academy will make a political statement by honoring the Obamas, but as a film – in its beauty, novelty, and fable-like resonance – Honeyland (MC-86, Hulu) is the best and most surprising documentary of the year.  In remote Macedonia, a lone Turkish woman lives in a deserted village with her elderly and ailing mother, tending bees both in the wild and in her own hives, carefully attuned to their well-being.  A large and boisterous family moves into one of the abandoned properties and makes a feckless stab at farming.  Our heroine tries to be welcoming to the interlopers, especially the children, but only one serious-minded boy actually appreciates the crone’s wisdom.  As in many documentaries, the appeal lies in the entry into an unknown and mysterious world, but this one is extraordinary not just in its access, but in the extreme grace of its cinematography, which illuminates the inner beauty of a magnificently ugly old woman.

Another lesson in sustainability is provided by The Biggest Little Farm (MC-73, Hulu), a charmingly eclectic retelling of an attempt to reclaim the played-out monoculture of a California farm, into a natural Eden of diversity, despite all kinds of adversity.  The film is good-natured in every sense of the word.  Accomplished wildlife photographer John Chester directs and narrates the story of how he and his foodie wife Molly determined to live a life of purpose by developing a viable all-natural farm, following the precepts of a biodiversity guru.  Augmented by interviews and even animation, the story unfolds across several years, through all the challenges and triumphs of trying to live in perfect harmony with nature.  I’d bump up its Metacritic rating by ten points.

In Hail Satan? (MC-76, Hulu), what looks initially like a satiric view of an oddball group of sketchy cranks, gradually morphs into a celebration of a different sort of diversity, one enshrined in the “establishment clause” of the constitution.  In Penny Lane’s documentary, the Satanic Temple grows from an island of misfit toys into a stalwart defender of religious and personal liberty, against those who would falsely claim the United States as a “Christian nation.”  These Satanists are less like a cult or coven of dark rituals, and more like a Dada-esque group of political and cultural provocateurs, with a credo that is frankly more rational and inclusive than that of their fundamentalist antagonists.

Though highly regarded, Apollo 11 (MC-88, Hulu) was a documentary I approached with some of the same skepticism and indifference I had for the moon landing itself, fifty years ago, when I studiously avoided all tv coverage of the event.  And today more than ever, it seems like a stupendous waste of energy and ingenuity, not to mention money, which could have been much better spent addressing terrestrial problems.  That said, this compilation of previously unseen NASA footage and official live audio calls up the event with remarkable and thoughtful vividness. 

Ask Dr. Ruth (MC-68, Hulu) fills in the Westheimer backstory in a way that makes her seem more significant than just a pop culture icon as talk show host and guest.  From her kindertransport survival of the Holocaust, which claimed her parents and other relatives, through three marriages, a stint as a sniper in the Zionist war in Palestine, followed by education in France and the U.S., and a career-defining stint with Planned Parenthood, which led to her becoming a pioneering media spokesperson for supportive sex therapy.  Put this in a category with RBG or Iris, though not quite in their class, as a celebration of the vitality of little old ladies.

I suspect that Hulu hoped to hit the same sweet spot as Minding the Gap with Jawline (MC-74, Hulu), which turns into a near miss, as an intimate look at the lives of teens in dead-end Rust Belt towns in a culture of social media.  The problem is the too-exclusive focus on one 16-year-old hoping to transcend his dismal circumstances by building a Bieber-esque following online, and then in public appearances.  The sociological phenomenon is of more interest than the individual, and the best thing I can say about this film is that it provides context and background for the excellent feature film Eighth Grade.

Note the surprisingly estimable line-up of documentaries on Hulu, but now we turn to a more traditional source of quality nonfiction film, PBS.  It’s always worth keeping up with the documentaries of interest offered in various series like “Independent Lens” and “POV” and “American Masters,” but here I highlight recent offerings on “American Experience” and “Frontline”

On the former, McCarthy (PBS) usefully recapitulates the brief transit of the senator whose name has become a byword for the persistent strain of American politics that relies on outright disregard for truth, coupled with demonization of marginal populations (sound familiar?).  In the Fifties, at least, there were some guardrails on the American political system, and some Republicans (including Ike) with the backbone to resist.  Rest assured that the spirit of Roy Cohn lives on, and Trump seems to have found his avatar in William Barr.  As in the classic Emile de Antonio documentary Point of Order, one of the most telling scenes is from the Army-McCarthy hearings, when Cohn is reacting to the moment when the senator self-destructs on national tv, back in the day when no politician actually believed he could get away with shooting someone in plain sight on Fifth Avenue.

Speaking of which, the reliably informative news series “Frontline” recently featured a two-part program on “America’s Great Divide,” with two hours each devoted to the Obama and Trump presidencies, as they solidified the division into partisan rancor, one inadvertently and the other purposefully.  The recapitulation was coherent and telling, with many voices on both sides.  Pointedly poignant – not to say nostalgic – and then enraging, the best part for me came from extended sequences I’d missed at the time, such as Barack’s singing “Amazing Grace” at the services for the Charleston church shooting.  I gather this production is available on Amazon Prime as well as PBS Passport.  Worth the time, if you can stand it.

Frontline also provided the platform for one of the Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature, For Sama (MC-89, PBS).  Waad Al-Kateab’s film puts a face (and mangled bodies) on to the bland assertion that Syria is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis (though there is Olympics-level competition for that title).  She’s a student in Aleppo when the protests against Assad escalate, and soon becomes a television journalist.  She covers the years of air attacks by the regime and the Russians, until the resistance is broken.  Along the way she marries a doctor and has a daughter (the Sama of the title), while documenting the airstrikes specifically targeting hospitals.  The protracted siege is an unimaginable situation, but you are there with the family, and with the beleaguered community, whether you want to be or not.  Hard to watch, but worth the effort.    

To round off this post, I return to another Oscar nominee from Netflix, Edge of Democracy (MC-81, NFX).  This is also a first-person film directed and narrated by a young woman; Petra Costa examines the political history of Brazil during the course of her lifetime, from the institution of democracy after military rule in the 1980s to the revenge of authoritarianism with Bolsonaro (Brazil’s Trump, in one of many scary parallels to American politics).  She has a unique perspective – as granddaughter of an influential oligarch, but daughter born to young radicals in hiding from the regime – and privileged access to Lula, as the union leader turned popular President is universally known, and Dilma (Rousseff), his hand-picked successor as President.  In an impeachment trial that was more of a sham and hoax and witch hunt than the USA’s, Dilma was removed from office.  Lula was sent to jail on a seemingly trumped-up charge, thereby forbidden to run in 2018 though released in 2019, paving the way for right-wing forces to install the useful idiot Bolsonaro.  It can’t happen here?  Maybe it already has.

It is worth noting that while women have been notoriously left out of Best Director nominations at the Academy Awards, all five Best Documentary Features candidates were at least co-directed by women.  The world would certainly be a better place if more films were made by women, and more attention were paid to them.

Martin Scorsese recently made a stir by opining that the superhero films that dominate the multiplexes are not “cinema,” but I believe he would agree with me that these documentaries are certainly what cinema was meant to be, what Roger Ebert defined as a “machine to generate empathy.”