Country Boys

I can’t believe I watched the whole thing. This appeared as three successive two-hour episodes of “Frontline” and extensive promotion led me to tune in with hopes of seeing the poor white trash version of Hoop Dreams. Not even remotely. This story of two rural Kentucky boys trying to make it through high school owed more to reality tv than to the documentary aesthetic that I prize. It was possible to take an interest in the two boys and their families and the alternative school they attended, but I spent a good part of the running time contemplating the film’s deficiencies as “direct cinema” or “cinema verite.” So here are some rules for documentary posed by the negative example of David Sutherland’s Country Boys (2005, PBS/T, n.), which might have been twice as good at half the length:

* You have to shoot a lot of footage, but you have to throw out almost as much, especially shots and scenes you fall in love with but which do not advance the story.

* You must maintain narrative drive, whether through Aristotelian dramatic unities or through some modern or postmodern strategy for propelling the story to its conclusion.

* Without making a game or a big deal of it, you have to acknowledge the camera’s and filmmakers’ presence on the scene.

* There is no absolute prescription against narration (or intertitles), especially when you lack the context or connection to give your scenes their full meaning.

* It’s okay to use subject voiceover to provide some narration, but you cannot simply break the bond of synchonous sound that gave first impetus to the movement of Maysles, Pennebaker, Leacock, Wiseman et al. You cannot edit a mosaic of conversation and lay it over a visual sequence of dubious connection, taking a statement from one context and putting it in the unseen mouth of the character in another scene. Aural and visual editing artistry is okay, but there needs to be a contract of authenticity.

* You should avoid excessive longshots of your characters walking through the landscape or streetscape, with a voiceover or song meant to convey meaning, or even worse conveying no meaning at all besides your own pictorial pleasure.

* You can establish your own ground rules -- whether Wiseman’s scrupulous observation, or the alternation of talking heads right at the camera, or inserting yourself provocatively in the scene as has been made famous by Michael Moore but done better by others -- but you cannot fudge the rules you have made.

* It’s not enough simply to snoop on alien lives, bemused by their stangeness and squalor. Your characters have to become emblematic while remaining idiosyncratic. You must strive for an open-eyed empathy, neither a blank stare nor a sentimental sympathy at your characters’ plight.

* Do not repeat shots or scenes or pieces of dialogue, especially when your film is languorous already. Know when enough is enough.