Docs rock!

Let me start with a confession of bias. To me, film originated with two opposing impulses -- Lumiere vs. Melies, the train pulling into the station vs. the rocket to the moon -- which I characterize as documentary vs. fabulation. I am a lifelong member of the party of Lumiere, and it’s not just that I prefer documentaries to fiction films, but that fiction films appeal to me by how much they document a real world, and lose my interest when they depend on fantasy and fashion. So following a rundown of features that I couldn’t quite bring myself to recommend, here’s a variety of nonfiction films that I heartily endorse. If the subject interests you, each is worth seeking out.

Scandalously unable to finance another feature after the high critical acclaim and low public response to The House of Mirth (2000), Terence Davies turned to documentary, and returned to the theme of his earlier films about growing up Catholic and gay in postwar Liverpool. Of Time and the City (2009, MC-81) is an unapologetic mash-up of poetry and music, archival footage and cinematic contemplation of Liverpool as it has become today. Davies is crotchety as well as passionate, acerbic as well as lyric. He appropriates, uncredited, a lot of poetry that was immediately familiar to me, notably Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” and music ranging from Mahler to dancehall. Along with images old and new, words and music weave a mood of reverie, of celebration and regret, in 72 artful and highly personal minutes. Davies may not be a guy you’d want to know, but he expresses himself in a film you ought to see.

Speaking of things you ought to see but don’t really want to, War Photographer (2002, MC-79) follows the career of James Nachtwey as he documents war and famine, devastation and destitution, around the globe, from Bosnia to Rwanda to Indonesia and beyond (after the film was made, he was seriously injured in Iraq, but seems to have recovered). Nachtwey is a quiet, even subdued personality who funnels all his passion into steely acts of attention and witness. Director Christian Frei follows him into the heart of the action, and the photographer also has a mini-cam attached to his camera, so we share his view as he takes his pictures. Besides the witness to human suffering, this film proffers a provocative debate on the ethics of photography, in implicit answer to Susan Sontag. What might be ghoulish sensationalism is rendered admirable by the hushed intensity of focus that the photographer brings to his anguished subjects.

Trouble the Water (2008) also follows behind and incorporates the images of a witness to devastation, in this case Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans. The eyewitness in this case is a 24-year-old woman from the Lower Ninth Ward, who couldn’t afford the “luxury” of evacuation and took refuge with family and others in the attic of one house as their neighborhood was inundated, wielding her camcorder the while. Documentarians Carl Deal and Tia Lessin discover her and her footage of the storm, and then follow as she and her husband escape to the relative paradise of Memphis but then return to participate in the reconstruction of New Orleans. Kimberly Roberts is a force of nature herself. Daughter of a drug addict who died of AIDS, she initially seems a bit wacked, but is gradually revealed as strong and articulate, with a rap persona who winds up crafting some powerful songs about the disaster, including the title song that plays over the final credits. Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke will remain the definitive view from outside of Katrina, but this film offers an intense and ultimately uplifting view from the inside. No dvd release has been scheduled yet, but it has been shown on HBO. Watch for it.