One reason I’ve been reviewing fewer fiction films lately is that I’ve been watching a lot of documentaries, and here I’m going to sort through a range of recommendations. Titles in bold are available on DVD from Netflix (or soon will be) and recommended by me. The others are worth looking for if you have a particular interest -- they may be found on the linked-to network schedules, or possibly On Demand..
First off is the recent documentary outing by feature director James Toback: Tyson (2009, MC-83). Like you, probably, I did not think I was all that interested in Mike Tyson, but I found this film almost hypnotizing in its formally inventive approach to film portraiture. Much of the film is Tyson himself speaking to the camera, in that incongruously high-pitched lisp, as if in self-reflection before an unseen therapist, but broken up into overlapping pictures and sound, which suggest the multiple facets of a divided self. He seems utterly believable in all his contradictions. There is enough footage recapitulating his career to establish that he might have been one of most powerful, if not the greatest, boxers of all time, and also to delineate his public disgrace in a rape conviction and prison term, plus the ignominious career-ending bout in which he bit the ear of his opponent. Tyson never goes quite so far as to plead, “I am not the animal you think I am,” but the film makes that case eloquently, and perhaps convincingly.
There are several stations worth monitoring for outstanding documentaries. Sundance Channel features Monday as Doc Day. I have been engrossed recently in the five-part (and perhaps continuing) series, Brick City, which portrays the city of Newark in much the same way that The Wire does Baltimore, though with more uplift and less crushing despair. In one of its aspects, this series from Mark Benjamin and Marc Levin picks up where the excellent documentary Street Fight leaves off, with the story of mayor Cory Booker, the media-savvy Obama avatar who is bringing hope to a city that is a byword for bleakness. Other threads include the story of a police commissioner brought in to lower the murder rate, and a gang girl gone good who is developing a mentoring program for other gang girls. If 90% of success is showing up, then the filmmakers are pretty much there, finding themselves in the middle of one amazing scene after another. One of the joys of documentary is deep-felt access into other people's lives, and this series has that in ... um, I want to say spades, but there are some honkies too.
“Real Sex” and “Taxicab Confessions” aside, HBO demonstrates a real commitment to quality documentaries, frequently featured on Mondays as well. From this link, you can get more information on these films, listed in order of the urgency of my recommendation. In Boy Interrupted, a filmmaking couple try to come to terms with the suicide of their teenage son, in a wrenching but not exploitive manner that is edifying to the viewer as well as cathartic for them. The Yes Men Save the World with media stunts like going on tv masquerading as a corporate spokesman to apologize and offer reparation for the health disaster of Bhopal -- they are inventive and funny and jaw-droppingly revealing of the ethos of big business. The Last Truck: The Closing of a GM Plant watches the last vehicle come off a massive assembly line in Ohio, and reveals the mixed feelings of the laid-off workers who have devoted most of their lives to the disappearing workplace. Prom Night in Mississippi is a bit of a stunt but turns out to be revealing, as Morgan Freeman offers to pay for the first integrated prom in his small hometown, which catalyzes debate over the lingering legacy of racism but also suggests the hope of a new generation free of the hatreds of the past. The Nine Lives of Marion Barry is like Tyson in going some way toward rehabilitating a black man who has become notorious for bad behavior. The Recruiter is just as much about the recruited, as we follow a variety of Texas youth into the military and through basic training, in a film that could be taken as a prequel to Stop-Loss. (Not a documentary but a spinoff from a great one, HBO's Grey Gardens, with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange as the Bouvier daughter and mother, was not as superfluous as I imagined -- while some scenes were duplicated from the Maysles brothers' classic, the backstory is filled in and the actresses illuminate their characters -- and deserved the slew of Emmy nominations it picked up.)
PBS has long been a mainstay for documentaries, and they are a number of series I check regularly, foremost among them Independent Lens. Among the recent highlights are Herb & Dorothy, an absolutely delightful and fascinating look at the Vogels, a postal worker and librarian, who amassed an astounding collection of art from the Sixties on in their tiny Manhattan apartment, before three moving vans carted it away to the National Gallery -- I will look for the first opportunity to show this at the Clark. Butte, America mines fascinating archival footage and retrospective interviews to tell of the highly emblematic rise and fall of the "richest hill on earth," whose deposits of copper made the city boom, but whose mining companies went bust and left a legacy of environmental devastation.
Frontline is frequently worth checking out for extended treatment of important issues of the day, and Wide Angle is the same with an international perspective. Particularly notable from the latter is Time for School 3, which like the 7 Up series tracks a diverse group of children through time, ranging from an Afghan girl to a Brazilian boy, from a Romanian girl to a Kenyan boy. Initiated when an international accord promised a free education to every child in the world by 2015, this very well-done and affecting series periodically checks in on how that promise is being met or not in a variety of countries.
Two other venerable PBS series worth tuning into are American Experience and American Masters. Two episodes I've enjoyed lately are an old one of the former, A Midwife’s Tale, which uses an old diary and effectively minimal historical reenactments to offer a window on everyday life in colonial New England, and a recent broadcast on the latter, Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound, which I didn't expect to watch, but caught while channelsurfing and remained caught by through its length -- I tend to think of Baez as a pretty voice covering other people's songs, but this film makes a case for her as a social activist who used singing as her most effective tool.
I've recently watched two other documentary dvds from Netflix that I commend to your attention. Kestrel’s Eye is a delight for birdbrains, offering a genuine bird's eye view of the lives of a family of hawks living in a cranny of an old Swedish church -- a spare but astonishing nature film, without narration or music, but with incredible camera angles and uncanny intimacy with the subject.
Many years ago I saw a memorable short film called Organism, a film about New York City which uses time-lapse photography to portray the city as a huge living organism. When I started to think about doing a film series of "city symphonies" at the Clark, I went looking for it and found it on a dvd called The Films of Hilary Harris -- it was every bit as good as I remembered, and as a bonus included 9 Variations, which is as good a dance documentary as I have ever seen, utterly simple but visually stunning and extremely sensual.
There's a world of great documentaries out there, and if you're not looking for them, you're missing a great part of the art of film.
No comments:
Post a Comment