The Ties That Bind vs. Never Cry Wolf
1985. Directed by Su Friedrich.
A 55-minute documentary shot in black and white,
The Ties That Bind feels a bit more like a student art film than something that would garner a theatrical release. Much of the photography is beautiful and performative. As Friedrich's mother tells her story of being a teenager in Germany during the rise of Hitler and the Second World War, we see shots of body parts interspersed with film of someone drawing in magazines, making a model house, and peeling vegetables.
The story is told through question and answer. We see the documentarian’s voice in scratched letters across the screen.
This element really slows the film down and makes it feel like a PBS children’s show. And the questions when done one word at a time started to piss me off. One sentence: “Couldn’t your family help you out?” Well, that would’ve worked just fine as “Couldn’t your family help?” or “Couldn’t your family help you?” I mean, the film is only 55 minutes long; it doesn’t need to be drawn out like this. And at least one sentence has a possessive error.
In the end, the slow pace and the quietness and all the blank screentime make the story seem more rather uninteresting. The story itself doesn't help too much either.
I was a bit glad when
The Ties That Bind didn't turn out so well, since it took some pressure off of
Never Cry Wolf, a film apparently rather beloved by a few folks around these parts. Also, I saw on IMDb that
Never Cry Wolf came out one day after I was born, which also inclines me to smile upon it. Also also,
Never Cry Wolf has cute wolf cubs, so, it’s automatically at an advantage for that reason.
Charles Martin Smith plays Tyler, who is sent up to the Arctic by the government to figure out if wolves are killing all the caribou or something. It doesn't really seem to matter why he's there. But dude looks and sounds and has several of the same postures as David Cross in
Arrested Development. It really felt as if Tobias Fünke were the main character of this film. And that was weird. So, I tried to ignore the narration and focus on the footage of beautiful Alaska’s snowy mountain peaks. Then, when the Inuits show up, the diary voice-over is so
Dances with Wolves-y (or, rather,
Dances with Wolves is so Never Cry Wolf-y) that I get super-distracted. Costner uses the same cadence, and the subject matter and one particular scene are strikingly similar. I want to rename this film
Tobias Fünke Never Cries While Dancing with Wolves.
Some other notes:
- Brian Dennehy is pretty much fantastic. He’s such an Al Swearengen fill-up-the-whole-screen type of figure.
- The film nicely drew me in to the adventure of the scenario. ...But I come from a family of suckers for wilderness adventure plots.
- Three words: mouse eating montage. I wanted someone here to laugh at it with me.
Verdict: Never Cry Wolf moves on. It probably won't go much further, but it certainly has merit. Alaska, puppies, buttcheeks. I can't believe my family never watched this when I was a kid. I mean, we had
The Adventures of the Wilderness Family on tape.