Author Topic: March MDC 2011 Documentaries: Write ups  (Read 10284 times)

ProperCharlie

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Re: March MDC 2011 Documentaries: Write ups
« Reply #20 on: March 13, 2011, 06:36:06 AM »
Lake of Fire (Kaye, 2006)



When making a documentary about a subject as polarising as abortion, you’d expect something that took a position.  That you’d be exposed to the arguments of one side, while the other is either ridiculed, made monstorous or simply portrayed as wrong.  Tony Kaye does take a position with Lake of Fire, but it’s not the one you’d expect.  He attempts to be even-handed, unbiased and show the many shades of grey. 

And he succeeds.  The difficulty of this task isn’t to be underestimated, especially as it’s in the interest of some parties involved in the debate to ensure that views on abortion are as black and white as possible.  He does not flinch from the extremes.  He shows pro-life videos showing the recognisably miniature human body parts of aborted foetuses.  He goes further showing a late-term abortion from the doctor’s point of view, having to sift through mutilated limbs and head to ensure that everything has been removed safely from the womb.  He shows crime scene photographs from the various assassinations of doctors and abortion clinic workers.  He goes to the jail as one of those murderers is executed.  He allows their families of the murder victims to show their hurt, including one nurse who suffered horrific injuries in the bombing of an abortion clinic.  He allows the religious right to have their say.  He follows the journey of a woman having an abortion, from going into the clinic, through the various checks and consultations, through the abortion itself, ‘til we find out what her life is like and how impossible

None of this is criticised by the author.  He puts it all up on the screen and allows you to form your own opinion.  The 2-hour plus running length is traumatising, and you will have your views challenged.  If you emerge feeling vindicated in your pre-existing beliefs, there’s something wrong with you.  This is how you make a documentary.  Involving, shocking, abosobing, challenging.

Probably the definitive word on this subject, beautifully, ironically shot in black and white..  Thanks for the dictation Bondo.  I would thoroughly recommend this.

Also watched (from Bondo’s list):
Frontline: Sick Around the World (Palfreman, 2008) - refreshingly less bombastic than Michael Moore, a simple look at five different countries’ health systems and what the US can learn.  I would class this as TV reportage rather than documentary.  Coming from the UK I would have to say that the view of our system is fair (and certainly better than in Sicko), although already out of date.  Not bad, and certainly useful if you’re considering altering your health system (Mr. Cameron take note)

The Garden (Kennedy, 2008) - the tale of the South Central Farmers and their battle to fight to save their 14-acre urban farm from developers and the L.A. City Council.  I did not enjoy this.  There were many secret deals and out-of-court settlements that the film maker didn’t attempt to uncover.  There was another story to be told regarding corruption, urban development and racial disharmony that wasn’t broached.  Nor did we find out much regarding the internal politics of the farmers which is in itself interesting. Although more of this was on screen, it was brushed over.  Instead we stick with the farmers and a fight against the Man that I’ve seen several times in several other docs. This documentary was part of their fight but purported to be separate from it.  Not good.

Bondo

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Re: March MDC 2011 Documentaries: Write ups
« Reply #21 on: March 13, 2011, 09:08:53 AM »
Glad you appreciated the crafting of Lake of Fire, as a dictator it is something I know is going to be difficult to put someone through. And yay for checking out the other two as well. I think what appealed to me about The Garden was just as a portrait of dysfunctional local politics more than the details of the case.

Sandy

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Re: March MDC 2011 Documentaries: Write ups
« Reply #22 on: March 15, 2011, 03:15:20 PM »
Little Dieter Needs to Fly

(Werner Herzog voiceover) Men are often haunted by things that happen to them in life, especially in war or other periods of great intensity. Sometimes you see these men walking the streets or driving in their car. Their lives seem to be normal, but they are not.
 
From that beginning point on, I watched with great interest to see how Dieter Dengler, a man who put on the face of normalcy, lived and coped in a post traumatic world. I was interested because not everyone is able to put on that face.  From opening and shutting doors, storing long term provisions, to building his home high on a hill with walls of windows, Dengler’s coping skills were impressive.
 
Herzog had Dengler travel back to Laos, where he had been shot down, and staged some reenactments. Even though they were wooden and the men looked uncomfortable in their roles, it brought about one of the most moving moments in the film. When a man became troubled while Dengler conveyed an especially harrowing moment, Dengler stopped, put his arm around him and said “It’s just a movie, don’t worry about it. You still have your finger.”
 
Tactility inter-played throughout the film. Dengler comforted the cast, touched the tools and buildings, and explored the jungle. He explained that while the monsoons had raged he and Duane would hold each other for “warmth and friendship in this misery.”  My mind wandered back to a moment when I had met two Vietnam Veterans at a concert. I had brought my Vietnamese twin toddlers and the men asked if they could pick them up. They held the children and talked to them and cried. I had stepped away to give them some space, so I don’t know the words that were spoken. Even if only a little, they had found a tangible way to heal. Did the documentary do the same for Dengler?

Herzog gets out of the way just enough to allow Dengler to tell the story in his own redemptive way. But Herzog is there, in voice, in musical choices, in contextual connections and the prolonged ending shot.  Knowing it was the end, I wanted more—more details, more understanding, more time with Dengler. Perhaps Herzog had a similar reaction, motivating him to retell the story in a different format.
 
Side note:
The first time I heard of Dieter Dengler was when I was asked to help supplement the high school curriculum for a tribute band for veterans. My job was to compile a sample list of war movies for each of the major American wars (Boy, could I have used this forum!). When it came to the Vietnam War, I was stumped. Green Berets was not going to land on my list, but neither could I use anything aged above the students. Luckily I found Rescue Dawn and was able to submit my recommendations. I wanted to know the story after the story, so I put Little Dieter Needs to Fly in the queue. Well, other interests came and buried the documentary—until now.

Thank you jrod for the perfect dictation.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2011, 03:18:30 PM by Sandy »

smirnoff

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Re: March MDC 2011 Documentaries: Write ups
« Reply #23 on: March 15, 2011, 06:33:18 PM »
F for Fake

Orson Welles poetic (meandering) narration, the Three Card Monte-style editing, and constantly being on guard for fake-outs all added up to a very limiting experience. I did not trust his little "promise" bit at the beginning for a second, which seemed to be the right response as the film twisted and turned in deliberately confusing ways. Not to be deterred I tried to look through the flash and keep my eye on the money card, certain a con was in progress. What other reason for all noise if not to get you looking over here while the trick goes down over there, I asked myself. Alas, I was trying to outsmart a movie which actually wasn't so sneaky as I suspected, until later. Maybe this overactive paranoia is natural in a world where 1 out of 10 emails you get is from a Nigerian prince who needs you to send him $1000 so he can release a small fortune to you (never again! ;P). Anyways, I appreciated the questions it was asking more than the way it went about asking them.

Probably not the reaction you'd hoped for Totoro, but thank you for the dictation nonetheless.

Bondo

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Re: March MDC 2011 Documentaries: Write ups
« Reply #24 on: March 15, 2011, 10:46:49 PM »
My Kid Could Paint That
As to your wish that the film would've probed more deeply into the "what difference does it make" question, you might find this TED talk quite interesting. It discusses how context can change the perception of art in ways that don't seem logical, which in many ways relates to this movie.

Speaking on this topic, I just got to a brief flourish in the third Hitchhiker's book talking about how people valued a set of poetry less once a company had gone back in time to see if the poetry would be improved if the author had access to correction fluid and ended up changing things such that he never actually wrote them but rather copied them from the future published edition. Since they were now (always?) "fakes" instead of based on original inspiration, do they become less good even though they are the same as ever in wording and structure.

I swear, Hitchhiker's has a gag related to any topic you could think to discuss.

oldkid

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Re: March MDC 2011 Documentaries: Write ups
« Reply #25 on: March 15, 2011, 11:13:48 PM »


I swear, Hitchhiker's has a gag related to any topic you could think to discuss.

And this, dear Bondo, is the secret to the Filmspotters' favorite book.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

oldkid

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Re: March MDC 2011 Documentaries: Write ups
« Reply #26 on: March 17, 2011, 11:39:14 PM »
The House Is Black (Forough Farrokhzad, 1963)



This twenty minute documentary is the only film made by poet Forough Farrokhzad.  And this twenty minutes of film changed Iranian cinema.  There's not much to it.  It's pretty spare. It is in black and white, at times completely black.  It has almost no music, and no dialogue.  You almost never hear a subject talking, for most of the speech is a voice over (usually the director) reading a text from Psalm 139, or the Qur'an, or the book of Job.  Yet this isn't a particularly religious film.  And it certainly isn't entertaining.  Yet it is compelling, necessary cinema.

It is a movie that focuses on a leprosy colony in Iran, showing us the inhabitants as they live their daily lives. They are in school, feeding each other, even on a wedding march.  Yet the opening warns us that we will be shocked and even appaled.  Why?  Because leprosy eats the flesh, and these people are worn away.  The most shocking sight I saw was of one person whose whole face is worn smooth.  The opening tells us that is is simple ugliness that will offend our sensibilities.  And, to a degree the director is right.  But I can't help but think, is my pity or sorrow toward their ugliness any better than disgust, horror or shame.  But that is not the focus of the film.

The message of the film is this: leprosy is a horror and it can be stopped.  The fact of the matter is, for the most part, is has been.  Since 1963 leprosariums have been successful in arresting leprosy almost from the time it is detected.  At times people lose parts of their body, but lepers are not in as critical a condition as they were in 1963.  However, the medical ability was there in 1963 to stop leprosy.  The only thing that lacked was the will and organization to do something about it.

Even so, I would say that the message of the film to us today has little to do with leprosy per se.  It has to do with the fact that compassion and organization can change the world.  We can arrest AIDS all over the world, if we have the will.  We can offer clean water to everyone in the world, if we so desired.  We could end the debilitating nature of homelessness.  All we need is the compassion and organization.  Something could be done.

The film is spare, yet deep.  It looks at the world as starkly as Pyassa-- the poet expressing sorrow over injustice, poverty and our own insensitivity.  And yet that very expression of the poet's compassion is beautiful and even magical.  From the midst of ugliness comes the beauty of the heart.

A film like this shames us-- even forces us-- to look at the sorrows of the world and makes us see the humanity, the glory.  The boy who answers the teacher's question, "What is ugly?" with "feet, hands, heads" is, himself, beautiful because we can see his joyful innocence behind his scarred, misshapen face.

And the texts read over the sights of diseased bodies add another layer.  As it often does with religion, the stark suffering of humanity causes the text to seem ironic.  "You have formed me as a fetus", "God the Beneficent": Can this hold true?  Is God truly to be called benevolent in the face of human innocents dejected and brought low?  Yes.  For the beginning of the film reminds us: It is within human capacity to meet this need.  The only thing that prevents the need being fulfilled is not divine, but human, apathy.

I can see this film could be a game-changer.  It didn't really show me anything new, but the arrangement of the pieces was startling and magnificent.

Thank you for the dictation, Sandy.


"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Sandy

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Re: March MDC 2011 Documentaries: Write ups
« Reply #27 on: March 18, 2011, 12:44:17 PM »
I should be thanking you. I hoped that you could teach me something about this disquieting doc and you came through in a big way. It ties in well with your post:

http://pastoralblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/right-to-living.html

I have been grappling with the "pursuit of happiness" that is going on around me and am grateful for your words reminding me about not only being concerned, but actually doing something about it.

Totoro

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Re: March MDC 2011 Documentaries: Write ups
« Reply #28 on: March 23, 2011, 02:54:37 AM »
I have watched Burden of Dreams and will be posting a review once I have a lot of free time.  :)

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Re: March MDC 2011 Documentaries: Write ups
« Reply #29 on: March 26, 2011, 02:29:51 AM »
Burden of Dreams (Les Blank, 1982)

Let me start out this review by stating that I have not watched Fitzcarraldo yet. I haven't seen a lot of Herzog's works either. Burden of Dreams was a pretty interesting, if tepid documentary about the difficult production of Herzog's 1982 aforementioned picture, Fitzcarraldo. The story follows a man trying to build a opera house in the middle of the jungle. There's a problematic scene that needs to be shot - the lifting of the boat on to the top of a mountain - that serves as the ultimate crux of the film. The documentary itself follows Herzog as he journeys into the jungle to attempt to make a film that he believes, if he doesn't finish, he won't ever make a film again. By nature, Herzog seems to be a bit of navel gazing lunatic, which might just be the point of the film. He does have a lot of struggles. There are rumors spread saying that him and his crew are out to murder the natives who act in his film as extras, for instance. Yet I don't feel the weight of a lot of the struggles because Werner is so darn introspective and oblivious. The doc begins to center around him, but since he ties everything back to the movie, it keeps the viewer at a distance. I didn't find the production to be that interesting. There are some interesting bits here and there mainly involving the culture clashes between the German cast/crew and the natives, but most of it doesn't land that big of a impact on me. A week later and it's becoming quite forgettable. 3/5