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NEWS
A Certain Tendency of the Documentary
CinemaBY ANTHONY KAUFMAN | MARCH 9, 2012 8:15 AM | 2
COMMENTS
The celebrity-driven nonfiction film has become an unwelcome
mainstray of the documentary form recently. Not
only is Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim ("An
Inconvenient Truth") directing commercials for none
other than public persona #1 Barack Obama, but a whole slew of
pop-docs are premiering at the Tribeca Film
Fesival next month, with new films on Joseph Papp, musicians
such as Queen and Tony Bennett, and sports
figures such as the Red Sox's Tim Wakefield and the Met's R.A.
Dickey. There's also star-studded docs on digital
cinema ("Side by Side," featuring James Cameron, David Fincher,
George Lucas, etc) and Morgan Spurlock's latest
"Mansome" (with interviews with Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Paul
Rudd, Zach Galifianakis, etc). And do I care?
Not really.
Tribeca has premiered its fair share of important docs,
from "Jesus Camp" to "Taxi to the Dark Side." But it's
also increasingly become a home for hagiographies and
celebrity profiles, with films on famous designers
(Halston) and famous musicians (Elton John) and
figures (Joan Rivers). While I'm sure there's place for
these name-driven docs, and the star status of their
subjects drive a certain amount of ticket sales, by and
large, the films don't interest me.
Granted, I have stayed away from many of them, so
perhaps I can't accurately judge this tendency in
documentary filmmaking, but it seems to me that there
is a general lack of complexity in the work. After all, how much
can you paint a shaded portrait of a celebrity who
probably has some control over the subject matter, and doesn't
want to be shown in a negative, or ambiguous,
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light?
At Sundance, I thought Joe Berlinger's Paul Simon documentary
"Under African Skies" largely avoided the pitfalls
of the celebrity doc, showing some of the problems with Simon's
South African visit during the Apartheid years,
but then again, the movie also suffered from it, and would have
been far more complex and interesting, I suspect,
if Simon wasn't so actively involved. The problem is that
celebrities are celebrities for a reason, they're charismatic
and persuasive and have a great screen presence, which makes
them natural documentary subjects. (Look, some
of the greatest docs ever -- "Don't Look Back," "Gimme Shelter,"
for instance, focus on pop stars.) But it'snecessary to inject any
strong film with a level of ambiguity that is often lacking in
these films.
Unlike the Premiere and Spotlight sections at fests, the
competition slates at Sundance, SXSW and Tribeca are rife
with documentary films that have not a single famous name in
them. Perhaps that is where we should focus our
attention.
MORE: Political Docs
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BILL NICHOLS | MARCH 9, 2012 12:50 PM
We had The Most on Heff long ago, Lonely Boy on Paul Anka, Dont
Look Back on Dylan, etc so what's wrong
with celeb dox, or like Hotel Terminus (on the search for Klaus
Barbie) on the heinous and anti-celebrity? The
main issue here, it seems, is hagiography not celebs as such.
Can a filmmaker have a critical, distanced view of
the subject or is all swoon and worship? Of course ads for Obama
aren't even docs in any meaningful sense
unless all nonfiction (I think they're nonfiction!) equals dox.
Maybe the new feature on Sarah Palin will be the
answer. b
FED | MARCH 9, 2012 11:15 AM
Or you can go to the many great regional documentary film
festivals that actually celebrate these filmmakers in
earnest, like Full Frame, True/False, etc. and avoid the
for-profit festivals.
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