EDITORAL: Red Eye and Documentaries, Topical Films

It should come as no surprise that I partake in the twice-annual Criterion Collection sale at Barnes & Noble. This year, one of the new releases I looked forward to most was Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine. For those that know me, adding Moore’s landmark film to my collection might raise eyebrows: aside from his debatable credibility, his viewpoints and messages tend to conflict with my own personal values. I don’t want to get too political, nor do I want to give out too much of my political identity here, but I will tell you this much: I don’t align with any particular party, but I like to call myself a constitutionalist – you can probably guess where my sociopolitical opinions sit. I will do my best to keep elements of my political identity as minimal as possible from this point forward.  

I seriously contemplated straying from topical documentaries when I first started Red Eye. My reasoning: under more circumstances than I’m comfortable with, there tends to be a lot of one-sidedness, distortion of facts, existing less as an educational piece than a cinematic means of confirmation bias, you’ve heard the complaints about “documentaries” time and time again, and I’m saying nothing new. Additionally, I admit that I don’t keep up with the details of world events (life is stressful enough, even without awareness of the world’s countless qualms), so I’m kind of a fish out of water when it comes to certain issues. Even with documentaries that are nobly being as objective as possible, one can still confidently guess where the filmmakers stand on the issue they’re documenting (Jesus Camp comes to mind regarding this).

When I was reviewing new films regularly, I was lucky to not have had to face the predicament of an upcoming topical documentary, but if I do decide to keep up with the latest in movies, I will be more open to topical films, no matter how one-sided they may be. I learned something when I was writing my ‘Great Favorites’ review on Mike Leigh’s Meantime – not a documentary, but still a topical film (Thatcherism in that movie’s case). Granted, I was not around in the UK at the time of Margaret Thatcher, but I still cared enough about the characters in the film, subsequently concerned about Mike Leigh’s interpretation of the effects of Thatcherism.

Many times, a film is not so much a mirror of the world we live in, but simply an interpretation of our world and an attempt to make some kind of sense of it. With traditional narrative cinema, I think it’s fair to say we’re much more forgiving of one-sidedness here than with documentaries. After all, it’s just a movie. Fiction.

With documentaries, however, here’s where things get complicated. Let’s start with the definition of the word, which I’m pulling verbatim from www.dictionary.com:

Adjective

1.       Pertaining to, consisting of, or derived from documents.

2.       Movies, Television. Based on or re-creating an actual event, era, life story, etc., that purports to be factually accurate and contains no fictional elements.

I don’t think I’ve yet seen a documentary film that actually follows the rules of that second definition (maybe with the exception of Tony Kaye’s terrific Lake of Fire), and I think many of my cinephilic peers can say the same. Because of this, I’ve heard documentaries criticized time and time again for not being, well, “documentaries”. While I completely understand this viewpoint, I think it is also being too dismissive – granted, we all have our biases and our values, but so does the person making the film. Perhaps I’m being redundant, but what I’m getting at is that a documentary is still a movie, therefore it is still somebody’s interpretation of a situation. Maybe we should be calling them “editorial” films instead, but that’s a conversation for another time.

Back to the whole “documentary” conversation; though there is an objective textbook definition, from my perspective, the film community has adopted its own definition of the term (call it a “street” definition, if you will), which goes something like this: a film that tells its story primarily through interaction with real people, real situations, and real environments, as opposed to that of fictional narrative cinema. Think about it for a moment: taking traditional documentaries out of the picture, think of abstract and experimental films like Sans Soleil and Koyaanisqatsi. These are films that are telling their stories through very unconventional means, but are still classified as documentaries, and the reason is simply because of the use of real footage.

Now let’s return to the conversation of “topical films”, using Bowling for Columbine as an example. Because this is an editorial piece you’re reading, I am not going to review the film, but I do want to get my nutshell thoughts on it out of the way first. For starters, I do think this is a solid film and has held up remarkably well, an impressive feat for a film as topical as this (unfortunately, due to mass shootings still being rampant throughout the States). This is also an important movie for my development, as it’s one of the first films I’ve seen that really opened my eyes to a whole other way of thinking, specifically the whole theme of fear and consumption (the Marilyn Manson was one of the most mind-blowing things I’d seen in my teenage years). And as somebody who is pro-Second Amendment, I don’t think it is nearly as anti-gun as many people seem to. I see Bowling for Columbine simply as a means of starting a conversation on the reasons for the seemingly daily gun murders in the country.

That said, I also join conventional wisdom without hesitation that Moore is a bit too manipulative and heavy-handed to give him substantial credibility, and Bowling for Columbine is no exception to his usual tropes – his use of two Columbine victims as essentially tools to cease ammunition sales at K-Mart draws great ire from me. Of course I wasn’t there, and maybe those kids really wanted K-Mart to change their ways (I wouldn’t blame them), but when they talk, it sounds like they’re just parroting things Moore told them to say, and the whole scene ends up coming off as exploitive. While I don’t consider Bowling for Columbine a great film (therefore won’t be seeing an entry into my ‘Great Favorites’), I still like it, earning a 3.5 rating from me. So, how could that possibly be, considering that Moore and I are on completely different platforms?

I reiterate that a documentary is still a film, and because it is an art form, its goal is to make you feel something. When you get to a certain age, there’s really no changing one’s opinions on whatever topic it may be, at least for a while. With topical films, though, I don’t think anyone should go into one asking themselves “will this film change my mind on whatever issue is at hand?” I think what the viewer should be more concerned about is “did this film make me care about what it had to say throughout its duration?” I mentioned earlier that I was completely riveted by the drama in Mike Leigh’s Meantime, in spite of having not gone through the alleged hell of Thatcher-era England. And while I’m pro-second amendment, I was still listening, with open ears, to what Moore had to say in Bowling for Columbine.

But what about films that express opinions that I agree with? Well, I’m still willing to criticize where criticism is due. Let’s take Tom Naughton’s Fat Head as an example here, a documentary where Naughton plays devil’s advocate to Morgan Spurlock and Supersize Me by losing weight on a month-long fast food diet. The film talks much about the benefits of high-fat/low-carb dieting, as well as exposing much of the “baloney” we’ve been led to believe by Supersize Me as well as conventional wisdom on fatty foods. I learned a lot from Fat Head, and not only agree with it front-to-back, but I still really enjoy it as a film. That said, I still have my criticisms, namely its condescending remarks towards vegetarianism and veganism. Mean-spiritedness can only get a film so much credibility – the documentary format doesn’t earn it a free pass.

I assure you my intent with this piece is not to paint myself in a light that vainly screams “look how open-minded I am”, and if I come across this way, I do apologize. With art being subjective, I feel I can only express what I have to say by relating my own personal experiences and observations, and these thoughts on topical movies have been on my mind a great deal lately. Maybe I really am reading this issue completely wrong, and it turns out that films like Bowling for Columbine really are terrible. This could be the case, but if it was a bad film, why do I still find myself watching it seriously?