documentary filmmakers must satisfy the requirements of cinema, and sometimes this leads them to manipulate the situation or their footage.
Many viewers may believe that documentary films must be fair, objective,
unbiased, and completely factual. Journalism, television documentaries, and
Hollywood’s old “March of Time” newsreels probably influenced this ideal, but it does not begin to account for the wide variety of film styles and approaches that we call documentary.
Let’s examine three fundamental types of documentaries that differ from this ideal—films of advocacy, visual poetry, and direct cinema.
Case Study ADVOCACY: FAHRENHEIT 9/11
The best-known documentary of recent years probably
following the World Trade Center attack, and graphic
is Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), a passion-
footage of persons wounded or killed in the Iraq War.
ate attack on the Bush administration’s stated reasons
In all of this, Moore’s point of view was crystal clear.
for going to war in Iraq. Moore uses all the filmmaker’s
He was advocating the ideas that the Iraq War was a
tools—montage, music, humor, even switching to ani-
criminal enterprise, that the government had lied about
mated cartoon footage—to make the film a lively one,
its reasons for going to war, and that the war was a
and he injects his own persona into the film. Moore’s
diversion from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the
specialty is using humor to be obnoxious and rude to
actual people who had attacked the United States.
politicians and institutions of power, such as when he
Many viewers who disagreed with these ideas
interviews a congressman on the street and tries to per-
felt that Moore’s film lacked the objectivity that they
suade him to send his own children to fight in Iraq. This
believed documentary requires. Others, filmmakers
was a situation that he set up and provoked rather than
among them, responded in kind. Fahrenhype 9/11
one that he found and filmed, but he believed that the
(2004), for example, critiqued Moore and his film by
responses he caught on film would reveal a truth that
using his own style against him.
was otherwise hidden from view.
However, whether one finds Moore’s film credible
Moore also included in the film a great deal of footage
or not, there is little in it that is inconsistent with the
and news information that had been suppressed or mini-
documentary tradition because that tradition includes a
mally covered by mainstream media. This included the
clear line of advocacy filmmaking. In the 1930s, British
infamous seven minutes of video showing President Bush
filmmaker John Grierson supervised a series of classic
continuing to read with a group of school children after
films that championed the cause of working-class life.
learning of the World Trade Center attack, the protests
In pictures such as Drifters (1929), Housing Problems
that surrounded President Bush’s first inauguration, the
(1935), Coal Face (1936), and Night Mail (1936),
U.S. government’s efforts to fly prominent Saudi Arabian
Grierson used film, as he said, like a hammer and not a
executives and politicians out of the United States
mirror. “I look on cinema as a pulpit,” he said.
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Modes of Screen Reality
FAHRENHEIT 9/11 (MIRAMAX, 2004)
Political and social advocacy is a historical part of the documentary film tradition. Michael Moore’s film—a criticism of the Bush administration’s response to 9/11—is a recent example of this enduring tradition. In this scene, Moore badgers members of Congress with questions about whether they will send their own children to serve in the Iraq War. Frame enlargement.
In that same period, Pare Lorentz made two classics
by the Pentagon as being “against war.” Huston replied,
about the Dust Bowl and the farming crisis in Depression-
“Well, sir, whenever I make a picture that’s for war—
era America, The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and
why, I hope you take me out and shoot me.”
The River (1937), that criticized the government policies
More recently, Hearts and Minds (1973) offered a
which, in his view, had helped create these problems.
strong indictment of the Vietnam War, and from the
The Iraqi War was a direct stimulus for Fahrenheit
other side of the political spectrum, the “Swift Boat
9/11 , and wars have motivated many of the advo-
Veterans” critiqued the war record of presidential can-
cacy classics of documentary. Frank Capra’s Why We
didate John Kerry in a series of short films that helped
Fight (1943–1945) series used footage of the German,
cost him the election.
Japanese, and Italian enemy to advocate the cause of
Political advocacy, then, is a vital and enduring part
U.S. participation in World War II. John Huston’s The
of the documentary film tradition. Objectivity does not
Battle of San Pietro (1944) vividly showed the violence of
play a role in this tradition of filmmaking. Instead, the
the Italian campaign in World War II from the standpoint
filmmaker tries to persuade and to arouse viewers; many
of the infantrymen caught in it. Because the film was so
classic documentaries have aimed, in Grierson’s words,
candid in its portrait of battlefield death, it was criticized
to use film as a hammer. ■
Visual Poetry
The documentary tradition includes another line of filmmaking in which the emphasis is on the poetic properties of cinema, on the expressive possibilities that color, light, texture, movement, editing, and the elements of sound hold for the filmmaker.
One of the most popular documentaries of recent years is Winged Migration (2001), a study of the flight paths of migratory birds in different areas of the world.
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Modes of Screen Reality
WINGED MIGRATION
(BAC FILMS, 2001)
The documentary tradition
includes numerous works
that aim for visual poetry,
that seek rich, artistically
appealing manipulations of
image and sound. The ex-
traordinary cinematography
of this film celebrates majes-
tic images of birds in flight.
Frame enlargement.
Although the film features voice-over narration informing the viewer about the different birds on display, the real heart of the film is the flying sequences, composed of amazing shots that track the birds on their flight paths. Gliding through the air with the birds, the camera seems to come so close that a viewer could touch their feathers. The visual poetry in these shots is astonishingly beautiful, and they convey the sensation of flight more strongly and sensually than anything put on film before. In fact, the poetry of flight here is so powerful and pleasurable to experience that the film could have done without the voice-over narration.
Comparable films that use nature photography or outdoor action to modify one’s perception of reality include deep-sea documentaries like Aliens of the Deep (2005), which display novel and exotic colors and shapes in the form of rarely glimpsed ocean creatures. A recent series of surfing d
ocumentaries— Step into Liquid (2003) and Riding Giants (2004)—uses special camera rigs and slow motion to take the viewer inside the experience of surfing a giant wave, slowing down time and magnifying space in ways that enhance the visual spectacle. These films are less about providing information on what surfers do than about picturing the physical thrills of riding a huge wave.
On a more abstract level, one that does not visualize a specific location or activity, are the “life out of balance” films that Godfrey Reggio has been making since the 1980s— Koyaanisqatsi (Life Out of Balance, 1983), Powaqqatsi (Life in Transformation, 1988), and Naqoyqatsi (Life as War, 2002). Reggio’s films are a dizzying montage of footage showing landscapes, cities, people, and cultural practices across the world. Connecting the shots is a poetic logic that explores oppositions between rural and urban life, premodern communities and industrial ones, pristine nature and the ravages of pollution. The imagery expresses an underlying theme that the modern world is out of balance and is exploiting, consuming, and despoiling the environment on which all life depends. These ideas are explored in purely visual and musical terms (with music by composer Phillip Glass), without narration, spoken dialogue, or interview footage.
The visual poetry of these films is part of a long tradition in documentary, which includes the “city films” of the silent and early sound era. Dziga Vertov’s The Man With a Movie Camera (1929) is a montage of life in the Soviet Union, showing people working, 341
Modes of Screen Reality
THE MAN WITH A MOVIE
CAMERA (1929)
Dziga Vertov’s documentary
about Russian life in city and
country is a dazzling montage of
shots that show ordinary people
as well as the cameraman travel-
ing around to get his shots and
the film’s editor assembling the
footage. The poetics of Vertov’s
montage include these references
to the machinery of cinema. The
film begins with this image of the
cinematographer atop a huge
camera. For Vertov, documentary
realism is a matter of what the
camera sees and how it sees it.
Frame enlargement.
playing, and sleeping and the city environment itself, traffic, monuments, and bridges.
The film documents its era with poetry and self-consciousness. An impressionistic logic connects the shots, there is no narration, and through it all we see the film’s cameraman, moving through traffic and climbing buildings to get the shots. We see the film’s editor at work, and in a stop-motion animated sequence, we even see the camera assembling itself and walking off on its tripod.
Walter Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of the City (1927) provides a dawn-to-dusk montage of the city awakening, coming to life in its daily bustle, and then slowing down again as the day ends. There is no plot, narration, or characters; instead, the visual rhythm formed by the editing of often abstract shots (e.g., a stroboscopic series showing railroad tracks and telephone lines) provides the film’s organizing design. Alberto Cavalcanti’s Only the Hours (1926) explored Paris in an identical fashion.
Filmmakers take tremendous delight in using the tools of their medium, and the documentary tradition enables them to do this. Documentary is not incompatible with poetic expression, and many of its classics aim to provide viewers with an intensely stimulating audiovisual experience.
Direct Cinema
The ideal of documentary as an “objective” medium may seem, at first, to be consistent with direct cinema , a style of documentary that minimizes the filmmaker’s overt manipulations of the material. The style emerged in the 1960s, characterized by films that seemed to be merely observations, without advocating a set of politics or point of view, and in which the filmmaker’s editorial role seemed relatively neutral.
The most famous direct cinema filmmaker is Frederick Wiseman, whose films have focused mostly on social institutions, which are identified in the title— High School (1968), Law and Order (1969), Hospital (1970), and Juvenile Court (1975). Much of Wiseman’s work has been funded by and shown on public television.
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Modes of Screen Reality
Case Study CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS
Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmans (2003) is an
sustains ambiguity and uncertainty about whether the
extraordinarily powerful recent example of direct cin-
abuse as charged actually occurred. It is very common
ema. Jarecki’s film portrays the destruction of a family
for two people who see the film to come to very differ-
when the father and one of the sons are arrested on
ent conclusions about the father’s guilt.
charges of child molestation. Incredibly, the family
At the same time, Jarecki skillfully manipulates his
made its own home movies of the terrible, raging argu-
material. The father was a gay man living a closeted,
ments that followed the arrests, as the husband, wife,
heterosexual life. Jarecki reveals this point slowly over
and children exchanged bitter recriminations. Jarecki
the course of the film, and he withholds knowledge
used much of this footage in the film, providing a dis-
that the father’s brother is gay, until a very calcu-
turbingly candid portrait of family breakdown.
lated camera move late in the film reveals that the
By seeming merely to observe what had happened,
brother, interviewed throughout in a tight close-up,
Jarecki allowed the situation to remain very ambiguous.
is in fact sitting next to his lover. The addition of this
On the one hand, the father did have child pornog-
context late in the film forces the viewer to reassess
raphy stashed in the house. On the other hand, the
the emotional dynamics of the family’s life as they’ve
children who made the accusations were counseled by
been shown until now.
therapists whose specialty was uncovering repressed
These aspects of the film’s design point toward a basic
and unconscious memories using techniques that, since
truth about direct cinema, namely, that it does not pro-
then, have been discredited. Some of the children later
vide an unfiltered, objective portrait of reality. No film can
recanted their charges.
accomplish such a task, nor would one wish it to do so.
The film is explosive in its emotional power—and
A filmmaker inevitably exercises editorial control over the
much of this power is due to Jarecki’s reluctance to
material. Direct cinema is a style in which this seems min-
make any overt commentary on the events. This policy
imized, but it is always, in fact, a part of filmmaking. ■
CAPTURING THE
FRIEDMANS (MAGNOLIA
PICTURES, 2003)
The mysteries and ambiguities
of reality are explored in disturb-
ing fashion by filmmaker Andrew
Jarecki. The film examines a
family’s disintegration when the
father and son are arrested and
charged with terrible crimes.
Frame enlargement.
Wiseman’s films dispense with a “story” or plot, and by shooting many hours of material and carefully editing it down, he manages to show the complexity of these institutions and the ways that they wield power over people.
Wiseman’s work, and direct cinema in general, was made possible by new developments in the late 1950s that led to highly mobile cameras and synchronized sound 343
Modes of Screen Reality<
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recorders. These enabled documentary film for the first time to make extensive use of interviews and recorded dialogue in natural, relatively uncontrolled settings. Thus Wiseman could capture and show the remarks of people, naturally and in action, in the institutions he studied.
Documentary Today
Documentary is more alive and vital today than perhaps at any point in its long history. Moreover, in the last few years, a significant number of films have “crossed over” into mainstream distribution, attracting audiences that are much broader than is typical for the form. March of the Penguins (2005) is an impressive example, grossing $117 million worldwide after eight months in release. Warner Independent Pictures and National Geographic Feature Films acquired a French film entitled The Emperor’s Journey, directed by Luc Jacquet. Warner and National Geographic retitled the film, added a new music score, and eliminated the talking penguins of the original, replacing their voices with spoken narration by Morgan Freeman.
The resulting film’s popularity and Academy Award recognition showed how
powerful documentaries have become in today’s film culture. In addition to such pictures as Capturing the Friedmans, Fahrenheit 9/11 , and Step into Liquid , others include Spellbound (2002), a highly dramatic portrait of children’s spelling bee competitions; The Fog of War (2003), an evocative series of interviews with Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), about the crash of the Enron Corporation and its fraudulent practices; and Murderball (2005), about a bone-crunching sport played by quadriplegics.
The Internet provides documentary filmmakers with a new means of sales and
distribution. Producer–director Robert Greenwald’s Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004) and Uncovered: The War on Iraq (2004) were principally sold and distributed via the Internet, bypassing the traditional distribution routes of theaters and television.
Many have remarked that the best stories on film in the last few years have been found in documentaries. Certainly, it is the documentary that most connects film with the conditions of our lives, and the form is quite flexible, enabling filmmakers to use cinema at the height of their artistic powers.
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