As we embark on our top 20s, it's probably as good a place as any to rendezvous on documentary picks, and also to acknowledge the growing burden on what's to come of a widely accepted film canon—as Steven puts it, "when I hear 'favorite' I am inexorably drawn to 'best.'" That's an understandable impulse, but equally so, at least for me, is the contrarian one to push against exactly that. I have been making a project the past few years of going through the movies listed at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? (link below), the carefully calibrated inventory, updated annually, of the critical consensus greatest of the greatest. It currently starts Citizen Kane, Vertigo, The Rules of the Game, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Godfather. You get the idea.
It's interesting what a range of reaction I have to them, almost certainly distorted by the pressure that inevitably accompanies the very idea of "best." Some I love (they are ahead on my list, or previously mentioned), some I don't much care for even as I grudgingly allow their attractions (The Searchers, Battleship Potemkin, La Dolce Vita), and many more, like The Rules of the Game, I am mostly indifferent to. (One, The Passion of Joan of Arc, was sacrificed to make room for this—I'm happy for the opportunity because, shortly after Steven named Hoop Dreams back in the 40s, I was surprised to realize I didn't have even one documentary on my list.) A good many of my picks still to come probably fall more in the category of "favorites," and indeed one of my key criteria has been how often I've seen something. If I've seen one picture six times and another twice, the one I've been drawn to more often gets the edge in rankings. It's more self-evidently a favorite, no matter how far out of the critical mainstream it may be. I'm trying as hard as I can simply to let "best" take care of itself.
Another project in recent years has been chasing down documentaries, a golden age for which we are supposed to be living in. That task, as so many others like it nowadays, has been made a good deal easier by Netflix and the many avenues for gaining access to pictures that once you could only wait and hope would eventually show up at local art houses, repertory theaters, or offbeat rental venues. My sense is that the affordability of prosumer electronics has certainly put the production of documentaries within the reach of vastly more people. My favorite kinds of documentaries, which tend to be highly personal and eccentric (though not always), are indeed more ubiquitous than ever, but the ratio of gold to dung remains about what it is in any creative endeavor. For every big winner there are two OK-to-good titles and a dozen or more mediocrities. It's as discouraging and as gratifying as anything else.
So, right, my pick—finally. Capturing the Friedmans weaves threads from three different strains of documentaries that I particularly like, and does so quite successfully, almost effortlessly: it's equal parts freak show (think early Errol Morris), aching profile of the interior lives of middle-class, mid-20th-century America (think Ross McElwee), and true-crime drama (think the Investigation Discovery channel). In the end I think it counts more than anything as a "just go see it" picture, though it's not easy to watch—in many ways the Friedmans are their own worst enemies, not only in the actions they choose to take or not take but quite explicitly in who they actually are, which only becomes more evident as the film goes on, lending it a kind of dense complexity of which few pictures of any kind are capable. The Friedmans' single-minded dedication to documenting every last thing about themselves serves them well, on balance, especially once the calamity of being accused of unimaginably heinous crimes descends on two of them.
This is controversial stuff, and filmmaker Andrew Jarecki does not always manage to get out of his own way, in terms of his point of view on many of the matters of opinion in the case (it's not too hard to see where his beliefs fall). Nor does he always entirely resist the impulse to milk the most explosive details of it for their most lurid values. But as a whole it works. You don't come out of this documentary exactly the same person you were going into it.
It may seem a bit silly or presumptuous to say, but I'm convinced that in the long run Capturing the Friedmans will come to be seen as part of uncovering the dimensions of a notably virulent mass hysteria into which American culture has been plunged for most of our lives. It's a fear of sexuality that has led us to project and condemn in others the worst in ourselves, and truth be damned. It was spurred by birth control and inflamed by AIDS, but the template was established a few centuries ago in Salem, Massachusetts. The Jonbenet Ramsey case may stand as the best well-known example of the pattern to date (the most significant developments in that case have occurred well past the media use-by date and out of the glare of publicity). There's another good example whose epicenter actually took place within walking distance of where I presently live, whose details can be found in a fine book by Lawrence Wright called Remembering Satan. Capturing the Friedmans takes its place with these.
Trailer
They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?
Phil #21: Crumb (Terry Zwigoff, 1994) (scroll down)
Steven #21: Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)
Yeah, it was fun doing this when I get to spout off like that. Actually, what happened is that when Steven posted his #21 pick, Night and Fog, Phil called an audible prompting the two of us to pick documentaries for that slot. In a perfect world I would have gone with Gates of Heaven, Phil worried I would pick Crumb one day ahead of him, and in the end I took the easy way out, going with a documentary I had already written up (here). It had been too long since I'd seen Gates of Heaven and no time to get to it. I do rank Crumb probably a little higher than Capturing the Friedmans, but the latter is nonetheless definitely something special.
Speaking of Terry Zwigoff, even if we weren't, exactly, I saw an early Zwigoff recently, Louie Bluie, a 60-minute documentary, and really loved it. It reminded me of some of Les Blank's stuff, for the obvious reasons. Louis Bluie has the advantage of a particularly engaging character at its center, Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong. He is lively and fun to listen to and he can do two amazing things: play the fiddle, one. Well, he plays a lot of instruments, but he is amazing on the fiddle. And then his artwork is just so good, simple and evocative, very sure of itself, and always interesting and apparently so much of it. A real surprise. Definitely worth seeing—the art, documentary, all.
Fargo—I finally got around to taking another look at Fargo (Phil's #28) and I'm glad I did. My impression the first time I saw it, when it was new, was that it was a little too facile, playing on people's impressions of "Minnesota nice" and a general retrograde condescension toward Midwesterners. I hate to think this is because of my own Minnesota baggage, but maybe so. Anyway, it was the somber music of Carter Burwell that first clued me to how serious it actually is. Once I stopped trying to play along with the irony, which is understandably enough an overlay one tends to bring to Coens pictures, I found it really impressive—tense and suspenseful, with rich insights into the things people do, in extremity and otherwise, and completely first-rate the whole way. There are also some really stunning shots, all of them exteriors. And I have to admit, it does nail Minnesota. Another one packed with people I know.
The Sacrifice—Tarkovsky's last, which clocks in at two and a half hours. I was expecting a slog but ended warming to it considerably. It feels a little like a Bergman picture with Erland Josephson, Allan Edwall (who was in Fanny and Alexander), and cinematographer Sven Nykvist all on hand. The doomsday aspect is heavy-handed and slightly dated, your basic World War III scenario (though it did come out in the year of Chernobyl, so there's that too). Much better than Lars von Trier's more recent Melancholia in terms of psychological cataclysm. As a clinical profile of nuclear anxiety, in fact, I'm not sure I've seen anything close—I thought it was really impressive on that point. The metaphors are obvious (notably the stunning climactic/titular event) but that doesn't mean they don't work on a visceral level. The missiles are absolutely one of the most frightening sounds I've ever heard. Edwall has an amazing scene, telling a story of his hobby, which is collecting incidents. And the film is a pleasure to look at every minute. I'm still trying to figure out Tarkovsky for myself, though have not yet seen either Solaris or Stalker. But I thought this was a whole lot better than I expected, and definitely worth seeing.
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