Best Boy (1979)

Winner of many awards including an Academy Award for best documentary, I found “Best Boy” to be a beautifully told story about a unique family.  What makes the Wohl’s special is that they have a 50-year old son with a mental disability.  Phillip Wohl or “Philly”, although mentally a lot slower than normal, is a sweet, compassionate, social man who has more excitement about life than most people.  Philly lives with his mother and father, who have taken care of him since birth.  The film covers months of the hardships, milestones, and adventures of Philly and his family.

The film, which was made by Philly’s cousin Ira, primarily uses footage with few cut scenes and little narration.  This creates a feeling of reality as I was watching the documentary, and it generally felt unedited and true to life.  The only downside with this method is that many times, the scenes ended up being quite long.  Fortunately, Philly was so mesmerizing that as a viewer, I found it hard to lose focus while watching.  The cut scenes that were used in the film where when a month or two had gone by, and that seemed appropriate.

Another interesting element the director used was the placement of focus.  Many times, it seemed as if the focus should have been in one place, but it was in a completely different location.  In one scene in particular, Philly and another person are in the foreground having a conversation, but the camera is focused on Philly’s mother sitting in the background.  She has the lost, empty look of a new widow that could only have been capture with her unknowingly being taped.  The director took what started off as a happy scene and turned it into a sad, somber look at depression, something the viewer might not have seen otherwise.  I found this method very effective, and hopefully will use something similar in my Milwaukee documentary.

An optimistic look at people living with mental disabilities, I would highly recommend this documentary.  Seeing disabled Philly so happy, outgoing, and ecstatic about life really seems to make one reevaluate their own life.  “Best Boy” is a well-done, true documentary about a sixteen year old man that truly loves life.

-Sarah Marcott

Philly and his mother

Philly

Night & Fog

I’ve known Alain Resnais’ documentary Night and Fog has existed for quite some time, as it always seemed to stare me down at my local video store.  So when I finally picked it off the shelf, I had an idea as to what was in store for me.  Although only a 31 minute film, Night and Fog is one of the first documentary’s to return to the Nazi concentration camps, from Ausschwitz to Dachau, the film combines newly shot color footage with historic footage from the actual time of the German occupation.

 

The combination of old and new footage offers a sort of context for the horrifying images of starving inmates and piles of malnourished corpses.  The color footage reexamines buildings and remnants of the death camps that were still standing at the time of Night and Fog’s creation.  They offer insight on just what the filmmakers are looking for in the old camps.  The narrator explores what the differences are between “normality” and the “reality” that inmates had to endure within the camp.  For example, the narrator explores the train tracks that lead up to the massive gates.  He mentions that at first the tracks seem normal, until on realizes that the gate they lead to is only meant to be entered one way.  Here, some of the most striking images are shown; German soldiers are being filmed forcing massive amounts of Jewish citizens into train cars.  It’s almost as if the German soldiers are not only present of the camera, but instead of being angry that they are being filmed, they continue their business pompously, as if they think that their actions are not only “right” but their duty to perform them makes perfect candidates to be filmed.

 

Other images seemingly shot on 16mm or 8mm camera’s have the same sort eery conundrum.  For example, if one knew they were performing a crime against humanity, usually being filmed would not be desirable, as now everyone who sees that footage knows of the crimes.  But since the German soldiers were either convinced of the duty to torture and kill, or claimed no responsibility, their actions made enduring memories by the camera have no affect on them.   

Bowling for Columbine, 2002

In this Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore discusses many key issues of living in an America where one can’t help but to wonder, “Are we a nation of gun nuts or are we just nuts?” With over 11,000 deaths a year in this country do to gun violence, when other countries in the world have less then one-hundred gun related deaths a year. The film starts us off at a bank were if you open an account you can get a free gun from a selection of over 500 held in the banks gun vault. Right away you get this underlining statement from Moore of I am at a bank that will give away free rifles, shotguns, or handguns if someone opens an account with this bank. How wrong should this be? Then through-out the film Michael Moore goes on a nation wide journey and even into Canada about not just necessary the events that happened with Columbine high school but just simply why we Americans are so fucked up when it comes to killing each other with guns when the rest of the world really isn’t like that. And that seems to be the man message of the film Us Americans, every last one of us weather we be white, black, Asian, Hispanic, male, female, adult, or child. Every last American in this country if fucked up in the head while the rest of the world doesn’t seem to get why we are the way we are uniquely American.

My main concern with this film was that it was a film that did talk about the events at Columbine high school. However this film also covered more then just what happened at Columbine. This film covered everything from issues of poverty in America, gun control, the appeal and scare tactics of our media constantly making all of us afraid, unequal pay, and blame. The film was about the shooting at Columbine but I felt that it was a film about more then that. When I first got this film in 2003 I had thought it would go in depth of why the killers did the shooting, what pushed them over the edge, who they new, interviews with the victims, why the boys couldn’t wait one more week to graduate and be done with high school and the shitty people in it. Answering that big question WHY!!! Ultimately this film was good, and indeed it was about Columbine, Americans, issues in America that contribute to gun violence, and it does an excellent job of making us examine ourselves. Michael Moore makes no attempt to have a laid out plan or list of answers of what to do to fix the problems in our country but he successfully shows us the problems in an attempt to hopefully wake-us up, as if to say, “Hey we need to change things now! It’s not hard all you have to do is try.

Matt Gonia

Film 203 Introduction to Documentry Production

Why We Fight (2005)

A question asked many times over, “Why do we fight?” This documentary by Eugene Jarecki covers the defense establishment from World War II to today (2004). With interviews from John McCain to Richard Pearl, this documentary covers many different ideals and facets on the problem of military-industrial complex; a term coined by Dwight D Eisenhower. Dwight D Eisenhower (Ike) warned of this problem when he left office; “Why We Fight” covers this problem over the years and shows the viewer exactly where it came from.

The film opens up with original footage of Dwight D Eisenhower giving his farewell address on January 17, 1961. In this speech Ike states that, “three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.” After this is stated there are cutaways to modern war machines sitting in a machine graveyard. The difference in time periods really brings forth Ike’s concerns and the viewer can see how pertinent his speech was.

During the film there is a mixture of modern interviews, semi-modern scenes of war (including Vietnam and battles in the Middle East), and old footage from the World War Two era. The contrast between these cuts is blatantly evident, but it really helps to reinforce the idea that what was said over 40 years ago is painfully pertinent today. Interviews, from everyone from a scientist that works on making new and improved bombs, to senators really give the viewer a feeling of how in depth the problem of this military-industrial complex really stretches, and how forward looking Dwight D Eisenhower really was.

Brother’s Keeper

Brother’s Keeper was a documentary about Delbert’s trial convicting him of killing his brother. There were four brother’s in all living in a little shack nestled in their farm. After the opening credits the movie begins with the audio of a court session and video of Delbert working on the farm. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, the film makers, gave just enough audio of the court session at the beginning of the film to hook the audience. I thought that was a great way to begin the film. With the audio in the background Joe and Bruce were able to portray Delbert, the brother convicted of murder, working in the field. The scene lacks in action. The audio created curiosity for the audience. What the video of Delbert working in the field did was create a feeling for the audience. The scene took place in the early mourning fog. Which created mystery. The combination of the video and audio created wonderful anticipation for what was to come next.

I thought the title of the film was very misleading. Joe and Bruce presented a lot of the neighbors throughout the film. Especially Dave Goff and Harry Thurston. The close up display of Dave Goff’s face while interviewing him allows the audience to feel they are actual part of the film. A connection was created through the audience and what Dave Goff was saying. Harry Thurston was shown visiting the grave and in the house of the brothers implying his great connection and relationship with the brothers. The title is part of the Cain and Abel story as told in Genesis 4:1-16. The story is about Cain murdering his brother Abel. By titling the documentary, Brother’s Keeper, I think the film makers should have told the story another way. A way in which implied Delbert as being guilty. Instead the film makers presented a lot of individuals which stated his innocence.

Perhaps the film makers did find evidence in there time spent documenting the film. However, could not show there evidence in the film and decided to imply it in the title. The story of Cain and Abel ends with the Lord’s punishment to Cain. The Lord allows Cain to live but banishes him from his homeland and Cain became a restless wanderer on the Earth.

This biblical story could symbolize the punishment for Delbert.

High School

Frederick Wiseman’s “High School”  floats around the titular location in what at first seems to be an almost stream of conscious collection of moments.  These individual scenes illustrate many of the facets of daily life at the school and are often connected by a rather intuitive kind of logic .  However as the film builds the initial guise of a mere anecdotal view of a high school sheds away to show what Wiseman really seems to be after.  It is not only a film about a particular high school or even the high school experience in general.  It is about America in a time of great generational conflict and even more broadly it is about the constant struggle of certain members of any society against the powers that be.

The interesting thing about this to me is not necessarily the ideas and issues he is dealing with, but the manner in which he is able to make a film that works on so many distinct levels.  Most importantly he does this by the exclusion of all unnecessary context.  Information such as people’s names, positions, or even the name of the school itself are only occasionally revealed through a casual mention of someone in the film.  By not giving us these things he allows what we see to transcend the specific situations at hand.  These are not just students and teachers.  These are people.

This is also echoed in the visual style of the film, most importantly through his use of close-ups.  Sometimes when people are talking all we see in the frame is their mouths.

Once again by giving us something which is detached from a specific identity he allows the actions that are playing out to become more Universal.  Even more interesting to me was his frequent  shots of hands which seem to be doing much the same thing.

-Johnathon Olsen