Oscars 2012: Best Documentary

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST DOCUMENTARY

1. UNDEFEATED

2. PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY

3. HELL AND BACK AGAIN

4. IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT

 5. PINA

I know, I know: The Weinstein Company. Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, producer. Football.

Why would I like this?

I hate football, but I loooove a good football movie (and no, I don’t get it either). But especially when it’s Friday Night Lights meets Stand and Deliver meets The Blind Side — wait, what?  Yes, Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin’s doc, Undefeated, about inner-city high school football students in North Memphis, TN — where crumbling roofs, absentee dads and shootings are just as common as the Mannassas High School football team’s losses — actually includes an African American boy who spends a few nights a week with a rich white family so that he can get the tutoring he needs to score that college scholarship to play football (rest easy: he does). Another boy — “Money” (who wears a Wicked t-shirt and bafflingly gets away with it) — damages his knee and is devastated to be out for the season, and so, naturally, some 1%er anonymously offers to pay for his entire four-year college education.

This may sound like a great big heap of The Help-like white guilt, but seeing it is a whole other story. Hard to believe, but it all rings true as honest-to-goodness stuff. The crazy-dedicated and magnetic coach — we would all be so lucky to have a Coach Courtney whilst growing up — teaches these kids not only the game of football, but the game of life (I can’t stop the cheese! But it’s true!), and we actually see the evolution of these young men as Bill’s words affect them, deeply — and as their  actions and successes ultimately, and equally, affect him. There is just so much love and good will in this film that you can’t not root for it. And I think voters are going to act as its cheerleaders, too.

Until quite recently, before Undefeated showed up late in the game, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory was the top contender. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s third installment of their series dedicated to uncovering the truth about the brutal slayings of three boys and setting free the West Memphis 3 actually changed course in August when the three men, 18 years after being wrongly incarcerated, were set free. This is easily the most compelling doc of the bunch (so compelling, in fact, that Peter Jackson has also been working on a documentary of his own for the past seven years, and West of Memphis is getting quite the buzz). That the Academy snubbed Berlinger and Sinofsky’s first two films may still indicate a spoiler-like win after all for the  filmmakers who dedicated nearly 15 years to these films and to justice for Damien Echols, Jesse Misskelley Jr. and Jason Baldwin. 

As for the final three:

Hell and Back Again is this year’s Restrepo or The Hurt Locker (minus that pesky fiction factor) with its story of Nathan Harris, who was hit by a sniper bullet in Afghanistan, destroying his hip/leg and quite possibly any chance of his walking again, just three days before returning home to the States. Filmmaker and journalist Danfung Dennis befriended Harris overseas and captured some stunning war footage, which he juxtaposes to powerful effect with scenes of Harris’s struggle to acclimate to civilian life. No PTSD here — Harris is a battle junkie, suffering from action withdrawal, and it’s difficult to believe, but fascinating, that he wants to go back and do it all again.

If a Tree Falls: The Story of the Earth Liberation Front, offers a militant and messy look at the so-called “eco-terroists” of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) who used guerrilla warfare (specifically arson to try to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment (ie. loggers and the like). Following one member of the group, Daniel McGowan, Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman’s doc is intriguing at times, but ultimately a bit all over the place, with no clear message. What is clear is the parallel to the Occupy Wall Street movement  – and I’m not sure that’s a good or a bad thing for the majority of voters.

I know I should like Pina. It is, after all, the “artistic” documentary, but this cinematic tribute to the great choreographer-performer Pina Bausch who died in 2009 amidst filming is too esoteric and pretentious for the general Academy. Wim Wenders’s film is equal portions hagiography and movement: the ensemble members of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, in their reflections of their choreographer-critic-friend, are all exaggerated reverence. I wanted less talking-gushing, more dancing. Or, if there needed to be talking, let it be about Pina, for I left the theatre knowing her no better than when I entered it.

Oscars 2012: Best Documentary Short

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

1.THE TSUNAMI AND THE CHERRY BLOSSOM

2. SAVING FACE

3. INCIDENT IN NEW BAGHDAD

4. THE BARBER OF BIRMINGHAM: FOOT SOLDIER OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

 GOD IS THE BIGGER ELVIS

I think it’s fair to say at this point that I won’t be seeing all of the Oscar nominees this year: For some unknown, inexplicable reason, God Is the Bigger Elvis is not able to be shown in theaters due to licensing restrictions (say what?). Super-lame.

As for the other four documentary shorts, it’s time to go halfsies, because two are pretty great and the other two are mediocre-to-bad. Let’s start with the letdowns, shall we?

The Barber in Birmingham reflects on James Armstrong’s participation (but not really) in the Civil Rights Movement. This classy older gent, an Alabaman barber, is adorable as he fondly remembers cutting MLK Jr.’s hair four times (though he admits the legend never actually spoke to him) and… that’s about it. Gail Dolgin and Robin Fryday’s film also touches on other “foot soldiers” who were children during school integration and who fought for the right to vote. The commentary is vague and the tone is celebratory in the most hagiographic sense. The subjects are worthy, but this doc doesn’t do them justice by remaining on the surface.

Incident in Baghdad represents the ubiquitous Iraq or Afghanistan doc that we clearly must have each year, whether in the short or feature-length category (see last year’s superior Restrepo). James Spione covers the notorious incident in Baghdad when a group of U.S. soldiers was caught on film slaughtering civilians and two journalists by gunfire. The (wiki)leaked footage was shown via all varieties of media outlets to the outrage of the American public. This short details US Army Specialist Ethan McCord ‘s PTS and anger towards the military for his involvement in the attack (he saved two small children who were near-fatally burned in one explosion, but not their father). It’s compelling material to a degree, but then again, how many times can we return to the same subject in essentially the same way?

Saving Face details the shockingly common act of men disfiguring and shaming Pakistanian women by throwing acid on their faces. It’s heartbreaking to look on these women who, until recently, had no legal recourse to make these men, usually their husbands (or their husbands’ families) accountable for their horrific actions, and Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s film follows one plastic surgeon from London (originally from Pakistan) in his attempt to help these women “save face.” Ultimately an inspiring piece in which one incredibly brave woman refuses to give up on bringing her husband-attacker to justice – he denied his actions despite eye witnesses and continued to threaten her while he was behind bars – and proves to be the first successful case of trying and convicting such an attacker. It’s important to note, however, that  the filmmakers don’t make saints of these women: many, when asked how they would like to see the men punished, violently assert that the men should have acid thrown on their own faces. The film offers no judgment; the surprising comments are recorded at face-value for what they are: the ugly effect of an “eye for an eye” ideal.

So rarely does a documentary offer both insight and artistry, but that’s exactly the case here: The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom is not only remarkable for its choice in subject – the  earthquake in Japan – but for its poetic beauty. Lucy Walker’s short recounts many individual stories of loss: one older gentleman, visibly grief-stricken, is astonishingly elegant in his heartbreak as he describes the moment his life lost meaning — reaching out for his dearest friend as he’s swept away in the flood. But just when you think this is your standard natural-disaster doc, a shift occurs: the man’s despair transforms into profound peace as he begins to speak tenderly of the cherry blossoms. A national treasure, the cherry blossom trees are so beloved by the Japanese that there are annual cherry blossom “viewing parties” in which people travel from all over to gaze upon the beautiful blossoms that continued to thrive and bloom despite the wreckage that surrounded them. Symbolizing the resilience and the beauty of the Japanese, Walker creates a gorgeous and moving analogy between the pain and despair of the tsunami and the hope and inspiration of the cherry blossoms. The cinematography  itself– blossoms falling slowly and softly like snowflakes around girls and men alike, gazing up in wonder — is breathtaking. This is the documentary to see even if you don’t care for documentaries: devastating, beautiful, heartwarming, inspiring. This is what filmmaking should be.

Oscars 2011: Best Documentary Feature

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Exit Through the Gift Shop

2. Inside Job

3. Restrepo

4. Waste Land

5. Gasland

Made by a self-described non-documentarian, Gasland is by far the most uninteresting of the feature  docs. Echoing similar sentiments of The Warriors of Qiugang , one of this year’s doc shorts nominees, Gasland brings a larger issue of pollution and the abuse of natural resources closer to home by uncovering the effects of “fracking,” a hydraulic drilling process that uncovers natural gas, and that’s being utilized across the greater United States. Of course, this affects the water quality in the area, offering the biggest shock of the doc: residents surrounding these wells can actually light their water on fire. Yes, the murky, contaminated water spurting right out of their faucets — the same water that the government says is A-OK to drink — bursts into flames when a lighter is near. Crazily, this is a vital concern for much of America, but unfortunately this documentary is not as vital. The director/writer/star Josh Fox narrates with so little passion, with such hipster-like indifference, that the topic never feels urgent (he should take a lesson from our good friend, Richard O’Barry’s highly emotional mission to save the dolphins).

Waste Land, on the other hand, is full of emotional uplift. A little too full. Top-selling — we are reminded of his fact multiple times — contemporary artist Vik Muniz travels to the world’s largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, where he picks out members of the community as casually as they pick up the trash. Despite the slightly self-satisfied, slightly smug artist, he and his strong, inspiring collaborators create beautiful work that highlights the transformative power of art and the endurance of the human spirit. This is the “feel good” doc of the year, but strangely it doesn’t seem to have gotten much traction with the Academy.

Restrepo, is a tightly structured, daring feat of journalism (these filmmakers were in the action) created from a year with one platoon in the deadliest valley of Afghanistan. It highlights many of the same themes as The Hurt Locker — but that fictional account of war was simply more gripping and effective, and I couldn’t help but think that while watching the entire documentary (not a good sign).

Inside Job, the likely winner here, is another Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room: uncovering the causes and consequences of the financial crisis of 2008 (as opposed to the rise and fall of a corrupt corporation), this condemnation of our nation’s banks (and the government that knowingly supported them) is meticulous and infuriating, and with so much information, often comes off as a kind of lecture. But it’s briskly paced, super-slick, has the most ’80s-riffic soundtrack ever (“Greed is good,” I kept thinking), and its inflammatory and topical subject is sure to get under the skin of the Academy.

Exit Through the Gift Shop spans almost a decade and covers multiple continents to show how an uber-eccentric (read: crazy) amateur filmmaker infiltrated the secretive world of street art only to — bizarrely — become a hugely popular artist himself (the elusive Banksy appears only briefly to comment, rather too kindly, on the filmmaker’s “art”). Exit works so well because it asks so many fascinating questions regarding the definition and value of art, what it means to be an artist, and what it matters to both the art and the world at large when the public voraciously — and unthinkingly — consumes it. In the end, though, the philosophical-cultural topic won’t grab the Academy’s attention as much as the political-financial angle of Inside Job.

Oscars 2011: Best Documentary Short

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

1. Strangers No More

2. Poster Girl

3. Killing in the Name

4. Sun Comes Up

5. The Warriors of Qiugang

It’s a tough crowd in the documentary short subjects this year, and by tough, I mean trying: all but one are self-important with tragic gravitas. The sole optimistic nominee, that takes a “we are the world” approach, will likely win simply because of its do-gooder attitude: Strangers No More is so utterly captivating because its subjects are endearing almost to a fault. A loving snapshot of a year in the life of the Bialik-Rogozin School in Tel Aviv, where children from all over the world — war-torn South Africa, Egypt, Chile, etc. — come for a chance at a new beginning, with Hebrew as the uniting language. Of course a film about such burdened and devastated kids could be incredibly emotionally manipulative. But the wonder of this short is that it needn’t employ any trickery to grab its audience by the heartstrings –the wise-beyond-their-years, eager to learn, loving, soulful children do it without any direction whatsover. These kids are inspiring and heartbreaking and an absolute pleasure to spend time with. When a film makes you want to pick up and move to Israel to teach the children… well, let’s just say that’s quite the accomplishment.

From here, though, things just get depressing. Sun Comes Up does muster up some optimism as it follows a small tribe living on an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea that is about to disappear into the rising sea. But the film’s success is also its downfall in that its microcosmic approach to the effects of global warming is both specific enough to intrigue and too specific to have the desired rallying effect on audiences — it all seems a bit too remote, even if all too human. The Warriors of Qiugang, while the most dedicated film (the filmmakers spent an effortful three years creating it), is also the most snooze-inducing (and has some strange little animated sequences that come off as a bit amateurish). A pesticide factory invades a small Chinese village, killing the community both indirectly (its land and crops) and directly (spreading cancer from toxic fumes), and finally causing the villagers to speak out against the local government that continuously ignores their pleas for environmental regulations. Again, a bit of a remote microcosm for worldwide environmental concerns, so more than likely the Academy will ignore it.

This leaves us with two films that will hit a bit closer to home. Poster Girl is the story of army vet Robynn Murray, once the cover girl for an Army magazine (she was considered the model female soldier), now suffering from emotionally crippling PTSD in addition to various physical injuries. The most personal (and personally invasive) story of the nominated films, Murray rips open her psychological wounds and traumatic memories for public consumption. But just when you think it’s verging on too-muchness, the film takes an inspiring turn by showcasing Murray’s life-saving discovery of the transformative power of art: she, and many other vets, create paintings, collages, and sculptures from their old uniforms, soldier manuals, and flags, and in the process rediscover their humanity (which, admittedly, is a bit much as well, but at least it lightened things up a bit). The problematic Killing in the Name, on the one hand tackles the difficult but always fascinating subject of Islamic fundamentalism, both from the perspective of a Jordanian crusader (whose wedding was crashed by a suicide bomber) and an Al-Qaeda recruiter (who coordinated the wedding bombing). What’s so troubling about the film is not the predictable “Americans are infidels, white people are cruel, etc” mantra of the fundamentalists, but the fact that the film allows the focus of many of its subjects to be on the lamenting solely of the Muslims that were mistakenly killed in these terrorist attacks, which is both alienating and creepily disconcerting.

Unfortunately, none of these altruistic films is aesthetically intriguing, but with all the good intentions and desperately vital subject matters, layering on some artistry would be asking a bit much…right?

 

Oscars 2010: The Shorts

Let’s begin with the shorts, shall we? (Not that you saw any of them)

[Note: My personal rankings are listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite, while predictions for the actual winners will be in orange.]

ANIMATED SHORT FILM

1.    The Lady and the Reaper (la Dama y la Muerte)

2. A Matter of Loaf and Death

3.    Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty

4.    Logorama

5.    French Roast

Are you wondering where Pixar’s adorable and utterly charming
Partly Cloudy is?
Me too.

Disregarding that huge oversight by the Academy, this alternately whimsical, clever, and politically overt crop o ‘toons is entirely worthy (for trailers for all nominated animated and live-action shorts, go here). My vote goes to the funny and crisply animated The Lady and the Reaper in which an elderly woman desperately pining for her beloved recently deceased husband tries valiantly (and hilariously) to meet the Reaper despite the cocksure and hysterical efforts of a handsomely chiseled doctor (Bonus: Antonio Banderas produces!). But the Academy rarely fails to reward that loveable claymation duo, Wallace and Gromit, and their yeasty adventures in A Matter of Loaf and Death offer that characteristically British-bent humor that has garnered three previous Oscars for creator Nick Park.

Possible spoiler: the profane and ultra-violent Logorama (at times) cleverly and colorfully sends up dozens upon dozens of universally recognizable brands as it simultaneously ticks off action cliché after action cliché (Car chases! SWAT teams! Earthquakes! Hostages!). While not offering much depth beyond the initial visual lampooning of corporations, voters may celebrate the film’s overtly adult content as a breath of fresh air in a category teeming with quirky, cutely-drawn characters and sentimental themes.  For my money, though, its in-your-face-anti-corporate politics are lazier than the animation is vibrant and inventive.

LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

1. The New Tenants

2. Kavi

3. Instead of Abracadabra

4. The Door

5. Miracle Fish

In this year’s wildly various category, Kavi is the sentimental favorite, as it follows the heartbreaking defiance of a brightly optimistic Indian boy as he dreams of playing cricket and freedom from his indentured servitude. But both the Academy and myself maintain a history of favoring clever and unpredictable violence, and Joachim Back and Patrik Eklund are the Tarantinos of short live-action with their self-conscious philosophizing film, The New Tenants. A couple preposterously encounters its vicious new neighbors over and over again while attempting to reconnect emotionally with each other in this brutally absurd short.

Meanwhile, Instead of Abracadbra captures the eccentric humor of a Swedish Napoleon Dynamite (“Chimay!”), the Irish-made, Russian-language The Door relays the muted despair of a family following Chernobyl, and the least accomplished Miracle Fish (Australia) begins cutely with a cherubic boy subjected to constant bullying and slowly builds to an emotionally manipulative moment of predictable – yet still shocking – horror.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT

1.    Rabbit à la Berlin
During the decades before the fall of the Berlin Wall, an enormous colony of wild rabbits took up residence in its shadow.

2.   The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
As the GM factory in Moraine, Ohio, prepares to close its doors, its employees face the prospect of joblessness in a difficult economic climate.

3.    Music by Prudence
In the face of incredible odds, disabled Zimbabwean singer/songwriter Prudence Mabhena offers a message of hope through her music.

4.  The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
While dealing with the devastating effects of Parkinson’s disease, Washington’s former governor Booth Gardner leads a campaign to legalize assisted suicide in the state.

5. China’s Unnatural Disaster:
The Tears of Seichuan Province
The terrible earthquake that struck China’s Sichuan province in 2008 resulted in the deaths of many children, often due to the collapse of their shoddily constructed schools.

QUICK UPDATE! Saw the short docs this afternoon (3/7/10) and the Rabbits were super-clever and a wonderfully told story through a unique perspective, The Last Truck is easily the most moving (at least for a girl from Detroit), and China’s Unnatural Disaster is incredibly shrill and unbalanced (I felt for the parents of children killed in the earthquake, but the filmmakers really needed to go deeper). This is my ranking, but we’ll see what happens!