Documentary ≠ just true crime
10 films that expand what non-fiction cinema can be.
Hey friends! Think I botched the sending of last week’s post, so putting it here at the top in case you didn’t get it.
Now, onto the show … if you follow me on Letterboxd, you may have noticed a flurry of viewing activity for new documentary releases. That’s because I was staring down a big voting deadline for the Critics Choice Association’s Documentary Awards, which take place on Sunday. (I’ll be attending, which ought to make for a fun evening!) I also contributed to the nomination process, albeit with a late start … so I did not get a chance to see nearly as much as early as I would have liked.
I will refrain from making any broad commentary on the slate of nominees, which do feature some of my favorite films of the year. But I think if you looked at these films alone, you would have a very narrow view of what non-fiction cinema can do or be. I am deeply grateful for how true crime stories have elevated documentaries into the public consciousness like never before, and I am grateful for the way they entertain a number of people I know who read this. (You know who you are, or at least I will assume so when you screenshot and send me this.)
Yet true crime documentaries, or any other films that rely heavily on talking heads and archival footage, do not represent the ceiling for the form. There’s a thriving non-fiction cinema that is pushing boundaries for cinema at large, and it deserves recognition as well. Below are 10 documentaries that have expanded my idea of what the medium can do.
All Light, Everywhere, Hulu
Just what you want when you have time to watch something for pleasure: an essay film. But unlike a standard non-fiction film, director Theo Anthony is not pitching a thesis from his perch on a soapbox in All Light, Everywhere. In fact, he’s often undermining the very tools filmmakers use to signify their own authority. From the perch of a computer’s desktop, he probes connections between various elements of America’s police and surveillance state through the prism of the body camera. It’s provocative not in statement but in suggestion. (And if you want to learn even more about Theo Anthony’s ideas and approach, I would highly recommend reading the conversation we had last year.)
The Arbor, rental
It’s important to know what you’re watching before you dive into Clio Barnard’s reality-blurring The Arbor. Her hybridized film uses the real voice recordings of the late playwright Andrea Dunbar, a playwright who emerged from one of Britain’s squalid council estates to a rapid fame that quickly flamed out, as well as the people from her community. But Barnard has actors lip-synch along to their words so their reflections do not feel like standard talking heads in a documentary. They’re given more of a free range to walk and talk like real people, only the words do not belong to them. Barnard’s porous boundaries between reality and fiction make for a fitting tribute to Dunbar, whose own plays drew so heavily from the veracity of her working-class background that such a distinction likely meant little to her as well. The Arbor is a truly expansive work, and Barnard finds fascinating ways to both reframe and restage lived experience.
Bisbee ‘17, rental
Non-fiction cinema does not necessarily mean that filmmakers must train their cameras and imaginations on events that already happened. While putting their fingers on the scale in the present day has its detractors, a new school of documentarians has found revelatory insights from staging performance and recreation. Director Robert Greene is at the vanguard of this movement, and if you want to see why, check out Bisbee ‘17. On the centennial of an infamous forced deportation of Mexican migrant workers from Arizona, Greene trains his cameras on how the titular town recreates the events in the heat of the Trump presidency. The film validates Mark Twain’s famous aphorism: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does often rhyme.”
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, rental
A group of actors assembles at a New Orleans bar in November 2016 to … portray the last night of a Las Vegas dive bar at the nadir of the Great Recession. The ensuing film Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is a documentary if you ask its directors Bill and Turner Ross. Their film captures an ecstatic truth about the bar and its frequent guests captured by their roving, inquisitive cameras during their synthetic shoot. It’s a film that challenged my own understanding of where I draw the line between documentary and fiction, so it was great to bounce some of those ideas off the Ross Brothers after seeing it. (Feel free to read the interview before watching to get a feel for what’s coming — your viewing experience will be enhanced, not spoiled, by knowing what to expect.)
The Gleaners and I, Criterion Channel
French New Wave legend Agnès Varda is perhaps most beloved for her fictional features like Cléo from 5 to 7 (covered in the most recent HBO Max Syllabus) and Le Bonheur, but I think I’ve grown most fond of her documentaries. They’re such personal, personable films that trace the evolution of a thought no matter where it leads. Although with Varda’s delight for life and curiosity in humanity, her instincts usually lead her somewhere unexpected yet delightful. That’s certainly the case in The Gleaners and I, in which an exploration of people who gather remaining crops after a harvest leads her to profound rumination on the very nature of her own artistry. If for some reason you’re under the mistaken impression that non-fiction is where emotion goes to die in cinema, let Varda correct that notion. This is a deeply moving film.
The Look of Silence, free with ads on Freevee through Amazon Prime Video
Documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer sent shockwaves through documentary cinema with his chilling 2013 work The Act of Killing, which let participants in Indonesia’s 1960s genocide depict their feelings about the killings by translating them into cinematic scenes. While their grandiose fantasies provide a window into the psychology of impunity on a grand scale, I found the smaller-scale companion piece The Look of Silence a much more moving work. Oppenheimer distills the macro-level pain of the survivors down to the micro through the experiences of Adi Rukun, who gets to speak with some of his brother’s killers under the pretense of an eye exam. It’s a startling work of quiet, gathering power.
Manakamana, Mubi
You can learn a lot about the world by simply fixing a camera in an interesting place and letting it roll. That’s certainly the case in Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez’s Manakamana, who position their gaze from one end of a cable car going up to the titular Hindu temple in Nepal. It’s the same 11 minutes for each ride, which gives our minds plenty of time to size up the life that extends before and beyond this moment. (Also, one journey includes five goats, which is just delightful.) Spray and Velez present reality, and our mind fills in the rest. The viewing experience ends up channeling the very religious zen that many of the film’s subjects seek.
Monterey Pop, HBO Max/Criterion Channel
Heck yeah, a concert movie counts as a documentary! Monterey Pop has a real murderer’s row of ‘60s talent — Jimi Hendrix! Janis Joplin! Jefferson Airplane! Performers who don’t start with “J” too! — and that alone would be worth the price of admission. But direct cinema pioneer D.A. Pennebaker is not out to produce a historical record of a key countercultural moment. With his access and artistry, he’s out to capture what it really felt like to experience these performances in person. There’s no better place to see this in action than Otis Redding’s performance of “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” shot bathed in white light that makes it feel like he’s channeling something from the heavens. You’ll ascend, too.
The Road Movie, Pluto TV (free with ads)
Compiling and curating clips shot by real people is a form of documentary in its own right, as Dmitrii Kalashnikov’s unhinged The Road Movie demonstrates. Picture this as a kind of “Russia’s Funniest Home Videos,” as 71 minutes of dash-cam footage provides a window into some truly insanely hilarious and frightening roadside shenanigans. Kalashnikov produces a true panorama of Putin’s Russia, one that glides with purpose and intentionality in its careful construction. This is not just a professionally edited version of going down a rabbit hole on YouTube (not that there’s anything wrong with that…)
Waltz with Bashir, rental (coming to Criterion Channel on 11/15)
Animation is quite literally something only possible in cinema, not reality, and yet many documentarians have found it a useful aesthetic tool to draw out memories that are not available through the archive. In Waltz with Bashir, director Ari Folman uses hand-drawn animation as a way to visualize how one former Israeli soldier’s experience feels somehow unreal to him. Only in talking to people he experienced the Lebanon War alongside and converting himself into a character inside a narrative can he fully grapple with a past he cannot remember but whose impact he cannot shake.
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd. I’ve also compiled every movie I’ve ever recommended through this newsletter via a list on the platform as well.
Among the many reasons you should see Armageddon Time in theaters: these conversations with director James Gray and star Jeremy Strong are among the most riveting hours of podcast interviews I’ve heard all year.
Perhaps you saw some head-scratching quotes from the Russo Brothers in their recent Variety cover story … here’s Keith Phipps demolishing their grandstanding:
For /Film, I ranked the best Cate Blanchett performances —it was TIGHT up at the top even before TÁR, the occasion for the list, came along! I walked away from this convinced that she’s the Meryl Streep of her generation.
Sadly, I could not include this iconic video…
I also tackled Tilda Swinton’s top 12 movies for the site, which was a great way to realize just how chameleonic and confident a performer she is.
Happy Veterans Day — watch The Best Years of Our Lives if you haven’t. Probably the best movie ever made about the veteran experience.
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall