Viewing Log:
Decasia (Bill Morrison, 2002): After viewing this, I wasn't sure whether this counted as a documentary or not, but given the project's rather inclusive approach to the matter and its listing as a documentary on both the IMDB and Netflix (where my copy came from), I'll include it here. The film is composed of early nitrate films, most around a hundred years old, that have fallen into deep decay. Without any embellished distressing of the stock, Morrison presents a meditative study on the nature of decay without words. Instead, the soundtrack is composed entirely of music by Michael Gordon that perfectly accompanies the film. While my brain works best in understanding an author's point when I'm hit over the head with it, the analysis strikes me here as so close to the surface that the lack of dialogue doesn't get in the way (that and the Netflix sleeve described Morrison's stated intentions
). I'm curious what others who've seen it think. Is it a documentary? An avante garde film? Both? Neither?
The Imposter (Bart Layton, 2012): Told in flashbacks and talking heads, Layton's film concerns the disappearance of 13 year old San Antonian Nicholas Barclay, and the "teenager" who 16 years later claimed to be him on the other side of the world. The film's marketing tried to sell it as less a documentary than a thriller in which the whole point is to find out if the two are the same, but this "secret" is actually revealed within the first few minutes of the film (not to mention the title!). Surprise, it's not him, but instead a French con-man who fakes the identity to avoid Interpol warrants in Spain. Spinning a tail of an international military/pedophilia syndicate kidnapping children all over the globe, Barclay's family welcomes him with open arms while chalking up any dissimilarities between the two to changes made during the alleged torture over three years. As the story begins to unravel, Layton starts to present the family less as trusting rubes in need of emotional fulfillment, and more as a sinister clan with dark secrets to hide who were forced into taking a stranger into their home to prevent suspicion. Indeed, by the end, Layton seems to be fully committed to the thesis that Barclay's older brother murdered the teen and buried him in their old house, a theory that results in the film's most manipulative moment
when in it's final shot a private eye goes digging in their old back yard, expecting to find Nicholas's corpse. It's edited to make us think that a major revelation is about to take place, and then...nothing is found.
In fact once the attention turns from Frédéric Bourdin, the faux Texas youth, to the Barclay's alleged guilt, the film turned too sensationalistic for me. There's a lot to like in its first two thirds, but it shoots itself in the foot by the end.
The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield, 2012): This was another high profile documentary from last year that I'm just now getting around to. This time the film begins as a document of the extravagances of timeshare CEO David Siegel and his over-the-top, made for reality TV wife, Jaqueline, as they attempt to build the world's largest private house (modeled after the palace at Versailles, of course). However, things quickly go off track as Siegel's company finds itself $400,000,000 in the red and it's creditors begin chipping away at his empire. The schadenfreude is thick here and the entire household (with the exception of their self-sacrificing nanny) do their best to try and destroy any empathy that we might have toward them. Jacqueline, who is highly educated, goes out of her way to behave as clownishly as possible while spending the family into oblivion. I felt sorry for David at several points, but then I remembered that his entire business practice is predicated upon taking advantage of unsuspecting yokels (not to mention
this and
this). Even the kids come off as jaded brats that let their pets starve to death rather than get off of their butts and feed it. The film's purpose was never quite clear to me. I do believe that Greenfield wanted to go for something deeper than the empty calories of Bravo style (or so I hear, since I haven't had cable since before this phenomenon started) TV, but Jacqueline's antics obscured any deeper point that she may have been trying to make. Every time Jacqueline appeared on screen, she became the 800 pound gorilla in high heels and a Gucci handbag.
What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole (William Arntz, et al., 2006): I'm currently writing a chapter on what Murray Gell-Mann calls "Quantum flapdoodle", so after watching the hideously bad original
What the Bleep Do We Know? back in 2004, I decided to check out this 2006 remix of the film that features the same talking heads talking out of their asses (with the exception of physicist/philosopher David Albert who's views were edited to make it sound as if they agreed with the nonsense spouted here). What we have is again the rantings of Ramtha, the 35,000 year old Lemurian who inhabits the body of cult leader JZ Knight, and is, surprise, an expert in quantum mechanics. The film then assembles anyone with a PH.D. after their name who has gone off of the deep end to make it sound as if physics and spirituality are one and the same. While I'm no expert on the field of quantum physics (I'd say that my understanding--in the theory, not the math--is probably about analogous to an advanced undergraduate major in physics), it was very easy to spot the majority of the falsehoods. For everything that the filmmakers got right (for instance, the animation about the double slit experiment was right on), it got about three things wrong. The greatest hits of the first film are back like the claim that the natives in the Caribbean couldn't see Columbus's ships because they had no conceptual scheme for clipper ships (!), along with new protracted mistakes on quantum entanglement and further conflation of "observation" and "consciousness". It was very clearly a film made by people who heard a few interesting things about quantum mechanics, learned the most rudimentary understanding of it possible, and then decided that everything is magic. It's not, and this film is utterly detestable garbage.