 "Photo: Molly Raskin")
 "Photo: allmoviephoto.com")
We’re more familiar with documentaries than we might think. Just look at our televisions. Not only do we have Ken Burns’ PBS opuses like The National Parks: America’s Best Idea topping off a list of famous treatments of such all-American topics as jazz, baseball and the Civil War, but there was also the jaw-dropping BBC/Discovery tag-team effort known as Planet Earth, perhaps one of the most re-watchable documentaries ever made. The problem is that apparently you need to slap Planet Earth on an IMAX (or be Michael Moore) to get people out to see a documentary on the big screen.
Even reality TV (that curse of modern programming), takes the form of a pseudo-documentary with its sense of voyeurism, use of talking heads and supposed penetration of its subjects lives. Ideally I’d like a documentary that could mix the professionalism of PBS with the salaciousness of reality TV. Perhaps a bit of a ridiculous request, but as several film critics have pointed out, documentaries are evolving and becoming more interesting as we speak.
When it comes to the bigger, better screen we seem less comfortable with the idea of sitting down for a documentary. Of course there are exceptions such as March of the Penguins, but usually feature-length documentaries go unwatched. Why? Sundance celebrates the form, IFC patronizes it and big and medium-sized names like Michael Moore and Errol Morris use it frequently to toy with our political discourse.
There are solid directors out there like Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, partners on Jesus Camp (2006) and the upcoming Freakonomics. Several more experimental filmmakers are making people reconsider the genre entirely, as Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation did in 2004, at least for those 10 people who saw it. Are movie-length documentaries too pretentious for most folks? Absolutely — but they by no means have to be. Take for example Super Size Me, Man on Wire, The Fog of War or Herzog’s Grizzly Man: all great, all more than deserving of an audience. Tarnation takes the cake, however, for utter lack of appreciation.
Tarnation is a wild movie. It’s tough and hand-stitched (apparently made for around $200), going rough and tumbling through acid-flashback scenes of a nostalgic but terrifying America as the filmmaker comes to terms with his mother’s schizophrenia and his own homosexuality. The result feels like a Gus Van Sant home movie (he actually produced Tarnation) with an added element of multi-media insanity. They don’t make them like this anymore, and that’s the problem. Tarnation is innocent of nearly everything negative you might expect from a Sundance-style feature documentary.
The upcoming art doc, The Art of the Steal, is guilty. Though it’s a little too compelling to hold up as a scapegoat for what’s wrong with documentaries these days, I’m tempted to do just that. It is little more than a rabid polemic in which art critics and other fuddy-duddies decry the rising commercialization of art via big, tourist institutions such as major art museums. Whah, poor art lovers. I thought this was the Great Recession, a time when we at the very least could admit to ourselves that people have real problems.
The Art of the Steal is myopically focused and poorly timed, a problem I see with many feature length documentaries. Much better films have suffered from this, such as Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure, a painful exposé. It bills and occasionally manages to sell itself as a clever, relevant and revelatory film about art heist (when really, by art heist, they mean the slow processes of legally tampering with a man’s will over a period of more than 50 years). It attempts to hide the fundamental dullness of its material, and it does this well. And yet, The Art of the Steal is actually kind of a great little film, if you can just get over its hyperbolic statements and obvious polemic. I’m having a hard time though. The Art of the Steal’s argument is essentially that legal issues such as trusts take precedent over people’s ability to see art. I’m not totally buying this premise, or this film, but I respect its effort. The Art of the Steal is exaggerated and biased, but enthralling to watch, like watching a lawyer build a great argument he cannot win.
Another issue is, of course, the extremely limited release of feature- length documentaries. This is a chicken - or - the - egg situation. Even indie films are inherently capitalistic: Make better movies and earn more screens. I wish it were that simple, but it’s really not much more complicated. Find a subject that speaks to people and then find a way to get it across. There is no need for a non-fiction film to limit itself to floating around ultra-limited releases like some kind of box office pariah. Unless, of course it wants to. If you follow The Art of the Steal’s logic, the more people see art, the more it is corrupted. I’m calling bullshit.
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