Docu-Drama
How movies, truth and politics intersected in 2004
Behold the Dawn of the Doc—the year that documentaries not only reached their widest theatrical audience to date but emerged as a substantial commercial and political power (as if the two were separate). The initiation of a doc, Michael Moore's incendiary Fahrenheit 9/11, into the $100 million club was a major story: less headline-grabbing, but perhaps more important, was the establishment of an alternative distribution network of house parties, indie theaters and guerrilla marketing that bypassed the rigged studio system.
The means weren't just seized by activist docs like Outfoxed and The Corporation; they were used to great success by features like the nutty What the (Bleep) Do We Know!?, which took its case directly to the people and made $10 million. Not coincidentally, 2004 saw the personal-essay doc, or "blogumentary," flourish as never before. Jonathan Caouette's iMovie autobiography Tarnation heralded a coming wave of cut-and-paste docs as no-budget self-expression; Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself used illustrative clips and voiceover to create perhaps the year's most striking piece of film criticism. The proliferation of styles, even the inclusion of reenactments and other impurities, expanded the form's boundaries—even as it renewed the controversy over what is and isn't a documentary.
If the basic element is "truth," though, then even some of the year's fiction films would qualify—movies that caught 2004's social and political anxieties, even if by accident. Scene writers Donna Bowman, Scott Manzler, Noel Murray and Jim Ridley discuss below.
Veterans' Day: In a year when documentary filmmaking became an amateur sport, the three best docs came from seasoned pros: Ross McElwee's personal but far-reaching essay Bright Leaves, Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky's epic of post-excess rock stardom Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster, and John Landis's rowdy, soulful Slasher, a snapshot of American venality and disappointment that Landis dared to edit with style and confidence. —NM
The Awful Truth?: To paraphrase one of this year's hunkiest screen idols, Jesus Christ: Men cry "truth, truth," but there is no truth. Truth, about the outside world at least, was very hard to discern in the rival, exasperated political documentaries screaming from their private planets. What was true about Outfoxed and Uncovered and Celsius 41.11 and America's Heart and Soul was the isolation, defensiveness, and missionary zeal of the filmmakers. A million mini-Michael Moores with their DV cameras and their Final Cut Pros: Welcome to the future of political discourse in America. And meanwhile the real Michael Moore, an actual artist validated by major prizes and awards long before he became a captain in the culture wars, allows himself to become Ann Coulter's alter ego on the election chess set, as if he were nothing but a pundit being paid to grind a liberal ax in an entertainingly one-sided way. —DB
Fahrenheit 11/2: Can we finally agree that Michael Moore's bid to oust our once and future president was something of a disappointment? Yes, he dialed down his on-screen presence, and yes, the film has a (somewhat) more organic narrative arc, but are these the qualities we truly seek in our foremost liberal director/provocateur? Bowling for Columbine is the better film and the better piece of political art. Despite its many insightful broadsides, Fahrenheit 9/11 never approaches the earlier work's chillingly prescient central thesis, America's "culture of fear." But as accuser and accused, at least it proves that "facts" can be extracted and reordered to fit any master narrative. —SM
Vote Early, Vote Often: It's reductive to treat the box-office success of The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11 as some kind of red-state/blue-state barometer, as Op-Ed pages did throughout the summer: just as all red-staters didn't vote for Bush, all blue-staters don't have an aversion to religion. It did, however, represent an unusual phenomenon: the movie ticket as vote, in a box-office referendum. By voting for The Passion, church groups sent the message to Hollywood—and to the suppliers of second-rate separatist Christian entertainment—that they're sick of being treated as culturally insignificant and undiscerning. By voting for Fahrenheit, frustrated liberals cried out for mass-media newsketeers to do their jobs instead of serving up glitzy punditry and celebrity diversion. And because the votes were measured in dollars, they counted. We'll see for how long. —JR
The Means, The Ends: With government-sanctioned media consolidation an unavoidable reality, 2004 provided many chilling, much-needed reminders that information dissemination and political power are regularly intertwined. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised bears witness to Venezuela's recent TV-abetted coup, while The Agronomist charts Haiti's democratic pulse as a function of Jean Dominique's on-again/off-again radio transmissions. But if objective truth is at best an illusory goal, then a plurality of voices is essential. Dismissed by some as a defense of Al Jazeera, Control Room attempts to hold a mirror to our self-reflexive war narrative; still, its focus drifts inexorably toward the Pentagon's pre-packaged talking points—talking points that our news outlets are often at pains to preserve and promote. In one particularly damning vignette from The Corporation, a Fox affiliate squashes a well-researched expose, preferencing their advertisers' interests over public health and safety. (See also: La Commune, Good Bye Lenin!, Moolaadéand the indefatigable Moveon.org.) —SM
Liberation Army: The mountain of 2004 "issue docs" makes a nice archive of early 21st-century life, but the keenest analysis of our moment in history came from two films about the early '70s. Whatever their respective aesthetic flaws, the documentary Guerrilla: The Taking Of Patty Hearst and the docudrama The Assassination Of Richard Nixon both detail the despair born when the reelection of a president sends a message to a sizable portion of the populace that their values and pleasures are no longer welcome in the American tapestry. And both show the violent response that ensues. —NM
I [Heart] Huckabees: First viewed during a break from the New York Film Festival's embarrassment of riches, David O. Russells philosophical soufflé seemed unduly fussy and precious. But following the election, its between-being-and-nothingness worldview felt oddly comforting. Hit me with your big red ball! Hit me! Hit me! —SM
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