Final Destination on the Documentary Journey

This final blog review took me to the four corners of the earth and back, with rare insight into places and experiences I can’t say I would have the privilege of seeing otherwise. I’ve learned by now that documentaries tend to do that.

This week I travelled to the Oval Office to hear President Barack Obama talk about his party’s defeat after the mid-term elections and what the past two years of his presidency have been like. 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft was my tour guide. The fact that this interview took place exactly two years to the day after he was elected and two days after the midterm election added poignancy to this interview, and a lesson to me and my fellow students that timing is everything. The timing alone distinguishes this interview from regular media-pandering to the masses; it is a leader being held accountable for his decisions and actions. The timing is what made this interview relevant.

Kroft gets the President to shed light on his feelings for the mid-term defeat, a stubbornly stagnant economy, tax cuts and the burgeoning strength of the right-wing Tea Party despite his best efforts. The interview is most aptly summarized, I think, when Kroft talks to Obama about the disappointment felt by his most ardent supporters and tells of an overall sentiment that he’s “lost his mojo” so to speak—the fires that fuelled his campaign and climb to the top have extinguished. “I take personal responsibility for that” says Obama and he goes on to explain that work, and “focusing on getting a bunch of stuff done’’ have taken a front seat to other elements of politics such as persuasion and public confidence.  Basically, I saw the most famous rookie in the world explain that he’s made a few fumbles over the last two years and that his expectations, much like those of the Americans that voted him into office, had to be adjusted to fit the dire straits of the situation he walked into. It was riveting because it was partly seeing him in the hot-seat that appealed to my Oprah-generation-need-for-must-see-TV-sensibility, and also an earnest curiosity that wants to know what this man is going through as a human being. How does it feel Mr. President, now that the banners are down, “yes we can” is a question in the headlines, and no one cares what your wife is wearing anymore?

Bob Simon then takes the 60 Minutes audience to the Philippines, to learn about a man who despite enormous hurdles has claimed victory in every lion’s den he’s found himself in. Manny Pacquiao: born one of six children to a single mother, in one of the most poverty stricken countries in the world tells how he went from earning two hundred pesos a day  selling cigarettes in the street (roughly $2 US)  to earning millions as a heavyweight champion, national treasure and Filipino Congressman.  

I have to say I can’t recall the last time, if ever, I have watched an episode of 60 Minutes. I remember with great familiarity the signature stop watch ticking down the seconds in the soundtrack of my life, as anyone who’s lived past 1968 when the show began can claim as well. Perhaps I’m spoiled, and perhaps it is because I am watching through somewhat of a critical lens, but I found some elements, or lack thereof, made the show harder to follow.  Narration introduces each and every subject into the story. Granted, during the Presidential interview, no CG’s with a name are required. But names like Bob Arum, and Freddy Roach floated around the voiceovers during Pacquiao’s segment and if I were tuning in mid sequence I would not have a clue who these people are, or what expertise they’re offering on the subject (or even the host names for that matter if you’re not listening). I suppose when you’ve been around for more than forty years, you’re free to stylize things as minimally as you care to… but it seemed a bit antiquated in my opinion. I’ve come to see documentaries like books—offering a broad glimpse into a specific time in history, with details that one can pursue to expert level if desired. However, if I wanted to pursue the history of Bob Arum, or Freddy Roach, I wouldn’t even know how to spell their names. By and large, details are what an audience needs for validation; name dropping doesn’t cut it anymore.  You may disagree, or maybe it’s the journalist in me, but they may as well have introduced these people as Bob what’s-his-face, or that guy Freddy.

But it’s not unique to 60 Minutes as I will find in my other picks of the week.

Courtesy of  TVOntario  I took a trip across the Pacific and back in time to September 1944:  the year that western society and warfare were introduced to the Kamikaze, and enemies that would rather die than surrender.  Australia Films’ The Road to Tokyo blends archival film footage and eyewitness accounts from Veterans and civilians with historical experts to tell of a region and time in WWII that, at least in Canadian public schools, is rarely told.

This is a national film so although it’s told entirely from the  Australian perspective, it quite valuably  offers the overlooked contribution and sacrifice that Australians made in 1944-45, until the atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki ending the war.

As I mentioned earlier, The Road to Tokyo is another example of how I have come to depend on CGs to introduce characters for visual stories. But rather than an audio blurb of a person’s name and credentials, this documentary introduced characters with still photos when they were young and narration of their connection to the war: a slow zoom over Les Keith when he was young in full military garb with a cross dissolve to his wizened face today as tells the camera that the “Japanese were madmen…they wanted to die because if they died for the Emperor they lived on in heaven…that’s the way they looked at it”; Allison Todd who’s father went to war  when she was 13 with a fade up to her present day face etched with the lines of longevity recounting through tears her nightmares, searching for her father in a crowd but never being able to find him.  This method of visual storytelling doesn’t allow the viewer to forget who these people are.  And with Remembrance Day tomorrow, and our last eyewitness accounts passing inevitably to meet their fallen comrades in the beyond, it is imperative that these stories representing crucial moments in our history be told memorably.

Director Wim Wenders commissions a trip to Cuba to talk to musical veterans of the same generation, but who were hit hardest by the Cold War. I find this to be an extremely unique story. We’ve all heard the of struggling governments,  boys and girls who go from rags to riches, and even the war stories of veterans that remain shaken to present day after several decades (although never so descriptively and in such geographical context).

But have you ever heard of a boy who was orphaned at twelve with only a song in his heart and his mother’s cane as his most precious possession, being sought out by Americans to sing and perform for audiences across the globe and make it to the pinnacle of concert halls, Carnegie Hall, nearly 50 years later? Me neither.  

Each one of the musicians we meet in the feature length documentary, The Buena Vista Social Club, represents incredible odds such as these. This film has an intoxicating, magical quality, and I think it’s because each shot focuses more on music and sound rather than socio-political shortcomings.  The film is rank with visual references to the dilapidated, near decrepit relics of Cuba’s glory days; this is not your tour bus Havana, carefully orchestrated from the offices of the Varadero five-stars. But the genius is, I think, that it is all shown without narration. That silence is what gives a voice to a people who have been told to grin and bear it, and who are too proud to do otherwise.

This film for me was so much of a subjective experience that it makes it harder to comment on.  My tendency is to gush! I loved the music, the humanity, the poverty in circumstance but wealth in experience and soul…but the film did leave me with a nagging question: to narrate or not to narrate? That is the question, for the documentary producer.

 Joachim Cooder has a role in the film filling in for drummers from Africa who never made it to Cuba. He is also the son of the American producer Ry Cooder who navigated the musical waters of Havana for the film. He says, “There’s no kind of learning like the kind of learning you get from the guys here. It’s so subtle, and quiet and powerful at the same time.” That pretty much sums of the journey I’ve taken on the Documentary Review.  By no means do I consider myself an expert now on what does or does not a great documentary make. But to my credit, I have seen films that have enriched my mind, my method and my cinematographic vocabulary to a point where I have much more respect for the genre and confidence in what works. I feel smarter and more sophisticated for it, which as we get older, becomes a more rare experience.   My life is changing because of my education. It’s forcing my mind open, despite my resistance and whining and complaining and it makes me ponder my legacy.   But in response to the question posed earlier, I know that legacies lie with what has been included or not included in a main d’oeuvre, and knowing when enough has been said.