Sunday, April 7, 2013

SFF 2013 Day 2 Pt. 1: How Not To Make A Documentary -"Which Way Is The Front Line From Here" & "More Than Honey"

     And so the waiting in line has begun! Today marked the first full day of programming at this year's Sarasota Film Festival and along with the movies, it brought with it one of my favorite aspects of the festival: the great conversations that spring up while waiting in line. This year I got proactive in the proselytization of this blog and actually had business cards printed (they seemed a better option than last year's habit of constantly scribbling down the URL on scrap paper for anyone I talked to). In fact if you are reading this now, then there is a great chance I handed you one of these in line.

Rodney&Roger's Official Business Card

     I saw three films today -two documentaries and an Italian narrative. I'll save my thoughts on the narrative for my next festival post and use this one to review the two documentaries.

Which Way Is The Front Line From Here?
The Life And Time Of Tim Hetherington * *

     Proverbs 29:18 states, "Where there is no vision the people perish." I would
contend that without vision, a film can perish as well. The primary challenge that a documentary faces is two-fold, not only does a film-maker need to find a good subject but also a compelling way in which to tell that subject's story to an audience. Director Sebastian Junger has found a great topic in the life and tragic passing of his former friend and colleague Tim Hetherington, but he can't seem to find a focus or vision for his film. Though broadly subtitled "The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington", the film would be more accurately advertised as being concerned with equally weighted, chronologically ordered, selected events from the career of Tim Hetherington. But though the documentary's content was thankfully more concerted that it's title would suggest, it still had no focus or theme.

     From the opening moments of Junger's film, Tim Hetherington shines. Charismatic and driven, he is immediately likable -garnering the viewer's attention and interest. And initially Junger seems committed to presenting a very personal portrait of Hetherington with his choice to open the film with footage from an interview with him that includes all of his swearing-laced out-takes. This film needed to be about more than just Hetherington's long and wide-spanning career though. Hetherington himself said of his photography, "At the root of my work is this kind of idea of intimacy." Also, " [photojournalism] is about individuals with individual stories and lives." Fostering a sense of intimacy between audiences and Hetherington would have required a specific avenue down which to pursue his story rather than the NFL highlights version of his career (not to mention the excessive time spent in the film retreading information already presented in Hetherington and Junger's documentary film Restrepo). A photographer who wasn't "interested in photography but in reaching people and engaging them with views of the world", who saved another man's life during wartime in Sierra Leone, whose father marveled at his ability to "seldom become a tourist but immerse himself in culture", and whose former professor complemented his seeing that we were living in "an image-based world" could have been the subject of a superb documentary on the significance of photojournalism; sadly, this was not that documentary.

More Than Honey *

     In high school English class, most students are taught that there are essentially two types of non-fiction writing: expository and argumentative. So
also are there essentially the same two types of documentary films. For all of its focus-related problems, I at least knew that Which Way Is The Front Line From Here was an expository documentary that wanted to inform me of the life and time of Tim Hetherington. But just as a father asks his daughter's date what his intentions are, so I wondered as to More Than Honey's intent even beyond its conclusion. I'm still not sure if it was purposed to inform me that bees are disappearing or to argue that I'm supposed to do something to stop said disappearing.

     Its structure would suggest that it's making some sort of argument, but I only ever felt informed (but not toward any particular purpose). The film jumps between multiple disjointed segments all involving individuals who make their livings directly off of or in some industry dependent on bees (which apparently includes one third of all food in the world). These segments stop and begin mid-film and it's unclear the attitude the audience is intended to have toward most. And some of the overly poetic narration and stunningly clear close-ups of the bees exist in marked contrast to the generally mediocre and occasionally sloppy cinematography and general nature of the rest of the film. Apart from one striking scene revealing Chinese farmers manually pollinating flowers because their pesticides have killed off all of their bees, there's not a memorable moment in the whole movie. Ultimately, the film ends up blanketly stating that all of the potential reasons that the bees are disappearing are mutually responsible. More Than Honey is unclear, discombobulated, and a prime example of how not to make a documentary.

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