Cute children, family conflicts, social blights -- the big three subjects of documentary features are currently on screen in films such as Mad Hot Ballroom, Tell Them Who You Are and Shake Hands With the Devil, part of an explosion of nonfiction films in theaters. But this boom, inspired by hits like Spellbound and Fahrenheit 9/11, has its downside. Every week seems to bring another mediocre documentary, coasting on the strength of its content and its similarity to better, more artistic films. Even as the genre leaps out of its niche, it is suffering from a tyranny of substance over style.
For example, Mad Hot Ballroom, the feel-good story of a dancing contest for New York City public-school children, is the singing, dancing, less talented cousin of Spellbound, the sly 2002 movie that turned a spelling bee into a thought-provoking portrait of class and education.
Digital technology has made filmmaking so cheap and easy that now almost anyone can point a camera at a difficult father or a wicked stepmother and call it a movie. And more of them are making it into theaters.
Nielsen EDI, which tracks box-office data, found that 50 documentaries were released in the US in 2002 and 53 in 2003 -- a number that jumped to 80 last year to mark a rapidly growing chunk of the 500 or so films typically released each year.
The success of Spellbound and Fahrenheit 9/11 seems to be propelling the surge. Sheila Nevins, president of HBO's documentary and family programming, pointed to those works as likely incentives for filmmakers and distributors who are grabbing for the next nonfiction blockbuster, sometimes recklessly.
Nevins said, "People are buying up everything," even commissioning documentaries on the basis of three or four-minute samples. As one gauge of a market gone wild, she pointed to Mad Hot Ballroom, which Paramount Classics and Nickelodeon bought for a reported US$2 million.
"That's the kind of film that might have sold for about US$250,000 five years ago," she said. Paramount bought world rights (excluding Australia), which only emphasizes the genre's reach.
While the film coaxes the audience to cheer for 11-year-olds doing the rumba (and who is churlish enough to resist that?), it glosses over the sociology behind its uplifting story. The Washington Heights school at the center of the film is attended largely by children of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, many from poor or troubled homes. All this is mentioned and breezed past, which leaves viewers with a nagging question: Just what are we and these children being uplifted from?
Spellbound, on the other hand, actually embraces social issues, as smart children of privilege compete with smart children of poverty. Whom to root for, and why, becomes a complicated equation.
Tell Them Who You Are belongs to a simpler category: film as personal catharsis. Mark Wexler, now middle-aged, sets out to capture a father who was sometimes brutal on his son's ego and evidently still is. Haskell Wexler is seen on screen ordering his son around and making himself seem important. The son's documentary seems like the ultimate in passive-aggressive filmmaking.
On the other hand, the deftly shaped Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire is more than one man's journey, as it follows the former UN general back to Rwanda a decade after the genocide he and his peacekeeping force were helpless to prevent. The narrative is reinforced with news clips and amateur video from a decade earlier. Those images can make the documentary tough to sit through, but it is also as compelling as its central character: a man haunted by his failed attempt to save all those lives. Moving beyond its devastating subject, the film expands into broader questions of political and personal responsibility.
While even the most poignant political documentaries are not likely to approach the box-office numbers of Michael Moore's artful Fahrenheit 9/11, which was entertaining and propelled by election-year frenzy, filmmakers of less creativity haven't been stopped from trying -- and being overpraised for their modest efforts. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, for example, has a topical subject, a lucidly told story, and no more flair than a cheap documentary on cable television.
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