It’s a bit of a rule that documentaries about artists are almost never as interesting as their subjects. That may seem a bit harsh, and it’s not as if these films are worthless. Yet too many of the docs that fall into this category simply tell a bland biographical narrative, occasionally illustrating their facile portraitures with images of paintings or clips from films. The best docs about artists manage to evoke the right spirit, blending a person’s life together with their greatest achievements.
But how do you do it? As “Room 237” demonstrated, one could make a feature length film about a just single piece of an artist’s output, never mind the whole thing. When you factor in a life story, it becomes an even bigger problem. Documentarians are forced to choose, to build around a particular angle. This year’s Tribeca Film Festival has a whole slew of these films. Perhaps the most daring of them is Yves Montmayeur’s “Michael H. Profession: Director.”
Its boldness lies in its simplicity. Montmayeur made a film about Michael Haneke’s oeuvre and nothing else. He begins with the filming of “Amour” and works backwards, blending clips, production footage, and interviews both new and old with the director and his actors. In spite of being notoriously unwilling to interpret his films, the Austrian auteur is terribly talkative (and surprisingly spry). His stars are enlightening as well, an assemblage that includes Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche, and of course Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva.
Much of the discussion seems to revolve around how Haneke doesn’t like to discuss his movies, including some entertaining footage of the director refusing to answer what he deems to be bad questions. He will also say things like “All of my films can be seen as a reaction to contemporary cinema,” which is interesting but not exactly groundbreaking. The excerpts of the films themselves, meanwhile, make “Michael H.” play a bit like a supercut of Haneke’s most violent and disturbing moments. Yet Montmayeur doesn’t emphasize the horror of his films in his selection interview footage.
“Michael H. Profession: Director” is a must-see for the die-hard fan of Haneke’s work, but does not offer much to the viewer that hasn’t seen at least most of his filmography. Thankfully for Montmayeur, that still gives him an audience. But what if he were directing a doc about a much lesser-known artist? “Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton” takes that problem and turns it into quite the opportunity.
James Broughton was a poet and filmmaker who got his start during the San Francisco Renaissance of the late 1940s. Not too many people know about him and his work, though “Big Joy” makes it pretty clear how unfortunate that is. His films are delightful and his poetry is passionate, a body of work that you will instantly draw you in. Clips of his many shorts feature prominently in “Big Joy,” but have none of the homogeny and brutality of “Michael H.” The title is entirely applicable, as his romantic and sexually adventurous work shines with real jubilation.
Yet the central pull of the film comes from the directors’ (three of them, Stephen Silha, Eric Slade and Dawn Logsdon) emphasis on Broughton’s relationships. He had a child with Pauline Kael. He went to Europe with his next lover, Kermit Sheets, and won an award at Cannes. He later returned to San Francisco and married a woman, at the urging of Stan Brakhage. His life was full of the ups and downs of a man wrestling with his sexuality, exacerbated by the swirling cultural community around him. “Big Joy” does not hide his gloomier moments, the dark thoughts that often accompany a closeted life, nor does it shield him from the ramifications of his failures and infidelities. Because no documentary can capture an entire lifetime, “Big Joy” settles for Broughton’s life-long relationship with love. It works beautifully.
Of course, this approach doesn’t work for everyone. Can you imagine a documentary about the life and loves of Gore Vidal? As we learn in Nicholas Wrathall’s “Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia” that might be fascinating, but would probably be impossible to make. Vidal was shy about discussing his personal life, and insists that his many-year relationship with Howard Austen was non-sexual. So there’s that.
However, Wrathall fastens on to the driving forces of the great novelist and gadfly’s character: his anger and his wit. This is a documentary about Vidal’s life, but it’s principally about his politics. The novels are mentioned, of course, and their well-designed covers are paraded before the camera. Yet the film spends much more time on the early years with his grandfather, Senator Thomas Gore of Oklahoma, and his various political campaigns and agitations. His public debates with William F. Buckley are also front and center, perhaps the best showcase of Vidal’s fiery opinions and rapid-fire wit.
At times, other elements of the man appear that might merit more attention in the hands of another filmmaker. His precarious friendship with Christopher Hitchens is one of these, when Vidal shifted from aristocratically referring to the Brit as his heir to rejecting him completely in the wake of his support for the Iraq War. Yet Wrathall’s film is not about Hitchens, nor is it really about Vidal’s social life or sense of humor. True to the man’s spirit, “Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia” is about the role of the political writer. If you laugh the whole way through, that’s only because this greatest of public intellectuals was so damn funny.
Categories: No CategoriesTags: Documentaries, Gore Vidal, James Broughton, Michael haneke, Tribeca film festival