Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by TA (A) on January 24, 2005 at 00:21:12

In Reply to: As a documentary filmmaker myself... (long) posted by EBerlin on January 22, 2005 at 17:43:00:

I find it interesting that grinagog is looking forward to seeing a "Ken Burns" documentary rather than a documentary on baseball, the Civil War or jazz. It shows how much he has become a brand name, like someone saying, I want to see a "Hitchcock" or "Godard" film, or even a "Michael Moore" film. With brand names, it's not the subject matter that matters but the filmmaker's eye on the subject matter that people are looking to experience.

I'm not sure that I agree with some of your criticism of Ken Burns, that part which I bluntly take as, he makes films that I don't think work as films. That is an cricism of the artistic use of the form and its cinematic virtue. But I think that to go down that path you may to apply the same criticism to a film like La Jetee, which is narration over a series of still pictures. I don't think I want to go down that path, else I'd have to say that Howard the Duck has more cinematic virtue than La Jetee.

I do side with you that if grinagog is looking to see a "Ken Burns" film because he wants to open himself to seeing a certain style of film, there are better choices for the documentary style. If he wants to learn something about the civil war, then maybe he is better sticking to Ken Burns than Sherman's March.

But there's something to think about in my saying that ... which is another part of your criticism, a part that I think is the more important one. It's how Ken Burns forces his position on the subject of his films. Documentaries in the past tried to avoid disclosing any self-awareness of the filmmaker's eye, and in the last twenty years it's become acceptable to relish in it. Films like Sherman's March do make it clear who the filmmaker is and that the film is in his voice and of his personal exploration of the subject matter. Documentaries today, like Sherman's March, are arguably more honest because they face that fact rather than try to hide it.

I would argue that it's dangerous to do what Ken Burns does, which is to give some air of official-ness to his point of view. Thank god he believes in racial equality and reinforces those themes in his films. That's easy to take as truth because we all believe in the same things. But what about his viewpoint about what's interesting about jazz? His viewpoint is expressed in his choice of who he covers. While people are nodding in agreement with his viewpoint that racial discrimination was bad in the '50s, he gets them to nod too that jazz kind of fizzled out after the '60s. There's a moral slippery slope in taking this manner of documentary filmmaking as honest, and a danger in how far one can push the line between reality and opinion. Now, I don't think Ken Burns would say that he's trying to hide the ball on the fimmaker's viewpoint in his films, but I do think that his films tend to soften that and pull the audience in as believers.

I find it a very strange circle. Grinagog wants to see a film because he wants to see a "Ken Burns" film, but his appeal is in making something that harks back to the old days when documentaries were seen as something that tried to hide the filmmaker's eye.

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One of these days I gotta get myself organizized.