Category: Documentary

By Joe Bendel. History has been unfair to the Donner Party. While they are often collectively referred to as “notorious,” the Uruguayan soccer team’s 1973 plane crash in the Andes is considered an inspiring story of survival. Yet, both did similar things to stave off starvation. While many factors hindered the Donner Party’s passage to California, none were as punishing as the storms that left them snowbound in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Somewhat logically, The Weather Channel branches out into original documentary production by chronicling and dramatically recreating the ill-fated 1846 expedition in Doug Glover’s Dead of Winter: the Donner Party, which premieres this Friday on the network.

Like so many who came before and after them, the group that came to be known as the Donner Party saw California as the land of opportunity. George Donner and James F. Reed were relatively successful in Springfield, Illinois, but they were convinced they could make substantially better lives for themselves with the California land grants. Their company of covered wagons was eager to get there as soon as possible, so they took a speculative shortcut called Hastings Cutoff. Obviously, it was a disaster.

Those who only know the Donner Party from its hazy reputation, might be surprised how quickly circumstances turned desperate for the group of pioneers and how long they resisted resorting to cannibalism. Arguably, their torturous crossing of the Great Salt Lake Desert was just as grueling as the snowstorms on the Sierra Nevada, but it came earlier in the trek, so it did not generate as drastic a death toll.

Glover, screenwriter Raymond Bridgers, and the assembled historical experts are all good storytellers, who happen to be refreshingly forgiving of the Donner Party. With a few terrible exceptions, the pioneers conducted themselves just as well as the Uruguayan football players. Men like Donner, Reed, and diarist Patrick Breen just wanted their children to have better lives than they did, but they sacrificed horribly for the sake of their American dreams.

The quality of Dead of Winter’s historical commentary is considerably better than average, while having Powers Boothe (Red Dawn and 24) as narrator gives the film some seriously cool cred. The dramatic recreation cast also look period-appropriate and eventually quite weathered and bedraggled. It is a well-produced documentary that convincingly shifts the focus on the Donner party from the lurid details of cannibalism to their harrowing exploits of heroism. You could almost say Dead of Winter is revisionist, in a good way. Shrewdly, it is scheduled for the night after Thanksgiving (making turkey leftovers look all kinds of appetizing). Recommended for history and weather buffs, Dead of Winter: the Donner Party premieres this Friday (11/27) on The Weather Channel.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on November 25th, 2015 at 12:18pm.

By Joe Bendel. During the Cold War, America had jazz and the USSR had the Bolshoi Ballet. We won the Cold War, but the Bolshoi still tours internationally, spreading Russian prestige. However, backstage drama took a rather ugly and embarrassingly public turn in early 2013 when Ballet Director Sergei Filin suffered a potentially disfiguring acid attack. Instead of bringing the company together it exacerbated pre-existing fissures, at least according to Nick Read’s Bolshoi Babylon, which opens this Friday in New York.

Babylon starts with the sort of tellingly ironic intro we always appreciate. According to one Bolshoi insider, Russia has two internationally recognizable name brands: the Kalashnikov and the Bolshoi, but the one-time market leading AK-47 has since been eclipsed by other automatic rifles. That says a lot about Russia in general. Unfortunately, Read and credited co-director Mark Franchetti are generally more content to observe than to probe.

We learn there was already deep discontent with Filin’s tenure as Ballet Director, a post roughly analogous to artistic director. Soon, disgruntled Bolshoi dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko is arrested for the crime and the company quickly divides into opposing factions. Dmitrichenko, a Bolshoi legacy, makes no bones of his resentment for Filin, specifically blaming him for sabotaging his girlfriend’s career. For many, this criticism rings all too true.

Frustratingly, Read shows no determination to get to the bottom of the controversy. Instead, he periodically lets partisans from Team Sergei and Team Pavel vent. Much of Babylon proceeds like Frederick Wiseman’s La Danse, offering us opportunities to watch rehearsals and performances from the wings. That is not without interest, especially for ballet connoisseurs, but it avoids the 800 pound gorilla we hear is stalking through the halls of the Bolshoi Theater.

Frankly, Babylon is a maddening missed opportunity. We are told straight up, as the Bolshoi goes, so goes Russia. It hardly seems coincidental corruption threatens to tarnish the storied ballet at a time when the Putin regime has increasingly tightened its control at home and launched belligerent military campaigns against its neighbors, but Read won’t go there.

There is some interesting stuff in Babylon, but it feels rushed out and provisional. Clearly, the guts of this story remains to be told. As a result, Babylon is primarily for dance fans who want a peak behind the Bolshoi’s curtain than serious geopolitical viewers looking for insight into the powerful and privileged of Putin’s Russia. A disappointing and sometimes repetitive mixed bag, Bolshoi Babylon opens this Friday (11/27) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on November 23rd, 2015 at 11:56am.

By Joe Bendel. Making a film about Guy Maddin is an intimidating prospect. There is no way you can get away with conventional talking heads when profiling arguably the most distinctive stylist in world cinema today. Fortunately, Yves Montmayeur recognized the challenge and brought his A-game for The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Maddin, which screens today as part of the 2015 RIDM: Montreal International Documentary Festival.

Before going any further, fans should be duly reassured Udo Kier most definitely appears in 1,000 Eyes. It wouldn’t be a Maddin film without him. As the documentary opens, he and Geraldine Chaplin are participating in Maddin’s séance performance art-installation piece at the Pompidou Center. They are trying to raise the spirits of aborted films that were never produced. Maddin’s persistent fascination with films that never were has proved a rich vein for him to mine, also partly inspiring the mind-blowing The Forbidden Room.

Somewhat surprisingly, Montmayeur has a clear affinity for the more macabre aspects of Maddin’s films, which is not how most of his fans typically think of the surrealist. However, he also explores Maddin’s playfully transgressive sexual themes, which are always hard to lose sight of. Throughout the doc, Montmayeur shrewdly selects film clips for illustrative purposes. However, the auteur’s admirers will really respect the way Montmayeur manages to blend his documentary footage together with Maddin’s films and imagery in accordance the spirit of his subject’s visions. Maddin is also unceasingly helpful, talking seriously about his work, while maintaining a self-deprecating sense of humor. Maddin semi-regular Isabella Rossellini adds some star power, while John Waters and Kenneth Anger further bolster its cult appeal.

Although far from an exhaustive survey, Montmayeur paints a robust portrait of the filmmaker and the tone and motifs of his work. Maddin’s films are bizarrely seductive. Despite their often intentional fakeness, they somehow feel like a very real alternate reality. If you watch My Winnipeg, you will be convinced every strange and absurd story really happened in his Manitoba hometown. Montmayeur conveys a sense of the trippy, intoxicating power his best films have, which is quite an accomplishment. Running an economic sixty-five minutes, it delves reasonably deeply into the Maddin aesthetic without belaboring its points or repeating itself. Recommended for Maddin and Kier fans, The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Maddin screens today (11/20) and Sunday (11/22), as part of this year’s RIDM in Montreal.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on November 20th, 2015 at 1:47pm.

By Joe Bendel. What were the crimes artist and poet Mu Xin was arrested for during his lifetime? Hardcore offenses, like talking informally about Madame Mao at a social gathering and making sketches in what became known as Taiwan in the years before the revolution (that’s right, he did not have the gift of clairvoyance). Of course, the Red Guards hardly needed a pretext to arrest and torture anyone during the Cultural Revolution. His secret, nonpolitical art was more than sufficient. Filmmakers Francesco Bello & Timothy Sternberg coaxed the late artist into reflecting on his life and work in the elegantly elegiac short documentary Dreaming Against the World, which screens during this year’s DOC NYC.

Mu Xin was born into a well to do family in Wuzhen, so he was doomed to face hardships during Mao’s various ideological campaigns. However, his early years were also greatly enriched by the extensive library a local intellectual left in his family’s care. Frankly, Mu Xin was better read in classic Western literature than any of us, which would hardly help his case during the Cultural Revolution, but it gave him perspective.

Although Mu Xin was a reluctant interview subject, he radiates dignity and erudite charm. Obviously, the episodes he warily speaks of were difficult to revisit, but he also seems to experience some cathartic release from the process. Yet, he is extraordinarily Zen-like referring to the scores of paintings, poems, plays, and other writings confiscated and destroyed during the collective insanity as mere “practice.”

For those who doubt the Communist experience immeasurably impoverished the world, Mu Xin’s lost work is conclusive proof. He is now best known for “Tower Within a Tower” series of landscape paintings and his secretly recorded Prison Notes, sixty six pages of such minute lettering, they are recognized as a work of art in their own right, as well as a courageous act of defiance. Still, one has to wonder what treasures would also be celebrated had they survived.

As Bello & Sternberg rightly point out, Mu Xin could have been summarily executed had his signature works been discovered while he was creating them. It is an incredible story, told with tremendous sensitivity. The filmmakers add just enough context to ensure any viewer can appreciate Mu Xin’s life and work, without getting sidetracked by the nightmarish historical dynamics at play. Several of the credited translators are also names we recognize and therefore give us even further confidence in the film’s accuracy and integrity. It is a film worthy of its accomplished and insightful subject. Very highly recommended, the thirty-five minute Dreaming Against the World screens before Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah this Thursday (11/19) at the SVA Theatre, as part of DOC NYC 2015.

LFM GRADE: A+

Posted on November 17th, 2015 at 10:33pm.

By Joe Bendel. They saw starvation during the Holodomor, Stalin’s forced starvation of Ukraine and radiation sickness during the Chernobyl meltdown. The latter paled compared to the horrors of Stalin. Having persevered through Stalin’s terror, they were not about to let a little thing like radiation scare them off. Holly Morris & Anne Bogart visit several of the two hundred-some matronly survivors who returned to their once-abandoned homes in The Babushkas of Chernobyl, which screens during this year’s DOC NYC.

The once bustling villages and mid-sized towns supporting the Soviet nuclear industry are now overgrown with weeds. Instead of a scorched wasteland, nature has largely taken back the so-called “Exclusion Zone.” According to PBS’s Nature, the wolf population has thrived in recent years. Considering their advanced age and vodka consumption, the “Babushkas” also seem to be doing relatively well. Valentyna Ivanivna attributes her longevity to the healing power of herbs, while Hanna Zavorotnya puts her faith in moonshine. They are probably both right.

Although the government still tightly controls access to the zone, they have semi-officially condoned the women’s recolonization, believing they will succumb to old age before the effects of radiation manifest in their bodies. It seems a quite reasonable position really. In contrast, Morris and Bogart also incorporate some of the video shot by the foolhardy thrill seekers venturing into the Exclusion Zone, often inspired by the Stalker video game. It is certainly fascinating footage to watch, but stupid as hell.

Indeed, Morris and Bogart had to take a tag team approach to limit their exposure. We also get a series of timely reality checks from Vita Polyakova, a government guide, who shares the filmmakers’ affection for the Babushkas. Still, between the wolves and the returnees, you have to wonder if there are natural phenomena at work off-setting the effects of radiation.

Granted, the Babushkas are steadily passing away, but what can we expect. They survived the Holodomor, the National Socialist occupation, and in some cases terrible marriages. Frankly, their resiliency and ironic humor is impressive. They are almost as old as Bernie Sanders, but they have actually lived under the socialism he is so blindly devoted to. Perhaps we should listen to them when they tell us to keep plenty of moonshine and pig fat handy. Recommended for the rugged charm of its subjects and an intriguing view of a land few will visit, The Babushkas of Chernobyl screens this Wednesday (11/18) and Thursday (11/19) at the IFC Center, as part of the 20105 DOC NYC.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on November 16th, 2015 at 6:22pm.

By Joe Bendel. By now, nobody puts too much stock in Wikipedia and other online databases. This is especially true when it comes to the filmographies of Harold and Lillian Michelson. For years, their contributions to classic Hollywood productions as a story board artist and researcher have been vaguely credited or completely uncredited. They finally get their due in Daniel Raim’s Harold and Lillian: a Hollywood Love Story, which screens during this year’s DOC NYC.

Unsung is maybe a slight exaggeration in Harold’s case, since he was able to graduate up to production designer gigs, earning two Oscar nominations (including one for Star Trek: the Motion Picture). Still, it is not like people out there are saying: “of course, Harold Michelson. He was the production designer on Johnny Got his Gun.” Credits for Lillian Michelson are even sketchier, but she enriched hundreds of pictures, often through research into period design details, but also into more specialized fields, such as occult imagery for the dream sequences in Rosemary’s Baby. Francis Ford Coppola thought so much of her, he ensconced her and her research library at his Zoetrope Studios, but unfortunately that did not last as long as he hoped.

Obviously, their Greatest Generation romance and six decades of marriage are of central importance to the film. It is quite endearing, but most viewers will be more interested in their contributions to classic cinema. Happily, one of the directors who comes off the best in their recollections is everyone’s favorite auteur, Alfred Hitchcock, who treated Harold like a genuine collaborator on The Birds and Marnie. Coppola and Mel Brooks also have plenty of nice things to say as does Harold’s old crony, executive producer Danny Devito.

Sadly, Harold Michelson passed away in 2007, but Raim still has sufficient interview footage for him to be a consistent presence in the film. The poems in his handcrafted valentines and birthday cards to Lillian also provide an ironic running commentary on their lives. However, the surviving Lillian always gets the last word, not that that would concern her beloved Harold. She is absolutely lovely, but she can also dish like Hedda Hopper, which makes her reminiscences highly watchable.

The Michelsons’ work is way more interesting than you might think and they are quite charming to spend time with. It is a super nice film that will be catnip for regular TCM viewers. Warmly recommended, Harold and Lillian screens tomorrow (11/17) and Wednesday (11/18) at the IFC Center, as part of the 20105 DOC NYC.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on November 16th, 2015 at 6:22pm.