June 2007

Talking about movies: Not just the facts, ma'am

By Frank Beaver

Ah, the perils of documentary filmmaking!

Two recent efforts by well-known documentarists have yet again pointed out just how susceptible the genre is to critical attack. Ken Burns' multi-segmented study of the United States in World War II (scheduled for broadcast this fall) was taken back to the editing room after coming under sharp attack by Latino groups for its failure to show their people as soldiers in the war.

Michael Moore's "Sicko," an anecdotal expose of the shortcomings of America's healthcare system, has been taken to task for including Cuba as an exemplary case-in-point for a country that takes care of the medical needs of its people. "Sicko" premiered in May at the Cannes Film Festival and opens here at the end of June. ( I saw a rough-cut of the documentary in April at Ann Arbor's Michigan Theater and found it to be Moore's most important film to date.)

The criticisms of these two films reaffirm the age-old adage that documentarists open themselves to attack for two reasons: for what they choose to include, and for what they choose to leave out.

There are several thoughts which come to mind about the art of documentary filmmaking. First, even though the film presents itself as a "document," the creation of any documentary involves an editorial process of inclusion/exclusion—the selection and rejection of available material in order that the film contain a definable, engaging point of view. Point of view is the crux of any worthwhile documentary, and it is from that point of view that the work takes shape and engages the viewer. Good documentaries offer good drama—a special type of storytelling that uses real people and facts and presents them in as compelling a manner as possible.

For me the simplest and most useful definition of documentary was stated back in the early days of the genre (the 1920's) by British-Canadian documentarist and critic John Grierson. He defined documentary as "a creative treatment of actuality." Grierson's definition was inspired by his study of the films of Robert Flaherty, a Michigan native and mineral prospector turned filmmaker.

Flaherty's prospecting sojourns had taken him in 1910 into the Hudson Bay area of Canada. There he came into contact with Eskimo tribes whose survival instincts he came to admire and which he would later seek to preserve on film. He was particularly interested, with the help of the Eskimos, in conveying older rather than current traditions of daily life. Flaherty wrote: "What I want to show is the former majesty and character of these people while it is still possible…."

In 1920 Flaherty set about filming an Eskimo hunter and fisherman, Nanook, and his family. Carefully selected events, including some restaged and some suggested by Nanook from his memory of the past, were filmed then later edited to create a point of view theme that depicted "man against nature." The result—decidedly 'a creative treatment of actuality,' was the unforgettable ethnographic documentary "Nanook of the North," released in 1921 to great acclaim.

Not surprisingly, Flaherty would himself in time come under attack for what he had included and what he had left out in making his heroic drama of Eskimo life in the far north.

In one of the film's most memorable scenes, Nanook and other Eskimo tribesmen struggle to kill a walrus with an ancient harpoon, although a rifle was at hand nearby. (This was one of the scenes suggested by Nanook). In another scene in which Nanook and his family are bedding down for the night inside an igloo the camera doesn't show that one side of the igloo had been cut away to provide adequate lighting for filming.

Flaherty, "the father of documentary," did what all good documentarists do—he discovered a story that the felt compelled to tell and he found ways through the selection and editing of his filmed material to get the story across. Documentarists like Flaherty and Burns and Moore are not just objective recorders. They can't and shouldn't be. Rather, they're explorers who interpret real people and the circumstances of their lives (Nanook), real events and their consequences (World War II), real issues and their personal implications (national healthcare).

Film historian and critic Frank Beaver is professor of film and video studies and professor of communication.