L'Atalante (France, 1934, Jean Vigo)

A mild disagreement over the relative qualities of this film ends with the discovery of some common ground vis a vis Murnau's sublime Sunrise.

Ben Begins:

How do you tolerate me? Your recent reply to my review of Children of Paradise was empathetically educational for me. I saw and reviewed that film long enough ago (a month?) for your reply to have caught me completely disconnected from my experience of it. But I am always sending you reviews of films you may not have seen for years, expecting you to have such-and-such as much on your mind as I have it on mine. Of course, I am not THAT self-centered and I have been proud of the times a review of mine has made you want to see a film again. Still, how do you tolerate me?

Unfortunately for both of us, I doubt the present review will make you want to see L'Atalante again. I don't have much to say about it. Truth be told, I was a little underwhelmed by it. In all fairness to the film, what little I've been watching lately has mostly been of the contemporary documentary sort, so I think my head was out of practice with (a) old, (b) foreign language hence subtitles and (c) fictitious drama.

In all fairness to me, however, I cannot agree with the blurb on the box which states that "a simple and engaging plot is transformed into a kaleidoscope of dazzling digressions." Well, I didn't find them so dazzling. The film sort of meanders along for the most part, introducing a dynamic conflict very late in the narrative. Coming so late as it does, this dynamic conflict is, frankly, not dynamic enough. After such a lengthy and laconic preamble, a ride a tad more wild, you know, a big finish, was missed by me. I do agree with the box that the film boasts some "offbeat characterizations," particularly the hilarious old sea dog covered with kittens and surrounded by all of the paraphernalia from his world travels . This performance is wonderful, drawing deep from the well of The Clown and I capitalize the category in order to acknowledge its profundity. And I liked the passion and romance of the newly-weds. But the relative newness of talkie technology seemed yet unmastered by Vigo insofar as the characters didn't have much of anything to say to each other.

More damning, for all the arresting shots and imagery - admittedly, some of this pretty darn arresting - the story-telling is not the best due to the absence of certain required scenes, either because they were never written in the first place or else because they were edited to the floor. And this hooks up the pacing problem of the film once the dynamic conflict comes into play. The minute she goes ashore independently and he lifts anchor without her, the story needs to kick into high grear. An accelerated pace would not only have generated the excitement of speed in its own right, it would have allowed for the much neglected elaboration on her adventure/crisis. What she actually gets into is underdeveloped and how she gets into anything at all is never explained, (how she is eventually located and returned by the old sea dog is so unexplained we can only allow this as pure poetic licence.) I can't help but wonder if the problem I am identifying originated from Vigo never committing to the female character as the overt protagonist of the tale. L'Atalante is an ensemble piece, a trio really, but I believe it would have been a much stronger story if it had definitely been hers.

As for that arresting cinematography I admitted already, I suppose this is the main reason why L'Atalante is treasured today. There are some very cool things to see. And on this score, I think the setting of film is not trivial. The camera movement on and around the boat, the boat in relation to its environs and the general depiction of this working class vocational culture into which she - and therefore - we have entered, all of this is atmospherically captured by the camera with considerable evocative authority. In short, the boat trip and everything related to it is working for me. I just think the film is less in control of itself when we are away from the boat.

And Dan Responds:

Look, man, I'm the dealer. I've got no one to blame but myself, since I keep giving you this junk; of course, if you keep shooting it up when you suspect it's not gonna make you high...well, you know the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing repeatedly, yet hoping for a different result. I "tolerate you" because your reviews are damned entertaining, man. And generally speaking, you make pretty persuasive case, so that even if we disagree about a film, I am at the very least engaged, and often provoked to rethink my position on a film. Other than Mulholland Dr., that is. You're just plain wrong about that one.

As for L'Atalante, I'm obviously a bigger fan of the film that you. It's not canonical (heh) or anything, but it's still a fascinating film for me. Perhaps I'm more willing than you to cut it some slack, particularly given when the film was made (so early on in the talkie era) cuz it was so bloody hard for filmmakers to keep the picture moving and vibrant at this time--so many films in the early silent era were stodgy, dull affairs, bogged down by the logistics of where to plant the mic in order to record the actor's dialogue--that a film like this, which--though admittedly langorously paced by comparison to, say, a Buster Keaton film--manages to keep rolling on down the river allowing the characters both physical and emotional movement despite the challenges imposed by consideration for all that sound equipment. I also don't mind the leisurely pace vis a vis the narrative, because the non-narrative elements, such as the cinematography (the imagery! Just the way Vigo captures the character of the French riverbank is quite remarkable, and some of the fantasy sequences, and those underwater shots, wow!), captivated me throughout. This is a film that is much more about mood than plot, which is why I suppose that I allow that while a bit more tension and sense of urgency after the complications set in would have given the film a more compelling payoff, I'm not terribly distressed. The film gives me enough story by showing the degenerative effects of time on young married life, as the story unfolds of a couple's disillusionment, and as their relationship moves from its initial dreaminess to a more tedious realism. Also, the movie presents the conventional story of innocence to experience, as the young girl Juliette leaves the small village that's always been her home, and heads out into the great unknown. She begins marriage with some trepidation, but much more curiousity, which fuels some of her flights of fancy (Vigo even includes some arty sequences depicting their mutual yearnings), and when that fantasy, which includes promises from dear hubby to be given a tour of gay Paris, is obliterated by a crueler and more petty reality, I think the film capably captures the death of the girl's idealism. In the early going, married life is both beautiful and strange, and Vigo's stellar camerawork helps us to share this young couple's experiences.

But to be honest, I quite enjoyed the fact that the film wasn't all that concerned about such matters. Instead, we are given a lyrical glimpse into life on (and along) the river; it has a distinct joie de vivre, and anticipates a 60s sort of free spiritedness that I continue to find very appealing. And while I will also concede that the performance of the "salty sea dog" (Michel Simon, a favourite of Jean Renoir's. As is Jean Daste, who plays the hubby) is my favourite, and in a film that is--at least ostensibly--about the unravelling of a marriage, that's somewhat problematic, however, I think that there's a none too subtle sexual tension in the sea dog's scenes with the girl that hint at this film's subversive subtext. Is this really a traditional happy ending, with a reversion to conventional roles of man and woman as husband and wife? Not while that sea dog still sails with 'em, they don't. In some ways, L'Atalante is a little like Sunrise, an arty film that takes us on a journey through the tensions that can beset a marriage, but with a more open-ended resolution. Regardless, this was the tubercular Vigo's final film (he died at the far too tender age of 29) and I can't help but mourn the films an even more mature, capable and confident director might have made.

Then Ben:

Sounds like I'm just plain wrong not only about Mulholland Drive but also L'Atalante.

You mention the technical achievement of Vigo keeping the ball rolling while accomodating all that sound equipment. Funny you should lean on this because a number of times it looked to me as if he filmed without audio, providing the sound track after the fact. I believe Fellini did this throughout his career precisely so as to free the camera from any constraint associated with all the sound equipment. I gave Vigo his props with respect to the motility of the camera and the cool imagery but at the same time I suggested that the price for this was paid by the narrative in both the (literally) meagre dialogue and the (more abstract) aural awkwardness.

I am glad you mentioned Sunrise because I thought of bringing it up myself before. I decided not to then because I was going to state that Vigo's film doesn't even come close to Murnau's. You are right that they both explore conjugal domesticity under threat. But Sunrise synthesizes rustic goth creepiness and ultra modern urban flash in a truly amazing manner, all the while holding fast to a level of melodrama in the plot that will take no prisoners of indecision, no captives of ambiguity hoping to dodge the moral cannon fire. L'Atalante is entirely without this degree of conceptual rigour, and falling back on the different sensibilities between the frogs and the krauts is no excuse this time. It's not that your observations about L'Atalante's examination of the "honeymoon being over" are not valid. It's that the thematic meaning of this examination never solidifies in the film because it never really decides on a particular character's point of view. I said before that it should have been the wife's but even if this is to be rejected, I maintain that the story is a bit of a lump because it lacks a plainly selected protagonist.

As for a couple of your other points, I think we are in agreement. I too found the erotic dimension of the characters' interactions compelling and I too was drawn into the overall atmosphere of the vessel making its slow but steady way through the landscape. We do not interpret the latter similarly, however. You give it a sort of Jack Kerouac "On The Road" reading whereas I paid more attention to the context of their labour; their scrap cargo, the cannal locks, and the harsh dispatcher who must be prevented by the first mate/clown from firing the love-sick skipper/husband. Rather than being free spirits, these deck hands must work in order to travel the world. You are right that the wife is quickly disillusioned about the bright lights of the big city. But she isn't just returned to her husband. She is brought back to the boat. Her peasant naivete gone, she embarks on a unique proletarian way of life.

And Dan:

Look, I'm just happy we got this far without discussing whether or not the film was able to float your boat.

We are in agreement that Sunrise is the superior film. It gets to the nut of the matter, whereas L'Atalante is a bit more breezy and fuzzy. Juliette in L'Atalante has a similar contrasting experience between the big city vs. small village of her childhood, but she doesn't integrate it in the same way as her counterpart in Sunrise. It just sorta happens, whereas in Sunrise, it's a real experience. And the love triangle in Sunrise is powerfully life-altering for all; it's not nearly as fundamental in L'Atalante. Perhaps it is as you reason a lack of commitment to a specific point of view; if Vigo had commited fully to Juliette, we would have had a clear emotional avenue into this conflict.

As for post-production synching, you are correct that Fellini did that (in all of his films, I believe) because it freed him up to film on location without having to worry about how he was going to record dialogue. His films are certainly richer visually for that, though I find some of the discrepancies between audio and video jarring at times (he wasn't always terribly attentive to that detail). However, I'm pretty sure that the technology that allowed Fellini to do this was not around in Vigo's day, which is why there are so few scenes of dialogue in the more visually adventurous moments. It just wasn't possible. So I suspect that Vigo often had to sacrifice words at the alter of image during the production of L'Atalante.

Children of Paradise (France, 1945, Michel Carne)

Wherein Ben and I admire a film's Gaul.

Ben Begins:

Boy, talk about a complete cultural statement in support of national identity. The film is so utterly French. It positively oozes Brie. After it had unfolded a fair play, I thought of Mayhew's proto-sociological character sketches and Dickens as well as Brechet's Three Penny Opera, itself based on the much early English Begger's Opera. But Monica corrected me: "Balzac." Oui. And we wondered how in hell the movie was even made. Coming out in 1945, what were the conditions of the film industry in Vichy France immediately prior to the release of COP? It's not that the film is overtly anti-German/Nazi or anything. (Although, the rag seller/gossip/soothsayer is pretty obviously a Jew and while comically despicable, is not entirely unsympathetic.) But it is so overtly pro-French, dripping with reverence for the Gaulic temperament. It is not openly subversive of the occupying power but it does constitute some sort of resistance to defeat. The population must have found COP deeply affirming when it came out. Thus, there is a recursive cultural connection established, a meta-feedback loop, between the 18?? theatre audience depicted in the film and the 1945 audience watching it. The recognition of THAT time in France at THIS moment in France, and the celebration of the specifically French theatrical tradition, most especially pantomime - it's as if the film is saying, you can force us to be silent but we know how to talk without words so you can't shut us up. It all hooks up with importance transcending the qualities the film has as a film.

But what qualities the film has as a film! It's well shot and well editied but most of all it boasts wonderful performances of a delicious screenplay. Clever and wise come together to give us meaningful wisecracks. I thought of Lubitsch. Funny and smart is sublime in my books. The femme fatale in particular knocked me out with her Mae West meets Edith Piaf delivery, a bit too old for the role but she owned it no problem. Her lovers and the rogues gallery too, everyone was delightful. And considering the film is about four hours long, the pace was exceptionally well set. This takes a deft hand because there are moments of tremendous intimacy, angusih and poignancy which necessitate slowing the thing down almost to a stop. COP is a ribald romp that somehow simultaneously manages to present us with considerably complex characters about whom we care. The tangled relations of love are of almost epic proportions and constitute the purpose of the picture; i.e., to never forget that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Of course, the leniency towards infidelity in the film is quintessentially French and in the context of the occupation, this assertion of sexual honesty constitutes a genuinely humanist negation of political authoritarianism. It's as if the film is saying, when it comes to freedom, we have always fought for it in the first place erotically; hey, we've been ignoring the Catholic church for years so we can ignore the Gestapo now.

Just a couple other points. One, the script is not just good because the dialogue is sharp. It is good as a story too and it is as tight as a trap, accounting for any information that may have been left hanging earlier on. The film is long but it is actually lean, everything develops plot lines and character interactions previously established. It's the sort of writing that film students should study. Like I said, I thought of Lubitsch. Two, the incorporation of Othello. The way this is done is positively brilliant in a variety of ways. I will not attempt to list them all, preferring instead merely to suggest that when the actor finally performs Othello, the film moves into its final act and the emotional stakes are raised past comedy to tragedy in COP itself. It would have been easy to do this wrong, in a clumsy and unconvincing manner. But COP gracefully pulls us in the direction it wants us to go and we follow like lemmings over a cliff.

And Dan:

Hey! I'm finally catching up on some of those reviews that you've written. Why start here? Two reason. One, I just spent the afternoon in the dentist's chair, and after 3 hours with your feet elevated above your head, it's hard to think straight. And two, I wrote of a review of the film, back in the day, for Apollo Guide. Consequently, it follows the 600 word editorial limit.

"The story behind the making of Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise) is about as interesting as the film itself, and since the film is one of the great achievements of French cinema, that's saying something. Director Marcel Carné and writer Jacques Prévert developed the film under the suspicious gaze of regulators who controlled the movie industry in Nazi-occupied France, and somehow managed to slip a deliciously subversive work of art past them. The film's title is an ironical reference to the inhabitants of the nosebleed section of theatres at the time – for, while they may have been "closer to God" in the theatre's upper reaches, they also had the worst seats in the house, befitting their lowly status as society's dregs. The title also refers to those lucky and gifted enough to perform on the stage, for this very same audience reveres the actors as gods. Most importantly, the film is about love, both sought and denied, returned and unrequited, and it is in the context of the theatre, where every emotion is heightened, and every relationship shadowed by the taxing and exultant connection between performer and audience, that these relationships take the form of social and political commentary. Les Enfants du Paradis follows a four person circle of unrequited love, where each member loves someone who cannot or will not love them in the way that they need or desire. This wild goose chase of unrequited love begins with the beautiful and mysterious Garance (Arletty), who is pursued by men she doesn't love, while loving a man who is too much the idealist and romantic to love her back. Arletty is probably 15 years too old to play the part of a young beauty believably, but she's a game study. The sensualist Shakespearean actor Frederick (Pierre Brasseur) speaks of giving all his love to the audience, an affection they clearly return. Brasseur's performance here stands the test of time, as his Olivier-like charm and swagger fit nicely with a modern audience's love of the self-assured actor. While he stalks women, and the beautiful and passionate Garance in particular, like sexual prey, the effete and idealistic mime Baptiste (Jean-Louise Barrault), whom Garance clearly adores, reveres Garance as a knight might his lady, and is unwilling to soil this love with a physical expression of his affection. The shady Lacenaire (Marcel Hemand) is the third man in this peculiar love quadrangle. His affection for Garance is more proprietary than romantic or sexual; indeed, he seems to have no sexual appetite whatsoever. Each man loves Garance in part, but seem unable to give her his entire being. Set in post-revolutionary 19th century France, the film's commentary on Nazi occupation is sly. When we learn that actors at the Funambules theatre are not allowed to speak on stage, as was the case at the time, the parallels to contemporary Europe, where artistic freedom was stifled under the boot heels of fascism, is clear. Also clear is Carné's contention that while artistic expression may be temporarily muffled, it can never be completely oppressed, and can sometimes morph into something even more beautiful, as the wildly popular art of the great mime Baptiste attests. Still, such optimism had to be tempered in a film made under such difficult conditions, and Carné seems to acknowledge this with the film's decidedly mournful conclusion. While the conditions under which it was made make this film a remarkable achievement, what really marks the greatness of this film is how you can marvel at its artistry without knowing anything about the context in which it was made."

Then Ben:

Shucks. It's been so long, when I saw the subject in the subject box I thought: Isn't that a Patrick Sweeze movie, set in Calcutta, supposed to establish him as a serious actor but bombed instead? Then I thought: Isn't that a film about ghetto kids in Rio or Sao Paulo that goes from faintly optimistic to utterly hopeless? Thanks for refreshing my memory. What a great film. Just revisiting it in my mind's eye this instant. You didn't mention the mime aspect in your limited-to-600-words review, but for me that is so vital to the Frenchness of it all.

Darwin's Nightmare, redux.

As I've now seen the film, Ben and I are able to share our shock and awe at the power and the glory that is Darwin's Nightmare.

A reminder of what Ben sed:

I have struggled to find my opening sentence and this lame offering is it. This is a must-see film, a great cinematic essay. Against the decontextualization of everything on behalf of postmodernism's reduction of reality to a virtual shoping spree, this film delivers a chunk of our actually existing world with ramifications that register off the chart.
We are so long past bullshit about objectivity in documentary film-making. Like I said, this is an essay. And the concrete is placed in just enough context to give the critical "big picture," the local case is shown to have global systemic causes.

But just like a literary essay of yester-year, the exposition of this is not some dry, analytical affair. So much of persuasion is rhetoric and the good documentarians today have enough command of cinematic grammar to fashion - what else to call it? - art. There is some amazing photography and the overall edit is masterful. The film is lean. Everything not only contributes but gains momentum and eventually comes together. Like I said about Lee's Levee, it has an argument. I am simply drawing attention to the brilliance of it's composition. The images are not subtle - how could they be? Shit, each one tells a thousand words and the words are all about oppression, poverty, degredation, desperation. But Jesus, how in hell did they even get the footage they got? And Christ, they cut the pieces together with outstanding craft in order to best enable the information to coalesce.

It is because things do not just speak for themselves that this excellence in documentation is so vital. This is journalism that knows neutrality is a myth and, dialectically, by taking an attached point of view, shows us greater truth about the whole. Have I made it clear that I am recommending the fuck out of this film?

I will not get into the content. I just want to mention I had no idea about the subject matter of DN , thought it was about religious fundamentalism in the US (again). You corrected me somewhat insofar as you told me it is about ecological crisis is some way. That is right. But DN is even more about imperialist political economy, down on the ground in Tanzania. The particular environmental disaster associated with Lake Victoria is only addressed in passing, in the context of the fishing industry that is the monocultural economy of the place - boom, and off we go. All down on the ground, so bloody awful down on the ground.

And since I was just talking about meta-conscious frame-busting in my review of The Prestige, there is a moment of filmic feed-back loop in DN that is so powerful it's staggering. Not this, context-is-always-shifting shit of the dilettante. This is, let's-return-that-to-where-we-found-it-for-even-more-of-THAT-REAL-context. I will not ruin your experience of this moment in the film by going into detail. Yes, I'm actually respecting the spoiler code for once. Just remember me when you watch the film. And please, you must watch this film.

And Finally, My Repost:

First, I must simply declare that this is a flat out, slap you in the face, kick you in the nuts great film. As we've discussed many times, we really are living in a golden age of documentaries. Michael Moore, for all his faults, surely deserves some credit for bringing the documentary out of the art houses and into the mainstream, while guys like Errol Morris and Werner Herzog just seems to be getting better with age. Hell, one of my favourite films from '06 was a doc—no, I'm not talking about Al Gore's Power Point Presentation, but rather Dave Chappelle's Block Party—and the last four films I've watched—DN, Why We Fight, Operation Homecoming and the 70s Vietnam war classic Hearts and Minds-- have all been terrific docs. However, even judged by today's heightened standards, director Sauper's work stands tall.

That said, I must confess that as the film unfolded, I initially struggled a bit to find the form in its apparently meandering ramblings. I watched the bug-killing air traffic controllers, Tanzanian working girls, and drunken, topless Russian pilots do their thing in a rather bemused and detached fashion in this strange African wasteland. Sure, there were these goddamned gigantic fish, which proved strikingly photogenic, and which were clearly the center of the ecological and economic problems besetting this land, but do we really need another environmental disaster film? What the hell was all this jibber jabbering with the locals going to add up to?

And then things begin to cohere, as moments that appear random creep back and punch you in the back of the head. The three women studying video of the dead prostitute, singing that sweet Tanzanian tune, was a moment of such poignancy and painful self-awareness, reminiscent of a moment in the aforementioned Hearts and Minds, where the director Peter Davis lingers on a shot of an angry Vietnamese villager, who tries his best to escape the camera's gaze, then turns to the lens and ferociously charges that the Americans kill them twice, the first time they shoot them with bullets, the second time with a camera. The lesson, that the filmmaker, for all his ideals and raised consciousness, remains a member of the same imperialist force, seems to me to fit nicely into this shot as well. And there's also the film's brilliant editing that takes us from a public official urging documentarians to show the good as well as the bad to images as horrific as humanly imaginable—children brawling over fetid rice, then sharing snorts of glue distilled from the carnivorous fish's packaging and hits off of cigarettes, women and plucking tiny morsels of edible meat off the mountains of maggoty fish bones. And what can you say about that heartbreaking anecdote of the Russian pilot? Has anyone captured with more precision the essence of this imperial relationship? And finally, while Sauper's use of the Nile Perch as a metaphor for rapacious cannibalistic global capitalism may lack the conciseness of the Russian's story, it makes up for this with it's insightful, spot-on critique of same. Both ravage their environment unchecked, consequences be damned, and when things get tight, they both turn on their own, cannibalizing the defenseless.

I was also very impressed by the filmmaker's ability to make such a strong statement without actually speaking in the film. Sauper allows those most deeply affected by the situation to tell their own story, in their own words. Of course, Sauper decides how to edit all of this material together, but still, it takes a lot of confidence in your storytelling and requires a lot of faith in your audience, to refrain from overt commentary, and I salute the director's abilities here, because I think the film is much more powerful because of this decision.

Darwin's Nightmare is a dirty, nasty and essential film. Brilliant stuff.

Then Ben:

Yes we have mentioned more than once that we are presently in a cultural period wherein documentary film-making is achieving a high degree of excellence and influence. Personally, I am about ready to read some academic theory on this because it seems to me that the mandate in modernism with respect specifically to realism-in-art is being inverted to a (so-called) postmodern agenda for art-in-realism; that is, the original mandate is being transplanted into what was hitherto non-artistic journalistic practice.

In reviewing Spike Lee's When The Levee Broke, I highlighted his departure from the bogus standard of objectivity, calling the non-neutral editing of the content an "essay." But just as an argument in writing cannot be pure reasoning that is convincing but also must be rhetoric that is persuasive, the new approach to the documentary incorporates the documentarian's subjectivity not just as an editorial manipulation of the content but also as an artistic expression of the form.

You are correct that Michael Moore is most responsible for throwing down the opinionated gauntlet, at least in North America. But his approach is actually relatively old-school agit-prop journalism, albeit organized through a First Person lens, and he just happens to wear all the the hats; director, writer editor, narrator, on-camera reporter. Your reference to Werner Herzog, on the other hand - and clearly it's no accident that he is also known and perhaps even better known as a director of fictional tales and an auteaur in general - this is the genuinely new "essay" approach to the documentary I have in mind.

Frankly, I think it might prove necessary to stop calling it "documentary." Contrary to the myth of objectivity, the centrality of the film-maker's point of view in both the form and the content, both ideologically and aesthetically, actually brings us more in touch with the objective facts. What to name this dialectic? I hope Cinemania will host a contest and to kick it off I propose: Testimony. The court stenographer who could care less merely documents the trial - the witness to the event whose own life was changed by it gives testimony.

Hubert Sauper testifies in DN. You remark in passing that he is able to make a "statement" with his film. This is right and captures the artistic side of what I am on about. Yet, Sauper is able not only to "make" a statement, he is able to GIVE one. This is to remember the realism of his testimony. It's not that the facts speak for themselves, they never do. It's that the film-maker gives voice to them. He is not just engaged by them, he is engaged with them.

On this score, I am not sure you are right to suggest that Sauper in DN is analogous to Davis in Hearts and Minds (which I have not seen). I am not so naive to proclaim that DN is a non-contradictory "part of the solution," but I would not be so quick to implicate it as yet another manifestation of the imperialism it witnesses. For what it's worth, the film raised the fuck outta my consciousness and it's not Sauper's fault that I don't know what to do about it. And perhaps you will accuse me of retreating from political activism into theoretical formalism, but the scene you describe in Hearts and Minds sounds very different from the one in DN to which you compare it. Far from attempting to escape the camera and then confronting it head on as an antagonist, the prostitutes in DN welcome Sauper's camera and he does not exploit their trust. Quite the contrary, he uses film to allow them to be witnesses to their own shared history and - I believe - raises their consciousness in the process. I hope this does not appear condescending, as if they would be lost without Sauper or some white-man's-burden shit. I'm just trying to make a case against reading DN as "part of the problem." In any case, I am adamant that Sauper showing the whores the exact same footage he showed us earlier in the film is art-in-realism and not a cheap exploitation of either his subjects or his viewers. Used simply as a technical device, it would be postmodern decadence of the most offensive sort. But it is used as a tool of education, for the whores, for me, and at bedrock Sauper himself. To "essay" is to attempt, after all.

You state that Sauper does not actually speak himself in DN. Compared to the tactics of, say, Micheal Moore, this is correct. However, it is not literally the case. Not unlike Herzog in, say, Grizzly Man, Sauper - or someone "on set" - asks questions off camera. This is not trivial. The question-asking has to do with the supposed emptiness of the planes when they arrive. The pacing of this ultimately leads to the confession by the Russian pilot at the conclusion of the film. But even before this, the question is asked a number of times and caught me off guard most powerfully. At first I thought the question was asked to make us consider how wrong it is for Tanzanians to export fish they cannot afford to eat themselves and not even receive any needed imports that they can afford in return; to display the lie of "free trade," to show the truth about the exchange between capital and those in need without effective demand. But no Ben, you fool, the planes arrive in Tanzania full, all too full. You did not reveal the nature of this cargo in your review and I refrain from doing so now. And notice that we are applying spoiler rules normally meant for fiction/art to a documentary. This is for me confirmation that DN is an example of what I have called testimony.

But enough cinephile chit-chat. Jesus Christ! The humanity. People are living those lives on this planet right now. It's beyond empathy. I can't even begin to imagine... Never mind Darwin, those mountains of maggoty fish bones you mention - to live on that, in that, with that - nightmare. Hell on earth. Brando mumbling "the horror, the horror" surrounded by a bunch of heads on sticks is cartoon stupidity in comparison. The art of DN is IN REALISM.

And Dan:

I did not mean to leave the impression that either Davis's or Sauper's film is another example of imperialist exploitation. I respect both films immensely (I'll get Hearts and Minds in your hands soon), and believe that they both are "part of the solution" to use modern parlance. Still, Davis's point does transfer (at least to some extent) to Sauper's film. That is, both filmmakers are using images of "third world" depravity to create a product for consumption back in the imperialist homeland, and even if the images stake out some sorta higher ground or aim for a greater good, there's still an element of exploitation about it. I mean, when Sauper was filming that young woman singing that song, only seconds before she was being manhandled and tossed around by some asshole Russian, and the filmmaker captured the moment without intervening. I wonder if he would have done anything if the Russian started to beat her? I mean, he shows ups images of Tanzanians, both young and not-so-young, beating each other up in the streets, and he doesn't seem to do anything there. To me, there's an element of exploitation to that sort of documentary filmmaking.

Again, that's not to say that the film as a whole is exploitative. It's obviously got it's heart and brain in the right place, and I cannot think of any recent film that moved me as much as this one. It's one a helluva film.

Then Ben:

When it comes to the commodification and marketing of third world suffering in radical packaging for the likes of you and me, I will admit that there are all sorts of political problems associated with this. What you are identifying as an element of exploitation in DN is not substantiated by the examples you mention, however. With respect to those examples, it seems to me that you are asking for a level of engagement that would necessarily lead to the film not getting made at all. It would require putting the camera down and taking up arms, as it were. You are telling the film-maker that it is not enough to impose his camera, he must intervene bodily. It is not enough to bear witness, he must participate. If this is to place the personal taking of political action above the personal making of documentation, you'll get no argument from me. But if we are willing to allow for the personal making of documentation, I think is is worthwhile to touch base with the case of Kieslowski, who ultimately did not have the stomach for the job. It is awkward for me to have to uphold this position, so standard is it for me to promote engagement. Nevertheless, I have to insist on some more dialectics because having a point of view is not to step into view and the engagement so vital to giving testimony can not be absolute, it must be tempered by detachment. You wonder if Sauper would have stepped in if the john's abuse of the prostitute had become openly violent. I wonder if he had stepped in under any provocation, would the film exist. Or are you going so far as to suggest that the subsequent murder of the prostitute is indirectly on the hands of the film-maker, too busy watching the daily rushes to get involved? I didn't think so.

And Dan:

Perhaps you're right, and I'm being too sensitive on this matter. It still bothers me, and while there is no easy way out (I'm convinced that the world would be a lesser place if the filmmaker had decided to drop the camera and surrender his art in order to wade into the situation) I can't help but feel a bit compromised as it unfolds.

And rather than (or in addition to?) reading up on the causes of the (re-)surgence of documentary filmmaking, maybe you need to write about it. I think you're onto something with the suggestion that it is a reaction to post-modernism and notions that an objective, tangible reality may not exist outside of our perceptions of same, because the best of these filmmakers sure so seem to make a compelling case against such solipcism.

Then Finally Ben:

I don't think that you're being too sensitive on this matter. Not at all. What you might be, however, is too sensitive about being sensitive. This is to propose that your response to certain scenes in DN might be best understood as a defence mechanism on your part. And I'm not trying to put you down now, I'm out to compliment you. And Sauper too, at the same time. Simply put, he got to you. It is a tribute to your compassion that it is possible to get to you. But you've got to give it up to him for getting to you. For the most part, you do so. Yet, it seems to me, another part of you feels: How dare he!

Initially, this feeling did not come out directly. You projected it onto and on behalf of certain persons in the film. Now, you are more directly speaking for yourself. You say you can't help but feel a bit compromised by the film. Hey, I felt compromised too. Bloody awful compromised man. But not BY THE FILM - BY THE REALITY. I said before that Kieslowski ultimately did not have the stomach to make documentaries. Well, please do not think that I am on a macho trip when I say that it takes some kind of stomach to watch the likes of DN. Liberal flight from the film will - correctly - point out that is it horribly one-sided, shows nothing positive, gives no hope, never mind a practical suggestion. But real critique, genuine radicalism, must not turn away too quickly from the negative facts of the matter.

Previously, you thought you sniffed a scent of voyeurism in the film that even smelled a bit of callous slumming. I responded to this by advocating the film-maker's detachment as necessary to some extent. Prior to this I said that DN educated my stupid commie ass and it's not Sauper's fault that I don't know what to do about it; that I don't know how to use his detachment for my engagement. You objected to the film-maker not reaching out from behind the safety-glass that is the camera lens, to which I responded: But what would you have the film-maker do? Now, I follow your lead but return the question from whence it came. For I believe you asked of Sauper what his film forces us to ask of ourselves. What is to be done?

I reiterate that Sauper's film is not cheap exploitation of either his subjects or his viewers. Or his viewers. That includes you. Meanwhile, if anyone is being too sensitive here it is me. Clearly, DN fucked me up and I... don't know what to do about it. And while I sincerely thank you for your suggestion that I write some (more) theory about documentary as testimony as art-in-realism as a critical response to postmodern solipsism - like that's gonna help change the world.

Cuba 2007 (pt. 4: But not a drop to drink)

Our first piece of inclement weather, it rained for about ten minutes--and we're talking REAL rain here, not that pussified mist that we bitch about in Victoria.

No, this was pounding down like nails on your scalp-type tropical rain--just as we were about to take off on our day-long catamaran ride. Everyone aboard, about thirty or forty of us, haling from ports as far afield as Russia, Germany, Mexico and Brazil, skittled under cover.

Eventually, the skies cleared and the day unfolded as it should.

It isn't just my kids, in the background, enjoying a good laugh at my expense. Apparently, dolphins know a bad hair day when they see one too.

Suddenly, the dolphins decide to move in on my chick. Cheeky bastards.

All aboard for the return trip. Some great snorkelling, but alas we do not have the water-proof camera to prove it.

The kids made some friends on the trip, so they didn't hafta be seen conversing with parental units at all times.

Everyone else seemed to be enjoying the open bar, perhaps just a bit too much if you ask me. Slurp. See you in the pool.