An Encounter with Simone Weil (Tuesday, March 6, 2012) (23)

Simone Weil was a less-than-totally-well-known French philosopher active mostly during the period between the two world wars. A consummate humanist, she struggled with the nature and scale of human suffering and wrote volumes and volumes of journals about it. She began as a Marxist, concerned with the rights of workers in French factories and moved on to other post-Communist concerns about people suffering under totalitarian organizations of any scale.

Raised as a secular Jew in an intellectual family, she became interested in the spiritual and mystical side of Christianity, as a way of understanding pain, suffering and exaltation. Ultimately Weil died in London in 1943, while working for the Free French Government, largely as a result of a near-starvation regime meant to symbolize a connection between herself and the people of France (Occupied and Vichy), who were not eating well.

In her film, An Encounter with Simone Weil, director Julia Haslett presents a fascinating biodoc about Weil, but from a very personal, almost avante-garde point of view. Haslett explains early on that her father suffered with mental illness through his life and committed suicide when she was 17; her brother, an academic also concerned with the history of suffering of blacks in America, deals with his own depression and thoughts of suicide.

The film is not a standard biodoc, however, but rather is more of a personal diary or collection of thoughts by Haslett, mostly about Weil, but also about suffering of people in her family and others. She is as much the subject of her doc as is Weil.

As the film moves along, we see the very typical still scans of photographs of Weil as well as copies of her hand-written journals and essays; Haslett interviews some of her family members who are still alive in France as well as contemporary philosophers, academics and researchers who are using her writings for their work.

The most daring element, though, is that Haslett has an actress playing Weil, has her study her writings and then interviews her. This is the very literal encounter with Simone Weil. As she is doing it, Haslett speaks about how she doesn't know exactly what she is going to get out of it. It's a very bold and interesting device -- to see if through the craft of acting, one might be able to unlock doors into a deeper meaning of the text. As a thought experiment this is a rather brilliant tool; I'm not sure it finds any specific success, although I appreciate the effort.

There is a real beauty to the way the film acts a bit like Haslett's journal, as she's researching Weil, who kept journals herself. I like the way Haslett tells Weil's full biography and gives a picture of her soul, and subtly shows her own emotional biography, as it relates to her father and brother. It's cut together really elegantly.

This is a very interesting, well made film that does more than just tell the story of a relatively unknown thinker. It is clear that this is a very personal film, which might lead to how good it is, but it also clear that Haslett is a daring filmmaker, interested in film form and structure as much as in narrative history. I always appreciate any film that breaks rules and pushes boundaries -- and this one does it very well.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (Tuesday, March 8, 2011) (187)

This is an interesting biodoc about the great and eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. It tells his life, in great detail, from his childhood in music school to his breaking out as a star in Canada, to his early tour in Soviet Russia and then his debut in New York City. It shows how he was always a bit unusual, and how he got more and more isolated and weird as time went on.

This is a very, very long movie and feels like it's at least 20-30 minutes too long. I think there's a lot of detail that could have been cut out. It's not really about his "inner" life, as the title would suggest, but rather about how the world saw him and how he responded to the pressure. I guess when you're a genius and an eccentric, it's not totally fair to expect that we would see inside his soul.

Strangely there's very little mention of his psychological situation and the directors Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont barely address the fact that he was a paranoid, obsessive-compulsive person who might have been sociopathic and was hardly able to make many connections with many people. It's possible that his mental state led him to become the artist he was, but it would still have been interesting to see an analysis of his mind.

Most of the film is told with still pictures of Gould, along with film footage of his interviews (he was always being interviewed and filmed) and radio shows as well as interviews with his associates and few friends looking back at his life. One thing the directors do that I didn't like is in the final third of the film, they have an actor walking around aimlessly wrapped up in a coat and scarf (the way we had seen Gould do earlier in his life) and suggest this is him. It is not him - it's just a stand-in for him. This is not really necessary and adds a bizarre layer of non-reality to the film that doesn't help tell his story.

This is an interesting movie because Gould's life was interesting, but it does not work well from a script point of view. Some of the detail of his later, non-performing life should have been cut down as should some of background on his one big love affair (which doesn't really fit in to the film).

Stars: 2 of 4

Lemmy (Friday, February 18, 2011) (8)

Lemmy Kilmister is just like you and me. When he goes to the record store to buy the Beatles box-set in mono (a band he claims is his all-time favorite) he's politely told by the clerk that they're sold out of that. He laughs and says he's not surprised. Oh - but then the store manager comes out with a set that she had put aside for herself. You see, Lemmy is not at all like you or me. He's a heavy metal god, or more appropriately THE heavy metal god.

For the past 36 years Lemmy has been the leader and bassist for Motorhead, one of the first heavy metal bands and one of the creators of the musical form. He basically single-handedly invented the genre and has never stopped recording, touring and drinking for the past 45-or-so years. Now at 66 he lives much like he did when he was 36 (possibly taking less speed than he did then). He's a friend to all in the music world in LA, he's never met a fan he wouldn't take a picture with or give an autograph to and he is always happy to share a story about being a roadie for Hendrix or trading girlfriends with John Lennon (or his son!).

Lemmy, the documentary by Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski, is a biodoc in the vein of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster or Anvil! The Story of Anvil. We get to know Lemmy as a guy now, living in a rather humble rent-stabilized apartment packed with shit in West Hollywood, touring with several bands and looking back on his life and his music; we see just about every major heavy metal musician alive today talk about him and how much of an influence he was to them (and how much he likes to drink Jack and Cokes); we learn about where he came from and how he came to the genre that has become heavy metal.

Nothing is incredibly deep here (unlike, say, Some Kind of Monster, which was pretty deep), there are no major life events that happen to him or any of his bands and, all in all, Lemmy seems like a pretty nice, genuine guy. He records some songs with Dave Grohl (from Nirvana and The Foo Fighters), plays onstage with Metallica and, or course, with Motorhead.

The film is very rationally organized, but runs very long. There is a section about Lemmy's obsession with World War II stuff, including a fascination with Nazi weapons and uniforms (he says he's purely into them for their sartorial beauty, and I totally believe him... but then he never explains the swastika flags in his apartment.. but, to be clear, there is never a suggestion that he's any sort of Nazi- lover... just a lover of Nazi things... weird), a section on his love of Jack and Cokes (in spite of his Type 2 diabetes), a section on his son and his view of parents, a section on his own upbringing being raised by his mom and grandmother, a section on his love of gambling. These things are all very interesting, but each runs a bit too long and might be a bit too segregated into it's own area. I think it all could have been written and edited better and should have been cut by 30 minutes.

This movie is a ton of fun. Lemmy is a wonderful guy and a great interview subject. He's totally likable and a guy you really want to hang out with. If it had been a bit tighter it would have been much better, I think.

Stars: 3 of 4

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel (Tuesday, August 3, 2010) (91)

The most insightful moment in the bio-doc Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel is near the end when Dr. Ruth Westheimer says that Hef has hurt his reputation as an activist and rebel by dating multiple women at the same time. He has become a caricature of what he once advocated and is now much more known for being a target of parparazzi flashes than any sort of force for social change. This disconnect between what he apparently once was and what he is today is the unexamined subtext of this film - a subtext that is really more interesting than the surface of the film.


Director Brigitte Berman shows us how Hefner got where he is now, with the history of the Playboy magazine and all the social causes it (Hef) championed over the years. From civil rights to anti-Vietnam, to obscenity and freedom of speech, to gay rights and women's rights, Hefner was on the forefront of the most of the major social issues of the second half of the 20th century. At least that's what his supporters and he says about him.


Most of the film is interviews with people who are friends or past collaborators with Hef. Some are former models or girlfriends, some are business people and some are old friends from his long-ago Chicago days. They all agree that Hef is a pretty fantastic guy all around.


Berman does have a few detractors on screen, but they are all people with "agendas", so they're easy to ignore. She has arch-Christian singer Pat Boone on talking about how the magazine traffics in sleaze and also how it has become not as interesting or cutting-edge as it once was (this second point is true - so why does the dismissible freak get this line and not someone more trustworthy?). Berman also has on Susan Brownmiller, a feminist writer, talking about the objectification of women as a counter point to Hef's claim that he is a feminist who has done more to help women gain control of their sexuality than anyone else on earth (an interesting, if unconvincing opinion). The big problem is that Brownmiller is a long-time foe of Hef and they once had a big on-air fight on the Dick Cavett show in the 1970s.


Basically other than these two, the whole film is totally laudatory. Nobody asks what to me is the most important question, which is what the hell happened to the magazine in the 1980s to turn it from an interesting magazine with top-notch writers and a sharp social compass (that also featured naked women) to the current trashy porno mag that has very little in the reading department. Yes, Alex Haley, Norman Mailer, Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut once wrote for Playboy, but nobody close to them has anything to do with the magazine anymore. At one point Hef suggests that obscenity cases and Jerry Falwell in the 1980s hurt the perception of the magazine, but this is ultimately unconvincing as it's been a long time since then and the magazine is still dull.


My biggest objection is that the film is way too long, running more than two hours. At most this should be a 90-minute movie, spending just a few minutes on each era and coming off as more than just a laundry list of achievements and anecdotes. There is no question that Hef is an important guy who was on the right side and out in front of all of these important issues, but most of the stories in the film I knew from other sources.


I know well that Hef drove to the West Side of Chicago to buy the Marilyn Monroe picture that was on the cover of the first issue; I know that he helped Lenny Bruce out of jail when he was arrested during a stand-up act in Chicago; I know that the Los Angeles Playboy Mansion is a fuckfest and a destination for celebrities. None of this is interesting. I would rather have had more cutting analysis of Hef, like what Dr. Ruth gave 110 minutes into the film.


Stars: 1 of 4

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (Tuesday, July 27, 2010) (85)

The opening sequence of The Radiant Child shows a few title cards where director Tamra Davis explains how the film got started. She writes that she was a friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat in the early- and mid-1980s, and interviewed him in 1986. After the interview she put the footage aside for awhile not knowing what to do with it. When he died of a drug overdose in 1988, she decided to put the interview away and not use it. Recently she came back to the footage deciding she could do something with it now.

In this introduction, Davis leads us to believe that this film would be based on her interview with Basquiat, maybe leading us to new insights from the never-before-seen reels. What we get though is really nothing of the sort; this is a pure bio-doc, and a very good one at that. Through interviews with contemporaries, ex-girlfriends, art critics, downtown scenesters and friends, not to mention the 1986 interview, we see a very thorough and clear picture of this brilliant, troubled artist.

I am interested by the fact that in all the years I studied art history and have admired Basquiat's work - and felt very viscerally affected by it - I have always felt the need to "understand" it better. The mystery in the layers and layers of paint, images and text always bemused me; I wanted to get to a deeper level with the works, always feeling left somewhat on the outside. This film, in explaining who he was and how he worked, showed me that there is no real "deeper" understanding of this work. His work is almost purely emotional with touch points of (sometimes obscure) cultural literacy and identity peppered throughout.

At one point in the interview he speaks about how when he goes to paint, he turns on the television "for source material". This is totally revelatory to me. What might seem like a trite or cute line by a young artist working today, totally encapsulates how I would understand his work now. Yes, there are many levels to his work, but like with a television, there's a lot of stuff that is there that you don't need to worry about. His work is a cypher for the cultural world.

Davies employs a great soundtrack in the film, much of it being the artists and musicians who were in the same downtown scene that Basquiat was in (Blondie, the Velvet Underground), some being music of the era that might not have been downtown per se (early hip hop from the Bronx), and lots of be-bop, which Basquiat listened to constantly. The use of the bop here really underlines how much his paintings have in common with that style. That Charlie Parker or Dizzie Gillespie could improvise and chop up standards into smaller interesting bits is very similar to the technical and aesthetic qualities of Basquiat's work.

The film is really wonderfully directed. It moves along very smoothly and seems to tell his whole life story, getting into his psychology relating to his complicated relationship with his parents, showing how he came on the scene with tons of talent and no access and became a millionaire looking to become friends with the cool kids (Andy Warhol). Davis cuts the film beautifully, especially the montages showing his paintings and still photographs of him working in the studio.

I don't know why she started the film with this suggestion that it would use her '86 interview so much, because we really only get about 10 or 15 minutes of it at most (and most of it is not very interesting as he's clearly rolling on heroin during it). This documentary really is a great work of biography and is illuminating, even for an art lover like myself.

Stars: 3 of 4

American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein (Sunday, June 20, 2010) (55)

This is a small documentary about American academic Norman Finkelstein who has made a career out of being a Jew who does not supported much of the recent Israeli policy toward Palestinians. He has been an outspoken critic of U.S. policy in the Middle East and has worked tirelessly to get the world community to see the conflict from the Palestinian point of view. As the son of Holocaust survivors, he has been an interesting voice in the debate, comparing Israeli treatment of Palestinians to his parents' treatment in the Warsaw ghetto by the Nazis.

The film briefly shows Finkelstein's roots in Brooklyn and how he made a name for himself in the early 1980s writing a piece that criticized a popular book that only took the Israeli side of the conflict. Most of the film takes place in the past few years as he went on a college campus debate tour over his latest book. In the middle of the tour, he got into a fight on the radio with Alan Dershowitz and then made it his mission to condemn Dersh and prove him to be a plagiarist. This got him into hot water with his employers, Hunter College and then DePaul University.

Finkelstein is certainly a weird guy and basically doesn't know when to shut the hell up. He is not wrong about Dersh copying footnotes from an earlier book into his recent one (I have read about this and it seems pretty clear that he plagiarized), but so what?! This is not a battle worth fighting.

At a point, Finkelstein goes even further off the rails by claiming that Hezbollah is a force for good. Certainly they are doing some money-giving work on the ground in Beirut, but it's hard to argue that they are an absolute force for good (their policy of wiping Israel off the map isn't "good", no matter how you slice it).

He seems to enjoy being a firebrand, more than being a serious public intellectual. It is interesting to see before our eyes him move from the latter to the former.

This is an interesting film, though rather wonky. You have to be interested in the Middle East and the "peace process" to even remotely enjoy or understand this. Still, it's an interesting work.

Stars: 2 of 4

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Friday, June 11, 2010) (49)

I grew up knowing Joan Rivers as a comedian, but knowing her best as a woman with bad plastic surgery who sold crappy jewelry on QVC and did a shrill red carpet show on cable with her daughter. This documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, tries to show that she is much more than just those things. She is a much more complicated person who lives the life of a queen, is desperately paranoid of not being able to work tomorrow and has lost most of her friends over the years. This is not entirely a bio-doc, per se, but rather an examination of the comedian: who she is today and why.

Joan is a workaholic who takes basically any job that is offered to her, from the Donald Trump Celebrity Apprentice show (which she won), to stand-up gigs in remote Wisconsin casinos (in the winter!). She lives in a gigantic apartment in Manhattan with 20-some-foot ceilings, gilded pillars and a staff of housekeepers. She has an agent, a manager and an assistant, not to mention her daughter Melissa who is frequently around. Her life seems like somewhat of a Mobius strip, where her fancy lifestyle forces her to work all the time and her working all the time gives her money to afford the fabulous lifestyle.

We see her history and how she got her start as a favorite of Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. When she was offered her own show on Fox that would compete directly with him, she left him (having been a frequent fill-in host for several years) and he dropped her forever. To make matters more tragic, her show never happened and she was left with no show, a lost friend and an unwritten ban from NBC late night TV. Clearly in retrospect this was a bad decision, however it is sad that Johnny dropped her the way he did - and did so in such a permanent way.

The sadness pervades her life and career, from her husband's suicide to the loss of a dear friend who serves as her manager and then vanishes during the filming (it's unclear what happens to him at all). She has outlived many of her contemporaries and her material is basically unknown to the younger generation of comedians. In one uncomfortable scene, she is driving to her own Comedy Central Roast and talking to her assistant about how all the jokes will be about the plastic surgery. Then there is a montage of bits by comedian after comedian making fun of her face and her surgeries. These jokes are cheap and clearly don't really spend the time to get to know her hilarious routine, which is about sex, gender roles and families (to name a few topics).

Overall this is a good and very funny movie and is interesting in its treatment of Rivers. You have to imagine she had some say in what went into it, but it still feels frank and unflinching (if slightly on her side). She is a generally sad person, I think, who keeps herself busy as way to deal with her shit. She has an interesting life - and is funny as hell.

Stars: 3 of 4

Still Bill (Saturday, January 30, 2010) (6)

OK - let's face it - Bill Withers is one of the greatest singer-songwriters of the 20th Century. He basically didn't write any bad songs and most of his work is excellent. Ain't No Sunshine, Lovely Day, Sweet Wanomi, Grandma's Hands, Use Me, Lean on Me and Just the Two of Us are just a few of the amazing songs he wrote and performed for more than a decade. This documentary tells his story from being raised in rural West Virgina, to making aircraft toilets in California, to hitting big in the 1970s and ultimately moving out of the music business in the 1980s. Now in his 70s, he talks here frankly about his life choices and his career.

Withers has many deep thoughts throughout the film, talking about his dislike of the music industry white 'blacksperts' who think they understand R&B music better than black people do themselves and talking about his aversion to the 'fame game'. He says how 'on the way to wonderful you might pass through alright - and that might be as far as you go'. How clear and concise! He seems to lead a comfortable life in the hills above Los Angeles and certainly makes a good amount of money each year from publishing rights. He is a family man who has two kids that he loves dearly.

The film, directed by Damani Baker and Alex Vlack, sadly lacks any real structure and flails about with small episodes that don't totally connect well. This is especially apparent as it bounces back and forth between the past and the present. A strictly chronological narrative would have been much easier - even inter-cut with contemporary interviews.

The big questions for Withers since his departure from the music world has been whether or not he would write another hit song. In this film, he works with a young Latin artist, Raul Midon, to write a Spanglish song dedicated to a Cuban friend of his. The song is really not very good and this sequence is actually pretty annoying and they write this turd. This scene is especially bad in light of one that shortly follows it where Withers' daughter Kori sings a song she has written. She totally blows him out of the water as she sings a fantastic piece.

All of this seems to add up to nothing. Yes, it does illuminate stuff about a lesser known man, but it's not easy to get through and is frequently frustrating. I think the directors would have been well advised to start with a general idea of a structure and worked from there. It seems like they threw random scenes on screen with no regard for the flow or our reactions. It's very disappointing for a film about such a great musician. The best part of the movie is Withers' music. I think one would be better served by listening to his records rather than watching this movie.

Stars: 2 of 4

Off and Running (Saturday, January 30, 2010) (5)

The set-up for this documentary is fantastic: A black girl is adopted by a single Jewish lesbian who meets another single lesbian who has an adopted black son and the two settle in to a married life together in Brooklyn. They ultimately adopt a Korean son and live as a multi-ethnic upper-middle-class family with three self-identified Jewish children. At some point in her high school years, the girl, a nationally rated star track runner, discovers tidbits about her personal history and biological family who gave her up and begins to rebel against the loving mothers who raised her. Wow!

Sadly, the film does not live up to it's potential wonderfulness. Part of my problems are with the true history of the girl, Avery, and the fact that there is not a magical end to her personal story (the filmmakers had no control over this, of course), but part of my problem is that the film goes off track story-wise and veers in a direction it should not.

Avery is a gregarious, compelling young woman who speaks frankly about her feelings and thoughts on her story. We see her struggling with the desire to learn about her birth mother and her birth family, while remaining respectful to her adoptive mothers. Her mothers decided to put her into public high school after she spent her elementary years in a private Jewish day school. In public school, she looks like just another black girl - despite the fact that she is Jewish and has a more uncommon nuclear family story. As she develops a group of mostly black friends and an understanding of a shadow life she could have lived in Texas with her birth family, she struggles with her identity, which suddenly doesn't feel natural to her.

As this is happening, director Nicole Opper unwisely focuses on Avery's mothers who fight to understand their daughter's mindset. In the end, we only see Avery explaining her feelings in retrospect rather than as she is experiencing them (for all I know she wouldn't talk to the filmmaker as she was dealing with the situation - in any event, it feels strange). This movie is really Avery's story - so a whole act barely dealing with her (just dealing with her absence) doesn't really work well.

In my view, part of biographical documentary making is dumb luck - one needs the subject to have a good, compelling story and one cannot do anything if the story falls apart in the middle. That Avery makes tragic decisions cannot be changed by the filmmaker, but Opper or editor Cheree Dillon should have steered the story in a better direction. The focus on the mothers and the family is totally the filmmakers' fault - not that of Avery or any ethereal force.

Avery's mothers come off as aloof and somewhat unkind to the girl's delicate situation. This is also sort of unfair, I think, as I'm sure they are doing what they are doing because they're hurt, threatened and love their daughter deeply. Still, they come off as very white and superficial. Avery also comes off as foolish and rash. Again, I think a good amount of these feelings come from the true chronology itself, but I don't think it's all that fair to the people involved. Why do I want to watch a film where all the priciple people are unlikable?

All in all, I think this is a big wasted opportunity. This is a good example of a badly executed documentary. I this is also a good example of how a good editor can tell many stories with the good footage, some interesting and some off the mark. Unfortunately the story told here is not the best one, I think.

Stars: 1 of 4

Wiliam Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe (Sunday, December 29, 2009) (179)

This film follows in a line of recent documentaries made by children of famous people who are dealing with their parent's legacies. Similar to how Nathaniel Kahn dealt with the troubled history of his father, Louis Kahn, and how Aiyana Elliott dealt with her own absent, but brilliant father, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, here Emily and Sarah Kunstler deal with the legacy of their father, ultra-liberal lawyer William Kunstler.

Kunstler become famous for being the main defense attorney in the trial of the so-called Chicago 7. In that case, he turned the courtroom into a stage to show the world that justice in America is not blind, but totally subjective and relative. From there he went on to fight for the rights of prisoners in New York's Attica State Penitentiary, for Native American rights and a slew of leftist causes in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the film, the two daughters speak directly about how they grew up in an era when their father was past his prime and frequently took cases they disagreed with. The knew very well about his history, but sometimes found it hard to defend his actions to their friends. This is a loving and intimate look at his whole life, showing his growth from a rather typical suburban father and lawyer in the 1950s to a long-haired radical fighter who talked openly about drug use in the 1970s.

We see how he was on the forefront of social change through the years, though, from helping the NAACP with Civil Rights cases in the South in the mid-1960, to defending a political group who burned draft records in the late 1960s to the Chicago 7 trial and on. He was not a passive, armchair critic, but an outspoken voice of change.

Overall, the analysis is interesting and compelling. The style is nice, involving many interviews with his colleagues, friends and past relations as well as footage and court sketches from his many famous trials. More interesting than his own history, is the personal, human aspect of the story. The two filmmakers do a very nice job showing how they began to look at his career with a rather skeptical eye and ultimately came to understand their father as a human being with typical faults and several bad choices. Perhaps it is a bit one-sided and possibly too complimentary, but this is not too much of a problem in this affectionate documentary.

Stars: 2.5 of 4