2008 IN REVIEW: The Year in Nonfiction Films

Putting together a top ten list of favorite nonfiction films from 2008 has been one of my biggest procrastinations of all time here on the blog.  I actually started working on notes for it in early December, figured I wrap the whole thing up before Christmas and have it ready for the first few days of 2009. 

Not so much.

For one thing, I've not yet seen what is by all accounts one of the best and most important nonfiction titles of last year, WALTZ WITH BASHIR.  Still haven't seen it.  Apologies all around.

For another, my list kept shifting.  And for various reasons, I couldn't quite justify to myself why one film would be off my list of top 10 films one day and relegated (if that's the right word) to the honorable mentions the next. 

So I've decided this year not to do a top 10 list, but a slightly expanded list of 15 films that were - as far as I can gather - my tops in 2008, as well as some of the moments and exceptional artistic achievements in some of my other favorites. 

In alphabetical order, they are:

ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL
Directed by Sascha Gervasi

From November 2008:

"Perhaps the most surprisingly beloved film at Sundance 2008 was Gervasi's portrait of Toronto working class heroes/heavy metal legends Lips and Robb.  But in the months after Park City, the surprise gave way to realization of the exceptional craft in the film.  Sure, it's hilarious and - at times - seems to be channeling mockumentary 101, but at heart it packs more emotion than most docs this year, particularly all those that seek appeals for you to join their righteous cause.  Years after everyone has forgotten the issue-of-the-moment doc, film and music fans will still be discovering ANVIL and downloading "Metal on Metal"."

BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER*
Directed by Christopher Bell

From January 2008:

"Starting with the small, personal story of anabolic steroid use within his own family (his two brothers have used steroids for years, Bell tried them once and felt so guilty that he stopped taking them), Bell expertly expands the tale to indict an American culture obsessed with winning at all costs. Like Spurlock and Michael Moore, Bell leads us on this journey and proves to be an excellent guide, equally at home quizzing his family as he is questioning U.S. congressmen and sports heroes. But Bell (aided by strong editing from Brian Singbiel) does something more and equally unexpected – he challenges our preconceived notions about steroids. What if, he wonders, much of what we’ve heard about steroids is a lie or an exaggeration? The best nonfiction films get us to see the world in new ways and on this point, BIGGER, STRONGER is an unqualified success."

THE ENGLISH SURGEON
Directed by Geoffrey Smith

Alternatingly hilarious and heart-breaking, Geoffrey Smith's film is a rich character study of Dr. Henry Marsh, a prominent London brain surgeon, as he attempts to bring better surgical procedures to the Ukraine.  But once he arrives, he must continually face the fact that the conditions on the ground - lack of equipment, money, other experts - limit what he can accomplish with his surgical powers.  One could call the film a mortality tale - of some of Marsh's patients as well as his own skills.  The man who is seen in the opening frames creating surgical tools from unused scraps or even from scratch will soon face those he can't help and those he failed.

A lesser filmmaker would take any one of several moments to hit you over the head with the inherent melodrama.  But Smith, working with his cinematographer Graham Day and his editor Kathy O'Shea employ an abundance of subtlety, so much so that late in the film the camera is so unobtrusive that you forget for long stretches that these are real people experiencing life and death situations.  Later still, waves of emotion come from a wordless, brief cut to a shot of a little girl seen earlier in the film.  An exceptionally assured debut by Smith.

FLYING ON ONE ENGINE
Directed by Joshua Weinstein

From April 2008:

"In a speedy 52 minutes, Weinstein introduces us to an amazing character - Dr. Dicksheet, a Brooklyn-based plastic surgeon who annually flies to India to perform reconstructive facial surgery on children born with cleft palates.  Sounds like just the kind of social justice based missionary filmmaking that I usually run from, but Weinstein probably wouldn't have been drawn to the film if that was the only thing going on here.  Dicksheet (even the name is unbelievable) has no larynx, he's suffering from a life-threatening aortic aneurysm and he likes to rant - hilariously - about how Mother Theresa didn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.  Throw in the man who coordinates Dicksheet's surgery camps and calls everyone "sisterfucker" and a tough as nails nurse who looks to Dicksheet as a god and you have one of the best films I've seen this year.  Good deeds plus outrageous humor plus moving scenes of young children in need all in under an hour."

FORBIDDEN LIES
Directed by Anna Broinowski

From February 2008:

"This information is conveyed through a variety of highly stylized interviews and recreations of Dalia's meeting and courtship. These recreations reach a fever pitch when the film introduces a singer/songwriter who has composed a maudlin ballad lionizing Dalia's story and the courtship between Dalia and her Christian beau is seen in music video form. Even as someone who is a strong proponent of stylization and construction, it felt like the movie was going off the rails - and we're only 20 minutes in.

But to Broinowski's deep credit, this sense of spinning out of control is all part of the plan, because it turns out that Khouri may have made the whole story up. It may be that Khouri is one of the greatest - or most desperate - con women alive. And for the next hour plus, Broinowski pulls back layer after layer of one of the most intriguing and fascinating films I've seen in some time. Who is telling the truth? Who is lying? What part of the filmmaking is completely fabricated? Is the backdrop behind Khouri even real? Broinowski weaves a technically brilliant storyline that includes her own deft and pinpoint interview skills."

LOOT
Directed by Darius Marder

From November 2008:

"A thoroughly surprising, beautifully rendered look at loss and discovery that is as fresh and unexpected as the great, lost, no-star, indie narratives of the 1990s.  Its provocative hook - a documentary about a treasure hunter - could almost overwhelm the simple, low key and alternately devastating and satisfying pleasures of this under-the-radar film.  Despite its jury triumph in Los Angeles (and the check that came with it), the film has kept a low profile through the fall but it deserves full exposure as a fresh and provocative take on the nonfiction genre.  A huge debut for director Marder."

Our year-end interview with Darius Marder is here.

MAN ON WIRE
Directed by James Marsh

From February 2008:

"A hybrid doc of the highest order, MAN ON WIRE reflects on the 1974 attempt by high wire artist Philippe Petit to covertly and illegally rig a 450 lb wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and then traverse the 250 from the top of one tower to the other (at 1,350 feet above the ground).  Utilizing modern day interviews with the participants, highly-stylized re-enactments, well-placed archival footage and a rich trove of film of Petit and his team preparing for the "coup", Marsh constructs a suspenseful thriller that acknowledges the audience's awareness of the fate of the Twin Towers without ever mentioning it or exploiting it.  That in itself is its own high wire act and Marsh executes it flawlessly."

We make the pitch that MAN ON WIRE should nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture here.

Our year-end interview with James Marsh is here.

MY WINNIPEG
Directed by Guy Maddin

Part sexualized fever dream, part unreliable memory, a mad mix of stock footage, animation, tall tales, noir actresses and lost hockey dreams, Guy Maddin has brought his signature old-time movie style to documentary and we are all the richer.  Who knows what to believe in Maddin's tale - our narrator trapped in his home town with actors cast as family members, performing the roles (badly) that narrator Maddin assigns.  Was that or wasn't that archival footage?  Is the crazy frozen horse story true but recreated?  Half true?  Urban legend?

Ably abetted by his co-conspirators - cinematographer/producer Jody Shapiro and editor John Gurdebeke in particular - Maddin's own brand of truth emerges, which seems no more or less real than what we've seen in other nonfiction this year.  Is not ORDER OF MYTHS' Margaret Brown's Mobile?  Then who can say that this is not Guy Maddin's WINNIPEG?  A breakthough.

THE MOTHER
Directed by Antoine Cattin and Pavel Kostamarov

From March 2008:

"A raw cinema verite portrait of a single mother of 9 children, THE MOTHER grants its audience neither context nor explanation yet entrances with stunning cinematography and pinpoint characterization.  The final shot, a seemingly endless close-up of the title character desperately making her way through a Russian train station is like something out of the French new wave and certain to be one of the most unforgettable images in nonfiction film this year."

ONE MINUTE TO NINE
Directed by Tommy Davis

A quietly devastating look at the last days before Wendy Madonado goes to prison for killing her abusive husband.  Employing a combination of verite footage, family home movies, Wendy's recollections and a lengthy, brutal 911 recording set to still photographs, Davis takes us beyond our initial biases about domestic abuse (seen it, heard it) and confronts and surprises.  It certainly helps that Wendy's husband's brutality is documented, but Davis and his editor Luis de Leon make a series of important choices in telling his story - when to reveal key facts about the killing, when to play the 911 tape - that consistently unravel the motivations as well as the key facts of the case. 

Davis also knows to trust Wendy as his subject, letting the camera linger on her as she talks about her choices to stay with her husband as well as her decision to finally kill him.  A lesser director would spoon feed the audience outrage over her situation and may even segue into a demand for justice in her name.  Davis just lets the prison door close.

THE ORDER OF MYTHS
Directed by Margaret Brown

From February 2008:

"Many in Park City were looking forward to Margaret Brown's second feature after her well-regarded music doc BE HERE TO LOVE ME: A FILM ABOUT TOWNES VAN ZANDT, but Brown exceeded expectations with her remarkably assured THE ORDER OF MYTHS.  Beautifully shot by Lee Daniel and Michael Simmonds and expertly edited by Brown, Michael Taylor and Geoffrey Richman, the film examines the time-honored tradition of Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama, where celebrations remain segregated between white and black residents.

With a deft, observant touch, Brown does what several recent acclaimed nonfiction films have done (STREET FIGHT and CAN MR. SMITH GET TO WASHINGTON ANYMORE? among them) by approaching issues of race from a side angle.  But Brown surpasses her predecessors with a level of craft that stuns. And it's clear from screenings here that THE ORDER OF MYTHS has the potential to spur conversations about race relationships that are simmering beneath the surface."

Margaret Brown's road trip diary for THE ORDER OF MYTHS begins here.

Our year-end interview with Margaret Brown is here.

ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED
Directed by Marina Zenovich

Marina Zenovich has crafted an old-fashioned, investigative page-turner of a doc that takes a famous subject and tells us a lot of things that we don't know.  It's a classic structure - interviews and archival footage (including some amazing 1970s-era local Los Angeles new reporting) - and Zenovich simultaneously reminds us how great that structure can be when its done correctly and reminds us how rarely it's actually done correctly.  The sleuthing that Zenovich does in preparation for the film - tracking down the key attorneys and the victim in the case and getting them to talk on camera about the unethical behavior of the trial judge - is worthy of praise on its own.  But Tanja Koop's cinematography and Joe Bini's editing elevates the journalism at the heart of Zenovich's film and makes a truly cinematic film that pings like an old time classic of LA corruption.  If only every pop documentary could be this good.

Our year-end interview with Marina Zenovich is here.

TO SEE IF I'M SMILING
Directed by Tamar Yarom

From April 2008:

"Using a series of straightforward interviews with veterans, Yarom combines the soldiers' home videos, photographs and newly shot footage to examine the lasting consequences of compelling young men and women to bear arms for their country.  With a deft touch (and in a scant 52 minute run time), Yarom effectively deals with some discouraging artifacts of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the reaction of seemingly normal young women to everyday Palestinians.  Can these women, now trained to suspect and draw their guns on women and children, retain humanity in the face of terror? Therein lies a universal question rooted very much in our own universal here and now.

I won't give away where the title of the film comes from, but suffice to say that I thought the sequence in which a central character says the words "to see if I'm smiling" is perhaps the most powerful few minutes of nonfiction I've seen this year.  In that one, singular moment, Yarom trains her lens on a subject in the midst of personal conflict, transition, hell."

UP THE YANGTZE
Directed by Yang Chung

Beautifully shot by Wand Shi Qing and edited by Hannele Halm, Yang Chung's UP THE YANGTZE is a gorgeous, melodic and meandering look at a disappearing culture, as the rising waters of the Yangtze, created by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, eliminates farms, towns and even cities.  Chang smartly abandons an activist approach to the story and instead takes us aboard a cruise ship that will sail up the Yangtze as the land ashore slowly washes away. 

On board the ship, our characters - two young people whose families' destinies are tied to the changing state of the river - face a different kind of challenge.  How will either person build a different life for themselves, one in which they support themselves, and perhaps their families, financially?  And what waits for them when the cruise ends?  Chung smartly lets teenagers be teenagers - sometimes clumsy, awkward, boastful, slothful, goofy, boy/girl-crazy - and his expert balancing of both worlds results in a tremendously impressive debut.

Our year-end interview with Yang Chung is here.

THE WILD HEARTS (DE VILDE HJERTER)
Directed by Michael Noer

What to say about the opening to Michael Noer's new film, in which a group of inebriated twenty-something boys ritually brand one-another, followed by a epic collage of male nudity and jackass-style homoerotic hijinks set to the William Tell Overture?  Hillarious?  Mouth-gaping? 

What follows then, as this group - a Danish moped gang - sets off on one last adventure, is alternately surprising, ribald, emotional, painful and often, completely over-the-top.  Noer, whose previous film VESTERBRO, an intimate look at a young Danish couple, was also on the circuit this year, seems to have a great knack for creating a new feel of documentary that blends the constructs of narrative films (the boys are about to take off on their trip - cue the pop soundtrack) with a nonfiction style that borrows and improves upon reality television and internet videos.  As both films have more of an American presence in 2009, Noer is definitely a talent to watch.

In thinking about the films of the year, I also think of the moments that I won't soon forget:

• Cecy and Camillo Ramirez' daughter Loida looking out the car window as she arrives in her new hometown in David Redmon and Ashley Sabin's INTIMIDAD

• Kim Roberts' home video footage from inside the house during Hurricane Katrina in Carl Deal and Tia Lessin's TROUBLE THE WATER

• The survivors return, with their children, to the place of their plane crash in Gonzalo Arijon's STRANDED, I'VE COME FROM A PLANE THAT CRASHED ON THE MOUNTAINS

• The first views inside Eugenia Lester's home and the look on her face - after her children have cleaned it - in Cynthia Lester's MY MOTHER'S GARDEN

• Ellen Kuras' "you are there" film footage of her subject (and eventual co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath on the mean streets of 1980s New York City in THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON)

• A young, underage prostitute with her stoned pimp, talking about her introduction to the life in the illegal sex trade in Ferenc Moldovanyi's ANOTHER PLANET

• The hilarious opening prologue and initial interviews in the Soulwax documentary PART OF THE WEEKEND NEVER DIES by director Saam Farahmand (which begins so promisingly and then...)

• Patti Smith's visit home to her parents where suddenly the punk poet is suddenly just another kid from New Jersey all grown up in DREAM OF LIFE by Steven Sebring

• The third act (horrific) reveal in Kurt Kuenne's DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER, potent even if you (as I) had difficulty with the aggressive and driving rhythm of Kuenne's narrative voiceover

• Jason Crigler's return to playing music in Eric Daniel Metzgar's LIFE. SUPPORT. MUSIC.

There are also moments of great craft (that made good films even better) that should be spotlighted:

• Brian Oakes' graphic design that makes sense of complicated financial issues in Patrick Creadon's I.O.U.S.A.

• Christopher Jenkins and James Morton-Haworth's cinematography and John Califra's original score, bringing the action of the bullring and its full, bloody spectacle to life in Stephen Higgins and Nina Gilden Seavey's THE MATADOR

• Morgan Dews' lyrical, dreamlike editing, introducing us to the secret world of his grandparents in MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH

• Massoud Bakhshi's hilarious narration in TEHRAN HAS NO MORE POMEGRANATES, co-written by Bakshi and Peymann Maadi

• Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss' work behind the camera as cinematographers (and directors) on the Iraq war simulation doc FULL BATTLE RATTLE

• Nanette Burstein's confident on-screen directorial choices in AMERICAN TEEN

And still there are more.  I could probably think of another 25 moments and maybe even add another 10 films to my list of favorites above.

The wealth of films from last year reminds how good the state of nonfiction is circa 2008 (and now heading forward into 2009).  When one can talk about everything that we've mentioned above and not yet spotlight fine new work by Herzog, Morris, Scorsese, Peter Gilbert & Steve James, one has to feel pretty good about everything that has crossed our path in the previous year.

Onward now to a new crop of films!

Comments

[VioletPlanet]

This is incorrect:

"But Tanja Koop's editing elevates the journalism at the heart of Zenovich's film"

Joe Bini was the editor not Tanja Koop. Tanja was the DP

[Mike Ambs]

Ahh - I can't seem to find The Mother anywhere. But after reading about here I think I would take a lot away from it right now... how did you track it down?

Great list by the way - need to catch up on a lot of these :)