Should the Term 'Documentary' Be Dropped for Good?
Filed under: Documentary, Independent, Newsstand, Michael Moore, Cinematical Indie
What distinguishes a "documentary" from a "narrative feature"? You might as well say, what distinguishes Michael Moore from Brad Pitt? Moore has made three of the top five grossing docs since 1982; the other two featured penguins and global warming. We tend to associate "documentary" with "truth," though the "facts" presented are often disputed, and some highly-regarded "documentaries" have staged some or all of their content. Ronald Bergen in The Guardian argues that "there has always been 'cheating' in documentaries." He concludes: "Isn't it time we drop the word 'documentary' for good?"
Filmmaker Frederick Wiseman is cited in the article as a "leading figure" of Direct Cinema, whose proponents "believed the camera could record the truth unobtrusively. But even Wiseman recognised that there is no pure documentary but all film-making is a process of imposing order on the filmed materials." Yesterday I watched part of Wiseman's The Store (1983) at AFI Dallas, and his skills as a filmmaker are evident: capturing a Neiman-Marcus salesman casually mention a $45,000 price tag, saleswomen being led through "finger calisthenics" and practice smiles, the opening and closing of elevator doors to signal location and time changes. Even if none of the footage was staged, Wiseman decided what to include in the finished film and in what order it would appear. We don't know what he may not have been permitted to shoot.
Some people think a "documentary" sounds like medicine: good for you but not fun to watch. I think the term itself has created a ghetto that keeps people from seeing great movies. What do you think? Is the term "documentary" archaic and out-of-date? Has the line between documentary and fiction become blurred beyond recognition? Is it time to drop "documentary" from our cinematic vocabulary?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-31-2009 @ 1:36PM
roshow said...
Despite the similar end results and even a lot of techniques, documentaries and fictional narrative are totally different things. Sure, a lot of documentaries are blurring the line -- Man on Wire, for instance -- but that line is there. I would be all for throwing out the term "documentary" and replacing it with something more audience-friendly but I would never lump them in the same category as fictional narratives.
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3-31-2009 @ 2:00PM
ThePlaylist said...
"Cheating"? Christ. The Guardian needs to open up their mind to what exactly constitutes a documentary and recognize the obvious: as all good art, it's an ever-evolving entity.
Should the blues stay the blues or are no other hybrids allowed? Silly.
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3-31-2009 @ 2:31PM
Flowers said...
I think this is almost laughable, but it raises a good debate. Documentaries are a fundamental part of cinema and in the very earliest days of docs (Pare Lorentz and many others) filmmakers staged events to convey concepts and emotions. This idea that documentary showcases pure truth is ignorant. Documentary is a style not a fact sheet. It is up to the audience to discern in what they believe in. Due to the very nature of editing/composition/music a doc is a manipulative form of story telling
(Triumph of the Will, Fahrenheit 9/11). What needs to change is how people are educated about films and how to view them. Yes how to view them. We have terms for fiction/doc films like docu-drama. Documentaries are meant to reveal life but they are not meant to be the absolute truth of life. In the end it is all about storytelling and conveying an emotion to the viewer. If you want the real truth then go for a walk, volunteer at the community center, help solve a murder. Just do anything other than sitting on your butt and assuming you're getting some insight to what makes humans tick by watching an illuminated screen.
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3-31-2009 @ 3:19PM
_blank said...
I think that documentaries doesn't exist, there's always a great deal of subjectivity in all kind of films, even when you are watching something that is supposed to be 'true'. In a sense, I think all documentaries are mockumentaries. Anyway, I think that there is a great difference between Frederick Wiseman and Michael Moore, for example. Wiseman films try to explain something in the most objective way, while Moore's documentaries are just pamphlets in which he tries to sell his political ideas. The fact is that a good director should try to encourage the viewers to have their own ideas, not to have the same as him.
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3-31-2009 @ 3:16PM
ML said...
If you lump it in with all the other all other types of film, wouldn't it still need some sort of genre? Or would you say, well this [former documentary] seems sorta dramatic, so it must be a drama or sorta funny, so it must be comedy? To my mind it just opens a new can of worms categorization-wise.
Meanwhile, we could go on forever discussing the nature of "reality" and the interpretation of same. After all, each of us interprets reality via our senses and brains. Therefore, each of us experiences a fundamentally different version of "reality." Our own experiences of reality is, by nature of our own individuality, incomplete and biased, so why should we complain that documentary filmmakers' films reflect these same characteristics? Even if you put a camera out on the street and didn't edit the footage, the result would be incomplete and biased in one way or another. Shish.
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4-01-2009 @ 1:21AM
Nick said...
An interesting thing to add is that the first feature-length doc, Nanook of the North, was destroyed by a fire. Events shot were then restaged to form the documentary. Documentary is an odd term and while someone in the comments mentioned that they "don't exist" another could argue that every film is a documentary.
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4-01-2009 @ 9:38AM
Fred P. said...
This was actually dealt with pretty well in a book I read on Wildlife Films (that's the title) for a class a couple of years ago. He talks in detail there about the differences between documentary and "narrative adventures," and about how documentaries borrow Hollywood techniques and conventions in ways that viewers are not even aware. Interesting.
Personally, I think This is Spinal Tap (1984) stood out as a good illustration of how documentary conventions can be merged with Hollywood style dramatic storytelling conventions in a way that is all but unnoticeable to viewers. We saw that film in the same class, along with Man Bites Dog and a few others that intentionally blur the lines, and others, especially wildlife films, that un-intentionally blur the lines.
FP
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4-01-2009 @ 11:13AM
M! said...
Well, let's start with the term documentary. The act of documenting is the recording of an event or evidence of an event. Of course the recording of this will be subject to the perspective and interpretation of the recorder. Just as two police reports concerning the same event written by two different officers would be different, so is a film going to be shaded by what the documentarian wants to capture.
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