Movie Review: One of Us

One of Us **** / *****

Directors: Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady.

 

One of Us is a difficult documentary to sit through, as it details stories that we do not often hear, and when we do, don’t really want to believe that they could happen in 2017, in America. The weakness of the film maybe that it can only tell one side of the story – but that side that we see is more than harrowing enough to be riveting viewing either way. Besides, there was no way that a full portrait could ever really get made.

The film details the story of three young people who grew up in the tight knit Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, who eventually decide that they have to flee – get out, and start their own lives, instead of staying. This is difficult because doing so essentially means you have to leave behind everything you know, everyone you love, and make it on your own – something that your upbringing in that community deliberately does not prepare you for. The film focuses on Ari – who in his late teens, has just left, has drug problems, suffered abuse as a child, that was covered up, and now really has to idea what he’s going to do next. There is also Luzer, who is now in his late 20s, but was a couple years older than Ari when he left – which for him, meant leaving his wife, and two children, behind to move to L.A. and try and become an actor. He cannot even see his children anymore because of his decision. Most harrowing is the story of Elly – who is now in her early 30s, who at the age of 19 was forced into a marriage with an abusive man, and has given birth to seven of his children since. You would think that doing to divorce court in New York would favor her – but it really doesn’t, and she has to accept the reality that even if she is able to leave, her children may not – and she may not see them very much at all, ever again.

 

The film was directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady – two of the best documentarians around, whose best known film, Jesus Camp, is one the doc highlights of the 2000s. That film also detailed an insular religious group – Evangelical Christians – but from the inside. The Evangelicals welcomed the cameras into their midst, and welcomed the opportunity to tell everyone about their beliefs – which is one of the reasons why Jesus Camp works so well – it allows them to expose themselves for who they are. They are not given the same access in One of Us – the Hasidic community is old fashioned and superstitious and are not going to explain themselves to Ewing and Grady. What we do glimpse of them, from the point-of-view or former members, is fascinating in its way. Yes, it’s very sad to see how they behave – but their beliefs are interesting. The community was originally made up of Holocaust survivors, and they see themselves as replacements of those who died – when you look at it that way, it makes sense that they do everything they can to keep everyone in the fold. No, it doesn’t excuse the abuse – or the lengths they go to ostracize and punish those who leave – but it does make it understandable.

 

The whole film had a melancholy tone to it that makes it more difficult to watch then Jesus Camp – which was nothing if not entertaining, even as it was also disturbing. This film is sadder than that, in part, because it doesn’t hold out a lot of hope for the future. This is the way the community is, and almost everyone stays (only 2% leave). You understand why they fight to maintain their way of life, but also cannot help but wonder if it’s worth the cost. This is a fascinating, troubling documentary.

Movie Review: Detropia

Detropia
Directed by: Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady.

Detroit was once a thriving manufacturing city for the entire United States. Slowly but surely over the years, as one car company after after closed it factories or moved them overseas, Detroit became a poorer and poorer city, with high employment and a falling population. It is now estimated that the population is half of what it was during the boom times – and unemployment reaches over 30%. Even the auto bailout hasn’t helped very much. The city is broke and has no way of making more money. Once a great city, Detroit is now a mere shadow of its former self.

The excellent documentary Detropia doesn’t have any solutions to the problems. Nor is it really about how Detroit sunk down to the place where it’s at now. Instead, it is a portrait of what the city is now like – what the residents go through on a day to day basis, the struggles the city government has. To offset these scenes of quiet desperation, the directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady flash to the Detroit opera – which is still going, mainly because of payouts by the auto companies to try and make themselves look good. But if the city is emptying, who the hell cares if they still have “culture”?

The most memorable character in the movie is probably Mike Stevens – a retired teacher who now owns a blues bar. He is outspoken in his criticism for everyone who has helped to destroy Detroit, but also optimistic that it can – and will recover. He is convinced that sooner or later, his bar will start making money again – and he’ll be able to hire a cook (he does it himself now). He goes to the car show, and is in disbelief that an electric car in China costs $20,000 than the Chevy Volt. Yes, but, the Volt has many more features than that car – a Chevy representative tells him. Americans won’t want to drive that car, they assure him. But Stevens seems to remember the recent past better than the Chevy guys do – and when he mentions that is precisely what they used to say about Honda, they don’t have much to say, and quickly end the conversation.

We see Detroit’s Mayor Dave Bing trying to do the best job he can – in a job no sane person would want. He has no good choices in front of him. His city has no money, and he needs to cut services. But if he cuts bus service for example, than many of the residents who still live in town would no longer be able to get to work. He comes up with a novel idea – move people in sparsely populated neighbourhoods into the more crowded ones – perhaps only half the city will be full, but at least than the city could concentrate all their money there – and the businesses in those areas might have more customers. Unsurprisingly, none of the people who are to be “relocated” are very happy about the plan.

We also meet an artist couple, who considered many places before deciding on moving to Detroit. What made them pick the Motor City? They could live cheaper there than anywhere else – and Detroit has more empty buildings and warehouses where they can practice their art.

The film is strangely beautiful. There is something haunting about the shots that Grady and Ewing of an abandoned Detroit. The often just let the images of the empty streets, empty lots, abandoned buildings, closed factories. I have come to think of Detroit of a broken, dirty city – and while Detropia shows that, it also has a sadly beautiful quality.

Detropia is a rather obvious title for the movie – and is not the title I would have chosen. That makes it sound like a more simple minded film – one that probably tries to advocate  a solution or tries to advance some sort of political agenda. That isn’t the case with Detropia. This is a film that looks at a once proud city, that is now probably destroyed forever. What are the solutions? Perhaps, as Detropia shows, there isn’t one.

Movie Review: Freakonomics

Freakonomics ***
Directed by: Seth Gordon (Introduction and Interludes), Morgan Spurlock (A Roshanda by Any Other Name), Alex Gibney (Pure Corruption), Eugene Jarecki (It’s Not Always a Wonderful Life), Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady (Can a Ninth Grader Be Bribed to Succeed).
Written By: Seth Gordon and Jeremy Chilnick & Morgan Spurlock and Peter Bull & Alex Gibney and Eugene Jarecki and Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady based on the book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

The omnibus film has been around for decades. While the idea of gathering a group of highly respected filmmakers together to make short films, all based around a single theme, seems like a good idea, the result is rarely very satisfying. The new film, Freakonomics, applies the formula to the documentary genre – taking the best selling book by Steven Levit and Stephen Dubner as its model. And while the film is not great, it is entertaining, involving and fascinating. In this instance, it actually worked.

The film assembles documentaries Seth Gordon (The King of Kong), Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) and Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp), all of whom, except for Gordon who provides the introduction, and various other interludes between the other longer segments, take a section from the book and make a documentary out of it. While all the films are different, I think they are about equal in terms of quality.

Spurlock’s A Roshanda By Any Other Name, is the first segment. As a filmmaker, I find Spurlock increasingly annoying and smug, but his segment has an undeniably fascinating subject matter, that although Spurlock sticks his nose into a little too much, he cannot ruin. The film looks at the effect something as simple as a name can have on a person. For instance, one social scientist did a study where he sent out the exact same resume to the exact same companies – half with the typically white name Greg, and the other half with the typically black name Tyrone – and discovered that Greg got called for an interview more often than Tyrone did. The film also looks at what effect a name can have on your personality, and what it says about your socio-economic background. The result is a fascinating, amusing documentary about identity.

The next segment is Alex Gibney’s Pure Corruption, which is probably the best of the four docs on display. It looks at a very strange issue – cheating in the world of sumo wrestling, which is supposed to be a very pure sport. The result of analysis of the data suggests that cheating runs through sumo from top to bottom – and most people overlook it because they consider the system pure. Each sumo tournament has a wrestler go through 15 bouts – if you win 8 or more battles, you get more money and more prestige, and if you lose 8 or more, you are shamed. The study finds that almost every time a wrestler with a record of 7-7 goes against a wreslter with a record of 8-6 in the final round, that the 7-7 wrestler almost always wins, yet the next time these two wrestlers meet, the 8-6 wrestler wins. The system is so ingrained in their sport, that violence and even murder have been perpetuated to keep people silent about it. Gibney is on shakier ground when he tries to extrapolate this to the larger, political and economic system in America (if he had more time perhaps he could have done this part properly and more thoroughly – but the result is a fascinating little doc nonetheless.

Eugene Jarecki’s It’s Not Always A Wonderful Life is the most innovative, and controversial, of the shorts. Intercutting scenes of the Frank Capra classic, with animation and statistics, the documentary tries to explain the decrease in violent crime of the early 1990s with the Roe vs. Wade decision. The documentary claims that all the factors given as to why there was such a dramatic decrease in violent crime represented only about 50% of the reason – the other 50% is because a generation of unwanted children – those being the most likely to turn to crime – were not born. It’s a controversial theory, one that cannot wholly be backed up – but offers much food for thought – especially when it shows that those states where abortion was legal before Roe vs. Wade experienced a drop in crime ahead of the rest of the country, and in those states where abortions are more widely available, the crime rate dropped even more. This film is undoubtedly controversial, but like the best documentaries, offers you something interesting to think about.

Finally Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s segement, about a test where they tried to get 9th graders to do better in school by bribing them. Each student who maintained a C or better in every one of their classes, received $50 a month, and a chance to win an additional $500. The results of this test were disappointing – seemingly many kids simply don’t care about getting an education – but the process of the testing itself – and why it worked for some and not for others, was fascinating in and of itself.

Freakonomics is not a great documentary. For one thing, because of its format, none of these issues, which could probably each be a feature doc, were given quite as much time as perhaps they deserved. But the film does offer a lot to think about, and puts it all in an entertaining package. The result may not be great – but it sure is interesting.

Movie Review: 12th and Delaware

12th and Delaware *** ½
Directed By: Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady.

12th and Delaware is a fascinating documentary about one street corner in Fort Pierce Florida. On one side of the street, is an abortion clinic. On the other side of the street is the Pregnancy Care Center, a pro-life center where they try and convince women who want to have abortions to keep their babies. On the street outside, at seemingly all hours of the day, there are protesters against the abortion clinic, who hold up those graphic, bloody signs showing aborted fetuses, and the protesters yell at the people who work at the clinic, and try to convince people who are heading in not to. This is the ground war on abortion rights in America.

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel the need to mention that I am pro-choice. So if you pro-life, and want to discount my view on this documentary because of it, feel free. I respect reasonable people on both sides of the debate – and deplore people on both sides who sensationalize the issue. The documentary by Tony Kaye, Lake of Fire, is in my mind the definitive look at abortion in America – and gives everyone, the rational and insane on both sides – time to air their views, and lets the viewer reach their own conclusion – something the Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady claim about this film as well. The music gives them away though – the sinister sounding music that plays at times when the film concentrates on the pro-life side, and the rather more sympathetic music on the pro-choice side. Having said that though, I do believe that 12th and Delaware does a fine job at showing you both sides, even if the filmmakers clearly do show more sympathy to the pro-choice side. Afterall, like their previous movie Jesus Camp, the people in this movie get a chance to say whatever they want to, and its entirely possible if you feel differently about the abortion issue than I do, that you will walk away with a differing opinion on what is shown.

I found the film fascinating when it shows what the Pregnancy Care Center does to women who come to them looking for abortion. Setting up across the street for the abortion clinic is vital to them, because they are counting on people to get confused and come to them by mistake – thinking they are going somewhere that performs abortions. They don’t do that, but for a while anyway, they let newcomers think they do (they never come out and say they do perform them, but by the time many patients realize this, they have been there for a while, and been subjected to all sorts of consuelling, videos and information that talk about the risks of abortion). I have a problem with this, not because of what they do so much, as how they do it. They do deliberately mislead people, they manipulate them into doing what they want. The counseller tells one woman who says she doesn’t want to have the baby because her boyfriend is verbally and physically abusive that she should have the baby because maybe “the baby will change him”. Yeah, right. They tell women that abortion could led to breast cancer, and give horror stories and questionable statistics about abortion to try and change their mind. They give each woman an ultrasound to tell if they are pregnant, and how far along they are, and when they send the pictures home with them, they write “Hi mommy” and “Hi daddy” on the envelope. Their estimates on how far along they are always come in strangely low – perhaps because most abortion clinics will only terminate up to 12 or 14 weeks, and after that the procedure becomes more risky and invasive, and they’ll have to go somewhere else.

Many women see through the ruse fairly quickly, and want to get out of there. Some don’t, and are convinced. I couldn’t help but feel for one 15 year old who was convinced by the Pregnancy Care Center to keep the baby, and says that she is confident that she’ll receive a lot of support for them, and the baby’s father, once the child is born.

The protesters outside are also a rather interesting bunch. I have never quite understood why people feel the need to stand outside of abortion clinics and harass the workers and the women going inside – why they seem intent on making a difficult decision even harder. And why do they need the graphic signs? The hide behind free speech, but I think that unless Larry Flynt has the right to walk around with signs depicting graphic pornography, than the protesters should have the right to walk around with signs with pictures of giant aborted fetuses. Why should anyone have to look at that who are just driving by?

For their part, the abortion clinic seems more reasonable about things. They want to ensure that the women are making this choice themselves, and that they are taking it seriously – although they don’t really try and talk anyone with doubts out of the procedure either, they do seem more sympathetic to the women who are in an impossible, no-win situation. One thing I did find odd is that there is not one mention – on either side of the street – of adoption. Strange.

No, I do not think that the film is unbiased, and I do think the filmmakers should cop to that. Like Jesus Camp, they are obviously on one side of the issue, and are intent on showing us their side. But also like Jesus Camp, they do allow the people a chance to voice their views. They aren’t coaching, but are just capturing the type of counseling that the Pregnancy Care Center does, and showing the audience what it is they do, and what they do on the other side on the street as well. And if I feel that the filmmakers should cop to their intentions, that also goes for the Pregnancy Care Center themselves. They are deliberately misleading people more so then the filmmakers are. 12th and Delaware is a shocking, yet sad film. It is shocking because of what it shows us, and how some people on both sides of the debate will act in order to win. It’s sad because lost in all the shuffle is any real talk about the children who are born. Does the Pregnancy Care Center care what happens to the children who are born because they talked their mothers out of having an abortion? Or is simply getting the baby out of the mother alive enough?

Note: After watching the documentary, I did some more research on the issue of Pregnancy Care Centers. It seems they are extremely controversial, but that not all of them are like the one portrayed in 12th and Delaware. Time Magazine did a fascinating article entitled The Grass-Roots Abortion War, about centers like this one. 12th and Delaware is about this clinic, and ones like it, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some good ones out there. Like with any issue, it is important to get multiple perspectives on something – 12th and Delaware is a valuable movie, that allows its participants to air their views – but like any movie its scope can only be so large.