Movie Review: 2019 Oscar Nominated Short Documentaries

I really do try and see the short films that are nominated for the Oscars every year – preferably before the ceremony – but it is often more difficult. The theatrical release isn’t very wide, the VOD release comes just a couple of days before the ceremony (and doesn’t seem to always hit Canada in time at all). This year, thankfully, the short documentaries are all available online to watch. Two of them (Period and End Game) are Netflix docs, another two are presented on YouTube by news organizations (The New Yorker to Lifeboat and The Guardian for Black Sheep) – and another is just on Vimeo for all to see – so if you have a Netflix subscription already, you can see all five without costing you a dime – and in just over 2 hours.

 

Below is a mini-review for all five nominated short documentaries – from my least favorite to my favorite. It is a pretty darn good lineup.

 

Lifeboat *** / *****

Directed by: Skye Fitzgerald.

 

Lifeboat is an undeniably powerful documentary about an important subject – the ongoing migrant crisis in Europe, where people from Africa are risking everything to make the perilous journey by boat to Europe for a better life. The film focuses on a German group who have made it their mission to rescue those migrants – the boats the make the journey are massively overcrowded and not safe – and it’s very common for people to die on the crossing. The documentary feels unfocused though – the first half is more confusing than anything, not making clear exactly what we are watching. The film finds its footing as it goes along – and grows more powerful. And yet, I could not help but think that the film feels like a superficial treatment of an important subject, told better in other films (like Fire at Sea) – and that all we’re really seeing here is a portrait of suffering, without proper context. The film still has value – we cannot turn away from the crisis – and yet I think it deserves deeper treatment than it gets here.

 

Period. End of Sentence *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Rayka Zehtabchi.

 

If you want a crowd pleaser in this category, this is the only choice. This Netflix documentary takes place in a small village outside of Delhi India – and is about a group of women who have a company that manufactures cheaper – but high quality – pads for women – because in India, less than 10% of women use them. The film is amusing at first, as documentarian Rayka Zehtabchi asks the people in the village what menstruation is – the men don’t seem to understand even the basics of it, younger women giggle, and look away awkwardly – something even some older women do. This is a taboo subject in India – and you can tell. The women involved want to eliminate that taboo – it is a natural bodily process after all, so it shouldn’t be shameful. The film is inspiring in the way it shows these smart, enterprising women manufacture and try and sell the pads. It also gets a little serious at times – talking about the cost of this taboo on the women of India. The film is crowd pleaser to be sure – fun and serious to boot. I do wish it was perhaps a touch deeper – the whole thing feels like a superficial gloss on the subject – an advertisement for its sponsored The Pad Project – an important organization to be sure, but an ad nonetheless.

 

End Game **** / *****

Directed by: Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman.

 

Oscar winners Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s End Game is a touching film about palliative care – the doctors, nurses and other health care workers who dedicate their careers to helping people in the final stages of their lives – not just with medical care, but about pretty much everything. The short documentary format is the right choice here – even at 40 minutes, the film can be tough to take as it is addressing a subject we all know we have to deal with someday, but no one wants to. The film’s approach is basically to sit back and observe – the patients, their families, the health care workers, etc. as they deal with the hardest decisions they will ever have to make. We see in the patients a variety of reactions – people who are defiant and think they can still beat their illness, those who are resigned to their fate, those who are scared, and a few who may accept it. In many ways, End Game is a very simple film, about a process that anyone who has ever watched a family member die has gone through, and that we will all go through ourselves. But it is that simplicity that makes it so effective.

 

Black Sheep **** / *****

Directed by: Ed Perkins.

 

The short documentary form is perfect for the story Black Sheep has to tell. In the aftermath of the killing of Damilola Taylor – a 10-year-old of Nigerian descent in London, England – a different Nigerian family living in the city decides to try and get away from the violence, and move to a smaller town. The effect it had on their son – Cornelius – is what is documented in Black Sheep. The entire movie is Cornelius’ story – talking about the hope he felt when he left, and how immediate the racist reaction to him and his presence was – involving him being beat up as soon as he arrives. He takes drastic measures to try and be “whiter” – colored contacts to change his eye color, even bleaching his skin to make him lighter. It works – to an extent – he finds a group of “friends” – who are as racist as ever, but somehow accept him (but only him). But being around that level of violence, and being that self-hating leads to violence in Cornelius as well. The film is striking shot – even with only one talking head interview, it still looks better than most docs of the same style, and the recreations scenes are stunning as well – more interested in the kind of immediate feeling of being in that situation than the details. Unlike some of the other films – that you feel are truncated versions of a full length doc (and thus, skimming the surface more than most) – Black Sheep finds the perfect length at 26 minutes for this story.

 

A Night at the Garden **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Marshall Curry.

 

Marshall Curry’s A Night at the Garden is only 7 minutes long, but that is the precise length it needs to be for it to get in, makes its points crystal clear, and get out again. The film is all archival footage of the rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. WWII is about to officially break out, Europe is in chaos, and Hitler is putting his final solution into effect. It is on this night that 20,000 Americans gather at Madison Square Garden to hold, in effect, a Nazi Rally under the guise of being true patriots. Much of the footage is silent – with just James Baxter’s great, tension fueled score as it soundtrack, as we see the type of footage we are well acquainted with from German propaganda films of the time, but this time on American soil –with a giant portrait of George Washington in the background. Curry is smart enough that he knows he doesn’t have to do much to the footage other than show it, edited together brilliantly, and scored perfectly. It is disturbing and horrifying – and makes all the point he needs to make with no commentary attached. A brilliant film.

Movie Review: Lovelace

Lovelace
Directed by: Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman.
Written by: Andy Bellin.
Starring: Amanda Seyfried (Linda), Peter Sarsgaard (Chuck), Sharon Stone (Dorothy Boreman), Robert Patrick (John Boreman), Juno Temple (Patsy), Chris Noth (Anthony Romano), Bobby Cannavale (Butchie Peraino), Hank Azaria (Gerry Damiano), Adam Brody (Harry Reems), Chloë Sevigny (Feminist Journalist), James Franco (Hugh Hefner), Debi Mazar (Dolly), Wes Bentley (Thomas – Photographer), Eric Roberts (Nat Laurendi).

There is no doubt that Linda Lovelace lived a fascinating enough life to warrant a biopic being made about her. She became a “star” in the early 1970s, when her film Deep Throat, was released and crossed over from a porn hit into a legitimate hit – largely because of her skills, and the humor of the movie. At the time she was married to Chuck Traynor who abused her, forced her into prostitution at times, and into doing the movie. While she wanted to be a star – she didn’t want to do what she did to become one. That she went from abused wife to porn star to anti-porn activist should make for a fascinating biopic. Unfortunately, Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman’s Lovelace plays more like a Made for TV movie than anything else.

When we first meet Linda (Amanda Seyfried), she is a teenager living at home with her conservative parents (a de-glamorized Sharon Stone, and Robert Patrick). She has already had some troubles in her life – including a child she was forced to give up – but she wants to be a good girl – and live a normal life. She meets Chuck (Peter Sarsgaard) – and everything seems perfect. He’s fun, he’s charming, he’s good looking, he has money and he adores her. She marries him without really thinking about it too much – and that is where the trouble starts. Chuck has some contacts with the adult film industry – and thinks Linda would be a perfect star – at first, they remained unconvinced. She’s too sweet and nice – not the kind of girl you see in porn. Then Chuck shows them a movie that highlight Linda’s, um, “oral skills” – and they’re sold. The rest is history.

The most interesting thing about Lovelace the movie is the structure. Like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, the first half of the film makes porn look like a fun party – and the second half makes it look like a living hell. Unlike Anderson’s film however, the two halves of Lovelace actually tell the same story – just from a different point of view. What seems like fun the first time through, isn’t fun at all when what we see – or what we thought we saw – is put into context.

The movie does benefit from the two lead performances. Seyfried has the right wide-eyed innocence to play Linda – to convince us that she could so easily fall for Chuck, and then continue down the road he sets for her for too long. And Sarsgaard adds another of his sleaze balls to his resume – although perhaps he could have eased up on the sleaze a little bit in the earlier moments of the movie, since we know from the start he’s up to no good. For the most part the rest of the cast – played by recognizable actors like Chris Noth, Bobby Cannavale, Hank Azaria, Adam Brody and especially James Franco as Hugh Hefner, are more of a distraction than anything else. They aren’t really given characters to play, so they’re just kind of there.

The movie holds our interest because of Seyfried, Sarsgaard and the interesting structure. But the film is never very enlightening either. Personally, I would have liked to see a little more of Linda’s life – her early years that made her susceptible to someone like Traynor in the first place, and how exactly she picked herself up to, remarried, and became a mother and an anti-porn activist. You can make a movie like this and have it be great – Bob Fosse’ excellent, underrated final film Star 80 (1983) told a similar, although even darker story (and perhaps casting the star of that film, Eric Roberts, in a cameo is a nod to that film) and was brilliant. If nothing else though, Lovelace does act as a corrective to a previous film – the documentary Inside Deep Throat (2005) which pretty much celebrated the film, and ignored Lovelace and the pain she went through to make it. That’s something – not enough perhaps – but something.

Movie Review: Howl

Howl ***
Directed by: Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman.
Written By: Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman.
Starring: James Franco (Allen Ginsberg), Jon Hamm (Jake Ehrlich), Mary-Louise Parker (Gail Potter), Jeff Daniels (Professor David Kirk), David Strathairn (Ralph McIntosh), Alessandro Nivola (Luther Nichols), Treat Williams (Mark Schorer), Bob Balaban (Judge Clayton Horn), Aaron Tveit (Peter Orlovsky), Jon Prescott (Neal Cassady), Todd Rotondi (Jack Kerouac), Andrew Rogers (Lawrence Ferlinghetti).

Howl is less of a narrative film than an essay film about the infamous, epic poem Howl by Allan Ginsberg. Filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman use the obscenity trial in 1955, not of Ginsberg for writing the poem, but on his publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti for publishing it, as a framing device, but the film is really an interesting reflection of the poem, its meanings and the controversy that surrounded it, Under animated sequences that are alternately beautiful and crude, much like the poem itself, we hear Ginsberg (James Franco) read his epic poem. Cut into this is an interview with Ginsberg, in black and white, where he talks about his life and what led to the poem and scenes from the trial itself where a series of literary experts discuss the value, or lack thereof, of the poem with lawyers and judges. None of the people in the movie can really be described as characters per se - Ginsberg comes closest, but he’s only used to further illuminate the poem itself. This means at times, Howl is dramatically inert - and yet it remains fascinating. I cannot think of another movie that structures itself around a poem in this way.

When you have a film like this, which is less concerned with dramatics than it is with style, obviously the direction becomes more important. I liked how Epstein and Friedman used different techniques at different times in the movie. The animation used during the body of the poem itself is crude and hand drawn, and at times perhaps a bit too literal for a poem, and yet it is also beautiful - and it adds a visual level to Ginsberg’s masterful use of language. The animation also solves the problem that someone reading poetry is not all that cinematic - the animation brings the poem alive in a way that a simple reading could not. And as a fan of animation, who is a little disappointed that even Disney seems to have abandoned the classic hand drawn look, its nice to see that style here - employed in an imaginative, surreal way sure, but hand drawn just the same.

I also quite liked the black and white scenes of Ginsberg being interviewed. Black and white provides a different perspective than color, and used infrequently, but here it works wonderfully well - not just in the interview scenes, but also in the dramatic scenes involving him as well. Franco does an excellent job as Ginsberg as well - he doesn’t much look like the real Ginsberg, but he does have a similar voice, and nails the mannerisms and makes him a fascinating person to watch.

From a visual standpoint, the courtroom scenes - shot in color - are the least interesting. And yet it is still fascinating to hear the experts argue with lawyers about the poem. Mary Louise Parker, Alessandro Nivola, Jeff Daniels and Treat Williams are the experts, Jon Hamm the defense lawyer, David Straithairn the prosecutor and Bob Balaban the judge. Obviously with those actors, these scenes are well acted - and also rather humorous. Even though it has been just over 50 years since the trial, something like this would be unthinkable today. We have come a long way in our view of censorship during that time.

Howl is an interesting, unique film. Made on a small budget, it obviously attracted the talent in front of the camera it did mainly on the strength of Ginsberg’s poem itself. Yet you do not need to know the poem itself to like the movie - I didn’t know the poem very well at all (those infamous opening lines were familiar, but little else). This is a film that looks at one of the major literary works of 20th Century America, and makes it accessible to everyone. A very good little film.