I admit it: at the Awards viewing parties I usually use the Feature Length Documentaries section as a chance to get up and stretch my legs, take a bathroom break, and snag an appetizer, because most of the time I haven’t seen any of the nominations. Not this year. This year I watched all of them.
What did I learn? What with two of the films discussing troubled musicians, one about the Mexican drug war, one about Ukrainian military opening fire on protestors, and one about an Indonesian man confronting his brother’s murderers, I learned that cheerful, upbeat documentaries aren’t Oscar Bait.
All kidding aside, there are some really good films up for the Award. Read on for some (very brief) (I promise) (well, mostly) rundowns of each; which one I liked best, and which one is likely to get the Award.
What Happened, Miss Simone?
I’d expected the story of Nina Simone, ground-breaking African American jazz and blues singer, to be mostly about her sometimes difficult personality and depression, but it went into a lot of detail about her work during the Civil Rights Movement, and her belief that maybe violence was needed, if it got people to wake up to how bad the situation was.
It follows her music too of course; somehow I’d missed the fact that she started out as a classical pianist, and that’s the career she’d always wanted: being a world-class jazz singer was what she “settled for,” and it always infuriated her that audience members would talk during a jazz song, and she’d storm off the stage if she was angry enough.
“I just wanted them to listen to the music, like they did in the classical world. I thought they needed teaching. If they couldn’t listen, fuck it.”
I enjoyed the movie, though the sound editing during the interviews is a bit odd: there are some abrupt cuts in the middle of sentences, I’m assuming to cut out overlong pauses or digressions, but once I started hearing them it was tough to ignore them.
Cartel Land
The look at the drug war in Mexico, and how it spills over into the United States, was fascinating, disturbing, and eye-opening, especially considering the recent armed militia takeover in Oregon. Part of the movie follows a man in Arizona who’s taken the law into his own hands; he and other volunteers patrol the back country near the border, to make sure the Cartel members don’t bring their drugs and their violence into the country.
It’d be easy to write him off as a crazy vigilante, but he’s extremely well-spoken and engaging, and after you see what the drugs and violence are doing to people in Mexico, and you realize that with an area as huge as the Mexico/Arizona border it can take hours for legitimate police to arrive, you can really see where he’s coming from.
The rest of the movie follows a man following a similar passion in Mexico: taking the law into his own hands to fight the Cartel. He’s inspiring and dedicated, but the later half of the movie was hard to watch, because we find out he’s a human being, and incredibly flawed, sometimes in ways that are hard to forgive.
The movie is interesting, and beautifully shot (and props to the camera operators taking footage during gun fights) but I wish I spoke more Spanish, because with any foreign-language film I’m having to take the film-maker’s word on the translations, and I was very aware how much the “facts” could be manipulated by the subtitles and the editing choices. But that’s the case with any documentary ever made.
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom
A lot of people in the US never knew the scope of what was going on in the Ukraine in 2013 and 2014: we heard about protests, and some horrific violence, but only had a vague understanding what it was about.
This Netflix documentary spells it out really well, in a way that’s easy to understand but still incredibly detailed. It takes it to a very human level, interviewing the people involved, either years after the protest or in some cases while it was still going on. There’s tons of footage taken in the square, looking at camp conditions and how people came together to protest an intolerable situation. The testimony of some of the doctors and nurses was especially chilling.
“Having to decide who was already dead, that was the hardest thing.”
I had no quibbles with this movie at all, it’s very well-done, and I’d be happy to see it get the Award. I liked the next two a little more, and I think they have a slightly better chance of getting the Award, but only slightly.
Amy
I already covered this one in detail, so in short: I was surprised how much I liked this one. I don’t usually care for celebrity biopics, but this one is extremely well made.
Based on the subject matter (a brilliant singer who self-destructed way too young) I think this one has a good chance of getting the Oscar, it’s got a popular appeal going for it. I’d rather the last film got it, but I wouldn’t be unhappy if Amy won.
The Look of Silence
This one was my favorite, but it’s very hard to watch: after the Indonesia dictatorship murdered hundreds of “communists” (often just people who disagreed with the dictatorship) in the 1960s the country went back to “normal,” with many of the murderers living side-by-side with the families of people they murdered.
The film follows a man (I’ll call him the Optometrist, since he’s never named) in rural Indonesia, as he quietly talks to some of the people who were responsible for his brother’s death.
The title Look of Silence refers his career, and how decades later many of the people involved (both the murderers and the victims’ families) don’t want to talk about it, or refuse to admit it happened, or believe they did anything wrong. Also, the film has no background score, we only hear the sounds of birds and crickets and frogs in the country. As accustomed as we are to background music, the quiet is nicely off-putting.
I almost thought we could’ve understood what was happening without any subtitles at all. The Optometrist watches a video (possibly footage from The Act of Killing, the previous documentary in this series, but it’s never said) of men boasting about the people they killed, and his expression never changes, but at one point he’s watching two men describing in detail how they murdered his brother. He blinks and swallows, and it’s heart wrenching.
Scenes like that are all over the movie: we see a woman try to stay calm after her father has proudly talked about drinking the blood of someone he killed (several people say that’s how you keep from going crazy.) She calmly explains, with a very shaky smile, that she had no idea it happened, that her father had never told her that before. And you believe her.
And I loved the Optometrist’s mother. She’s lived so long, lost her son, and is now taking care of her extremely disabled husband. But she still laughs sometime, and her face is so expressive. She’s very matter of fact, but with an odd sense of humor despite everything.
The closing credits drive home the fact that a lot of the murderers are still in charge today: in the list of directors, producers, and managers the same name appears, often several times in a row: Anonymous, Anonymous, Anonymous. Over and over.
This one is my favorite of the five, because it’s beautifully shot, with scenes of daily life, small towns, the countryside, and people. One of the final images is a wide angle of the Optometrist, silently watching the television, and it’s almost like a painting. I’d be very happy if this one got the Award.
Edited to add: and it’s official, Amy wins for Best Documentary Feature!