For the last couple summers, HBO has featured a Monday night documentary series. They show a different doc every week, and I’m glad they do. Still, I think last year’s crop (that included the hilarious wannabe superheroes doc, the fascinating Afghanistan women’s prison doc Love Crimes in Kabul, and the excellent expose of our legal system Hot Coffee) was a lot better. This year’s class was actually missing class, as none of the issues were really that weighty or interesting enough to make a full documentary about. Anyway, let’s talk specifics…
1. Marina Abramovic The Artist Is Present…All about the career of Marina Abramovic, a controversial performance artist whose work routinely features nudity, some awkward situations, sometimes torture, and (in a move sure to confound most people) her sitting in a chair while people wait in line to face her while sitting in another chair. I’ll admit to being a bit skeptical of her work and the documentary is too long, losing me about halfway through, and yet…by the time they got to that chair exhibit I’ll be damned if I wasn’t drawn in. All of the criticisms people have about modern art (it’s too abstract, it’s a sham, it’s preposterous that some people have fallen for this cult) could definitely apply to Abramovic, but there’s just something about her reaction to her fans in that chair——-some of whom cry, some of whom smile, all of whom use her face as a mirror into how they’re feeling——-that I couldn’t turn away from. Grade: B-
2. One Nation Under Dog…Who doesn’t like a documentary about dogs? This film is a bit all-over-the-place, kind-of dealing with dog abuse, kind-of dealing with how much people love their dogs, but really it’s just a mostly sweet movie that has on obvious passion for its subject even if you’re never very sure what it’s trying to tell you. Grade: B
3. Me at the Zoo…A tough one. It’s about the former “YouTube star” (and I can’t believe anyone can say that while keeping a straight face) Chris Crocker, who’s most famous for the “Leave Britney Alone” video and dressing up like a woman in a series of ridiculously stupid videos. The doc sort of wants to be about the rise of YouTube and ask the question of whether or not someone like Crocker is the modern day incarnate of Andy Warhol (a great question, by the way), but it misfires by letting Crocker hijack the documentary. As interesting as the general subject of internet fame may be, he’s not. He never really comes across as a real person (when a documentary is hogged by someone on camera for 90 percent of it but you get no real sense of what they’re like, only what they’ll do to become famous, you lose interest quick), and as a Warholian creature of do-whatever-it-takes-to-become-somebody he’s no better than mediocre, not quite as outrageous or as fascinating as he might think. Grade: C…while admitting that a better film could be made about this same subject.
4. Vito…About noted gay rights activist and film historian Vito Russo, who eventually died from AIDs complications. A really informative time capsule about the rise of AIDs and the Reagan administration’s (complete lack of a) response, and the depictions of homosexuality in film from the 50’s (where messages had to be coded) to the 70’s/80’s (when the only way you could have a homosexual in a movie is if they met a tragic end or were the villain). Still, if you’re wondering exactly what those two things have in common, other than Vito was passionate about them, you’re not entirely alone. The film is a bit too random to really add up to a definitive portrait on anything, you’ll learn some valuable information…just not a lot of it. Grade: B
5. About Face…Interviews a lot of former supermodels about how the business was then. And if this sounds like a thin idea to fill up a feature length documentary movie, it is. Grade: C
6. Birders…Even though the phenomenon of “birding” was covered in last year’s Steve Martin bomb, Big Year, that approximately 100 people cared enough about to buy tickets to (although it actually was a pretty good movie), somehow this doc thinks we’ll be really interested to watch Jonathan Frazen stalk birds through Central Park. I enjoy seeing a colorful or rare bird as much as the next non-bird-watcher, but the obsession these people have with it is better detailed in fiction. I’d say watch “Big Year” instead, although this hour-long doc is too short to be called a time waster. Grade: B
And so we’re done with another summer series. One thing you’ll notice about the above list is that almost NONE of them (from birds to dogs to models to artists to…YouTube artists?) with the exception of Vito deals with a weighty or serious subject. Watching most of these docs I felt “What’s the point of this? What needs to be told about this story?” A question next year’s documentarians would be wise to ask themselves beforehand.