5 HBO’s docs being reviewed…the theme? All of them revolve around women or women’s issues.
“Dead Mother’s Club”…What does it do to a woman to loose their mother, especially at a young age? This doc deals with that question with three famous examples (Molly Shannon, Rosie O’Donnell, and an especially candid Jane Fonda give interviews) and three non-famous examples. Some of the mothers commit suicide, and others are lost to natural causes, and that seems to have ripple effects into how their daughters remember them and form new relationships. I wish they had pushed the psychological aspects a little more and dug a little deeper. It’s a really cozy and somewhat relaxing doc, but maybe it shouldn’t have been. Grade: C+
“The Trials of Pamela Smart”…This doc deals with the sensational, Tabloid-ready case of Pamela Smart (the school employee—not a teacher—who had an affair with a student and that student killed her husband) who was portrayed as evil seductress incarnate in the public eye. Was she really an innocent victim of circumstance? The doc raises that tantalizing question, but is at least ten minutes too long and goes over the same information a few times as if to say “just in case you’re not convinced yet.” Grade: B-
“Paycheck to Paycheck”…A working-poor life is examined in this doc about a mother of three kids in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which practically borders Alabama and I understand the elements of this particular poverty all too well. [They mention that one of the reasons things are so hard-up for decent paying blue collar work is that a lot of the sock mills have shut down and moved overseas when I’ve known people to lose their jobs for exactly that reason.] So even though I knew too many people who very similar to this, feeling sympathy for someone and feeling interested in them as a person are too different things for a documentary. The mom showcased seems remarkably unreflective on her overall situation, even as she has to constantly worry about specific day-to-day things. And the movie doesn’t draw any larger conclusions about poverty in America. You get the sense that the people showcased would probably blame their situation on Obama instead of income inequality or off-shoring. Grade: C
“Love Child”…A doc about a South Korean couple who were so busy playing videogames their baby died from neglect. That may sound pretty cut and dried that these people are monsters, but the movie shows video gaming as a real addiction that can change the way somebody’s mind works. They keep mentioning that this particularly couple had absolutely no concept of raising a child or real interest in taking care of one, but I wondered “Is that something larger in South Korean culture or something with Generation Y in general? Are we losing our humanity because we’re spending all our time attached to machines?” I kept wanting the movie to draw larger conclusions or broaden the scope off of just this one case, but it never really did. Still, some gorgeous shots of the city-of-the-future that is Seoul, the look of this doc is technically flawless and has a real kinetic energy. Grade: B-
“Private Violence”…In my opinion, the best of the bunch. It’s a documentary about domestic abuse and follows a handful of women (either currently being abused or desperately trying to help women that are abused). I think it shines a light on some of the often-asked questions—-like “Why don’t they just leave?”—-and shows that some of those same questions may be subtle ways of asking if it’s not her fault if she gets killed. There’s an urgency here that the other docs lack and it (finally) delved deep into the psychology of the people on film, probably my chief complaint about most of the rest of them. Grade: B+