Movie Review: West of Memphis

West of Memphis
Directed by: Amy Berg.

I have now seen four documentaries about the West Memphis 3 – the three Paradise Lost films directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky made between 1996 and 2011, and now Amy Berg’s West of Memphis made in 2012. Of them all, I still think the original Paradise Lost from 1996 is the best. When Berlinger and Sinofsky went down to make the film, they assumed, like everyone else, the three were guilty and they would be making a film about how three teenagers murdered three younger boys. What they found though didn’t add up. There was no evidence, aside from a confession got out of the slowest of the three boys, who recanted. Other than that, the entire case seemed to be built on smoke and mirrors. And it is also unquestionable that without that film, they rest would not have been made. Pretty much everyone who became involved in the case over the years became involved BECAUSE of that documentary. Having said that, I think that West of Memphis is probably the most complete single film about the case. It has the benefit of hindsight, and the years of research and investigation into the original case and shows you precisely what did happen. Even after four documentaries about the case – not to mention an excellent book about it – I’m still learning things.

The story is now familiar to most people – it has become one of the most well-known true crime stories in recent American history. Three eight year boys were found beaten, bound and murdered in a shallow creek. The police have no real leads, but think that the crime might have something to do with Satan worship. They focus on Damien Echols, a “strange” teenager in town, who dresses all in black, and is said to worship Satan – as well as his two friends – Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley. The story becomes huge in the small town, and begins to attract national attention. After hours of interrogation, Jessie confesses to helping Jason and Damien kill the three boys. His confession is splashed all over the front page of the paper. It is also riddled with mistakes and inconsistencies that the detectives help him remember correctly. He later recants his confession, and refuses to testify against Damien and Jason – who are to be tried separately. There is no physical evidence tying any of the three of them to the murders. Despite this, all three are convicted, and Damien is sentenced to death.

The movie opens with a recap of the case from back in 1994 – including gruesome crime scene footage and descriptions, that quite frankly, are hard to stomach, but necessary. It then goes over what has happened in the 18 years since then – the celebrities who became involved in trying to free the West Memphis Three – from Eddie Vedder to Johnny Depp to the Dixie Chicks to Peter Jackson (who produced this film, and also gave lots of money in order to hire appeals lawyers and investigators to help out) – as well as the “regular” people who became involved – including a woman named Laurie who ended up falling in love and marrying Damien. The film also supplies an alternate theory of the crime.

For years, the most likely suspect was thought to be John Mark Byers – the stepfather of one of the murdered boys. He was front and center in the first two Paradise Lost movies (especially the second one, which is admittingly the weakest of the three) – and certainly did himself no favors, with his over the top grieving and hate filled tirades against the West Memphis Three, not to mention some apparent slip ups. But in one of the ironies of this case, many focused on him solely because he “seemed” like the type of person who WOULD do something like this – which is precisely what got the West Memphis Three in trouble in the first place. There is no evidence against him, and no one really believes he did it anymore. That person is now Terry Hobbs – another stepfather – and there actually is some evidence to support this claim – a hair found in one of the knots that bound the murdered boys for example. Whether or not he did it, you’ll have to decide for yourself based on what the movie shows. It is clear there will never be a true investigation into him by the police or the prosecutors, who insist they convicted the right three people.

And that is sad thing about this case. What has become clear enough for pretty much everyone to except – that the West Memphis Three are innocent and served 18 years in prison for something they didn’t do, is what the police and prosecutors – not to mention the original judge – will never admit. When it became clear that the three were going to get new trials, the prosecutors came up with a deal for the three of them. In one of the strangest pleas I can imagine, the West Memphis Three were allowed to maintain their innocence, while admitting that the prosecution had enough evidence to convict them -  and were allowed to go free. This was presented as a Win-Win for all involved. The Prosecution technically got guilty pleas, and are able to close the case, maintaining they convicted the right three people, and they spent years in jail for the crime, and also protect themselves and the state from any lawsuits the three may file. The West Memphis Three got to get out of jail, and not spend years longer waiting for a new trial, where there was no guarantee they would be found not guilty. Win Win, right?

Except it isn’t a w in win, because the real killer or killers of those three innocent boys is still out there. The prosecution and police don’t care, because they have protected their own asses. But is that really their job? Isn’t their job to find, convict and punish the guilty, and get some level of justice for the victims and their families? The case of the West Memphis Three is one of injustice – injustice because three innocent kids spent 18 years in jail for something they didn’t do, going in when they were teenagers and coming out as they approach middle age. And injustice because someone killed three innocent children, and will never face justice for it. There is no happy ending to a case like this.

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: 5 Broken Cameras

5 Broken Cameras
Directed by: Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi.

Emad Burnat is a Palestinian villager who has spent his whole life in his small village of Bil’in. He gets a camera on the occasion of his fourth son’s birth so he can document his son’s life. Emad, and seemingly everyone else is Bil’in, isn’t really political. They live a simple life, and are happy. All they really want is for things to stay the same. But when the Israeli government decides that they need to build a barrier – to separate villagers like Bil’in from the Israeli settlement near by, the people of Bil’in are not happy – and they start to protest. Their protests are non-violent – basically just the entire village going to the construction site of the barrier every Friday with signs and chanting at the workers and Israeli army member there. The Israeli response is not non-violent – he sees his friends and family arrested or beaten, and throughout the course of his movie, he will have five different cameras that he has used to document the protests destroyed.

The story that 5 Broken Cameras tells is undeniably powerful and important. The film is narrated by Burnat, who tells his story over the images his cameras caught. Professional filmmaker – and Israeli – Guy Davidi co-directed the film, one assumes to help give it a professional polish that Burnat, who says he knew nothing about filmmaking, would be incapable of giving. Had the two simply let the images speak for themselves, and cut back on the cloying narration, this could have been a great documentary. As it stands, I could not help but think that I was being manipulated throughout the entire running time of the documentary. The sad thing is, the filmmakers didn’t need to do that. In this case, it is hard to defend Israel’s actions – but I still don’t like the filmmakers bashing me over the head over and over again with their rather obvious point.

Take for instance a scene in which Burnat’s youngest son, Gibreel, who must be at most 3 at the time, goes up to an Israeli soldier and literally hands him an olive branch (olives being  the main crop of the area). The film shows this, without narration, as if it was a natural, spur of the moment gesture by the wide eyed innocent Gibreel. But the whole scene reeks of a setup – I wonder just how long Gibreel needed to be coached before he did that?

The same sort of manipulation can be seen throughout the movie. Burnat and Davidi never tire of showing us wide eyed, innocent children to go along with their cloying narration that never really shares any real insight into what is happening, but is there to pull at the audience’s heartstrings.

Which is sad, because the story of the Bil’in protests is an important one. We hear stories of violent clashes between Israel and Palestine – and more often, Israel and its neighbors – far too often. The villagers in Bil’in are not trying to wipe Israel off the map, they just want to be left alone in their village, so they can raise their own families in peace. Their protests are peaceful, and what Israel does in response is overkill.

But 5 Broken Cameras remains a film that isn’t really interested in presenting a fair and balance picture of what happened. Instead, they insist on beating its point into your head over and over again, in the most broadly sentimental way imaginable. It’s too bad. The filmmakers didn’t need to go this route to make a good film. In fact, they would have been much better served if they hadn’t. This is a sad enough story that the filmmakers needn’t have tried so hard to pull at your heartstrings.

2012 Year End: The Best Documentaries of 2012

Every year, I try to watch more documentaries than the year before – and yet it seems like every year, it gets harder and harder to keep up with them. Part of this is because while documentaries are more popular now than ever before, for the most part most docs only ever hit major cities and the decreasing number of independent theaters. So, as always, I missed some docs I wish I could have seen. I had the chance to see How to Survive a Plague and Chasing Ice and never got around to them. I never even had a chance to see: The Central Park Five, Ethel, The Gatekeepers (I'm hearing a March release date in Toronto for this), The House I Live In, Mea Maxima Culpa, The Waiting Room or West of Memphis (apparently this opens January 25th - so I'll see it then). I often say that I need a year, really, before I am truly comfortable with my top 10 list – after all the hype has died down. That’s doubly true for a list of the year’s best documentaries – since it takes you that long to have a chance to see them all.

Anyway, enough about the documentaries I didn’t see this year, and let’s move to the ones I did see. Like everything else, not all documentaries are good – if you read my post on the worst films of the year, you already know I hated 2016: Obama’s America, a ridiculous, dishonest film about President Obama that doesn’t take advantage of a real opportunity to make a reasoned case against the man. I didn’t hate The Ambassador, in fact I kind of admire director Mads Brugger’ tenacity in making his movie, but I cannot help but think that his motives were less pure than he makes them out to be. I was not much of a fan of the Oscar-nominated 5 Broken Cameras which told an undeniably interesting story, but it felt to me like they laid everything on a little too thick, trying to manipulate audience sympathy far more than was necessary.

There were a number of average, lightweight docs like Indie Game: The Movie about the world of independent game video game designers, Spike Lee’s Bad 25 an in-depth look at the making of and impact of Michael Jackson’s Bad album (I saw the TV version, and mildly enjoyed it, but don't think I'll see the whole thing when it's released for home viewing) and Morgan Spurlock’s Comicon Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope about how much fans love what they do. All were enjoyable. Similarly lightweight, but at least slightly better was Marley about Bob Marley – although I think another documentary is necessary to tell the whole story. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is an extremely entertaining documentary about a man who has dedicated his life to his craft – with a twinge of sadness to it as well. Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present was a fascinating look at the famed performance artist, especially her latest “exhibit” at MoMA – where she simply sat at a table staring at whoever sat across for her.

Then there were some average social issues docs – The Pruitt-Igoe Myth about the famed, failed housing project in St. Louis, We Are Legion about the so-called hacktivists who take on whatever pisses them off in the brave new world on the internet. The much talked about Bully shed light on an important issue, but I think there is more to this story that the documentary doesn’t get to in its rush to be an advocacy documentary.

A film that would have definitely been on my top 10 list of docs had it not been effectively a four part TV miniseries was Werner Herzog’s excellent On Death Row, four interviews with death row inmates that continues what Herzog did in Into the Abyss last year. Once again Herzog proves why he’s one of the best documentary filmmakers in the world. One of the very best documentaries I saw this year The Act of Killing was at TIFF, and I’m happy to say it has found distribution, and will be coming to theaters next year – when it will surely make this list.

Which brings us to the following - my 10 favorite documentaries of the year.

10. Detropia (Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady)

With Jesus Camp and 12^th and Delaware, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady became one of my favorite documentary filmmaker duos out there right now. Their latest film, Detropia, is not quite as good as their earlier films, but is still a fascinating film. The film is about Detroit, and how since the closing of all the auto plants, it has essentially become an abandoned city. Half the city is now empty, the city is broke and cutting services they really shouldn’t, residents are unemployed or underemployed – and those who still work in the city do everything possible to move to the suburbs. And yet there are those who hang on, who try their best to make the city the love thrive. The title of the movie is stupid (get it? Detroit is a dystopia), but despite the film’s simple minded title, this is actually a fascinating documentary about one city that is a victim of modern capitalism – and a city that should serve as a lesson for the rest of America.

9. Dreams of a Life (Carol Morley)

You probably remember the story, even if you never knew the name Joyce Vincent. She was the sad, lonely woman who died in her apartment in 2003 and wasn’t discovered for more than three years. Perhaps the saddest part is when they finally did find her; she was surrounded by Christmas presents she was wrapping. Who were these presents for? Why did they not come check on her for three years? Why didn’t the government, who subsided her housing, come and check on her when she didn’t pay rent or utilities for years? And how does a person end up so isolated from the rest of the world that no one notices her gone for three years? Carol Morley’s documentary tries to answer these questions – but cannot. It finds many old friends, co-workers and boyfriends to talk to – and the Joyce Vincent they describe was beautiful, sexy and outgoing – if very private. We still don’t know what happened to Joyce Vincent, and that’s sad, and this daring, innovative documentary is not worse for not having the answer to the questions it raises – it just sad that Morley was the first one to ask the questions.

8. The Imposter (Bart Layton)

There are some stories just so bizarre that they have to be – because no one could possibly make them up. Such is the story that The Imposter tells. A young teenager disappeared from his Texas home in 1993 – and wasn’t heard from again for three years. Then someone claiming to be the missing boy is located in Spain, and tells a nearly impossible to imagine story of being kidnapped for a sex ring that he finally escaped from. But why does the boy look like he’s in his 20s, has different hair color, eye color and speaks with a French accent? Because, of course, he isn’t really the missing boy. Yet he fools everyone – even apparently the missing boys family, who brings him back to Texas, and lives with him for months – and even refuses to believe the authorities when they get suspicious and tell them there is no way this man could be their son? Why does the family so adamantly believe? Do they just want it to be true? Or is there something darker going on? The Imposter is a bizarre story that takes twists you will not see coming – and has access to pretty much all the players, including the imposter himself, and the boy’s family. Everyone except for the boy himself – who is still missing.

7. The Invisible War (Kirby Dick)

The Invisible War shines a light on one the American Military’s dirty little secrets – the near epidemic of rape and sexual assault that goes on within their ranks. The film documents the stories of many women who were raped while serving their country – which was bad enough – but perhaps even worse was the treatment they received afterwards. They were told to stop whining, not to report it at all because it would hurt their careers. In some cases, they were even charged with “adultery” under the military code, because they mean who raped them – their commanding officers – were married, even though they didn’t face any disciplinary actions. One woman was told she was asking for it because she was dressed provocatively in her official uniform skirt. This is an important issue, that the Military has known was a problem for decades – and until this movie was released, they did little to combat it. A powerful, important doc – that has already made a difference.

6. The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield)

Rich people live in their own world to a certain extent – unencumbered by the problems of normal people. When Lauren Greenfield started making The Queen of Versailles, she thought she was making a film about David Siegel, the owner of the largest time share company in the world, and his trophy wife Jackie, as they set about to build the largest private home in America. And then the market collapses, all that cheap money Siegel was using to fund his company went away and – shock – the bank wanted their money back. Not only that, but the suckers they duped into buying those time shares could no longer afford the payments and the company was in real danger. But of course, when you owe the bank hundreds of millions of dollars, instead of just a few thousand, you get breaks the rest of us don’t. The Queen of Versailles could have been a cruel film – a film that mocks this couple for their excesses – and yet while the movie does have some great moments showing Jackie’s cluelessness (asking the man at the Hertz Company the name of her driver for example), it is a strangely sympathetic film towards them. It is possible to hate what the Siegel’s stand for – David made it even easier this year, threatening to fire a bunch of people in Obama won re-election – and still see them as people. The Queen of Versailles manages that trick nicely.

5. Side by Side (Christopher Kenneally)

The biggest change in the movie world over the past decade and a half is the slow transition from film to digital. Casual viewers probably do not notice much of a difference, but there are people who are impassioned on both sides of the divide. It started innocently enough – with a little Danish film named The Celebration back in 1998 which was shot on a consumer grade camera, and while the visuals were grainy, it gave the filmmakers more flexibility in what they were shooting. American indie films followed suit shortly thereafter – and then George Lucas got involved with the Star Wars prequels, and everything changed forever. Christopher Kenneally’s documentary does a great job of interviewing a wide range of filmmakers – Lucas, James Cameron, the Wachowskis, Scorsese, Danny Boyle, Christopher Nolan – as well as various “below the line” talent like Directors of Photography and Editors (the interviews are actually conducted by Keanu Reeves, who is surprisingly knowledgeable about the subject). The result is a fascinating documentary – and a must for movie fans, who should care about what is happening, whether they are pro-film or pro-digital.

4. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman)

China has gotten a lot of attention in recent years for becoming a more open society – and yet it still has a long way to go. Artist/activist Ai Weiwei has been a longtime critic of the Chinese regime, and does so at great risk to his own personal safety. He grew up the son of a man sent to a prison/re-education camp for his ideas, was educated in New York, and returned to China in the mid-1990s and has essentially been pestering the establishment ever since. In the wake of the devastating earthquake, that killed thousands of school children, Ai Weiwei set about on an ambitious mission of documenting every name of the children killed – something the government was unable to do. This documentary shows Ai Weiwei for what he is – a great artist and a vital activist, trying to push his country to be better than it currently is. He reminds us that while China has made progress, they are not there yet, and must keep pushing.

3. Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul)

One of the year’s great inspiration movies, about a talented singer-songwriter named Rodriguez who released two critically acclaimed albums in the early 1970s that no one ever bought or even heard of, and then disappeared from public view. Somehow he becomes a cult sensation in South Africa, inspiring many anti-Apartheid musicians and selling hundreds of thousands of albums in that country – similar numbers to acts like The Beatles or Elvis, even though no one in South Africa knows anything about him, despite their efforts to find out. In the late 1990s, they really try, and the result is astonishing. Most feel-good movies leave me feeling cold – the cynical bastard that I can be – but this one is truly inspiring and couldn’t help but bring a smile to my face. And the music in the film truly is brilliant.

2. This is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was arrested, charged and convicted of propaganda against the regime, and given a six year prison sentence and a 20 year ban on making any films, leaving the country or giving media interviews. As he sits in his apartment awaiting the results of his appeal, he decides to film himself – on a cheap camera and his iPhone. While he is not allowed to direct a film, he thinks shooting himself talking on the phone or reading a screenplay isn’t the same thing. His friend and collaborator Mojtaba Mirtahmasb comes by to help him, and when Panahi gives the direction to cut at a certain point, Mirtahmasb refuses, correctly pointing out that if he did, that would mean Panahi was directing. We see other scenes in the film – Panahi talking to his pet lizard, and most touchingly, an extended sequence where Panahi talks to the young man who collects each apartment’s garbage – Panahi even leaves his apartment and follows him down the elevator, and the film ends with him going out into the night – looking up at the sky full of fireworks, even though the government has banned them. I’m not sure what This is Not a Film is – but it’s one of a kind. A bold act of defiance, which never directly criticizes the Iranian government, because it doesn’t have to – everything you need to know is right there on screen.

1. Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley)

With her first two feature films – Away from Her (2007) and Take This Waltz (2012), Sarah Polley established herself as one of Canada’s best filmmakers. Watching her first documentary, Stories We Tell, helps to explain why Polley is attracted to the stories she is. Both of her feature films deal with a marriage, somewhat falling apart. Stories We Tell is a movie about her mother – who died when Polley was young – and reveals her family secret – that her father isn’t her biological father. Sarah, who was the youngest child my quite a margin, was the product of an affair – and she didn’t find out about it until she was almost 30. Stories We Tell allows everyone to tell their version of the story – both of Polley’s fathers, all of her siblings, friends of her mothers. Everyone, that is, except for her mother, who remains an enigma, because whatever she felt, she took to her grave. Most documentaries tackle some important issue – either past or present – but Polley’s documentary is painfully personal. A small scale piece that reveals big truths. And my favorite documentary of the year.

TV Movie Review: On Death Row

On Death Row
Directed by: Werner Herzog.

Werner Herzog wanted to make a documentary about the death penalty in America – and in 2011 he made Into the Abyss, a stunning film about crime, punishment, violence and poverty in America, that was for me, the best documentary of the year. But before Herzog settled on the story of Michael Perry and Jason Burkett for Into the Abyss, he considered four other cases – and even conducted interviews with the offenders. Not wanting to waste these interviews, Herzog decided to make four mini-documentaries, each 50 minutes long, about their stories. While none provide the depth of Into the Abyss, all four stories are well told by Herzog and simply add to his basic premise – that the death penalty is wrong, even for offenders who are guilty of the crimes they committed. As he says at the start of each of these mini-docs >As a German, coming from a different historical background, and a visitor to the United States, I respectfully disagree with the practice of the death penalty`.

Herzog tells each of the five inmates her interviews over these four films that just because he`s here, it doesn’t mean he likes them – or that he has any interest in trying to prove their innocence – which two of them proclaim. He wants to examine their cases and what led them to do what they do, and what the experience of being on death row is like. He is not really making an advocacy documentary.

The first doc concentrates on James Barnes, one of the only people who will fully admit to his guilt. He was convicted of murdering his ex-wife in Florida, and while serving out his life sentence, he confesses to the rape and murder of a nurse way back in 1988 – for which he receives the death penalty. While talking to Herzog, he even admits to committing at least one other murder. He is a serial offender, who has no hope for rehabilitation. He led a troubled life as a youngster; in and out of trouble from the time he is a teenager – who may have molested his twin sister. Yet, he seems to value family – he wants some sort of approval, or at least acknowledgment for his family. He tries to manipulate Herzog, but he sees through him. This is the most disturbing of the docs, but Barnes is so clearly guilty, so clearly evil – and even rather unrepentant – even blaming the nurse for her own murder, although not wanting to disparage the dead, he refuses to explain why it was her fault.

The second doc is the only one that concentrates on a woman – Linda Carty. This is the strangest, most incomplete of the docs, mainly because I do not think that Carty ever really levels with Herzog. She remains evasive throughout, trying hard to milk sympathy out of the audience. Her case is disturbing, because it involves Carty apparently hiring three drug dealers to break into the apartment of neighbor, to steal her newborn child. She tells the drug dealers that there is nearly a ton of pot in the apartment – which simply is not true. Eventually, the young mother is found dead in the trunk of a car, and her baby found barely clinging to life in a car right next to it. Carty proclaims her innocence, and she does have serious, legitimate concerns about her representation at her trial. But based on what I saw in this documentary, I think she probably is guilty. But because she is so evasive, and the case itself so complex, I do not think Herzog ever really nails this segment down. It does have one of the best single moments in the series though, when a prosecutor says it is easy to concentrate on the criminal, and forget the victim, in these cases. That it is very easy for Herzog to "humanize Carty", to which Herzog very bluntly replies “I do not make an attempt to humanize her. She is simply a human being, period”, which is one of the underlying points to this series by Herzog – the people who commit these crimes may have done evil things – but they are all still human.

Next up is two of the infamous Texas Seven, inmates serving out life sentences in a Texas penitentiary, who inexplicably were able to escape from prison. They didn’t kill anyone getting out of the prison, and survived for weeks on end on the run. One night, while robbing a sporting goods store, they do kill a police officer – for which all are sentenced to death when they are caught. The segment starts with Joseph Garcia, sentenced to 30 years for a murder, which he claims self-defense, who had no part in the murder of the police officer – he was shot outside, while he was still inside the store, but because his co-conspirators committed the crime, by Texas law, he is just as guilty as the one who pulled the trigger. Next, Herzog interviews George Rivas, the mastermind of the escape, and the man who pulled the trigger to kill the police officer. This is stronger than the Linda Carty segment, but not as strong as the other two – Herzog, by necessity, has to spend so much time going over how they escaped, that the crimes for which they found themselves in prison in the first place, and their life on death row, and doesn’t get quite as much attention.

Finally, there is the case of Hank Skinner, in what is probably the strongest of these mini-docs. Skinner was convicted of a triple homicide back in 1993, and vehemently claims his innocence (but does seem to hedge at points, coming up with excuses as to why his DNA may well be on the murder weapon when he eventually gets them tested). Skinner speaks most eloquently on his life on death row – on the Pollunsky unit, and how it felt when he came very close to being executed – only receiving a last minute stay of execution. Skinner gives the clearest picture of what day to day life on death row is like – how dehumanizing it is, and how difficult it is to maintain your sanity.

I think these four documentaries are better taken as a whole than any one segment is. Along with Into the Abyss, it makes for one large film about capital punishment in America. Yes, Into the Abyss is a masterpiece in itself, because Herzog takes the time to flesh out the crime, the victims and their families, the perpetrators and their families, and the people who are tasked with the impossible job of executing these criminals. Herzog does not have the time to do that with any of these cases. And yet, taken together, the movies make a devastating portrait of crime and punishment in America. You can be for capital punishment or against it, and these films will still make you question what you think. That is what great documentaries do – not simply confirm or congratulate you for believing what the filmmaker does, but makes you re-examine why you think it.

Movie Review: Searching for Sugar Man

Searching for Sugar Man
Directed by: Malik Bendjelloul.

Rordriguez was a very gifted singer/songwriter who released two albums in the early 1970s, and was never heard from again. Or more accurately, even when he released those albums, he wasn’t heard from. He got some good reviews, but his albums didn’t sell, and so he was dropped from his label, and forgotten, even by the people who liked his music. Everyone who worked with him remembered him though – and loved him. They have nothing but kind words to say about him, and they all rank him among the most talented musicians they ever worked with.

But a strange thing happens – somehow, Rodriguez became huge in South Africa. How his album even got there is not known – an old story says that an American girl came to visit her South African boyfriend with a copy of the album, and everyone loved it, and starting bootlegging in. All through the 1970s and 1980s, under Apartheid, Rodriguez’s two albums were in constant circulation – and inspired anti-Apartheid musicians across the country. His albums were censored by the government, who quite literally scratched the vinyl albums, so the tracks they didn’t want played on the radio could not be played. Rodriguez became a legend in South Africa – bigger than Elvis. He sold hundreds of thousands of records. Part of the reason he became so big is because no one knew anything about him. There were no real linear notes on the album, and strangely the vinyl record lists three different names – the cover identifies him only as Rodriguez, the record itself identifies him as Sixto Rodriguez, and the songwriting credits list him as Jesus Rodriguez. Somehow a story circulates that the reason he never made a third album is because he set himself on fire on stage, killing himself. Or he shot himself on stage. No one knows for sure, but they can all agree is this: Rodriguez is dead.

In the late 1990s, two South Africans set about trying to figure out how Rodriguez really is. They go to his South African record companies. Surely they’ll know – after all, they have to be sending royalties somewhere. And they did, although that trail turns out to be a dead end because the person they are paying royalties to isn’t Rodriguez, but his old record company – and they sure aren’t passing them along anywhere. So then they do a strange thing – they start trying to figure out where Rodriguez is from by looking at the lyrics to the songs themselves. San Francisco, New York, Amsterdam – all dead ends. Then they notice he mentions a place called Dearborn, and the path becomes clearer. What they find will astonish everyone.

I won’t reveal what happens next, because if you are lucky enough not to know this story already, then you deserve to find out for yourself when you watch this remarkable documentary. And remarkable it certainly is. If a screenwriter came up with this story, it would never get made, because no one would believe it. It is the type of story that is made for documentary, because if you didn’t hear it from the people who lived it, you would think it had to be made up. Another documentary this year was like that – The Imposter – but that was a much darker story, that ends as it begins with an enigma. I prefer Searching for Sugar Man which is one of the most inspirational films of the year. I often roll my eyes when I see movies that try to inspire me – I’m a cynic at heart. But I cannot help being won over by a story like the one Searching for Sugar Man tells. We can all learn a lot from Searching for Sugar Man – and the mystery man at its core.

Note: The only real complaint I have about Searching for Sugar Man is the same complaint I have about many movies about musicians – we never get to hear a song from beginning to end during the movie. We hear parts of a lot of Rodriguez’s songs – and what I heard makes me want to hear more, as it is my type of music, but I wonder why documentary filmmakers can never settle down long enough to let a whole song play beginning to end. Oh well, I seem to be the only one bothered by this, but it’s a pet peeve of mine. I want to hear the songs!

Movie Review: This is Not a Film

This is Not a Film
Directed by: Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb.

Jafar Panahi is currently serving a six year prison sentence in Iran – just because in the Iranian elections of 2009, he supported the “wrong” party.  He was convicted in late 2010 of "assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic", given his six year jail sentence, and banned from making any films for 20 years. While appealing his sentence, he made This is Not a Film, over a 10 day span in March 2011, using a digital camcorder and an iPhone. The film was smuggled out of Iran in a cake, and played at Cannes in May 2011, before receiving a theatrical release in North America earlier this year. It may just be the best film Panahi has ever made.

Don’t get me wrong, I like much of Panahi’s other work – at least what I have seen. But I do not think that The Circle (2000), Crimson Gold (2003) or Offside (2006) (the three other films of his I have seen) are great films. They are all very good, but they are also a little on the simplistic side to me. In these films, Panahi never outwardly insults Iran, or its government, but their implications speak for themselves. He makes films about outsiders – often women – who are marginalized in Iranian society, and while all the films are well made, well-acted (by amateurs) and quite good, none of them rise to the level of the best work of some of his country – like Abbas Kiarostami or Asghar Farhadi. His imprisonment and ban from filmmaking however are an affront to anyone who values freedom of expression.

I mention all of this at the top of my review of This is Not a Film, because without knowing the background, you probably won’t know what to make of the film. It is a very strange film – one where boredom plays a crucial role, and overall, there is a sense of futility and resignation to the film. During the running time of the movie – a scant 75 minutes – Panahi sits in his kitchen, talks on the phone to his lawyers about his court case. He tries to read aloud from the screenplay he wanted to direct – even going as far as to map out the house he sees in his head on the floor in tape – before giving up (saying “If you can tell a movie, why would anyone make a movie?”). He feeds his lizard, and briefly watches a neighbor’s dog, until it becomes clear the lizard and the dog cannot co-exist. He re-visits his old films, telling stories of the great things in them that he did not plan. He interacts with co-director Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, arguing with him with Panahi tells him to “Cut”, and Mirtahmasb refuses, saying that Panahi cannot direct, because that would be violating his sentence, so he holds the shot longer to show that it is him directing, not Panahi. The film ends with a very strange sequence where a building manager comes to Panahi’s apartment to collect his garbage, and then Panahi follows him into the elevator, and accompanies him down, one floor at a time, where he collects garbage from the other tenants, before reaching the street – at which point the young man walks away and Panahi records the fireworks being set off around the city, even though they have been banned by the government (apparently because they have nothing to do with Islam).

This is Not a Film is an appropriate title for the movie. It really isn’t a film – at least not in terms of what we think of as a film. Panahi is careful not to directly violate his ban – he doesn’t write a screenplay, which he is banned from doing, and he doesn’t act, also banned, but he simply reads aloud from his screenplay. He doesn’t give an interview, which is banned, but simply films himself talking – to himself and others. He doesn’t “direct”, he just shoots video. Yet, it takes extraordinary courage for Panahi to even do these things. Who else when hoping to get his prison sentence and ban on movie making would do this? Once again, Panahi never directly criticizes the Iranian government or their legal system for doing to him what they have done. He doesn’t have to. This is Not a Film speaks for itself. Whatever the hell This is Not a Film is, it is one of a kind.

DVD Review: Dreams of a Life

Dreams of a Life
Directed by: Carol Morley.
Written by: Carol Morley.
Starring: Zawe Ashton (Joyce Vincent).

You most likely heard about the death of Joyce Carol Vincent, even if you do not remember her name. This was the incredibly sad, almost incomprehensible and unthinkable story, of a woman who died in December 2003, and whose body was not discovered until three years later in 2006. For those three years, no one reported her missing, and her body sat, slowly decomposing, in front of her TV, surrounded by Christmas presents. This woman essentially disappeared off the face of the planet – and no one noticed. Her body was so badly decomposed when they found her that no cause of death could be identified. Was it murder? Suicide? Accident? Natural causes? No one knows for sure, but the police don’t think foul play was involved. Why was she able to go three years without paying rent or utilities and have no one notice? And more importantly, how did this woman not have any family or friends who came looking for her for three years?

The new film Dreams of a Life tries it’s best to answer these questions – and does fill in a lot of the blanks, but still leaves many of the most pressing questions unanswered. This is not really a flaw in the movie, but actually proves to one of its strengths. For all the information about Joyce Carol Vincent that the movie uncovers, she still remains an enigma, and the reasons why she died and was left undiscovered are still unknown. Part of this is because many of the government organizations that are involved aren’t really speaking – and neither is Joyce’s family. The movie cannot really find anyone who had contact with Joyce after early 2002. What we do know is that early in 2001, she left a well-paying job at Ernst & Young, although no one knows the reasons. Some say she was headhunted by another firm, some say she left to go “travelling”. But later in 2001, she calls an old boyfriend up out of the blue and lives on his couch for a few months – and ends up working a maid’s job. After she left there, she spent time in a home from battered women, and eventually ended up in her low rent “bedsit” where she would be found. The question of “why” this happened never becomes clear.

What Dreams of a Life does do is put a human face on this tragedy – although a mysterious one. The movie finds many old friends of Joyce’s – and none of them can associate the Joyce they knew, with the lonely woman who wound up all alone and dead at the age of 38. They all recount a beautiful, vibrant young woman who loved life – loved going out and having fun, had a beautiful singing voice and dreamed of being a pop singer. Men were drawn were to her. She gave off an impression of being well educated, although she wasn’t, and happy-go-lucky, although obviously she wasn’t, at least not at the end.

What does out however is how no one really knew Joyce. She is described by her former boyfriends as a woman with no real interests or friends of her own. Whoever she was with at the time, their interests became her interests, their friends, became her friends. She moved constantly, and quit jobs almost as often. Friends say it was not unusual for them not to hear from her for weeks or months at a time. You could go from being great friends with her one day, to completely on the outside the next. Parts of her childhood help to suggest why her family may have not been involved with her life when she died.

Overall, however, Dreams of a Life leaves Joyce Carol Vincent as much as an enigma at the end of the film as she was at the beginning. The movie tries to fill in the gaps in her life with some “speculative” dramatized scenes – featuring a brilliant Zawe Ashton as a sad eyed Joyce. These scenes pull on the heartstrings, perhaps a little too heavily, but they are still effective. Like the rest of the movie, they try to get to know the real “Joyce”, and end up not being able to explain her.

I know that some people will be frustrated by Dreams of a Life. It is natural that people want a movie to answer all the questions it raises – particularly a documentary. But this is a story where there are no answers – or at least none that we can know. Only one person really knows what happened to Joyce Carol Vincent, and unfortunately she is dead. But what Dreams of a Life does do is put an all too human face on what was a story everyone heard, but few remembered. And more than that, it makes the tragedy universal. How well do we really know anyone? And how close are we all to ending up like Joyce Carol Vincent. She had her reasons for being secretive about her past, she never really let anyone in, and for that she paid a terrible, sad price. And really, we should learn something from this tragedy.

Movie Review: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Directed by: Alison Klayman.

China has come a long way in becoming a more open society in the past few decades, yet still has a long way to go until they are truly open, truly free. Artist and activist Ai Weiwei almost perfectly embodies this contradiction in Chinese society. Decades ago, someone as openly critical of the Chinese government would be, like his father was, shipped off for “reeducation through hard labor” – and that is if they were lucky and weren’t executed or just “disappeared”. And yet, while this hasn’t happened to Ai Weiwei yet, the Chinese government did shut down his blog when he used it to openly and repeatedly criticize them in the wake of the earthquake that left tens of thousands dead – including thousands of school children crushed in poorly constructed government schools. One police officer even punched Ai in the head, causing him to need brain surgery. And then there was that three month period where Ai vanished – taken in by the police and questioned, apparently because of his finances, and then released – with a $2.4 million tax bill given to him. So yes, things have gotten better – but they are far from good.

Alison Klayman’s documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is a fascinating portrait of the man who has become arguably China’s most famous modern artist. It tracks his development – from his nine year period in New York for the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, to his return to Beijing, where he became a fixture on the “underground” art scene – because the galleries did not want to show his type of art. Back then, he was doing things like photographing himself smashed a Han Dynasty vase, or painting over similar relics – sometimes with logos for things like Coca Cola. These were seen as shocking at the time – how could he “destroy” these pieces of Chinese history, but the symbolism is clear – China is destroying their own history everyday – and no one notices.

His career really took off in the early 2000s, and his reputation has simply grown, both internationally and inside China ever since. He now works on an enormous scale – making a collage of backpacks spelling out a simple phrase “She lived happily on this earth for seven years”, a quote from a parent of one those children killed in the earthquake. Ai was tireless in his effort to uncover how many children were killed – sending out volunteers across the country to collect the names and birthdates of the children killed, because apparently the Chinese government thought this information should be “classified”. When they shut down his blog, he takes to twitter – getting information out to his mainly followers as it happens. When the police follow and videotape him, he has his own videographer’s film them right back. Although he knows nothing will come out of his request for an investigation into the punch that police officer gave him, he goes around to every government agency he can to file a complaint. Why? Because for Ai, saying the system is flawed is useless – you have to show it is flawed. How else will it ever get better?

This documentary is mainly a celebration of Ai Weiwei and his work – essentially letting him tell his own story, either through interviews (with Klayman, or others that she observes), or through simply sitting back and watching, fly on the wall style, as Ai works. His life and his work have become so intertwined, it is almost impossible to tell the difference anymore – everything he does is part of his art. This is a beautiful, thoughtful, fascinating documentary about an important artist – and is one of the year’s best documentaries.

Movie Review: The Imposter

The Imposter
Directed by: Bart Layton.
Featuring: Frédéric Bourdin (Himself), Adam O'Brian (Frédéric Bourdin), Carey Gibson (Herself), Anna Ruben (Carey Gibson), Beverly Dollarhide (Herself), Cathy Dresbach (Nancy Fisher), Charlie Parker (Himself), Alan Teichman (Charlie Parker), Nancy Fisher (Herself), Ivan Villanueva (Social Worker), Bryan Gibson (Himself), Maria Jesus Hoyos (Judge), Codey Gibson (Himself), Anton Marti (Male Police Officer), Amparo Fontanet (Female Police Officer), Bruce Perry (Himself), Ken Appledorn (U.S. Embassy Official), Phillip French (Himself).

Spoiler Warning: I don’t think that this review contains any true spoilers – most of what it discusses is revealed fairly early in the film. However, if you know nothing of the story, and want to see the film yourself, you may be better off waiting until after you’ve seen the film to read this review. What I will say in this space is that it is a very good documentary. You’ve been warned.

The Imposter is a fascinating documentary that ultimately raises just as many questions as it answers. In 1994, Nicholas Barclay, then 13, disappeared from his Texas home and was never found. In 1997, his family gets a phone call from police in Spain – they have someone there who claims to be Nicholas. As soon as they get some paper work done, they can come and get him – which is exactly what his big sister does. Nicholas has a fantastic story to tell about being kidnapped and forced into the sex trade for years, before finally escaping his captors. But there are problems with his story. How did his captors manage to smuggle a 13 year old boy out of America in the first place? Why is his hair a different color? Why are his eyes a different color? Why does he speak with what appears to be a French accent? Why does he seem to have little to no memory about his life in Texas? And why does he appear to be older than 16-17 year old boy he is supposed to be?

The answer of course, as the title implies, is that this is not Nicholas at all. The person claiming to be Nicholas is really Frederic Bourdin, who is in his early 20s and is in fact from France. He is wanted by Interpol, and when some helpful tourists come across him in Spain, he has to think quickly before he gets arrested. Bourdin is interviewed in the film, and explains exactly how he came to claim to be Nicholas Barclay. He never expected things to go as far as they do, but he rode the wave anyway. Because when Nicholas’ sister shows up, she believes that he really is Nicholas – and when she brings him home to Texas, the rest of the family believes it as well. His amazing story of survival even makes the news. The problem is that the FBI wants to speak to him. They need to know everything “Nicholas” can tell them about the sex trafficking ring that abducted him. But Nicholas isn’t really co-operating – and neither is his family. It will only be a matter of time before the truth comes out.

The Imposter is one of those stories that if it wasn’t true, you would never believe it. Imagine a Hollywood screenwriter trying to make this story up, and it just doesn’t seem at all plausible. But this is a true story – and a strange one. And even by the end of the film, when Bourdin has had his say, and Nicholas Barclay’s family have all had their say, we still don’t know the whole story.

Why, for instance, did the Barclay’s believe this person, who was clearly not Nicholas, was their long lost son/brother? Even after the police and FBI tell them there is no way he could possibly be Nicholas, they continue to insist that he is for quite some time? Was it simply that they were so desperate, so wanted to believe that this was Nicholas, that they convinced themselves of the impossible? Or is it something more sinister. After his ruse was discovered, and Bourdin was arrested, he claimed that the family confessed to him that they had murdered Nicholas and disposed of the body. Therefore, they had to pretend that the real Nicholas was out there somewhere, or else admit their own guilt. But how can we possibly believe anything Bourdin has to say? He is a compulsive liar – Nicholas was not the first, nor was he the last, person Bourdin tried to pass himself off as. And yet, there does seem to be something fishy going on here – something beyond Bourdin.

The Imposter was directed by Bart Layton and is an interesting looking documentary throughout its running time. Purists will most likely be upset that Layton inserts “re-enactments” and other staged scenes, without anything identifying them as such, but smart audience members will be able to tell – and the scenes give the film something to show other than the standard boilerplate documentary format – talking heads and archival footage. And it’s a film that is endlessly fascinating. Yes, it is more manipulative than most documentaries, and at times Layton goes a little overboard with the stylistic trickery, but overall The Imposter is a documentary that I cannot get out of my head.

DVD Review: The Queen of Versailles

The Queen of Versailles

Directed by: Lauren Greenfield.

It would have been very easy to make a documentary that simply mocks David and Jackie Siegel. After all, the make it so easy. He is the owner of the large, privately owned Time Share Company in the world. When the times were good, they had more money than they knew what to do with, which is why they started construction on the largest, single family home in America, which of course, they modeled after Marie-Antoinette’s palace Versailles. It was going to cost $100 million, but hey, they had the money. When asked why he was building it, David Siegel simply says “Because I can”. That’s probably the only reason that actually makes sense. Before the market crash of 2008, the Siegel’s lived in a world that even most rich people in America could never dream of. And then, it all came crashing down.

It must have been somewhat tempting for filmmaker Lauren Greenfield to make a movie that laughed at the Siegel’s, who saw their (temporary) downfall as a deserved comeuppance for the couple who are so far removed from normal people that they make Mitt Romney look like the Regular Joe he tried so hard to pass himself as this year by comparison. And yes, there are a few moments in the movie where Greenfield cannot resist including, which will make the audience feel a little superior to the Siegel’s (the out and out funniest moment in the film is one of those – when Jackie rents a car at Hertz and asks the bewildered clerk what the name of her driver is). Overall though, the movie, while not overly sympathetic to the Siegel’s, doesn’t take too many potshots at them either. It is a relatively honest portrait of the two – if they don’t like how they come off in the movie, they really have no one to blame but themselves.

David certainly comes off worse than Jackie does. He seems unaware of the irony when he complains that about the greedy banks who tempted himself with so much easy money, that he could never hope to repay unless the market kept going up and up and up, and then shutting it down when he needed it the most. Isn’t that precisely what a time share company does? Does David not realize he has no one but himself to blame for all the debt he has amassed, since he basically paid for everything in cash, and then mortgaged it back to the banks, so he could get more money, so he could do the same damn thing all over again? During the course of the film, Siegel gets increasingly worn down by everything around him – the financial strain he has put himself, and his company in.

On the other hand, Jackie simply seems a little oblivious to what is going on. Her idea of cutting back is going to Wal-Mart and spending thousands of dollars instead of going to designer stores. She wonders aloud why the bailout money has filtered down to regular people, like herself. She is clearly a trophy wife, who laughingly admits that her husband – who is 30 years older than her – always said when she turned 40 he’d trade her in for two 20 year olds. She’s over 40 now, and he hasn’t done so yet – perhaps because she has given him 7 children – or perhaps because doing so would simply cost him too much money. Yet, I couldn’t hate Jackie – couldn’t just simply mock her as an airhead. She may be somewhat clueless, but she’s likable. She may not know what the hell she’s doing, but damn it, she tries hard.

It is easy to hate what the Siegel’s represent however. They are super rich, and if David had been a little smarter, even the real estate crash wouldn’t have almost sunk him like it did (he is apparently, back on track now, after finally doing what everyone told him to do for years – let the banks have the money pit that was his Las Vegas Time Share). Surely, there had to be somewhat more worthwhile they could have spent their money on rather than $100 million house, complete with a bowling alley, two tennis courts, 10 kitchens and a closet so large Greenfield mistakes it for a bedroom. Isn’t that money supposed to trickle down somehow? But Siegel, of course, plays by a different set of rules than the rest of us, as the movie shows. A childhood friend of Jackie defaults on her mortgage, and is in danger of being foreclosed on. Jackie sends her $5,000 to help her out, but it’s too late, foreclosure proceedings have started, and although her friend now has the money to pay what she owes, the banks won’t help her out. When you owe $5,000 to a bank, you’re nothing. When you owe them hundreds of millions, you’re too indispensable.

DVD Review: The Ambassador

The Ambassador

Directed by: Mads Brugger.

Mads Brugger was certainly brave – or foolhardy – when he made The Ambassador. His goal was to show the corruption that is rife in Africa – how government diplomatic credentials can be bought and sold for the right price, how these fake diplomats head into Africa saying good things about building infrastructure and factories to help the poor, which is really no more than a ruse to get their hands on blood diamonds – mined by children, exploited by rich miners – and then how these diplomats are able to smuggle these blood diamonds out – because of their diplomatic credentials, they are never searched. And Brugger does all that. This Danish journalist disguises himself as the most outrageously clothed diplomat you can imagine – it’s like he shops at Imperialists R Us or something – and then films everyone on hidden cameras – or sometimes even video cameras that he ensures his guests are just still cameras – boldly incriminating themselves just minutes after meeting him. There is no shame here, no secrecy. Everyone knows what is happening, and no one does anything to stop it.

So why, if Brugger does what he sets out to do in exposing the corruption, was I so uncomfortable while watching The Ambassador? It wasn’t just the behavior of the corrupt that gave that feeling – that’s to be expected. But it was also Brugger’s behavior. His ruse, that all diplomats have because they need a legitimate reason to be there, is that he’s going to set up a match factory where the poor will work. He hires an expert from India, and even holds training sessions with the pygmies, who he insists on hiring, because, in his words, the Africans think they have magical powers. He even hires two pygmy assistants to follow him around, and delights in dancing with them. He makes up racist posters, saying that all the Africans problems are caused by the French and the Chinese. He shows them videos to this effect. He acknowledges in his voice over that he is giving these people a false sense of hope, but justifies it by saying that it goes on, on a much larger scale, every day. But that doesn’t justify it. He takes the phony match factory idea to illogical extremes – way farther than he needs to in order to expose the corruption and get the blood diamonds he needs.

I was also confused by his behavior often in the movie – the racist jokes and speeches he makes almost constantly. I know he’s trying to poke fun at the phony diplomats, who are clueless and racist, as well as the corrupt African officials themselves – trying to prod them into saying something. But more often than not, I got the feeling that this entire movie was really just a way for Brugger to amuse himself. It’s like he’s trying to do what Sacha Baron Cohen did in Borat or Bruno – the difference of course, is rather than rubbing Middle America’s nose in their own racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia, Brugger exploits the very people who are exploited all the time, and the supposed purpose of this documentary is to expose that exploitation. Even Baron Cohen – a genius at this type of film - takes his gambit too far at times, and gets into some shady ethical territory. Brugger goes far beyond that in The Ambassador.

It should be said that Brugger did take real risks during the making of this film. The people he deals with are not screwing around, and have no problem with killing people and leaving them a ditch – in fact by the time Brugger is done filming in Africa, one of the people he interviewed had already been assassinated. It took guts for Brugger to do what he does in this film. And he does expose real corruption. That doesn’t excuse some of his behavior, or make me like the movie all that much more, but I do feel it’s right to give credit where credit’s due. I don’t like The Ambassador, but I admire the guts it took to make it.