Response to Introduction to Documentary

                I read this same excerpt for a class last semester and I’m reminded over and over again that while there can be distinguished six different modes of documentary, they are very rarely independent of one another. That is, almost all documentaries combine modes to tell their story. I’m a little wary of documentary just because it is very easy to skew a situation to fit your own intent in portraying it and somehow it feels dishonest. This is the main criticism levelled against Michael Moore, for example, regarding his film Bowling for Columbine. This documentary explores the extent of gun violence in America and the reasons behind it, as well as trying to come up with solutions for it; as the name of the film indicates, the main tragedy that it focuses on is the shooting at Columbine High School. The reason this movie is criticized as being biased is Moore’s treatment of Charlton Heston, the then-president of the NRA. In a scene where Moore goes to his house and interviews him, it doesn’t seem like Heston had given consent, and Moore then suggests that Heston is upset because he is defensive of his actions (namely, still being pro-gun even after the shootings). There is little acknowledgment that Heston is old, possibly senile, and uncomfortable with a filmmaker coming to his home. This is not to say that Heston is entirely guiltless, of course – but painting all pro-gun people as evil isn’t exactly fair either.

                Most documentaries that I’ve seen have fallen under the general category of expository/participatory mode – that is, there is a voice-of-god or voice-of-authority narration with images that “illustrate, illuminate, evoke, or act in counterpoint to what is said” (107). For example: Bowling for Columbine, Food, Inc., and Blackfish. Another mode of documentary that I find fascinating, however, is the reflexive documentary. One that comes to mind is another film we watched in the same class last semester, the 1989 short film Ilha das Flores (Isle of Flowers), directed by Jorge Furtado. The film tracks the story of a tomato from the farm to someone’s house. What I found really interesting about Ilha das Flores is that it makes political commentary but in a very roundabout way, precisely because it flouts the conventions of most documentaries that make social commentary. The film comments on the poverty of the families living on the Isle of Flowers – they are so poor that their food comes from the rejected pig food, which is literally garbage from nearby areas. But it does so by talking about, for example, the biology of human beings, the meaning of a “second”, the making of perfume, and other seemingly unrelated things that come together to define “freedom”, juxtaposed with shots of garbagemen and a landfill. I think Ilha das Flores makes much more striking commentary on poverty because of its seeming lack of direction, because the unstructured-ness of it suggests a sort of authenticity that somehow, films like Bowling for Columbine don’t.