| Issue #31, October 27, 2006 |
Art Commentary With Marion Wolberg Weiss
FILM AS ART: ABOUT THE BODY AND WE SHALL OVERCOME AT HAMPTONS FILM FESTIVAL
Part 3
Storytelling is as much a part of art (consider Cindy Sherman’s photographs including this year’s Hamptons Film Festival poster) as it as an indigenous aspect of film. And stories are as much an element of documentaries or non-fiction as of movie fiction.
Two films provided worthy examples of this principle at the Hamptons Film Festival last week: Alona Seroussi’s About The Body and Niels Arden Oplev’s We Shall Overcome. While the works seem wildly disparate, they possess salient commonalities.
About The Body documents the existences of four victims of terrorism in Israel as the women attempt to put their lives (and bodies) back together over the course of several years. While the documentary has no plot, it does tell a story with a beginning, middle and end (inconclusive though it is.) And while the film has no “characters,” it is about people, nonetheless.
Ms. Seroussi uses cinematic devices common to fictional movies to convey her story, including music, close-ups, editing and emotional conversation (dialogue) thus creating a work that is much less “objective” than interview on CNN. Yet there hardly exist today any documentaries that are not subjective or even overly manipulative.
Given this situation, at what point do these works become more fiction than non-fiction? It’s a potent and provocative question. Even so, About the Body remains true to its goal of informing viewers about victims of terrorism. It also resists the temptation to include critical comments regarding the enemy. The focus is on the women, not the politics, although they play a part, of course.
The fictional film, We Shall Overcome, seems to be the reverse, concentrating on the politics of repression in the Danish school system, circa late 1960s. Yet ultimately, it’s about people, not issues, about the children and adults who are put to a moral test, who must decide if they will fight authority and tradition. Like About the Body, the film is also concerned with victimization (this time embodied by a vicious headmaster.)
And, like About the Body, the characters, especially the hero, Frits, experience a rite of passage in the process.
What’s unusual about the film is its autobiographical nature, which makes it the director’s personal story. Thus, We Shall Overcome has a pervasive, non-fictional element to it. Mr. Oplev seems to recognize this fact, avoiding certain sensational, theatrical and manipulative aspects and showing an arresting sense of restraint; individual scenes are cut short, leaving it to viewers’ imaginations to fill in the blanks. The headmaster’s brutal beatings of Frits are also not shown, an unusual tactic considering that they are the actual events.
At the end of the day, We Shall Overcome is a remarkable film on many levels: championing courage and justice, but most importantly, reinforcing the importance of the family, rather than the corruption of authority.
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