Week Of April 24, 2006 - Overlooked Week - Mon / Wed / Fri

April 26, 2006

51 BIRCH STREET

Doug Block, best known for 1998's Home Page (a doc about the early web), delivers this doc about his parents, Mike and Mina, and the dangers of making a documentary about your own family… you learn more than you may want to know. But unlike a film like Tarnation, Block's film is about something more than himself and his own family. The experience of this film is the experience that we all - for the most part - have had as we get older.

Block's parents are impossibly perfect documentary fodder, good looking but not gorgeous, open but guarded, funny but with just enough edge to hint at the rest of the story. But even more so, they are of a generation that was involved in a dramatic evolution. The couple came together at the end of WWII, married, and lived through the Cold War, Vietnam, Sexual Revolution, Watergate and so on. Yet, there remains a universality to their story… but with better stories after going 50 years through times of such change.

Block really leans on his mom, who is the far more verbal of the two parents, for details and ideas, up until her sudden death. And that is when the surprises start. Many secrets die with a loved one… but truths start to emerge as well.

51 Birch Street feels like it is about to veer into excessive self-indulgence. Bu the longer the film goes, the more universal the truths and the more inherently entertaining the revelations of Block and his family members.

Who are the people around us? Really. And how freaky is it when finally achieving some intimacy shocks you… especially when it is with your parents. Terrific little film.

ARAKIMENTARI

I've written about this film before. It is a document of the work and life of Araki, the famously infamous Japanese photographer, whose work documents the mundane and the profane with equal passion. It can get a little intimidating when a mostly nude woman in Geisha gear hangs from the roof by ropes that seem to be from some book that would be bought and immediately stuck in a brown paper bag. But it is more than that. And it is that.

Araki is a character, but he is emotionally evasive. The only time the camera corners him is when it's his camera exposing his heart. The camera also exposes his need to push expectations. But after looking at a lot of Araki's work - he's stunningly prolific - it is amazing how well the film captures the range of what he has done in such a short running time. It is not the ultimate look at this artist. But I'm not sure that such a thing is possible with Araki… outside of looking at the work. And the work is giving a good airing here.

The film, which was at Slamdance a few years back, is finally available on DVD here. You won't see anything like it anywhere else. And because of the controversy over Araki's nudes of women, you probably won't see it on cable. I would guess that its why the film never got distribution, since the sex is not niche sex, which is more marketable.

A CERTAIN KIND OF DEATH

I missed this doc at Sundance three years ago and always wondered. I rented it at Vidiots in Santa Monica this weekend and found an uncomfortable journey that I was very happy I took. I read the book, "Stiff," a couple of years ago and found it very comforting in an odd way when considering the loss of people I love. Likewise, A Certain Kind of Death, though in a very different way. The uniting theme is that our bodies are, indeed, just a vessel and that the details of our lives are best considered in a different light altogether.

The film looks, primarily, at three different cases of people who passed away with no one there and ultimately, with no next of kin. All three are found in some unpeaceful position, naked, and messy. Your mother's admonition to wear clean underwear has never seem more prescient.

This is the start of the process as the local municipality, in this case Los Angeles County, tries to put the pieces of a life at its end together. Is there an estate? Are there funeral arrangements? Is there anyone to give their stuff to?

The film is neither grim nor encouraging. Even though the film doesn't have the kind of focus of a Maysles, playing out a story, it is closer to that or Allan King than the current doc styles. It is just plain real. No gimmicks. So much of it is seeing the experience that the people involved are having. There is a sympathy in the eyes of the policeman who is rolling over a 2-day-old corpse and then again in the eyes of the woman who is trying to figure out where the gash on its head came from. But it is the sympathy of someone who has seen this many, many times. It is past the point of fear or a nervous reaction. It is that feeling I have had - perhaps you have too - looking at the face of a dead loved one in an open casket and wondering how they can look so unlike themselves.

But learning the details of a death without anyone to mourn or to manage is fascinating and evokes all kinds of thoughts… thoughts well worth having. It's scary. But it's also a heartening reminded that this mortal coil is not who we are, whatever we leave behind. Death remains frightening. But when it seems more natural, even in the unnatural settings of this film, it seems more a detail than a destiny. Excellent experience.

NOBODY LISTENED

22 years ago, Nestor Almendros (yes, the cinematographer) and Jorge Ulla made a documentary about the experiences of their contemporaries who conflicted with Fidel Castro since the Revolution. It was called Nobody Listened, and if you look at Hollywood's experience with Castro in recent years, it is clear that no one has listened much since… except for politicians who want to be elected in Miami or in the state of Florida.

The film is a breathtaking account of just how abusive of human rights Fidel Castro has been in his era. And the voices of pain include many who fought side by side with the man in the revolution… and from a surprising number of Communists who found themselves on the outs when Castro finally decided to take up Communism himself. (They argue that Communism was only an excuse for Castro never to hold legitimate elections in the democracy he promised in the revolution.)

The last major piece of Cuba that wasn't made by Cubans or Cubans who fled to America was the Oliver Stone docs, the first of which, Commandante, has all but disappeared after HBO decided not to air that love letter to Fidel and his cigars. (The DVD is available in Europe, but not in the US or Canada.) The second, Looking For Fidel was loaded with tougher questions, provoked by the murder of some journalists around the time that Stone was making the first doc. Ulla and Almendros' doc shames Stone for ever making the first film.

Of course, this is definitely a film with a point of view. And as such, one has to remain suspicious of the singularity of vision. That said, in a very subtle way, Nobody Listened makes its case quite convincingly, especially as witnesses/victims confirm one another's stories without being asked to do so.

If you can find this film - it is available on Amazon.com - it's worth taking a listen. If you ever wondered just why the Cuban population in Miami is so rabidly anti-Castro, this film will answer your question with absolute power.

READER OF THE DAY: Regarding Monday's ROTD, two e-mails. First, Overlooked.

MARIN RHYTHM & BLUES writes: "I've not only seen this doc, but took the time to do other research on this theory and believe me, if someone would have asked me if this were even remotely possible 20 years ago, I would have laughed.

BUT.....if you'd have listed so many of the illegal and downright criminal behavior that this admisnistration has gotten away with-
thanks in large part to the Republican trifecta-Executive, Legislative and Judical-I would also have thought EVERYTHING they have actually done to be impossible for them to have succeeded at as well. It's been a helluva last 5 years.

If you can answer the salient questions brought up in this doc with
any degree of certainty and any facts to contradict, please email me
with thise answers ASAP-because I couldn't come up with any. Not one.

As shocking and as crazy as the notion seems, if you concentrate strictly on the irrefutable science in this doc, you will be trapped by this truth.

Your emailer is right-this ought to be madatory viewing for every single American."

And for The Overcooked, there is this from COUNTRY-M-WESTERN: "I was across the Potomac from the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001. About 6 blocks from the Capitol. When I went outside, waiting for them to release me from the Navy Yard (they locked down when the military figured out what was happening - well, sort of figured out), I looked into the sky over the Pentagon. I saw a huge cloud of rising black smoke, hundreds of feet high. I was too far away to see the people working to save lives or do anything else. Later I heard eyewitness accounts of people who SAW THE PLANE HIT on the radio. But that could be hearsay.

The black smoke could not. Only JET FUEL burns black. And it would take a full load of JET FUEL to burn that long and that high, as I saw with my own eyes.

So they can cram their conspiracy theory. It's crap, from closed minds, who care more for myopic opinions than facts. It's a long way from incompetence to pre-meditated mass murder of one's own citizens. If they were that good, the media would be reporting vastly different stories these days."

E Me: And the beat goes on....

Week Of April 3, 2006 - Life In the Bubble - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 10, 2006 - List Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 17, 2006 - Review Week - Mon / Wed / Fri