Friday 30 July 2010

Is Every Film A Documentary?

There has long been a groundswell gathering in favour of increased recognition for Documentary film-making. There is a school of thought stating that the creativity, the compositional and editing skills shown by Documentary film-makers mean that these works should be considered alongside their fictional counterparts. Within this argument lies the insecure feeling that fiction film-making is the more lauded and more laudable discipline.

I think that, if there is to be a rapprochement in the way we treat these two disciplines, then it should be fiction that makes the first move. Documentary shouldn't move closer to fiction but fiction closer to documentary.

When this thought, such as it is, occurred to me, I researched what I could and discovered that this idea has had plenty of traction over the years:

                  Every film is a documentary of its actors
                                                                        Jean-Luc Godard 

Yes, every film is a documentary of its actors. It records them at a particular point in their lives for posterity and for eternity. Whatever the on-screen persona or character, whatever the makeup, it is nigh on impossible to obfuscate the person.

Not only that, but it records them doing what inspired them the most - acting. A film is the plate on which a butterfly is preserved.

                Every feature film in Hollywood is a documentary about Hollywood.
                                                                         Hartmut Bitomsky

A similar thought. In this case, Bitomsky proposes that the nature of the film - its subject, its style, its actors, its length - provide an insight into the concerns and needs of the Hollywood machine.  That is the theory, at least.

However, all the film can tell you with complete accuracy is that it was made in Hollywood. It cannot say if it was part of a trend, or a radical departure. It cannot say if it succeeded or failed.

                Every film is a documentary of its own making
                                                                          Jacques Rivette

Following on from Bitomsky and Godard, Rivette's pensee folds the two ideas together. What is on the screen cannot be argued with - it exists. And yet, Rivette goes further than Godard to imply the world beyond the frame through the certainty of what is in it.

However, all of these thoughts are incomplete. They have something of the aphorism about them. The statements are cheeky because they are aware that the films cannot document things in the way they describe.  They want to provoke thought. Accepting that documentaries can never be an immaculate realm of fact, individual films are still a too imperfect document of Actors, Hollywood and their own creation.

One must move on to where fiction film may lie side by side with Documentary and closer towards what I think may qualify (I too am being a little mischievous) fiction as documentary.

It is often heard that even the most fantastical fictions give evidence of the culture that produced it. They are a window into the politics of the time, a vane to the prevailing winds. Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders are two of the foremost directors who espouse this view but they speak for a consensus. It's hard to avoid reading into a film what one read in the newspapers the morning of the screening.

But, despite there being much to recommend it, this perspective is too simplistic. There are films that seek to be allegorical of or to grow organically from the world around them and those that cannot help but be. Yet there are many artistic demands on a fiction film that pull the focus away from the 'real' and blur it. Fiction films are extrapolations or simplifications of situations that are far better represented in traditional documentary with its notions of full responsibility to the truth.

In my mind, the similarities between fiction film and documentary film lie elsewhere and I will try and elaborate them here.

When Directors and Screenwriters discuss their works, they, more often than not, acknowledge that there is a world beyond the frame, that the character's world is part of a wider fictional world. We don't see certain planets and star systems in Star Wars but they exist. We also assume that there is much in that galaxy that we are not told about but lives on the edges of our minds and of the minds of the film-makers.


One could say that this world beyond the world is ill-defined, a mere backdrop, an afterthought, a creation that lives and breathes only to serve what the film is fundamentally 'about'. One could also point out that this microcosm of the wider world, the microcosm we concentrate on, with its characters and stories, exists first and the rest later comes later. Even so the outside is there.

Therefore, it stands to reason that one edits not by meticulously clipping away threads of what we already see but that one edits like a sculptor. You begin with a vast hulk of stone that represents the entire fictional world and you hew down to the essentials. What is on screen, then, is of what isn't rather than what is off-screen being a ghostly echo of what is on screen. A subtle change in emphasis may reveal fiction to be documentary.

If one is prepared to take these (not so) logical steps, every fiction film is a documentary of a fictional world.

Is what we see in A.I. not faithfully representative of the future world it takes place in? Perhaps I am clutching at straws, distorting and over-reaching. Perhaps I am putting the cart before the horse. Perhaps I am being mischievous for the sake of it. But it is a debate worth having. Only by stating the ridiculous can one properly think anew.


                                              *              *              *


Why is it that we watch fiction and documentary so differently. Is there a switch that we push when we know it's 'real' and when we know it's 'fantasy'? The narratives could be the same, the emotions created the same but we react differently to each. It's a mind-set.

Sure, in documentary the people, however artistically or manipulatively they are depicted, are real. We want to learn from a documentary and its immediacy invites us to learn about ourselves. This is less important in fiction film. Entertainment and stimulation come first partly because we want and expect them too. Documentary doesn't need to entertain or stimulate but inform with a modicum of flair. It's not the quality of the film-making so much as the quality and nutritional value of the unmediated story. We rightly hold them to different standards when it comes to 'agendas'.


Nevertheless if we go into both experiences with an open mind we will see that they are closer than we think.


16 comments:

  1. Aha. Lovely take on a subject I always love to talk about, Stephen.

    I truly believe there's no difference between documentary and fiction. As you elaborate, every fiction is a documentary (camera records everything that the director did not assemble as well) and every documentary is a fiction (the moment the lens is opened and an image framed, we have a point of view). So there's really no use seperating these two.

    Also, there's no point in documentary filmmakers swearing allegiance to reality. Nothing will come out of surface naturalism. Likewise, a fictional filmmaker can't absolve himself of the realist underpinnings of his film. Hence the politics of the film is highly important in any discussion. Everything there is to this boundary between fiction and documentary can be found in the works of Abbas Kiarostami. Of course, there are also filmmakers such as Panahi, Costa, Herzog (very important), and Weerasethakul who've been consistently exploring this mythical chasm.

    But then, it also brings in the question of ethics towards one's subject, which a lot of documentarians throw to the wind. This is highly reproachable.

    I think this debate will be highly interesting.

    Cheers!

    P.S: Stephen, I remember you mentioning Film Socialisme to be a great film? Where ever did you see it?!

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  2. Thanks, JAFB.

    "As you elaborate, every fiction is a documentary (camera records everything that the director did not assemble as well) and every documentary is a fiction (the moment the lens is opened and an image framed, we have a point of view). So there's really no use seperating these two."

    Yes, but couldn't one say the same for individual people in society? I see from my point of view with my experiences / personality colouring the 'truth' and the 'reality'.

    There are distinctions but I think that they are narrow and hard to grasp. I'll come back to you once I've had time to think it over some more.

    Herzog's documentaries dive into this 'chasm' more freely than any I have seen.

    re FILM SOCIALISME, I saw it on a French website which quite a few French blogs assured me was perfectly legal (I'm now not so sure but I can't unwatch it, I'm afraid). It's no longer available to see but the DVD is out in September and I can't wait to get my hands on it.

    I'm also about to send off for Rivette's "36 VUES DU PIC SAINT LOUP". Two great Nouvelle Vague Directors still working magic half a century on.

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  3. Thank God my French is just about good enough that I don't have to have the subtitles. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to enjoy some of these titles - I have a Japanese PONT DU NORD DVD which seems to be the only version of the film available (or was at the time).

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  4. "Yes, but couldn't one say the same for individual people in society? I see from my point of view with my experiences / personality colouring the 'truth' and the 'reality'." - Precisely, Stephen. That's why one can throw out the claims to absolute objectivity of certain documentaries out of the window.

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  5. Maybe then the disparities come down to the self-imposed restrictions of the film-makers and audience alike.

    I agree that absolute objectivity is a mirage but the intentions surely matter to some extent. You do say "certain documentaries". Documentaries of the mating habits of a skunk are qualitatively different to a documentary purporting to show the real life of teenagers or asylum seekers in a holding camp.

    Despite the issues I talked about, I believe that the gap between what are termed fiction film and documentary film is smaller in the arguing than in the 'reality' of the viewing.

    I watch them differently and they feel different. Maybe I am untouched by documentaries (Lessons of Darkness and Etre et Avoir apart) because of my prejudice or maybe they are actually separate.

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  6. Maybe it comes down to the 'artistic eye' that one spots in certain documentaries that mark them out more clearly as an expression of a vision rather than the cold-eyed, insensitive lens.

    Chantal Akerman's documentaries, like D'EST seem very much like her films. They are travelogues that are more freeform than other documentaries because they can go anywhere and be about anything rather than concentrating on a found subject and trying to dissect it.

    I think I may be confusing or simplifying matters but it comes down to 'found' art (documentary) vs art created from scratch (as far as that is possible).

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  7. good stuff--this is definitely where Godard's dictum that "the cinema is truth 24 times a second" comes into play...

    it's not that cinema= absolute Truth... it's that the images (no matter what nominal genre they appear to be participating in) we see bear a truth-like relationship to the world posited by the film as a whole... if Godard had said "Cinema is A truth 24 times a second", he'd have been closer to the, uh, facts of the case...

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  8. "Documentaries of the mating habits of a skunk are qualitatively different to a documentary purporting to show the real life of teenagers or asylum seekers in a holding camp" - Haha.

    That is true. One needn't reinvent the wheel every time one builds a car. What I'm saying is that when the subject matter is little more grave than skunk mating, it's always good to be a little skeptic with respect to the film's claims to truth.

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  9. Thanks David (I hope that is your name),

    "...it's that the images (no matter what nominal genre they appear to be participating in) we see bear a truth-like relationship to the world posited by the film as a whole... if Godard had said "Cinema is A truth 24 times a second", he'd have been closer to the, uh, facts of the case..."

    Yes, I think you're right about making this distinction.

    By the way I still read your posts and enjoy them - especially your exhaustive essays, essays I feel singularly under-qualified to comment on properly.

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  10. JAFB,

    "One needn't reinvent the wheel every time one builds a car."

    Yes, I was just trying to establish where there is little or no crossover.

    "What I'm saying is that when the subject matter is little more grave than skunk mating, it's always good to be a little skeptic with respect to the film's claims to truth."

    I agree. Though perhaps the more sceptical type would expect/ see / infer more fiction in a documentary than a more trusting individual.

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  11. Well, here is somewhere I disagree. Yes, both document bits of worlds, and the world of each is -- or at least feels -- as real as that of the other, but their approaches are worlds apart. Fiction approaches its world with a story, or the definite lack of one. Documentaries, to be sure, have stories, but the story is a component, not the driving force.
    Sure, there are crossovers like Borges, who documents his ficitonal worlds, but even there we can see significant influence of the idea of the story.

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  12. I agree with you actually Ronak and on the terms you describe here. Instinctively I feel there is a large, largely unbridgeable gap, one that you can only partly argue away.

    The fact is that even if the experience were similar it is in the approach of the film-makers (as you say) and the fundamental natures of the two that there is irreconcilable difference.

    This post and my comments are a process of questioning and advocating differing points of view. I asked myself whether one could justifiably see it from this angle. I have always seen the two as separate but maybe a little further apart than I do now.

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  13. thanks Stephen!

    re: the difference between the two forms--I would argue that it has nothing to with the reliance upon story (but that's because I believe everything is a story)... Of course, most documentaries DO feel very different from most fiction films--but I would ascribe that difference to the latter's far greater tendency to encode subjectivity (not as an artist's tool, but as a dramatized element) into the proceedings

    Dave

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  14. "...the latter's far greater tendency to encode subjectivity (not as an artist's tool, but as a dramatized element) into the proceedings"

    Yes, that's very true. I hadn't thought about it quite that way. I think it is fair to say that they have opposite starting points with periodic overlap. Kiarostami, Kieslowski etc. You can feel the documentary outlook in the fiction.

    Thanks.

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  15. Fascinating dialogue here in the comment section (JAFB is as always, exquisite) and yet another post that amply demonstrates your hankering to examine issues and make comparisons that are highly original, exceedingly well researched, and most persuasive. There has always been a considerable overlap between these two forms, with the most gifted of the artists always attempting to blend the two. I would have certainly jumped in here with Weerasethakul, but JAFB has covered these based, as he has with Herzog, who is the most obvious adherent. I love those quotes from the directors!

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  16. Thanks again for the kind comments, Sam.

    The contributions in the comments section as always widen and deepen my understanding of these issues.

    I've yet to see any Weerasethakul, but I am well aware of his work.

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