The New Documentary Boom!
Documentary films are having a new film in the cinemas these days. Take a look at just this summer. Four documentaries have been released this summer, a time when big budget action blockbusters rule, and they have all done excellent business. Fahrenheit 9/11, Super Size Me, Control Room and the newly released The Corporation have all not only broken even, but made large return profits, a feet that few documentaries get to reach.
Why are these films doing so well? There are a few reasons. The first is Michael Moore. Love him or hate him, Moore is responsible for making documentary film exciting for the public and profitable for the studios. Moore’s 1989 film Roger and Me was, at the time, the highest grossing documentary film of all time with nearly $9 million. He broke his own record in 2002 with Bowling for Columbine and then shattered that record with this summer’s Fahrenheit 9/11, a film is just about to break $100 million.
Moore is a muckraker with a camera. He has some good ideas and he has the ability to add humor to his projects. He makes films, which stir people up, for better or for worse. Some call him an out and out liar; those people just don’t understand the genre.
The person foremost responsible for the documentary movement was Robert Flaherty. Flaherty’s films were big deals and perhaps you heard of some of them; Nanook of the North and The Man of Aran are his most popular. He is the one whom American documentary makers followed. But what few people know is that every shot in everyone of Flaherty’s film was staged. Flaherty was obsessed with the past and was more concerned with his idea of what reality was rather that what is actually was. Flaherty followed different cultures and captured their daily rituals for survival. But many of the rituals that Flaherty captured on film hadn’t been practiced for hundreds of years. That is where the movement started.
When watching a documentary the viewer must understand it is watching a film by a master craftsman. The filmmaker has a point to make and will use whatever footage he or she has to make that point. To claim that one documentary is more or less biased than another is a lame argument. It is the viewer’s job to take the information presented in a documentary and come to their own conclusions. One must never blame the filmmaker for doing what they do.
Another reason for the sudden boom is that the public is going to see these films. The public is tired of the same old Hollywood productions. They want something else, something they can sink their teeth into. Capturing the Friedmans, The Fog of War, Spellbound, and Winged Migration; these are all films released within the last two years that have made serious money. Documentaries used to be seen by a select crowd, and now everyone is seeing them.
Perhaps studios will put out the money needed to make more of these films. They are extremely cheap to make and the trend has no signs of dying anytime soon. Do yourself and watch all the films mentioned in the piece. They are all good works and excellent documentaries. They show that something can make you think and still be entertaining. We can only hope that Hollywood will soon follow.
Written by David Bohnert