This year’s crop of doc nominees is an outlier, since none of them indulges in the kind of sleight-of-hand that used to enrage documentary purists. A follow-up conversation with a distinguished member of the doc branch explains how the Academy has tried to adjust to an evolving cinematic form.
NOLAN POWERS Can I ask who you’re voting for?
DISTINGUISHED DIRECTOR Sure. Last Men in Aleppo.
NP The odds say it’s the runner-up. Faces Places is the overwhelming favorite.
DD Aleppo has the same subject as last year’s short doc winner, The White Helmets. Same guys. Probably hurts its chances.
NP I thought Faces Places was sweet, but once I saw Aleppo…Shouldn’t docs that involve danger to the filmmaker get points?
DD Well, the International Documentary Association gives a “courage under fire” award. The Academy as a whole tends to go for charming, especially if the heavier docs split the votes.
NP Errol Morris didn’t even make the short list.
DD Because of O.J. winning last year. The branch outlawed multi-part docs. O.J. broke a lot of rules, including a bogus theatrical release. Actually, I thought the “fictional” scenes in Wormwood were clunky.
NP The doc branch keeps having to make new rules.
DD Because docs are changing. So many hybrids. Exit Through the Gift Shop. Fantastic movie, but the whole thing was probably a Banksy hoax.
NP Who would have accepted the award if he’d won?
DD The Academy must have been terrified he’d pull some Tony Clifton stunt. The Imposter. At the end of that film, there’s a cast list! All the scenes in Spain were faked. Now the Academy has a rule that filmmakers have to identify all re-enactments. They attach a sheet to their submissions. Mind you, they don’t have to warn the audience.
NP The Imposter must have confused the purists, because it didn’t get nominated.
DD It got a BAFTA nomination.
NP Searching for Sugar Man won that year [2012].
DD And it got a lot of pushback. Turned out that guy was already touring, so the filmmaker created a mystery where there wasn’t a mystery.
NP So are docs trying to become more like fiction films? They certainly seem artier than they used to be.
DD And more interested in fooling the audience. Catfish was the watershed. “The best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never directed.”
NP The lead-up to the reveal was all re-jiggered.
DD Yeah, that came out at Sundance. But who’s worrying about it anymore? Only the Academy. Does the audience care? I think this newer generation can tell the difference. That Casey Affleck doc about Joaquin Phoenix, I’m Still Here? Everybody knew it was fake, nobody cared, big flop.
NP We’ve come a long way since cinéma vérité.
DD Light years.
NP In Abacus you don’t get much vérité feel about those Chinese restaurant meals. You get the feeling that the filmmaker said, OK, you’re here, now talk about the court case.
DD The vérité purists said any kind of fakery was a violation. Somebody leaves a house, you weren’t allowed to show them getting into a car unless you actually followed them out there. The filmmakers thought the audience would be thrown off by the fakery.
NP Not true anymore.
DD Fake news, hybrid docs…it’s the zeitgeist.
First published in The Ankler.