Making a documentary about one's own family history is inherently risky. While showing home videos and rare artifacts of your departed relatives will certainly resonate with your own personal family, a broader audience will likely lose interest within the first five minutes. Luckily for Ross McElwee, his family history is intertwined in a subject that everybody has some level of an opinion on: the tobacco industry.
The film revolves around McElwee exploring his great-grandfather's legacy, an extremely interesting one that actually inspired a major Hollywood movie. We discover that McElwee's family is essentially responsible for the presence of domesticated tobacco plants in North Carolina, but that a rival company essentially ran the elder McElwee out of business in a rather unfair manner. Tobacco would become a billion dollar industry, but the McElwees wouldn't profit from any of it.
This stunning realization about the origins of the tobacco industry is made extremely relatable through McElwee, who does a good job at conveying both his frustration and his confusion about the subject. He feels cheated in a way, but altogether confused about the merits of such a deadly contribution to society. These contrasting emotions clash throughout the entire movie, and the film does a good job of telling both sides of the story. I would classify it as anti-tobacco without hesitation, but it doesn't skimp away from the appeal. He portrays it extremely honestly, crucial for a documentary.
The film represents a journey for McElwee, albeit an ill-defined one. There's no clear-cut thesis, and he doesn't hold your hand throughout. On one level, I enjoyed this, because it allowed me to make my own conclusions about the nature of tobacco; still, I'm not completely sure what he wanted the audience to take from it. Overall, I found it to be an enjoyable, intelligent, but somewhat ambiguous take on an extremely important subject.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Man on Wire Review
When I take time out of my life to sit down and watch a movie, I want to be rewarded in some way. I want to laugh to the point of tears or have the shit scared out of me. I want to feel inspired or I want to feel moved. I want to feel emotion in some way. Man on Wire is an incredibly interesting and gracefully short documentary about the acts of Phillipe Petit, a man whose life revolves around the inherently dangerous act of tight-rope-walking. While I enjoyed watching the film, I can't say that I would consider re-watching it any time soon, nor would I recommend it to that many people; it's a film that, for a multitude of reasons, did not live up to the potential that I feel the subject matter clearly had.
The movie revolves around Petit, a french man who's turned the novelty act of walking along a slack line into a lifestyle. The man lives to "walk on air," as the movie so romantically put it. We learn about Petit through a combination of home videos taken from various points in his life and interviews with both himself and his loved ones. By nature, Petit puts his life in danger every time he walks the wire; he can't seem to help himself. We learn early in the film that he considered it his "destiny" to walk across the Twin Towers.
Therein lies my initial problem with the movie: the egotism of Petit makes him an incredibly frustrating person to follow for even an hour. The entire movie is more of a testament to his greatness than a documentary about the act of walking across the World Trade Center. Petit's boldness definitely makes him an interesting character to root for, but the movie takes things a bit too far. The viewer is constantly subjected to spliced-in interviews of Petit's friends admiring him. After a while, I lost all connection with him; the amount that the movie builds him up makes him a difficult person to relate to or care for.
The amount of time that the film spends sucking Petit's penis should be spent covering the art of wire-walking, a fascinating act worth exploring. It doesn't spend nearly as much time as it should on the subject, as when it finally divulges from the Petit slobber-fest, it goes into gut-wrenchingly accurate detail about the process that led up to the World Trade Center act. The sequence is presented to look like a heist, and it consumes about half of the movie, which constantly jumps from discussing the Twin Towers to discussing Petit as a person. By about half an hour in, I had had enough. I didn't care anymore about how they got cables to the top of the world trade center, or about how some of the group members didn't like each other. I just wanted to see some wire-walkin'.
The final fifteen minutes of the movie represent a monumental relief, as the viewer is treated to actual footage of the crossing of the Towers. Thankfully, the entire sequence is incredibly entertaining. It consists of actual video footage of Petit gracefully walking across the wire some fifteen hundred feet in the air. It's exactly what I wanted; daring, adventurous and fun.
Naturally, the entire movie depends on this dramatic finale. I left in a good mood, but that mood waned as time went on. As entertaining as the finale was, it couldn't carry the enormous expectations thrust upon it by the rest of the movie. For a movie that's eighty percent buildup, twenty percent action, something monumental needed to have happened in that sequence, and as dramatic as it was, it didn't validate what had preceded it. If I had to assign it a letter grade, I'd probably give it a B-minus.
The movie revolves around Petit, a french man who's turned the novelty act of walking along a slack line into a lifestyle. The man lives to "walk on air," as the movie so romantically put it. We learn about Petit through a combination of home videos taken from various points in his life and interviews with both himself and his loved ones. By nature, Petit puts his life in danger every time he walks the wire; he can't seem to help himself. We learn early in the film that he considered it his "destiny" to walk across the Twin Towers.
Therein lies my initial problem with the movie: the egotism of Petit makes him an incredibly frustrating person to follow for even an hour. The entire movie is more of a testament to his greatness than a documentary about the act of walking across the World Trade Center. Petit's boldness definitely makes him an interesting character to root for, but the movie takes things a bit too far. The viewer is constantly subjected to spliced-in interviews of Petit's friends admiring him. After a while, I lost all connection with him; the amount that the movie builds him up makes him a difficult person to relate to or care for.
The amount of time that the film spends sucking Petit's penis should be spent covering the art of wire-walking, a fascinating act worth exploring. It doesn't spend nearly as much time as it should on the subject, as when it finally divulges from the Petit slobber-fest, it goes into gut-wrenchingly accurate detail about the process that led up to the World Trade Center act. The sequence is presented to look like a heist, and it consumes about half of the movie, which constantly jumps from discussing the Twin Towers to discussing Petit as a person. By about half an hour in, I had had enough. I didn't care anymore about how they got cables to the top of the world trade center, or about how some of the group members didn't like each other. I just wanted to see some wire-walkin'.
The final fifteen minutes of the movie represent a monumental relief, as the viewer is treated to actual footage of the crossing of the Towers. Thankfully, the entire sequence is incredibly entertaining. It consists of actual video footage of Petit gracefully walking across the wire some fifteen hundred feet in the air. It's exactly what I wanted; daring, adventurous and fun.
Naturally, the entire movie depends on this dramatic finale. I left in a good mood, but that mood waned as time went on. As entertaining as the finale was, it couldn't carry the enormous expectations thrust upon it by the rest of the movie. For a movie that's eighty percent buildup, twenty percent action, something monumental needed to have happened in that sequence, and as dramatic as it was, it didn't validate what had preceded it. If I had to assign it a letter grade, I'd probably give it a B-minus.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
LeBron
With a crowd of about 20,000 paying attention to a game of basketball, sound is inevitably a factor. The crowd had just witnessed their team squander a five point lead lead in a matter of minutes, though; the detested Detroit Pistons had, once again, taken the lead. They say that silence can be more defining than noise, and this situation proved that cliche to be absolutely correct. 20,000 people, every one of them silent, every one of them waiting for the inevitable to happen: for the Cavaliers to lose, for the series to be over.
Thankfully, the Cavaliers were playing with the best basketball player on the planet. If anybody was capable of salvaging the game, it was LeBron James; the crowd just didn't know it yet. One of the most ballyhooed high school basketball players ever, LeBron graced the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was a junior in high school... when he was the 2003-2004 NBA Rookie of the Year... when he was an NBA sophomore... you get the point. The amount of hype and attention that he received was unprecedented. Time for him to prove his worth.
With little under ten seconds to go, James drove the basket and tied the game with a layup that made the Pistons defenders look like an intramural team trying to stop a varsity team. The game was tied with two seconds to go, and the crowd collectively lost its fucking mind. Before the possession started, you could hear somebody with court side seats sneeze from the nose-bleed section.
After the game was tied, the crowd reacted like they were at a concert. Strangers hugged each other. People that didn't care for sports screamed at the top of their lungs. It was pure euphoria, audible energy that transformed the entire crowd.
What proceeded was arguably the most dominating playoff performance in recent years. LeBron absolutely took over, scoring something like 25 of his team's last 27 points. With every bucket, the crowd went insane. It was like a twenty minute roller-coaster ride, but a lot more intense. The man held his audience in the palm of his hand, capable of manipulating them in a way that I had never seen in my life. To this day, I have never seen anything like it.
The most telling thing about the experience was the way I felt when I woke up the next day: my voice was completely shot, and I was experiencing a severe adrenaline hangover. I felt strangely confident, though. I had witnessed history.
Thankfully, the Cavaliers were playing with the best basketball player on the planet. If anybody was capable of salvaging the game, it was LeBron James; the crowd just didn't know it yet. One of the most ballyhooed high school basketball players ever, LeBron graced the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was a junior in high school... when he was the 2003-2004 NBA Rookie of the Year... when he was an NBA sophomore... you get the point. The amount of hype and attention that he received was unprecedented. Time for him to prove his worth.
With little under ten seconds to go, James drove the basket and tied the game with a layup that made the Pistons defenders look like an intramural team trying to stop a varsity team. The game was tied with two seconds to go, and the crowd collectively lost its fucking mind. Before the possession started, you could hear somebody with court side seats sneeze from the nose-bleed section.
After the game was tied, the crowd reacted like they were at a concert. Strangers hugged each other. People that didn't care for sports screamed at the top of their lungs. It was pure euphoria, audible energy that transformed the entire crowd.
What proceeded was arguably the most dominating playoff performance in recent years. LeBron absolutely took over, scoring something like 25 of his team's last 27 points. With every bucket, the crowd went insane. It was like a twenty minute roller-coaster ride, but a lot more intense. The man held his audience in the palm of his hand, capable of manipulating them in a way that I had never seen in my life. To this day, I have never seen anything like it.
The most telling thing about the experience was the way I felt when I woke up the next day: my voice was completely shot, and I was experiencing a severe adrenaline hangover. I felt strangely confident, though. I had witnessed history.
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