Transversing Different Visions

Shaelene G. Moler

Prof. Richard Simpson

History and Theory of Documentary Film

7 December 2020

Transversing Different Visions

In any biography, one can expect the author’s fascination with the subject’s character and being, but in Werner Herzog’s biographical documentary Grizzly Man, viewer’s can expect not only the story of one man’s life, but a reflection on his ideology, and imperfections. Grizzly Man, which is a documentary film directed and narrated by the German filmmaker Werner Herzog, is a film based on the life of Timothy Treadwell, and Treadwell’s mission to reduce/eliminate the stigmatization against grizzly bears, and protect the areas in which they live. Released in the August of 2005, this film illustrates the life of a devoted conservationist, who fell in love with the bears because of, and in spite of his own personal issues. The film is strongly composed of both “found” diary footage by Timothy Treadwell himself, and interviews conducted by Herzog featuring a variety of different people who knew Treadwell, or had participated in his recovery after his death. That being said, this documentary is one that has been composed without Treadwell’s input on not only the presentation of himself, but the presentation of his ideas, beliefs, and methods, and instead, was edited to reflect Herzog’s relationship to the material/subject, and present a distorted visual argument for and against Treadwell’s ideology through editing.

In order to discuss a film’s editing process and composition, it is important to first discuss not only how we categorize a film, but how a film should be approached because of its category. When categorizing Grizzly Man, it is most important to acknowledge its compositional elements. Are there interviews, or is it found footage? When it was filmed, did the subject know that their were being filmed, or was the camera hidden? How involved was the director/filmmaker in the process? Considering this, according to Bill Nichol’s text Introduction to Documentary 3rd edition, Grizzly man can be considered a strong example of a blending of documentary modes. By definition, Grizzly Man can be categorized into both the participatory mode, and as an individual biography featuring diary/journalistic elements. 

Grizzly Man can be categorized into the participatory mode, because both filmmakers, if you consider Treadwell a filmmaker alongside Herzog, are actively involved in the creation of the film, and directly address the films subjects. At the time of filmmaking, when Treadwell was the lone filmmaker, the bears were his subject, and he directly engaged with them, and when Herzog assumed control of the films vision after Treadwell’s untimely death, he shifted the focus to Treadwell as an individual subject, and directly engaged with those he interviewed about Treadwell, as well as had a “conversation” with Treadwell’s ideology through the films narration. In Nichols’ chapter on “Poetic, Expository, and Reflexive Modes,” Nichols states that the participatory mode can be characterized by “what we learn from personal interactions; what people say and do when confronted or engaged by others; what can be conveyed by interviews and other forms of encounter,” and that it “stresses the speech between the filmmaker and subject, especially in interviews. [With a] heavy reliance on sync sound, but may also utilize voice-over; filmmaker retains only partial creative control of sound” (Nichols 109). In Grizzly man, we not only see both filmmaker’s assume little creative control over the sound (consider both the bear’s reactions and actions, as well as Treadwell’s films and the interviewee’s responses), but we also see elements of documenting the encounter through Treadwell’s interaction with the bears in his video diary’s, and Herzog’s interviews with people about Treadwell, where he actively questioned their relationships to and opinions of Treadwell, and Treadwell’s mission/purpose.

The other element of this film is the fact that it is both an individual documentary, and diary/ journal. Had this film began with a solid vision in mind, and had been completely carried out by Treadwell himself, the film may not have been considered either of these, and instead, could of resulted as a first-person essay in which the documentary would be a “Personal account of some aspect of the author/ filmmaker’s experience or point of view,” or an advocacy/ promotion of a cause documentary that “stress/es convincing, compelling evidence and examples; urge adoption of a specific point of view,” or maybe even a combination of the two. But, since Treadwell had passed away, and Herzog had assumed control of the film’s vision, the footage that Treadwell had shot became diary/ journal style footage because Treadwell had lost control of the film, featured in an individual or group profile/ biography. According to Nichols, what makes a film a diary/ journal is it’s features of “daily impressions that may begin and end somewhat arbitrarily,” and what makes a film an individual or group profile/ biography, is how it “recounts [the] story of [a] person’s or group’s maturation and distinctiveness” (Nichols 107). Considering this, the reason that Grizzly Man can be considered a film of both Models, is the separation of the filmmaker’s filmed content, and how the purpose of that content had shifted with the transition from Treadwell’s creative vision, to Herzog’s creative vision. What this means is, when Treadwell’s footage was given to Herzog, it was in it’s raw form, and focused on Treadwell’s experience with bears in Alaska, in his eyes, this would have been a diary/ journal because it did not have a guided script, and was filmed on Treadwell’s impulse. Whereas, the interviews and editing process that was imposed on Treadwell’s footage in the final product guide’s the film into becoming a biography on Treadwell for who he was, and what his purpose and ideologies were. 

To say that Herzog’s editing process is responsible for the film’s composition and categorization, is a statement that must be said with a grain of salt. What this means is, when discussing the editing of a film, it is important to address how we may define editing, and pinpointing where exactly the editing process begins; maybe even for both filmmakers. In Grizzly Man, if we go by the definition of Fredrick Wiseman in his article “Editing as a Four-Way Conversation,” the editing process began with Timothy Treadwell. In this article, Wiseman states “Any documentary, mine or anyone else’s, made in no matter what style, is arbitrary, biased, prejudiced, compressed, and subjective. Like any of its sisterly or brotherly fictional forms it is born in choice - choice of subject matter, place, people, camera angles, duration of shooting, sequences to be shot or omitted, transitional material and cutaways” (Wiseman 279). That being said, the editing began with Treadwell’s creative vision, intentions, beliefs, and how those things had affected the composition of the shot. 

Furthering this, if we place the perspective of Wiseman as a filmmaker on Treadwell’s creative decisions and motivations, as well as consider the philosophies of Tom Gunning in his article “Embarrassing Evidence: The Detective Camera and the Documentary Impulse,” we are met with a sort of contradiction in considering Werzog as the lone creative visionary for this film. Continuing in his article, Wiseman states “the motivation to record a particular sequence may result from the way someone walks or is dressed; or a hunch, the intuition that something interesting may develop when two people begin to talk. When I have that feeling I’ve learned to follow it, which is not to say the hunch is always right but rather that in not following it no risk is taken and therefore the risk of missing a ‘good’ sequence occurs” (Wiseman 280). If we place this “hunch” on Treadwell in his filming process, we can consider most of his filming (at least the films that was chosen to be featured by Herzog in the final product) was filmed on a “hunch,” a “hunch” that was motivated by Treadwell’s love for the bears. This is illustrated by the frequent scenes featuring the bear’s natural behavior, with an attempt to emphasize their natural behavior, and “good nature.” 

This “hunch,” is what Tom Gunning would call the documentary impulse, and it is something that is guided by our fascinations of our own lives and views, that being said, it can pose its own . In his article, Tom Gunning states “The emerging discipline of anthropology (with its ties to colonial exploration) undoubtedly provided a context in which the recording of details of daily life (which otherwise might seem unworthy of notice or smack of simple snooping) could gain a respectable veneer. However, a new fascination with daily life and a nearly prurient interest in uncovering scandalous or otherwise decent material also played an important role in the genre’s popularity” (Gunning 52). Putting this in context of Treadwell, and perhaps even Herzog in some of his scenes such as the spreading of Treadwell’s ashes towards the end of the film, what can be seen is, the motivation behind the filming of these moments is based on an impulse to document what we believe is important to our lives, memory, and purpose. Gunning follows this quote with “But the very pleasure of the film (and its recognizable place as an ancestor of television’s domestic situation comedy) also reveals the strong attraction that the temptation of documenting ordinarily concealed aspects of daily life still exerts” summarizing this concept (Gunning 63).

With Treadwell’s editorial influence in mind, we approach how this was morphed and distorted by Herzog’s own editorial practices and ideas with the shift between the filmmakers. Before acknowledging the technical aspects of the editing, it is important to understand what had influenced Herzog, and how this influence contradicts the visions of Treadwell. In his written reaction an analysis of Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, Fatimah Tobing Rony expresses “As Flaherty himself explained, he did not want to show the Inuit as they were at the time of the making of the film, he did not want to show the Inuit as they were at the time of making the film, but as (he thought) they had been” (Rony 101). Much like Flaherty, Herzog utilized film that was rehearsed and reshot in many cases by Treadwell, and used it not to fulfill Treadwell’s personal vision as it was, but instead, fulfill his own vision, on what he believed to be the most honest depiction of Treadwell as an individual, because of his own “relationship” to him, and the material Treadwell had created. From here, Herzog can be considered someone who practiced ethnographic taxidermy, which Rony defined and described as:

“I call the mode of representation of the ‘ethnographic’ which emerged from the impulse of taxidermy. Taxidermy seeks to make that which is dead look as if it were still living. In his study on the impact of the taxidermic impulse on the writing of history in the nineteenth century, Stephen Bann quotes British taxidermist Charles Waterton who complained that the unadorned dead beast was ‘a mere dried specimen, shrunk too much in this part, or too bloated in that; a mummy, a distortion, an hideous spectacle’” (Rony 101).

In attempt to represent Treadwell in what he believed to be the most honest representation of him from the eyes of a man looking back on a past life, Herzog sacrifices true authenticity, even in the moment where he tosses the romantic lens. He does this, through the exercise of selective editing, where he sifted through the material filmed by Treadwell, and contrasted Treadwell’s filmed footage with the contents of the interviews conducted by Herzog.

There is a few scenes in the film in particular where this is true, and they are scenes that come towards the end of the film which feature various montages of Timothy Treadwell’s “darkest moments” that he himself had captured on film. At first, it is instinctual to consider these shots and scenes as truth, because they were filmed by Treadwell himself, and he probably expected to cut some of these moments out in order to fulfill the purpose of his creative vision. In addition to that, he also seemed to film as a way to distract himself in times of boredom, or express himself in times of distress. But, as the footage is pieced together by Herzog, the moments in which Treadwell was most vulnerable, or his emotions are most heightened, is presented as a contradiction to his message and the interviews accompanying them. In these scenes, we see a variety of different shots, that all seem to present different emotions that Treadwell had experienced as he was out in the field. There is scenes of him crying over a bee that had died on a fireweed plant, as well as videos of him lashing out to camera about other park professionals who claim to be conservationists who care about the wellbeing of the bears that Treadwell was studying. To this, we bring in the ideas of Vsevolod Pudovkin in his article “[On Editing]” where he writes “One must learn to understand that editing is in actual fact a compulsory and deliberate guidance of the thoughts and associations of the spectator” reminding audiences that in editing, the film is presented in a way that the director wants to pursued or inform the audience (Pudovkin 10).

One question still remains, and that question is, how should we judge this film, based on it’s truth, and the answer to this, lies in an interview conducted by Richard Bernstein in his article “‘Roger and Me’: Documentary? Satire? Or Both” where Bernstein shares Michael Moore’s own philosophy on film truth which reads “Mr. Moore has said in interviews that he did compress events, but that his film nonetheless is true to what actually happened in Flint, his hometown, where, he believes, General Motors did abandon its social responsibility to help workers it was laying off” (Bernstein par. 20). Putting this in context of Grizzly Man, if Herzog were to discuss his own editorial process, he would likely say that the film is true to what he believed had actually happened to Timothy Treadwell in his journey to prove the world was wrong about Grizzly bears and had to protect them.

In closing, because this documentary had been composed without Treadwell and his input, the presentation of his ideas, beliefs, and methods were edited to reflect Herzog’s relationship to Treadwell and his filmed material, and presented a distorted visual argument on Treadwell’s ideology through his editing process. Although this does not necessarily invalidate the films truth, but instead offers an excellent example on how truth can transverse in the editing process, especially between two filmmakers with very different creative visions. 

Works Cited

Bernstein, R. (1990, February 01). 'Roger and Me': Documentary? Satire? Or Both? Retrieved December 08, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/01/movies/roger-and-me-documentary-satire-or-both.html

Gunning, T. (1999). Embarrassing Evidence: The Detective Camera and the Documentary Impulse.

Nichols, B. (2017). How Can We Differentiate among Documentary Models and Modes? What Are the Poetic, Expository, and Reflexive Modes? In Introduction to documentary (3rd ed., pp. 104-158). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Pudovkin, V. (n.d.). [On Editing]. From Film Technique, 7-12.

Rony, F. T. (1996). Chapter Four: Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography: Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North. The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle, 99-126.

Wiseman, F. (1994). Editing as a Four-Way Conversation. Dox: Documentary Quarterly, (No. 1), 278-282.

 

Post-War Experimentation

 Kali Spencer

Richard Simpson

ENGL 342

10/13/20

Post-War Experimentation

This week we watched Shoeshine by Vittorio de Sica (1946), O Dreamland by Lindsay Anderson (1953), Glass by Bert Haanstra (1958), and Nuit et Brouillard by Alan Resnais (1955). These films fall under the experimental mode of filmmaking. This mode of documentary is most easily identified by its goal of re-evaluates cinematic conventions and its use of non-narrative forms/non-linear narratives.   

The films I found the most interesting this week were O Dreamland by Lindsay Anderson (1953) and Glass by Bert Haanstra (1958). Both of these films seemed to revolve around an interest in new technology and its impact on society. O Dreamland, while lacking a solid narrative structure, still creates an argument through its use of editing and juxtaposition of images. It seems to open a discussion around whether or not our technological advancements are actually advancing us as a society and ideas of the distance technology offers us from our responsibilities. The argument of whether or not our technological advancements are actually advancing us as a society can be seen in the film's title. The title O Dreamland refers to the idea of this utopian version of society that was being proposed to people at the time that seemed to view any new technology as a positive step. This however is juxtaposed against images of prisoners being put to death in the electric chair, an example of technology that has obviously been harmful. The example of the electric chair also ties into the argument that technology offers us distance from our responsibilities. This is shown in the way that we tend to view murder as wrong and barbaric but because we are killing them with a machine it's as if we aren't doing it ourselves. The argument is also shown in the way that both children and adults easily view horrible and gruesome activities because they are being acted out by animatronic people rather than real people. This seems to create a distance between the people and the events that took place because it’s easy to detach feelings when only machines are being harmed and the connection doesn’t need to be made that these are problems that have/continue to affect real people. 

Glass has a similar argument to O Dreamland and also asks the viewer to question whether or not our technological advancements are actually advancing us as a society. This can be seen in the calm and artistic way the human glassblowers create glasses versus the robotic and rigid way the mechanized glass blowing process occurs. This seems to advance the argument that while machines may be useful for creating large quantities of things in a very efficient manner nothing can replace the human element when it comes to crafting quality pieces and art. This can also be seen in the scene where the machine breaks the bottle and requires human intervention to correct itself, it can also be seen as an argument for the invaluable and irreplaceable efforts of humans. 

Both of these films seem to move their narratives along through the use of changing rhythms in songs, increased speed of images displayed, and juxtaposing images. This clearly demonstrates the way an argument can be constructed through the editing process.

The Creative Treatment of Actuality

Kali Spencer

Richard Simpson

ENGL 342

10/13/20

The Creative Treatment of Actuality

This week we watched Drifters by John Grierson (1929), Night Mail by Watt and Wright (1936), and The Quiet One by Sidney Meyers of Film and Photo League (1948). These films and the readings highlight a pivotal time in the history of documentary film where documentarians were debating the best use and purpose of documentary filmmaking.

Bill Nichols stated this well when he said “repression conveys the force of a denial, and what documentary film history sought to deny was not simply an overly aesthetic lineage but the radically transformative potential of film pursued by a large segment of the international avant-garde”. This quote perfectly encapsulates feelings at the time expressed by filmmakers like Grierson who thought that the value of cinema lay in its capacity to “document, demonstrate, or, at most, enact the proper, or improper, terms of individual citizenship and state responsibility”. Grierson saw the potential of documentary film in serving the state in the form of propaganda and advocated for documentaries to take a decidedly argumentative rather than objective focus. This explains documentary’s split from other forms of cinema. Nichols theorizes that this split was the result of active efforts to build national identity during the 1920s and 1930s. He too acknowledged documentary films' ability to affirm, or contest, the power of the state. These ideas expressed by both Grierson and Nichols seem to tie into the ideas of Comolli and Narboni who would break this idea down in greater detail and classify it further.

From here the idea of the avant-garde film is created. Avant-garde is French for ‘vanguard’ which is a military term used to describe the front-line of an army moving into battle. Artists since then have been compared with these soldiers, as they are often a group force and have the ability to challenge long-established concepts and ideas about art. They can use these abilities to either fight or support an entrenched establishment. This is where the more political aspect comes in like in Night Mail and Drifters. These films have very pro-labor ideas attached to them that want to promote the everyday worker/the working class. And this idea of creating films that are trying to advance an agenda go along really well with the history of the time with shifts in the realm of politics with the idea of -isms communism, socialism, fascism all of which challenged the traditional role of governments. This is really important in relating back to the title of this week's section of films and writings as The Creative Treatment of Actuality because the lines do blur here. There is a form of creativity and art that goes into constructing a version of reality that documentarians create when they want to get you to see things from their perspective. 

Personal Film Essay

 Kali Spencer

Richard Simpson

ENGL 342

11/11/20

Personal Film Essay

This week we viewed the films Sink or Swim by Su Friedrich (1990) and Tongues Untied by Isaac Julien (1990). According to Nichols both of these films fall under the category of the first-person essay or personal film essay because they cover the “personal account of some aspect of the author/filmmaker’s experience or point of view”. Both films, through the use of this method, create stories that are emotionally intense and extremely good at conveying personal experiences.

Sink or Swim by Su Friedrich includes audio of short stories played over film that looks like a home video. Together they create a picture of a girl's life as she grows up and details the relationship between her and her father. Aside from the more obvious elements that convey the story of a father and daughter, I believe that the structure of the film also does a great deal in giving the film this feel. First off, the way that the phrases/stories are broken up in sink or swim reminded me of the anecdotal words of wisdom that children receive from their parents. Each of the stories told is an exapmple a different element that complicates her relationship with her father (family relations, work, gender, power struggles/authority). Secondly, the use of home video seems purposeful as it not only usually relates to families but is also a good example of the way that people tend to present positive stories of their families while the true story (the narration) may be much more complicated and dark.

Tongues Untied by Isaac Julien portrays the experience of what it meant to be a black, gay, man in the 80s/90s. This film is politically charged and tackles difficult topics like sexuality, gender, race and the complicated ways that these elements interact. The film also seems to touch on cultural appropriation and tokenization of both black and gay culture. Another thing I found interesting was the way the opening of the film seems to highlight the ways that things that may be completely acceptable for wealthy/white people or even regarded as art are not seen in the same way when done by poor/black people, for example, poetry versus rap. Relating to rap another interesting aspect of the film is the rhythm created through the use of rhythmic lines, snapping, and some dance-like elements. 

Lastly, I’d like to address a quote from one of our readings entitled The Totalizing Quest of Meaning (1993) by Trinh T. Minh-Ha. The quote reads:

This involves an extensive and relentless pursuit of naturalism across all the elements of cinematic technology. Indispensable to this cinema of the authentic image and spoken word are, for example, the directional microphone (localizing and restricting in its process of selecting sound for purposes of decipherability) and the Nagra portable tape recorder (unrivaled for its maximally faithful ability to document). Lip-synchronous sound is validated as the norm; it is a "must"; not so much in replicating reality (this much has been acknowledged among the fact-makers) as in "showing real people in real locations at real tasks." (Even nonsync sounds that are recorded in-context are considered "less authentic" because the technique of sound synchronization and its institutionalized use have become "nature" within film culture).

This quote seems to say a lot about the way reality is created within the arts. It seems to state that although something may not actually be more realistic, it may be used because it seems more realistic. It also seems to address the way these norms for what is realistic are determined by the industry. This reminded me of a conversation we had at the beginning of the semester surrounding the editing techniques used in Feeling My Way and whether or not they made the film more or less realistic.

Direct Cinema v. Cinema Verité

 Kali Spencer

Richard Simpson

ENGL 342

10/28/20

Direct Cinema v. Cinema Verité

Thanks to the revolutionary technology that was developed in the early 1960s (including lightweight filming equipment, hand-held cameras, and synchronous sound) filmmakers like Jean Rouch and Frederick Wiseman were able to free themselves of the large crews, studio sets, tripod-mounted equipment, and special lights seen in the earlier days of film. This allowed the directors to create the films Chronicle of a Summer and High School. In the case of both of these films, the making of the film was included in the film itself. This focus on ways in which we present/capture the truth place the films under the categories of direct cinema and cinema verité. 

Chronicle of a Summer seems to be an experiment into whether or not it is possible to act naturally on camera and a study of how “truth” is portrayed in documentary films. This theme led me to wonder when people aren’t acting. While I understand that there may be a pattern of behavior that is more authentic to those individuals, I would argue that even those behaviors are a sort of acting that people do in their everyday lives to fit social norms/situations. This is why I found the end of the film, where the filmmakers show their subjects the footage and have them discuss the level of reality that they thought the movie achieved, so fascinating. Reviewing depictions of the truth and this film structure was something innovative and an example of cinéma vérité. By connecting the film and its content in this way the filmmakers seem to be able to address depictions of the truth and authenticity in completely new ways.

High School has similar themes. It shows a typical day for a group of students at Northeast High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This seems to be an example of direct cinema as the directors seem to hope to unveil truth through the camera’s observation of events and subjects. I found this not entirely accurate though as the film still seems to have a clear theme that is created through the film's editing. The directors seem to have edited an argument into the film meaning this film if far from an untouched observation of the truth.

Pastiche

     One of the key terms I got from the "Postmodernism and Consumer Society" essay was the concept of pastiche as distinct from parody or historical fiction. Pastiche has a quality of imitation without the mockery that is implied in parody. I see this in many pieces of art today, there is a sense of nostalgia in much postmodern art, which to me seems a little antithetical to the pull away from this sense of differentiation between high-brow art and art for the masses. I suppose much of pastiche actually makes older pieces of art more accessible or relatable to a wider audience. 

I recently came across a painting from a local artist that was a reproduction (or pastiche, I suppose) of Van Gogh's "At Eternity's Gate". This painting, though had a few alterations and was titled "At Eternity's Gate in the Time of COVID". The subject is modernized to a healthcare worker wearing crocs, but it is unmistakably the within Van Gogh's thick stroked style and color pallet. I thought this was a particularly postmodern piece of art for these reasons and because of the commentary it holds. It uses this sense of nostalgia to inform topical issues and document a pervasive and very current feelings regarding the state of the pandemic. I wouldn't consider this parody as it isn't mocking the original piece or time period, the style is just a vehicle to convey these ideas.

"At Eternity's Gate" by Vincent Van Gogh

"At Eternity's Gate in the Time of COVID" by Patrick Ripp

"Common Sense" aka the dominant ideology

 I thought representations of the dominant ideology were really interesting in this week's documentaries. Starting with "The Thin Blue Line", Morris' main issue is the automatic assumption that a sixteen year old couldn't possibly kill a police officer and thereby leading to the wrongful imprisonment of Randall Adams. He very succinctly summed up the dynamics of the town where the shooting happened as well as the preconceived notions that assured Harris' innocence. This made the whole film (for me anyway) kind of a nail biter. I didn't know what to believe with all the conflicting circumstantial evidence until close to the end. Of course then there was what was essentially a confession that sealed the fate of each of the social agents this story follows in my mind. 

Similarly, I had no reason to disbelieve Michael Moore's experience of his hometown until I read critiques that point out how much of the history he either glosses over or completely shapes by juxtaposing certain shots in his sequence. This was eye opening to me as I still have this belief that documentarians should try to convey a sequence of events accurately. Of course he probably wouldn't have done as well at the box office if the film showed more of the nuances within the dismantling of all of these factories. Of course, there is no one truth and there's a level of subjectivity involved, but I wonder about the ethics of that particular representation.