Filming a lonely road stretching diagonally towards the horizon, a lighting bolt sears through the pewter sky. Kirsten Johnson gasps in amazement. Moments later, thunder returns the favor with a heavy constitution. Observing the stillness of a graveyard in Bosnia, Johnson and her director discuss the merits of having no bystander walking into the frame; the tombstones stand on their own. In Alabama, evidence is being laid out in a trial involving a man who was dragged to death from behind a car, the lawyer speaking in some detail seems to be restraining a sadness and fear of the atrocity. Moments, captured and embalmed in film, float together with a disregard for chronology as memories sort of flood into the retrieving mind unexpectedly. These moments are possessions of Kirsten Johnson, captured through the many projects she participated in as a documentary cinematographer. Cameraperson is her visual memoir of these delicate, but powerful moments. Like almost a stream of consciousness or a series of dreams emerging and fading, we are transported through space and time almost arbitrarily, with a figment of a theme or symbolic motif binding these moving images with brief, but bold, slivers of the human condition. Alas, it amounts to a visceral experience, where we are allowed a moment of entrance to the extremely personal, finding respite in the many instances, sympathizing and binding with the images. Its reflexive construction, anchored by such recollections, opens Johnson up to ways of expressing such memorial journeying through editing, in which shots and scenes are placed together either motivated by a specific emotion or a certain intellectualism. One sequence early on in the film suggests hectic movement a documentary filmmaker must adapt when following a moving subject with no knowledge of where they are going. The cuts quicken as the motion within the shots quicken, resulting in a hilarious moment where Johnson makes a surprising misstep. Later on, a montage of mostly still shots quietly observes the variety of locations where some form of atrocity against humanity occurred: genocide, execution, or mass rape. One location was a deserted motel. Another was an empty pool. Such a montage was prompted by the emphasis Johnson upholds of her time in Bosnia, where she recounts the stories of several women during the ethnic cleansing in the 90s. It is as if a painful memory of one atrocity reminded her of all the times she has come across such remnants of tragedy. To us, with only some reference cue from title cards, we contemplate in sadness. Not all sequences carry such aesthetic or thematic adhesion, expressing maybe a freestyle recollection, but when things are adhesive with some core concept, it buries into our imagination. As an outsider of such memories, there is a clarity of discerning the bravery, courage, and maybe even recklessness of Johnson and the slew of directors she works with, capturing moments that are dangerous, to say the least. Yet, such bravery is not always aligned with how dangerous a moment is but also how personal and vulnerable it can be. Aside from Bosnia, another prominent memory thread are the scenes captured of Johnson's mother, shown devolving tragically into the void of Alzheimer's. Indeed, it is not difficult to see Johnson ruminate on these moments where she actively participates in remembering and preserving her past as she captures her mother whose memories are gradually withering away. If memory and the emotional and intellectual impressions that unearth themselves through remembering finds itself as the more ethereal theme hovering among the visual moments, then on a more practical level, yet just as intriguing, is the sense that Cameraperson is also an expose of the ethics and responsibilities of documentary filmmakers. Many moments are indications where Johnson not only grew as a human being understanding the world around her, but as a filmmaker who begins to understand maybe the social or cultural obligations and complexities involved when representing actuality. When Johnson and her director film a birth to a boy who is lacking of oxygen, there is an uneasy instance where the doctor has left, searching for oxygen to give, leaving only the filmmakers in the room with the struggling infant. I will not reveal more, but place faith in the idea that what is exhibited is immeasurably gripping. As the visual memoir shapes our perception, the lens from which we see this world ultimately is shaped through Kirsten's imagination, where the camera is an extension of her own perception of the world, how not only she wants to see it but how she wants others to see it. Although the disjointed collection may contribute to a risk of detachment from scenes only to be seen as sensationalized, it is also an effective mechanism illustrating the difficulty of providing a summation of your memories and experiences. In spite of such risk, these moments, assembled in some mysteriously personal manner, may be the conclusion of Kirsten's attempt to step back from her experiences, marking points on her journey for which she changed direction in her walk of life. And a most wholesome life it has been. So I am more than content to watch this film under an aura of mystery, a personal mystery that is both being presented bravely by Johnson but restrained just the same. All that can really be shared are the cornucopia of feelings jutting prominently out of the images we see.
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Seven and a half hours of eruptive frustration and I am incensed. I am depressed. I am befuddled, awestruck, and overflowing with ire, as if the toxic byproduct of such feelings produce smoke that seeps out of my body like the choking smog from old factories. And thus, this smokey cloud lingers around me, suspending me in a despair where any formation of thoughts seems to crumble as soon as they commence. If there is one main, purging reason Ezra Edelman's epically tragic O.J.: Made in America punctures my own sensibilities with how I look at race, class, and ideologies in America is that is so clearly envisions the chaotic fear that I have repressed in a world so saturated in information and lack of discourse. It is both an adamant testament of the film's power to convey a story so thorough and effective and, at the same time, its skill, Edelman's skill, to make the spectator alarmingly vulnerable. With the privilege of the wealth of information provided in this five-part film, we sit and watch hatred become irony, irony become symbolism, and symbolism become tragedy. Made in America is not just a documentary about famed athlete, actor, and American personality O.J. Simpson; it is a kaleidoscopic mosaic of the individual through prisms and reflections of so many people. Simpson is not interviewed in this film, but mostly everyone else who has been part of his life in some way, big or small, speaks. I am reminded of Ikiru, the compelling film from Akira Kurosawa in which the second half of the film depicts the protagonist only through the stories and opinions of other people, and we are to judge, ourselves, what was going through the mind of a man so full of life yet closing in on death. What is enunciated with such a narrative structure is not just the moments and events in the individual's life but the way in which people responded and reacted to the actions performed by the protagonist. Ezra convincingly presents us with so many people who vocalize so many different views of Simpson that he becomes a translucent entity of a million shades, a character embodying complexity amid stark personality traits. Yet, Edelman does not stop there; nothing is as engrossing as comparative narratives and Simpson's character arc is neatly and justifiably connecting to the the character arc of the city he lived in, Los Angeles. More specifically, the black experience in Los Angeles from the late 60s to the mid 90s. Virtually beginning from the time Simpson step foot at University of Southern California for football where he would begin an impressive Hall of Fame career, Edelman also begins the story of racial oppression, brutality, and fear in Los Angeles, and the almost inexplicable distance Simpson proscribed himself between him and the black community. More substantially in the first two parts of the series, which precede the infamous criminal trial, there are times when Simpson is not mentioned for ten to twenty minutes as members of the Los Angeles community, both on the side of the police force and the black activists, describe the constant severance between the two groups and the growing hatred of the black community towards an austerely and uncertain institution that is suppose to protect and serve. It is a great preface or first act to the trial that would be the pompously catastrophic second act. The length of time, over three hours, before the trial builds with a gargantuan intensity because everything is so clear and so understood even though the more you understand the more you realize you don't understand. We, at the very least, recognize what is at stake. Made in America is a milestone of journalistic integrity within the creative documentary context. How Edelman ventures both into the developing psyche of Simpson and the developing urban mindscape of Los Angeles meets at continuously satisfying junctures when both stories intersect from time to time right up until they get tangled in a knot during the trial. And so once the trial steps onto the stage in all of its grisly obscurity, we realize the social, cultural, and political stakes so vividly that every action by every major player in the trial not only reverberates as it did those twenty-three years ago but reverberates in our minds and our souls newly formed. Among the grave complexities presented it the ongoing realpolitik played out between the defense team and the prosecution, the lashing of ideologies endorsing no desire for discourse, payback for unadulterated hatred and bigotry, and the use of Simpson as a tainted and contestable symbol for black oppression. Maybe I speak more for someone who was too young to understand anything significant regarding this moment in American history, but (re)living these moments will instigate outbursts of emotions, good and bad. We must be very careful in the ways we create symbols to represent ideologies. There is a reason why it is called a symbol - it is not an object of the real thing, it is almost a metaphorical entity referring to the real thing, whatever that thing may be. Simpson represents the limitations of symbolism, but he also represents the only outlet an oppressed community can vent its growing anger when no one else, no where else, takes the time to listen. It is the sort of predicament America sort of corners itself into from time to time. Ultimately, Made in America creates a lasting effect in that it is almost grossly timely...or maybe even timeless...with exploration of race, culture, and ignorance in America. You will find many, many things throughout this story that ring loudly because of its contemporary presence. You will identify it and you will become frustrated. Because, the main tragedy of it all happens to be the two deaths that our covered in miles and miles of bullshit and we let that happen. Again, to reiterate, the ease at which you become wholly immersed, then frustrated, and then in shock is due to both journalistic integrity, calculated narrative structuring, and just the right amount of artistic interjection to create a work alarmingly profound. Like The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, here is another documentary that is incredibly necessary to view, maybe more so by the so-called millennials than anyone else. No matter, it should be viewed by anyone. We shouldn't forget a moment like this, at least as an American, because so many things did not seem right, did not sit well. But it can certainly happen again, maybe it already is. There are some things we learn from our parents directly, like how to ride a bike or how to cook a certain dish. Then there are the things you learn but are ignorant of such education: the possibly unscientific genealogy of passing down traits of character, or even a willingness to perform an action in a particular way. Sachi, the eldest sister of three, the other two being the heavy-drinker but sweet Yuccan and the pleasantly odd Chika, despises her father for leaving them and their mother for another woman so many years ago. Yet, she currently is dating a man whose wife is suffering from clinical depression. When she is reminded by one of her sisters that her actions reflect that of their father's, she becomes frightful, albeit confused. She has not even seen her father in fifteen years. Sometimes almost miraculously, we always seem to remain close to our family, no matter how far away in time and space we try to run. Most of the time it is inexplicable. Hirokazu Kore-eda's Our Little Sister is layered with the genealogy of a broken family, in which the narrative reveals itself through the struggles between generations in which the generations, themselves, are not at all straightforward. Like driftwood from a destroyed ship, this family has been shattered and been drifting apart ever since, yet they all still come from the same boat. The only point of togetherness is situated in the three sisters, whose living arrangement resides in their old house that use to be their grandparents, described often as a 'girl's dormitory.' Pictures of these grandparents hang on the wall: Can they see that these sisters are left to their own devices without any parental guidance? These portraits are manifestations of memories and the house is a structure full of familial memories, where the sisters make food their mother or father taught them so long ago. They even continue to make plum wine their grandparents began long ago, going so far as keeping the first batch of wine made to use for special occasions. Kore-eda makes use of the setting, with the creaky wood and profuse vegetation growing all around, to convey ancestral resonance as the sisters try to continue with their lives, maybe get married, and maybe finally move out. When news arrives that their father has died, they go to the funeral in the town of which he lived. There, they meet their younger sister, well, half-sister. In fact, she is the younger sister from the woman their father left them for. She is shy, reserved, but mature in conversation. Her name is Suza, and her mother at the time of father's death is not the same mother she was born from. Like her older sisters, she has experienced severance. Sachi, who has assumed the role of a surrogate mother to her sisters, ambitiously asks Suza to come back and live with them, immediately treating her like a little sister, ignoring the fact that they have different mothers. Thus, the three sisters strive to convince Suza that she belongs with them, that a past of infidelities wrought upon by adults cannot take away a sisterhood of understanding. Kore-eda treats his female stars with a graceful levity, allowing the sisters to maintain an independent sense of determining optimism among the cynical context of family breakdowns as well as their more contemporary problems with their love lives. Most of the film has all four sisters with the frame of the camera, and it is through calculated blocking of the actresses that each of their distinct personalities constantly reverberate between one another. All of them perform well and perform even better together. Many of the scenes hide much of their functionality in regards to plot with dialogue that is beautifully banal, as if there is no notion of a film with a story being made. But, what makes each of these scenes, and each of these shots with all the sisters present, so intriguing, is just watching each of them react to the other organically. Kore-eda's cinematographer, Mikiya Takimoto, plays with foreground and background elements often as well as depth of field. He takes advantage of many moments where people populate the scene, and important movements, gestures, or reactions happen either in the background, extreme foreground, or even out of focus. In one instance, when the older sisters' estranged mother arrives at the house she ran away from fourteen years ago, she has a fight with Sachi over selling the house, the latter furious to the idea. Yet, the scenes intensity is depicted more with the people watching such an argument, even though they are out of focus. It all makes sense; the conflict between Sachi and her mother might seem like a grudge just between them, but familial conflicts are never contained, they send shock waves so powerful yet so subtle. The other members internalize their dismay, maybe holding grudges for later use. If those moments express the film's most intense conflicts, even with subtlety, then the rest of the film hovers between the mundane and the revelatory. The women of this film see each other as priorities, tightening their bond even though their tarnished past and social norms tell them otherwise. They form a sisterhood of love, care, and respect. With every moment of light beauty, happiness, and comedy comes a moment of slow-burning tragedy. Feelings conjure of worthlessness, childhoods removed, and normalcy vanished. There are never really any moments of climatic expression, save for maybe one. But maybe that is because how we would traditionally identify dramatic change is something too obvious, far more externalized than reality. The tragedies and triumphs of these four women is shown between the looks and smiles and concerned eyes they give to each other, not in a performative exhibition for an unseen audience. And that is fine by me. With such naturalism, a comforting placidity commands the flow of the film, opening itself up for a warming empathy. Lastly, it must be said that this film is filled with sympathetic characters. One could easily take this as an example of flatness, a disregard for drama by not giving us characters to root against. Yet, maybe we shouldn't think of looking upon other humans as a dichotomy of who to like and who to despise. Our Little Sister is a decent film in the best ways possible. It's decency is its profundity. An elderly couple lives in a small house nestled between two small mountains somewhere in South Korea. There is very little civilization surrounding them. A gentle river wraps itself along the sides of the property and sometimes a mist hovers between. This couple has been married for seventy-six years. Jo, the husband, is ninety-eight years old while Kang is eighty-nine years of age. Most peculiarly, I wonder how much water has passed by that house since they have been together, how many flowers bloomed and died, how many tiny insects crawled on leaves only to wither away soon enough.
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