Sunday, July 19, 2020
10:00 AM |
The Film Meme No. 85
[85th of 100]. I never thought of including documentaries in this list, because that felt like another list deserving of its own spotlight. Truth to tell, my favorite documentaries number beyond a hundred, and I actually do have a stronger preference for non-fiction. I thought that including this tradition of cinema in this list might eclipse narrative film altogether -- but nearing the tail-end of this endeavour, I've realized what a taxing, if also rewarding, exercise this has been, and I'm not sure I have the wherewithal to do the same for documentary films. And so I am placed in the most excruciating of positions: to choose just one favorite among the many. I could go the classic route and choose
Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat or
Nanook of the North or
Man With a Movie Camera. Or I could go for the iconic and choose
Grey Gardens or
Woodstock or
Salesman or the
Up Series. Or I could go to the poetic and choose
Baraka or
Nostalgia for the Light or
Microcosmos or
Aquarela or
Last and First Men or
Honeyland. Or I could go for the strange and choose
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On or
Gates of Heaven or
Catfish. Or I could go for the historical and choose
Last Days of Vietnam or
The Act of Killing or
The Kingmaker or
Batas Militar or
The Missing Picture or
Night & Fog or
Shoah. Or I could go for the scientific and choose
A Brief History of Time or
Aliens of the Deep. Or I could go for personal chronicles of uncommon or disrupted lives and choose
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty or
Sunday Beauty Queen or
Capturing the Friedmans or
Stories We Tell or
Three Identical Strangers. Or I could go for hero-making biographies such as
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City or
RBG or
I Am Not Your Negro. Or I could go for the observational and choose
At Berkeley or
Ex Libris: The New York Public Library. Or I could go for the controversial and go for
Olympia or
Mondo Cane or
The Thin Blue Line or
Roger & Me or
Deliver Us From Evil or
Jesus Camp or
An Inconvenient Truth or
Waltz With Bashir or
Hail, Satan? or
The Terrorists or
The Aristocrats or
The Cove or
Super Size Me. Or I could go for the delightful and choose
Spellbound or
Wordplay or
Kedi or
March of the Penguins. Or I could go for the suspenseful and choose
Free Solo. Or I could go for the intellectual and choose
Derrida or
Public Speaking or
Regarding Susan Sontag. I love films about gay concerns, and I could choose
The Celluloid Closet or
Paris is Burning or
Before Stonewall or
The Times of Harvey Milk or
Tickled or
The Case Against 8. I love films about artists in pursuit of their craft, and I could easily go for
Jiro Dreams of Sushi or
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse or
City of Gold or
Exit Through the Gift Shop or
Style Wars or
Helvetica or
De Palma or
Everything is Copy: Nora Ephron, Scripted and Unscripted or
Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold or
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael or
Waking Sleeping Beauty or
Seymour: An Introduction or
Cutie and the Boxer or
Hitchcock/Truffaut or
The Price of Everything or
Shirkers or
Unzipped or
Madonna: Truth or Dare or
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry or
Spielberg or
Six by Sondheim or
Ballet 422 or
Pina or
Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel or
Jodorowky's Dune or
Man on Wire or
Becoming Mike Nichols or
The Kid Stays in the Picture or
Mori: The Artists Habitat or
Bill Cunningham New York or
The First Monday in May or
Finding Vivian Maier or
The Decline of Western Civilization or
The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness or
Tim's Vermeer or
Faces, Places or
Filmworker or
Crumb. Do you see what I mean? It's an impossibility, so I'll choose something that I've found myself perpetually delighted by even in repetition -- and if you've noticed, I have a particular weakness for documentaries about artistry and creatives. And I've chosen the 2009 documentary by R.J. Cutler about the making of Vogue Magazine's heftiest, and most sought after, monthly issue. I love the film because it is ostensibly a work documentary following American Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour -- clearly her personal response to
The Devil Wears Prada, the fictional expose, in book and subsequent film adaptation, that dared bear her alleged workplace toxicity. But in following their subject around as she goes through the grind of finishing the most demanding issue of the year, the film finds itself becoming a treatise about staying true to one's artistic vision under the heels of pedestrian and commercial concerns. It makes that turn when it discovers editor Grace Coddington, the perfect foil to Wintour and her struggles to juggle the demands of the bottomline, editing just enough of the artistry to populate the meager page counts with, and staying right ahead or on top of the cutting edge of fashion's many dicta. It is clearly not an enviable job, and I can understand the icy stance Wintour puts on, perhaps as shield to the hard editorial decisions she has to make. But this also makes out Coddington as the free-spirit art director, always fighting for more pages for her truly remarkable fashion photos, and always trying to subvert the fashion world's expectations. [On hearing that Wintour has ordered the pot belly of the film's cameraman -- who was used as minor subject in one of the magazine's approved photo shoots -- be airbrushed, Coddington quickly calls the art department for it to refrain from doing so. "We need this to be realistic," she tells the camera.] That push and pull between Wintour and Coddington is all the more interesting because it is not really antagonistic, but more of a strange kind of complementary. As Coddington would confess to the camera: "She knows how to push me, and I know how to push her." The film also has a special allure for me because it is also a story of journalism -- magazine-making is a very special niche -- and it has allowed me a sobering look into the hard work of creating those glossy pages. It informs me above all that the primary qualification of a good editor is really singular vision-keeping. I once worked for an editor who was too timid, and lacked a strong editorial voice: her way of managing her staff was to take in everyone's suggestions and ideas without really processing if they worked together. The resulting publication was a terrible hodgepodge that defied description. This film taught me the fine balance between editorial firmness and artistic flight. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: artists, documentaries, fashion, film, journalism, magazines
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