Amy
I found this doc about Amy Winehouse to be incredibly moving. What a tragic tale about a girl who just couldn't get the support she needed. Many heroic people tried to help her, others failed her miserably and some just preyed upon her talent. She just didn't have the time to mature enough to act as her own savior.
Amy uses so much actual footage, either home movies or from her many interviews and performances. It really allows you to feel as if you are getting to know this girl as you watch. It is a very intimate doc in that way.
I find I watch docs like horror films these days. I sit on my couch and scream at the TV, "Amy! Don't get back with that boyfriend! He's so bad for you!" But it never feels good to be proven right. I think I need a good slasher film about now. It will cheer me up!
Look of Silence
The follow up to The Act of Killing, this year's nominee, Look of Silence has more about the mass killings that happened in Indonesia. We hear again from the brutal murderers including their gloating, celebrations and jubilant reenactments. But this time the filmmaker is accompanied by a young man whose brother, Ramli, was killed. It is painful and interesting to watch him investigate these murderers and then confront them and their families.
It makes you question what you know about humanity and how we process right and wrong. It makes you wonder how the fragile notion of civilization actually succeeds in keeping us from killing each other in large numbers all of the time. And it contains my favorite sentence spoken in any movie I have seen this year:
"Let's all get along like the military dictatorship taught us."
It feels like a dangerous doc to have made, at times. While I am grateful for the lessons, I didn't enjoy watching these.
Doc Shorts
A Girl in the River - Hey, did you know that "honor killings" are common in Pakistan? That's when girls are killed for bringing dishonor to their families! And as long as the surviving family members "agree" or are forced to forgive the murderers in court, there is no penalty!
Chau, Beyond the Lines - Hey, did you know there are camps to house all of the horribly deformed and disabled children whose parents were exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War? And it is highly unusual for them to have any kind of normal life at all?
Last Day of Freedom - Hey, did you know that because they didn't even recognize PTSD as a thing that needed treatment after Vietnam that this one guy's brother struggled with mental illness and flashbacks until he mistakenly tried to hide from bombers in a woman's home and then killed her trying to keep her quiet so they wouldn't be found by the V.C.? He never got any help, instead he got the death penalty. But, I'm sure there have been more cases like this than just this one!
Body Team 12 - Hey, did you know that there were whole teams devoted to removing dead bodies from homes during the Ebola outbreak in Liberia? They spent all day, every day risking their lives by suiting up and removing thousands of infected dead and taking them to crematoriums? Sometimes the families fought them because they dearly wanted to bury their beloved departed but you can't do that during and Ebola outbreak!
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah - Hey, did you know that the filmmaker of Shoah, Claude Lanzmann almost destroyed his life by working for 15 years on a film about the holocaust? He pretended to be a neutral historian so that he could get close to Nazis and listen to them matter-of-factly discuss their atrocities.
I didn't know any of these things. And I need several strong drinks now.
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