Last weekend, I caught up on a few documentaries I’d been wanting to see. First was Robert Greenwald’s 2004 film, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (Wikipedia). Fox news is so obviously right-leaning that it’s sad anyone needs a documentary to point the fact out. But people still watch it, quite a few of them, in fact. And, worse yet, some of them actually believe it is journalism. This film should help, as some of the practices utilized by Fox and nicely documented here are impossible to defend. Journalistic integrity took a holiday the day that network was founded.
I have long loved Errol Morris‘ work. So I had been eager to see The Fog of War (2003) for some time. It did not disappoint. Far from it. It’s among his best work. And that’s saying something, as Morris raises the bar with almost every venture. Even his commercials are good. You wouldn’t think a film centered on Robert S. McNamara could be interesting, let alone moving. But it was for me. And, though McNamara never comments on the current conflict or the current administration, the film is as timely as ever.
Morris’ films are always based around interviews. And, like other documentary film makers, he makes extensive use of archival footage. He also has some very artful camera work in the transitions between the interview segments. The interview segments themselves are always revealing. And he uses subtle differences in shot angle, even in these segments, to keep up interest and emphasize the seriousness of certain pronouncements. He brings a real concern for the filmic aspects of the documentary.
And because I’d just seen the master at work, following up Morris’ film with Blindspot: Hitler’s Secretary was a tremendous let down. For, even though the story related by Traudl Junge, one of Hitler’s private secretaries during the war, is interesting, the framing of it is anything but. Anyone with a camcorder could have shot this. There’s no attention to detail. The editing is laughable, as are the few efforts at postmodern technique (in this case, a few shots of Junge watching, and sometimes commenting on, other bits of her own interview that, for us at least, is still in progress). Still, I can’t pan it entirely. Her story does have a genuine human interest and gives us one more glimpse, from a different angle, into the Third Reich.