Unbridled outrage and the lack of conclusions

Since we're no longer members of the Michigan Theater, we've been seeing fewer films, as you might expect. So when the Oscar nominations were announced the other day, I decided I/we should try to catch up on a few things. We've seen four of the ten Best Picture nominees but had seen none of the documentary feature films, so I figured we'd start there. I'll cover the first four (The Perfect Neighbor, The Alabama Solution, Mr. Nobody Against Putin and Come See Me in the Good Light) here. The fifth, Cutting Through Rocks, is only available on the Sundance Channel so I'm not sure when we might get a chance to see that.

The Perfect Neighbor- This one was about the killing of Ajike Owens in Ocala, FL in 2023. Susan Lorincz was Owens' neighbor who complained constantly about Owens' children and the children of other neighbors playing near her apartment. Those complaints included repeated calls to the Marion County sheriff. On June 2, 2023, Lorincz allegedly assaulted some of the children by hurling objects at them and calling them names. When Owens came across the street and knocked on her door to protest that behavior, Lorincz shot her through the locked door, killing her. Lorincz later cited Florida's "stand your ground" law as an explanation for her behavior. Public protests followed swiftly and Lorincz was eventually convicted of manslaughter, among other charges, and given 25 years. The film is yet another tragic example of basic racism and the idiocy of these so-called "self-defense" laws that allow our gun-happy society to exercise their "rights" to kill other people. But the fascinating thing about the presentation is that the vast majority of the film is comprised of the sheriff's officers' bodycam footage, as well as internal cameras at their HQ. Those bodycams give us insight as to their views on the absurdity of the situation (frequently walking away from visits to the neighborhood muttering about how the only one causing problems is Lorincz) but also to how they're basically unable to do anything about a person who is clearly not stable (she's arrested during the film for destroying the gate of a local business that had been closed on the area where she'd illegally parked her truck) but isn't doing anything that would enable them to either act directly or, at the very least, find some mental health resources for her that might help her situation (if those even exist at that level in the state of Florida.) It's on Netflix.

The Alabama Solution- should leave any decent person with a fine sense of outrage (similar to what you should be feeling over events in Minnesota these days.) It's about the systematic mistreatment within and injustice of the correctional system in Alabama, which basically serves as those of many states do, which is the perpetuation of slavery under another name (i.e. unpaid labor by prisoners who are systematically denied any genuine case review for release.) What makes that worse are the number of deaths that take place in that state's system that are simply waved away by the public (there are a couple great moments when the local shock jocks are heard dismissing an inmate being beaten to death by guards with essentially: "Shouldn't'a been there in the first place!") and which leaves families no recourse as to accountability or even explanations as to why their loved ones end up never returning from behind bars. It's infuriating, but really well done, since most of the footage comes from cell phone recordings from devices smuggled into the prisons (by guards, so they can make more money, as they are also systematically underpaid and abused by the system.) Some of the best parts are in recorded conversations with Robert Earl Council and Melvin Ray, two prisoners who are the leaders of the Free Alabama Movement, which the Alabama dept. of corrections despises because it exposes their perfidy in the most basic of ways. It's on HBO. 

Mr. Nobody Against Putin- This one starts out far more lighthearted than the first two, as it's initially presented as the story of a young man, Pavel Talankin, who is the videographer and event coordinator for the largest school in Karabash, a town of 15,000 people in the Ural mountains, once solely famous for being the most polluted town in all of Russia, thanks to the local copper mining and smelting operation. (See Mark Twain's Roughing It for a detailed description of just how awful copper mining- and mining, in general -really is.) Pavel loves his job... until the invasion of Ukraine begins and his job and that of the teachers becomes one of spoon-feeding propaganda to their students to encourage them not just to support the invasion, but also to indoctrinate them to the idea of fighting for Russia being their highest possible mission in life. It becomes an hour-and-a-half excursion into the concept of "patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel." It's also told entirely through Pavel's equipment, both at the school and his home and reveals not only his personal misgivings, but also how he starts to translate those objections into actions at the school (At one point, where the school is now required to start each day with a march through the hallway to the Russian national anthem, he replaces it with The Star-Spangled Banner.) Eventually, his actions attract the attention of higher-ups and things begin to get really dark in this small town. Once again, the primary emotional reaction of most watching should be some level of outrage, followed by shaking one's head at the stupidity of it all. It's on Apple TV.

Come See Me in the Good Light- And, finally, what is easily the most personal of those presented and what may be the best of them, as well. This film is the story of Colorado's poet laureate, Andrea Gibson and their wife, Megan Falley, as they struggle with Andrea's cancer. It follows them through treatment, the changing tides of their progress and regression and how it changes Andrea's outlook on their work, their relationships, and their life. Having grown up in a strict Baptist household, Andrea's poetry orbits the topics of identity, gender, and self-determination (and the emotional impact of all of those) pretty regularly. In the early 00s, they began performing as a spoken word artist and became something of a rock star in the poetry scene, but retreated from all of that after their diagnosis. Neither Andrea nor Megan are inhibited by the presence of (plain, old regular) cameras and so this ends up being a surprisingly intimate depiction of two people struggling with the concepts of mortality while still trying to maintain their normally hopeful (Megan) and determined (Andrea) demeanor about life and everything in it. When it came to a close without displaying what the resolution of Andrea's struggle was, Tricia complained that we didn't find out "what happened." My response was that because this was a film about life, whether they had died or not wasn't relevant. The film had shown what they wanted and that was life and everything in it that was to be appreciated and sometimes endured. It's also on Apple TV.

Too bright for a dirge - 2025 documentary shorts

There was an interesting dichotomy in this collection, in that two were about music and three were about death in one form or another. A full house of contrasts, although there is certainly music about death and if the first selection had been about children playing Mozart, I definitely would have made a reference to the Requiem. This collection was among the best we've seen, I think, as none of them failed to get their message across and all of them were worth the time spent, even if one did run a little long (for a short.)

Instruments of a Beating Heart- The opener started us off on a (ahem) high note, with a presentation of Japanese first graders about to move on to second grade and being given the task of performing Beethoven's Ode to Joy for the incoming class of new first graders. If that sounds like quite the task for kids that young, you're not alone. It was a good example of the standards set by the Japanese educational system and what many Americans see as hallmarks of Japanese society (elegance, pressure, achievement, determination) for good or ill. The central focus was one young girl, Ayame, who first aspired to the drum and then to the cymbal for their performance and fell short of the needed diligence to produce what their teacher was asking, only to be encouraged by him, her classmates, and another teacher to reach the level that all of them were striving for. It's something that sung to both my musical and socialist hearts about the cooperation and tolerance among humanity to bring more literal joy out of our daily existence than the spontaneous frivolity of children would otherwise produce. It was also just this side of unbearably cute in every scene and moment, not least for the eagerness displayed by the children to come to grips with a project that they likely didn't quite understand the scope of, but were constantly assured that they were capable of doing. It was an incredibly positive and entertaining story.

Incident- Of course, the next entry was one enormous pile of outrage and cynicism that wiped away all of the joy and brightness that its predecessor had introduced. It's the story of the murder of Harith "Snoop" Augustus by Chicago police in 2018, told entirely through body- and surveillance cameras. When Augustus is first accosted and then assaulted by police for no reason whatsoever, he attempts to escape and is gunned down. Watching the police, from the probationary officer who shot him to lieutenants scheming, prevaricating, and excusing in an attempt to cover up the fact that multiple officers had committed crimes ranging from simple assault and unlawful detention to second degree murder in the space of a couple minutes and then, of course, committed several other crimes in an attempt to cover it up was just a reminder of both the level of violence that is tolerated by society's "protectors" and their near-absolute authority in escaping the very justice that they're nominally responsible to uphold. This was, by far, the best production of the five we saw, as the screen was split into two, three, or four parts to show the progression of the incident from every angle available and even following some of the police away from the scene of the crime. That multi-perspective depiction also put on full display the power disparity between the normal citizens that came to ask questions of their "protectors" and the indifference of the latter to that inquisition. The film lacked the narrative style of most of the other entries, but the technical excellence and the power of the simple message it delivered made it a strong favorite for me (which means, of course, that it won't win.)

I Am Ready, Warden- Continuing the theme of death, we came to the case of John Henry Ramirez, who was convicted of the stabbing murder of Pablo Castro outside the convenience store where the latter worked in 1984 in Corpus Christi, TX. After being caught four years later, Ramirez was placed on death row and the film was about his last few days and how he was dealing with what he deemed his final release from prison, as well as how Pablo's son, Aaron, 14 at the time of his father's death, was confronting it, as well. The situation was brought to a tipping point when the local DA, Mark Gonzalez, tried to withdraw the death warrant for Ramirez after Gonzalez changed his mind about the morality of the death penalty. It was a careful examination of both the ethical situations involved in the murder, the conviction, and the impending execution, as well as the emotions that suffused all of those. The film handled those ethical questions with a very light touch, which is always the most effective method, IMO. As a death penalty opponent, I'm also quite sympathetic to the tacit idea of "justice" needing to be meted out to the perpetrators of heinous crimes; not least the ones they freely admit committing and to which they agree they probably deserve the harshest punishment, as in the case of Ramirez. Of course, given that region of Texas and the predilection of everyone involved to invoke Christianity into these matters, I couldn't help but regularly think of Deuteronomy: "Vengeance is mine" (saith the Lord...)

The Only Girl in the Orchestra- Returning to our theme of music, this film was about the life and career of Orin O'Brien, a double bassist who was also the first woman to play as part of the New York Philharmonic; hired by Lenny Bernstein himself. Like the first film, it was an incredibly positive piece about a woman who wouldn't let anything slow her down in any way, including the trappings of fame that came with her standout role as "the only girl." It was a great story of determination and passion for music while constantly professing the desire to not be in the spotlight and to embody the "support" role that she says that the double bass occupies in that form of music. The film was produced and directed by her niece, Molly, who regularly encourages Orin to wax rhapsodic on what she's accomplished, to which Orin responds by waving away any and all platitudes. It's a remarkable expression of humility by someone not only highly intelligent and clearly talented, but also driven by the memory of her Hollywood parents, whose careers took a downturn in the second half of their lives and left them both feeling unfulfilled. Orin, 87 at the time of filming and retired from playing (but still teaching!), regularly emphasizes that she had done pretty much everything she wanted to do in her professional career, but still felt the urge to keep going because of the happiness that that success generated. To her, it was about passing on that passion to her students and those around her. While it felt like this one ran a little long, given the relative lightness of its subject matter in comparison to the others, it was still really enjoyable.

Death by Numbers- And, finally, the denouement of death. This is a film based on the journals of Sam Fuentes, one of the survivors of the Parkland high school shooting, and how she was processing what had been happening to her while the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was involved in a four-month long sentencing hearing to determine whether he would be given life without parole or the death penalty. A talented writer with a poetic turn of phrase, Fuentes' running narration of the events and her perception of them, as well as her victim's statement at the trial, delivered a message as powerful as any other that we saw tonight. I also thought that its placement as the finale was yet another statement about the current political climate, given Cruz's affection for the ideas expressed by both the historical Nazis and the ones currently controlling the US government. The fact that Fuentes has been attending a class about the history of the Holocaust while Cruz, his AR-15 emblazoned with swastikas, fired through the window is a discombobulating coincidence and something of a cosmic statement on the absurdity of US gun laws, the casual shrug with which yet another school shooting is accepted on a weekly basis, and the fact that bigots like Cruz have not only perpetuated both of those farces but are now in control of the government. In an ironic twist, the vengeful reaction of other bigots like Ron DeSantis to the result of Cruz's sentencing again brings us back to the ethics of vengeance and the question of how important it is to redress the crimes after they've happened or try to change our society before they occur.

Again, my favorite, simply for the way it was produced, is Incident. However, I think both the timeliness and the emotional impact of Death by Numbers will hand it the statue; fully deserved. So, those are the shorts for this year. It was probably the best total batch we've seen in some time, with no single glaring failure in any category. Now to track down four of the five feature-length docs that we haven't seen.

Music, books, living and building: 2024 Oscar-nominated documentary shorts

It's Oscar short season and we ended up seeing two categories in one day again. The second was Documentary, but that's the one I'm going to cover first because Live Action, collectively, was the better category this year.

Nâi Nai and Wài Pó- This was director Sean Wang's film about his paternal and maternal grandmothers, who live together to support each other, as their respective husbands had passed years ago. It's a very simple presentation about how they go about their daily lives; morning exercise and then activities of various sorts, like gardening or a day for dancing to music. It was quite funny and very cute seeing the two of them dress up in a variety of costumes which they freely admitted was because their grandson was there with a camera. It was also remarkably insightful on their polar opposite views on life, where Wài Pó, who is 83 said she felt like she was still 20, while Nâi Nai who is 94, said she felt like she was 100 years old. That perspective included their thoughts on the future, where the latter said that she would be fine with just another year or two of life, while the former bemoaned the fact that she had to die at some point when she clearly felt there was so much living to do. That extended to their activities, in which Wài Pó took the lead on thinking about trying new things, while Nâi Nai was content to flip through photo albums and phone numbers, reminiscing about the friends she'd lost and the good times she'd had with them. It was a great encapsulation of both elderly life and life, in general.

The Barber of Little Rock- This was the story of Arlo Washington, a Little Rock, AR entrepreneur who chose to follow the path of his mother, whose life was cut short at 31, and devote his life to work toward building and supporting his community. To that end, he started a barber college and used the money from that to begin People's Trust, a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI; a non-profit bank), which provides micro and small loans to people in personal need or to begin businesses in the "south of the highway" section of Little Rock. It's a great depiction of life that much of (White) America never sees and almost immediately had me kicking myself for not still being involved in progressive politics, as these were the people and scenarios that I saw all the time when I was and whom still really need help. Arlo is an incredibly forward and positive thinker and the genuine emotion that frequently overwhelmed his clients when they finally found someone who would not only help them but actually listen to them was quite telling. I saw that frequently in my previous activity and it's a measure of both how much people in the "wealthiest nation in the world" still need help (especially if they're not White) and the humanity of those who make it their purpose to help them and, as Arlo frequently states, to grow the community as a whole. This was my second favorite among the offerings.

Island in Between- This was S. Leo Chiang's story about Kinmen, the small island right off the coast of mainland China which is a territory of the Republic of China (aka Taiwan.) As such, it was both the initial target of the People's Republic of China intentions to reclaim the territory it regards as its own and a heavily-militarized outpost that the Taiwanese regard as the first line of defense against the Red Menace. Chiang, who is originally from Kinmen, spent many years in the US, and is now a resident of Taipei, spends some time regaling us with the history of the island and the ardent propaganda against the looming enemy and how Kinmen was intended to be the launching point for the retaking of the mainland for the Chinese people and the destruction of the vile communists. Given that relations between the two nations have much improved since the 1950s, no one really thinks about that much anymore and, honestly, the film kind of reflects that neglect. It was a pretty rote depiction of the situation then and the tepid situation now and this was, by far, the least interesting of the nominated films.

The ABCs of Book Banning- This film, directed by Sheila Nevins, the head of MTV Documentary films, is obviously extremely timely. The most notable thing about it to me was that MTV still exists in any way, shape or form. I say that largely because I knew everything that was depicted here. Every time they put up another book cover that was promptly crossed with a glaring red "BANNED", "RESTRICTED", or "CHALLENGED", all I did was nod my head and think: "Yeah, I knew that already." I was clearly not the target audience. I also wondered why the font and format of those glaring red titles changed two-thirds of the way through the film. However, the real upside of the show was the collection of interviews with 7-10-year-olds who are the students of the schools where these books are being banned. To a person, all of them reacted with confusion and dismay at the idea that these stories and this information was being denied to them, especially when they learned exactly what these books were about. For example, And Tango Makes Three, a book about a penguin chick with two fathers (a situation that did happen at the Bronx Zoo and does happen in the wild) has been banned or challenged in multiple districts because it draws attention to the idea of same sex marriage; an appalling thought for the ignorant and/or religiously fanatical among society. The children presented with this book and others usually responded with "Why would they ban a book that just tells the story of people being who they are?" That, of course, is an extremely modern attitude which should give most hope for the future and the film overall does that. It just wasn't particularly new to me so, while I liked it, it's definitely a story I've heard before.

The Last Repair Shop- Right up front, this was my favorite documentary of the evening. That was because not only was it about music, but also because I didn't even know this program existed and was happily surprised that it did, especially in the environs of Los Angeles which, like many big cities, seemed like it had begun to phase out cultural activities for public school students. The program is one in which musical instruments are provided to those students and repaired for them when they inevitably encounter the problems that all crafted devices do. If it had just been about the repair shop for instruments, it wouldn't have been as interesting as it was because they also delved into the rather interesting characters who operate the shop and their backgrounds which led them to becoming experts in the repair and maintenance of brass, strings, woodwinds, and pianos. They include a single mother immigrant from Mexico, a man who came out in the early stages of the Gay Power movement in San Francisco, a former fiddle player for the Bodie Mountain Express, and an Armenian refugee from Azerbaijan. All of their stories are interesting and provide context for how they ended up assisting the musical dreams of children across the spectrum of LA existence. Needless to say, the story (ahem) sang to me and, for once, I think my favorite is also the clear favorite for the Oscar this year.

Next up is Live Action.

All the P.A.I.N. and the anguish

I didn't realize that it had been over a month since the last time I posted here. That's a combination of factors, including having nothing to see at the Michigan Theater, seeing things again (Everything Everywhere All At Once), or seeing things that just weren't impressive enough to inspire a reflection (The Quiet Girl.) But tonight we watched something that we saw a trailer for at the theater, but ended up seeing on HBO. It was the documentary about photographer, Nan Goldin, her struggle with oxycontin addiction and the organization she created to bring attention to the Sackler family who profited from the drug and its casualties, and much more about her life: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. It was what you'd expect out of any serious documentary: informative, insightful, pertinent, but also harrowing and disturbing.

The film highlights the criminality of Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, but it also exposes the basic criminal situation of the health system in the United States, where a company nominally producing products for the care of patients, instead is motivated almost solely by profit, in true Reaganite fashion. This is brought into focus when Nan talks about her initial addiction to oxycontin, which dropped her out of the dynamic community that she'd become a part of as a creative person in the neighborhoods of south Manhattan, and into rehab. When she emerged from her treatment and tried to reconnect with that community, she said: "They were all gone." as the AIDS epidemic had ripped through the LGBTQ circles that she had been a part of and the indifference of the medical community, until there was a profit to be made, and the ignorance or contempt of the general public left so many to die. This coincides with the first story that the film begins with, which is that of Nan's sister, Barbara, who was struggling with her own sexuality and was committed to multiple mental health institutions by her parents as a consequence.

The story of Nan's (and Barbara's) life is one of an attempt to make connections. Deprived of emotional contact at home (something that also troubled her sister), Nan sought out communities that she could become a part of and which, in turn, would embrace her. This led to some extensive drug use, which is what placed her in the central quandary that gives the film its premise, but also sex work, which she had never previously spoken of, and all of the issues that come with that which are, again, often made up of an indifferent or contemptuous public and a willingness to look down upon anything that it doesn't implicitly understand or accept as "normal." Nan, in contrast, made her career by creating images of people as they are; different, alive, human, which is what Barbara was and would have remained. On a technical level, it's an interesting departure from many documentaries in that the vast majority of the footage and images are from Nan's work, as she photographed the life around her, but also filmed the protests that her organization P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) conducted to expose the Sackler family's connection to the art world, leading to many museums and galleries dissociating with the family and rejecting their money, a large portion of which they had siphoned from Perdue when the lawsuits over its products began, before it eventually declared bankruptcy. So it's not director, Laura Poitas, just filming the aftermath of the original topic, but Nan's work, in the moment, that makes up the bulk of the film.

This is a very personal film that doesn't present many jarring or urgent moments, but instead provides a two-hour look at a very long and varied life and the constant dark clouds that hovered over much of it from the point when Nan was 11 years old. It's a story of perseverance, both in the face of personal foibles and corporate ones, and it provides a fair amount of perspective from a very different standpoint from what my life has been. On the other hand, it does provide one note that neatly coincides with my experience, when Nan mentions that her parents were ill-suited to be parents, but instead had kids because "that's what you did then.", which is right in line with my own experience. It's fairly long for a documentary, but remains compelling throughout and is definitely worth the time, if only for the straightforward examination of personal trauma that she reveals and her determination to come out the other side of it.

Wars to walruses - 2022 Documentary shorts

It's that time of year again and we'll be seeing all of the Oscar-nominated short films over the next three days. Like usual, it was a solid selection that didn't have any "bad" or misplaced selections, but there were a couple that I think elevated themselves above the rest.

How Do You Measure a Year?: I appreciate this one in principle but mostly for its social analysis contexts. Director Jay Rosenblatt decided to try to document the mental and emotional growth of his daughter, Ella, by asking her the same set of questions on her birthday every year from the age of two to the age of eighteen. While many have chosen to see this as a documentary about their changing relationship as she (and he) aged, I was much more interested in her sense of self-awareness and awareness of the world around her as she developed. I think my perspective may have been different if I'd actually had children of my own with the concern that many parents develop about how their kids will see them and whether their relationship of absolute devotion with a toddler may radically change with that of a teenager and an adult. My experience on a daily basis in that respect is solely with the teenager and adult stages, so I wasn't as taken with the cute or tender responses that Ella gave as a youngster, but I could see absolute parallels between the stages she displayed from the age of 13 onward with those that I'd seen in Tricia's daughter, including the same use of language (employing "like" before every three words at the age of 14; "I think, like, we're, like, fighting all the time, but we still, like, make up at the end...") and beginning to question the standards that are set before her. The most amusing point was when she had taken a shine to ASL at the age of nine which was, of course, completely absent by birthday #10. I think it was a good effort, if a bit simple when compared with the other four.

The Elephant Whisperers: While the story of this one was also relatively simple- a south Indian couple, Bomman and Bellli, tend to the health of a young elephant, Raghu, and others around him -what really came through for me was the old "film is a visual medium" angle. The cinematography of this one was excellent and was able to convey much of the story and the reality of their lives in Mudumalai National Park without any needed explanation, although both humans kept a running dialogue between themselves and their charges, Raghu and a later addition, Amma, so that we all knew the reasons for their respective involvement and how much the elephants meant to them. The camera took much time to examine the other sights of the park, including the everpresent gray langurs who were more than happy to help themselves to any food that the elephants weren't interested in eating. Probably the most interesting aspect to it was Bomman's insistence on speaking to Raghu as if the latter would understand him and, of course, he largely seemed to. Whether that was because of repetition or the fabled intelligence of the species is up for debate. You can't doubt their devotion to the animals in their care, though, and it's also open to question whether they looked on Raghu and Amma as beloved pets or beloved friends. I'm tempted to say the latter. Again, I really enjoyed the visuals of this one, even if the story itself was probably the thinnest of any of the available selections.

Stranger at the Gate: This was a very powerful story about a former Marine and veteran of the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan who learned to hate and fear Muslims and planned to act on those emotions by bombing the local Islamic center in his home town of Muncie, IN. It's a very straightforward depiction of learning to think of "the enemy" as subhuman in order to make it easier to commit violence upon them, only to have to return home and realize that "the enemy" are every bit as human as you are. Director Joshua Seftel had read Richard "Mac" McKinney's story in an Indiana newspaper years earlier, but decided he wanted to hear the side of the people that Mac had been intending to kill. His straightforward interviews with the Bahrami family, Jomo Williams, and Mac's ex-wife and daughter present a very crisp, documentary style that doesn't hinge on dramatic moments, but still provides both a level of tension and an excellent message of understanding from everyone involved. The visual storytelling is similar, in that it's presented in a very "investigative reporting" style but doesn't come with an agenda about anyone involved. Taking the time to interview the police who had become aware of Mac's plot was a really nice touch, as well. I was pretty much enthralled with this one and have it tagged as the eventual winner. More than any of the rest, this one is worth taking the half hour to absorb.

Haulout: This would probably be considered the most unusual of the offerings. Directors Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev arrived on an isolated beach in far northeastern Siberia when they were working on a documentary about the Chukchi people. There they discovered an equally-isolated marine biologist, Maxim Chakilev, who was studying walrus migration patterns and the impact that they're feeling from the lack of sea ice in the Arctic created by climate change. They decided to switch focus and stayed with him for the few weeks of his study, where they were completely hemmed in by almost 100,000 walruses and couldn't leave his tiny, ramshackle cabin. He was there to observe the walruses and they were there to observe him while they were all trapped together and you definitely get the mild claustrophobic sensation of being stuck there, but also the tragedy that has beset these creatures who are now all crashing into this beach, exhausted, because they have nowhere to rest on the open sea as they're accustomed to. They spend some time observing Chakilev, in turn, as he goes about both his work and simply existing in this distant corner of the world. No real dialogue occurs other than his taped reports (to be later transcribed) of what he's seeing and they don't bother to go into much detail, other than when he's stating the particulars of the corpses of the dozens of dead walruses left on the beach. They let the pictures tell the whole story, which was ideal in this circumstance.

The Martha Mitchell Effect: As one of the largely untold/misremembered aspects to the Watergate burglary and Richard Nixon's downfall, this was an interesting example of a mid-20th century case of political gaslighting. Former AG and Nixon campaign manager, John Mitchell's outspoken wife, Martha, was one of the first voices of outrage about the connections between the Watergate crimes and the White House. In a typically paranoid response, Nixon declared her Public Enemy #1 within his circle for a few months and tried to have her publicly discredited as "hysterical" and otherwise mentally ill. All of this story is told through archival footage from news programs and the later talk shows that Martha was interviewed on once everyone figured out that she had been telling the truth about the whole sordid affair. There are occasional quotes from various news figures involved at the time, both living (Connie Chung) and passed (Helen Thomas.) While I don't find myself particularly fascinated by rehashing Watergate yet again, it was interesting to see someone whom I'd only known as a minor detail in the whole event be revealed as someone that the media and public tried to ignore except as a source of entertainment, only to finally take her seriously for the couple years preceding her death, until eventually forgetting about her once they were past that. It's a sad commentary on the media's urge to flock to whatever is sensational at the moment, while looking askew at anyone who questions the propriety of what was going on in the august halls of Washington (New York Times, that's your cue...) I liked this one, even if the subject matter is a bit tired.

So, yeah, I think Stranger at the Gate was the runaway winner, both for technique and subject matter, but all of them were worth the time. Tomorrow: Live Action. (Still waiting for the "Unlive action" category.)

Three seeming greats that didn't resonate

I try to write about everything that we see at the Michigan Theater, as I made an unofficial promise to Larissa and Jaime that I would do so when we first picked up memberships and began regularly visiting four(?) years ago. Sometimes it takes me longer than others because I just don't feel what the writer, director, and actors are laying down. I recognize the level of their accomplishment, as we rarely see a genuinely bad film at the theater, but sometimes what I'm seeing, as entertaining as it may be, just doesn't resonate with me in the manner that usually inspires one of my wordy reviews. Between the four of us, we've seen all of the Best Picture nominees (Jaime and Larissa saw West Side Story and CODA, while Tricia and I saw King Richard and Nightmare Alley (two more that I will get around to soon); I think one of the four have only missed a couple more) and all three of those I'm writing about tonight are on those nomination lists; sometimes more than once. They are Flee, The Worst Person in the World, and Ascension.

Flee has actually been nominated three times (Best Animated Feature, Best Documentary, Best International Feature- Denmark) and there's little room to argue that it's a great film. It has a gripping and very relatable story, an appealing lead/narrator (Amin) who has gone on to great success in his life despite his intense period of trial, and was done using a smart form of animation. As a former comic guy, animation is always going to hold some degree of appeal to me and I think their comic-esque approach was a really smart choice for a lengthy story of this type. You can easily imagine the panel borders as the camera moves around and scenes shift. The opening scenes reminded me of the tragedy that the emergence of the mujahedeen wrought upon that country, as I remembered the pictures of Kabul University in 1980, with women freely attending, dressed as they like. The family fled Afghanistan for a variety of reasons, not least because their father was a government official, but Amin also knew that his sexuality could easily result in him being executed, and that identity is nicely woven into the story, rather than being presented as a glaring factor. But with all of that approbation, when I got home the night we saw it, my motivation was absent. As nice as Amin was, I didn't find anything about his personal perspective that was particularly interesting. With all of the other characters, including his siblings, strained through Amin's perspective, they also became little more than stand-ins, without any of the emotional feedback that you would get from "live actors", despite efforts by the animation crew to depict them in as much detail (facial expressions, etc.) as possible. I felt, perhaps, like there was nothing for me to hang my perspective on. It was an interesting story. It was presented well. There it is. That said, I would highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in the topic, animation, or simply a good film.

The Worst Person in the World has also been nominated for Best International Feature (Norway) and, like Flee, is also indisputably a great film. In contrast to the latter, Worst Person is redolent with characters whose emotions are written on their faces and whom convey them in the most normal, human manner possible. Indeed, this is a film about emotion and how it changes through life and how some of those changes are more understandable than others, even (often especially) by those feeling them. But after I saw it, I felt like I had nothing to add to it. We'd seen the film. It was good. There it is. The main character, Julie (Renate Reinsve) is, in turn, both appealing and frustrating and her surrounding cast, especially Elvind (Herbert Nordrum), have a level of magnetism that you find in the better actors. Indeed, given that this was her first feature film, Reinsve was kinda spectacular. Here's hoping for more. I also thought the story structure was interesting (divided into 12 "chapters"), if a little drawn out in the later stages. But one of the key decisions of the film, wherein Julie breaks off her long-time relationship with Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie) to pursue her lurking passion for Elvind, doesn't seem to have enough built up around it for the magnitude that it's supposed to have. Their final argument before she leaves, where she complains that "Sometimes I just want to have feelings about things-!" didn't have much buildup. There weren't any flashpoints where she was prevented from having those feelings, so I wondered why so much weight was being added to a situation that she'd been in multiple times before where she simply lost interest in whoever she was with and went off after someone else. As Jaime pointed out, it's possible that we missed some of the interplay in their conversations, as it's often difficult to pick up idioms and cultural cues from translations. (This is why my friend, Adoni, who teaches classics at OSU, taught himself to read French and German so he could read the original sources.) I don't think the lack of that story support was necessarily a weakness of the film. It could just be a weakness of my viewing of it. But it just didn't sing to me the way so many other films have. It was good and I would definitely recommend it, but I didn't have much to say about it.

Ascension has been nominated for Best Documentary. From watching the trailer, I was genuinely excited to see this film. This looked like a hard and involved examination of the impact of capitalism on the People's Republic of China. I expected a lot of stories from those involved about the ups and downs of the system and how they dealt with it; similar to One Child Nation. Instead, we took kind of a meandering path through a number of situations related to that cultural impact; from recruiting on street corners with company rules and "perks" to assembly lines for plastic gadgets to people training to be servants and bodyguards to the entertainment venues that none of these working people will be able to afford. Those, along with visual allusions to the waste created by this economic boom, in the form of plastic trash on the rivers to literal piles of bicycles sitting in a lot, present a film that, at first glance (as in the trailer), would seem to be an exposé of just what China has largely become. But that message really doesn't come across in that fashion, outside of some isolated moments in those factories where the pace of the work becomes both mind- and finger-numbing. There were far fewer sharp, emotional moments than I expected, perhaps partially because of the lack of direct input from most of the subjects. There were almost no direct interviews of people talking about their circumstances and the positive and/or negative aspects to them. I'm not sure if it's because director Jessica Kingdon was forbidden to have those conversations or if company and/or national policy prevented people from giving their opinion. Consequently, the pace of the film felt languid, where I had expected at least mildly frenetic. Kingdon seemed content to simply observe, rather than question (again, presuming that she wasn't forbidden from doing so.) Her observations were still interesting, but just didn't have the impact that I had been hoping for. The only reason I'd encourage others to see it is for the prospect of them coming away with something more than we did and telling me what I was missing.

So, in the end, good enough for a paragraph, but not the multiples that usually make up these posts. Having seen so much in the past two weeks, we might have hit a dry spell in what the theater is offering, so there may be some delay in the next missive that I'll probably try to fill with the two films mentioned above that we watched on HBO.

Short films, big packages - documentary, 2021

Unlike more artistically-driven categories, I've come to the conclusion over the years that documentaries are difficult to really get "wrong." I have seen some bad ones (or, really, just stopped watching them) but, by and large, most stories that have been picked for the long production schedules that most producers function under (usually involving searching for funding) are usually worth seeing. That's why it's kind of remarkable to see Netflix's continued presence in the category, as funding is, uh, not a problem with them and yet they still produce excellent work on the regular, as we saw tonight with three of the five nominees having been produced by the big, red N.

First up was Audible, which is about a group of students at Maryland's School for the Deaf. The primary focus was on Amaree McKenstry-Hall, a football player, and his friends within the squad, among the cheerleaders, and how he and the rest of their community struggled with the loss of a friend to suicide. The presentation of the film was actually innovative in that it was an aural film, but was still shot so that the hearing-impaired could get the full experience, with subtitles for spoken lines (the majority of communication was, as you might expect, in ASL), as well as background sounds (i.e. music, doors closing and other atmospheric sounds, etc.) We spent a good deal of time with Amaree and how he was dealing with the same problems that many teenagers have: uncertainty about relationships, lack of a father figure, dealing with defeat and other setbacks, and so on. The overriding complication in all of that, of course, is that he's deaf and will soon have to deal with "the outside world" as they call it, away from the "bubble" that his school provides for him. One of the more jarring moments was watching the parents of Amaree's unfortunate classmate, Teddy, be apparently still oblivious to the greater pressures that would have been created by taking him out of a school that helps him with his disability, away from his friends and support network, and away from his boyfriend, The result was all too predictable and seemingly obvious to everyone else in the community. As a whole, it was a really energetic and inspiring opening.

Following that was When We Were Bullies; a production by veteran documentarian, Jay Rosenblatt, about an event that took place on a Friday after school in his childhood in Brooklyn, and his attempt to find out if anyone else in his fifth grade class who participated in that event carried the same painful memories that he rediscovered when reminded of it, 50 years later. This was the most artistic of the films of the evening, as it utilized a great deal of animation centered around the class picture of his then-10-year-old compatriots. However, it still relied on actual events and many interviews with those who perpetrated the mass action of persecution against a single classmate, although Rosenblatt failed to get a full interview with the victim, who at least reassured Jay that he had gone on to have quite a satisfying life. It's an interesting examination of the casual cruelty of children and their similar susceptibility to herd instinct (e.g. driving out and scorning the "weak") that likewise drives many segments of adult society (especially the ones that have refused to grow up.) His successful pursuit of his still-living fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Bromberg, provided some evidence of the cultural blindness that may have propelled that behavior, as she suggests that all girls are catty and boys will be boys, so there's nothing to do about it, despite her own daughter having been bullied to the point where it may have contributed to her eventual suicide. Her dismissive opinion extended to his efforts, as she felt his film would be "tedious" to watch. I'm afraid she was quite wrong in that respect.

Next was Three Songs for Benazir, which was the shortest and least fleshed out of the evening. That's perhaps because not much more needed to be said, but when it comes to the incredibly complex topic of Afghans living in a displaced persons camp in Kabul and Shaista, a young man trying to become the first of his tribe to join the Afghan National Army in order to provide for his wife, Benazir, and their impending child, it seems like there's a lot of ground to cover. However, I appreciated that co-directors Elizabeth and Gulistan Mirazei covered the topic at all, albeit in a rather plain and direct fashion that most assume is the standard boilerplate tone of anything called a "documentary." The title comes from Shaista's habit of making up songs and singing them to his perpetually-giggling wife, which is a sweet, personal note amidst the uncertainty and chaos that still defines existence in Afghanistan, which can only be heightened by living in what has become a permanent temporary existence in the camps. There wasn't really any need for a narrator to assist the story of a person trying to get ahead in the world and taking the most obvious path ahead of him (fighting the Taliban) but also being told that he's not educated enough to participate and then being told that there are no resources to educate him. It's the self-defeating spiral that has often defined that traumatized nation's existence since 1980 and, despite that "boilerplate" approach leaving the film in the shadow of the more stylistic touches of the other four, I still found it both poignant and worthwhile.

The sledgehammer of the night, however, was Lead Me Home; not only because of its emotional impact but also because of the frustration it engendered. A broad examination of homelessness in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, the film sticks mostly to personal accounts from those afflicted, as well as those struggling to help them in the current housing crisis which, as one social worker mentions, is only going to get worse when the COVID rent abatements are finally lifted with seemingly no help from the government to save those people in danger of eviction. We go from tent city to tent city, in parks, alleyways, and on highway overpasses. Everywhere the story is the same: people eager to change their situation, but burdened by other problems (high cost of housing, low-paying jobs, addiction, psychiatric needs) that prevent them from "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps." Even when some are able to make progress, the combination of more than one of those factors is enough to pull them back into their plight. The most deeply felt moment was when one woman described the circumstances that caused her to flee her home and her abusive partner and how she had spent most of her time since then trying to pretend for her two children so that they wouldn't realize what their situation actually was and carry that stigma with them or reveal it to their peers and suffer the social consequences of it. Even worse was the side comment by a social worker helping a woman out of the abusive scenario she was living through in one of the camps: "I'm just one paycheck away from being in the tent right next to you." No decent society should allow this to become normal. This was the clear "winner" of the evening for me.

We wrapped up with The Queen of Basketball; the story of Lusia Mae Harris and her rise from the only family in a small town in Mississippi with a basketball hoop to leading Delta State University's newly-created women's basketball team to three straight national titles and being the only woman ever drafted by an NBA franchise (the New Orleans (now Utah) Jazz.) Lusia told her own story on camera, with the help of more archival footage than you'd initially expect existed, and did so with lot of winks at that camera. She knew that she was someone unusual, but carried so much humility that most of the time she wouldn't admit it. Among her notable moments was being the first woman to score in an NCAA women's basketball game and the first woman elected to the National Basketball Hall of Fame. But she was also rooted enough to have stepped away from the game and be proud of the six children she raised; all of them with a collection of doctorates and/or master's degrees and successful lives of their own. Despite the interest in the topic, the most entertaining part of the film was, without a doubt, Lusia herself, smirking at the audience who must be in on the joke, and making salient points about equality and opportunity for women without being aggressive about it for a second. It was an uplifting way to end, even if we later discovered that Lusia passed away in January and so never got to know that the story of her life had been nominated for yet another award.

So that's Oscar short season for another year, with pretty positive returns all around. If I were to pick my favorites, they'd be The Dress (live action), The Windshield Wiper (animation), and Lead Me Home (documentary), but I suspect that the winners will be different. Given that they won't even be shown live in the ceremony any longer, it's open to question as to whether short films will continue to even receive as little attention as they do now, unfortunately.

It's a dry sweet

Similarly to the last piece I wrote about a film, it took some time for the words to come about Honeyland, an interesting documentary about a beekeeper living in the hills of Macedonia with her elderly mother. It was apparently the most lauded film at this year's Sundance Film Festival and has the unusually high critical rating of 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. Even for great films, that's exceptional. Having seen it, I think it deserves most, if not all, of those plaudits. Unlike Cold Case Hammarskjöld, this film carried a narrative from the opening moment and didn't need any special construction to establish or maintain it. That said, the overriding feeling I have after seeing the film and thinking about it for the past few days is: "Okay." The only reason I have been thinking about it is because I've been trying to write this. Beyond that, there's nothing particularly compelling about it, except to say that it's a very well done look into both the average day and some extraordinary circumstances in the life of Hatidze Muratova.

What I will say is that watching the daily activity of rural beekeeping, with hives nestled in between rocks or the crevices of ruined buildings, is interesting in itself. Likewise, her trip to the market in Skopje and changing relationship with a new family, who bring their cattle to the otherwise deserted village where Hatidze has always lived, are likewise interesting; largely because they're experiences that most people and especially most Americans would never have, otherwise. But that's the same as watching a National Geographic piece. What makes the film is the level of intimacy that Hatidze allows to the filmmakers, as we sit and watch her concern over her mother's ailing health come forth as reproving bickering; her relationship with the new neighbors shift from concealed joy at having someone to teach and converse with to frustration with the disruption of her livelihood; and her concern about never finding regular companionship expressed in casual comments to her mother and deep consideration of what kind of hair dye to purchase at the market.

One wonders sometimes how it is that documentary subjects are able to tune out the fact that cameras are following them everywhere and watching every reaction and personal moment. It would seem that someone as isolated as Hatidze would be even more conscious of that situation, but she remains as open about discussing the reality of her work as she is displaying her reactions to the world around her. It's a simple story, but simple stories can have depth without requiring elaborate plot twists. Sometimes, it just depends on how relatable your characters are, no matter that the story is taking place in some fantasy realm like Westeros or some place so far from one's daily reality that it might as well be a fantasy realm, like the hills of Macedonia.

I think, perhaps, that my reticence toward gushing about a really well-made film might be that we've been seeing so many documentaries recently that I've become mildly jaded toward the format. Perhaps it will take something as invigorating as Maiden to get me back to the point where I can appreciate a narrative grounded simply in the facts of someone's everyday life. Don't let that dissuade you from seeing Honeyland, if you get the chance, though.

Cold Case, cold film

It's not often that I get stuck with the "blank page" writer's phenomenon. You know, that point where you're just staring at the page/screen and not knowing how to actually apply words to it? But in trying to keep up with my pseudo-promise to review all of the films we see at the Michigan/State, I kind of struggled with Cold Case Hammarskjöld. It's not because it was great and I didn't know how to encompass it. It's certainly not because it was bad and I didn't know how to get started ranting (see: any of my coverage of Game of Thrones' final season or True Detective's second season if you want to see loquaciousness in the service of bad productions.) It's because it wasn't much of... anything. It's not as if there isn't substance to the film. There certainly is. It's loaded with facts that reflect the colonial exploitation of Africa, the dirty wars that accompanied and followed that exploitation, the influence of massive corporations in those wars, racism, disease, and the turbulent political period following World War II and the introduction of the Cold War. It is all of those things. But it's also somewhere between a newsreel and a Twitter thread in its presentation of them.

The film examines the death of former United Nations secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjöld, in a plane crash in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia.) As Hammarskjöld was a fervent reformer and champion for the rights of those who had been (or still were) under the colonial boot, he had a lot of enemies. As the plane crash was very swiftly examined and buried by the Rhodesian authorities, it's never been far from the thoughts of many people that the crash was actually a calculated assassination. This is the premise of the film, as Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger and Swedish journalist Göran Björkdahl interview people both involved in the clean-up and those who claim to be part of the mercenary outfit that actually carried out the crime, the South African Institute for Maritime Research. The film continues down that rabbit hole, exploring the possible paymasters behind SAIMR and the various other projects that the Institute was involved in, ranging from pedestrian white supremacy to attempted genocide.

Sounds fascinating, right? And it probably would have been for someone who hadn't already spent many years reading about that activity. There were several moments in the film where I would have been more interested by an exploration of the larger picture beyond what was hinted at, but they quite properly avoided that and tried to stay focused on Hammarskjöld's death, for the most part. But that also set the film up to be something like a first draft of a screenplay for a police procedural, without any real narrative or character, except the interjection of the two filmmakers in something of a Mr. Bean role, as they fumble around trying to dig up the wreckage of the infamous crash. I think they tried to compensate for the fact that they were laying things out in pretty straightforward fashion by showing Brügger dictating the story to two different transcribers and showing their reactions to both the story and his elaborations upon it. The fact that both transcribers were Black does kind of dovetail with one of the more explosive elements of the conspiracy story, but I'm not sure if that was intentional or coincidental.

Of course, the conspiracy is kind of the central conceit of the film and, in that respect, it's just like watching Oliver Stone's JFK. The surrounding plot and performances run secondary to the theme in that film in the same way they do with this one. But it's the manner of delivery that kind of stalls out here. If you're already aware of the mountain of evidence out there about the activities of South African mercenary groups, then it's not difficult to believe that what's being presented here is true. But it's also not that interesting because the filmmakers take pains to not dramatize the possibilities, as Stone did in his film. For documentarians, that's a laudable goal. But it also kind of saps the life from the presentation in this case. And that's strange for me because it sounded like a great idea. I'm a Cold War enthusiast. I used to live and breathe that stuff. I have board games sitting in my house based on that period, mostly because they're about the Cold War, as opposed to whether they're any good on a rainy afternoon (They are.) But this film just didn't sing to me. I walked away from it thinking more about the casual reference in one moment to Jonas Savimbi, rather than about the film itself, because there's actually more story around the former UNITA leader.

I won't say that it's not worth your time, as I think it is. It's just that I wish it were more worth it.

"Policy is policy."

We saw One Child Nation last night, which is a documentary about China's "one child" policy that it maintained from 1979 to 2015. On the one hand, you can look at a government attempt at strictly controlling human behavior and laugh at the folly of it. On the communist side of the scale, it's akin to the Soviet Five Year Plans, wherein everything would proceed in perfect lockstep order in terms of demand, production, and pricing; all of it under the guise of keeping things in that perfect lockstep on account of heroic patriotism toward the state. In China's case, no one was going to keep people from screwing (cue abstinence proponents...) and no one was going to keep people from wanting more children; especially male children.

On the other hand, you can look at the much darker aspects of said foolish policy, which played out in the form of forced sterilizations, child abduction, and mass corruption by government apparatchiks, who made money off those activities and more. The film delves into all of that, emphasizing the fact that this wasn't just about people not being able to have the families they wanted or the simpler corruption of wealthier people being able to afford the fines for deviating from policy. This was about human trafficking. This was about the abrogation of women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies. This was about people profiting off the sale of other humans.

Director Jialing Zhang and director/narrator Nanfu Wang (above) were both born under the policy and decided to make a film about it when Wang became pregnant and she began to consider the different circumstances surrounding the birth of her child, as opposed to those that surrounded her own. Unlike many documentarians, given the omnipresence of the policy, Wang didn't have to seek out the story or find good candidates to interview. She could instead return to her own village and interview those people that knew her and knew her family and examine how they were directly impacted and how it changed their lives.

One of the most brutal consequences was the intersection of the policy with the longstanding cultural preference for male children in order to maintain the family name. As one of Wang's relatives mentions: "A boy continues the family. A girl just gets absorbed into someone else's family." Prior to the communist takeover, it wasn't uncommon for people that were hoping for a male baby and were disappointed by the arrival of a girl to simply abandon that child and let it die of exposure. This became even more prevalent in rural (and less wealthy) areas in China, the residents of which couldn't afford to pay the fines for having multiple children. Female babies would be placed in the local market, with the common wisdom being that, with more passersby, someone may be willing to pick up the child. If that child were "lucky", she would get picked up and handed off to one of the state-run orphanages for money. If not, she'd end up like millions before her throughout history, while people hurried past and pretended not to notice the corpse being fed upon by maggots.

But profiteering played its role even when parents weren't willing to so callously abandon their children, as government officials would threaten multi-child families with dire consequences unless they handed over their offspring to those officials who could then make a tidy sum by handing off those kids to the orphanages. Wang took a moment to stop in and inquire with a separated twin in her village who was the victim of this kind of corruption. Her sibling is now in the US and has been located by a volunteer organization, attempting to identify the origins of many of those adopted by well-intentioned families in the West.

A running theme of the interviews which the directors then stop to highlight is the passive acceptance among all of the actors and victims of the policy: "What could we do?", they said. Indeed, Wang's mother gives the quote that titles this piece: Government policy was government policy. The law was the law. This was how things were and no one would speak against it. One has flashes of Nuremberg in these comments, where everyone simply accepted the sale of children, the screaming women being put under the knife, the tiny bodies in the streets as market customers hurried past. Everyone knew what was happening, but no one was willing to stand up and point out the ashes in the air. At the very least, many of those she interviewed were willing to acknowledge the shame of what they participated in and allowed to happen.

But another theme stuck out to me in the audience reaction at the Michigan Theater. When they showed footage of the propaganda used to encourage cooperation with the policy, there were many chuckles and audible snorts of contempt. The implication was obvious: "How could people be taken in by these ham-handed dances and songs, cheering on the 'best families have only ONE child!'?" But when you're given the message constantly about what best serves the state's interest, it becomes easier to accept. People laugh at the grotesquerie of glorious sunbeams arcing past the angelic workers in Soviet artwork, too, but they don't stop to think about how they just accept the reciting of the pledge of allegiance or the playing of the national anthem before every sporting event, in addition to the military flyovers, or how that kind of constant pressure to accept the flag and the military and the "perfection" of the American system is every bit the same kind of propaganda as anything the Chinese state tried to instill in its own people. Is the worship of the military and its excursions around the world as damaging as a policy that encourages people to profit from the trafficking of children? It's worth a thought. To Wang's enormous credit, she takes a moment to cite the fact that the denial of basic rights to women in China under the policy is simply the other side of the coin to the same thing happening in the States, of which she is now a resident, over the issue of abortion and birth control. The final note of the film mentioning that Beijing is now using similar propaganda to promote the new policy of restricting families to two children ("Our chief weapon is surprise... fear and surprise... Our TWO weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency... Our THREE weapons are...") is where we begin to shift from tragedy to farce. If you can find it, One Child Nation is definitely worth the look.