Bertolt Brecht once said: "Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it." [1] Grierson also argued that the purpose of art was to represent the real world and not “the bank holiday of frenzied events” (See Aitken, 1990: 60). Documentary as an art form creates some underlying implications, if it, at the same time has a ‘claim on the real’. According to Brain Winston: “The contemporary use of ‘document’ still carries with it the connotation of evidence.” (Winston, 1995: 11). Even today some people immediately conceptualize documentaries as objective, rational, and educational. But can documentaries actually ‘document’ reality or are they just an artistic creation?
Its uplifting non-diagetic orchestra in the opening sequence, make Hitler seem like some kind of ‘divine’ authority as he descends down to meet his followers. One scene sees the camera tracking backwards as it unveils a huge crowd making the Nazi salute in Mexican wave fashion; all of them, young, old, like robotic soldiers. It looks like these people were directed and as Susan Sontag points out: “The rally was planned not only as a spectacular mass meeting, but as a spectacular propaganda film.”[2]
Riefenstahl still argues her film was not a constructed and did document reality: “Everything in it is true. And it contains no tendentious commentary at all. It is history. A pure historical film... it is film-vérité. It reflects the truth that was then in 1934, history.”[3]
While it is true that the film reflects the culture and history that was back then, it made Hitler too much of a ‘godly’ figure and the films obvious propaganda connotations obscure the true reality of the Nazi fascist and racist regime, thus taking away its ‘claim on the real’. And as Sontag tells us: “In Triumph of the Will, the document (the image) is no longer simply the record of reality; "reality" has been constructed to serve the image.”[4] As an artistic creation Triumph of the Will is considered to be one of the best. Its establishing shots are always epic, with the vast crowd of soldiers and citizens in view. The cameras were clearly positioned in certain places and shots were edited along with the music. The opening again is another example of this. As Hitler comes out of the plane, the uplifting transient music climaxes into a louder, elevated rhythm going in tune with the chants of the crowd.
It seems that documentaries can never really document reality and hence can never be ‘truth’. The creative treatment process whereby the raw footage goes through is vulnerable to many subjective and opinionated transformations. In the case of the Triumph of the Will, it is no doubt that the film documents a true historical event but it borderlines more towards art because of its timely edits of the camera shots and music. So the ‘documentary film’ is something which can never be objective. But why are documentaries still seen as something ‘authentic’, when clearly everything during the production process is constructed? You might think then, what difference is there from documentary film and fiction film? – They’re both constructed. The big difference is that fiction explores another world for the audience to contemplate whereas documentary represents the world we already inhabit and share. (See Nichols, 2001: 1).
Bill Nichols explains that documentary is a difficult term to explain but says that: “...documentary is not a reproduction of reality, it is a representation of the world we already occupy. It stands for a particular view of the world, one we may never have encountered before even if the aspects of the world represented are familiar to us.” (Nichols, 2001: 20).
Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line (1988) is regarded as a definite example of investigative documentary.[5] In the film Morris blurs both fiction and non-fiction elements as he questions the interviewees about the death of a police officer. He uses highly cinematic reconstructed scenes to describe each interview’s own version of events. All the reconstructions are of the same event, which describes how the police officer was shot, but all of them contradict each other, because of the varied descriptions each interviewee had of the event. Even the reconstructions take place in a different place from where the actual crime took place. According to Nichols all of these choices were tactics made by Morris, to make the audience think and question “What really happened” and as he states: “They amount to bad science but they are part and parcel of documentary representation.” (Nichols, 2001: 85). Each person’s representation of the ‘truth’ is different and Morris believes that documentaries should be creative in their form to be able to search for ‘truth’: “There’s no reason why documentaries can’t be as personal as fiction filmmaking and bear the imprint of those who made them. Truth isn’t guaranteed by style or expression. It isn’t guaranteed by anything.” (Arthur: cited: Bruzzi, 2000: 5-6).
The Thin Blue Line clearly shows Morris’s imprint with its highly stylized reconstructions which make the film look much more like a non-fiction film noir[6], and the film noir element at the same gives you the feeling of a highly atmospheric fiction film. This can be seen in the opening, where the credits start rolling when the film starts; typical of fiction films. Lighting and shadows are used effectively in the film, especially in the reconstructions. For example when Randall Adams, the person accused of the murder, talks about how he was interrogated by the police officer and how he was threatened with a gun to confess the crime, the reconstruction shows a shadowy and almost dominant figure, with his face covered by the darkness. Everything in this scene is ‘dramatised’ including the sound, like the footsteps, the pen thrown onto the table and the reloading of the pistol. They are done slowly to make the audience hear every intricate detail which adds to the overall suspense. Morris’s subjectivity could be seen here as he wants to make the audience see the police officer in a bad light. The film then cuts to the police officers who seem friendly and somewhat non-threatening[7]. This juxtaposition of cuts obviously confuses things but Morris wants the audience to decide who and what to believe.
According to Stephen Rowley: “Attempts to force confessions are something we see in Hollywood films, and which we associate with villainous cops played by scary-looking actors.” Morris intentionally added a ‘fiction film’ element to reinvent the case while at the same time revisiting it[8]. By doing this Morris gives us new light to the American justice system as he portrays these goofy[9] police officers responsible for putting an innocent man into jail. So in essence he gets to the truth using what Grierson would say a “creative treatment” process and as Morris tells us: “I wanted to make a movie that had this real-world story that was very, very important to me. A terrible miscarriage of justice. But I wanted to make it in a certain way...”[10]. Note how Morris says he wanted to make it in a ‘certain way’. He didn’t just want interviews and cutaways, but wanted drama and suspense.
According to Nichols: “We judge a representation more by the nature of the pleasure it offers, the value of the insight or knowledge it provides, and the quality of the orientation or disposition, tone or perspective it instils.” (Nichols, 2001:20-21). Objective truth in any film is impossible to find and Morris shows this in The Thin Blue Line as he interviews people with different version of ‘truths’. Everyone have their own way of thinking and thus people make out ‘truths’ or representations of reality in different ways because this is at the end of the day, is affected by our own prejudices, beliefs and values.[11] In the end though Morris manages to show the ‘truth’ through a simple tape recorder – the culmination of all the tension and suspense throughout the film is brought to an end through the most simplest form of evidence.[12]
It’s now clear that documentaries all have a voice of their own, a specific perspective held by the filmmaker. They use both sound an imagery to portray their argument to the audience. They do this in a form of a narrative and as Nichols explains: “Documentaries are fictions with plots, characters, situations and events like any other.” (Nichols, 1991: 107). Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) is a story made to represent how an Inuit family battles against nature and tries to survive in the arctic. Since there is no dialogue or voices heard in Nanook of the North, Flaherty mainly uses music along with inter-titles to depict his point of view and the nature of each scene.
For example in the scene where Nanook is depicted trying to figure out what the gramophone is, we see him biting into the record as if to tell us that he is primitive and has never seen technology like this in his life. This scene is supposed to portray the simple side of Nanook but it seems more like a patronising scene with the inter-title beforehand telling us: “In deference to Nanook, the great hunter, the trader entertains and attempts to explain the principle of the gramophone – how the white man ‘cans’ his voice”.[13] It’s attempts to ‘respect’ “the great hunter”, suggests a much more patronising tone which ends with a somewhat stereotypical Inuit ‘slang’ with the use of “White man”. It also seems as if Flaherty who is acting as the ‘trader’ is mocking Nanook by just watching him bite into the record without showing him how to actually use it. The light hearted music adds to the overall ‘mockery’ which seems as if it were from a Warner Brother’s cartoon.
Flaherty knowingly done this since everything was staged[14]. According to Barnouw: “Characters occasionally glanced at the camera as though at a film maker. Nanook, grinning over the gramophone, testing a gramophone disc with his teeth, looks at the camera as though for agreement and approval...” (Barnouw, 1974: 39). So it seems that Flaherty’s attempts to portray a simple minded Inuit backfired, and because his representation of the ‘Inuit’ did not engage with the historical world, Nichols tells us: “The voice of the film betrays its makers form of engagement with the world in a way that even he might not have recognized.” (Nichols, 2001: 44). Flaherty’s obsession with the remote and primitive (See Barnouw, 1974: 85) meant that his own views and ideals got in the way of representing the ‘historical world’ and hence he failed to ‘add light’ or historical understanding upon the Inuit world.
Documentaries essence lies in the dramatisation of actual material and this is done in the editing process using sound and music. In Nanook of the North, music is chiefly used to set the mood of a scene and to also to dramatise certain situations. For example, in the scene where Nanook is trying to hunt a seal out of the ice, the sounds of violins, trumpets and flutes are heard playing in a repetitive and frantic manner. It shows to the audience the intensity of the hunt, as Nanook repeatedly hauls the line in only to be jerked down and dragged over the ice again[15]. The music adds to the drama and exaggerates the scene. The audience finally know in the end that Nanook has won, as they are signposted in with a different rhythm, more tranquil, with the violins slowing down, signifying somewhat, the ‘end of a battle’.
Another type of sound seen in documentaries is the voice over. Nichols terms it as “The expository mode” and he says, it: “ ...addresses the viewer directly, with titles or voices that propose a perspective, advance an argument, or recount history.” (Nichols, 2001: 105).
In Michael Moore’s Roger & Me, commentary is used in a sarcastic but humorous way which entices the audience’s attention. For example, seven minutes into the film you’ll hear Moore commenting on Roger Smith for the first time and then talking about GM’s plans and how they plan to sack many people. He uses a montage of still shots – cleverly used in juxtaposition[16] with the commentary. Moore ends this scene by saying in a sarcastic manner that: “...Roger Smith was a true genius”[17]. Moore has already set his subjective and ideological position to the audience, by cleverly placing this montage near the beginning[18], and as Nichols tells us: “We take our cue from the commentary and understand the images as evidence or demonstration for what is being said.” (Nichols, 2001: 107). As the commentary in documentaries explain the images, they are thus seen by the audience, higher than images in terms of ‘evidence’. (See Nichols, 2001: 107).
But how can a ‘voice’ which proposes a subjective outlook be seen as evidence? Stella Bruzzi points out that because voice over’s connote “individualism and instruction”, they tend to signify a distorted and fictionalised documentary. (See Bruzzi, 2000: 64). Moore did make Smith seem much more like a buffoon than even his own bumbling character, with the clever juxtaposition of image and audio, so this could be seen as the ‘creative treatment’ which takes away the ‘actuality’.
Overall, it can be seen that a documentary goes through a ‘creative treatment’ process where a filmmaker gets ‘actuality’ and constructs it to form a manufactured object (See Izod, Kilborn, 1997: 116) which only creates an imitation, not the real thing(See Niney, 1994:21). Grierson knew film interpreted reality, but believed that the average spectator should not share that recognition, and that a illusion of reality was essential in order to make the narrative as powerful (See Aitken, 1990: 70). This tells us that a documentary, by its nature, lies to the audience since it makes a truth claim right from the outset which leaves the ‘documentary’ in a particularly vulnerable position as it can be used a dangerous means of communication if the audience take the documentary as reality.
Bibliography:
Aitken, Ian (1990) Film and Reform: Routledge
Bruzzi, Stella (2000) New Documentary: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge
Izod, J. and Kilborn, R. (1997) An Introduction to TV Documentary, Manchester: Manchester
University Press
Nichols, Bill (1991) Representing Reality, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press
Nichols, Bill (2001) Introduction to Documentary, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press
Niney, Francois (1994) The Fiction of Reality in Documentary Film Quarterly
Winston, Brian (1995) Claiming The Real: the documentary film revisited, London: British Film Insitute
Barnouw, Eric (1993) Documentary – a history of the non-fiction film, New York: Oxford University Press
Films referred to:
Triump of the Will – Leni Riefenstahl’s (1935)
The Thin Blue Line – Errol Morris (1988)
Nanook of the North – Robert Flaherty (1922)
Roger & Me – Michael Moore (1989)
Endnotes/website:
[1] http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/26853.Bertolt_Brecht
[2] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9280
[3] http://www.kamera.co.uk/features/leniriefenstahl.html
[4] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9280
[5] http://www.cinephobia.com/thinblue.htm
[6] http://www.cinephobia.com/thinblue.htm
[7] http://www.cinephobia.com/thinblue.htm
[8] http://www.documentary.org/content/errol-morris-thin-blue-line-1988
[9] http://www.cinephobia.com/thinblue.htm
[10] http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/16/morris.html
[11] http://www.cinephobia.com/thinblue.htm
[12] http://www.cinephobia.com/thinblue.htm
[13] http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/MultimediaStudentProjects/98-99/9500048s/project/html/fakena.htm
[14] http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/MultimediaStudentProjects/98-99/9500048s/project/html/fakena.htm
[15] http://www.oneworldmagazine.org/seek/nanook/nanotext.htm
[16] http://www.angelfire.com/film/articles/moore.htm
[17] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30p71PNXEx8&feature=related
[18] http://www.angelfire.com/film/articles/moore.htm
