Cinema, by its very nature, is
voyeuristic. We sit in the darkness and delve into peoples’ lives––in turn
emerging from the imagination of others––and sometimes make an immediate
connection with them like no other art form can achieve on a similar scale. But
what happens when, instead of mining for inspiration in the outside world or
within their fertile minds, filmmakers and/or actors turn the camera around and examine their own lives with, what may be described as, subjective
detachment?
Two fascinating documentaries
screened at the recently concluded Mumbai International Film Festival did just
this with equally satisfying results. The first, Stories We Tell, is a film by Canadian actress/filmmaker Sarah
Polley who discovered a few years ago that her father, Michael Polley, is in
fact not her biological parent and that she was born out of wedlock when her
actress mother Diane Polley had a relationship with another man while she was
in Toronto for a play in the late ‘70s.
Minnie Vaid's documentary on Dr. Binayak Sen, A Doctor To Defend, is a moving and inspiring portrait of a well-educated, middle-class man who followed his conscience all the way to the poorest districts of the country and has lived and worked amongst the people for nearly four decades. Indefatigably. Intelligent, articulate, soft-spoken and sensitive, Dr. Sen's interview is at the core of the film, which chronicles his journey from the Christian Medical College, Vellore, to the miners of Dalli Rajhara for and with whom he co-founded the Shaheed Hospital, the Bagrumnala clinic in Chhattisgarh from where he worked, all the way to his incarceration, first in 2007, and again in December 2010, on charges of 'sedition' and 'conspiracy' against the Indian state.
Michael Paxton's two-and-a-half hour long documentary on Ayn Rand may not be particularly objective -- she was far too controversial a person to get such a rose-tinted appraisal -- but it certainly is a fascinating chronicle of her incredible journey from the heart of Communism to becoming one of the most vocal champions of unbridled Capitalism. Ayn Rand - A Sense of Life follows a staid, chronological and entirely flattering narrative and really comes alive when we see archival footage of Ms. Rand, piercing eyes and all, postulating her theory of Objectivism, her professed Atheism, vehement rejection of Altruism and of course the evils of Communism versus the glorious virtues of Capitalism.
Charles Ferguson, the technology entrepreneur-turned-filmmaker describes what the banking industry did to the US economy through their heedless greed as a 'heist' where the looters didn't walk in with guns, but were the guys running the show themselves. Inside Job suggests that the indiscriminate deregulation of the financial services and insurance industries and the unbriddled spread of high-risk transactions called derivatives, has looted America (and, by extension, the world) of trillions of dollars and increased the gap between the haves and the have-nots in the country like never before; worse, rather than being prosecuted for their role in this scam, they continue to hold key positions in the Obama administration!
Months before Roman Polanski was placed under house arrest in Switzerland (he was in Zurich to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award) in September 2009 on pending charges of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles in 1977, came a documentary chronicling the incident that changed the course of the famed director’s life. Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired by Marina Zenovich methodically delves into the events leading up to the harrowing trial that unfolded under the media glare and the flip-flops of presiding judge Laurence J Rittenband who clearly emerges as the villain of the piece, finally forcing Polanski to flee America in 1978, never to return to that country.
No matter how much documentaries are run down as boring and preachy, there is a viewership and a market for them, even it is small and scattered. If only feature filmmakers had the courage and imagination, there are thousands of stories out there, just waiting to be told. If they were made in the fiction format, maybe many more issues would reach a larger audience.
