Reel Politik

Perhaps the simplest way to gauge the nature of the current relationship between the worlds of film and politics is with an easy verbal test: Ask someone on the street to name the White House Chief of Staff. When the question proves too challenging, ask the same person to name a flabby, liberal documentary filmmaker.

A commentator with ample creativity and righteous fervor, but few tangible political qualifications, is now a subject, and not merely a stimulator, of heated national debate. The occupant of arguably the country’s most powerful appointed position—that being Andrew Card—is comparatively anonymous. For the first time in American history, the views of the men and women behind the camera, more than the actions of the men and occasional woman in front, have seized the public’s political consciousness.

A History of Cinéma Vérité

Michael Moore, of course, is not alone. The recently released conservative rejoinder, Celsius 41.11, Robert Greenwald’s Uncovered: The War on Iraq, and George Butler’s Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry have all thrown their support firmly behind one of the two major candidates in the upcoming presidential election. Political documentary filmmaking bears increasing resemblance to partisan advertising.

It hasn’t always been that way. Perhaps to the surprise of contemporary moviegoers, the modern political documentary is a branch of a tradition rooted in objectivity and artistic unobtrusiveness. That tradition is on display (alongside fictional feature films) at the Harvard Film Archive’s election prelude, entitled “Direct Democracy: The Presidential Election on Screen,” that began Oct. 14 and runs through Sunday, Oct. 17.

Robert Drew’s 1960 film Primary, which kicked off the HFA film series on Thursday, chronicles the efforts of John F. Kennedy ’40, who was also a Crimson editor, to defeat Hubert H. Humphrey for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. It is widely seen as the first foray into the politics of cinéma vérité (sometimes termed “direct cinema”), a subset of the documentary genre featuring factual portrayal of the subject’s activities, with minimal interference by the director.

Drew, a reporter for Life Magazine, theorized—while a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1955—about filmmaking that used candid footage to present news. Using the shoulder-held, synchronized-sound camera newly invented by his associates Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker, he turned theoretical writing into 16mm film. Condensed to 26 minutes and relegated to local stations owned by the Time-Life corporation, Primary was a commercial flop, but its frank and intimate portrayal of political maneuvering and its use of new technology made cinematic history.

In addition to such accolades as the blue ribbon at the American Film Festival, Primary won Kennedy’s approval, and he invited cinéma vérité directly into the Oval Office. The result was the 1963 film, Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, which documented the federal government’s standoff with Alabama Governor George Wallace over educational integration. Few films since have chronicled presidential power with such immediacy—an immediacy too acute for the tastes of the New York Times editorial page, which lambasted Kennedy for making a mockery of the governing process.

Of course, not all political film-making of the past was characterized by such straightforward objectivity. The 1964 feature The Best Man, based on a stage play by Gore Vidal, resonates with today’s negative politics, as it dramatizes several candidates’ efforts to smear and outmaneuver their opponents behind the scenes of a political convention. Vidal criticized both ends of the political spectrum, basing her Machiavellian politicos on real-life figures ranging from Adlai Stevenson to Barry Goldwater.

Despite such exceptions, and despite the impossibility of again obtaining the unvarnished access to decision-makers that Crisis featured, the observational tradition of political cinéma vérité survived. Pennebaker, the former member of Drew’s team, directed the 1992 film The War Room, a character study of slogan-toting Democratic consultants James Carville and George Stephanopoulos and an analysis of the effects of their rapid response campaign strategy. The film plays this evening at HFA.

In 2000, Alexandra Pelosi’s Journeys With George persisted in this vein of candid impartiality, depicting then-presidential candidate George W. Bush as alternately savvy and befuddled and his horde of media followers as alternately hardy and sycophantic.

The Modern Move Towards Bias

But if the future president joking about margarita-loving reporters into a handheld digital camera is the essence of cinéma vérité, Michael Moore’s decision to hire an ice cream truck to drive in circles while he broadcasts the Patriot Act would seem to be a gaudy emblem of cinéma faux.

The current spate of political films eschews extensive candid recording in favor of manipulative editing and staged interactions, and prefers unambiguous argument to quiet observation. Harvard Film Archive programmer Ted Barron notes that such works often offer more raw passion than analysis.

“People’s emotions are very strong about this election, probably more strongly than in the last twenty years,” says Barron,” and film is a good medium to express such a sentiment.”

These films are not necessarily lacking in originality or heavy-handedness, however: Fahrenheit 9/11 and Going Upriver have earned widespread critical acclaim. Indeed, Moore’s film, which won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, has elevated the political documentary to heights unmatched by previous films of the genre.

Its box office revenues of $204.1 million as of September 4, 2004, has made Fahrenheit 9/11 the highest-grossing documentary of all time. Hollywood, it seems, has responded to the success of one of its own with an influx of films that prominently laud or criticize the exploits of various political figures.

Many, but not all, of these films find themselves concurring—although somewhat less zealously—with Moore’s desire to see George W. Bush removed from the White House.

Director Robert Greenwald framed his Uncovered as a serious but essentially apolitical critique of the administration’s foreign policy, spurred by his fear that the threshold for invading foreign nations had become dangerously low. The film, released in August, was greeted with mixed reviews, as some critics praised it as a convincingly muted version of Moore’s film while others perceived it as a diluted rehash.

Going Upriver takes the opposite route to the same desired destination, praising presidential challenger John Kerry’s service in the Vietnam War and his outspoken protest upon his stateside return. The film casts no aspersions about its political leanings, as the official synopsis consciously emphasizes Kerry’s bravery, courage, and eloquence. Nonetheless, it has been extolled for its honest overall assessment of the Vietnam era; the Chicago Tribune praised the film as “measured, calm, well-researched and thoughtful.”

But in a polarized country with political engagement at an unusual high, “measured” seems not to sell particularly well at the box office. Going Upriver has taken in less than $500,000 since its release two weeks ago; it was out-grossed this weekend by Maria Full of Grace, another independent film entering its thirteenth week at thirty fewer theaters.

Robert Hock, a manager at Loews’ Harvard Square 5 theater, characterized the film’s box office performance as “okay,” despite fairly high expectations for its performance in the liberal, Kerry-friendly Cambridge area. Hock speculates that the timing of the film’s release was poor; strangely, he notes, “it might have been too late,” despite the rapidly approaching election, perhaps suggesting that cashing in on the massive public awareness generated by Fahrenheit 9/11 might have been financially beneficial.

Given the recent litany of movies and campaign advertisements, it does seem plausible that the market for political films (of either the thirty-second or feature-length varieties) has been saturated.

If the supply of presidential documentaries truly has eclipsed demand, Sinclair Broadcasting Group may be sacrificing financial health for partisan gain by airing Stolen Honor: The Wounds that Never Heal on up to 62 of its networks in swing states. The film, which enthusiastically picks up where the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth left off, criticizes the Senator’s anti-Vietnam activism and alleges that it jeopardized the safety of American troops in captivity.

More Wal-Mart than Tinseltown, Sinclair (headquartered on Beaver Dam Road in Hunt Valley, Maryland) hardly provides the conservative answer to Hollywood. It is however, a solidly Republican media conglomerate: its executives have given generously to GOP candidates, and one of its vice presidents doubles as a conservative on-air commentator. Its airing of Stolen Honor, produced by the former Washington Times reporter Carlton Sherwood, may be subject to federal regulations requiring networks to provide candidates with equal time.

The people who screen films seem to be joining the filmmakers in brazen partisan advocacy. The past few months have made one point unmistakably clear: America has certainly strayed far from the subgenre of political cinéma vérité.

But have these filmmakers left the realm of the documentary altogether?

The Consequences of Michael Moore

“In feature films, the director is God,” Alfred Hitchcock once quipped. “In documentary films, God is the director.” By this relatively narrow definition, the contemporary political non-fiction films that have been labeled documentaries are really more akin to feature films—Moore’s recitation from his commandeered ice cream truck, after all, easily qualifies as directorial lording.

Hitchcock need not be taken at its word, though. At its inception, documentary was a French term referring to any film with a factual subject, including instructional videos or promotional material.

John Grierson, whose monograph First Principles of Documentary set forth some of the genre’s initial conventions, took a more humanistic view than Hitchcock. He once stated: “In documentary we deal with the actual, and in one sense with the real. But the really real…is something deeper than that. The only reality which counts in the end is the interpretation which is profound.”

In this sense, Grierson, who believed in the use of “cinema as a pulpit,” is something of an ally of Moore, Greenwald, and their fellow partisan filmmakers. They, too, hold interpretation—the conclusions drawn by viewers—to be primary. But do these political films meet Grierson’s threshold test of “profound” interpretation? Do viewers of partisan films draw deep conclusions, or even alter in any way the convictions they held when they entered the theater?

Steven T.J. Ahn ’07, a Pennsylvania resident who describes himself as politically apathetic, notes that partisanship can energize partisans but might do little else.

“All of my Democratic and Republican friends saw Fahrenheit 9/11,” he says. “My Democratic friends were like, ‘This is so true,’ and my Republican friends were like, ‘This is horse shit.’ But both realized it was biased.”

Ross McElwee, Professor of the Practice of Filmmaking, is also skeptical that recent films will affect the election’s outcome.

“I do think this year has given us a bumper crop of political documentaries which have heightened public awareness of issues and candidates,” says McElwee. “But it remains to be seen whether or not they can be said to have registered in any significant way on the public consciousness.”

Noting the absence of empirical evidence, McElwee says, “Certainly Fahrenheit 9/11 has gained wider theatrical distribution than any documentary in history, but do we really think Republican voters are wandering into the theaters where it is playing and suddenly changing their minds about President Bush? Somehow, I doubt it.”

He adds, “It is possible that Moore’s film may have had some kind of effect on swaying independent and undecided voters, but again, without doing movie theater exit polls, how can we tell?”

The only film that could be considered to have swayed a vote, McElwee notes, was Peter Davis’ 1974 anti-Vietnam polemic Hearts and Minds, which fueled the anti-war movement before that year’s Congressional midterm elections.

Associate Professor of Government Barry Burden focuses on the more investigative function of recent films. “In revealing truths that were previously hidden from the public,” he says, “a documentary is performing a similar function to All the President’s Men”—the book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward detailing the Watergate scandal that later became an award-winning movie.

Both McElwee and Burden agree, though, that the partisans’ position outside the more traditional sphere of documentary is not especially relevant. A director with an “axe to grind” is not necessary, says Burden, but it is not a disqualifying characteristic either, as “no documentary is completely impartial since it must present a limited set of facts.”

“Personally authored, highly biased documentaries, such as Fahrenheit 9/11 … deserve their place in the landscape of documentary filmmaking,” says McElwee.

Likening the array of political films to a “motion picture media bouillabaisse being offered up to the American public,” McElwee observes that the problem of “real documentary” is increasingly irrelevant.

“The really exciting thing about documentary filmmaking now is that there is such a plethora of styles, forms, approaches to making them,” says McElwee. “All the rules have been broken, and the doors have been flung wide open.”