It was a great year for documentaries, but you'd have a hard time convincing the Academy of that fact, since they ignored three of the best docs that I saw this year: Bill Cunningham: New York, Buck, and Senna. (Not to mention the two Werner Herzog released this year (Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Into the Abyss), and Project Nim, none of which I have seen.) My money is on the one popular doc the Academy DID recognize, "Pina," Wim Wender's tribute to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch, brilliantly shot in 3D (proving the 3D technology is not just for action movies).
The documentary short category provides the real gems, as I found out at a special screening of four of the five nominated films. (Why the organizers of this year's "Oscar Shorts" series left out one title, "God is the Bigger Elvis" -- aren't you intrigued by that title? -- is a mystery). The clear weak one in the bunch is "Incident in New Baghdad," a re-telling of a tragic incident during the Iraq war where civilians and journalists were caught in the crosshairs by an over-anxious U.S. military. The filmmakers rely too heavily on cable news videos and the film wears its left-leaning politics too obviously on its sleeve (how is it that only Michael Moore can pull that off effectively?).
"The Barber of Birmingham" is a more effective piece of historical documentation, following a septugenarian 'foot soldier' in the Civil Rights movement of the Sixties, as he witnesses the election of America's first black President. Unfortunately, real life proved too messy for the arc of the story: barber James Armstrong was too ill to travel to Washington DC for Barack Obama's inauguration, then he died in 2009, before the movie was completed. Earnest and effective like a PBS documentary, it never reaches the depths of emotion as the next two nominees.
"The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom" starts with a remarkable four-minute home video that encapsulates the magnitude and horror of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Taken from atop a hill overlooking a seaside village as that village slowly washes away, the voices of the witnesses (and survivors) provide the only soundtrack as they watch their neighbors run up the hill, literally for their lives. Those chilling images provide the backdrop for the interviews with the survivors that follow, still fresh and numb from their experiences. If that were all to this film, it would be compelling; what makes this film transcendent is the juxtaposition of this tragedy with healing power of the cherry blossoms which arrive and leave at the same time every year, another part of nature indifferent to human suffering yet somehow comforting to the survivors. The strength and serenity the Japanese people get from the blossoms' annual appearance is mysterious and timeless, and especially needed this past spring. That director Lucy Walker (who also helmed last year's excellent "The Waste Land," also an Oscar nominee) was able to capture these events with humanity and respect makes this the odds-on favorite to win the Oscar (and I think it will!).
But I am holding out my want in this category to the brave Pakistani women whose stories are told in the equally-moving "Saving Face." A synopsis cannot adequately convey the power of this film, but here goes: it follows the stories of several women (of an estimated 100 per year) who have suffered acid attacks to their face, scarring them for life. What is insane is that many of these attacks come at the hands of their own husbands and in-laws, for whatever perceived slights or indignities they felt they have suffered. (Other cases involve jilted suitors). Often these women are physically abused to begin with. To make matters worse, they are ostracized by society to the point where one victim is forced by circumstance to return to live with the husband and family who perpetrated this crime!
The film does not shy away from showing the hideous scars these women have received, and the work of one ex-pat plastic surgeon who returns to Pakistan to help these women get their faces, and their lives, back. A secondary plot shows how the legal system is finally being changed to deal harsher sentences to the perpetrators of this unspeakable crime that oftentimes goes unpunished. If documentaries serve to open your eyes to a world you had no idea existed, this moving film more than achieves its goal.
