By Glenn Dunks
I think it’s fair to say that when Frederick Wiseman directed High School in 1968 he wouldn’t have expected the modern version of education with its prevalence of technology and virtual teaching. Charles Guggenheim, too, who in 1984 also made a documentary titled High Schools, that time an Oscar nominee, surely could not have perceived of metal detectors and mass field trips for teachers dressed in chinos to shooting ranges where they learn how to shoot an armed gunman.
But 50 years after Wiseman captured debates over skirt length and observed awkward sexual education classes, Homeroom and Bulletproof both offer very contemporary looks at what it is like to be a student in 2021...
Peter Nicks’ Homeroom probably has the harder logistical assignment of the pair, filming as it was during the 2019–20 school season at Oakland High School. What begins as a look at one school’s graduating class and their emerging awareness of political concerns while making applications for college and attending homecoming rallies, eventually takes a necessary narrative twist into the global response to COVID-19 crisis. Like any filmmaker choosing to make a film about young school students (see also last year’s Boys State), Nicks is very reliant on strong subjects who can carry a non-fiction narrative. He more or less succeeds in Denilson Garibo, but the reality of the school year is an unfortunate reality that Homeroom has to deal with to somewhat dramatically deflating ends.
Perhaps surprisingly, the COVID section of Homeroom doesn’t actually feel as if it adds too much to the current emerging crop of pandemic-era non-fiction, even though it was conveniently well-placed to have done so. Rather, its strongest element is Garibo’s charge as a member of the Oakland student union’s efforts to, well, defund the police. Nicks follows Garibo and his fellow student councilmembers as they seek to change policy that devotes money to the school’s constant police protection rather than literally anything else (like mental health and at-risk counselling) as the school board makes cuts across swathes of the education ladder.
Additionally, there are SAT scores and college admissions, musical rehearsals and the endless scrolling of social media platforms. The outbreak of #BlackLivesMatter protests following the death of George Floyd only further radicalises them to their mission to enlighten the adults in the room about the realities and desires of the student population. Homeroom lacks much of the technical depth that was on display in Nicks’ earlier feature, The Force; a superior film that walked a fine line between critiquing police while ultimately wanting them to be better. Teenage resilience is on fine display, but Homeroom does feel like a strong film hampered by the unfortunate realities of what happened to the world in 2020.
Alternatively, strong direction and smart editing by Todd Chandler (he is also a co-producer) elevate Bulletproof to one of the finest documentaries of the year. Unlike Homeroom, Chandler’s quite remarkable film takes something of a more removed tactic with its subject—the scourge of mass shootings in American high schools and the efforts made to avert such disasters happening in the future—through the use of clean, mostly static camerawork that coldly, but also very effectively, utilises CCTV surveillance footage as students walk silently down corridors to highlight how expectations of privacy have well and truly vanished from the students at this Texan school (although there are also detours also to a primary school that marks yet another alarming, upsetting moment of realization in the viewer).
Bulletproof opens with an active shooter drill—and there will be several more throughout. Teachers are routinely seen engaging in firearm practice from ex-military trainers who inform on the best stance to take when shooting a suspect. One teacher uses a gymnasium simulator to test her shooting skills only to be told that, oops, she would have shot an innocent basketball player instead which is an experiment that doesn't need to be expanded upon by talking heads reeling off bullet points that the film's likely audience already know.
Talking heads are indeed more or less absent, instead we see trade shows where guns and safety equipment are shilled in cardboard booths and dioramas of death trap classrooms are displayed. In one of Chandler’s less connected segues, we meet a young Palo Alto entrepreneur who has begun manufacturing homemade, insulated ‘wonder hoodies’ and she speaks to the camera about her desire to make this into a sustainable business. The connotations there are, again, obvious without needing them to be so blatantly pointed out. Needless the say, that commodification of school shootings is one of Bulletproof’s most alarming passages, but it’s just one of too many.
Bulletproof is both a sobering film, and a soberly made one. It’s quiet, wading into dark territories with a clear-eyed aesthetic that broaches many damning, prickly subjects. Despite its subject, however, it isn’t a hard watch. Chandler’s clear cinematic vision sees to that, and it must be noted that there are no actual school shooting depicted herein. As a directorial work, it’s stronger than many similarly themed documentaries (Newton, Us Kids come to mind) and one that announces Todd Chandler as a gifted documentary filmmaker whose uneasy confrontation of uneasy questions makes for riveting viewing some 20 years after Bowling for Columbine shifted the cinematic narrative of this terrible reality.
Release: Homeroom is currently screening on Hulu in the United States. Bulletproof does not have a release scheduled as far as I can tell, but it will probably pop up at festivals still. For those in Australia, it is currently streaming as a part of the virtual Melbourne International Film Festival.
Oscar chances: If Boys State couldn’t make it into the final five last year, I suspect Homeroom will struggle, too. But depending on how much attention it gets upon release and through awards season it could be a long-list contender. Bulletproof is probably too stark of a film to make it for Oscar whenever it becomes eligible, but I’ll be cheering for it if it does.