Oscar's Documentaries: Tales from the Shortlist (Part 1)

Glenn here with the first of three pieces looking at this year’s 15 finalists for Best Documentary. Watch along with us!

Prior to the announcement of the shortlist, I had seen roughly 30 of the 151 contenders. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have managed to catch up with all 15 of the shortlisted titles, which will be the first time that has ever happened. As Team Experience's apparent resident doc expert, I am determined to do it, although I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that I couldn't catch even more of the longlist. 151 is a lot even for me.

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer
Synopsis: Filmed over the course of 6 months, this documentary tells the incredible story of three young moments of Pussy Riot, a Russian activist punk band out to disrupt the status quo and bring attention to their homeland's injustices by the hand of Vladimir Putin.
Director: Mike Lerner (Oscar nominee, Hell and Back Again) and Maxim Pozdorovkin
Festivals: Bath, Brisbane, Cornwall, Eastend, GAZE LGBT, Melbourne, New Zealand, Seattle, Sheffield, Sundance, Sydney, Vancouver.
Awards: Special Jury Prize (Sundance), Best Documentary (British Independent Film Awards).
Box Office: N/A (qualifying run), available on HBOgo
Review: If TV networks had Christian Bale balls they would air this illuminating documentary on a never-ending loop parallel to the upcoming Winter Olympics in Russia. They don't and they won't - although maybe HBO, who screened it last summer alongside other long-listed titles such as Valentine Road and Gasland 2 - will. The film itself isn't particularly brilliant, but works as a perfect entry point into the story of Pussy Riot. A story, just by the way, that continues to evolve to this day. It's a very standard documentary, simply charting the story of the imprisonment and subsequent farce of a trial of three Pussy Riot members after they stormed a church alter and performed an anti-Putin anthem. I'm glad I watched it, although there are areas that the filmmakers could have expanded like Russia's growing feminist movement and the history of it.
Oscar: The branch could respond to the very timely subjects of not just artistic oppression and censorship, but also Russia's glaringly plummeting human rights record. The branch has gone with an unexpected music doc before - Tupac: Resurrection in 2003 - but even then, the music of Pussy Riot are a, shall we say, acquired taste. And they did just award Searching for Sugarman. A vote for this film would be more a vote for the issue than the film.

Four more contenders after the jump...

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Team FYC: Stories We Tell for Best Editing

In this series our contributors sound off on their favorite fringe contenders. Here's Jose Solis on "Stories We Tell" It's winning Best Documentary critics prizes but let's talk another category.

Sarah Polley’s brilliant Stories We Tell isn’t as much a “documentary” as it is a psychological thriller. As the film begins she teases you suggesting this will be a simple case of “let’s find the truth about my mother” kind of film, only to then pull the rug from under your feet and reveal that she’s not exactly interested in delivering a beautiful conclusion tied up with a pretty ribbon. Delivering more twists and turns than any other film this year, Stories We Tell owes much of its success to its byzantine editing (by Mike Munn), which takes us on what feels like an emotional roller coaster ride.

Earlier this year, I spoke to Polley who explained how and why this structure came to be:

[instead of going for a traditional linear structure] what if we’re revealing information that is from before this story starts and reveal it halfway through this story, so that it gives a whole new meaning to what we’ve seen and for me it felt like it would give the audience a sense that was similar to mine. You know you hit bottom and a trap door opens, then you hit bottom again and another trap door opens and you never really got solid ground under your feet, because the amount that you can learn about something and its context is infinite.”

The fact that she wanted audiences to share her experience the same way she had lived it is admirable and humble, the fact that she pulled it off by reminding us that memory might very well be the essence of cinema is nothing if not brilliant.

Previously on Team FYC

Oscar's Docs Down to 15

We will be taking a closer look at each of the 15 contenders for Best Documentary soon, but for now let's look at the films that Oscar's doc branch decided to shortlist from that gargantuan list of 151 contenders. All of the titles are rather high profile with a few left field contenders for fun. I was surprised to not see the likes of A River Changes Course, Let the Fire Burn (the only IDA nominee which didn't make it), At Berkeley, Call me Kuchu, and my personal favourite, The Missing Picture, but this looks like a fairly well representative list of films from what has arguably been one of the strongest years ever for documentaries.

The 15 contenders are:

• The Act of Killing
• The Armstrong Lie
• Blackfish
• The Crash Reel
• Cutie and the Boxer
• Dirty Wars
• First Cousin: Once Removed
• God Loves Uganda (Reviewed)
• Life According to Sam
• Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (Reviewed)
• Stories We Tell, The Square (Reviewed)
• Tim's Vermeer
• Twenty Feet to Stardom
• Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington.

At this stage I'd be expecting The Act of Killing, Blackfish, Dirty Wars, The Square and Twenty Feet to Stardom, although I keep thinking that high-grossing doc will be left off (the Academy already gave an award to a documentary about back-up singers) in favour of something else, but it seems slightly foolish to bet against it. 

For now what are you guys thinking? How many have you seen?

Is The Man Who Is Tall Eligible? No, Sadly.

Glenn here to discuss a true one of a kind film. That it's directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) should make that statement come as little surprise, but surprised I was. The film has the unwieldy, and yet simple and effectively evocative, title of Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?: An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky. Needless to say, despite being animated, Gondry's film is not planning a head to head box office battle royale with Disney's Frozen (which we're going to discuss very soon).

Another arena where the two will not face off is the Academy's Animated Feature category. Despite clearing the animation percentage bar with ease, and beautifully so too for that matter - it's certainly the most incomparable and charming animation of the year - the film was not submitted. It is, however, on the longlist for documentary features, but so are 150 others and I doubt a relatively simple back-and-forth conversation between director and subject, albeit one as different as this, can make much headway amongst bigger, loftier titles.

I wonder why the studio chose to not submit it for the animated feature? Especially in such a dire year for the category, I wouldn't have put it past the branch to have nominated it based on style alone. It really can't be said how majestically hypnotic the animation in Gondry's film is with its mass of bold colors, hand-drawn forms and techniques. He weaves in crude psychedelia, superimposed collage projections, chaotic flashes, and even moments of tribal imagery that recalls the experimental work of John Whitney Jr not to mention any number of groundbreaking experimental animated works. The film is nothing if not dazzling to watch. I imagine audiences in the 1970s would have had a field day, if you know what I mean. It is full of personal anecdotes from both scientist and philosopher Noam Chomsky as well as Gondry. When it sidesteps the sometimes head-scratching physics and heads into personal territory, like a third act detour to WWII, it proves to be remarkably effective.

The film has its problems, definitely. For one, Gondry with his thick French accent thinks he is as much a star of the film as his subject. If you're going to make a film about someone like Noam Chomsky it's best you just shut up and let the man talk. Of course, the catch 22 is that for many - including myself, I admit - much of the talk will fly right over their heads. I do, however, feel smarter for just having watched the film, whether I understood all of it all not. It was wise of Gondry to use animation to tell the story since whether you "get it" or not, you will be able to marvel at the eye-popping animation. I'm also not sure exactly why it was made in the first place, but it will ultimately prove a fascinating gem to anybody investigating the careers of both men years into the future. It feels like a film one stumbles across at 1.30am on cable and then can't turn away until you realise it's 3 in the morning and you're as wide awake as ever, your mind expanded in a way one can't comprehend until morning (or next week). 

Look, I'm sure the last thing on Gondry and 84-year-old Chomsky's mind is an Academy Award nomination, but such a thing can help bring a film like this to a much wider audience. I mean, I can't imagine many people had seen The Secret of the Kells before nomination morning. So it's baffling why they wouldn't at least role the dice on Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy. With only 18 other titles to compete against they had a much easier try there than they ever did in documentary. Meanwhile, The Croods may be laughing all the way to a nomination. Sigh.

Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? closes the DOC NYC festival tonight and opens in limited release this weekend.

Podcast: Dallas Buyers Oscar Club (with a side of kale)

After a week break in which the team was on separate coasts, Nathaniel reunites with Nick, Katey and Joe to discuss Matthew McConaughey & Jared Leto's Oscar-seeking duet in Dallas Buyers Club.

That's the focus but we also make time for talking about previously tweeted adventures: Nathaniel's AFI celebrity encounters (including Saving Mr Banks) and Joe's Doc NY screenings (We Steal Secrets and We Always Lie to Strangers). We chat about Megan Ellison at Annapurna, James Schamus's departure at Focus, and Katey and Joe's new jobs at Vanity Fair and The Atlantic Wire. Joe tries to start a fight between Nick and Katey about Ron Howard's Rush.

Finally we talk about the unloved (this year) Best Animated Feature category and The Croods. And we reveal what we've been watching as far as older films go: Danny Kaye in The Court Jester, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, Robert Altman's The Last Goodbye, the hard-to-find classic Killer of Sheep, and Carol Kane in Hester Street.

You can listen at the bottom of the post or download it on iTunes. Join in the conversation in the comments.

P.S.

Attn @joereid @NicksFlickPicks @nathanielr pic.twitter.com/GGayLCo8h3

— kateyrich (@kateyrich) November 17, 2013

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