On Friday this week, we watched some films which are quite controversial in terms of what they are: documentary or drama? This reminds me what I studied last semester about documentary, so I decide this Initiative pose should focus on those hybrid films which exist on the boundary between documentary and drama.
Janus Metz, a famous Danish filmmaker who has made feature documentaries like Love on Delivery (2008) and Ticket to Paradise (2008), called the blurry boundary as ‘grey zone’ in an interview (Sim, G. 2011). He said ‘Making documentaries is all about truth, it’s all about having a certain relationship to what realism as a representation of truth entails’ (Sim, G. 2011). What he points out is the very nature of documentary film. As many critics think, a documentary is usually expected to be objective and real, and the director has the responsibility to make his film the closest to the truth. But in actual practice, filmmakers sometimes pursue the things more than that. As Metz also said ‘But I think what’s important to me is, through a poetic appropriation of reality, to get closer to some of the things that are not necessarily immediate – to see some of the hyperreal structures or mythological implications of the moment’ (Sim, G. 2011). Here, simply uncovering the immediacy of realism seems to become the duty of journalists, but the filmmakers seek the aesthetics, the approaches and most importantly, the questions behind the immediate, because a documentary is not just an introduction of actuality, it is also a sort of art. Hence, it becomes much easier to understand why there is a grey zone between documentary and fiction film – dramatic features and artist re-creations are sometimes significantly involved in documentary filmmaking, especially like Waltz with Bashir and Nanook of the North, the hybrids exist just on the boundary.
David Balfour also mentions this in his article on the Vertigo Magazine that ‘By creating a fictional character we were able to explore something which traditional documentary or fiction films cannot do, and which was relevant to our subject’ (Balfour, 2006). This point has been well proved in Nanook of the North. A fictional character Nanook in this case helps a lot to explore the life of Eskimo in the past, which makes the film much more effective to tell the story than traditional straight documentary. Even there were never a Nanook in reality, it does not affect the fact that this fictional film is also a documentary which tries to tell the truth of the primitive life. Therefore, as Guarneri suggests, maybe it is not meaningful to have a strict definition or clear distinction to figure out which side those hybrid films do belong to, because it already becomes a new form of film, which carries the features from both documentary and fictional cinema.
So is the line or boundary too blur for us to make a meaningful distinction? Do we have to make a distinction between them at all?
Michael Guarneri, an Italian film scholar, answers this question in his article. ‘Doubting (the boundary) is legitimate but, if taken to its extreme consequences, it leads us in a cul-de-sac where no discourse is possible’ (Guarneri, 2012). It leads the debate from where is the boundary to a very practical question that is it really necessary to have such a boundary at all. In his opinion, since more and more contemporary filmmakers are deliberately practicing the films which blur the lines between fiction and fact, why ‘…waste time and energy providing strict definitions and clear distinctions between “documentary film as a whole” and “fiction film as a whole”?’ (Guarneri, 2012). This argument is as same and reasonable as the criticism on Nicola’s documentary modes, which doubts the necessity of separating documentaries into the six fixed modes.
Guarneri’s reasoning of not having strict definition and clear distinction between fiction and documentary film is supported by some other filmmakers and commenters for the reason that the hybrid film like Waltz with Bashir brilliantly demonstrates its function as both documentary and fictional film. For example, ‘Good films that are talking about the truth are welcome right now’ said by Mary Lea Bandy, chief curator of Film and Media Art at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, ‘In telling what you’re trying to tell, a narrative story can be more truthful than a straight documentary, creating a narrative fiction can be extremely effective’ (Svetvilas, 2004). According to her theory, in Waltz with Bashir, although a strong narrative of director’s personal experience is involved and there is no attention to have perspectives from both sides in the war to ensure the objectivity, it is still a documentary because subjective and fictional narrative is just effective to express the truth in director’s memory. Since there is no truth for everyone, the director does have the right to show his own truth, in his own ways, through his own film called documentary.
For me, the answer is simple: why not ask the director? Of course not simply ask the director that is your film a documentary or fiction, but exploring the film from different perspectives, to assess and speculate that does the director really have a strong will of making a film which tells the truth to audiences. If yes, ignoring the subjectivity, fictional and dramatic elements and any kinds of re-creation, the film is a documentary, maybe not for everyone, but certainly for someone. Everyone has his or her own opinion of the truth and own understanding of the truth as well. Sometimes it is insignificant to whose truth is the real truth, the guaranteed truth and the objective truth. Back to the very nature of documentary, it aims to explore and reveal stories in our real lives, and therefore the both sides of humanity can be seen in an artistic form. As a result, the only thing that matters becomes if the director truly desire to tell his truth, which is just a blurry but also meaningful boundary.
Bibliography
Balfour, D., 2006. Real Fiction – Blurring Lines Between Documentary and Fiction. Vertigo, Ⅲ(1).
Barnouw, Erik (1993). Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 33–35.
Elliott, S., 2008. A Series and Its Sponsor Capture a Shared Link With History. [Online]
Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/business/media/29adco.html?_r=0
Guarneri, M., 2012. c. Between Documentary, Fiction and Appropriation Art. [Online]
Available at: http://www.photogenie.be/photogenie_blog/article/c-between-documentary-fiction-and-appropriation-art
McLane, Betsy A. 2013, A New History of Documentary Film, e-book, accessed 29 May 2015, <http://RMIT.eblib.com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1190703>.
Reidemeister, H., 1982. On documentary filmmaking. [Online]
Available at: http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC27folder/ReidmstOnDocy.html
Sim, G. 2011, “A Gray Zone Between Documentary and Fiction: Interview with Janus Metz”, Film Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 1, pp. 17-24.Svetvilas, C., 2004. Hybrid Reality: When Documentary and Fiction Breed to Create a Better Truth. [Online]
Available at: http://www.documentary.org/feature/hybrid-reality-when-documentary-and-fiction-breed-create-better-truth