(
MENAFN- The Conversation) First things first: , Errol Morris's new six-part CIA conspiracy series on Netflix, is a documentary. But this did not appear to be the view of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which it ineligible for the Oscars' documentary category.
One can see how some might reach this conclusion. This story of Eric Olson and his decades-long investigation into his scientist father Frank's mysterious death plunge from a New York hotel window in 1953 uses reenactment sequences featuring recognisable, excellent actors like Peter Saarsgard, Molly Parker and Bob Balaban.
It is a story about an alleged government cover-up, CIA involvement and drugging victims with LSD. This is all given stylistic emphasis with clips from Laurence Olivier's and near kaleidoscopic split-screen interview sequences. As such, the series' form matches the hallucinatory and byzantine characteristics of its protagonist's quest for truth.
Yet the Academy's objection has little to do with the reenactments – in fact, actors in reenactments for acting nominations. Rather the issue is Wormwood's serialised format. After the win earlier this year for OJ: Made in America, the Academy multi-series nominations.
What a documentary is
Critics have muddied the waters too, Wormwood is 'not quite a documentary and not quite a drama'. But treating Wormwood as docudrama disregards much of the history of documentary. Fictional elements have played a key role in truth telling in the genre, starting with when Louise Lumière workers to exit his factory for a second time as he filmed them in his .
Even if one disregards as documentary for casting Inuit man Allakariallak in the title role, plenty other examples with fictional elements should be included. Ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch involved his participants in the production of their own stories in and . He believed the stories people told for themselves revealed far more than interviews or observation. And Sarah Polley's emphasises the ways such stories construct a life.
Hoaxes, too, can reveal valuable things in a documentary. chronicles the response of audiences to Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña's tour as 'undiscovered Amerindians', granting insights into deep and continuing colonialism in museums, art galleries and indeed documentary.
One can see similar playful revelations even in , where Sasha Baron Cohen's provocations as the eponymous reporter expose Americans' response to an Eastern other. This fake newsman yields real information.
And the list of documentaries that challenge a reliance on shaky handheld, fly-on-the-wall footage or authoritative voiceover continues. uses animation to depict filmmaker Ari Folman's investigation into his repressed memories. In , Rithy Panh uses clay figurines to help recall a childhood of extreme loss in the Cambodian genocide. Joshua Oppenheimer's (Morris was executive producer) chronicles men producing and performing in a film about the genocide in which they took an active role.
Morris major
Wormwood therefore shares a lot with the documentary tradition, in both its experimentations and its preoccupations with an elusive truth. Additionally, it is all over.
Errol Morris.
Eric Olson stands at the centre of the story, his life and obsessions having been shaped by the loss of his father. A trained clinical psychologist, he has drawn on a collage method as a means of repairing trauma and its distorting effects on the memory.
These fervent pursuits make Eric a familiar figure within the Morris oeuvre – predominantly documentary and typically compelling. The American filmmaker has delivered a range of eccentrics and experts including the residents of ; the execution designer and Holocaust denier in , and the delightful photographer Elsa Dorfman in .
More familiar might be Morris's character studies of US secretaries of defence Robert McNamara () and Donald Rumsfeld (), both of whom are deemed responsible for leading the nation into unpopular wars.
Wormwood also shares with other Morris productions a preoccupation with piecing together a history. , for instance, tells of the events at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq while addressing how digital photographs can become evidence, both for documentaries and trials. This calls attention to a larger system that decides on what is a crime (and not standard operating procedure).
Similarly, Morris's break-out film, , reconstructed the shooting death of police officer Robert Woods by scrutinising evidence, reports and testimonies; and using them alongside reenactments.
These experimentations with documentary style highlighted the challenge of recovering the past, though Morris that the film was not a disavowal of the truth. There is the fact of an occurrence. Someone was shot. Someone pulled the trigger. Not everything is a matter of perspective. Astoundingly, The Thin Blue Line aided in the of Randall Adams (below), who had been imprisoned for the crime.
Wormwood takes up similar pursuits with delirious flourish, resulting in a multi-layered experience. 'I was told that your father has had an accident,' says Eric during an interview. 'But that was the cover story told by the CIA'.
The reenactments echo and sometimes anticipate details that appear in onscreen reports or congressional testimonies. Each fact offers itself to necessary scrutiny over its origins, how it came about, whether it is corroborated, and generally its status as evidence.
The series encourages the viewer to watch with a critical gaze. But it neither rushes to the kind of reactionary scepticism that leads people to cry 'fake news!', nor trusts unquestioningly anything that appears as an authoritative fact. Wormwood achieves what all the best documentaries do: it challenges the idea that filmmakers can only establish facts through techniques like straight observation or an authoritative voiceover, but without for a moment compromising its commitment to uncover the truth.
Wormwood premieres on Netflix on December 15.
MENAFN1412201701990000ID1096234232
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.