American Movie

Recently, my favorite YouTube channel, Red Letter Media, did a review of a 1996 film called Feeders. This bizarre little B-movie was panned pretty hard by the panel, but it did get briefly recognized for the significance of being a shot-on-video, no-budget film that managed to somehow land in a video store, completely removed from the help of any studio– something that was new to the 90s era of indie filmmaking. As RLM member Jack Packard put it, "this is the precursor to everything we're doing now– people outside of the studio system making movies on their own." While Feeders was made by the Polonia brothers, its story and creators share strong parallels with Mark Borchardt, equally a creator and character in his own right, and also the focus of the 1999 documentary American Movie.

Due to the total authenticity of both the filmmaking style and the subjects themselves, American Movie has a very strong comedic flair. You would almost be hardpressed to think that you're not watching a mockumentary, or perhaps a feverish, Wisconsinan cousin of Napoleon Dynamite, as Borchardt sincerely makes every effort to see his dream movie get made, but this film confirms that truth really is stranger than fiction. And the director, Chris Smith, is sure to make every effort on his part to capture each detail of Borchardt's highly unique life– and particularly his directing style. From casual shirtless interviews on set to failed stunts to securing production money from family members, we get a highly detailed portrait of Mark Borchardt by the end of the film. It's actually less of a documentary about how to create an indie movie outside of a studio system so much as it is an ultrasound of the kind of person it takes to see one through.

The cinematography and editing style of the film is meant to mirror the style of Borchardt's filmmaking– that is to say, it has a distinct handheld "shot-on-video" look to nearly every shot (excluding the establishing shots.) Using the Thanksgiving dinner scene as an example, no one is framed quite right (subjects are often right in the middle of the frame), the camera follows every person speaking with the bare minimum amount of cuts, frequently gets too close to subjects faces, and uses minimal lighting outside of the available lighting in the rooms each shot it in. In other words, there is very little attempt to make everyone in each shot well-lit or well-framed, giving it, along with the long shots without cuts, the appearance of a handheld home video.

As a film student, it's impossible not to sympathize with Borchardt. He's a lovable loser. The ultimate underdog. A man in search of the American dream, trying to beat the system, just him and his friends. How cool is that? It takes a really special kind of confidence and perseverance to push through with that, regardless of the quality of the film or its financial success. Maybe he's stupid for doing so, if you look at it realistically. But looking at it as a film, it doesn't matter, because damn it, you root for this guy to succeed. I highly recommend American Movie– perhaps the only documentary I have ever seen to get me to genuinely laugh out loud on multiple occasions. 

Searching for Sugarman

Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugarman is one of the most uniquely cinematic documentaries I have ever experienced. Certainly I'm not the only one to feel this way– it won the late Swedish filmmaker the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 85th Academy Awards in 2013. Featuring great music, stylistic animation, and a captivating story clouded in mystery, this is the type of documentary anyone– even the most casual of audiences– can get into.

The effectiveness of the film can be credited to a variety of things, but overall, the element of suspense is what separates it from the great majority of other documentaries. It is, by its title, a "search", and we follow Stephen Segerman on that search to find Sixto Rodriguez. So while the film is meant to be informative in nature, the way that information is revealed is done in a way that keeps the audience guessing as to whether Segerman will reach his goal. This is classic narrative structure that is typically not found in documentary filmmaking, but is what makes going to the movies such an immersive experience for audiences. 

This could be just as good of a film to study for building suspense than any other narrative feature. Rodriguez himself is not fully revealed until just over halfway into the film. If the filmmakers really wanted to create a structurally narrative-based documentary, they could've pushed the reveal to about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way through the film so that the act structure worked better, but that's probably taking it too far– too little of Rodriguez may have defeated the point of the film. 

That being said, I really liked that the purpose of the documentary was not to just inform the audience of this man's life. This was much more about the journey to find Sixto and the impact he had on the South African people and culture than it was on Rodriguez himself. Perhaps it was the right time and the right place, but this music was liberating to these people during the Apartheid. Besides, a documentary all about Rodriguez alone may have gotten boring quick considering how short for words he is. Letting his daughters and those who did the searching for Sugarman talk for him was a smart idea.

The concert at the end to top things off was brilliant, both structurally and on a filmmaking level. It's a huge payoff for all the setup we've gotten throughout the film for all Rodriguez has done for the people of South Africa and how legendary of an artist he is. It's also incredible to see how well the found footage meshes with the recreated shots, to the point that you really don't know what isn't found footage. The scene is put together by a collection of short cuts from a variety of different sources ranging from within the crowd to on the stage to behind the stage, and nothing lasts longer than a few brief seconds. It's seamlessly edited so that it feels like, as an audience member, you are there witnessing this historic event. This is a supremely well-edited film overall. Searching for Sugarman gets a very high recommendation from me.