The Unmaking of a College

Hampshire College president Miriam Nelson is surrounded by disgruntled students.

(2022) Documentary (Zeitgeist) Ken Burns, Miriam “Mim” Nelson, Marlon Becerra, Margaret Cerullo, Nya Johnson Andrew Del Banco, Cheyenne Palacio-McCarthy, Moon West, Holden Tharp, Andrew Gordon, Rhys MacArthur, Joshua Berman, Adam Falk, Salman Hameed, Adele Simmons, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Mingda Zhao, John Buckley, Lynda Pickbourn, Annie Wood. Directed by Amy Goldstein

 

College campuses have traditionally been a hotbed when it comes to demonstrations for causes. From civil rights, to antiwar demonstrations in the Sixties right up through now, when protests against climate change denial and racial injustice continue to pop up in colleges across the country, student protests have long been an instigator for social change.

Hampshire College is, located in the beautiful Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts, along with four other schools – Amherst College, Mt. Holyoke College, Smith College, Amherst College, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. It was founded in 1970 as an experimental school which offered no set majors and allowed students to select their own curriculum. As most private liberal arts colleges tend to be, the tuition is pricy.

In 2018, the school selected their eighth president – Dr. Miriam “Mim” Nelson, whose background was as the CEO of Newman’s Own Foundation. She has also been a policy advisor on health and nutrition under President Obama. However, during the winter break in 2019, she sent out a disturbing e-mail, indicating that the college was in severe financial difficulties and was in need of a “strategic partner” to help extricate them. She scheduled a meeting while students were out on break, which seemed odd. She also announced that the school would not be accepting a freshman class in Fall 2019. For a school that relies nearly completely on tuition and fees for their budget, this would be a devastating blow, and could easily lead to the closing of the school altogether. Certainly, it would mean significant layoffs at the conclusion of the 2018-19 academic year.

The more that students heard, the more disturbing it became. It turned out that Dr. Nelson had not only not consulted with students or faculty about any of this, but she also hadn’t consulted members of her own board. In the open meetings, she used a lot of corporate-speak to discuss the financial situation with the students, who began to suspect that something was amiss. Did Dr. Nelson have ulterior motives for these sudden and unprecedented moves?

It turned out that the lack of transparency hid some things that were less than savory. Students, furious that their education was being put at risk, decided to do something about it. They staged a massive sit-in in the President’s office, with a consistent presence for 74 days. The organization that the students displayed was admirable, scheduling people so that there was a round-the-clock presence but allowing students to still attend classes.

Hampshire alum Goldstein obviously feels a kinship with the students, and this is mostly their story. We hear almost nothing other than the public statements from Dr. Nelson, or from most of the trustees with the exception of those who were in opposition to the college president. If the narrative feels one-sided, well, that’s because it is.

Most of the voices we hear are those directly involved with the story, with the exception of Hampshire alumnus Ken Burns, the noted documentary filmmaker who waxes poetic about his time at the college. The students are for the most part, articulate and interesting; the faculty members and administrators are also equally passionate about their affection for the school.

Of course, the kids can be accused of having tunnel vision – that comes with the territory. Also, being young, they can be irritating and condescending at times; I found their habit of snapping their fingers instead of applauding to be pretentious, but that’s just one curmudgeon talking, I suppose. But the great failing here is that Goldstein really never manages to make this more than a local issue; although she attempts to connect this to alarming trends in higher education, she isn’t really successful at doing so, so the documentary may well fail to appeal to those outside of New England.

But the students themselves are certainly passionate and there is some comfort to be had from that. Change has, as I mentioned early, traditionally begun on college campuses and our nation is badly in need of some right about now. It’s good to know that there are students out there still that are willing to fight to make good changes happen.

REASONS TO SEE: Indicates that there are larger problems going on in higher education.
REASONS TO AVOID: Fails to really connect the dots to what those issues are, other than the regional one for this specific school.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUITS: The sit-in in Dr. Nelson’s office lasted 74 days, the longest on a college campus to date.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Kino Marquee
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/25/22: Rotten Tomatoes: 71% positive reviews; Metacritic: 50/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: American Teacher
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Cyrano

American Gadfly

Sharing a laugh before hitting the campaign laptop.

(2022) Documentary (Gravitas) Mike Gravel, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, Henry Williams, David Oks, Elijah Emery, Henry Magowan, Whitney Stewart Gravel, Dave Weigel, Jamie Keiles, Marianne Williamson, Rick Santorum, Jon Suhr, Anne Williams, Bettina Weil, Keane Bhatt, Alex Chang, Benjamin Church, Niko House, Katherine Williams. Directed by Skye Wallin

 

The political landscape has changed, as it always, inevitably, does. As technologies change, as fresh blood infuses the electorate, the way in which political discourse is conducted has shifted. We are entering the age, for better or for worse, of the political meme.

As the 2020 presidential election began to take shape, a group of politically-minded high school seniors in upscale Westchester County, New York, felt frustrated by the way the Democratic primaries were shaping out. Henry Williams, David Oks, Elijah Emery (a junior) and Henry Magowan felt that the issues important to them and to other young liberals, were not being addressed by the largely centrist group of candidates. Even Bernie Sanders didn’t feel far enough to the left for them. They thought they needed a candidate who would, at least, bring their issues to the conversation.

They found one in Mike Gravel (pronounced Gra-velle, with an emphasis on the second syllable. A former Senator from Alaska, Gravel was known for reading the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional record to point out the criminal activities being perpetrated by military forces in Vietnam. He was a bit of a maverick, often breaking with party lines, who believed in direct Democracy – that issues should be decided by a popular vote by the electorate, rather than by elected officials. He was also a pacifist, vehemently antiwar.

The trouble was that Gravel was long since retired from politics, living in Monterey, California, and just shy of 90. That didn’t stop the idealistic teens from reaching out to Gravel and asking him to run one last time for President, as he had in 2008 where he had at least made it to the debate stage.

The boys had no illusions of winning the primary. All they wanted to accomplish was to get Gravel on the debate stage this time out, so that their issues might be expressed. Gravel was intrigued by the idea, although he felt that the physical demands of the campaign would be too much for him. However, he agreed to file and allow the students to use his social media accounts to raise the issues and have the conversation that the boys felt was important for the party’s future.

The documentary follows the process as the boys run a uniquely 21^st century campaign through Twitter and Facebook. They took on the other candidates for the Democratic primary, often snarky in tone, but the campaign was unusual enough to get some notice from the late night talk shows…well, at least, one of them, anyway.

Although the title of the movie seems to indicate that it’s about Gravel, the former Senator is actually a supporting player. He is generally contacted by phone and rarely consulted about the content of the campaign. The movie is really about the four young men, who know absolutely nothing about running a campaign and yet managing to achieve the goal of getting enough donations to qualify for the second Democratic primary debate – unfortunately, Gravel still didn’t make the stage since more than 20 candidates qualified and the organizers would only permit a maximum of 20 candidates onstage.

The focus on the boys has some interest; as the campaign goes on, some friction rises between the four as they begn to disagree on how the campaign is to be run. Still, this may well be a preview of how campaigns are going to be run in the near-future, and in many ways it’s chilling. When you reduce the conversation to television sound bites, ideas often get essentially lost; reduce it further to accomodate Twitter and the ideas disappear completely. The memes are often snarky and sometimes even vicious; even though the boys decry the bullying tactics of Trump, they often imitate them. Watching this, I thought about the divide between conservatives and liberals in this country; would we further fracture as the far right and far left take on the centrists in their own parties? Can we as a nation ever come back from such a divide?

One admires the chutzpah of the four young men running a campaign on a shoestring. Some will grumble that there isn’t a great deal of inclusiveness in their campaign – no women and only two people of color (both Asians) are involved with their campaign in any meaningful way, but considering that this is essentially four guys from the same school who decided to tilt at a particular windmill that others weren’t likely to follow along with, it’s understandable that they didn’t attract a whole lot of interest from others who might have been (and were) more interested in the campaigns of Kamala Harris, Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang.

The movie is a bit self-aggrandizing – the boys tend to make claims about the effects of their campaign on the national conversation that I don’t think are warranted – but at the end of the day, four young men of a generation that are pretty much left out of the political equation saw a need to get themselves representation and went for it. There’s nothing that isn’t admirable about that.

REASONS TO SEE: There is something comforting about watching young people trying to change the world.
REASONS TO AVOID: The title is somewhat misleading towards the content.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a bit of profanity as well as some adult these.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Gravel passed away at age 91 on June 26, 2021 of multiple myelomas. He is the oldest candidate for President in the history of the Democratic party.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Google Play, Microsoft, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/9/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 80% positive reviews; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Our Brand is Crisis
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Don’t Look Up

Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers

A prince for all time.

(2021) Documentary (Discovery Plus) Prince Charles, Prince William, Princess Anne, Prince Harry, Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie, Prince Andrew, Sophie Countess of Wessex, Camilla Parker-Bowles, Alexandra McCreery, Zara Tindall, Mark Philips, Timothy Laurence, Louise Mountbatten-Windsor. Directed by Faye Hamilton and Mark Hill

 

To mark the occasion of the 100^th birthday of Philip the Duke of Edinburgh, documentary filmmakers Faye Hamilton and Mark Hill sat down with various members of the Royal family to get their impressions of the husband of Elizabeth II, reigning monarch of the United Kingdom. When Philip passed away unexpectedly on April 9^th of last year, two months shy of his birthday, the conversations took on an entirely different tone.

Additional interviews took place following the passing of the prince, and along with the anecdotes about the Prince, his temperament and his love for sports, hunting and the outdoors, his family opened up about what Philip meant to the family and to them individually. It is an unusually candid and emotional documentary; very often the Royals tend to keep their emotions in check.

We also have a tendency to judge Philip based on different portrayals of him in the media, particularly here in America. Most who know him through portrayals in such films as The Queen or TV series like The Crown, in both of which he is second banana to his wife (as I suppose is proper), we are given a portrait of a tone-deaf man giving his wife terrible advice in the days following the tragic death of the former Princess of Wales Diana, or being a bit standoffish while arguing for conservative values from a bygone era.

Nearly everyone interviewed here from his children and grandchildren to his staff remark on his sense of humor, his tendency to tease those he was close to with affection, and above all his devotion to his family. Considering his early history – his family was forced to flee Greece after a coup and he lived in exile in Britain, his family nearly penniless. He made an impression in military school and served with distinction in the Second World War, before catching the eye of a princess whom he later wed. Their marriage was, by all accounts, a good one and certainly Elizabeth leaned on her husband for support and advice throughout her reign, and he provided her with both.

The movie is replete with lots of wonderful anecdotes about Prince Philip, as well as archival footage and even some home movies – I’m sure most people don’t know this but the late Prince was an aficionado of the barbecue and worked the grill whenever he had the opportunity to, and we see him doing just that.

A biography is sometimes defined as a portrait, warts and all whereas a hagiography is completely without blemish, and the latter is true here. Then again, this was meant to be a birthday gift before it became a tribute, and neither occasion is appropriate for a tell-all exposé, For those here in the States who are fascinated by the Royals, this is absolutely indispensable. For history buffs, it has merit but should be taken in the spirit it was intended. For those looking for a complete portrait of the man, well, I’m sure he’s not going to be nominated for sainthood anytime soon but this film provides a point of view we don’t often get to see, and in that sense, it’s invaluable.
REASONS TO SEE: Plenty of archival material and family photos.
REASONS TO AVOID: About as hagiographic as one would expect this would be.
FAMILY VALUES: Suitable for all audiences.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Philip at more than 70 years was the longest-serving consort in the history of the British crown.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Discovery Plus
CRITICAL MASS: As of 01/10/22: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Aulcie

The Rise and Fall of LuLaRoe

LuLaRoe retailer Sharon Tucker and her son Elijah examine some of their wares.

(2021) Documentary (Discovery Plus) Rick Ross, Stephanie McNeal, Vivian Kaye, Elijah Tucker, Joy Saavedra, Christina Hinks, DeAnne Brady Stidham, Sharon Tucker, Meg Conley, Jean Marie, Amanda Montell, Mark Stidham, Vivian Kaye, Jill Domme, Wendi Rogers, CJ Sanders, Carla Hadfield, Heather Blithely, Brittany Hunter. Director Uncredited.

“Work hard to get ahead.” That’s the mantra we Americans have heard essentially all our lives; that the secret to a good life was putting our nose to the grindstone and working our tushies off. As that has been exposed to be a bill of goods that has no basis in the reality of the 21^st century America, many have turned to adding income in order to make ends meet, let alone get ahead.

DeAnne Brady Stidham and her husband Mark founded LuLaRoe as a women’s clothing company in 2013 with their emphasis on what they described as “buttery soft” leggings with somewhat over-the-top prints and colors. Rather than selling through stores, they enlisted their own retailers – mostly white moms – who sold through social media, posting upbeat videos with the go-for-it attitude of a Jazzercize class.

This type of venture isn’t new. It’s called “Multi-Level Marketing” and has been used successfully by Tupperware, Avon and Mary Kay Cosmetics – all, again, mostly utilizing white moms. But there is an inherent danger in this kind of business and it has to do with recruiting. The more retailers that a product like LuLaRoe can entice, the more sales they make and the more profit. To encourage sales growth, they gave their retailers incentive to sign up new retailers by giving them a bonus for the orders put in by their recruits. This is essentially a pyramid scheme, and they are illegal.

The reason that they’re illegal is that the money flows upwards and those on the bottom of the pyramid generally are left having made a worthless investment while those at the top rake in the dough. The retailers began to notice that the once-high quality leggings began to deteriorate drastically in quality with ugly patterns and forming holes in them with only a single wearing. Retailers found themselves unable to sell the low-quality and increasingly unattractive leggings and were left with thousands of dollars in merchandise that they couldn’t sell. Many of them wound up deeply in debt and some found their relationships with family and friends strained or even broken.

This documentary, airing exclusively on Discovery Plus, examines the cult-like environment that the Stidhams created, using what one expert called “toxic positivity,” in which low sales would be blamed on poor attitudes, or too-small inventories. Top sellers were rewarded with Carnival Cruises or trips to Cancun. Authors and experts on cult behavior Rick Ross and Amanda Montell both detail how LuLaRoe’s environment is similar to that within a cult, while online activist Christina Hinks discuss the evils of Multi-Level Marketing.

This is definitely a cautionary tale, one that continues today – LuLaRoe continues its behavior, as they show in footage from their 2021 Cancun retreat – but it’s clear that this is meant to warn people about how easy promises of “full-time pay for part-time work” can be deceiving and lead to terrible consequences. That LuLaRoe preyed on women desperate for a sense of camaraderie is repulsive.

But keep in mind that while the subject matter is compelling, the format of the documentary is pretty standard and the story not particularly well-told. One can easily glean the same information from Stephanie McNeal’s original BuzzFeed article that detailed the tactics of LuLaRoe, or by the Amazon documentary mini-series LuLaRich which goes into greater depth, although requires more of a time commitment from the viewer. In any case, this is a non-essential documentary on a subject of interest.

REASONS TO SEE: A thorough look at an American scandal.
REASONS TO AVOID: Like many documentaries of this nature, relies on a parade of talking heads.
FAMILY VALUES: Suitable for family viewing, although kids may find this boring.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is essentially a documentary form of the BuzzFeed article by McNeal that exposed the Stidhams and their business practices.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Discovery Plus
CRITICAL MASS: As of 12/26/21: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Gig Is Up
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Wonder Park

The Mustangs: America’s Wild Horses

American icons.

(2021) Documentary (Virgil) Robert Redford (voice), David Philipps, Stormy Mullins, Wylene Davis, Tom Hagwood, Mary Kitzmiller, Ann Souders, Pat Doak, Matt Manroe, Jimmy Welch, Ryan Beatele, Richard Durant, Brittany Johnson, Stella Trueblood, Neda DeMayo. Directed by Steven Latham and Conrad Stanley

 
An iconic image of the American west was the cowboy on his mustang, riding the range. But the mustangs aren’t native to the Americas; the Spanish conquistadors brought it with them. But as the century turned from the 19^th to the 20^th, the face of the American West changed. Farms and agriculture, towns and cities began to dominate the landscape as the open range became a thing of the past. Mustangs in the wild, no longer needed for transportation and work with the advent of the automobile, began to be used as dog food as they became nuisances to farmers. Their numbers dropped in the wild to under 10,000 by the 1950s.

That all changed with the advent of Velma “Wild Horse Annie” Johnston, an ordinary secretary who while on the way to work one day saw the inhumane way wild horses were treated. Outraged at the sad mistreatment of an animal that symbolized America at its finest, she went on what started as a one-woman crusade to save the wild mustang. Her campaign gathered steam, supported in large part by America’s children. Eventually, the Bureau of Land Management set aside land for the mustangs to roam free and an agency was set up to manage them. The legacy of Wild Horse Annie is that the number of mustangs in the wild has grown to more than 80,000.

In fact, that’s where their modern troubles have begun. The land that the mustangs inhabit cannot sustain that many horses. Horses have no natural predators and left to their own devices their population will double roughly every four to five years. Several advocacy groups have been tackling this problem in different ways, from a group of women who travel the inhospitable range in Wyoming and Nevada to shoot darts into the mares. The darts contain a fertility inhibitor that keeps the mare from ovulating. This is the most cost-effective way to handle the problem at about $30 a dart. One of the other means of controlling the population is rounding up groups of horses and keeping them in a BLM enclosure, costing the taxpayers roughly $50K every year per horse.

Then there is the Extreme Mustang Makeover, in which 100 of the horses that have been rounded up are given to 100 horse trainers who are given 100 days to train the equines to get used to working with humans. We follow two of the trainers – Mary Kitzmiller and Brittany Johnson as they take the wild horses who are often fractious around humans and in the hundred day window not only get them used to a human presence but even make them partners. It is a competition, and the horses – all of them – are auctioned off to the highest bidder, win or lose.

One of the winning bidders was Operation Wild Horse, which is a ranch in Illinois that pairs veterans with PTSD with horses, helping the vets to regain a sense of purpose and worth. It is a moving segment, one which in addition to tackling the issue of wild horse overpopulation, also takes on at the same time the problems of vets returning home after serving in hellacious circumstances.

The movie is only an hour and a half long, but the pacing is maddeningly slow. Still, the viewer is treated to breathtaking cinematography of horses in the wild, running in herds and protecting their colts. This is a documentary which falls under the category “the same, but different” in that it articulates an issue that has ramifications on the survival of the species, utilizes gorgeous images to tug at the emotions of the viewers and talks about efforts underway to resolve the situation, but different in the sense that we’re not talking about dwindling population numbers so much as dwindling available resources. Horse lovers should glom onto this one sooner rather than later.

REASONS TO SEE: Some beautiful images of horses in the wild.
REASONS TO AVOID:T he pacing is a little too deliberate.
FAMILY VALUES: There are some disturbing images of animal cruelty.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Among the producers for the film are Redford, Bruce Springsteen (who also contributes a song to the soundtrack), his wife Patti Scialfa Springsteen and songwriter Diane Warren, who wrote a song for the soundtrack.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Google Play, Kino Now, Spectrum, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 12/21/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 100% positive reviews; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Buck
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Benedetta

Set!

The dinner table can be a serious business.

(2021) Documentary (Discovery Plus) Bonnie Overman, Marie Schoenfelder, Christel Schoenfelder, Hilarie Moore, Tim Wyckoff, Crystal Young, Rich Young, Ron Lew, Janet Lew, Cheryl Van Der Heller, Ginnie Miller, Sandra R. Courtney. Directed by Scott Gawlick

There are competitions for everything, from solving crossword puzzles to driving monster trucks to seeing whose frog can jump the farthest. If something can be done, sooner or later human nature will develop a contest for it.

That extends to mundane, everyday tasks as well. Take setting the table, for example. You know, the job your mom made you do when dinner was ready – and one you probably only did grudgingly, at that. You’re probably wondering why people would set tables on purpose. Didn’t they invent children to cover that?

Well, you wouldn’t send a child to decorate these tables. They are elaborate affairs, heavily themed and essentially works of art. There is also a great deal of skill involved; the silverware must be arranged properly and be the proper distance from the plates. Missing by a fraction of an inch can make the difference between winning nothing and winning Best in Show – the highest honor.

Don’t ever say that to Bonnie Overman. She is the Michael Jordan of table setting, having won more Best in Show ribbons than anyone. Her competitors look at her as a rival who can potentially win any competition she enters. The one she’s working on now is for the Orange County Fair in California, near where she lives. There are two themes; travel, and illumination. Bonnie chooses travel, and staying true to her love of cinema, she themes her table to Out of Africa. The OC Fair also gives ribbons out in the two themes for First Place, Second Place and Honorable Mention. There are no cash prizes; these women compete for ribbons and honor.

Did I say women? Well, while most of the competitors are women middle-aged and older, there is at least one man in the competition; Tim Wyckoff, who is also a cosplay enthusiast, but currently unemployed and living with his mom. He is doing a table based on Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go on a very strict budget – you see, some of the women spend thousands of dollars on their tables. Recent immigrant Janet Lew decorates her tables with items she’s picked up from her travels around the world, including a chandelier. Defending champion Crystal Young – the only one in the cast competing in the illumination category – is taking a chance on doing the tried-and-true barn setting to follow the overall theme of the Fair. However, nobody is taking as much of a chance as Hilarie Moore, who looks on these competitions as art installations and she likes to make a point with her art. She uses the travel theme, for example, to protest poaching in Africa and creates a setting compete with taxidermy animals, blood-soaked sand and animal bones. Bon appetit.

Your reaction to these and other contestants who are profiled may depend on your tolerance for obsessive behavior. Some will find them to be fascinating, interesting people with an unusual hobby; others will see them as women (and men) fiercely desperate for recognition, regardless of for what it is being received. Still others will see them as people with way too much time on their hands. Of course, I’m not one to talk; each one of these reviews you read requires somewhere in the neighborhood of five to eight hours of work apiece, from watching the movie to doing research on it, to finally writing, editing and posting the review on the site, multiplied by one review just about every day. We all have our obsessions.

For the most part, Gawlick himself is non-judgmental. He lets the various subjects tell their own story, leaving it up to the viewer to decide what they think, which is pretty admirable when you think about it. Most documentaries have a definite opinion about their subjects and aren’t afraid to express it; Gawlick treats his subjects with respect, which some might argue is more than they deserve. In all honesty, I was a bit gob-smacked by their dedication at first, but as time went by I began to see them a bit more clearly; at the end of the day, these are people who have found an outlet to express themselves, and it sure beats staring at a phone screen all day clicking on “like” buttons. In any case, you’re more likely to find their stories compelling than not, so why not give it a look-see?

REASONS TO SEE: Manages to hold your attention even though you know it shouldn’t.
REASONS TO AVOID: These are the REAL real housewives of Orange County.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity and a couple of disturbing images.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Those who participate in these competitions refer to it as “tablescaping.”
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Discovery Plus
CRITICAL MASS: As of 12/15/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 100% positive reviews; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Wordplay
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: The Monkey King: Reborn

Writing With Fire

For a lone woman , even conducting a simple interview can be intimidating – and dangerous.

(2021) Documentary (Music Box) Meera Devi, Suneeta Prajapati, Shyamkali Devi, Arti Soni, Alima Tarannum, Lalita Devi, Rojini Kumari, Anita Shakya, Kavita Devi, Geeta Devi, Krishna Mishra, Sahodra, Alka Manral, Lakshmi Sharma, Sunita Devi, Nazal Rizui, Saroj, Meera Jatau, Reena Ahirwar, Harshita Vera, Kumkim Yadau, Susheela Devi, Rajkumari Ahirwar. Directed by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas

 

India has for many centuries held to a caste system, where the lowest are the Dalit caste, who were once known as “untouchables” in the sense that they were not allowed to make physical contact with other castes. While the name is no longer used, the same type of attitude still prevails.

And if you think that’s terrible, even lower than that is to be a Dalit woman. While it is now possible for Dalits (even Dalit women) to get an education, the women still remain subservient to men in their culture. Women are often placed by their parents in arranged marriages, and from time to time their husbands think nothing of using physical violence to control their wives.

Things are changing in some ways, and one of the agents of change are the intrepid reporters of the Khabar Lahariya newspaper (which translates as “waves of news”). The newspaper is grassroots journalism at its finest, and what is more remarkable that it is entirely staffed by women – most of them Dalit women. This documentary focuses on three of the reporters – senior reporter Meera Devi, who has been married since age 14 and prior to becoming a journalist was a teacher with a degree in political science; senior reporter Suneeta Prajapati, who is focusing on stories regarding illegal mining operations that employ child labor, place their miners in deplorable conditions in which injuries are frequent and deaths not uncommon; and cub reporter Shyamkali Devi who is young and married to an abusive husband, but determined to become successful even though she knows nothing about journalism or writing.

We catch these women during a period of transition for Khabar Lahariya as the print newspaper is pivoting into becoming a digital enterprise. This means teaching the reporters how to use a cell phone to capture video, file stories via e-mail and research on the internet, although several of the women have never used a cell phone before (Shyamkali among them). Shyamkali is having a difficult time with the transition; she doesn’t speak English and the phones require a certain amount of knowledge of the English language.

But little by little we see the effect that the newspaper has on local issues; a village that is suffering through a tuberculosis epidemic finally receives medical assistance after the paper shames the government into acting; a vital road in a village receives much-needed repairs after the newspaper points out the dangerous conditions, and politicians and police officers are held to task for their inaction.

India is a place where rape culture has thrived, and it comes as no surprise that much of the energy at the newspaper is spent on telling the stories of women who have been violated (some of them repeatedly), only to find that the police are unwilling to do anything about it. The general consensus is that “boys will be boys” and make “silly mistakes,” and that rape is really a mental health issue. Nothing to be done, so sorry, carry on.

We also experience the rise of current Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist BJP party. We meet young Hindus who are determined to preserve the way of life that their theology has taught them to lead, and it’s fairly chilling. There are some disquieting similarities between the followers of Modi and the followers of Trump here. Trump has sown seeds of mistrust among the right for the media, a tactic that doesn’t seem as necessary in India as the media is sometimes as corrupt as the politicians themselves are. Often the reporters of Khabar Lahariya are held up to ridicule by their fellow reporters (all men of a certain class) and veiled threats are even made upon occasion. One wonders if the presence of a documentary crew filming the interviews might have saved the women from being the targets of violence.

The women are certainly courageous and dedicated to making life better for those with no voices, providing a voice for them. The filmmakers fail to provide more context. We learn next to nothing about what prompted the founding of the newspaper and it’s unique staffing policy, what prompted these women individually to become citizen journalists, how the hierarchy of the organization works, and how do they stay afloat financially. A little background information would have gone a long way in helping viewers understand, particularly those of us who aren’t familiar with Indian culture.

These women are definite role models, particularly for young girls who are growing up in what might seem to be a hopeless situation with little future and no really good options. These women seem to be bent on overcoming that situation, and despite having varying degrees of support from their families, it can’t be denied that these women are making a difference.

REASONS TO SEE: The women depicted here are courageous and tenacious, absolute role models. Quietly points out how what’s going on in India isn’t unlike what’s going on here.
REASONS TO AVOID: Could have given a bit more background on the various subjects i.e., why they got into journalism in the first place.
FAMILY VALUES: There is violence and discussions of sexual assault.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: More than 40 journalists have been killed since 2019, making India one of the most dangerous places in the world to report the news.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 12/13/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 100% positive reviews; Metacritic: 84/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Under the Wire (2018)
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: BLONDE: purple

Citizen Ashe

Arthur Ashe: More than a tennis star.

(2021) Documentary (Magnolia) Arthur Ashe, Harry Edwards, John McEnroe, Billy Jean King, LeBron James, Andrew Young, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, John Carlos, Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith, Lenny Simpson, Johnnie Ashe, Art Carrington, Charlie Pasarell, Donald Dell, EJ McGorda, Victor Ellis, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Tiana Melvina Woods. Directed by Rex Miller and Sam Pollard

Some people make the times they’re in; others are made by them. Arthur Ashe was one of the former; as one of the few African-Americans to play professional tennis in the 1960s and on through the 1990s, he was known for his unflappable demeanor, his intelligent strategy and his awe-inspiring power game. In many ways he was the Tiger Woods of his day; excelling in a sport dominated by people not of color.

But in some ways, he also was made by his times. He grew up in Richmond, Virginia – a soft-spoken black man who had access to tennis courts because his family lived in housing in a city park where his dad was caretaker; he showed a great deal of promise in the game and ended up with a scholarship to UCLA where he eventually earned a spot on the Davis Cup team.

If all that we remember about Arthur Ashe was his achievements in the game of tennis, he would likely be remembered as a giant of the game – the first African-American male to win three Grand Slam events (including the inaugural U.S. Open), but Arthur’s rise to tennis stardom coincided with the Civil Rights movement. Arthur, who as a black man growing up in the South in the Fifties, learned deference at an early age, was not as unspoken as fellow southern athlete Muhammad Ali, who grew up in Louisville. This earned accusations of being an Uncle Tom from folks like Harry Edwards, the San Jose State professor who helped radicalize Black athletes and use their celebrity to push for social justice, basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who unkindly referred to the tennis star as “Arthur Ass”) and Ali himself.

That didn’t necessarily mean that Ashe had no opinion about civil rights; he had plenty. However, being a firebrand was never his style. Edwards remarks today that if you listen carefully to what Ashe was saying, he was in many ways more militant than some of the people who denounced him. Latein life, Ashe contracted HIV from a blood transfusion during open heart surgery and eventually died far too young at age 49 in 1993, less than a year after announcing he had contracted the disease and ten years after the fact.

For the most part, this is a fairly typical bio-doc with plenty of talking head interviews with friends and contemporaries of Ashe (including his brother Johnnie), plenty of archival footage as well as home movies and private video (some never before seen), and just a touch of hagiography.

But Ashe was a colossus of his time and remains a man who valued a life of kindness, one who spoke softly and used reason to persuade rather than shouting people down (a technique that many people these days would do well to learn). He was a disciple more of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela than of Malcolm X and Harry Edwards. He was in the strange position of being reviled by both sides, being called an uppity Negro by white racists and an Uncle Tom by black ideologues. It got to the point where he despaired “When will I get to decide how I want to live?” when faced with the dichotomy of opinions about his stands on the issues of equality and justce for Americans of color.

There are some excellent anecdotes, particularly from his brother Johnnie and his widow Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (the latter of whom also was an executive producer on the film, along with such luminaries as documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney and musician John Legend). The jazzy score by Jongnic Bontemps is Cool AF and really helps establish a time and place for the film. I’ll be real honest; this isn’t one of the top documentaries of the year, but it is a very good one and the subject matter is more than deserving of the attention.

REASONS TO SEE: A really cool jazz soundtrack.
REASONS TO AVOID: Generally speaking, a fairly typical sports doc.
FAMILY VALUES: There are some adult themes.
TRIVIAL PURSUITS:Ashe took up tennis, a non-traditional sport for African-American athletes at the time, because he wanted to be the “Jackie Robinson of tennis.”
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, DirecTV, Google Play, Microsoft, Optimum, Redbox, Spectrum, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 12/3/21: Rotten Tomatoes:93% positive reviews; Metacritic: 77/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: King Richard
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Writing With Fire

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time

Filmmaker (left) and author, out for a stroll on the beach.

(2021) Documentary (IFC) Kurt Vonnegut, Robert B. Weide, Sam Waterston (voice), John Irving, Edie Vonnegut, Kurt Adams, Jerome Klinkowitz, Morley Safer, Sidney Offit, Nanny Vonnegut, Dan Simon, Steve Adams, Valerie Stevenson, Gregory Sumner, Rodney Allen, Mark Vonnegut, Jim Adams, Joe Bleifuss, Dan Wakefield, Peter Adams, Ginger Strand. Directed by Robert B. Weide and Don Argott

Very often before writing a review of a film I’ve recently seen, I like to read the reviews written by other critics. Not because I want to steal their prose, although once in a while I find that we’re thining along the same lines. It’s mainly curiosity that motivates me; why did this critic rate the movie so highly, or so low? What did they see that I didn’t? When it comes to documentaries, I am often surprised that critics seem to write negative reviews because a documentary didn’t meet their expectations of what they thought it should cover. I suppose that I’ve probably been guilty of the same sin myself – it’s extraordinarily, brutally hard to evaluate one’s own work – but I at least try to review what’s up there on the screen rather than what I think should be up there. That just seems logical to me.

So I suppose that those who love the work of Kurt Vonnegut – author of classics like Cat’s Cradle, Sirens of Titan and Breakfast of Champions – might well be disappointed because the movie, shot over a forty year period by his close friend Robert B. Weide (an Emmy winner for Curb Your Enthusiasm), doesn’t dwell very much on literary analysis. This is a biography, told in a decidedly nonlinear fashion, much as Vonnegut’s best works are written.

It does spend a lot of time examining the facts of his life; how he served in World War II, eventually being taken prisoner and housed in a former slaughterhouse in Dresden where he witnessed firsthand the terrifying firebombing of that city, and was afterwards forced to dig out corpses from the smoldering ruins. The events were chronicled in his most famous book that was also his commercial breakthrough, Slaughterhouse Five,

Weide and co-director Don Argott go through the main highlights of his life, from his upbringing in Indianapolis to his marriage to Jane Marie Cox, his adoption of his sister Alice’s four sons after she died of cancer (and likely a broken heart) just two days after her husband perished in a horrific train accident, adding her children to the three he and Jane already had (one of her sister’s children would eventually move out after a year to be raised by relatives on his paternal side). It also reports on how he divorced Jane, leaving her for the photographer he was having an affair with, which did alienate him from his children for many years.

Weide talks to a lot of people, from his children (Jane, who passed away in 1986, is not heard from, curiously) to academics and admirers, biographers and people who also knew the author. We see him at personal appearances, reading from his books; he is an engaging speaker, as funny in person as his prose is on the printed page.

But it’s his relationship with Weide that really takes center stage in the movie. We see informal footage of the two chatting together, hear answering machine messages from the author that Weide saved, and hear him talk about anecdotes that Vonnegut shared with him. We learn, poignantly, that Weide keeps a dictionary above his desk that was published before the author’s death in 2007. The entry reads “Kurt Vonnegut (1922-    ), American author.” In that way, there was a source at Weide’s desk that lists his friend as still being alive. At the end of the film, Weide gently pencils in the date into the author’s entry, perhaps signifying that the completion of the documentary, which took Weide forty years to complete, is the appropriate place to let go.

The film is engaging and sometimes sentimental. For those unfamiliar with the details of Vonnegut’s life, there is a lot here to unpack – although nothing that doesn’t appear on his Wikipedia page, so from that standpoint, it’s not going to surprise those who are more familiar with the author’s life. And for those looking for insight into the author’s work, there’s really not a lot here that you wouldn’t find in your average 10^th grade American literature course. Like all authors, Vonnegut was a product of his times. His experiences at Dresden made him passionately anti-war, and in the Seventies he became something of a counterculture figure for a brief time. There is something almost professorial about Vonnegut, from his bushy moustache to his corduroy jackets with patches on the elbows, to the ever-present cigarettes – one thing that annoyed me about the movie that in still photos in which Vonnegut is smoking (and there are MANY of those) Weide adds digital smoke to the point it becomes distracting.

Other than that, this is a well-made look at the author’s life through the lens of his friend’s eyes. From that standpoint, there is nothing remotely impartial about the film. In fact, the fact that the filmmaker obviously had a great deal of affection for his subject actually makes the movie a lot more enjoyable than something else that would have been dry and insufferable – the very antithesis of what Vonnegut was as a writer.

REASONS TO SEE: A moving tribute from one friend to another. Some insight into one of the most influential authors of the 20^th century, particularly for those not familiar with the details of his life.
=REASONS TO AVOID: The digital smoke from the cigarettes is overused.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity and lots of smoking.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Vonnegut introduced the character of science fiction writer Kilgore Trout in God Bless You, Mister Rosewater. The character would recur in many of Vonnegut’s works.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Doc NYC online (until November 28), Amazon, AppleTV, DirecTV, Google Play, Microsoft, Spectrum, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/22/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 91% positive reviews; =Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road

Children of the Enemy

Patricio Galvez cuddles his grandson.

(2021) Documentary (Abramorama) Patricio Galvez, Clive Stafford Smith, Alba Galvez, Katalina Galvez, Mio Galvez, Persraw Baker Hussein, Eskandar Saleh, Stefan Åsberg, Isobel Coles, Adam Mattinen, Cecilia Uddén, Terese Cristiansson, Jacek Machula, Simon Sowell, Rena Effendi, Beatrice Eriksson. Directed by Gorki Glaser-Müller

Dostoyevsky wrote that a civilization is judged by how it treats its prisoners. That could also be included as to how it treats its enemies – or their children.

Patricio Galvez, a middle-aged musician who had emigrated to Sweden from Chile, made headlines in Scandinavia in 2018-19 when he attempted to rescue his seven grandchildren from the notorious Al-Hol refugee camp in Syria. You see, his daughter Amanda had converted to Islam along with her mother (at the time divorced from Patricio) and had an arranged marriage with Michael Skråmo, a notorious ISIS recruiter from Norway. Eventually the two moved to Syria over the objections of Galvez, and taken their four children with them. While in Syria, they kept busy – Amanda had three more children there and was pregnant with an eighth when she was killed in an air strike. A couple of months later, Skråmo died during the fall of the caliphate, shot to death in front of his children.

The children were placed in a refugee camp and as the children of ISIS terrorists, were essentially persona non grata in Sweden. Galvez didn’t see the children of terrorists, however; he just saw his grandchildren and put up a tremendous fight to get them out of the camp. But the clock was ticking; the children were severely malnourished and were growing weaker and more ill with each passing day.

The movie chronicles the ordeal of Galvez, which is mostly down time waiting on bureaucrats to return his call, or for some action or another to be taken. He enlists the aid of humanitarian groups, but they can accomplish later. He begins a media campaign which seems to spur the Swedish government into action. However, the Swedish public is less sanguine about the affair; the social media posts are (predictably) nasty, urging Galvez to return to Chile and pointing out his failures as a father to raise a terrorist, wondering if he would be fit to raise these children as well or would they turn out to be just as radical as Amanda turned out to be?

Galvez is very conflicted. On the one hand, he mourns the loss of his daughter, realizing that she was lost years earlier when she was radicalized. He also mourns the damage done by his son-in-law and ISIS in general, all the lives disrupted, the women used as sex slaves, the children left as orphans. But throughout, he perseveres. He realizes, better than most, that the sins of the father (or the mother) should not be visited upon the sons (and daughters).

It is at times a difficult movie to watch; some of Amanda’s letters to her father from Syria are absolutely chilling, as are the home movies the two sent him of the kids. There are some joyous moments, as when Patricio finally gets a breakthrough from the Swedish diplomatic corps and Glaser-Müller puts down the camera to embrace his friend, who is overcome. The grandmother makes an appearance, further complicating matters.

The children themselves we see little of and when we do see them, their eyes are pixilated so that they can’t be easily identified. They are clearly traumatized but for all that, they are still just kids, innocent victims of parents who had followed a path of evil.

There are some negatives here; we don’t really get a lot of personal background. We aren’t told when and how Patricio’s marriage to Amanda’s mother ended, or how the two women ended up converting to Islam and why. Then again, this isn’t meant to be Amanda’s story, although she looms large throughout. We also aren’t told how Patricio managed to afford staying in the hotel near the Iraq-Syria border for a month and a half, or how he could afford to take off work (or even whether he is employed). We learn almost nothing about the mundane details of Patricio’s life, other than that he is a doting grandfather, a grieving father and a musician. A few more blanks needed to be filled in. The score is a bit on the intrusive side as well.

But that aside, this is a powerful documentary that looks at the war on terror from an entirely different viewpoint. The film is currently playing in a limited run in Los Angeles, as well as available for streaming as part of the DOC NYC festival online (see link below). While there are some questions that can never be answered – how can an apparently well-adjusted person be radicalized to that degree – it at least lets us look at the questions it can answer.

REASONS TO SEE: Patricio is a compelling subject with a warm, engaging smile but still a broken heart. Plays almost like a thriller in places.
REASONS TO AVOID: Really doesn’t give us much insight as to who Galvez is.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some adult thematic content.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Like Galvez, Glaser-Müller is a Chilean-Swede.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: DOC NYC Online (through November 28)
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/19/21: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Mass
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: Dean Martin: King of Cool