The Art of the Documentary

In many ways, for me at least, the construction of a documentary is little different than that of a feature film. A filmmaker can't just settle for training a camera on the star or slacking on the storytelling or ignoring the necessities of technical details and sharp editing. A documentary needs a compelling narrative arc, whether it's a hero story or a nagging mystery.

I saw both ends of the quality spectrum within a few days. I was disappointed in "Levon Helm: Not In It or My Health" and exhilarated by a second screening of "The House I Live In" at a special event at the KiMo Theater downtown (with a fabulous sound system). And somewhere in the middle, I enjoyed the charming profile "The Bitter Buddha."

The Levon Helm documentary has its moments, and if you're a fan of the Band drummer you'll fall for his charms, but for the most part this movie just sits lazily on the screen. All of the footage seems to have been shot entirely in 2008, as if Helm cut off access one day and the project was shelved, only to be hastily edited together after his death last year.

The filmmakers skimp on the archival footage. We get a quick rush seeing the boys on the Ed Sullivan show or performing at Woodstock. Helm, having cheated death for the past decade at the point of filming, understandably dwells on the two previously departed members of the Band, Richard Manuel and Rick Danko. However, the filmmakers never adequately explore Helm's relationship with his bandmates, nor do they press him to explain his fixation with those two ghosts. A connection is missing.

We also get a few glancing cheap shots at Robbie Robertson, whose financial edge as principal songwriter (Helm here is obviously bitter about the Canadian Robertson filching Helm's Southern experiences to write Americana classics like "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down") led to the band's breakup and the bitterness that kept them apart.

Meantime, the filmmakers spin their wheels, showcasing Helm's homespun monologues in front of pals and admirers to the point where you swear you heard that story just a half hour earlier. And after yet another one of those good-ol'-boy moments, the screen goes black. It's an unsatisfying experience in the end, because you just know there was a better film to be made here.

***

If you want to see a good film, look for the name Jarecki in the credits. Eugene Jarecki has had a string of pleasing releases: "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," "Why We Fight," "Freakonomics" and the last year's sharp HBO biography "Reagan." Brother Andrew crafted what is one of the best documentaries of the past decade, "Capturing the Friedmans." Half-brother Nicholas Jarecki has dabbled as a producer in documentaries ("Tyson") but focused on feature films, most notably last year's financial thriller "Arbitrage."

Eugene's "The House I Live In" is the culmination of his work as a documentary filmmaker. Here he takes on the United States drug war and the skewed incarceration rates of people of color. Let's put aside the fact that this is a powerfully crafted polemic; it's simply a great film.

Jarecki scores high in all categories of the Documentary Checklist. He's got intelligent, well-spoken talking heads; an engaging but not overpowering soundtrack; just the right amount of stats and data given on the screen; a sympathetic but flawed hero; a familiar but effective framing device; a locomotive of a narrative; a clever twist at the two-thirds mark; a broad historical perspective; and a tug at your emotions, especially at the end.

Jarecki gambles in the beginning by using what has often been a fairly trite framing device: his own personal story, which he narrates. Not only that, but he's the white savior who will use his black nanny as the hook to get into his story. Jarecki was raised by a black woman named Nannie Jeter, who was well compensated by his well-off parents but whose subsequent commute left her an absentee mom. She lost a son to drugs and AIDS, and he is just one of the victims Jarecki introduces from the war on drugs.

The bond between Jarecki and Nannie is strong enough to overcome any qualms about the valorous white filmmaker using his former nanny to school us all on race relations. The film rises above the simplicity of the racial element to the war on drugs. It makes bigger points about society and our capitalist system.

And then, more than halfway through the film, an interesting thing happens. Jarecki introduces a historian (I lost track of names, but I believe it's Richard L. Miller), an intense steampunk intellectual who provides a broad historical perspective about the government's targeting of drug use and ethnic groups, going back to the mid 19th century. The sweeping theory runs from the ban on Asians' use of opium, through Mexicans' marijuana use, the jazz scene's heroin craze, the crack epidemic of the '80s and the current focus on the lower class and meth. It's an eye-opening observation that various epochs of the drug war follow a similar pattern in which a vulnerable class of people is targeted, ostracized and then attacked through the criminal system. Another articulate talking head -- David Simon, creator of "The Wire -- cautiously compares the modern war on drugs to a slow holocaust.

Jarecki also interviews a judge who is tired of the ridiculous sentencing guidelines. He talks to a medical expert. And he has a keen eye for those who have been run through the criminal justice system. He uses one, Shanequa Benitez, more for visual effect (reaction shots, for example) than for her insights.

Put it all together, and it's a triumph of documentary filmmaking.

***

And then there are those documentaries where you just point the camera at a subject and know you'll get a good story. I'm a sucker for documentaries about comedy and comedians ("Standup" with Jerry Seinfeld, "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," "The Aristocrats"), and "The Bitter Buddha," which turns the camera on veteran journeyman comic Eddie Pepitone, ranks up there with its insightful predecessors.

Pepitone is a troubled man. His standup routine might approximate what I imagine Rodney Dangerfield might have been like off-stage when he dropped the goofball act and got serious with his therapist. I identified with Pepitone's middle-aged hand-wringing over the general unfairness of the world around us. He kills with a bit featuring him trying to read a simple line for a laundry detergent commercial only to be foiled by the enunciation of the dark thoughts he can't keep to himself.

Director Steven Feinartz fashions quite the valentine to this sad-sack slob. He assembles an impressive array of funny people to wax comedic about Pepitone. We hear from Patton Oswalt, Dana Gould (entertaining on the DVD extra, too), Sarah Silverman and Zach Galifianakis. Feinartz cribs a lot of material from Pepitone's appearances with Marc Maron on Maron's popular podcast. He uses animation (by Allen Mezquida) to liven up those segments. Animation also is used to punctuate the chapters with an occasional absurdist Tweet from Pepitone. The gimmick works because the Tweets are funny. ("Remember, we are just specks of dust in infinite space who love ice cream.")

The dramatic device Feinartz uses here involves a big show back in his hometown in New York that Pepitone is nervous about, mainly because his old bully of a father might make his first trip in seven years from Staten Island to Manhattan for the show. Pepitone's dad sounds like a typical gruff postwar father, and Pepitone's mother suffered from mental illness before she died. The scenes with Pepitone and his dad are revealing for their complex interactions. It's also interesting to see the unhealthy 50-something look as old as his father; they could be brothers.

The film climaxes with Pepitone's big show in front of his father. And there you have the universal narrative arc and hero story: Will the big goof please his old man?

GRADES
"Levon Helm": B-minus
"The House I Live In": A
"The Bitter Buddha": B+