Government Watchdogs

COLLECTIVE (A-minus) - This documentary could serve as a bookend to the era of the Romanian New Wave, with its horrifyingly real examination of that country's health care system, which was fictionalized back in 2005 with "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu." Here, director Alexander Nanau and co-writer Antoaneta Opris get the inside scoop -- by following a crusading journalist and a progressive health minister -- regarding the aftermath of a deadly concert fire, in which more people died later of bacterial infections in the hospital than were killed by smoke inhalation at the event.

This starts out celebrating the power of investigative journalism, tailing along with Catalin Tolontan, the editor of a sports publication, and his dogged crew, as they keep asking questions about why victims of the fire continue to die in what quickly is discovered to be a scandalous lack of sanitation at the country's trauma centers. But what starts out as a real-life "All the President's Men," shifts gears at the  midpoint and pivots to Vlad Voiculescu, a young health minister who has good intentions but little clue how to turn this corrupt post-communist ship around and overcome the graft that allowed a chemical company to water down its anti-bacterial product.

Voiculescu's charms wear off quickly, and the film spins its wheels along with the health czar, eventually winding down to an uninspiring conclusion. This project had all the markings of a true eye-opener -- and the smuggled video of a horrific lack of care certainly shocks the conscience -- but it loses its momentum in the second half and falls short of perfection. The journalists were more interesting than the bureaucrat.

CITY HALL (B) - Frederick Wiseman long ago burnished his reputation as a master storyteller, one of the pioneers of fly-on-the-wall documentaries, and he is closing out his career (he is now 90) with tedious process stories that have examined the administration of a university ("At Berkeley") a New York neighborhood ("In Jackson Heights"), small-town life ("Monrovia, Indiana"), the public library system ("Ex-Libris") and now the inner workings of the city of Boston. "City Hall" -- a four-and-a-half-hour marathon -- is one of the better products amid a motley bunch in the past decade.

This one is another mixed bag. There again are a lot of low-level meetings that dwell on the minutiae of budgeting and priority-setting. Wiseman is obsessed with diversity -- nearly every scene touches on race issues in some way -- and while that is understandable when sketching out a city with Boston's sketchy history, the theme becomes suffocating. You would think that Boston is now the most culturally aware city in the world. By the end, you get the sense that Wiseman is over-compensating here and that we are not getting a full-bodied profile of Boston.

He also overdoses on the city's second-term mayor, Marty Walsh, a child of Irish immigrants who comes across as truly progressive, a product of the union movement. There seems to be no event too small or obscure for Mayor Marty to hobnob with the citizenry. 

Some scenes work, others don't. The best tend to appear in the second half. We spend about a half hour with a city-facilitated meeting between minority residents of a poor neighborhood and the entrepreneurs looking to bring in a marijuana dispensary. Meantime, when we can drag Wiseman's crew away from the conference rooms, we go out in the field to watch a street crew, 311 operators, a meter maid, a code enforcement officer and a pest inspector toil away to keep the municipality humming. And Wiseman luxuriates in the physical details of Boston with some magnificent establishing shots, a montage of which would make a pretty good short film in itself. 

I managed this one in three chunks. It is on a par with "Ex Libris," and doesn't suffer from the utter drudgery of "At Berkeley" and "Monrovia, Indiana." It does help to have a star to focus on.

BONUS TRACK

From "Collective," a jaunty tune from the Alternate Routes, "Nothing More":