'Go Where he Will, the wise man is at home' Frederick Wiseman documentaries at the Ultimate Picture Palace

10:06am Thursday 13th November 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

Rarely has Ralph Waldo Emerson's quotation been more aptly applied than to Frederick Wiseman, the director whose fascination with so many aspects of American society has made him one of the most inspired and admired practitioners of the fly-on-the-wall style known as Direct Cinema. A former law professor who began making films in 1967, Wiseman has specialised in depicting the efforts of ordinary people to maintain their dignity in the face of dehumanising bureaucracy and the misuse of power. Four of his films are on show at the Ultimate Picture Palace over the next few weeks and the venue is to be lauded for bringing rep back to Oxford cinemas and reviving memories of the glory days when both the UPP and the Phoenix used to programme boldly rather than simply commercially. Wiseman is an observer of life, who eschews interviews, narration and music and even resists the temptation to interpret the events captured by his camera. Obviously, his editorial choices shape the material. But Wiseman's ‘reality-fictions’ have an authenticity, discretion and integrity that is sadly absent from the work of those celebrity documentarists who think themselves a key element of their stories. In Missile (1987), for example, the emphasis is firmly on the men and women of the 4315th Training Squadron of the Strategic Air Command at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. But in revealing the qualities required to staff the launch control centres for the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles, Wiseman also shows how the future of the planet is in the hands of people like ourselves. This is both reassuring and disconcerting and the same mix of confidence and consternation emerges on viewing Hospital (1970), as it becomes clear that the staff of New York’s Metropolitan Hospital is fighting a losing battle against the frailty and folly of its patients and the penny-pinching jobs-worthiness of the administrators struggling to keep the threadbare and inefficient facility functioning. The difficulties inherent in making a difference are even more apparent in State Legislature (2007), which eavesdrops on the workings of Democracy to expose just how slowly they grind. A suffocating political correctness encumbers business in the Boise capitol, whether the debate is on water supplies, teachers’ salaries, the relationship between church and state, second-hand smoke or video voyeurism. However, the minutiae comes to exert a fascination that is enhanced by Wiseman's deft disclosure of the egotism that drives even the most outwardly altruistic members of the Idaho House and Senate. Given the current credit crunch, the release of Patrick Creadon's I.O.U.S.A. couldn’t have been better timed. Anyone baffled by the gloom-laden news reports should find this a compelling introduction to the mechanics of international trade, Wall Street, the federal budget, the US social security system and the national debt. Taking his cue from William Bonner and Addison Wiggin’s book Empire of Debt, Creadon makes viewer-friendly use of pie charts, timelines, graphs and talking heads to explain how wars, inflation, public works, tax cuts and presidential bravura have shaped American economics over the last 200 years. However, he leaves the finger-wagging to Comptroller General David M. Walker and Concord Coalition director Robert Bixby, who make disgraced president Richard Nixon and former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan the principal targets of the Fiscal Wake-Up road show they hope will alert citizens to the dangers of amassing governmental arrears of $8.7 trillion. With so much misinformation fuelling the on-going fiscal and economic crises, an enterprising British TV producer could do a lot worse than rustle up a UK equivalent to this accessible and highly discomforting picture. Elsewhere this week come two slices of underdog realism. In Choking Man, director Steve Barron uses rabbit-filled animated reveries to convey the inarticulate emotions of Ecuadorian dishwasher Octavio Gomez Berrios. But they clash with the fussy naturalism of the Jamaica, Queens locale where Mandy Patinkin's diner hosts an eclectic ethnic mix of clientele and staff. Egged on by a figmentary conscience in his shabby bedsit, Berrios dotes on cheery Chinese waitress Eugenia Yuan and harbours a growing grudge against workmate Aaron Paul, whose brash charm seems to be having more effect than Berrios's bashful devotion. However, the denouement proves anti-climactic, despite the efforts of Antoine Vivas Denisov's camera to impart a little tension and human interest into a tale told with such discretion it's almost anonymous. Small moments and gentle smiles also inform Yosuke Fujita's offbeat comedy, Fine, Totally Fine, which centres on YosiYosi Arakawa, a 30 year-old who still lives at home and works in his father's secondhand bookshop. His ambition is to run a fully functioning haunted house, but he passes the time by filming elaborate practical jokes, which he perpetrates on unsuspecting passers-by with the help of Yoshinori Okada, a hospital administrator who persuades him to find artist Yoshino Kimura a job after a series of accidents forces him to sack her as a care worker. Naturally, the buddies end up falling for Kimura, even though she's a bone fide kook with a penchant for spying on bag ladies. Unfortunately, however, this misfit saga fritters its potential, even though Mai Ekomo's catchy score perfectly suits Fujita's fondness for idiosyncratic detail.