Nominated documentaries of 2016

Life, Animated, nominated Best Documentary, 2016

Life, Animated is about Owen Suskind and his family and how they have learned to cope and communicate with each other despite the challenges presented by Owen's autism. Owen's father, Ron Suskind, a journalist, wrote a book about it and then it was subsequently made into a documentary. Roger Ross Williams (Music by Prudence) directed this charming and uplifting and very insightful documentary; and the Suskind family was very open in sharing their experiences and their concerns about Owen's future. Owen is 23 years old when the film starts, but home movies take us back to when Owen and his older brother, Walter, were little, before and after Owen developed autism. Owen essentially stopped speaking when he was three years old, and remained very uncommunicative until his father discovered that he could communicate by using Disney characters and dialog. Owen uses Disney films to express his feelings and to relate with the world; he will speak dialog or reference characters. Disney helps him open up, and at his school he starts the Disney Club, so his friends, who also relate to Disney can share their experiences and what the films mean to them. Owen is getting ready to graduate from his school and move into independent living in a community with other young people with autism, including his girlfriend. It's about an hour away from his parents, and he'll be on his own to look for a job, make his meals (he has counselors who help him with these living skills). Williams interviews Owen, and his parents and his brother. They all speak very honestly, with Owen and with the director. His older brother Walter feels a great responsibility for taking care of Owen as his parents get older; it's not resentful, but it can be overwhelming. Williams doesn't focus on that; he shows the brothers playing miniature golf and Walter trying to have a conversation with Owen about his relationship with his girlfriend, Emily. Owen is a very talented artist, and he creates his own cartoon/story based on sidekicks (as in the sidekicks from Disney and some of his own creations), because that's what he feels he is. There is so much more, but I don't want to spoil it. I will just say, you should watch it, if you have kids or don't, if you know someone on the autism spectrum or not; it's just a wonderful human interest story. It's the 'lightest' of the nominees, and depending on what the voters are looking for this year (which has been a weird year), it could go to Life, Animated or to OJ: Made in America (watching now) or the other three (which I have not seen as of this writing).

OJ: Made in America, nominated Best Documentary, 2016

I sat down to watch OJ: Made in America thinking I would watch an episode at a time, spreading it out over a week because how could I sit and watch over seven hours of OJ Simpson? Well, if I could have physically sat and watched all five episodes in one night, I absolutely would have done so. It was that captivating and enthralling. I made the mistake of thinking it would be only about his trial for the murder of his wife, Nicole and her friend, Ron Goldman. That was the connecting theme, but the documentary was so much more than that. It looked at OJ's life from his days at junior college as a football phenom all the way through to his incredible fall from grace after the civil trial about the murder of Nicole and Ron to the memorabilia debacle in Las Vegas. One of the people interviewed (I cannot remember who) said his was the American story: the rise and fall of an American hero. If you're a regular reader here you know how I start to squirm if a movie goes over two hours; no squirming here after watching three hours at a time, I just wanted more. The director/producers from ESPN talk to friends, teammates, adversaries, business partners as well as using archival footage to paint a very well-rounded portrait of the man we know as "The Juice". It's a complicated picture of a man who seemed to be very aware of his charisma and charm, who loved the glitter and spotlight that he found in Los Angeles, and yet could be incredibly self-centered. Interviewers include former detective Mark Furhman, whose inflammatory language and denial of it played a huge role in the fate of the trial; Marcia Clark, Bill Hodgman and Gil Garcetti of the District Attorney's office (Christopher Darden declined); and Fred Goldman, Ron Goldman's father. Simpson's story is told within the context of race relations in America, specifically in Los Angeles; it provides a history which may or may not be familiar to those watching. Some of the crimes committed against the black community (yes, that's what they were) I was aware of, but others, I had no idea. Sadly, it's almost like we have not moved on from those times at all. I recommend watching this, with the caveat that there are some very grisly crime scene photos and adult language.


13th, nominated Best Documentary, 2016

I was telling a co-worker today about 13th, they documentary directed by Ava DuVernay, the director of Selma, and I found myself getting agitated. 13th refers to the 13th Amendment of the Constitution, specifically this statement: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The movie looks at the evolution of prisons and imprisonment since the 'end' of slavery and what was free labor provided by millions of slaves. Imprisonments of blacks increased because the need for labor had not decreased at all. DuVernay provides us with a wide array of interviews, from professors of history, sociology, economics to former inmates of the justice system to attorneys specializing in representing those who are vulnerable and susceptible to the faults in the system, and politicians (Angela Davis, Newt Gingrich, Bryan Stevenson, Van Jones, Cory Booker, Henry Louis Gates among just a few). She packs a lot of information in just 100 minutes. Over 150 years of racism, institutionalized and politicized racism, is explained and examined; how black men were portrayed as animals and dangers to white society, and those portrayals and the resulting fears justified imprisonment and subsequent brutal treatments. It was infuriating to hear, from the mouth of Lee Atwater, advisor to Ronald Reagan, the strategy to demonize blacks in order to frighten whites and drive them to the Republican Party, even though he knew he was lying. I suppose lying is par for the course in politics, but the consequences of Atwater's lies, as well as Richard Nixon's strategies and other Republican operatives, continue through today, and with tearing the country apart as the result. The film also examines the privatization of prisons, that is running prisons for profit, using prison labor as a means to increase profits for companies. I thought the film was very well done; our history is even more relevant than ever; watched in tandem with OJ: Made in America, the viewer gets a pretty thorough overview of the issue of race in America. It might make you uncomfortable, and it should; it made me uncomfortable and angry. If we, as a country, are going to truly come together, we need to acknowledge the past and the impacts that it has had on our collective being. I passionately recommend 13th (streaming on Netflix) and OJ: Made in America, as well as these two books: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative eji.org and A Lesson Before Dying by Earnest Gaines, which is fiction, but representative of the criminal justice system in the first half of the century.