Two documentary nominees from 2012 - The Gatekeepers and Chasing Ice

It has actually been quite a movie filled weekend, which means I got nothing else done. It was a gloomy, rainy weekend, so I feel justified in my slacker-attitude. I wanted to do these two movies separately, and then I will get caught up on the others throughout the week. Since 2009 I have been trying to watch all of the nominated films in all the categories. You may imagine some get knocked off the list a lot easier and sooner than others, but I am happy to say that with these two movies, the only films remaining from 2012 are the documentary shorts and the live action shorts. I hope to track those down via YouTube, Hulu or some anthology that comes out at a later date. For now, I will declare victory!

9/27/13 Chasing Ice, nominated for Best Original Song, 2012

Geysir, Iceland, 1990

Chasing Ice is a documentary that sets out to show the effects of global warming by filming icebergs around the world, including Iceland, Greenland and Alaska, and through time-lapse photography, the shrinking of them. The documentary really does two things: it tells the story of James Balog, the man whose brainchild this is and the story of the melting icebergs. There are a lot of naysayers out there, denying that there is any impact on the environment from the last several decades of pollution, but what Balog and his team show over a few years, and thousands of hours of digital video, must raise some doubt in the most stubborn of critics. Balog's dedication to this project comes at the risk of his own health, he has very severe problems with his knee and often disregards the advice of his doctors to keep on with the vigorous hiking and walking he must do in Greenland and Iceland. The movie was actually nominated for Best Original Song "Before My Time" song by Scarlett Johansson and Joshua Bell. It was a nice enough song, very ethereal, I thought, but any song would have had a difficult time beating "Skyfall" by Adele. The movie is beautifully filmed, and shows a part of the world that many people never get to see, and it will make you think.

Gullfoss, Iceland, 1990

10/6/13, The Gatekeepers, nominee for Best Documentary, 2012

Put this one under the 'wait until it's over before you decide' category. The Gatekeepers was an entry in the Best Documentary category; Searching for Sugarman was the winner for 2012. The Gatekeepers is about Shin Bet the Israeli internal security service, responsible for domestic security in Israel. the movie looks at Shin Bet over history, going back to 1948, when Israel became a state, through the current day, how its role has changed and tactics evolved in dealing with the Palestinians through interviews with the past heads of the agency. There are some viewpoints that they share that seem fairly predictable, but as the movie progresses, and we move from the 1970s into the 1980s and 1990s, they almost all share in the belief that Israel must open and continue a dialogue with the organizations within Palestine because the future looks very bleak and hopeless. The opinions of these men is at odds with the more conservative, and often religious, section of Israel's population. While the main focus of the movie is about the relationship with the Palestinians, because of the backlash against the peace process by the conservatives in Israel, Shin Bet must also look inward to fellow Jews who are now committed to acts of violence and terrorism, including the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a Jew. The Gatekeepers highlights the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the internal challenges in the Israeli/Jewish community. Many of the events from the 1970s on have happened in my lifetime, I remember Rabin's assassination, and the feeling that the peace process was stopped in its tracks. This is must viewing for anyone who is interested in the conflict in the Middle East. It's not an exhaustive study or all-inclusive, and the interviews are limited to the heads of Shin Bet, but it is a look inside a very secretive organization. It raised a lot of questions for me, but as I have said before, I think that's a good thing when it comes to documentaries.