Documentaries for your consideration: Grey Gardens and Virunga

6/17/16 Grey Gardens, 1975, National Film Registry, #53 BBC

Grey Gardens is a documentary by David and Albert Maysles released in 1975 and focuses on mother and daughter, both named Edith Beale (Big Edie and Little Edie respectively); Big Edie was a first cousin Jacqueline Kennedy. The Beales lived at the Grey Gardens estate in East Hampton, New York in conditions that most people would find inhabitable. It was those conditions that almost led to them being evicted and brought them to the attention of the Maysles brothers. We don't get too much of a background into the Beales, but we are dropped immediately into the daily lives of mother and daughter, their squabbles, reminiscences and personality quirks. Big Edie sits around, often times in what my mother would refer to as a 'shifts' or sometimes in a towel wrapped around her. She talks about her father and what life was like when she was growing up; she loves to sing and will break into song with very little provocation. Little Edie is in her late 50s when the movie is being filmed and there is something very un-selfconscious about her, and maybe just a little off, eccentric. She wears some outrageous and unique 'costumes' as she calls them. She often reflects on her missed opportunities, particularly in show business, and blames her mother for needing her to come back to Grey Gardens to take care of her. The filmmakers just let the Beales 'be' in their moments, with their animals, with each other, with the neighbor who comes for a visit. There are many moments where it's uncomfortable to watch, but you can't look away. A movie that focuses on family members of Jacqueline Kennedy may seem outdated in 2016, but at the time, Jackie Kennedy, now Onassis, was still very much in the public eye, it was only 12 years since John F. Kennedy was assassinated,and people were interested in things Kennedy and Kennedy-related. In 2006, there was a musical was adapted from the documentary, and in 2009 HBO produced a television film starring Drew Barrymore as Little Edie and Jessica Lange as Big Edie. It was good, and I thought both actresses really captured the personalities, but I wouldn't watch that without watching the documentary, it gives you a more complete picture.


6/18/16 Virunga, nominated for Best Documentary, 2014 

Grey Gardens was a documentary that let the main characters just be themselves, there was no obvious agenda, political or otherwise; Virunga definitely has an agenda (and I do not mean that in a pejorative way) and that is to inform us of the perils faced by the mountain gorillas in Congo and Virunga National Park, as well as those faced by the gorillas' protectors, the rangers. In less than two hours, the filmmakers try to provide viewers with Congo's history, beginning with colonization in the 1800s to the painful road to independence and the civil wars up to the present day, as well as illustrate the importance of the gorillas and their protection in the vast national park, and UNESCO World Heritage Site, Virunga National Park. A couple of the rangers tell their stories, why it's important to protect the gorillas and why they risk their lives, over 120 rangers have been killed because of their job. At the time of the film, Congo is in turmoil with the army fighting various factions of rebels and an English company called Soco International that wants to do exploratory drilling for oil under Lake Edward which is part of the national park. This is supposed to be illegal by the laws of the country and the international community, but there is too much money at stake. This movie is heartwarming and heartbreaking as we watch Rodrigue work the gorillas that he calls his 'family'; he loves those animals and they seem to love him back, hugging him, climbing on him, looking to him for comfort when they are distressed. As we saw in Racing Extinction, conservation efforts can have economic payoffs for countries if they invest in ecotourism, and that's what many villages were doing until the rebels took over, and wanted to focus on oil. The scenery is beautiful and to borrow William Butler Yeats's quote, "It's a terrible beauty". The park has a volcano, mountains, open grasslands and an incredible diversity of wildlife that is trying to make a complete return. At the time of the movie, there were around 800 mountain gorillas left in the world. This movie made me angry, sad, but also uplifted because of the brave men and women (in this film, it is mostly men, except for Melanie Gouby, a French journalist) who fight for these animals, and sheer joy at the beauty that is in this world. Soco has supposedly said it would not look for oil, but I couldn't discern if, in fact, that was the case. There is still the risk of poachers. The movie was nominated for Best Documentary in 2014, but lost to Citizenfour and was competing with movies like Last Days in Vietnam, Finding Vivian Maier and The Salt of the Earth. They were all well done and had something important to say about different topics, and I liked them all, but Virunga and Last Days in Vietnam were my 'favorites', but Citizenfour definitely raised some frightening points about government monitoring in the U.S. So, clearly, I would be a terrible voter because I can't make up my mind. Do yourselves a favor and try and see as many as you can. Virunga has a Facebook page as well as a website with more information.