It has been asked, "Are reflexive or cinema vérité documentary films more accurate at truthfully representing reality?” This question can be answered many ways. One obvious path is to side with reflexivity, because it is honest about the shortcomings of filmmaking. However, we cannot be so quick to assume to know what the question is asking. The question must be broken down first in order to come to a satisfactory answer.
First, a simpler way of thinking about the phrase “truthfully representing reality” is “truth.” Reality and truth are synonymous because by asking what’s true, one is asking what is. Second, classifying films as reflexive or vérité is sloppy for the purpose of this question. Any given film will contain elements of multiple modes of film, and therefore assigning it one mode will unnecessarily correlate the truth of that specific film with its assigned mode. In other words, if analysis were to prove the film High School to be the most truthful film of all time, it would be wrong to also say cinema vérité is the most truthful mode, because High School is not pure cinema vérité.
To illustrate this point, consider the gym teacher’s handling of delinquents in the aforementioned film. In one instance, he lectures a student on the importance of addressing him as “sir.” In later instance, another misbehaving student addresses him as sir and he is upset by the “fakeness” of it. The gym teacher contradicts himself and more importantly, handles the same subject matter differently on separate occasions. His inconsistent treatment of students in the same situation is not unlike Betty’s inconsistent treatment of the same story in Betty Tells Her Story (which is most classified as a reflexive film). Therefore, to answer ...
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...s. Therefore, vérité moments tell more truth in documentary film.
What this means is that observing reality and making decisions and judgments accordingly is the reality of humanity is trying to do all time. Vérité moments in film allow the viewer to do this, because they presume they see reality. It may be true that Michael Moore’s actions cause a lot of reflection on the credibility of the film, but the viewing of the live event of people being thrown out of their homes using vérité technique allows people to better construct truth about the world around them. It does not have to be objective, because that is not what people find in real life either.
Works Cited
Aufderheide, P. (2007). Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nichols, B. (2001). Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
The film immediately sets the tone from the very beginning by presenting various interdisciplinary ‘experts’ who equally have part in narrating the film throughout. As the argument develops, however, the narrators seem to hav...
Kerner, Aaron M.. “Irreconcilable Realities.” Film Analysis: A Norton Reader. Eds. Jeffrey Geiger and R.L. Rutsky. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2nd edition, 2013. 462-83.
This report aims to make light of certain elements of documentary making that are perhaps more susceptible to influence on the director’s part, and once again explore the effect of these decisions on the audience’s reaction to the information presented.
In this paper I used outside sources such as Hurley’s book, Gawthrop’s, Jacobson and Moakley articles to clarify and develop deeper thinking about Coles’ ideas in “The Tradition: Fact and Fiction,” with focal points being: human actuality, the interiority of a photograph, and the emotional impact of cropping. Throughout Coles’ essay he portrays a documentarian as one who creates their work to meet their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and their audience. He also shows, in correlation to the title, that there is no line between fact or fiction in documentary work; they are loosely mingled, overlapping and only seen separately from a biased standpoint.
The entire movie is bursting with counter narratives, when the audience believes they hold an accurate grasp on what is truly happening, there is a misguiding event, as the storyline is continually challenged. The viewer’s beginning formations about what is going on are learned to be always questionable because what is repeatedly steered to trust and is revealed not be the truth in the conclusion of the film. This neo-noir film had multiple scenarios that make the previous actions untrustworthy to the actual message. This proves that all the observations and thoughts the viewer possesses are only relevant to what they are exposed to and shown and not to what is, in fact, happening.
“According to Trent Griffiths the filmmaker in the frame brings to the surface on underlying tension between the filmmaker as an author of reality and the filmmaker as a subject in reality”. In the film 9\11 the Naudet brothers initially in the beginning of the film they are the authors of reality because we see them as just ordinary firefighters going about their regular lives and routines of firefighters then they later become subject in reality as they witness at first hand both crashes and the collapse of the other building they get caught in the reality. Furthermore this essay will discuss the filmmakers shifting point of view from that of the brothers to that as the new York firefighter and the witness of the aftermath. Also
Movies distort reality by creating an ideal conflictual ambience, from which all the subtle human emotions and the characters arise. Humans might appear as consensus beings, seeking conformation and avoiding alienation by “society”. However, referring back to Aristotle’s saying, “human beings are by nature political animals” (1999), humans continually strive for power and control inasmuch as they strive for pure oxygen to breathe. Movies unleash these “socially unacceptable” political animals, exposing the hidden moral corruption embedded within most humans. Movies accomplish such a task by distorting reality, by reshaping the truth into a collection of video shots, taken from different angles, creating different meanings to content; the true meaning. The three genres of literature – narratives, poetry and drama – establish the key to revealing the distortion, thus providing humans with the ultimate method of deciphering our reality through the eyes of a glass lens. In the movie Do the Right Thing, these genres come together to paint a “picture” of us.
With the advent of television, films start progressing "by leaps and bounds." One kind of cinema is a documentary film. Thanks to the documentary film, which is simple, concise and understandable form, tell us about nature, culture, history and science, and replenished our "body of knowledge." This is the positive role of cinema in which the means of the common man gets a huge amount of information without losing its finding and processing of your precious time. It increases the overall level of culture. The story of “Australia” makes us closer to the problems of Australian native people, and still, it tells us a beautiful story of Australian people which would be erased if it had any other form except film.
Since the creation of films, their main goal was to appeal to mass audiences. However, once, the viewer looks past the appearance of films, the viewer realizes that the all-important purpose of films is to serve as a bridge connecting countries, cultures, and languages. This is because if you compare any two films that are from a foreign country or spoken in another language, there is the possibility of a connection between the two because of the fact that they have a universally understanding or interpretation. This is true for the French New Wave films; Contempt and Breathless directed by Jean-Luc Godard, and contemporary Indian films; Earth and Water directed by Deepa Mehta. All four films portray an individual’s role in society using sound and editing.
Kerner, Aaron M.. “Irreconcilable Realities.” Film Analysis: A Norton Reader. Eds. Jeffrey Geiger and R.L. Rutsky. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2nd edition, 2013. 462-83.
In recent years, Hollywood has been inundating the American public with movies that question the very essence of reality. While set in highly entertaining, thrilling, and spectacular films, the very foundations of reality have been challenged, and some unsettling questions have been left unanswered in the minds of the American public. When did Hollywood become such a philosophizer? But more importantly, why has Hollywood taken to creating powerful films that manipulate the emotions and beliefs of their viewers as specifically concerns reality and their understanding of it?
The statement Junger and Heatherington made with their film Restrepo was a powerful one. This is exactly the purpose of Cinema Verite, to give voice to the truth. Many argue that the verite style presents a manipulative version of reality because the editing is used to influence the audience, dramatizing the events on screen, focused on eliciting a certain emotional response. It is also often criticized for being more reportage that artistic expression. However, as with all modern art, especially that in the film industry because of its wide audience and influence, Cinema Verite reflects the zeitgeist in which it was produced. There is a thirst for the truth, even in the harshest of realities. Artists, no matter their medium, strive for this.
Neill, Alex. “Empathy and (Film) Fiction.” Philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology. Ed. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 247-259. Print.
2. Nichols, Bill. ‘Documentary Modes of Representation (The Observational Mode).’ Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington & Indianapolis; Indiana University Press. 1991. 38-44
Cinematic realism is a very subjective theory. As are most theories when it comes to cinema. The idea that a film can be entertaining, yet showcase and represent the world around us, is a fascinating subject. What’s most interesting though, is the subjections that comes with realism. Does a film have to be a completely accurate picture of the world in order to realistically represent it? There are arguments for both sides, but ultimately realism in cinema is subjective, because people’s view of the world is subjective. Reality for you can be completely different for someone else. The same way a movie can be an accurate representation to you, but the complete opposite to someone else.