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.
Films are necessary in our time period because the human eye can articulate the message intended through sight allowing visual imagination to occur. In the book, world 2 by Max Brooks, he creates a character by the name Roy Elliot who was a former movie director. Roy Elliot manages to make a movie titled “Victory at Avalon: The Battle of the Five Colleges” and some how it goes viral. Similarly, Frank Capra’s film, “Why we Fight” expresses a sense of understanding the meaning of wars. Films do not inevitably portray truth because they display what the film director views as important and beneficial for people to know.
...lly has a critic. To strengthen the arguments and persuade viewers to their side of the debate, film makers tend to present only one side of the story. Specific placement of an object, the choice of words and the selection of scenes are possible elements that could be woven into documentaries to shape viewers’ perspectives on certain issues. Fat Head is a great case in point, which is likely to convert some public opinion about the ideology of healthy eating. Documentaries may contain biases that mislead the viewers; presenting ‘facts’ but perhaps not revealing the entire picture. Therefore, in a sense, documentaries can be truthful, but also fallacious. It is imperative to evaluate the techniques used in documentaries, in order to distinguish readily from what is fantasy. It could be concluded that Fat Head and Super Size Me are two version of the same reality.
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.
the relation of what is filmed and what truly is real. In an inspection of The Thin
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.
Narratives of documentary as a craft of expression of metaphor and the soul of rhetoric have attracted many modern film scholars (Dorst 268-281). Discussing folk life of the films of Errol Morris, Dorst feels that ‘text’ and ‘apparatus’ in a documentary limits the usefulness of hybridity as a productive theoretical metaphor. Comparing the narrative structure of documentary filmmaker William Manchester and Truman Capote, Donald Pizer suggests that documentary narrative can vary in form. Its adaptability suggests that it will continue to serve as a vehicle of experimental narrative by serious writers as well as a form of the higher journalism. Like all literary artists, the modern writer is confronted by the problem of the seemingly rival claims
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
Rascaroli, Laura. "The Essay Film: Problems, Definitions, Textual Commitments." Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 49.2 (2008): 24-47. JSTOR. Web. 08 May 2014.
Turner, Graeme. Film as a Social Practice. 3rd ed. of the year. London: Routledge, 1999.
In ways documentary films are similar to fictional films. Both types of films have infinite possibilities of topic choices to choose from and have a crew to influence and manipulate the film so that it can be accepted the way they want it represented. However, documentary films are created to be works of informative and factual art. Fictional films, although they may stem from the ground of truth, they branch into the realm of unrealistic entertainment (316).
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 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.
This form or realistic cinema provided the viewer with something completely different than they were used to seeing with the Classic Hollywood Style. These films hold a strong sense of the dilemma for the ordinary individual that is affected by political circumstances that are beyond their control. These actors were no longer perfectly attractive and trai...
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.
One of the integral things that must be addressed when making a film is the ethics involved. Ethics are a constant issue that have to be carefully considered when filmmaking. This difficult decision-making is highly prevalent in that of documentaries, because of the difficulties associated in filming ‘real people’ or “social actors, (Nichols, 2001).” More importantly, the issues faced by a filmmaker differ between each of the documentary modes. Each particular documentary mode poses different formal choices that must be made in order to operate in an ethical fashion. Two films that have been made both display examples of how ethics must be considered when embarking on a documentary are Etre at Avoir [To Be and to Have], (2001) and Capturing the Friedmans (2003). These films have been made in different documentary modes, highlighting that there is not one mode which is easier or has fewer ethical issues associated with it. Additionally, what must be considered is how these style choices in these different modes affect the power relationships between the filmmaker, the subject and its audience, (Nichols, 2001).