In a year littered with customary Jerry Bruckheimer blockbusters and over-hyped epics, there emerged a genre rarely associated with box office success: the documentary. This underdog variety impacted American culture just about as much as society was influenced by it.
For starters, there was the mother of all documentaries: Fahrenheit 9/11. A week couldn’t pass by without filmmaker Michael Moore infiltrating the news with his polemic documentary Fahrenheit, which accuses President Bush of botching the war on terrorism. Fahrenheit 411 author Ray Bradbury called up to say he wanted his title back, while conservative groups accused Fahrenheit TV ads of violating campaign finance laws. The hullabaloo never let up.
The controversy surrounding Fahrenheit 9/11 first reared its ugly head in May when the film won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in France and became the first documentary to win since Jacques Cousteau’s and Louis Malle’s The Silent World in 1956.
Still, not even the coveted Palme d’Or could stop the Burbank-based Walt Disney Co. from deciding not to allow subsidiary Miramax Film Corp. to distribute the film. A war of words ensued, with Moore accusing Disney CEO Michael Eisner of blocking the film’s release for political reasons, a claim Eisner has denied. The result? Disney eventually let Miramax acquire the rights to the film, giving Miramax’s co-chiefs Harvey and Bob Weinstein freedom to look for another outlet. Through a consortium of distributors, including Lions Gate Entertainment, Fahrenheit 9/11 went on to gross $120 million and put documentaries on the map.
And in an election year, Fahrenheit‘s timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Not only did it get people hotly debating politics, issues and the war in Iraq, but also paved the way for a plethora of political documentaries that may otherwise have gone unnoticed. With journalists embedded in troops stationed throughout the Middle East, war coverage was available 24-hours a day right from our living rooms–and documentarians took shots as the messengers: The networks.
There was Jihane Noujaime’s eye opening and touching documentary The Control Room, which provides a rare window into the international perception of the Iraq War through the Arab world’s most popular news outlet: Al Jazeera. Then came Robert Greenwall’s documentary Outfoxed, which examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, have been running a “race to the bottom” in TV news.
Politicians, however, were hardly exempt from political documentaries. The Hunting of the President explores what it calls a sustained and well-funded effort to discredit and defeat Bill Clinton, dating from his gubernatorial days in Arkansas and eventually leading to his impeachment trial. George Butler’s Going Upriver–The Long War of John Kerry chronicles presidential candidate John Kerry’s career from his time in Vietnam to his association with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which culminated in a mass action by that group in Washington, D.C. in April 1971.
Super Size This
Documentaries weren’t all about politics. The No. 2 grossing documentary of 2004 behind Fahrenheit 9/11 was Morgan Spurlock‘s Super Size Me, which went on to make $11.5 million at the domestic box office. In this scrumptious documentary, Spurlock documents what happens to someone who eats McDonald’s three square meals a day for 30 days, using himself as the guinea pig. As expected, Spurlock‘s drive-through, fast food diet results in a physical and emotional metamorphosis bound to make anyone think twice about eating at your neighborhood Golden Arches.
Coincidentally, McDonald’s stopped offering “super-sized” portions on its menu soon after the film’s release, a decision the fast food juggernaut denied had anything to do with Super Size Me.
[PAGEBREAK]
Cultural Idolatry and More…
While some documentarians were consumed by questions on why Americans are so fat, others focused on musical icons. Director Lauren Lazin’s Tupac: Resurrection, for example, offers a self-portrait of hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur, who was shot and killed in September 1996 at the age of 25. Produced by his mother and narrated in his own words through a variety of interviews, journal readings, home movies and never-before-seen concert footage, the documentary truly resurrects a cultural icon whose career and persona, both, continue to grow from beyond the grave.
Meanwhile, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster documents the heavy-metal band Metallica as its members go through two years of therapy to work through conflicts in their 20-year working relationship. The silly juxtaposition of hardened, tattooed headbangers, lamenting about abandonment issues, makes this documentary both touching and entertaining. Documakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky may have set out to make a film about Metallica cutting a new album but instead deliver a poignant portrait of rockers who aren’t too macho to talk it out.
The Great Outdoors
2004 also demonstrated that music is not bound by one medium but transcends into film to give moviegoers a rare and personal glimpse at the people and icons behind the tunes–especially in the world of extreme sports. Skateboarder-turned-director Stacy Peralta, who helmed the memorable 2002 skate documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, brought us Riding Giants, an insider’s look at the origins of surfing, the subversive birth of surf culture, and the mythology and lure of the “big wave.”
While Peralta‘s Riding Giants artfully reveals that the man versus nature dialectic never ends, filmmaker Kevin McDonald drives the point home with Touching the Void, a chilling documentary about Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who set out to climb the west face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985–a feat that had never been done before.
Following a successful three-and-a-half-day ascent, Simpson fell and broke several bones in his leg. The men attempted the descent together with Yates lowering Simpson 300 feet at a time in a slow, painful process. But Yates unknowingly lowered Simpson over a precipice that left him hanging in mid-air over a drop of unknowable distance and after an hour of trying to hold on, cut the rope. Simpson survived the fall and in Touching the Void, both men return to the Siula Grande for the first time to retell their astounding story.
Although 2004 didn’t offer any more documentaries than previous years, this particular crop nudged their way to the forefront thanks in part to high profile pics like Fahrenheit 9/11, which provided a deserved spotlight to a genre not usually considered a box office draw.
