A year later, the end of that perpetuity has arrived.
It's not that I haven't kept it up. I have. In fact, I've never missed a turn in the two-week rotation. Some weeks it worked out that I needed to watch it on Monday, and other weeks on Wednesday, but never in that year have I missed by more than one day on either side. And if you watch it on a Monday, a day before you were supposed to, it can hardly be described as "missing," now can it?
My upcoming trip to America, which starts six days from now, would create my first real scenario where it would be hard to continue. (Which means it times out pretty well for the end of this year-long project. If I did one more two weeks from now, it would overlap with the date of the first one a year ago, which is one more than necessary.)
The two bi-weekly Tuesdays on that trip would be once when I'm in Maine visiting my father and his wife, and once when I'm in California sorting through the stuff in our garage, preparing to finally sell the house we bought ten years ago (and lived in for exactly one year before moving here). Oh, I could fit in viewings -- I'm pretty determined when I have arbitrary schedules to keep -- but I suspect I'll have better things to do, and it'll be nice not to think I have to, even if you, dear reader, are the only person I'm answering to here, and you are very forgiving.
But I think the trip to America is really just an excuse to do something I've wanted to do for a while. I think the goal of this mission has been accomplished, with an asterisk. Yeah sure I watched 26 documentaries in the past year, which is great -- but I watched only those 26. That's a pretty high number for a year and I wouldn't likely watch more than that anyway, but the point is, I watched them only because I felt obligated to, not organically. The real goal is to watch a documentary whenever I feel like it, not because I should or because I said I would.
If I dwindle back down to the single digits per year in documentaries, this past year will ultimately have been sort of a failure. But I don't think I will. It'll just be nice to watch them when the mood strikes me, not when a predetermined schedule tells me it's time.
The Errol Morris documentary Gates of Heaven, about pet cemeteries, seemed like a perfect way to finish, dealing as it does in issues surrounding the end of life. Plus Morris is one of our most vital documentarians, whose previously unseen work is the sort of thing this "series" was designed to push me toward. (Plus it was short, only 82 minutes, which is always great.)
Far too often, these weren't the kinds of movies I watched in this series. Many of the slots were filled with documentaries from the current year that I thought I should see because there was a little buzz around them and I wanted to rank them. That seems like a bit of a cheat because I might have watched those films anyway. Then there were weeks where I had no idea what to watch so I just threw my hands up in the air and picked some random thing that ended up disappointing me, by documentary standards. (I say "by documentary standards" because most documentaries are pretty good.)
So instead of holding my own feet to the fire every two weeks, my intention now is to keep referring back to my Letterboxd list of documentaries I haven't seen, which I created just for this series, and continue to tick off documentaries I actually want to see, because I have a free night and because it will contribute to my overall edification as a cinephile.
Free nights were actually one of the issues. Because of my commitment to two of these movies a month, as well as two viewings per month among my previous #1s since the start of this year, as well as other movies I need to watch because I'm reviewing them, as well as other movies I need to watch as part of three different series (two on this blog and one elsewhere), I was finding relatively few free nights on my calendar, nights when I really could just watch anything I wanted. I want that back.
But I do want to send off this series with a quick recap of what I saw, when, and a few thoughts on the experience. So here goes:
1. Gunda (2020, Viktor Kossakovsky)
Watched: Tuesday, August 3, 2021
If you read this post, you'll recall that this was the inaugural film -- and that it was so meditative (a documentary about pigs that has no voiceover or other spoken language) that it put me into sort of a trance. The right kind of trance, though. An art film trance, and so what if I needed to take a couple naps in the middle, pausing as I did? A promising start.
2. We Are The Thousand (2020, Anita Rivaroli)
Watched: Tuesday, August 17, 2021
My second movie fell right in the midst of MIFF, and since MIFF was online last year, it was easy to arrange this documentary of Italian origin to line up with my schedule. The movie looks at the viral event that occurred when organizers got musicians from across Italy to come together and simultaneously play the Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly" in one thousand-piece orchestra of singers and instrumentalists, as a way of wooing the Foos to come play in that small town. The viral event was pretty awesome. The 30 minutes of tacked on material to approach feature length was not.
3. Step Into Liquid (2003, Dana Brown)
Watched: Tuesday, August 31, 2021
The first time I wondered whether this experiment was a great idea was only three installments in. This surfing documentary, which I threw on with a shrug after striking out elsewhere on streaming, was pretty slipshod and all over the place, even if the director is the son of the guy who directed The Endless Summer.
4. Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary (2019, Jack Bennett)
Watched: Tuesday, September 14, 2021
Although this was a second straight movie I sort of grabbed out of my ass when it came to be Tuesday night, it ended up being a huge pleasure because of how much I love Galaxy Quest.
5. Tim's Vermeer (2013, Teller)
Watched: Tuesday, September 28, 2021
This brought the series back on track in terms of giving me an excuse to watch documentaries I'd been meaning to watch for years ... this actually being the first example of that. This is a fascinating story of a non-painter who used scientific techniques and refracting lenses to paint a Vermeer that was indistinguishable from the real McCoy.
6. Jodorowsky's Dune (2013, Frank Pavich)
Watched: Tuesday, October 12, 2021
It was logical for me to follow up Tim's Vermeer with Jodorowsky's Dune, because I wrote about both of these films back in 2013 when I could not get my hands on them in time to rank them before the end of the year. Loved this one and it single-handedly prompted me to buy and read Frank Herbert's novel before Denis Villeneuve's version of the film came out.
7. Val (2021, Ting Poo & Leo Scott)
Watched: Tuesday, October 26, 2021
This is the first "watch it to rank it for the current year" movie I watched. I was pretty touched by his portrait of Val Kilmer's career from the perspective of his own struggle with throat cancer, requiring him to use an electrolarynx or "throat back" in order to speak.
8. Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed (2021, Joshua Rofe)
Watched: Tuesday, November 9, 2021
As we're getting into November and into the end of the year, expect these late-season list contenders to keep coming. Despite feeling primed to really appreciate this due to the subject matter, I was underwhelmed.
9. The Truffle Hunters (2020, Michael Dweck & Gregory Kershaw)
Watched: Tuesday, November 23, 2021
It's listed as 2020 here, but this fulfilled my requirements for a movie I could rank in 2021. This was the first time where life threw me a curveball that might prevent the viewing, as I was on the second of two nights away with my wife. But after we played a lot of pool and went our separate ways for televised entertainment to end the night, I determined I could still fit in this film's brief 84 minutes, which went down pretty well.
10. My Name is Gulpilil (2021, Molly Reynolds)
Watched: Tuesday, December 7, 2021
I'm a big fan of the recently deceased indigenous actor David Gulpilil, who has been in all sorts of classic Australian films, so it counting for the current year was sort of a secondary interest, since he'd just died within the past few weeks. The movie was not great from a filmmaking perspective but I loved learning more about him.
11. Summer of Soul (... or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021, Questlove)
Watched: Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Even being in the new house for just over 24 hours did not prevent me from fitting in my documentary alternate Tuesday. I'm a dedicated man. This was one of the most acclaimed films of last year and I was obviously going to fit it in before ranking. It ended up in my top 20 for the year.
12. The Rescue (2021, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin)
Watched: Monday, January 3, 2022
My first Monday, but not my last. Cannot remember why I needed to watch it on Monday night instead of Tuesday. On that Tuesday I watched The Lost Daughter. It seems like I could have just as easily flipped those two. Really liked this, just outside my top 20 for the year. These filmmakers excel in movies about climbing, and it appears, also in movies about rescuing people from flooded caves.
13. The Velvet Underground (2021, Todd Haynes)
Watched: Monday, January 17, 2022
After I'd broken the seal the previous time, kept the Monday night viewings going with my last movie before I closed off my 2021 rankings. It ended up somewhere in the 60 to 65% range in those rankings, as the these final viewings usually do, when I've lost all my critical faculties and just want to be done with the whole thing. It's an impressive film but not being a huge VU fan probably limited my appreciation.
14. Looking for Richard (1996, Al Pacino)
Watched: Tuesday, February 1, 2022
I got back to Tuesdays but I got a little cheeky with this one nonetheless. Hey I never said they all had to be documentaries I hadn't seen before, did I? By this point I had already decided I was going to revisit all my former #1s in order to rank them at the end of 2022, and this is the only documentary I have ever crowned as my favorite of the year.
15. In & Of Itself (2020, Frank Oz)
Watched: Monday, February 14, 2022
This indescribable self-help/magic special fits my description of a documentary enough to qualify. Unlike some people -- my wife included, who was watching it on the couch next to me -- I didn't know what to make of this film and am still not sure if I really liked it. Maybe it's just the frustration of not knowing how Derek DelGaudio does what he did. The weirdest thing is probably that we chose this as our Valentine's Day viewing.
16. Flee (2021, Jonas Poher Rasmussen)
Watched: Tuesday, March 1, 2022
This 2021 critical darling -- which was somehow Oscar-nominated for best documentary, best foreign language film and best animated feature, even though two of those three would seem to contradict each other -- was right up my alley as a big fan of Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir.
17. The Tinder Swindler (2022, Felicity Morris)
Watched: Tuesday, March 15, 2022
New year, new documentaries to rank in the current year. This movie had its moment in the zeitgeist but I didn't find it particularly interesting.
18. Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press (2017, Brian Knappenberger)
Watched: Tuesday, March 29, 2022
I think this was another result of a streaming deep dive -- I remember going through a lot of pages here -- but the results were better than the previous time I did this (Step Into Liquid). Was really interested in the Hulk Hogan portion of this, not so much in the other portions -- and in fact, can no longer remember what they were about.
19. The Imposter (2012, Bart Layton)
Watched: Wednesday, April 13, 2022
My first Wednesday, but there was no way I was watching a documentary that Tuesday, which was my 14th wedding anniversary. (Valentine's Day was bad enough.) I had remembered wanting to watch this documentary when it first came out and was glad to come across it, though it's another milquetoast 3.5 star rating where I don't remember all that much about it.
20. Do I Sound Gay? (2014, David Thorpe)
Watched: Tuesday, April 26, 2022
This might not have been the best documentary I watched in the last year, but it hits an absolute sweet spot by being about an interesting topic (the phenomenon of gay men speaking effeminately) with some (but not overwhelming) social importance, managing to be fun and funny while also uncovering a real sense of sadness and self-loathing. A great way to pass an evening in COVID quarantine, and it was only 77 minutes to boot.
21. Miss Representation (2011, Jennifer Siebel Newsom)
Watched: Tuesday, May 10, 2022
I ended up liking this pretty well after a deep dive into Kanopy to see what I could find, but I wouldn't say that it really says anything new about women's attempts to be viewed equally, and not as sex objects, in popular culture and entertainment. Perhaps the most interesting thing about it in my mind is that the director, a former actress, is married to the governor of California, and therefore, a possible future first lady? Maybe?
22. Can We Take a Joke? (2015, Ted Balaker)
Watched: Monday, May 23, 2022
It wasn't a great sign for the longevity of this project that I took a deep dive into Kanopy for the second installment in a row, and didn't come up with something I felt very excited about for the second time in a row, opting for this primarily because it would be over in 74 minutes. It's basically about whether our culture has become too sensitive to jokes, though it doesn't have quite the right-wing perspective you might assume from that premise.
23. Beastie Boys Story (2020, Spike Jonze)
Watched: Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Clearly feeling a bit desperate to get back on track here, I was glad to remember I had wanted to watch this documentary that was among the first bits of original content I was aware of to be released by AppleTV+. Even though my viewing was divided between work, a long bus ride home from baseball practice and home, I really, really liked this -- glad to see the two remaining Beasties with such a fun perspective on their careers, delivered in a manner that suggested they no longer worry about being perceived as cool.
24. Burden of Dreams (1982, Les Blank)
Watched: Wednesday, June 22, 2022
This was a pivot from the movie I had planned to watch as my documentary the night before, which, I realized after starting it, turned out not to be a documentary: Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom. But what a pivot. This was pretty easily my favorite documentary from the whole year, something I had long wanted to see, about Werner Herzog's fateful experiences shooting Fitzcarraldo. It lived up to everything I hoped from what I'd heard going in, especially his famous speech about animals murdering each other in nature and birds screaming.
25. Our Father (2022, Lucie Jourdan)
Watched: Tuesday, July 5, 2022
Yes I got to tick off a 2022 documentary I needed to see, but more than that got a really fascinating story about a fertility doctor who used his own samples dozens, and dozens, and dozens of times, potentially screwing up the whole gene pool in a major metropolitan area. This is one of the few times I remember really liking staged recreations in a documentary.
26. Gates of Heaven (1978, Errol Morris)
Watched: Tuesday, July 19, 2022
Alas, I didn't love Gates of Heaven. In fact I'm not even sure I really liked it. I'm giving it three stars as an adjustment of my expectations of a documentary made at a very different time than today, but this was a lot of talking heads waffling on and going on whatever tangents they wanted, because Morris' interview style allows for that. I saw the seeds of what Morris would become in the future, but this first effort only brings the pets to life, so to speak, in fleeting moments. I learned all too much about the ins and outs related to the creation of the cemetery without really feeling like it was a vibrant space either. He also gave altogether too much screen time to the film's least appealing character. Maybe I just needed more b-roll than I got. Or maybe I was too tired, which is not a big surprise given that I'm leaving for the U.S. in six days. I'm obviously wrong because Roger Ebert put this on one of his Sight & Sound polls as one of the ten best films of all time. This film's completion and exhibition were also the occasion for Werner Herzog to eat his own shoe, as a result of losing a bet about whether Gates of Heaven would ever see the light of day.
A few takeaways:
1) I'm still pretty allergic to earnest movies about social and human rights issues, the kind I watched extensively when I was choosing films for that human rights film festival back in 2015 and 2016 (for festivals taking place in 2016 and 2017). Yep, five years later I am still broken from that.
2) Twenty-three of these 26 movies are from the 21st century, suggesting that documentaries don't have much of a shelf life. Either the older ones are not available, or they're not on my radar because, with a few rare exceptions, people aren't still talking about them 50 years after they were made. (Also, I watched 12 pre-1990 documentaries for my series Audient Authentic back in 2020, so perhaps I thought I scratched that particular itch then.)
3) When I saw a doco that I really liked, it definitely got me feeling enthused about this project all over again. However, instead of soldiering on with the project through good times and bad, I'll just remember that I can be enthusiastic about documentaries even if I am not doing this series -- and maybe that's the next step in bringing them fully back into my good graces.
If the problem before this was that watching documentaries felt like a chore, forcing myself to watch them every two weeks probably didn't help with that. But now that I'm reminded they don't have to feel like a chore, I'll look forward to opting in to them -- on my own schedule this time.
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