Objectivity in Documentary
by Peter Morris
In their essay Redefining
Cinema: other genres, Izod and Kilborn state that ‘the photographic
realism of the documentary, for instance, can easily conceal the extent to
which it often actively constructs a particular view of the world…documentaries
can never be wholly objective; they will always involve a greater or lesser
degree of intervention on the part of the documentarist.’
Documentaries hold
a particularly resonant role in the society of today as a visual medium in
which to learn and evaluate the facts of a certain situation. We are expected to believe what we see and as
viewers and consumers of this information, we expect to be shown the truth of
an event or events that take place on the screen before us…as the saying
goes…”a picture never lies”. But what if
we can’t see the whole picture, the bigger picture, the picture cut from view,
the edited expression of the reality of an event? Do we as the viewer have to construct this
bigger picture ourselves? Are we
expected to derive the truth from the information given to us by the
photographer? Is that the lure of this
medium of expression? Dai Vaughan, a
documentary film editor for over thirty years, suggests that “realism has
nothing to do with totality but involves, on the part of the recipient, a
sparkling of understanding across gaps in the text; such creative response,
such active construction of meaning by the recipient, lying at the heart of
aesthetic pleasure.”¹ This gives the
documentary the ability to select and discard, allowing a certain margin for
the creative processes of the human mind…this is John Grierson’s “creative
treatment of actuality”2, a phrase that has been and will be debated
on many levels for many years to come.
The Lumière
Brothers were the first to produce moving pictures of real people involved in
real world situations. These images of
workers leaving their factory workplace on a bright evening astounded their
viewers…this was the first instance of a real situation being presented to an
audience, and is probably one of the most honest attempts at documenting a
particular event with no sense of bias, or subject, or objectivity, or
treatment of the images for the viewer.
This didn’t last long. Soon, the
Lumière Brothers discovered that to show the demolition of a stone wall in
reverse could astound any viewer. The
creative treatment had begun. And, in
the decades that followed, the search for truth in documentary got more and
more difficult, more and more hidden behind the emerging abilities of the
film-makers and their ever evolving equipment.
This new forum for expression had begun and the documentary film began
to grow, from the simple images of factory workers to films which can cause
political, social and moral unrest, affecting millions of people. Documentaries can be used to promote one’s
subjective views or to analyse the subjective nature of institutions and
individuals across the world. A forum
that can bring to us the world of a lonely individual or the strife of an
entire nation, the remembrance of something that is now gone or the promotion
of something that is yet to come.
This form has,
since its inception, taken many different shapes, each with its own unique take
on how the “creative treatment of actuality”2 should be recorded and
presented to the general viewer. Film
writer Bill Nichols describes these various modes…the expository mode is
described as “Voice of God commentary and poetic perspectives sought to
disclose information about the historical world itself and to see that world
afresh, even if these views came to seem romantic and didactic” (Watt and
Wright’s Night Mail (1936), Alberto Calvacanti’s Coalface (1935),
John Grierson’s Drifters (1929)), the observational mode “of
representation allowed the film maker to record unobtrusively what people did
when they were not explicitly addressing the camera…But the observational mode
limited the film maker to the present moment and required disciplined
detachment from the events themselves (Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut
Follies (1967 ), Albert & David Maysles’ Salesman (1969), Robert
Drew’s Primary (1960)), the interactive mode “arose from the…desire
to make the film maker’s perspective more evident. Interview styles and interventionist tactics
arose, allowing the film maker to participate more actively in present events (Michael
Moore’s Roger and Me (1989), Nick Broomfield’s Tracking Down Maggie (1994)),
and the reflexive mode which “arose from a desire to make the conventions of
representations themselves more apparent and to challenge the impression of
reality which the other three modes normally conveyed unproblematic.”
(Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line (1988), Alex Gibney’s Enron: The
Smartest Guys In The Room (2005)).3 These different modes of documentary-making
changed over the years partly due to technological innovations in equipment,
most notably in sound recording equipment and hand held cameras, and partly in
the ability of the film-maker to push the boundaries in terms of the
presentation of the truth as a viable mode of creative communication. Izod and Kilborn argue that “The
photographic realism of the documentary can easily conceal the extent to which
it often actively constructs a particular view of the world. This view is determined, among other things,
by the film-maker’s own preconceptions, by the perspective from which the
events are witnessed, and by the structuring principles according to which the
material is edited. In other words,
documentaries can never be wholly objective; they will always involve a greater
or lesser degree of intervention on the part of the documentarist”2
Even with these varying modes of documentary, the holy grail of pure
objectivity is still elusive, lost amongst the techniques involved in the film
making process, but some have come close and regardless of what style of
documentary, in the majority of attempts, an accurate portrayal of the truth is
paramount.
Direct cinema was
America’s answer to the cinema veritè movement that was blooming in
Europe in the 1950s and 1960s; led by such film-makers as Chris Marker, Jacques
Rozier, Pierre Perrault and Jean Rouch, whose film Chronicle of a Summer (Chronique
d’un Été 1961), had a huge influence on the cinema veritè movement4. The direct cinema style of documentary making
focused on a lack of participation on the film-makers behalf, in terms of
influencing the reality of the situation they are recording, a form of the
observational mode of film-making mentioned earlier. The Maysles brothers were integral in the
establishment of this mode of film making, along with Robert Drew (credited as
the father of direct cinema), Richard Leacock, D.A. Penneaker and Frederick
Wiseman, who all believed that this form of documentary making was the only
true objective form of documentary, even more so than their European
counterpart’s version; cinema veritè.
Erik Barnouw defines the differences – “The direct cinema
documentarist took his camera to a situation of tension and waited hopefully
for a crisis; the Rouch version of cinema veritè tried to precipitate one. The direct cinema artist aspired to
invisibility; the Rouch cinema veritè artist was often an avowed
participant. The direct cinema artist
played the role of uninvolved bystander; the cinema veritè artist espoused that
of provocateur. Direct cinema found its
truth in events available to the camera.
Cinema veritè was committed to a paradox: that artificial circumstances
could bring hidden truth.”4
Made in 1969, Salesman
follows the fortunes of four salesmen as they attempt to sell expensive
bibles, door to door, to low-income households across New England and
Florida. The film was produced and
directed by brothers Albert and David Maysles along with Charlotte Zwerin and
followed the mandate of the direct cinema mode – no interviews, no voice of
god, no intertitles, no participation.
The film focuses on the struggle of Paul Brennan A.K.A. ‘The Badger’, an
Irish – American salesman, under pressure to increase his sales numbers. Even upon its release the film was both
praised and ridiculed for its stance on realism. Salesman follows the rules laid down
by the direct cinema mode but has still been criticised for not being able to
be wholly objective. The presence of a
camera can influence how people react and the unavoidable use of selective
editing was the basis for much of the criticism given to Salesman, and
indeed, to the direct cinema movement as a whole. Vincent Canby of the New York Times said in
1969, “they have eliminated from the film all evidence that the people being
photographed – the salesmen and their customers – are aware of the presence of
the camera. Obviously, they also
photographed much more material that is included in the finished movie,
allowing them to impose a certain narrative order on the events, and with that
order, a point of view.” 5 “You could call it that,” Albert
Maysles responds, “but if the POV is set up to give you a message – the hell
with the facts – that’s where POV gets into trouble. When you’re getting into “purposes”, then you’re
getting into POV. If your purpose is
just to reveal the human condition, then that’s ok.”6 Regardless of the critics’ comments in terms
of the objectivity of direct cinema, it showed a new and engaging attempt to
portray the subjects of their films with a truth, a reality and an honesty that
had not been seen before in any other mode of documentary. In an interview on the force of reality in
direct cinema, Albert Maysles says; “in Salesman, for example, you’ll see
Paul (Brennan) sitting in a cafeteria, and it’s quite a long sustained
shot of him just looking off into the blue.
Now, I would venture to say that any other documentary filmmaker
would have thought it smart to say, “But Paul, what are you thinking of? We want to know what you are thinking.” You probably would have needed cutaways,
because there would be questions and answers, and you can’t just go along
continuously that way. So, you’d have
cutaway shots, food on the table or a waitress walking, or whatever. Instead, in our film, the audience is totally
absorbed in the man’s thinking, whatever it is.
And you don’t exactly know what it is, but you can pretty damn well
guess. In fact, in that guessing process
you become all the more engaged, because now, more than ever, the process of
identification is taking place. You are
identifying with that person. You are in
that person’s shoes. You are with him,
heart and soul.”7 It is
this engagement, this truth of the human being that the Maysles brothers sought
and brought to the screen in Salesman and subsequent documentaries such
as Grey Gardens (1975), a character study of real people going through
real events. These events are portrayed
as authentically as possible, considering there is the buffer of a director
between the characters and the audience.
In direct cinema this buffer is minimised to the best it can be. Is it objective realism or is it a
constructed view of reality? Either way
this buffer is present and a very real determining factor in what we are
expected to feel.
In 1988, Errol
Morris released a film that chose the truth as the subject matter of the
documentary. His film The Thin Blue
Line (1988) studies the case of Randall Adams, an innocent man who was
convicted of murdering a Dallas police officer in November 1976 and sentenced
to death for his crime. Morris’ film is
both an investigation of the murder and a nightmarish meditation on the
differences between truth and fiction8 which used interviews,
archive footage and re-enactments to portray the facts of a convoluted
miscarriage of justice. These rather
stylised devices, alien to the world of the Maysles brothers and direct cinema,
were a new step in the creative reflexive mode of documentary making,
especially the re-enactments, which were shot much like a noir film; rich in
texture and resonating with the viewer, as they played out the various accounts
from various perspectives of the shooting on that fateful night in Dallas, to
the haunting score by composer Philip Glass.
These re-enactments drew the attention of many critics who felt that
Morris was taking liberties with the truth by using these stylish re-enactments
as a medium to portray the realities of an actual event. He defends himself, “My re-enactments
focus our attention on some specific detail or object that helps us look beyond
the surface images to something hidden, something deeper – something that
better captures what really happened…The engine of uncovering truth is not some
special lens or even the unadorned human eye; it is unadorned human reason. It wasn’t a cinema veritè documentary that
got Randall Adams out of prison. It was
a film that re-enacted important details of the crime…I use re-enactments to
burrow underneath the surface of reality in an attempt to uncover some hidden
truth.”9 And he understands the power
of these pictures, and understands the power he wields as the director and
buffer of the truth between subject and audience, “If seeing is believing,
then we better be damn careful about what we show people, including ourselves –
because, regardless of what it is – we are likely to uncritically believe it.”9 There is no doubting that Morris was very
subjective in this film, he wholeheartedly admits believing that Adams was
innocent of the murder before he started filming10 and used these
re-enactments, collected evidence and interviews with all the people concerned
with the investigation to prove the innocence of Randall Adams. A year after Morris released The Thin Blue Line Adams was released from jail after serving
twelve years for a murder he did not commit.
It was up to Morris to solve the case that the court system in Texas
couldn’t, even though there was overwhelming evidence to the contrary of Adam’s
guilt.
One critic, Stephen Rowley states; “It’s fashionable amongst certain academic circles to
argue that there is no such thing as objective truth; that any account of
events is inherently a fiction, shaped by our own prejudices, beliefs, values
and so on. In re-enacting every perspective
of events without distinction, Morris at first seems to be ascribing to his
view. Each version is another tale,
apparently equally valid. Yet Morris
never loses sight of the fact that although different people might reconstruct
real events in different ways, somebody pulled the trigger that night.”11 There is inherently an understanding in
Morris, as a documentarist, to show only truth in his films. With The Thin Blue Line, he went one step further, he showed not only
what was true but what was perceived to be true and what was utterly
false. There is no arguing that the ‘the
photographic realism of the documentary can easily conceal the extent to which
it often actively constructs a particular view of the world.’ 2 In the case of The
Thin Blue Line this particular view of the world turned out to be the only
view based on actual truth.
The idea of pure
objectivity in a documentary film is simply impossibly. There is inherently a creative process
involved in the making of any documentary film, be it an observational film or
a reflexive film, an interactive film or an expository film, there is somebody
behind the camera who chooses to point it here and not there, there is somebody
sitting in an editing suite choosing what is important and what is not, there
is somebody who decides they want to make a film about this person or that
object. Errol Morris and the Maysles
brothers sit on very opposite sides of the objective film-maker divide, but
both aspire for the same thing – a fundamental truth in their films, be it the
world of Paul Brennan or the world of Randall Adams. The objectivity of direct cinema reveals to
us the truth about how people act and perceive the world, the subjectivity of
Errol Morris reveals to us how the world can act on the people within it. Both will agree, there is only the truth as
they see it, that they can perceive.
“But I’ll make
every effort to tell the truth…but what I tell will be the truth as best as I
know. What is documentary but one
divine accident after another? I mean,
reality is a force outside of ourselves that we play just a small part of.”7
- Albert Maysles -
2007
References:
- Jordan, Randolph (January 31st
2003) The Gap: Documentary Truth between Reality and Perception (Online)
http://horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/documentary_truth.html
- Hall, J. Ed & Church Gibson, P
(1998) Oxford Guide to Film Studies Pgs. 426 - 433 (Oxford
University Press)
- Nichols, Bill (1989) Representing
Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press)
- Barsam, Richard M. (1992) Non-fiction
Film: A Cultural History Pgs 299 - 305 (US: Indiana University
Press)
- Canby, Vincent (April 18th
1969) New York Times Review: Salesman (Online) http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=2&res=EE05E7DF173AA52CAB494CC4B679958D6896&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
- Lewis, Anne S. (February 11th
2000) Stories That Tell Themselves.
The Texas Documentary Tour: Meet the Maysles (Online) http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/print?oid=75859
- Zuber, Sharon (2007) The Force
of Reality in Direct Cinema: an Interview with Albert Maysles (Online)
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-33571787_ITM
- Maslin, Janet (August 25th
1988) Review/Film; Anatomy of a Murder: A Real Life Whodunit (Online)
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=940DE2DA1F30F935A1575BC0A96E948260&pagewanted=print
- Morris, Errol (April 3rd
2008) Play It Again, Sam (Re-enactments, Part One) (Online) http://morris.blogs.nyimes.com/2008/04/03/play-it-again-sam-re-enactments-part-one/index.html
- Wisconsin Public Radio (July 2nd
2004) A Conversation With Errol Morris (Online) http://www.wpr.org/news/errol%20morris%20iv.cfm
- Rowley, Stephen (2007) The Thin
Blue Line (Errol Morris) 1988 (Online) http://cinephobia.com/thinblue.htm
Bibliography
Films Cited
- Night Mail (1936) - Dir. Basil Wright, Harry Watt
- Coal Face (1935) – Dir. Alberto Calvacanti
- Drifters (1929) – Dir. John Grierson
- Titicut Follies (1967) – Dir. Frederick Wiseman
- Salesman (1969) – Dir. Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin
- Primary (1960) – Dir. Robert Drew
- Roger and Me (1989) – Dir. Michael Moore
- Tracking Down Maggie (1994) – Dir. Nick Broomfield
- The Thin Blue Line (1988) – Dir. Errol Morris
- Enron: The Smartest Guys In
The Room (2005) – Dir. Alex Gibney
- Chronique d'un été (Paris 1960) (1961) – Dir. Edgar Morin, Jean Rouch
- Grey Gardens (1975) – Dir. Ellen Hovde, Albert Maysles, David Maysles,
Muffie Meyer
