Let the Viewer Decide

Documentarian Frederick Wiseman on free speech, complexity, and the trouble with Michael Moore

Jesse Walker from the December 2007 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

Reason: There’s a recent trend toward documentaries in which the filmmaker makes himself a part of the action. Obviously that’s very different from your style. Sicko and Hospital are both about American health care, but their approaches are just poles apart.

Wiseman: Well, I haven’t seen Sicko, but generally speaking I’m not a fan of Michael Moore’s.

Reason: How come?

Wiseman: I think he’s an entertainer. I don’t think he’s interested in complexity.

I’m not against the filmmaker appearing in a film. I think some of the greatest documentaries I’ve ever seen have been made by a filmmaker who’s present in the film. I don’t know if you’ve seen any movies by Marcel Ophuls—The Sorrow and the Pity or Hotel Terminus. Ophuls is a great filmmaker because he’s a great interviewer and he has a very sharp and analytical mind. In the case of Michael Moore, I don’t see any particular filmmaking skills, and I think his point of view is extremely simplistic and self-serving.

One of my goals is always to deal with the ambiguity and complexity that I find in any subject. Even the simplest human act can be subject to multiple interpretations or have multiple causes. In Titicut Follies, for example, there are scenes where you see a guard or a doctor or a social worker being cruel to an inmate. But there are other situations where they’re being kind. Some of them are both kind and cruel, if not simultaneously then serially.

Reason: You’ve said Titicut Follies is more didactic than your later films. Are there sequences you wish you had done differently?

Wiseman: Yeah. The best example is the forced feeding. I show too heavy an editorial hand in that sequence. Instead of intercutting it with the guy being made up for his funeral, it would have been better if I’d shown the forced feeding as a separate sequence, and then had some intervening sequences, and then shown him being made up for his burial later and cutting it in such a way that you recognize that it’s the same person.

I think the way I did it forces the issue of whether the guy is treated better in death than in life. Whereas if I did it the way I just described, the viewer could have come to that conclusion instead of having it forced on him.

Reason: When the judge ruled to suppress Titicut Follies, its openness was one of the things he held against it. “Each viewer,” he complained, “is left to his own devices as to just what is being portrayed and in what context.”

Wiseman: I think that’s a good description of the technique I’ve used all along. When the technique works, it works because the viewer is brought into the situation, feels in some way present, and has to make up his own mind about the significance of what he’s seeing. That’s what I tried to do in the Follies, and that’s what I tried to refine as time went on.

I have a horror of novels that are so didactic that you know the reason why everybody is doing what they’re doing. And I think there’s no reason a film can’t be as complex as a novel.

Comments

|11.16.07 @ 4:27PM|#

Is Titicut Follies available on DVD?

|11.16.07 @ 4:28PM|#

his company, Zipporah Films, is preparing to release his movies on DVD

Serves me right for not RTFA carefully.

SxCx|11.16.07 @ 5:12PM|#

A sincere thanks to Jesse and Reason for bringing this man to my attention. I checked out my local library shortly after reading the piece and discovered they have around seven of his films on VHS, including Titicut.

On the other hand, I'll be patronizing a wasteful public institution...

JBinMO|11.16.07 @ 5:17PM|#

What a different world we live in today. That was just 50 years ago.

|11.16.07 @ 5:23PM|#

What a different world we live in today. That was just 50 years ago.

You must have missed the part where Jesse drew the comparison of Titicut with Abu Ghraib.

Or did you mean how we treat the mentally ill? God, I hope we're still not doing that stuff.

LarryA|11.16.07 @ 6:24PM|#

Or did you mean how we treat the mentally ill? God, I hope we're still not doing that stuff.

Na. Most of them have been "released," quit taking their meds, and are now homeless. My hometown has a wonderful new program for them, as we've been blessed with state funding for a couple of new bridges and a recent flood keeps the city diligent on keeping brush and trash cleared out of the riverbottom.

In addition, when it rains they send a cop around to warn everyone about flash flooding.

|11.16.07 @ 7:45PM|#

For more recent MH goofiness, see "The Satanic Panic" and "repressed memory syndrome".

I work at a Mental Health Center. I do manage to keep my mouth shut for the most part.

|11.16.07 @ 9:11PM|#

No human being should be treated in such a manner.

Massachusetts instead of modernizing facilites for the chronic ill, mentally ill, and schools fo the retarded literally destroyed them.

The state became a buyer of services instead of a provider of services establishing an out of control Human Service Industrial Establishment riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse containing little or no accountability or oversight.

Vendors, providers, and consultants continue to ply their poor services or no services to those in need and continuing to rip of taxpayers.

The time has come for a factual updated documentary of what has and is happening in Massachusetts.

Investigative journalists, documentary filmakers, and research collaboratives, consider yourselves invited.

BakedPenguin|11.16.07 @ 9:57PM|#

One of the great innovators in documentary film making. Film History by David Bordwell & Kristen Thompson has a great discussion of his works. Unfortunately, it's a textbook, and really pricey.

|11.17.07 @ 6:58PM|#

Michael Moore has never made a documentary. He makes socialist propaganda, and he's the best director in that field since Leni Riefenstahl.

-jcr

The Libertarian Guy|11.18.07 @ 10:33PM|#

"Michael Moore has never made a documentary. He makes socialist propaganda, and he's the best director in that field since Leni Riefenstahl."


But... but... what about the children???

stephen the goldberger|11.19.07 @ 5:26PM|#

I'm not a huge fan of Wiseman. He makes movies for intellectuals, films that are more interesting to talk and write about afterwards than actually watch. Hence why this article was infinitely more interesting than any of his works (especially "Zoo" wow that was boring).

|11.21.07 @ 9:14PM|#

Oh, the "but what about the children?" thing has so become a favorite sarcastic interlude of mine as well.

People fear monger on the left and fear monger on the right. Just because you believe in one side more does not negate the fact that it is a detriment and not the way education should be spread.

And all movies are for intellectuals. I learned more from old school disney than any documentary I ever saw. And plus, if it pleases you, many movies can show you what idiots people are. But that wouldn't be too intellectual I guess.