If there is any category of media that has exploded in the last quarter century, it's the humble documentary feature. I had so many titles for consideration, I quickly filled all twenty-five slots and had to make some truly painful cuts to the list. If you see a particularly egregious omission, please be aware that I had to be ruthless, and these are personal favorites rather than the movies I'd hand out awards to. As with all lists in this series, there are unranked 25 entries, ordered by release date, but only the top ten get writeups.
Grizzly Man (2005) - A Werner Herzog film has to be on this list, and I landed on this one to represent all of his documentary work. Herzog's soft-spoken narration, his willingness to put himself on camera to become part of the narrative, and the nihilist bent gof his commentary are all very familiar now, but "Grizzly Man" was where much of the general public really got to know Herzog. Twenty years later, the cautionary messages are still all too timely and relevant.
King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007) - I love movies that give me a look into little subcultures that I know nothing about. And competitive video game playing is definitely a universe unto itself, with some very memorable characters. Finding out what happened to Billy Mitchell and Twin Galaxies since this documentary was released only makes the events in the film more fascinating. "King of Kong" remains a snapshot of an era of gaming that will never be the same.
Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) - I wrote this up for my Best Documentary Academy Award winners list not too long ago, but I couldn't leave this off. There are so many celebrated examinations of the terrible wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the POV of the decisionmakers and the perpetrators. "Taxi to the Dark Side" remains one of the few, unblinking narratives that tells us this story from the point of view of one of the victims, humanizing him every step of the way.
Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) - It's the Banksy documentary. In addition to playing with different levels of meta, so we're left wondering how much of what we're seeing is real, staged, or somewhere in between, the movie offers a scathing critique of the artistic establishment. The movie documents all the different ways that art and artists can be commodified and compromised, and how dreams of success can quickly lead to some very dark and disastrous places.
Stories We Tell (2013) - This is Sarah Polley's deeply personal, intimate interrogation of her own closest relationships as she searches for answers about her identity. Polley slowly unravels family secrets and sets the record straight as she revisits her own tangled history, but never in a way that feels indulgent or self-obsessed. The film popularized a documentary as memoir format that several others have attempted since, but never with such poignancy and insight.
Leviathan (2013) - Put a camera in a place where you wouldn't think to put one, and suddenly whole new worlds open up. The cameras here are on the surface of the ocean, on the deck of a fishing boat, looking up into skies full of birds, or down into the abyss. There's no narrative offered here, and no commentary. Instead, there is a total immersion into the sights and sounds of a fishing boat and the oceans that it traverses, teeming with life and sensory wonders.
The Act of Killing (2013) - An anti-communist purge was carried out in the 1960s under the regime of Indonesia's president, Suharto. The death squads were on the side of those who stayed in power, and so were never held accountable. Director Joshua Oppenheimer gives us a chilling look at what history written by the winners looks like, inviting his subjects to dramatize their memories of the killings, with all the powers of cinema fantasy that he can make available to them.
One Child Nation (2019) - It's one thing to hear about China's One Child policy, and another thing entirely to see how it worked in practice, to hear the bitter stories of how it was enforced, and to see those who are still haunted by the effects to this day. Director Nanfu Wang's interviews start with her own extended family, but also include health workers, administrators, and others who were directly involved in one of the most notorious social experiments in human history.
The Painter and the Thief (2020) - A modest Norwegian documentary about two strangers who become friends under extremely unusual circumstances. On the one hand you have the talented painter Barbora Kysilkova, and on the other hand you have Karl-Bertil Nordland, one of the men convicted of stealing two of Kysilkova's paintings from an Oslo gallery. The film's achronological storytelling doesn't do much for me, but the central relationship is absolutely engrossing to see unfold.
The Alabama Solution (2025) - Finally, there have been a lot of exposes about the dysfunctional state of the criminal justice system, but when the prisoners themselves are the cinematographers, providing the footage of the appalling conditions that they're forced to endure, the effect is profound. The documentary provides plenty of history and context for why this nightmare situation exists, but it's the prisoners themselves who offer the most compelling evidence.
The next fifteen:
Bowling For Columbine (2002)
The Fog of War (2003)
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
Searching for Sugar Man (2011)
Project Nim (2011)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)
The Unknown Known (2013)
At Berkeley (2013)
Jodorowsky's Dune (2013)
The Salt of the Earth (2014)
O.J.: Made in America (2016)
I Am Not Your Negro (2016)
Faces Places (2017)
Shirkers (2018)
Navalny (2022)
---
No comments:
Post a Comment