Hot Docs 2012: Reviews #9

Reviews of screenings from the 2012 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Toronto, Canada.

The Reluctant Revolutionary (Dir: Sean McAllister, 69 minutes, UK)

Kais is barely making a living as a guide in his native Yemen when his economic prospects suddenly get a lot worse — nothing keeps the tourists away like massive political unrest. One camera-toting "tourist" (director Sean McAllister) remains behind to watch things unfold. As tensions ratchet up in the country, we get to witness not only the growing demands for freedom and democracy, but a change in Kais as well. At the outset, he's not overtly political and declares that president-for-life Saleh is doing a good job and keeping things stable. As he sees the brutal lengths to which the regime will go to prolong its reign, he slowly becomes the titular reluctant revolutionary.

The film is shot with a you-are-there first-person immediacy. This can be stirring and make us feel like witnesses to history in the making. The shots of crowds building in "Change Square" are at first like a joyful festival ("it's just like Glastonbury!" proclaims a chuffed McAllister) and later a scene of tragic horror as the army opens fire (and uses some U.S.-supplied nerve gas) against unarmed civilians. The downside is that there is also some really dodgy amateur camera-work — for the film's first few minutes I thought I was going to get vertigo from McAllister's shaky, wildly veering camera.

Fortunately, that does settle down as the story progresses, especially as it moves into the quieter territory of hanging out with Kais. Besides giving us a welcome dose of what things are like for an educated, khat-chewing regular guy, it's also a poignant depiction of the moral calculations undertaken by anyone who's swept up in something bigger than themself — how far should I go to risk my life and my family's security in the name of some abstract ideal? How far can you be pushed before you have to take a stand?

As an observer, McAllister's motives are never made very clear. One assumes that he is a journalist, despite his continued denials of such to the authorities. He sensibly worries about his own skin and how his presence might cause trouble for his Yemeni friends, but as the tension mounts, things tip a bit too far in trying to make us worry about the fate of this one European as opposed to the thousands out in the street. But on the whole, this is an effective document of the finer details of life during the Arab Spring.

We Are Wisconsin (Dir: Amie Williams, 90 minutes, USA)

Another you-are-here account of a political uprising, this film shifts to the American midwest to follow the efforts of a rookie governor to bring his State's financial house in order. Just a few days into his new job, Scott Walker introduced an omnibus "Budget Repair Bill" that seemed to have a hidden agenda, giving the boon of public sell-offs to his out-of-state big-money supporters while gutting not only union benefits, but the very right of collective bargaining itself.

It was the latter that immediately rallied public-sector union workers to fight, and quickly workers and students (Madison is also a big college town) were organizing protests that grew by orders of magnitude with every passing day.

Taking us behind the scenes, and guiding us through the events with an articulate range of subjects, the film does a stirring job of showing a people-power revolution, American-style. The Rotunda of the beautiful State Capitol is soon packed with occupying citizens, determined to exercise their democratic rights up-close and in person.

Along the way, things get bogged down from all angles, as Republican state senators look for a way to pass the budget bill in the absence of a quorum denied them by Democratic legislators who have fled across state lines to slow the process down. And the big picture of the protests gets swallowed up somewhat by small-scale tactical battles.

But it's the passion of the subjects that pulls things through, from social service workers who demonstrate how the removal of their collective agreements will have adverse effects on their ability to help their clients to a rare feel-good police story, with law-enforcement officials rising above the divide-and-conquer temptations to not fight against a bill that would have exempted them... this time around.

Seeing how this bold action served to galvanize such a huge response, the cynical take from this is that the Tea Party faction was dumb to do this so fast and openly. As we're seeing in our own country right now, workers' rights can eroded more effectively when slowly done behind a bland façade (and even longer omnibus bills). Hopefully the lessons learned and spirit gained by the progressive forces will be enough to counter new skulduggery and massive financial infusions from shadowy right-wing forces.

Plus, this movie should work as a very effective agitprop tool to support its cause. After receiving the longest and loudest applause that I witnessed during the festival, director Williams told the crowd that the film is going to be deployed all across Wisconsin in the buildup to the June 5th gubernatorial recall election. Forward, proud badgers!

Polish Illusions (Dir: Jacob Dammas/Helge Renner, 85 minutes, Poland/Germany/Denmark/France)

Darłowo, Poland is a beautiful resort on the Baltic. Home to hordes to invading tourists during the summer, this film follows a couple locals each connected by their own illusions.

For Jan Konstantynow, those are quite literal. A retired fisherman focused on his magic act, Konstantynow fondly remembers the Communist days, when an illusionist was treated with some respect. These days, the town's young new cultural planner wants to freshen things up to fill his newly-renovated auditorium.

Mark Buller, a retired American military pilot, was attracted to the town by its large annual military re-enactment festival and decided to stay. A fetishist for military hardware, he loves restoring old vehicles but also pines for a new companion to fill the void left in his life by his wife's passing. Going through life with an oblivious, obnoxious bluster (he should wear a sweatshirt with "STEREOTYPICAL AMERICAN" in stencilled letters), he can't seem to connect with the local women.

There's potential here for this to unfold into something interesting, but it simply does not. At one level, the film is hamstrung by the fact that Buller isn't all that compelling of a character, but overall it was the whole presentation that I found offputting. Filmed from a tripod and employing a cloyingly precious omniscient voiceover, the film gave the impression that it wanted to be anything but a documentary. And yes, yes, all filmic reality is constructed etc. etc., and shots from a handheld camera do not imbue more veracity — but the whole construction here, convenient character arcs included, gives this the feel of a "quirky" small town comedy, but it just never pays off.

We see Konstantynow build himself up only for the "reveal" that he's stumblingly incompetent, and eventually try and embrace the new capitalist ethos. We also see Buller learn to tone down his personality enough to find love — but by the time this happens I was long past caring.

The tone employed here might work well for others — there were laughs in the theatre at material that pained me — but I would advise skipping this one.