The Truth and Its Servants

FFP and I have been going to the SXSW Film Fest. We have seen only documentaries. Six of them so far.

I plan some mini-reviews over at my main site but this entry is about the consequences of putting the truth in service of our hopes, dreams and desires for change.

Documentaries often have an agenda. They want to explore something as a call to arms to change or at least to expose something standing in the way of a true path.

Which is great.

Except.

It is irresistible not to start picking and choosing what you show or pay attention to. By turning a blind eye to some things and putting the floodlights on others the truth starts to look a lot like lying. Especially in cinema. The harder you try to put the truth in service of something, the more it becomes a lie.

Of the films we've seen, the ones that seemed to ring truest and also to give us some insight into the human condition, got out of the way of big issues and let us see individuals in individual struggles. One film chose not to investigate too deeply a character's claim to a celebrity parent seeing that the purposes of the film were served by just knowing what the character said he believed to be true.

At the Q&A for another film that stayed true to the personal while addressing the existence of larger issues, an audience member tried to pursue a thread...looking for a raison d'etre for a (seeming?) epidemic of cancer. This woman went so far as to start talking about governments. You know, being to blame for not stopping the toxic onslaught of industry. This is a tactic FFP and I refer to as 'Stop the Industrial Revolution.'

Another film seemed to want to address growth and natural resources and the politics thereof. Facts were presented. Dazzling cinematography was engendered from satellite pictures, site maps, blueprints. And yet the cause remained blurred. I was sure there was a message. A call to action. But what was it? Was sprawl bad? But they were excoriating high rises. Was growth bad in general? But the director was introduced as not only a great director but a mother.

Documentaries are entertaining and short cutting the truth often makes them more engaging. But the harder you try to put the material in service of some cause and really press to change the world, the muddier the waters get. It turned out that the docs I enjoyed most and, I think, got the most out of, were ones that put a microscope on some of the individual lives that are just part of the great mass of humans. Really, there is only truth one-on-one. And all politics is inherently a statistical lie.