documentary

THE TWINNING REACTION: research playing with lives

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From L:R – Subjects Doug Rausch and Howard Burack in a still from THE TWINNING REACTION. Photo courtesy JFI.

The startling and moving documentary The Twinning Reaction tells the story of a Mad Men-era research project and its profound human impact. To perform a longitudinal study of nurture vs. nature, researchers INTENTIONALLY separated identical twins and placed them with families that the researchers kept in the dark. The placements occurred AFTER the twin babies had bonded together in the crib for many months. Legally and ethically sketchy at the time, this is monstrous by today’s standards, and, in fact, caused harm to the adoptees.

Somehow, some of these twins learned the truth as adults and located their birth siblings. In The Twinning Reaction, we meet three sets of separated identical siblings. Because we meet the subjects of the study, the effects of separation are clearly apparent and highly personalized.

Writer-director Lori Shinseki has found an amazing story and source material to match. In a gripping 52 minutes, she weaves it into a coherent and compelling story.

THE TWINNING REACTION
THE TWINNING REACTION

The most astonishing set of sibs are triplets which are the subject of a film in current theatrical release, Three Identical Strangers. The Twinning Reaction focuses on the study; we meet several sets of twins, and the triplets are the jaw-dropping final act.   Three Identical Strangers focuses on the triplets and then takes a more current dive into the study.

The Twinning Reaction’s world premiere was at Cinequest two years ago. The Twinning Reaction is not yet available to stream, so your only chance to see it will be at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this July and August.

WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?: gentleness from ferocity

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Fred Rogers with his Daniel Tiger in WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is the surprisingly moving biodoc of Fred Rogers, the originator and host of the PBS children’s program The Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.  I had missed this movie at the San Francisco International Film Festival where it submerged audiences in their hankies.

Of course, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? tells the story of the show.  But, more than that, it relates Rogers’ fierce passion for the plight of small children, and his need to protect them and help their emotional development.

What is so surprising is that Rogers’ sometimes laughably gentle affect sprang from such internal ferocity.  It turns that Rogers was a man who hated, hated, hated the moral emptiness and materialism of commercial children’s television.

His need to help children through difficult times drove him to explain the word “assassination” the day after RFK was killed.  And to demystify, clarify and normalize divorce and a host of other potentially child-traumatizing topics.  Utterly unafraid of (most) controversy in a timid medium, he was first and foremost the champion for small children, a cardigan-clad champion.

I am immune to Mr. Rogers nostalgia because I am too old to have watched the show as a kid, and it was no longer a first-run show when my own kid came of age.  So I was surprised to find myself choked with emotion when Fred Rogers explained to a very skeptical Senator John Pastore the need to “make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable”.  As Rogers recited the lyrics of his song about having feelings and staying in control, Pastore visibly melted (and so did I).

In Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Rogers’ family and his TV crew reveal their insider views of Rogers and his show.  The origins of the characters, the puppets, the songs and themes are explained.  But the core of Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is that Fred Rogers resolutely believed that every small child is deserving of love and has value, a view which has sadly become controversial among some.

THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS: a Feel Good until we peel back the onion

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THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS

The startling documentary Three Identical Strangers begins with a young man’s first day on a college campus, being greeted by strangers who are convinced that they know him; that night, a fellow student connects him to his double, born on the same day. They turned out to be identical siblings separated at birth and adopted by different families.  Even more stunning, the two brothers soon find their identical triplet.

The first third of Three Identical Strangers is a wonderful Feel Good story of family discovery.  But then we find that the triplets’ separation had been orchestrated as part of a  longitudinal study of nurture vs. nature.  Researchers INTENTIONALLY separated identical twins and placed them with families that the researchers kept in the dark. The placements occurred AFTER the twin babies had bonded together in the crib for many months.

This study was not detached observation, it was human experimentation.  As details reminiscent of Josef Mengele unfold,  the fact that both the researcher and the adoption agency were Jewish becomes even more chilling.

A film that covers much of the same factual territory, Twinning Reaction, premiered two years ago at Cinequest.  Twinning Reaction focuses on the study; we meet several sets of twins, and the triplets are the jaw-dropping final act.   Three Identical Strangers focuses on the triplets and then takes a more current dive into the study.  Twinning Reaction is not yet available to stream, but it will be playing at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this July and August.

Three Identical Strangers won the Special Jury Prize for Storytelling at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  It also played at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM).  Well-spun, this is an amazing story.

AMERICAN ANIMALS: a preposterous heist

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AMERICAN ANIMALS

In Bart Layton’s clever documentary/re-enactment mashup American Animals, four college kids plan a major art heist. The film opens with the title words THIS IS NOT BASED ON A TRUE STORY morphing into THIS IS A TRUE STORY. Indeed, in 2003, four college kids really did target $12 million in rare Audubon and Darwin books at the Transylvania University library in Lexington, Kentucky.

The story follows the classic arc of a heist movie -the intricate planning, the assembling of a team and, finally, the Big Day.  Because the heist is so preposterous (and because these guys are smoking a lot of weed while planning it), the whole thing is pretty funny.

Layton has his cake and eats it, too.  He has actors re-enact the real events.  And he has the real participants commenting as talking heads.  (With the retrospect of fifteen years, none of the participants now thinks that the heist was a good idea.)

I was especially eager to see American Animals because director Bart Layton also made The Imposter, one of the most jaw-dropping documentaries I have seen. American Animals is not as good as the unforgettable The Imposter, but funnier and more inventive – and damn entertaining.

I saw American Animals at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM).  It opens in the Bay Area this weekend.

RBG: humanizing a stonefaced icon

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RBG

RBG is the affectionate and enlightening biodoc about US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  The challenge, of course, is in making such a famously stonefaced 84-year-old subject relatable.  RBG pulls that off by hearing from Ginsburg’s family and childhood friends, and by showing her reaction to the “Notorious RPG” meme and to her portrayals on SNL.

Most importantly, RBG traces her longtime marriage to her late husband Marty, an affable extrovert with a zany sense of humor.  He was a highly accomplished lawyer in his own right but, unusual for his generation, was also a man who embraced his wife’s career goals surpassing his own.

This is an exciting movie for a legal geek (like me). RBG documents Ginsburg’s role as the leading legal strategist for women’s rights, carefully picking the factual bases and the sequence of cases heading to the Supreme Court.  It appears that Ginsburg really has only Thurgood Marshall as a peer in orchestrating the progress of a major civil rights movement.

Unfortunately that makes Ginsburg’s dissents in the regressive decisions of Roberts Court (Bush v Gore, Hobby Lobby, Shelby) all the more sobering.

That being said, what is impressive (and reassuring) is that RBG shows Ginsburg working out at the gym – she can hold a plank longer than I can hold mug of beer.

I must note that RBG is outright reverential – but why not?  Ginsburg deserves it.

BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY: the world’s most beautiful woman and her secrets

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BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY

Friday, May 18, you can see Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story on PBS’ American Masters. This is the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage, and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.

In the last few years, one totally unexpected aspect of Lamarr’s life has become more well-known. She was a tinkerer/inventor who co-invented a radio guidance system for submarine torpedos, which she donated to the US military. The US Navy used this technology in WW II. Modern blue tooth technology stems directly from her innovation. Today her patent would be worth billions.

Bombshell adds layer upon layer to this tale of beauty and brains, as it traces Lamarr’s remarkable life. Hedy Lamarr had no control over being born a woman, being born to Jewish parents and being born to be a beauty. These three accidents of birth set the parameters of her journey – granting her access to some professional opportunities and stunting others, even threatening her life.

She burst into celebrity – and notoriety – at age 19, as the star of the film Ecstasy. Not only was Hedy the first actress filmed in full frontal nudity, she was the first screen actress to portray female orgasms. She was soon the young trophy wife of an Austrian industrialist, a formidable and fearsome supplier of munitions to Hitler. Hedy’s life seemed headed along the Bimbo Track, but she realized that her husband was powerful enough to keep her trapped in the marriage, but not powerful enough to protect her from the Nazis. At this point, she orchestrated an international escape that is the stuff of thrillers.

At age 24, often nominated as the most beautiful woman in the world, she launched a Hollywood career. Professional ups and downs, marriages and affairs and children followed, along with her work in technology.

Her beauty was often a blessing and sometimes a curse, but always affected her trajectory. Someone that beautiful is just different – the rest of us can’t help our reactions to her. But how many times can you be a trophy wife?

She was a person who survived troubling times, which left scars on her. How Hedy handled her Jewishness, how she raised her kids and how she was treated by the military are unsettling. Documentarian Alexandra Dean, Bombshell’s writer-director brings us witnesses, including Hedy’s children, to deliver an inside peek at a real life that would not be believable as a work of fiction.

I saw Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story last summer at the 2017 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF). It’s playing tomorrow night on PBS’ American Masters series.

DVD/Stream of the Week: ART AND CRAFT – could a sane man devise a con this successful?

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ART AND CRAFT
ART AND CRAFT

The startling documentary Art and Craft is about an art fraud. Of prolific scale. And which is apparently legal. By a diagnosed schizophrenic.

We start with a guy named Mark Landis. He is very good at photocopying (!) great art works, applying paint to make them seem like the real thing, putting them in distressed frames and donating them to museums in the name of his late (and imaginary!) sister. He has done this hundreds of times, fooling scores of snooty museum curators in the process.

Why does he do this? Why can’t he stop? What’s with the imaginary sister? Those answers probably lie within his schizophrenia, a disease which doesn’t impair his skill or his cunning. Landis himself, once you get over his initial creepiness and become comfortable in his Southern gentility and wry mischievousness, is one of 2014’s most compelling movie characters.

Why doesn’t his fraud constitute a criminal act? Because he doesn’t profit from selling his fakes, he just gives them away. And he doesn’t take the tax write-off.

How come he doesn’t get caught? These are PHOTOCOPIES for krissakes! Those answers are in the self-interest and professional greed of the museum professionals – embodied by one puddle of mediocrity who becomes Landis’ obsessive Javert.

All of these combine to make Art and Craft one of the year’s most engaging documentaries. I saw Art and Craft at the San Francisco International Film Festival, where it was an audience hit. Art and Craft is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

SFFILMFestival Stream of the Week: NUTS! – the rise and fall of a testicular empire

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NUTS!
NUTS!

The San Feancisco International Film Festival kicks off tomorrow night, so this week’s video pick is from the 2016 SFFILMFestival. NUTS! is the persistently hilarious (and finally poignant) documentary about the rise and fall of a medical and radio empire – all built on goat testicle “implantation” surgery in gullible humans. Yes, a huckster named J.R. Brinkley really did surgically place goat testicles inside human scrota – and, more astonishingly, this actually became a craze in the 1920s. Now that’s enough of a forehead slapper, but there’s more, much more and that’s what makes NUTS! so fun.

Brinkley’s story is one that leads to celebrity mega wealth and a colossal miscalculation. Improbably, Brinkley’s wild ride touched Huey Long,William Jennings Bryan, Rudolph Valentino, Buster Keaton, June Carter Cash and Wolfman Jack. There’s a radio empire, a Gubernatorial election and a dramatic, climactic trial.

NUTS!
“Dr.” Brinkley at work in NUTS!

Director Penny Lane tells the story with animation (different animators for each chapter, but you can’t tell) seamlessly braided together with historical still photos, movies and a final heartbreaking recording. NUTS! tells a story that is too bizarre to be true – but really happened. It makes for a most entertaining movie.

NUTS! is available to stream from Amazon (free with Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Cinequest: BROTHERS IN ARMS

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BROTHERS IN ARMS

Brothers in Arms is a documentary on the making of Platoon, directed by Paul Sanchez, who played Doc.  Platoon, of course, won the Best Picture Oscar and launched the careers of many actors in its young cast.   Except for Tom Berenger, this was the first movie job for most of them. including Charlie Sheen, Johnny Depp and Willem Dafoe.

Director Oliver Stone, a Vietnam vet himself, assembled the cast two weeks before filming and put them through basic military training in the Philippine jungle under real military trainers.  The cast developed an usual bond during that process, as well as in coping with the mercurial Stone.

In Brothers in Arms, we get to hear from the actors (except for Dafoe, who was making a movie in South Africa) and the military advisers (but not from Oliver Stone).  There plenty of entertaining anecdotes and some insights into the filmmaking.

Stream of the Week: THE BRAINWASHING OF MY DAD

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THE BRAINWASHING OF MY DAD
THE BRAINWASHING OF MY DAD

In honor of Cinequest, this week’s video pick is The Brainwashing of My Dad, which had its US Premiere at the 2016 Cinequest.

Ever notice how people who watch a lot of Fox News or listen to talk radio become bitter, angry and, most telling, fact-resistant? In the documentary The Brainwashing of My Dad, filmmaker Jan Senko as she explores how right-wing media impacts the mood and personality of its consumers as well as their political outlook. Senko uses her own father Frank as a case study.

We see Frank Senko become continually mad and, well, mean. And we hear testimony about many, many others with the identical experience. Experts explain the existence of a biological addiction to anger.

Senko traces the history of right-wing media from the mid-1960s, with the contributions of Lewis Powell, Richard Nixon, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Senko even gets right-wing wordsmith Frank Luntz on camera to explain the power of buzz words. If you don’t know this story (Hillary was right about the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”) , Senko spins the tale very comprehensively. If you do know the material (and my day job is in politics), it is methodical.

This topic is usually explored for its impact on political opinion. Senko’s focus on mood and personality is original and The Brainwashing of My Dad contributes an important addition to the conversation. One last thing about the brainwashing of Senko’s dad – it may not be irreversible…

I first reviewed The Brainwashing of My Dad for its U.S. Premiere at Cinequest 2016. The Brainwashing of My Dad is available streaming on Amazon Video, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.