6 minute read
GB RECOMMENDS
MARC’S PICKS
Most Saturday and Sunday mornings, I’m on the couch by 5 a.m., answering emails, organizing my calendar for the upcoming week and watching a documentary film. The best documentaries are insightful and entertaining but can also be amusing, disturbing, inspiring, shocking or infuriating. A great documentary cannot only change the way I think about some people or issues, it can change the way I act or consume. Documentaries are supposed to be founded in the truth, but it’s important to understand that all were written and directed by someone with a perspective and a motive. As we’ve all learned through social media and the emergence of biased “news” organizations, what’s presented as truth can be far from it. No matter what your interest is, there’s an entire genre of documentaries about it: art, business, sports, travel, food, fashion, religion, military, health and aging. And there are an ever-increasing number of places to view them: Netflix, Amazon, HBO, ESPN, PBS, HULU, YouTube, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel and many others. My taste in documentaries is quite eclectic. If it’s well made, I can find myself totally absorbed in a film about almost anything. That said, here are a few that I’ve watched and enjoyed lately:
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“Icarus”
Bryan Fogel, the film’s director, who is an amateur bike racer, planned to investigate the use of performance-enhancing drugs by injecting himself and then trying to evade detection. As Fogel was shooting, his consulting expert, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, was identified as the mastermind behind Russia’s elaborate state-sponsored doping program at the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games. Recognizing a story more compelling and sinister than the one he was shooting, Fogel wisely pivoted and began getting first-hand details about the biggest athletic scandal in sports history. The result is a tense, fascinating and stranger-than-fiction, Oscar-winning film.
Whether you like where we are politically or not, if you want to know how we got here, “Get Me Roger Stone” will provide insight. The film is a riveting and disturbing look at the self-described “Dirty Trickster” of American politics. Stone ran smear campaigns for Richard Nixon in the 1970s. In the 1980s, he and his business partner, Paul Manafort, practically invented big-money lobbying and corporate influence, peddling access to President Ronald Reagan. Stone proudly takes credit for all but creating negative advertising, mud slinging and the use of misinformation in political campaigns. It was Stone who first suggested Donald Trump run for president and ignited his obsession with the “birther” issue. Last year, Stone was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s presidential campaign. Stone was set to begin a 40-month prison term when his sentence was commuted by President Trump.
I can’t imagine the stress of watching this story unfold without knowing the outcome, because it’s mind-blowingly dramatic and unnerving when you do know the outcome. “Free Solo,” winner of the 2019 Oscar for Best Documentary, details Alex Honnold’s obsession with accomplishing the impossible — climbing the 3,200-foot sheer face of Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan without the use of any rope or safety equipment. This gripping and awe-inspiring documentary from National Geographic is either a unique personal profile in courage or idiocy. You be the judge. This much is guaranteed: Alex Honnold and “Free Solo” will blow you away.Oscar-winning film.
“Filthy Rich”
This four-part, true-crime docuseries from Netflix is infuriating but difficult to stop watching. The arrest and suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, the high-society financier and convicted sexual offender, was one of 2019’s biggest news stories.Director Lisa Bryant weaves together the stories of survivors revealing a horrific look at how Epstein used power, influence and wealthy connections to prey on minors and escape justice for decades.
I love just about any documentary on art and artists. And I enjoyed “The Price of Everything,” even though it received mixed reviews. The film examines the white-hot contemporary art market, in which wealthy collectors, driven by a frenzy of speculation, buy not what they love but what they can make a profit on. The question driving the market today is, “Who’s the most undervalued artist?” with the art market becoming a de facto stock market, complete with trading, flipping and commodities futures. With so much personal wealth in the world, prices have been driven so high that even well-funded museums can no longer compete with private collectors. The result is that many pieces of great art have disappeared into private collections, never to be seen.
After interviewing Philippe Petit for Growing Bolder radio, I had to watch “Man on Wire,” the 2008 documentary about his daring high wire stunt, which has been called “The artistic crime of the century.” In 1974, Petit and his crew eluded security overnight, lugging hundreds of pounds of equipment to the roof of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. They shot a line from one tower to the other and anchored a three-quarterinch wire across the span. When the sun came up the next morning, Petit walked along the bouncing wire with no safety net as stunned crowds gathered far below. The film, complete with stunning archival footage, is less about the stunt itself and more about following your passion. While it makes no mention of 9/11, it’s impossible to watch without feeling a deep pain for the loss the Twin Towers now represent.
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