Plastic Horizons

In his Plastic Planet, Werner Boote illustrates how plastic products have become essential in our everyday lives despite recent proof of its toxicity. I believed this subject deserved to be treated and I was impatient to see how Boote had addressed it in his documentary.  

At the beginning of his film, W. Boote captivated me as he described the history of plastics and the role they now played in the world trade. These first minutes are practically unmarked by his personal biases and are charged with information. Unfortunately, the director seems to quickly change the structure of his documentary in its second half.

Quickly, Boote depicts all plastic-based products as the burden of society and an overwhelming threat to global health. His narration is characterized by one-sided comments such as “Plastic: the invisible danger.” At the same time, W. Boote only provides short insights of experiments conducted by independent researchers on plastic’s toxicity. In fact, most arguments in Plastic Planet are illustrated superficially. Scenes such as the short shots of a plastic-mummification company leave viewers disappointed and confused.

 

Though he might be facing convincing evidence that proves his theory, I think Werner Boote didn’t make the most convincing choice. I suspect an objective film presenting the tests conducted by both parties would have better supported his claims.

Among the documentaries we have seen so far, Werner Boote's Plastic Planet disappointed me the most. At first I was fascinated by the focus of the film, the importance and potential threats of plastics in our consumer societies. However, Boote’s attitude and his superficial presentation of certain arguments left me disappointed.

  

If you would like to experience another perspective on the affects of plastic waste in the world, I recommend Waste Land. This documentary is an account of visual artist Vik Muniz’s work with pickers in the world’s largest landfill in Brazil. Waste Land brings a humanitarian dimension to Werner Boote’s theme.  

Jesus Camp

Jesus Camp immediately caught my attention and kept me hooked. Once I started watching, it was hard to pause. The first glimpses at Evangelical ceremonies aroused my curiosity. I was surprised to see such young children taking part in intense ceremonies and burst in tears as they react to their pastor’s speech. 

I think I was unconsciously waiting to see a documentary like Jesus Camp. In the last decade, religious extremism and terrorism often have been associated with Islamism, if not the entirety of Islam. Though I knew there were fundamentalists around the world from other religious backgrounds, my assumptions were most likely based on the view given by the press. In retrospect, I saw countless documentaries and news reports on islamist training camps and acts of terrorism before seeing Jesus Camp. During the same time period, I barely heard of other sectarian activity.

Scenes of young children taking part in passionate implorations chocked me. I couldn’t understand how these preteens assimilated the words delivered by their pastor, Becky Fischer. It soon became clear that these children were being manipulated. In an iconic shot, a mother is seen holding her children’s hands and raising them as they pay attention to something. She makes her son and daughter raise their hands after Fischer asks: "Is there anyone here who believes that God can do anything?" I believe this acts truly shows what is being taught to these children. They are being told what to say and how to act. Emphasis is put on implanting ideas in these children’s minds rather then help them interpret biblical writings and preaches their own way.   

NPR interview of Werner Herzog on Grizzly Man

Here is the link to an NPR interview of Werner Herzog on the making of Grizzly Man. He provides explanations of his filming choices and additional insights that are not included in his documentary.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4778191

Herzog makes it very clear that he now believes Timothey Treadwell was inexorably drifting towards his death as he ventured to film grizzlies in Alaska. The director goes as far as asserting that the “grizzly man” had a suicidal penchant. Werner Herzog most likely could not have afforded to say this in his film, fearing his opinions could prove too controversial.

W. Herzog also stresses how he believes nature should be respected, not sentimentalized. He condemns a modern “Disneyization” of wilderness. To him, the dramatic outcome of Treadwell’s adventure illustrates a chronic misunderstanding of wild animals.

The filmmaker also explains he could not make a work of fiction out of Treadwell’s life story since he was dead and respect was owed to him. Herzog says he often likes to go deeper into stories than “cinéma vérité” allows it. Without unreasonably distorting the truth, he often tries to give an esthetic form to his works in order to further captivate his audience.  

Timothy Treadwell : The Grizzly Man

When I first saw Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, I feared I was about to view just another consumer-oriented, sensationalism-fuelled documentary. My first impression was based on P. Aufderheide description of this type of broadcasts in Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction.

This assumption came as I saw Timothy Treadwell talk in the same words you often hear from wildlife documentary producers on various television channels. Recurring expressions such as "death,""warrior," "survival" and "weak" in the first minutes of extracts from Treadwell’s footage turned me towards these false first impressions that perhaps would not have come to my mind if I knew about the story of the “grizzly man” and the renown Herzog who directed the eponymous film before viewing it.

This impression quickly disappeared as I watched the documentary and realized the depth of Herzog’s work on Timothy Treadwell. Not only does he attempt to provide a full picture of his subject’s life and work but he also seems to be determined to dissect and better understand the psychology behind this difficult character. His exposé consists of a selection of segments from Treadwell’s footage as well as interviews of friends and family which help comprehend this man’s choices concerning his life and perhaps his death.

Grizzly Man definitely aroused my curiosity and I look forward to posting again after I see more of Treadwell’s footage in Grizzly Man Diaries and maybe learn more about director Werner Herzog and the mysterious man he decided to study in his documentary. 

Waiting for "Superman"

As we discussed our first documentary, Waiting for “Superman”, several fellow students rose their concerns about how in the film teachers seemed to be held fully responsible for their students’ academic failure. This said, everybody in the class agreed that there were evident flaws in tenure laws. I later reflected on this matter and wondered, if tenure was stopped in the secondary education system, would there even be enough teachers to replace the “Lemons” that would be discharged as a result? 

Here is a graph from a study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the unemployment rate for Elementary, Middle and Secondary school teachers compared to the national average rate as well as the total number of unemployed teachers in those grades.

In the film, expert Eric Hanushek asserts that if the lower performing 6 to 10 percent of US teachers were replaced with “average teachers”, the American educational system could compete with the Finish one (said to be the world’s best).

Studying the unemployment graph, you discover that the unemployment rate for teachers from elementary to the end of middle school reached a high of 4.1% in 2012. So if you consider that the proportion of “lemons” are the same among new teachers replacing those who retire each year, only about half of the 6 to 10 percent of lower performing teachers could be replaced if tenure was turned down this year.

To conclude, it seems as if there simply would not be enough teachers available to counterbalance the theoretical discharge of even 6 percent of today’s teachers. It would also be interesting to know whether teachers obtaining their licensures today are better equipped to make their students succeed than teachers now reaching retirement. Would a more comprehensive education help tomorrow’s teachers improve their own students’ academic achievements?