Film Freak Central Does Hot Docs 2002 Canadian International Documentary Festival – May 2

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

BLACK BOX GERMANY (2001)
Black Box BRD
***/****
directed by Andres Veiel

Dealing with the ultra-left terrorism that swept West Germany in the '70s and early '80s, Black Box Germany both examines and obscures the implications of its main subjects: Deutsche Bank executive Alfred Herrhausen, who was killed by a car bomb, and RAF member Wolfgang "Gaks" Gams, who died in mysterious circumstances while being pursued by police. The main event is the who-ya-gonna-believe question, pitting capitalist thug vs. terrorist hooligan; unfortunately, this blots out every political persuasion in-between (and beyond), with a maddening vagueness that keeps you from taking a position. One can't imagine either party being too thrilled with the film: the banker would be annoyed by the implied challenge to his authority and the radical would find its "ambiguity" and precious aestheticism irredeemably bourgeois.

Nevertheless, Black Box Germany does have one big selling point: the examination of personal responses to political situations. In establishing each subject as slightly off outsiders who simply differ in approaches to social order, it shows how easily one can accept a point of view due to private hurt and selfish convenience. As we watch the journeys of the two men–Gams is completely radicalized by wrongful imprisonment, while Herrhausen monomaniacally climbs to the top (before suddenly making a stab at Third World debt reduction)–we see the incredible number of variables that go into making a political and life decision; the film warns us to examine our reasons for believing as we do. Politically unhelpful, perhaps, but still food for thought.

THE COCKETTES
***/****
directed by Bill Weber, David Weissman

The Cockettes, more than any other film, made me wish I'd been around for the sixties. Its chronicle of a Haight-Ashbury commune turned drag troupe is an eloquent testament to a time when political and sexual boundaries seemed to disappear and a life of anarchic bliss looked possible–at once joyously buoyant and achingly sad. Invented as a between-films diversion by messianic androgyne Hibiscus (who attracted followers gay and straight, male and female), the group ultimately displaced its cinematic wraparound by attracting a legion of fans who would dress up and drop acid with the performers. Members included John Waters regular Divine and disco pioneer Sylvester, but the star was a gentle hippie camp that sought only to release its audience from gendered bondage. And for a while, they seemed to live a dream of communal living and sexual freedom.

Unfortunately, the acid Sixties turned into the heroin Seventies, and the film shifts in turn from elated reminiscence to mournful dirge. The group's simultaneous zenith and nadir comes when they are invited to perform in the Big Apple, only to discover that their gentle California goofing doesn't fly with the town's camp mandarins. And the group is rocked with death, first by overdoses and then by AIDS, by which time the engine that fuelled their journey had sputtered to silence. So as the film comes to a close we are left with the potent memory of what could have been, left as a gift by those who remember it for the cameras for those who might in the future learn from their idyllic example.

THE EXECUTION OF WANDA JEAN
**½/****
directed by Liz Garbus

Choosing to follow a narrative is a risky thing for a documentary, and The Execution of Wanda Jean shows why it's sometimes a bad idea. Following the highly-publicized clemency trial of convicted Oklahoma murderer Wanda Jean Allen, whose mental illness and borderline retardation cast doubts on her ability to understand her actions, the film sticks with the brute chronology of events and leaves underlying issues unexamined. On the plus side, it does do its best to humanize the issue, revealing that her victim's family does not wish her to die and showing the high emotions of Wanda Jean's loved ones and legal support team. And I suppose that suffices in dealing with the specifics of the case, revealing that Bible-belt Oklahoma has stacked the deck against her in the name of law and order and against her lesbianism.

But the film is strangely without power, because it doesn't pause to hammer home the abstract issues of the case. While I can hear cinema vérité diehards howling with outrage, this documentary could really use some talking heads, sequences where people talk about the issues and clarify their relationship to them. With no direct outlet for outrage, The Execution of Wanda Jean doesn't do much but congratulate the intended liberal audience for grasping the issues instead of rousing them to act; one wonders what an Errol Morris would have done with the ephemera of the case. It's something to stumble upon on cable (it was produced for Showtime), but nothing to go out of your way for.