Utne Reader Film Reviews: July-August 2008

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Couchside Curator
P.O.V. (televised on PBS)
Navigating the television and Netflix listings can be overwhelming, which is why it’s nice to have a TV series that does its own sifting and sorting. The producers of P.O.V., the PBS independent documentary series, cull 15 films for viewers in its 21st season. From June to December, P.O.V. features a handful of documentaries showing how individuals fit or fight national stereotypes, an appropriate election-year theme.

Two films examine who is entitled to liberty and justice in the United States. Election Day (July 1) follows a jumble of activity at 11 polling places during Election Day 2004, showing that the promise of universal suffrage is still uneven in practice. The stories include an ex-felon’s first time voting, the plodding pace of voting in a predominantly black St. Louis district, and a determined Republican committeeman monitoring the polls in a Democratic ward in Chicago. The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández (July 8) soberly unravels the shooting of a Texas teen by U.S. Marines. Along the Rio Grande, the native farming population is as fluid as the river separating families into corresponding villages on opposite banks. Sleepless, disoriented Marines were trained to see all border dwellers as potential drug traffickers, resulting in Hernández’s tragic death.

Up the Yangtze (Oct. 14) follows Chinese teen Yu Shui as she leaves her peasant family to work on a “farewell” cruise ship on the Yangtze River, which is about to flood because of the Three Gorges Dam. Far from stoic Confucians, the Yus and other Chinese commoners who are interviewed fight tears as they talk about the difficulty of sending children to work rather than to school and of forced relocation. As the Yus’ home sinks under rising waters in the film’s close, it’s uncertain whether they will stay afloat in their new urban surroundings. —Lisa Gulya

Here Is What Is
(Red Floor Records; on DVD)
“He wanted to dive in and go deep. He wanted to marry a mermaid,” Bob Dylan wrote about Daniel Lanois’ approach to producing music. Lanois goes deep in the self-made documentary Here Is What Is, which explores his intense, personal style of making music as a producer and an artist. Whether he’s sitting at the control board or fronting a band, Lanois works by “feel” to coax new and unexpected sounds from performers and equipment. At once a purist and a meddler, he thrives on the vibe of a band playing together in the same room, yet takes enormous liberties with sound manipulation to create his sweeping sonic palette. The film benefits from psychedelic cinematography, generous performance footage, and an informal feel that reveals making art as neither mysterious nor elite, but the very stuff of life. —Keith Goetzman

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