super sad true stories
Yesterday, I told myself I was going to go to the gym, so of course instead I went to the IFC to watch the Oscar-nominated short docs, which is the the discomfort equivalent of maybe 17 consecutive hours on the treadmill? 117? Somewhere between 17 and 117 hours on the treadmill. We start off with pictures of Iraqi civillians blown to pieces by US helicopters! So many high-res pictures of legs and half of heads blown off! And that’s OUR handiwork!! So I’m already crying a whole lot at this point. But wait! There’s more! We follow that up with 40 minutes about women in rural Pakistan who’ve had their faces melted in acid attacks! Usually it’s their husbands, and occasionally a mother-in-law will join in by dousing her daughter-in-law in gasoline and lighting her aflame! (And it gets a lot worse and then a little bit better but I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you!) You guys, human beings love torturing each other! So much!! At this point I congratulate myself for having the foresight to put away my glasses during the first documentary because it’s impossible to keep up wiping away all the tears with these stupid things on. The two elderly gentlemen I’m wedged between are starting to get uncomfortable, but who the fuck cares about them when Ruhksana’s had her face burned off but has to move back in with her abusive husband because her child is sick?! So anyway, that one ends and we move on to the one that’s almost definitely getting the Oscar—The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (by the lady* who did “Wasteland” which I coincidentally watched, sobbing in that same theater! Was that really a year ago? Time flies when you’re crying in public!) which starts out with the most disturbing footage I can ever remember seeing: it’s filmed from atop a hill, watching the tsunami approach, with people screaming about their grandmothers and friends that were left behind and then you see some people below who try to outrun it and get swallowed up by the water and debris. They try to make the movie uplifting too, with this whole cherry blossom-as-metaphor-for-rebirth thing, but you still want to vomit from the awfulness of the footage at the beginning. And what movie do we end with? You guys, it’s about this 86-year-old guy in Birmingham who marched for the right to vote in the Civil Rights Movement (and every year since) and how he and others felt when Obama was voted in. It sounds uplifting! Except that it’s mostly backstory about the civil rights movement! Which means a lot of old footage of white sheriffs/state troopers beating up peaceful people because they’re trying to participate in our democracy!! Also this old dude volunteered his children to integrate an elementary school in Birmingham! I nominate that for Worst Childhood Experience!
Even though I was the one person who felt nothing when I watched Man On Wire and I never bothered to watch Babies, I could’ve used one movie with a happy baby or a silly Frenchman in it.
*That lady, Lucy Walker, seemed pretty great until I read the following on her Wikipedia page: “While at NYU film school, Walker supported herself by DJing.” Uh oh! Sounds like she may be an awful person who happens to make good movies! (Just because I watch documentaries about important issues, doesn’t mean I don’t still hate people for stupid reasons!)
It’s a bummer that I can only like this post once!
Also, the only time I a) openly sobbed at a documentary in public, and b) willingly went to see a documentary in public, was with All Caps, so, you know…I feel an affinity with this post? something like that?
(I am not a very cultured person)
