HotDocs '15 - Day 6: Chuck Norris vs. Communism/War of Lies

By Jorge Ignacio Castillo

Chuck Norris vs. Communism (Romania/USA, 2015): A usually successful strategy to make a documentary is to take a very specific phenomenon and see how it relates to a larger movement. The terrific doc Chuck Norris vs. Communism takes this approach and runs with it, with the added bonus of one fascinating subject.

During the Eighties, the only way to have access to American movies in Romania was through counterfeit VHS tapes. Western-made films were deemed detrimental to Ceausescu’s establishment and contradicted the Communist Manifesto. But the growing popularity of VCRs and a booming black market allowed the unhappy population access to Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Norris’ finest. Not only this trend undermined the oppressive regime, it may have played a part in the movement that toppled the government in 1989.

One of the bootleg chain links steals the movie: Irina Nistor. While maintaining a government day job, Nistor managed to translate over 3,000 movies (she didn’t dubbed them, just added an additional voice track to the original sound). Her voice became a staple for an entire generation of kids, who ended up associating it with the notions of insurgence and freedom.

Chuck Norris vs. Communism is canny enough to keep Nistor out of sight until the end and let those who lived through the events depicted in the film tell the story. This doc is a testament to the power of community. Four and a half stars.

War of Lies (Germany, 2014): Ever wondered about the origins of the materials Colin Powell presented to the UN in 2003, when making his case to invade Iraq? According to the official narrative, the source was Rafed Aljanabi, a chemical engineer who worked at a weapons manufacture facility in Iraq. Aljanabi wilfully collaborated with German intelligence and the CIA to give the US an excuse to bring down Saddam Hussein, or so most news sources declared.

According to War of Lies, there was more to the story, mostly that the engineer was more ambivalent about his role in the conspiracy, and that the information he provided (later demonstrated to be false) was at the specific request of his liaison with the intelligence services.

Director Matthias Bittner tracked down Aljanabi and convinced him to participate in a feature-length interview. While his tale is damning, Rafed comes across as self-serving and arrogant. By excusing his actions as “means to an end” (Saddam’s fall), he exhibits the same moral relativism than those who supposedly coerced him into lying.

Bittner in turn doesn’t try hard enough to poke holes into Aljanabi’s story (his testimony is the only one in the film), and his continuous efforts to get Rafed to reconsider the morality of his actions -which led to a war that has caused thousands of casualties- amount to very little.  Two stars.

HotDocs '15 - Day 5: Raiders!/The Nightmare

By Jorge Ignacio Castillo

While this year’s HotDocs features plenty of hard-hitting, thought-provoking features, a couple of crowd-pleasers have made it into the line-up. Here are two of them.

Raiders! (USA, 2015): For most of their teenage years, three kids spent every summer filming a shot-by-shot recreation of Raiders of the Lost Ark. With no more resources than sheer will and gung-ho spirit, the boys succeeded for the most part: The adaptation became a cult film championed by the likes of Eli Roth and Harry Knowles. One scene was missing though: An expensive, complex action sequence at a landing pad involving Indy, three Nazi planes and a hulking henchman.

This hilarious coming-of-age doc Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made follows two of the boys, all grown-up, as they try to complete their magnum opus. The storyline (compelling in its own right) serves as a pretext to revisit the shooting of the rest of the movie. Children of the 80’s, Eric Zala, Chris Strompolos and Jayson Lamb come across as extremely ingenious and phenomenally irresponsible (some scenes involving stunts and fire will give you pause before cracking up).

Raiders! also offers glimpses of growing pains and dreams fading away, which only makes the movie more human and relatable. Four stars.

The Nightmare (USA, 2015): Three years ago, director Rodney Asher interviewed nine people to explore different deconstructions of the movie The Shining. The outcome became the doc Room 237, a tremendously entertaining exercise that gave the same tribune to legitimate readings (the massacre of Native Americans in Colorado as background) and crackpot theories (Stanley Kubrick’s atonement for faking the moon landing). Room 237 was more about cinema as an individual experience than about interpretations, but the outward layers gathered most of the attention.

The Nightmare is shaped similarly, but lacks the overarching undercurrent: A group of people of different backgrounds share a common condition: Sleep paralysis. Not only they awake in the middle of the night unable to move a muscle, every single one recalls a malevolent presence in the vicinity.

While the film creates at times moments of genuine dread, there is little interest in finding a reasonable explanation (or a consistent one, for that matter). Other than insinuating the possibility that mysterious entities covet the subjects’ souls, there is no method to this madness. The Nightmare is undeniably entertaining, but it’s just empty calories. Two stars.

HotDocs '15 - Day 4: Deep Web/Western

By Jorge Ignacio Castillo

A common thread on this year’s HotDocs’ line-up is the number of films depicting the conflict between the law and modern life. Often, legislation is not speedy enough or lacks the tools to tackle grey areas related to technology and human behaviour.

Deep Web (USA, 2015): Director Alex Winter may be better known as Bill Preston from the Bill and Ted movies, but is also one of the few filmmakers able to deal with the dark corners of the web with enough knowledge to understand what he is doing.

At first sight, Winter’s stance in Deep Web is hard to sustain, if all the information you have on the subject comes from news magazines. According to the film, Silk Road (the online open market that became the symbol of the deep net) was actually a force for good until the FBI shut it down in 2013. Silk Road made drug transactions violence-free, and was never a haven for hitmen and child pornographers as we’ve been led to believe.

The documentary smartest move is to make the film about the alleged creator and administrator of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, aka Dread Pirate Roberts. A brilliant libertarian, Ulbricht turned the marketplace into a platform for the right to privacy. Sure enough, Ross was declared guilty of trafficking, money laundering and hacking, yet secrecy and straight-up obstruction during the process point at powerful forces at play.

Deep Web keeps the eyes on the prize, outside a couple of detours to engage with the cypher-punk movement (deserving of a movie of its own). It may not engage the audience emotionally, but it’s pure brain candy. The narrator, you ask? Keanu Reeves, who else. Three and a half stars.

Western (USA, 2015): Across the border between Texas and Mexico there are two mirror communities -Eagle Nest and Piedras Negras- who for decades maintained a close relationship. Cattle business benefited both economies and Rio Grande was more of a common ground than a border.

All that came crushing down when the cartels moved their operations to the neighbourhood. Violence began to seep into Piedras Negras, while the US government reacted by suspending cattle trading and putting a (fairly useless) fence in the riverbank.

There is a lot of artistry in Western. Instead of using the genre’s oldest tools –talking heads, graphs, archive footage-, directors Bill and Turner Ross employ a cinema verité approach. They let the narrative emerge organically through scenes of raw beauty. While brave, the strategy slows the story to a crawl. Western is also hurt by its main subjects, neither particularly articulate or compelling.  Fans of Terrence Malick will eat this one up. Two and a half stars.

HotDocs '15 - Day 3: Deprogrammed

By Jorge Ignacio Castillo

Deprogrammed (USA, 2015): Cult deprogramming is a complicated affair: Those in need of it won’t participate voluntarily and kidnapping and unlawful confinement is, well, illegal. In the early 70’s –the heyday of religious cult activity- a high school dropout became the foremost specialist in the subject.

Deprogrammed tells the story of said man, Ted Patrick. His methods were questionable, his results 50/50, but undoubtedly he was onto something.  His main skill was his capacity to poke holes into ideologies. His modus operandi? Get the cult members to start thinking by themselves again.

Early on, Patrick got some leash from the law. He was frequently accused of kidnapping (even though parents hired him, his “patients” were old enough to refuse), but was seldom convicted and not for long, especially after the events in Guyana. During the 80’s however, legislation became tougher and the satanic cult paranoia actually got innocents damaged for life (see the West Memphis Three).

The documentary does a superb job depicting the nebulous area in which Patrick operated. Deprogrammed also establishes the need of a new strategy, especially now that ISIS and Al Qaeda is recruiting from among disgruntled young westerners and the law discourages an approach such as Patrick’s. Fascinating stuff. Three and a half stars.

HotDocs '15 - Day 2: Thought Crimes/The Arms Drop

By Jorge Ignacio Castillo

The emergence of two major players in the documentary field –Netflix and CNN- plus the continuous strength of HBO is doing wonders for the genre. If there was a time a couple of outliers were the only ones to leave a mark in the box office, now documentaries are easily accessible and are more poignant than feature dramas by a mile. Yesterday, the CNN-acquired The Wolfpack had the crowd going. Today, the HBO-backed Thought Crimes drew a significant audience.

Thought Crimes (USA, 2015): It could have been a curio: NY cop Gilberto Valle was convicted in 2013 of conspiracy to commit a crime (kidnap and eat women). He used the police database to track down female acquaintances and discussed online what he would do to them in graphic detail. Here is the kicker: Valle never acted on it. In fact, his defense claimed he was voicing a fantasy in an appropriate environment (namely, a fetish website).

Director Erin Lee Carr taps on an interesting subject: As hard to stomach as Valle’s sexual fantasies are (and it gets pretty rough), he may have been penalized for a thought crime. The line is very grey as intention is a critical factor. Instead of staying with the abstract discussion about the limits of freedom of expression, Carr goes back to Valle time and time again. Her decision is unimpeachable cinematically (the former cop is hard to read and disturbingly watchable), but the matter of thought policing could have used additional scrutiny. Also, some of the recreations (like Valle sitting in front of a computer screen) have a film school feel to them.

Regardless, Carr knows how to tell a story. Shouldn’t be a surprise: Erin is the daughter of the great, much missed David Carr. Three stars.

The Arms Drop (Denmark, 2014): In 1995, a Danish citizen, Niels Holck, planned to drop dozens of AK-47 in West Bengal. The idea was to arm local rebels against the repressive and vicious provincial government. In order to achieve this, Holck hired a British arms dealer, Peter Bleach, who in turn kept the English government and the MI-5 posted.

The plan went sour. Holck managed to escape, but his exploits didn’t go unnoticed and India demanded his extradition. Bleach landed in jail and the British intelligence denied knowing of him.

Oddly, this is just the setup of The Arms Drop, a fascinating spy story in which two guys who thought they were players realize they were just pawns. The film gets an extra oomph from the compelling Holck and Bleach. The British in particular, stiff-upper-lip, prim and proper comes across as more sympathetic. Twenty years later, Bleach seems still surprised he was betrayed by his government, and nurses the illusion of revenge against the agent that almost got him hanged.

The problem with The Arms Drop is that not even the audience has any clue what was the goal of the forces at play, outside Holck’s. There are no theories or insights, just two men fumbling in the dark, trying to remain afloat. Three stars.