We Have Changed

Is documentary film reportage, or cinema? Obviously, the answer is both. Some films have been pure reportage (much of the excellent Frontline series), some pure cinema ('Koyaanisqatsi:Life Out of Balance'), and often the best have been both (most recently, 'Grizzly Man' and 'Iraq in Fragments'). Since many documentary films have a social advocacy bent, the film as witness, reportage and documentation are important dimensions. But a documentary film as cinema is not without merit. And I think that this cinematic quality is vital for a good film, documentary or otherwise. The director Akira Kurowsawa said it best in his Something Like an Autobiography: "There is something that might be called cinematic beauty. It can only be expressed in a film, and it must be present in a film for that film to be a moving work. When it is very well expressed, one experiences a particularly deep emotion while watching that film. I believe it is this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that is the hope of attaining this quality that inspires the filmmaker to make his film in the first place. In other words, I believe that the essence of the cinema lies in cinematic beauty."
No matter how grim or important or vital a documentary film, and no matter how urgent and pressing its cause, documentary film is ultimately, well, film, and can only be enriched by this cinematic undercurrent.