The relationship between reality, history and narrative form

The relationship between realism or historical accuracy and narrative form is a problematic one, with ethical issues arising in works that perpetuate an image of realism.
Cinematic representations of real events subvert history, and it is by understanding the filmmakers intentions, that we can understand the ‘reality’ with which we have been presented.
It is arguable that subjectivity is inevitable and unavoidable within films, even those which aim to retell or capture reality objectively.
Documentaries are an editing of the truth, and Austin observes that the real world ‘exceeds the borders of any film’1, or as Felperin suggests, ‘documentaries, can only capture a slice of a larger story which can never be wholly contained by a feature length film.’2
The ambiguity in Capturing The Friedmans offers the audience the opportunity to interact with the film, the marketable value in this not lost on the films distributors. The tagline, ‘who will you believe?’, alludes to the feeling that it is the viewer who will ultimately decide what the truth is, the viewer who is the judge and jury, and that within the film we are led to come to our own conclusions.3 This marketing of the film, almost as a mystery, or thriller4, could be said to be irresponsible and at the expense of the victims whose story is being told, turning reality into entertainment. It is this ambiguity within the film which in some respects, makes the realism less than convincing; we never truly discover whether Arnold and Jesse, the alleged abusers, are guilty of the crimes they are jailed for. Audiences are often unaccepting of ambiguity, preferring a explicit and clear explanation, but the ambiguity here is the device through which the narrative thrives.
Capturing The Friedmans, like so many other or arguably all documentaries, provides access to events but through a subjective lense. Upon closer examination of the film, and the elements of the story not included, it becomes clear we are not offered the full picture, the view of the story and the characters we are given manipulated. Seth Friedman declined to appear in the film, leading director Andrew Jarecki to mostly exclude footage which showed Seth. This surely suggests that the account we are presented with is altered and edited from reality, causing the reliability of the information to be called into question. The portrayal of the alleged victims and police officers disturbs the neutrality and unbias of the film, often combined through editing with conflicting and contradictory images or testimonies, with another of Friedman’s students dismissing the accusations as a ‘grotesque fantasy.’5 Although the tagline of the film suggests the verdict is left to the viewer, it becomes clear that Jarecki’s editing techniques work in favour of the Friedman’s innocence, despite admittances from Arnold of his paedophilia.
In making the film Jarecki had to make sense of and condense ‘a seesaw of conflicting narratives and contradictory versions of the truth’6, admitting himself that “while not everyone in this film tells the truth, I don’t find most of them to be consciously lying about anything.”7
The police investigation into the Friedman’s is portrayed, perhaps fairly, as a witch-hunt, with experts condemning the hypnosis techniques used to gain evidence from the alleged victims, and absolutely no physical evidence provided in the case.8 As we never actually view the alleged abuse within the film, it is hard to imagine these moments in the same reality as the moments we are shown, such as home videos of happier Friedman family moments, and this perhaps goes some way to shaping our opinions of the truth. Although the aesthetic of home video can subtly make ‘implicit claims to.. veracity and integrity’9 through amateur techniques that suggest more of a focus on depicting reality than creating masterful films, Orgeron notes that ‘home videographers have already made a pre-emptive directorial intervention by... representational decisions, inclusions as well as exclusions.. these decisions impact.. the documentaries that employ this footage.’10 Austin notes that the filmmakers have been criticised for ‘prioritising dramatic imperatives over honesty and accuracy’11, and this suggests a criticism that the documentary is more a piece of entertainment than factual filmmaking. Rich argues that in trying to obtain commercial success, ‘documentary itself sometimes seen to be mutating into a new hybrid phase altogether, the “docutainment,” which offers newly marketable pleasures to a fiction-sated audience: Capturing the Friedmans, say..’12
The issue of exploitation of factual material to produce entertainment is one that is also relevant in discussing Makhmalbaf’s The Apple. The film depicts the story of neglect of two young girls with the air of a documentary, and like many Iranian films, its ‘narrative premise is anchored in a true occurrence’13, using the actual people involved to retell the story. The repercussions in ‘remaking’ real life, the ethical risk of exploiting people’s suffering, become evident when the father of the girls, reading of the story in a newspaper, breaks down, distressed by the media coverage, ironic, as he was presumably surrounded by cameras and film crew.
A cultural imposition is put upon the relationship between reality and narrative form in Iranian cinema by modesty regulations, which mean that women may not appear on film unveiled, even within their own homes where they normally would be.14 Therefore, depictions of Iranian women on screen are unrealistic and limiting, with Makhmalbaf admitting that ‘with the enforced censorship, you must simply find new and interesting ways of expressing ideas through the vocabulary of cinema.’15
By expressing Massoumeh and Zahra’s story through the ‘vocabulary of cinema’, Makhmalbaf treats reality and history with artistic license and makes a film which is open to allegorical readings. As Austin comments of Capturing The Friedmans, so here is a ‘tension between evidentiality and aestheticisation.’16
Darznik says that The Apple is a ‘horror story in the way that only reality can be horrible’17, attributing realism to the film, but also alluding to the very fictional and mainstream genre of horror.
Supporting the idea that the film is perhaps more fictionalised than one would ascertain at first glance, Danks comments that The Apple takes its lead from films which ‘blur the distinctions between cinema and life’18 and that it ‘depicts a sensational story, and sensational stories are, whatever their cultural contexts, necessarily exaggerated versions of reality.’19 Adair agrees, saying that the film is ‘a semi-fictionalised film at that, for The Apple is not a documentary.’20 Makhmalbaf may not claim that the film is a documentary, but the film certainly stresses the point that it is based on a true story, albeit the director’s retelling of it through the ‘vocabulary of cinema’.
The reworking of history is evident in Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine. The film reimagines the days of Glam Rock through queer-tinted glasses, interpreting the queer undertones and themes present in the movement and exaggerating them, altering the reality of the time into something of a fantasy. The film’s introduction announces to the audience that ‘Histories, like ancient ruins, are the fictions of empires’21, and the film’s reimagining of the 1970’s wholly upholds this suggestion. Velvet Goldmine explores the idea of images shaping queer culture and audiences, and Haynes uses reality to support an agenda, the history of the Glam Rock movement utilised to serve a function of queer wish fulfilment. DeAngelis states that Velvet Goldmine offered Haynes an opportunity to ‘queer the present, by reconstituting the notion of ‘reality’ itself through multiple juxtapositions of histories remembered, forgotten, and repressed’.22

History, reality, and narrative form are clearly inextricably linked, but their relationship is anything but clear cut. Narrative form is not a direct representation of reality but a subjective interpretation of it, and as much as it tries to struggle against that fact, it will always be the case.




Bibliography

Adair, Gilbert, “Cinema: The girl with the movie camera”, The Independent on Sunday, 27 December 1998
Austin, Thomas, “‘The most confusing tears’: home video, sex crime, and indeterminacy in Capturing the Friedmans”, Watching the World: Screen Documentary and Audiences, 2007
Becker, Snowden, “Capturing the Friedmans”, The Moving Image vol. 4 no. 1, Spring 2004, pp. 145-148
Danks, Adrian, “The House That Mohsen Built: The Films of Samira Makhmalbaf and Marzieh Meshkini”, Senses of Cinema, 2002;
Darznik, Jasmine, “Shining Rotten Apple, A horrific film that must be seen”, The Iranian, March 3 1999
DeAngelis, Michael, “The Characteristics of New Queer Filmmaking: Case Study—Todd Haynes” in Michele Aaron (ed.) New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004; pp. 41–52
Fairweather, Kathleen, “A Family Affair: Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki Discusses How He Captured ‘The Friedmans,’” International Documentary, July 2003.
Orgeron, Marsha, “Familial Pursuits, Editorial Acts: Documentaries after the Age of Home Video”, The Velvet Light Trap no. 60, Autumn 2007; pp. 47-62
Rich, B. Ruby, “Documentary Disciplines: An Introduction”, Cinema Journal vol. 46 no. 1, Autumn 2006; pp. 108-115
Wood, Jason, “A Quick Chat with Samira Makhmalbaf”, http://kamera.co.uk

Velvet Goldmine (US/UK, Todd Haynes, 1998)

The Apple (Iran, Samira Makhmalbaf, 1999)

Capturing The Friedmans (US, Andrew Jarecki, 2003)