Riefenstahl: A Triumph of the Bad Documentary

The documentary has slipped downhill in recent years. Not Ken Burns, bless him; we watched his latest on the American Revolution and he's still the best at the old-fashioned, long-form, talking heads doc. But otherwise, documentaries have gone to hell in a handbasket. Sometimes it's a problem of being "authorized" by the subject of the doc, and therefore inclined to leave out anything that doesn't fit the subject's view of themselves. This was a problem with recent docs about Jeff Lynne, Gordon Lightfoot, Paul McCartney (I guess I watch a lot of music docs). Recent films about Syd Barrett, Pee-Wee Herman and Billy Joel were better, though still constrained a bit by being "official." A Dionne Warwick documentary skipped over many years in her career which she apparently didn't want to cover. Sometimes it's the format that is at fault, as in Moonage Daydream, about David Bowie, which was terribly put together. 

But my biggest problem with 21st century docs is the disappearance of narration. I think directors believe that the absence of a guiding god-like voice makes the proceedings seem more objective, which is of course not true—someone is still choosing and editing and eliding and emphasizing. A narrating voice can bring a cohesion to a story and fill in stuff that was not elicited by the filmmaker. For example, the recent McCartney film, Man on the Run, which covers the first four years or so of his solo career, made good use of actual McCartney interviews, but most of the fascinating stories of the behind the scenes turmoil during the recording of the album Band on the Run was left out because no one spoke to it, something a narrator could have done at least in passing.

But the worst doc I've seen in a while is Riefenstahl by Andres Veiel. I happen to know a good bit about Leni Riefenstahl, a German actress and director whose most famous works, Triumph of the Will and Olympia, both documentaries themselves, were more or less made to order for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, a controversy that came to define her life and career in popular culture. Veiel's film is pretentious, boring, and muddled. In addition to being faux artsy and slow, it assumes that the viewer already knows who she was and what the controversies that surrounded her all her life were about. It's only sometimes chronological and much context for what is being presented, especially in her pre- and post-Hitler years, is missing. The director did dig up lots of previously unseen photos and footage but they add little to the content of the film, they just fill time. Though I'm not a Riefenstahl apologist—her claims of total innocence about what was going on under Hitler are baldly self-serving and mostly ring false—the filmmaker doesn't attempt a two-sided view here. He spends half his time making her look ridiculous and guilty without giving her own arguments any real exposure. The most interesting point that's made is that she desperately wanted to believe that her being an artist put her above political concerns, and that was a belief that led her to being combatively defensive all her life. Overall the film comes off as a bit amateurish. Don't bother with it; instead, read a biography of her or look for the much better movie, The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl from 1993.

Revisiting Jesus Christ Superstar (the 1973 movie)

This post assumes the reader has some familiarity with the title musical, as album or play or movie. It was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and originated as an album in 1970, and was one of the first rock operas, after Tommy by The Who. The album was something of a revelation to me; I got Tommy for Christmas in 1969 and thought it was cool but didn't really play it much. In early '71, when I was 14, I got Jesus Christ Superstar. I’d bought the single "Superstar" the year before, mostly because it was controversial, and this long-haired teen was all about controversy. Luckily, my parents were never bothered by this streak in me; since I didn't act out in rebellious ways in real life, they didn't seem to mind that I did artistically. (My mom bought me the Hair album when I was 13 and was a bit startled when I asked her what "sodomy" meant, but otherwise she was fine with me listening to it.) I was Catholic and still went to church on Sundays, attendance mandated by my father, but I was basically an atheist even at that early age. I wouldn’t say the album changed my mind, but it gave the Gospel stories an emotional core that had been lacking for me, not to mention that I have yet to have anyone explain logically why Jesus had to die in order for God to offer us places in Heaven. Judas is portrayed as a tortured individual, thinking that Jesus has gotten sidetracked from his political anti-oppression message and is too wrapped up in his supposed divinity: "You really do believe this talk of God is true / And all the good you've done will soon be swept away." Jesus is similarly tortured, and I saw Judas' betrayal as something that he was forced to do, so that the mythic story of Jesus would play out as predestined. Unlike Tommy, I played this rock opera frequently, and saw a live concert-style performance of it that predated the Broadway production by a few months. 

Every Easter since my teen days, I have revisited either the album or the movie (though some years, I substitute Godspell), and this year it was the movie. I first saw it in 1973 and was disappointed, but still I bought it when it was issued on DVD. This time around, for some reason, I was more disappointed than ever. The concept behind the movie is interesting: a troupe of actors arrive in an Israeli desert on a bus, unload props and costumes (see picture above), and proceed to perform the opera about the last week of Jesus's life in a variety of desert settings. Most of the songs are intact, with a few lyrical alterations. Two new songs were added, one to clarify the position of the Jewish elders, possibly to address charges of antisemitism, and one, "Could We Start Again Please?" which the apostles sing to Jesus before his crucifixion, and which actually works fairly well. I understand the desire to open the musical up to be less stagy, and this works best in the moneylenders scene where Jesus trashes the marketplace like Kane did to his wife's room in Citizen Kane, but some of the most effective scenes in the movie are ones that are actually a bit stagy even when opened up: the apostles in the cave at the beginning, the high priests conversations, Mary singing "I Don't Know How to Love Him." The actors are fine, especially Carl Anderson as Judas and Barry Dennen as Pilate, but the singing is not always top-notch (Dennen, Josh Mostel as Herod, Kurt Yahjian as Annas), substituting energy for pitch and tone. Maybe because my TV isn't attached to a fancy sound system, the music lost some power and punch. Some of the desert vistas are lovely, but when actors are put in them, as in the scene where the lepers beg Jesus for help, they are dwarfed and some impact is lost. The glittery “Superstar” number, on the other hand, doesn’t go far enough; it should be much more bombastic show-biz, though I do love the Supremes-style backing singers (see below). 

I only saw parts of the live TV Hollywood Bowl concert with John Legend and was not impressed, though I remember liking Alice Cooper as Herod. I also saw the touring company of the Broadway production during one of their reunion tours, with Carl Anderson and Ted Neely, and it was OK though Neely seemed to overdo the agony at times. There are other recordings, amateur and professional, on YouTube that I may explore later in the week. But ultimately, partly because of a nostalgia factor, I don't think the original concept album will ever be displaced as my #1 choice for experiencing this work.