For better and worse, and particularly for those on the younger side of the boomer generation, New York City’s mayors have often stood astride national politics, even before the events of September 11, 2001. No one typifies that more than the recently deceased Ed Koch, who was a unique political brand — at once easygoing and tough — whose blunt, blustery appeal can be traced forward in time to a figure like current New Jersey governor Chris Christie.
A divisive three-term Democratic mayor whose tenure spanned the 1970s and ’80s and whose post-political career would include gadfly commentary and a two-year stint as the judge on The People’s Court, Koch was to plenty a hero, and yet to others an opportunistic race-baiter. He was never boring, however, nor anyone but himself, qualities which are on abundant and inimitable display in the entertaining, thought-provoking and in some ways even elegiac portrait of Neil Barsky’s new documentary, Koch.
A self-described “liberal with sanity,” the Jewish Koch was a quick-on-his-feet populist — he garnered over 75 percent of the vote in his successful re-election bids, and was the first candidate to score Democratic and Republican party endorsements in the same election — who rounded into form after an unlikely and unruly 1977 primary to unseat incumbent Abe Beame. An ex-Congressman, his fierce advocacy for the city of New York and his ability to spin, spar (can one imagine today a politician telling a voter point-blank to shut up?) and frame informed conviction as truth and right would find welcome reception with voters and media alike. “As a politician you have got to get the public to follow you,” says Koch in one of the film’s interview segments, “and you can only do that by being bigger than life — it’s theatrics.”
That instinct drove various reforms — none bigger than his ambitious, multi-billion-dollar public housing program — but would also eventually make Koch the strong and very personal enemy of all sorts of groups who felt marginalized by both his decisions and decision-making processes. Koch’s closure of the Harlem-adjacent Sydenham Hospital, one of 17 municipal city hospitals, would strain and stain relations with African-Americans for years (along with other issues), and his aggressive leveraging of condemnations of 42nd Street properties — which would eventually pave the way for the commercial boom of Times Square — would have to beat back 47 separate lawsuits to stand. Koch’s third term would bring what some viewed as comeuppance — unprecedented scandal via a string of bid-rigging, phony contracts and bribes attached to various borough presidents and city commissioners.
The gift of Koch, then, is that it embraces the clutter and volume of opinion about the man, without stooping to its nastiest extremes. Having the subject as a driving force of the film certainly helps; Koch is just a great interview, whether addressing the Sydenham controversy, the many rumors and smears about his sexuality (he never married, and was rumored to be a closeted homosexual, which rendered fraught his relationship with the gay community during the AIDS crisis) or any other manner of topic. Barsky takes the measure of the man, and if his portrait is undeniably rather favorable, it also honestly addresses outside criticisms of Koch’s governance, and mostly forthrightly puts this dissent to him.
In its third act, the movie lags a bit, focusing in dawdling fashion on legacy burnishing. Still, an attractive technical package, inclusive of classy, evocative cinematography by Tom Hurwitz and smartly chosen and juxtaposed archival news clips, boosts this engaging nonfiction snapshot’s profile and appeal. Koch is a reminder that our best politicians aren’t timid creatures, but neither are we likely going to agree with them on every issue, so it’s important to remember that they shouldn’t be punished to the extreme for that fact. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Zeitgeist, unrated, 95 minutes)
Monthly Archives: March 2013
A Place at the Table
It seems incongruous during a rampant obesity epidemic in the United States, the notion of around 49 million Americans suffering from “food insecurity” — not knowing where either their next meal will come from, or the money for it. But the smart and poignantly argued new documentary A Place at the Table, in assaying governmental farm subsidy policies and other social welfare assistance, casts hunger and obesity as neighbors, not distant and exclusive conditions separated by a yawning chasm. Engorged with feeling, this nonfiction tale leads with its heart, and successfully makes a persuasive case for social investments that offset future “up-stream” societal costs across a wide range of arenas.
Against a backdrop which has seen a 40 percent rise in the cost of fruits and vegetables over the past three decades, versus a 40 percent decrease in the price of processed foods, A Place at the Table puts in its crosshairs agricultural policies (including $250 billion in USDA subsidies since 1995) that underwrite the massive production of in particular corn, wheat, rice, soy and sugar — the basic ingredients in many high-fat, high-sodium processed foods — but not other staple crops, or whole grains. It does this mostly by polite cajoling, though, rather than heated hectoring.
The film’s rhythms sometimes tip toward the sedate, and while co-directors Lori Silverbush and Kristi Jacobson succeed in finding articulate and compelling interview subjects, they sometimes have trouble picking effective editorial pivot points and sharpening the spear tip of their arguments, making full sense of their case subjects’ situations. Still, with original music by T Bone Burnett and the Civil Wars, A Place at the Table aims to be a movie with more emotional punching power, which isn’t to say that it’s shoddily researched, just sensitive (perhaps a little too much so) to charges of wonky factorial overkill.
Not unlike Food, Inc., though, it shines a light on just the dispiriting degree to which so many — and especially so many children — are prisoners of a system in which the vast majority of the scope of their diet lies outside of reasonably expected mechanisms of their own control. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For the more about the movie, click here to visit its website. (Magnolia/Participant Media, unrated, 86 minutes)
Photographic Memory
In David Lynch‘s trippy, 1997 neo-noir psychological thriller Lost Highway, Bill Pullman’s Fred Madison explains his aversion to video cameras thusly: “I like to remember things my own way.” When pressed for a further explanation, he offers, “How I remembered them — not necessarily the way they happened.” For documentary director Ross McElwee — whose films have almost always been reflexively autobiographical, delving into his familial relationships and ancestral connections — it’s almost the opposite. His memories have, for years, been filtered through first his photographs and writings, and then his ever-present camera lens, to the point that even he begins to question how real, or accurate, some of his memories actually are.
The vehicle for this reflection is the beguiling, homespun Photographic Memory, triggered by some early-onset empty nest syndrome and domestic struggles. Attempting to make peace with the surliness, technological addiction and emotional waywardness of his 20-year-old son, McElwee decides to retrace some of his own footsteps from when he was around the same age, and spent a year abroad in France. The result is a delicate, mesmeric rumination on family, memory, the necessary growing pains of young adulthood, and the sloping banks of generational chasm that will always exist.
We first glimpse Adrian McElwee as a youngster, cavorting about with his younger sister. McElwee frequently filmed his kids growing up, and they used to love it. Now, despite his interest in becoming a filmmaker and/or graphic artist, Adrian is tired of his father’s looming lens; he’d rather hang out with friends, blow off school, smoke a bit of pot and film himself doing extreme ski tricks. Narrating his frustration, McElwee tries to channel and focus his son’s energies, while also dolefully noting certain behavioral similarities to his own adolescent wanderings.
McElwee deftly intercuts this story — of all the poking, prodding, hoping and cajoling attached to his son — with his own journey back in time, and a set of conflicted emotions that arise. Traveling back to St. Quay-Portrieux in Brittany, France, for the first time in almost four decades, the filmmaker tries to track down his first employer, a photographer named Maurice, as well as Maud, a woman with whom he had a brief but memorable romantic liaison.
On the surface Photographic Memory may sound simple, or irretrievably blinkered and personal, but McElwee has aself-awareness, sharp sense of observation and droll wit to boot that easily locates the universality of the material. McElwee’s film is honest about the sort of parenting mistakes born of trying to protect his son from himself, as well as wry articulations about the deep but tested roots of unconditional love (“Teenagers often don’t realize how protected they are from strangulation by the memories of smaller versions of themselves”).
If all that sounds a little too ethereal, Photographic Memory is also just a great little travelogue mystery, with the filmmaker subject’s twangy, Carolina-infused French, in his efforts to find Maurice and Maud, matching the uniquely accented sheer entertainment value of Werner Herzog’s nonfiction self-narration. So does McElwee locate these people from his past? Or are his memories of their time together, and reasons for parting, at all reliable? And what lessons might he learn from all of this travel in dealing with his son? McElwee makes movies to assay the human condition and try to sort things out for himself. This is another good one, full of both answers and questions, feelings and wonder. It shares many features in common with his previous efforts, and is of a certain piece with those movies, but also its own thing — and easily accessible for viewers with no memory or knowledge of McElwee’s canon.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Photographic Memory comes to DVD in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 audio track. Apart from a photo gallery and a bit of touting for other of McElwee’s films, there aren’t any other extras here. Given the hearty degree of on-sleeve authorial presence in the movie, further interview material would really (mostly) be kind of pointless. Still, some small measure of “update” on Adrian would be nice. To purchase the DVD via First Run Features, click here; if Amazon is your thing, meanwhile, click here. B+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)