Frederick Wiseman: Deaf and Blind But Not Dumb

Frederick Wiseman's documentaries are a collection of dialogue, compromise, anger, observation and, in the case of his 1987 film "Blind", an exercise in pure cinemas as discovery. It comes at the halfway point when one of the very young blind children featured in the film (known as Jason) is followed in an extreme long take as he feels his way downstairs into one classroom and then back upstairs to another to talk to his teachers. There's no expediency or montage juxtaposition to hurry up the act. We simply exist to observe this child as his newly taught sensory skills are put to the test. It's a moment both bracing in its honesty and awe-inspiring in the possibilities of film to capture something non manufactured and real. In essence, that's what Wiseman has been doing for forty plus years.

As a companion piece to "Blind", there's also "Deaf", released a year earlier in 1986 but taking place in the same Alabama area school for the Deaf and Blind. Culled from endless hours of footage and whittled down to approximately five hours of film, both "Deaf" and "Blind" follow the framework of Wiseman's now pattern formula... i.e.basic exterior shots of the city and school welded around the inhabitants, leadership and tangential elements of an institution. In between, there are one or two extended scenes of discussion or conflict that serve as the identifying setpiece. In "Deaf", its a 35 minute discussion between a principal, a teacher, a mother and a deaf child whose been causing trouble at the school. Threats of suicide and intentional fights with other boys has landed this young man in the hot seat and through a carefully worded and patient conversation, his animosity about not seeing his real father and his mother's supposed lack of communication become the root cause. It's as if we're watching an intense psychiatric session, punctuated by sign language and the genuine care of all involved to arrive at an accepted and humane compromise.

Separating the visual style of both films- while "Deaf" is in color, "Blind" is black and white, naturally- both films are interested solely in the mechanics of thought, learning, perception and discussion... even when we don't fully understand the discussion. Several scenes in "Deaf" feature students communicating outside or by themselves in the hallway in sign language. There's no attempt to translate or cheapen the moment. The viewer is present, fully, in their world. Likewise, in "Blind", Wiseman sagely dispenses with compassionate leanings and shows only the strong moments of the blind students. Jason's confident walk. A classroom lesson where children learn about textures and feel as linen cloths are placed over their prone bodies. And a carefree dance where the energies and vigor of youth take over, regardless of their inability to see.

In both "Deaf and "Blind", the overriding message is that, yes, these children do have handicaps, but their immersion in life, relationships, and the everyday ebbs and flows of emotions are just as pertinent. Perhaps more so because they're learning to adapt without a vital sense many people take for granted. Wiseman doesn't. And the men, women and children featured in "Deaf" and "Blind" certainly don't.

Both films are available at www.Zipporah.com.

Inferno: Frederick Wiseman's "Welfare"

During one scene of Frederick Wiseman's 1974 marathon documentary, "Welfare", a man who has come down to the aforementioned New York City public office is shooed away by some type of manager (and a manager who seemingly does this to everyone who dares venture into his office) and then spends the next five minutes, uninterrupted, talking to himself in the corridors. Part homily for himself to God and part soliloquy on his financial misfortunes, Wiseman shrewdly ends on this man, capping a four hour document of someplace pretty close to bureaucratic Hell with a capital "H". And the message is clear... this man is probably better off talking to himself rather than anyone at the welfare office.

Yet, in between agonizing, frustrating moments such as these, "Welfare" also spotlights the actions of other office workers, desperately trying to understand their own internal politics of the various case files that appear before them or actually go above and beyond and walk upstairs to ascertain resolutions. It's amazing the feelings that ebb and swell while watching "Welfare". One moment, I'm saying to myself, "jeez if you'd get off the drugs and do something productive with your life...." and the next I'm yelling at the screen while an especially moody office worker basically throws her arms up and walks away from trying to find a solution, blinded by her own hierarchical stubbornness. Not many documentaries stir up the juices like that. And if that's not enough, Wiseman captures those marginal figures we expect to be floating around the welfare office. The hotheads, the loonies (in one man who lays out his especially racial attitude to an African-American police officer), the drug addicts. And this is 1974. Imagine this office today.

Like all of Wiseman's work, the film is a testament to an institution, warts and all...good and bad.. and one that not only sheds light on an especially laborious aspect of our society, but creates a crescendo of voices, faces and reactions that can never be manufactured. If anything, that's the magic of Wiseman's cinema.

From Mane to Maine: Wiseman's "Crazy Horse" and "Belfast, Maine"

Whether he's training his camera on the autumnal haze of sleepy "Belfast, Maine"- with its potato plants, church choirs and local gas station denizens- or the writhing half naked bodies of beautiful dancers rehearsing their latest erotic spectacle in Paris, Wiseman is a filmmaker who understands silence is golden. Of course, editing and mise-en-scene is a comment itself on the subject, but both "Belfast, Maine" and "Crazy Horse" represent the best aspects of Wiseman's 45 year plus oeuvre.... which is a long way of saying he observes and visually dissects an institution or locale with monk-like patience and an acute eye for the humanity wrapped inside the mundane.

"Belfast, Maine" (1999), one of the few works by Wiseman to document the sprawling intersections of an actual city (the other being "Aspen" in 1991), at first seems to unravel with little order in its four hour progression. It's only about halfway through its fly-on-the-wall tactics does something like a message emerge. And that message is that Wiseman's documentaries are probably the closest thing we have to actual life being lived on-screen. Through the seemingly random (and at times rambling) simple shots of people going about their business, dealing with Medicaid workers, checking into a hospital, or rehearsing a scene from "Death of a Salesman", "Belfast, Maine" paints such an evocative portrait of life-in-the-margins that it almost feels extraordinary for its ordinariness. I doubt any written movie character could be as seemingly good-natured and expectant of whatever eventually takes her life as an elderly woman describing her condition to an aid worker in one scene or the appalling state of health of another man who claims he used to smoke seven to eight packs of cigarettes a day, but now is down to a more manageable two-to-three since he had a stroke last year. Further still, outside of the people within the film, Belfast reveals itself as an almost too perfect hamlet of Northeastern charm and approaching 'wintryness'. As stated earlier, this is one of the few films Wiseman made centered around an entire city, but his efforts always canopy the specific atmosphere and tensions of the environment his chosen institution reside within. I can't help but feel a homely kinship to the surroundings shown in "Boxing Gym" (Austin, Texas") and especially the upscale cowboy aura buttressed around his 1983 film about the retail capital of Neiman Marcus' Dallas, Texas location. If there's a high compliment to be paid to "Belfast, Maine", it's that even though I've never been further in the Northeast than Philadelphia, I feel like I know it slightly better through "Belfast, Maine" and its tough-minded inhabitants.

About as far removed from the plaid-and-denim quaintness of Maine lies "Crazy Horse" (2012), a film thirteen years later that finds Wiseman firmly ensconced in the electric, haute couture confines of the world renowned Paris cabaret. What begins as titillating (beautiful, half naked women pampering their faces and applying make up backstage) soon turns methodical as the film endlessly charts, zags and follows the various beauties as they work hard learning their moves for upcoming dance numbers or stand listless while choreographers, set designers and club financiers argue, dawdle and crunch numbers. Actually, "Crazy Horse" isn't that different from the seemingly normal actions of Belfast, Maine after all. Boredom, struggles, and bureaucratic numbness is a universal language.

Made after "La Danse" (2009) and "Boxing Gym" (2010), "Crazy Horse" could be called the cap in his ballet trilogy, adapting a more free floating camera style than before. Instead of hinged in the corner, observing people talking or reacting to their surroundings, Wiseman continually frames the writhing bodies of his "Crazy Horse" women seamlessly.... none moreso moving than when one dancer practices alongside Antony and the Johnson's beautiful song ""Man is the Baby". Music and image, when done right, can often be a transcendent merging of arts, and in this quiet, almost nondescript individual moment that never connects with any other choreographed section of the film, captures something that feels stunningly private. That's documentary filmmaking done right... and it's just one of the thousands of little, off-hand moments Wiseman has been documenting and etching into film for decades now.

"Crazy Horse" is available on Blu-ray video
"Belfast, Maine" is currently unavailable on home video formats

Patient Observations: 3 From Frederick Wiseman

Filmmaker Frederick Wiseman is a national landmark amidst the landscape of documentary cinema. So why is it so damn hard to see any of his films? Not known for brevity (a majority of his work runs over 3 hours) or easy subjects (public welfare, a domestic abuse center for women) it's still thrilling to finally receive a small sampling of his work.

Wiseman's penchant for examining various American institutions remained intact from the very beginning in 1967 when he filmed "Titicut Follies" in a Massachusetts state hospital for the criminally insane. It's one of the more transcendent cinema moments where art actually explores reality and changes something. After the buzz from this film and its black and white images of standards instead the facility, "Titicut Follies" was banned but not before it cast a questionable eye on the politics of the state's treatment of its prisoners. Still, one has to wonder who failed to check the negatives before allowing Wiseman and his crew to exit the property. Shown in unflinchingly clinical images are the force feeding of one inmate, hordes of men standing around naked or in feces filled cells, and one seemingly lucid man pleading his case before a board of doctors who seem more interested in keeping their cigarettes lit than actually listening to some of his ideas on incarceration. Granted, these are still "criminally insane" men who committed violent acts, but the idea of such squalid conditions and primitive lack of psychological treatment make one wonder about the living conditions of "normal" inmates who committed the same crimes. These are the types of ideas that vault through one's mind while watching a Wiseman documentary. He allows the images to do the talking, without narration or contextual supposition. Michael Moore, take note.



"Model", Wiseman's 1980 film about the vagaries of the modeling industry in New York, sounded like the most uninspiring entry of the three titles here, yet I came away with a somewhat profound affection for this facade of beauty. Never boring and ultimately propelled through fashion shoots and television commercial sessions that become more and more abstract (from breezy shoots in an apartment or outdoors to a black and white shadow shoot that's selling.... something), "Model" explores the tireless details of every action. How many times must a director shoot a model's leg before they reach the perfect take? Watch how one actress, charged with the seemingly easy job of running down the steps and looking left, becomes an (edited) 30minute ordeal of subtle adjustments and nth degree facial turns that doesn't wrap for days. I became exhausted just watching it all.


Yet, the real coup of Wiseman's film is celebrating the ones that don't make it. Centered around one modeling agency in New York, Wiseman is allowed into the interview room for several talent scouts who talk to wanna-be models, peruse through their portfolios and find increasingly nice ways to say "you're not pretty enough" or "you just don't have IT". For a film that trades in beauty, Wiseman slyly inserts some ugliness.



Even with the deplorable setting of "Titicut Follies", the toughest to watch was "Hospital". Released in 1971, Wiseman was given access to the emergency rooms and corridors of a hospital in New York during the overnight hours. Glimpses of the horror are there- a man who almost overdoses on drugs and is then put into his own private holding cell where he rants, vomits, rants some more, vomits more.... then accepts that he probably needs to head back home to his family and get some help. But with Wiseman's other works, "Hospital" is a multi-faceted portrait of an institution and the people who, for better or worse, runs things. The doctors and nurses in "Hospital" seem genuinely impacted by their patients and strive for the best in their well being. One scene has a doctor calling the administration of another hospital whose patient they just received, upset and filing a complaint for that previous doctor's failure to recognize certain symptoms before transport. After seemingly receiving no sympathy or understanding from the person on the other end of the line, the doctor hangs up the phone, Wiseman's camera capturing a moment of frailty and despair in the doctor as he rubs his eyebrows. It's a small moment, yes, but one befitting the gracious patience of Wiseman to never lose sight of our emotional bearings within these mammoth institutions. He is documenting people and life after all.