09/04/2002 Entry:
"Secret Ballot - Babak Payami (2001)
Chain Camera - Kirby Dick (2001)"

I keep waiting for the movie which is going to blow me away this year, the one that will hit me in the gut and leave me with my mouth hanging open. 2001 had Donnie Darko, 2000 had George Washington (leave aside for the moment the fact that I only saw both these movies this year.) Last weekend I saw these two releases, and I'm still waiting.

Secret Ballot is an Iranian film by Babak Payami. I have read several pieces on this film which describe it as boring and repetitive. I guess I can see where those people are going with that, but I really didn't feel that way. I certainly wasn't bored throughout any of the proceeding, and there was only one segment I found repetitive. This was a short sequence at the very end wherein the ballot collector approaches a person running some machinery. The noise of the machinery is loud and the person running it is pointedly ignoring the ballot collector. Having seen so many scenes such as this one up to this point, I really thought this one added little to the whole.

Many people have framed this as a film about democracy, which is certainly a valid tack to take given the subject matter. The film also contains a good dose of the male/female relations which take the forefront of many Iranian films. However, I really felt this film as an urban/rural commentary as much as anything else. All of the issues are framed in this context. The woman comes into the rural area from the big city, expecting to be treated just as she is there, and is shocked when she isn't. She expects the rural residents to have the same ideals and concerns as her, yet they don't. They have their own problems and issues. Everything is framed around this context and I think the film is quite interesting from that standpoint and its something I haven't really seen mentioned anywhere else. I found the film interesting and fun to watch, many refer to it as a comedy although I didn't really take it that way. While I liked it, it certainly wasn't the best thing I've seen all year.

Chain Camera had been heralded from many quarters and again, while it was entertaining, even riotously funny in some places, I didn't really see what the big deal is. It was nice to see a documentary like this done with normal people from a normal diverse school (as opposed to something like American High, which featured a bunch of kids from one of the most privileged areas of Chicago) but what did they, and by proxy the film, really have to say that we didn't already know? OK, kids today are obsessed by the opposite sex, suffer from racial issues, do drugs, are worried about their future, and have difficulties at home. What else is new? I mean, I appreciate that, but I kept waiting for the knockout punch, the one thing which would leave a real impact. It never came, and I was pretty disappointed. The only real surprise here was that homosexuality seems to be fairly well accepted amongst kids today. Certainly some of the individual stories were fairly compelling. Most notably the mentally challenged kid who was voted homecoming prince. There is a gradually revealed sense in this segment that the other kids are laughing at this kid rather than with him, but he remains oblivious. It all comes together slowly and quietly, and the mood changes are subtle and occur before you've really realized it.

This story was the one that actually came closest to fulfilling what I've always wanted to see in high school documentaries, which is a focus on the complete outcasts, the kids who never get their stories told. Where is the kid getting the crap kicked out of him in the locker room after gym? Where is the AVClub nerd? Where is the teacher ridiculing the kid in front of his class? I've seen all these other people before, we're blitzed with happy well-adjusted kids all day long, lets see the dark underside of high school we all know exists. I can't believe that in over 700 hours of footage, there weren't one or two truly dark pieces to be told. Anyone who is trying to make a true portrait of high school who ignores this aspect is lying. Any given episode of Freaks And Geeks portrays a more realistic portrait of high school than Chain Camera does (although I'm sure those for whom high school was a more pleasant experience might disagree, and who knows, maybe things have changed in 16 years *cough*.)

Also, from a stylistic perspective, I would have vastly preferred to see the segments run together rather than be separated with intertitles. You could have made more subtle shifts of mood and let kids run into each other in a sort of stream of consciousness stream of portraits. Many have referred to this method of passing cameras from one kid to another as innovative, but it didn't really seem so big to me. The aforementioned American High did a similar thing (although more structured) and it was being produced right around the same time as Chain Camera.

All that said though, the banana scene did totally crack my shit up.