Documentary Style

I finally got my mits on our copy of The Battle of Algiers, the conservatives' favorite documentary style Marxist film of 1966. Had I been around to have seen it in the sixties, I'd say it's as hard hitting today as it ever was.

I joined Melba and Snacks for Murderball on Friday and it was okay. I don't like to call the film a disappointment, but I would have liked some more rugby action. Instead, the film was mostly personal back story. I did appreciate the scenes that dealt with how quadriplegics do it.

On Saturday, I made my Aunt see the penguin movie with me. I enjoyed the simple struggle of March of the Penguins even more than the hypnotic Winged Migration. Yet, aside from the miraculous photography, March of the Penguins is kind of a throwback to those cutesy narrated nature films they used to show me in elementary school. I believe that most sentient creatures have emotions, however I don't believe in sentimental anthropomorphism. I don't need the deep and dulcet voice of Morgan Freeman telling me that penguins are "in love" just before they mate or "devastated" when they lose their offspring. If a left wing anticolonialist can make a fiction film about the liberation of Algeria without demonizing the French, then a bird loving French documentary can show the lives of penguins without depicting a hungry leopard seal as a villain.