Warning: Spoilers below the fold.
I saw two documentaries this month on two very different topics. And both were ok.
I saw Capitalism: A Love Story the day after I got my wisdom teeth taken out. I'm a fan generally of Michael Moore films. I'm a liberal, a Democrat, so it's a preaching to the choir situation. However, I felt this movie had less of a coherent, straight line plot approach than his other films (especially Fahrenheit 9/11). This one felt more loose, with at times slow and sprawling examples of the shitstorm bought upon people by our capitalistic society. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. The movie was pretty long, and at times slow.
Also the stunt element of this one - Moore goes to Wall Street to demand back taxpayer money from all the banks and companies and then, when that leads to nothing, police-tapes the buildings off - fell kind of flat. I instead thought the revisiting of Flint after Roger & Me was a lot more affecting. Also, this.
So. Not great, not bad. It has laughs, it makes you think, it makes good points.
A week or so later, I saw Chris Rock's Good Hair. Now, anything I knew about weaves I learned from America's Next Top Model; mostly that the good ones are expensive, and it's a painful process that involves somehow sewing it onto your head.
Apparently Chris Rock made the documentary because one day his young daughter asked him why she didn't have good hair. That's ... pretty devastating. The movie came up with a lot of interesting aspects of the hair business, some being:
- The chemical used in relaxer - which is used sometimes in young children's hair - burns, and can eat through soda cans;
- Most human hair used in weaves comes from India, where it's shaved off for religious reasons;
- and that the race that financially benefits the most off the black hair industry aren't African-Americans.
There's a lot of discussion amongst kids, adults, celebrities, hair stylists and regular folk about whether it's socially acceptable or not to go natural or straighten/relax hair, what's the protocol when attempting to touch anyone's hair, and the high high cost of such maintenance. I didn't really know how much work it all took.
There's an overall arc to the movie about the Bronner Bros. Hair Show in Atlanta. I found these parts of the movie the least interesting, but they kind of pull all of Rock's points together. It seemed like a TLC reality show waiting to happen. And, in the end, the hair styles achieved during the show by the four stylists weren't all that important. The dude that won (Derek J?) won because he had a whole goddamn BAND come out and perform, but since they didn't come on stage, he didn't break the "no more than 10 people on stage rule." That seems ... rather ... not the point ... of a hair show.
The movie is definitely entertaining and informative. Some of it seemed a little far-fetched (not paying rent to pay for a weave? I noticed in these segments Rock would make such a claim with an AMIRITE? face and the ladies would laugh, but no one would be like "Yeah!") but that didn't hinder the points he was making.
Again, another completely ok movie.
