The Cruise

     The Cruise is a film about a tour guide that leads a double decker bus tour in New York City.  The film begins with a close up shot of the main character, singing a song with a talking voice and his curly mess of hair waving around in the wind.  Once he finishes the song, he says that it was written by a trodden down man - this is where I thought he was going to say that it was written by him - but he surprised me by saying that it was written by Gershwin.  The camera then pulled out to reveal that he was narrating a tour.  In the beginning, he is often shown doing this.  However, during the middle of the film, after learning more about his personal life, the camera returns to the bus, but shows the tour from a tourist’s point of view while he continues to narrate.  There was also a great shot where he was describing a beautiful terra cotta building and how light reflects off of terra cotta whereas stone just absorbs it.  He begins making noises while talking to himself and the camera pulls out to show him in a fantastic wide shot and in this shot he becomes a New York exhibition for the passers by on the street.  All of these different types of shots allowed us to experience him in many ways; as a tourist, a curious NYC patron, we even spoke with him like a friend.

     For many reasons, he was a great documentary subject to follow.  One reason, he likes to talk!  He has opinions about everything.  He knows a lot of history which probably comes in part from being a tour guide, but it is very apparent that he knows more than his scripted tour.  He has an obvious love for history, architecture, people and New York City.  He takes time to go out and stand and meditate on the Brooklyn Bridge.  He loves art and interpreting art.  He enjoys speaking poetically.  He freely talks about his personal history and often relates that to New York.

     Many of the things he said were explanatory of himself, whether he was speaking directly about himself or not.  At the end of one of his tours he said a great line, “Ladies and gentleman, my name is Timothy...if you need advice or directions on New York City, on style, on how to appear as a debonair individual despite interior feelings of despair, let us know.”  Another interesting fact about him was that he made the comment that Willy Wonka was one of his inspirations which I thought was, in many ways, very spot on.  The entire film tends to give the appearance that he is alone and New York is his best and possibly only friend.  He lives in his head a lot.  Near the end of the film, he is back on the bus and tells passengers that when Greta Garbo was asked why she moved to NYC, she said that it was the only place in which she could be alone.  It then cuts to a shot of him going out to have fun and interact with the city, still alone.  The film in its entirety was edited well so that it really allowed the audience to get to know this one man from New York.

The Sweetest Sound

     The Sweetest Sound is a film about filmmaker, Alan Berliner, and his inquiry about the commonality of names, particularly his own.  The topics he chose to discuss in the film were things that most of us have gone through before, making it very interesting and easy to relate to.

     I liked how he began the film by talking about some of his ancestors and their names and supplementing that with old black and white photos and videos.  It didn’t matter whether these were family photos or stock images because they created a sense of authenticity.  (Although, he did make a statement during the middle of the credits asking viewers to contact him if they recognized anyone in the images he used.)  In addition, he set up the entire premise for the film very early on as he talked about unique and famous names in history and then how much it angered him to discover a group of people in the world who had been given his exact same name.  It bothers me too when I go to a place, give them my name and they reply with, “And which Ashley Powell are you?”  I mean how many of me could there be in the world?!  Yet, I still never gave this topic too much thought.

     The style of the film was very straightforward.  He captured some very honest opinions from interviewees and he was also honest himself.  If he didn’t like something, he said it on camera and didn’t edit it out.  It was interesting to hear other people talk about their name and having to share it with other people.  Some were very blunt and said that even those close to them bothered them a more when they had to “share” the same name.  As for the filmmaker, it wasn’t the use of his name Alan that bothered him, but rather when they had both his first and last name together.  That really bothered him.  He also interviewed random people to find out if they thought they might be a different person if they had been given a different name at birth. 

     I was impressed with how carefully he explored this topic.  On the surface, it seems difficult to make a feature length documentary about names, but he managed to explore a variety of facets within the topic.  He interviewed his parents to try to understand why they chose to name him Alan Berliner and they responded by saying that they really liked the name.  Also, once he contacted and met with the other men with his same name, he began to learn about each of them, trying to find similarities amongst the group.  For example, he asked each one about their occupation.  He also asked each to say the different ways that they have heard their name mispronounced.  However, one of my favorite parts of the film was at the end, when he shared one of his triumphs with viewers, showing that he had finally found something that only he had and no one else.  He had claimed alanberliner.com before anyone else could.

The Business of Being Born

     The Business of Being Born is an informative documentary about the natural birthing process, midwifery and the differences between a natural birth and a typical hospital birth.  I have quite a few friends that have been choosing to have a natural birth instead of the traditional hospital birth and so this topic interested me.  I really didn’t know too much about the topic before watching this and so I really appreciated the art cards used  to state facts about both types of births and where and how they are used, etc.  In addition, the film gave a brief history of natural birthing and its popularity in the early 1900s.  It also talked about its rapid decrease in popularity and almost elimination by the mid 1950s which was actually due to the increase of doctors and their need for more work.  This along with a series of historical photos were crucial to the film’s story because it validated the natural birthing process.

     The filmmakers took a very educational approach with this documentary and they emphasized this in the beginning by cutting together a series of single question and answer clips with numerous women stating that they didn’t know about natural births.  The producer’s point of view and her side of the story also helped convey the purpose and information to the audience because as an uneducated viewer I was able to connect with her learning experience.  As she talked about how she learned and found out more about natural births, I did too.

     By the time the credits rolled, I had learned a great deal of information about natural births which I believe was the purpose of this film, for educating viewers.  However, I was not yet convinced of the idea.  I think this could have been in part because the filmmaker had become pregnant during filming and decided to have a natural birth.  However, she never seemed overly convinced of it and in the end had to have a traditional hospital birth due to complications with the baby.