Fantastic Lies (Netflix)

ESPN’s 30 for 30, which has continued beyond its initial anniversary celebration to bring occasional documentaries to the sports channel, has given us interesting, traditional storytelling over the past five years. They occasionally branch out into something more daring (like the excellent, narration-less June 17, 1994), but for the most part they stick to a formula that works well. Fantastic Lies, one of their most recent (and longer) documentaries, is another example of what 30 for 30 does best: tells a complex story that we thought we knew in a clear, entertaining and informative way. The bells and whistles aren’t there, but they don’t have to be.

Fantastic Lies follows the story of the Duke LaCrosse team, who were accused of a massive rape scandal and then later acquitted of all wrongdoing when it turned out that evidence didn’t exist and nothing had really happened. Director Marina Zenovich, who covered sensitive material like this in Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, doesn’t add anything new to the story, but she doesn’t have to. The story is compelling enough on its own. She walks us through the story in real time, taking the viewer back through the events as they unfolded, so that we are forced to live again through the shifting anger of the story: first at the players we thought had done unthinkable things, then at the university that seemed to be protecting them, and finally at the prosecution that had covered up evidence and lied to us repeatedly. Zenovich smartly doesn’t show her cards before she has to, so that we aren’t prejudging where the story is going but instead reliving it moment by moment. If you didn’t know the ending already, it would be the complete body blow it was to those who lived it in the moment.

What is remarkable about all of this is that Zenovich does this without the participation of most of the major players in the case. The film ends with an almost ridiculous litany of people who turned down interviews: all of the prosecuted athletes, the prosecutors themselves, most of the team members, and any representative to Duke University. This allows Zenovich to control the narrative more, and lets the story unfold with less bias, than perhaps would normally be fitting. With someone as adept as Zenovich at the helm, though, it makes the film all the more compelling and enraging.

One Day Since Yesterday: Peter Bogdanovich & the Lost American Film (Netflix)

I should start this review with a caveat: Despite my love for the films of Peter Bogdanovich, I have never seen They All Laughed (the titular “Lost American Film” here). The fact that this doesn’t take away from enjoying One Day Since Yesterday is a testament to what Bill Teck does. Teck takes us through Bogdanovich’s early career, the creation of They All Laughed and the ultimate tragedy that loomed over the film’s release with ease. He fills the film with talking heads happy to talk about Bogdanovich and what they love about They All Laughed and that exuberance bleeds off the screen to us. Like a good storyteller, he manages to take us through the jury regardless of what we are bringing to the table ourselves.

Teck’s storytelling isn’t always perfect. He is at his best when highlighting the almost ridiculously hyped up rise of Bogdanovich and when he is looking closely at the making of They All Laughed. He gets great things out of his commentators, from happy fans Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino to reluctant collaborator Ben Gazzara to Bogdanovich himself, who seems uncomfortable at times but always open and honest. In the final parts of the film, when the joys of filmmaking sour with the sudden murder of They All Laughed’s muse (and Bogdanovich’s lover) Dorothy Stratton, the story gets a little muddled. After taking us through the making of the film expertly, Teck now assumes that we know the details of the murder and doesn’t lay them out for us. The section is as confused as its participants. Suddenly, all the context is gone and we are left with a series of disjointed remembrances with no clear bridge. For the first time, the film feels like hundreds of others that have come before it, rather than a very clearly made ode to a great film and the masters who created it.

CLASSIC: God’s Country (HuluPlus)

With Criterion and TCM announcing FilmStruck, a new streaming service housing their joint libraries, HuluPlus customers only have six months left to catch Criterion titles on the streaming service before they move over. Among their vast collection of titles is a small collection of documentaries by Louis Malle, the French filmmaker more famous for his narrative features like Atlantic City, My Dinner with Andre or Elevator at the Gallows. Malle’s 1985 documentary God’s Country, about the 5,000-person town of Glencoe, Minnesota, is one of those Criterion titles ripe for discovery, especially in a contentious election year. It reminds us of what is at stake every day for an average American, and that hopes and dreams don’t always come in big packages.

In 1979, with funding from PBS, Malle toured around Minnesota looking for a subject for a film about America. God’s Country opens with him stumbling on an 85-year-old woman gardening in an expansive front yard rose garden. In an almost Errol Morris-esque interview, she draws Malle (and us) into Glencoe, Minnesota. The next hour-plus of the film is the director listening to and engaging in the hopes, fears, struggles, and placid composure of the residents of Glencoe. We meet lawyers, farmers, parents, children, a 10-year-old who drives a giant tractor, the struggling playwright of Much Ado About Corn, and even watch a man artificially inseminate a cow. They repeatedly teeter between the believable and the bizarre, but they are always real. Malle frames everything with love and appreciation; he finds the people of Glencoe as foreign as he does charming but he is never condescending towards what can seem at times an overly simple life. The fact that they find him just as intriguing, and have no problem rifling questions back at him about his life in France, creates a bond that holds the film together.

The real power of God’s Country, and what makes it required viewing thirty years later, is the final twenty minutes of the film. Malle returns to Glencoe six years later, when the town has moved from Carter-era tranquility to a Reagan-era farm crisis, and finds that so much of what drew him to the residents had vanished. Their cheery optimism is replaced with cynicism, their dreams are no longer as realistic as they thought they were, and their devotion to their town and their farms is vanishing quickly. Suddenly, the prospect of their kids being the future of Glencoe is turning into the hope that their kids will get out of town, and Malle devastatingly discovers that the charm of the American small town is quickly becoming extinct.