The influence of documentaries over time

One of this fall’s biggest cinematic disappointments at the box office was by a big budget film that told the inspiring story of the final days of an NFL player.

The film is “The Tillman Story,” the powerfully sobering documentary about former NFL player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman, whose death in 2004 by friendly fire was subsequently covered up by military officials.

The success of films like “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “Sicko” and “An Inconvenient Truth” has changed how people think of documentaries in terms of their ability to turn a profit.
Many people thought “The Tillman Story” had the right type of mass appeal and political flair to carry the torch that these films had lit. The fact that “The Tillman Story” had any box office expectations at all represents a huge shift for the popularity of documentaries in the past decade.

While the filmmaking triumphs of Michael Moore and Al Gore certainly carry a bulk of the credit for the status of documentary in the current film landscape, the roots of this trend can be traced back to the ’90s and late ’80s.

IU professor Steve Krahnke has had his hand in a number of documentaries throughout his career. He counts one of those films, the Academy Award nominated “Hoop Dreams,” as an integral part in documentary’s rise.

“It won the (1994) Sundance Audience Award, then secured a theatrical distribution deal, but it wasn’t at all a big budget film,” Krahnke said. “The theatrical release provides greater press attention, and so it may make a fairly inexpensive film seem like a bigger deal.”

Five years earlier it was Michael Moore’s first film, “Roger and Me,” that unexpectedly succeeded at the box office and set records for ticket sales by a documentary movie.
Moore’s popularity does raise a number of questions about the nature of documentary itself, though, as many critics have questioned the truthfulness of his storytelling techniques.

Certainly, there has always been conflict in films that are portrayed to be non-fictional between being truthful and crafting a compelling narrative, but does a surge in documentary popularity directly coincide with a dip in its affinity for giving its audiences the facts?

Joshua Malitsky, a scholar and IU professor of documentary who can speak with authority about filmmakers from Vertov to Herzog, does not think so.

“I think what we’ve seen is an increase in the public’s knowledge of how films are made, so what we have is an increase in transparency,” he said.

He noted that historically, documentaries have always played with the boundaries that separate fact from fiction. It was standard practice for important events to be reenacted for the camera and then shown to the audience as if they were the real thing before technology allowed filmmakers to be more mobile.

Malitsky said he believes that with films such as Moore’s or “An Inconvenient Truth,” audiences realize that the filmmaker is coming at them with a certain agenda to shape public opinions.

The attempt to incite social change through film has been a driving force behind documentaries throughout their existence, and audiences today are more educated about that fact than ever before, Malitsky said.

While social issue documentaries generate the most discussion, they aren’t sole generators of profit when it comes to documentary films.

“March of the Penguins,” “Earth” and “Oceans” all rank in the top 10 highest grossing documentaries. One of the more successful documentaries to come out this year, “Babies,” was a profile on four different newborns from around the globe.

The film took no political stance and made no statement other than “babies are cute.” Krahnke, for one, is among those who prefer this style of documentary.

“I liked ‘March of the Penguins,’ mainly because I recognized the craft in filmmaking,” Krahnke said. “But I don’t think it changed society much. People were pretty happy with penguins to begin with.”