One of the highlights of my year was profiling Julia Reichert as a Cinematheque retrospective marked her 50 years of making documentaries. This Ohio-based filmmaker worked with her collaborator and partner Steven Bognar to create one of the most important documentaries of the year. American Factory looks at what happens after a Chinese company buys a shuttered GM plant and retools it into an auto glass factory. It’s a love story to the Midwestern workers who the filmmakers got to know when making The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant. The workers are grieving the loss of their high-paying union jobs (many of them took cuts from $29/hour to $13/hour.) But it doesn’t demonize the Chinese owner and managers; it shows how difficult it is for them to be far away from their families and trying to supervise a workforce that doesn’t understand them. American Factory is the first film distributed on Netflix by Barack and Michelle Obama’s company, Higher Ground Productions. It’s easy to see why they chose it.
We can’t talk documentary without mentioning Knock Down the House. What a thrill it was to experience it in a packed Shannon Hall audience at the Wisconsin Film Festival. The director, Rachel Lears, follows four female candidates through their primary challenges. The star of the show is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (aka AOC), the Bronx bartender-turned-congresswoman who overcame all the odds to defeat a machine Democrat and a Republican to become the youngest woman elected to Congress at 29. The emotion in the room for the live screening was palpable Seeing this movie is the antidote to cynicism.
Speaking of which...After last year’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor, the documentary that reduced the entire Wisconsin Film Festival audience to sniffling in their seats, I wasn’t sure what to expect of Tom Hanks playing Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. It takes just a minute to adjust to Hanks playing the soft-spoken TV host, as he sings the opening number. This film is based on a real-life chapter in Rogers’ life when a cynical magazine reporter, called Lloyd Vogel in the film, is assigned a 400-word profile of Rogers for Esquire (Tom Junod’s actual profile grew to a 10,000 word cover profile, “Can You Say....Hero?”). Vogel (an incredible Matthew Rys), a distracted father with a troubled relationship with his own dad (Chris Cooper), is annoyed that he’s been assigned a puff piece when he’s an investigative reporter. But the charms of Mister Rogers are truly irresistible, and the friendship that develops will warm your heart. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was a model of empathy, compassion and inclusiveness that is utterly relevant today.
The year’s most class-conscious movie was Parasite, the stunning and disconcerting satire from South Korean director Bong Joon-ho. It contrasts the life of the poor Kim family, which lives in a squalid basement apartment with the Parks, a wealthy family that employs the Kims. The less you know about this film, the more you’ll enjoy it. It’s not for the squeamish. Neither is The Lighthouse, but it features incredible cinematography and bravura performances by Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, as two salty seamen, holed up and losing their minds on a rocky island.
I admit, I resisted seeing The Irishman, despite the fact that it shows up on many best-of lists. I wasn’t that eager to sit through a three-and- a-half hour epic on mobsters. But I found Martin Scorsese’s film to be profoundly affecting, and strangely gentle. I’ll chalk it up to one of the finest directors alive, a flowing, natural screenplay, and astounding performances from Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Ray Romano and every other Italian American actor Scorsese could find. Yes, it’s all about the men, with women playing almost invisible supporting roles. But Anna Paquin’s seven-line performance as the hit man’s wise and damaged daughter will haunt me for a long time. The story is told as a series of flashbacks by a lonely Frank Sheeran (De Niro), a resident in a nursing home who has outlived most of his peers. He is narrating his life working for the mafia and a stint as right hand man to Teamsters Union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino). De Niro can melt a camera with his eyes, and his portrayal of killer and a lonely old man who has sacrificed his closest relationships is a wonder.
I went into Harriet trying to be alert to potential white savior narrative threads after reading some criticism online, but I came out impressed with the powerful story of the legendary Tubman, who helped usher hundreds of enslaved people to freedom. Writer-director Kasi Lemmons did take liberties with Tubman’s story, as filmmakers always do, inventing and accentuating the roles of some characters and de-emphasizing others. Historians say there were a few black slave catchers, like the movie’s Bigger Long, and it’s legitimate to question why Lemmons decided to include this character, given that most slave catchers were white. At the end of the movie, we see Tubman leading a black battalion into the Civil War where 750 fugitive slaves were freed. Her role is likely exaggerated, but she did work as a Union spy, nurse and scout, and helped plan that raid. Tubman’s bravery and tenacity in freeing hundreds of people is an amazing historical reality that we should all have learned about in history class.
Essential watching for the Black Lives Matter era is the surprising, heartbreaking Queen & Slim. Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) and Jodie Turner-Smith have a Tinder date in Cleveland that spirals out of control after a cop pulls Slim’s car over. Slim shoots in self-defense, and their lives are irreversibly altered. On the run, they become heroes to black people, who have suffered the indignities of being pulled over, harassed and killed because of the color of their skin. Unexpected allies assist them throughout their steamy, winding journey through the Deep South. As a work of social commentary, it is powerful and surprisingly subtle. As a romance, it is utterly devastating.
[Editor's note: We incorrectly stated that Julia Reichert was Iowa-based in the first version of this story. She has spent her whole life working, teaching and making films in Ohio.]
