American Wiseman

The final film I'm catching up on writing about from my long trip is a retrospective title from Berlin. As part of a series called "The War at Home" they showed Frederick Wiseman's 1970 documentary BASIC TRAINING.

If there is any justice in the world, Wiseman should just get a blank check from our government to film whatever he wanted. The man is a national treasure. Well, at least Wiseman gets the government’s permission to enter so many public institutions and document them. His style is incredibly effective and still under utilized today. No narration, just footage of public institutions edited together for dramatic yet never judgmental effect. So definitive are his films that they often bear strikingly sparse titles, like ZOO or HIGH SCHOOL. I made the trek to Denver in my college days just to see HIGH SCHOOL, to this day that's still the only time I actually made it to the Denver FF.

BASIC TRAINING is a real cultural document not just because of the pallor of Vietnam that hangs over everything here but because he captures the actual shape and size of an institution that has been endlessly depicted in modern fiction. For all the other films that I’ve seen showing basic training I don’t think I’ve ever really seen it before seeing this. The absurdity and the aching humanity of trying to get a group of people to learn basic hygiene and killing skills is unbelievable.