So our reality has not become what used to be our science fiction. Contagion, The Andromeda Strain, The Quiet Earth, The Happening, The Crazies, pick your poison. Someone evoked Escape From New York this morning on Twitter, and it’s way too early in the morning for me to work out why. (That it can’t be good goes without saying.)
There’s been plenty of writing about the uptick of viewing of Contagion in particular. But if dark fantasy is now reality, what happens to cinema that was dedicated to documenting reality when that reality is now completely inaccessible? Is cinema verite, improbably, the new escapism?
That was the thought that I was left with after watching the legendary documentarian Albert Maysles’ (co-director of Grey Gardens, Salesman, and Gimme Shelter) final masterpiece, In Transit, which has long been suppressed for rights issues and is now screening on their website for free for a week. It’s only 70 minutes, but it’s an incredible window into a world that would have once seemed prosaic but now seems utterly fantastical.
The premise of In Transit, which was released in 2015 (the year of Maysles’ passing), is simple: following a train on a three-day journey across America. Maysles - who, I should note, in his whole-hearted communitarian way shares the “film by” credit with the three principal cinematographers and the editor - intercuts the east-west journey and the west-east journey, relying largely on pure observation with occasional casual interviews that play more as unprompted monologues.
The subjects of In Transit are of course themselves in transit, often at a crossroads at their life (even if one passenger hilariously debunks the notion of a crossroads being available to all Americans). For those who have seen The Overnighters, set in the oil boom town of Williston, North Dakota, this film will have an additional resonance as many of the passengers are heading to Williston to pursue riches in the oil fields. Others are starting their lives over in a new town, or returning to a partner to face a reckoning, or heading to family in order to give birth (a subplot which gives both unexpected tension and unexpected dividends).
I’ve always loved observational filmmaking - it’s a dream of mine to edit a purely observational film (it’s not in my constitution to shoot one) - and I’m used to people being a bit perplexed by that taste. But reality is all around you, why would you go to a cinema? A question I file next to How can you enjoy that horrible noise? or But there’s no story, so what’s the point? as historically unanswerable.
But lo and behold, in 2020, reality is suddenly no longer going around us. Two strangers sitting a seat’s length away and getting to know each other without wearing masks or carrying about hygiene seems as impossible to project one’s self into as a teleportation device. A chance encounter of a younger black man talking to an older black man, the former breaking down in tears, and the latter grasping his hand, goes beyond “right place, right time” camera and into sheer fantasyland, a document of grace from a time gone by.
And of course, there’s merely the aspect of seeing the world. I took the Northern Explorer train from Wellington to Auckland for the first time last year, and loved just sitting there, flipping through a pile of books, listening to Neil Young, and watching the country go by. (For the purest form of this, I recommend checking out Greenstone’s Go South, a train journey across New Zealand unencumbered by narration or characters, one of the riskiest and coolest productions I’m aware of in the last few years.) And In Transit takes plenty of time for seeing the journey, from beautiful mountains to barren oil fields. It’s always been a virtue of cinema that it can transport you around the world, and now that none of us can travel, its abilities in doing so are literally unattainable in reality.
But it’s the chance encounters of In Transit that resonated most for me. In the early days of the outbreak, when it seemed a matter for Italy, Sarah and I often thought back to this time last year, when we were fortunate enough to be in Europe. We had a few train journeys, of course, and would inevitably meet fellow passengers, sometimes just exchanging a few words or helping out with luggage, sometimes talking for an hour or two. Transit is a great leveller - while it’s not purely economically egalitarian (the aforementioned crossroads-commentator notes that if you’re really jobless you’re on a bus), it still gives you an opportunity to meet people from other walks of life that you’d never see otherwise.
How that even happens now is hard to understand. And now that the world of In Transit has gone from something that could be approximated at my local train station to something purely unattainable, even the most realism-averse viewer would have to agree that In Transit no longer offers us something that is all around us every day. The most real has become the purest escape. Go verite.
If you’re feeling like more observational documentary after that, and you’re in NZ, may I suggest you give streaming service DocPlay a go? Iris is there, as is National Gallery, by another grand lion of observational documentary, Frederick Wiseman. (It seems you can’t search for director on DocPlay, sadly, but there may be others.) Ten documentaries that I highly recommend (some of which I haven’t seen for a while and may be misremembering the level of observation): Pick of the Litter, Quest, The Ground We Won, City of Gold, Faces Places, A Band Called Death, Cameraperson, This Way of Life, Cutie and the Boxer, and, on the more experimental edge of things, On an Unknown Beach. (Most of these will be available internationally one way or another, American subscribers.
I woke up this morning to an email from Erased Tapes, the label of Nils Frahm - who somehow I totally forgot the other day when giving recommendations for ambient soundtrack-y music, and highly recommend - that today is Piano Day. If you want relaxing, mysterious, experimental piano music, click through that link for a Spotify playlist. Frahm has released a surprise new album today, Empty, and to be honest if you’re looking for a peaceful Sunday playlist I highly recommend scouring the Erased Tapes discography til you find the perfect soothing sounds that slot comfortably into your nervous system.
And finally, for anyone looking to go really deep on free streaming options, it will be impossible to beat this list from Leshu Torchin at St Andrews Film. I can’t even mentally process everything on it right now, but it’s a vast and deep resource that’s worth keeping a browser tab open for and scanning to see if anything jumps out at you.
Take care, and talk soon.
Doug