Zul's Writing Sample (Film Reviews)

Writing Sample (1) Spotlight: A Documentary Strategy in a Feature Film a Film Review

Spotlight, a film directed by Tom McCharty, is in my opinion an exceptional film.

It tells the story of a team of journalists conducting an investigation concerning a child abuse scandal that had occurred in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States of America, particularly in Boston, Massachusetts. The investigation result was published in The Boston Globe daily in 2001 and it won the Pulitzer Prize, a prestigious award for journalistic and literary writings.

Spotlight shows strong language clarity, in which it goes straight to the point of the issue and does not contain insignificant subplots as several other Hollywood movies do. I believe this film becomes powerful by utilizing the strategy of documentary filmmaking. It focuses on the investigation process intending to reveal a sensitive case to be discussed. The plot is neatly composed through the element of continuity that is intertwined by a single issue. It becomes the fundamental difference between films with a narrative approach and films with a documentary approach. In a documentary film, the main part of the issue is on how the film can speak and end up properly. This is different to a narrative film that often struggles with the drama of the protagonist against antagonist attempting to achieve their goals and eventually concludes with a predictable ending.

In Spotlight, the appeal and strength of the documentary approach strategy is shown because the director assisted by his fellow-screenwriter, Josh Singer, did not focus on the headlines that became the end of this journalistic coverage. Instead, it features the story of the characters when they were collecting information and clues, opening old archives, or interviewing the victims and other things related to the case. This plot made me feel as if I were watching a behind the scene story of a high integrity journalistic investigation process. The journalists are portrayed as not merely chasing headlines to attract their readers, but they do what they are supposed to do, which is revealing the truth and exposing it to be publicly known.

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We may view that the subject of this film is the journalists who attempted to meet the informants (victims, lawyers, relevant organizations, etc.), collected data, encountered bureaucratic hurdles, editorial pressures, or other things which had hindered the pursuit of actual news (as is the 9/11 headline). Such prevailing plot in this film is a full representation on how subjectivity or point of view become very important, which is exactly a part of the documentary film strategy. At the end of the movie, I came to realize that the film provided no visual embellishment. The absence of “over the top� narrative style in this film instills deep impact to the viewers and demonstrates the pure power of narration by itself, although maintaining a documentary strategy.

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(2) A Story of Snowden: Between two different storytelling A critical observation on how documentary filmmaking and feature film tells the story of one person

The story of Edward Snowden may be familiar due to several media coverage regarding his controversial story that occurred between 2013 and 2014. A documentary film entitled “Citizenfour” directed by Laura Poitras outstandingly articulates the Snowden story. Recently, there is another work based on the documentary drama genre directed by Oliver Stone entitled “Snowden” which was released on September 2016.

Citizenfour strengthened the facts behind the story of the infamous whistleblower, Edward Snowden. The Snowden case was initially disclosed together by a journalist, Glen Greenwald, and a senior reporter of The Guardian, Ewen MacAskill. The spotlight of the film recounted a series of account when Poitras was initially contacted by Snowden via graphic text on seemingly encrypted email communication. The film is structured to lead us to the confidential issue which is crucial to be subsequently revealed. The scenes were intertwined with the big narratives on how the state had to address the allegations pertaining to illegal acquisition of the public’s personal information through communication channels. Additionally, the fact regarding the public’s daily activities that have been deeply connected with data and internet, shows the prevailing gap between illegal wiretapping and surveillance on people's life which started to become intriguing.

Moreover, the matter was later confirmed by a number of facts revealed by William Biney, a veteran NSA employee who is an expert in the technology of metadata. In Citizenfour, Snowden is not positioned as a main character but rather as a small narrative who emerged furious against the state that is conducting illegal wiretapping on the majority of American citizen, even the world.

In the docudrama film entitled Snowden directed by Oliver Stone, there is a similar opening scene with a situation in which Poitras and Greenwald meets Snowden in the hotel somewhere in Hong Kong. The plot of the film is formed around their several days interview of digging further into the data of secret information Snowden possesses.

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What makes this film different to Citizenfour is that the plot focuses on Snowden’s personal aspect, his history and his biography. The story is arranged as such to show the process of Snowden’s personal development from wanting to serve his country, then he turned out to be a whistleblower and eventually labeled as a state traitor. This film seems to answer the question of how and why the figure of Snowden finally emerged to the surface to reveal the illegal practices conducted by the state upon public.

In summary, the comparison between both films, which narrate a similar person, incident and issue, is as stated in the following passages. Firstly, documentary film always pivots on the issue and the information that the filmmaker wants to convey; and the conflict happening in the documentary film was more focused on the act of the main character against the system that led to a massive impact. Unlike the documentary film, Snowden which is similar to most Hollywood movie production, highlights the dramatization of Snowden himself. The scenes appearing in the film still showed the interrelation of each characters. I think there is a lack of scenes showing Snowden’s relationship with his girlfriend and the debate with O’Brian, his superior in the CIA, and many more. Fortunately, no antagonist character appears in the film to obstruct or oppose his actions. The absence of the antagonist is not unlike the state’s measures which were taken regarding the serious leak of information or the unintended consequence of Snowden’s disclosure, which made this film seemingly attempting to avoid the actual crux of the problem and being satisfied with a secure and familiar approach on the topic of people’s resistance against the system.

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(3) A Creative Reunion and Reenactment A film review of “This Ain’t California” a hybrid Documentary film by Marten Piersil (Winner of German Film Festival critic competition 2014, Jakarta, Indonesia)

It still resonates in my mind how a classic footage of 8 mm film showing children’s agility playing skateboard in a neighborhood somewhere in East Germany, during the period before the collapse of the Berlin wall. At first, the remarkably detailed footages raised a question in me, particularly, how deliberate and useful were those casual recording at the time? A film camera with an 8 mm medium could be the most hyped gadget for youngsters back in the ‘80s, which is not unlike today’s mirror-less camera.

Hence, it could have easily recorded the activities of young people playing skateboard during the suffering years of division between East and West Germany.

Initially, I took a personal interest in this film as it tells the history of the skateboard movement in East Germany during the mid 1980s. This film is certainly an interesting show for its content and its whole film because of the skateboarding background in itself. Yet, watching through the film, another question comes to mind: “Did all of those classic events in this film really happen?”. This is a fair question as before screening this film, the director provides an introduction stating that the film is a combination of several recording events, original footages, scene reconstructions, animation and also talking head interviews. The director himself declared this film as a combination of documentary and fiction film, or a hybrid film.

Reunion and reenactment In terms of narration, this film is led by the story of a character named Denis “Panik” Paraceck. He and his friends began his story and adventure by playing skateboard. Their activities and events took place in mid 1980s when skateboard was considered to be a brutal game without rules, which was a stark contrast to East Germany’s condition at the time. Shortly, they were reunited because of a news about Denis’ death in the battlefield. They were actually curious why the brutal Denis could have an idea to join the army, which ultimately led him to the battlefield in Afghanistan.

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During Denis’ funeral, without a plan, his childhood skateboarding friends had gathered. When this scene was shown, I began to feel a different introductory scene to that often found in documentary film story. The choice of story-telling by presenting Denis’ childhood friends, gathering in a place where they played skateboard together, gave the impression of a fascinating reunion. Such reunion culture is actually very effective to present and tell a given moment in the past. The process of articulating their youth nostalgia is very thorough and varied with classic footages as I mentioned earlier.

Eventually, I realized that those classic footages are clearly fiction, which at first it functioned as an additional information of reenacting past events. This technique opened my mind to how creative the director was in building up the sense of reenactment. The use of an 8 mm camera, costumes and fashion models designed as in the 1980s, with other supporting properties, made this reenactment successful in manipulating the common audience.

Who is Denis?

Denis is actually the main axis of the film’s narrative which mixes animation, reenactment, and current dialogue. This film continuously raises tickling questions until the end. Ultimately, this film leaves a big question, “Does the Denis character really exist, or not? Or is he just the director’s imagination?”. I looked into the matter further and discovered that the Denis character does exist, and he is still alive. As told in the film, it is true that Denis joined the army and wanted to die in the battlefield, but he had failed.

Now he is back in Berlin and has become an alcoholic. The Denis character in the film is actually played by a model and actor, who is also a modern skateboarder from Germany named Kai Hillebrandt.

This film, personally, reopened broad possibilities in exploring the film medium, by breaking the boundary between documentary and fiction. In fact, the most important lesson learned pertains to how a director can tell a story through the medium of film by using creative intersecting approaches.

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