This film is very interesting because it looks at both people in general and at a specific element of the American society: the Christian sub-culture.
The message for our society in general is that when we concentrate on our own self-fulfillment, we will often times hurt those around us who we should be caring for instead. (I personally sensed a deeper message than this that the director was attempting to communicate, but we’ll cover that in the ending section of content.) Many times throughout the movie, Brian opts to ignore his wife, not help his son with projects, and not pay any attention to his sister. (At one point, it’s brought to his attention that he has no idea even what his sister does for a living, despite the fact that she pays for all of his bills. At another point, she leaves and has been gone for three days before he notices, and then, only because he wanted her to massage his head and she doesn’t come when he bellows for her.) The arrogant, self-centered nature of Brian is one that is very common in America, especially in the new “Me” Generation, full of personal entertainment, personal fulfillment, and personal comfort.
The more specific message was aimed at the Christian sub-culture, a portion of American society that has largely commercialized Christianity and turned it into a group of isolated cliques sporting catch-phrased bumper stickers and Icthuses. This isolation and commercialism is in stark contrast to the teachings of the Christian Bible, which emphasizes brotherly love and the fact that salvation is free to all who believe in Christ. Because of how hypocritical much of this sub-culture is, the director aims both barrels firmly at it, showcasing its hypocrisy through both Aaron and Brian. The easily swayed character of Aaron is willing to believe everything that Brian says, no matter how much it disagrees with the Christian Bible and who sports a myriad of Christian-ese slogan shirts like, “God is da Bomb”, “The Fashion of the Christ”, and “Get Up with Christ”. Meanwhile, Brian claims to be an ambassador of God, yet blatantly refuses to help a homeless man, insults people in the streets while claiming to “help” them, and only appears to have a passing familiarity with the Bible. (This doesn’t prevent him from making up sections of the Bible on the fly, however.)
Despite all the things the film does well, it does have some issues. Primarily, the conclusion of the film as it ends right now is a little anti-climactic. It’s anti-climactic because, for a general message, the moral that being arrogant leads to confusion and chaos is a bit of a letdown. It’s not that it isn’t valid, it’s just that it isn’t quite enough to justify the entire movie.
I talked with the director and he expressed that his overarching intent was to show when we, as people, try to wait until we find our “most special” purpose, we often miss all the day-to-day things that we could be doing that are special. In the case of Brian, he’s so busy trying to find a special purpose and trying to be a regional messiah that he neglects his family, failing to realize that he should be a special, loving husband and father before worrying about other special purposes. I felt this was a very good intent, but it’s currently not shown very clearly in the film. Luckily, this is not terribly hard to remedy.
While I haven’t mentioned the ending of the film (so as to not bring up too much of a spoiler) it can easily be inferred from my review so far that Brian has a serious reality check about the whole “regional messiah” thing. After that reality check, he has a moment of clarity in which he can choose to learn from his mistakes, but, instead, chooses to persist in his own ignorance and arrogance. As the film ends, and both Brian and Aaron are pretty much where we discovered them in the first place, the camera goes back to Miriam, who has been the viewpoint of objectivity for the entire film, and the interviewer asks if “she has a special purpose” herself. At this point we hear the brothers try to kill one another on the back porch and we can easily infer that her purpose is to look after these two grown men who act like they’re children.
If that one shot could be redone, all we would need for her to say is, “Maybe when you spend all your time searching for your special purpose, you miss the day-to-day opportunities to be special to the people around you.” That one statement brings up the concepts of self-sacrifice and altruism that Miriam’s character truly represents in this film and that would make the desired ending much more clear for many more people.
Visual Look
I never thought I would say this in a review. This film looks too good. I’m serious. It actually looks too good. Or, rather, more appropriately, it looks too good for what it is trying to look like.
Why do I say this? Well, Chris Hansen, the director, actually has access to the Sony HDW-F900. (For those of you who don’t know, that’s the $120,000 camera that George Lucas shot Star Wars: Episode II with. No, Chris Hansen isn’t ludicrously rich; he just happens to works for a college that owns the camera.) As such, many of the scenes in this film just look way too polished for a documentary. Documentaries, even in the best of circumstances, can almost never be shot on better than 16mm film because of how much film must be shot to make the documentary. A mockumentary is designed to look exactly like a documentary in order for the audience to suspend their disbelief. As such, when you watch a mockumentary that looks like it was shot on Super35mm, you have problems with suspending your disbelief.
[Note to the Director: My recommendation is to run the footage through Magic Bullet’s MisFire engine until you get it to look approximately like it was originated on 16mm film. That or you can do a fair amount of grain and motion work with Nattress’ FilmLook 2.5 plug-ins for FCP. Yes, I know it hurts to damage a film, but I honestly think that the project will look better for doing it to it. This is Spinal Tap was a success largely because it looked so much like a real documentary.]
