Though this film follows the documentary format, it more closely resembles that of an investigative journalism piece. While I do get the sense that certain parties involved in all this controversy were rather difficult to get a hold of, the film seems to get rather dangerously close to being a bit one-sided. At the end, there was a title card that mentioned how correspondence sent to certain individuals was never responded to, which was a good inclusion. Though it might be a good idea to mention this connection throughout the movie, as is usually done in investigative journalism pieces.
Visual Look
There were some good shots in this movie – while most documentaries only contain stationary shots, quite a few in this movie were done handheld. This made a nice change and gave the film some variety. However a lot of these handheld shots had a bit of shake to them. Most shook just a little bit, but there were a few that got distracting.
Toward the end of the film there was a handheld interview with Anonka, during which the camera moved around a lot. It was also held very close to her face, which sometimes caused the audio to be distorted. Plus she was obviously emotional, so the entire sequence was hard to understand. My guess is that the director wanted to capture her emotion at the time, which is good; but the segment should’ve been cut down, or at least used in connection with a voice-over of some sort, to make it a little easier on the audience.
Some of the interview shots were set at awkward angles – in an interview with a lawyer from Kentucky the camera was set more off to the side. Plus, at the location where most of Anonka’s interviews took place, the camera was set very high up so that the viewer was almost looking down on her; that shot also seemed to be lit from above, which created shadows under Anonka’s eyes. As she is the type of woman who is always wearing black, it’s possible that she wanted to be dimly-lit, but the shot just looks awkward. It really should’ve been done at eye-level, with more even lighting, like the interviews with her children, Tamara and Rocky.
In addition, there was one interview shot where the interviewer actually moved into shot briefly, which was a real distraction. A couple of the interview shots were out of focus, at least briefly, and during some sequences, where pieces of the interviews had been edited together, a few were edited with cuts when dissolves really should’ve been used instead.
Use of Audio
One thing that I really liked about this movie came near the very end. The director included a recorded phone call between himself and Anonka, which played over images of the museum, complete with a “for sale” sign in the window. In the audio Anonka explained that they had to sell the museum, because of her daughter’s divorce, but that she now had a 10-acre farm outside Caro. The images worked nicely with the audio of the phone call – which was very well-recorded. That sequence, combined with a final, brief interview, was a really great way to finish off the movie.
