Monrovia Indiana
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“I Learned From the First Film Exactly What He Wants”: Jon Davey, Frederick Wiseman’s Longtime DP, Speaks
In another life, John Davey could have been a doctor. He was studying to become one in 1966 when a mining disaster struck the Welsh village of Aberfan, some 20 miles from his campus. Davey heard the news and set off to volunteer with a group of fellow med students. They didn’t know it at the time, but the avalanche had hit an elementary school, burying more than 100 children alive. Their job, it turned out, was to retrieve the bodies. The experience rattled Davey, who was just 19 at the time. “I realized,” he recalls now, “I wasn’t really […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Dec 17, 2018 -
“It’s Impossible to Predict [an Audience’s] Reactions, and I Make No Effort to Do It”: Frederick Wiseman on Monrovia, Indiana and His 51-Year Career
In the last 51 years, Frederick Wiseman has made 42 non-fiction films, plus two fiction features. In a sense, each film is the same: The filmmaker, a sprightly and sharp 88, goes to an institution — or, in a handful of cases, a confined area — with a small crew. (Currently it’s his longtime cameraman John Davey and Davey’s assistant Jim Bishop.) Wiseman doesn’t do research; as he’s said countless times, “The shooting is the research.” He does no interviews. There is no onscreen text describing who is who, or even where is where. He rarely shows any person more than once. […]
by Matt Prigge on Oct 26, 2018 -
NYFF 2018 Critic’s Notebook 1: Monrovia, Indiana, American Dharma
It’s fitting that the first two films I saw at NYFF after returning from TIFF were Frederick Wiseman’s Monrovia, Indiana and Errol Morris’s American Dharma. It’s not that you never hear Our 45th President’s name in Canada (given that we’re at Twitter war with them or whatever the status is), but it doesn’t come up as much; to return to two movies that wrestle with Trump’s America was very much a “welcome home, whether you like it or not” moment. Monrovia is a highlight among Wiseman’s recent work, while Dharma continues what’s basically been a decade-plus downward spiral for Morris; nonetheless, the two pair […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 30, 2018 -
Venice 2018 Critic’s Notebook: Sunset, Vox Lux and Monrovia, Indiana
Walking out of László Nemes’ Sunset, I was gripped by the same stupefaction I had felt upon first seeing such films as The Dreamed Path or Post Tenebras Lux: though unable to make full sense of the experience or form a definite judgement, I was pretty sure I had just witnessed something genuinely great. This impression has only grown stronger since. In Sunset, Nemes employs a formal strategy very similar to the one from Son of Saul, stringing together a series of propulsive and staggeringly complex handheld shots that stick close to the protagonist at all times, while the intricate […]
by Giovanni Marchini Camia on Sep 6, 2018
