I discovered the work of the American documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman through sheer pot lock. I used to work for the film section of Time Out London magazine, and my job involved writing capsule reviews for repertory and festival screenings that were occurring across the capital. Usually, our team would be sent a bulging Jiffy Bag of DVD-Rs with mysterious titles daubed in marker pen. In 2006, while prepping for the upcoming London Film Festival, we received a huge pile of preview discs covering a bunch of sidebar titles that we were able to cover in advance, and they were doled out to me and my colleagues at random. I got handed a little plastic wallet, clasped with two rubber bands, and inside were two DVD-Rs with the name “State Legislature” written in giant black letters. (The reason I remember this detail so vividly is because I never actually returned the discs – sorry!). This was my movie meet-cute with the master.
Watching the film was something of a baptism of fire, in that all the formal guardrails of conventional documentary cinema were removed in the expectation that the viewer would expend a little energy to become attuned to its unique wavelength. There was no narration, no intertitles, no music, no fast cutting – nothing extraneous to necessity. The majority of Wiseman’s work involved viewing pockets of human activity and interaction through the prism of an institution or workplace, and wading blind into the 217 minute State Legislature was akin to the experience of being a gawky newbie starting a new job and having to feel your way into this alien environment. Yet as soon as Wiseman’s humble MO becomes apparent, his whole world (and worldview) is suddenly unlocked. He seldom strayed from a mode of filmmaking that he described as “fictional non-fiction”.
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But surely that’s a contradiction? How can subjectivity and objectivity co-exist together in the same frame? Wiseman made films in which he would strive to achieve something vaguely appropriating objectivity, in that he would make himself and his camera scarce and would never manipulate or choreograph the action that played out in front of him. Yet the subjectivity comes from the acknowledgment that the mere presence of a camera or a person holding a boom mic will naturally manipulate the behaviour of the subject, even to a degree that might be imperceptible to the viewer. As well, every edit or change of perspective delivers signals and manipulates our perception of time, which is something that is inherent to all film. Being allowed to peek in on meetings and sessions at the Idaho State Legislature is a way to have access to an unseen world. By the time of this film, in what would eventually amount to a six-decade career, Wiseman had honed his observational mode to the level of high art.
My Wiseman journey continued shortly after that with the help of the BFI Southbank’s DVD and Blu-ray shop which, in a previous incarnation, would stock titles from the US and overseas. As such, it stocked DVDs of Wiseman’s entire corpus (at a hefty but not exploitative price-hike considering the fact that many of the films ran across multiple discs), and I created a little Wiseman slush fund to be able to pick up one new film a month. I started at the beginning with his non-fiction debut, 1968’s Titicut Follies, about life in a men’s mental asylum in Massachusetts, which still remains one his most lauded and well-known films. It’s a stand-out title for the revelations it delivers about the ill-treatment of inmates, and it’s one of Wiseman’s most overtly political films – almost working as a piece of journalist activism. Indeed, so effective was it in presenting the casual inhumanity of this institution that it was banned for many years down to a legal loophole regarding the fact that its subjects were not of sound enough mind to give their consent to be filmed, despite the fact that Wiseman had received permission from the warden in advance.
My personal Wiseman journey extended through many years, and I got such a huge kick from being able to immerse myself in these miniature worlds for a few hours. His films were always different and always the same – using a range of structures and context to present human intimacy, human diplomacy and human discord in all its colourful and ambiguous (and literary!) beauty.
On the occasion of his death at the ripe age of 96, it’s worth saying that Wiseman was the rare filmmaker who never made a bad film and, in fact, was making some of his best during his eight and ninth decades (National Gallery, At Berkeley, Ex Libris: The New York Public Library). My personal favourite of his films is 1997’s Public Housing which offers a lyrical survey of the Ida B Wells housing development in Chicago, documenting the realities of life close to the poverty line, but creating something that borders on the symphonic with regards to its images and the editing. While we are allowed access to residents meetings and the workings of various municipal offices, the film also hones in on the rhythms and repetitions of life on the estate, everything is always different but somehow always the same. Just thinking about it causes me to be overcome with melancholy.
It’s always sad when one of the true maestros dies, but Wiseman leaves behind him one of the most impressive, expansive and rich bodies of work of any artist in the modern age. Here’s hoping that the closure of his project will lead many others to start their own journey through his worlds.
