CAMERAPERSON (2016)
Directed by Kirsten
Johnson
Big Mouth
Productions, 102 minutes, Not-Rated
* * *
Kirsten Johnson is a documentary filmmaker best known for
her work on productions such as Citizenfour
(2014), her look at Edward Snowden; Darfur
Now (2007); and This Film is Not Yet
Rated (2006), a takedown of the politics of Hollywood ratings codes. Her
newest project, Trapped, has been
making its way across college campuses this spring, as its topic—the backdoor
efforts to limit access to abortion services—is a hot-button issue.
Like most documentarians, though, the few things for which
Johnson is known are but the iceberg’s tip of her career. Much of the larger
body of work has been behind the camera, either for her own small films or as a
hired lens crafter for projects directed by others. She has done camera work,
for instance, on several Michael Moore films. Cameraperson is a pastiche of her resume, with an intriguing twist.
Its major point is to see subjects as if you are the eye of the lens. The
approach is both personal and voyeuristic; in essence, it’s both revelatory and
sometimes faintly unsettling. The idea intrigues, though sometimes the final
product is stronger in conception than in execution.
To say that Johnson’s past oeuvre is catholic in an
understatement. In addition to the subjects mentioned above, Johnson’s cameras
have probed topics such as military women and rape, genital mutilation in
Ghana, midwives in Nigeria, the relationship of humans and thinking animals,
gay Jews, the philosopher Jacques Derrida, Mormons, and Chinese medicine. She
made films in France, but has spent a lot of time in Africa and in the Balkans.
If there are any constant themes in her work, they are: social activism, the
roles of women across the globe, the effects of war on women, the dangers of
militarism, and power relations. How, exactly, does one summarize such
eclecticism?
There is, of course, no imperative that films have a strict
narrative structure. Johnson opts for a bathing-in-images approach akin to that
of Koyaanisqatsi (1982) or Baraka (1992), except her film eschews
quick-cuts and has more dialogue. It’s a sampler approach with culls that stand
independently of each other, yet are incomplete in and of themselves. We watch
a Nigerian midwife impassively deliver two children, one of which is healthy
and the other of which appears unlikely to survive; listen to an old Muslim
woman with wrecked teeth and posture tell us of her former beauty and her
current optimism; follow Derrida across a street while holding court; notice
Michael Moore ambushing an interviewee; and witness war’s devastation in
numerous locales. We can only infer how any of these things end.
I’d like to say that all of this works as well as Koyaanisqatsi or Baraka, but that’s not the case. In the former, the image is the
story; in Johnson’s films, the story is the story but we must infer it from the
images. When it works, it’s spot on, but I often found myself struggling for
enough context to understand why Johnson picked a particular slice of film over
another. Cameraperson is under two
hours in length, yet it feels longer because of the amount of intellectual
energy needed to stay engaged. Should you see it? Yes—the virtues are worth
it—but be prepared for an uneven journey that could use a tough editor to sort.
I’d also say that if individual clips fail to resonate, just let that be the
case. There is no grand theme other than seeing things from the POV of the
lens, so you’ll be just fine if you tune in and out. --Rob
Weir
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