I can think of no better first (real) post for this blog than a presentation of a few offbeat documentaries. Unusual topics handled in an unconventional manner are precisely what Vilettante demands - so, let's get to it.
First in the docket is Carts Of Darkness (2008 JustWatch, Tubi), directed by Murray Siple, who was formerly a director of snowboard videos until a tragic accident left him a paraplegic. This was his first film in ten years.
Carts Of Darkness delves into the lives of a small circle of homeless men dwelling in Vancouver, British Columbia who make a living by collecting recyclables with the aid of shopping carts, trading them in for cash...and, when the opportunity arises, riding said shopping carts down Vancouver's many hills, at speeds approaching 40 mph (>60 kph). (If you didn't know a cart could roll that fast, I'll bet the engineers who designed them didn't, either.) One might be tempted to think of these sequences as a loose equivalent of the infamous American "bum fighting" videos of the 2000s, in which exploitation filmmakers with camcorders would pay homeless people small amounts of money to engage in Jackass-style dangerous stunts or simply beat each other up. The difference here is that the homeless men in Carts Of Darkness are riding their carts freely of their own volition, without anyone encouraging or ordering them to do it. And clearly having a good time on the roll, judging from all of their whooping and hollering.
Vancouver is prosperous, as North American cities go, and there isn't any one cause for the homelessness depicted in Carts. Some of the men in the film have severe legal problems, some are alcoholic or mentally ill, and some simply don't want to be part of society, don't see why they should obey its demands and accept its compromises. Carts is non-judgmental; it simply presents these people to the camera and viewer as they are, in their own words, without holier-than-thou criticism of their lives and without presenting well-meaning but ill-founded solutions to their situations. I was particularly struck by one man explaining why he preferred camping out in the woods to spending his nights in a shelter; as he put it, out in the woods, he only had to deal with his own problems, but in the shelter, he had to deal with the problems of everyone else there, too. As an introvert who usually prefers solitude, I can only applaud that statement.
In his voiceover, the director expresses a certain admiration for these men and their willingness to live their lives by their own rules. As he becomes more involved with the cart-riders, he begins to see their DIY sport as a substitute for the snowboarding that he documented before he lost the use of his legs; a vicarious way to obtain the speed and adrenaline that he lost as a disabled person. He comes to inhabit their world, which had existed around his home in the city for years without him ever knowing. He wishes that he could participate with them, instead of merely driving his van downhill alongside them; but since rolling at that speed in a wheelchair and coming out unscathed is not practicable, he can't. ...That is, until the end of the film, when a solution is found and the director does participate in the cart racing. But I'm not going to spoil how that happens.
Carts Of Darkness is one of the many documentaries on streaming services that I discovered purely by chance. I would never have thought to search for it, nor would I have even suspected that such a documentary even existed. It's about as unique a film as you're likely to ever see - though it'll surely have some competition on this blog.
The second of this post's docs is Mountain (2017, JustWatch, Tubi), directed by Jennifer Peedom, and with a pleasingly minimalist narration written by the director and Robert MacFarlane and well-delivered by Willem Dafoe, The mostly-classical soundtrack is performed by the Australia Chamber Orchestra, and includes selections of works by Vivaldi, Beethoven, and Chopin.
I strongly recommend watching this on the largest screen available; your phone simply can't do it justice. Mountain, surprisingly, is about mountains. More specifically, it's about mountains and humans, about the reactions that they provoke and the dreams that they inspire by the people who gaze at them, scale them, slide down them, and sometimes die on them. As the narration points out, the now-common desire to travel to and climb mountains is a recent innovation; prior to the advent of Alpinism (romanticism of the European Alps) in the 18th century, mountains in most of the world were more likely to be seen as forbidden or sacrosanct, the domains of gods and demons. Places to revered or dreaded, but always held far beyond arm's-length, and never entered.
The film includes many soaring shots of mountainscapes, and may be unnerving to watch for acrophobes. There are several extended sequences of Koyaanisqatsi-style time-lapse photography, including one stunning sequence of a ski resort that I could only describe as "The Grid" of mountain documentaries. Snippets of films of 20th century mountaineering expeditions as well as footage taken by modern mountaineers are included, but the undoubted climax of Mountain is an extended montage of a wide array of mountain
extreme sports, including skiing and snowboarding, tightrope-walking, mountain biking,
BASE jumping, wingsuiting, and parasailing. About all that's missing is zorbing!
The narration speaks of mountains as metaphors, symbols upon which are projected dreams, desires, and fears. With increasing industrialization and urbanization over the past couple of centuries, the adventures and dangers of everyday life have increasingly been replaced with routine and comfort. As Mountain posits it, the desire to travel to and climb mountains may then stem from the unfulfillment of dwelling in artificial, controlled places; the untamed danger of mountains is the stark opposite (or so we tell ourselves). In truth, there's been an increasing familiarity with even the highest mountains since the early 20th century, and particularly since the the first successful ascent of Mt. Everest in 1953, after which mountaineering vastly increased in popularity. This habituation of once-legendary mountains has resulted in, if not contempt, a certain lack of regard for the power of the peaks - notably for Everest, which hosts thousands of climbers every year. The narration likens managing these cramponed legions to crowd control; considering the footage of the crowded routes and base camps in the film, the analogy is quite accurate. It's also noted that climbers are often from wealthy countries, and the native peoples who assist them, such as the Sherpas of the Himalayas, take the most risks, yet receive the least recognition. But, despite all of this, mountains still have the capacity to humble the most prideful soul. Their indifference to the humans fascinated by them can exhilarate, challenge, wound (mentally and physically), or restore a sense of wonder.
While generally agreeing with the film's conclusions, I think the narration may have over-generalized the lack of interest in scaling peaks in pre-modern cultures. Long before Europeans arrived in the New World, some of the people dwelling in the Andes did climb their mountains, sometimes to altitudes that modern mountaineers normally wouldn't attempt without supplemental oxygen. The archaeological record of the area bears this out, and the lack of evidence for such early ascents elsewhere in the world may owe more to a dearth of study than to a dearth of ancient mountain climbers. Also, given the subject matter, I would've preferred a less anthropocentric approach. There are only a few shots of mountain wildlife in the film, and a naive viewer might come away from Mountain thinking that the world's high places are as barren as the deepest desert - which they (usually) aren't. Perhaps the filmmakers could've delved a little into, say, the complicated relationships of Ibex and Chamois with European Alpinists, or the reverence that many South American cultures had for the Andean Condor? Or pointed out that any plant and animal species that were formerly more widespread have now been forced into the refuge of mountains by human persecution - and, due to disturbance from many of the activities depicted in the film, may not persist even there?
Minor quibbles aside, Mountain is a joy to watch and listen to, and it challenges the viewer about their own conceptions and experiences of mountains - certainly it made me ponder some of mine. Think of it as an unusually long (and unusually well-written) IMAX special that provides just as much food for thought as visual spectacle.
Last up is Into Eternity (2010 JustWatch, Kanopy), directed by Michael Madsen. This film is an examination of Onkalo (approximate translation: "hiding place"), a nuclear waste storage repository currently being excavated in Finland. Upon completion, it will consist of a series of tunnels, shafts, and storage cells buried about 500 meters (1,640 ft) underground, to shield all surface life from the radiation of its contents. The entire construct is planned to be more than 4 kilometers (2.5 mi) long, all of it blasted and bored through solid rock. It is projected to be complete and full of radioactive waste to capacity in the early 22nd century, at which point its entrance will be plugged with concrete and paved over, allowing human and natural development to continue over it.
Most documentaries about an engineering topic like this would instruct about the how and why; the experiences and skills of the people involved, the techniques and tools that they use, and their expectations for the construct once it's complete. Whilst Into Eternity delves into some of this, it's more concerned with the present and future ramifications of Onkalo. What makes the film stand out is its philosophical, long-view approach, and the unavoidable temporal weight that the project and the people involved must carry. Most modern "permanent" buildings are designed to last for 40-50 years, perhaps a century. While it's a proverb that time fears the Egyptian pyramids, the truth is that just a few thousand years (and erosion, and the Egyptians themselves) have turned them into decrepit, decaying hulks that any self-respecting pharaoh would refuse to be entombed in. Onkalo, by its very purpose of safely storing waste that will remain radioactive and dangerous for tens of thousands of years, must remain intact and capable of securing storing its contents for at least 100,000 years. To put that into perspective, the designers of Onkalo have had to take the next projected ice age, perhaps 60,000 years from now, into account - and to do their best to ensure that it will remain intact for tens of millennia after the glaciers roll over it, and after they retreat again.
It hardly needs to be said that many people have strong opinions about nuclear power, the radioactive waste that it produces, and the dilemma of what should be done with this waste. Into Eternity isn't much concerned with those debates; it presents nuclear power and the waste that it inevitably produces as a fait accompli. Regardless of how one feels about it, it exists, and it isn't going away any time soon, particularly considering current attempts to phase out fossil fuels. The film is essentially calm and contemplative in its approach; though there are differing opinions about many aspects of the project, there are no real arguments. There isn't very much that even happens onscreen, aside from from some controlled blasting of Onkalo's underground tunnels. Yet Into Eternity is pervaded throughout with an eerie, unsettling tone; partly due to the danger inherent in its subject matter, partly because Onkalo is being excavated beneath an idyllic Scandinavian forest, but more particularly because of the uncertainty of it all. Involvement with a project like this could be compared to standing on the edge of an abyss, far too deep to see the bottom of, yet knowing that there are people, not much unlike you, inhabiting those depths. If presented with a pile of large rocks and ordered that you must drop them over the precipice, knowing that doing so might very well harm someone that you'll never meet, how would you feel? What precautions would you take? Would you lose any sleep over it?
The film includes portions of interviews with Finnish government officials, some of the scientists and engineers who conceptualized and designed Onkalo, and the workers who are building it. Many of their remarks, and the director's narration, are delivered as though addressing the inhabitants of the far future - specifically, people who have hypothetically discovered the site and are attempting to enter it, exposing themselves to the radiation of its contents. Such human intrusion is one of the biggest concerns about the facility, resulting in much discussion regarding how it can be avoided. Into Eternity studies a problem familiar to students of deep time: Just how is it possible to communicate even so rudimentary a concept as "DANGER" to people who won't be born until the far distant future, long after all current languages and other means of communication will have either vanished or evolved beyond recognition? Various methods of doing this are discussed, mainly involving stone slabs carved with warning messages and/or nonverbal threats, while a number of people involved in the project suggest that the best solution, once Onkalo is complete and full of waste, is to simply bury all traces of it and hope that it's never discovered again. The documentary leaves it to the viewer to decide whether it would be better to remember, to preserve the memory of the site for generations to come; or, in this case, to forget.
Well, that wraps up the first real post on Vilettante. I hope I've managed to interest readers in the works that I've discussed. Remember, we're just scratching the surface of what's available out there, and when parking yourself in front of a screen, you don't have to settle for whatever happens to be trending.
More to follow!
