Mockumentary is a powerful tool, which is becoming more and more common. It can be a very sloppy way of avoiding style decisions, because it is a form which precludes artfulness, and enables background information to be read into the material in the simplest possible way. Cut to interview.

For filmmakers, it is a strange, almost pornographic fascination. To pervert reality, to convince an audience that something is real when it’s not, using bits and pieces of archival film and the adroit use of eyelines, reaction shots and enveloping soundscapes. The trickiness is joyous.

Mostly, the form is used for comic purposes, as in the famed and ubiquitous Spinal Tap. But it can be a powerful way of exploring conditional reality, the “what ifs” of political decisions.

Peter Watkins moved from the dramatised documentary of Culloden to the make-believe of The War Game, in which he demonstrated what would happen if Britain was attacked by nuclear weapons. It was a generally terrifying film, made on a very low budget, mixing wobbly footage, hypothetical responses and the existing plans of government. The BBC banned it, Watkins protested, and never worked again in the official British system which has a very long memory. He found the situation so distressing I believe it corroded his personality.

There is a unique kind of chaos in these films, in which the audience is terrified out of its wits, and then has to claw its way out by identifying what is and is not actual. If we watch a documentary about the tsunami, for instance, we have been through the emotional experience of accepting it, grieving, and adjusting our place in the world. See something convincing, which is making the temporary assertion that it is real, which precipitates us into a terrifying situation, and we are close to having the initial experience, unmediated by previous knowledge.

When Leslie Woodhead’s film A Çry from the Grave, about the massacre at Srebrenica in the presence of Dutch peacekeepers, was run at the Rotterdam Film Festival, the audience was exposed to a piece of reality which was both horrible and seen for the very first time, because it had been so poorly covered by the news. I have been told that the audience became very distressed, and some people were sick in the aisles.

Now American audiences, who valorise their President in ways which bewilder the rest of us, are faced with Death of a President, the seamless reconstruction of President Bush’s assassination, in 2008. This is apparently Forest Gump taken much further, where fictional characters can be convincingly dropped into real moments, to reversion reality. Stalin would have cried with joy. The world would remember him sharing that podium with Lenin in 1917, side by side with the heroes of the Revolution as Trotsky would have been dragged off a horse, still dressed in the uniform of a White Russian general…

The Americans are not too pleased. Newmarket Films spent a million dollars to acquire the rights, but distributors are turning away.

… several major theater chains are refusing to play the film, which mixes real news footage with dramatized segments depicting the fictional 2007 death of President Bush.

Newmarket, the 12-year-old Los Angeles-based film financing, production and distribution company, plans to open the film October 27, just in time for the November 7 election.

“Yes, it’s controversial,” Newmarket co-founder Chris Ball said. “It’s quite a compelling political thriller. In many ways it is sympathetic to George Bush. It talks about a rush to judgment. In no way is it a call for violence.”

But the country’s largest theater chain, Regal Entertainment Group, has passed on playing the film, citing the subject matter as the primary reason. “We would not be inclined to program this film,” Regal Entertainment Group CEO Mike Campbell said. “We feel it is inappropriate to portray the future assassination of a sitting president, regardless of political affiliation.”

Texas-based Cinemark USA also has declined to play the indie film, corporate spokesman Terrell Falk said. The circuit, which recently completed its acquisition of northern California-based Century Theatres, will not allow the regional player to book the film either. “We’re not playing it on any of our screens,” Falk said. “It’s a subject matter we don’t wish to play. We decided to pass on the film.”…

… Newmarket distribution consultant Richard Abramowitz insisted he was having no trouble booking the film, which initially will open in several hundred locations… “We’re getting a good reception in a lot of places. No matter how tight the screens are, once a film has success, it’s always easier to get more screens.”…

…One distribution executive questioned the wisdom of rushing “President” into cinemas in advance of the election. “In the midst of all the backlash and controversy it seems to make sense to ride the moment,” he said. “The film is so topical and incendiary, you’d think that to wait is to waste it. But the film may not have enough time to gestate and get the best theaters booked. They are finding out how difficult and crazy this timing is.”

“President” marks Newmarket’s bid to reclaim its title as a champion of product other distributors deem untouchable. The distribution arm was built from the ground up in 2000 surrounding the release of Christopher Nolan’s “Memento” when other distributors passed on the film. It eventually took the movie to a $25 million North American gross and went on to a winning streak with “Whale Rider,” “Monster” and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”

I don’t know what I think about this. I would like to acknowledge that the film was made for British television, not to be shown to Americans just before the mid-term elections. Does Newmarket simply see this as a marketing exercise, as a self-consciously provocative company with no particular politics seizing a chance when the nation will respond?

I suspect so, given that their range of films is so eclectic. Unlike the Michael Moore films, this has no clear pro or anti Bush agenda – critics are claiming it invokes a visceral support for Bush, and also revealing the depths of xenophobia and the legal structures of repression. As The Guardian said in its review:

“… the rightwing press has actually jumped on this film erroneously. Far from a prescription, it is a powerful life-insurance policy for the president – for what it shows us is that the consequences of his assassination would be far, far worse than any denial of civil liberties or foreign invasions already under way. Cheney as 44th president? Syria on alert? Patriot Act III? An innocent scapegoat in custody?

Provocative it certainly is. The Hollywood Reporter hates it. The film

“uses the morally dubious tactic of mixing real news footage with staged events to create an imagined assassination of President George W. Bush… the unpleasantness of watching this skilled British docu-dramatist massage real footage and sound bytes to envision the murder of a person who, whether you like the man or not, is still very much alive. …. clever though ethically challenged manipulations….”

Without seeing the film, I have no need or reason to take a position. Gabriel Range is a good filmmaker – I’ve seen part of The Day Britain Stopped, about a national gridlock, and it is compelling.

But I do suspect DOAP is different in one fundamental way. His other films game out the rule book, and show us what would happen in particular crises. They bring the manual to life. What he projects about the assassination is this [The Guardian again]:

“Death of a President is centrally concerned with the death of civil liberties, the dangers of the Patriot Act, and the certainty with which secret investigations and round-ups can only find the wrong people, misunderstand every situation, focus on the wrong subjects, and, in the end, lead to a near-fascist government that endangers everyone. It lays out a drama of misunderstanding and tragedy, in which the real victims are veterans, activists and Muslims.”

I suspect, if anyone did attempt to hit Bush, that it would be an excuse to ditch the rule of law completely and throw away the manual of civilisation. After all, that’s what they did after 9/11.

And you can’t use this sort of documentary to explore that sort of event. We step back in horror, remind ourselves we don’t have any evidence, go home and hug our children. cling to the last moments of decorous peace.

The trailer is here. If you feel the need, you can read the right wing response here.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 9th, 2006 at 7:45 pm and is filed under history, visual media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.