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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
The grandfather of cinéma vérité talks about domestic violence, "Domestic Violence" and the reality behind reality films.
Jan 30, 2002 | Though he gets less press than, say, Scorsese or Spielberg (or Brett Ratner or Tom Green, for that matter), Frederick Wiseman for over 30 years has quietly forged a lasting impression of our nation on celluloid. The Cambridge-based documentarian, along with D.A. Pennebaker and the Maysles brothers, is a pioneer of cinéma vérité. In its early years, cinéma vérité consisted of more than just its stylistic trappings (grainy footage, hand-held camera work and natural sound); it sought to reveal the underlying truths of situations by capturing the unscripted action of real people. Think of the vérité filmmakers as the very disappointed stepfathers of "The Real World" and "Cops."
Wiseman, whose works include "High School," "Hospital" and "Public Housing," began making films while working as a law school professor in 1967. "Titicut Follies," his searing exposé of Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Massachusetts, earned him much acclaim, as well as several lawsuits. Ever since, Wiseman has trained his camera, and his critical gaze, on the workings and practices of American institutions. PBS has a long-standing agreement to broadcast each of his films as they come out.
Wiseman's newest film is a three-hour-plus study called "Domestic Violence," opening this week in New York. The 71-year-old filmmaker and his crew spent more than two months in and around Tampa, Fla., following the police as they responded to domestic violence calls, and spending time with residents of The Spring, a shelter for abused women. The result is an unblinking portrait, at once engrossing and difficult to watch. We see a woman, bloody and broken from a beating, being taken away in an ambulance. We hear a 5-year-old girl talk about her abusive father; she tells her counselor, "When my dad dies, I won't cry." At The Spring, women who are victims of violence gather to discuss their lives, and we are treated to story after story of cruelty and abuse. One counselor notes that there is "not a facet of the world unaffected" by violence in the home. Incredible figures corroborate this: One-third of all police time is devoted to domestic violence cases; one woman in three will be abused in her lifetime.
"Domestic Violence" is intelligent, and scarcely didactic. It offers no solutions, and it does not moralize; rather, it paints an unforgiving picture, in strokes broad and fine, of the violence men inflict on women. A follow-up film, "Domestic Violence II," now in post-production, will study the court system and look at the perpetrators of such violence. "Domestic Violence" is Frederick Wiseman's 32nd film, and it is as pure and as powerful as his first.
Wiseman spoke to Salon from Paris, where he is editing his second fiction feature.
In your career, you've addressed a vast range of issues and institutions. What gave you the idea to make a film about domestic violence?
It's a subject that's interested me for a long time, so when I found a situation where I could get permission to do the film, I jumped at the opportunity. Violence is a subject that has interested me in a lot of my other films -- "Titicut Follies," "Law and Order," "Juvenile Court," "Missile," "Maneuver," "Basic Training" and "Sinai Field Mission" all deal with aspects of violence. "Domestic Violence" is just a natural extension of some of the ideas and themes that I've been dealing with in these other films.
What did you know about domestic violence before you started the project?
Very little. I had a slight acquaintance with it from reading the newspaper accounts of various well-known cases. And many years ago, I taught family law, so I was familiar with some of the legal issues connected with domestic violence. But in no way would I suggest that I was an expert on the subject, or even very knowledgeable about it. Like the subjects of all these films, whatever knowledge I acquired, I acquired in the course of making the film.
The film takes place entirely in Tampa. Did you choose Tampa because it was a typical American city, or because it was in some way unusual?
I made the movie in Tampa because I got permission to make the movie in Tampa. And the community in Tampa seems to me to be extremely well organized to deal with domestic violence issues. There is a judge in the Hillsborough County Court, the chief judge there, who was interested in domestic violence, and he and other leaders of the community put together a coordinating group, which consists of judges, the sheriff's office, the police department, the D.A.'s office, legal aid, the shelter, children and family services.
All the various city and state and county organizations that deal with domestic violence work together, and as a result, my impression of Tampa is that there's been a great effort to educate the people in the community to recognize that it's not shameful to report incidents of domestic violence. Florida has a zero tolerance law, so that if there's any kind of physical abuse, an arrest has to be made. As a consequence, a lot more domestic violence cases get reported. It doesn't mean that there's more domestic violence, it just means that people feel somewhat more comfortable about reporting it, and less shameful about it.
