14

The Docudrama

On one level, that of content, docudrama has much in common with melodrama. The nature of the struggle, the positioning of the main character, and the tone are similar. But on the issue of style, the manner of presentation of the story, they differ. The docudrama is concerned with a particular kind of style, a style that assures an aura of veracity. This style may be present in the melodrama, but it is never as central a feature as it is in the docudrama.

The docudrama has its roots in the documentary. The sense of actuality in Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North and Man of Aran conveyed the idea of cultures quickly giving way to modern urban life. Equally important, however, these documentaries took editorial positions about those cultures, advocacy positions that were romantic but also represented a wish that the pattern of these cultures passing were not so inevitable a byproduct of modernization. These two elements—actuality and a social, or political, perspective on the life situation of the participants—link the documentary directly to the docudrama.

Whether anarchistic (Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera) or fascist (Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will), the documentary quickly became a form whose agenda was principally educational and propagandistic rather than entertaining. This quality too became a link to the docudrama.

Style became more pronounced in the ‘50s with “direct cinema,” in the documentaries of Lindsay Anderson (Everyday Except Christmas) and Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson (Momma Don’t Allow). This was even more the case in the “cinema verité” explosion in the documentary filmmakers of the ‘60s (Leacock, Pennebaker, the Maysles brothers). But no examples of the style sacrificed those original intentions—actuality, education, political goals. Also, the style crossed over into the feature film— Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool and Michael Ritchie’s The Candidate. In the extreme, that style is represented in the recent “Dogma 95” films, particularly Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves and Vinterberg’s The Celebration. But none of the work has given up those original documentary intentions—to share with the audience a real experience, and to educate more than to entertain. The docudrama represents the consciousness of style fused with dramatic principles to share a story the writer-directors feel is important.

General Characteristics

The Centrality of Actuality

At the heart of the docudrama is the sense of actuality. Whether the focus is on real people, a real place, or a historical event, the docudrama trades on this sense—it happened to real people, in a real place and time. The deployment of style, as well as of the dramatic components, will likely focus on that veracity.

Time will also be allotted to supporting the sense of actuality—details, habits, and customs will all be specific to the topic. This does not, however, necessarily mean that the focus will be on the famous or highborn, although both have provided ample material for the docudrama. It means that at whatever level, rich or poor, famous or obscure, the focus of the narrative will be as much taken up with the “anthropology” of the place and time as it will with the dramatic properties of the event or person.

The Dominance of Place and Time Over Character

In the melodrama, the character and his or her goal seem to transcend time and place. The reason is that at its heart, melodrama is about psychology, behavior, and interior issues; in a sense, the dramatic arc of the main character is an inner journey. Consequently, the externalities of time and place are subsidiary to the internal dynamics of character. Mike Van Diem’s Character, discussed in the previous chapter, is an excellent benchmark. The main character’s family life, his ambition, and his self-abnegation far transcend the sense of Rotterdam in the 1920s. We are aware of Rotterdam, its poverty, and its labor unrest, but none of this overrides the interior journey of the main character. In docudrama the reverse is true. Place and time not only transcend character, they are central to the experience of docudrama. In Ken Loach’s Wednesday’s Child, the prevailing ideas of antipsychiatry in the London of the 1960s override the film being considered as a family drama about dysfunction and child-parent relationships. Equally, Michael Ritchie’s Downhill Racer is more about competitive international sports in the 1970s than it is about a particular skier. Why this is the case has everything to do with the goals of the writer or director, an issue we will address later in this section.

The Nature of the Struggle of the Main Character

The struggle for the main character in melodrama dominates the narrative. In the docudrama, the nature of the character’s struggle is subordinate to the goal of the story. In addition, here the voice of the author subsumes the elements of story, often for political (as opposed to dramatic) purposes. Also, the heritage of the documentary film overrides dramatic considerations. In Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, the challenge of conformity is more critical than the character’s fate, and something similar is true of Tony Richardson’s The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. The idea of female oppression at the hands of male chauvinism far supersedes the portrait of Camille Claudel as an artist in Bruno Nuytten’s Camille Claudel; further, place and time—turn-of-the-century Paris and its art world—are more critical than the personal relationship between Claudel and Rodin.

The Role of Plot

In the melodrama, plot (if deployed) is a primary barrier to the main character and his or her goal. If the main character and the goal are less important in the docudrama, how is plot used? In Peter Watkin’s Culloden, the battle itself, the last battle fought on British soil, dominates the narrative. Although there are many characters on both sides of the battle, their vividness does not dominate the story; indeed, there is no single main character. The course of the event, which is the plot, dominates the narrative.

This dynamic does not change when Watkins takes a character as his subject. In his film Edvard Munch, the goal of the main character is to pursue his artistic goals. His early career in Norway and Germany is a failure, because of the powerful conservatism of the German art critics. Although Munch finds alliances with other artists and writers, the course of his career, the plot, has a tragic quality. Here too plot seems more important than the interior emotional journey of Munch (so often reflected in his own paintings).

The Relationship of Docudrama to Issues of the Day

Like melodrama, the docudrama is eminently adaptable to the issues of the day. Because as a style it gives the viewer the sense of being there as the story is unfolding, the style evokes the power of television with its immediacy. Consequently, films such as The Death of a Princess are particularly powerful. Much of Ken Loach’s work, from Poor Cow to Riff Raff, has this quality. The docudrama also lends weight to past events, special events, and famous people of the past. Steven Spielberg’s techniques for the opening battle scene of Saving Private Ryan borrow extensively from the style of the docudrama. He has used the approach not only to memorialize the D-day landings on the beaches of Normandy but also to give us the feeling that we are on those beaches.

The docudrama form is particular and elicits a very specific kind of reaction from its audience. It lends an immediacy to events past and present, an immediacy that is quite unique in its impact on the audience.

The Voice of the Author

Although one interpretation of docudrama is to call it simply classical melodrama with a distinctive style, this is too circumscribed a definition to encompass docudrama fully. Another view is to call docudrama a story form that, by virtue of the author’s strongly held views, requires a style powerful enough to act as a pronouncement of those views. To put it more simply, docudrama is a form in which it is important to the author to say to the audience, “This story is more important than your average melodrama. I have something to say, and I want you to listen and to watch and to be moved to action by the experience.”

In this sense, the choice of a docudrama approach in a film such as Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom, with its cinema verité style, gives us the sense that we are there on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. The style gives a feeling of immediacy to the combat scenes, but the docudrama form also has an impact on the narrative choices Loach makes. On at least three occasions during the film, lengthy debates take place about issues that are in essence matters of dogma: land rights; the role of the Soviet Communist Party and Joseph Stalin in the organization of the Republican side; and military organization—whether formal structure would undermine the paramilitary units, which are presented as ideologically “pure” and therefore true revolutionaries. These lengthy discussions are filmed earnestly and respectfully, as if they were just happening. From a dramatic point of view, these choices make the experience of the film more educational than “emotional,” as melodramatic equivalents (The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls) would tend to be.

When they wish to achieve a more active voice—a voice that implies a higher level of importance, serving an educational or political goal rather than entertainment—directors choose the docudrama, a form whose style implies, “This is important.”

Motifs—Case Studies

For docudrama, as for melodrama, it is useful to look at case studies in order to understand the narrative shape of the form. The two case studies below will represent two of the subcategories of the docudrama: the event, Peter Watkins’s Culloden (1964); and the political portrait, Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom (1996).

Culloden

The Main Character and His Goal

The story proceeds without a main character. The combatants are the Scottish and the English. The leadership in each case is highlighted; however, there is no single character through whom we enter the story. If there is the equivalent of a main character, it is the narrator, in essence a reporter in search of the story. He interviews combatants, the victors as well as the vanquished. He is looking to explain as well as to understand the battle and its aftermath. In this sense, the narrator could be considered the main character, with the goal of reporting the story of the last battle to occur on British soil. The narrator, by the way, is Peter Watkins himself. Using the form of the docudrama, he has made himself, and his voice about the battle, the entry point (which is the role of the main character) into the story.

The Antagonist

The antagonist in this story is certainly the imperial forces, from the commander, Prince William of England, down to the English soldiers. They are portrayed as cruel, lusting for Scottish blood. Although Prince Charles, who leads the Scottish rebellion, is rebuked for his indifference to his forces and for his addiction “to his little bottle,” he is presented as no worse than an incapable leader of the disunited, underarmed forces that meet the English on the field at Culloden.

The Catalytic Event

Since the entire film is devoted to the events leading up to the battle, the battle itself, and its aftermath, the catalytic event would have to be considered the beginning of the Scottish rebellion that has resulted in the battle. Whether this is the landing of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” from France or some subsequent political coalition, the fact is that the catalytic event, unusual as it is, occurs before the film begins.

The Dramatic Arc

The shape of Culloden is the course of the battle itself. There is a lead-up to the battle, and there is an aftermath. However, the major part of the narrative is devoted to the battle itself, its details, and its outcome.

The Resolution

The battle ends with a decisive victory for the English forces. In the aftermath of the battle, the Scottish wounded on the field of battle are executed, and those who are captured are transported for execution in the cities of England or deported to Australia.

The Narrative Style

Culloden is entirely plot. We follow the course of a battle from beginning to end. Since there is no central character, relationships are not developed. Characters are introduced only in terms of their roles in the battle. Their performance and their fates are reported in the narrative.

The Narrative Shape

Because Culloden is about a battle, time is important. The film illustrates how quickly and decisively the English forces were able to win the battle. Time also plays a role in how remorselessly and cruelly the vanquished were hunted down and punished for participating in the Scottish rebellion.

Tone

The battle is presented in a cinema verité style. Details of social, economic, and military organization and weaponry are combined with journalistic interviews with the combatants. The presentation is extremely realistic. The narrator, the writer-director Watkins, has clear sympathies for Scottish nationalism; consequently, he editorializes about the English leadership and forces in the harshest terms. It is his view that this last battle on English soil destroyed a culture, the remnants of which were dispersed to the far corners of the Empire as a result. The tone of the narration is one of loss. That loss is the sense Peter Watkins wants to leave with us, via the experience of Culloden.

Land and Freedom

The Main Character and His Goal

The main character in Land and Freedom is a young man, a laborer (and a Communist) from Liverpool. His goal is to live by his beliefs; to that end, he joins a militia group fighting on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. He is a man of principle trying to live by those principles.

The Antagonist

Superficially, the antagonist would seem to be the Nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco, but this is not a story about the Civil War and its outcome. Rather it is a story, focused on the Spanish conflict, about idealism versus pragmatism as it plays out in the world political arena. Thus, the forces of pragmatism (the main character would say cynicism) are the real antagonists. This means that Stalin, Stalinism, Communism, or Fascism would all be far more important antagonists than Franco. Organized politics and its leaders become the enemy to the true idealist. They are the real antagonists in Land and Freedom.

The Catalytic Event

The main character decides to go to Spain to fight for the Republican cause.

The Dramatic Arc

The arc of the story is the journey of the main character to disillusionment in the very cause in which he enlisted. The story begins with an aura of camaraderie in a particular militia unit. The unit is democratic, its members principled and brave. They succeed in combat. Slowly, however, the unit is fractured by orders from Moscow—a requirement to obey a central command (implied to be controlled by Moscow). Dissension among the group leads some to join the organized army, others to remain in the militia. The final confrontation occurs when Republican soldiers, commanded by a former member of the militia, order the men of the militia unit to surrender their arms and its leaders to submit to arrest and prosecution. The confrontation ends with the death of a female member of the militia. The group is disbanded, and the main character becomes a man hunted by the very forces who represent the cause he first joined. The implication is that Franco did not win the Spanish Civil War but that the Republicans lost it, by giving up their original principles.

The Resolution

The main character buries his female comrade-in-arms and lover and returns to England.

The Narrative Style

Land and Freedom has both a plot and a background story. The plot is the experience of the main character as a soldier on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. The background story is that of his personal relationship with a woman who is a member of the militia group he joins. Originally a prostitute, she is passionate about the purity of the ideology held by their group. She believes in the egalitarian ideal within the militia and within Spanish society. She is the ultimate idealist. The main character, on the other hand, is a Communist, and when the Party orders the militias to join into regular forces, he obeys (thereby betraying her). His experience with the regular forces fighting in Barcelona is disillusioning, and he eventually rejoins the militia and the woman. When she is killed by Republican soldiers commanded by a former member of the militia, the main character’s disillusionment is complete. There is nothing for him to do now but return to England.

The narrative is framed by a modern sequence. At the film’s opening, the main character dies of a heart attack. The story unfolds as his granddaughter reads his letters. The film closes with his funeral. The granddaughter empties onto his casket a red bandana filled with Spanish earth gathered from the earlier funeral of his Spanish lover, and so he goes to rest with fragments from his past buried with him.

Tone

The tone is realistic. The introjection of various debates among the militiamen and townspeople, between the militiamen themselves, or with Republican soldiers provides a sense that ideology is what is important here—not people, not their fates, but political ideas and structures that can change everything. The respect for ideology over dramatic principles suggests Loach’s priorities. In this sense the details, the style, and the dramatic choices characterize Land and Freedom as a docudrama.

Writing Devices

What writing devices will help you shape your story as a docudrama? How do they differ from those of the melodrama? We now address these questions.

Every story can be presented in a style that emphasizes veracity, but not every story is suitable for such treatment. The first question you must answer for yourself has to do with your sense of purpose for the story. Is your goal concerned with politics, education, or information, as opposed to entertainment? A second question has to do with the importance of the event or person you are dramatizing. Was the event critical to history? Was the person influential? If so, how is the event or person relevant to today’s audience? Finally, do you feel it is very important to share your view of this story with the audience? How will it change their lives? How has it changed yours? If the majority of your answers are affirmative, the docudrama may very well be a useful approach to your story.

The Use of Character and Goal

Although the docudrama can proceed without a main character if it chronicles an event, more often there is a main character, and that character does have a goal. The difference between melodrama and docudrama is actually one of point of view: how the main character and his or her goal is deployed.

In melodrama, we enter and experience the story through the main character. In docudrama, however, the point of view—or point of entry to the story—is via the writer-director, whose point of view is not necessarily that of the main character. In fact, the main character and his or her goal is simply the vehicle by which the writer-director presents his or her views on the story. In Land and Freedom, Ken Loach wants to say something about idealism and about how realpolitik destroys the idealism that arises out of hopeful political ideology. He uses the main character and his consequent disillusionment as the vehicle for that idea. In this film, the view of the writer-director exists separately from the main character and his goal. The main character and his goal become the lightning rod for the ideas of the writer-director.

The Proximity of the Docudrama to the Documentary

Docudramas are organized dramatically in a manner closer to the documentary than to the melodrama. The melodrama is organized on a three-act structure. It deploys character in a particular way. It may or may not have plot. It may or may not have resolution.

The documentary, on the other hand, is organized like a court case. An idea is put forward, then a number of points are argued that make the case. The idea is then restated in the light of the case established.

The documentary tends to be a closed, or resolved, presentation because it is in essence a proven case. Whether about a person or an event, the process will be the same. The case will be made. The docudrama makes a case for the writer-director’s views upon a person or event. The writer-director organizes the story around the case structure. If the film concerns a person, the character and his goal constitute the vehicle for the case—so too does the course of an event, if the story focuses on one. The shape of the docudrama follows the shape of the documentary rather than that of the melodrama.

Plot Is Used in the Same Manner as the Main Character and His or Her Goal

Plot in the melodrama is used in opposition to the main character and his or her goal. Since the role (that is, view) of the writer-director is the dominant presence in the docudrama, a parallel process goes on in the deployment of plot. Plot serves to illustrate, and make the case for, the views of the writer-director. In Culloden, Peter Watkins has particular views on the imperialism of England vis-à-vis Scotland, and Scotland’s 18th-century venture into nationalism. The plot, the Battle of Culloden, is Watkins’s case against England, and he finds the country guilty.

Find the Structure That Is Suitable to the Story

Several of the previously mentioned docudramas use narrators. It is by no means mandatory that there be a narrator; however, the device, borrowed from documentary, is commonly used in docudrama. Very often that narrator assumes the journalistic role of reporter, and so the structure proceeds as a piece of reportage (Culloden). Another approach to the narrator is to use a diarist. In Loach’s Land and Freedom, the letters of the main character document the story.

Whether reporter or diarist, the framing device of a shared piece of reportage or a recorded piece of personal history provides an entry point into what is essentially historical material. The presence of the narrator helps shape for the audience what might otherwise be difficult or inaccessible material. The narrator is a useful device to structure the story.

This differs from the playwright’s approach to a real life event, such as the Battle of Gallipoli. David Williamson’s treatment of events in the Peter Weir film Gallipoli is very dramatic, and we do enter the story through the experience of two main characters. The treatment, however, is very different from the narrator approach earlier described for the docudrama.

The second dimension to the structure of the docudrama is that it can be shaped as a character-driven or a plot-driven narrative. Whichever is chosen , the narrative tends to have closure or resolution. In this sense, it differs from melodrama, which can proceed either to an open-ended conclusion or to resolution.

The Short Film

Having elaborated upon the features of the docudrama in the long film, what is the balance between subject matter and style in the short film? Are main character and goal, plot, and tone deployed in a manner that supports the authorial voice? How much if any variance in tone does the short docudrama tolerate? These are questions to which we now turn.

Style in the Short Film

In the short film, the notion that you are watching a documentary is even more critical than in the long film. Consequently, the deployment of journalistic techniques, from camera style to on or off-air narration, is critical. In fact, the first narrative responsibility of the writer is to create at least the illusion that what we are watching are real people at real work or leisure. A can-did quality, even the sense of “eavesdropping,” should inform the writing and the style of performance. This “spontaneity” immediately establishes veracity and seriousness, upon which the writer-director will draw. What is being captured is not so much an enactment as the real thing. This is the central style of the docudrama. It is the primary and foremost key to the success of the docudrama.

The Main Character and the Goal

As in the long film, the main character, with his or her goal, is the vehicle for the ideas of the writer-director. Although the character may be vivid or important, the narrative has to create a large place for the voice of the writer-director. We will look at this issue in detail below, under structure.

The Role of Plot

As with the main character, plot too can be vivid; indeed, it can be the principal focus of the narrative. However, the voice of the writer-director has to be a counterweight. The plot, like the main character, has to be secondary to the voice of the writer-director in this genre.

Structure

Whether the narrative is plot-driven or character-driven, the dominant or shaping element of the docudrama is the voice of the writer-director. Whatever opinion is being pursued, it is that view that will shape the narrative. Very much like a documentary, the narrative is shaped as a case to be proven. Plot and character are tools used to illustrate, but the organization and presentation of the narrative, whether through onscreen or offscreen narration, is the principal shaping device. It is here where the voice of the author resides.

Tone

The tone will be emphatically realistic, with as much detail to emphasize realism as possible. This may mean camera style, or it may mean an on-air narrator speaking directly to the audience. The one exception is the mocku-mentary, where the realism itself is undermined as the viewer gradually realizes that it is realism itself that is being attacked.

Case Study in Character

Matt Mailer’s The Money Shot chronicles a particular film project. The filmmaker is the central character. He is following two “street kids,” both teenagers in trouble. The film opens with the male subject confessing to killing people. He is charming but brutal and very candid about what he does. The female subject also lives a marginalized life—alienated from her mother, she supports herself by prostitution, and she is a drug user. The filmmaker also interviews the young woman’s mother and the young man’s aunt. Both duck the realities of the two young people’s lives. Both refuse to speak about matters too personal to them. In the course of the narrative, the filmmaker crosses the line and gets personally involved with both young people. The young woman overdoses on drugs, and the young man kills a policeman while being filmed. The filmmaker is thrilled to get the incident on film, but when threatened by the young man, who wants the incriminating footage, the filmmaker tries to call his bluff. The young man kills him and takes the film.

The character of the filmmaker is presented first as relentlessly pursuing the truth about life on the streets. Later we see he is a user, interested only in exploiting the situation, the entrapped and dangerous lives of two young people. His cynicism about people and his zeal for exploitation in the end cost him his life.

Matt Mailer is very interested, as others have been (Oliver Stone, in Natural Born Killers), in the exploitative power of film. His voice implies that the media are two-edged swords. Their power can destroy the lives of the subjects as well as of the observers. This cautionary tale uses the main character and his goal to voice concerns about the media. A more satiric form of this caution was the subject of Paddy Chayevsky’s Network. The main character and his goal in The Money Shot is the primary vehicle for the exploration of Mailer’s ideas about exploitation, media, and the power of the media.

Case Study in Place

Helen Besfamilny’s Brighton Blues is a story about the Russian émigré community in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn. The story is a simple one. A Russian wanders into a deli and admires the variety of food. The woman behind the counter is young, an American. He tells her he cannot afford the food, that he spent his money on cigarettes. She invites him out for dinner. Their night together is a bittersweet one. Other émigrés drop in to her apartment while he sleeps off the evening. He leaves but returns to invite her to accompany him to the airport, from which he’ll leave for home, the USSR. She refuses, but after he leaves she follows, loaded down with food for him. She goes to the subway station, but they do not see each other. She is alone, and he is gone. This brief description does not capture the despair, loneliness, and the fleeting joy these people experience in the film.

The film uses a blue filter to present an attitude about Brighton Beach. The cinema verité footage of the deli, the restaurant, the street, and the subway station, as well as the beach, echo a community in a deep malaise. The émigrés are not home in their new home. But they recreate the sounds and smells and sights that remind them of home—Moscow, Mother Russia. The film has a powerful sense of place and of nostalgia for that other home, far away.

Besfamilny’s views about place infuse Brighton Blues and share with us a profound sadness about displacement. This is her voice in Brighton Blues.

Cast Study in Plot

Ethan Spigland’s Strange Case of Balthazar Hyppolite tells the story of a film archivist who finds some rare film footage by the filmmaker Balthazar Hyppolite. The film predates the numerous technological discoveries that helped create the film industry. Consequently, it is footage of considerable historical importance. The balance of the film is devoted to searching and reconstructing the footage. In the second part of the film, the main character’s love interest in a fellow archivist is introduced. By the end, the footage has been added to, and a new narrative reconsideration of the footage is presented.

Spigland is himself obsessed with obsessive characters. This plot of reconstructing lost footage provides him with the opportunity to explore that characteristic, to observe that love of film and love itself often fuse and, in a sense, combine. The distinction between movie life and real life blurs for the character. His structure, essentially a detective story told initially in a serious and later in a mocking tone, is both a paean to film and a mocking commentary on obsession (his and others) with film. The detective-style plot allows Spigland to freely editorialize about the purpose and passion of his main character.

A Case Study in Time

Phil Bertelson’s Around the Time is an interview of a black father by his son. What Bertelson is exploring is actually the circumstances of his own birth. This encounter of young adult and middle-aged man is a meeting of two strangers. The conversation triggers the narration by the father of a time a generation earlier, of his relationship with a white woman, and of the racism of the times and the consequent impermanence of interracial relationships. The relationship fails, but the narrator gives us the nervous, excited feel of the early ‘60s, a time when change was possible, if elusive. By framing the story around the relationship and the time of the relationship, the filmmaker is looking to understand the circumstances of his birth. Bertelson does not condemn or approve of his father. He remains dispassionate, the true interviewer of the narrative. Consequently, the sense of time dominates character, goal, and plot. As in the Besfamilny film, the sense of place and time is overwhelmingly the core of the film. All else is secondary.

A Case Study in Tone

Geoffrey Mandel’s Kill the Director is a mockumentary about film production, specifically student production. It uses interview techniques focusing on the director and his crew. The tale is one of continual failure. Crew members leave. The director feigns optimism, and artistic integrity above all is his goal, even in the nude scenes. Eventually, all the crew members and actors leave, and the director undresses and films himself as stand-in for the actor. A lamp falls on him and kills him. His crew rallies, finishes the film, and wins numerous awards. It was art after all.

Mandel’s film amusingly mocks pretension, film criticism, acting, and directing. Every area is subject to mockery, and the result is a mockumentary that amusingly portrays student film production as disproportionately earnest.

To sum up, docudrama allows the voice of the writer-director to dominate. As a form, it uses style to suggest the importance of the film, but also to allow that voice to override and shape the dramatic properties—character, structure, and tone.