When I first saw this film on the list I really wasn’t that interested. All I could think of when I saw the title was the play, “Our Town.” When I looked into it though I was surprised by what exactly this film was about. I guess that I was partially right but there was a lot more to this documentary than just that. When I found out that it was about a bunch of high school kids in Compton, CA trying to put on a play for the first time in 20 years I decided that I really wanted to see it. I thought that it was a pretty good documentary. I would call it a “feel good documentary.” When I started watching the film it didn’t take too long for me to know how the film would end. The way that everything was shot and how everything was set up I knew that everything was going to turn out in the end. Even though I wasn’t surprised, I was pleased. Documentaries tend to dwell in a kind of negative realm. A lot of documentaries take it on themselves to go to the “dark” and expose things. While this is a good and noble cause it is also good every once in a while to have a documentary that has a happy ending.
That said, the filmmakers didn’t shy away from showing the conflicts that existed in this environment. It was actually quite full of conflict. There were conflicts between the teacher and the students as well as between different students. There was also an overarching conflict between the world against these students. Coming from Compton there is a stigma and prejudgment constantly about these kids. If you ask just about anyone about Compton they will probably say something about how there are a bunch of gangs and crime there. While that may be true, this documentary showed a different kind of people who also live there. As they try to put on this play they have to battle all of the problems of their environment: broken families, drugs, teen pregnancy as well as simply being ignored by the school and the general public. One kind of symbol of this comes in a conflict between the teacher (Catherine Borek) and her students. She wanted to change the play to make it more relatable to the students which is good and honorable but many of the students disagreed with what the final product became. In one interview a student lamented that the play had been ruined because of the changes. So it almost becomes a no-win situation. The students don’t like the play the way it is but they don’t like it once it is changed. The filmmakers don’t really show how the conflict is resolved but it somehow does. Another conflict comes as the opening day of the play is drawing close and the students are still struggling mightily with their lines. Arguments and anger ensue to the point that students start leaving. This goes on for a bit until somehow this too gets resolved. One hole that I did see in this film is that all of the problems seemed to get figured out but the filmmakers didn’t really show this happened. I guess that the more important thing for them was that things worked out not exactly how it happened.
This was a good film to show how people can sell others short because of their situations or their environments but these people can surprise you. These students grew up in a place and environment that couldn’t care less about drama and plays but they were able to successfully put on a good play. This also shows that people are people no matter where or who they are. I thought that this was a good film all in all.
Dear Brandon,
ReplyDeleteI feel like you got a really good sense of what this documentary was doing without actually saying "this documentary was trying to manipulate me to feel good with it's storytelling techniques." It's pretty clear to anybody who is looking hard at this film in a critical way that the film tried to pull every emotion string they had at their disposal. But I also have a very similar overal opinion to yours of the documentary. I'm not sure if it really matters that the story was manipulated. It made the documentary more entertaining and we still become familiar with some valid points that the story is trying to say.
Something that you reminded me of, which I didn't write about in my post, is how wonderful it was that these students were challenged to do something hard for once in their lives. This is the kind of refiners fire that none of them are ever expected to go through, because they're told their entire lives that they can't do hard things, but this teachers takes them on a journey that ends up being insurmountably beneficial for them.
On a sadder note, I think this is not enough of a refiners fire in it of itself to boost a lot of them to a place where they feel like they can be successful in the world, but it does show us what those types of experiences can do for somebody in that type of condition.