Great documentaries you don’t want to miss
Pop Culture Happy Hour
In this episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour, hosts Glenn Weldon and Aisha Harris highlight several recent documentary films that deserve more
Key takeaways
- Ross McElwee's 'Remake' explores the filmmaker's personal struggles with marriage dissolution and his son Adrian's addiction.
- John Wilson's 'The History of Concrete' uses the subject of infrastructure as a vehicle for a self-referential, wandering narrative style.
Main topics
- Documentary film recommendations
- Ross McElwee's filmmaking style
Notable quotes
Ebert said the film is an empathy engine, and that's the key to a film like this.
Conclusion
The episode provides a curated guide for viewers looking to discover m
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) As the political landscape shifts beneath our feet, we're all vulnerable to a well-funded distraction economy determined to take our eye off the ball. Our weekly politics series, If You Can Keep It, is here to help, where our focus is not the horse race, but the state. We tackle the big political stories of the day and why they matter for our democracy. Join me, Todd Zwilich. And me, Jen White, on the 1A Podcast from WAMU and NPR. You're listening to Pop Speaker 3 (0:24) Culture Happy Hour, the podcast that keeps you up to date on the latest in pop culture. And here's a little transitive property for you. You stay up to date on pop culture by staying up to date on the show. And the way you stay up to date on the show is by following Pop Culture Happy Hour on your favorite podcast app. Thank you. Speaker 3 (0:45) We talk a lot about movies on this show, but new documentary films, for whatever reason, can sometimes get lost in the shuffle. So we figured we'd take a beat to highlight some new documentaries that are worth your time. I'm Glenn Weldon, and today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're recommending some great documentaries you don't want to miss. Joining me is my co-host, Aisha Harris. Hey, Aisha. Speaker 1 (1:05) Hey, Glenn. Excited to talk about these with you. Speaker 3 (1:08) Yeah, and I know this first one we're going to talk about is one you really love. You covered it for NPR. Yeah. Tell me about it. Speaker 1 (1:13) So this is... Yeah, probably one of my favorite movies of the year, to be honest. And it is remake directed by the very legendary filmmaker, documentarian Ross McElwee. It's his first feature in 15 years. It's about. McElwee sort of trying to get a new project off the ground. This time it's a remake of one of his previous documentaries, like a fictional remake. But while he's trying to work on that, he's also reckoning with the dissolution of his marriage and his son Adrian's drug addiction. I do think it's a little important to have a little bit of context. While you don't have to have seen Ross McElwee's phones before this in order for it to hit you. It does help, I think, because so much of his filmmaking is self-referential. Speaker 2 (1:57) I Speaker 1 (1:58) don't know how familiar you were with Ross McElwee. This is new to me, but I'm sure you'd come across his work before. Speaker 3 (2:04) Oh, I was one of those people who saw Sherman's March, the film that he made his bones on back in the day when I was a young kid. I know his stuff. Speaker 1 (2:10) Yeah, I did a whole binge on him before seeing Remake because I was like, I've not seen any of his films, so let's do this. And what I realized while watching some of it, films was like before Mark Cohen and Rent, before Lonely Girl 15. And you know, the countless present day in the life, like content creators who are inviting you to get ready with them or whatever, there was Ross McAuley. Starting in the 70s, he produced films that were very self-conscious, self-referential. Sherman's March, as you mentioned, is sort of this would-be Civil War doc that actually ends up being about the pressure he himself is facing to find someone and settle down. It's really about him. And he's constantly in all of his films, sort of using footage that he's used in other films. And there's a through line. And so Remake is sort of like born out of the success of Sherman's March. The movie he's trying to remake, that a filmmaker is trying to remake, is Sherman's March. And he sells the rights to a producer. But then while he's documenting the process, he's... Rocky relationship with his son, Adrian, is kind of coming to the forefront. And this was filmed over several years. His son passed away in 2016. But you can tell that this is a movie that's been many years in the making. And it really hits you. I don't even really know how to describe it any more than that. It's just a movie you kind of need to sit with and really let it wash over you. I think anyone who's experienced someone who has struggled with addiction, whether it's a family member or someone close to you, it's one of those movies that is just... As self-conscious as it is, it also opens it up to all these questions that I think a lot of people, regardless of who you are, will be able to connect to. And it just, it hits hard. What did you think of this? Speaker 3 (3:49) Yeah, it hits hard. You know, Ebert said the film is an empathy engine, and that's the key to a film like this. And, you know, I joke on the show all the time when it comes time to talk about the Oscar-nominated documentaries, for example, that they are all bummers. And that's just, you know. Glibness is my operating system. I can't get past it. But that's the way I kind of deal with wrenching very difficult subjects like this one. And I don't think anybody, any listener has any illusions that going into a film about the loss of a son is going to be a laugh riot. So you could ask yourself, why put yourself through it? You do that for films like this one, where the filmmaker is, as you mentioned, he's the subject. He is so willing to flay himself. Before us. And he's not projecting coolness or intelligence or even craft per se. He's just he's so willing to have his friend Charlene, who was one of the standout characters, people from Sherman's March, Speaker 1 (4:45) just Speaker 3 (4:45) rake him over the coals for his indecisiveness and his. is overthinking. And, you know, if it sometimes seems like his affinity for having people call him out can come off a bit pathological. I'm no therapist. What do I know? But there is such a worth to a film like this one because what he's doing in those moments is articulating really vividly some very difficult truths. There's a lot in this film. about loss, not just grief, though there's a hell of a lot about grief, but also things like memory loss. We meet Charlene again, and she's experiencing memory loss, loss of intimacy, as you say, having to do with his marriage. He's wrestling with that stuff, forcing us to wrestle with it. And it works because of the connection he makes with us, this empathy that we feel for him. Not a laugh riot, but I mean. And also not a film to watch while doing your laundry because he's doing some really smart things, setting up parallel shots, you know, between filming his kid as a young kid, filming his kid as an adult. Sometimes his kid is filming him. Speaker 5 (5:45) It Speaker 3 (5:45) makes demands on you, this film, I will say. But those demands are really worth it because you come out of it feeling like I've had a human enriching experience. And there's something to