MovieZen Blog

The power and disenchantment of artist bio pics

"Documentaries" is a very relative and biased term for artists bio pics. In reality they are glossed over and made more glamorous  than their realistic counterparts.  Of course when creating a good bio pic it is even harder than transferring books into film.  A whole life needs to be summarized in a two hour time frame.

It is always arguable that artists live very complex and tormented lives. It is as if they feel things differently than Regular Joe and get a good dose of bad karma and crap thrown at them by the universe to balance their other worldy talent.  Painters as far back as Van Gogh and musicians like Mozart certainly had fascinating lives.

However, because of their great success people feel compelled to portray them in a positive light. Therein lies the mistake. These great artists at times could be narcissistic, misunderstood misogynistic and destructive.  This characterization might be too hard to swallow for regular moviegoers, yet fictionalizing them might not appease hardcore fans.

Focusing on tormented love affairs is a good way to attract audiences. Movies like Walk the Line and Frida depict two artists journey to try and find love through large obstacles like drugs, fidelity and health problems.

Films such as Pollock do not seem to do well as it is quite hard to like a character who seems to treat his wife like a transferable commodity. And artists who do incredibly deplorable things can never seem to find a  good hold on audiences such as Great Balls of Fire where he had a love affair with his 13 year old cousin.

Fictionalized films which perhaps remain truthful to the essence of the artists such as Amadeus create a heightened sense of drama and comedy viewing a fool given the gift of a genius.

Because an artist's life is so incredibly complex and unidimensional, that is, there are numerous points of view of who the artist was at times films have concentrated on seeing the artist's life in small snippets instead of attempting to tell the whole story. We can see glimpses of the complexity of Andy Warhol in his relationship with Edie Sedgwick in Factory Girl.

Yet the biggest way to attract audiences is that these films have to  have poignant acting in order for us to truly care about them. Jamie Foxx made Ray into a struggling yet deeply beautiful soul which produced great music.

Whatever the method, artist bio pics are a genre which will never be bereft of material as these artists created amazing art in music, painting and dance yet led destructive lives and were very tormented souls.

Maryam DiMauro
Filmsi

**Read more articles by Maryam DiMauro**

An Unlikely Movie Maker—Madonna’s Gardener

She’s not exactly the most conventional of stars so I suppose it should come as no surprise that when it came time to choose someone to direct her new documentary Madonna picked her former gardener.

You know, because cultivating snapdragons and filming a movie about HIV/AIDS orphans in Malawi is so similar.

Surprising yet true. Nathan Rissman recently unveiled his masterpiece (starring his Material Girl boss) at the Tribeca Film Festival. “I Am Because We Are” was produced and narrated by Madonna, but directed entirely by Rissman.

"Nathan Rissman basically did everything for me," the singing sensation told reporters. "He was my gardener. He was my carpenter. He rerouted the electricity in my house. He looked after the children. And he started making home movies of my children. And they were amazing."

So amazing that the 49-year-old "Truth or Dare" star says she was convinced Rissman was the perfect person to document her first encounters with the young boy she is still in the process of adopting. According to Madonna, her former gardener turned movie director has the ability to “instill trust in people.” The actress also credits Rissman’s gift of getting people to open up to him as the reason for the film’s success.

The documentary was designed to illustrate the poverty and disease devastating the lives of Malawi's children. Madonna says she hopes that upon seeing the film viewers will be encouraged to aid the disadvantaged people of the south African country.

“I Am Because We Are” follows Madonna as she provides food, education and shelter to Malawian children through her Raising Malawi organization. It also documents the first meeting between the "Evita" star and the boy she hopes to one day officially call her own—2-year-old David Banda.  But the film is not all about Madonna’s charitable ways it also includes several graphic scenes including the death of one orphan and the aftermath of another child's violent castration.

The documentary is still in need of a distributor, but Rissman says that doesn’t bother him. He contends that getting the chance to work on such an inspirational project with his superstar boss was a “dream come true.”

And, hey, if the movie business doesn’t work out Rissman could always go back to his day job tending to Madonna’s tulips.

Lucia Kim
Families Pop Culture Blog

**Read more articles by Lucia Kim**

What's up doc...

In the past, documentaries were extremely boring and mind numbing experiences. At least, that was their reputation. The genre was reserved for backlogged dusty film classes and pseudo intellectual talks about World War two.

Enter HBO, Micheal Moore and even MTV and documentaries have become cool again. Granted, these aren't the run of the mill National Geographic documentaries. These are films with soundtracks, biting commentary and subjective points of view.

By any textbook standards, documentaries are supposed to create films and try objectively to document what they have found. Not so with modern documentaries. Films such as Bowling for Columbine had no qualms about taking sides and sticking with the issues. Indeed, these films became attacks on the system in ways that no other films could parlay.

While these films became more popular the nation became aware of issues that were pertinent to our daily lives. Films which targeted obesity and corruption in white collar society such as the film The Corporation and Super Size Me were hot topics everywhere.

   

Documentaries started to become bolder and more politically charged. Films such as Farenheit 911 threatened a political election.  Other movies were amazing in the way they seemed to be scripted movies such as March of the Penguins which spawned cartoon copycats.

Documentaries have become a popular staple of film and television and opened our minds to new horizons. Let's hope it stays that way.

Maryam DiMauro
Filmsi

**Read more articles by Maryam DiMauro**