Living in the Netflix era, it’s become easy to think of the documentary film style as a heightened or glorified presentation of some remarkable true-life tragedy or as a grandly sweeping, omniscient view of the natural world and its wonders.
But the truly unique and singular power of documentary film is its ability to cast a close eye onto the everyday movements of our everyday world and to reframe those minuscule, day-to-day motions within the language of expose and drama.
And no filmmaker may have ever quite understood that capability of the form better than the great Frederick Wiseman.
From his striking beginnings in the 1960s through his more than 40 films since, Wiseman has applied his stark, non-interfering eye to the full scope of societal institutions and human systems, often presenting them in greater detail – and in harsher light – than most viewers have ever seen.
While decades’ worth of reviews and think pieces have referred to Wiseman’s style as “objective” or even as “unbiased,” the director himself has taken issue with those labels. He explains instead that his editing and choices of focus are paramount and that the decisions he makes will always be subjective and biased toward highlighting the inherent drama and quiet spectacle of societal life.
Now, with a two-month, decades-spanning retrospective of 7 of his most groundbreaking and effective documentaries, OKCMOA is offering audiences the chance to explore and re-evaluate those quiet spectacles and social constructs through the lens of this remarkable artist every Thursday in March and April.
Wiseman’s primary preoccupation throughout his career has been the institutions – the governmental, educational, medical, judicial, familial, and even psychological – that rely on constructed social systems to steer the course of modern life in the 20th and 21st centuries.
But he does it all without narration, hand-holding, or any loudly declared agenda. There is only the camera lens, the stark reality within the frame, and Wiseman’s own unmatched talent for editing and connection.
“In putting together our series, we wanted to showcase the scope and variety of Wiseman’s career by choosing films that capture diverse aspects of American institutions and communities across decades, regions and class divides,” OKCMOA Head of Film Programming Lisa Broad told Free Press.
“Taken individually,” Broad said, “Wiseman’s documentaries are so attentive to detail that they can have a time-capsule or snapshot-like quality, but taken together his films reveal a panoramic, evolving portrait of American life.”
‘Titicut Follies’ – March 13th
Effectively banned in the US until 1991, Wiseman’s very first documentary feature is an unprecedented look into the grim, shocking reality of mental health and incarceration in 1960s America.
Taking a camera into the daily machinations of the Bridgewater, Massachusetts State Prison for the Criminally Insane, Wiseman exposed the general inhumanity and indifference of the primitive mental health system of the time in a harrowing, objectively disturbing, and altogether groundbreaking documentary.
‘High School’ – March 20th
For his second film (and his first to be widely seen and appreciated in America,) Wiseman turned his camera from the inhumane treatment inside a prison asylum to the generally cold and indifferent treatment of students inside a standard Philadelphia high school.
Once again, with no narration or interviews to frame or dilute the slices of real life shown, Wiseman examines a public schooling system far more concerned with discipline and conformity than with educational knowledge.
‘Law and Order’ – March 27th
It was already daring and deeply subversive for Wiseman to embed into and follow a Kansas City, Missouri police department in 1969, but to see “Law and Order” now and to realize just how little has systemically changed in law enforcement in the past 50+ years is even more shocking.
“Law and Order” notoriously contains scenes of real-life police brutality, in particular an infamous scene of an officer placing a Black sex worker in an abusively aggressive chokehold. But those scenes are juxtaposed against equally real scenes of community service and office minutiae, creating a film of the very cognitive dissonance that American law enforcement often represents.
‘Welfare’ – April 3rd
While his previous films had largely remained under an hour and a half, Wiseman jumps to a nearly three-hour format to examine the labyrinthine and ceaselessly convoluted bureaucracy of the American welfare system.
Filmed entirely within a Manhattan welfare office in 1973, Wiseman’s camera captures the full scope, scale, and diversity of the welfare system itself, including (and especially) the dizzying complexities and unreasonable difficulties.
‘The Store’ – April 10th
No longer simply examining the public and governmental institutions and constructs of American life, Wiseman set his sights on the commercial world, focusing in on the operations and systems behind Nieman-Marcus in Dallas.
Exploring everything from the clerks, customers, and salesmen on the floor to the offices and boardrooms in the chain’s corporate headquarters behind the scenes, Wiseman develops a portrait of the consumerism and commerce that inarguably powers the American machine.
‘Central Park’ – April 17th
Regarded as one of Wiseman’s most accessible films (even at three hours long) “Central Park” offers viewers exactly what they may imagine: a sweeping slice-of-life look at the daily ins and outs of America’s – and perhaps the world’s – most famous city park.
Any given moment within Central Park presents a microcosm of New York City life, and Wiseman’s camera captures it all, from wealth and homelessness, youth fervor and police, park maintenance and general upkeep, and even the officials and donors behind the scenes.
‘Belfast, Maine’ – April 24th
Though far from his final work, 1999’s “Belfast, Maine” represents something of a culmination for Wiseman’s eye and narrative style.
Rather than hyper-focus on a single institutional element of American society, he instead pulls back to show the full picture of an altogether average American town and how the schools, police, government, commerce, and public spaces all interact to form what we think of as life.
Unsurprisingly, it’s sprawling – even in its simplicity – at more than 4 hours in length.
The series “Frederick Wiseman: Documenting American Life” runs from March 13th through April 24th at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, with a different documentary film by Frederick Wiseman screening each Thursday in a new, director-supervised 4K restoration. For times, tickets, and more information, visit okcmoa.com.
Catch Brett Fieldcamp’s film column weekly for information and insights into the world of film in the Oklahoma City metro and Oklahoma. | Brought to you by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
