A war of the words
Spelling bee documentary is novel, but lacks momentum of previous films
Midway through this spelling bee documentary from director Sam Rega I saw a familiar face. Nupur Lala. How did I know her?
Turns out she was the winner of the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee, the story of which was told in the 2002 doc Spellbound. It’s hard to overstate the legacy of that Oscar-nominated film; it helped kick start this century’s love of the documentary genre.
Spelling the Dream takes a slightly different angle on the subject, aiming to figure out why Indian-Americans, who make up about one per cent of the U.S. population, so dominate the annual bee. Twenty-six of the last 31 winners, including the last 12, were of Indian descent.
It’s a problematic question, inviting allegations of tiger parents or racial stereotyping. But as far as Rega can figure it just comes down to Indians seeing other Indians excel in the event, and being motivated to do the same.
It may also help that the motherland is a polyglottal place. If your parents are Indian, it’s quite possible each knows a different language from childhood, in addition to the official language of Hindi. And as someone notes, as a former British colony, “English was around.”
Spelling the Dream does a good job of celebrating this immigrant excellence, but beyond that it struggles to create the same kind of tension as its documentary predecessor.
It’s fun to meet the participants — one of them, Akash, is only seven years old and has been spelling since he was two. But once the novelty wears off, the movie is merely — how do I put this? — plebeian. P-L-E-B-E-IA-N. Plebeian.