Chris Rock weaves spell of delight on Netflix
Good Hair (2009)
Available from Wednesday
Chris Rock might be the funniest man alive today. Here, he turns his wit and wisdom to a subject that became important in his own life after he had his daughters — the idea of “good hair” for black women. His little girls wanted their afro hair straightened and ironed and Rock tries to pick apart the racist and sexist forces that come together to create this idea of beauty. He travels to a remote village in India, where entire populations of women are left bald, having harvested their silken dark tresses to feed to a multibillion dollar industry in the US. He observes vats of acid being mixed so they can burn the curls of young women into submission. He interviews black female celebrities who confess to him the laundry list of serums, pastes and weaves needed to create their looks. After this film came out in 2009, there were those who pointed out that most women — not just black women — wrestle to some degree with nature and beauty. Rock responded to critics on the Oprah Winfrey Show, saying “it’s not important what’s on top of your head — it’s important what’s inside of your head. That is the theme of the movie.”
The Eichmann Show
Available from Wednesday
This docudrama, first broadcast last year on the BBC, is based on the true story of how American TV producer Milton Fruchtman and blacklisted TV director Leo Hurwitz came to broadcast the trial of one of the war’s most notorious Nazis, Adolf Eichmann in 1961. This a brilliant and creative exploration of the meaning of evil and the power of media. As Hurwitz, a brilliant director despised by the McCarthyites, Anthony LaPaglia catches perfectly the sense of an intellectual preoccupied by Eichmann’s refusal to admit his guilt or in any other way acknowledge the evil he had perpetrated. As Fruchtman, Martin Freeman even more effectively conveys the huge international impact of the trial, and how broadcasting the eyewitness testimony of survivors to huge audiences around the world brought to wider light than ever before the full horror of the Nazi atrocities. Using archive clips of the actual trial proves an effective way of reminding viewers, too, of the hugeness of the crimes as well as Eichmann’s seeming indifference to it all. But what most impressed was the belief of all those involved (and reflected in Simon Block’s deft script) that only presenting the truth, and remembering, could stop the Holocaust happening again.
I Am Divine (2013)
Available from tomorrow
Like its subject — the drag queen star of director John Waters’s high camp Pink Flamingos — this documentary has heart and warmth. Friends, family and castmates weigh in on the life and career of Harris Glenn Milstead, whom his childhood friend Waters christened ‘Divine’ in a 1968 lowbudget film. More than just a onename star of pop culture’s alternative history, Divine’s story is one of being terrorised by bullies, embraced by the gay subculture, where he finds a home, and becoming the patron saint of outsiders, as Waters says (between uproarious anecdotes). Footage from behind the scenes (including the end of Pink Flamingos) helps make this recollection funny, full and sad.
Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me
Available from Wednesday
In this incredible documentary, we see the country music star suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, yet we also share his triumph as he sets out on an ambitious series of performances across America — his guitar and singing skills notably intact. The result is a film that’s exhilarating, thoughtful, inspiring and not a little haunting. This is in no small part to the warm presence of Glen Campbell, who has a down-to-earth sense of humour and an awareness of his affliction, that at times seems to cut through the affliction itself. And just try not to cry when he does Wichita Lineman. Well worth a look.