Close-up of person behind the camera
“Cameraperson” is a documentary unlike any other. Directed by Kirsten Johnson, the cameraman — or cameraperson — on a number of distinguished documentaries, the movie assembles footage shot for those films into a kind of autobiography. What results isn’t a straight autobiography, obviously, but rather the autobiography of a career and, most importantly, the autobiography of a spirit.
We are the things we see, the places we go and the people who touch us. Over the course of “Cameraperson,” we see some of the places that have touched Johnson’s life — Nigeria, Bosnia and Rwanda, as well as some of the noisiest and stillest places in the United States. And a couple of things start to happen. First, we have a sense of Johnson’s presence, of her very engaged, open and appealing personality. And second, we get the sense of being there.
But here’s the thing: The “sense of being there” in this film is different from the usual sense of location that we get in other movies. The sense we get here is rather what we often feel when we ourselves are in an odd and unexpected place. This sense is rarely a feeling of complete presence, but rather one of separateness, as though you want to pinch yourself into full consciousness. Often it’s only later, looking at the videos or the photos, that you fully feel the strangeness and wonder of having been so far from home.
In “Cameraperson,” Johnson demonstrates the power of the camera, not just to show us where we were or what we saw, but to make us feel it. It’s a weird thing and perhaps too subtle to adequately explain, but it’s almost as if, when we are physically in a place, we are almost too within ourselves to see it. But the images from a camera give us permission to get free of our bodies and engage on a more spiritual level.
What a gift. Johnson opens up the vault and shows us moments that are precious to her. Not every moment will be precious to us. Some moments are gripping, some less so, but everything is seen as through a poet’s eye. At one point, she gives us shots of various places where mass murders or tortures were committed. All these places now are peaceful. The birds sing; the ocean rushes in and rushes out. These places are fine and always were fine. It’s just that people can be terrible.
In the process of seeing things through Johnson’s eyes, we get to know her. So that by the time we actually see her, late in the film, in a two-shot talking to her mother, we feel that we’ve already met. It’s the face we expected all along — brave, perhaps a little naive, but in the best American way, and fiercely awake to everything around her. It’s a pleasure getting acquainted.