JUST WHAT THE DOC ORDERED
Documentary festival starts Friday
OBIT
Director: Vanessa Gould 2 p.m. Saturday, Metro Cinema
It’s said life isn’t a competition — but in the case of obituaries, death is.
This brilliant, rather philosophical look at the obituary department at the New York Times pushes straight up to the big questions of existence. Am I accomplishing anything? Well, what page would your obit land on?
First stop, though — the art of making newspapers. And I can tell you this documentary feels 10 times as legitimate as the fifth season of The Wire. Watching writers
pitch and plead for their selected dead is as amazing as a first-person tour through the Times’ news morgue and its captivating crypt keeper, Jeff Roth, a beautiful weirdo who reveals one of the oldest obits written in advance — they have 1,700 or so banked — used 80 years later about then-teenage aerial daredevil Elinor Smith. She died at 98.
A typewriter repairman, David Foster Wallace and the image consultant for JFK before the big debate with sweaty Nixon are all eulogized, while the day Farrah Fawcett’s death was displaced by Michael Jackson’s is uncomfortably relived.
It’s a truly beautiful documentary, writer Bruce Weber recalling an anecdote of a young reporter having a “corrections problem,” making too many mistakes in print. An older writer was asked if he had any advice. “Yeah, I do. Don’t put in so many facts.”
CITIZEN JANE: BATTLE FOR THE CITY Director: Matt Tynauer 6 p.m. Sunday, Metro Cinema
“Any city that’s tearing down its building just to make money for a development or just to have novelty is doing something criminal.” — Jane Jacobs
So rings one battle cry of journalist-turned-activist Jane Jacobs, the cyclist, housewife but above all other tags, savvy observer of the urban condition. Her skills lead to 1960s fascinating The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
This influential book states that excellent, enduring cities are built from the ground up, on existing habits and urges of the people, rather than through the generic master plans of powerful czars on high, a park here and a sports facility there.
The stakes of this doc are quickly set up, a David-and-Goliath yarn. It’s Jacobs and those whose homes are in the way of superhighways and flock “towers in parks” versus near-autocrats like New York City planner and utopian modernist Robert Moses, his freeways literally destroying neighbourhoods still mourned.
The towers, which too quickly descended into the crime-riddled infamous Projects since demolished, demonstrated Jacobs’ point, while activist James Baldwin curses so-called urban renewal as “Negro removal.”
Universally, and still, neighbourhoods are dismissed as problematic, laws bent at the whims of developers. This basic introduction to Jacobs, who successfully led movements which stopped a number of destructive developments, including one in Toronto and another which would have erased SoHo, is inspiring to a would-be activist.
Ultimately, the film asks us to remain skeptical and vigilant as we face and plan for a planet where 1.5 million new people are now being urbanized weekly.
TOKYO IDOLS
Director: Kyoko Miyake 9:30 p.m. Friday, Metro Cinema
Following Japan’s billion-dollar idol phenomenon from the points of view of its up-and-coming young female stars and their generally older male fans, Tokyo Idols is compelling and at-times truly creepy.
Behind ropes on small stages, all the way up to stadium-filling ranking competitions, girls and young women — the idols — sing pop hits, dance in anime costumes and sell merchandise afterwards to the otaku — Japanese slang for over-obsessive fans — who spend their wages on them.
“There’s a best-by date,” idol Rio Hiirage notes. “I can’t do this forever.” She celebrates her 21st birthday on stage in front of a crowd of supporters, including her father, who dances along with her sweating, glow stick-waving fans, collectively known as RioRio Brothers.
One of them, Koji, 43, is an electronics seller who notes of himself, “It’s been an easy, mediocre life. Totally devoid of excitement.” But in Rio, at first 19 in the film, he finds meaning, even inspiration to try a different career. He has no time for a relationship outside what he says he has with her.
Over and over again, he attends her shows, has timed meetings with her across a table at “handshake events,” and collects their instant photos. There are rules. They are allowed to touch hands, that’s it.
But then there are the younger idols. Like Amu, 14, who’s asked if she is scared of the screaming men in her audience. Very purposefully she says, “No. They are all very nice. I’m OK.”
Rio, meanwhile, bikes across Japan on tour, alone yet not. Koji and others follow closely behind on bicycles, but only make contact when they’re allowed.
She sings to them, “I have no friends left in the outside world, but I still can’t stop being otaku,” and of a pierced heart after hearing otaku being called “dirty pigs.”
We’re meant to genuinely cheer for Hiirage’s success, but cringe as a handler has to shove a frozeneyed fan away — it’s a complicated relationship worth considering.