Documentariescan be entertaining and informative ways to learn more about a subject.Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Roomexplained the company’s fall in relatable and understanding terms instead of boiling everything down to numbers and stocks. Conversely,The Fog of Warwas a rare example of a controversial person (former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara) giving their side of the story in a near-confessional manner.
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Still, no program is fully perfect. No matter how popular or widespread adocumentarybecomes, its facts can get outdated over time, or one of its subjects may have to be simplified to fit time constraints. Others have such fundamental flaws at their hearts that viewers have to go in with a critical eye right from the start.
7What the Bleep Do We Know!?
Starting off with a simple one,What the Bleep Do We Know!?was somewhat popular on its original release in 2004, as it caught on through word of mouth as a sleeper hit. It uses a fictional story about a photographer to talk about quantum physics and the state of consciousness with a broad range of interviewees. Unfortunately, it was less science and more pseudoscience.
Actual accredited scientists do get interviewed, but they’re often quoted out of context to support unprovable notions (e.g. the universe is made of thoughts and ideas). It didn’t help that the movie’s directors were all members of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, a New Age group that’s been accused of being a cult. Outside its devotees, the movie’s ideas didn’t take hold and it quickly faded from the public view.
6Religulous
It was refreshing for many to see organized religion (largely the Abrahamic ones) get a critical skewering. As a cheeky look at the more ridiculous parts of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and (briefly) Scientology, it’s a success. As an educational source, however,Religulousis much less stable. Bill Maher is better atpicking apart Christian Fundamentalistslike Ken Ham or oddities like Holy Land Experience, doing so with good humor. It is other religions that have a more uneven portrayal.
If there’s more about Judaism and Islam to discuss than ‘look at their funny Sabbath gadgets’ and ‘listen to far-right figure Geert Wilders talk about terrorism’ respectively, Maher didn’t mention it. He also used deceptive means to gain some of his interviews, pretending he was making something more nuanced. If it was bad whenExpelled: No Intelligence Alloweddid it, thenReligulousshouldn’t get a pass for it either. It may be entertaining, but its methods and analysis are problematic.
5Winged Migration
Nature documentaries are a popular genre, showinganimals in their own habitat. They also have some of the most notorious examples of falsified films, likeDisney’s notoriousWhite Wilderness. Its crew threw lemmings off a cliff to suggest they’d rather plummet in their en-masse runs than avoid danger. French documentaryWinged Migrationis a more modern example of this trait, though luckily not as harmful to actual wildlife
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On screen, it’s a record of how bird species migrate, taken from footage filmed across three years on all seven continents. In reality though, the producers used tamed species to provide flying shots, with some CGI sweetening here and there. They got around this by describing the movie as ‘a natural tale’- a simulation of natural habits rather than a proper documentary or full-on fictional piece. In that regard it’s fine. Beyond that, not so much.
4Searching for Sugar Man
Malik Bendjelloul’s 2012 documentary about two music fans tracking down singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez received widespread acclaim on release. It won anOscarfor Best Documentary as well as numerous other awards. Still, it ran into some problems. The biggest being a regional issue. It presents Rodriguez as a rising superstar that caught on in the fans’native South Africabefore disappearing without a trace.
Except he never really went missing. He toured Australia in the early 1980s and gained cult fame there instead. This info didn’t reach South Africa at the time because the apartheid regime censored news items. So, from a South African perspective, the story makes sense because it did seem like Rodriguez just vanished. For everyone else, however, it felt like a mountain being made out of a molehill.
3Waiting for Superman
The US education system has problems, and Davis Guggenheim’sWaiting for Supermanaddresses them, or so its intent goes. The idea behind the title is that there’s no superhero that’s going to come in and fix everyone’s problems for them. People have to fix them up themselves. Public schools are curtailed by the government and unions, but private charter schools aren’t so affected and produce better results. If only they were enough of them to take in every student.
However, the charter schools’ glowing portrayal is limited to just a few examples. Wider studies focusing on a larger group have shown they don’t perform that much betterthan public schools. The ones that do may also be expelling low-performing students to artificially improve their results. These and other flaws were enough to inspire a counter-documentary calledThe Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Supermanin 2011. Guggenheim and his documentary are right that the system is flawed. It’s just that their own studies have problems too.
2Bowling for Columbine
Michael Moore is one of the more famous and infamous movie directors around. On the one hand, his documentaries have made good points about the War on Terror (Fahrenheit 9/11), the US Healthcare System (Sicko), and dodgy business practices (Roger & Me). On the other, his editing can make things look worse than they actually are, even if they were bad enough to begin with.
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For example, his movieBowling for Columbineshowed US gun culture as being so out of control that he could get a free shotgun with a bank account. Except it didn’t quite work that way. Moore had to open the account, go to a gun store with the bank’s T&Cs, dabble in more paperwork, and then get the gun. That’s still not great, but the bank wasn’t being as reckless as Moore’s editing suggested.
1Super Size Me
Here’s the big one, pun not intended. Morgan Spurlock’s month-long experiment to eat McDonald’s for all three meals per day, and super-sizing it whenever asked, left an impact on the fast-food industry. While people knew it wasn’t healthy, the documentary really exposed how unhealthy the food and its businesses were, with Spurlock himself serving as living proof. On top of being overweight and lethargic, the food often made him sick and put a strain on his heart.
When other people tried replicating Spurlock’s methods though, their results weren’t nearly as bad. It turns out some of Spurlock’s results might’ve been affected by his own health, like his prior vegan diet making his body resist meat. That’s not an excuse topig out at McDonald’sor other fast-food places. It just means the dire consequences of supersizing oneself would take longer than a single month to turn up.
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