Side By Side

As I type this, Rachel (my wife) is away for the night so I am feeling mighty kingly (and this also means that I am once again without a proofreader).  I am the sole ruler of the domain, and I have precious few hours to enjoy the power trip.  I don't believe I have talked much about my anxiety in the last few blogs, but that does not mean that it has disappeared.  In actuality, it has been kind of running my life the last little bit so now I am on sick leave from work to try and conquer this beast.  Sometimes when I am feeling like I need to ground myself I watch crappy movies, hence the Sharknado review.  Other times I enjoy being informed, and that is why today I am reviewing the documentary Side By Side (which can be found on Netflix), a look at the evolution of digital movie making and the comparison with standard film format. 

Side By Side is hosted by Keanu Reeves and follows him as he interviews many different members of the film industry, most notably directors such as James Cameron, Danny Boyle, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, and Lars von Trier.  Some documentaries focus on bringing about emotional reactions in the audience, and others are more about delivering factoids for the minds that crave information.  This one fits in the category of sharing information, and for folk like me, it is a gold mine because we not only see the quantitative info, but it also shows the human side of accepting, rejecting, and pioneering, which I always find fascinating.

If you like documentaries that feed very interesting nuggets of information about the evolution of products, behaviours, or art then this will probably be a very interesting watch for you.  If you enjoy the technical conversation around how movies are made, this will be a very interesting watch for you.  It is well constructed and does not waste its time with filler segments that I sense some documentaries do to pad their running time.  This one not only looks at the technical transition from film to digital, but takes the time to look at numerous aspects and production jobs that have been changing during that transition.

The depth of interviewees adds great context and variety to this discussion, and we get a sense of what drives the early adopters and what holds back the non-adopters.  There is no particular stance that the documentary takes, other than to feed us the facts and capture the opinions and emotions of those who are pushing the process or caught within it.  While one camp may talk about film as being the true form of art, you also see the passion of those who use digital and catch their excitement when they share story telling methods they can now use for the art form that were not a possibility before.

A good documentary may leave you pondering on an issue or two, and I definitely had a moment where I wanted to scream at the screen and weigh in on what was being said.  The point was brought up that the creation of high quality cameras that are affordable means that anyone can make a movie.  For some, like Richard Linklater ( Dazed and Confused, Before Midnight), this is exciting because it means that the artist has the freedom to make the film they want.  For others, they see it as destructive, that it cheapens it if everyone has the ability to make a movie.  There is less good and refined products, and more poorly made movies.  They believe that the future of movies is now in jeopardy because if everyone is able to do it there is no longer a tastemaker involved.   

I see it completely differently, and I think Keanu did as well.  There are already a whole lot of sterilized products coming from the massive studios right now, where is the tastemaker there?  The low budget offers people to create stories that would no longer be told on the big screen, because large budgets are portioned out to the potential future franchises and not the films with something to say.  It allows new voices.  It allows new thoughts.  We get more variety than ever before, and that does not mean we will be inundated with garbage.  Yes, perhaps there will be exponentially more crappy movies being made, but poorly made movies will never get very far, and it is the quality ones that will get recognition at festivals and gain distribution rights.  Blogs give anyone the opportunity to write (such as riff raff like myself), but that has not meant that the publishing industry has collapsed into a pile of tasteless rubbish.

I digress.  A lot, apparently.  As you can see, it left me with something to say.  It left me with my mind active and analytical.  If you enjoy disecting information and trends the same way that I do, the I believe you just may find Side By Side to be a very good use of your time.  I most definitely recommend it for both the analytical thinkers who enjoy case studies of early adopters and non adopters, and people with a fascination with the evolution of technology.

Rating - 3 out of 4 stars