There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane (2011) dir. Liz Garbus
Documentary

***½

By Alan Bacchus

You may have heard this story already, as it made the press rounds a couple of years ago. It’s a strange case of a seemingly normal, well-adjusted middle-class mom travelling home from the cottage with her two young kids and three nieces. She inexplicably loses her sense of direction and starts speeding the wrong way on the highway before tragically killing eight people, including herself and all but one of her passengers.

So what happened to Diane Schuler? According to the autopsy her blood alcohol level was well above the legal limit and there were strong traces of marijuana. Diane’s husband, Daniel, appeared on Oprah, Larry King and other shows to vehemently deny the allegations. But science doesn’t lie, does it? Liz Garbus’s haunting documentary on the subject follows Diane Schuler’s husband and sister-in-law as they fight to clear her name and search out the truth about what happened to Diane on that fateful drive home.

Director Liz Garbus, fresh off her absorbing Sundance-screened doc Bobby Fischer Against the World, sympathizes with the family, who, because of the alcohol and drug tests, has had Diane’s name dragged through the mud as a drunk-driving irresponsible mother. As Garbus goes through minute-by-minute details of the four-hour journey from the New Jersey campsite to the Taconic State Parkway, we get to know the intimate details of Diane Schuler’s life.

We hear accounts of Schuler’s oldest niece calling home from the car on Diane’s cell phone alerting her parents to her aunt’s mysterious ailment. A migraine maybe? An embolism? We’ll never know exactly what happened in that car.

As important as the investigative details are, the details of Garbus herself and the life she led up until that point are just as interesting. Garbus expertly draws a thorough character sketch of Diane, who at nine years of age, traumatized by her parents divorce, grew up developing a subconscious urge to be in control. This trait helped her succeed in her career and raise two kids virtually on her own while Daniel worked nights. But it was a trait that also may have contributed to her death.

In legal terms this is called character evidence, and it feeds precisely into the objective of the film, which is to exonerate Diane and explain to the world what kind of exceptional circumstances must have contributed to the accident.

The final moments of the eyewitness accounts describing the accident are haunting and confounding. The images and descriptions of true blood-curdling horror have stuck in my mind for over a week since I saw the film. But the strongest lingering effects are the contradictory actions of Diane in these last moments of her life compared to the righteous decency and high level of responsibility she had shown as a wife and a mother. There was indeed something wrong with Aunt Diane and sadly we’ll never know what.

There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane is currently playing on HBO as part of the HBO Documentary Films Summer Series.

Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011) dir. Liz Garbus
Documentary

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

We all know the story of Bobby Fischer, who, at the height of his career, was the one of the most famous people in the world - for playing chess. This new HBO feature doc, examines the man's complicated life from his well publicized early years as a wunderkind all the way to his famous reclusion and sad psychological breakdown. In between director Liz Garbus chronicles in the riveting day-by-day details of the 'Match of the Century' with Boris Spassky for the World Championship. It’s a familiar story well told, a fascinating story of sport, pop culture, politics, and most importantly, the rare phenomenon of genius.

To devote one’s entire life to such a complex and brain taxing endeavour such as chess requires another level of dedication more than mere strength training or endurance. And to do it at the World Championship level history has shown requires a dedication of one's mind at the sacrifice of conventional social abilities.

This is what happened to Bobby Fischer who, as the youngest American chess champion ever, was in the public eye before he turned 16. Most children aren't prepared for this let alone a damaged psychological mind such as Fischer's.

Fischer's malaise and erratic behaviour comes up prominently in the lead up to the 1972 Grandmaster Championship - an event more than just for the sport of chess, but a Cold War battle of democracy vs. communism.

The public awareness of chess in the United States during those few months in 1972 is astonishing. A sport completely off the radar for 99.9% of the population was suddenly the most watched event that summer and fall of 1972. With well-chosen pop music tracks, Garbus magnificently captures the flavour, feeling and excitement of those times.

The one frustrating element missing from the picture is our ability to see Spassky and Fischer together playing the match. In the first game well placed film and TV cameras captured every dramatic moment of the match, especially the nail biting intensity of Fischer's face and body posture. But of course, part of the drama of the match was Fischer’s demand for cameras to be removed from the room, a request conceded by Spassky. As such we never get to see the rest of the match, only recreations from other chess masters discussing the strategies after the fact.

After the match Garbus documents the gradual destruction of his mind due to his severe anxiety afflictions - a psychosis which rendered him almost completely anti-social, and ironically anti-semetic and anti-American. After Fischer's 1990 ressurection the public finally got to see the broken-down state of the man, a shadow of his former self, both as a chess player and a human being - a sad, sombre but effective ending to a high energy documentary.

With maximum production value, for the 90 minute running time of the film Liz Garbus rekindles the same kind of collective interest in chess as we saw in 1972.