Cinema Verité - A Saga de uma Família Americana

This film speaks volumes about the ethical dilemmas doc-makers (and "reality TV" producers) all-too-frequently face. Some choose to do the ethical thing and tell an unvarnished truth, most are happy to sell their soul for ratings. Strong filmmaking from the folks who brought us American Splendor and have now once again cut to the heart of the American Dream. If you watch "reality TV" and believe it, this is mandatory viewing. Diane Lane will break your heart, Tim Robbins shatters deeply held delusions about the Playboy/Esquire lifestyle and James Gandofini's strong performance is a scream in the dark urging us to dump the junk TV and watch more substantial fare. This is great American filmmaking.

Minor, though still entertaining cable-made docudrama from directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini chronicling the would-be Sturm und Drang that went on behind-the-scenes of PBS's "American Family", an 11-hour television series in 1971 which presented the lives of The Louds, a "typical" family from Santa Barbara, CA. The Louds, who have since cemented their legacy as the first reality-TV family, brought in big ratings for the so-called "education network". Ordinary people, they were picked out of a society column by an ambitious producer and were followed around by a small camera-crew for some 78 days; still, high drama was hard to come by (patriarch Bill Loud had the wandering eye; eldest son Lance Loud was a flamboyant singer who had already moved to New York City when production began; while spouse Pat Loud, strong and confident, was the glue who kept kids and husband together). There wasn't much happening behind--nor in front of!--the lens, except for some mild flirting between Pat and the crafty, cunning producer, and Pat's discovery that her husband had been carrying on affairs with a number of different women. The editors of the actual show had a tough time piecing together enough watchable product, while this rendering of events, penned by the estimable David Seltzer, suffers the same fate. The groovy production-design is spot-on, and Diane Lane has several strong moments portraying Pat...yet this American family simply wasn't cliffhanger material. It all seems much ado about nothing.

Naturally, it doesn't feel real. The first show of its kind, brought America into a debacle of sorts. Was this an "art form" or a voyeuristic trip into the unknown? Now, the whole thing feels manipulated, fragmented and utterly unreal. The gay son, brought the situation into the main stream but it was misunderstood, or was it? The one thing I got out of this films was a superlative performance by Diane Lane. She is truly extraordinary. But the task of reproducing the "moment" feels a bit all over the place. Going from highlight to highlight, if you didn't know about it you still won't really understand. This is no Truman Show. The dramatic structure seems not merely uncertain but downright opportunistic. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

Surprisingly successful HBO film, which takes on the tricky multi-layered task of making a fictionalized docudrama about the making of "An American Family" a 10 hour PBS documentary that was the direct forerunner the surreal and semi-real world of 'reality television' we know today.

James Gandolfini plays James Gilbert, who has the brilliant idea to study a 'typical' American Family on film, almost as if it were an archaeological document. But of course no family is 'typical' (particularly the upscale Loud family), and all sorts of sticky moral, ethical and cinematic walls are crashed into. How objective can a documentary really be? What is, or should be off-limits of a prying camera? How much do the personalities and needs of the film-makers effect the behavior and choices subjects, subtly or sometimes very dramatically?

It also explores questions about family, as did the original series, but with the value of the passage of years to give context and distance. What is normal? Who are the heroes and villains in the complexities of family life? Are things ever that simple? Why do so many of us want to be seen, known? Or at least think we do?

It's very impressive that an 86 minute film can address so many of these questions so intelligently, entertainingly, disturbingly and ultimately movingly. The acting is all solid, with Diane Lane giving what may be the most impressive performance of her career, disappearing into the role of Pat Loud, the confused, self-searching mother.

While one could validly argue that there was more to explore (e.g. why was this series such a phenomenon? Why are we so driven to watch the train wrecks of other's lives?) this film does a terrific job of self-awarely playing with multiple layers and meanings of 'reality'. Not least when we briefly see footage of the real family cut in. Not surprising from these filmmakers, who also played with various levels of drama vs. reality so well in "American Splendor".

"Cinema Verite" may be a new art form: a drama shot in semi-documentary style about a documentary series (shot in 1971, televised nationally in 1973) which itself hovered between the spontaneous and the rehearsed. This 90-minute effort takes about a third of its running time time to get off the ground, but when it does it becomes fascinating as both sociology and drama.

At first it seems as if there is no point in re-enacting the back story to the famous series that followed the ups and downs of the upper-middle-class Loud family of Santa Barbara. Nothing particularly interesting happens as a producer (James Gandolfini) talks a married couple (Diane Lane and Tim Robbins) into allowing cameras into their lives for an unprecedentedly close look at the perfect American family. The real drama begins only when the participants are forced to grapple with the big choices (what and what not to film, what and what not to do when the camera is rolling, how to handle the fact that their lives have decisively changed once the cameras entered). The actors here give themselves totally to this multi-leveled process and come out with flying colors.

We see the actual Loud family in snippets from the original series juxtaposed with their contemporary impersonators who seamlessly fill their shoes, sometimes in mid- conversation. The casting is very good; the resemblances are striking. (But as close a match as Diane Lane is to Pat Loud, Demi Moore would have been even closer.) Some clever member of the creative team even decided to frame the whole enterprise with Mama Cass's 1969 song hit "Dream a Little Dream of Me" (originally a hit in 1931, about 40 years before "An American Family"'s time), allowing the song to surface again, 40 more years down the road, as underscoring to an examination of "the first reality show." A neat touch.

One thing they got wrong was the performance of the underground play "Vain Victory" which the mother attends in the company of her gay son, Lance. The performers and venue for such ragtag productions were a lot funkier than depicted in this otherwise spot-on production. Of course, by 2011 cultural standards such drag acts are as tame and commonplace as Twinkies, but they were enough to drive Pat Loud out of the room back in '71.