what (not) to doc

New to DVD this week:
MONOGAMISH

Director:
Tao Ruspoli

Premiere:
Rome 2015

Select Festivals:
Austin

About:
After his public divorce (from the never-named actress Olivia Wilde), the filmmaker sets out to understand the nature of love, marriage, and monogamy.

At sea following the end of his eight year marriage, the strangely naive Ruspoli conducts an all-over-the-map survey of the current state of heterosexual relationships, desperately seeking clarity on why our society is so fixated on the ideal of monogamy when it clearly has a poor track record. What results is a talking heads parade of academics, authors, sex workers, sex therapists, and everyday people unpacking myths and misconceptions around love, sex, monogamy, and alternative relationship structures like polyamory, occasionally illustrated with weak re-enactments. Unfortunately, Ruspoli is committed to including his own story in this as much as possible, so he unnecessarily attempts to tie virtually everything back to his own story, or that of his storied family of Italian aristocracy – he himself was the product of the union between a married Italian prince and his American mistress. While this meta aspect yields at least one mildly entertaining subject in Ruspoli’s scene-stealing female cousin, it more often feels like self-indulgent filmmaking-as-therapy and an unneeded storytelling crutch. While offering an occasionally interesting tidbit about the sociohistorical roots of monogamy, the project ultimately comes off as a fairly standard survey film about a “big question” – and one that sadly can never adequately or satisfyingly fulfill its own mandate.

Coming to NYC’s Stranger Than Fiction series tomorrow, Thursday, March 1:
INTO THE NIGHT: PORTRAITS OF LIFE AND DEATH

Director:
Helen Whitney

Premiere:
FilmColumbia 2017

Select Festivals:
Austin, Hamptons Take 2 Docs

About:
Nine diverse perspectives on dying, death, and the afterlife.

Through the varied experiences of her subjects, individuals who each either interact with death in their work or who have had confronted mortality in their personal lives, Whitney presents an intimate meditation on the fundamental mystery and certainty of our fleeting existence. Those interviewed – including a mortician, a Baptist minister, a heart surgeon, a cryonicist, and an ex-radical Islamist – share deeply personal and often affecting stories, spurring consideration of what it means to both live and die with dignity and purpose. While not without flaws – in particular, a surfeit of unnecessary narration, a too-long running time at over two hours, and the fatigue that often results from survey-driven projects – Whitney has crafted a thoughtful, and thought-provoking, film about a universal, but often deliberately avoided, topic.