Many things inspire people to make a film. Usually, it's a story they are so passionate about telling that they simply have to get it out there. Sometimes, it's a form of activism, of bringing attention to a topic they believe deserves more eyeballs on it. Other times, you make a movie about someone simply because you love and admire them. This was clearly the motivating factor for Molly O'Brien when directing “The Only Girl in the Orchestra.” The thirty-three minute documentary is about O'Brien's aunt, Orin O'Brien. She was the first women hired to play in the New York Philharmonic. Leonard Bernstein personally selected her to play the double bass in the orchestra. The film is largely devoted to showing O'Brien's life as a recent retiree, while also discussing her career, the path that brought her to it, and how she navigated the difficulties of being a woman in a man-dominated profession.
You learn a few things from “The Only Girl in the Orchestra.” You learn about the condescending way O'Brien was treated throughout her career, especially when a newspaper article about her is read and it discusses her appearance and status as the sole woman there more than her ability as a musician. You learn that Orin O'Brien is the daughter of George O'Brien, a star during the silent era and a regular in John Ford's films who is best remembered now for Murnau's “Sunrise.” Her mother was Marguerite Churchill, also a successful actress who I recognize from “Dracula's Daughter” and “The Walking Dead.” Mostly, however, what we learn from the film is that Molly O'Brien loves her aunt. And that's nice. We see Orin get misty eyed as her piano is dissembled and carried out of her decaying apartment. She teaches and plays the bass with students and reminiscences about her life and career.
It's all very pleasant. Orin seems nice. She's so humble that she actively asks what makes her worthy of being the subject of a movie. She shares multiple anecdotes about how it is the job of someone in an orchestra to work together with the group and not stand out. She is fine with that, finding it incredibly rewarding. Does any of that make for a compelling documentary? Sometimes. I like the fly-on-the-wall shots of Orin moving through her apartment or playing the bass. She's obviously an exceptionally talented woman. The film never really gets into where the drive, discipline, and passion someone must have to succeed in any creative field must come from though. It's simply a half-hour with a pretty cool old woman. Which isn't bad, by any means, but I do have to wonder why the Academy felt the need to single it out. [5/10]
In 2014, Chicago police murdered Laquan McDonald by shooting him in the back sixteen times. They later claimed McDonald lunged at them with a knife but body-cam footage proved otherwise. Following this, laws were changed so that any recordings of a violent police incident would be released to the public after sixty days. In July of 2018, a barber named Harith “Snoop” Augustus was also murdered by Chicago police. Harith had a Conceal and Carry License and had a legally purchased gun in a holster on his person. Police saw the object through his shirt. They stopped him and physically attempted to grab him. Augustus fled and was fatally shoot in the back. The killing was captured on film by surveillance cameras and body-cams. Bill Morrison's “Incident” assembles this footage into a thirty minute film, allowing a viewer to see the mundane events leading up to the killing, the murder itself, and what the cops did and said afterwards.
In other words, “Incident” shows us a police cover-up happening in real time. Using a split screen structure and on-screen subtitles, Morrison's films uses recordings to give us as much of an objective recounting of events as possible. We see the only interaction the police had with Augustus before attacking him: He walked by them and scratched his back. We see the cops leap at him violently and without cause when he attempts to show them his Conceal and Carry license. Most damning, we see and hear what happens after they kill him: Immediately, the cops start lying and making excuses. They claim shots were fired at them. They say Augustus was reaching for his gun. They flee the crime scene. When the cops realize they are being recorded, they begin to speak more carefully before turning the cameras off.
This makes “Incident” a stark and distressing documentation of not only how police officers get away with killing innocent people but the mindset that turns them into murderers. The female officer who reached out to grab Augustus unprompted, on-camera, melodramatically states that she feared for her life. Minutes later, she's downgraded her concerns to being scratched on the arm, as if that justified murdering a man. The officer who shot Augustus is repeatedly reassured that he did nothing wrong, that he did “the right thing.” Notably, one of the first things the cops do after killing the innocent man is remove the holstered gun from the body. If “Incident” doesn't make you want to picket in front of your local police department, I don't know what will. It is such a clear recording of the way law enforcement in this country are trained to see any person of color as a violent threat, to react with lethal force to absolutely anything, and how they carry themselves with a mind set that justifies the crimes they commit and allows them to get away with it. I hope Harlith Augustus' family – his daughter was five at the time of his death – achieve some sort of peace in their lifetime, because I know his murderers will never face proper discipline for what they did. [9/10]
The co-director of “St. Louise Superman” returns to the Best Documentary Short Subject category with “I am Ready, Warden,” a film that makes us a fly on the wall of the death penalty debate. Eighteen years ago, John Henry Ramirez stabbed Pablo Castro 29 times outside a gas station in Corpsi Christi, Texas. He fled to Mexico for four years, fathering a child, before being apprehended and sentenced to death. While in prison, he discovered religion and did everything he could to be remorseful about his crime. The order of execution has been stayed three times before. An attempt by the Attorney General to downgrade Ramirez' sentence to Life in Prison did not succeed. In the days leading up to the man's execution, filmmaker Smriti Mundhra interviewed Ramirez, his son, the anti-death sentence activist who became his godmother, and the now adult son of the man he senselessly killed.
I am against the death penalty, first and foremost, because I do not believe that an unjust system can deliver justice. Moreover, I don't believe that the taking of one life is balanced by the taking of another. “I am Ready, Warden” forces us to ask some difficult questions. Ramirez never asks for forgiveness for his crime, considers what he did a hideous act, and accepts his fate. However, he has clearly changed a lot in eighteen years. I don't know if I believe becoming religious is enough to prove someone has become a better person. Yet Ramirez has clearly thought about what he did. I don't think that redeems him for his crime. At the same time, I don't think taking a father away from one son, because he took another son's father away years before, is right. What does that achieve? Now two men are dead, more wounds are made and none from the past have been healed. “I am Ready, Warden” gives time to Pablo Castro's son, who doesn't have any interest in forgiving the man who killed his father. Nor should he and I wouldn't expect anyone in that situation to. However.. Is this the best way to insure some sort of moral equality has been done?
If nothing else, the film is determined to put these events in context. It details Ramirez' own damaged childhood, abandoned by his father and physically abused by his mother. It describes how he grew up in an environment of drugs and violence. As senseless as the murder of Pablo Castro was, it didn't happen in a vacuum. Every action sends out a ripple and Ramirez was, perhaps, as much a victim of past mistakes as Castro's son was. “I am Ready, Warden” is soundly an anti-death penalty film but it doesn't preach either. It simply presents these difficult facts and asks us to come to our conclusions, if one murder justifies another. More in-depth films have been made on this topic. “I am Ready, Warden” is simply a microcosm of one such case among many but I did find it to be powerful. [7/10]
Mass shootings are so commonplace in America now that learning a survivor has gone on to become a filmmaker is sadly unsurprising. “Death by Numbers” is about and written by Sam Fuentes. She is a survivor of the Parkland high school massacre, which currently holds the grim record of deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. (Until it is inevitably eclipsed, because America is incredibly fucked-up.) In the years since the tragedy, Fuentes has done what she can to cope with the trauma by writing poetry and becoming an anti-gun violence activist. “Death by Numbers” shows her, in 2022, still healing from the mental scars. This comes to a head as Fuentes is summoned to the trial of Nikolas Cruz, the shooter. She is eventually chosen as the representative of all the victims, given the chance to speak directly to the person that killed seventeen of her classmates and teachers and injured sixteen more.
“Death by Numbers” is a film that ultimately operates in two modes. The first is more expressionistic, showcasing Fuentes' writing. Her poetry and journals are read in voiceover against a number of images, including scenes from “Meshes of the Afternoon.” This represents the survivor attempting to make sense of what she lived through and the motives of the man behind the violence. Nikolas Cruz defined himself as a white supremacist and coldly, cruelly made proclamations of wanting to be the world's deadliest school shooter. As if it was some sort of game. That Fuentes was in a Holocaust Studies Class during the shooting seems like an especially pointed, deliberate act on the killer's' behalf. It's such an utterly senseless and despicable act that there's no getting your brain around it. Fuentes' writing puts it in the context of hate speech and terrorism, which the film contrasts with images of Hitler, Nazis, and Alt-Right agitators. A twenty minute short doesn't have the room to put Cruz' acts in the context of the culture of hatred and violence that birthed him. What film could grapple with that subject fully? These are clearly Fuentes' personal attempts to comprehend the event and should be understood as such.
The other half of “Death by Numbers” is a more traditional documentary, following Fuentes as she's called to testify at Cruz' trial and eventually faces him in the courtroom. We see the trial play out, Fuentes' teacher and many of her classmates called forward to recount the details of the worst days of their lives once again. This is, obviously, extremely upsetting to watch. Whenever Cruz appears, his face is marked out, presumably to deny him any fame or power over his victims... But the views we do get of his blank, remorseless eyes are still chilling. Watching “Death by Numbers” after “I am Ready, Warden” is an interesting experience, both films dealing with whether the death penalty amounts to justice. Sam is against it herself and I agree with her. I don't believe that any person or act exist out of context. Cruz' public defender, without excusing his horrendous crimes, points out that he's clearly mentally ill and the result of an abusive background. At the same time, it's hard not to relate to the families of the victims. They exit the courtroom, shaking their heads in dismay after Cruz was only sentenced to life without parole. Sam Fuentes claims that her passionate speech to her attempted murderer, being forced to face the consequences of his actions, is a far more fitting punishment. However, seeing the clear shadow these events will cast on the lives of Fuentes and the other victims, and how inhumanly cruel the shooter seems, it's hard to feel victorious about how any of this plays out. This makes “Death by Numbers” a messy, upsetting, unsatisfying watch. But what else could it be? Sam Fuentes is doing what she can to make peace with what happened to her and others, like any of us would in her circumstance. That makes “Death by Numbers” a powerful piece of art taken from an extremely personal perspective. [7/10]
Let's have something more light-hearted now, shall we? In a Tokyo public school, the students of the first grade class are preparing for a big end-of-the-semester event: A performance of “Ode to Joy,” everyone in the class playing a different instrument. Little Ayame ends up getting assigned the cymbals. She feels an immense amount of pressure to perform well, receiving encouragement and scolding from her various teachers and class mates. Ema Ryan Yamazaki's film watches as Ayame prepares and catches other snapshots from the first grade class, as the kids get ready for this special time in their lives.
After three documentary shorts dealing with extremely serious and upsetting topics, I'll admit “Instruments of a Beating Heart” was a nice change of pace. This short is simply adorable throughout, devoted to watching some sweet kids being themselves. The students of this first grade class are a very sensitive lot. One of them starts to get a little weepy eyed because they are worried about whether their classmates will make it into the band. Ayame is maybe the most sensitive. At her young age, she's already feeling pressured to perform to a certain standard. A heartbreaker of a moment has a teacher reprimanding her for not memorizing her part in front of the class, which reduces the poor girl to tears. This leads to such a touching moment, when another teacher consoles her and says that if Ayame is scolded, she will be too. It's hard to imagine an interaction like this happening in an American school for so many different reasons – none of which are the fault of teachers or students – so it's nice to see young people so in-touch with their emotions and professionals so prepared to help them navigate it.
Catching such genuine, touching moments on-camera – examples of reality playing out in front of our eyes – is what the documentary genre is all about. “Instruments of a Beating Heart” doesn't break any new ground and, at only 23 minutes, feels a bit long. There's only so much story to be mined from this material. Nevertheless, this is about as sweet and adorable as you'd expect a class of first graders to be. As someone who always felt an enormous pressure to prove themselves running counter to being generally unprepared, I related so much to Ayame's struggles here. Luckily, the short has a happy ending. Sometimes all you need is a protagonist you can root for trying to overcome a challenge and succeeding in doing so. [7/10]
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