Small is Beautiful

Release:  2015

Director/Writing Credits:  Jeremy Beasley

Producer:  Chris Kamen

Editing:  Florence Mathilde Holmes

Cast:  Ben Campbell, Nikki Codding, Mitchell Mast, Karen Parramore

Running Time:  67 minutes

Another in the collection of Netflix’s documentaries that boards on advertising, this sixty-seven minute piece follows the lives of four people who have just entered into the Tiny House movement, the centre of which (if this film is anything to go by) appears to be Portland Oregon.  Portlandia viewers and fans of comedian Maria Bamford’s ‘Ask Me About My New God!’ special will appreciate the logic of this geography.

For Ben Campbell and couple Nikki Codding and Mitchell Mast, it’s ostensibly a cost-effective way to get out from under crippling student debt.  Karen Parramore, on the other hand, having encountered economic difficulties for different reasons (which we’ll get to later) also decided to go the tiny house route.  She is also apart from the other tiny house adventurers, in that she has already completed her project when we meet her.  The director has therefore covered the various stages of these projects, from the humble beginnings of empty frames, to an individual who has spent a couple of years living the tiny house life.

To this writer the idea of the tiny house movement is fascinating.  Romantically speaking, the idea of paring back to the bare essentials, appeals in a big way.  This collection of individuals had virtually no previous experience in building or DIY before starting their projects.  They all take varying approaches on to how they go about building minimal living experiences.  Nikki and Mitchell seem to want to plough through for the most part on their own, it seemingly being a matter of pride for these self-proclaimed perfectionists.  Ben takes that particular road initially, before deciding to reach out to, amongst others, his step-father, the tiny house community and Dee Williams (tiny house guru or Beatle) to move his project forward.

Fifty year old Karen made her dream come true with the help of a friend.  Her dream involved the nightmare of a friend’s struggle with addiction and stealing from Karen’s various accounts to feed his habit.  As she tells it, her friend eventually sought help, earned his sobriety and in an attempt at redemption, helped to make her tiny home a reality.  Tragically this story finishes with his relapse and a return to his old ways, leaving Karen distraught.  Having decided to end the relationship she makes the trip to gather up her things, only to find him dead in the bathroom, having taken his own life.  Ben, a twenty-something who had inherited fifty thousand dollars from his estranged father, carries that weight throughout the film.  He builds something that will ultimately house him, from a significant tangible connection to his dead father.  It’s a theme that’s not far from the front of his mind during the entire build process.  Similarly Nikki dives into the world of carpentry, linking the work on the tiny house with her relationship to her own carpenter father, a man who apparently took her two places when he had custody of her as a child, building sites and bars.  These back stories imbue the construction of the tiny home with a sense of personal sacrifice almost as drastic as John Updike’s novel ‘Brazil’, where nothing is gained without something being lost.

The cinematography feels very firmly rooted in the hipster category, and the director could easily be following a rag tag bunch of musicians across the States, with those dark tones that allude to feelings beneath.  In that sense the film is very much like James Marcus Haney’s ‘Austin to Boston’.  Although it must be said that the stories of ‘Small is Beautiful’ appear more searching than the narcissism of the music world.

While the movie does indeed broadly demonstrate a lot of what goes into building a tiny house, it doesn’t go into minute detail.  Viewers used to informational DIY programmes, looking to pick up a few tips along the way will be a little disappointed.  While the houses are completed, or almost complete in Nikki and Mitchell’s case by the time we reach the end credits, we never really get a thorough tour of every nook and cranny.  But watching this film and looking for that particular angle is missing the point.  This is a film about a movement and essential to the heart of a great movement is a moving emotional core.

http://www.smallbeautifulmovie.com/

Small Is Beautiful Netflix

Small is Beautiful Facebook

The Resurrection of Jake the Snake

Release:  2015

Director:  Steve Yu

Producer:  Chris Bell, Christopher Carey, Dallas Page, Steve Yu

Editing:  Christopher Carey, Dylan Frymyer, Nathan Mowery, Steven Yu

Cast:  Jake Roberts, Steve Yu, Diamond Dallas Page, Scott ‘Razor Ramon’ Hall

Running Time:  93 minutes

During the eighties and nineties wrestling never really hooked me in.  I was aware of it like all ‘fads’ kids talk about in the school yard or on the street.  And as a passing viewer with no real sense of the history, characters or the nuances of the spectacle of wrestling, I was aware of only the most famous participants.  Gladiators of the ring like Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant were ubiquitous.  Jake the Snake was one of those guys.  Except that he wasn’t.  Where they were loud and over the top like television’s 1960s Batman, his persona was dark and twisted like a millennial Joker. This was best exemplified when Jake carried a large snake across his broad shoulders into the ring, most notably a python called Damien.

Jake reached the pinnacle of the wrestling world with WWE (or WWF as it was then) in the eighties and nineties but had fallen a long way by the time we meet him in late 2012.  By then 57 years old, he is a long-time alcoholic and drug addict in serious financial trouble.  The film is interspersed with various video clips of both Jake’s heyday and later his tragic drunken attempts at wrestling in far lesser arenas than the WWE, showing just how badly his addiction beat him up.  We find out later that the only reason he hasn’t committed suicide is his desire not to hurt his kids more than he already has done.

His saviour from addiction is to be Diamond Dallas Page, another former wrestler, trained by Jake in his early career before hitting the big time.  They will be joined on this journey by director Steve Yu.  Jake (real name Aurelian Smith Jr.) moves into Page’s home in Atlanta Georgia weighing over 300 pounds, and is as far removed from the visual idea of an athlete as one can possibly be.   

His recovery begins with Yoga, exercise, healthy eating, AA meetings and a permanent support group.  The weight comes off rapidly and in a matter of weeks we are looking at a fitter, happier man.  But of course trouble is never far away and the road has more than a few bumps along it.  The most interesting facet of Jake’s falling off the wagon is witnessing the mindset of an addict.  Bare-faced lying, rationalisation and indignant anger are core to the performance for the rest of the world.  In contrast the immediate aftermath of the relapses present a child-like sorrow in this 6 ft 6 in, 250 lb alcoholic, before he once again picks himself up and deals with his reality in an honest and brave manner. 

However, there are couple of slightly unsettling aspects to this film, or maybe there are to someone like this writer, not inured to the American way of life.  The first is the director’s need to be involved in the process.  This robs the film of any real objectivity.  Perhaps a Louis Theroux approach where the documentarian interacts with their subjects, but becomes neither a positive nor negative catalyst would have been more interesting.  It feels too much like we’re all on Team Roberts.  Or are we?  There seems to be another team present in this film, DDP Yoga, a fitness venture developed by Page.   Regular shots of DDP Yoga t-shirts, sports bags and video blogs/promos for the DDP Yoga site appear throughout.  Page’s affection for Jake seems genuine, but it also seems like he’s investing on two levels.  Fellow former wrestler and current addict Scott Hall, perhaps better known as Razor Ramon, joins Jake in Page’s home.  This serves to bolster the idea of community, as a recovering Robert’s tries to help Hall, but this ends up feeling too much like a testimonial.  But, maybe just like religion, the ends justify the means in offering someone struggling with addiction and its’ underlying causes, another shot at life.

The director infuses a narrative around redemption within the wrestling world into his film, which at best feels perfunctory, and will most likely be of interest only to dyed-in-the-wool wrestling fans. And naturally the film ends on a positive note, which is both fitting given Jake’s highly laudable efforts, and at the same time DDP Yoga brand positive.  The cherry on top of this particular American Pie is a finale with a particularly tacky lift from Rocky III.

The film’s best moments are not the metaphorical car crashes of Jake’s drunkenness, but instead the moments of emotional clarity and honesty shared by Jake when he is stone cold sober.  We discover how his relationship with a physically and emotionally abusive father scarred him for life, and how this became his motivation to succeed in wrestling and surpass his father’s achievements.  We see a man desperate to form a relationship with his own children and grandchildren, who does eventually realise that dream.  These open, raw moments are the emotional core of the film.  Though the DDP Yoga aspect of the film taints things, and the persona of Jake the Snake Roberts casts a shadow over proceedings, there is no doubt that the struggle and triumph of Aurelian Smith Jr. is a truly moving insight into addiction and recovery.

http://www.jakethesnakemovie.com/
https://www.facebook.com/jakethesnakemovie
The Resurrection of Jake the Snake IMDB

A crude awakening

Release: 2006

Directors/Producers: Basil Gelpke, Raymond McCormack, Reto Caduff

Music: Daniel Schnyder

Editing: Georgia Wyss

Running time:  94 minutes

As a person who considers himself left-leaning, environmentally friendly and right on (in theory), this writer has become used to a certain formula when watching documentaries.  The well-meaning, well-informed socially conscious individual, imploring one and all to join up and fight for the worthy cause.  And, for the most part it’s impressive.  Watching earnest, erudite people make an intelligent case for the freedom of killer whales or the re-evaluation of how we operate economically as a society, is as about engaging as it gets.  That is, until you come across a documentary where the rest of the talking heads are hardline capitalists (or functionaries of said capitlaism), who have gorged on and promoted the use of our oil resources for decades, and they agree with those other guys!

When experts in the field of science, such as oil geologists (Colin J. Campbell), tell you that the world’s oil supply is depleting and cannot be sustained, and that in a very short space of time we need to find alternatives, you take notice.  In a documentary film of this kind the director usually follows this with short clips of a bunch of self-interested, right-wing capitalist  blowhards telling the cry-babies to calm down, and that all is under control, thereby creating antagonists.  Not this time.  Not even a little.  Directors Gelpke, McCormack and Caduff line up an illustrious group of oil industry experts such as GOP Representative Roscoe Bartlett, George W. Bush’s energy advisor Matthew Simmons and Fadhil al-Chalabi the former OPEC Executive Secretary General.  And what is their standpoint in this debate?  Shut up you whimpering tree huggers?  Nope. Simply put, we are running out of oil.  To a man, each one of them factually, and without quibble states that oil production has peaked and we need to change strategy.  All row in behind M. King Hubbert’s theory of ‘Peak Oil’, which outlines the point at which we will see oil supply only decrease.  He estimated this to be around the year 2020.

The film moves swiftly on to the consequences of this projected oil shortfall.  Horrifying scenarios include an inability to sustain the current level of population on the planet.  It’s suggested that the downward population adjustment may happen through famine and extreme poverty.  Given the current levels of economic inequality in this world, this a truly sobering thought.  A vague reference is made to humankind rolling back it’s use of technologies and transport.  The talking heads suggest a world where flight, and possibly even road travel will be a luxury that only the richest of the rich may permit themselves due to exhorbitant price increases for oil.  Only Alfred M. Spormann, a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, of Chemical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Biology at Stanford, optimistically supports the idea of the constant forward movement of evolution and technology.

As for new energy technologies such as wind and solar nobody seems to be painting a pretty picture.  All agree, that yes, the technologies do indeed exist, but are nowhere near polished enough to replace the behemoth that is oil.  Estimates range from 30 to 40 years, if not more, before a suitable, renewable energy will be perfected as a substitute to oil, capable of fulfilling our current and future energy needs.  However, given that this film was made in 2006, this may no longer be the case.  In fact films such as ‘Catching the sun’, insist that solar technology is ready to provide the energy needed, and all that is lacking in countries like the United States is the political will to upset the old petroleum order.  They quote Germany and China as two world powers hellbent on, and in fact implementing renewable energy policies on a grand scale.

Whatever the case, ‘A crude awakening’ makes it’s point extremely well.  Scientists outlining a cataclysmic event in the near future, makes for slightly uncomfortable viewing for the distanced viewer.  But add industry heavyweights backing them up and an a compelling race against time and you’ve got a documentary worth it’s weight in oil.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0776794/
http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/