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Recently Released In Theaters Reviews
2012 Twilight: New Moon Planet 51 The Blind Side Mammoth Red Cliff Dare The Messenger Pirate Radio Precious The Fourth Kind The Box A Christmas Carol Men Who Stare at Goats The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day Recently Added Spotlights Paul Rudd Jason Segel Nicolas Cage Rose Byrne Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore Jared Padalecki Amanda Righetti Clive Owen Naomi Watts Joaquin Phoenix Steve Martin Renee Zellweger Liam Neeson Maggie Grace Dustin Hoffman |
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 This question - whether or not the Olmsteads' portrayal in the film is accurately representational or a series of editing tricks - is something every documentarian has to deal with. "People have this negative response toward the guiding of the story," Bar-Lev says. "They feel like if you guide the story, you're being disingenuous in a way. There is no not guiding the story...you could never let the story be what it is. Nobody's going to sit in the theater for a year. That would be letting a story be what it is. I took a year of time and turned it into an 84-minute movie. That couch scene at the end, for instance, was two and a half hours long, and now it's two minutes long. That question of objectivity, and being balanced, they don't even really have a place in the conversation. It's really just about trying to be truthful in a different way." So while a documentary could never be wholly representational, he do believes he has captured the truth of the situation. "What documentaries are, in most cases, they're improvisation. If there were two poles to the spectrum, on the one hand scripting the story and boxing it in, and on the other hand just witnessing it, documentaries are somewhere in the middle there. You are projecting a story out into the world, just like if you had written something, but you have to be willing for the world to bounce something back. It's like sonar or something. And I find that immensely pleasurable, intellectually." Of course, truthful or not, you're never going to please everyone. In the long tradition of controversial documentaries, the subjects of this one, the Olmstead parents, have condemned the filmmaker and the film. " They are not happy with the film," he says matter-of-factly, but with a hint of sadness in his voice, "and they have made a public statement which you can find online." (The Olmsteads told the New York Post: "When we met Amir Bar-Lev three years ago and he expressed interest in our daughter's work, we welcomed him into our home and lives. But we are heartbroken by some of the choices he made in his portrayal of our family in the editing of the film. We feel the question of the authenticity of our daughter's paintings has been answered. Marla has created many pieces on film, one of which, in Mr. Bar-Lev's opinion, was in keeping with her best works.") Bar-Lev takes pains to sound ... |
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