When evidence gets manufactured

Shardul Bhardwaj

Documentary cinema, since its inception, has been burdened by the duty of providing evidence. Irrespective of the art and cultural movements, which raged through the 20th century and questioned the veracity of the cinematic image, the image onscreen is still the marker of truth. In the large canon of documentary filmmaking lies this genre called biography, which seems to have used by governments, media houses and individual makers to grant credence to a certain narrative. More often than not this sub-genre has been used to create hagiographies of personalities.

The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten (1969), narrated by Lord Mountbatten himself, took what he called his 70 years of triumph, conflict and glory to a lot of English households. The result was that this 12-part documentary series made him into a larger than life embodiment of duty and patriotism. The critics of such self-aggrandisement stood with their backs against the wall as the larger English masses considered the images contained with the voiceover to be whole truths about English history. 

But one might argue that this was an age where information was scarce and Mountbatten had a direct agenda of self-promotion to make the docu-series, it might not be so easy today. 

On the contrary scores of documentaries are being produced today by third parties, which seem to follow the same path of image-making and PR exercise, Netflix, Hotstar and Amazon being the largest online platforms for the so-called good content house them.

Roar of the Lion (2019), which claims to shed light on the difficult years that Dhoni and Chennai Super Kings went through during the match-fixing scandal, which led to the team being banned for two years. “One of the earliest things that makes your eyebrows go up when you start watching Roar of the Lion on Hotstar is when the credits roll: A Banijay Asia and Dhoni Entertainment Production,” writes Vinayakk Mohanarangan for Scroll. The docu-drama is a nuanced broadcast of Kapil Dev crying on national television as he pleaded innocent in the match-fixing scandal in 2000. The thumbnail for the video of Kapil Dev crying on YouTube is, “I would die before cheating”, Dhoni’s docu-drama’s byline is “match-fixing is a bigger crime than murder for a cricketer”. The point here is not whether Dhoni actually indulged in match-fixing or not, the point is how easy it is to manage public opinion through the use of documentary films which in the larger public domain hold the image of infallibility.

The image’s infallibility is used quite often in documentary films today to articulate the infallibility of a public persona. In the Netflix documentary on Keith Richards called Keith Richards: Man Under Influence, the filmmaker chooses to play classical music as we see Richards’s back and he says, “Life is a funny thing you know. But I’ve always thought 30 was about it. Beyond that would be horrible to be alive.” After this point on the whole, the film seems to be an exercise in showing how many times this rock legend has fallen and gotten up stronger. The film falls just a little bit short of a fan video with a lot of production budget. Films in a similar vein about Joe Cocker, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Quincy Jones, etc. seem to populate our online platforms.

Voluntarily or involuntarily, a large section of documentary filmmakers seem to be under the burden of ‘knowing’. In other words, documentary films have become a mere exercise in the dissemination of information that the filmmaker has completely understood. The conflict and biggest drama of document is the way one understands what he/she comes across, and the way he/she presents this understanding. The drama increases twofold when one deals with the life of a human being, the understanding of someone else’s life can hardly be complete, and so its presentation can hardly ever claim to have understood a person’s life. The documentary filmmaker of today will have to challenge the authority of image more than ever when we live in the age of misinformation. There have been filmmakers like Mani Kaul, Jonas Mekas and Kamal Swaroop, who have constantly done that, it’s just that the rich tradition of storytelling where the viewer is granted the authority of piecing together a story from the perception of a filmmaker has to be given more credence.