Director: Errol Morris
I used to think that I would watch Errol Morris film a bunch of weirdos reading the phone book. That thought has been extinguished by Vernon, Florida, an extremely loose collection of interviews that Morris did in the Florida town. The film almost functions as an anthropological study of rural people - we see how they spend their leisure time, what they believe in, how they work, and so on.
Like Gates of Heaven, Morris's preceding film, there's something much deeper going on in Vernon, Florida, but I'll be damned if I actually want to find out what it is. Compounding the general inscrutability of the film are the subjects' thick accents, which make them near-incomprehensible at times. The film is also funny, but as a college-educated Northerner, I'd feel like a real asshole if I put on this film to laugh at the people in it. However, restricting my laughter just made viewing the film a tense experience. I don't think it was Morris's intent to make fun of these people, but with so many television shows featuring ill-informed people 'deserving' of our ridicule (e.g. Jerry Springer, the early incarnation of The Daily Show), it's unfortunately my impulse. Mercifully, the film is only 55 minutes long.
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I haven't seen any of his work, but I've read an interesting series of articles that he wrote about a painting forger.
ReplyDeletehttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/bamboozling-ourselves/
If nothing else, check Part 2: The Uncanny Valley.
wow, those articles are fascinating. great stuff, thanks. you should check out an errol morris film sometime, other than this one they've all been good.
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