02.06.2004

Documenter extraordinaire

Jim Gilbert Moody reviews In fact: Michael Grigsby and the documentary tradition, National Film Theatre, June 4-25

Those unfamiliar with the outstanding documentary work carried out by Michael Grigsby over the last 40 years or so now have the rare opportunity to savour some of it at a retrospective season of his films being hosted by the British Film Institute. His vision to move us, the viewers, is well represented here. Grigsby's aim - to "liberate people's imagination [and] let them think things through for themselves" - comes through loud and clear throughout his work (all quotes from School of Sound interview in 2000).

Grigsby started filmmaking, aged 15, while attending Abingdon School, where he ran a film society; some of his current work with pupils there will appear in the season. One of his early pieces, No tumbled house (1955), deals with the realities faced by a boy in a boarding school; but it was his work at Granada Television from the late 1950s while still a teenager that began to establish his professional credentials and led to his making a succession of important documentaries into the present century.

Fitting in with the Granada ethos of the time, Grigsby set out to make films about "the social conditions around me, work, and the way people lived". For example, in 1970 he directed I was a soldier, which looked at how three returning Vietnam war veterans felt on coming back to their small, mid-western US town. None of them feels able to re-enter their former lives, but are adrift; most of their friends just do not and cannot understand; only one young man's parents are sympathetic and give him space to come to terms with the unspoken horrors he has obviously been party to in Vietnam. No direct reference to what these conscripts did or saw appears, yet the film shows us how their humanity has been damaged by their experiences; this film was one of the first airings for an issue that was very rarely addressed at the time.

A life apart, made in 1973, allowed Fleetwood trawlermen and those in the community around them to speak. In preparing for filming, Grigsby tried to get to grips with his subject by spending four months living amongst them. He has always maintained that only this intense involvement and commitment can create a capacity to express sufficiently the real lives being portrayed, without leaving people feeling exploited and used in the way that the brief visits of current affairs programme-makers often do.

A large part of the aesthetic of these documentaries rests in the director's use of sound, which he acknowledges to be of enormous importance. In The time of our lives (1993), a film which starts with sound news clips from the (then) present and gradually goes back. It concludes with a recording of Beveridge talking in 1945 about his famous report, which promised so much and so misled a generation into such hopeful expectations of a welfare state. 

The irony of the gloomy council passageways in the visual images compound with the empty promises of bourgeois politicians and conclude the scene in question with an old man asleep in poverty. This particular work continues a similar theme that was begun six years earlier in Living on the edge (1987).

The use of fragments of sound and archive in these films constitutes a central theme: the director's tireless efforts to implant a visual-audio awareness in his documentary audience. It fits well with his aim of letting viewers "ponder, reflect, take out of it what they will" - as opposed to the sound-bite, pre-digested methodology that has infected most documentary work for decades.

West Belfast has featured in many a 'factual' programme over the years, but the continued freshness of Grigsby's The silent war (1990), broadcast first in C4's True stories slot, underlines the correctness of his approach. Women from the area, catholic and protestant, discuss together and within their families the human costs that they have borne through the troubles of the 70s and 80s. The simplicity with which participants tell their stories of suffering wonderfully engages the viewer. Grigsby sees no good reason why documentary-makers should shy away from building up the mood in the manner of a feature film.

Moving the audience in an artistic way seems to go against the grain for many documentary-makers, who defer to a 'factual' style that is bereft of feeling. But the sensitive building of mood is what makes Grigsby's work so effective, drawing you in and involving you in the concerns of the people in his films, however unfamiliar their lives might at first glance appear to be. In Thoi Noi (1992), Grigsby visits Vietnam over 16 years after liberation from the American and puppet regime and evokes intervening history through the reading of letters. No work in the series illustrates better the value of listening. Grigsby is a maestro of mood and sound.

Calmly, men and women who literally had to pick up the pieces after the terrorist outrage talk about it as best they can 10 years later in Lockerbie: a night remembered (1998). Grigsby had to reassure his subjects, who were extremely reticent when first approached. One farmer thought he might have to do what he had seen on TV reports and encapsulate his feelings in a single sound bite; once reassured that this was the opposite of what was needed, he gives a most dignified and moving account. 

Again, the director considers sound such a crucial element that he combines the role of composer and sound recordist, producing a measured effect full of impact; thanks in large part to the emphasis produced by the soundtrack, memories of events 10 years old are made alive.
Soccer chants are incorporated into the soundtrack of The score (1998), which shows everything about a football match except the game itself. A musical score uses the chants, which are then effectively melded into the sounds created by the roars of the crowd itself. Faces of individuals in the crowd express the whole range of emotions bringing them in proximity to the audience: connection is thus established.

Michael Grigsby hones down, aiming to make his films as economical and punchy as possible. They are certainly that, but what is especially noteworthy is that he has been producing such high-impact material for decades. In that important interface between politics and art, Grigsby behaves impeccably as an artist. There is no crude attempt to hector or propagandise. Instead, he utilises the documentary genre in a unique fashion, bringing his humanist vision to bear on problems in society, so that viewers become participants too - involved, engaged and thinking.

Whether you are unfamiliar with Grigsby's work or may have missed some of his prodigious output over the years, there is now a chance not to be missed over the next few weeks.