The Aristocrats, Rize

My two favorite documentaries of the past year are not necessarily what I think are the "best" documentaries of the year--Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man is certainly a better film. But these two very different docs, both centered more or less on the performing arts, are the ones I enjoyed the most.

The Aristocrats is an amazing piece of work. The 90 minutes of various comedians telling, discussing, and deconstructing the same stupid joke sounds like an awful concept, but turns out brilliantly, partially due to the strength of the various performers and partially due to the equal artistry with which they are edited together. There are some brilliant tellings of the joke (Sarah Silverman's in particular is pure genius), but it can be more interesting to simply hear all these comics ponder what the joke is about, and why it is (or isn't) funny. There is such coherency in the editing that you forget that these people have all been filmed at different times in different places--they seem to be all in one room having one big, long conversation. Each telling of the joke seems unified to what preceeds and follows it, as the conversation morphs from one theme to the next, and each comic seems to have his or her own idea about what the joke says about show biz.

I'm glad I got to see The Aristocrats at the theater--it was a great film to watch the audience react to--but this is one of those movies that's just MADE for DVD. There's so much great unused footage in the extras, so many great insights in the commentary track, and the movie itself rewards repeated viewings, as the artistry becomes more evident the closer you look.

Rize is not a particularly well-made documentary. In fact, I think David LaChappelle did a rather shoddy job in creating a story out of his footage, and he takes every opportunity to clumsily pull the strings of the viewers emotions. But the footage he shot is so amazing, it hardly matters. The doc traces the development of clowning and krumping, two related forms of hip-hop dance in South Central L.A., and the moves these dancers do are fucking incredible. It's so beautiful watching these kids do these moves against the backdrop of the streets of the hood, it almost made me tear up. Which makes it all the more shameful that LaCheppelle felt he had to try (unsuccesfully, I might add) to force more emotion out of his stories.