Documentaries are depictions of truth and reality that often time people tend to ignore but some of them have become a must-watch due to their incredible making.
The main motive of a good documentary is to give its audience the truth about anything basically but a great documentary not only serves the hardcore truth but also is able to make its audience feel for the story depicted. It aims to make people understand the world a bit better and even rethink the ideas that the people have of themselves. Right now, it is considered to be the peak of the documentary era with the film studios creating an avalanche of them and some of them have turned out to be truly amazing. Here are some of the best documentaries that everyone should watch at least once.
Shoah (1985)
The documentary directed by Claude Lanzmann portrays the story of people who have been living the horrors of the concentration camps Treblinka, Auschwitz, Sobibor, Chelmno, and Belzec. The documentary is the result of the distillation of 350 hours of interviews with the witnesses of this terrifying incident and runs for nine and a half hours. It holds the testimony of one of the two Jew survivors who could live through this incident of killing 400,000 men, women, and children at the Chelmno death camp and his experience of visiting Poland for the first time. The testimony of a barber who used to give haircuts before the people were taken to concentration camps, a train driver who carried the victims to the death camps, and an SS officer speaking about the ‘processing’ of the victims on their way to the concentration camp.
Sans Soleil (1983)
This documentary was created by Chris Maker and was made in such a way that the audience will get the sense of reading a diary that is filled with vibrant pictures from all around the world taken while the creator was on a journey. The female narration going ‘He wrote me…’ gives the feeling of letters a friend has written with the intention of sharing each and every single emotion, every splitting moment the creator has witnessed and enjoyed on his journey. The opening shot of three Icelandic girls walking down a path, the Japanese Temple dedicated to cats, the illuminating aside of Hitchcock’s Vertigo creates a sense of a diary that is being read, written, and watched all at the same time. It is by far the most intimate film made on Tokyo.
The Thin Blue Line (1988)
This documentary was done by Errol Morris in a whodunit manner that captures the story of the murder of a policeman in Dallas and the suspect Randall Adams who was imprisoned in 1967. This documentary employs the re-enactments of the whole situation in an investigative way. The dramatic reconstruction of the incident gave multiple perspectives on what happened and how it happened. The witness interviews in the documentary are weird, wary, and unreliable which creates a poignant and hilarious essay on oddball America. With the beautifully structured shots, the comic yet nightmarish study of self-delusion and deception along with immaculate plot, this documentary is bound to make its audience feel anger, sadness, relief, wonder, and admiration.
Night and Fog (1955)
Considered as one of the first cinematic depictions of the Holocaust, this French documentary was directed by Alain Resnais and runs for just half an hour. The documentary also feels like a ghost movie that shows the empty and abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The narration is done by Jean Cayrol, a survivor of this heinous crime. The juxtaposition of the empty grounds with wartime images depicts how much cruel and violent mankind become and there is a possibility that these incidents to take place again. The portrayals of the sickening Nazi experiments and their inhuman results have given the documentary the capability of deeply affecting the audience and leave them in tears.
Harlan County U.S.A (1976)
Directed by Barbara Kopple, this documentary depicts the soul-crushing struggles of the coal-mine workers who worked under the Duke Power Company and runs up to one hour and forty-three minutes. This documentary showcases the personal pain and the sacrifices these miners had to go through and make for the upper-class of people. The miners were driven to work till which led to their ruination due to black-lung disease, insufficient wages, and housing showing a lack of moral standards and dirty beyond imagination. The main focus of the director was to capture a strike called the ‘Brookside Strike’ of 1973 of 180 coal miners and their wives due to their unfavorable working conditions. It took Kopple four years to get this documentary read for the world to see and won Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Dont Look Back (1967)
The documentary was directed by D.A. Pennebaker and it covers the life of the legendary artist Bob Dylan on a 1965 concert tour in England. It was the first one of its kind and paved the way for the rockumentary film genre. The documentary shows the legend as he lounges in hotel rooms and banters with his friends, the idea of having an all-access pass to the musician’s inner life originated from this very documentary. From attacks from the reporters, the rabid fans wanting to get a piece of the singer, and songwriter to iconic moments of Dylan interrupting Alan Price’s performance to ask why he had left the Animals, he and Baez singing Hank Williams songs in the hotel to his philosophical debate with a science student before the concert, the documentary captures all of it and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
The War Game (1965)
Directed by Peter Watkins, this is a British documentary that captured the nuclear war and its aftermath. The incredible ‘you-are-there’ perspective along with masterfully manufactured scenes of the mayhem of the suburb in the disguise of an emergency news report is bound to stir something in the audience’s mind. Usage of scientific research, government statistics, and the testimonies about the damage on Hiroshima and Nagasaki banned the documentary from BBC but did great such a profound impact that it nabbed the Best Documentary Oscar in 1966. Before this, no one had used the fake-documentary format to such an extent and it made the documentary still a high mark for employing such a blissful style.
Apart from these, there is a galaxy of amazing documentaries that need to be watched by everyone at least once in their lifetime to get a clear perspective of the past and present and how much these are influencing the future of the film industry.
