I'm looking for films about whatever they're about that are also about their own making. Fiction is preferred over documentary--this approach in documentary tends to strike me as more often lazy than profound--but skillful documentaries are welcome too. [examples inside, including spoilers]
On watching
Man with a Movie Camera again recently, I've become fascinated with films that tell two stories, one of them at least in part about the film's making--it seems an easy way to work in commentary about the power of film and to comment about story-telling itself. Examples include
Persona, which reminds you constantly that it's a film, and
The Player and
Adaptation, which both use the "meta" aspect as a wicked subplot/twist revealed near the end.
In my opinion Ross McElwee can sometimes pull it off in his documentaries (I think he does in
Six O'Clock News and
Time Indefinite, but for some reason it rankles me in
Sherman's March). I like what Varda does with it in her
Gleaners films (including others' criticisms of her own choices as a film maker).
Examples where I think it doesn't add much to the story include
Beyond the Mat and
I Remember Me; for the most part, I think documentary filmmakers seem to fall back on this "making-of" plot once their main plot lags, so it strikes me as a kludge more than a brilliant hack. (Though
Blair Witch got a clever gimmick out of it.)
What other examples can you think of? Spoilers are fine; I'm more interested in seeing what the filmmakers do with the "meta" aspect.
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posted by phearlez at 2:35 PM on September 27, 2005