Introduction
This is a post that is a repurposing of an old-school Mini-Review Round-Up post. As stated here I am essentially done with running multi-film review posts. Each film deserves its own review. Therefore I will repost, and at times add to, old reviews periodically. Enjoy!
No Place on Earth
When you see the logo pop up that reads History Channel Films you should know what you’re in for at least to an extent. The dramatization is a fine line between narrative and documentary cinema that this film likes to walk most of the time. The dramatization takes things a step further say than Flaherty did in Nanook of the North when setting up shots. Here there are reenactments that are cast, staged and immaculately lit. It takes a deft hand to weave talking-heads interviews (also immaculately lit) and staged reenactments and it’s a balance this film never strikes. Oddly, in trying to closer represent things visually much of the power is drained from the film.
If you contrast this with say Cave of Forgotten Dreams where Herzog instead moves about an uninhabited cave and films the art and people discussing it without having a visual representation of the work being made, you can see the power of the restraint. However, even closer in construction was this year’s Nicky’s Family that included modern-day interviews with refugees of the holocaust, stills and reenactments with great balance. Here the equation split the story, and as interesting as that is it levels out and fails to give us the best of either technique.
The Movie Rat 