Mood: Meditative Documentaries
Our family has recently cut back on streaming subscriptions, so I borrowed most of this month’s picks from the library. Often I reserved titles ahead of time, but I also browsed the DVD shelves at the library, an experience that was pleasantly reminiscent of going to the video store in the 1990s. Browsing physical objects seems to bring a layer of serendipity, and as you’ll notice, I found myself drawn to documentaries. I’ve noted below where you can stream the films, but if you want that old-school video store feeling, I recommend checking out your local library. And, as one of my readers pointed out, if you can’t find the film you want, your librarian may be able to get it for you via interlibrary loan.
There are some film-related links at the bottom of this email, as well as some information about my novel, which I’ve mentioned from time to time in this newsletter—usually as something that kept me from posting. It’s coming out this summer and is available for preorder, if you want to check it out.
Zen Buddhism for Dog Lovers
Heart of a Dog (2016)
Written & Directed by Laurie Anderson
1 hour 15 minutes; Streaming on Criterion or VOD $3.59
I heard Laurie Anderson on Marc Maron a couple of months ago and was so soothed by the sound of her voice that I made a note to myself to check out her documentary about the death of her beloved dog, Lolabelle. I watched it on a Sunday morning, and it felt like a beautiful sermon about love and death, with Anderson sharing memories of her dog, recollections of her life in NYC, and stories from her childhood. Her studies in Zen Buddhism were woven into her essayistic reflections. I’m making it sound gentle and meandering–and it is, at first–but I was floored by the final twenty minutes, as well as the closing song by Anderson’s late husband, Lou Reed. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
A Sobering Look at Forever Chemicals
The Devil We Know (2018)
Directed by Stephanie Soechtig and Jeremy Seifert
1 hour 35 minutes; VOD $3.99
This documentary about DuPont’s illegal disposal of toxic “forever chemicals” is an excellent companion to Dark Waters, which explores the same material in a narrative format. If you know Dark Waters, then you’re familiar with the story of the West Virginia farmer whose cows began to die in horrific ways after wading in streams adjacent to DuPont properties. When the farmer complained, DuPont lied about what they knew about the chemicals–namely, that they were toxic to most living things. These chemicals, known as PFAS, were recently banned, but they are so pervasive that they are now in everyone’s bloodstream, with terrible consequences for human health. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
Women Talking
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (2023)
Written and directed by Anna Hints
1 hour 29 minutes; Streaming on Mubi, VOD $4.99
Women talking in a smoke sauna. Talking about the things women talk about: their bodies, their mothers, their sex lives. Death, obviously. Childbirth. Pain. Love. Grief. Periods. It’s all here, and because it happens within the ritual of sauna, there’s a feeling of safety and peace, even as the women share upsetting stories. You see the seasons pass as the women visit the sauna hut, an idyllic cabin on a small pond. I loved the intimacy of this documentary, it felt as if I were in the smoky room, with the women, listening intently. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
A Billionaire’s Folly
Taming the Garden (2022)
Directed by Salomé Jashi
1 hour 32 minutes; Streaming on Hoopla and Ovid; VOD $3.99
A billionaire based in Georgia (the country, not the state) decides that he wants to have huge trees in his private garden, so he scours rural villages for beautiful, century-old trees, which he then buys and transports to his garden, at great expense. It sounds fantastical, but it’s real, and Taming the Garden sinks into the reality of it by paying close attention to the process of digging up the trees and transporting them. These are enormous organisms that have deeply entrenched root systems, and it takes work crews several weeks to dig them up, even with the help of construction equipment. We meet the people who have decided to sell their trees, and the strange sadness that descends after the trees are carted away. It’s a surreal documentary without much dialogue and very little explanation. This can be a little frustrating, and you should probably know, going in, that there isn’t going to be a strong narrative thread. Tellingly, we never meet the man financing this strange operation, but at the end we see his garden of grandmother trees, a place that has a sad, zoo-like quality. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
Closer to Fine
It’s Only Life After All (2024)
Directed by Alexandria Bombach
2 hours 3 minutes; VOD $4.99 on Apple and Fandango
It’s hilarious to me that my five-year-old daughter now associates The Indigo Girls with Barbie, because I can still remember hearing Amy Ray and Emily Saliers for the first time when I was 15, and feeling like they were the total opposite of the girly-girl pop stars I’d grown up with. They were also very different from the irony-laden indie boy rockers. It’s hard to describe how fresh they sounded: warm, sincere, and unabashedly melodic. I obviously love these two women and I loved hearing them reflect on their music and their activism in this documentary. They seem to be their own harshest critics, cringing at some of their early lyrics, though they conceded that they were held back by the misogyny and especially the homophobia of the 80s and 90s alt-rock scene, which didn’t know what to do with two lesbian women who were totally uninterested in appealing to the male gaze. Thanks to Ray, many of their early performances are captured on video, and there are photos going back to when they started singing together, in high school. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
❤️ Link Love ❤️
An essay about how Peak TV is now “mid TV” (This, incidentally, is the main reason our family is cutting back on the streamers.)
Sarah Schulman on All The Beauty and the Bloodshed
An illuminating review of Priscilla, a movie I found to be a little bit opaque.
Double Dare Ya to check out this profile of Kathleen Hanna
And finally, a peek at the cover of my novel . . .
It will be on sale August 13 and you can preorder it now. It’s a story about motherhood, medicinal mushrooms, talking trees, and what it feels like to raise children in a time of rapid climate change. I started working on it around the time I began writing Thelma & Alice, so it is certainly infused with all the movies I’ve watched over the years. (Shout out to Fantastic Fungi!)
Congratulations on your NOVEL!!!! Amazing!