Cinéma vérité
Vibrantly colored, helium-filled balloons and the joyous cracks of a $2 noisemaker engulf a dining room in the aura of “Happy Birthday!” as a little brother’s face is smashed mercilessly into a double chocolate cake. That same little brother’s mother whips out a disposable camera and exclaims, “Say cheese!” Later, the mother will develop her film, and paste the freshly recorded event into a family album. Will a single photo capture the essence of the occasion? Will it capture the smells, the sounds, the guests’ thoughts, and their laughter? How should she, and how should we, as a humanity, go about recording our families’ histories? Ruth Ozeki Lounsbury asks the same question of her viewers in the opening of her documentary: Halving the Bones. Coincidentally, Halving the Bones is Ozeki’s answer to her own question. In this film, she leads her viewers on a complex journey through her family’s past. She presents her grandmother’s “written autobiography” of her immigration to the US, and then tells the tale of her mother, the cancer. Though this film seems to be a simple documentary of a Japanese immigrant and her offspring, Halving the Bones is entrenched with excepts of film previously recorded for some other purpose and ideas that simply do not match up. Even so, Halving the Bones is a reflexive documentary – it follows the approach, style, and technique of any other documentary, it just does so in a fashion that challenges the foundation of documentary filmmaking.
The general approach to making a documentary is to convey a message by enlightening viewers on a certain topic. In Halving the Bones, the surface topic in need of enlightenment is Ruth Lounsbury’s family’s history, but through the layers of her film, viewers can find the true topic. This is a film about race and family. It begins with the tale of Ozeki’s grandmother: a Japanese girl of 18, Matsuye, is sent to Hawaii to marry an American man she knows only by a picture. The two eventually become intimate enough for Matsuye to “develop cancer.” After a small trip to Japan to determine that the cancer she had developed was merely Masako Ozeki Lounsbury, Matsuye returns to Hawaii, where she raises her child. Masako graduates from high school but cannot find a job. Americans in Hawaii did not approve of those of the yellow peril. Japanese people were inscrutable, they were not worthy of trust. Due to her unsuccessful endeavors in America, Masako returns to Japan to expand on her education. She ventures back and forth between the two countries and ultimately receives a PhD from Yale. At last, Masako reaps her reward for all of her arduous work. Yet she forgoes her accomplishments to create a family with her husband. Ruth Ozeki Lounsbury is born. Ruth grows up in a world that is accustomed to belittling anyone or anything that is Japanese. During WWII, her grandfather was put into an internment camp. She wants to be an American, so she hides her Japanese pride. There were no other Japanese people in Connecticut. She was alone. Ruth becomes disconnected with her family due to her shame, and finally, she is left with her grandmother’s bones. She does not know what to do with them. Ozeki shows us how difficult it must have been to live as a Japanese person during the times that she, her mother, and her grandmother did. She shows us how American hate for all things Japanese can tear a family apart. Her approach is that of a filmmaker creating a documentary – there is a message, and she uses her fiction to proclaim it to all those who wish to examine it.
Ruth Ozeki Lounsbury employs the essence of documentary style, but challenges the foundation of the documentary genre by just barley fitting her picture into the framework of that style. Throughout the film, there are scenes that are frequently desaturated, tinted, or edited in some sort of manner. The general documentary does not contain edited images. Premeditated camera shots align this film. Ozeki shoots footage of her mother preparing a turkey from outside her home to give her viewers a complete perspective of the activity. In a typical documentary, all camera shots are taken as the action happens. They are not taken as long drawn out processes so that the viewer can observe the action upfront and watch as it unfolds. She uses excerpts of film that she did not even record as evidence to the facts she narrates. In a standard documentary, all of the footage is genuine. None of it is taken from anywhere but the filmmaker’s work. She takes her challenge a step further by employing actors to play some of the roles of her family members. There are no actors in common documentary. Multiple times in the film, Ozeki states, “I just made this up.” She undermines the foundation of her film – facts. She questions the documentary genre as a whole by making her viewers question her credibility as a narrator. Her narrative voice is split into three: an American voice, an American voice with a Japanese accent, and a Japanese voice. She undermines herself by using these multiple voices. It is unclear as to why there is a different voice narrating different sections of the film. If Ozeki cannot be trusted telling her own family’s story, how can trust between viewers and documentaries be established? Even though Halving the Bones questions its own genre, and shakes its own foundation, factual information is delivered through the use of film, voice, camera angles, editing, and characters. It is a documentary.
The technique of assembly in this film is surprisingly more relatable to that of a classic documentary. Ruth conducts interviews with her mother much as any other director constructing a documentary would. She sets up her equipment, and starts an interview. Ruth leads her mother, Masako, into commenting on certain items that belonged to her mother, Matsuye. The only difference between Ruth’s interview and a general documentary’s interview is that Ruth’s interview pertains to her personally, and she takes part in the discussion as herself. She steps away from the camera to play her part. Filmmakers creating a documentary generally have no connection to the action or dialogue. They are simply there to record happenings of the world. Candid scenes are not found in everyday documentaries. They are found in Halving the Bones, but there is an authenticity in their falsehood. Masako is a very well learned woman, but she acts as if she is a mere simple old lady on camera. Through her fake demeanor, she reveals that she is a reserved woman who does not take well to having her privacy invaded. Ruth’s narration is another element of her film that relates better to that of classical documentary. Even though her voice is split into three, it is still there as a guide through the film. It serves its purpose in Halving the Bones as it would in any other documentary.
The fact that Halving the Bones is an extremely abstract and complicated film affects the narrative. The viewers of such a film as this are much too lost or confused to look through the multiple layers. They are simply trying to piece together the main plot of the film. The messages that Ozeki wants to convey are not presented as profoundly as they could have been, but because of the extreme abstraction, another point is made: it is a formidable task to prepare a family album.
Ruth Ozeki Lounsbury has tried her best to preserve her family’s memories and stories. She has attempted to preserve life with the best medium she could think of – film. She has created an elaborate mess of adventures, blended them together, and asked her viewers to unscramble them. She even goes as far as to layer in her feelings about how America treated Japanese people. She layers in relationships between her and her family members. She exposes her mother for who she is. She creates a double chocolate cake for the mind, and after the brain has processed every single morsel, a greater level of satisfaction is reached. There is a greater understanding of Ruth Ozeki Lounsbury. This is the point of documentary film, and this is why Halving the Bones is a documentary.
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There's shit in here that needs to be fixed, but overall I'm pretty proud of this draft. Woohoo!
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