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Trawl back through the history of documentaries from Grey Gardens (1975) to The Sorrow and The Pity (1969) or Salesman (1965) you will find exactly the same utilisation of story.
There is always a protagonist (sometimes it’s the central subject, sometimes it’s the viewer); there is always a villain (sometimes that’s the subject matter, sometimes it’s a living threat); and there’s always a goal – to tell a life, to finish a job – to have the final word on the subject at hand. In every one of these films a journey is enacted by someone we care about, and as in any archetypal story new knowledge is found.
All of these elements are clear and present too in the world’s first feature length documentary film – Nanook Of The North (1922). Nowadays the film is as famous for the controversy that surrounds it than for the work itself. The director Robert Flaherty staged many scenes for the camera – and the affecting story of Nanook, the Inuit and his family, has been derailed by those who dismiss it as ‘fake’.
This is perhaps a fallacious argument. Fiction lies to show truth – why shouldn’t reality too? What’s important, I think, is to ask whether the lie better and more effectively expresses a deeper meaning that has resonance for us all?
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