The Best of 2012 - DOCS

I watched 139 films in 2012 and despite the grinches and naysayers, I thought this was a great year for film.  So much so that I refuse to indulge in a trite Top 10 list, or grinch my way through a Bottom 10 of the year.  Instead, here's a list of all the films that moved me, impressed me, surprised me or made me laugh, split by category. It's a list that reflects my own tastes - often puerile, anti-hippie-vegetarian, politicised and eccentric.  It's far from comprehensive - I watch very little horror, even less action and due to an ankle injury mid-year, missed a lot of summer blockbusters. But it sums up my year in movies and I hope gives you a few left-field suggestions for DVDs and Festival screenings turned mainstream releases in 2013.

To begin, it felt like 2012 was a great year for DOCUMENTARIES. In March, I watched two superb docs during the Sundance London Festival.  Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern's film of LCD Soundsystem's valedictory concert at Madison Square Garden, SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS, introduced me to the best band of the decade about a decade after everyone else caught on (doh!) and led to a month of round the clock listening.  Sometimes it feels like I'm Losing My Edge is the soundtrack to my professional life.  The Kids Are (indeed) Coming Up From Behind. More closely related to my dayjob as a greedy capitalist bastard, Lauren Greenfield's THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES was a surprisingly touching look at the excesses of the credit-fuelled property boom and subsequent bust - a microcosmic counterpart to the superlative MARGIN CALL.  Back at the multiplex I cried like a baby during Kevin MacDonald's MARLEY, in memory of a rejected man who became a legendary musician and spread love, perhaps all too freely for his children's taste.

This was also an exceptionally strong year for docs at the London Film Festival.  Shola Lynch's FREE ANGELA AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS reaffirmed my admiration for Angela Davis and the principled articulate protests of the 1960s and 1970s, in sharp contrast to the amorphous, inarticulate Occupy movement of today. Alex Gibney produced a similarly hard-hitting documentary looking at the Catholic Church's tragic mishandling of child sex abuse, by working out from the original US court case.  MEA MAXIMA CULPA was a necessarily painful watch for those who, like me, still consider themselves members of the Church, but given the recent allegations about Jimmy Saville at the BBC, raises important questions about all institutional cover-ups.  FREE ANGELA and MEA MAXIMA CULPA touched subjects close to my heart, but it was a testament to just how well put together Nick Ryan's THE SUMMIT was that I was fascinated by his K2 mountaineering disaster doc.  It doesn't yet have a UK or US release date which is a crying shame.

My final three documentary picks are about larger than life eccentric geniuses who defined their eras and fundamentally changed their art.  The first is Charlie and Lucy Paul's portrait of Gonzo artist, Ralph Steadman, FOR NO GOOD REASON.  The film-makers show Steadman drawing, and capture an in-depth with Johnny Depp that examines his famous relationship with, and resentment of, Hunter S Thompson.  A LIAR'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY is a fantastically innovative animated biography of Monty Python's Flying Circus member Graham Chapman - openly homosexual when that was still a crime, but a closeted alcoholic. Bill Jones' doc is as irreverent and witty and surreal as a Python deserves.

But hands down the most balls-out insane doc about the most balls-out insane man is the aptly titled BEWARE OF MR BAKER.  Poor Jay Bulger spent years chronicling the angry drummer's tirades, vitriol and bile, while also reminding us just how revolutionary a man he was, principally with the legendary supergroup Cream.  Ginger Baker is also the only man who has threatened to smash a broken bottle over the head of the man who shot his doc on stage at the London Film Fest.  He also inspired the character Animal on The Muppet Show.  Legend come to life. Watch it.

THE SUMMIT, FREE ANGELA & ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS, NO GOOD REASON do not yet have a commercial release date.  A LIAR'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY went on limited release in the US in November and goes on release in the UK in February.  MEA MAXIMA CULPA  and BEWARE OF MR BAKER went on limited release in the US in November. MARLEY went on global release in summer 2012 and is available to rent and own. THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES THE HITS went on release in the US, Canada and the UK earlier this year and is available to rent and own.

London Film Fest 2012 Day 3 - THE SUMMIT

THE SUMMIT is Nick Ryan's documentary about the 2008 K2 disaster.  K2 may be less tall than Everest, but it is a far more challenging climb. The peak is in the "death zone" where the human body cannot naturally survive - where the altitude, lack of oxygen and fatigue severely impair normal mental and physical function. Of the limited group that successfully ascend K2, 1 in 4 will not survive the descent, with a particularly high fatality rate around the "bottleneck" - a small pass to the upper slopes with an overhanging ice Seroc waiting to break off and cause chaos.  

The 2008 disaster saw a number of international teams and some solo climbers all try to ascend at the very end of the climbing season.  Despite poor planning and execution, crossed wires and some inexperience, 22 people did make it to the summit, but 11 lost their lives coming down, making it the worst single day on K2 in history.

What this documentary does well is to use video and photos and interviews with survivors and close family to give us a feel for the personalities of the men and women on the slope, what drove them on, and what might have been their reactions to the extreme conditions.  We become attached to them and will them to survive, even though we can deduce from who and who isn't a talking head, who will fall victim to K2.  We also become acutely aware that all eye-witness testimony is suspect and all moral judgements futile, because of the very nature of altitude sickness.  There's an extent to which we will never know what really happened up there that day.

What I found frustrating, however, was the rather haphazard organisation of the material, rather than a more straightforward linear approach. It was only upon returning home and going onto the internet that I got a really clear picture of what went on and the controversies around the different accounts - and that can't be right can it?

I also felt that because of who would and wouldn't speak to the director, the movie might've been a bit uneven in its approach.  Here and there throughout the film, different participants make comments about the Koreans being ill-prepared, just sitting and smoking, treating the sherpas poorly. This is put in stark contrast with the undoubtedly deeply brave and impressive Pemba Gyalje, who survived, and the charismatic Irish climber Ger McDonnell, who tragically died, apparently trying to save South Korean climbers.  I was crying out for someone to interview someone from the Korean team to get their perspective.   To be fair, in the end credits there is a statement saying that the surviving Korean team leader refused to be interviewed.  But couldn't they have gotten someone, anyone, a mountaineering expert, to explain the Korean perspective?

Overall all then, a fascinating documentary.  It was my sixth straight film of the day, and I have no interest in mountaineering, but I was transfixed by the story.  I am thankful for the insightful interviews with key survivors and their family, and Nick Murphy and DP StephenO'Reilly's breathtaking K2 footage. But it felt like only half the story had been told.

THE SUMMIT played London 2012. It does not yet have a commercial release date. The running time is 95 minutes.