More real than reality?

The term animated documentary may seem like a paradox. A documentary, by its very definition, is a depiction of events that occur in real life, while animation is used mostly to give flight to our imagination. This is not necessarily true, says Sheila Sofian, associate professor, University of Southern California, who makes animated documentaries.

“There is a misconception that documentary films are ‘real’ depictions of events. Audiences are often not aware of how much the footage is manipulated to tell a specific story,” says Sofian,

“The filmmaker manipulates what he/she films, how he/she films the material, edits it, and what voiceover or sound he/she edits over the image.” In that sense, there isn’t much difference between live action and animated documentaries. The difference lies in the sort of themes documentary filmmakers can explore using animation, and the manner in which such stories are told.

The Academy Award-winning documentary Waltz With Bashir (2009) is one such example. The autobiographical story, told by director Ari Folman, is set during the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war. Folman, a 19-year-old soldier, is in Beirut when civilians are massacred in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in the city. Twenty years later, Folman cannot remember a single detail of the incident. He seeks out his comrades, a journalist who covered the war at the time, and a psychologist to help him put together pieces of his memories.

“There was no other way to do it, to show memories, hallucinations, dreams. War is like a really bad acid trip, and this was the only to show it,” Folman told The Guardian, explaining why he chose animation.

For instance, in one scene, Folman’s comrade, Carmi, is recollecting the boat ride to Beirut. Two years of military training haven’t prepared Carmi to face fear. He remembers throwing up and then closing his eyes. A giant voluptuous naked woman carries him on her arms, and the two float away from the boat which is bombed by a plane soon after. One live-action fictional film that has a somewhat similar depiction is The Manchurian Candidate (2004). Though the plot is entirely different, the film too deals with broken memories, where hallucination and reality blur into one. However, the special effects in this film dominate the characters.

But because Waltz With Bashir is in a sense created entirely using special effects, the hallucinations, when they occur, don’t shock you. Animation, in this case, helps enhance your understanding of the character.

Bella Honess Roe, lecturer in film studies, University of Surrey, believes that animation can evoke ideas, feelings, emotions and states of mind better than live action. “The Animated Minds series, which are about mental health issues, has an expressive capacity (through visual metaphor and association, for example) that can tell us more than words.”

Animation is also being used to make period films, which till now have been shot in live action. Chico And Rita was the dark horse for winning this year’s Academy Awards for best animated film. Set in Havana and New York in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, the story revolves around Chico, a pianist, and Rita, a singer. The film documented the jazz scene in New York at a time when Latino influence on jazz was at its peak. The film also explores how Latin American musicians, though popular, had to face colour discrimination. Though the lead characters themselves were fictional, several other characters in the film were real-life jazz legends such as percussionist Chano Pozo and trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie. Then there’s Marlon Brando at one of the parties in the film.

Francesco Trueba, the director of Chico And Rita, says that he could never have conceived the film as anything but animated. But he was very thorough in ensuring the authenticity of the setting.  The film was shot in live action first for four weeks in Havana to give the animation team reference points for recreating the ‘40s dancing style in Cuba, as well as the way jazz musicians played instruments. But it was Mariscal’s drawings that gave the film another dimension, says Trueba. “The origin of this movie were Mariscal’s drawings of Havana streets. When I saw them, I thought they were more beautiful than reality. That’s art’s purpose. Recreate life, adding the beauty of the artist’s vision.”

This is evident in the scene where Chico reaches the shores of New York. The screen turns black, and everything, the people, the buildings, the streets and the cars, turn neon. This ability to inject surrealism to a narrative is something that filmmakers can achieve better via animation. Like Scott McCloud says in his graphic novel, Understanding Comics, “When we abstract an image through cartooning, we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning’, an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t.”

According to Sofian, with animation becoming more popular as a genre when it comes to fiction, documentary filmmakers are getting encouraged to explore this medium to tell their stories. The trend these days is to produce longer feature-length films, she says. If they receive a good response, we may well stop thinking of animated documentaries as a paradox.