When you agree to be the subject of a documentary, you may not appreciate what you are letting yourself in for. This film analyses the impact on those who featured in famous documentaries, some of whom seemed happy with the experience, and others wish they'd never taken part. It raises a number of questions - should subjects of documentaries be paid, should we worry about the bias in who has the power of making the documentary - often featuring people with little power? Should documentary-makers employ therapists?
Although I didn't get bored watching Subject, I did feel that it would have been better if I was familiar with the featured documentaries - all famous and award-winning, but, alas, not known to me. The main ones were The Staircase, Capturing the Friedmans, The Wolfpack, Hoop Dreams, and The Square.
The first two focused on stories with a 'true crime' element, and it was their subjects (family members of those convicted of crimes) who appeared most damaged by the experience. They had not anticipated that the documentaries would be shown years later across the world via streaming services, and felt they could not escape from being recognised and from reliving the awful experiences they had had. The Wolfpack was about a family with 7 children who were kept segregated from society by a controlling father - the main character featured in Subject, a son, appeared remarkably well-adjusted, and wanted himself to be a film-maker. It was left unclear to me what had happened to the father. The main subject of Hoop Dreams was a black basketball player who was featured as a teenager; remarkably, the (white) director had shared the proceeds from the documentary with the subjects, so they had benefited materially from involvement - and seemed generally happy with their experience. The Square was quite different: a documentary about the Arab Spring made by an Egyptian film-maker, who had produced compelling live footage of riots in Egypt, which had subsequently proved inspirational to protestors in other countries. He had had to leave Egypt and was shown sitting sadly at the end, unemployed and away from home. It was hard to say whether he had been damaged by making the documentary, of which he himself was a subject - his final situation was not great, but perhaps might have been worse if he'd not made the film.
Subject does make you think - could things have been handled better - especially for the documentaries about crime? Or should we just not allow such documentaries? It doesn't seem feasible to prevent the bad consequences to subjects, but maybe therapists and/or financial rewards would soften the experience?
The problem is that we like sensational stories, and if they are true stories, we find them all the more gripping. I came away thinking that I'd like to see all five of the featured docuementaries, while at the same time feeling that this voyeuristic impulse was not healthy.
A final point is that the main interviews with subjects was intercut with very brief snippets of other famous documentaries. I disliked this aspect of the film - it was almost like a recognition memory test. I guess its intention might have been to just emphasise the extent to which documentaries about real lives have exploded, especially with streaming services, but there was no opportunity to engage with the individual cases, and it made the film seem bitty and a bit shallow.
Overall, Subject is a kind of meta-documentary - a documentary about documentaries, which makes you think about the genre and raises questions about whether there should be more formal guidelines for how subjects are treated. Fascinating, but raised more questions than it answered.
