nataloff-1

An exercise in form that nearly drowns the content, "Becoming John Ford" should be nominated for "Best Performance by a Designer." There's plenty of keen insight and worthwhile scholarship in this arty documentary but it's undone by a wandering rostrum camera, foolishly obscured film clips, a cavalier attitude toward identifying its speakers, and a paucity of comments from people who actually worked with John Ford. In fact, Ford himself is never heard despite available footage. Yet there are clearly money and integrity behind this well-researched kludge, so the filmmakers' decision to undercut their mission is even more suspect. Not that it shouldn't be seen - just take Dramamine first.

This is a terrific 70-minute documentary that goes on for 90 minutes. A huge cast of exceptional voice talent tells how they got to do what they do, why they like doing what they do, why they do and don't get the recognition they deserve, and other green room stories. Each and every interview is compelling and informative in and of itself, but after about an hour the aggregate doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Although the filmmakers have broken the continuity into subject areas and the online editors have done a gorgeous job creating transitions and effects that add to the storytelling, one comes away from "I Know That Voice" knowing what it's like to be a voice actor, but not how a voice actor does her or his job. The film doesn't show it. A major off-putting stylistic decision was having the interviewer sit so far off eye-line axis that the viewer feels excluded from the conversation rather than brought into it. This is a loving tribute to unsung people, pleasant but not memorable.

Coming to "From Hollywood to Hanoi" after so much history has been added to the stories of the United States and Vietnam since the end of the war between them, one is struck both by how prescient the film was on its 1992 release as well as how optimistic its filmmaker, Tiana Thi Thanh Nga, was when she made it. On one level, the documentary about a Vietnamese-American woman trying to untangle the twisted strands of her bi-national life is a universal quest for self and homeland. On the other, it's an absolution of America spoken without rancor by the people who were attacked by the greatest military force on earth. One expects that any film about Vietnam -- and certainly one that features Vietnamese people remembering the war -- would automatically be an indictment of the people who waged it (Gen. William Westmoreland, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, Secretary of State Robert McNamara and the special interests whose water they carried). But that doesn't happen. Instead, Tiana -- whose father was press liaison for South Vietnam and remained a staunch Conservative until his death -- draws compassionate, even hopeful statements from the people that the bombs fell on. She is a winning screen interlocutor, a knowledgeable guide, and a dynamic Everywoman who unites rather than divides. I saw the film when it was originally released and found it a compelling character study. Seeing it again after some twenty years -- and after the death of General Vo Nguyen Giap, the architect of North Vietnam's defense strategy -- I am struck by how much has changed and, with regret, how much has not. The tiny nation that America could not conquer by force has instead being conquered by business. It's the people on both sides want to make peace; their governments still haven't come fully around. Maybe they should all see the remarkable "From Hollywood to Hanoi" again.