Considering the Best Documentaries of the Decade (2000-2009): Part 2

Among the best: The War Tapes, Mad Hot Ballroom, In the Shadow of the Moon

Recently I analyzed a couple of "Best Documentaries of the Decades" lists. Soon after that post I found similar lists at Cinematical and The Playlist, as well as a terrific selection from Marilyn Ferdinand. Since some of my favorites from the decade are missing from these lists, I found it only right to come up with some version of my own.

I've been really inspired considering these films and everything they've taught me about the world in the last decade. So long as a story is well-told and relevant to my life, I don't really have a preference between documentaries or traditional feature films. But truth is always stranger than fiction - and a lot funnier, and more emotional, and more horrifying, and generally more compelling. So documentaries represent a powerfully transformative tool in my life, allowing me to be taken to times and places I could never otherwise go and be introduced to real people that I would never otherwise meet.

So I've developed a somewhat raw list of more than 40 documentary films that have added greatly to my worldview this decade while making me laugh, sob, recoil, or quite often, all three. For reasons I explained in the last post, they are all from 2002 or later and are not ranked in any order (I also listed some notable documentaries I missed from this decade). Also, I stand by my previous claims in this space that 2008 was the best documentary year of the decade, which explains why nearly all of my top 10 from last year are represented here (also, reviews for many of these below can be found via my Review Index). This is not a definitive collection by any means, but it is a personally meaningful one for me:

WAR/POLITICS/INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: 

The Weather Underground (2002) 

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003)
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (2003)
Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (2004) 

Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (2004) 

Why We Fight (2005) 

The War Tapes (2006) 

No End in Sight (2007)
Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008)
Crude (2009)

Comments: Considering the U.S. has been at war for nearly an entire decade, it's disappointing and yet understandable that many of the war documentaries have been forgettable, or dated too quickly. For every stellar No End in Sight, there was a mediocre Gunner Palace, Fahrenheit 9/11, or Standard Operating Procedure. Only years after combat can the big picture perspective of a war truly come into form, which is why The Fog of War and Shake Hands With the Devil were so compelling, and why The War Tapes was so surprisingly insightful. On domestic matters, the political fireworks on display in The Weather Underground and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised showed just how far some people are willing to go - even beyond the boundaries of law - in pursuit of their ideologies.


HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:

Spellbound (2002) 

The Boys of Baraka (2005)

Mad Hot Ballroom (2005)

American Teen (2008)

Blind Loves (2008)
Young@Heart (2008)

Comments: That I saw both Spellbound and Mad Hot Ballroom in the theater three times each should tell you how much enjoyment I get from watching pre-adolescents awkwardly discover their place in the world. This theme also played out in American Teen (amusingly) and The Boys of Baraka (tragically), the latter of which was both more truthful and more important than the next film its directors made, the overrated Jesus Camp. On the other side of the life spectrum was Young@Heart, which squeezed every ounce of emotion out of me, and Blind Loves, a little-seen but outstanding documentary from Slovakia that, among other things, forever changed my perspective on people talking in movie theaters.


FAMILY:

Capturing the Friedmans (2003) 

My Kid Could Paint That (2007)

The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) (2008) 

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008) 

Surfwise (2008)

Comments: Generally speaking, if someone is making a documentary about their family, you can expect it's going to involve some kind of sordid tragedy or disturbing mystery - sometimes both. Regardless of your own family history, these films made you reflect on the the familial love and loyalty you have either enjoyed or missed during your life. I still don't know why the fascinating Surfwise didn't reach a wider audience last year, and I think My Kid Could Paint That also received much less attention and acclaim than it deserved. I saw it again recently and was so impressed by its presentation.

GLOBAL ISSUES:

Born Into Brothels (2004)
La Sierra (2005)
Manufactured Landscapes (2006)

Up the Yangtze (2008)
Milking the Rhino (2009)

Comments: This category is a personal favorite of mine because it includes films that literally pick you up and take you to another place, teaching you about world history and culture in vivid detail (Manufactured Landscapes being perhaps the most visually striking). Born Into Brothels, La Sierra, and Up the Yangtze were immediately and intensely affecting for me, and the latter was my favorite documentary from last year - the best year of the decade. Does that make it the Best Documentary of the Decade? I won't make that claim, but arriving when it did last year it might be one of the most urgently relevant.

 
PERSONAL PASSION:

Tupac: Resurrection (2003) 

Grizzly Man (2005) 

Murderball (2005) 

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)
War Dance (2007)
Blindsight (2008) 

Man on Wire (2008)

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2009) 

Tyson (2009)

Comments: Sometimes experiencing someone else's trials and tribulations is the best way to gain perspective about your own. This decade was packed with documentaries about characters so bizarre and quirky that you couldn't even make them up; some were so interesting that they've already inspired upcoming feature film adaptations (King of Kong and Man on Wire). The people in these documentaries overcame tragedy (War Dance), disability (Blindsight, Murderball), and mockery (Anvil!, Tyson) with grace, humor, and determination, providing viewers the opportunity to gain meaningful life lessons without shedding any of our own blood, sweat, and tears. Well, maybe we shed some tears.

AMERICAN CULTURE:

Dogtown and Z Boys (2001) / Riding Giants (2004) 

Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Super Size Me (2004)
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple (2006) 

Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)
In the Shadow of the Moon (2007)
Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (2008)
Trouble the Water (2008) 

Food, Inc. (2009)

Comments: Putting a spotlight on the United States and shoving a mirror in the faces of its citizens, these films showed us the best and (more often) the worst of our American culture, often drawing on recent history to show us how much or (more often) how little we've changed over the years. Probably none of these documentaries could be considered patriotic by any definition other than Michael Moore's, but hey, you have to identify and agree on problems before you can begin to solve them, right? Perhaps many more films could be added to this list, but most of them (and some of these) crossed that fine line between well-balanced documentary storytelling and one-sided agit-doc activist agenda-pushing. But then, I suppose pushing your opinion on others is just the American way.

There you have it - the documentaries that reached me during the last 10 years and that should be added to your Netflix queues immediately. Please share thoughts or additions, and if you want to talk about my reasoning behind certain omissions from these categories (e.g., An Inconvenient Truth), we can do that, too.