The Devil's Playground

Well, seeing as there won't be any more assigned documentaries for a week I thought that this was a pretty good one to go out on. I have to say that my favorite part of this documentary was just the insight it gave me on Amish culture. While I was already somewhat vaguely aware of a few of the things shown in this film such as rumspringa and that the community ultimately decides what forms of technologies were allowed, I had never really looked into them that much, mainly because such information was a found as a small part of a different project. While learning that Amish are surprisingly more modern than everybody gives them credit for was a bit new, what surprised me the most though was just the huge emphasis that the Amish had on the community. I mean, I was just astonished to see volumes of books dedicated to showing who lives where in  Amish communities all over the country with a detail of all of their family members and everything, not to mention that apparently hundreds of teens from all over the country would show up at just one party. I suppose it makes the shunning when someone leaves the church after baptism all the sadder.

Jesus Camp

I'll admit, I found this one to be rather hard to watch half of the time. Granted, the film was clearly biased against the evangelicals and camp runners so the craziness was to be expected, but I suppose that actually seeing things being said that otherwise would seem like over-the-top exaggerations of evangelicals (like the denouncing of Harry Potter as satanical, or the smashing of the government-labeled cups and the G.W.B. cutout scene) makes still makes it rather strange to see, especially considering that the majority of Christians are far less extremist. The creepy music during the scenes where they were "speaking in tongues" and the shots of the children crying and screaming didn't help things one bit.




On the other hand, I did enjoy the portrayal of the children in the movie. They were all really nice kids, and as many people noted in class, they did have an admirable dedication to their religion while still managing to act like normal kids. I also loved the scenes that they had together, like when they were all telling ghost stories or talking at the table together, going bowling, and especially when they were all looking at the spiders. If I had to guess why those scenes were included (aside from just featuring kids being cute), it would be to make the "indoctrination" all the sadder. By the end, I pretty much had the same reaction as Mr. Papantonio.

Thoughts on "Grizzly Man"

While watching Grizzly Man, I found myself fascinated by Mr. Treadwell and his time spent with the bears of Alaska. Of course, knowing that he'd eventually end up being eaten kind of makes it tragic to watch, even though he was quite aware that it could happen and had never seemed too phased by it, as shown by this interview (which I've heard was cut out of the DVD release, although I've forgotten if it was in the Netflix version or not). I also feared that they were going to play the audio of his death or show pictures (granted, it could have made for a powerful scene if used right, but would haunt my nightmares for quite a while).

Although he could seem kind of crazy at times with his ranting, it definitely felt like he had a good idea of what he was doing and that he genuinely loved his work, and I have to commend him for being able to document the bears so well and make it look easy, as well as his beautiful photography work shown in Diaries as well as how well he was able to live with the bears for 13 summers. I also found it amazing that he was apparently able to recognize the same bears and foxes that he named year after year.