In recent months, two new London cinemas have marked their openings with declarations of love for documentary film-making. The glitzy Picturehouse Central offers docs at less than half the price of fiction films, while the Curzon Bloomsbury has an entire screen dedicated to non-fiction. Both will likely become regular haunts (and cash drains) for the capital’s documentary fans, who might reasonably credit the recent groundswell of interest in the form to Netflix – the world’s biggest video subscription service – where docs are given pride of place.
But what’s lacking in Picturehouse and Curzon’s segregational approach to documentary is a true understanding of what’s made the Netflix model so rewarding for docs. By treating non-fiction in the same way it treats everything else, the platform has neatly sidestepped any notion of an industry hierarchy holding scripted drama to be supreme. Indeed, alongside a new season of Orange Is The New Black, it’s launched three Netflix-branded documentaries in the last month alone.
The latest is What Happened, Miss Simone?, director Liz Garbus’s coolly expressive portrait of Nina Simone. A patchwork of archival performance footage, audio testimonies and personal diaries, the film traverses Simone’s remarkable oeuvre in a way that elucidates without ever over-explaining. The archive material – much of it unseen until now – would be striking enough to hold the viewer’s attention unadorned, but Garbus is canny enough to know which added details will help to paint a larger, fuller picture of her subject.
Still, if Netflix has thrown out the rulebook in the way it presents docs, What Happened, Miss Simone? still clings to a few needless formalities. Extraneous talking-head interviews prove remarkably adept at shattering the mood, while contrived dramatic revelations about Simone’s life (usually accompanied by flatly patronising soundtrack cues) undersell the integrity of the film’s connection with its star.
Also out this week
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Grey pound-baiting comedy drama.
Jupiter Ascending Roundly derided $176m space opera.
It Follows Smart, symbolic, subversive teen horror.
