ALLAN KING FILMMAKER: A TRIBUTE
By Rick Jackson
This year's Kingston Canadian Film Festival honours Allan King, one of our pioneering documentary filmmakers. To mark this milestone, director Allison Migneault is bringing back two of his older films with the director himself present at a special workshop. In 2004 King was here to talk about Dying At Grace which was well received. I had the pleasure of talking to him on my show, the Artists and Music of the Twentieth Century on the Saturday during the festival and we had an engaging discussion.
Warrendale (1967) and A Married Couple (1969) are the two older films moviegoers will get a chance to see and I recommend them since they show King's delicate handling about topics close to his heart as a filmmaker or he wouldn't be doing them.
King was born in Vancouver, B.C. in 1930. He majored in Honors Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, drove a taxi for nine months, and went to Europe for one-and-a-half years. Returning to Vancouver, he worked as a production assistant in the television industry for two years before switching to film.
His first short was Skid Row in 1956. After its completion, he left to go to Spain and London. In 1967 he returned to Canada where he concentrated on doing what he loved best - filmmaking.
He was asked to do a feature film about emotionally disturbed children for the CBC series, Document, hosted and executive-produced by Patrick Watson. The documentary which was called Warrendale was never shown because the network executives refused to allow the four-letter words spoken by the disturbed children to be heard.
After the CBC's rejection, Warrendale made it to theatres in 1967 and today it ranks as one of the most powerful documentaries ever made. Having not seen it in many years, it was if I was brought back in time. It is ironic how intense it remains to anyone seeing it today. The children, especially the girls who can articulate better than the boys, brings the same gut reaction as it brings across the revealing, shocking truth of this once-controversial institution outside Toronto.
King wastes no time in introducing the psychodramatic world of Warrendale. We are completely absorbed from the first minute: the anger, the hurt and the therapists who deal with it on a constant basis day after day.
They know what to do and for the five weeks spent filming there for fifteen hours a day, it was an experience.
He told author Martin Knelman in his book, This Is Where We Came In: "They were aware of the camera, but they simply accepted it and trusted us. They all consented to the filming; there were no holdouts. They sensed that we were not judging them."
While watching it, you know these kids are smart right away. It is their physical abilities that handicap them from living in normally. Whether it's the young girl who won't get up in the morning, or one of the older girls who wants desperately to be at home with her mother, it is a revealing closeup at what it's really like to be different.
What is especially compellng is the reaction by all the children when they learn that Dorothy, the cook, has died. It's as if a close member of their family has passed away. They have treated her like their very own mother because she, for them, was the closest thing to being a mother.
The staff, including Terry and Walter, try to reassure them and they all go to the funeral home to see and understand what dying means. The immediacy of the moment is captured on the faces of the children who are relaxed, quiet and fear nothing as they look at their friend. As the casket closes, some do not want to leave. Their feeling of a shared familiarity makes them appear to be "normal" for the first time. To leave means going back to the place where they are reminded of their physical conditions which they have been forcibly learned to accept.
A boy asks, "How did she die?" It is a perfectly normal question which goes unanswered.
It is interesting to see them engage in normal activities, such as watching the hockey game between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Some of the children and staff make a small wager on which team will win.
There are eight dedicated and sensitive staff for twelve children there. A lot of questions were raised at the time Warrendale was first released, such as "Does it exploit the children?" No.
Jan Dawson wrote in the British film monthly, Sight And Sound: "Despite the producers' assurance that when the camera and crew become part of the community, you as the audience are taken into a dramatic human experience."
Documentaries are meant to make you aware of their subjects and to look back at Warrendale is heartbreaking. Today the problem still exists and at other places similar to this one children continue to be ripped away from homes by parents who cannot deal with the special needs of their children.
Ernest Callenbach in his review in Film Quarterly (Winter, 1967-68) took aim at this far-reaching dilemma in society and Warrendale as a refuge for a segment of the population that wants to ignore the quality of life under the pressures of everyday life. The staff and volunteers of places like this are acting as substitute parents to families who cannot cope with the families of disturbed children. How they are born is irrelevant. They are still our children and we must deal with this controversial issue. As you watch places like Warrendale close for lack of financing or governent cutbacks, these children need more than drugs to repress the symptoms in their emotional confinement.
Warrendale addresses and reminds us that we should never let our children live away from home because we want to escape from their reality just because they were born differently.
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A Married Couple is concerned about another aspect of society which is more prevalent today than it was in 1969: the high divorce rate. This true story of a marriage in crisis lets us experience up close and personal the problems arising in the average family.
We see it everyday on television if you watch shows like Dr. Phil which tell us how badly we need help. For many of us in a relationship we don't listen, learn or understand each other.
Although King does not give us any clear answers, it is all in the scenes and dialogue if you are listening and watching closely.
His second feature documentary lets us observe the way we communicate to each other by looking at the conflicts in the home of Billy and Antoinette Edwards, their son Bogart and dog Merton.
As we sit back and watch them interact, you can plainly see how easy it is to just
ignore the other person's feelings and end up fighting. Billy, the main provider of the family, has a superior attitude. He feels he doesn't need to do anything at home but sit and relax without being bothered by anything. When he does, he gets irritable, swears a lot and, generally, feels like he is king of the castle. His wife's feelings are ignored, except when the two of them are alone in bed. However, even here it is not a perfect place. You see them argue not only here, but at breakfast and in their living room.
The violence is contained and doesn't get to the point where the police are called in, but some moviegoers may find Billy's coarse language and resentment toward Antoinette to be disturbing. This is not a film for young children to watch.
The reality of A Married Couple is its uncompromising look at ourselves. Married couples who don't get along will identify with the Edwards. Nothing is staged. It is all real. After a few noticeable awkward moments in the beginning when they are sure how to react with the camera rolling, they become themselves.
Billy and Antoinette are caring people who love their home, respect their son and dog. Yet, it isn't long before their conversations are reduced to an inevitable distortion in regard to the other person, which means they fail to connect with true intimacy. Their relationship carries a series of anxieties, childhood patterns and miscellaneous things where the true connection between them is difficult. There are some happy moments shared by them and King captures them, too.
Near the end we get to see and hear Billy's true feelings about their marriage when they have a serious argument and he throws Antoinette out of the house.
A Married Couple, like Warrendale, was the subject of controversy when the Ontario Censor Board felt the language in the film was unprecendented. You have to remember this is 1969. They had trouble deciding if the swearing was going to arouse public reaction and only in Ontario were three cuts made to A Married Couple.
The conversations in the last twenty minutes between Billy and Antoinette reveal the true picture of their relationship. Two years later, they divorced.
Allan King's documentaries deserve to be seen and appreciated for tackling subjects which are both acute and important in understanding ourselves as human beings and the way we show ourselves. The camera, each time, takes it all in for us to play back and, hopefully, we will learn more from the experiences these documentaries continue to teach us.
A Married Couple will be shown at The Screening Room at 9:35 P.M. on Friday, March 9, 2007 and Warrendale at 2:45 P.M., also at The Screening Room, on Saturday, March 10, 2007.
