tieman64 Along with Emile de Antonio, Frederick Wiseman is one of the godfathers of documentary cinema, having established the standard for what is now known as "observational" or "objective" documentary film-making (a term which Wiseman fully rejects). But unlike most in his field, Wiseman's films all focus on institutions. His subjects are whole organisations, and he conjures up drama by simply observing the various cogs and people at work within these societal machines. High schools, welfare offices, zoos, hospitals, ballet groups, army basic training camps, small towns, ICBM bases and business corporations are just some of the institutions he's tackled.The end result is a vast canvas, which when put together with all of Wiseman's other documentaries, creates a human panorama akin to Balzak. This is the late 20th/early 21st century rendered, in all its expansiveness, in all its complexity, with humility by a little man and a tiny camera.But the importance of Wiseman is that he dares to show, not only how much humanity has accomplished, but to what extent we've become slaves to the institutions, facilities, jobs and social structures that we inhabit and/or create. Whilst most films centre on a hero or heroes scheming to overcome some obstacle or complete some quest, Wiseman's world is one in which systemic forces exert tremendous pressure on the individual, shaping how he thinks and behaves. To Wiseman, society is a complex lattice of overlapping social structures and institutions and mankind is both the God who creates them, and the pawn who succumbs to the tides of their walls.And this juxtaposition (man as God/man as pawn) permeates Wiseman's entire filmography. Though touted as a kind of "anthropological" director, or a film-maker concerned about "studying institutions", Wiseman's larger preoccupation seems to be that of capturing the follies and sheer absurdity of human beings. Think the monkeys masturbating in "Primate", the city street-sweepers who sweep snow with futility during a blizzard because "that's their job", the suburban white kids being shown how to put a condom on a giant black phallus in "High School" or the doctors of "Near Death", so desensitised to suffering that they joke about their vegetable patients. This is black comedy at its darkest, its most absurd.Wiseman's films, when viewed in tandem, start revealing patterns, rhymes and rhythms. Watch how "Ballet" mirrors "Le Dance", "Zoo" mirrors "Primate", "Basic Training" mirrors "Missile", "High School's 1 and 2" echo his work in "Juvenile Court" and "Public Housing". Likewise, observe how "Hospital" mirrors "Near Death" and "Deaf" mirrors "Blind". Wiseman says he jumps randomly from institution to institution, but there's also a sense of a calculated human portrait on a grand scale.That said, Wiseman's "Belfast Maine", regarded by many as one of his masterpieces, works well as an individual film. At four hours long, this is a mammoth survey of the bay-side town of Belfast, Maine. Wiseman takes us through the town's gorgeous natural environments, introduces us to its population, social workers and institutions, and delves into everything from sardine factories, police stations, hospitals, high schools etc.Labelled "sociological" or "anthropological", it's also a strangely apocalyptic work. Wiseman captures the indifference of school teachers, their sense of hopelessness for their children's futures and the way various characters seem trapped in various blue collar jobs. This is, as one Pentecostal preacher states, "a broken world". But it's not all bleak. When Wiseman locates kindness, he finds it hiding in care homes, amongst pensioners, churches and other nooks and crannies which oozes a sort of communal spirit.Wiseman punctuates his film with shots of the town's docks and waterways, the lapping tides suggesting a cyclical pattern, a life of gentle repetitions in which townsfolk adhere to fairly rigid daily routines: wake up, go to work, attend to business, play, come home, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat.Ultimately, Wiseman sees this town as an almost spiritual project, everyone, and the town itself, moving, they hope, toward intellectual, physical, spiritual and financial betterment. It's no coincidence that Wiseman focuses, within the documentary, on a local production of "Death of a Salesman", a play about a man who believed himself destined for a greatness he never achieved.And so we watch as the characters of this film perform thankless jobs, refer to their factories as "jails" and "assembly lines", fail to find "Moby Dick" like mythos in their work, but trudge along nevertheless in the hope of a better tomorrow. What the film asks is whether and where this hope can be found, and what little pockets of humanity are lost in the journey from blue collar to white.9/10 – This mammoth 4 hour film pushes aside Norman Rockwell's brand of small town kitsch and taps into something far more…human.

dane-70 This is a great and disturbing movie. I have lived in Maine all my life, and worked in a number of the jobs depicted here, and I too, as some viewers below, find myself romanticizing Maine, thinking you will find the true Maine in movies other than this one. That you can find the "true Maine" not in the elderly, the infirm, not in the soul-crushing factories, and not in a string of defendants, mechanically pleading guilty to the inevitable and petty charges leveled against them in a courtroom. It is absolutely not true that the youth are not represented here--you see them in the hospitals, as infants, in the stories told by hunters, and as the bored faces in the classroom, repeating the presumably inspiring banalities of an English teacher. And all of the people you do see were of course once much younger than you see them here. It's only four hours--what else do you have to do today that's so important?

soloview Wish I could have voted 7.5. Wanted to check the demographics on Belfast after watching this film. Have to agree with so many others the focus was predominantly down-scale. Would like to have seen the 'other half', so to speak. From this film, it would seem the town is down-trodden, mostly illiterate & suffering from 2-digit IQs. Compassion & intelligence were shown, but not frequently. I'm sure Belfast is much like any other town, with a fair mixture of all levels.I like to 'observe' people & gather much from interactions, what is said between or among them.It's a decent movie but left me wanting...to know more, to get a more even feel.

dukendoc Belfast, Maine is an extraordinarily well made documentary. You are riveted to the screen, drawn into the lives of individuals trying to get by working in factories, dry cleaners, bakeries. I sat watching, never leaving for the full four hours.Now for the bad news. As a resident of Belfast, I couldn't help but see that a huge segment of the population was being ignored. Where were the professionals? I remember one doctor portrayed, on call in the emergency room. Lawyers? Real estate agents? Where was my favorite latte shop? Where were the hundreds of magnificent homes in our historic district? No. The director shut us out. He wanted to show what my boss refers to as "Hidden Belfast," not the one most of us see every day. I wish he had told me up front. The film ignores what Belfast has become over the past decade, a renaissance town, a tourist destination, with a beautiful waterfront, comfortable bed and breakfasts, and wonderful downtown. A place that two years ago the Cohn Brothers and their families (of Fargo fame) chose as a vacation destination.Belfast, Maine (the documentary) all too clearly reminded me what a good director could do...by not showing certain footage (and other careful editing,) totally distort the truth.