Thursday 17 November 2016

My Favourite Films - Dear Zachary (2008)

It feels very bizarre to call something like this one of my favourite films, after all, in this series I mostly talk about the ones that leave me with a good feeling, ones that make me laugh, make me think about life, or ones that I simply enjoy watching repeatedly. Dear Zachary left me feeling angry, it left me feeling hateful, it left me feeling like the world was broken, idiot and corrupt…But to be fair that’s what they’re trying to make feel so good job guys!

Dear Zachary is a documentary directed by Kurt Kuenne and follows the story of Andrew Bagby, a man who was murdered by his ex-girlfriend who is pregnant with his child. Thus the story is half exploring Andrew’s life and all the people who cared about him, and half his parents fighting for custody over their grandchild. This is one of the most emotionally heart wrenching films I have ever seen (As you could probably guess from the previous paragraph) and the key component that makes that so if within the directing. The director was actually childhood best friends with the victim and even though they went their separate ways, after his death he started to learn so much about Andrew’s life and wanted to make a film for Zachary-Andrew’s son-so he would know how good of a man his father was. Because of that the emotions in this film very genuine-even for a documentary-and everyone involved absolutely put everything they can into making this as good as possible. Now yes, some might say that gives the film something of a biased agenda, but that is true for almost every documentary ever, this one is just a lot more upfront about it.

Though Andrew is shown in a very positive light, it’s always in a realistic manner, they never claim he was a saint, they don’t make him seem flawless, but they show that overall he was a very good person who cared about making people happy. He was funny, he was caring and he was sociable so he that meant lots of people cared about him and he did impact a lot of people’s lives. He wasn’t going to be the next Martin Luther King or anything, but he did leave this world making it a little better than before and that’s still important. The other side of the film focusing on Andrew’s parents David & Kathleen however I would actually say is the more emotional aspect of the film. My favourite types of documentaries are the ones where they’re filming it as it’s happening, meaning it’s much harder to tell where things are going because the people they’re following don’t know where things are going.

Seeing these two fight so hard for custody over their grandchild and having to face an ignorantly corrupt system that keeps favouring this mother, keeps just giving her slaps on the wrist despite the fact she is a convicted murderer. If you don’t already hate the system, you will after this film, seeing how so many people who are in charge of convicting criminals, keeping innocent people safe can be so naïve, stupid and sympathetic to the completely wrong people. Speaking of hate, I don’t care if you are the most forgiving, kind, non-violent person in the world, after watching this film, you will hate Shirley Turner-the murderer-more than you would think humanly possible. The way how this woman did not pay for her actions, or how she doesn’t even seem to realize how awful of a person she is, or how much pain she brought into people’s lives, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much hatred for a person from a documentary.

But that is the key here, there are plenty of documentaries out there that I would call fascinating, but there aren’t that many where I would get emotional over. With this, I was literally shaking with anger, I don’t think I’ve ever been so overwhelmed with emotion at a film before, whether it be sadness, fear or rage over what was happening. A lot of this is done through editing, paralleling events from the film to show yet again how awful the system is, unfortunately a lot of this is in ways that I can’t really delve into because I don’t want to spoil how the film ends, like I said, I love these types of documentaries because I don’t know where it’s going and I wouldn’t want to take that away from anyone.

Unfortunately, that makes it so much harder to discuss the film because I don’t want to give that much away. Also seeing as it’s a documentary there isn’t as much to discuss in comparison to a piece of fiction, there’s no acting or script to discuss so all I have is the directing, editing and how it made me feel and I’ve already discussed those. So if any of what I’ve said sounds interesting to you and you’re ready to be an emotional wreck after watching this film then I would highly recommend it, because it is my all time favourite documentary.

-Danny

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