After a friend and I watched Manto on the large screen a couple of years ago, we were talking about how literary documentaries were difficult to come by in India. Now, thanks to Netflix and company, this has changed significantly. Given the current lockdown, here are five literary documentaries you can watch online.
James Ellroy: Feast of Death (YouTube)
The celebrated author of The Black Dahlia , LA Confidential and dozens of other blockbuster crime novels opens up in this (surprisingly) thrill-a-minute 2001 documentary, structured like one of Ellroy’s whodunits. At the heart of many of his novels lay the decades-old, unsolved murder of Ellroy’s own mother. From this starting point, the film explores several aspects of the creative process, in particular how one fictionalises real-world experiences, especially traumatic ones (without sacrificing one’s mental health).
From ‘Joan Didion: The Centre Will Not Hold’
Joan Didion: The Centre Will Not Hold (Netflix India)
Joan Didion (Play It As It Lays, The Year of Magical Thinking) was among a bunch of American writers in the 70s who made significant stylistic breakthroughs in journalism and book-length non-fiction, often employing novelistic techniques. The resultant ‘New Journalism’ remains an influential style with longform specialists. Didion has written some very moving books about her own family life, so it’s fitting that The Centre Will Not Hold was made by her nephew, the actor Griffin Dunne. It is fascinating to see the now 85-year-old Didion talk about her salad days, covering California micro-cultures in the late 60s and early 70s, the stuff of novels like Inherent Vice.
From ‘Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia’
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (Netflix India)
Gore Vidal (1925-2012) was nothing if not controversial — indeed, he was downright offensive, misogynistic and tone-deaf towards the end of his life, like the time he called the 13-year-old girl raped by Roman Polanski “a young [prostitute] who got upset”. He was also, as it so happens, an accomplished writer of both fiction and non-fiction. In his seven-part Narratives of Empire novel series (1968-2000), for example, Vidal gives us a sweeping, large-scale indictment of America’s militaristic ways. In The United States of Amnesia (2013), a candid Vidal talks about the highs and lows of his six-decade-long career (including fun sideshows like the time he acted in a Fellini movie, and much later, played a science fiction villain in the Hollywood film Gattaca, alongside Uma Thurman).
The South Bank Show: JG Ballard
The South Bank Show: JG Ballard (YouTube)
JG Ballard (1930-2009) was one of the finest and most prescient writers of speculative fiction. In brilliant novels like High-Rise, Crash and The Drowned World, Ballard seemed to anticipate the pitfalls of techno-capitalist excesses around the world. In a 40-minute 2006 episode of The South Bank Show (a regular art and culture show on iTV), Ballard is extensively interviewed about his themes and influences, as well his prognosis for some of the most complicated problems of the 21st century. This really is a must-watch for all science fiction fans (added bonus being Ballard reading some of his best lines in his sonorous voice).
Ted Hughes: Force of Nature
Ted Hughes: Force of Nature (YouTube)
This 1998 BBC documentary was released a few months after Hughes, one of the best-known British poets of all time, died. Its chief strength is the line-up of writers, editors and poets who talk about Hughes throughout the film — Al Alvarez, John Carey, Simon Armitage and so on. Fair warning: in the best British stiff upper lip tradition, it tries to downplay Hughes’ cheating, philandering, emotionally abusive ways during his marriage with the American poet Sylvia Plath.
