Hot Docs 2018 Reviews: Love, Gilda, The War Room, The Devil We Know

Apr 29, 2018- Permalink

Love, Gilda

After yesterday’s look at Harvey Weinstein, a stain on Hollywood, it was a good moment to spend some quality time with a beloved comic figure, Gilda Radner. Love, Gilda is both heart-warming and heart-breaking, as we see the background and early work of the SNL original as well as being reminded that cancer took her away from her loved ones and fans too early. Director Lisa D’Apolito has the best narrator for the project, Radner herself, as she uses the audiobook from Radner’s autobiography It’s Always Something. Hearing the story in her own words is amazing, even when it comes from readings of her notes and letters by SNL successors Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler and Bill Hader. The common thread woven through interviews with friends and co-workers like Martin Short is that they were in awe of her talent and in love with her being. Well worth your time to seek this one out.

I then had a chance to catch a doc that I have wanted to see for a long time. Like the Hot Docs Festival itself, Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker’s The War Room is also celebrating its 25th anniversary. Following the presidential campaign of Bill Clinton in 1992, the candidate is not the star of this doc. That goes to chief strategist James “It’s the economy, stupid” Carville and media director George Stephanopoulos, the yin and yang of the campaign who steered the Arkansas governor to victory.

Compared to how fast political scandals break and explode on social media today, the pacing back then seems almost quaint. Carville and Stephanopoulos almost have time to breathe as their candidate faces a popular incumbent, an upstart outsider (Ross Perot), and allegations of an affair with Gennifer Flowers. They parse words in response to reporters and debate phrasing for radio ads. The camera is able to get into the intimate space of the campaign and the viewer feels like they have a seat at the table during discussions. You become a part of it and almost feel like you’ve earned a slice of cold pizza on the long nights of the campaign. It’s a fascinating look at how a president gets elected. Even if you’re not a complete political junkie, The War Room should be on your documentary bucket list.

Stephanie Soechtig’s The Devil We Know is one of those documentaries that makes you want to take action immediately upon leaving the theatre. It follows the town of Parkersburg, West Virginia, where chemical giant DuPont started manufacturing C8, a component of the ubiquitous Teflon that was coating cookware, microwave popcorn bags and even carpets and couches in the form of ScotchGard, When DuPont supplier 3M decided C8 was too dangerous to make, DuPont decided to make it in-house. Some female workers started giving birth to horribly disfigured children. Farmers near containment ponds had livestock dying off, while other residents downstream began noticing new ailments.

The doc shows how the EPA mostly turned a blind eye to the events as the agency’s top brass seemed to have been populated by an awful lot of people with ties to the company. It shows the depositions of DuPont execs who had barely a care for what they were causing. The most mind-numbing figure was learning that the chemical was found in the blood of 99% of Americans, so pervasive was the use of Teflon. And while the doc has a bit of a happy ending in terms of civil activism, it also hits you with the despair that nothing has really changed,

For more information on the 2018 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and for tickets and showtimes visit hotdocs.ca.