JimBell Blog

Anytown, USA

Under discussion:
Anytown, USA (2005)

Under discussion:

Anytown, USA (2005)

Although I follow politics, I’m not a political junky and I don’t belong to a political party. Still, I really liked Anytown, USA (2006), a documentary of the 2003 race for mayor in Bogota, New Jersey. Why would I be interested in such a distant, small-time contest?

The up-close-and-personal documentary offers an insider look at a civic election. A lot of voters are furious with the cost-cutting Mayor Lonegin and his dismissive manner. Yet the Democrat challenger is pathetically incompetent: When asked by a reporter to state the most important plank in his platform, he cannot even say what he stands for.

The race got more interesting when a third candidate joined in. Dave Musikant was a Bagota football hero who had gone blind from a brain tumour, lived in his sister’s basement, was unemployed, and could not stand the way the Republican mayor was running the town Dave loved. He had two strikes against him: he was running as an independent, and, because he entered the race late, he was a write in. After floundering in his idealistic amateurism for a few weeks, he brought in the professional campaign organizer Doug Friedline, famous for making a pro wrestler state governor.

The suspense was constant without being artificial. The high school football team, which the incumbent Republican mayor had wanted to cut, started off the season with a dismal loss but fought on to victory after victory with Dave Musikant cheering from the sidelines, and Dave’s nephew scoring the crucial touchdown of the season. The football team even helped in Dave’s door-to-door campaign. Would it be enough to earn the good-hearted write-in a victory over the dismissive politico incumbent? On election day, the mayor is worried to the extent that we hear him on the phone trying to arrange one absentee vote from a foreign country.

All of this would lack impact for me if it was a Michael Moore-style documentary with an axe to grind or a point to prove. But it is an old-style documentary aiming to just tell the story. From 300 hours of footage shot over 3 months, director Kristian Fraga and crew spent 7 months editing it down to 93 minutes, with the guiding concern of “telling the story” or, put another way, letting the story tell itself. Just because such objectivity is technically impossible does not mean that it is not an objective worth pursuing. The result is a documentary that respects the people in it even when a less resolute director might have mocked them for, say, petty arrogance, deep-seated incompetence, or old-fashioned idealism. Ultimately, I trusted that the film makers were giving me a pretty valid and reliable picture of the race.

While the film makers say that the documentary gains resonance because it mirrors the national scene (think: Bush, Gore, Nader etc.), I thought the lasting power came in the results of the election. It left me thinking once again about the strengths and weaknesses of democracy, the worst political system except for all the others.

posted on Wednesday, September 19, 2007 4:10 PM by JimBell

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lopezdash
Posted Thursday, November 08, 2007 11:47 AM

It really shows you the power of good filmmaking--bringint out the qualities and personalities that make a town like Bogota truly interesting. I thought the end of the film was over-the-top, it didn't make me question the fundamental nature of democratic forms of government.. but it was one of those "wait, are you serious?" type of moments. During the course of the relatively short film, I grew to like Dave, then to hate him, then to like him again -- both as a candidate and a person. I just could not believe that _that_ much could happen in one election.

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