Posts Tagged ‘documentaries’
Last Words
New technology can bring us multiple ways to make sports bets by the minute online, or provide endless hours of doomscrolling on smartphones, but Netflix is offering something much more worthy in their “Famous Last Words” TV series. Based on a Danish series, the shows involve an hour-long interview with notable figures that only gets published after their death.
Renowned primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall died of natural causes last week, and an interview Netflix recorded with her in March of 2025 is now available for viewing. Cyndie and I watched it last night and found it to be very moving and profoundly impressive.
The technology they used in recording the interview included remotely operated cameras so that there were no other people in the room except for Jane and the Producer/Host, Brad Falchuk.
At the end of the interview, Brad leaves the set and allows Jane to close with her final words to the world, looking directly into a camera. It’s very powerful. She was very well-spoken.
It is easy to ignore the reality that she recorded this seven months ago and focus on the fact that she knew her message would not be seen by anyone until after her death. As we watched her speak, knowing she had died less than a week prior, there was a strong sense that we were hearing her communicate from the afterlife.
I don’t know that I could articulate such a profound message for the world to hear after my death with such solemnity and dignity. I’m no Jane Goodall, for one, and I don’t have the fame to attract Netflix, so I won’t have to worry about such a thing.
However, if there isn’t already, there should soon be an app for us common folk to record personal statements to be seen by generations to come after our demise. I wonder how many will start with the line, “If you are watching this, I am dead.” They could probably find a way to tie it in with the online gambling sites. “…Hopefully, you won some money on the bet of how long I would live.”
Joking aside, there is something very special about listening to a person’s last words. I tip my hat to Netflix for pursuing the project of recording this interview with such obvious respect. I am now curious about who else they have recorded and stored in their vault, awaiting a to-be-determined publishing date.
R.I.P. Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, 1934-2025.
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Coincidental Convergence
It started while Cyndie was away for a week in southern California. I entertained myself watching movies that she wouldn’t want to see. As I moved into the genre of war movies, I ended up progressing from WWII conflicts to the Vietnam War. By coincidence, I noticed a documentary series on AppleTV+ narrated by Ethan Hawke called “Vietnam: The War That Changed America.”
It is a fascinating telling by people who were there, on both sides of the conflict, with added context of what was going on at home with the citizenry and political leadership. It is much more than a Hollywood recreation of what happened, but it tends to validate plenty of the acted scenes in the movies I had been watching just days before.
As a palate cleanser, when Cyndie got home, I offered her some episodes of another AppleTV+ series: “1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything.” I hadn’t planned the synchronicity, but I quickly realized I was watching footage of the same period of history in each of the shows.
Saturday night, my brother recommended the 2023 documentary movie, “What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat, & Tears?” I watched it yesterday and found myself once again immersed in events from the same 1970s era as the previous two documentaries.
It was entirely unintentional but something of a reward. Each one served to add depth to the others.
The impression these all made on me provided a helpful reference for the consternation over the current situation in this country. Being taken back to points in history when people felt the world was teetering on the brink of nuclear obliteration or when public opinion was dramatically split between supporting a war against communism and demands that we bring our soldiers home.
The norms of oppression of minorities and women were being threatened by civil rights and equal rights marches. The youth were threatening almost all of the norms of their parents’ generation. Over and over, people perceived the disruptions as potentially disastrous to society, yet somehow we’ve endured and, in a few ways, even made progress.
It won’t be without some distress and many challenges, but based on how we’ve come through the difficulties this country has faced in the past, we may survive the current absurdities underway and eventually recover some semblance of political sanity.
Think about what today’s weirdness will look like in documentaries that might get made in 2075. That is, if historical documentaries are allowed in the future Christian Communist States of America. In 50 years, how much more money will the top 1% have amassed at the expense of the rest of the world?
That’s not a serious query. Fifty years out is too far for me to imagine. My focus is more like a year and a half from now with the hope that I still get to vote on who I want to represent me in our government.
Spoiler alert: Blood, Sweat, & Tears got forced into a no-win deal by the Nixon administration. That’s what the hell happened.
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Happiness Expedition
Surfing for something to watch during a fabulous dinner of a grilled chicken sandwich with a slice of tomato fresh from the garden and just-picked sweetcorn, brought us to the 2017 documentary, “Expedition Happiness.” What a fun surprise that turned out to be since we didn’t know anything about Felix Starck (“Pedal the World”) or Selima “Mogli” Taibi and their excellent chronicle of traveling Canada, the United States, and Mexico in a refurbished school bus they modified themselves.
Their expedition provided plenty of happiness but was not without trials and tribulations. I found it refreshing that they succeeded repeatedly in reframing the difficulties in a way that always saved room for happiness to continue to exist. I would do well to emulate this exercise as often as I can. My happiness tends to get smothered by the depths of instant despair sparked by one thing after another when trying to bring order to life’s ongoing chaos.
Yes, we have an adopted 16-month-old rescued mixed-breed puppy. Yes, we are caretakers of 20 acres of fields and forests. Yes, we have a 33-year-old log home that is beginning to show signs of settling to a point that deserves professional analysis and possible intervention. Yes, we are both retired and living on a tighter budget than our working years. Yes, we are over a year into waiting on a landscape contractor to finish grading the edges of our 900-foot driveway after being told repeatedly we are on their schedule (current “guess” is possibly the week after next –where have I heard that before?).
Still, I am truly happy, even though I felt a scary twinge in my back yesterday while wielding my favorite new hedge trimmer to cut back tall growth that was bending over our path around the outside of the hay field fence. I changed up my routine for a bit and went back later to carefully finish without further physical damage but as the evening wore on, the rest of my body began the natural reaction of tightening up to restrict movement that might exacerbate the disc degeneration affliction.
I’m happy to be newly inspired to try making use of the little plums we get from a few American Plum trees distributed around our land. Cyndie tells me she did try one year but after pitting and pureeing a batch she had to store them in the refrigerator while heading out of town. By the time she returned, they had fermented.
I think the pitting effort dissuaded her from trying again in the seasons since. Maybe if I offer some of my labor I can coerce her into trying again for a jam or other concoction of her choosing.
When the beautiful fruit is falling off the tree onto our walking path, it seems a shame to not put it to use beyond feeding wildlife and decomposing into our soil.
Taking advantage of free natural fruit growing on our land is the kind of thing that provides bonus happiness for our ongoing adventures.
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So This
I admit, I have never done this before. I have never been as old as I am today and faced everything that November 2017 is presenting. Is that why this season’s onset of freezing temperatures feels more jarring than ever before? My blood is definitely not winter-thick yet.
Maybe I’m off my game because of how unsettling the last year under the current U.S. leadership has been. The increasing turmoil of extreme storms from the warming planet has definitely contributed.
Sometimes, looking back for reference provides some insight on present day issues, but there are so many unique technologies now woven into our lives, it feels difficult to compare events from decades ago. This weekend, our Netflix queue offered up a documentary DVD about the Freedom Riders of 1961.
I was two years old at the time of those civil rights dramas playing out in the deep south. I suppose the white supremacists at that time were terrified their racist version of society was being threatened.
It has me trying to fathom how history might perceive people and events of 2017 some fifty or a hundred years from now.
The next movie that showed up was a documentary about the Rwandan cycling team that rose from the ashes of genocide that country experienced in 1994. Nineteen Ninety Four. I wish such human carnage wasn’t something that still occurs.
It all serves to put my travails in perspective. Feeling weak against the cold air? I’ll get over it.
I can go out and hug our horses, absorb some of their warmth, and see if I can pick up some of their energy and perspective on the present moment.
They can help me to breathe and get back to grazing.
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Relative Something 