Documentary smorgasbord

I have seen three noteworthy documentary films in the past two weeks that I feel compelled to comment on and share with everyone. The three are so vastly different from one another that I really dare not compare them with one another. Instead, here's a brief run-down of each:

The first is about a punk band living in squalor in Beijing, China. Appropriately titled Wasted Orient, the film documents the band Joyside and its four disillusioned members as they embark upon a mini tour of a number of cities in Communist China. These boys are living in hovels and have given up hope of being the kind of people that their society deems acceptable. Thusly they spend their time drinking lots and lots and lots and lots of beer and playing crude British and American-inspired punk music to audiences that average about 20-30 people. The film is interesting in that it appears to take a very objective view of the situation, simply training the camera on the drunken, impoverished boys instead of commenting on how the political environment affects the boys and their music. However, this gets a bit dull after about the second or third city as we witness the boys abuse themselves day after day in city after city. There is a great scene towards the beginning of the film as we are introduced to each boy in which the guitarist visits a street vendor and proceeds to eat a variety of insects on camera. He holds aloft each critter and proclaims, "This is bug. What's this? It's bug".

Next up was a truly bizarre and unique slice of life called The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief. This odd little movie visits the Japanese city of Osaka you can visit "Host clubs", establishments where love is on the menu for a hefty price. Here we meet Issei, a 22-year-old man who, according to the film, is the city's top host. He and other young men offer their companionship to women at their club for an exorbitant price. This is appears to be a form of prostitution, but they are not selling sex to the women (generally young, attractive women). Instead they are selling a dream of sorts, selling a weird version of an actual relationship. Here's how it goes down: ladies visit the club and are given a menu with pictures and descriptions of the available hosts. The ladies may choose their host from the menu and are then charged an hourly rate. The host in turn visits them, spends time with them, talks and jokes with them, flatters them, etc. They basically treat the girls as though they were their girlfriends. The ladies compete with each other for affections of each host, spending more and more money as they buy the host's time and attention. This is indeed a cultural phenomenon, but stranger still is the fact that the documentary reveals that most of the women who frequent the clubs are actually prostitutes themselves. They are not at all interested in buying sex but instead buy a relationship from men who won't judge them for their profession. Of course, no one is having a real relationship and everyone is left lonely at the end of the day (or night, for that matter). At a 75 minute running time, I encourage everyone to visit this very strange and unique world of The Great Happiness Space.

The biggest surprise was the incredible film The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Everyone keeps looking at me like I have two heads when I begin to describe this film. No one can imagine that this is a good movie, let alone a great one. It's better than great, even. It's wonderful. The King of Kong follows two men, one a gaming legend who carries the highest scores ever on several classic arcade games, one a down-and-out everyman who discovers that his mathematical mind and O.C.D. sensibilities give him the qualities it takes to be the greatest Donkey Kong player of all time. Thus ensues a (sometimes imaginary) battle between two men and their quest to be the best at Donkey Kong. Billy Mitchell is the gamer who peaked in the '80s with his "perfect Pac-Man" game. He still sports his '80s look and he's still riding the wave of notoriety that his high scores brought him in the gaming community. Steve Weibe is the guy who got laid off from his job on the day he and his wife closed on their suburban home. As a way of distracting himself from his failures and disappointments, he spends his free time in his garage playing Donkey Kong. After many, many hundreds of hours, he videotapes himself beating Billy Mitchell's score. The gaming community and the head honchos at Twin Galaxies (scorekeepers extraordinaire) doubt Weibe's score and abilities. Thus Weibe goes on a quest to prove himself and his mad Donkey Kong skillz to the world. This sounds dorky, and it is. But as Weibe himself states in the film, after a while it really isn't about Donkey Kong at all. It's a version of "Rocky" for nerds, and it's all real. At approximately an hour and 20 min, it's one of the only films I've seen that I actually wish was longer. It's a fantastic portrait of two men who lose themselves in a game. It's good vs. evil, it's a true story, and it's the best movie I've seen in a long time.