Sitting in front of any Monty Python movie in its original version, or its fantastic “Flying Circus», It should be a pleasure for all the senses and especially that of humor. Anything similar to the “Knights of the Square Table” exercise is genius, and the students at the school that grew up around “Saturday Night Live” (“SNL”) know a lot about that. Acolytes, actors and screenwriters like Fred Armisen, Bill Hader and Seth Meyers, regular writers and presenters like John Mulaney and directors like Rhys Thomas, flee from the ephemeral to parody the most famous documentary works in history in “Documentary Now!”. Now three and a half years After the last installment, AMC+ premieres today the fourth season of these masterpieces that not only use the best ingenuity that man has created, paying attention to detail, but have also brought along performers who abandon themselves to the game proposed by the creators of these five juicy pieces that play with the viewer’s mind, as well as with their capacity for wonder and that shy smile at the corner of the lips of the unbelievers.
Each of the pieces is briefly prefaced by an impeccable Helen Mirren, who is also the first to laugh at the format and introduces us to the “53rd season” of “Documentary Now!”. In just half an hour, the creators, along with executive producer Lorne Michaels, pay tribute with greater or lesser success to great documentaries of history. As in the third season, the first chapter is double and under the title “Soldier of Illusion”, they pay tribute to “Burden of Dreams” (1982), directed by Les Blank: a behind-the-scenes look at the making of ” Fitzcarraldo» (1982) by Werner Herzog with Klaus Kinski. Written by John Mulaney and starring Alexander Skarsgård (“Big Little Lies”), Nicholas Braun (“Succession”) and August Diehl (“Inglourious Basterds”), nintroduces you to a visionary German filmmaker (Skarsgård) who tries to make his magnum opus come true: portraying the native population of the roller coasters of Ular while creating the sitcom “Single Nanny”. Kevin Bishop, Gana Bayarsaikhan, Matthias Rimpler and Fred Armisen complete the cast. Hilarious Diehl as a Klaus Kinski out of his mind.
The second short is a candy. Cate Blanchet creates and stars in “Two Hairdressers in Bagglyport,” which mixes “3 Salons At the Seaside” with the “Vogue” documentary “The September Issue.” A hairdresser and her useless assistant They recreate the day-to-day of their absurd business with dozens of clients with their gray hair in slow motion. The fiction features Harriet Walter (“Killing Eve”), as the owner of the establishment who racks her brains to choose the best photos for her annual “style” book, while she receives correspondence from clients on vacation in Mallorca, just kidnapped. The third piece is not wasted either and it is that it parodies in its own way the documentary “When We Were Kings” (1996) (“When we were kings”) by Leon Gast, on the heavyweight championship boxing match most famous of all time: the “Rumble in the Jungle” between champion George Foreman and challenger Muhammad Ali. It chronicles the Welsh sport of Craig Maes, also known as “Field Rock”, and the iconic 1974 fight called “The Melon vs. The Felon” with two wrestlers throwing stones at each other with added commentary from two “specialist” journalists played by Jonathan Pryce and John Rhys-Davies and a cameo appearance by Tom Jones as an ex-policeman.
They close this season «My Monkey Grifter», inspired by «My Octopus Teacher» (2020) by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed, and starring Jamie Demetriou and Fred Armisen, and «Trouver Frisson», which features French actress Liliane Rovère and Ronald Guttman, in a piece that ironizes with “The gleaners and I” (2020) and “The beaches of Agnès” (2008), by Agnés Varda. The piece narrates how the famous French filmmaker Ida Leos (Rovère) looks for why she no longer experiences the goosebumps that she has always been her guide. Aauthentic works of art for exquisite palates.
“Documentary Now!”: When laughing at documentary cinema becomes art