Last month, I shared a rare opportunity to view a 16mm presentation of Frederick Wiseman’s 1969 film, Hospital with a group of people who came out to support visual artist and filmmaker, Tucker Stilley.
The event was hosted by REDCAT at the Music Center in Los Angeles as a benefit for Stilley, who suffers from ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Wiseman, friend to both Stilley and his wife, Lindsay Mofford, offered a print specifically for the benefit event. An enthusiastic group of friends and supporters came out not only have the rare opportunity to screen Wiseman’s work, but also celebrate Tucker and his work, The Permanent Record which can be explored at TuckerStilley.com.
This was only the second film by Frederick Wiseman that I have ever seen, so I can not claim to have any real deep knowledge of Wiseman or his work, nor cinéma vérité as an overall movement. I was however, left with a number of thoughts regarding the work, and how it relates to a world some forty years later.
The first film of Wiseman’s that I was exposed to, is perhaps his best known, High School. I had the chance to see the film roughly 15 years ago or so in a film class, and in all honesty the film never stayed with me. I remember how many of us in the class often chuckled at the people we were watching. Students and teachers who were familiar and alien to us all at the same time. At that point, I’m sure I viewed High School as more of a curiosity piece. Since the film didn’t actively engage me as a viewer or as an aspiring filmmaker, (Errol Morris‘ The Thin Blue Line was far more engaging to me in this way), I neatly filed it away as due diligence. If I were to go back and watch it again today? I honestly don’t know. Certainly I’d have a better sense of Wiseman’s craft, but whether it would leave a greater mark upon me, I can’t say.
Wiseman’s Hospital on the other hand, definitely left an impression.
Hospital serves as a window into a “day-in-the-life” of the people served by, or serving in a major metropolitan hospital trauma ward and outpatient clinics. Wiseman’s camera has all but disappeared to the subjects he focuses on. That in and of itself, is an achievement. It also seems like a reflection on a different era of media culture and awareness, but all of that should not undercut the clear patience and care of Wiseman and his capable crew.
At the film’s opening, I was taken aback by the near-surreal nature of what I was witnessing. A title card with the word “Hospital” appears, and moments later, we are in an operating room as a patient is being prepared for surgery. Whether there was a conscious or coincidental connection between the films, Guy Maddin’s Tales from the Gimli Hospital is easily called to mind during the film’s opening. The operating room, like all the rest of the hospital is cramped, and the patient appears as if he is about to be tortured upon a cross. The machines and tools of patient care are huge and archaic, and one imagines that even the most contemporary individual might have been left with an ill sense-of-ease. However, once we get past the early moments where Wiseman rather graphically, entirely cooly and metaphorically opens the hospital to us, much of that sense of surrealism disappears.
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