HopkinsCinemAddicts

Portraits of Nora Ephron and Joan Didion

The documentary, Everything is Copy, chronicles Nora Ephron’s life, focusing on her importance as an essayist and screenwriter, as well as the relationships that shaped her. Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold similarly dives into the writer’s personal and professional life. Both of these documentaries focus on loss and question what it means to know another person, providing perspectives characterized both by intimacy and distance. 

Everything Is Copy is notable in how it works to explore Ephron’s life in spite of her not being alive at the time of filming. She died of leukemia in 2012, and her son, Jacob Bernstein, began working on the documentary in the years immediately afterward, ultimately releasing it in 2016. The film first opens solely with the sound of Ephron speaking, and a few seconds later, her image appears. This shift from the audio to video immediately emphasizes how film brings her to life. She looks not at the camera but at Charlie Rose, who is off-screen, as she recounts a story that results in laughter from the audience. This beginning doesn’t need context; her presence and humor are enough to establish her personality.

The subsequent ten minutes exhibit a combination of photographs, archival footage, and past and more recent interviews, exposing how film can break up time as well as extend it. In just a few minutes, we witness not just who Ephron was, but specifically the history that shaped her and her legacy into the future. The segment of her and Charlie Rose, for example, is followed by an oscillation between her present and the past. It cuts between home videos of her at nine years old, and an interview where she discusses her mother’s mantra that Bernstein chose as the title, “everything is copy.” The juxtaposition of the visuals of her as a child and her adult voice demonstrates the formative nature of this idea and how it has persisted throughout her life. Our understanding of her is immediate and personal. The film then moves from the past to the actual present, with a cut from her using a typewriter to one of Bernstein’s laptop. This technological gap marks the passage of time, while also illustrating Ephron’s impact on her son, who details how he too is a writer. Photographs of her punctuate throughout; although she is often joyous, these still images seemed to contain her and suggest that, without her alive, our understanding of her is ultimately limited.  

The documentary also points to the boundary between public and private identities, and explores the extent that such a boundary existed for Ephron. Bernstein interviews a large range of people, including David Remnick, Meryl Streep, Rob Reiner, Amy Pascal, Meg Ryan, and Rosie O’Donnell. Her demeanor in interviews with hosts like Charlie Rose matches the descriptions of those who personally knew her. Several speak of her in a way that suggests a closeness; there’s often a succession of them individually describing the same thing about her, adding to a cohesion in her portrayal. Yet many lament not knowing that she had been diagnosed with cancer. The documentary creates a parallel between the viewer and her friends; the film increasingly immerses us in her life, allowing us to get closer to her, and then it forces us to revisit the secrecy of her illness again at the end. Ephron is simultaneously knowable and elusive.

Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, like Everything is Copy, was directed by someone close to her, specifically her nephew, Griffin Dunne. The film's visual depiction of Didion’s loss of her husband, John Dunne, suggests its incomprehensibility for her. When Didion begins describing the night he died, we see part of their apartment in daylight, where no one is present. The tension from this absence is exacerbated by an off-center camera. As she progresses in recounting what happened, we get increasingly closer-up shots of a table, and then the piano on the side. Her words, “I remember the sense of the weight as he fell,” coincide with a cuts to a shot of trees outside, now at night and at a distance from what is presumably Didion’s window. The film conveys the emotion of this grief not through Didion’s words but in what is on screen. Another example of a key visual decision is when Dunne’s brother discusses how he and Didion went into John’s office after his death. As he talks about himself, the closet is in color, but as he talks about her, it shifts to black and white, signifying the impact of Dunne's death on her.

The documentary’s portrayal of Quintana, Didion’s daughter, is also of note. At one point, there is a shift in topics from Quintana to Didion’s journalism and political work, which centered on the El Salvadoran Civil War, as well as Dick Cheney. The documentary then returns to the topic of Quintana, and Didion discusses how her daughter had told her she was “remote” as a mother. This structure, where her political work gains prominence and is sandwiched by Quintana, seems to implicate it as creating a division between the two of them. Regarding the comment that she was “remote,” Didion insists: “I didn’t see it as possible because her father and I so clearly needed her.” There is an evident dissonance between their perspectives of her role as a mother, and there is no way for it to be reconciled.  

Next, a sequence of photographs of the three of them shifts from black and white to color; the passage in time is marked by this shift, as well as through John’s balding, and Quintana’s growth from a child to an adult. There’s a noticeable lack in what we know about Quintana from the film; photographs of her seem empty, as we don’t truly get a sense of their relationship. Soon afterward, there’s a description of how Quintana enters a coma and ultimately dies, with coincides with a photo of her smiling. Interestingly, after her death, a shot of hand-written notes from Quintana as a child is the only kind of personal evidence, other than photographs, that we get of her.

It may not be that Didion and Quintana had a uniquely distant relationship, but instead that the film specifically decided not to give the viewer a privileged perspective of them. What gets left out of such a documentary, though, is as interesting as what is put in.

Challenging conceptions of human's relationship to nature

The two documentaries, Jane and David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, appear to have differing explicit intentions. The first is a biological documentary about Jane Goodall, the primatologist renowned for her chimpanzee research. It provides a portrait of her work in the Gombe National Park of Tanzania, and how it personally shaped her life. On the other hand, the latter is more of a nature documentary rather than a biological one; it is a plea for humans to correct the devastation we have caused on the environment. Although the extent of the damage is anchored by Attenborough’s memories of his travels, the film doesn’t seek to give us a better understanding of the historian as the prior does for Goodall. What does emerge from both films, though, is the idea that humans have strayed in thinking that we are above nature, rather than a part of it. In particular, notions of a dichotomy between human and animal, as well as of rightful human dominance, are palpably flawed. 

Jane, despite the fact that Goodall’s work was key chimpanzee research, is noticeably detached from the science of it all.  Most of the film is footage of Jane’s explorations, narrated by her present self. What is crucial is how director Brett Morgen creates parallels between the chimpanzees and Jane, highlighting their similarities and her unique, emotional approach to studying them. The film, for example, often juxtaposes the behavior of the chimps with that of Goodall. We see a young Goodall sitting in trees that the chimps occupy, washing her hair in the same river that they traverse. She tends to them like they tend to one another, and treats them like humans, naming them — David Graybeard and Flo are some examples —  rather than numbering them. 

The film also deliberately pairs the developments in Jane’s relationship to the chimps with developments in her personal life. She sets up a feeding system that allows her to observe them more closely and excitedly learn about their habits’, aggressions, and mating styles. In the scenes subsequently afterward, we then learn how she shared this admiration of the chimps with the photographer, Hugo van Lawick, her eventual husband. Close-up shots of Jane’s face — smiling, sticking her tongue out —  contrast from footage of her in the beginning, that is  impersonal. As we achieve a better understanding of the chimps, we also achieve a better understanding of her.

The parallels between Jane and the chimps are especially prominent when Flo gives birth to an infant, whom Jane names Flint. Shortly afterward, Jane has her own child, and directly emphasizes the importance of seeing the relationship between Flo and Flint for her own relationship with her son. Jane mostly guides the narration, but occasionally the direction of the interviewer helps solidify the parallels. When asked what she admires about Flo, Jane says “she was playful, but being supportive.... That was the key, and of course that’s what my mother was”. Jane has such a personal bond with the chimps and learns so much from them. The film pushes us to empathize with both Jane and the chimps, and to consider our role in the world in light of this.

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, addresses the consequences of human behavior on the environment. Attenborough’s life is used mainly to contextualise the rapidity with which humans have had a devastating impact on the environment. 

The film grounds itself in three important statistics: world population, carbon in atmosphere, and the percentage of remaining wilderness. As Attenborough runs through the past 93 years of his life, these numbers evolve and serve as evidence of the perilous state of the planet. At the beginning of the film, we learn that in 1937, the year Attenborough was born, the population was 2.3 billion, the carbon 280 parts per million, and the remaining wilderness 66%. In 2020, the word population has tripled, the carbon has doubled, and the remaining wilderness has been cut in half. This is a warning sign to the viewers. 

The film juxtaposes a past beauty and immensity of the environment with the destructive behavior of humans. Bird’s eye shots of the Borneo rainforest, for example, expose an intense lushness and vibrancy that is now threatened. As viewers, we bear witness to tall, strong trees that are cut down, pulled down to the ground; it is unnatural that humans do so. Similarly, the film presents the ocean, its wonders in the colors and diversity of its organisms, as threatened by the constraining influence of humans. 

The first part of the film is an indictment of human behavior; in the second, Attenborough offers solutions to the crisis, that include a higher standard of living to stabilize population growth, plant-based diets and no fish zones. The last shots of the film, though, are most powerful. Attenborough exits the abandoned building in Chernobyl that the film began with, and enters surroundings full of trees, where nature is regenerating because of the absence of humans. Attenborough says: “The wild has reclaimed the space,” a reassuring statement about what the future can hold.

In Jane, Goodall emphasizes the need for conservation at the very end, and its importance has become clear through seeing her own relationship with her environment. In David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, the beauty of the world is undeniable, as well as a type of human arrogance and neglect. Both compel the reexamination of our place in nature.

Lady Bird's Coming-of-Age Journey

“I wish I could live through something,” states the protagonist of Lady Bird at the beginning of the film. As the titular heroine, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, rides in the car with her mother, Marion, she expresses this desire to attach a grand meaning to her life. This meaning, we quickly learn, does not exist for her in Sacramento, her hometown. “I hate California. I want to go to the east coast,” she says, and a close-up shot of her looking out the car window emphasizes how she yearns to be across the country, far from the colleges that she and her mother have just taken a road trip to tour. The flat, dull and unchanging landscape that the car moves through helps frame her desire for escape. 

This desire of Lady Bird’s launches the first conflict in the film: an argument between her and her mother, who sees it as an example of her daughter’s selfishness and lack of gratitude. The addition of this conflict in the scene is subtly matched by Marion’s turning of the car; their previously straight path and corresponding fluidity have been disrupted. They begin talking over one another, and their eyes fail to meet for the rest of the scene, as the camera alternates between individual close-ups of each of them. These elements serve to establish their opposing points of view; in this conversation, they are not truly listening, but simply speaking, reacting, and revealing their frustrations with the other. To free herself from this fight, Lady Bird jumps out of the moving car — an action that both comically and strikingly encapsulates her feelings of confinement. Marion screams, and the film quickly cuts to a close-up of a hot pink cast on her arm, with the words “fuck you mom” written on top. The cast matches her dyed pink hair, and both serve as markers of her individuality throughout the film.

These initial few minutes set up a focus on mother-daughter conflict and an adolescent’s struggle for what they want, which is a central theme of the film. In the first part, we continue to see that Lady Bird feels her life is lacking in several ways, some small and others large. For example, she and her best friend, Julie, walk through a wealthy neighborhood after school, with quick cuts of them longingly looking at the grand, beautiful homes. Then she wants her mother to buy her a magazine, so she can read it in bed as “rich people do”, rather than having to borrow it from the library. It is this dissatisfaction with her environment, and her to desire to leave California, that most prominently ties her to her mother. The film uses their perceptions of Sacramento, and their movements through it, to distance them at the beginning and connect them at the end. 

Early on in the film, Marion drives home from work, and there are several small, simple but beautiful cuts of Sacramento on her ride home. Shots of Marion are interspersed, and John Hartford’s “This Eve of Parting” plays. Marion is constantly grounded in reality, and an abrupt cut from the song to a slamming of her car door, reminds us of this at the end of the sequence. Before that, though, there appears to be her peaceful, almost romantic admiration of setting. 

Lady Bird, on the other hand, is focused on escape. She constantly rejects Sacramento, an act which Marion ostensibly takes to be a rejection of everything she has tried to give her. These opposing perspectives of their home, and what Lady Bird’s place in the world can be, push them apart. However, the end of the film brings them back together by recalling Marion’s drive in a couple of ways. When Lady Bird receives her acceptance letter for a school in New York, “The Eve of Parting” plays again. Marion, angry that Lady Bird had secretly applied to east schools, has ceased speaking to her at this point. But the song functions as a poignant reminder of their bond, and how Marion has to come to terms with Lady Bird’s departure. At the very end, after Lady Bird has arrived in New York, she calls her parents. As she speaks, the film cuts to shots of the same drive in Sacramento, and then it alternates between Marion and Lady Bird each driving alone in the car. As Lady Bird looks out of her window, there is a clear appreciation of and comfort in Sacramento that she never held before. Here, there is finally a resolution where we become aware of Lady Bird’s growth and her connection with her mother.

What is also interesting to me about Lady Bird is how much of her identity is ill-defined. She isn’t particularly interested in or good at one thing, but she hopes to be, which makes her a more ordinary yet more dimensional character than typical coming-of-age protagonists. For example, it’s her senior year and she sits in the office of a nun at her Catholic school, where she says it’s her tradition to run for student government, but she knows she won’t win. Similarly, she says she’d like to join the math olympiad team, to which the nun says: “But math isn’t something you’re terribly strong in.” The nun also pushes her to audition for the theater group’s fall musical, which Lady Bird didn’t even know existed until now. She gets a minor role in the musical, but complains: “The part I got was basically not getting in.” Then she abandons the group in the spring, refusing to audition for the play. 

What we never doubt that she genuinely cares about, though, is the abstract idea of freedom and what her future could entail. Her desire for going to New York isn’t rooted in something specific, but just in her belief that it has “culture”. Lady Bird stands in contrast to Julie and Jenna, the “popular girl” that she befriends, who are both content to stay in Sacramento. She also doesn’t have proof that she deserves what she aspires to have, and is reminded of this at different instances, like when her counselor initially laughs at the idea of her applying to east coast schools. Lady Bird simply wants, and she shows us that that’s reason enough.