At times, the documentary passages — aerial tours of France, one from a German reconnaissance plane, another from an Allied bomber; buildings ablaze in the aftermath of bombings; troop trains loading and unloading — seem to take place within Tom's mind, as he tries to conjure an image of the large historical experience in which his own individual fate plays a small part.
The documentary passages are by far the more exciting, eccentric and fun.
Coupled with the languid tone and documentary passages, the film possesses a peculiar atmosphere, one that will cause you to recall shots or character gestures days after you've seen it.
For the past four years, I have been preparing to shoot a documentary called Northwest Passage about the life of my good friend Travis Blue and how his life was changed thanks to the influence of a groundbreaking piece of fiction: David Lynch and Mark Frost's surreal mystery soap Twin Peaks.
(Her mother's struggle with dementia is the subject of "Rite of Passage," a documentary project she is doing with MediaStorm, and for which she is raising funds through a Kickstarter campaign).
It is also "the cloud floating right now over the church spire, the gentle thought in the doctor's mind … the small child tapping the surface of a newly hardboiled egg while her mother looks on lovingly, the nuclear submarine patrolling the maritime borders with efficiency and courage …" Humphrey Jennings could have made a documentary about this lyrical passage, which has a wartime ring to it.
The latest episode of VICE's documentary series Rites of Passage follows Bo Tyler, a 16-year-old bull rider in Montana.
In one of the documentary's most moving passages, Mr. Flores describes a field trip to the Alamo made while he was in grade school: "As we exited, my best friend nudged me and said: 'You killed them.
Or navigating around glaciers in the Northwest Passage, making a documentary aboard a boat he had bought from the family of Jacques Cousteau.
The initial shock of alienation is followed by a slow, halting, uncertain progress toward a new experience and acceptance of the physical world, which presses in with all the prickly materiality of Rossellini's neorealist training (and even long passages of outright documentary, like the violent fishing expedition in "Stromboli" or the guided tours through Naples and Pompeii in "Voyage").
