The way this film is just doesn't feel real. It is the first version of 'direct cinema' and one of the first films to use video and sound simultaneously (I think at least); Robert Drew really knows how to navigate it. I think the reason I never watched the JFK film is that I thought it would be a film from that time, but it's just a rendition of what could have happened. Here, it's just so uncanny because it's as real as real can get, but because of this, it looks set up. The shots are so dreamy, and the camera becomes almost like a character with how it moves, dictating your emotion. This whole period feels like the tipping point of American politics and the control of the CIA, so you constantly feel this anticipation that something is going to happen, or something they don't know (I wonder what that is). and when JFK enters into one of his rallys half way though, Pennybaker (im guessing) just puts the camera over his head, and somehow can get everything perfectly. It's just simply amazing. Its so weird how one day you're watching Taxi Driver thinking your smart, then out of nowhere you find an hour long film about JFK fascinating.
The way this film is just doesn't feel real. It is the first version of 'direct cinema' and one of the first films to use video and sound simultaneously (I think at least); Robert Drew really knows how to navigate it. I think the reason I never watched the JFK film is that I thought it would be a film from that time, but it's just a rendition of what could have happened. Here, it's just so uncanny because it's as real as real can get, but because of this, it looks set up. The shots are so dreamy, and the camera becomes almost like a character with how it moves, dictating your emotion. This whole period feels like the tipping point of American politics and the control of the CIA, so you constantly feel this anticipation that something is going to happen, or something they don't know (I wonder what that is). and when JFK enters into one of his rallys half way though, Pennybaker (im guessing) just puts the camera over his head, and somehow can get everything perfectly. It's just simply amazing. Its so weird how one day you're watching Taxi Driver thinking your smart, then out of nowhere you find an hour long film about JFK fascinating.
