Hi Karina,

I spent much of last year reviewing movies and TV shows for Beliefnet and I received my fair share of “pray for him” comments. It’s a big world out there and people seem to really open up, both for better and for worse, when commenting online. I never knew WHAT the reaction was going to be so posting was always a trepidatious affair.

Keep up the great work…we need your perspective!!!

- Todd

I’m not writing this cursory paragraph to defend Karina or the movie, but I have to say that Karina’s review is right on target. I may not always agree with her analysis of all films, but I guarantee I always leave Spout.com with a new, honest, non knee-jerk (read, thoughtful) view of movies that I can’t get anywhere else. Let’s face it: Dear Zachary is a horrifying story. Metaphysically speaking, the behavior in the film verges on evil. You’d have to be a robot to not respond with emotion and feel defeated by human behavior. Still, it’s storytelling technique is manipulative in the sense that it attempts to replace emotion with loud music, a screaming voice, and quick cuts to intensify the shock. Maybe the editor’s/director’s intention was to amplify the double shock in the film, but to me it came across as over the top, condescending “can’t feel for yourself so I’m gonna do it for you with glossy editing, intensified colors, and loud noise.” In other words, the director had a specific goal in what he wanted the audience to feel - to the point of forcing it and therefore replacing the stirring emotions. More specifically, after talking with him at a party on night, he wanted the audience to feel anger, hatred and disbelief at the end. As a consequence, he tried to maximize those inner emotions of turmoil with certain editing techniques that came across as childish and amateurish when, in fact, all he had to do was let the story tell itself and allow the audience to feel those emotions instead of trying to turn them into an MTVesque ad. Thus, it seems to me that the director’s choices are, in fact, part of these very critiques aimed at Karina’s thoughtful analysis: the visual uttering of nonsense in order to rile up attention and stir up emotions using unthinkable visual techniques… Perhaps we need more crazies like Karina who have the courage to call Bullshit not only when they see it, but when they can actually write a thoughtful critique of why and how it’s bullshit wrapped in gold and still maintain a love/hate relationship with the story.

Karina,

Don’t listen to the naysayers. Not everybody is going to like “Dear Zachary”. I didn’t like it. The premise was good. The execution was terrible.

I will defend my opinion of the film. You have the right to your opinion, Karina. People need to stop being such pricks and stop harping on people who have differing opinions.

Don’t mind them.

I mostly agree with what WOW wrote, thanks WOW for being specific. but, if the the maker of the documentary was trying to recreate his feelings, his perspective, on his friend’s death and Zachary, then..well he can do so. He can be (allowed to be) manipulative to achieve empathy for his point of view. Is it still a documentary if we don’t receive other points of view, I think so yes. Personally, I don’t think he had to work so hard, because of the tragic nature of the subject matter, the audience would still empathize, but perhaps he had to push it with editing and somewhat lying by omission, because that is really how it went down for him, and he is taking us on the same exact highly emotional and nonobjective journey he went through, step for step. It is manipulative, Yes, but maybe that is what actually happened. It was what he was actually feeling, what he and Zachary’s family was going through. Does it matter how you get there, just as long as you “get it”?

Peter, if all one does is respond to how a film makes one feel, one tends to ignore the mechanisms by which one is made to feel. Just because something “works” doesn’t make it true. The end can be achieved by mendacious manipulation, by playing to one’s social conditioning…all sorts of ways that are less than “honest.” Karina felt played by this film, and as she explains it, she had good reason to. The very fact that so many of her detractors insist on seeing the film as some sort of holy object that cannot be even questioned let alone “reviewed” I think tends to strengthen her point.

Stupid people make this mistake all the time: they think negative criticism is telling of character, as a way of bullying the critic. Here’s my advice: don’t read what you can’t understand.

That’s for politicians and advocates to do, not film critics.

Peter was being modest, this might make you feel better Em.
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935933.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&query=dear+zachary

Longworth’s review wasn’t really negative, it was just the only one that attempted to discuss how the form of that film related to the emotional aspect. But a lot of people just don’t get film criticism and any discussion of form is beyond them.

Also people just love to get mad. They like simply feeling the anger that watching “Dear Zachary” triggered and Longworth’s review asks them to think about the techniques that triggered those emotions, but people just love to feel mad and resent being asked to think.