I watched two documentaries over these two days.
Love, Lust, and Lies
This film followed the lives of three Australian girls: Josie, Diana, and Kerry. The documentarian visited them when they were fourteen, eighteen, twenty-eight, thirty-three, and forty-seven. The first visit occurred in 1976, and it revealed something about that time. All of the girls were smoking, and not illegally - they would just walk into a drug store and buy cigarettes. They lived fairly typical lives. Two of them were working and the third was seeking work. The one not working - Diana - had also dropped out of school. She was the most insecure of all three of them - she was a bit overweight and thought herself to be very ugly. The topic of if they would ever have kids came up, and Diana mentioned that she would never get an abortion.
The documentarian returned when they were eighteen, and Josie's and Diana's lives were quite different (Kerry was not in this segment). Josie had gotten pregnant shortly after the documentary was filmed, as had Diana. They were both struggling to support themselves.
At each of Gillian Armstrong's visits, Josie was married or engaged to a different person. Diana fluctuated between being overweight and being unhealthily thin. Kerry was the only one with a stable relationship all the way through, and the only one who seemed to be truly happy. During the last visit, Diana was married to the father of the child she'd considered aborting (contrary to her previous beliefs) years before - though at the time, she had been married to someone else. Armstrong also followed some of their kids, and the truth of their parents' mistakes had driven a rift between them and their parents on some occasions - the truth that Josie didn't know who the father of her oldest daughter was; the fact that Diana had an affair; etc.
It was interesting noting the differences that time period and age had on each of the girls. However, Diana never lost her insecurity, Josie never found stability in her life, and Kerry never seemed to go through as much misfortune as the other two. Josie and Diana seemed so normal at the beginning, but everything flipped upside-down for them. You never really can tell how different people will be in just a few years' time.
NIRVANA Smells Like Teen Spirit
This film was so captivating. The other film - honestly - did not have much appeal to me, but not every film interests every person. NIRVANA was about something of great interest to me: music. I'd never been much of a Nirvana fan before this because I'd never taken the time to sit down and listen to their music, but after viewing this film, I really like them.
The thing I really appreciate about Nirvana after viewing this film is the amount of passion they put into their music. A lot of their lyrics are rather nonsensical because Kurdt Cobain just put words in that flowed with the music; however, they also have plenty of songs that are bone-chillingly relatable, or otherwise really good. There is so much passion and heart they put into their music, and it is so inspirational.
At points, their producer would play bits of some of their songs, and he would relate the process of recording the songs. He would play just parts of their songs at times, like just the drums and bass, or just the vocals, or one vocal track and he would layer on the others one by one, etc. It gave insight into why professionally recorded songs sound so complete, as opposed to amateur albums or live tracks. It was also very interesting to learn of the band's process and progression through the songs. As a whole, the documentary also gave a feel for the time period, when "pop" and "rock" stopped meaning the same thing, and Grunge was very popular. It was an enrapturing film.
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