Re-working Re-Creations

Remember those nonfiction cable shows you used to watch featuring re-created scenes of badly-costumed pirates, peasants and yeomen? You know, those filler shots produced to cover long minutes of interviews or narration talk, talk, talk. They were almost always done on the cheap and surprise! Despite the fact that they were clichéd, even laughable, everybody started using them until they became de rigueur in the world of nonfiction television. 

Fortunately for most current nonfiction shows, those re-creations are history. But speaking honestly, I've never been one to criticize re-creations that are done well. They do serve a purpose, and I don’t mean as filler. Done well they help you see deeper layers of what’s going on. They help you make connections. Associations. Done well, they’re not really re-creations anymore. They are illustrations. Insightful. Poetic.

If you’d like to see those-scenes-that-used-to-be-called-re-creations done well, really well, check out Alex Gibney’s feature documentary, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer. Here’s a high-end example of creative re-creations, impressionistic, seldom literal and masterfully integrated into the rest of the film. We’ve seen great work from Gibney before, “Taxi to the Dark Side” and “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.” He got the goods with this doc too, including a disarmingly open interview with Spitzer himself. Well worth your time and a terrific example of breaking through the re-creation ceiling.