SpIFF 2007: Best docs follow the characters

Tonight’s two programs at the 2007 Spokane International Film Festival included two feature-length documentaries, the Norwegian film “Loop” and the Hurricane Katrina movie “Dark Water Rising: Survival Stories of Hurricane Katrina Animal Rescues.”

Of the two, I was drawn more to “Loop,” an existential exploration focusing on the experiences of a quartet of men: an old guy hanging in a mountain cabin, an EMT who spends his summers in a fire lookout tower, a guy who climbs sheer cliffs by himself (only then to BASE jump from the summit) and, finally, two guys who do pretty much nothing but fish and extreme ski.

The film asks a simple question: What is life, and what are we doing with it? It makes the argument that our typical way of being in the world, filling our every moment with work and seldom taking time to enjoy the simple miracle of being, is a loop that takes effort to break. Each of the characters, each in his own way, makes that break.

The Katrina movie, “Dark Water Rising,” follows a story that has a built-in sympathy factor: abandoned and needy pets. The problem is, the film tries to do too much at once.

Katrina was a disaster. And up until now, most of the stories have been about the result in human suffering and the incompetence of governmental response. “Dark Water Rising” is unique in that it deals with the animals the departing humans left behind.

Filmmaker Mike Shiley does that by looking at the overall process of animal rescue. We meet members of the U.S. Humane Society, the SPCA and volunteers from both organizations that come from all over the United States.

But the most interesting characters in the film are the “renegades,” the independent volunteers who came to New Orleans, were turned down for one reason or another but, instead of going home, stuck around and did rescue work on their own. The group we get to know best works out of an abandoned Winn-Dixie store.

It’s no secret that the best way to make a documentary is to find some interesting characters and then follow them doing whatever it is they do. Take “Murderball,” for example. As long as “Dark Water Rising” follows the Winn Dixie volunteers, the film crackles with attitude. When it steps away from them, it becomes a public service announcement.

Nothing wrong with that. It’s just that you have to wonder what the film might have been had Shiley gone with what works best.