7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 5.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A documentary about the closure of General Motors' plants in Flint, Michigan, which resulted in the loss of 30,000 jobs, and the resulting transformation of the city.
Starring: Michael Moore, Pat BooneDocumentary | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (192 kbps)
German: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish=Latin & Castilian
English SDH, French, German SDH, Japanese, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 2.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Michael Moore has acquired many fans, probably even more enemies and an Oscar for Best Documentary (for Bowling for Columbine) in the twenty-five years since his first film, Roger & Me, but it may turn out that the freshman effort will stand as his finest achievement. Deep study, thorough investigation and careful analysis have never been Moore's strong suits, which is why his documentaries have so often been more effective as provocations than as aids to understanding. His principal contribution to the documentary form has been to make it entertaining—a goal he freely acknowledges in the commentary newly recorded for this Blu-ray edition of Roger & Me. With a showman's panache and a satirist's mean streak, Moore can always be counted on to hold an audience's attention, even if that means they're howling at the screen. In Roger & Me, though, Moore didn't need to investigate his subject, because he already knew it intimately. The film is a portrait of Moore's home town, Flint, Michigan, as it rapidly deteriorated from the prosperous middle class community of Moore's youth into a poverty-stricken wasteland after General Motors closed down the auto factories that had been the town's life blood. Determined to show people the enormity of the economic havoc, Moore taught himself, by trial and error, to operate a 16mm camera, shooting many cans of unusable film in the process. Although Moore had reporting experience as a print journalist, all of his previous work was for alternative press, including a brief stint with Mother Jones, who fired him for being too working class. His severance helped fund Roger & Me. One can argue, as does a GM spokesperson in the film, that GM's actions were reasonable business decisions. Still, a quarter century later, it's hard to dispute Moore's instinct that, in the words of the famous Sixties song, "there's somethin' happenin' here". Despite the tech-fueled growth of the Nineties and the many new possibilities presented by the internet, the fate of Flint has been repeated in many other U.S. communities, including nearby Detroit. Though the causes are more complex than plant closings, the replacement of good-paying jobs with low-wage or part-time work, and the negative consequences that follow, have become a permanent topic of national conversation. Roger & Me helped start that conversation in terms that are worth revisiting.
According to a statement released by Moore in his e-newsletter, Warner has given Roger & Me a 4k restoration from the original 16mm negative. This overhaul was necessitated by the discovery, several years ago, that all of the existing prints had so badly deteriorated that a new source would have to be created for the limited theatrical re-release planned for this fall (which will no doubt be a DCP). The result of this remastering, presented on Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, demonstrates yet again that 16mm film can, when properly handled, yield a detailed and film-like image with visible but well-rendered grain and a vivid array of colors that can now be more precisely timed than ever. While the archival TV broadcasts, newsreels and film clips will never look better than their sources, Moore's own footage (shot by himself and several different cameramen) captures everything from the pageantry of the annual Flint parade to the desolation of derelict factories and abandoned neighborhoods with impressive detail. It also catches the uniquely human interactions with local Flint residents, as well as the various functionaries who interpose themselves between Moore and his efforts to ambush Roger Smith. And then there are the unforgettable characters like Deputy Fred and Rabbit Lady Rhonda, whose vivid personalities are matched by the clarity of their images. As Moore repeatedly notes in his commentary, none of his footage was "professional", and a lot of what he used was included simply because that day's footage turned out well instead of being ruined by some rookie mistake. Still, Warner has done a superb job of capturing the raw, you-are-there feel of a documentary while preserving the director's goal of presenting the film as entertainment. For all the limitations of the source, the image is still a pleasure to watch, especially when Moore catches celebrities like Bob Eubanks (of The Dating Game) in informal moments of conversation. With vivid colors, decent blacks and impressive detail (when the lighting permits), the Blu-ray image is also free of any noticeable high-frequency roll-off, artificial sharpening or other inappropriate digital tampering. The average bitrate clocks in at 23.94, which doesn't seem inappropriate for a film that includes a fair number of talking-head interview sequences. I expect that some posters in the Blu-ray forum will question the high video score given to this title, but it is for the accuracy of the presentation, not its value as eye candy.
Roger & Me was released in mono, and the Blu-ray also features a mono soundtrack encoded as Dolby Digital 2.0, with identical left and right channels. The use of DD instead of a lossless format is a noteworthy departure for Warner, which has been providing lossless audio on its Blu-rays for many years now, including on classic titles from the vault, where the argument could be made (and has been by other studios) that the dynamic range of older soundtracks is too limited for lossless audio to make an audible difference. I can't explain (and wouldn't try) why Warner went this route with Roger & Me, but I can report that the audio sounds decent enough, clearly reproducing Moore's voiceover narration, the voices of the interviewees and bystanders and the musical selections that are often deliberately recorded as if played through an old AM radio or TV speaker. Perhaps the biggest victim of the lossy audio is the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice", which plays both during the film and over the closing credits and would almost certainly have a fuller sound in a better audio format than DD at 192 kbps. (The song acquires an ironic import in the film due to its association with the nervous breakdown of an auto worker.) It should be noted that the omission of lossless audio has nothing to do with space concerns. Several GB of the BD-25 remain unused.
Warner released Roger & Me on DVD in 2003 with commentary and a trailer. The Blu-ray includes the trailer and an all-new commentary recorded for the film's twenty-fifth anniversary.
There are many people for whom the very name Michael Moore is anathema, but I doubt that any of them are reading this review. At the opposite extreme are Moore's devoted fans, who hardly need a reviewer's recommendation to acquire this presentation of Roger & Me in the best home video format to date. Somewhere in the middle are people with mixed feelings, of whom I'm one. Moore's passion is admirable, and his flair as an entertainer is undeniable. No one, not even Errol Morris, has done more to move the documentary format into the mainstream by making it fun to watch and removing its stigma as something vaguely medicinal. The question remains, though, whether Moore's popularization of documentaries has really been a good thing, since, especially in his later films, he's done it by making himself as much a star of the show as the subject he's supposed to be investigating. If you want to see the Michael Moore show, you can watch Capitalism: A Love Story, but if you want to understand the 2008 financial crisis, you should watch Inside Job, whose director never appears on screen and whose name (Charles Ferguson) most people wouldn't recognize. But Roger & Me is different. In Roger & Me the familiar Moore persona hadn't fully developed, and there was still enough of the reporter left in Moore to fulfill the traditional documentarian's role. Besides, he already knew his subject inside and out. This was his home. Despite the lack of lossless audio, highly recommended.
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