By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Frederick Wiseman
Country: united_states
Year: 2013
Running time: 244
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3091552/combined
Kyle says: “AT BERKELEY and THE LAST OF THE UNJUST share little in common aside from both being Main Slate screenings of the 51st New York Film Festival, both having very long running times, and both being sharply revealing contemporary documentaries of the highest caliber, directed by legendary creators well into their eighties. The former is an
incisive portrait of America’s higher educational system at one of our finest public universities, University of California/Berkeley, the latter a devastating portrait of men doing their worst, and occasionally their best, during the cruelest years of the twentieth century, World War II in Germany.
“Berkeley is a virtual brand name, synonymous with political activism in the 1960s for much of America’s student population, one of its leaders Mario Savio. Students of the history of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement know his name well. Today there is even a Mario Savio Free Speech Movement Café on the campus, making a cameo appearance in this riveting documentary. Wiseman brilliantly negotiates multiple narratives from various points of view: students in classrooms speaking in complete sentences with complex clauses indicating vastly more intelligence than virtually anything that passes for political discourse in American nightly news; administrators speaking in that peculiar overstuffed sentence structure obfuscating clarity but nonetheless suggesting concern; maintenance staff dealing with cuts by working even harder, focusing on a single person and machine cutting grass for the entire campus; both administrators and young people dealing with the consequences of dramatic funding cuts, increasing costs and decreasing advantages, their stated goal being learning more about life versus making more money; former military personnel trying to find their way in an alien university environment; students from foreign countries either excited by their prospects in America or saddened by realities; and finally the Chancellor and Provost and Senior Staff coping with a student occupation of the library, the passions clear but the goals unfocused, the effort doomed to failure. Frederick Wiseman’s work transcends accumulation of time-honored detail to create his own rhythmically unique visual structure. So invigorating was AT BERKELEY that I did not check my watch even once, and was delightfully shocked at how fast the four hours flew by. 5 cats”
“Saturday, September 28, 2013, New York Film Festival at Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center, New York”
David says: “Frederick Wiseman’s, AT BERKELEY, is a four-hour experience, screened complete without intermission; not to be missed. No wonder this accomplished documentary filmmaker is called a wise man. What a luxury and joy for the smart viewer to watch cinema in a world where films must fit into a commercial time frame. Few filmmakers get this length of screen time to explore a subject in depth: In this case, The University of California at Berkeley, the oldest and most illustrious of the California ten campus public education system. One must also state that Berkeley is one of the finest teaching and research
facilities in the country. Case made clearly in this beautifully made documentary.
“Wiseman was given total access to the campus to explore Berkeley’s academic and social missions, campus life, and how decisions are made and implemented by the administration. You go into the classrooms, administrative meetings, concerts at famed Zellerbach Hall, and even witness a student campus protest over tuition and assessment increases. You get in to see how the Chancellor and his team plan to handle a possible student-building take over.
“The Chancellor is an interesting character that has the special ability to smile and sneer while talking at the same time. He seems to think that the current student protests against the high costs of getting an education lack in comparison and merit to the protests of the 60’s and 70’s, when students were focused in their demands to ban nuclear weapons, and stop the War in Vietnam. Back then it appears he thinks students had better style and form when protesting the Administration. In the end, he does come off a little more sympathetic to the present economic realities of living in the real world when he talks about saving campus jobs. One wonders if the Berkeley Administration was second-guessing giving Wiseman so much freedom to film.
“All who care about education, its ideals, and importance in society, will enjoy this film. 5 cats”