For my documentary, I chose to watch Oklahoma City. It is a documentary about the Oklahoma City bombing and the events leading up to it. It began with the bombing and initial reactions then began to weave that story with the story of how it all began. The Waco siege was talked about and how that happened, along with Ruby Ridge. The documentary followed white supremacist activities following up to the bombing and made a case for that being a major motivating factor of the attack. It also included witness testimony and interviews with parents who had lost their children in the bombing. It ended with the verdict of the bomber’s trial and how two survivors are doing now.
In the documentary there was a great deal of foreshadowing. When they were talking about the bombing in the begin, they mentioned Waco and Ruby Ridge a few times before actually going in depth about the events that took place there. At Waco, they talked specifically about a man selling bumper stickers. At the time, I thought it was odd to care so much about one man but later on it was revealed that the man selling bumper stickers was the man who orchestrated the Oklahoma City bombing. I also thought that the shots they used were interesting. When they were showing dramatizations of events such as the father of a child survivor walking into the hospital, they added grain to the footage and dated the clothing so it looked like it had been shot right there and then. As if a camera had followed him into the hospital the first time he step foot in there.
One thing that did bother me was that for the beginning of the movie almost all of the interviews were from one angle, the person being interviewed was in the right of the frame, lead space on the left. Suddenly, after four interviews that way, the viewpoint changed to the other direction. It disrupted the continuity of the shots and made me think about it instead of what the person was talking about. Maybe I’m just becoming a film snob. I thought another shot was interesting, when they were showing shots of the dead children and the dead adults when they were alive they formatted them in the same way. Like a three dimensional college. And with the kids, the shot was moving out and more pictures were falling into frame that way. But with the adults, the shot was moving in. I’m sure there is some symbolism about that that I can’t recognize in this moment.
I would definitely recommend this movie to someone else. The story line and the flow of events was spectacularly done. The use of news headlines added a jarring reality factor and between discussing different events the story always briefly came back to the bombing so you never forgot the main topic. Voice over from the bomber was used at shocking points to really illustrate that he had no regrets about what he did. Another well executed moment was when the shot went from a woman in the courtroom to the actual woman on camera. There were all these little moments that shook the viewer that this was real, this happened. Also, I had no idea about these events prior and think from a purely educational standpoint people should watch this documentary. Especially since it deals so much with gun violence and regulations and that is quite the hot topic at the moment. I normally hate movies and documentaries but this was spectacularly done, everyone should watch it.
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