Middletown
(USA, 111 min.)
Dir. Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine
Programme: Premieres (World premiere)
Some of us had teachers who changed our lives in beneficial ways right into adulthood. I had several. My Grade Five teacher proved to be a kind, gentle hand after early years of struggle. My English teacher for my senior year of high school gave my writing more encouragement than anyone ever had. Then there was my high school politics teacher: a gruff, bearded, hippy-ish man played by his own rules. Essentially treating politics like a philosophy class, he adorned the walls with “Stop the Tritium Traffic” signs and told tales of protesting outside nuclear facilities. He electrified our young minds with a belief that through commitment and cleverness we could somehow change the world. Meanwhile, my dad is an environmental engineer, and throughout much of my childhood, he was tasked with consulting on waste management, not the kind that Tony Soprano supposedly was involved with, but actual local dumps and other facilities that were in the process of being decommissioned or reconditioned to satisfy increasingly strict environmental protection mandates.
It’s in this context that I watched Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s latest terrific film Middletown and found myself constantly amazed by how much the story that they captured mirrored my own adolescence. For while my school didn’t have an AV club, we did have a character like Fred Isseks, who these filmmakers focus upon – one of those rare educators who inspires, provokes, and proves to be the kind of wonderfully and dangerously effective educator who got the likes of Socrates killed, and got more contemporary versions of the philosopher shunned by close-minded administrators and staff.
Moss and McBaine are no stranger to these pages – their last documentaries together Boys State and Girls State are truly extraordinary. Their work on Sundance Jury Prize (and TFCA award winner!) The Overnighters will forever be a highlight. For their latest project, the couple set their sights on the Upstate New York area around Middletown, a sleepy community with a dark secret waiting to be found out. Isseks initiated what he dubbed “Electronic English” by dropping traditional literature and allowing the students to engage directly with what was then state-of-the-art broadcast equipment.
For those who grew up using smart phones with 100x zoom lenses and 8K recording resolution, these events in the early 1990s must be like witnessing the dinosaurs walk the earth. But, depressingly, the students of Middletown high are younger than this writer, using devices I could have only dreamed of having access to during my high school years.
At first, the students do the usual general levels of communication, talking about school events, having playful debates about specific subjects, etc. Yet one of Isseks’ own interests about what’s taking place at a local dump became a shared interest for key members of the class, and soon they were breaking rules with their cameras in tow, clambering over fences into what was marked as private property. With their cameras, they began uncovering lies that were buried along with the items that were being illegally dumped.
What sets Middletown so firmly in my wheelhouse is how it captures that extraordinary feeling I had in those politics classes. Not only did I feel that I was learning deeper truths about grand ideas, but they also gave me the sense that I was seeing things that others were either too ignorant to parse or too cynical to engage with. One witnesses in this film the firing synapses of these students and a teacher who’s far off the traditional path, but truly engaging with these kids in profound ways that led them to journalistic breakthroughs, but also deeper, more affecting intellectual stimulation that carried well into their adulthood.
It’s through contemporary interviews that we see the dramatic effect this period of their lives had on them, as is common for high school sports heroes to look back fondly at past glory. There’s genuine recognition that this process of working through the challenges and opportunities that Isseks’ class provided helped them become more fulsome individuals on a deep level. Rather than a mere tokenistic slice of nostalgia, Middletown is a paean to the power of an educator to shape minds for the better.
Moss and McBaine do have a lot of fun playing the nostalgia card, however, and kudos to their production team for the extraordinary efforts they go through to recreate the early-’90s’ video aesthetic. Strictly on the level of gear porn, there’s joy to behold, and what could easily feel be manipulative is instead a further reminder of just how much in the last decades things have changed, from the way kids are taught, to the toys they get to play with in the pursuit of their education.
Thanks to probing yet sensitive interviews, we are given unique insight into how what the kids uncovered came to be. In addition, the yeoman work by Christopher Passig and Moss and McBaine’s editorial collaborators provides a masterclass in the use of archival material, cutting hours upon hours of footage in a way that’s always engaging and, more importantly, giving far more information than even the deeper context of the voiceovers provides. The central metaphor of digging through a pile to find the truth of the matter is always front and center, and whether it be from a mountain of videotapes, or the trash strewn at a dump, there’s an intense sense of satisfaction felt when the deeper truths are uncovered and the detritus re-contextualized into something astonishing.
While in many ways I spent much of Middletown thinking it had been made for me (a surreal experience repeated this Sundance with a very different film), I’m attempting to have enough professionalism and distance to declare this another magnificent film from two of the most accomplished non-fiction filmmakers of their generation. For years now, all of their films have been both necessary and vital, and the thrill experienced in seeing another of their finely honed stories come to life is one of the true joys of getting to watch documentaries, full stop.
This sentiment makes Middletown feel so joyous. For, of course, it’s a documentary about a bunch of kids who essentially documented what was around them, while being young or naïve or foolish or brave enough to believe that by telling the truth, change can be made. The actions of the students were free from sarcasm and post-modern ennui, divorced by gotcha moments on social media or a need for vainglorious celebrity. We see them striving to find out what happened because of the intense drive to do just that, to delve deeper to gain knowledge, to look closer in order to hopefully understand and make things right.
This joy of exploration and stimulation through knowledge-making is what Moss and McBaine’s films do about as well as anyone who has ever picked up a camera. It is through their sensitive gaze, which never succumbs to simplicity, that sets Middletown apart: a seemingly quaint tale of plucky teens out to hold those in power accountable, but instead revealing a far deeper insight into not only the mechanisms of local politics, but the very modes by which stories like this are uncovered through diligent journalism and more than a small dose of obsession.
Middletown is magnificent, as uplifting as it is engaging, as thrilling to look back upon for those who lived through it as it is for those of us vicariously learning about these events years on. It’s a film that reminds you why you love documentaries, an event that encourages you at whatever age to hold onto that desire to delve more deeply into understanding what’s going on around you, even if those elements are superficially dangerous or repulsive. The film is a triumph, its subject perfect for Moss and McBaine to explore, and it immediately stands as yet another great works from this wondrous pairing of documentary filmmakers that are very quickly earning legendary status.
