Spine 602: The War Room

Lost in Criterion

Every time we watch a documentary, we end up talking a lot about the nature of documentary. With Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker's The War Room (1993), much of that end of the conversation is focused on how Direct Cinema is not a journalistic endeavor, and how the material covered - Bill Clinton's 1992 US Presidential campaign - could have used a journalistic approach. Instead what we get is a collection of some of the worst people in US politics for the last 30 years given free reign to lie to the camera. America: it may not be a perfect system, but it sure is bad.