Spellbound

Since watching a clip of Spellbound in class, I have watched the documentary three times. Not because I thought it was the best movie ever, but because I kept taking away different things whenever I'd watch it.

The first time I watched it was because I wanted to see it, it seemed cute and funny in class and I wanted to see the whole thing. However I was multitasking while watching it and didn't give it my full attention. It was enjoyable, but I couldn't say much past that. The next time I watched it was when my boyfriend was in town. We wanted a movie to watch, and I was trying to figure out how to break him into documentaries. I loved what Diane said about how Spellbound "is a good one to show your mom, so she knows what you're doing in film school. She'll think it's cute." Works the same with boyfriends.

It really is a light-hearted, straightforward and simple structure - kids in spelling bees, let's look at each of them and follow them to the National Bee. I think it's a great way to break someone into the idea of a non-fiction feature, like family and friends who don't know much about documentaries.

However, when I watched it with him I would get tense or frustrated if I felt like he missed a line or a doc convention that was cool or worked really well. It stressed me out so I watched it a third time by myself. The last time I really wanted to look at how they constructed each main kid as a character. I'm mostly interested in portrait and personal documentaries, so I'm trying to watch a bunch and see what things I like about some docs over others, what works, what doesn't, etc. For example, there were definitely some families that I was more drawn to and interested in than others, and some kids I'd rather spend time in their space and psyche than try to show a lot of their family or town if I didn't think it was as strong.

I really did like this movie though, I think it's something that makes documentary filmmaking feel more accesible because of its ease of story and event (though it could've been a a horrific process, who knows) and the likability of its protagonists.