by michael fox
correspondent
Alan Berliner is, above all else, a master craftsman. In an era when anybody can press a button on a cheap camcorder, call him or herself a filmmaker and send the finished tape to Sundance for a look-see, Berliner’s skill and diligence are so rare as to border on extinct.
In his marvelously unsentimental family portraits “Intimate Stranger” and Nobody’s Business,” the acclaimed New York documentary filmmaker blended amazingly candid interviews with photos and home movies. Humor plays a bigger role in his probing survey of the meaning of names, “The Sweetest Sound,” and in his latest film, “Wide Awake,” which examines the curse of insomnia.
“Wide Awake,” which screened last year at the San Francisco International Film Festival, has its television premiere at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, May 22 on HBO. For those without insomnia or Tivo, it repeats at 8 p.m. Wednesday, May 23 and three other times during the month
If your ear is tuned just right, you can pick up the kvetch that’s at the center of Berliner’s personal films. It’s not to be confused with self-pity, which Berliner is too smart to tolerate.
“I’m trying to find that universal kvetch,” he observes on the phone from New York. “You don’t have to be Jewish to have a kvetch button. Kvetching is a type of philosophical stance. The world itches, so we scratch at it. We complain, but we also get pleasure from soothing the itch.”
Berliner would be the first to admit that, on the surface, his films aren’t explicitly Jewish. They deal with universal issues — identity, family, work and personal responsibility. But he’s deeply connected to his Jewishness, and it’s palpable in his work. As a result, his documentaries have been presented at Jewish film festivals around the world.
“They embrace the work I do as a kind of lifelong project,” Berliner says. “As an artist, you can’t ask for more than that.
“None of [my] films are about Israel, none of the films are about the politics of the Middle East or have to do with Jewish ritual directly,” he continues. “You would never describe any of the films as Jewish-themed in a direct way. But all of them have subtextual and resonant connections of being an American Jew or being Jewish, and how that reflects upon the quest for understanding Jewish identity.”
Berliner is one of the most respected nonfiction filmmakers working today, as evidenced by the career retrospective he received last November at the premiere documentary festival in the world in Amsterdam, and his seat as a juror of the documentary competition at Sundance this past January.
Those honors coincide with the premiere of “Wide Awake,” a wry, pained and personal exploration of chronic wakefulness. Although it contains fewer overtly Jewish references than his previous movies, a scene of the filmmaker sitting at a table with his exasperated mother, sister and wife is unmistakably Jewish. Not to mention funny.
“That’s also a Jewish way — making fun of yourself and playing with the world,” Berliner says. “You might say it’s sourced in a talmudic approach. What I do is take the subject of sleep — or the lack of it — and I question the question, I question the answers, I answer the questions. I look at it from inside out, upside down, outside in. I really do a full 360 on it. I pull it and push it and stretch it and knead it and see if it sinks or floats. And making fun of it and making fun of me is just part of that process and part of that way of framing the world.”
Although Berliner’s first-person documentaries are anything but film-as-therapy, one can’t resist asking if his ability to sleep through the night has improved as a result of making “Wide Awake.”
“I’m better,” he replied. “I wouldn’t say I’m cured. I won’t ever be cured, whatever that means. The real test will be when I start a new film project. When I’m working on a film, it’s about losing myself in time. Seven hours pass and you don’t know where they pass. In the throes of very focused, obsessed energy, I’m going to stop at one or two in the morning? It’s unlikely. I never have.”
“Wide Awake” airs on HBO at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, May 22; 8 p.m. Wednesday, May 23; 11:30 a.m. Saturday, May 26; 10:30 p.m. Monday, May 28 and 12:30 p.m. Thursday, May 31.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California