Public Housing

The second scene in Frederick Wiseman's latest documentary--which dispassionately documents, in his usual fly-on-the-wall style, a couple of weeks in the lives of residents of a Chicago project--finds two housing cops giving a semi-friendly warning to a middle-aged woman who looks down on her luck at best, homeless and addicted at worst. I was fascinated by the confrontation...but I was even more fascinated by the fact that none of its three participants ever so much as glanced at the camera, which couldn't have been more than a couple yards away. Wiseman claims that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (look it up) doesn't apply to his work, but I'm at a loss to explain why a woman who's being hassled by police would studiously ignore a camera crew that's virtually breathing down her neck. I admire the film for its incisive, meticulous, and (incredibly, given its three-hour-plus running time) never boring examination of a culture in crisis, but I don't entirely trust it. If I did, the rating above would be at least half a star higher. Still, recommended. (M. D'Angelo)