To Rendera Life: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men And The Documentary Vision

The phrase "to render a life" hails from writer James Agee's 1941 classic study of rural American poverty Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Combining passages from Agee's books and commentary from such widely divergent spokespeople as Jonathan Yardley (book critic), Robert Coles (professor and social critic), and Frederick Wiseman (noted documentary filmmaker), filmmaker Ross Spears chronicles the daily life of the Glass family: a poor husband, wife, and adopted daughter living on the edge of a rich county in Virginia. Obeah Glass takes what work he can find as a furniture refinisher, while Alice concentrates on taking care of adopted daughter Anita (her other children are grown and living away from home) and looking after the few animals on the property. First and foremost, To Render a Life is eminently watchable: whether we're watching documentary filmmakers talk about the difficulties of their trade, or listening to Alice Glass describe her stroke and subsequent decision to not seek medical attention since the family has no medical insurance, the film is always interesting and sometimes riveting. But just as Agee's book, whose passages are quoted throughout the film, veered back and forth between the immature maudlin and the poetically insightful, so does Spears' film have its own flaw: namely, there is simply too much on the plate. For all the lit crit talk of Coles and Yardley; the discussion of film tricks of the trade from Wiseman; and the sometimes beautiful, sometimes stiflingly purple prose of Agee, the filmmaker's take on the Glass family is not altogether evident. One almost wishes that Spears himself would have offered more commentary rather than grafting Agee's prose on to the work. Because, ultimately, what is rendered is something less than a life, but certainly more than a snapshot. Let us call it a portrait (a level that many films never achieve), and a very good portrait at that. The Glass family, while perhaps a far cry from our own lives in terms of material wealth, nevertheless share the same hopes and dreams for a happy life and a prosperous (in the larger sense) family as we all do. With class one of the last taboo topics in America (people will talk about sex much more readily than they'll talk about class), this film shows us what we'd often rather not acknowledge: rich or poor, we're cut from the same cloth. Highly recommended. (Available from: The James Agee Film Project, Box 315, Franklin Lakes, NJ 97417; (201) 8918240.)