CHRIS BACKLEY/Daily Bruin Director Alan
Berliner spoke to a crowd of approximately 300 on
Monday.
By Willy Flockton
Daily Bruin Contributor
“He is not in love with anything” is how
Oscar’s daughter describes her own father. Oscar Berliner is
the father of nationally acclaimed filmmaker Alan Berliner and
focal character of his son’s 1996 documentary film
“Nobody’s Business.”
He is a highly opinionated and irascible old man, but his
situation soon makes any audience sympathize with his plight. He
has no human contact apart from his children. He is deaf and
recovering from brain surgery. He is broken and lonely.
About 300 crammed into the chilly James Bridges Theatre on
Monday night to gaze at the Melnitz Documentary Saloon series of
events presented by documentary filmmaker and UCLA professor Marina
Goldvskaya. On show was Alan Berliner’s Emmy award winning
piece, and examples of his early short films. Later, after the
deserved applause died down, the emotional impact of these works
was voiced in an audience question session. Berliner’s
experimental works “City Edition” and “Everywhere
at Once” seem to be an anomalous choice to accompany the
emotional roller coaster that is “Nobody’s
Business.”
These symphonies deftly play with unrelated archival images,
such as atom bomb explosions and early Walter Cronkite news
broadcasts, edited with careful love for detail to juxtaposing
music and aural effects. However, they clearly act as frames of
reference, or in Berliner’s own words, as “seeds”
for his later masterpiece.
Both editing techniques and several shots are repeated and
expanded upon. They show the spirit of his filmmaking, and his
spirit is very moving.
“Nobody’s Business” draws the audience into a
battle of minds between the unwilling focal point, Oscar and his
filmmaking son. “Nobody’s Business” is an
examination of their family history, structured around
Berliner’s globe-trotting research, as well as the photos and
filmic images he has discovered. This gives an understanding of the
difficult relationship, one different from friendship ““ one
of family.
“What do you want me to say? That I love him? He means
nothing to me. I don’t care. I don’t give a
shit,” Oscar states at one point when shown a photo of his
grandfather. It is this integrity behind the indifference that
initially repels the viewer.
Alan Berliner is a showman. Through technical structure, he
conveys a sense of humor that has the audience responding with
pleasure. He sets, for instance, the scenes captured from the seven
hours of intensive interview with his father to shots and sounds of
a boxing match. Although these images work as a metaphor for the
dynamics of the difficult father-son relationship, they are also
very amusing.
“A guaranteed flop” Oscar chastises Berliner.
“With your intellect you could have been a
accountant.”
While screening his films Berliner was carefully watching the
audience reaction to his work at the back of the theater.
The use of visual metaphors is more powerful than the choked
words ““ and silences ““ of Oscar. Drawing from his own
archive, Berliner incorporates historic footage with his
father’s own home movies.
When discussing Oscar’s divorce to a woman who did not
love him, his wife of 17 years, Berliner places a house falling
into a fast moving torrent. Simultaneously, Oscar yells at the
camera, “I don’t want to talk about it. This is
personal. This is nobody’s business.”
The film is indeed deeply emotional. One moving scene is when
the father and son stop engaging in battle and seem to connect with
each other when discussing what characteristics they see in each
other. After the screening, Berliner shared the personal secret
that he always sheds a tear when there is a shot of his father
sitting alone in a restaurant, and a reflection of a couple holding
hands can be seen in a window. The audience cannot help but be
drawn into the sadness and relative isolation of Oscars’
life. After his nonchalant reaction to his own grandfather, and a
distinct lack of him smiling, he is shown playing with his
granddaughter.
Oscar died in August.
“I was incredibly lucky to make this film,” Alan
Berliner was prompted to say by an audience member’s
question. “I had unfinished business which I am inoculated
from by making it. … I was unconsciously waiting all my life to
make it.”
“I got (Oscar’s) respect but not approval,”
Berliner said.