The Fictions of Reality

I've been watching a lot of movie-length pieces about real people lately. By that I don't mean fictional movies based on real events, I mean documentaries and stand-up comedy specials, mostly. I use the term movie-length because I wouldn't necessarily call stand-up specials "movies," but for the sake of brevity, let's just assume that from here on out when I refer to these pieces of work as "movies," I'm talking about both documentaries and stand-up specials.

I couldn't tell you entirely why I've been feeling this particular kind of movie lately, but I think it has something to do with the tangibleness of it, the almost accidental complexity of real people. So often, our own motivations are so garbled and unintelligible that when we see movie characters whose goals are effortlessly defined it rings less true, no matter how properly unfurled those motivations are.

Basically what I'm saying is that the most well-written fiction doesn't hold a candle to real life.

More after the jump.