More than halfway through this odd, fascinating “documentary,” the filmmaker abandons the people that had been its subjects – Mark and his girlfriend, Lisa, both meth and heroin addicts in rural Louisiana – and follows a group of their neighbors, a self-styled militia who are convinced President Obama will impose martial law, and are ready to “defend the second amendment”.

Italian-born director Roberto Minervini is a polemicist, and he obviously had a point to make by disrupting his narrative this way. He never returns to Mark and Lisa, and never states outright how the militia group – who may not even know the couple – are connected to their story. Ordinarily, I would dismiss such a move as facile and tendentious. But Minervini is not interested in winning a debate. He wants the audience to make the connection naturally, and he believes we will do that if we accept that what we are seeing of all of these people is true; that they share a similar perspective about this country, and we should be frightened by that.

This was a bold move on his part, but I think Minervini was right. The two stories, ostensibely separate, cohere into a single expression of fear and disgust.

I’ll return to the main point of his argument later, but first I want to discuss his technique. It suits his purposes, but my approval is limited to his success in getting my attention, and holding it, but not to the way he manipulates the documentary process, which is far from legitimate. We get to know the couple intimately – Mark, trim but slovenly, polite, sincere; Lisa, open-hearted, devoted, unashamed of her plus-size body. But their lifestyle is a ghastly spectacle, like strewn wreckage. They shoot drugs, go naked, copulate, eat and curse as if the camera was not there. But of course it always is.

While Mark’s sister lives in something that can be called a house, the entire area is bayou land that shows no human care whatsoever. You might as well live in a shack or your car. What makes it a real community, however, is an unquestioning trust in family and your neighbors. When not making and shooting dope, Mark spends much of his time with his mother, sister and grandmother, as well as with Lisa’s family.

The Variety review said the film “depicts” graphic sex and drug use by Mark and Lisa. If that’s true, the film is dishonest. A “depiction” is a representation of reality, which means that the artist presenting that reality has  exercised some control over the content. In this case, Minervini not only selected what he wanted to show us, in the editing of the footage, but actually directed Mark and Lisa to “depict” their usual behavior for the camera, i.e., to show us how they live when the camera is not there. But, as has been said many times before, this is not the same thing as a recording of the subjects by a hidden camera.

Minervini doesn’t seem bothered by this. However, as a lawyer,  I can’t ignore the reliability of evidence. It’s also what bothered me in the “re-enactments” in the Philippe Petit doc, Man on Wire. In this case, Minervini correctly relied on the magnetic appeal of Mark and Lisa, their infectious joy in each other’s company, to divert us from the problem. Their mutual affection seems so natural that I can’t remember a single moment that looked “staged”. There are many close-ups, but nobody shows any awareness of the camera. Minervini wants us to feel like spectators in the room, which is why he favors long takes with few distracting camera movements. His approach is to de-emphasize the editorial techniques associated with documentaries. He wants us to follow the “story” with none of the usual context aids: no narration or title cards or printed summaries or identifying labels. The meaning, therefore, cannot be anything other than what we see, and interpret, individually.

Minervini has actually declared this as his intention. In an interview in “Iodonna” concerning Stop The Pounding Heart, the third film in his Texas trilogy, he said that he does not tell the actors what to do but he will discuss what he sees about their lives with them. He said, for instance, that he told a character who had doubts about his religion to discuss this with his mother. But such a technique will, inevitably, influence the subjects in terms of providing him with the material he wants to film. Still, as a documentarian, Minervini believes in having the camera adapt to the lives of the subjects, not vice versa.

The narrative and dramatic strength of the film does much to overcome my reservations. In one scene, pulling himself together, Mark tells Lisa that he intends to turn himself in and “do his three months” in order to get clean. He advises Lisa to do the same. It seems to be the only time we see Mark looking at his life in a serious way. Politically, however, his half-joking, ignorant putdowns of government, especially Obama, fit in with what the other characters say.

Contrast this with the militia group. Their hatred of government, also focused on Obama, is just as ignorant and biased. But these men, including many Mideast war vets, are frighteningly composed, disciplined and very proud of their abilities, especially with a gun. They may laugh, drink and party hard, but their commitment is fierce. The dismaying thought occurs that Mark, a near useless human wreck, is closer to them than it seems. We’ve seen enough of Mark’s integrity, loyalty and competence to believe that, if he were ever to kick his addictions, he’d be ready to devote himself wholeheartedly to a cause. So just be wary, Minervini suggests, of our well-intentioned impulse to “rehabilitate” him. In a restored state, Mark would defend his country fearlessly. The trouble is, like many other isolated and ignorant men from the same cultural environment, he’s likely to choose other Americans as “the enemy”.

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