And I considered myself a cinephile...

I like movies. I like all sorts of movies. During the pandemic proper, when my dad and brother and I first started to get together on Zoom (later Skype), I challenged them to come up with a random prime number of favorite movies list, and then to grab screenshots of them and try to stump each other, or show off what we really connected with. I feel like a fan of the form. In high school I started my quest to visit with the oldies: I rented The Wild Bunch and Easy Rider and Mean Streets; I went to see Taxi Driver at the Tower Theater in Sacramento in 1996 when they re-released it on the big screen for its 20th anniversary.

I like documentaries as well. I love Steve James' work, and certainly saw a couple of Michael Moore's movies in the theater.

But then I read a quick blurb in a review of documentaries that should be seen. The article was about three docs that can be found on various streaming platforms, and they all sounded interesting to differing degrees. The author mentioned, near the end of their spiel, that they were sure to make time for Frederick Wiseman's "Menus-Plaisirs: Les Troisgros." They had to make sure, since it was going to leave PBS online on 4/20, all the dialogue was in French, and it was four hours long.

This movie wasn't one of their reviews otherwise, yet it was mentioned. They quickly ran down the premise: (this guy) Wiseman's look at a third-trying-to-hand-off-to-a-fourth-generation family-run three Micheline star holding restaurant in France.

Now, I have mixed feelings about cooking-related programming. As well as that, I've always been cagey about my job-status on this blog. I've never mentioned any of my actual jobs here, only alluded to aspects when it was needed for a post. Anyone can read through the 1500+ posts and see that I've never mentioned the actual job itself. 

That being said, I'll admit that at one point, I did work for a restaurant in Manhattan that was a Micheline star holding establishment. And as far as programs are concerned: I do enjoy PBS's America's Test Kitchen, but none of the competition cooking shows. I'm not a huge fan of the late Anthony Bourdain's show, but I did highly enjoy the ahead-of-its-time sitcom Kitchen Confidential, based on Bourdain's book of the same name and starring Bradley Cooper as a character named Jack Bourdain, an avatar of the source material. Pixar's Ratatouille holds a place near to my heart as one of my favorite movies, animated or otherwise.

To hear that there was a documentary based on a family's long-standing Micheline star (3!) restaurant was too much for me to decide to skip it, so I fired it up while at work. I had about four days to watch all four hours, if that was something I wanted to do. After five minutes I knew I had to see the whole enchilada.

Similar to other Wiseman documentaries (I later learned), this movie provides no voiceover, no title cards to let you know who's who, and no music. It starts as a chef and some of his acolytes are shopping at a farmer's market in Roanne, France. He runs into his brother, who is also shopping for gear. The next scene has the two boys with their father, working out menus---sauces, proteins, starches, veg, the like. The younger brother explains that a sauce isn't as complicated as it sounds as the father tries to work it out in his head (the sauce, which was to be poured over (gigantic) poached asparagus: mayo, frommage blanc (a creamy cheese product similar to cream cheese), soy sauce, elderberry vinegar and almond puree). We later see someone prepping out the garnish: shaved almonds on a mandolin (the other garnish was julienned rhubarb).

The movie travels all over central France; we see a cattle supplier, a cheese maker, a supplier of tomatoes and other vegetables; we see a convo between the dad and his sommelier concerning wines that will cost the patron 5,000 Euro, even 15,000 Euro a bottle. I learned more about calf brains than I ever knew I needed to know. It's a masterpiece. 

In the four days I had eyes on it, before I understood it was to leave PBS online, I turned my dad and an old friend onto it. I love this movie.

But then I found other Wiseman documentaries. On Kanopy (free to stream if you have a library card) one can find "The Store" and "Belfast, Maine." I fired up "The Store" the other day and was shocked by what I saw: a title card stating the name of the film, and then we're there in the store, the flagship of Neiman-Marcus to be exact, in Dallas (wait, what? I would've guessed otherwise). We see counter-people trying to sell jewelry, sales meetings, workers going about their business. No music, no voiceover, no information at all. It was released in 1983.

This was exactly the same style as Menus-Plaisirs. "Belfast, Maine" looks at a tiny cannery town in Maine: workers working, meetings happening, life trudging along.

What?

After checking into the 94 year-old Frederick Wiseman I learned a few things: he's considered an American documentary institution, his work has been hailed as a classic form of cinema veritae, even though he bristles at the label. He says that his movies, while unobtrusive and observational, and pass no judgement on its subjects, are implicitly biased, and he tries to find drama in the minutiae of each tiny scene.

Wiseman's made many, many films over the years, many breach the 200 minute mark, and many are considered masterpiece classics. He tends toward generic titles like "City Hall" and "High School," where he'll do his thing (no voiceover, music, or title cards) while looking deeply at institutions in American cities. His own release company leases the films to schools and PBS, and offers for sale many of them on their own website, Zipporah Films, named for his late wife.

I mentioned a while back about loving to learn new things. And here I am again. Menus-plaisirs translates to "small pleasures," and it may have wormed its way into my film ziggurat, into an upper echelon of my favorite movies ever. If you ever thought that Pixar's Ratatouille would be better as a documentary and set in the French countryside, this would be your evidence.

And I made it until now without learning about Frederick Wiseman?