Real Life

Almost a decade before reality TV was to take on grotesque forms, writer/director/comedian Albert Brooks made a hilarious parody of this phenomenon. Brooks plays a Messianic film-maker who thinks he can make a major commercial film by taking cinéma vérité to extremes. In a middle American town, he films a carefully selected average family for twenty-four hours a day. In the house of the lamentable family, the overambitious film-maker has had cameras installed all over the place: the surprised family members are followed in everything they do by cameramen. These are equipped with cameras built in to their helmets (apparently of Dutch manufacture) and continuously lurk around their prey. In the guise of a burlesque comedy Brooks provides a venomous critique of the so-called vérité approach in film and on television. (GjZ)