Troll Hunter, The Arbor and blurring lines

Troll!!!

Troll Hunter and The Arbor may only have two things in common.  Both screened at this year's True/False Film Festival, and both blur the lines between documentary and narrative fiction.  I liked The Arbor better.

I was looking forward to Troll Hunter as a fan of comedy, bizarro subject matter and Norwegians.  I knew going in that the film was largely invented, with CGI trolls and all.  I guess I thought the filmmakers extrapolated from some kernel of truth - perhaps playing out some crazy guy's stories.  But the film is 100% invention, much in the vein of Blair Witch or Cloverfield.

There are some genuinely funny moments, and the filmmakers get a lot of mileage from just a little bit of troll footage.  Unlike many mockumentaries, they stay completely true to documentary style found footage.  But once it's clear the film is all invention, I wanted the pacing and beats of a narrative arc.  If you don't have the storytelling of narrative and you don't have the "reality" of documentary, what do you have?

Worth shooting with actors just for a bitchin' shot like this.

Whereas Troll Hunter is a fiction narrative trying to look like a documentary, The Arbor is a documentary made to look like fiction.  The film consists of audio interviews with its subjects, with actors on screen lip-synching to their words.

It's the story of British playwright Andrea Dunbar, whose teenage accounts of life in The Estate (the projects) brought her some prominence in the 80s.  Dunbar's hard drinking and hard living led to three children from three fathers and her death at just 29.  Her children, especially the oldest, struggled to get on without falling down the same path as their mother.

The lip-synching technique is a bit jarring at first, but often you forget it's even there.  But Director Clio Barnard wants the audience to remain aware that there is a level of manipulation and storytelling in what they are watching.  (I asked her.)  What really made the technique connect is that, in the same way Andrea's plays were a dramatic recreation of her life's events, the documentary is a sort-of recreation based on the stories the people in her life have told.

Coming on the heels of a year when Catfish and Exit Through the Gift Shop sparked a lot of debate about the blending of truth and fiction in docs, The Arbor and Troll Hunter illustrate that the blending of styles hinges on which elements you hold onto.