American Movie Directed by Chris Smith - Film Review

Released in 1999, American Movie is a documentary following the creative process of Mark Borchardt. The main aim of the film seems to be to examine Borchardt not only as a small budget independent filmmaker, but also to give us insight into his personal life. We see and hear throughout the documentary stories of his childhood. From both friends and family we learn of his aims in life and his motivations not to end up as a forgotten man. With the likes of those who live life working an unaspiring factory job. 

The documentary is very broad in it's material. It uses its time to paint a very detailed picture of his social life and at times I felt that this slowed the pace. By this I mean we would often see parts of interviews with actors that were through out the film with very similar lines being said by the same people, only the next time it would be worded slightly differently. However, this does not reflect on my conclusion for the film.

Overall I really enjoyed the film. The main reason for this being all the effort we see Borchardt putting into his dream of being a filmmaker. Friends and family inform us of his passion for filmmaking from a young age. And as an audience we truthfully do feel for him as we see him put all of his money and effort into his project. And it is also a true representation of how when we as people get stressed and upset that are friends and family are going to be there to ground us.

Concluding, to anyone who is a fan of documentary filmmaking I would recommend this if you haven't seen it already. But to those that don't usually resonate with the documentary genre I would also recommend giving this movie a try. The reason being that the film feels in many ways like a piece of fiction. Choosing on most occasions to put the attention on the people involved in a very character driven way.