104 TIMESeptember 3–10, 2018
AH, SUMMER! THE SEASON OF SUPERHERO BLOCKBUSTERS
and exhilarating action movies, enterprises that demand little
more of us than shutting down some of our brain power and
sinking into cushy stadium seats. But the summer of 2018
has put a wrinkle in that pattern. We’re in the midst of a mini
documentary boom, during a season in which a surprising
number of people have made the efort to go out to the
movies—to see anonictionilm. Since its June release, Morgan
Neville’s documentary portrait of beloved TV personality and
children’s advocate Fred Rogers,Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,
has grossed $22 million at the box oice. Two other docs—Julie
Cohen and Betsy West’s homage to Supreme Court Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg,RBG,released in May, and Tim Wardle’s
potent and unsettling adoption saga,Three Identical Strangers,
which opened in June—have also hit big at the box oice,
grossing some $13.7 million and $10 million, respectively.
Those igures are nothing close to what huge hits like
Black PantherorAvengers: Ininity Warhave raked in. But
they’re still surprising. Think of it this way: All three of these
docs have already cracked the list of top 30 highest-grossing
documentaries since 1982—and they’ve been in theaters
for only three or four months. (The top-grossing doc since
1982, according to Box Oice Mojo, is Michael Moore’s 2004
Fahrenheit 9/11,which has made $119 million to date.)
It’s too soon to tell if this current love afair with
documentaries is the beginning of a trend or simply a
testament to the quality of these three ilms. But sometimes
numbers tell a story that has less to do with proit statistics
than with an almost indescribable state of yearning: What if
MOVIES
The summer of the doc
By Stephanie Zacharek
this summer’s big documentaries—and
a few others that aren’t as splashy but
are still worth your time—are giving
audiences something they didn’t know
they needed? At a time when the press
is under constant attack and many of
our government leaders operate under
a rather elastic deinition of the truth,
maybe audiences are looking to connect
with stories they can truly believe in.THERISE OFdocumentary ilms may
run on a parallel track with the recent
popularity of true-crime podcasts. Of the
new doc crop,Three Identical Strangers
is most similar to a whodunit. It may not
be a true-crime story, but itisatragic
mystery with a sinister twist. Director
Wardle tells the story of Eddy Galland,
David Kellman and Bobby Shafran,
triplets who were separated at birth in
the early 1960s and adopted by three
diferent families. The trio found one
another, almost miraculously, in the
early 1980s and enjoyed a brief run as
minor celebrities—until certain facts
about their adoption disrupted the
fairy tale. The picture asks some teasing
questions about nature vs. nurture, and
it’s as suspenseful as any iction that a
screenwriter could dream up.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?strikes
a diferent chord. As the world looks
today, it’s a wonder that a man likeTimeOf Rev iews
△
RBG, one of this
summer’s knockout
documentaries,
chronicles the
adventures of
another kind of
superhero: Justice
Ruth Bader GinsburgRBG: MAGNOLIA PICTURES; CAR, RAMEN: GETTY IMAGES