Watching: The Order of Myths by Margaret Brown

If I had a nickel for every would-be documentarian with a great idea for a film about their fascinating lesbian auntie, libertarian war-veteran grandfather or prickly humanitarian cousin, I would, as the saying goes, have a lot of nickels. Yes, home is where the heart is, but it's such an even bigger cliché for early career filmmakers to turn to their families as subjects that it is difficult not to snicker or cringe whenever the prospect of such a project comes up. Documentaries tend to be not very interesting without conflict, and when that conflict draws on ancestral dining room table conversation, most filmmakers invariably capitulate to family sensibilities, until what once seemed like a gripping concept for a movie is soon reduced to a few heartfelt personal platitudes.

So when this sort of thing is really done right, it demands our praise and attention. After telling my Shreveportian friend Rob Peterson that I was planning on spending the lead-in to Mardi Gras season in New Orleans, he asked me at once if I had seen The Order of Myths, although it's not about Louisiana. It's about the oldest Mardi Gras carnival in the United States, in Mobile, Alabama. I could tell you that this is a film about race relations in America today, but I would probably already lose those of you who are woozy with delight at living in post-racial Obamaland. I could suggest that it is a tale of two cities, or really just one city, with two parallel lives. Perhaps mention that it's about a grand pageant, an ancient tradition, carefully preserved at all costs; a representation of a genteel and conservative way of life that captures the very essence of the southern soul. It is all of those things, but they aren't what make it powerful.

It can't have been easy for Margaret Brown to return to her hometown of Mobile and start waving her Yankee ivy-league diploma and camera in the faces of Mobile's white elite, but documentaries are also all about access, and through her grandfather, Brown had it. At least she had it to the white carnival. Mobile has two. One for the white folks, and one for the black folks. People like it that way, one of Brown's informants tells her. She gets great access to the black carnival as well, as we get the sense that there really isn't that much to hide over on the wrong side of the tracks.

What makes this a wonderful film, however, is its subtlety. Brown is so sure-footed in her choices, so careful not to go for easy condemnation, and so much more interested in observing than in pontificating, that the only possible result is a film of great nuance and measure. (Only one brief moment of interview footage, when a good old Bubba speaks from behind his mask, felt just ever-so-slightly jarring--far worse exploitations abound in any given ten seconds of any Michael Moore film). There is just enough of the Klan reflected in the carnival masks of the debutantes' escorts to conjure up an ominous dread. There are mute skeletons in closets, and even some hanging from trees, but this film never comes close to being shrill or judgmental, and its great surprise and payoff, ultimately, is that it left me cautiously but genuinely optimistic.

It was also the first film I streamed direct from Amazon, a viewing experience I highly recommend. For less than the price of a grande latte, I experienced some first-class filmmaking right from the comfort of my rented New Orleans Barcalounger.

Brown understands that the family connection is fraught with documentary difficulty, but she even manages to turn this to her advantage, waiting until just the right instant to let us know that a particular stern and patrician onscreen presence is also her grandfather. Then, in the film's most dramatic, final moment, she gives him the last word. I won't ruin this profoundly ambiguous closing; you really ought to have a look for yourself.

I just wanted to make a simple phone call...

Some things really should be a state monopoly. Here in Cartagena, Colombia, there are three major cellular telephone operators, Comcel, Tigo, and Movistar. Not unlike Sprint, AT and T, T-mobile and the rest of the New York carriers vying to be the one to drop your call today, except that part of the corporate strategy here for grabbing market share is to penalize anyone who isn't your subscriber every time they call someone who is. In other words, since I'm on Comcel, I can call anyone else with a Comcel SIM card at a quite reasonable rates. If I call someone on Tigo, or Movistar, however, I get whacked. The first digits of the telephone number indicate the carrier; numbers beginning 310 and 311 belong to Comcel, for instance.

An entire business has sprung up to cope with this absurdity; on almost every block is a small-time entrepreneur who has gathered enough capital together to buy at least one phone and SIM on each network. The simplest of these businesses consists of a woman sitting somewhere in the shade in a plastic armchair, with a little disco waist pouch on her lap overflowing with the cheapest Nokias. The more splendid have a cart of some kind, or a card table protected from the brutal Caribbean sun by a small awning. Customers, even those who may own their own phone, cluster around these impromptu booths when they need to call someone outside of their own network, or simply because they have depleted their pay-as-you go funds and don't wish to make the lump-sum investment to recharge their accounts.

"Wait, let me get this straight: it costs much more to call some numbers than others?"
"Claro," of course, she said, as if I was a small child who understood nothing.
"How strange," I said, but instead it was me that she thought strange. It had never occurred to her, I think, that it would ever be any other way.

To avoid any funny business, like an unannounced call to Australia, the proprietor dials for you. As soon as someone picks up at the other end, you are handed the phone, and you begin to explain why you are not calling from your own telephone number. The less spry proprietors attach their telephones to their chair with lengths of string. The most deluxe operations have chains, an unintended metaphor for your relationship with your "service provider."