Heart of Darkness with a Wink: The Evolution of the Killer Mockumentary, From Man Bites Dog to the Magician (Critical Essay‪)‬

The mockumentary Man Bites Dog (Belvaux, 1992) set a precedent in the genre for its unusual fusion of explicit violence, human comedy and social satire in a seamless documentary simulacrum. A pleasant young Belgian man, Benoit (Benoit Poelvoorde), who also happens to be a serial killer, is followed by a documentary crew, who record his various killings and aspects of his personal life. The film commences with a strangulation. It is later followed by scenes of execution by gunshot, dismemberment, and attempted murder. These scenes of uncomfortable gore and violence are complemented with scenarios which not only mock the bourgeoisie hypocrisy of Benoit and his relatives, but also the complicity of the film crew and much of Belgian society in the murderous ways of the film's protagonist. Benoit visits a middle-aged free spirit, who he leads the cameramen and director to believe is his close friend and a lover, is ultimately revealed to be a prostitute, and he one of her clients. Likewise his mother and grandfather are blissfully unaware of his profession, or choose to ignore it, instead exalting his extrovert ways. Likewise his girlfriend may be judged accomplice in her clear knowledge of both his work and its consequences. Yet other than this is an able illustration of a homogenous society's complicity in Benoit's frequent elimination of its minorities: African security guards, Italian postal workers, and so on. Beyond this satire and generic innovation the film contains numerous aspects that reward analysis. The film is further successful in three key areas in specific relation to the subversion of the documentary format. In the protagonist's various musings is an apt parody of the documentary format when observation of a subject tips over into indulgence. It is an aspect frequently present, yet rarely noted. Benoit discusses politics, feminine beauty, the mechanics of a hit, reveals innate racism, and so on. Yet rarely, if ever, does the documentary director reign in his philosophizing, self-deluded subject, as perhaps does Erroll Morris to the talking head of William McNamara in his film The Fog of War (2003). Just as Morris knows that keeping quiet may elicit the shyest of confessions in The Thin Blue Line (1988) he also knows that McNamara's understatement with regards to his performance in the Viet Nam War will not stand for his documentary audience, and roundly interjects his rambling. Likewise in Hearts and Minds (1974) director Peter Davis knows that the indignation and pomposity found in Walt Rostow's rationale for America's involvement in Viet Nam, and with it his long-winded response, is a justifiable editorial choice in the interests of revealing a subject's character. Yet, this aspect of character being revealed through longeurs is a risky choice within the documentary format. Indeed the musings may, if encouraged, tip into the baroque. A landmark character study in documentary, the Maysle Brothers' Grey Gardens (1975), was in fact transformed into a Broadway play in 2006. The characters of Little Edie and Big Edie are so eccentric that the film may effectively polarize audiences, exposing beyond the accepted durations of narrative purpose, or psychological acuity. The ramblings of these women, the immersion in the monologues to such a stringent subjectivity, are clearly, in my view, parodied in the mindless attention that the fictional director of Man Bites Dog pays to his subject. The second area is through a relationship similarly investigated in Grey Gardens, that of the teasing, codependent relationship between subject and filmmaker. Little Edie flirts as much with the camera as she does the filmmakers, and so too does Benoit endeavor to exhibit an upbeat, aggressively charming persona both to the camera and to the filmmakers. Yet the need for juicy character material on the part of the documentarians is satirized by their being co-opted into his crimes, finally becoming his accomplice, with a stationary ca