A Crowbar to the Face

Frederick Wiseman has spent a lifetime piecing together sounds and images captured from the daily flow. These patchwork projections of our common life play across the screen without voiceovers, written texts or talking heads--with no explanation at all, except for the baldest statement of subject matter. High School, Hospital, Public Housing: Weigh these brief titles against the ensuing events--three or four hours' worth of them, usually--and you understand that Wiseman's concerns are both social and philosophical. How much experience must we accumulate to gain a little knowledge? How much, or how little, does our knowledge inform the evidence of our senses?

In his latest documentary, Domestic Violence, Wiseman reveals that this philosophy can be a matter of life and death.

Imagine a cramped house somewhere in Tampa, Florida, late at night. In rooms where the lights are turned low or turned off, the camera's lamp casts a glare over bare walls, sparse and rumpled furniture, and the thin, shirtless torso of a man. He has the hair and mustache of George Armstrong Custer and a low-voiced drawl to match, deployed with pride in his vocabulary and a drunkard's pretense of self-possession. He is the one who called the police, and who greets them with a long-neck beer in his hand. He says he wants no trouble to arise from his dispute with the woman in the bedroom.

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