Tabloid (***1/2)

It happens that I saw this when, aside from the economy, the month’s two biggest news stories have been a young woman’s acquittal on charges of murdering her daughter and a British newspaper’s alleged phone hacking. The stranger-than-fiction story that unfolds here is a reminder that stories of young women, especially attractive white ones, have long captured public attention, and that British newspapers have never been shy about pursuing their own version of the truth.

The events that took Joyce McKinney from Wyoming beauty pageant contestant to English headline-war fodder took place in 1977. Her looks have faded, but she seems to be the same person whose magnificent obsession with her Mormon boyfriend (or fiancé, maybe) inadvertently turned her into a celebrity across the ocean. And Errol Morris, who has made biographical documentaries about serious things (The Fog of War) and entertaining things (Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control), provides just the right approach to telling her story. While relying heavily on his own interviews, he splashes his screen with old Hollywood footage and splashes pull quotes from his subjects across the screen in giant, old-fashioned letters. Even the background music is melodrama worthy. This approach can seem heavy-handed in a serious documentary (see Michael Moore’s work for examples, or even some of Morris’s), but underscores the humor. And, for certain, there’s more humor here than in most Hollywood comedies.

McKinney might be a tragic figure but seems to see herself more as a survivor. She certainly has a way with a phrase; she compares the unlikelihood of the accusation against her to “putting a marshmallow into a parking meter.” And she has already denounced Morris’s film as a “celluloid catastrophe,” though gently mocking is about the worst that can be said of the director’s presentation. I felt there was a sincerity to her even when I wasn’t sure I believed her version of events.

The one thing thing that hampers Morris’s storytelling is the lack of participation of key principals, either because of death or unwillingness to participate. (The only documentary I can compare this to would be Crazy Love, which tells a more complete story.) McKinney tells the bulk of the tale, and she appears to be an unreliable narrator. And yet the ambiguity that remains is also part of the appeal; the element of mystery is that which nearly all of the greatest tabloid stories have. Morris may not have resorted to illegality, and he is, McKinney’s objections notwithstanding, presumably more scrupulous than The Daily Mail about fairly portraying his subjects (his 1988 film The Thin Blue Line helped free a falsely accused prisoner), but he clearly understands the attraction of what the tabloids are selling.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz 5 and reviewed 7/18/11