A pleasure that’s emerging from seeing these films in close succession is the sense of living in Frederick Wiseman’s world. We see what interests him, both in terms of the places he’s choosing to film and the specific things within those worlds that he chooses to explore and focus on. Whatever we might think the main activities we should see in a place ought to be, we’ll probably view them more indirectly than we might expect, and what might seem like detours wind up feeling as essential as the supposed big stuff. We’ll go wherever Wiseman has gleaned stuff he deems interesting. That’s a commonplace observation on my part, but I’m feeling in sync enough with the films to understand there’s a Wiseman way of looking at things. There’s going to be time for what might look ordinary to develop into something quite complex. We might not know right away why it’s worth looking at something that’s going on, and maybe it will just be a quick glimpse that won’t last very long before it’s over and we’re on to something else, or the little thing may turn big and occupy us for a good chunk of time. There will always be people sweeping up. The typography of the credit might jokingly reflect the location or the institution (Sinai Field Mission, The Store, this film), as identifiable as in the films of Woody Allen. There will be phone calls. There will certainly be meetings. Cars will go by along a nearby highway. Things you see will remind you of scenes from other movies. There will be music on a radio that might slyly comment on what we’re seeing. There will be a sense of common humanity, even (or especially) when people might sound silly or full of themselves or overly earnest. There could well be a sermon in a place you wouldn’t expect it. Some speeches are pretty likely.
Here are the main interests that I think come out in Racetrack. I’m sure there are many others or different ways to see issues expressed in his films. I’m basing this on my own viewing and my sense of common concerns from earlier movies.
A. Animals.
B. Sports
C. Community, Institution, Subculture
D. Media
E. Work - how people work, how different jobs relate
F. Economic Issues - Class, Wages
G. Religion, Sermons
H. Wisemanesque things - general statements, odd characters, references to previous films
A. Primate, Meat, and now here give us more than enough evidence that Wiseman is interested in animals and what people do to them and with them. In Primate they were studied and operated on, in Meat they were slaughtered for food, and in Racetrack they are used for sport and also operated on. We can see some common elements here. I thought the monkey decapitation operation in Primate was among the toughest things to watch I’ve ever seen in a film, but Racetrack’s big set piece of around fifteen minutes of a horse’s leg being operated on gives it a run for its money, as it were. (When a feed tube is inserted down the animal’s throat, it feels like we’re back in Titicut Follies all over again.) Wiseman likes to get an operation going and not let us know why until late in the procedure. We see the tools, the technology, the operation itself, without a word being spoken. Just after it’s done, the vet surgeon explains that the horse has fractured his leg and they’re trying to repair it. Left unsaid is that obviously this was caused by racing, and it can easily cast a pall over the sporting aspects we’ve been watching up to there. The length of the operation and the unflinching close-ups Wiseman offers make it difficult not to confront this question. The attempts to get the horse to stand and the lack of resolution to the whole process are bold moves in a film ostensibly about the sport of kings. Horses were clearly better off in the idyllic set pieces that begin the film, of giving birth and mating (odd that’s the order we see) at a breeding farm far removed from the track. Meat began that way too - happy cows on the range not knowing what’s in store. What’s in store is a very different fate, and with animals, Wiseman’s already unflinching eye is never more direct.
B. Even in films where we might not have expected it, sports and recreational activities can figure largely. I think it was Sinai Field Mission where we went through how broad a range that can be. Performing or listening to music can also be thought of here. What emerges might be the flip side of work - some of the things people do to relax or amuse themselves. Racetrack tackles this head-on. Sport can be very revealing when it’s looked at as an institution. What makes Racetrack such a good film is the different ways it pulls you - marveling at the beauty of the horses and the grandeur of the rituals of racing, fascinated by the human variety attracted to the sport, and repelled by the exploitive underpinnings of the rich versus poor divide so much in evidence. What’s fascinating is that we can be simultaneously drawn into this world and see it questioned and sharply criticized at the same time. The owners of horses are obviously the pompously rich and among the worst of the one percenters, but they’re gamblers too who don’t have to spend their money this way, and they support and make possible a structure of trainers and jockeys and lovers of the sport that to me seem impossible not to admire. I don’t know if you’d call it even-handedness or an awareness of complexity, but it’s one of the great fascinations of this kind of film (and I’m not going to get into the do you call it cinema verite or direct cinema or reality fictions stuff, at least now) that you can feel pulled in many different directions as you watch these films and think about them after, and that different people can watch the same film and respond so differently. It’s because ultimately the world out there is so full of contradictions, things to love and things to condemn, fascinating human beings and others less than admirable. You point your camera and see what’s out there, and that can be far more interesting than making it up entirely on your own. Wiseman has been very smart (hate to keep saying that, but it’s true) in seeing that sports are very revealing of human behavior, and that the structures that support sports, like Belmont Park, are no worse or no better than other aspects of life.
C. Are racetracks institutions? Are towns? What are the “subjects” here? I don’t want to flog a dead horse (ha ha), but flexibility on this matter is needed, and an appreciation for variety. Wiseman’s body of work more than lives up to a documentarian’s responsibility, if that exists, to examine public tax supported institutions in ways that raise issues of economic and racial injustice, governmental failings, human shortcomings, and just plain things not working right. But rather than be Upton Sinclair all the time, he’s got greater ambitions, and his films can take up lots of subjects with the same kind of eye, because that eye is ready to take what it sees and then make movies out of that variety. Whether we say he’s examining institutions, communities, subcultures, or whatever, I think it’s that very simple idea of planting yourself in one spot, whether it’s one building, one general area, or even a neighborhood or town, that’s the bold choice being made. We’re not going to ten different racetracks, or comparing horse owners to basketball or football team owners, or examining labor conditions throughout multiple industries, or creating essays around established topics, or any of the other possible strategies that might be invented. So the strategies will be varied, but clearly he’s not just winging it. The subjects are the product of a good deal of thought, and the approach from film to film has considerable consistencies. But a little bit, like the films themselves, in looking at them we have to take what comes and see what we find to be worth thinking and talking about. Sport is definitely one of those places Wiseman has found for all these things that interest him to come into play (literally). And it’s a provocative notion that we wouldn’t expect, after hospitals and slaughterhouses and lots of the military.
D. Besides the self-reflexive aspects of looking at media, media itself is a subject that comes up a lot. We may watch TV’s directly, even when the event being shown is right nearby. Racetrack sometimes has two screens going at once, with a race on one, and we’ll move in on the other next to it because something is going on there worth looking at, a channel set to some completely different program. Once we watch an entire big race entirely on TV monitors even though it’s happening live, and we will also watch crowds of bettors looking up at TV screens even though they’re at the track. If there are reporters and cameras present, like in the winner’s circle after a race, Wiseman is as likely to be showing that bunch of cameras and question callers as he is the winners themselves. Racetrack has two contrasting announcers, one a charming and quirky woman who provides the crowd with little tidbits about horses in general such as "These are sensitive animals. Very high strung,” and she tells the crowd and us that "They are professional athletes in every sense of the word." (Although that’s two words.) In an astute observation, she announces *Sometimes horses will look around too, and they don't have their mind on their business.” The film-maker seems most sympathetic to this attitude. The second announcer announces the races themselves, and he does so holding up large binoculars and calling the race without ever looking at notes - he most impressively knows the names of all the horses as he so expertly does his job. Here too, it seems to be very Wisemanesque to find the way the race is announced to be as interesting as the race itself. Media can be an alternative way to experience things, a continual distraction, a spectacle in itself.
E. Work is a principal topic - interest in people doing their jobs is certainly quite central. He is especially attuned to the specifics of a job - letting us see special skills, particular ways of doing things, how interested the person is in what they’re doing, how repetitive some jobs are. How different jobs relate is also of great interest. When subordinates go to bosses, when workers need pep talks or other kinds of motivation, and of course how employees deal with the public they’re meant to serve. If there are unusual jobs to be seen or particular ways of talking unique to certain jobs, Wiseman will zero in. A case in point in Racetrack is his fascination with trainers - we’ll see them talking to each other, interacting with owners and the public, and sometimes even doing some actual training. "What the hell do you have to know to train a horse? All you have to do is be smarter than the horse,” one says, which we may choose to believe or not. And a big part of Wiseman’s interest in work, in film after film, are the menial tasks and the manual labor that’s essential to the running of any organization. Invariably, as very much in evidence in Racetrack, these jobs are done by minority workers who are both essential and exploited. Wiseman never misses them, and scenes about workers’ pay or benefits regularly come up, or there will be a telling shot as here of a row of five black works sitting along a fence, waiting for a bus, that could as well be a Dorothea Lange depression-era image. A sly moment I only caught on this viewing has one of the black workers who’s playing pool while on a break, and in his back pocket we can spot a paperback of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man peeking out. Some might wish Wiseman’s films more overtly tackled disparities so visible in these workplaces, but that’s sort of the point, that the disparities are so visible. He’s taken us close up for a look, and from there it’s on us to evaluate.
F. Maybe it shouldn’t be separated from work, but Wiseman films can be quite detailed in its depiction of class and racial differences. Racetrack takes this to extremes in its fascination with the world of owners. He becomes almost anthropological in exploring their particular habits and ways of doing things. We even leave Belmont Park and head into Manhattan for an extended sequence at Roseland, where the marquee says "Racing Salutes John Morris" "61 YEARS 1919 1981”. (Amusingly, as the limos pull up, a Central Park horse and carriage canter by very slowly amidst all the traffic.) Morris was an owner and then major organization figure, and while we do get around to hearing him speak, we spend a good deal more time watching the big party in progress, especially an old-fashioned jazz band prone to tunes like “All That Jazz” and “New York New York”. The quite well-dressed crowd (Nieman Marcus no doubt among their store options) do not dance especially well, but we’re still going to get a good sampling of what the very wealthy look like on the dance floor. When the evening is winding down, Wiseman will show one of their black limo drivers waiting outside and an ambulance goes by, as if we’re now back in the real world. Returning to Belmont Park, whether it’s in the stables or elsewhere behind the scenes, we go from the all-white owners to the almost completely black and latino employees, who will do some singing and dancing on their own at times, albeit in much impoverished circumstances. Where in Law and Order and Welfare poverty is the overwhelming condition, in Racetrack we get the extremes, sometimes in close proximity to each other. Racetrack also spends a fair amount of time with what looks like the middle class and downwards - the sometimes quite huge crowds of people lined up to place bets and then watch those tv screens as they generally lose those bets. Sports provide an opportunity to show a broad cross section of economic levels, and Racetrack certainly has them.
G. Whenever another sermon pops up in a Wiseman film, I seem to keep saying how I can’t figure out what’s going on with them, but Racetrack has a real doozy. First though we’d say: A sermon in a movie called Racetrack? Yup, we’re told it’s Easter, and somewhere at Belmont Park a church service is going on. The sermon is not all that difficult to see why it’s included, both because it’s so quirky but also so many non-religious topics are broached, the two great ones being the minister’s views on television and on work. Shifting from religion pretty abruptly, he tells his congregants “Depression can come about because of too much television and so often, television disappoints us and disillusions us.” Not biting the hand that feeds him, he doesn’t speak against the evils of horse racing, but he does warn that “depression can happen because of overwork” and finally getting track specific says “A trainer once told me, this job is a seven day a week job, every week of the year.” So I think the deal with these sermons popping up all the time is that they’re so idiosyncratic but somehow bring up questions, if even in a screwy decidedly non-religious way, that touch upon larger issues the films are already concerned with. Even though the sermon eventually returns to religion, he’s touched upon some pretty topical bullet points. So if there’s a church service somewhere on the premises, Wiseman is going to seek it out, and it’s going to have its peculiarities. They don’t pop up in every film, but I feel like I’ve heard more sermons in the last couple of weeks of films than I have in person in years.
H. Speaking of quirkiness, but in a good way, we can wind up this quick list of common concerns with a few Wiseman signature things. There are plenty more that I’m sure we’ll touch on in films to come, but I think one really noticeable interest of his is to go for those remarks which can be taken much more broadly than the contexts in which they’re uttered might suggest. A couple of Racetrack examples would include when a trainer speaks to a group of reporters and says "Let me tell you something about our business. You gotta win. Because if you don't win, they're gonna fire you. And they're entitled to." This might be capitalism reduced to its essentials. I mentioned those twin tv’s, where one is showing us a race in progress, but the strange one next to it is a movie showing where we hear the line “Now we either work together politically or fight it out’ - another overheard line from a random movie that might lead to broader thought as to its applicability. For maybe a third of these kinds of statements, during the mostly wordless birth of a foal at the start of the film, one of the hardworking humans assisting in the birth can’t help but exclaim: ”Look at this. What a wonderful thing." It doesn’t come across as narration, it’s more a heartfelt expression of the miracle of birth, not just of this one. Comments like all these show a film-maker really listening, and the significance comes from how easily generalizable so many of these comments allow.
It’s a Wiseman thing too just to appreciate odd characters, especially to allow for individual ways of speaking to get a full hearing. It may be that his frequent returns to New York can partly be because so much distinctive behavior and colorful language is on display there, but Wiseman finds it everywhere. Sometimes it will be telephone monologs, other times general observations or jokes, or unexpected humor in difficult situations. This one’s a little hard to pin down, but you know it when you see it - people expressing themselves in an ironic or unpredictable manner, even if they appear in a film for a very short period of time.
As this body of films grows, Wiseman seems to employ a shorthand in referencing things we’ve seen before, as if to say, he knows he’s developing a broad panorama full of linkages. I’ve already been bringing this sort of stuff up, but I just want to note here that it’s a pretty common practice in his films, that things are showing up which are very close to moments in other films. Here’s the strangest Racetrack one, and a chance to impress your friends with serious Wiseman trivia. Here it is: what song appears in more than one Wiseman film? No, not two different Paul Simon songs - we did that one already. What’s an exact song that you hear in two different films? And remember, except for that Otis Redding at the start of High School, he’s not choosing any music, so it has to be the rarest of coincidence for the same song to be on two different radios in two different movies. So when that does happen, wouldn’t you say it’s more than just chance? It’s an association, a reminder, a reference. OK, the answer on this one is the song “Still” by Lionel Richie. In Racetrack, in our first visit to a horse barn, we see in close-up a radio, with the appropriate lyrics being sung "We played the games that people play”. As is Wiseman’s wont with songs, it plays for a pretty good while (instead of just snippets here and there) as we see horses settled into their stalls. I don’t think it’s all that popular a tune, but the same song was playing in Model where the models are being given a bunch of commands by a photographer - the “a little less smile” and the “a little more innocent, a little more sexual” sequence. It’s not that big a deal, but it’s that “didn’t I hear this before” which surfaces in lots of ways in these films. Just to continue with the Model connections, in the winner’s circle after the first race, when one of the photographers shouts the request “Turn the horse’s head around” we’ve certainly been there before. And outside of Roseland, among brief shots of city streets, of course we have to notice the male model photo for a cigarette ad. Those other worlds we’ve looked into still exist, and they bring associations back which make us feel like we’re watching that one big Wiseman movie.