The Hottest August

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🎙️ EPISODE 522: 08.01.22Full disclosure: I watched a 54-minute cut of this via PBS and not the 90-minute full-length which I believe is streaming on the Criterion Channel. But, this is the type of movie that could be five minutes or 500 hours long. It exists on a plane in a particular moment in time: NYC, August 2017. New York City is vast and getting strangers to appear on camera is easy. Making sense of the latter is tricky and the framework of time is important: this is America eight months into the Trump presidency. That's never explicitly spelled out; it assumes the audience is well-aware of the horror show and its presented as such. The full-on or quasi or burgeoning sycophants — i.e., Staten Island — are exhibited as counterpoint but the tone is clear: they exist, in this document anyway, for our derision.

And who are we? This film was made by Canadians who get scoffed at in a local bar simply for stating such. The film assumes we think a certain way and no cinéma vérité stylings and neutral questioning can hide that fact. It's the first of several crimes, but not the most egregious. That would be its overall lack of direction. This is an extremely aimless film, but what's worse is I'm not sure it realizes how aimless it is. Watching this brought to mind the excellent HBO series, How To with John Wilson, and how that is the opposite in nearly everywhere but aesthetically somewhat similar. Wilson, also in New York, works backwards from an assumed premise to reveal some completely different revelations, and the show is purposeful in its determination to create connections along the way (even when they aren't really there). Still, I don't necessarily mind aimlessness, in general. It's the lack of purpose and recognition that's the issue.

It's funny in a way. This is a simple, fly-on-the-wall documentary and its subjects in moments are engaging and real, so it's never all that bad. But comparing Summer '17 to say, oh I don't know, Summer '20? This is a film which thought it was making sense of something that had just happened and not something that was about to begin. We always think we're living in the most important timeline but in reality that's nearly never true. Take an August — in NYC or anywhere else — from any of this country's nearly 250 years... what's the most important, the most intriguing? We're always living through something and that will be the case until were not. The ticking time bomb which is the latter is fascinating and scary. I just don't have anything good to say about it. Who does?

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 521 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 523 ⫸

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The Hottest August is an American documentary film directed by Brett Story wherein ordinary people in New York are asked to talk about their lives and their hopes for the future in a time marked by political division and climate change. It was released on February 28, 2019.