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Elsewhere, Brian Lowry watched the new HBO documentary about Alanis Morissette, and still can’t quite figure out why she slammed it.
“‘Jagged’ is a perfectly fine HBO documentary about Alanis Morissette’s meteoric musical career, made puzzling by the controversy unleashed by her negative reaction to the film when it screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. It’s a reminder that people tend to take the way they’re depicted seriously, and — isn’t it ironic? — often see the bad more than the good.
Specifically, Morissette objected to a portion of the documentary and its ‘salacious agenda’ that discussed the way men hit on her when she was just 15 years old, and regrets that she harbors about that period in her life.
‘You’re not consenting at 15,” she says during the interviews, adding of the questions regarding why women don’t report sexual assaults right away, ‘Women don’t wait. A culture doesn’t listen.’
All told, those exchanges amount to about two minutes out of an otherwise wildly positive 97-minute documentary directed by Alison Klayman, which speculates about who inspired the song ‘You Oughta Know,’ the way Morissette was pressured about her weight and accused of being angry, and how her music opened doors for the female artists that followed her.
To a third-party observer with no dog in the fight, Morissette’s irritation seems misplaced, especially because she admits to having undergone ‘copious amounts of therapy’ to address her past, and how living under such public scrutiny is ‘not a normal social construct.’
Anyway, ‘Jagged’ kicks off a run of HBO music documentaries, to be followed by films about Earl ‘DMX’ Simmons, Kenny G, producer Robert Stigwood, and Juice WRLD under the “Music Box” banner. And at least the first one well worth watching, even if its subject doesn’t think that you should.”
In other docu-content (and there’s a lot of it this week), Lowry looks at the Apple four-part podcast-turned-series “The Line.”
“Dissecting the trial of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was charged with war crimes after accusations from his own men, ‘The Line’ provides a sobering look at the horrors of war as well as what’s expected of those who fight in them.
Produced by among others Alex Gibney, the four-part Apple TV+ docuseries (and related podcast) includes interviews with Gallagher and his accusers, who present strikingly different accounts of what transpired in Mosul, Iraq, both in their interviews with the filmmakers and videotaped questioning from NCIS investigators.
Perhaps most notably, once Gallagher was charged his wife Andrea and brother Sean took the battle to conservative media, freely acknowledging that they used those conduits — particularly Fox News — to catch the eye of then-President Trump, who weighed in on Gallagher’s behalf.
‘They played the Fox fiddle beautifully,’ says former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer.
The SEALs who spoke up knew they were taking a chance that could endanger their careers but cite being alarmed enough by Gallagher’s actions to take that unusual step. Yet as key facets of the prosecution’s case crumbled, one team member interviewed anonymously says that at a certain point, “Everybody just gave up on justice.”
‘The Line’ captures the gung-ho mentality of these elite units, with member Dylan Dille likening serving in Mosul to ‘going to the Super Bowl.’
Whether that sports metaphor holds, ‘The Line’ makes a compelling argument that military standards didn’t represent the only line that might have been crossed in the course of the Gallagher case.”
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