Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon: "Keeping you Safe Beside me" (1999, NR)

Producer: Ronald G Shafer

Director/Photographer/Editor: William Hamilton

Sound Engineer: Kenneth Ciroli

Production Assistant: Brett Shafer

Text Editor: Nancy Coldren

Person Interviewed: Donald Hall

With the voices of: Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon

Interviewer: Ronald G Shafer

Released by The Indiana University of Pennsylvania

As Reviewed by James Brundage

Steps to becoming a film critic. First, you must develop a tolerance for movies. Not just for violence on film, or sex on film or anything else that you may or may not find personally distasteful, but for bad films in general. Humanity is dropped at the door if at all possible, and you reflect on your experiences with a human aspect once you exit. Second, you must learn that the world you are entering into is not at all a pleasant one. Three: Find an outlet. Online places, due to their relative ease, are a good start. Do not try to get pay from the start, because you won't. A great deal many of us have been in this for years and have reaped nary a dime. Four: Network. Get to know the business and the people in the business. Anytime you can pick the brains of a filmmaker, do so.

The big fish in the business of film criticism, Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin. These people know everybody, and are very logical about their reviews. Myself, I know a lot of the people on the low level (i.e. the agent of Jena Olin, the cinematographer my favorite shot in history, the opening shot of The Player). I know them peripherally at most, by email. However, today I feel as if I have made a major career move, because I have met someone who has produced his own documentary.

Admittedly, this is not a great source of excitement. I've met people farther up the food chain than this guy, but its still a source of dumb pride (this is what I get for living in the suburbs for many years). No, I'm not reviewing this as a personal favor to him, although I do consider him a friend I told him candidly before the premier at the local branch of IUP that I do not show mercy as a critic. I'm writing this review because, as far as documentaries go, it's one of the finest I have seen in the past four years of criticism.

Remember that a documentary's basic purpose is not to tell a story. It is not to entertain. It is definitely not to be original. There goes every single aspect upon which I normally grade a film... or does it? The documentary, for which the entire cast and crew is listed above, blurs the lines between documentary and docudrama as it tells the story of Donald Hall and the late Jane Kenyon, a tale of poets in love.

Giving background, Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon are both poets that wrote the majority of their time in New England and, at least I believe, are of the naturalist persuasion. Truth to be told, I do not know very much about them. This is not to say that the documentary was not informative: it told me very much of the enduring romance between Donald Hall, a very traditional man, and Jane Kenyon, a woman who spent most of her life fighting manic-depression and died of leukemia in 1995. It told me about two people who appreciated New England like only people from New England can, the ones who don't mind that bugs eat you alive and will give it all up for the smell of the sea.

What was interesting about this documentary, and what made it much better than the 35mm or 16mm filmed Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch, which was the last documentary that I saw, was that it did not fall into what I term as the "documentary trap." The idea of a documentary may be to inform, but the idea of human nature is to entertain oneself every chance we would get. So, unless I'm in a classroom setting, I'd rather watch a documentary which is more like a docudrama, which is what this film is.

Whereas the normal documentary does not move the camera (except to pan), this film does. Where as the normal documentary spends its time in color, this one switches in between color and black and white. The normal documentary has about as much residual noise as a silent film has spoken conversation. It also has a touching story and hints of a basically cyclic film style (the first and last scenes are the same). This film has a soundtrack in the form of original (and not too shabby) compositions. It does fall into one trap of the documentary, however. It does have bad lighting, which I have seen on about every documentary to date, and thus I believe it to be unavoidable.

I'm not going to tell you to rush to the multiplex to see this film. You won't find it. I'm not going to tell you to tune into PBS to watch it. You won't find it there, either. In fact, it is currently in the hands of the marketing department at IUP. I'm just saying that, should you get the chance to see this, jump on it.