Nick Broomfield makes the pursuit of an interview part of the story, and his persistence can reveal who wants to control it. We value the enquiry, but he is less reliable at testing what he is told.
Fi1m perspective
Nick Broomfield is there with the boom microphone, trying to get an interview, and the failed attempt stays in the film. He lets us see the work of asking, waiting and trying again. That persistence can uncover who has an interest in controlling a story, though it can also make the search feel more conclusive than it is. We find him worth following, with reservations about where he leaves us.
That was not his starting point. His early observational work included Juvenile Liaison (1975), co-directed with cinematographer Joan Churchill. By Driving Me Crazy (1988), he was putting himself on screen and making the filmmaking process part of the subject. The change gives us another person to assess: the man asking the questions, whose persistence need not make his judgement sound.
Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992) shows both the value and the limits of that approach. We were unsettled by the dealmaking around Wuornos, because so many competing interests intrude on the effort to understand her. Broomfield keeps following those interests, and his enquiries give the film momentum even when answers remain out of reach. There is enough human complication here to justify the pursuit, and enough reason to question the people hoping to sell her story.
Yet he gives Wuornos's own account too little scrutiny and the evidence against it too little attention. We need more time spent testing what she says, even if that means less time following the next lead. The people around her may have reasons to exploit her story, but that does not make her version of events true. This is a substantial weakness in a film that asks us to take its subject seriously.
His later move into scripted drama with non-actors, in Ghosts (2006) and Battle for Haditha (2007), took him away from the familiar on-screen pursuit. Small crews, real locations and documentary techniques carried over into those reconstructions. That change of method is worth remembering before reducing him to the man holding the microphone, though it does not settle our doubts about the earlier enquiry. Start with the 1992 film if the search interests you; do not take it as the last word on Wuornos.
Biography
Nick Broomfield is an English documentary filmmaker. Born in London in 1948, he is the son of photographer Maurice Broomfield. He studied politics and law at the University of Essex before attending the National Film and Television School.
Broomfield directed, wrote and produced Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992) and directed Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003). His other films include Kurt & Courtney (1998), Biggie & Tupac (2002) and Battle for Haditha (2007). He frequently works with minimal crews and appears on camera in his documentaries.
Broomfield received the BAFTA Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to Documentary. He was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Essex and the Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College, and is a founder member of the Morecambe Bay Victims Fund.
