In her 2004 documentary In
The Realms Of The Unreal, Jessica Yu illustrated the life and art of troubled loner
Henry Darger while only occasionally acknowledging the impact his work had on
the culture at large. In her follow-up doc, Protagonist, she illustrates the
principles of Euripidean drama by recording the stories of four men: bank
robber Joe Loya, German terrorist Hans-Joachim Klein, martial-arts enthusiast
Mark Salzman, and "ex-gay" evangelist Mark Pierpont. Yu re-enacts some key
incidents from their lives with flip-book animation and puppets in ancient
Greek robes, indicating that no matter what the medium, some dramas will always
play out the same way. Or at least they will if they're pre-selected and
carefully edited.
By shuffling these stories
together, Yu finds their connective tissue. All four men reacted against their
fathers, whether by trying to be strong where their dads were weak, or striving
for their attention, or making them feel guilty for years of abuse. All four
men take up causes and carry them too far, whether they pass out tracts in gay
bars, get involved with a kung-fu cult, or plant bombs in public spaces. And
all four undergo a conversion of sorts, shedding their extremism in favor of
maturity and normalcy. If Protagonist conveys one clear, compelling idea, it's that
even certainty isn't certain.
Mostly, though, Protagonist offers four fairly
interesting monologues, undercut by ominous music, stylistic frippery, and a
structure that all but guarantees the audience will be able to predict where
the stories will go. (If one interviewee talks about his change of heart, the
other three are bound to fall right into line.) The film bears the mark of a
real directorial talent, eager to push the documentary form in inventive
directions, just like Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, and for that alone, it
deserves a nod of appreciation. But while Yu is a hell of a filmmaker, her work
to date has been ridiculously overdetermined. Where some documentarians
approach their subjects and say, "Tell me your story," Yu seems to say, "Let me
tell you what your story is."