On the films of Frederick Wiseman and what observational documentary can achieve that other forms cannot.

Frederick Wiseman has been making documentary films about American institutions since 1967. Hospital, Welfare, Near Death, Belfast Maine, National Gallery, Ex Libris — each film is an extended observation of a specific institution, with no narration, no interviews, no explanatory framework.

Wiseman's method is to spend several weeks with his subject — filming with a very small crew, rarely being refused access — and then to spend a year editing the footage into a film that is typically three to five hours long.

The films don't argue. They observe. But the observation is shaped by what Wiseman chooses to include and how he orders the sequences. National Gallery is not neutral about art, even though it never states a position about art. The choices of which galleries, which visitors, which lectures to include are editorial arguments made without commentary.

What Wiseman's films reveal about institutions is that they are constituted by the accumulation of small decisions, small kindnesses, small failures of imagination. The drama in his films is real drama — not manufactured, not selected for being unusual — but it's drama that only reveals itself if you're willing to look at ordinary life with sufficient patience.