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The Leadership
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As someone who once briefly had an unlikely but
well-paid moonlighting job speaking to after-dinner groups at leadership
seminars – where, as a rule, I liked to screen violent clips from gangster
movies – I was naturally drawn to comparing my own style of delivery with that
of Fabian Dattner (who likes to bill herself as “CEO and Dreamer”) in Ili
Baré’s The Leadership.
This is a documentary following the 21 days of a ship
voyage to Antarctica, where a large group of female scientists are encouraged
to … well, “find themselves”, under the guidance of Dattner and her “faculty”.
The collective goal is to pursue, win and maintain leadership positions in
their diverse STEMM (science,
technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) fields.
The cause is a noble one – but Dattner’s strenuous
methods, based on both breaking down and building up the individual ego of
every participant, seem more than a little misplaced.
At the outset – with its stirring, soaring music (by
Kristin Rule) and yet more drone photography (the greatest cliché of
contemporary documentary) for vista-effects – The Leadership comes on like a relentlessly positive, New Age
advertisement (or recruitment campaign) for Dattner’s Homeward Bound
enterprise. I will confess that my eyeballs were in constant roll-motion
throughout its first half.
But stick with it, because action at last starts
happening, and things start cracking apart. Several attendees confront Dattner
with their doubts and questions (like: how inclusive is this all-white
gathering?), and (as we learn) a subsequent investigation by Grist magazine uncovered
disturbing allegations of incidents of sexual harassment and abuse involving
male members of the ship’s crew. (Baré’s camera crew, it must be said, either
looked away from, or was prohibited from filming, the nightly on-board
socialising that led to those events.)
It’s not half as morbidly satisfying as seeing
Frederick Wiseman’s camera roll on implacably as the secluded monks
psychologically go to pieces in Essene (1972), but it grips all the same. And after all of that, in its world-wide
coda, The Leadership tries to salvage
a positive message. See if you agree with it.
© Adrian Martin August 2020 |
