F%ck - A Documentary - Elyse Stefanowicz

"Fuck" (2006)
Director - Steve Anderson

This documentary is literally about the word "fuck". It circles around many people - politicians, actors, porn stars, musicians, writers, etc. all explaining their own versions of the word. It follows "fuck" in the news, sports, politics, religion, newspapers, movies and music and highlighted all of fuck's greatest moments. Linguists were also interviewed to help derive the word and try to figure out it's definite meaning and origin. The documentary was a fun ride and keeps the audience interested from start to finish.

While watching a documentary based solely on a word, I couldn't help but wonder how they were going to film it while keeping it interesting. "Fuck" is a word and cannot be technically seen, interviewed, or for that matter filmed (the word itself, not the act), so the documentary seemed to have quite a challenge ahead of it. What I found out after watching, however, was that the filmmaker did an excellent job of keeping the audience involved and not bored. The entire film was a talking head interview and had some film footage and clips of when fuck was used in a certain place and time.

The film had to rely on the people talking about it to tell its story, which in my opinion can be risky. The interviewees varied greatly which also kept the documentary interesting. At certain parts there would be a very conservative politician speaking his mind only to have a very liberal actor countering his argument. The contrast of view was perhaps one of the most interesting aspects to me. Instead of voicing a certain opinion, the audience received different types of views, and were left to decide how they felt about the subject. The film didn't instill a specific opinion or view of the word and had each side of the spectrum tell its own belief.