Le Cinéma Selection: Review of HOME VIDEOS by Jerrod Carmichael
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Family, Documentary, Short Film, Movie Review

Le Cinéma Selection: Review of HOME VIDEOS by Jerrod Carmichael

What this powerfully understated short documentary has to say about families, race and more. Miniflix Follow Dec 8, 2020 · 5 min read

Screenshot from HOME VIDEOS (HBO)

Review by Tober Corrigan — Miniflix Contributor

In this recurring series, we review a film currently playing at Le Cinéma Club, the free short & medium-length curated film site. Then, if relevant, we pair it with a short film currently available in the Miniflix library.

HOME VIDEOS has some explosive talent in front of and behind the screen. Key among them is the director and family-interviewer Jerrod Carmichael, a stand-up comedian and popular comedy personality. Behind the camera is Pawel Pogorzelski, known for lensing modern horror classics Midsommar and Hereditary. On the soundtrack is none other than Tyler, the Creator.

Yet, despite all of the high-wattage creatives who helped bring HOME VIDEOS to life, this a magnificent study in restraint. Extended, frank discussions on race, gender, sex, black culture, infidelity and more play out in various vignettes. This creative trio could have made bombastic decisions with the visuals and editing; they could have tried to “subvert” the documentary elements.

Jerrod talking with his niece in HOME VIDEOS (HBO)

But, instead, they leaned into the conventions of the social realist style, letting the questions and answers between Carmichaeal and family fully play out. While this is certainly a very personal and important project for Carmichael, he wisely defers to his interview subjects for the most revealing and insightful conversations. Pogorzelski frames each encounter to center the woman being interviewed. Outside of one quick glance towards the camera in a group shot, Carmichael stays resolutely in profile through each interview scene, keeping the visual focus and energy on the family member he’s interviewing.

The conversations feel natural and off-the-cuff, but the short film follows a very intentional visual and thematic structure. Starting early in the day, when natural light fills up an adolescent’s bedroom, Carmichael and his niece have a wide-ranging but low-key conversation. Each new scene brings us later in the day, until only some low lamp light shows the faces of Carmichael and his mother, who engage in a very serious, sobering and complicated talk. The film starts with the young and works its way to the matriarch, a woman confident in who she is no matter how much her son presses her on decisions she could make with her life.

One clear throughline exists through all of these conversations with family — and it might not be what you think. While he’s clearly interested in learning from his sister, nieces and mother about what it’s like to be a black woman in 2020, he’s also very clear on pushing back and provoking. He asks his sister how she feels around white people, asks three other family members whether they can still listen to R Kelly and continually puts her faith-led mother through hypothetical scenarios around casual sex and leaving her husband, and his father, behind.

He lets no one off easy, and vice versa. That’s the beauty of this particular family dynamic, and perhaps the beauty of all families. If there’s anything universal about this short film, it’s in the very assured, very comfortable way in which everyone is portrayed, and which everyone displays themselves.

In a world full of reality television and social-media fueled drama, it’s hard to remember that filmed family encounters can still feel this right. We can thank HOME VIDEOS for reminding us of the authenticity of cinema as the enigmatic capturer of everyday life.