Monrovia, Indiana

Frederick Wiseman's 2018 documentary records a town of fewer than a thousand people in Indiana. The camera is on farms, in the barber shop, the gun store, the church, the council meeting and a funeral; the narrative shows them in turn. Wiseman does not comment and interviews nobody. What the town thinks of itself emerges from the conversations; community service, religious life and neighbourliness run through them. Exclusion and narrowness appear in the same scenes. The film neither mocks the town nor exalts it. That neutrality is deliberate; rather than confirming the common accounts of rural America, the documentary leaves the viewer alone with the detail. It runs past two and a half hours. Who it's for: those who like observational documentary and narratives about the American countryside. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a thesis or a conclusion; the film provides neither.