Aspen and Model: Zooming Out to Zoom In

In the first installment of our coverage of Austin Film Society’s “Frederick Wiseman: Eight Systems” series that wrapped up this past October, we wrote on the importance of Wiseman’s directorial method of providing a neutral perspective toward his subjects and letting audience members draw their own conclusions on what they see and what Wiseman observes. That still remains a fundamental element of what makes his style of documentary so unique and captivating, though he sure can provide his own opinions when he deems appropriate. Never in this series was that clearer than with its last two films, Aspen (1991) and Model (1981), as Wiseman very directly comments on his subjects through the intentionality of his editing choices, particularly in his shot sequences. He also uses his signature style of fly-on-the-wall cinematography to this end, allowing us into spaces and events that are very revealing of cultural values of the time for communities in upper socioeconomic classes.

Of the two films, Aspen more starkly illustrates the shallow perspectives of the wealthy by highlighting two major groups occupying the titular town. Much of the film is dedicated to showing how tourists and vacationers spend their time in Aspen, though there are several sequences featuring its middle- and working class locals enjoying family and community events that paint the pastimes of the upper class visitors as particularly vapid. Model is attentive to class dynamics, as well, applying a critical lens to a commercial modeling industry dominated by large advertising agencies and other corporate entities by similarly showcasing smaller talent agencies and more intimate, low-budget shoots against the shoots and productions funded by much deeper pockets. The film is also keen on covering the complexities of gender in the modeling profession, and how different people’s bodies are meticulously assessed against ridiculously stringent beauty standards that affect women differently than they do men.

Despite the decade between the release of these two films, Wiseman is remarkably consistent with his incisive commentary on class and gender dynamics within the tourism and modeling industries in Aspen and Model, respectively. He employs very subtle cues in his editing that prompt viewers to critically assess the scene’s events, and often just plainly exhibits his subjects as-is to invite critique. A scene early in Aspen demonstrates this; he follows a meeting as part of a conference of male plastic surgeons, and Wiseman needs to do very little to inspire criticism of the boys’ club style of gender and race politics on display. He frankly shows these men participating in casual racism and misogyny as they throw around racially coded language and uphold a particularly egregious beauty double standard between women and men. Furthermore, at one point in Model, Wiseman focuses on a photoshoot featuring fashionably dressed female models picketing against the unfair treatment of women… while a group of older men in the crew joyfully watch on from behind the camera. He finds extreme irony in the juxtaposition of who is on either side of the photographer, skewering the commercial advertising industry and its caricaturing of countercultural protests while also highlighting its patriarchal power structure.

Wiseman does not, however, only empower his ability to comment on the events of his films. He provides opportunities for some of his subjects to provide perspective on certain people, situations, or circumstances shown. While Aspen primarily follows the tourists and seasonal residents of the titular town, Wiseman uses a couple of sequences to survey Aspen’s locals and get a sense of what everyday life is like there. In those sequences, we are shown locals who are very aware of the reputation their town has throughout the world, especially for upper-class communities, and openly discuss the influence the tourism industry has had on their lives. Additionally in Model, Wiseman covers a lengthy and broad conversation between a male model and a photographer that becomes introspective when they address their place in an industry that’s increasingly focused on almost exclusively employing young women. This conversation takes place during a photoshoot in an older warehouse, certainly one of the more inexpensive settings shown throughout the film, which provides more weight to what the two men are speaking to. In giving his subjects chances to reflect on the major themes of each film, Wiseman continues to exercise his own reflexivity and further deepen the impact of his detailed explorations of the industries studied in Aspen and Model by depicting the variety of people affected by them. 

He also supplies context, commentary, and meaning through his skillful editing, especially in how he cuts together his shot sequences. Wiseman uses the various locations and landscapes found throughout both films and interweaves shots of them between action-driven sequences to ground themes of class, labor, and socioeconomic progress in the whole environment in which the industries in question operate. In an early scene in Aspen, Wiseman observes the work of local coal miners at a mine just outside of a ski resort, then progressively backs out of the mine until it is far in the background in a shot that foregrounds a family skiing. He first establishes the proximity of the mine and its laborers to the resort, then extends the distance between them by gradually relegating the mine to a position largely out of sight to both the audience and the skiers that become the focus of the next scene. The editing of this transition sequence between locations emphasizes the socioeconomic disparity between the mine workers and the ski resort’s residents and the lack of recognition manual labor receives in American culture, amplified by how close the mine and the resort are to each other.

Similarly, in Model, Wiseman captures a couple of commercial and print magazine shoots produced on the streets of New York City, then follows each scene with a sequence zooming out to the rest of the city. In doing so, he situates two industries with immense cultural influence, fashion and commercial advertising, in the greater scope of day-to-day life in an urban area, helping make them right sized against their disproportionate social power. A commercial shoot for stockings proves to be both a spectacle and an obstacle to local pedestrians, something that is again some longer distance away from ordinary life that must be moved around and watched from afar. Positioning the production of this commercial and others in the film as both disruptive to and a part of everyday life in New York City demonstrates the reverence these industries strive for and have achieved to some degree, making different what may otherwise be seen as unexemplary work.

Throughout our coverage of the Frederick Wiseman retrospective held at AFS earlier this fall, we have looked at Wiseman as a highly skilled, efficient, and consistent filmmaker that uses economical style in both his camerawork and editing to terrific effect. His works are on their face purely observational films that cover communities and industries in many of their facets, though just under the surface viewers can find meticulously crafted masterworks that focus on making ordinary processes extraordinary to watch. Wiseman revels in exploring profound themes by documenting the everyday in all its simplicity and nuance, covered in this series during the most prolific period of his career in the late 20th century between Law and Order (1969) and Aspen. Astoundingly, the director is still highly active in his mid-90s and has enjoyed a surge in popularity since the 2010s with celebrated recent efforts including Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (2017), Monrovia, Indiana (2018), and City Hall (2020). We look forward to more opportunities, both through new releases and other retrospectives, to continue celebrating the work of Frederick Wiseman.

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