Another great post - absolutely agree -
- there was a disconnect between what was trailed and what we saw, which created a sense of anti-climax and diminished the true awfulness of the content. This may not have been C4's fault if it was a real leak.
- Brand now appears to be an exceptional monster, which he certainly isn't
To add:
I used to make documentaries and felt that this film was really really unforgivably badly made. An absolutely wasted opportunity. The running order was terrible - different structural elements thrown together without any sense of building towards events or conclusions. Too often we went back and forth from something heinous and criminal to something more in the realm of 'being a shit'. Audiences need a certain amount of linearity to be able to 'weigh' this stuff and hold it in their minds in a hierarchy, so that they can experience the moral weight of things: this had the effect of undermining the seriousness of the worst stuff.
For eg. the makers didn't keep a clear divide between the runners being asked to pimp for him, and the runners being assaulted and/or physically intimidated. It was confusing and had the effect of diminishing the seriousness of both things. Likewise, 'being a shit' was mixed in with coercive behaviour was mixed in with rape and sexual assault, with the same outcome.
These different behaviours should have been sectioned away from each other, and linked by far more character/psychological analysis. So you'd build up from the minor to the major, keeping the material on the sexual assaults/rapes towards the end, and much more focused.
In general should have been more thoughtful with the material which comes under the heading of 'emotional abuse' I think. It gives those looking for a get-out a hook - 'being a shit is not a crime'. I'm thinking, for eg, of the girls from the audience with whom he'd had sex with and not called back, who then called the producers.
Rather than throwing it all into the pot, the filmmakers should have tackled the distinction themselves: So the v/o should have said (shorthand) 'of course, these behaviours ultimately come under the heading of [being a shit] - they are not a crime. But in its consistency and its relentlessness, it demonstrates a pattern of contempt for, and habitual misuse of women which gives context to what was about to happen to Alice.' And then onto the criminal stuff. As it was, they have allowed the likes of Sarah Vine (and some posters on here) to say 'Ah well, man behaves badly - shame, but...'
Often, I felt they had failed at the interview stage - they should definitely have asked better questions about the bath incident for example- this was coercive control in my view but it sounded weak with the testimony that they had. 'So what if he said 'stay in the bath till I get back - maybe he was just longer than he expected'. With better questions this could have been far more powerful - or they could have fixed the weaknesses in the testimony with careful v/o to set it up and bring out the nuance of it.
There was an absence of analyis to support the testimony overall: we should have had a psychologist explaining how coercive control works, for eg. with the bath incident. Why was there no discussion on, for eg, why a man would hold a woman down and spit in her mouth and force her to swallow it. That, for me, was the most shocking moment in the film. It should have been a huge moment. There should have been a fade to black, then a pause, while we all consider the horror of this, and then expert analysis showing that basically it makes him a psychopath. It was absolutely thrown away.
They also left out a huge amount of the stuff that was in the Sunday Times' piece which would have added psychological/emotional weight - Alice's mother's testimony that she felt that she would lose her daughter if she lay down the law; the fact that she dropped her off in a pitiful attempt to demonstrate to RB that her daughter wasn't entirely unprotected - and the really powerful bit about the taxi driver begging Alice not to go in. They also left out the rage/anger around the urine incident which gave a hint of why everyone was so scared of him.
There should also have been a big chunk on what so many of us have said about his live material - it was absolutely fucking shocking hearing him talk about choking girls with his penis and watching the mascara run, even without the echoes of Alice's testimony of being orally raped. How did we get to a point that this was ok - hilarious, even? There should have been more sociopolitical analyis of how we were gaslit at a societal level, and RB's role in that alongside many other comedians and (particularly, but ofc unlikely) channel 4 itself.
I would have kept ALL the statements to the end - sectioned them off entirely, if Legal would allow it (I don't know why they wouldn't, it's common.) They disrupted the film both in terms of its impact and its flow - of course this is not entertainment, but you can't risk boring n your audience either.