Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
“Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (2017)”
Text By: Reuben Clay
Original Publication Date: December 18th, 2017
Frederick Wiseman is by any standard definition an auteur. His films’ flat and obsessive focus on single institutions lend them a uniform subject matter and unique style; one could easily tell his documentaries apart from others. Embodying the auteur moniker even more than most directors, Wiseman has direct creative control over a wide array of filmmaking positions. For instance, he not only directed Ex Libris - The New York Public Library, but he edited it and did the sound design as well. In terms of exerting creative control, few directors explicitly have their fingers in so many of the pies that go into filmmaking.
Yet I would call Frederick Wiseman the anti-auteur auteur. That authorial control feels laser focused on creating an aesthetic that is personless. This is more than just a continuation of the verite style that Wiseman helped pioneer in the documentary genre. Wiseman places the camera in places that feel deliberately “uncinematic.” Sometimes a small move or a tilt up could have cut a distracting person out of frame, but Wiseman leaves these details in, happy to make his video feel almost found rather than constructed--as if he makes his documentaries from the promotional or amateur footage paid for by the institutions that he documents. This is what I mean when I say that Wiseman strikes me almost as an anti-auteur auteur. He fits all the criteria of auteurism, but his films have divested themselves of the egoism and hierarchical nature of that label.
I believe this dedicated decentering of Wiseman’s own voice sets him up to be the type of ally that marginalized people could appreciate: someone who utilizes their privilege to lift up others’ voices. Ex Libris - The New York Public Library may be his finest examination of how privilege plays into institutional access. The very beginning of Ex Libris sets this into motion. Richard Dawkins is being interviewed in the absolute front of the major Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library system. He’s delivering his typical talking points about the infallibility of science and the danger that religion poses to the modern world. An interviewer asks questions, but the two people aren’t having a conversation; Dawkins is delivering a sermon, putting his talking points in the structure of conversational questions. For those who are unaware, Dawkins has received a fair share of criticism on Twitter and the blogosphere for how his anti-religious views tip easily into Islamophobia and racism, criticism that he never has truly addressed in a meaningful way.
Wiseman, on the other hand, appears aware of this criticism, almost immediately cutting to a scene of a Black author being interviewed about the power (and lack thereof) of clergy during the height of chattel slavery. This author notes how the state punished those who were vocally critical of slavery by taking power from the church away, that the few voices who were standing up for the rights of Africans were located in the cloth and that they were either removed from prominence or that their power was vastly reduced for said dissent. With the context of Dawkins’ views, pressing these scenes back to back reveals a number of Wiseman’s positions without truly stating them outright. Wiseman is not only pushing against the holes in Dawkins’ worldview but also illuminating issues with access via comparison of these two interviews. The audience of Ex Libris likely has no idea where the second interview occurs, but they know that it is not the main entrance of New York’s most-visited and prestigious library. This opposing viewpoint is much more likely to be erased due to its placement.
This issue of access and prestige is one that the film returns to again and again. At each library, Wiseman introduces the surrounding neighborhood with establishing shots. Manhattan’s famous lion stone building is shown to be surrounded by parks and coffee shops. Here, people lounge and self educate for self reflection, school, and pleasure. Bronx and Brooklyn locations, on the other hand, are located near pawn shops and storefronts looking for renters. In the central and most famous library, people quietly gather for study or to hear celebrities like Elvis Costello or writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates discuss their work and their philosophy. Crowds in the other libraries focus on work fairs or education for their children. In one of the more difficult to watch scenes in the film, a group of disabled people have gathered in a library to learn about housing options. These people lack the time or other resources to use the library as simply an institution of learning. Instead, it serves as a necessity for survival. It is a government arm as paramount as high school or welfare to the people in these neighborhoods.
While the board of the New York Public Library represents a level of diversity worth striving for (at least in comparison to the executive boards of most businesses and government agencies), there is a distinct lack of diversity in the bowels of the libraries where the unseen work that allows them to function occurs. These employees are almost uniformly people of color. This dichotomy, whether intended by Frederick Wiseman or not* is inescapable in the film. There is a stratification to American society that is evident in each institution that Wiseman investigates. It is a classism, racism, and ableism that is baked into American society.
Wiseman’s stylelessness often makes it hard for me as a viewer to totally engage with his films, yet Ex Libris resonated with me and made me appreciate the work that he was doing much more than I had previously. I hope that marginalized people feel similarly to me about the work that Wiseman is doing and that those with privilege who appreciate his work take note of how he uses his privilege to give voice to those who don’t often have it.
* I would argue that it is intentional. Not just because of the aesthetics of this film but also because films like In Jackson Heights and Welfare show a long standing and continued interest in the subject.
-Reuben Clay, 2017
