‘Ren Faire’ review: HBO’s three-part documentary is an entertaining, exhausting chronicle of a somewhat silly power struggle

Documentarian Lance Oppenheim looks like a maximalist Errol Morris.

He makes films that focus on eccentrics and oddities and the communities they inhabit, documentaries that invite viewers to gape at their subjects but not themselves.

In a documentary landscape that is too often tinged with the intentionally bland aesthetic conventions of “realism”—grainy, washed-out photographs and hand-held framing masquerading as “objective”—Oppenheim’s films can be aggressive. They’re full of supersaturated colors, hallucinatory perspective shifts, hyper-intimate close-ups, and reenactments that blur the lines between reality and subjective fiction.

I was legitimately shocked to check out the race times at Oppenheim 2020 A kind of paradise and 2024 Sperm world and see that both documentaries were less than 85 minutes long. It’s not really a criticism to say that I thought they were both longer. Lance Oppenheim documentaries seem like a lot.

Lasting three hours spread over three episodes, Oppenheim’s HBO series Ren Faire This really looks like a lot. It’s a study in excess that I don’t necessarily recommend watching in three-hour bursts, but that I absolutely recommend watching. Ren Faire has real escapist potential, with its juicy, borderline-unbelievable story, its cast of larger-than-life characters presented in those larger-than-life close-ups, and its absolute cacophony of weirdness.

There’s so much going on in Ren Faire and Oppenheim holds the viewer’s hand with such consistency that most people won’t get distracted by all the gaps in the narrative and all the places beneath the surface that the director doesn’t want to delve into.

The series takes place around the Texas Renaissance Festival, the largest of its kind in the United States. La Faire was founded 50 years ago by George Coulam. Between the festival grounds and surrounding campgrounds, it covers hundreds of acres and, although an incorporated town, it is closer to a human-ruled fiefdom than They call them “King George”.

George has decided that he will die at 95, which means he only has nine years left – nine years in which he wants to devote himself to gardening, art and finding a mate. He embarks on this latest quest through a series of Sugar Daddy sites, which allow him to target “beautiful slim (ladies) between 30 and 50 years old”; If that sounds a little gross, know that the women we see him with in the documentary are all under 30 and his main condition is that they have natural breasts.

So George is considering a life beyond the Texas Renaissance Festival, but he hasn’t named a successor.

There are candidates!

Jeffrey Baldwin is the festival’s current general director, a position that has the longevity of Spinal Tap drummers because George is… let’s just say… “fickle.” Jeff, a former actor who sings seriously on songs from Shrek the musical, understands the spirit of the festival, but perhaps does not have the commercial assets necessary to make it work? He also doesn’t understand why “nepotism” is bad – he wants to hire his wife for a key position – but maybe that’s because the voice of morality belongs to King George.

Louie Migliaccio is a kettle corn mogul who has built a mini-empire at the festival, employing 140 people. Louie has rich parents and he’s trying to raise money to buy the festival and he has lots of big ideas to take it forward into the future. With a neatly trimmed beard, long flowing locks and a love for leather vests, he looks like a steampunk villain.

Finally, to a much lesser extent, there’s “vendor coordinator” Darla Smith, who doesn’t really have the lofty aspirations of matching Jeffrey or Louie; she just pops up behind the one in charge, glaring darkly. If Darla didn’t have experience as an elephant trainer, would Oppenheimer be so interested in her? Probably not! But she does it, and that also makes her special.

So you could probably say that Ren Faire East Succession meets Tiger King, without the latent contempt that the creators of the Netflix series showed at every moment for their main characters, with every editing choice and every musical cue. What I appreciate most about Oppenheim is that he rarely passes judgment on any of his characters, even if they are in dire need of judgment. This is one of the things that makes his documentaries disturbing. Like Ari Nagel, the world’s most prolific sperm donor. Sperm worldcame across as a man in dire need of outside judgment, but Oppenheim left it to me to provide.

The characters in Ren Faire could all use a good reality check and Oppenheim makes it easy to mock Jeffrey for his naivety or Louie for his entitled preening or George for absolutely anything. But rather than doing it himself, he captures his subjects in a way that illustrates how much is at stake for these people in their chosen medium. It honors how they feel about the situation more than the outward appearance.

It is possible, in fact, that a Succession/Tiger King the comparison is too well-founded for Oppenheim’s mythology. He likes to give ordinary life a Shakespearean aspect, with King Lear as a comparison so obvious that Jeffrey makes it several times – but with a strong suggestion that he never made it to the end of the play, because he hopes to be George’s Cordelia, which he sees as the best case scenario . THE King Lear references abound Ren Faireas are the nods to obvious touchstones like Game Of Thrones And Charlie and the chocolate factory. Although Oppenheim is hesitant to put his finger on a moral scale, he never wants viewers to be in the dark about what he’s doing – there’s even a fucking dragon to avoid. Game Of Thrones without the comparisons of dragons. In doing so, however, it takes away much of the fun some viewers might otherwise have in making connections themselves.

The main story here is so good, the main characters so vivid, the approach so intense and entertaining, that it’s easy to get drawn into the courtly plot of Ren Faire. There is no doubt that the entire Oppenheim team is on the same page. Nate Hurtsellers’ cinematography alternates between acidic evocations of this largely rhetorical conflict and access so close to the action that we become familiar with the burst blood vessels in Jeffrey’s eyes at a crucial moment. Ari Balouzian’s score is a hodgepodge of sound that aurally reflects the comings and goings of power. Oppenheimer’s style has the effect of turning real people into actors, but if you pretend to live in medieval times even while talking on your cell phone, a little play for a documentary film crew is probably kosher. .

There’s no real exploration of Texas, which is why this place found such a home in the Lone Star State in the first place. What does it mean that there is this oasis of very white nostalgia within a diversifying Texas? In a state of red/blue polarization, is there any way to confirm my theory that the Texas Renaissance Festival is likely an unlikely mix of ideological extremes? There’s something truly enlightening to watch Ren Faire alongside the three-part HBO film God save Texasbut that’s not on Oppenheim’s agenda (and HBO has largely let God save Texas first and disappear without a trace).

Maybe we can have these conversations once people are trapped Ren Fairebecause I suspect there is an audience that will get hooked on this series and stick with it, unless they get too burned out on the style first.