How Louis Theroux became documentary’s golden boy | Little White Lies

Not Movies

How Louis Ther­oux became documentary’s gold­en boy

04 Oct 2016

Words by Caspar Salmon

The Where’s Wal­ly-meets-Buster Keaton shtick masks a film­mak­er a rare emo­tion­al intelligence.

Did you feel you were groomed?” This ques­tion, direct­ed at Louis Ther­oux by one of the inter­vie­wees in his new BBC doc­u­men­tary,‘Louis Ther­oux: Sav­ile’, was star­tling. It deliv­ered a jolt not just because it so explic­it­ly picked out the par­al­lels between Savile’s vic­tims and Ther­oux him­self, when, as a young doc­u­men­tar­i­an, he pro­filed Sav­ile and failed to get the truth out of him.

No, the pow­er of the ques­tion comes from the fact that Ther­oux was being ques­tioned at all: it tes­ti­fied to a change in dynam­ics, to a new world where the estab­lish­ment is fair game for crit­i­cism. If Ther­oux was mak­ing this bold, uncom­pro­mis­ing doc­u­men­tary in which he called him­self out for his blind spots, it’s at least due in part to this cli­mate. As a result, his doc­u­men­tary felt like a dis­til­la­tion of changes in his own meth­ods and progress as a filmmaker.

To con­sid­er Louis Theroux’s ear­li­er work now – for instance, the Porn’ episode from his series Louis Theroux’s Weird Week­ends’ – is to be struck by how self-con­scious and snig­ger­ing the films are. By plac­ing him­self as a sort of Where’s Wal­ly-meets-Buster Keaton inter­locu­tor for his sub­jects, Ther­oux just about pre­vents his films from sneer­ing, because of his ready sym­pa­thy, guid­ing the viewer’s respons­es. But the films – it’s there in the title – are dis­qui­et­ing­ly pred­i­cat­ed on the idea of gasp­ing at the out­landish­ness of oth­ers, at their dif­fer­ence. This tone car­ried over some­what into his next series, When Louis Ther­oux Met…’, which made a point of detail­ing the eccen­tric­i­ties of his subjects.

The series took a wicked plea­sure in debunk­ing the insti­tu­tions of the 70s and 80s, like a kind of lat­ter-day Emi­nent Vic­to­ri­ans. So Chris Eubank and Paul Daniels were met, and gen­tly mocked; but this per­spec­tive, in which all wack­i­ness­es are reduced to spec­ta­cle, as would be clear when Ther­oux met Sav­ile, was flawed. In fact, Ther­oux also met Max Clif­ford for this series, who was lat­er arrest­ed on eight counts of inde­cent assault as the result of Oper­a­tion Yewtree. (Inter­est­ing­ly, Mar­tin Bashir’s Michael Jack­son doc­u­men­tary, along the same lines, was rough­ly con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous to these programmes.)

Louis Ther­oux: Sav­ile’, then, dis­tils the ways in which Ther­oux has evolved as a doc­u­men­tar­i­an. His gift for get­ting close to his sub­jects, always evi­dent in his com­par­a­tive­ly naïve ear­ly work, is now aug­ment­ed by more inci­sive ques­tion­ing. He has also gained in stature and author­i­ty, and his pro­grammes have a greater assur­ance in their abil­i­ty to draw out their sub­ject. Final­ly, Ther­oux is now more known as a doc­u­menter of injus­tice than of idio­syn­crasy, so that his mar­gin­alised sub­jects these days are more like­ly to be the object of our com­pas­sion: for instance, in his excel­lent Drink­ing to Obliv­ion’, from ear­li­er this year.

He uses all of this to bril­liant effect in this new film, guid­ing us through com­pelling inter­views and clever archive footage. More than ever, Ther­oux is able to weave his sub­jects’ dif­fer­ent tes­ti­monies, char­ac­ters, on-screen pres­ence into a uni­fied over­ar­ch­ing nar­ra­tive. But it’s sur­pris­ing that Ther­oux does not pick up on the par­al­lels between him­self and Sav­ile. Sav­ile was mon­strous, but the theme star­ing us in the face here is about sto­ry­telling and nar­ra­tive: Sav­ile used his sta­tus and per­sona to guide the nation into think­ing a cer­tain way; he used sto­ry­telling to hood­wink a coun­try. Ther­oux is a part – or was a part – of that type of estab­lish­ment, and played with his own image to direct his audi­ences’ emo­tions and thoughts. Now he is, mov­ing­ly, mak­ing his way in a more refract­ed, more uncer­tain world, and ced­ing the ques­tion­ing to others.

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