Diary of Awards Season 2012: Brooklyn Castle

To contact us Click HERE
As a founding member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, I will vote for my 11th year in our annual awards. I'm now receiving all kinds of screeners in the mail, and I'm catching up with likely candidates that I missed during the year, or movies that haven't yet shown, or movies that I loved and would like to see again. I'd like for this to be a casual series of random thoughts, rather than actual reviews.
Most documentaries, especially at this time of year, are downers. They're all about some kind of major problem, usually war, the climate crisis, the financial crisis, the Holocaust, etc. Katie Dellamaggiore's Brooklyn Castle rises above by being about something wonderful: poor kids in a Brooklyn neighborhood becoming chess champions. Right there we have a great story, an unexpected and happy colliding of two worlds, and Dellamaggiore runs with it.
She finds little dramas among the most interesting of the competitors and leaves off with little victories. (I'm personally hoping that Rochelle Ballantyne, pictured above, eventually becomes the first African-American female chess master.) Dellamaggiore also manages to mix in a social issue: the horrendous financial troubles and the way it has affected schools (the movie even manages a dig at the "corrupt bankers that caused it," who -- by the way -- have still not been arrested). Mixing this in with an enjoyable subject makes it far more palatable: a lesson for all documentary filmmakers.
The movie has a few talking heads, but these appear to have been shot at a moment's notice, wherever the crew and subjects happened to be, rather than organized in a studio with proper lighting. The movie has a scrappy, organic flow, and a passionate devotion to following the kids and their chess games. (The movie could have focused more on specific games, I guess, but it does just fine.)
In any case, I found this to be most refreshing, enlightening and enjoyable. As of today, it's going on my ballot, for Best Documentary, in 4th place, after This Is Not a Film, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and The Waiting Room.