Jason Sondhi
A rare and special profile documentary, Unmappable is a smartly ambitious film that aims higher than 99.9% of its genre simply by its choice of subject. Rather than featuring a quirky or purely inspiring individual, an approach that can be effective, but sometimes dull, the film commits to a more nuanced, and morally gray project—tackling a complicated, flawed, yet vivaciously brilliant main character, the psycho-geographer and artist, Denis Wood. Through the lens of Wood, the filmmakers, Jasmine Luoma and Diane Hodson, explore creativity and intellectual passion, but also how these same sparks lead Wood to be tarred as a sex offender, and deemed by many, including at times Wood himself, an “unacceptable” person.
Wood came to fame through his novel approach to mapmaking, a craft that is considered staid and traditional in popular consciousness, but which he was able to open up to creativity and whimsy in novel ways. Ira Glass of “This American Life” is a fan, and Wood was featured in an extraordinarily popular episode of the series, which considerably raised his degree of fame. The reason for the plaudits are both intellectual and artistic—by challenging concepts of “objectivity” in his field, Wood could create cartographies of experiential phenomena. Taking mapmaking into the direction of subjectivity allows the space for immense creativity, and Wood’s clever and beautiful maps have made up the core of two popular books. Examples the film uses include the location of pumpkins put on display one Halloween, or leaves on a tree labelled by color.
To illustrate some of these examples, Luoma and Hodson bring in Bryan Campbell to do simple, but effective motion design animation in the film. While somewhat rudimentary, it is a welcome and differentiating touch, one that adds to the overall strong visual aesthetic. Often visual style is an afterthought in documentaries of this length, but Unmappable is full of strong directorial decisions in presentation, such as the use of Super 8 film sequences, as well as uncomfortably long sequences of verité documentation.
The difficult challenge of the film however is how to handle the crimes which sent Wood to prison for over 2 years in the 90’s. The film structures the reveal as a bit of a mystery, hinting at it early on, but taking its time to confront in full. Obviously it doesn’t want to prejudice you against Wood too early on, but the flipside therefore applies, and you run the risk of the film serving as an apologia. Wood is clear-eyed and forthcoming about the events, but is naturally biased and is largely allowed to present himself unchallenged. That said, Luoma and Hodson walk the tightrope well, I think, providing on the whole a balanced and critical look at the man in total.
It is an assured effort from both Luoma and Hodson, who met while going through Wake Forest’s MFA program in Documentary filmmaking in 2012. The film has earned plenty of acclaim, including several Jury awards during its festival run, and more recently, a Vimeo Staff Pick. Currently the duo is shooting their next film, a project based in Brownsville, Brooklyn that focuses on one block of public housing within an area that has the highest concentration of public housing in the nation.