Left on Purpose

This is a beautiful and sensitive film that explores the existential struggles and frustrations of a man who devoted his life to radical politics, as well as probing the loneliness of depression, and the ethics of documentary filmmaking itself. Mayer Vishner, its central character, is captivating— passionate, principled, witty, and suicidal. The filmmaker is transparently introspective about his own role in Vishner's life and fate, and raises questions that will generate important and difficult conversation that most of us are afraid to have. A must see for anyone interested in leftist social movements and the toll such commitments take on the human soul.

Mayer Vishner - chronic contrarian, man behind the scenes pulling the strings of the Yippie movement, and close friend and associate of Abby Hoffman - is the down and out subject of this documentary by filmmakers Justin Schein and David Mehlman. He's a 60's stalwart, tending a community garden and subsiding in his west village hovel amid decades of memorabilia and detritus, who agrees to have his life chronicled. Midway through the production though, Mayer decides the subject will be about ending his own life. He's an alcoholic, depressed, and lonely, but has passionate and poignant ideas for what a good life should be. His own outlook is bleak and joining the many colleagues who took their own lives seems an inevitability.

Tension abounds as the filmmaker must step from behind the camera to increasingly care for Mayer and challenge his beliefs about his end. The film's sad arc is nevertheless well punctuated with ample hilarity and uplifting moments. Mayer is a genuine character bandying about witticisms both critical and self deprecating. His engagement with the camera and his cohort draws the viewer in, as does the film's pirouettes, challenging the conventional documentary format with unconventional features and quandary: Is the filmmaker directing the subject or is the subject coaxing the director to film him? What are the ethics of training a camera on an impending death? Is doc' film still doc' when the filmmaker becomes part of the story. How can an individual so perceptive about life's simple delights, remain so overly attuned to their impossible acquisition instead? Along the way the audience is treated to a healthy injection of fact-finding and history lesson, including run-ins with influential players of the 60's Anti-war movement.

I attended a screening of Left on Purpose at the Doc NYC Festival with several of the film's protagonists and family and friends of Mayer Vishner in the audience. In the Q&A session that followed many contributed their own statements of overwhelming pride for Mayer's life and sublime gratitude for the sensitivity and grace with which the filmmakers told his story. This is a beautiful film about life, and lives, and peace and protest, and deserves to be enjoyed by all.

The story of the Yippies is full of compelling and amusing characters, and someone will eventually make an entertaining film just revisiting the hi-jinks and hilarity, cutting away before the bummers start piling up. If wreckage is more to your taste, there's a film to be made of that as well.

Left on Purpose isn't either film. It passes that low-hanging fruit for who-knows-what. Initially, it feels familiar, as Mayer reminisces about his youth and the Yippies in their heyday. Mayer is a character far, far removed from his glory days, and it's a bit perplexing at first when the film returns to his glamourless life and very uncertain future instead of lingering in his colorful past.

The most compelling documentaries are those in which neither filmmaker, subject, not viewer knows where things are headed. That appears to have created a stressful situation for Schein, as Mayer maneuvers first for control of the film and then for control of the filmmaker. The partnership between the two makes for the great drama of the film. Schein clearly did not set out to make a film about a filmmaker's dilemma, and his discomfort is obvious. It was a stroke of freaking genius and a bold-ass move for Schein to let the film follow the story where it led instead of where he had planned.

This is a deeply moving and original movie on so many levels. At its most fundamental, it's about the relationship between a filmmaker and his subject. I wish this was something more filmmakers addressed as probingly and with as much self-honesty as Justin Schein does here. Where is the ethical borderline between bearing witness and intervention to avert a wrong? But that's just one axis on which this film turns. What if what seems wrong -- in this case, we are talking about the desire of a charismatic, funny, biting and incredibly, overwhelmingly lonely veteran political activist to take is own life -- what if what seems wrong isn't wrong? What if it's both wrong and right? How do you even know? Another review calls the movie "depressing.'' Yet the audience I saw it with burst into laughter at many points. That's because Mayer Vishner, the Yippie leader Schein profiles, is genuinely funny -- we can see why Schein is drawn to him -- and because Schein, often at his wits end, also manages to keep his sense of humor. Parts of the film are hard to watch, yes. It is unflinching. So are its two protagonists. But that is precisely what makes you want to keep seeing more.

Final note: The archival footage of Yippie activism and the context in which it rose and fell is amazing in its own right. Highly recommended.

Left On Purpose is a heart-wrenching study of a man and the choices he makes. Over the progression of the sometimes surprisingly amusing subject the film also becomes a study of the choices a documentary filmmaker must at times make in order to see a project through and what happens when the filmmaker becomes personally intertwined with the subject. Highly recommended as a study of the complexities inherent in the human condition.