Nichols opens his essay by stating that “(d)ocumentary films address the historical world itself rather than construct an imaginary or fictional world. They (…) invite engagement with their representation of the historical world (…) by emotional or persuasive means.” (99) Therefore they are “not necessary argumentative, didactic, or propagandistic.” (100) Documentary films “draw us into a particular perspective on the world and invite us to experience the world in a distinct way. Engaging the viewer in a distinct perspective emotionally or persuading the viewer of a particular perspective intellectually go hand in hand in documentary, even though different films vary the balance between these two goals.” (100)
Documentary films have an “indexical relationship” (i.e. the image strictly corresponds to what it represents), which “allows the image to represent a specific aspect of the historical world with great accuracy.” (106) However, the way how one interprets images “remains a matter of interpretation, of what signifieds get attached, even to indexical signifiers.” (108) Interpretation is a matter of the interpreter’s “skills, background, and motives” (108).
Documentary films can “uphold (…) contest, alter, or subvert” (109) a dominant ideology of a specific moment, therefore they must be persuasive. “To be effective a documentary sets out to do three things: 1) establish the credibility of the filmmaker; 2) provide a convincing argument; 3) achieve a compelling form of presentation.” So, a documentary can be successful “if it is believed.” (109) The documentary must thus adhere to the “Three C’s of rhetoric” (109), i.e. it must be “credible, convincing, compelling” (109).
Nichols then explains the six modes (involving each mode „a set of conventions for representing reality“ – p. 114) of documentary film as follows:
Expository: it’s „the most common way of representing reality“ (114), documentaries in this mode „receive much of their organizing structure from what the guiding voice says.” (115) This voice, speaking directly to the audience, can be the “unseen voice of God (…) external to the events depicted” (114) or the “visible voice of authority, someone both seen and heard” (1114-5); This “expository voice represents the viewpoint of the filmmaker.” (115)
“(…) images often serve t illustrate what is said (…) serving to advance the overall argument.” (115) Another important feature of this mode is “evidentiary editing, which represents the best possible visible evidence” (114).
Poetic: “a major link between the documentary and the avant-garde film. It stresses form or pattern over an explicit argument, even though it may well have an implicit perspective on some aspects of the historical world.” (116) It focuses on the aesthetics of what is shown. This mode, “breaks with continuity editing to build patterns that simulate the look and feel of real-world activities and processes.” (116-7) It mostly lacks verbal commentary.
Observational: also referred to as “direct cinema, (it) returns to the fiction-like stress on the continuity of time and space.” (117) It tries to “capture the unfolding duration of what (takes) place in front of the camera (…), events likely to occur in the form they do whether a camera is present or not” (117). This mode “give(s) a vivid sense of what it feels like to share the specific world of particular individuals at a giving moment in time.” (118) Its strength resides in its “immediacy and access to specific (…) moments” (118), its weakness in its “inability to give a broader, historical picture” (118).
Participatory: also called “interactive documentary or cinéma vérité”, it is a mode in which “the participatory filmmaker becomes an openly integral part of what happens in front of the camera. Interviews, which only occur because the camera is present, are a staple of participatory films.“ (118) “The film becomes a record of the interactions of subjects and filmmaker.” (119) It can also “combine interviews with footage that illustrates what the speaker refers to. (120) This mix of interviews and archival footage has “become the dominant mode for recounting historical events.” (121)
Reflexive: this mode “draws attention to the type of the film the documentary is. It makes the viewer aware of the conventions, the expectations and assumptions that usually go unspoken. It stimulates reflection on the viewing process and how it differs from viewing a fiction film.” (122)
Performative: it “stresses emotional involvement with what it is like to witness a particular kind of experience.” (124) This mode “rel(ies) less heavily on commentary to convey information than on form to convey emotion.” (124) Performative documentaries “seek (…) to draw us into an affective, experiential engagement with what it feels like to encounter the world from a specific perspective and in a particular time and place. (…) (They) do more than convey information or mount an argument. Like fiction films, documentaries can be a source of deeply felt and long remembered emotional experiences.” (125)
Nichols then talks about the style of the documentary film, which “ranges from plain to ornate. (…) The choice of what style to use is a question of what is fitting for the subject and purpose.” (126) Decorum is the term Nichols refers to the choice of style. Examples: Leni Riefenstahl’s pompous style in Triumph of the Will vs. Michael Moore’s “plain-talking, straight-acting Everyman”’s (127) style vs. hyperbolic style in Hanson’s 8 Mile.
As Nichols states before explaining the six modes of documentary films, although one mode is dominant in a film, the modes “can be mixed and matched in any film” (114), as, I believe, it is the case of Lanzmann’s Shoah. The dominant mode in Shoah is very evidently the Participatory Mode (see Nichols p. 119-120). However, in some scenes, other modes prevail. In the long shots of the Polish forest, the trees planted by the Nazis to hide the atrocities they were committing, as well as of the vast clearing among the trees where the Jews were burnt and buried, the beauty of such wilderness reminds me of the Poetic Mode. Also, the fact that Shoah deals with the Holocaust, and therefore with Jewish people, reminds me of the Performative Mode.
Simon Srebnik coming back to the Chelmno forest and singing Polish and German songs; Motke Zaïdl and Itzhak Dugin standing in an Israeli forest that resembles the Ponari forest in Lithuania, telling how they re-opened the mass graves in the Lithuanian forest; the train driver looking out while arriving at the Treblinka station; and finally also the scene described by Nichols of Abraham Bomba cutting hair during Lanzmann’s interview – all these reenactments remind me of the Observational Mode.