Synopsis
Everyone wants the last word.
This documentary follows 8 teens and pre-teens as they work their way toward the finals of the Scripps Howard national spelling bee championship in Washington D.C.
Spellbound
2002 Directed by Jeffrey Blitz
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Alternative Titles
Завороженный, Mistrzowie ortografii, Agonisma orthografias, Al pie de la letra, チャレンジ・キッズ 未来に架ける子どもたち
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This film, which tells the story of 8 qualifiers for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, is one of the most critical yet patriotic documentaries that I have seen. The eight stories give an excellent cross-section of race, class, opportunity, parenting strategies and personality types. The fact that the filmmakers allow the flaws and beauty of each of the children and their parents move forward with no overt judgement in editing or commentary (of which there is none) make this film just as interesting today as it was 15 years ago. This film even appeals to the sports-minded as it taps into the essence of competition that persuades ESPN to televise the final rounds of the competition each year.
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Cinematic Time Capsule
2002 Marathon - Film #32”Well, I don’t think I’ll win, but I’ll try hard anyways”
The National Spelling Bee!
In which parents from around the country converge on a single convention center and pit their offspring against one another…
”My baby gonna win”
”We’re doing between 7,000 and 8,000 words a day.”
“I can’t even pronounce these words… but I know she can”
“Whatever happens I’ll be happy for her, as long as she places in the top 50”
”Neil’s paternal grandfather… has actually paid 1,000 people to be chanting and praying around the clock for Neil to win”
So in a way, I guess it’s like a form of literary cockfighting.”Well, you’re full of jabberwocky tonight, aren’t you?”
“I got another word for it” -
Flat-out ridiculous. Also touching, tense, and seriously funny. From a visual standpoint, Spellbound (not to be mistaken for the Hitchcock classic of the same name) is a little on the Windows 99 side, but its subjects are what make it count. Centring on the annual National Spelling Bees, this short and sweet doc does well to document the circus with an unbiased eye, unbridled Americana flooding in from every angle. Some parents are proud, others are competitive or controlling, and some are kind-natured or indifferent, but really it all comes down to the children. It’s never fair to put kids under this kind of pressure (particularly in the eye of the media), but all’s good what’s in the name of the flag. Plays like a Louis Theroux documentary, just without the Louis. God bless America.
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It's 11:30 on an Sunday night and I'm sitting here getting emotional over a little bell ringing??? Ugh the power of cinema.
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☆"But it's fine, it's okay. She gon' be alright."☆
I've been a little underwhelmed by recent competition documentaries, many of which feature kids for the cute effect, despite really admiring the talent shown and celebrated. (Good to average films include The Speed Cubers, Spelling the Dream, Giving Voice, and Science Fair.) I love that part though, just seeing the wishes attained, and cherishing the opportunities children and teens are given to show off their skills and achieve their dreams.
So it's time to finally go back to one of the originators of this subgenre if you will, Jeffrey Blitz's Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound. The 2002 film follows eight competitors of the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee and is an…
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Watching this is basically like time traveling back to my sophomore year of high school, even featuring Henry practicing guitar on the same red Fender I had at the time. But apart from basking in the nostalgia, what I really enjoyed about this documentary is that it doesn't try to gussy up the charming and cute material with an overblown sense of dramatic weight and urgency, which is far too prevalent in modern documentaries. The personal stakes are high for these kids, of course, but when most of them get eliminated, they take it in stride, and the filmmakers don't paint it as emotionally devastating. That's not to say there isn't great tension in a lot of these scenes—when the…
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"I feel bad for that boy from Texas who got 'yenta.'"
The secondhand pain, the cultural collision, the movie in a line! Especially for the cut to that boy from Texas, baffled at the microphone, the word as punctuated as it is spelled. "'Yenta'?"
Structured to emphasize a diversity of backgrounds and the expansive regional differences of the US, via the word soup that is the dictionary. All kinds of words, with murky origins and cross contaminations, loaned from other languages, neologisms and botanical descriptors, the meaning secondary. You can tell the dictionary is American because it's wearing a cowboy outfit. You can tell it's a nerd because it's wearing glasses.
Absolutely excruciating, in the way that Pen15 is. Take…
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sometimes the most comforting thing can be watching kids be visibly stressed out over letters in primitive-looking digital video! ironically, i got out on the word "competition" in my 5th grade spelling bee
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