SNP’s word of the day: Vérité

Every day of every week, I define, and opine on, some cultural mot du jour. It’s like Sesame Street, but fancy. Today my favourite word is “vérité,” as in cinema, Cassavetes, and… reality television.

Word: “Vérité,” as in “Cinema Vérité”

Meaning: A genre of film and television that aims to show more of life’s reality by representing it in a truthful way, i.e. with realistic dialogue, natural lighting, and seemingly happenstance action.

Usage: “I’m doing a vérité fan video for the Le Tigre song ‘What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?'”

You should know it because: TIFF Bell Lightbox is holding a retrospective of John Cassavetes films, and Cassavetes is the actor-turned-director who pioneered vérité on this side of the Atlantic. From 1959 until his death in 1989, he made a cool dozen films, first in grainy black-and-white, then in colour. He financed them himself—well, he had to, because the material was so raw, unflinching, and un-Hollywood, the films’ subject matter at once banal and profane. The greatest star of his work, Gena Rowlands, was also his wife IRL.

They say Cassavetes is the father of American independent cinema, and that’s probably true, but he’s also to blame for the modern problem of reality television. Watch the films (especially Faces and Husbands) and tell me I’m wrong (kidding, you don’t want to fight with me). Look at his voyeuristic close-ups, the conversations he scripted to be realistic, his unwavering attention to the inane nuances of domestic disputes: it’s, like, The Hills.

Of course, I’m not equating John Cassavetes with Justin Bobby. But the truth of one can be seen in the other: life is stranger than fiction, and we’re only playing ourselves, on increasingly multiplied and smaller screens.

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