Indie Memphis Film Festival '15: Sara Kaye Larson and Joann Self Selvidge's The Keepers

I can't imagine how difficult it must be to make a documentary. You've captured hours and hours of footage, many of which are probably interviews, over the course of several years, and now you're forced to shape it into something that will interest and captivate an audience. Yikes. Given the amount of time put in and the passion for the subject at hand, I always feel bad when a documentary does not work for me. Such is the case with The Keepers, a well intentioned but ultimately bland movie about the daily lives of the zookeepers at the Memphis Zoo. We hear them talk about what drew them to the job (many of them fell into it), which animals they like to spend their days with, and the hardships they face (mostly due to being criminally underpaid). Most absorbing to me were the series of interviews with the retired keepers as they discuss the changes they saw over the years and the pain of losing an animal they've been caring for since birth.

The focus of the movie feels scattershot. In between interviews, we learn about a giraffe that is stuck in isolation and needs to be transported to another location, the eggs of a Komodo Dragon, and the life expectancy of penguins. All well and good, except that it all looks like it was randomly stitched together, so we're thrown from one subject to the next and are confused as to what we're supposed to be concentrating on. I'm sure the filmmakers wanted to include as much footage as they could, although I think, to echo my comments on Barge, The Keepers would have worked much more efficiently as a short film.

Maybe I was hoping to see a more in depth documentary about the zoo, with interviews woven into the narrative. That certainly would have provided a richer tapestry and made the movie appear less repetitive (after a while, the interviews start to blend together). I can appreciate what directors Sara Kaye Larson and Joann Self Selvidge were trying to do with The Keepers; the voices of those who care for the animals are rarely heard. But having that as the sole focus of the movie makes for a sadly thin experience, unless you're going to explore the history of keepers at the zoo and how conditions have changed since it opened, for better or worse. When the movie was over, I hadn't gained anything that I couldn't have acquired from a trip to the zoo. I was hungry for more.


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