A trio of documentaries to kick off our Santa Barbara coverage, two of them in competition…

“BLESSED IS THE MATCH: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF HANNAH SENESH” (**)

Roberta Grossman’s portrait of the Jewish Joan of Arc, Hannah Senesh, is somehow not the testament her actions deserve.  Hindered by an overabundance of meaningless photographs and dubious reinactments, the film lacks scope and at times seems more interested in serving as a narrative biopic than a work of non-fiction.

Senesh was a poet and one of a troupe of Jews living in Palestine trained by British military to save the Hungarian Jews from eventual extermination at Auschwitz.  Her team tragically parachuted into the region mere days before the country was invaded by Germany.  She was eventually arrested and executed for her actions.  Her writings and poetry were discovered by her comrades and published immediately.

The narration of the piece impedes the flow, Joan Allen, for instance, speaking in the voice of Senesh’s mother in something of a distracting device.  Talking heads are plopped in when insight or, at the very least, a change of pace is called for, leaving the film something of a slap-dash enterprise vacant of the power and resonance a subject like Senesh ought to illicit.

“INVENTING L.A.: THE CHANDLERS AND THEIR TIMES” (***1/2)

Peter Jones’s fascinating look at one of Southern California’s most influential (and dysfunctional) dynasties received its world premiere yesterday at the Lobero Theatre, and it’s one hell of a gem.  It’s so fresh it still lacks an IMDb page.

Narrated by Liev Schreiber, the film is filling yet swift, written at a pace as taut as a print news item.  And yet the ambitious task of tackling, at length, the life and times of five generations of the Chandler family, which owned and published the Los Angeles Times locally for over 100 years, never threatens to overwhelm the filmmakers and always maintains a confident pace.

News junkies (and certainly former and current Times staffers) are sure to be mesmerized by the inside baseball.  But at it’s heart, “Inventing L.A.” (a title paraphrased from a David Halberstam quote) presents one of America’s great epic tales, fascinating viewing in the wake of classics such as “Citizen Kane,” “Chinatown” or even the recent “There Will Be Blood.”

“PIRATE FOR THE SEA” (**1/2)

A lengthy look at the actions (some would say antics) of environmental activist Paul Watson seemed inevitable enough, and Ronald Colby’s stab is a comprehensive if unfocused study of the man.

Armed with spools of Watson’s own footage (shot largely in the way of preemptive defense against prosecution for his high seas heroism), Colby does a fine job of representing (and therefore endorsing) the cause, but never fully engages the viewer with the portrait of a man and his motives that might have made for a more emotionally connective experience.

Instead, Colby leans heavily on the admittedly inarguable footage of sharks being de-finned in Asia or baby seals being clubbed and slaughtered in Canada, among other graphic examples, to tell the story.  Plenty of Watson’s rhetoric is peppered throughout, all of it rousing in some sense, but one can’t help but wish for something deeper when it comes to issues as important as marine conservationism.