Wagonmasters Documentary Review
Wagonmasters is a documentary on station wagons available on Amazon Prime Video (also home to The Grand Tour). Here's my review of the documentary...
Many of you probably have amazon prime to watch The Grand Tour (which is worth the price plus the free shipping), but there's much more automotive content available. Many are documentaries, with one such documentary being about the history behind the station wagon as an automotive icon. It's 37 minutes long and originally distributed by PBS, but this is also some sort of student film. I have no idea how this became a commercial project, whether that was from the beginning or as an afterthought, but it definitely shows that this is a student film project for better or worse. Nonetheless it exceeds the quality of an average student documentary.
From the start I was slightly off put by the introduction sequence. For starters, one of the lines is somebody saying the wagon is dead and it will never be a thing again. I have to seriously disagree with that statement. At-least we get some decent B-Roll of a Pontiac wagon. Also, the documentarians do not place much emphasis on the conception of the station wagon. They only include an interview with poor sound put in place of narration to explain how the station wagon came into being. Subsequent interviews do have better sound, but I still wish there was narration. Another theme with the interviews will be a lot of focus on older enthusiasts. I don't have a problem with that, but it would be nice to show how there are lots of young people who love wagons as well.
The documentary gets more interesting when they start to dive into the intricacies such as the uselessness of wood grain, how wagons are a working class hero, and how they impacted people's lives. The owners may be old, but it is a diverse bunch. There's a guy who works on wood grain, the guy who runs the national wagon club, a Michigan woman who bought the '57 Chevy wagon she always wanted, a black man who calls himself "DJ Munchy" who has his Ford LTD wagon detailed, and a quirky virgin guy called "Spanky" Cox with Vietnam memories
An important part of the documentary is explaining what the station wagon meant for the post World War II American Experience. Wagons were right up there with suburban homes, white picket fences, and the nuclear family with "2.5 kids", which defined at least the image of those times. Wagons became a mascot of the suburban family lifestyle in America. The documentary then pivots to how wagons became loved by different demographics after the 50s, especially Volvos. Wagons have become more counter culture than they used to be. Surfers are another group that began to gravitate towards wagons due to their availability and practicality.
There's a really out of place segment at demolition derby that unfortunately annoys me. There's very little interview time, probably because the adrenaline monkey couldn't calm down long enough to be interviewed, but when the interviewee does talk he just says he doesn't want to fix wagons up like other enthusiasts and that he just wants to smash them. The directors were clearly going for a different tone, and this part should have been cut out entirely as it contributes nothing to the wider film. However, I suspect this film was not exactly a "director's cut", considering the low budget and already short run time.
When the main narrative continues, it's about how the minivan played a roll in ushering out wagons. You can really feel the animosity that wagon enthusiasts have towards the minivan craze, but they ultimately turn that animosity into positivity within their group or, shall I call it, tribe. The wagon club has a contest to pick the best wagon, but every wagon is still a winner in their eyes.
I think that this documentary could do with less interviews, more narration, less excess information, and more focus on the actual cars. The documentary is very well shot at points, but some lousy shots sneak their way in to stretch out the run time and to match the lengthy interviews. The documentary's greatest strength is in the emotional moments within interviews and how the filmmakers managed to pull together a somewhat interesting and cohesive narrative throughout the project. Another positive is that Wagonmasters helps to preserve a lost history. The film points out that many wagons were crushed because they were seen as expendable gas hogs. That's also a driving force behind the film's emotional impact. If anything, watching Wagonmasters made me want to make my own documentary on wagons someday, or at least a YouTube video essay. In my own film I would prefer to also address modern smaller wagons and how they are cool in their own way. This documentary ends with the statement that you don't miss something until it's gone, but I don't think wagons are truly gone and I retain hope for the future. If you want to check out the film, as I said before it's on Amazon Prime videos (you can get a free trial I believe), and it's $3.99 on YouTube. If I had to rate it, I'd give it a 6/10.
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