I was really hopeful about Handmade Nation. I love indie documentaries, and I’ve dabbled in kntting, sewing, batiking, and many other crafts since I was a kid. Unfortunately, this was the worst documentary I can remember seeing.
The good: The artists featured were very talented and inspiring. This movie did make me want to make more stuff.
The bad: The narrative was non-existent. The film quality was horrendous at times. The editing was really uninspired. I felt like all of the artists featured seemed really boring and even downright insipid. It’s a director’s job to draw people out, find their story, and do what it takes to make them seem interesting. Handmade Nation severely failed at this.
The ugly: Handmade Nation was so smug, self-congratulatory, and ideological that it made me sick. I really don’t need another heavy handed lesson on the evils of Wal-mart. And it’s extremely hypocritical too. People with Etsy stores can be just as capitalistic as anyone else. Have you ever seen the Twitter spam coming from some of these people? And while the crafting movement may want to preach about how green it is, then why is it mostly selling us cutesy stuff we don’t need?
Why can’t crafting be about working with your hands, being creative, exercising self sufficiency, and enjoying the fruits of your labor? To me, making it a political statement really is just defiling something I love.
