Spellbound (2002)

Spellbound: 2002, dir. Jeffrey Blitz. Seen on DVD (March 7).
Spellbound is a documentary that got a lot of attention last year. It was meant to be broadcast on Showtime, but it was so popular and well received that it ended up having a theatrical release instead. People were charmed by the story of eight children all preparing for the National Spelling Bee.
My coworkers in particular enjoyed it because they are geeky tech writers who like to watch people spell. In fact, I have to wonder how many of my tech writing coworkers might have been in spelling bees in their youth, perhaps losing traumatically and turning to a life of pathologically perfectionistic proofreading and editing as a result. Not me, of course.

Okay, okay, I was in a citywide spelling bee in junior high school, and I was knocked out in the first round with a word I knew damn well but I froze up and freaked out and the wrong letters came out of my mouth. My mom got me a cake afterwards with the word on it (properly spelled). Gee, thanks. That was the beginning and end of my spelling bee experiences.
It did mean that I was inclined to sympathize with the kids, and I truly felt for the ones who choked up and became paralyzed with fear and anxiety. One thing the documentary didn’t mention, and did not show the kids preparing for, was stage fright and nervousness. The kids all had different drills for learning to memorize words and to spell words they didn’t know, but I didn’t see anyone preparing on how to remain calm and collected during a national, televised event with a lot of competitive pressure.
Spellbound is a pretty good documentary, but I found it a little too manipulative at times. I felt the filmmakers were too eager to stereotype some people. For example, I don’t know why they felt it necessary to interview the employers of the father of the girl from Texas, except to show us a couple of narrow-minded, prejudiced people. Was this meant for comic relief, or to show us the kinds of people that the girl was up against in her drive to succeed? And they lingered a little too long on the loopy flakiness of one girl’s mom, a woman who liked to make lots of “bee” jokes. I felt they made her look needlessly ridiculous.
Since most of us don’t follow the National Spelling Bee every year, we get to be in suspense about the outcome and the ending is a surprise. I did think the filmmakers were very good about not giving away the winner ahead of time. I didn’t know who it would be.
However, it took forever to set things up in the beginning of the film. I think if the filmmakers had been able to capture more of the local-level spelling bees on film or tape, so we could see how these kids advanced, that might have helped the pacing. I can imagine that the logistics of researching and filming this particular documentary must have been extremely difficult, though, and it’s amazing that they had as much background footage as they did.
Spellbound would be a nice movie to watch with your relatives, since there isn’t much to offend anyone, or with any good-sized group. Everyone ends up picking a child they like the best and want to win (personally, I was rooting for the girl from Texas, and not because I live here either), everyone gets caught up in the stories of the kids and the tension of the competition. And of course if you’re a tech writer, you can try to figure out how many of the words you could spell. (I could spell the words that were food related. Go figure.)
The DVD is particularly nice because one of the extras is a little follow-up on the kids, with a paragraph or two summarizing where they are now. Also, the filmmakers have a commentary track on the DVD, which I didn’t have time to watch.
It’s not often you find a documentary that is as universally engaging as Spellbound. I liked it just fine, although not well enough to want to see it again anytime soon.