Table Talk: Hot Docs 2024: The Bones

Anton: The Bones, directed by Jeremy Xido, had its North American premiere at Hot Docs 2024 this spring in Toronto. It’s produced by Ina Fichman, who is an important figure in the documentary scene in Canada, and who most recently produced Fire of Love (2022), which Aren reviewed for the site. 

Let’s start with a basic yet important observation about the documentary: The Bones is less about dinosaur bones and more about the economies that humans have constructed around the discovery, transportation, and purpose of the fossilized remains of dinosaurs from 65 million and more years ago. 

Science. Colonialism. Pop culture. Personal collecting. These are the different facets the film examines, and each is linked with a certain character—paleontologists Nizar Ibrahim, Bolor Minjin, and Jack Horner, as well as the bone collector, François Escuiller. As each main character tells their story, however, we see that these facets are more dynamic and overlapping, as human personalities, motivations, and interactions are layered, not unlike the geological terrains that the dino bones are extracted from.

I was pleased with The Bones as an interesting story that looks at the strange world around dinosaur bones. At the same time, the film never really rises to the crises it tries to pitch early on—that we have to stop the collecting of dino bones, that they offer the key to stave off extinction or climate change, etc. 

Anders, what did you think? As boys, I remember you being very into dinosaurs, reading heavy-duty science books in the middle years of elementary school. So I imagine the film was compelling for you?

Anders: Yes, and no. As you note, I was really into dinosaurs as a kid; I think the book you’re recalling, which was one of my favourites, was Predatory Dinosaurs of the World by Gregory S. Paul, whose illustrations and skeletal diagrams I poured over and recreated. And then, as with many of the people interviewed in the film, Spielberg’s Jurassic Park came out at a key time in my life to really push that interest into high gear. So, I should be the target audience for this documentary.

That said, I found the various elements of the film didn’t quite gel. As you note, the film is really about linking these various economic, scientific, and political questions together, using dinosaur bones as the link, and in an interview with the director, Xido says as much. But I agree that the film never really lives up to what it’s pitching early on. The various elements don’t balance out, and in trying to illustrate this larger narrative conflict the film perhaps takes on more than it can handle.

I found the historical elements of interest, but I was already familiar with Roy Chapman Andrews and his quests into Mongolia in the early 20th century. As an aside, the film claims that Jurassic Park was “based on” Jack Horner, and it is true that Crichton modelled Alan Grant on Horner. But another funny connection is that Roy Chapman Andrews was also partly an inspiration for Indiana Jones!

Anton: Maybe that is why Jack Horner says George Lucas gave him a million bucks to put towards science, around the release of Jurassic Park! I did enjoy the bits of background about Horner and Spielberg’s film that we get.

As the film develops and we meet the characters, the most compelling, in my view, are the two that are putting forward the most contrary arguments about the bones: Nizar Ibrahim, a paleontologist from Germany who works in Morocco, and François Escuiller, a Frenchman who skirts the line between collecting, scientific curiosity, and trading. They are the most interesting because they are each putting on a show for a camera, and then occasionally we see deeper, more authentic aspects. 

Who did you like best?

Anders: Well, I always find Horner interesting. I had no idea about the shift in the focus of work in the last 20 years, getting into dissecting bones and attempting to figure out how to recreate a dinosaur. But Jack serves as more of a commenter and less one of the three main characters. I actually think that François Escuiller is the most compelling character. I think the film is trying to portray him as this villain, or at least a morally very grey character. But he’s easily the most interesting. At the same time, the film does make it clear, particularly through Ibrahim, that this trade in bones is potentially interfering with scientific discovery because the museums cannot afford to pay the insane prices being generated for these bones. To reference Indy once again: “It belongs in a museum!”

I think the Mongolian scientist, Bolor Minjin, gets lost in a competing argument between Ibrahim and Escuiller’s points of view. Because the film starts in Mongolia, and the filmmakers are clearly illustrating the link between the trade of bones and early 20th-century colonialism, I expected to find more in that story. But it’s a bit confusing. As the film explains, the bone trade really only gets going in the post-communist-era in Mongolia, in the early 1990s, as people are trying to find new sources of income and international trade. The film makes an argument presenting bones as a kind of natural resource that should be for the pride and benefit of the Mongolian people as a whole. But I didn’t get a sense that they had thought out how that tied into the notion of scientific benefit, as argued by Ibrahim, as clearly as they could. I mean, there’s a whole question here that the film never seriously delves into which explores how the meaning that dinosaur bones have had in human culture, how we understand their meaning for our understanding of the world is shaped by the organizing principles of modern scientific discovery. But the filmmakers seem more comfortable in the science versus capitalism story.

Anton: Yes, it somewhat simplifies and reduces the issue. I find it strange that the Mongolia stuff was apparently the starting point for the documentary, as it turns out to seem the least connected with the rest.

Overall, the narrative wasn’t fully satisfying. I get that this is often the case with a documentary, given that documentary filmmakers usually don’t make events conform to the shape they want. They have to react to and work with the footage they capture. That said, we would hope for more in the climactic exchange between the two figures with diametrical views, Ibrahim and Escuiller.

Anders: Absolutely, the film doesn’t really do enough to put these characters into dialogue. As I note, Bolor gets lost in the shuffle. The film just kind of drifts along and lacks a strong formal structure that this kind of documentary filmmaking needs.

Anton: I was really hoping the actual meeting between Ibrahim and Escuiller would be something more. You wonder if it was just chance, them both being in Tucson at a big gem and fossil show (or I guess Ibrahim was giving a lecture there at the same time), but coming near the end of the film, it doesn’t work as a climax. They mostly just look warily at each other. Maybe the filmmakers thought they couldn’t do that, that it wouldn’t be fair to pit two of their subjects directly against each other.

Anders: But it would be fascinating and entertaining!

Anton: In terms of filmmaking, I noticed that this is one of those docs that has some extra glossy, gorgeous cinematography, which is really a new feature I see in docs over the past decade. At times, though, such as with the first shots of girls in Mongolia playing with little dino toys, the camerawork implies more scripting that I might prefer.

Anders: I also immediately wondered about that opening scene with the two little girls, how scripted it was. But I actually didn’t love the film’s high definition drone photography. They are certainly stunning vistas in Mongolia, Morocco, and Montana, but I just felt it didn’t work to the strengths of the story. It really just plays into what people expect of nature documentaries rather than the needs of this film itself. It comes across as a little too slick and doesn’t match the tone of this film, compared with its use in say the films of Richard Attenborough or even the climate docs of Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, and Edward Burtynsky like Anthropocene: The Human Epoch.

Formally, I felt the doc ends up stuck in “made-for-tv” mode. It will fit in as well on Crave as a National Geographic-style special does on Disney+, but doesn’t really push into truly cinematic presentation. It’s too content to ape the forms that audiences are used to.

Anton: Do you have some examples of what you are talking about?

Anders: In general, it uses a very simple establishing shot, interview, and coverage structure. Which can be fine, but it gets a bit monotonous. If there isn’t a stronger overarching narrative to hang that tried and true form on, it’s going to come across as kind of run-of-the-mill.

Anton: In terms of narrative structure, might we describe this movie, even if it’s a documentary, as being very similar to the network narratives that were popular in the 2000s, like Traffic (2000), Crash (2004), Syriana (2005), etc.? Network narratives tend to be fictional films that explore complex socio-political issues by following multiple characters; we move from each storyline to the next and back and forth through intercutting. The Bones plays like a docu-network narrative, since it even tries to incorporate a bit of the thriller nature that was common to most of them. However, unlike the best of those films, such as those by Steven Soderbergh, we could have used a few more clarifications than just titles to help make the networking structures crystal clear. While watching The Bones, I often asked, where are we? We see a lot of barren plains. Sometimes I didn’t know if I was in Mongolia or the badlands of Montana and Alberta.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that the film was produced in association with Crave Originals, Crave being a Canadian streaming platform, so I assume it will be on streaming later this year. 

Anders, do you think The Bones is worth checking out if people come across it on streaming?

Anders: I think the film is worth checking out if you have a strong interest in the subject matter of dinosaurs, but as far as a gripping narrative or deep dive that will surprise you, you can probably give it a pass.

The Bones (2024, Canada/Germany)

Directed by Jeremy Xido; produced by Ina Fichman.

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