Spellbound (documentary)
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| Spellbound | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover for Spellbound |
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| Directed by | Jeffrey Blitz |
| Produced by | Jeffrey Blitz Ronnie Eisen Sean Welch |
| Written by | Jeffrey Blitz |
| Starring | Harry Altman Angela Arenivar Ted Brigham April DeGideo Neil Kadakia Nupur Lala Emily Stagg Ashley White |
| Music by | Daniel Hulsizer |
| Distributed by | ThinkFilm |
| Release date(s) | 2002 |
| Running time | 97 min. 95 min. (Canada) |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Spellbound is a 2002 documentary, directed by Jeffrey Blitz, nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It follows eight competitors in the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee: Harry Altman, Angela Arenivar, Ted Brigham, April DeGideo, Neil Kadakia, Nupur Lala, Emily Stagg and Ashley White.
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[edit] Spellers
As they appear from left to right on the DVD's cover:
[edit] Neil Kadakia
Neil Kadakia is currently a fourth-year student at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the younger brother of Shivani Kadakia. Neil is an excellent downhill skier, poet, and technophile. Neil (as speller # 139) missed "hellebore" in the bee to get ninth place. Other words Neil spelled include:
- hellebore (spelled incorrectly as "helebore")
[edit] Emily Stagg
Emily Stagg (speller # 148) was sponsored by the New Haven Register in New Haven, Connecticut and spelled:
- clavecin (spelled incorrectly as "clavison")
[edit] Ashley White
Ashley White (speller 149) represented The Washington Informer in Washington, DC in the bee. She is the mother of a three-year-old girl and is currently attending Howard University. Following Ashley's teenage pregnancy, a marketing consultant who had seen the movie managed to rally support from other viewers of the documentary to help Ashley into Howard University. [1]
- ecclesiastical (spelled incorrectly as "eccleastical")
[edit] April DeGideo
April DeGideo, who lives in Ambler, Pennsylvania, participated in the 1998 and 1999 bees, in the latter of which she placed third, representing the Times Herald of Norristown, Pennsylvania. April is now a junior journalism major at New York University. She was speller # 61 and spelled the following words:
- terrene (spelled incorrectly as "terrine")
[edit] Harry Altman
Many critics who reviewed Spellbound singled out Altman (speller # 8) as its most interesting "character". Roger Ebert wrote that he "has so many eccentricities that he'd be comic relief in a teenage comedy ... He screws his face up into so many shapes while trying to spell a word that it's a wonder the letters can find their way to the surface". He went to the Academy for Engineering and Design Technology in Hackensack, New Jersey. He enrolled in the University of Chicago in autumn 2005. The phrase "What time is it?" has been time and again referred to within Tufts House, a dormitory at the University of Chicago, as an expression of mirth, intellectual sarcasm and sheer love for Altman. He missed "banns" in the bee featured in the film and spelled these words:
- cephalalgia (Harry laughed when the judge described this word's definition as "a pain in the head")
- banns (on which he spent more than five minutes contorting his face; Harry was reminded several times to face forward and finish the word. He misspelled it as "bands").
[edit] Angela Arenivar
Angela Arenivar is a senior at Texas A&M University. She is studying Spanish. Arenivar plans to attend graduate school in Spanish and teach at the university level. She spent the first half of 2006 studying abroad through Texas A&M at the University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain, and wrote a blog, Angela in Spain, during her time there.
Angela, who was speller # 85, missed the word "heleoplankton". The words she spelled are listed below:
- heleoplankton (spelled incorrectly as "helioplankton")
[edit] Nupur Lala
Nupur Lala was the champion of the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee (as speller # 165), spelling "logorrhea" to win. She joined University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 2003 to study brain and cognitive sciences and pre-medical studies. Nupur won the bee against David Lewandowski, a speller from Indiana who misspelled "opsimath." All of the words she spelled were:
- logorrhea (the winning word)
[edit] Ted Brigham
Ted Brigham, from Rolla, Missouri, represented the Rolla Daily News, based in the same town. One of the more notable stories from his experience is the congratulations posted by students on the marquee in front of his high school in which "champ" was misspelled as "chapm". He was speller # 243.
- distractible (spelled incorrectly as "distractable")
[edit] Other notable spellers
- George Thampy was speller # 245 in the bee and was mentioned several times within the film. He misspelled "kirtle" as "curtle" for third place, tying with April DeGideo. Thampy eventually won the 2000 national bee.
- David Lewandowski finished second place in the spelling bee, spelling "opsimath" as "opsomath". After David's mistake, Nupur spelled "logorrhea" to win the competition.
- Allyson Lieberman was originally slated to be featured as one of the spellers in the documentary, but the plan never went through; the scene involving her can be found in the special features of the DVD. The youngest contestant in the entire 1998 bee, she misspelled "purblind".
- Frances Taschuk and Ann Foley are shown in the final set of scenes prior to the last round of the spelling bee. Frances misspells "acoelous" and Ann "quinquevir".
- Vinay Krupadev is in a scene involving Harry's mother feeling "sorry for the boy from Texas who got 'yenta'". She was referring to Vinay, and his pronunciation of "yenta" is shown in the film. He eventually spelled it "yente".
[edit] Form
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This section reads like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup. Please improve this article by rewriting this section in an encyclopedic style. (documentation, talk) |
This film could be classed as an Expository documentary as the production crew remain unseen throughout the film although there is no voice-over – a feature which theorist Bill Nichols suggests is a convention of the expository documentary. The cinematography in the film is fairly static because the majority of what we see is interview footage; this also aides the dialog driven narrative. The interviews appear to be observational and unscripted, although questions have clearly been asked of the participants, this is not made explicit to us as viewers. Use of the 'close-up' dominates, as this aides the development of both character and narrative tension, the impact of this is especially noticeable when viewed on a large screen.
Non-diegetic music is used as a signifier of the class and regional location of the participants; this is especially noticeable when we go from the harmonica music which accompanies Angela's vignette to the string arrangement that we hear throughout the section on Nupur.
The film makes use of recurring motifs:
- Empty streets are used to introduce us to the different locations
- The 'Congratulations' sign from each school is used to 'close' each vignette, it also provides further indications of the participants background (especially evident when words are spelled incorrectly)
- Use of sepia tones gives the film a nostalgic quality
- Literal imagery (Bumble Bee) is used to represent the innocence of the participants.
