The Art of the Possible
1978 · 57m · Canada
Directed by Peter Raymont
Genres: biography, documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Ontario Premier Bill Davis and cabinet navigate committees, budgets, and media inside a long-ruling political machine. Decision making unfolds behind closed doors.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1978 fly-on-the-wall doc about *provincial politics* shouldn't work, but Raymont somehow makes backroom committee logistics feel genuinely tense—it's the anti-thriller thriller, which is either brilliant or a snoozefest depending on your tolerance for subversion through bureaucracy.
Raymont's observational restraint and formal commitment to letting process unfold without manipulation places this squarely in the lineage of direct cinema; the editing discipline needed to sustain narrative tension across closed-door meetings without voice-over or editorializing marks a decisive technical rigor.
The entire film hinges on Raymont's decision to trust *silence and the micro-expressions of power*—no narrator, no explanatory intercuts—and that singular choice elevates what could've been dry archival footage into something genuinely revelatory about how consensus breaks down in real time.