When it comes to baffling documentaries, Bama Rush might take the cake. Given the opportunity to really dig into the phenomenon of Rush at the University of Alabama (made famous by TikTok in recent years), the documentary serves to highlight the director’s personal battle with alopecia instead. Whether that stemmed from the lack of interview subjects and people refusing to talk with her about “The Machine” (the shady fraternity and sorority organization), rushing, and the rest of Greek life at the university, it was still a weird choice of focus.
Especially given a number of issues raised in the documentary itself—like racism at the school, the fraternities and sororities there, and in the city itself. Bama Rush focuses on a series of girls who, at one point, discuss in the film how often they’ve been roofied and their experiences with sexual assault, before cutting to things that barely comment on that part of the school’s nature. Don’t worry, though, we had plenty of conversations about director Rachel Fleit’s alopecia.
Truly, I do think that the majority of her story was added because of the university and the Greek life there refusing to play a role in the documentary. Instead of scrapping it, Fleit put out the footage she got but then added in her own personal story, which is where it gets very messy. In the film, she had the ability to talk with journalist and University of Alabama alumnus John Archibald about the school, the idea of the Machine, and more. Instead, she focused on her four subjects who were going to “rush,” and when two dropped out and one stopped filming with Fleit out of fear, she was left with Isabelle Eacrett, a student from California who wanted to rush because of what she saw on TikTok.
Overall, the documentary was disappointing. What’s not disappointing are the Letterboxd reviews.
Letterboxd is the place to be
Often, writing up your Letterboxd review is the first thing someone does after seeing a movie. You can see the phones light up, the green stars varying from person to person, and the tags flying as each thinks of the best thing to write. Whether you joke around or you write a sincere review, Letterboxd is meant to track your movies while also giving users an idea of the movie they’re about to jump into.
For Bama Rush, every single review is someone wondering why alopecia is the star of the movie.
A common point was that if Fleit wanted to make a documentary about alopecia she probably should have just done that—because all she did was use a very rich setting for a documentary to explore none of the toxicity surrounding Bama Rush as a concept. For all the panic this film caused, the result was information we could just look up online mixed with Fleit’s personal journey with accepting her alopecia.
This isn’t a knock at the pain that Fleit has dealt with, but it really is a disservice to documentary filmmaking to have a subject like the racism, sexism, and power of the University of Alabama and focus it on how your battle with alopecia sort of gave you feelings like rushing a sorority. (How? I don’t get it. But a wild choice.)
So if you haven’t yet taken a look at the Letterboxd reviews for Bama Rush, treat yourself to the funniest collection of low-ranking reviews around.
(featured image: Max)
