Starting at Zero
About two-thirds of the way through Starting at Zero, Sharnelia Cook begins to tell her story, and she’s like a cool breeze on a stifling day. Cook went to a state-supported pre-school — the film’s subject — and talks about how it helped prepare her for a successful life. We don’t see Cook in the context of her life — at school, at work, with friends or family, nope, nope, nope — but at least she’s telling a personal story in an engaging way.
The rest of Starting at Zero is styled like a pharmaceutical commercial, crossed with a PowerPoint presentation. It’s a slick slice of propaganda, courtesy of the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation, which focuses on early childhood education and clearly needs new leadership in its media department.
The film is mostly a string of repetitive sound bites from politicians (from both parties), administrators, academics, nonprofit fundraisers, and a few actual educators, all making the case for free pre-K. The intention is worthy, the cause admirable, but the arguments are endless truisms and generalities, peppered with references to what “studies show” — studies that are never explained in detail. There’s one unattributed pie chart, but no attempt to make a scientific case with hard facts. There are lots of title cards to describe the film’s outline: bullet points (we are now starting section three of five…), sub bullet points, sub-sub bullet points, and at one point — I kid you not — sub-sub-sub bullet points.
An actual educator who watched Starting at Zero with me noted that he advises his colleagues on PowerPoint presentations often, and the first rule is “no outlines.” As soon as you show an audience how many topics are left to cover, they fixate on just ticking them off (“still four to go!”) and tune out the content. Point taken.
For visuals, the film relies on endless footage of well-groomed, squeaky clean, adorably dressed tykes in pre-school classrooms and playgrounds, interacting with equally scrubbed (and all female) teachers. The kids and adults are a racially diverse lot and sweet as candy, but none is ever identified or personalized, nor are the locations ever mentioned. This half hour or more of images spread out over the film’s one-hour length would make great stock footage; it has nothing to do with documentary filmmaking.
The director and co-producer is Willa Kammerer, whose website identifies her as “firestarter, storyteller” and opens with the credo, “I believe in the power of storytelling to foster deeper understanding, and make the world a better place.” Great! But there’s almost zero storytelling in Starting at Zero. Save for Cook and a couple parents seen briefly, human narrative is here replaced by earnest posturing and dry assertions.
Starting at Zero is the kind of slick, soulless media presentation you expect at an educators’ conference or political convention. It might provide cover for politicians who want to vote to spend the vast sums necessary to support universal pre-K — the film hedges on budgetary impact, referring to public-private partnerships but not delving into the realities of state spending decisions — but for the average viewer it will be neither informative nor absorbing.
Is it remarkable that Alabama has a successful pre-K program (the subject of about half the film’s length)? Yes. Do we learn how it’s funded? Do we meet the kids, the parents, the teachers? Not really. A few pre-K teachers were pulled aside for interviews at a state conference, and they seems a great bunch. If “storyteller” Kammerer had followed any of them home or to their schools, she might have produced something worth watching.
I wish success to Starting at Zero. May it go forth and sway votes in state legislatures across the country. May its impact on young children be as great as it aspires to be. You go on and make the world a better place, Ms. Kammerer. But I think you’ll find actual storytelling makes for a better firestarter than this chilly infomercial.
Grade: D. Not rated, but suitable to bore people of all ages. Available beginning Aug. 14 via the Fine Arts Theatre’s Virtual Cinema streaming program.
(Photo: Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation)
