Michael Phelps may be the fastest man ever to plunge into a pool, but his skills as a narrator are decidedly underwater.
No small number of things goes into making a documentary: compelling images, whether moving or still (Ken Burns has made a career out of the latter); a well-written script with something to say about the visuals and a broader point to be made; and perhaps most importantly, someone to voice the script who will bring it alive.
I’ve grown so used to good narration that it’s something of a shock when the voice of a documentary falls flat. Many capable actors are available, and there’s little use for the old Troy McClure style.
The other evening, I was trolling the streaming services for something new and spotted a documentary that looked promising — The Weight of Gold, Phelps’s documentary on the psychological strain of being an Olympian. It could be an engaging topic. How far can people push themselves in a monomaniacal quest to do something better than anyone else in the world? Just as they might suffer a knee or hamstring blowout, do they risk mental burnout? Are the psychological effects of competition crippling over the long haul in the same way that too many triple axels can make ice skaters arthritic in their 30s? What kind of cruel endeavor is it to gather the best pole vaulters in the world simply to declare all but one of them losers?
It should be riveting stuff. But I barely made it through five minutes. It was Phelps. The swimmer’s voice-over is a belly flop.
Phelps has no ear for language. He’s even worse than Kevin Costner. The bemedaled Olympian sounds as if he’s running his finger under the words as he reads.
The voice of a documentary can tell the viewer volumes. Hear the rich, melodic baritone of Morgan Freeman, and you know many things. For starters, you know you’re watching a first-rate production. Freeman’s contribution is guaranteed to be engaging, and his presence tells you the producers had the resources to enlist the best talent available.
Or a voice can be a sort of branding, an aural cue as distinctive as NBC’s G-E-C chimes. Take the documentary series Frontline. From episode to episode, different producers, directors, and writers are involved. But each program is narrated by the same voice talent, Will Lyman. Hear his stern tones of gruff disapproval, and you know that Frontline is on (and that it’s time to change the channel). For decades, Britain’s Pathe’s newsreel company could be instantly recognized by the clipped sing-song of presenter Cyril Frederick Danvers-Walker.
The most successful narrators have great voices, yes, but it is intelligence, not vocal resonance, that distinguishes the greats. David McCollough, for example, is a sort of unicorn. How could it be that such a fine storytelling historian should have such a fine storyteller’s voice? It may be an accident that McCollough enjoys an elegantly gritty basso, but it’s no accident that McCullough’s voice is owned by a thinker. He’s not just saying something. He has something to say.
My admiration for McCullough notwithstanding, he’s not my favorite narrator. That plum goes to the great Shakespearean actor Laurence Olivier. He didn’t do much narration work — his explosive style was better suited to Lear on the heath railing against the storm: “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout.” But Olivier undertook one epic narration, telling the story of World War II in the 26-part documentary The World at War. He didn’t bellow or roar — there was violence enough in the archival footage. The performance is all restraint, with the subtlest gestures made in tone and cadence.
The documentary had been intended to rest on the film footage, letting the visuals speak for themselves, bolstered by as minimal a narration as possible.
The World at War is the standard by which all documentary narrations must be judged. Phelps can take comfort that Olivier was no threat in the 200-meter butterfly.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
