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RR

Name: RR
Director: James Benning
Released: 2007
Duration: 115 min

Representation Score

0.6/10

Minimal

2007

Director

James Benning

Runtime

115 minutes

Average Rating

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New Showbiz Analysis

RR is a documentary that emphasizes formalist exploration through long, static shots of locomotives and landscapes. It serves as a cinematic essay on industrial movement and the American environment. Without human characters, dialogue, or interpersonal conflict, the film operates outside traditional identity-based representation. Instead, it offers a critique of systemic structures, encouraging viewers to see the landscape as a site of historical and economic tension rather than just scenery.

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Category Breakdown

Does RR have LGBTQ+ representation?

Minimal

Since the film does not include any human characters, there are no depictions of LGBTQ+ identities or sexual orientations.

How does RR portray gender?

Minimal

The film focuses on landscapes and machinery, so there are no characters to depict traditional gender roles or power dynamics.

How racially and ethnically diverse is RR?

Minimal

The film concentrates on the natural and industrial landscapes of the American West and does not depict specific racial or ethnic groups.

How does RR represent religion and culture?

Fair

By overlaying Eisenhower's speech about coal trains, the film critiques the Western institutions and challenges the nostalgic view of American expansion and consumption.

Does RR include disability representation?

Minimal

Since the film does not have any human characters, there is no representation of physical disabilities or neurodivergent identities.

Present on Screen

Provides a sophisticated critique of American capitalism and industrialism.
Challenges nostalgic views of expansion through the use of historical political speech.
Offers a postmodern deconstruction of traditional progress narratives.

Limited or Absent

Lacks human-centric storytelling and character-driven social discourse.
Does not provide representation of gender, race, or sexual orientation due to its focus on machinery.
Does not engage with identity politics or characters who reflect more than one aspect of diversity.

Official Synopsis

Looping, chugging and barreling by, the trains in Benning's latest monumental film map a stunning topography and a history of American development. RR comes three decades after Benning and Bette Gordon made The United States of America (1975), a cinematic journey along the country’s interstates that is keenly aware “of superhighways and railroad tracks as American public symbols.” A political essay responding to the economic histories of trains as instruments in a culture of hyper-consumption, RR articulates its concern most explicitly when Eisenhower's military-industrial complex speech is heard as a mile long coal train passes through eastern Wyoming. Benning spent two and a half years collecting two hundred and sixteen shots of trains, forty-three of which appear in RR. The locomotives' varying colors, speeds, vectors, and reverberations are charged with visual thrills, romance and a nostalgia heightened by Benning's declaration that this will be his last work in 16mm film.

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