Ren Faire

Ren Faire, HBO’s perceptive and surprisingly thrilling three-part portrait of the Texas Renaissance Festival as it approaches its 50th anniversary, is not that kind of story [offbeat, warmhearted nonfiction films about nerdy subcultures]. It’s Succession, but with corsets and chainmail.

If Netflix’s “Tiger King” made your jaw drop, get ready for it to fall to the ground while watching Lance Oppenheim’s wild three-part HBO series. It addictively covers the house-of-cards succession plans being hashed out for the Texas Renaissance Festival. Oppenheim melds documentary vérité for a fascinating depiction of 86-year-old King George’s (George Coulam) pursuit to pick a “suitable” successor.

With characters as richly entertaining as King George and his minions, Oppenheim needed to do little to make “Ren Faire” compelling. But, even as a young filmmaker, Oppenheim already has a strong set of visual and narrative signatures which he deploys to amplify his subject matter, rendering his stories much more like dramatic films than conventional documentaries.

“Ren Faire” does a lose a little steam in its final third, as the characters — now including a third contender, Darla Smith, appointed co-manager with Jeff — continue to go ‘round in circles. You may share their frustration. But as time spent in a different sort of place — different even from the one the characters imagine inhabiting — it’s a quite rewarding, even refreshing, not-overlong watch. And the ending is, in its way, happy.

It’s a study in excess that I don’t necessarily recommend watching as a three-hour binge, but one that I absolutely recommend watching. Ren Faire has real breakout potential, with its juicy, borderline unbelievable story, its cast of larger-than-life character featured in those larger-than-life close-ups and its absolute cacophony of quirkiness.

Director Oppenheim paints vivid portraits of these individuals and their intertwined psychodramas, and he embellishes his action by mixing verité material with scenes in which they read scripted expository lines or speak to imaginary figures.

Director Lance Oppenheim (whose credits include the recent Hulu documentary “Spermworld”) takes a stylized approach, giving the documentary an untrustworthy and manipulated feel that suggests a number of moments were staged. But it also seems likely that Coulam is too peculiar and stubborn — too lacking in self-awareness — to be anyone other than who he is, whether a camera is there or not.

This is not a true documentary so much as a docu-drama in which many shots are staged or re-enacted. It's based upon the true story of the Texas Renaissance Festival and an internal struggle to control it as its nutty founder contemplates retirement.

The storyline was overall compelling and what really made me hold on to the show was just seeing how much crazier George could get as each episode developed. The videography is visually striking and the soundtrack compelling, but I disliked how much of the documentary felt like it was staged bits that were included for filler. I think a good, incisive documentary would interview a lot more of the day-to-day hands in the park to get a grittier perspective of the faire, but it really skirts around some of the deeper details, such as reasons the various deals to buy the park keep falling through. Ultimately it serves as a nice introduction to the TRF but I feel like it is barely scratching the surface of the honest truth of the park.