Frederick Wiseman understood the subtle architecture of humanity

We meet many people in Frederick Wiseman’s films. The crass American diner sticking his face into a plate of haute cuisine and taking a big whiff in Menus-Plaisirs, Les Troisgros. The migrant worker telling a harrowing story about her daughter’s journey on foot to America in In Jackson Heights. The Black security guard slowly losing his patience with the racist ranting of an elderly white man in Welfare. The former schoolteacher, naked and shivering, shoved into a bare cell in Titicut Follies.