There’s the general idea in cinema that a director learns something with each new film, with his or her new work hopefully being more accomplished than the last. Frederick Wiseman, while still putting out great work, arrived on the scene fully formed with classics such as the controversial Titicut Follies and High School. At the age of 85, he returns this year with a new documentary, In Jackson Heights, which we named one of the best of Venice Film Festival.

We said in our review, “How amazing it is that a human being one century from now can fire up their wind-powered neuro-image-emitter, put on Frederick Wiseman’s In Jackson Heights, and really get a grasp of what it felt like for these people to live? The great documentarian’s latest film — screening out-of-competition this week at the Venice Film Festival — is neither a snapshot nor a love letter of some static environment,...