Let's talk about June 17, 1994.

I don't remember watching the O.J. Simpson chase on television, nor do I remember where I was at the time. Most Millennials probably don't. Childhood memories from that era tend to blend together. I was nine years old at the time, not even a month removed from the Third Grade. To me, O.J. Simpson was that doofus I saw in the Naked Gun movies, not a Heisman Trophy winner or Pro Football Hall of Famer. Put another way, Justin Bieber was only three months old.

The chase itself, though, is an instantly identifiable image. I'd be willing to bet that a Ford Bronco ranks only below a Delorean as pop culture's most identifiable real-life automobile. The chase is shorthand for an era, an entire murder investigation, a media circus.

What's remarkable, however, is just how much else happened in the sports world that day, and that confluence of events provides the story, as it were, for June 17, 1994, one of ESPN's lauded "30 for 30" series of documentaries. On one coast, Arnold Palmer played his last round at the U.S. Open. New York City held a victory parade for the Stanley Cup champion New York Rangers that morning; that night the Knicks would host the Houston Rockets at Madison Square Garden for Game 5 of the NBA Finals. Moving west, the World Cup opened in Chicago and Ken Griffey Jr hit his MLB-leading 30th home run of the season at Kansas City. Finally, in California, the day-long ordeal in which O.J. Simpson, accused of two murders, failed to turn himself into the police and led them on a low speed chase that ended at his house. Truly, it's remarkable just how much can happen in one day.

Each of these events was captured live for posterity, and that news footage forms the entirety of June 17, 1994. There are no interviews, no talking heads, and no narration, making the film a rarity. It's not a cinéma vérité documentary like Salesman, a concert film like Stop Making Sense, or an experimental movie like Koyaanisqatsi. To my knowledge, only The Atomic Cafe compares. I don't know how many hours of footage director Brett Morgan had to sift through (obvious preference for ESPN footage likely simplified the ordeal) but if anything else, the film is a masterpiece of editing.

The format provides the film's few weaknesses; needless flourishes such as static interference and showy intertitles are added to spice things up, and the score is occasionally obtrusive. June 17, 1994 is otherwise flawless.

Theatrical docs from last year such as Catfish and Exit Through the Gift Shop played with the viewer's trust in reality, asking the audience to question what is real. June 17, 1994 reminds the viewer of what was real and has since been distorted. At the time of the chase, O.J. was still widely seen as innocent. Crowds swarmed overpasses and even the freeway itself to support him (one of the best moments in the film is when a shot of a cheering crowd turns out not to be footage of the Rangers' victory parade, but footage from Los Angeles - or was it the other way around?). Perhaps some of them simply wanted a chance to get a part of the action. How many of them knew that O.J. was being talked out of a suicide attempt at the time? The car chase was not just a media spectacle later parodied with Kramer on Seinfeld, a man's life was actually at stake. It's enough to pity the man. There is a genuine sense of remorse for what he did - or despair at the confusion he got swept up in through no fault of his own. To hear O.J.'s voice in the Bronco is to marvel that somehow he would later write If I Did It.

But then again, there's a lot we can't predict. Ken Griffey Jr wouldn't be able to break any hypothetical home run records; the MLB season ended prematurely due to the players' strike. The Knicks wouldn't win the NBA Finals, nor any in the years since.

It's a funny thing to see a time capsule of a year that you actually lived through. Keith Olbermann has a mustache! Robert was the most famous Kardashian! Of course, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The media remains vacuous and a slave to the 24-hour news cycle. The wisdom of crowds continues to not exist.

Iconography happens at the expense of context. We see an image and forget what happened in the preceding hours, weeks, even years. June 17, 1994 isn't just a dissection of an unusually eventful day, an examination of the low point of a former star athelete, nor a study of the media. It's a restoration of context. It's the best documentary of 2010.