tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55766328015048161492024-02-16T20:25:52.737+13:00Musings without a good name for my blogMatthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.comBlogger145125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-47504107194875237122023-03-12T15:30:00.009+13:002023-03-15T23:55:23.787+13:001441 minutes<p>So here's the thing, </p><p>About seven years ago, filmmaking duo the Daniels released their first film, <a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2017/06/victory-redux.html#:~:text=in%20that%20context.-,Swiss%20Army%20Man,-Well%20I%20certainly" target="_blank"><i>Swiss Army Man</i></a>. And there was a lot that I really liked in the film - it was a fascinating exploration of friendship, loneliness, love, and regret, anchored by a fantastic central performance by Daniel Radcliffe. But there was a lot in the film that I genuinely hated - after all, Daniel Radcliffe was playing a corpse that farts all the time and has an erection that works as a compass. The almost non-stop juvenile fascination with toilet humour made the film feel as though it was made by young teenagers rather than two adult men. So while there was a lot of potential in that film, if you had told me that the second film from that duo would be frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar, I think my brain might have broken at that idea.</p><p><i>[Thoughts on </i>Everything Everywhere All At Once<i>, and all nine other Best Picture nominees -</i> The Fabelmans<i>, </i>The Banshees of Inisherin<i>, </i>Top Gun: Maverick<i>, </i>Avatar: The Way of Water<i>, </i>Elvis<i>, </i>Triangle of Sadness<i>, </i>Tár<i>, </i>Women Talking<i>, and </i>All Quiet on the Western Front<i> - after the jump]</i></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJDsx3vHIaAqKj4LyJnPR7rbvtPtuNt9sQOagdNikJshIgS6Vb8VzV8Ic6-0awM5qjH7BkbhQ4m7iTi2M1dsb-hwI6XFwmSX7_PzCNQuF_bcrnro0ojl8SKgHES2CWaPLVkg8fxa6Me2Wfj8VDPGPxl6oJbhT7wWiA1fWydmL0NgO2sHC1BKJBNFRz6A/s755/everything_everywhere_all_at_once.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJDsx3vHIaAqKj4LyJnPR7rbvtPtuNt9sQOagdNikJshIgS6Vb8VzV8Ic6-0awM5qjH7BkbhQ4m7iTi2M1dsb-hwI6XFwmSX7_PzCNQuF_bcrnro0ojl8SKgHES2CWaPLVkg8fxa6Me2Wfj8VDPGPxl6oJbhT7wWiA1fWydmL0NgO2sHC1BKJBNFRz6A/w270-h400/everything_everywhere_all_at_once.jpg" width="270" /></a>When I saw <i><b>Everything Everywhere All At Once</b></i> for the first time, at an advance preview a good three weeks before it came out, I had no expectations. I had seen the trailer and thought it looked interesting, but I definitely was not expecting to see one of the best films of the year. Ultimately I walked out of that screening frustrated because I wanted to tell people to see the film, but at the same time it was going to be a full three weeks before anyone else could see it. Yet in my excitement and enthusiasm for just how brilliant the film was, I never would have expected it to be the frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar. After all, there's no way a film this bonkers, this wild, this unrestrained would ever even get a look in.</p><p>The film stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn, a Chinese immigrant running a failing laundromat with her husband Waymond (the triumphant return of 80s child star Ke Huy Quan) who is thinking about seeking a divorce. Their daughter Joy is a lesbian, whose sexuality Evelyn is trying to hide from her elderly father. One day, during a meeting with the IRS about their tax audit, Waymond is briefly taken over by a version of Waymond from a parallel universe, who tells Evelyn that there is a great evil coming to destroy the multiverse but that he can teach her how to tap into the infinite skills of the infinite number of Evelyns that exist across the infinite multiverse - Evelyns whose lives have gone in wildly different directions because they made different choices. And when they come under attack from the great evil, which turns out to have a very personal connection to her, Evelyn has to learn to use the skills of the infinite Evelyns to fight to save all of existence.</p><p>So it's an over-the-top multiverse-hopping science-fiction martial-arts family-drama with an absurdist comedic bent. And yet despite everything that's going on, the film never loses track of the real human emotional core that lies at the centre of the story. We've seen a lot of multiverse stories lately, particularly thanks to the major comic book movie franchises, but this is really the only film that feels like it's using the concept of a multiverse as a way of exploring richer thematic concepts about the human experience. We all live with the pain and uncertainty of the paths not taken - what would my life be like if I had asked that person out? if I had broken up with my partner? if I had taken that job? if I had avoided that accident? In this film, Evelyn has made all the wrong choices - she is the greatest failure of every Evelyn throughout the multiverse - and yet despite that, even now she has the potential to achieve incredible things. At the same time, the potential created by the concept of “the paths not taken” can be overwhelming, raising uncertainty about the point of existence - that's the space that the film’s antagonist falls into, as they seek to destroy all of life in every parallel universe out of a sense of overwhelming nihilism, where their understanding of their miniscule place even just within their universe, let alone the multiverse, leaves them feeling that there is no purpose to existence. And maybe there is nothing original about a film that ultimately ends with the message that existence is its own purpose, that love and connection and acceptance are in and of themselves a reason for being here, but the way this film explores these ideas is just so overpowering and invigorating that it becomes a wonder to experience.</p><p>Remembering my dislike for the juvenile humour of <i>Swiss Army Man</i>, I was wary when I realised the Daniels had also made this film. And this film still has moments where the Daniels reveal their love of the bawdiest humour - there is a moment where someone is beaten to death with a giant rubber penis just flopping around everywhere, or another moment where two men fight to beat the other to ram a massive butt plug up their arse. (Again, this is a film the Academy nominated for Best Picture! It's the frontrunner!) But whereas in that earlier film it seems like that was the only joke they knew how to make, here these are just small moments sprinkled into the tapestry of a film trying to portray something of the entirety of all experience. It also helps that the Daniels have realised that they can be funny when they're not relying on toilet humour as a crutch, and they display real talent for finding humour and pathos in equal measure in almost unimaginable situations - after all, one of the funniest and most moving scenes in the film is a conversation between two rocks that can't speak, while another now iconic scene involving a universe where humans have unusual appendages is initially hilarious but becomes a weirdly emotional moment.</p><p>The film is also extremely passionate about cinema, and I love how often the film would just drop in a reference to a new film genre, sometimes just for a split second, other times for an extended sequence. The film’s love for martial arts films is obvious, especially the films of Jackie Chan (it comes as no surprise that the film was originally written for Chan, before the lead role was gender-flipped for Yeoh). There is an extended riff on Pixar films, specifically the film <i>Ratatouille</i>, even featuring Randy Newman singing a song. Then there are the almost uncountable scenes where we glimpse the vast array of alternate universes, each drawing clear inspiration from one film or film style or another - one moment we're in a wuxia film; the next we're in an absurd recreation of <i>2001</i>. But to me as a film fan, the biggest delight came in the recurring scenes taking place in the universe where Evelyn left Waymond in their youth and became a major movie star. As Evelyn and Waymond are reunited decades after their separation, I was excited to realise that they were doing Wong Kar Wai, specifically his masterwork <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekNG7cW-xXE" target="_blank">In the Mood for Love</a></i>. That film's themes of regret and longing are perfectly paired for these people who have outwardly achieved incredible success and yet are haunted by a sense of pain and emptiness.</p><p>But to be clear, the film is not simply relying on film references as a cheat, as a way of eliciting easy audience connection. In <i>Swiss Army Man</i>, the Daniels had the characters bond over a discussion about <i>Jurassic Park</i> - because in our world, movies and television are the common cultural stories that give us a framework through which we process our existence. Similarly here, with a story that pulls through us through so many worlds, cinema not only becomes our way for us to quickly identify where we are in the multiverse, but it also becomes a way that Evelyn can connect to and process her experiences.</p><p>Now, is the film too long? Absolutely - it's just shy of 2 hours 20 minutes, and I really was feeling those last 20 minutes - there is so much in the film that you start feeling a sense of overload. But at the same time, the film promises to be about everything and everywhere, and it's simply not possible in a world of linear time to cover those all at once. And there is such ambition and inventiveness and brilliance in the film that I genuinely can't imagine what you could cut from the film without damaging the whole. And I've seen too many films that are too long without giving me anything to engage with, so I will forgive this film for giving me so much that it just exhausted me.</p><p>At this time, it's looking inevitable that the film will win the Best Picture Oscar. Not only does it have the highest number of nominations this year (always a promising sign) but in the past few weeks the film took the main award at all four major guilds (Producers Guild, Directors Guild, Screen Actors Guild, and Writers Guild) - and the four previous films to achieve this all won the big award. And yet, despite this promising indication, I simply can't let myself believe that this film could ever win Best Picture. How does an Academy that only last year gave the prize to <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2022/03/1392-minutes.html#:~:text=a%20win%20by-,CODA,-%2D%20which%20was%20a" target="_blank">CODA</a></i>, a film as conventional and middlebrow as you can imagine, turn around and one year later award something is chaotic and inventive and new as this film? I hope they do, but right now it just doesn't seem possible.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNb-b8A547mVPhBIow95Oyqt1N4rTmkEn6VqvW3_z8I2NQR_h3on2ASaszOl_twVAwizItFNGlJZLtch5ZG1fZ9hrjYs9YqDHkSciYe3W94gpMchEcZf7bA8KATplj5ug80ct2RlObeEIBvfAyWkAOfqbHfX2UjD16nmomDvaYxNe-v491XTmvGgY1lQ/s755/fabelmans.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="477" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNb-b8A547mVPhBIow95Oyqt1N4rTmkEn6VqvW3_z8I2NQR_h3on2ASaszOl_twVAwizItFNGlJZLtch5ZG1fZ9hrjYs9YqDHkSciYe3W94gpMchEcZf7bA8KATplj5ug80ct2RlObeEIBvfAyWkAOfqbHfX2UjD16nmomDvaYxNe-v491XTmvGgY1lQ/w253-h400/fabelmans.jpg" width="253" /></a>A film that would seem to be a more normal winner would be something like <i><b>The Fabelmans</b></i>. When it was announced that Steven Spielberg's next film would be a semi-autobiographical film based on his own youth, we all knew a big part of the film would be about his parents’ divorce, which was an absolutely foundational event for the young Spielberg and has already made its way into his work in films like <i>ET</i>. And sure enough it is. The film follows Sammy Fabelman, a young boy who adores his pianist mother and is somewhat distanced from his engineer father. As he grows, he discovers a passion for filmmaking, mounting elaborate productions with the local kids, all while becoming the victim of anti-Semitic bullying. Meanwhile, his mother starts to form an intense emotional bond with her husband's best friend and work colleague.</p><p>I did find myself pondering just how much of this film is truly fictionalised and how much is just Spielberg showing us what happened but giving the main character different name. After all, the opening sequence has the young Fabelman terrified by the train crash in <i>The Greatest Show on Earth</i>, trying to recreate the crash with his train set, before ultimately trying to capture a crash of his model trains on film as a way of processing his feelings - that's an exact recreation of <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/steven-spielbergs-train-keeps-rollin-77458/" target="_blank">a story he's told many times</a>. Similarly the final scene of the film (in which he has the opportunity to meet the greatest film director ever - played by another great director - and is given some important advice) is recreated in every detail from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfiCdpmuFUE" target="_blank">the story as often told by Spielberg</a> - down to the lipstick kisses and the almost incongruous involvement by someone in the production of Hogan's Heroes. The actors all look <a href="https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/fabelmans/" target="_blank">like the real people</a> they are portraying, albeit better looking Hollywood versions. They recreated his childhood home from the blueprints. There's a fantastic sequence that essentially recreates the making of one of Spielberg's teenage films, a war epic called <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI3431fetiM" target="_blank">Escape to Nowhere</a></i>. And the scenes of the young filmmaker are absolutely fascinating, as you get a glimpse into how his mind works to achieve seemingly impossible effects for no budget - poking holes in the film to achieve a gunshot effect, or making mini-seesaws to propel clouds of dirt into the air to create grenade explosions.</p><p>The issue I have with the film is that, despite supposedly being a fictionalised story, the movie almost needed more fictionalisation. He may have brought in the talents of Tony Kushner to write the script and give some structure to the work, but Spielberg is simply too close to the story to be able to make his own life work as a movie - there are simply too many scenes that feel like distractions but that were included simply because "the time my mother brought home a monkey" was a particularly memorable moment for the young Spielberg, rather than being a scene that actually has a place in the film. And so at times the film almost seemed unsure of its direction, because there were all these constant distractions and diversions that made it seem as though the film wasn’t entirely certain what it was about. For the most part, I think the film is about a person discovering his passion for telling stories through cinema - that's certainly where the film starts and ends. But there are long stretches of the film where that seems almost forgotten, in favour of other subplots. There are points where I started to wonder if the film was actually supposed to be about his parents’ divorce, but that ultimately resolves itself much too early to be the focus of the film. Similarly, there's the long stretch where we explore his experiences being bullied in high school or being with his first girlfriend, which left me wondering where this film was even going. Now, it's not that these subplots are completely separated from the story of Sammy's love of movies - in fact both of these plots feature fantastic and pivotal scenes illustrating the power of cinema. In one case, Sammy realises his home movies have inadvertently captured evidence of his mother's emotional affair; brief moments that might have passed unnoticed but that are inescapable when examined repeatedly. In the other case, Sammy is able to use his cinematic talents when making a film of a school day at the beach to cause the bullies to see themselves through someone else's eyes. These are both wonderful moments that really do capture something of the power of cinema, the way they can capture and frame reality or construct a new reality, and how this art form played a vital role in the young Spielberg's life. But ultimately these are different subplots that feel like they have been crammed together with insufficient efforts to shape a cohesive whole.</p><p>This is not to say that the film is not entertaining. We all know that Spielberg is a master filmmaker, and here, making a film that he's talked about making for decades, it almost feels as though he's spent so long making the movie in his mind that it almost emerged fully-formed. And while he's often criticised as a director who relies too much on emotional manipulation, it feels as though the emotional connection here is perfectly calibrated to the content of the film - moving without trying too hard to elicit the tears. The main thing is that it doesn't feel self-indulgent - I do think that you could watch this film not knowing how closely it connects to Spielberg's own life and be thoroughly entertained. But when you know that backstory, it is fascinating to witness these formative experiences that led to the creation of one of our great cinematic legends. And you can see how important it was to him to have the ability to escape into filmmaking - in one of my favourite moments, having just received particularly upsetting news, Sammy escapes to his room, where he just sits with the clack-clack-clack of the film camera running to provide him with the comfort he needs.</p><p><i>The Fabelmans</i> is a sweet and tender little movie, a reflection on a life long gone, lovingly looking back with sadness. I may have had issues with the film's unclear focus, but regardless the film is a treasure to be cherished.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0oUSI2pIz6h_TH2ZLOKgImcHQd-dplUqZq6ulivxW1JEldX9WmuMfKBKjiKreZWmMs44ZtSFf26yeB55jJOOnQEVgwW87L0fgAbAqlowxhjTig4WFhjMsQRP7SQyI-oUrSOjvEBhNXXD7fnxSF100KOysBdxcUkKcpRjd790STOHHdAkzI54hB3O4SQ/s755/banshees_of_inisherin.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0oUSI2pIz6h_TH2ZLOKgImcHQd-dplUqZq6ulivxW1JEldX9WmuMfKBKjiKreZWmMs44ZtSFf26yeB55jJOOnQEVgwW87L0fgAbAqlowxhjTig4WFhjMsQRP7SQyI-oUrSOjvEBhNXXD7fnxSF100KOysBdxcUkKcpRjd790STOHHdAkzI54hB3O4SQ/w270-h400/banshees_of_inisherin.jpg" width="270" /></a>One of the most exciting films to be nominated this year is <i><b>The Banshees of Inisherin</b></i>, which reunites Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson with their <i>In Bruges</i> director Martin McDonagh. Farrell stars as Pádraic, a resident on the small Irish Island of Inisherin. Every day, he meets up with his best friend Colm (played by Gleeson) to go to the pub and drink and talk for a few hours. But one day Colm announces he just doesn't want to be friends with Pádraic anymore; he's decided he doesn't like Pádraic because the man is boring, and he just wants to have nothing to do with him. Pádraic can't cope with the idea, and thinks he can just force Colm to accept him as a friend, which leads Colm to take increasingly extreme measures to demonstrate just how serious he is about ending their friendship.</p><p>So I think I was rather lucky when I went to see <i>Banshees</i>. It was an advance screening a number of weeks before the film had its full release, and while I was anticipating the film due to the highly positive response from overseas, I hadn't had a chance to see any of the promotional material for the film. I was therefore horrified when I later saw the <a href="https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/au_homepage_thebanshessofinisherin_poster_r_8d2ecfc1.jpeg" target="_blank">poster</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzAWiOu_yPo" target="_blank">trailer</a> that proclaimed the film was "Shudderingly funny" and that made the film look like a hilarious black comedy. The film is certainly funny - Mark Kermode has a "six laugh test" for comedies, and I certainly laughed out loud six times in the film - but never in a million years would I describe it as a comedy. It's a sad, melancholy drama that happens to have the occasional moment of humour to lighten what could otherwise be a tough movie to watch.</p><p>Looking at a lot of the commentary around this film, it is astonishing how much thematic richness people are able to draw from the film. It almost seems as though every commentator saw a completely different film with completely different thematic concerns from each other. To me, I found the film most intriguing as an exploration about the relationship between men and our inability and reluctance to express and deal with our feelings. Colm is clearly trying to deal with serious depression, or more - at one point the priest even asks how he's coping with the "despair". He's basically going through an existential crisis, pained at the knowledge that when his time comes to pass away, he will be leaving no mark on the world. It's that knowledge that drives him to reject Pádraic in order to spend his time writing music that will live on after him. But even though that's his claimed justification, it's very clear that he is dealing with much more than just wanting time to compose his music - after all, as the film progresses, his actions prove actively obstructive to his ability to create the music that he sees as his legacy. But that's because that's not really the solution to the depression he's dealing with; his musical outlet is just the way he justifies his actions to himself and that allow him to completely ignore the pain that he's not dealing with. Perhaps if he could find the words to say that he was suffering when faced with the futility of existence, then perhaps it might have been possible for him to find some true resolution. But instead, he just carries on hurting those around him, and in turn being hurt.</p><p>But the other thing I found fascinating about the film was the turn that Pádraic takes. There's this one thing that is repeatedly stated about Pádraic - he's nice, he's so nice, he's dull but he is nice. We first see him walking down the path, a beatific smile on his face, the nicest man in all of Ireland. It's almost a surprise when, later in the film, someone actually tells Pádraic that he's not nice. But that's the point - by that point in the film, we've seen some of the direction of travel he’s on, we've seen Pádraic do some bad things, with more terrible things coming, and you realise that it's true that Pádraic is not nice. I think the film is making the point that niceness is not something to be aspired to - it's not a real characteristic of a person. It's easy to be nice when everything is going well, when you're liked by everyone, and you can just sit back and let things stay as they are. The challenge comes when things don't work out in your favour, and you can't rely on niceness to avoid dealing with the situation. Niceness isn't something you just are, but what you do, and it's not niceness that you should aspire to, but goodness. And so much of the devastation of this film comes because "nice" Pádraic doesn't know how to respond when people aren't nice back.</p><p>The performances in the film are just an utter delight. Colin Farrell plays Pádraic as someone who is exceptionally sweet but who is nevertheless somewhat dim and oblivious - someone who is driven by a constant need to avoid feeling uncomfortable. You get the sense that Colm has probably been trying to let Pádraic know how he's been feeling for a while, but every time he tries to find a way to bring the subject up, Pádraic starts feeling uncomfortable and redirects the conversation back to whatever he thinks of, even if it's just discussing his little pony’s shite, just to avoid discomfort. Brendan Gleeson as Colm is a fascinating figure to watch - he genuinely feels like someone struggling with an overwhelming burden, and saddened by the fact that he feels it necessary for him to take these actions. Even in those moments where there should be joy – say, gathering together at the pub to play music - there's never any real sense of enjoyment or pleasure. To the contrary, there's a disturbing determination in the character - when he does make his threat to try to force Pádraic to leave him alone, part of the reason why the threat is so convincing is the fact that there is always this tension of potential violence under the surface of the character. Kerry Condon, as Pádraic's sister, felt like a real discovery - I'd never noted her before, but here she really draws the attention. It's a nicely sympathetic performance of someone who is going through very much a similar sense of malaise as Colm - she sees her life slipping away on this island, but she has different options to address that malaise then Colm has. And then there's Barry Keoghan, as the kind-hearted and tragic idiot who has had all of his dreams and hopes beaten out of him until he's barely holding on – it’s a small but memorable role, and he has a beautiful scene with Kerry Condon which might be the best scene of the year.</p><p><i>The Banshees of Inisherin</i> is certainly one of my favourite films of this year, and far and away the best film Martin McDonagh has made. It is a powerful, beautiful, moving film that takes wild and unpredictable turns in direction while never been afraid of shocking the audience. At the same time, it's a rich and deep work that provokes a great deal of self-reflection. I loved this film.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP10Kag1DLB5YTag5lYKEsvXCcTjJ_uhaI42B7NiFfUjxsLkpkBMOShZnlyhH_Yh1uqkJfVvXG4IkqLTSwsTnrqPmM2jVjbvuYQqZ8187KiLjeH-rQS8IcfVC5p-9pNfrzD39ED-JJMBiEPe0bs_Ix3Noeq6SdnflFCsaWGH4E4KOLj4oejnv-WSbYxg/s755/top_gun_maverick.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP10Kag1DLB5YTag5lYKEsvXCcTjJ_uhaI42B7NiFfUjxsLkpkBMOShZnlyhH_Yh1uqkJfVvXG4IkqLTSwsTnrqPmM2jVjbvuYQqZ8187KiLjeH-rQS8IcfVC5p-9pNfrzD39ED-JJMBiEPe0bs_Ix3Noeq6SdnflFCsaWGH4E4KOLj4oejnv-WSbYxg/w270-h400/top_gun_maverick.jpg" width="270" /></a>There have been reasonably successful movies released in the post-Covid world, but still, there was a widespread fear that audiences might never return to cinemas. <b><i>Top Gun: Maverick</i></b> was the film that marked the first real return of audiences to cinema, flocking to see a film that they had to experience on the big screen. Now, I am not a fan of the original <i>Top Gun</i>. I think it's very much a film that you needed to see at the time, back in the 80s, while I only saw it for the first time about 10 years ago. And although that was a cinema screening, which is absolutely the best way to see the film - despite the obvious problems they encountered at the time trying to film these impossibly fast jets with the limited film technology they had available at the time, it's still a thrill in an era of CG action to see obviously real planes involved in a major set piece - outside of the flying sequences the film just doesn't work, with an awkward structure and bad script held together by the charisma of Tom Cruise.</p><p>Which was why I was surprised by just how much I like the legacy sequel <i>Top Gun: Maverick</i>. But I think it's an interesting case where the film is possibly advantaged by the fact that the earlier film doesn't work.</p><p>To explain what I mean, let's take a detour to one of the highest-profile legacy sequels - <i>Star Wars: The Force Awakens</i>. Like most legacy sequels, <i>The Force Awakens</i> works to borrow as much as possible from the original film so that it can echo what we love about that film. But the problem is, the original <i>Star Wars</i> is a well-constructed work, and so the mix and match of elements in the sequel leaves certain pieces out on their own. For instance, the map that BB-8 is carrying is clearly intended to evoke the plans that R2-D2 carried, but whereas Artoo's plans were a vital element to destroying the Death Star and the film's resolution, the map that BB-8 is carrying is almost immediately forgotten about and only ever becomes relevant after the climax of the film, once the core conflict is resolved. It feels as though they felt they needed to hide information in a droid, because that's what happened in the first film, but they simply couldn't make it relevant to the main conflict of the film, so it just becomes an extra piece of the jigsaw that's largely irrelevant.</p><p>Now, in the case of <i>Top Gun</i>, the original film simply isn't that great, but it is filled with a lot of truly iconic moments - the opening shots of the jets taking off and landing on the aircraft carrier, the shirtless beach volleyball game, Tom Cruise riding his motorbike, the significant death scene, the intensity of the climactic battle, "Great Balls of Fire", or the song "Danger Zone". Add to that the concept of a school to train the most elite of fighter pilots, and the somewhat peripheral and unnecessary romance subplot, and you've basically described both the original film and <i>Top Gun: Maverick</i>.</p><p>Except that in this film, it's just done so much better. If something worked well in the original film - you're never going to get a better song than "Danger Zone" - they don't try. But where something really didn't work in the original film, they're able to rework the moment into something that holds together much more - so the climactic battle sequence, which really does come out of nowhere in the original film, instead becomes the focus of the film, the mission that the entire team has been training to prepare for. At other points, they're able to find new spins on iconic moments so that they don't feel solely like retreads - the tragic death of a friend becomes a moment where Maverick loses his sole defender; the macho posturing of the beach volleyball scene becomes a team building exercise game of beach football. Even the romance subpart, which definitely remains the most unnecessary element in the film, is improved by the acting (Kelly McGillis was fine, but Jennifer Connelly is a massive upgrade), and by the quality of the writing, which gives the love interest character much more of a spark, as well as a real sense of long-standing history between the characters that the film does well playing with. And the big thing is that the film knows it's not fooling you, it knows that you know that there is little difference between beach football and beach volleyball, but it doesn't matter because the quality of the film is so high and it knows we are enjoying this experience as a remix of the original.</p><p>The other big consideration about the film is the level of practicality involved in making it. We all know how Tom Cruise has increasingly become an advocate for doing things for real is far is possible - most notably in the <i>Mission: Impossible</i> films, but also in pretty much every other film is made lately. And so when it was announced that he would be making a <i>Top Gun</i> sequel, it was inevitable that the actors would find themselves filming while flying in real jets, experiencing what it is genuinely like to be executing these complex manoeuvres at an insane speed. And that devotion to capturing something real makes the movie so much more effective - you can see in the actors’ faces how much they are affected by the G-forces, or by being thrown around as the jet takes repeated rapid turns. You feel the urgency of the flight, because it's printed on the faces of the actors in ways that simply cannot be performed, can only be lived. And that sense of reality makes the movie so much more effective than in most other action blockbusters. If I'm watching a <i>Fast and Furious</i> movie and they manage to make a car perform some incredible feat, I just feel disconnected from that because I never believe that there's a real car there, and I certainly do not believe that Vin Diesel is behind the wheel of that car, because it's all just a mess of CGI. But this film, this I believed, because at some level those actors really were there flying through those valleys, making those turns.</p><p>Which brings us to the interesting question about its nomination as Best Picture? Is <i>Top Gun: Maverick</i> really one of the 10 best movies of the past-year. No, of course not, it's an absurd thing to even try to suggest. And yet, I'm really okay with its nomination for the big award. So much of big budget cinema these days is built out of exploiting a franchise, of finding some iconic IP that you can use to make your big hit. And all too often it winds up feeling soulless and empty - witness the <i>Jurassic World</i> trilogy for a start - so it's exciting when you watch one of these films and you can feel the genuine passion and focus on making a truly brilliant commercial film. This is not a cynical film; this is a film that feels as though it was born out of a genuine excitement to make something that people will embrace and genuinely love. And people do love the film - it's a fantastic film. So when you get a film that is a damn near perfect example of the film that it is trying to be, and it does this without giving in to the cynicism of modern blockbusters, then that is something that is worth celebrating.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG0-__MRo9f0W1PDt-A9JTYiYK5wu8ScbIlAoZkX28OsHgW-OKYN9kTG7pku3oYgVCjstyAqPCL8MZ_c6hpZ6d7oMgNCJD66a8QnWUxZYQVSJ3z5ircIZSP9BRYuzp_t1N6gQiPnZuynaHpsQ2yeDMwehmlytg3VVvlrLOsyohNff5VbiwXxWhmaFCaQ/s755/avatar_the_way_of_water.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="484" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG0-__MRo9f0W1PDt-A9JTYiYK5wu8ScbIlAoZkX28OsHgW-OKYN9kTG7pku3oYgVCjstyAqPCL8MZ_c6hpZ6d7oMgNCJD66a8QnWUxZYQVSJ3z5ircIZSP9BRYuzp_t1N6gQiPnZuynaHpsQ2yeDMwehmlytg3VVvlrLOsyohNff5VbiwXxWhmaFCaQ/w256-h400/avatar_the_way_of_water.jpg" width="256" /></a>And if there was any doubt after the success of <i>Top Gun: Maverick</i>, then <i><b>Avatar: The Way of Water</b></i> proved that people really will turn up if you give them something to come to.</p><p>My dislike of the original <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2010/01/all-visuals-aside-there-are-real.html" target="_blank">Avatar</a></i> was well and truly expressed at the time. The film is a technical marvel and has fantastic action sequences, but is pulled down by seriously flawed storytelling that seemingly never truly engages with the experiences of the characters. But I was willing to chalk that up to a misstep from James Cameron and was still excited to see his next project. Until he announced that he was planning to make four <i>Avatar</i> sequels. In fact, from memory, I believe Cameron said that he would be able to tell all the stories he wanted to tell through the world of Pandora. And that was seriously depressing to me. Cameron is a cinematic master, a genius at constructing pure action, and every release from him is an important event. The prospect of him getting trapped making endless <i>Avatar</i> sequels just sounded like a major waste of his talent.</p><p>Which was why I was shocked to realise that I really liked <i>Avatar: The Way of Water</i>. I've seen the film four times, and even now want to try to squeeze in a fifth screening before it leaves cinemas. The film finds Jake Sully, permanently living in his Na’vi avatar body after events of the first film, raising a family with his wife Neytiri when the humans return to the moon world of Pandora. When it becomes clear that Jake's continuing presence is a threat to the forest they love by drawing the humans to them, Jake and his family leave their home to hide out with a tribe of water people and learn their ways.</p><p>I think part of the reason the film works for me is the fact that it is a sequel. If you look at my criticisms of the first film, most of my issues revolve around the setup to the film and the world of Pandora - the fact that they needed our main character to both be paralysed and have a dead identical twin brother to make the story work points to a level of contrivance that is a problem. But making a sequel allows Cameron to skip over a lot of the plotty world-building aspects of the first film and get straight on to the stuff that he's really good at. So we get to avoid the largely exposition-heavy first act, and instead get a first act that is filled with multiple thrilling sequences - the train attack, or the rescuing of the children.</p><p>The film does slow down in its second act as Jake and the family join the water clan, and we get to encounter the marvels of the underwater world of Pandora. And here also I think the sequel easily exceeds the original. I never liked the design of the Pandora forests - the fluorescent Day-Glo look only ever seemed garish and ugly, and spending such an extended time in that place never appealed to me. But here, there's a natural softening of colour and calming beautifying that comes with the soft blue wash of water that just makes our time exploring this new environment so much more appealing. So when the film slows down to spend time in this underwater world, we get to just exist in a place that I simply enjoyed more, and I get to find beauty in all of these creatures and the way they move in this space. And there's something calming and peaceful about existing in the aquatic environment that is simply appealing. It's here that James Cameron's earnestness takes full control of the film - the man who made <i>The Abyss</i> and <i>Titanic</i>, and who was the first person to descend solo to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, feels fully in his element, and his love for the water and the incredible creatures that live here, even in this artificial world, are fully on display. Plus there's more of a sense of connection between the characters and the creatures in the sequel. In the original film, for all the impression the film gave about the Na’vi connection to nature, one of the film's major action beats involves Jake trying to catch and forcibly imprint on to the wildlife. While the sequel has equivalent scenes, those moments are more about the characters learning to control themselves and work with the creatures, rather than forcing their will onto the creatures. Plus, it's at this point where we get probably the most emotionally resonant plot in the film - the friendship between Jake's son Lo'ak and Payakan, a whale-like Tulkun, formed as the two bond over their shared status as outcasts from their families.</p><p>That bond, and the tragedy that led to Payakan's exile, leads into the films third act, and from that point it's just a masterful execution of action cinema. First comes the "whaling" sequence, where we ride with the villains of the film as they attack a pod of creatures to kill a mother Tulkun and extract a valuable substance from her brain. It's a thrilling sequence, exhilarating in the way it hits the pleasure centre of watching a team of people execute a complex task with pure efficiency, while simultaneously horrifying to watch the abuse of nature on display. But that's the first beat in what essentially becomes a 45-minute action sequence that barely pauses, with Cameron drawing from throughout his back catalogue to compile a greatest hits action scene that completely enthralled. In a lesser film, such an extended sequence with little or no break would become wearying and tiring, but Cameron is a master of action pacing, able to build in ebbs and flows so that the audience can find space to breathe without compromising the urgency of the action. It truly is a marvel to watch.</p><p>If the main failing of the first film was its clunky screenwriting by James Cameron working alone, then we see an instant improvement here with the inclusion of other writers. Cameron apparently brought in what is in effect a writer's room to develop the stories of the sequels, and then tasked particular individuals within the team to co-write the scripts with him. The end result is a film that feels lighter on its feet, less leaden, despite its length. The film even finds time for moments of genuine humour - it's a small moment, but dammit if the video of the marine saying "Oorah" doesn't make me laugh every time. And sure, it could be argued that as a waste of time for the brothers to rescue the sisters only for the sisters to immediately be captured again, but it's worth just for daughter Tuk's exasperation at being captured again. These people feel like actual characters with personality, who you enjoy spending time with.</p><p>Being the first of four sequels, the film also has a lot of set up to prepare for the remaining films, which it mostly does a serviceable job in achieving. The reintroduction of Colonel Quaritch, the antagonist killed in the first film but reborn here in a Na’vi body, brings with him a nice story of a man being in conflict with his existence and trying to relate with his son, even as his story is clearly one step in a larger overarching storyline - I'm assuming that by the final film we'll see Quaritch come to accept life as a Na’vi just as much as Jake has, but that’s just speculation. Similarly, the film sets up a mystery around Kiri, Jake's adopted daughter with a strange connection to the Mother Earth-style deity of the planet - this is perhaps less elegantly set up, with scenes that have feel like they have little significance for the story of this film. But it’s an intriguing setup and I'm interested to see where it goes.</p><p>This also has to be said: the technical work on the CGI is genuinely seamless, and shows a real development in the state-of-the-art, even beyond the miraculous work of the first film. I did see a re-release of the first film a few months before the sequel came out, and all through the film I was in awe at just how much those effects hold up - and then mid-credits they showed a preview of the scene where Lo'ak first meets Payakan, and instantly the leap in technology over the past 13 years was clearly visible. There is not a moment where you are even aware of the fact that you're looking at a bunch of pixels on a screen, because the film just feels real. And I think that's part of the reason why the film has such staying power - it's simply feels like a magic trick, as though we are seeing something impossible on-screen, and it draws us back because we need to understand it. A few weeks ago, I went to a screening of <i>Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania</i>, and it really drove home just how much <i>Avatar</i> is operating at a technical level far above where almost any other film is operating. Like <i>Avatar</i>, <i>Ant-Man</i> also takes place in a world which is largely created is a digital effect, but there was never any point in that film where I believed anything that I was watching. This is not at all a criticism of the effects artists who worked on <i>Ant-Man</i>, but it goes to show the impact that taking the time and money to really develop and perfect the creation of the world of the film. I was completely transported by one film; I merely saw the other. I prefer the first experience.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9GRnLCZjCoYnl3U5kZ2ZVvRPwKSJ6D5KFEjv7XK2-tHvP-MJ8Rc-AOn6ny07m8R5bgqlimn64ZKRWRdvA7bL4VQszaZIFWBVb9hl6nk6zJOBj6E5eP3YlBTP8_DDc5yLaUjj57cgAuxD0aOMksINf36dn86du2cnOZvSjGIB6r3JP4-vUxGsCaaMQw/s755/elvis.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9GRnLCZjCoYnl3U5kZ2ZVvRPwKSJ6D5KFEjv7XK2-tHvP-MJ8Rc-AOn6ny07m8R5bgqlimn64ZKRWRdvA7bL4VQszaZIFWBVb9hl6nk6zJOBj6E5eP3YlBTP8_DDc5yLaUjj57cgAuxD0aOMksINf36dn86du2cnOZvSjGIB6r3JP4-vUxGsCaaMQw/w270-h400/elvis.jpg" width="270" /></a>I don't know that I would ever have predicted that Baz Luhrmann would make a biopic about Elvis Presley, but it's one of those ideas that, once it happens, just seems inevitable. So much of Luhrmann's work is defined by music, so a film about the “King of Rock and Roll” makes complete sense, while Baz's often chaotic visual style is perfect for a figure whose most iconic image involves a variety of garish sequined jumpsuits. If there was any doubt that <i><b>Elvis</b></i> was a film from Baz Luhrmann, those doubts would have been dispelled two minutes into the film when a model of the Starship Enterprise (yes, that one!) powered up and took off (yes, really!). From that point on, we were just there for the ride.</p><p>As with any film from Baz Luhrmann, there is a lot that works really well and some things set just do not succeed. Unfortunately in this case, the key thing that does not work is one of the main characters. So much has already been said about Tom Hanks' bizarre performance as Elvis's manager, Colonel Tom Parker - in fact the commentary started as soon as the film's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBDLRvjHVOY" target="_blank">trailer</a> released. I was willing to give the film the benefit of the doubt - I've seen performances that seem terrible when viewed as individual scenes or edited into trailers but that work well in the context of the whole film - but watching the film still left me baffled by the choice to give Hanks <u>that</u> accent. The Colonel is inevitably a major role, he's the second lead of the film, the entire film is told from his perspective, and yet every time he speaks I just find myself distanced as I wonder what on earth is going on. I could have forgiven the choice to give the character such an over-the-top accent if that was how the real man spoke, but then you see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfsDx4IsQe0" target="_blank">videos of the Colonel speaking</a> and he sounds perfectly normal, without a hint of the impossible-to-describe melange of sounds that Hanks gives us, and it becomes frustrating. Tom Hanks is a great actor, and Colonel Tom Parker has the potential to be a wonderfully villainous role, so it's frustrating when the performance is saddled with this absurdly distracting element.</p><p>And speaking of the Colonel, there's another puzzling choice. As with many Luhrmann films, the story is presented to us by a narrator reflecting on their experiences. Except here, the narrator is the Colonel, the villain of the story, seemingly trying to justify himself and explain to us why he is not the criminal that history has chosen to see him as. Except that no one wants to see a story where the Colonel is the benevolent figure of good that the character would try to present himself as - his exploitation of Elvis is too well documented for that to work - so instead you get this curious situation where he's the narrator, but the story as presented is not the story he would tell. No-one trying to present themselves as a good person would, for instance, ever tell a story where he insists that doctors get a collapsed near-death Elvis onto his feet and on stage to perform. So I was puzzled by the framing device, because the perspective being illustrated was not that of the person trying to tell the story.</p><p>Fortunately, the film overcomes its disastrous approach to the Colonel by having an absolutely perfect Elvis. I was not previously familiar with Austin Butler, who apparently came to prominence on the Disney Channel. Here he firmly establishes himself as a talented adult actor. He has all the charisma and the swagger to convince as one of the great music stars, and he even has that iconic voice down perfectly. (Apparently he does much of his own singing, only relying on existing recordings for the scenes later in life when Elvis's voice had been too damaged by drugs to imitate.) But he never feels like he's giving an imitation; instead he brings a great deal of soulfulness and depth to his performance. I found him an intriguing figure, and I'm certainly interested to see where his career leads him.</p><p>Baz Luhrmann's typically flashy filmmaking style is fully on display here - at his most heightened, he's positively hallucinogenic, or making use of 70s style split screen effects, or using faux-comic book panels to tell the characters backstory. But even at his most sedate, there's a nervous anxiety and excitement to the filmmaking that I found invigorating. The film feels as though it is aware that something important is happening, and it's responding in kind. And then, when Elvis performs, the film just explodes - and that's when it becomes clear why you need someone like Baz Luhrmann to make this film. We live in a world where songs like "WAP" are major hits, where a massive show like <i>Game of Thrones</i> can feature extended scenes of sex and nudity, and where explicit pornography is instantly accessible to us on our phones wherever we go. In this world, the notion of someone like "Elvis the Pelvis" being seen as scandalous simply because he shakes his hips seems absurd. But Luhrmann knows how to film those scenes and have them edited to transport us back to that time and make us feel just how radical and dangerous this all felt for those observing. Suddenly we find ourselves experiencing those moments as though this is the first time we've seen anyone do anything quite as sexual as shaking his hips - the film itself gasps at the sight. And that is why Baz Luhrmann is the right person to make this film - anyone can make a film that tells his story, but it takes exceptional talent to wipe away 70 years of societal movement and make us feel the true shock and impact Elvis had.</p><p>I was also intrigued by the use of music in the film. Baz Luhrmann doesn't just rely on the original Elvis recordings or on Austin Butler's performance for his music; instead, much like his use of modern songs in <i>The Great Gatsby</i>, he makes significant use of anachronistic remixes or covers of Elvis songs by current artists to fill his film. It seems to almost be a statement of purpose, both in bringing a new and refreshed energy to these songs, but also acknowledging the importance of Elvis in the line of essential music figures whose work continues to inspire major modern artists.</p><p>The film is very much a celebratory biopic. It acknowledges some of Elvis's flaws - the womanising, the drug use - but avoids dwelling on them as much as possible, while at other times it just elides over other issues pretending not to notice (just how old was Priscilla?). Plus there's the usual oversimplification that often happens in biopics, where true events are simplified to such a degree that they start to ring false - perhaps Elvis's comeback special was conceived as a Christmas special, but how is it possible for the Colonel to not know until the performance that Elvis will not be wearing a jumper and singing about "Santy Claus"? But ultimately the point of the film is to bring a great artist to the attention of an audience that may have forgotten him, and remind those viewers that you have to pay attention to Elvis. And if this film gets people listening to his work, then that's a good thing.</p><p>(One last thing: it's a very minor point, barely worth mentioning, but something that really excited the film fan in me was the acknowledgement of one of the great “What If”s of movie history. Elvis' movie career is largely seen as a joke today, and with good reason - he spent a decade turning out dozens of largely forgettable/bad films. Yet when you watch him in something like <i>King Creole</i>, you can see that he has some real acting talent, but he never really got the projects that would allow him to display his ability. Which is why I've always been intrigued by the fact that Elvis was originally offered the Kris Kristofferson role in the Streisand version of <i>A Star Is Born</i>, and he wanted to do it, but the Colonel refused to let him make that film. Now, the Streisand <i>Star Is Born</i> is certainly the least of the <i>Star</i>s, but there's still a lot of meat in the role for a talented actor to explore. So I was excited that the film takes a moment to acknowledge that this was something that was at one point going to happen. It seems odd for a film to devote any screen time to something that ultimately never eventuated, but as someone who wishes he lived in a world where that film existed, it was nice to see.)</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmYwsmkXz2J-lTOupBiEqW_Vvd0LwlvGq8tdR3yQkreAEpoN0hdsCTGiJ_rRCqL9uuyK277I8LOm2OO9nHy1JGNsj8sop2dS0Ntge52AkzjcnvMV0Y2TAtMF2zudH_WWUc-zso_-yd2O-E-IKuXOX5OhOxR-pyAvCl-tSZaBwSAP39GjCZmHSDqViLQ/s755/triangle_of_sadness.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmYwsmkXz2J-lTOupBiEqW_Vvd0LwlvGq8tdR3yQkreAEpoN0hdsCTGiJ_rRCqL9uuyK277I8LOm2OO9nHy1JGNsj8sop2dS0Ntge52AkzjcnvMV0Y2TAtMF2zudH_WWUc-zso_-yd2O-E-IKuXOX5OhOxR-pyAvCl-tSZaBwSAP39GjCZmHSDqViLQ/w270-h400/triangle_of_sadness.jpg" width="270" /></a>I saw one of the nominated films, <b><i>Triangle of Sadness</i></b>, at the film festival last year, and I don't have much more to say beyond <a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2022/11/rebuilding-redux.html#more:~:text=entertainment.%20Strongly%20recommended.-,Triangle%20of%20Sadness,-A%20new%20satire" target="_blank">my comments at the time</a>. The one thing I will emphasise is this: a lot of people have been suggesting that the film is solely about how terrible rich people are. Even Mark Kermode, who I would usually hope to bring a more thoughtful perspective, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciJnhGNPS60" target="_blank">sees the film in this very clear-cut way</a>. But I think the film is making a slightly more nuanced argument. I think it's significant that the couple at the centre of the film have wealth, but are not rich, and are certainly not the super-rich that make up the rest of the passengers on the yacht. But once they're on the yacht, one of the first things we see the man do is use his power as a passenger to have someone fired. And then in the third act, when the story takes a turn and the power dynamics flip, we see someone who was on the bottom rung eagerly exploiting their newfound position of power and doing everything they can to keep that position. The problem isn't "the rich"; the problem is "people exploiting their power" - for a lot of people, if you give them some level of power, they'll start exploiting that power. It's just that the rich are the people whose power is most visible, and whose efforts to take advantage of their power is therefore most clearly able to be seen.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPUD-Hsm91EXLE5XSAMZo6eObpgCQx-XCD7IlGMde4WgSih-JqkRHZYr41H_QgX4tx7AgzrmcE4R9R9D-Lo6gKMpdUD0YDHk5vyNgBEyh-dx4s_fBnObJlAEChmmjWQZROiTyPSCZuiuv8Na2GtxN_tIS4dsFBv7jJ9o_VuRO1VhUzHzdY0ge3lUNDAA/s755/tar.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPUD-Hsm91EXLE5XSAMZo6eObpgCQx-XCD7IlGMde4WgSih-JqkRHZYr41H_QgX4tx7AgzrmcE4R9R9D-Lo6gKMpdUD0YDHk5vyNgBEyh-dx4s_fBnObJlAEChmmjWQZROiTyPSCZuiuv8Na2GtxN_tIS4dsFBv7jJ9o_VuRO1VhUzHzdY0ge3lUNDAA/w270-h400/tar.jpg" width="270" /></a>And that notion of a person exploiting their power is fully
on display in <i><b>Tár</b></i>, the new film from Todd Field, with Cate Blanchett playing top
conductor Lydia Tár, the chief conductor of the celebrated Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the first female to have that role. She's a performer and composer of great
acclaim. Also, although she would never see herself as this, she is a predator
- she looks for attractive young women seeking opportunities in her field, and
she uses her position to hopefully use these girls to satisfy her needs. Up
until this point, her misdeeds have been largely overlooked or covered over,
but as Tár is about to achieve a major career milestone, and as she sets her
eyes on a young new cellist, a variety of scandals start to be revealed and the
resulting crises snowball.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Now, first, I should emphasise that this is a fictional
story. Lydia Tár is not a person who exists. I say this because there is an
alarming number of people online who, for no readily apparent reason, seem to
think that this is a true story. Even leaving the cinema after my screening, I
overheard two women debating between themselves just how much of the film
actually happened. I have no idea where this perception of the film as a true
story came from - the film makes no claims to be anything other than fiction -
and yet for some reason this is just a lingering question around the film that should be addressed. And
now that I've said that,...</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I found it an interesting choice to make a film that is so
focused on an abusive female. There has obviously been a huge amount of
attention lately on the Me Too movement, with women standing up and talking
about the abuse they have experienced from men. And that is a good thing - it
is right that the Harvey Weinsteins and Bill Cosbys and Kevin Spaceys of this
world have their crimes exposed. But one thing that you often hear said is that
rape is not about sex, but about power - it's about being in a position where
you can take something from someone that you want. And that's why I think it's
interesting that Lydia is a female who is a predator. If you make a film about
another man taking advantage of young women, then you risk the focus being
placed on the sex of the perpetrator - they are male, and therefore their
actions are an example of toxic masculinity. But if you want to make a film
that is about the power dynamics that lie between the abuser and their victims,
then it makes sense to seek to remove the abuser's sex from the
equation - hence making a film about a female abuser. And some women do behave
in the ways portrayed here - I was discussing the film with a friend who
mentioned that they knew someone who had been similarly exploited by a woman
with a significant position of power in a creative field.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Similarly, I found the decision to make a film about a
conductor to be a fascinating decision. It's a role that is very seldom
portrayed on-screen, and yet the control and power they have over the
performers is immense - they can have literally 100 people watching their every
move, the performers moderating and adjusting performances based on the way
they move or the expression on their face. And yet portrayed on-screen that
attention can almost become condemnatory - there's a moment where Tár has given
this desirable young cellist a massive opportunity, and as Tár steps up to the
podium, she can feel every eye on her. It might be that they are all attentive
performers watching for her signals, but in that moment she feels as though
everyone in the orchestra - including her first violinist wife - knows how she
behaves, has seen the patterns, they see her give this opportunity to this one
girl, can already see what she is doing, and are silently judging her for her
actions. I love the way the film explored this ambiguity - is she someone who
commands the focus of attention, or is she someone who attracts scorn from
those who know of her actions?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But it's also reflective of the fact that the classical
music world has itself been the subject of significance scandal and accusations
of abuse that were covered over. There's a moment where one person dismissively
refers to what happened to "Jimmy Levine", as though he was treated
unfairly. This moment in particular really hit me, because I remembered being
shocked when <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Levine#:~:text=1%5D%5B65%5D-,Sexual%20assault%20allegations,-%5Bedit%5D" target="_blank">the accusations came out</a> against James Levine. There is clear
evidence of a long-standing pattern of sexual abuse of young men dating back 30
or 40 years - and there are reports that it had been known as an open secret in
the classical world for decades. Yet it seems there was a willingness to overlook
this behaviour, almost as though the experiences of the victims are just
sacrifices at the altar of great art.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This was my first time seeing a film from Todd Field -
previously my only experience with the man was as an memorable actor in <i>Eyes
Wide Shut</i>, although I had heard excellent things about his previous two films.
And I'm now strongly interested in seeking out those earlier works, because he
shows an admirable control over the medium. Early in the film, he presents us
with a gripping 10-minute-long single-take in which Tar cruelly destroys a
music student who expresses little interest in Bach because his
"misogynistic life" as a "white male cisgender composer"
made the music impossible for the student, as a "BIPOC pangender
person", to embrace. It's a fascinating scene, because you agree with
everything that she is saying, and yet as the scene plays out there is a
natural escalation until it culminates in a moment of such casual cruelty that
it takes the breath away. And at that moment, you can see almost a look of delight
in Cate Blanchett's face. Rather than taking joy in teaching these students and
getting them to open their minds, she took delight in using her authority and
knowledge to browbeat someone until he is left completely demoralised. It's a
perfectly constructed piece of writing and directing by Field, that reflects
the entire film in a microcosm - Tár is a woman who has cultivated this public
perception of being this great authority, of being this wise mentor, but in
private she is someone who is joyous at her power over other people and her
ability to use her authority to destroy them. Much of the film revolves around
an emerging scandal after one of her victims takes her own life, and the sense
of casual disregard for the effect her actions have had on other people is
deeply upsetting. And it's also intriguing in the way she establishes a clear
hierarchy of music that is and is not worth appreciation - at one point, she
casually dismisses the work of Jerry Goldsmith on the legendary score for
<i>Planet of the Apes</i>, suggesting that she almost views the work of composition
for films or video games as lesser music. Which to me, as someone who
appreciates the work of both Bach and Goldsmith, is somewhat galling, but does
also speak to the mindset of someone who is so focused on the creation of high
art that she is blinded to the potential merits of anything she dismisses. (I
also think it's significant that we learn that she herself does do composition
for the movies - you get the sense that she feels she's elevating cinema with
her presence, rather than the other composers who lower themselves to its
level.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The film is anchored by a fantastic performance Cate
Blanchett, currently viewed as one of the two frontrunners for the Best Actress
Oscar. And she gives us some beautifully nuanced work. Appropriately for a
conductor whose work is all about precision and silent expression, Blanchett
gives a measured and considered performance - it's not a hugely demonstrative
performance, nor is she prone to vocalising her emotions, but we find ourselves
drawn into the character’s internal monologue through flickers and tiny moments
where we can read her thoughts. It's a reliably impressive performance from
someone who remains one of our finest actors.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxJQVfSWuAcc2eLeOdgefO_4p9Sub-CAL_1z13Qlz_dji1kjtPf6lIz74RlptTkf02vgxTur91JyX2F3aKKMv5rIkIsCeUJ8K67yWHkj0fygwYUopLkIo36z27n4Kdk0ym6sBJpPBNTu24zr_O0X4ZL0BK73ERvA91zj9XuU6j3aj7NHPEBBAJBuiC2w/s755/women_talking.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxJQVfSWuAcc2eLeOdgefO_4p9Sub-CAL_1z13Qlz_dji1kjtPf6lIz74RlptTkf02vgxTur91JyX2F3aKKMv5rIkIsCeUJ8K67yWHkj0fygwYUopLkIo36z27n4Kdk0ym6sBJpPBNTu24zr_O0X4ZL0BK73ERvA91zj9XuU6j3aj7NHPEBBAJBuiC2w/w270-h400/women_talking.jpg" width="270" /></a>A similarly brilliant exploration of power and abuse comes
in Sarah Polley's effective <i><b>Women Talking</b></i>, which takes the reverse point of
view, looking at the victims of abuse and the way they can band together to
take back their own power. For years, the women in an isolated Mennonite
community have been regularly waking to find that they have been violently
raped in their sleep. But the men in the community tell them that nothing
happened, that it's all in their imagination, or that they are the victims of
evil spirits for which they are responsible. But one night, the men who have
been drugging and raping these women are caught and arrested. So the men of the community all
leave for a couple of days to bail out the rapists, instructing the women that
when they return, the women will need to forgive those who have been preying
on them. And so, left alone for a couple of days, the woman gather to talk and
vote on what to do - will they stay and accept things as they are, will they
stay and fight in hope of making a better community, or will they leave and
brave the uncertainty of the outside world. And that is pretty much the film -
it's a collection of conversations and debates between these characters who are
struggling to decide what to do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’ve liked Sarah Polley’s work in the past, but here she
confirms herself as a filmmaker of exceptional talent and sensitivity. This
starts with the way she portrays the crimes - she knows that the audience
should already have an appreciation of the horror of these crimes, and she
knows that any portrayal of these events is going to weigh the film down, so
she delicately but impactfully elides over these events in the first couple of
minutes, only ever portraying the crimes through brief glimpses of the
consequences, whether that be the severe bruising on someone's leg, or the
bloody remains of a miscarriage that may have been the result of someone raped
by her brother. Besides, the crimes aren't actually the focus of the film; it's
all about the conversations that result, and Polley is very focused on those
conversations. And I was impressed with the level of urgency Polley is able to
bring to the film - a film that is effectively 100 minutes of people in
conversation and debate could begin to feel very circular, to lose some of the
sense of a need for action. But Polley understands that these conversations are
the action, that it's the way these discussions ebb and flow, that people
change their position as different arguments come up, that creates the tension.
It brought to mind the film <i>12 Angry Men</i>, another film that features a limited
cast of characters having a conversation in a confined space trying to reach a
decision of great consequence. And it's to Polley’s credit that her film lives
up to that comparison - there is just as much mastery and skill in her direction,
and as much a sense of significance and power in the film, as there is in that
classic work. She also understands how to make the film engaging as a piece of
cinema - this is a work that could very easily feel restricted and stagebound
(indeed, you could probably produce a stage version of this film without any
changes to the script), but her approach to cinematography, shot selection, and
editing gives the film a cinematic heft that might not be on the page.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">During those early introductory scenes, we see drawings
being made to represent the three options being debated by the women - in fact,
these are then used to vote on the options. But it quickly becomes clear that
the reason for these drawings is that most of these women are illiterate -
Rooney Mara's character at one point reveals she doesn't even know what a comma
is - and so a visual representation becomes essential for the vote. And that revelation
becomes a fascinating insight into the degree to which these women have been
held down - there's no need for women to be educated, there's no need for women
to know how to read. And it's in that context that the title of the film, <i>Women
Talking</i>, becomes significant. This film takes place in a community where women have
had their power taken away from them, where they have been isolated, where they
have been made to think that there is little else that they can do. But they do
have the power to gather and talk together, and even that feels like a
dangerous action for some of these women.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One thing I love about the film was how effective it was in
truly putting you in the mindset of these women. You often hear people talking
about victims of abuse, saying that they should have just left, as though it's
as easy as that. By putting us in the middle of this debate, where the women
struggle to make the right choice, it becomes clear why just leaving is such a
challenging prospect for people in this circumstance. To stay would be
intolerable, would mean giving up on the prospect that there is any hope that things
might get better, to be resigned to a life of abuse. To stay and fight feels like a
gamble - if they win, they could secure the better life that they want, but
they might lose, and in that case the act of rebellion could make things worse
for them than they already are. And so you naturally come to the conclusion
that these women should leave - but then the film reminds you that that is not
as easy as it seems. There's a comfort that comes with staying - you know what
to expect, you know you can survive with things as they are. But to leave means
taking a step into a world of uncertainty, a world where you don't have that
comfort, where you don't know if you can survive. That's even more true in the
case of these women - they've never lived outside of this community, they don't
know what to expect, they don't know what the outside world even looks like.
The idea of being thrust into an existence that they can't even imagine just
feels like an impossible prospect. And then you layer onto that the weight of
their religion - several times, different people express concern that they
can't leave because of what that will mean for their faith. If the Lord
returns, how will he know where to find them if they are not in the community?
And for these women, that's a genuine fear - are they giving up eternal life
and salvation just because they aren't willing to put up with some suffering in
this life? That is a colossal choice to make. The way they grapple with these
questions, trying to balance the different considerations and possible outcomes
to reach a decision, is fascinating to watch and engage with.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p><i>Women Talking</i> is a beautiful and powerful film. It's a shame
that its premise and subject matter are such that many people would be
discouraged from watching it, because those who give it a chance would find it
a fascinating and challenging work.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv0zzpHwGLRo3ZB9C-q17ABYXaDCGY2p6i7tHKGv0KGyZnWOfBHePkbs0pgAn1_OvPSOXXDZaVA2xtxTauCLNPi3wYHzliWAIBVqMzubQSgKLgMlLigta4fSBGDnb1M_mFeHpiMVzt_9VUIMRvsWZsgbLEiEJVmOWS02vaPGhKHm3zfW7ak57-HG0yiQ/s755/all_quiet_on_the_western_front.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="503" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv0zzpHwGLRo3ZB9C-q17ABYXaDCGY2p6i7tHKGv0KGyZnWOfBHePkbs0pgAn1_OvPSOXXDZaVA2xtxTauCLNPi3wYHzliWAIBVqMzubQSgKLgMlLigta4fSBGDnb1M_mFeHpiMVzt_9VUIMRvsWZsgbLEiEJVmOWS02vaPGhKHm3zfW7ak57-HG0yiQ/w266-h400/all_quiet_on_the_western_front.jpg" width="266" /></a>Finally, <b style="font-style: italic;">All Quiet on the Western Front</b> is a new film adaptation of the of the classic novel about the traumatic experiences of life in the trenches in World War I, as seen through the eyes of a German soldier named Paul Bäumer. Intriguingly, for such a significant novel from a German author about German characters, it seems this is the first time the story has been made as a German film, after several previous American adaptations, including a celebrated 1930 adaptation that won the best picture Oscar - which I've never seen. I actually studied the novel back in high school, and at the time, we also watched the 1979 TV movie, which I mainly remembered for featuring Ernest Borgnine. My memory of the novel has largely faded away to vague recollections, except for two major scenes that imprinted on me - the school teacher delivering speeches rallying his students to enlist, and a later moment where Paul finds himself trapped in a bomb crater with an enemy soldier who he fatally wounds and then spends hours waiting for the man to slowly die. Other than that, I had no real memory of the story, not even whether the main character lived or died - I had some memory of Paul returning home and reflecting on people who didn't understand his experience, but could not have told you whether that was time on leave during the war or a post-war experience.</p><p>As a Netflix film, I had to watch the film at home - apparently they did have a very limited number of cinema screenings, but as far as I could tell, none in my region. And that's a shame, because I do think the experience of a film like this is amplified on the big screen. When you see a film at home, it's simply too easy to be distracted, to check your phone, to pause the film and do something else. But the experience of watching a film like this on the big screen, being forced to dwell in the trenches for a couple of hours with no escape, absolutely highlights to some degree what it must be like to live in a place like this for months, where death becomes the only hope for escape.</p><p>That said, even at home, as a portrait of life on the battlefront, I did find the film challenging. The moments I remembered from the novel are effectively portrayed - especially the slow death off the enemy soldier in the bomb crater, whose agonised breathing and slow gurgling creates a genuinely horrifying scene. And the film is filled with memorable sequences, starting with an opening moment where the uniform is stripped from the body of a dead soldier, repaired, and sent back home to become the uniform of a young Paul who has no idea what happened to its previous owner. There are moments where the battle seems like a horror, where the giant tanks that roam the battlefield seem like monsters from a nightmare, where people resort to committing suicide to escape. That said, I do find myself wondering just how much of the novel is actually used in the film, and how much is made up from whole cloth. I could easily be misremembering, but I definitely do not remember any actual suicides in the novel, let alone the multiple suicides in the film. Similarly, there's an impressively suspenseful sequence involving a hunt for a group of 60 young soldiers who have gone missing, and who are ultimately revealed to have all died after being too slow to put their gas masks on. It's a skilfully made scene, culminating in an absolutely horrifying revelation, but it didn’t ring any bells for me from the book. And if it is a new scene created for the film, then it's a confusing choice - the novel is already filled with such horror at the atrocities of war that you wonder why a film would feel the need to pad the story out with sequences like this.</p><p>I think it's an interesting choice to remove the scenes in the book of Paul returning home on leave. I can imagine those scenes, where we finally get a chance to see just how traumatised this man is by putting him in a regular everyday with people who don't understand his experience, would have had a massive impact when the novel was written. However, in today's environment, we've all seen these moments portrayed - they're in everything from <i>The Best Years of Our Lives</i> to <i>The Hurt Locker</i> (and even in the first <i>Rambo</i> film!) - and so it's a smart decision in a film with limited runtime to save that time to focus on the experiences in the trenches.</p><p>Except that that is not what they do. Instead, they constantly cut from the events at the trenches to the politicians and diplomats negotiating a treaty to end the war. There is some bitterness in those scenes - moments when the war could have ended, but these people, separated from the true consequences on the men fighting the war, decide to keep the conflict going out of bloody-minded pride - but for the most part, these scenes simply are not needed. Much like the "soldier returning home", we've all seen enough war films that illustrate the separation between the commanders and the troops giving their lives - everything from <i>Paths of Glory</i> to <i>Blackadder Goes Forth</i> - that it doesn't feel as though it really illuminates anything. The only thing it did was provide us as the audience with a relief from the miseries of the trench that these soldiers themselves never experienced. And to the degree that these scenes did offer some form of respite for its audience, it's a failing of the film.</p><p>My second issue was frankly with the ending of the film. [SPOILERS FOLLOW] Whenever I hear someone talking about the end of a war, there is an odd thought that always comes to my mind - there is a person who was the last person to be killed in any given war; one person who if they could have just avoided being killed for a matter of hours would have survived. So when, half an hour into the film, the movie jumps ahead 18 months to early November 1918, I obviously immediately knew the film would be working towards Armistice Day, but also realised the film would probably be presenting Paul as the last person killed in the war. This is not true of the novel - as Wikipedia remind me, he dies towards the end of the war, but doesn't make it to those final few days; the bitter irony of the title is not that it refers to the quiet of an ended war, but that in war people will still die on a day that seems relatively quiet. It's a change that just felt unnecessary and obvious.</p><p>My final issue with the film is that I found the characters to be relative cyphers. One thing I do remember about the novel was this strength of connection between the characters; you felt the sense that these people were bonded through their wartime experiences, and that each death weighed on the survivors. Admittedly, it is easier to achieve in a novel, where you have the space and ability to give the characters interiority, than in the condensed form of a movie, but I simply never felt this sense of connection between these characters. Even with Paul, our main character, I felt the film holding me at a distance. I didn't have a strong sense of who this person was; this wasn't his story, he was just the person we were following.</p><p>But despite these qualms, overall I did appreciate the film. It's a skillfully made piece of cinema that overall did engage me. And it is nice to see the Oscars continuing their trend in the past few years of acknowledging the existence of films made outside the US. At the same time, there were many better international films released this year, and I am puzzled by the amount of attention this film is receiving.</p><div>So those are some of my thoughts about the Oscar films. I have a lot more that I would like to say about all of them, but I simply don't have time, so I'll leave it there. All in all, I think it's a good year for the Oscars. I may have issues with some of the films, but overall I like them all; they are all good films that are worthy of the attention the Oscars bring. Now we just wait for the ceremony.</div>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-32787369059099627122022-11-01T21:48:00.002+13:002022-11-26T20:46:14.973+13:00Rebuilding redux<p></p>So here's the thing, <p></p><p>As usual, I sought to keep track of my feelings of the films I saw during this year's film festival by posting some comments about each film on Facebook, before collecting those posts here. These were written pretty much within a day, maybe two, of the screenings so they really do record my immediate response, and they were written in a bit of a rush, with all the rough drafting that implies. And my usual disclaimer - these are not "reviews"; they are just reflections, an attempt to record how I felt about each film. They're mainly written for myself - they allow me to process my feelings about each movie, and also ensure that I don't finish the festival having forgotten about half the films I saw. That said, I'm also aware that other people may read these posts, and I would love if my comments would make someone want to see a film that I loved, so I do try to take this external audience into account when I'm writing.</p><p>Anyway, here are my initial responses to the films of this year's festival.</p><p><i>[Comments on all 21 films after the jump...]</i></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy2dWSw3iCzLHMw70x6Vti-mLdP3cUEkJzaFwQ37RRkicgyt5hSWuWfmb0zd5d1Wyk3mBOS8_WgAa8t5oA4mn9Lq7907NgDHjV6xGQcLuXpNem4J-__JZgEm4Vm9vUBE0Stwuh0eGFuVg6ukbfHlE1pkhpbfQWeB0LHZI1ag1V0hCHH0R2lagBRMGUpg/s2160/navalny.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="1440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy2dWSw3iCzLHMw70x6Vti-mLdP3cUEkJzaFwQ37RRkicgyt5hSWuWfmb0zd5d1Wyk3mBOS8_WgAa8t5oA4mn9Lq7907NgDHjV6xGQcLuXpNem4J-__JZgEm4Vm9vUBE0Stwuh0eGFuVg6ukbfHlE1pkhpbfQWeB0LHZI1ag1V0hCHH0R2lagBRMGUpg/w266-h400/navalny.jpg" width="266" /></a></p><p><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Navalny</span></i></b> </p><p>My first film of the festival was a documentary portrait of Alexei Navalny, the popular and charismatic Russian opposition leader running an anti-corruption campaign against Putin. Navalny was famously the subject of a botched assassination attempt using Novichok poison in 2020; after recovering in Germany he returned to Russia where he was arrested in the airport, and he remains in prison today.</p><p>So I will be honest: I didn't really know anything about Navalny before seeing this film. I don't follow Russian politics all that much, so while I knew about the Novichok poisoning from media coverage at the time, and knew that he's now in prison on trumped-up charges, I couldn't say that I had a clear knowledge of exactly who Navalny was. And the thing is, having watched the film, I still feel that I don't really know who Alexei Navalny is. Now, I realise that sounds like a criticism, and I don't intend it to be - I really did find the film extremely enjoyable and worth watching - but if you want to understand what makes the man tick, I think you're going to need to look elsewhere. We don't really learn too much about his backstory, where he came from, what motivated him to begin his political career, how he found himself in a position of being this very public rival to Putin. Even this major anti-corruption organisation that he founded is introduced to us with little fanfare. Now to be clear, I'm not complaining about this lack of context - I do think that a a film that did take a more linear story-of-a-life approach would feel more generic and less engaging then this film - but it is really driven home by the fact that I feel I've learnt more about this man by glancing through his Wikipedia entry then I did watching a 100 minute documentary. </p><p>The thing is, what the film does is so much more interesting than just present a <i>This Is Your Life</i> for Alexei Navalny. It's essentially an observational portrait of the man. We do get a number of talking-head interviews, most notably Navalny sitting in a bar, but for the most part it is just watching him living his life with his family and his close allies around him. And that approach really bears fruit, allowing the film to be much more dynamic then you might otherwise have expected. This really does feel like it's been constructed to be a work of cinema, not something that simply follows a generic documentary template. This is driven home in two particularly notable sequences in particular. In one, we watch as Navalny and his allies undertake research to identify the people who were responsible for his poisoning, an intriguing and detailed investigation culminating in an incredible scene where Navalny tricks one of the scientists involved in the assassination attempt into confessing his involvement and explaining how the poisoning was actually implemented. It's a remarkable scene, and you're so astonished to hear this person freely admit to this crime that it's not until after the phone is eventually hung up that you realise that this man has just been tricked into signing his own death warrant. (We do indeed learn that the scientist has not been heard from since, which does not bode well for his safety.) The second major sequence in the film is the climax of the film, following Navalny and his wife as they leave Germany and fly into Russia, knowing that he will be arrested on arrival, intercut with footage of police arresting the swarms of people who have gathered the airport to welcome him. It's a fantastic sequence, edited with a cinematic sensibility that feels like a narrative movie rather than a traditional documentary, with a sense of genuine suspense that is maintained despite the fact that you know how this story will end. </p><p>But this where I do part ways with the film. It's one thing to feel that you don't get to know the man's backstory, because that's not what the film is trying to do. But I don't know that I get much insight into who the man is today. It's a big thing to decide to go to a place, even if it's your home, where you know you are going to be arrested and held in prison for years. Yet we don't get any insight into the thought process or consideration that he gives to making that choice. Navalny is an experienced politician, and every reply he gives, whether it's in his talking-head interview or just casual comments around the house, feels practised and on message, so he never really opens up to us. And while that maybe something the filmmakers couldn't help, it is a disappointment - the film becomes less a portrait of who the man is, and more illustrative of what he does. </p><p>The film touches on a number of other significant issues, most notably with a real focus on data security. It's certainly entertaining as it explores this issue - there's the great story of the senior Russian official who kept being hacked and so every time would change his password from Moscow1 to Moscow2, Moscow3, Moscow4 - but it's also chilling and surprising. I don't think anyone's genuinely surprised that our data and digital footprint is freely accessible to the major states - Russia, China, the US, etc - and that's just something we assume but just try not to think about. But there's a moment where the researcher helping investigate Navalny's poisoning is able to verifiably identify the exact people involved in the assassination attempt because he's able to buy data that tracks their movement over years and match those movements to Navalny's. It's not cheap - in fact it's eye-wateringly expensive - but the knowledge that that type of data is freely available to anyone willing to pay for it is genuinely horrifying. </p><p>Ultimately it's an entertaining and engaging film, and one that does allow you understand why this man would become a popular figure in the fight against Putin, but it doesn't give as much insight as I would have liked into who he is or what motivates him, and that's my main disappointment with the film.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdZHWzAjrYlE3BG2EFXe0LJ6R6RhAo1KCWiC3B9a7nNtwQoQZ7Lj9ZlfmBJ3zGOA4-HMP5dhzTj6FbjS3fTmx1WelLnlTcKCwx-hU9cljUH6vgOuakgtE1X85lXIBZQItk1unQa59AFdjZuWX_RI89Uj91X4G3YAEA9zEFJ2b3i_kOVZU7EC8Yig1OnQ/s755/crimes_of_the_future.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdZHWzAjrYlE3BG2EFXe0LJ6R6RhAo1KCWiC3B9a7nNtwQoQZ7Lj9ZlfmBJ3zGOA4-HMP5dhzTj6FbjS3fTmx1WelLnlTcKCwx-hU9cljUH6vgOuakgtE1X85lXIBZQItk1unQa59AFdjZuWX_RI89Uj91X4G3YAEA9zEFJ2b3i_kOVZU7EC8Yig1OnQ/w270-h400/crimes_of_the_future.jpg" width="270" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Crimes of the Future</i></b></span> </p><p>My experience with the work of David Cronenberg is unfortunately limited. I've only seen a handful of his big titles - <i>Videodrome</i>, <i>The Fly</i>, <i>A History of Violence</i> - and when I saw <i>eXistenZ</i> at the 1999 festival I liked it so much I saw it again in general release. And that's about it. But when I heard great reports about <i>Crimes of the Future</i>, in which Cronenberg makes his return to the body horror genre that made his name after 20 years of making films that aren't filled with viscera, I had to see it.</p><p>Set in a near future in which human beings are beginning to spontaneously generate new non-functional body organs, the film stars Viggo Mortensen as a man particularly prone to having rapid generation of new organs, which he has catalogued before they are tattooed and removed in public surgery by his partner (Lea Seydoux) in a form of performance art. Then there are the unsettling people running an official national registry of new organs, there is the police officer in the newly formed NuVice department investigating crimes relating to these new organs, there are weird technicians responsible for maintaining the devices on which these public surgeries are undertaken. And then there is the father who wants our main characters to undertake a new piece of performance art - a public autopsy on the dead body of his young son. </p><p>I realised very early on that I had probably come into the film with overly high expectations. In particular, I heard heard so much buzz around how shocking the first 10 minutes of the movie were that I was fully bracing myself to prepare for whatever horrors I would see. Which is why I felt almost deflated when I saw those opening 10 minutes and was not particularly horrified. Which is not to say that the events of the opening are pleasant; they're not. But when you see what happens - a young boy sits in a bathroom eating a plastic waste basket; later that night his mother murders him by suffocating him with a pillow - there's nothing about those scenes that I haven't seen dozens of times. And while there is certainly uncomfortable material that follows later in the film, with plenty of shots of internal organs or scenes in which the act of slicing into a human body is regarded as the most erotic experience imaginable, it all felt weirdly tame. </p><p>My main problem with the film is just that I feel the world of the film seems only half-realised. We hear repeatedly how humanity has progressed beyond pain and discomfort, although it's unclear whether this is due to natural evolution, drugs and anaesthetics, or furniture that adjusts to counter pain sensations, since different scenes will seem to offer different explanations and they don't sit well together. The scenes of public surgery as performance art do feel very half-baked and lacking in any particular comment on the art world. The repeated idea of an inner beauty contest, where people compete by putting their new organs on display, is an amusing play on words, but doesn't feel like it adds to the film. When the film does finally decide to offer some kind of explanation for why these new body organs are appearing, the explanation - the human body is reacting to the pollution and waste in the world by developing body structures that can consume these products - seems to offer a logical explanation that also gives the film a point of view, until you remember the man whose body is completely covered in ears, a scene that now feels as though it exists just for shock without any clear connection to this wider idea. Ultimately I understand where Cronenberg is going with the message of the film - the conflict between traditionalists (who want to keep the status quo and who see that as their source of power) and those who see change as a new opportunity to advance humanity and our understanding. But it felt very surface-level. </p><p>There's also a weird and frustrating disconnect in the film's characters. I never really got any sense that any of these people had any depth, had anything to them beyond the surface level. The conversations were bland and matter of fact, not in a way that felt deliberate or stylised (in the way that, say, a Yorgos Lanthimos film might be), but just in a way that felt underdeveloped. I couldn't tell if the film was trying to make a point about the emptiness of these characters and their lives, or if they were just poorly written. And so often these characters are frustrating to be around. I fully admire Viggo Mortensen for the commitment he shows to performing his character in the way he does, but it's exhausting to spend an entire film with this man who's constantly weak and in pain, coughing and hacking. It's not an appealing performance, and I don't want to spend any time with him, which is a problem when he's your main character.</p><p>And yet for all that, overall I think I like the film. David Cronenberg knows what he's doing when it comes to body horror, and he's able to construct images of incredible beauty out of elements that should be utterly repulsive. You can understand why someone would find beauty and art in the internal organs of the human body. There's a repeated mantra in the film that "Surgery is the new sex", and you understand what they mean - in one moment, Viggo Mortensen has had a zipper installed in his stomach to allow him to display his new organs, and Lea Seydoux unzips him and starts making out with his opened stomach, and it's a moment that feels tender and romantic. There's a tactility and a sensuousness to his filmmaking and to the world that he constructs that is palpable. The main thing about this film is that it emphasises what a skilled filmmaker David Cronenberg is. And as someone who really does have a limited knowledge of the man's work, it reminds me that I need to start exploring his back catalogue. </p><p>This is not a film for everyone. But it is an intriguing and memorable piece of work, with images that do feel like they will linger in the mind, the same way that Jeff Goldblum's decomposing body in <i>The Fly</i> or the fish stew in <i>eXistenZ</i> have remained in my memory. If you know what it means to see a David Cronenberg film, and you are prepared for that, it is worth seeing.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtTzPQlJbO3IMDDy1XwSQ0DglUa4LfvY8VpmbMEqEEEH17c9COpYKXRQhMdF4caSuHxKnmmaxaCphO43UlycV8b3Z3z0VREZF4l4Xa5Pu1K9QnuJlRO7JnjI_CSLZKcu_j4H88aUKDQs7XSzojdYOz1L2EZCZNGGmUhKYPw3hooRnVuPE442UkPoI9Zg/s755/ali_and_ava.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="511" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtTzPQlJbO3IMDDy1XwSQ0DglUa4LfvY8VpmbMEqEEEH17c9COpYKXRQhMdF4caSuHxKnmmaxaCphO43UlycV8b3Z3z0VREZF4l4Xa5Pu1K9QnuJlRO7JnjI_CSLZKcu_j4H88aUKDQs7XSzojdYOz1L2EZCZNGGmUhKYPw3hooRnVuPE442UkPoI9Zg/w271-h400/ali_and_ava.jpg" width="271" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Ali & Ava</i></b></span> </p><p>A wonderfully sweet romantic drama from Clio Barnard, <i>Ali & Ava</i> focuses on the bond that forms between two middle-aged people. Ali is a British Pakistani, a former DJ in the process of separating from his wife. Ava is struggling as a teacher's aide, widowed with four children and five young grandchildren. Ali gives Ava a lift home from her work one day, and they begin to form a friendship over their shared love of music. But one of Ava's sons, who idolises the memory of his (racist and abusive) late father, isn't keen to see his mother hanging out with another man, especially a Pakistani.</p><p>Clio Barnard is not a director of big moments or strong narrative drive; her work is much smaller, intimate, almost documentary-style. Everything about her work feels natural, as though we're just watching these characters live their lives. And it's those small moments that I think are going to linger in the memory - Ava helping a young girl climb down from some playground equipment; Ali dancing on the roof of his car in the middle of the night; Ava softly singing a traditional Irish song to herself. Even when there are moments of drama, they quickly pass and leave us with the intensity of emotional space instead - in one scene, Ava's son angrily threatens Ali with a sword(!), but within a minute the moment has passed and we are left with Ava trying to tenderly help her son deal with the internal conflicts he's experiencing.</p><p>Above all, the film is held together by two incredible performances. Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook bring a nice sense of loneliness to their performances - they're both surrounded by people (it's a great portrait of the way different communities work), while simultaneously dealing with the pain of a lack of connection. Ava is almost wistful at the memory of being in love, while Ali just wants someone who is willing to treat him with a bit of respect. And it's that longing that brings the two to nervously, uncertainly start spending time together, initially not even seeking any type of romantic connection, but just happy to be seen and to have someone else to spend time with - they almost seem surprised when their friendship develops into something more. But they are sweet and charming together and you can really feel the sense of joy they experience as they find this bond with someone they might never have looked twice at.</p><p>This is one of those films that just works. It never puts a foot wrong, it never hits a false note, it just set these characters in front of you and ask you to connect with them. It's a delightful little work, it comes by its emotions honestly and earns every moment of joy it presents. I loved it.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgINwuJaDJ_rLMhBgWg4Q6Ugu-02c18k9V5Acb1g3yG1-k-YpCi3EdDjzEowmzusiG62wZk0q8UkoJN8BA3xKDf4LQeWci9ahA_iM--tlzjXyP4P8qJn8AXVTeJeifvzy-trfek0Z2XXeGgsH_Raopg8PHIjAZQkPjKnSKMr7Ehz9vuVLh-x3al_oTGlg/s755/my_old_school.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgINwuJaDJ_rLMhBgWg4Q6Ugu-02c18k9V5Acb1g3yG1-k-YpCi3EdDjzEowmzusiG62wZk0q8UkoJN8BA3xKDf4LQeWci9ahA_iM--tlzjXyP4P8qJn8AXVTeJeifvzy-trfek0Z2XXeGgsH_Raopg8PHIjAZQkPjKnSKMr7Ehz9vuVLh-x3al_oTGlg/w270-h400/my_old_school.jpg" width="270" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>My Old School</i></b></span> </p><p>An intriguing, hilarious, and completely enjoyable documentary. In 1994, a new student called Brandon Lee enrolled as a fifth-year secondary school student at Bearsden Academy in Scotland; the film's director Jono McLeod was a classmate of Brandon. Right from the start, the other students apparently could tell there was something off about him, but eventually they moved past it and he became a well-known figure in the school, even taking the lead in the school musical. But still, there was that thing about him that seemed a little off. The next year, after he leaves school to pursue higher education, the truth about Brandon came out, and the school became the centre of a massive media scandal. </p><p>So I don't want to say what Brandon's secret was - although you can pretty much see where this is going from the start (for me, I found the suspense was less about what he was doing and more about why he was doing that). But despite that lack of surprise, it's just a fascinating story, and extremely entertaining as we hear all of his classmates reflecting with 25 years of hindsight on this crazy experience and reacting with amusement to the fact that they were so completely fooled by this person.</p><p>There's an unusual but really smart choice made by the film to present most of the talking-head interviews as pairs, where the interviewees are not only responding to the prompting of the interviewer, but also interacting and engaging with their fellow interviewee. It gives this film a real sense of nostalgia, the way that people will just get together with old friends and spend the time reminiscing and telling crazy stories about that time one person did something stupid - except that this time the "something stupid" resulted in massive media attention. The film heightens that sense of nostalgic conversation by having moments where we hear the stories that went around the school, the stories that everyone heard and believed, and it's only once those stories are bedded in that someone who was actually present for the events sticks their head in to correct the record - it's a nice reflection both of the fallibility of memory and the unreliability of gossip. And here it also helps that McLeod himself was a classmate of all these people (indeed, we later discover he's actually one of the talking heads) - he's not someone coming from outside to judge these people; he understands exactly what happened and how it happened. (There's even a moment where one interview subject, when asked why they were fooled, turns it back on McLeod, pointing out to him that he was just as fooled as everyone else.)</p><p>One of the most intriguing elements to the film is the way it approaches its interview with Brandon. You can't properly tell this story without getting the perspective of the man at the centre of the story, but for entirely understandable reasons, Brandon refuses to be interviewed on camera, although he does agree to an audio interview. And so, rather than working around the lack of video footage of Brandon's interview, they hire Alan Cumming to play Brandon for the purpose of being a talking head, convincingly lip-syncing his performance to Brandon's actual interview. Initially I wasn't certain whether this worked - Cumming is a very recognisable actor, and so his appearance was a constant reminder that this was not the real person. But when we do eventually see footage of the real Brandon, it turns out that Cumming is pretty good casting for the role - he does look a lot like the real person, and apparently at one point was even attached to play Brandon in a narrative movie that was never made. But there's also something conceptual about this approach that I found increasingly effective as the film went on - the core of this story is that Brendan is playing a role, pretending to be someone he's not, and so having a known actor, someone we can recognise as just playing a role, helps illuminate that fact.</p><p>There's also an interesting choice to illustrate the events in the story through the use of animation, rather than reenactment. And for the most part I did enjoy that approach - the stylization of the animation does really drive home that what we are watching is not necessarily how these events went down. It's just a shame that the animation is so noticeably cheap. Now, it's not that I'm expecting Disney-calibre animation on what is presumably a fairly low-budget movie. But it is disappointing when you find yourself watching something that looks about as animated as a basic webtoon from 20 years ago, especially when they keep reusing the same cheap animation over and over again (seriously, surely kids on holiday do other things besides dancing the Macarena all night). Still, the entire film is so likeable that I'll give the animation a pass. </p><p>Ultimately, it's just a genuinely entertaining film. It's intriguing, suspensful, hilarious, and a great time in the cinema.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-tuvX8kHIh-RA2xsiwhG7qpHF-B9pQ3OSsmc-CGC58EWuh-AxCE7LD6RAUP9nAbTJDsXiUPFjLpYgntAhrO1vFh_HSS0II6qAey2YndyOXGgGeV5IDUw5uZ1ZnW7EzFohhPDlfvwfgEAK9BFnwbUdySuNcNjLDiIW7UL5mXmIAXZs0DhUaLTpxL1HvQ/s755/fire_of_love.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-tuvX8kHIh-RA2xsiwhG7qpHF-B9pQ3OSsmc-CGC58EWuh-AxCE7LD6RAUP9nAbTJDsXiUPFjLpYgntAhrO1vFh_HSS0II6qAey2YndyOXGgGeV5IDUw5uZ1ZnW7EzFohhPDlfvwfgEAK9BFnwbUdySuNcNjLDiIW7UL5mXmIAXZs0DhUaLTpxL1HvQ/w270-h400/fire_of_love.jpg" width="270" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Fire of Love</i></b></span> </p><p>In the late 1960s, Katia and Maurice Krafft met in university, bonded over their mutual passion for volcanoes, fell in love, and spent over 20 years travelling the world together as married volcanologists to study, observe, and film and photograph as many active volcanoes up-close as possible, enhancing our understanding of the incredible geological processes at work under our feet. And then in June 1991, while observing the eruption of Mt Enzen in Japan, the pair get caught in a sudden cloud of boiling hot gas and ash, and pass away inches away from each other.</p><p>So it's a fascinating story, the Kraffts are charismatic and fun people to be around, and their enthusiasm for the marvels of volcanoes is palpable. And you do get a sense from them, particularly from Maurice, that there is a part of them that is thrilled by the danger. But they're never blinded to the destructive power of these processes - late in the film there is a tragic incident in which 25,000 people were avoidably killed in a volcanic mudflow, and the footage from that moment is truly horrific. But there's really only one reason to watch the film - the absolutely extraordinary images of volcanic activity. The Kraffts apparently shot hundreds of hours of footage, and so what we are given here are the best moments, the scenes and shots that just makes you marvel at the wonders of this Earth. There's the hypnotic beauty of watching the Earth split apart and the lava flows just slowly emerge and fold over onto themselves, there's the fireworks of volcanic bombs of red-hot rock flung into the air, there's the lava flow that rushes faster than a fast-moving river, there's the thick dense clouds of ash that plume out and cover everything around. And when I say that these people are close to this activity, I mean it - they're able to cook their food on the new lava flows, and even walk on them, or they pick up and juggle red-hot pieces of lava. And that closeness gives us the ability to witness things you never would have imagined - as we're told, volcanology is all about observation, and the closer you are, the more you observe. Every minute of the documentary brings us some new wonder you never would have imagined.</p><p>This is a stunning documentary. It is simply awesome, in the truest sense of the word - it inspires awe at the immense power and beauty of the Earth. You need to see this film, and if you can see this film on the big screen, see it on the biggest screen possible.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBAjK_2oHLHv96Hgh8cjHXYTI1VJsLH7xyW7b0SaQRnrqiIbK7v2KEzVFOtVvm7v9XTe0OOON3faqiwzxX9A8f5BZTQEWdaZWHZXDSt3WMiunxlsVpNETXaz4aU6Dy24wtKzUPaqBrQE12pR08KLJqENRYqmiH3dFRGDiS_nElRAZ3bCIz-kH86ZpcnQ/s755/speak_no_evil.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="528" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBAjK_2oHLHv96Hgh8cjHXYTI1VJsLH7xyW7b0SaQRnrqiIbK7v2KEzVFOtVvm7v9XTe0OOON3faqiwzxX9A8f5BZTQEWdaZWHZXDSt3WMiunxlsVpNETXaz4aU6Dy24wtKzUPaqBrQE12pR08KLJqENRYqmiH3dFRGDiS_nElRAZ3bCIz-kH86ZpcnQ/w280-h400/speak_no_evil.jpg" width="280" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Speak No Evil</i></b></span> </p><p>I couldn't actually remember what <i>Speak No Evil</i> was when I set down to watch the film. But when, less than a minute in, a shot of a beautiful Tuscan villa resort on a bright sunny day is treated with a loud discordant blaring score, you instantly know that this is a horror film.</p><p>A Danish family - Bjorn, Louise, and their young daughter Agnes - on holiday in Tuscany meet and befriend a Dutch couple - Patrick, Karin, and their silent son Abel. So when, a few months later, they get an invitation from the Dutch couple to spend a few days at their home, they decide to accept. Sure, they don't really know this other couple, but they're nice, what's the worst that could happen? Right from the start of the visit, they're uncomfortable - Patrick forgets that Louise is a vegetarian, Agnes' bed is a thin mattress on the floor, Patrick and Karin are uncomfortably demonstrative in their affections, they'll use the bathroom while someone is already taking a shower, to say nothing of the growing signs that Patrick is physically abusive to his son. But you can't really say anything about any of this; when you're a guest in someone's home it would be impolite to the host to say that you're not enjoying yourself. And who knows, maybe these are just cultural clashes, maybe they just do things differently in the Netherlands. And so the offences build and grow. </p><p>I really had a lot of fun with this one. While the film inevitably does become a horror film, the film really only makes that transition in the final 20 or 25 minutes. Before then, it exists very much as an exploration of manners, in which we are forced into a world of excruciating discomfort, but everyone chooses to suffer through and tolerate it because that's just the done thing, leaving us all discombobulated and unsure of our footing. At the end of the film, once everything has been revealed and the horrors of the situation are understood, Patrick is asked why they have done these things, and his answer is simple: "Because you let us." And that's the fundamental perspective of the film: it can often be easy for us to allow ourselves to be walked all over, to be treated with disrespect, because it's simpler then taking action or expressing anything uncomfortable. In that way, it has a lot in common thematically (if not stylistically) with the work of Ruben Ostlund or Michael Haneke - I found myself thinking a lot about <i>Funny Games</i> as the film progress, and was interested as I left the film to overhear someone else make the exact same comparison, so there's definitely something there. </p><p>The film has a fantastic cast all-round, but I found myself particularly admiring the work of Fedja van Huêt as the villainous Patrick. In this role, he manages to ride the line of feeling extremely charming and charismatic without actually being charming or charismatic - we needed to understand how he could be someone so likeable that people would be willing to go and spend time living with someone they hardly know, yet at the same time having an actually likeable villain would undercut the tension of the work by creating a conflict in the audience. Van Huêt is a master of the art of smiling without his eyes, which at times seem soulless, or at other times are often completely consumed with rage and fury. The end result is a performance that is somehow more threatening the more genial he becomes.</p><p>One thing I really respected about the film was the decision to leave so much unexplained and unanswered about what exactly was happening. Patrick's "Because you let us" is the only explanation we get for why all of this is occurring, and it's a strong choice. The film is so much in the perspective of Bjorn, Louise, and Agnes as the victims that the question of "why" becomes completely irrelevant. It doesn't really make any difference for the victim what the motivation is of their abuser; all that matters to them is that there is this person who is hurting them. And so the film deliberately leaves us with the same confusion and frustration that our sympathetic heroes are experiencing. We walk out of the film with many, many questions, and while we at least have a hint of an explanation for some of these, for many of those questions we're just left with blanks. And I appreciated the confidence the film had to leave those empty spaces for its audience.</p><p>There are really only two things about the film that I didn't appreciate. The first I've already referred to - the score is simply appalling, actively unpleasant, intrusively announcing itself and declaring the film to be a horror film even in moments where there is no horror to elicit that response. It's not supplementing or bringing out the tone of the film; it's aggressively setting the tone of the film in advance of the film itself. The one good thing about the score is that it's relatively sparse, and there are fortunately few moments where it is called on. But you quickly learn to brace yourself whenever you hear the score come in. </p><p>The second frustration comes when the characters fall into the common horror film trap of not being smarter then the audience. And sure, I know I'm watching a horror film so I know how important it is to escape, whereas for them it's just an uncomfortable situation until it's really not. But what makes a horror film satisfying is when you think about what you would do to get out of a situation, and then the characters try that very same approach, and it doesn't work - that at least means the characters are as smart as you, and you don't get to be frustrated at how dumb these people are for not trying something so obvious. In this case, there is one thing that I wanted to yell at the characters to try - why didn't they try to think of some excuse (a work situation, an unexpectedly sick family member) that might justify them leaving early. Indeed, there's one point where the family are given a perfect opportunity to take the time to prepare such an excuse, and for some reason choose not to, and as a result effectively choose to let themselves continue to be trapped. Would it have worked if they had said "We've just heard our mum is in the hospital, we have to go"? Perhaps, perhaps not. But it's frustrating that the characters never even give that a try.</p><p>But still, it's a very entertaining and suspenseful film that manages to wring a great deal of tension out of just how long it takes the film to reveal its true colours as a horror film, and that is effectively horrifying once it does so. It's an extremely enjoyable film, and I would recommend it.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKX5sCSGEn0Bcg5Gr2pTMGsWBao7ScCWh5thEQTRogHB2ncGOSuPz8rgh4kIeuqZdmH1zN_wPoyU-SvGC7TGve98mvjNB-BjPSvM5GcwsM5NUOndFVlcHwBe5aUGUHMQVvV4izTrb1UlIzYdnLGh7Z_PObWyglHIWJHiT3wC2vW8QtHRT3LeajdPYZug/s755/good_boss.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKX5sCSGEn0Bcg5Gr2pTMGsWBao7ScCWh5thEQTRogHB2ncGOSuPz8rgh4kIeuqZdmH1zN_wPoyU-SvGC7TGve98mvjNB-BjPSvM5GcwsM5NUOndFVlcHwBe5aUGUHMQVvV4izTrb1UlIzYdnLGh7Z_PObWyglHIWJHiT3wC2vW8QtHRT3LeajdPYZug/w270-h400/good_boss.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">The Good Boss</span></i></b> </p><p>Javier Bardem stars as Julio, the wealthy owner of a business manufacturing scales that his family has run for generations. He's excited to announce that the company is in the running for a prestigious award for excellence, and he informs his employees about this award during a speech in which he proclaims that each and every one of his employees is like a family member, they're like his sons or daughters. Of course, he's frustrated at the former "son" who has now set up camp across from the factory in protest at being laid off, which will not look good to the awarding committee when they visit. And he's irritated with his current "son" who keeps making massive and costly mistakes out of distraction because the man's wife is having an affair with another one of Julio's "sons". And then one of his oldest "sons" asks him for help after the "son's" son is arrested for being part of a gang that violently assaulted a man. And he is definitely keeping an eye on one of his newest "daughters", who is young and hot and would be great in bed. </p><p>So the film is a perfectly pleasant way to spend a couple of hours - it has some solid laughs, engaging characters, and a story that comes with enough surprising reveals and developments so that it always holds the attention. But as a corporate satire, it's frustratingly toothless and shallow. The film's main message seems to essentially be that your boss is not your family, and that attempts to build any such sense of connection within a company are ultimately born out of a desire to create an emotional bond between the employee and their employer when the employer has no such loyalty to the employee. And that's fine, I think there's a lot of truth in that. But it also doesn't feel like it's saying anything terribly interesting or radical - I suspect every person who watches this film will either have personal experience of being unfairly treated by their employer, or will know someone who was unfairly treated by their employer. At the same time, the boss's job is to run the business, and if an employee cannot contribute to the business or indeed is actively obstructive to its successful operation, it is the boss's job to address that situation as required. There's nothing terribly enlightening about this idea, and so if the film wants to make a point then the film needs to have more to say. And I don't think it does.</p><p>I also found the film to be irritatingly overwritten at times, at least as it comes to metaphor. It may seem random that the film revolves around a company that makes scales, until you hear the characters start to talk about the idea of scales - they talked about the importance of treating people fairly, of not tipping the scales; they talked about the blindness of Lady Justice holding the scales of justice aloft to judge the guilt or innocence of all who come to her. The most heavy-handed metaphor would have to be the set of scales that is set on display at the front gate of the factory, which remain constantly askew no matter what efforts are put in to reset them, and that can ultimately only be set back to the appearance of "even" by weighing one down with a bullet, because the involvement of a device for death in this metaphor isn't ominous at all.</p><p>If there is a reason to see the film, it is absolutely for Javier Bardem. It's a wonderfully smug, self-satisfied performance by the man, smarmy and with a constant cheerful rictus-like grin on his face that belies the tensions and frustrations that are building up within the man. We were told in a pre-film introduction that this is the third time that Javier Bardem has worked with director Fernando León de Aranoa, and I do think that existing relationship with the director does seem to have given Bardem a confidence to really explore the limits of unlikeability in his character.</p><p>It's a fun, enjoyable film - and one I will have forgotten about tomorrow.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSypnRy8nGjiuPDDDkeZ4en4nhcZQEVel0b4xLB6FJnxPHXkwKyMZEyTjITHcat_Kxin4Z7DD0pgMVvprdWJGizmcTP-kiJrePpZ8uHPgsjjasRL5fWy6h15lmgagyoxGV8Rriy_nORXzM8bl0-_QOCYdcoEjp2NRNSXZCnmLHf4kkwO2vulF4zQpKNQ/s755/dual.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSypnRy8nGjiuPDDDkeZ4en4nhcZQEVel0b4xLB6FJnxPHXkwKyMZEyTjITHcat_Kxin4Z7DD0pgMVvprdWJGizmcTP-kiJrePpZ8uHPgsjjasRL5fWy6h15lmgagyoxGV8Rriy_nORXzM8bl0-_QOCYdcoEjp2NRNSXZCnmLHf4kkwO2vulF4zQpKNQ/w270-h400/dual.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Dual</span></i></b> </p><p>Karen Gillan stars as Sarah, a young woman who one day discovers she has a terminal disease for which there is no hope of recovery. Not wanting to have her boyfriend and mother missing her, she decides to have a duplicate made of her, Sarah's Double. Sarah will spend her last few weeks teaching the Double how to be Sarah, her likes and dislikes, so that the Double can take her place once she dies. But 10 months pass, and Sarah discovers that her terminal illness has gone into remission and she's going to live. Which is a problem because only one of Sarah and Sarah's Double can be allowed to live, and Sarah's Double has been alive long enough to develop her own existence and not want to be terminated. And so this problem must be resolved the way the legal system in this world resolves such issues - they have a year to prepare, and at the end of that year, Sarah and Sarah's Double will meet on a field for a duel to the death to decide who will get to live on as Sarah. And so Sarah meets up with a local personal trainer, played by Aaron Paul, to equip herself with the skills and fortitude required to kill her Double.</p><p>I was initially thrown early in the film by several moments where certain lines or performance moments didn't quite ring true, felt a bit artificial. It wasn't until the scene where Sarah goes to her doctor and I was baffled by the doctor's performance that I suddenly clicked and realised that this was deliberate - the entire film had been shot with a consciously blank affect. It's not quite as extreme as you might get in a Yorgos Lanthimos film, but it's definitely there, and it's an intentional choice by the director. The challenge that I have with this is that it's almost not enough. When I watch a Lanthimos film, his characters speak with such an extreme neutrality of cadence that it's impossible to miss, and it almost turns his characters into blank canvases upon which we can apply our own interpretation of their character. But in this film, the way the characters speak and the things they say, while certainly being stylised, are sufficiently close to regular dialogue or conversational cadences that they don't immediately leap out as being part of the artifice of the film. As I said, it probably took me 10 or 15 minutes to register that this was actually part of the film's style, and I don't know how effective that is. I've seen both of Riley Stearns' previous films, <i>Faults</i> and <i>The Art of Self-Defense</i>, and while I could be misremembering, I don't remember there being any such stylisation in either of those films, so I don't think it's a particular quirk of the director. For some reason, Stearns just seems to think that the characters in the world of this film need to talk like this, and I don't understand why. Part of the problem with this approach is that it can be hard to maintain that level of stylised blank dialogue for the length of a film, and I'm not sure how consistently the approach is taken. For instance, there were some parts where it seems to me that they were creating a deliberate distinction between Sarah and her Double, where the Double seemed more natural than Sarah, but just when it seemed as though the film might be making a point about doubles seeming more human, the Double would return to the same blank affect, and it would be clear that these moments of personality were simply minor misalignments in performance or dialogue, rather than being part of any real point.</p><p>But I think the other problem with this approach is that it feels as though it pulls the film away from any real weight. Because its characters don't quite feel right, it then becomes difficult to take them seriously. You might wonder what it would be like to live with a double and have that double take over your life, you might wonder what it would be like to have to prepare to kill someone who is in essence yourself - these are natural things to find yourself reflecting on as a result of the film, but because these people never seem to have any real emotional response to the extreme situation they are in, it makes the film feel shallow and as though it's not fully engaging with the emotional realities that would come with existing in this world. Now, to be clear, it's a fun film - I laughed many times, I found the premise of the film intriguing, I admired how much thought and care had clearly gone into developing the world of the film and the rules that would govern the way it operates, and Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul are clearly enjoying themselves. If you see the film, I'm confident you'll have a good time. But I don't think it gets too much beneath its surface.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA-dIPoq2WI9xgC1gUEe3axF3lcEgfZYq3VOs3dQ5CH54mOigNf4vTe5zVeWcNmQfiYQQSYcOPoUNYpvM-md5k8ssZBXlbGXhZmZGT_T0LDixoNNiTc0hnnHUqBAdy5gB-_EbGPQiSoRYLA-PQAT0pINyrmxyjyCb_jxH5IcazBfgsqGMP8ATkS-qLWA/s755/resurrection.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA-dIPoq2WI9xgC1gUEe3axF3lcEgfZYq3VOs3dQ5CH54mOigNf4vTe5zVeWcNmQfiYQQSYcOPoUNYpvM-md5k8ssZBXlbGXhZmZGT_T0LDixoNNiTc0hnnHUqBAdy5gB-_EbGPQiSoRYLA-PQAT0pINyrmxyjyCb_jxH5IcazBfgsqGMP8ATkS-qLWA/w270-h400/resurrection.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Resurrection</span></i></b> </p><p>So I think this might be my first candidate for favourite film of the festival. <i>[NOTE: This was indeed my favourite of the festival.]</i> I walked out of <i>Resurrection</i> stunned, a little shell-shocked, beaten down, yet invigorated at the remarkable experience I've just been through.</p><p>Rebecca Hall stars as Margaret, an extremely competent business executive who has her life arranged pretty much exactly how she wants. She's doing well in her career, she has a smart, capable daughter about to turn 18, and she has a regular hook-up with a married colleague whenever she wants to get laid. And then suddenly she starts seeing a man from her past, David (played by Tim Roth), everywhere she goes - at a conference, in a store, at the park. And the sight of this man brings out a sheer panic in Margaret, much to the confusion of her lover and her daughter, who simply cannot understand the way she is behaving. </p><p>We don't initially understand either, at least not fully. And then Margaret explains her entire history with David, an appalling story of predatory behaviour and abuse by David against the younger Margaret. It's an incredible, extraordinary scene and performance - Rebecca Hall was my main reason for seeing the film, she's an actress whose work I always admire, but nothing prepared me for the power of her performance in that scene. And the thing that's beautiful about the scene is that it's a pure monologue - Rebecca Hall just starts talking, ostensibly to the other person in the room but in reality to the audience - and suddenly it felt to me as though time just stood still, and I was just caught up in this performance. It's all presented in a single take, there's never the release of a cut, we just sit and watch and listen as Rebecca Hall shows us a woman retraumatising herself as she forces herself to recall in excruciating detail and re-experience the worst moments of her life. But at the same time, the story she tells is so extreme that it's almost hard to believe. She's clearly traumatised and damaged by her experiences with David, there's never any doubt that this was a horrific and abusive relationship, but did he really do THAT? Or is this something she invented to help her process what really happened? Certainly there are things that David says that seem to indicate the truth of her story, but the film feels so completely from the perspective of Margaret that we begin to doubt the reliability of the film we are watching - did he really just say that, or did she imagine him saying that to justify the actions she feels she has to take? </p><p>The film is a powerful exploration of the lingering psychological effects that abuse can have on its victims. Margaret is a confident woman in control of her life, she's even able to draw on her own experiences with David to give advice to other women in bad relationships. To all outward appearance, the notion of her as a victim would seem absurd. And yet when he's there, she reverts back to the person she was with him, she has to follow his instructions, because there is such an overwhelming sense of fear in her, she seems to genuinely believe that he has the power to do anything he threatens to do, and all she can do is agree to whatever he demands in order to hopefully win his favour and convince him to leave her alone. And the astonishing thing is that possibly the most powerful threat he has over her is no threat at all, it's an absurdity, it's something that she rationally knows is nothing, and yet that threat has power over her because it is tied to the memory of the worst moment of her life, it's something that she desperately wishes could be undone, and so he can make her do whatever he likes by promising he can help undo this event or threatening to make this event permanent.</p><p>I've already praised Rebecca Hall, but I really need to reiterate how marvellous I found her portrayal of a woman slowly unravelling as she becomes increasingly desperate to find a way, any way, to free herself of this lingering presence in her life. But Tim Roth gives an equally exceptional performance as the abusive David. You can see the remnants of his charm sprinkled through his work; you can understand how it would be that an impressionable young woman would become infatuated with this soft-spoken older man. And when he does start exercising his control over her, he does so with an regretful tone - "I wish I didn't have to do this; this hurts me more than it hurts you; it's for your own good" - that is just chilling. But the thing that makes Tim Roth's performance so fantastic is the level of smarmy confidence he has on display. He's almost smug in his knowledge that he has absolute control over this woman, and it seems as though his reason for coming back to see her is just to prove to himself that he still has her hooked. </p><p>This is an exceptional thriller. It has moments that are so completely intense that I was literally uncomfortable because there was so much tension in my body. I'm genuinely impressed with writer-director Andrew Semans for making such a confidently crafted piece in only his second film, and am definitely interested to see where his career goes from here. In the meantime, it's a genuinely masterful work, and I find myself invigorated at having experienced it.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg48WETMgxDxL0G3MLvIl6mnHBCor54FlIXS4i-hZRQpANmIQrMc0X5I-fUthxoNd6n5aplYVKoVg52ZmCewbMV9-NncOHoNhVDV3b2950fzvIh-j6bCNBjBAi_9-TWiKk8sgdzh3BxTxLncXZY01BPFkQkPhO58BqD5dDiR1D3nod5pLbalAMwjMwJXg/s755/humans.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="481" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg48WETMgxDxL0G3MLvIl6mnHBCor54FlIXS4i-hZRQpANmIQrMc0X5I-fUthxoNd6n5aplYVKoVg52ZmCewbMV9-NncOHoNhVDV3b2950fzvIh-j6bCNBjBAi_9-TWiKk8sgdzh3BxTxLncXZY01BPFkQkPhO58BqD5dDiR1D3nod5pLbalAMwjMwJXg/w255-h400/humans.jpg" width="255" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>The Humans</i></b></span> </p><p>In a rundown New York City apartment filled with weird noises and water-stained walls, the Blake family gather to celebrate Thanksgiving. Youngest daughter Brigid has only just moved in to this apartment with her partner Richard, their first home together, and while there are a million problems with this apartment, that's why they can (just barely) afford it. She's also frustrated that her dream of being a composer keeps being stymied and that she's losing out on opportunities to build her career. Older daughter Aimee has broken up with her girlfriend, is dealing with a chronic bowel condition, and has just learnt that she has no hope of career progression at her current job. Their father Erik is anxious about his daughter living in this apartment with so many problems, he's still carrying trauma from nearly dying on 9/11 and from the things he saw on that day, and he noticeably has something he needs to tell his daughters but hasn't yet. Deeply Catholic mother Deirdre is not so passive-aggressively trying to deal with both her daughters walking away from the faith, and has her own health issues. And their grandmother Momo has Alzheimer's, just mutters incoherently, and is wheelchair-bound except when she decides to go for a wander. </p><p>I was a little bit uncertain approaching this one. I'd heard good things, but at the same time the basic description of the film - a movie adaptation of a recent acclaimed award-winning play about a family that comes together for a significant family event centred around a dinner - gave me strong memories of <i>August: Osage County</i>, which I did not care for. Fortunately this was a much more subtle and reflective film, without the easy histrionics that I found so off-putting in that film. It's the type of film where the tensions are much smaller, much sadder, and although there is one big blow-up in the film it comes surprisingly late in the piece, and you get the sense that this is just an immediate reaction out of surprise to a revelation, rather than some big relationship-ending conflict. Above all, the film seems to be about disappointment, with everyone having to grapple with some form of guilt or frustration at life not working out how you expect. </p><p>One thing that is always a risk with a movie that is based on a play is that the adaptation could feel too stage-bound - it's common to have a play where the events all take place in one location, but if you make a movie constrained to one location, it can feel restricted. And this film does takes place in a very limited location - with a handful of brief exceptions, the characters never leave the apartment, and they certainly never leave the building and go outside. And yet the film never feels restricted in that way. For a start, I assume they must have increased the size of the apartment from the play, since I assume on stage they would not have had a two-storey apartment set. While I'm not sure that increase in apartment size quite makes sense (how does the sound of the heavy-footed upstairs neighbour penetrate that loudly through two floors?), having that type of location for the film gives the director a lot more choice; there are so many nooks and crannies with their own distinctive details and feel that the director can use to locate a particular scene, so it never feels like we're stuck in one location. And first-time director Stephen Karam (who wrote the original play, as well as the screenplay adaptation) seems to really enjoy finding unusual or unexpected angles or images offered by the location to use as transitions between moments, as well as interesting little vignettes (particular highlights include Richard trying to create an artificial fireplace with a projector, or Aimee being uncomfortable about her grandmother seeing some graffiti in the elevator) that lighten the tone and give some variation to the texture of the film. All of which means that the movie feel genuinely cinematic, with a sense of scope that is quite unexpected given its limitations.</p><p>It's a wonderful little film, and I would strongly recommend it.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZVfqIa-VfxDnwDwgU_oqnqxeTTj811LC7dSuq4FiO9D_C27kngAowmC9bdCf7LP3GORm0Go7jOz4oi6xFvE3-lFiZ1zX9P8pJQ94n0CWDNLfEpGtgrg1zsFpbxIUPRR-AXtLS_c0Q8UVEEaScSebK_km3f2MMNK874Qw2OSLk2CZtJgSGbbMYd4bG8Q/s1029/sick_of_myself.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1029" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZVfqIa-VfxDnwDwgU_oqnqxeTTj811LC7dSuq4FiO9D_C27kngAowmC9bdCf7LP3GORm0Go7jOz4oi6xFvE3-lFiZ1zX9P8pJQ94n0CWDNLfEpGtgrg1zsFpbxIUPRR-AXtLS_c0Q8UVEEaScSebK_km3f2MMNK874Qw2OSLk2CZtJgSGbbMYd4bG8Q/w280-h400/sick_of_myself.jpg" width="280" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Sick of Myself</i></b></span> </p><p>Signe is a twentysomething cafe worker who one day saves the life of a woman attacked by a dog, and then dines out on the admiration that comes with her heroism. But after a few weeks, people tire of her story, while her artist boyfriend achieves some success with an installation made up of stolen chairs. Wanting to find some way to one-up him, she tries faking a nut allergy, or taunting a dog into biting her, until she finds the perfect way to get attention for herself - an obscure Russian pharmaceutical has just been banned for a side-effect that creates a a severe skin condition, so she buys every pill she can find and starts overdosing on them. And it works - it gives her a very visible problem that people can't help but notice, she even gets media attention when doctors can't identify the cause of her mysterious condition, leading to her being taken on as a model by an agency that specifically represents models with disabilities and unusual conditions.</p><p>So this is a perfectly fine film. It's an entertaining black comedy, with some solid laughs and an amusing central performance. But ultimately, the film just feels slight. The basic message of the film - young people today will do anything to attract attention in the modern media landscape - feels like a painfully obvious argument, lacking any truly significant insight at all. Of course the millennial, after handing her phone over to her boyfriend to take a photo of her, immediately knows the exact right pose to adopt for the "I was deep in thought and didn't even realise I was being photographed" photo. Then there's just the frustration that a lot of the jokes, while funny, often feel overly telegraphed and obvious, or simply underdeveloped. Consider the moment where Signe is at the modelling agency and suddenly vomits up a pool of blood, before the blind assistant walks into the room. As soon as they cut to the next scene, you know that the assistant is going to walk in completely unaware of the bloody footprints she is leaving. And sure enough, that happens. But also, there's no real pay-off to the scene that I noticed - she got blood on the sole of her shoe, that's the joke, and it does nothing further with that joke.</p><p>The film also has this device running through the movie where Signe constantly goes off on flights of fantasy, rehearsing different moments and imagining how they will always work out to her absolute advantage - of course if she writes a book about her experiences then it will be a massive best seller and hugely inspirational text; what other option could there be? And in theory, I don't mind this as a device. It's funny, it's true and reflects something I think we all do, and it does offer an illuminating insight into Signe as a character. But also I think that if you're going to have this kind of device, you do need to be clear about when your movie is presenting one of these flights of fantasy and when it's portraying real life. After all, the notion of a modelling agency for women with severely disfigured hands or massive unsightly skin conditions seems so unusual and so completely tied to her desire for major attention that for the first couple of minutes, I was fully prepared for this to be another fantasy moment, and it actually took me a little while to be fully certain that this was a genuine plot development in the film.</p><p>Ultimately, the film is the film - it's perfectly enjoyable and entertaining, and I enjoyed my time watching it. But it does feel like it lacks any real insight or substance. And that is the key disappointment around this film.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFPKyBlg-DPrRSgN7sGnfmzEvAmUXV7lySJSVNPPY-XojGUuQAKF2GWpAro8ktFUjyY_53a_q_U7MsDyYL3vR3X4GFT_WBZsG6OdrQdVK0B5e_qtebuzUxs4HM3hxdEjuyWPefUzxp8AXYjpybIS97EokdKkdPbWejp5Yk4gqB4gLAe6jaDIu36OO-jA/s755/flux_gourmet.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFPKyBlg-DPrRSgN7sGnfmzEvAmUXV7lySJSVNPPY-XojGUuQAKF2GWpAro8ktFUjyY_53a_q_U7MsDyYL3vR3X4GFT_WBZsG6OdrQdVK0B5e_qtebuzUxs4HM3hxdEjuyWPefUzxp8AXYjpybIS97EokdKkdPbWejp5Yk4gqB4gLAe6jaDIu36OO-jA/w270-h400/flux_gourmet.jpg" width="270" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Flux Gourmet</i></b></span> </p><p>Gwendoline Christie stars as the director of an organisation offering month-long residencies to culinary collectives in sonic catering, artists who construct their art from the aural landscape of food. The current collective in residency is led by an extremely indecisive yet overly stubborn woman who refuses to accept any suggestions, however helpful, from the woman responsible for paying for their art. Meanwhile, one of the institute's employees is suffering from extreme gastric distress, inspiring the idea of a public endoscopy as art. And in the meantime, the director also comes under attack from another culinary collective that was rejected because she "didn't like what they did to terrapins".</p><p>You could walk into this film knowing nothing about it, and immediately recognise that this is a Peter Strickland film. For a start, the degree of fetishisation in these films is palpable - at this point, it really does feel as though Strickland is just making films about his fetishes, and then just inviting us to feel how he feels when he looks at these images. One of the very first shots in the film is an image of fingers with perfectly manicured fingernails, painted in a deep green, dipping into salt, and then sprinkling the salt into a boiling broth. It's bizarrely erotic - you can feel Strickland being strangely turned on by the salt crystals that remain on those fingernails even as the rest fall into the hot liquid. Another thing that quite clearly entrances Peter Strickland is evidently millinery - Gwendoline Christie is constantly shown wearing these extraordinary pieces of fashion, always paired off with a stunning hat or fascinator (even in bed, she still wears some great headwear suitable for sleeping in), and there's something about the way he shoots her that gives a particularly uncomfortable and arousing focus to that headwear.</p><p>As always, Strickland is a fascinatingly tactile film-maker. As you watch his film, you experience what it feels like to hold regurgitated avocado in your hand, or have tomato soup poured all over you, or indeed to have salt crystals stuck to your fingers. The film has a lot in common with Strickland's excellent <i>Berberian Sound Studio</i>, between the tactility of slicing into vegetables, or the different sounds that can be generated from different foods, but where that film was much more of a nightmare about a man losing his mind, here it's much more sensual and enjoyable. In fact, Strickland seems much more playful here than I think he has ever been before - just look at Gwendoline Christie, who is absolutely a Strickland-type - tall and statuesque, clad in stunning fashion and impossibly powerful - but whereas, say, the comparable lesbian shop-assistant witches of <i>In Fabric</i> were severe and daunting, here Christie gets to be bright and cheery and funny. Indeed, the entire film is a genuinely hilarious experience that the audience seemed to fully delight in - whether it's the wonderfully overblown dialogue ("You can keep the epicurean toxicity, but indulge me on the flanger, please?"), the absurd cast of characters (the cadaverous doctor constantly mocking everyone for not having read Euripides was a particular highlight), or the genuinely affectionate skewering of the art world (which I found much more convincing and effective then in <i>Crimes of the Future</i>).</p><p>My only real issue with the film is the frustrating choice to have the film be narrated by a character suffering from severe gastric distress. Being me with my sensibilities, I dreaded every time the narrator came in with yet more discussion about his bowel movements or his constant need to fart. </p><p>After I saw <i>In Fabric</i> a few years ago, I referenced the David Fincher <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9031777-if-you-think-that-you-can-hide-what-your-interests" target="_blank">quote</a>, "If you think that you can hide what your interests are, what your prurient interests are, ... if you think you can hide that in your work as a film director, you're nuts." The quote continues to be true of Strickland - he's definitely not trying to hide his prurient interests, he's positively revelling in them, and he wants us to join him in this world. The marvel of his work is that we managed to walk away without being made to feel dirty; in fact, I suspect most people would walk away from the film thinking "Hmm, hats..., yeah I get that." I really enjoyed this one.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga3pATA-_0Z4yNYnwhgyPOCgKMHbCamNI-q05--9chM-z8P-zTDY8cJAiN4gMNIQxn_I91iiSrwUzKw6U_IEHz_wP_xa2MIX87nK-dzVa9e7e3EWN3xGT7tVIGOakzViji7i_GysjIuz2zUtUjg-f1vLbgey085uKfsioVN36qBeou6t__UCDMYUbzHg/s755/stranger.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga3pATA-_0Z4yNYnwhgyPOCgKMHbCamNI-q05--9chM-z8P-zTDY8cJAiN4gMNIQxn_I91iiSrwUzKw6U_IEHz_wP_xa2MIX87nK-dzVa9e7e3EWN3xGT7tVIGOakzViji7i_GysjIuz2zUtUjg-f1vLbgey085uKfsioVN36qBeou6t__UCDMYUbzHg/w270-h400/stranger.jpg" width="270" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>The Stranger</i></b></span> </p><p>Henry is something of a drifter, looking for work. So when a new acquaintance suggests that he can get Henry a position working for the same major criminal enterprise he works for, Henry is definitely interested. Henry is introduced to Mark, his point of contact in the organisation, and the two work together and become friends. But what Henry doesn't know is that Mark is an undercover cop, there is no criminal organisation, and this entire months-long operation is entirely focused on him as the lead suspect in a high profile murder case.</p><p>So I didn't remember anything about the premise of this film when I sat down to watch it - so much so that I was genuinely shocked, 15 minutes into the film, when Mark pulled out an audio recorder to record a message revealing that he's an undercover cop - which really let me focus on the way the film sets out its key information and tells its story. I did really appreciate how slowly and carefully the film doled out its information - we only gradually learn what crime is being investigated, how the investigation came to zero in on Henry as their main suspect, and even how the elaborate creation of this entire criminal organisation could even lead to the arrest of this man for a completely unrelated historic crime. I did think the film perhaps was not as clear as it could have been that it is taking place in multiple timelines - the film intercuts constantly between the undercover operation and the initial investigation that leads to the identification of Henry as a suspect, and admittedly I might have missed something, but it took a while for me to realise that the film is moving back and forward through time as it cuts between these storylines. </p><p>And that, I think, points to one of the big risks presented by this film. The openings studio logos revealed this is a film eventually to be released by Netflix, and I'm not sure how well the film will work at home. We're all aware of the reality of watching a film at home, of being easily distracted by how many devices to hand, of having things pull us out of the film. <i>The Stranger</i> is an extremely effective film that does cast a spell over you when you are able to be completely absorbed into it, but I do fear that watching at home, with all of the risk of distractions taking its audience away of the film, the film's measured pace and careful revealing of information might not quite hold the attention and unfairly damage the film's reception. I also worry because sound was such a big part of the reason I was so engaged with the film - one of my favourite tricks in the film was the often subtle use of a very high frequency tone to represent Mark's awareness of being recorded, and fear that at any moment their operation could be discovered. Again, we had the advantage of a cinema sound system to really draw out the nuances and intricacies of the sound design, and I'd be really curious how well that is communicated at home where most people will not have such precision sound setups.</p><p>The film also did some interesting work in portraying the experience and mindset of this man who is trying to be a parent to his son, while at the same time having to maintain a separate identity. And while it is only a minor part of the film, it's effectively explored, thanks to the dream sequences that portray the mental damage this investigation is doing to Mark, or the hide-and-seek scene, in which we clearly see just how fearful Mark is about protecting his son having spent so long with a man accused of a truly heinous crime. At the same time, I'd actually like a bit more development of this point. I couldn't help wondering how this all worked, how someone could return home and fulfil their parental responsibilities when they're trying to maintain an entire separate identity - doesn't that create a real risk of exposure if the target ever discovers where you live? How do they guard against that?</p><p>I found the film challenging and thoughtful, and I was excited to have the chance to see it on the big screen. Realistically most people will watch it on Netflix, and so all I can suggest is to turn off the lights, put away your devices, and just let the film envelop you.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQaBbhjhJqzqZ7mRj3YMM6WM5gQdmerwIseMOyLGpkszVaIUhCkIsTxgNzpVXDZbhgLLqrsEysmSvaBzt_-TSIVE7UacB3zj9Zs_x-fr8beT9X8pU_dM8VckR9jJLxhP7M1aO7W5Dj2q8DU7yBaIpYLdgzXS_sKhhnTXjW7S2OS2_Fw_-9yjobBC0ukA/s755/forgiven.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQaBbhjhJqzqZ7mRj3YMM6WM5gQdmerwIseMOyLGpkszVaIUhCkIsTxgNzpVXDZbhgLLqrsEysmSvaBzt_-TSIVE7UacB3zj9Zs_x-fr8beT9X8pU_dM8VckR9jJLxhP7M1aO7W5Dj2q8DU7yBaIpYLdgzXS_sKhhnTXjW7S2OS2_Fw_-9yjobBC0ukA/w270-h400/forgiven.jpg" width="270" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>The Forgiven</i></b></span> </p><p>Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain star as David and Jo, a married couple who seem to have nothing but contempt for each other. The couple are on holiday in Morocco, travelling to the palatial compound of a friend for a many-days-long party. But as they drive in the middle of the desert at night, David having spent the day drinking, they accidentally hit and kill a local teenager. So they pile his body into the car and carry on to the party. But then the father of the young boy turns up to claim the body and seeking the person who killed his son, and while David hopes that he can find a way to make this problem go away at minimal cost and inconvenience to him, it becomes clear that David is going to have to travel with the father back to his home to make true reparations (which he doesn't want to do, since what if they're ISIS?). Meanwhile Jo stays behind at the party, enjoying a lifestyle of debauchery, and flirting (or more) with a cute and funny American. </p><p>So the film's messaging is extremely obvious, a portrait of the indulgence and excess of the wealthy who build themselves up at the expense of the impoverished around them. It's in David's apparent attitude that he can kill this boy and just move on because the kid is just a local, and not important. It's in the way the host partner proudly announces that he designed all of the servant's uniforms, which are apparently all "authentic". Whenever there's a question of how they did something - whether it's how they got enough water into the middle of the desert to fill the massive swimming pool, or how they got fresh papaya for breakfast - the answer is always the same. Their host, played by Matt Smith, has decided to build his life in Morocco but has also chosen to essentially wall himself off from the country in this massive home, and while he smugly announces the depths of his appreciation of Islamic art he is particularly uninterested in engaging with the culture around him, being dismissive of his servants, and seeming to show little knowledge about how things work in this country past dealing with the authorities. The attitudes of these people feel almost predatory to the country, as though they have come there just to devour the local resources for their own amusement. Unfortunately I think the film is too obvious in making the point, and in deriding the shallowness of its characters it makes the mistake of embracing that shallowness itself - there is precious little nuance to the film, and too many of its characters have no defining characteristics beyond enjoying diving into the pool and taking drugs, or being the stoic servants observing the events. </p><p>But then you have the evolution of David, and that is where I think the film is particularly strong. Ralph Fiennes gives his character an extremely subtle journey as he goes on this trip to the dead boy's home - he starts out intensely self-centred, even trying to put the incident aside in order to enjoy the party, and when it becomes clear that he has to go on this trip with the boy's father, his focus is very much solely on his own fears and his desire to minimise any cost to himself as a consequence (he even declares that he won't pay any more than €1000 for the boy's life). There's no big moment where his attitude changes; instead Fiennes brings a real understanding to the character, with each scene taking him one step closer to his conclusion, where his heart is genuinely broken for this boy and where you feel that he would willingly give his life if it would bring the boy back. It's a powerful performance, and is certainly the reason to watch the film. </p><p>Beyond that, I don't know there's too much to the film. The satire of the wealthy feels genuinely shallow, beyond the handful of major characters everyone feels unformed, and at times the way the film cuts between the indulgence of the party and the tragedy of David and the grieving father gives the film a whiplash sensation. I also find myself very aware that this is a film made by a white British man that is, in the part of the film that makes most impact, presenting a portrait of the lives and cultures of the people living in North Africa, and I can't help wondering how people who live in Morocco would feel about the way their world has been portrayed. At the same time, there is that Ralph Fiennes performance, which is great, and I'm glad to have seen the film just for that.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWylQUT1TTt-tCWEJuzqVlTJbuNb5h7iaQFr0RQ5Kr0l9bZ56qmPtWDG1Ed_13ke2Jpcm802BOQUtWZ5_oobfzWuaM4geoItHsHpuM3CihyZFYlbDPQhDgNIUL0Jj2zBU_PIUtDX9h1_DxChGyAOJUtN5iwdzRX7BqeMUlXpwdYVW2gJTv73LFwfc6Gg/s750/stars_at_noon.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWylQUT1TTt-tCWEJuzqVlTJbuNb5h7iaQFr0RQ5Kr0l9bZ56qmPtWDG1Ed_13ke2Jpcm802BOQUtWZ5_oobfzWuaM4geoItHsHpuM3CihyZFYlbDPQhDgNIUL0Jj2zBU_PIUtDX9h1_DxChGyAOJUtN5iwdzRX7BqeMUlXpwdYVW2gJTv73LFwfc6Gg/w266-h400/stars_at_noon.jpeg" width="266" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>The Stars at Noon</i></b></span> </p><p>Trish is a freelance journalist trying to report from Nicaragua; however, the upscale travel magazine she has written articles for in the past isn't interested in her stories of kidnapping and murder so, with no money coming in, she turns to sex work in order to survive and get enough money to leave the country. One day she meets Daniel, a white-suited Englishman who may be more than the oil company consultant he claims to be, and the two start a troubled relationship. But when pressures in the country starts to get too much, and Trish's other contacts can no longer offer her any assistance or favours, the two decide to try to escape over the border. </p><p>The first part of the film, with Trish navigating her way around the city of Managua, really is involving. Admittedly it is baggy, but appealingly so - it's not especially plot-driven, and is much more about simply observing this woman and how she survives. Trish has been in this city long enough that she does have a comfort and a certainty as she navigates the different places of the city, and it's genuinely fascinating just watching her, getting to understand the way she lives. And while there are plot developments in that first part of the film, for the most part they feel less like a story is being told, and more as though we are just watching the character and understanding her through the way she reacts to these new developments and complications. </p><p>Playing Trish is Margaret Qualley, who I've been following ever since <i>The Leftovers</i>, and who was my main reason for seeing the film. Her work here really is excellent - she's confident, in control, because she knows she can show no weakness to survive in this world, she just has to take the punches and carry on. But we understand that it is all surface - we see her exhaustion in private as she prepares herself to encounter someone she wants to avoid, or we hear her desperation as she pleads for her weary editor to help her. At times the mask slips and she reveals her anxieties to others around her - her panic when an authority figure betrays her or fails to come through with assistance she was relying on, or her shamefacedness with the guy she's flirting with where she has to come out and say that if he wants to sleep with her he'll have to pay $50 - and you can feel her horror as she understands how weakened her position is as a result of those interactions. </p><p>Unfortunately the second half of the film, when our two leads try to escape through the jungle to find some way to leave the country, really did not work for me. The bagginess of the film worked when it was just a static portrait of life in the city, but once it started having an actual direction of travel, started needing to move the story towards its climax, the lack of tension really countered against what the film needed to be trying to achieve. Frankly, I disengaged from the film. The second half would almost have been a complete write-off were it not for the presence of Benny Safdie, who between this and <i>Licorice Pizza</i> is very quickly becoming someone whose role is to wander into a film late in its third act and be brilliant. Here he plays an American who finds himself in the middle of nowhere and who barely even attempts to deny that he's CIA. He's pretending to be a fish out of water, but he knows no-one believes him, he's not really trying to convince anyone, and the entire exercise seems almost to be for his own amusement. He does give the film a nice spark of fun at a time where there is otherwise precious little.</p><p>I find myself bothered by one of the key choices made in telling this story. The film essentially takes place today, mid-Covid pandemic - everyone wears masks, they need their temperature checked before checking into high-end hotels, there's even a significant confrontation that takes place in a Covid testing station, and the film definitely tries to suggest that some of the tensions in the story are driven by the pandemic and the response to it. But it's also clear that there is more going on - there's a genuine undercurrent of political unrest running through the film. And that puzzled me - I know I'm not the most up-to-date on international affairs, but I felt that I hadn't heard anything about Nicaragua being a political hotspot lately. Indeed, checking the official travel advisories I find that, while the country is certainly not the safest place to be, it doesn't seem to be in the type of political upheaval that the film suggests. This confused me, until I discovered the film is based on a novel that takes place in 1984 during the Nicaraguan Revolution. I can see that the story would work in that context, that you would need that type of chaotic environment for this story to make sense. I get the impression that they probably tried to write a script that did remove the Revolution from the story and use Covid to replace it, but the problem was that the Revolution was so ingrained into the fibre of the story that even someone like me, who knows nothing about Nicaraguan history or the original novel, could recognise this key plot element even if they've tried to remove it.</p><p>So ultimately the film didn't work for me. That said, Margaret Qualley is a star you can't help watching, and I remain interested in seeing where she goes next.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVw2kW8hl09RdaGvhO4US26ngGs_vmJfaNR8nS_NjV5VFlI9OkgDPR4sIj5B_mRNRVKUTT9-Ng7pyn-VUw8R77RvUPc3WZXEAJgvvcqpfj5AThBu_H5YRFEshHpiuw2GCGYmpa7BjiRPrXd3MHzAjW-jQpGQXenV6bvVnkpH5M8t46Dm0UA0XrBrz5oA/s755/mona_lisa_and_the_blood_moon.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="534" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVw2kW8hl09RdaGvhO4US26ngGs_vmJfaNR8nS_NjV5VFlI9OkgDPR4sIj5B_mRNRVKUTT9-Ng7pyn-VUw8R77RvUPc3WZXEAJgvvcqpfj5AThBu_H5YRFEshHpiuw2GCGYmpa7BjiRPrXd3MHzAjW-jQpGQXenV6bvVnkpH5M8t46Dm0UA0XrBrz5oA/w283-h400/mona_lisa_and_the_blood_moon.jpg" width="283" /></a><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon</span></i></b> </p><p>Mona is a young woman who has spent years being held in a mental institution being treated cruelly by the guards and service providers employed there. But Mona has powers of mind control, and one day she decides to use these to escape and flee into New Orleans. Once there, she befriends a stripper who sees in Mona's powers someone who can help her get the strip club clients to be extremely generous in their tipping, or persuade passers-by to go to the nearest ATM and offload their bank balances onto her. This draws the attention of a cop who has already experienced Mona's mind control powers, and so he determines to hunt her down before anyone else gets hurt. </p><p>I can confidently say that this was my most hated film of the festival - and since I was rather looking forward to it, that makes it also my most disappointing film. I really loved Ana Lily Amirpour's first film, the Iranian vampire drama <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2016/06/power-redux.html#:~:text=A%20Girl%20Walks%20Home%20Alone%20At%20Night" target="_blank">A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night</a></i>. Inevitably I find myself comparing this film to that earlier film, and there is not a single measure by which this film compares well. In <i>Girl</i>, the entire film is infused with its Iranian setting, the very point of the film is about Iranian oppression of women; here the New Orleans setting feels generic; other than a single scene where the cop gets a token from a voodoo priestess to (ineffectively) protect himself from Mona's powers, nothing about the film seems to connect with the setting at all. In fact, I struggle to find any thematic substance here at all; the closest it came was a moment where we see news footage of Donald Trump signing an agreement with North Korea, followed very shortly by the revelation that Mona is herself North Korean, but while it's clearly trying to make a point, what it adds up to was unclear to me. <i>Girl</i> had interesting, nuanced characters with unexpected shading to them; here the characters can be summed up as according with every clichéd stereotype imaginable for their character category - stripper, deadbeats, neighbourhood bully, precocious boy, determined cop - whatever you've imagine from those barebones descriptions is what these characters are. The only character who can't be summed up in a couple of words is Mona, and that's just because she's pretty much a blank slate responding to whatever else anyone else does or says. <i>Girl</i> had beautiful stark black-and-white cinematography that felt rich and distinctive and created indelible images I still remember seven years after seeing the film; here the cinematography is bright and garish and ugly and feels like it's assaulting the viewer with images I can't wait to forget. It had a promising-looking cast, with people like Kate Hudson and Craig Robinson, but Kate Hudson is wasted in a generic uninteresting stripper role, while Craig Robinson is likeable as the cop trying to catch Mona, but he's also playing the character as Craig Robinson, just like every other role he plays. It's also a film that is trying to be funny, but that never once amused me - although much of the audience did laugh in the intended moments, and walking out I even heard one couple discussing how funny they found it, so maybe I'm wrong about that.</p><p>Look, your mileage may vary, you might see this and think it's hilarious, a great film, extremely entertaining. The other people in the cinema seemed to enjoy it. All I know is that, within about 5 minutes of the film starting, I realised that I was hating the film, and sadly it never got better.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLNDgGtmbpLdBEFWrb38Dnx_oQrsRY2REjKaT0Mt-98GDIYlbUMTo_HWdL6N1G4NLV6LAym2Z0j7tXGSDgWY7s4_UfYjQZ1V0QuoPrY4pEqgtqKhlfsQMQBYc7pEG1RwAyJIP2aDivFZjdxz1DJZeEdhCqzEw3X3jJuRg2VFNSE3rYyFV7fReVvAhKOA/s755/corsage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="533" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLNDgGtmbpLdBEFWrb38Dnx_oQrsRY2REjKaT0Mt-98GDIYlbUMTo_HWdL6N1G4NLV6LAym2Z0j7tXGSDgWY7s4_UfYjQZ1V0QuoPrY4pEqgtqKhlfsQMQBYc7pEG1RwAyJIP2aDivFZjdxz1DJZeEdhCqzEw3X3jJuRg2VFNSE3rYyFV7fReVvAhKOA/w283-h400/corsage.jpg" width="283" /></a><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Corsage</span></i></b> </p><p>Vicky Krieps plays Empress Elisabeth of Austria, who was married to Emperor Fritz Joseph I for 44 years. When the film begins, Elizabeth is in her 40s, is sensitive about rumours that she is putting on weight, and so responds by having her servants bind her bodice (the titular "corsage") ever tighter. She's unhappy in her marriage, and feels stifled by court life and the burdens of being consort to the ruler. And so she travels, always finding attractive men to flirt with, but always returning to the life she hates. </p><p>The film is perfectly fine. The reason to see the film is Vicky Krieps' performance, another reminder of just how great this actress is. In many ways the performance should be rather unlikeable - she's tetchy with the servants, uninterested in her husband, snaps at those around - but Krieps manages to position this behaviour as a reaction to the frustrations of feeling trapped in this world. Indeed in an early moment she slyly invites us into this world with a glance straight to camera and a knowing smirk, as if telling the audience "you think you'd be fine in this environment, but you get to leave and escape; imagine how trapped this world would make you feel if this was your life". Part of her frustration clearly comes from being someone always strives to challenge herself - her very first scene involves trying to push the limit for how long she can keep herself underwater - so having to live a life filled with endless banquets and little challenge would understandably begin to feel like a prison to the Empress. </p><p>I did like the way the film deliberately tried to avoid a narrative structure - the film is not driven by story beats or by the historic record per se, instead presenting a collection of individual moments that together add up to an image of the Empress. Rather then racing from storybeat to storybeat, we get something much more contemplative and reflective of the time passing. Now to be honest, I do think a more narrative-driven approach would have been interesting - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_Elisabeth_of_Austria" target="_blank">Wikipedia would suggest</a> there is a lot of drama in her story that was largely elided in the film - but for the most part it's a rather enjoyable experience.</p><p>One thing I was puzzled by was the decision to include a number of anachronisms into the film. There are a couple of moments where characters listen to someone performing modern songs, including a harpist singing the Rolling Stones' song "As Tears Go By". There are multiple scenes where Elisabeth is filmed on a movie camera about 15 or 20 years too early for the technology. And while I missed it, my friend eT informs me that there was a modern tractor in a scene at the railway station. Now there is a long history of deliberately including anachronism in period movies as a way of making a specific point - Sofia Coppola famously gave Marie Antoinette a pair of Converse sneakers is a way of highlighting the fact that the woman was just a teenager - but I am having trouble identifying what the purpose of these anachronisms are, and what message we are intended to take away from these moments. If anything, the anachronisms are insufficiently anachronistic - when she is filmed on the movie camera, my initial reaction was to think that it seemed too early for the technology, but my knowledge about the very early history of the moving picture is weak enough that it seems plausible that the technology was a few years older then I had realised. (Indeed it seems that there had been limited versions of the moving picture camera invented at the time, but not as advanced as the one we are shown, which would not be invented for another 15 years.) What that meant was that whenever one of these movie camera moments arises, it pulled me out of the film - I was more focused on trying to work out whether this was an anachronism rather than thinking about the scene itself.</p><p>The movie ends with Elisabeth's death. But the interesting thing is, the way she is shown dying in the movie is not how she died in reality. In truth, Elisabeth was travelling under a assumed identity, but news of this came out, and an Italian anarchist wanting to kill someone - anyone - from royalty stabbed her. That is not what happens in this film - although there is a moment that I think is intended to explain why that is the story that history has recorded. The film instead gives her a death in a striking, stunning moment that has left an indelible final image embedded in my mind. It should be a tragic moment - it's the death of a character we've come to care a great deal about - but instead it's surprisingly freeing, as Elisabeth finds in her death an opportunity to free herself from the constraints of duty that have so tightly restricted her. It's a magical moment.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8F5J-2ineQqp41YwLT3LCzIU44gLrOSlC1C18gYFqXtlUuynJvBc6KzT6GOZwYcHaVgxMYeS9--4h2TppvdNnqihyu2TsuZrPeE0WsXlXG-3X99jmR4Kd4v72rVfzUXrpsfFnskUkX1WN8wbPxSKK155nfwrxPsKSR7kgGx-MaZRa_fxqST6zrCP2gA/s755/alcarras.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8F5J-2ineQqp41YwLT3LCzIU44gLrOSlC1C18gYFqXtlUuynJvBc6KzT6GOZwYcHaVgxMYeS9--4h2TppvdNnqihyu2TsuZrPeE0WsXlXG-3X99jmR4Kd4v72rVfzUXrpsfFnskUkX1WN8wbPxSKK155nfwrxPsKSR7kgGx-MaZRa_fxqST6zrCP2gA/w270-h400/alcarras.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Alcarràs</span></i></b> </p><p>Back in the 1930s, the wealthy Pinyol family were protected by the neighbouring Solé family during the Spanish Civil War; as an expression of gratitude, the patriarch of the Pinyols gave a portion of his family's land to the Solés, to build their family home and develop a small peach orchard. Unfortunately, they never signed a contract (because you just didn't do those things in those days - your word was your bond), the man who gave them the land has passed away, and now the younger Pinyol now wants the land back so he can clear the trees and build a solar panel farm. And so the Solés have one last summer to enjoy before their entire way of life ends. </p><p>The second feature film from director Carla Simón, whose debut film <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2018/07/matryoshka-doll-redux.html#:~:text=to%20enjoy%20it.-,Summer%201993,-A%20sweetly%20moving" target="_blank">Summer 1993</a></i> was a genuine festival highlight a few years ago, <i>Alcarrás</i> shows that that film's success was no accident. She makes an interesting choice here to set up this tension - they are losing their property - but then it's not really the focus of the film; it's just one of many subplots. This is not a film about the family making one last effort to save the property; the film starts at a point where they've essentially already accepted that they've lost, and so they just put that to one side and enjoy what time they have. Indeed, it seems as though at times they even forget what is happening - instead they continue to worry about the effect rabbits will have on the peach trees, or whether some flooding will kill the trees, despite the fact that everyone knows those trees will be uprooted in a matter of weeks. The Pinyol family are barely a presence in the film - although the constant increase in the size of the solar panel farm means their impact is always present - and they're not villains, despite how the Solés clearly feel (the teens even leave dead rabbits on their front porch). There's a scene where we learn that some of the Solé family members have even been offered a job maintaining the solar panels, which does go to show that, while the Pinyols are doing what is best for their own interests, there is at least some understanding of the impact their actions are having and a desire to find some way to address that. At the same time, the decision to reject that offer is entirely understandable, and reflects the pain of losing the only life you've ever known and being forced to adopt a new life to which you may feel entirely unsuited.</p><p>The main delight of <i>Summer 1993</i> was how the film really focused in on the world of the young children at the centre of the story. Here, the story is much larger with a wider range of characters, but again the highlight of the film does rest in the relationship between the three young children that make up the youngest generation, and it's clear that Simón has a particular talent for portraying the world of children. They're largely oblivious to everything that the grownups are dealing with, and only notice when something happens that affects them - like when the rusted car they enjoy playing in is taken away to clear the area for the solar panels. And it's a real joy to just watch these kids being kids - they play spaceships, and imagine pouring the petrol into the spaceship mid-flight so they can escape from the aliens; they sneak into the neighbour's garden to eat his watermelons and have a lettuce-fight; they build a fort out of pallets and then are annoyed when the grown-ups want to use the pallets for work stuff. But that's not to say that these young kids are the focus of the story - there are several generations represented here across multiple branches of the extended family and they all get involving stories, from the teenage girl practising a dance routine with her friends for a local show, or the guy trying to secretly hide a few marijuana plants in with the other crops, or the fight to improve the payments given to farmers for their fruit.</p><p>One thing I was surprised to be reminded of post-film-screening was the fact that the cast is pretty much entirely made up of non-professional actors. I've seen many films that rely on non-professionals - it seems to be one of those things that really appeals to directors looking to introduce some extra authenticity into their work - and it very seldom works, because you can always see a degree of discomfort and self-consciousness by the performers. But here, I completely forgot that these were not experienced actors, because there's such a natural ease to their performances that they became invisible. To do that with such a large cast without a single off-performance speaks to Simón's strength as a director guiding her performers, and it's particularly impressive with a director who is still so new. </p><p>The film is just an utter delight, and one of the genuine highlights of the festival.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgShD50_zS0rDUgOjV6cjCNfoXaee9ZU9yoRv_gUJV9kgpfIqQ0VeGAX3_h9_zxnvfGsVDU6pavPR3aDP11zG5mGEaPEDL2udPW6zr7xrM1vRs8NMUY4_1VIPFx4sIgfGvop-W_zbU9dNuZI8njJdwDmb5M5SYqEryOBYIzycvnkZDN6F5P7LMgSs5Bqw/s755/watcher.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgShD50_zS0rDUgOjV6cjCNfoXaee9ZU9yoRv_gUJV9kgpfIqQ0VeGAX3_h9_zxnvfGsVDU6pavPR3aDP11zG5mGEaPEDL2udPW6zr7xrM1vRs8NMUY4_1VIPFx4sIgfGvop-W_zbU9dNuZI8njJdwDmb5M5SYqEryOBYIzycvnkZDN6F5P7LMgSs5Bqw/w270-h400/watcher.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Watcher</span></i></b> </p><p>Julia is a young woman who moves with her husband from America to Bucharest for his job. While he's at work, she spends the days putting their apartment in order, shopping, befriending her neighbour, and learning the language. But she also can't help noticing that there's one weird guy in the building facing them who seems to spend all night looking into their apartment, and who also seems to be following her. And it's also possible that person might be the serial killer who has murdered and decapitated a number of young woman in their apartments.</p><p>There are few things that I love more than a good thriller, and while <i>Watcher</i> certainly has some flaws, it is absolutely a very good thriller, turning what could be a fairly common stalker story into an intense and suspenseful work. The feature film debut for director Chloe Okuno, <i>Watcher</i> shows that she is a talented maker of thrillers. She has a real understanding for the art of the paranoid thriller, where each step, each moment of the film sets one more block until we reach an impossible conclusion. Plus she has a real feel for the timing of the film, which is so essential in a thriller, knowing for instance how long to let a shot play out in order to build maximum suspense in the audience without wearying them. Okuno is aided by some wonderfully gloomy cinematography by Benjamin Kirk Nielsen, giving the film an oppressive look even in the middle of the day. There's also some fantastic sound design work, that is extremely effective in getting you into Julia's entire mindset. She's not comfortable in this world, and so we are never allowed to feel comfortable - if there's silence, it's a thick kind of silence that feels like it has its own presence; if there's noise, it's a loud, disorienting noise; and the entire aural landscape of the city just seems off, filled with sounds that seem entirely natural and realistic yet unfamiliar. </p><p>Maika Monroe made an immediate impression back in 2014, with lead roles as a scream queen in both <i>The Guest</i> and <i>It Follows</i>, but while she has certainly been working in the years since, she hasn't been in anything I've seen (or, in most cases, even heard of), so it was a pleasing surprise to see her name in the credits. She does some really nice work communicating the disorientation and frustration that can come with being in a foreign city where you don't speak the language, don't have a support network, and the isolation that comes with feeling in effect an outcast in the place you find yourself calling home.</p><p>I also loved Burn Gorman's work here as the titular watcher. For much of the film, he's this nicely ambiguous presence - he could be sad, glowering, ominous, weak, depending on the moment and depending on the audience's reaction to him. But above all, he's a silent ever-present figure. And then, in one of my favourite scenes in the film, he gets a chance to actually speak, as he talks about his life, about caring for his father, about why it is that he does watch his neighbours, and it's a surprisingly sympathetic moment, as we get an insight into who this person is. Gorman is able to elicit unexpected amount of pathos for a character who the film wants us to believe may be a killer.</p><p>The only real issue I have with the film is with the ending, which is sadly predictable. Now, look, I know the way these films work; I'm fully aware that if you make a film where the main character is paranoid that she is being stalked by a serial killer, she's always going to wind up being attacked by the serial killer (even if she's wrong about the person she suspects) - so I'm not complaining about that. But I was disappointed that the film wound up going in a direction that was so predictable. I think that there are several places it could have gone that might have been more surprising, but as it was it instead took the more obvious route, paired with an annoyingly improbable version of the "that person's dead; no they're not" cliche. Add to that the fact that it raises a number of questions - how did that person clean up that crime scene so quickly - that the film tries to move past quickly to avoid you noticing, and it is an unfortunate ending for a film that is otherwise really rather engaging. </p><p>In short, be prepared for a minor let-down of an ending, but it's worth it for just how much fun the rest of the film is.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFUOseMfGBRE4rni_CJwPCuOKK3492JRAv49oaqFI-WHKhFGLqL69euxEUptFU7aexvEHYnSuI_fygRuGfDNMxJq2kQLWj_7-q6B86k33p3-B5wWsBvfWIyGD94-2T0J1TpwMTuATsrrHcL_nScGBBQ1IFloGBxrGdJYNnRbxVQtBdXbbjsSC8Kvdr-A/s755/decision_to_leave.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="527" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFUOseMfGBRE4rni_CJwPCuOKK3492JRAv49oaqFI-WHKhFGLqL69euxEUptFU7aexvEHYnSuI_fygRuGfDNMxJq2kQLWj_7-q6B86k33p3-B5wWsBvfWIyGD94-2T0J1TpwMTuATsrrHcL_nScGBBQ1IFloGBxrGdJYNnRbxVQtBdXbbjsSC8Kvdr-A/w279-h400/decision_to_leave.jpg" width="279" /></a><i><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Decision to Leave</span></b></i> </p><p>Hae-joon is a police officer prone to obsession over his unsolved cases, and sort-of happy in his long-distance marriage, although something is bothering him judging by his constant insomnia. One day he's called in to investigate a mysterious death, a mountain climber who fell to his death, and attention falls on the dead man's wife, Seo-rae. She has a firm alibi, although there's circumstantial evidence that does point to her involvement, and she is oddly unbothered by her husband's death. But, as Hae-joon tries to deal with his insomnia by staking out her place at night, he starts to fall in love with her - and she with him. And then further attention is focused on her after there's a second death of someone close to her.</p><p>When you hear the name of Park Chan-wook, you think of someone operating on the extreme end of the scale. Now, to clear, I'm very aware that there are much more extreme filmmakers working today. But Park is a filmmaker whose work always feels like it's pushing the limits of popular filmmaking - I mean, seriously, if you've seen <i>Oldboy</i>, you know how bizarre it is that a film about <u>that</u> became almost a mainstream success. He made his name as probably the most prominent figure in the ultraviolent Korean revenge film, while with his last film he pushed himself into the extremely-erotic thriller genre, and now he's giving us ... a film with an M rating. A film that literally any person in the country can legally see. More than anything else, that just feels wrong. So while the name of Park Chan-wook was always going to interest me, I was especially intrigued to see what he would give us here. </p><p>And what I felt it does is prove that Park truly is a master filmmaker. The excessive violence and perverse sexuality of his earlier works may have grabbed the attention - seriously, to hear the online film community talk about it, you'd think there was nothing of interest in <i>Oldboy</i> beyond the hammer scene and that revelation - but if you look past that, he's always been a skilled technician. And here he has nothing to hide behind. I love how patient he is as a filmmaker, taking his time to construct the film's story piece by piece. You're also reminded what a fantastic visual sensibility he's developed; even in the most rundown places, he finds a beauty and a sense of elegance that is quite captivating. And while the film does have an unusual structure to its story, you can't help wondering if this is taking inspiration from the definitive romantic thriller, Alfred Hitchcock's <i>Vertigo</i>, which famously follows a very similar storytelling structure. But at the same time, you can tell that Park is having fun playing with these characters, and never loses his sense of humour - there's a scene of Hae-joon mountain climbing that is the hardest I've laughed all festival. </p><p>Which is not to say that he's completely lost his edge, or has made a "safe" film. On the contrary, this is a film that manages to stay with you and disturb you without ever pushing boundaries. In particular, the climax of the film involves a scene at the beach in which every awful thing you've ever imagined could happen to you at the beach occurs; I literally had a nightmare about it that night, the scene so completely wormed its way into my mind. And yet he manages to have that effect without ever even showing you the event. Instead he just gives you enough to understand the setup, to register what's about to happen, and then he steps away and leaves it for his audience to imagine the horrific scene to follow. It's masterfully done, giving us something I've never seen and could never even have thought of. And he did that within the boundaries of a seemingly safe film. </p><p>The romantic thriller is a rather unusual sub-genre. There are plenty of thrillers that include some kind of love story as a side plot line, but the challenge of the romantic thriller is that the tension for the audience needs to be driven, not from whatever plot machinations are occurring around the murder or whatever is driving the story, but from the emotional consequences that those events will have on the relationship - and that's a tricky thing to pull off. Park manages to achieve that with an admirable skill. The relationship is involving from the start, with the first sharing of the "expensive" sushi box, and while the film never loses track of its plotting, it still focuses its investment in the small moments between the characters - him making an "authentic" Chinese meal for her, or the tenderness that she shows as she cares for him. I really appreciated the nice slow build that is taken to developing the relationship - you almost get the sense that the characters aren't conscious of how deeply the relationship has developed. At the same time, in any romantic thriller there needs to be some point of conflict that is so fundamental to the relationship that it dooms the relationship to its ultimate end - otherwise there's no genuine tension to the thriller - and Park seems to really enjoy playing with the notion of the police officer and (possible) criminal being drawn to each other, regardless of the consequences. </p><p><i>Decision to Leave</i> is a fantastically involving piece of entertainment. Strongly recommended.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmYwsmkXz2J-lTOupBiEqW_Vvd0LwlvGq8tdR3yQkreAEpoN0hdsCTGiJ_rRCqL9uuyK277I8LOm2OO9nHy1JGNsj8sop2dS0Ntge52AkzjcnvMV0Y2TAtMF2zudH_WWUc-zso_-yd2O-E-IKuXOX5OhOxR-pyAvCl-tSZaBwSAP39GjCZmHSDqViLQ/s755/triangle_of_sadness.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmYwsmkXz2J-lTOupBiEqW_Vvd0LwlvGq8tdR3yQkreAEpoN0hdsCTGiJ_rRCqL9uuyK277I8LOm2OO9nHy1JGNsj8sop2dS0Ntge52AkzjcnvMV0Y2TAtMF2zudH_WWUc-zso_-yd2O-E-IKuXOX5OhOxR-pyAvCl-tSZaBwSAP39GjCZmHSDqViLQ/w270-h400/triangle_of_sadness.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Triangle of Sadness</span></i></b> </p><p>A new satire of privilege, wealth, and the use of beauty as currency in three parts from Ruben Östlund. In the film's opening scenes, we watch a group of male models auditioning for a job, where a documentarian filming the auditions tests their ability to adjust their expression depending on whether they are advertising a high-end exclusive brand (glowering, showing contempt for the customer) or a low-end shopping mall brand (happy, smiling, inviting). In the first part of the film, we go with one of those models, Carl, to a very expensive dinner with his model girlfriend Yaya; Carl is upset that Yaya always expects him to pay even though she earns more than him, and an argument between the two breaks out. In the second part, the two receive a free trip on a cruise for the super-rich; while they are by far the poorest on this astonishing luxurious ship, otherwise populated by sweet English weapons manufacturers or a coarse Russian oligarch travelling with both his wife and mistress, they certainly enjoy the privileges and power that comes with being passengers - the ability to demand anything and have it be done. And in the final part, a group of passengers and crew from the boat travel to a nearby island, where they have an experience that challenges their perception about wealth and power and how these can shift as priorities change. </p><p>Back in 2014, Östlund's fourth film, <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2015/07/so-heres-thing-this-years-film-festival.html#:~:text=the%20film%20forgettable.-,Force%20Majeure,-When%20the%20film" target="_blank">Force Majeure</a></i>, caused the film world to really pay attention to this maker of biting social satires; his next film, <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2018/07/matryoshka-doll-redux.html#:~:text=to%20the%20festival.-,The%20Square,-An%20enjoyable%2C%20but" target="_blank">The Square</a></i>, won the Palme d'Or, a feat he repeated again when <i>Triangle of Sadness</i> went to Cannes. The thing about Östlund is that his films are not subtle; you'd have to be pretty obtuse to miss the message of the film when it literally features a scene of an American socialist and a Russian capitalist arguing the merits of their viewpoints over a loudspeaker. Pretty much every scene of the film in some way winds up being an illustration of the film's core themes. Carl exercises his power as a guest (able to demand whatever he wants) to have a worker on the yacht fired because his girlfriend found the worker hot. One passenger feels guilty about enjoying herself on the boat while the crew have to work to help her, and so she insists that the entire crew just drop whatever work they are doing, no matter how pressing it is, to half-heartedly go swimming. The service crew of the yacht go crazy yelling "Money! Money! Money!" as an end-of-meeting chant in excitement at the tips they'll be getting, while one passenger just tries to buy the entire yacht from the captain.</p><p>All of which makes the film seem like a very dogmatic, anti-capitalist, eat-the-rich diatribe - that would be funny, but rather shallow. Often with such satires, you get the sense the film has adopted a position that the problem is with the wealthy and that's it. But here, the nice thing is that in its third part the film seeks to introduce some shading to the issue. The message of the film seems ultimately to be that the problem lies in human nature. Yes, the wealthy in this film are obscenely wealthy, but you're fooling yourself if you think you'd be any different if you were in their position. At our core, everyone just wants to get ahead and most people would stomp over anyone else to get in the position of power and to maintain it. And value, power, wealth are all relative, and can shift wildly in different circumstances. One of the first things we learn in the very first scene is that female models on average earn 3 times as much as male models, which sounds quite believable, and so it seems like a pointed comment that by the end of the film Carl finds he has infinitely more economic value than his girlfriend.</p><p>One of the things I appreciate about Ruben Östund's work is his willingness to take his time and let his scenes play out to maximum discomfort, where other filmmakers might have have tried to cut away sooner. Take for instance the argument that is the focus of the first part of the film. I honestly have no idea how long that argument even was - I wouldn't be surprised if it was 10 minutes, or even longer - but it reaches the point where it feels like the argument has finished, like they've run out of steam, and then it just keeps going, with Carl outside the elevator with repeatedly sticking his hand in to hold it so that he can make one more point, and another point, and another, and.... Every moment the hand slammed in between the closing elevator doors was another laugh out loud joke. Now, occasionally that instinct does genuinely lead to unfortunate decisions - there is entirely too much vomiting in the storm sequence, which just started to feel cruel, even for Östlund - but for the most part he shows a real skill in exploiting the comedic potential of every uncomfortable moment simply by being patient and letting the moment play out however long it takes.</p><p><i>[EDIT - It's worth noting that, a couple of weeks after the festival screening of </i>Triangle of Sadness<i>, Charlbi Dean (who </i><i>played Yaya, the woman in the film's central couple</i><i>) passed away. It was an appealing and enjoyable performance, and I would have been interested to see where she would have gone as her career progressed - a career that has sadly ended. Rest in peace.]</i></p><p><i>Triangle of Sadness</i> is a great deal of fun. It is not a subtle film, you're never in any doubt about what it is saying, but it operates at such a consistently high comedic level, and finds such variation and subtlety in its messaging, that you simply don't mind being preached to because it's just making you laugh so much. It was a fantastic way to bring to the end of what was overall a very enjoyable, albeit short, festival. Hopefully next year the film festival will return in its full strength.</p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-3974849089588652532022-08-04T23:00:00.000+12:002022-08-04T23:00:22.914+12:00Rebuilding suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings... mainly happy endings<p>So here's the thing, </p><p>The last two years for the film festival were tough. Between the <a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2021/11/an-anti-climactic-suspense-laughter.html" target="_blank">inevitable but anticlimactic shift to a largely online festival in 2020</a> and the <a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2021/12/optimism-redux.html" target="_blank">frustration of cancelled legs and mandatory half-full cinemas in cities where the 2021 festival was able to take place</a>, it's understandable that it's apparently not in strong health. Which is why they've described this year's festival as a "year of rebuilding", with a programme that is dramatically cut down - it's only a 10-day festival (rather than the usual 17 days), and whereas last year about 170 films screened, this year, it's only 70. And the number of venues is also reduced - last year we had seven venues, stretching all the way from Miramar out to Porirua, while this year we only have three venues (which does make the inter-film dashes much less stressful - I will not miss the mad 30km drives).</p><p>So tickets went on sale a couple of weeks ago on Monday, supposedly at 10am. Which is why I was surprised to find tickets already on sale when I went to the site at about 9am. I started the process of buying tickets, nervously remembering last year when tickets were briefly available and I actually made payment before the ticket sales were closed. But this time, no such issues. Sure, the seat selection still doesn't seem to work - the system freaked out and froze when I tried to select my first seat, so I decided to just accept whatever seat the system allocated me (sigh). But after that, I don't know whether it was the fact that there were fewer people buying tickets because of the early ticket open, or because there were fewer tickets being purchased because of the smaller number of films, or because they've got the system working with sufficient capacity for opening day, but it actually worked pretty smoothly. </p><p></p><div class="separator"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmzvP8lq0v4eOGHBlpioeLmelCDqreFnWRV339gs5G7No5KQOJuDIXN1xeqzJjKVvcuDNLsOqCR1nQPDMN7nLeMAqna0zVnCzoE0jpcdKu5vxwNEMWSs7_8diYH7QL_7zL7OdGSWQLs4kt2weeRoD2bLXi3ZNeKPOreFWbVE8yx3RDOAHXX1w9WU1X8g/s1285/NZIFF22.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1285" data-original-width="908" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmzvP8lq0v4eOGHBlpioeLmelCDqreFnWRV339gs5G7No5KQOJuDIXN1xeqzJjKVvcuDNLsOqCR1nQPDMN7nLeMAqna0zVnCzoE0jpcdKu5vxwNEMWSs7_8diYH7QL_7zL7OdGSWQLs4kt2weeRoD2bLXi3ZNeKPOreFWbVE8yx3RDOAHXX1w9WU1X8g/w283-h400/NZIFF22.jpg" width="283" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">Anyway, the films I'll be seeing this year are:</p><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/navalny/" target="_blank">Navalny</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/crimes-of-the-future/" target="_blank">Crimes of the Future</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/ali-ava/" target="_blank">Ali & Ava</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/my-old-school/" target="_blank">My Old School</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/fire-of-love/" target="_blank">Fire of Love</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/speak-no-evil/" target="_blank">Speak No Evil</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/the-good-boss/" target="_blank">The Good Boss</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/dual/" target="_blank">Dual</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/resurrection/" target="_blank">Resurrection</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/the-humans/" target="_blank">The Humans</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/sick-of-myself/" target="_blank">Sick of Myself</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/flux-gourmet/" target="_blank">Flux Gourmet</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/the-stranger/" target="_blank">The Stranger</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/the-forgiven/" target="_blank">The Forgiven</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/stars-at-noon/" target="_blank">Stars at Noon</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/mona-lisa-and-the-blood-moon/" target="_blank">Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/corsage/" target="_blank">Corsage</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/alcarras/" target="_blank">Alcarràs</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/watcher/" target="_blank">Watcher</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/decision-to-leave/" target="_blank">Decision to Leave</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/wellington/triangle-of-sadness/" target="_blank">Triangle of Sadness</a></i></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">It was a frustrating festival to schedule. The reduced number of films means that there wasn't as much opportunity to find unexpected intriguing options to plug gaps in my schedule. Meanwhile many of the films have only one screening outside of work hours, so if I had a clash in screening times I simply had to make the decision which to see and accept that there's just no way to catch the other. This means that my schedule is not quite as packed as it might normally be, even allowing for the shortened festival length.</p><p style="text-align: left;">But despite that, it's still a promising-looking festival. The official programme launch was held at a film society screening of <i>Summer 1993</i>, which reminded me just <a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2018/07/matryoshka-doll-redux.html#:~:text=to%20enjoy%20it.-,summer%201993,-A%20sweetly%20moving" target="_blank">how much I was delighted by that film</a> and which alerted me to Carla Simón's new film <i>Alcarràs</i>. My experience with David Cronenberg is sadly limited to a handful of films, but after <i>Crimes of the Future</i>, his return to body horror after two decades, received such acclaim at Cannes I'm interested to what he's doing. I'm intrigued to see <i>Decision to Leave</i>, the new film from Park Chan-Wook seemingly working in a less-extreme mode than I usually expect of from him. I hadn't heard that Peter Strickland (the man who gave us the gleeful "evil dress" film <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2019/08/trail-redux.html#:~:text=a%20slight%20disappointment.-,in%20fabric,-The%20film%20opens" target="_blank">In Fabric</a></i>) had made a new film, but when I saw his name connected to <i>Flux Gourmet</i> I had to see it. Having really enjoyed Ruben Östlund's <a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2015/07/so-heres-thing-this-years-film-festival.html#:~:text=the%20film%20forgettable.-,force%20majeure,-When%20the%20film" target="_blank">two</a> <a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2018/07/matryoshka-doll-redux.html#:~:text=to%20the%20festival.-,the%20square,-An%20enjoyable%2C%20but" target="_blank">previous</a> movies, his new satire, <i>Triangle of Sadness</i>, would have been a must-see even before it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. I was extremely impressed by Ana Lily Amirpour's debut film <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2016/06/power-redux.html#:~:text=A%20Girl%20Walks%20Home%20Alone%20At%20Night" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A Girl Walks Home At Night</a></i>, a wonderfully stylish Iranian-set vampire film, so I was excited to discover she made <i>Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon</i>. And I've heard great things about <i>Dual</i>, <i>Ali & Ava</i>, <i>Watcher</i>, <i>Fire of Love</i>, <i>My Old School</i>, <i>Speak No Evil</i>, and <i>The Humans</i>. </p><p style="text-align: left;">The film festival opening night is tonight, but like last year, the opening night is dedicated to a single screening of a single film. For all intents and purposes, the film festival proper starts tomorrow. So for the next 10 days, I may be busy. </p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IRRLD5PTpow" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-41130156767649371302022-03-27T15:57:00.005+13:002022-06-12T23:53:26.342+12:001392 minutes<p></p><p style="text-align: left;">So here's the thing, </p><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">A few weeks ago, there was a small controversy in the film world after filmmaker and comic book fan Kevin Smith (who really should have known better) <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/kevin-smith-spider-man-oscars-snub-1235092252/#:~:text=They%20got%2010%20slots%2C%20they%20can%E2%80%99t%20give%20one%20to%20the%20biggest%20fucking%20movie%20of%2C%20like%2C%20the%20last%20three%20years%3F%E2%80%9D%20he%20argued.%C2%A0%E2%80%9CMan%2C%20and%20they%E2%80%99re%20like%2C%20%E2%80%98Why%20won%E2%80%99t%20anyone%20watch%20this%20show%3F%E2%80%99%20Like%20fucking%20make%20a%20populist%20choice%2C%20fuck%2C%20man." rel="nofollow" target="_blank">criticised the Academy Awards</a> for not nominating <i>Spider-Man: No Way Home</i> for Best Picture. </div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>They got 10 slots, they can’t give one to the biggest f***ing movie of, like, the last three years? ... Like f***ing make a populist choice, f***, man.</i></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">But I've seen <i>Spider-Man: No Way Home</i>, I've seen it twice even, I really enjoy the movie, and I really do love the way that film engages with the past 20 years of cinematic portrayals of that character. It's a lot of fun, but there is no way that film deserves an Oscar nomination.</div><p>But the thing that is particularly bizarre about that criticism is that, while the Academy may not have nominated the sixth-highest-grossing-film-of-all-time, the Academy actually did make the populist choice. See, as I write this post, I've just returned from a brief holiday in Australia, where I discovered the Melbourne IMAX cinema was still showing the Denis Villeneuve film <i>Dune</i> three months after that film was released. I obviously couldn't pass up that opportunity, which is why I spent the evening watching the film - for the third time in an IMAX cinema, and my sixth screening in total. And what was particularly exciting about the screening, other than the fact that I was once again watching <i>Dune</i> at an IMAX, was the fact that the movie was still really busy - close to half the seats had been sold (many more than were sold for the screening of <i>Uncharted</i>, the opening-weekend film which was #1 at the box office, that immediately followed). At a time when <i>Spider-Man</i> had been and gone from cinemas, people were still turning up to see <i>Dune</i>, and they wanted to see it on the biggest screen possible. <i>Dune</i> is a genuinely remarkable piece of filmmaking, one that is also incredibly popular, and it's the film I was most excited to see listed in the Best Picture nominees.</p><p><i>[Comments on </i>Dune<i>, and the other nine nominees - </i>The Power of the Dog<i>, </i>CODA<i>, </i>Belfast<i>, </i>Drive My Car<i>, </i>Licorice Pizza<i>, </i>Nightmare Alley<i>, </i>West Side Story<i>, </i>King Richard<i>, and </i>Don't Look Up<i> - after the jump.]</i> </p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguNv6GSIuDw9OK-56JOXzGvD6HTxxOZkfcX8sLG1YjkOs9eAzAlT5s5EKAplI2Dd7PnnLyfu9RIV5WHqhAvg3BiualUakpCb8cHClcPoQoWGMxZh8XtQ0BDztDo5c7yzDjCPN6cBV2woxPknIrQu1EiiGNkHU2Sve35I4UzMMZyKkJlERYbo4Er-jUPQ/s755/dune.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguNv6GSIuDw9OK-56JOXzGvD6HTxxOZkfcX8sLG1YjkOs9eAzAlT5s5EKAplI2Dd7PnnLyfu9RIV5WHqhAvg3BiualUakpCb8cHClcPoQoWGMxZh8XtQ0BDztDo5c7yzDjCPN6cBV2woxPknIrQu1EiiGNkHU2Sve35I4UzMMZyKkJlERYbo4Er-jUPQ/w270-h400/dune.jpg" width="270" /></a></div><p>And what's surprising is that <i><b>Dune</b></i> doesn't really feel like it should be the populist choice. For a start, it's an incomplete story, adapting only the first half of a famously dense book. The story - an Emperor seeks to put down a rising rival family by forcing them to take responsibility for mining the most valuable resource in the empire, dispossessing another powerful family, and then enabling that dispossessed power to attack the rival family, all while a group of supernaturally powerful women try to bring about the rise of a new messiah figure - is a strange mix of political machination and mysticism. It takes place in a sprawling world, spanning four different planets and three different factions, and yet we never even see the Emperor whose scheming is ultimately behind the conflict. It's a story that's filled with new and bizarre phrases - Kwisatz Haderach, Bene Gesserit, Melange, Shai-Hulud, Sardaukar - that we need to understand and follow. And it's hardly a feel-good movie - much of the film is spent getting us to fall in love with a wide cast of characters only to watch many of them being brutally killed, while the climax of the film is a nasty one-on-one fight in which our hero just flat out kills a person for the first time. And then the film just ends, because it's only adapting the first half of the novel, resolving nothing and ending the film with a promise of some cool stuff we'll hopefully get to see in the sequel.</p><p>And yet it all works, because we are in the hands of a master with a clear and precise vision for how best to adapt the source novel. The decision to focus so completely on Paul and the House Atreides, almost to the exclusion of all else, is fascinating. The immediate antagonists, House Harkonnen, are barely defined as characters, little more then the "brutal animals" that Gurney describes, while we only ever hear second-hand about the schemes of the unseen emperor that are driving the entire narrative. We're only ever given just enough information about them to understand their actions, but never enough to make them fully rounded characters. And while that seems a curious approach, I really like that choice for this film. Villeneuve has promised that the Harkonnens will be given more prominence in the next film, but here they just exist as an overwhelming force to be overcome by, no different to an exploding volcano or a devastating earthquake. And so the focus isn't on who will win the conflict between these families; it's solely on who will survive and how.</p><p>And I admire Villeneuve's confidence in his ability to use filmmaking to relieve the need for dialogue to explain so much of this world. Just look at the moment where the Duke asks how much money was spent on the visit of the ceremonial delegation, and Thufir Hawat's eyes roll up for a second as he does some quick calculations - there's no explanation, I don't think the word "Mentat" is ever even used in the film (I had to look it up), but in an instant we understand exactly what he is. In the same way, we never get an explanation about the Voice, or Ground Thumpers, or Hunter Seekers, or the Atreides hand gesture communications, while there's only a single line of dialogue to explain when the personal shields do and do not work - these are all elements that prove absolutely pivotal to the film, but they are presented to the audience with such clarity and economy that it allows the film time to focus on the political schemes driving the plot, time to peer into the weird corners of this world, or time to just exist in the emotional space of these characters.</p><p>One of the challenges this story presents is that the novel is famously hallucinatory and impressionistic at moments. There's a reason why Alejandro Jodorowsky tried to adapt the story, and why David Lynch actually did make the 1984 version - these are two directors whose works are driven less by clear narrative structure and more by atmospheric dream logic. Villeneuve is by comparison a director much more attuned to the storytelling needs of his films, but while his vision sequences and representation of Paul's dreams may be comparatively straightforward, there's something unsettling still at work in those moments. In particular, there's a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOf1Fuhd59M" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">vision sequence late in the film</a> where Paul witnesses himself leading an army of Fremen into battle, slicing his way through his enemies, before returning to his home planet of Caladan with Chani by his side - but while it feels like this vision is promising Paul the outcome that he's been working towards, it feels like a nightmare. Villeneuve may not be giving the audience the off-the-wall spark that Jodorowsky might have given his audience in these moments, but he's expertly using these sequences to drive the emotional stories forward, and that is exciting.</p><p>Given how perfectly the film works, it's frustrating that Villeneuve was not nominated for Best Director. I wasn't much of a fan of his early work, which I found visually interesting but overall unengaging. But then he made <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2017/02/1117-minutes.html#:~:text=It%20has%20been%20a%20few%20months%20since%20Arrival%20came%20out" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Arrival</a></i>, a brilliant and thoughtful piece of science fiction, and suddenly it became clear that his problem was that he's a science fiction filmmaker who wasn't making science fiction films. Since then he's given us <i>Blade Runner 2049</i> and now <i>Dune</i>, both incredible and challenging works, and he's become a real draw for me. And here it's absolutely clear that we are seeing Villeneuve's personal vision for what a <i>Dune</i> movie could be. He's working with a text that is famously unwieldy, and every choice he makes feels calibrated by his focus on how to make this film work cinematically and coherently. And of course, there are moments of incredible spectacle - if the moment Paul first sees a sandworm isn't awe inspiring, then you've done something wrong - but one thing I love about his version of this film is how casually he presents something incredible. It wasn't until after seeing the film and hearing some of the commentary, for instance, that I realised just how unusual the thopters are - it just seemed so natural that you would have planes with dragonfly-style beating wings that it hadn't even occurred to me that there's something bizarre about that idea, because the film takes place in a world where there is nothing bizarre about that. And a big part of the realism of this world is driven by how tactile Villeneuve makes it feel. When Paul dips his hand into the water of Caladan, or when Liet-Kynes feels the sand liquifying under her, or the Sardukar army are dabbed with blood in the pouring rain, or Duke Leto puts a comforting hand on the back of Lady Jessica's neck, or the Harkonnen servant runs her fingers across the instrument - these are all small, subtle moments that many films would not include, but they feel vital to this film because Villeneuve uses them to evoke a sense memory in the audience that makes these worlds feel real to us.</p><p>On the other hand, one of the film's most deserved nominations is for its score by Hans Zimmer, and frankly it would be an outrage if anything else wins, as Zimmer's score is one of the best I've heard in years. Like Villeneuve, Zimmer read the book as a teenager, and his score feels like he's been imagining what this world sounds like for decades. Zimmer completely eschews a recognisable orchestral approach, adopting instrumentation that is wide-ranging, apparently even constructing new instruments to sound alien and original, and in the moments where we are consciously aware of specifically recognisable instrumentation, it's usually something we don't commonly expect to hear in this context - witness the bagpipes when House Atreides arrive on Arrakis. And it's not an especially melodic score, instead being driven by distinctive soundscapes - this is not a score to be hummed, but to be felt. Each environment, each faction, has their own particular sound - House Atreides is warm and regal, House Harkonnen is filled with mechanistic and militaristic beats, the Bene Gesserit have a barely audible chattering, the Fremen have a wailing cry that feels both mournful for a world that has been under subjugation and defiant against that subjugation, and Arrakis and the sandworms seem to have a majesty and wonder. And Zimmer does some fantastic work in layering these elements, placing this sound against that sound so that the score can give you a sense of the competing factions at play in each moment, in a way that a more traditional Wagnerian thematic approach might struggle to communicate. Which is not to say the film is entirely devoid of musical themes - there's one particularly memorable theme that runs through the film as representative of Paul's journey, from his introduction in his home of Caladan, through his family's departure, his first sighting of the sandworm, to his choice to journey into the desert. It's a small, simple theme but that can be both intensely thrilling and deeply mournful at the inevitable loss of life that is coming. (My favourite sequence in the film, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPoS140YXv4" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">departure from Caladan</a>, perfectly uses the theme - its powerful and exciting, but carries the weight and sadness of leaving the only home you've known, possibly never to return.) All in all, there's so much intricacy and detailed running through this score, which retains intense beauty and majesty despite how unconventional it feels.</p><p>In case it wasn't clear, I adore <i>Dune</i>. This is an incredible cinematic work. Every time I watch it, it's just envelops me. Even after seeing the film six times, I want to see it again. I have the 4K disc sitting a few feet away, and as I try to find the words to describe how the film makes me feel, I desperately want to just put it on, just for a few moments/hours. And I feel I should be clear, this is not born out of any pre-existing attachment to this property. I've never read any of the books (before now I've never really even considered reading them), nor have I seen the generally well-regarded miniseries. I have seen the David Lynch film three times, hated it the first time, came to appreciate it more in later viewings, but that was more out of interest in Lynch as a film-maker rather than any interest in the property (and in any case I've never been able to actually follow what's going on in that film). And I've seen the <a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2015/07/so-heres-thing-this-years-film-festival.html#:~:text=bit%20more%20substantial.-,Jodorowsky%27s%20Dune,-I%20don%E2%80%99t%20really" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">documentary about Jodorowsky's failed version</a>. But this is the first time I've really engaged with <i>Dune</i>, the first time I've fallen in love with it. And what's thrilling is that this is only half the story, and I know that <i>Dune: Part Two</i> is going ahead. All things going well, next year, I'll get to return to this world. And I cannot wait.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxaM83EB2D_20txhWly7YSH-jYwna1sQ3aF8CytpJD75olzQKqWCcaUeGHOvaZUIMW0QLf6QNEcCIJLX8Qwj-wcFYjLj95Tv3tFjET1E5UYMJVu106fBjCk0wVN3UmRFgXk7vZ6QFVsXdYanEooCIpQwx9N4sPM1iKJYZyK60NqRzbVilsO5UgcjkWA/s755/power_of_the_dog.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxaM83EB2D_20txhWly7YSH-jYwna1sQ3aF8CytpJD75olzQKqWCcaUeGHOvaZUIMW0QLf6QNEcCIJLX8Qwj-wcFYjLj95Tv3tFjET1E5UYMJVu106fBjCk0wVN3UmRFgXk7vZ6QFVsXdYanEooCIpQwx9N4sPM1iKJYZyK60NqRzbVilsO5UgcjkWA/w270-h400/power_of_the_dog.jpg" width="270" /></a>For much of the awards season, it seemed as though <i><b>The Power of the Dog</b></i>, the new western from Jane Campion, was locked in as the almost inevitable winner. Benedict Cumberbatch plays a rancher who takes delight in dominating and tormenting those around - and when his brother marries a widowed innkeeper with an effeminate teenage son, Peter, he has two new targets to focus his cruelty on. But then one day, for some reason, Phil suddenly shifts, and begins to take an interest in helping and teaching Peter how to be a rancher. </p><p>Regardless of whether it does win Best Picture, the film definitely looks like it will win Jane Campion the Oscar for Director. And it's an award that is absolutely earned. Campion is someone I've struggled to connect with in the past - I've seen all of her films, some multiple times, but the only time I've ever really felt engaged with her work was her TV series <i>Top of the Lake</i> (and even with that I had real problems with <a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2018/07/matryoshka-doll-redux.html#:~:text=Top%20of%20the%20Lake%3A%20China%20Girl" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">its flawed second season</a>). But with her work here, I just felt her grab my attention from the opening minutes, and hold it until the credits rolled, and on second viewing I found myself really appreciating the way she tells the story. At least initially, there's not a strong sense of where the film is leading, and it ducks off into little side avenues or introduces these odd little moments that don't seem to be connected to anything. It's not until the film reaches its conclusion that all the disparate pieces of the film are bound together like a braided rope and we finally understand what the film as a whole actually is - I was glad to be able to watch the film a second time, just to approach it with an understanding of its ultimate direction in order to appreciate the efficiency and precision on display in the film's storytelling. I particularly liked the way she holds us at a distance from the characters - it's an extremely interior film, and yet the film is almost entirely focused solely on the events that occur, and (other then a line of voice-over from Peter at the very start of the film, and again at the very end) never really lets you into the characters' mind spaces. This forces the audience to actively engage with the film while sustaining a sense of ambiguity that leaves the story wide open for interpretation - I've seen so many theories about how this is what that character was planning, or that this character once did that, and they all could work. And it's important to note that this shows how engaged audience for this film is - they don't just receive the film; they are excited to puzzle through it and develop their own understanding of how everything holds together. This is not to say that the film is confusing - we have all the pieces, we understand everything that happened, we even understand at a broad level what motivations drove the characters, but the film still has this disconnect where you never fully understand why things happened, we never know what a person was thinking or what considerations drove particular actions. And that is part of its joy. </p><p>Campion also shows remarkable skill in getting the audience to experience the emotional space of the characters. If you look at what Phil is actually doing or saying, there's not necessarily anything overly terrible about any of his actions - he's mean and cutting and extremely nasty, sure, but he's certainly not physically abusive, and I'm not even certain that his actions reach the intensity that we imagine of when we talk about emotional abuse, he never even raises his voice. But Phil is able to identify every person's weakness and precisely target that so that he can do the greatest psychological damage to everyone. I mean, the most obvious thing he does to Rose is play the banjo - that is literally all he does - and yet Campion manages to put us in a space where we share the anxiety felt by Rose. With every plucked note, with every whistled breath, viewing the film I felt every bit as traumatised as Rose, and we completely understand the measures she takes to help her deal with her experience. Every moment of the film becomes filled with dread as we wait on edge for whatever new torture takes his fancy. It become a chilling portrait about how terrible masculinity could become when untempered by compassion or sympathy. </p><p>All four main performances in the film have been nominated in the acting awards - Benedict Cumberbatch as lead actor, and Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee in supporting categories. The casting of Cumberbatch as this vile piece of excessive masculinity initially seems counterintuitive, but it proves to be the film's most brilliant choice. He never quite feels comfortable in the role, when he strides across the ranch he comes across as a little stiff, as though he is putting on a performance for everyone around, because that's the nature of the character - it's only in those rare moments when he's alone that he visibly eases, relieved of the burden of presenting this image he's dedicated to. It's a wonderful performance, and also a smart piece of casting that uses the actor's public perception to illuminate aspects of the character. I also enjoyed the air of jealousy that drives his character - you can see him looking at his brother George and wife Rose and how their union has brought them relief from their loneliness, and an intense resentment burns through the character at the different directions and opportunities their lives have taken compared to his - along with the tiny ways he signals the enjoyment Phil gets from lashing out at all around. Kodi Smit-McPhee gets an even more challenging role, in a role that almost feels like a mystery to be solved - outwardly he's frail, weak, but he has a look of determination in his performance, and a level of subdued rage that runs through his every action. His best scenes are those moments where he acts opposite Cumberbatch - there's a practised obsequiousness to his actions that almost feels sarcastic, but you can sense a coiled tension waiting to explode in his every scene, and when Phil mocks the very notion that Peter could ever be considered strong, it's clear how completely he's misjudged the boy in front of him. Kirsten Dunst becomes the emotional and tragic core of the film, bringing a meekness to the role that is completely understandable - you can see how the past tragedies that defined her life have left her vulnerable, and the decline that she takes is both pathetic and devastating. I always enjoy watching Jesse Plemons, and it's nice to see him get the acknowledgement of being nominated, especially alongside his real-life wife Dunst, but while he's very good as brother George, unfortunately there's not all that much to the role, he's a character I frequently forgot was in the film even while I was watching the film, and there are certainly stronger, more interesting performances this year that's probably should have been recognised ahead of him. </p><p>I'm fascinated by the fact that the film takes place in 1925. There is nothing in this film that necessarily requires it to take place at that time, and it could easily have been set 50 years earlier - during the period celebrated by the classic western - with little change. Instead it seems a deliberate choice to set the film in a more modern time, when the automobile is replacing the horse and stagecoach. Into this world, Phil tries to project an ultra-masculine rough, tough cowboy image, but he's doing this at a time when that image is in decline. He's so caught up in this idea that "this is what a man is" that he hasn't noticed the world changing around him, and that he's quickly becoming outdated. It becomes part of the tragedy of this character - he's learnt these lessons from the previous generation and is now replicating them in his own life, without recognising that the world is offering other ways to live that might make him happier.</p><p><i>The Power of the Dog</i> is a wonderfully nuanced, thoughtful, and rich movie, and absolutely one of the filmic high points of 2021. If it does win Best Picture, it will be an award well-deserved.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm81o72OLhaogvzBxxJZDnQsSkdMmSqMP-NE7ZalGDNBwuJaujOsj4HL8HY5Pbv7IGy3CpISvGbIpZ52EUy8x7OQKaKwmgCcUDxC8PzZYwOkMI0IHPsgtjvPe2hbSA0d8lTtjfSoOIOo1qeHIdN-o8l19uQxALjji-tS3BwQVw4sFxleFGnnYrhRbq6Q/s755/coda.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="503" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm81o72OLhaogvzBxxJZDnQsSkdMmSqMP-NE7ZalGDNBwuJaujOsj4HL8HY5Pbv7IGy3CpISvGbIpZ52EUy8x7OQKaKwmgCcUDxC8PzZYwOkMI0IHPsgtjvPe2hbSA0d8lTtjfSoOIOo1qeHIdN-o8l19uQxALjji-tS3BwQVw4sFxleFGnnYrhRbq6Q/w266-h400/coda.jpg" width="266" /></a>However, in the past couple of weeks, a new film has won a number of major guild awards, pointing to a strong possibility of a win by <i><b>CODA</b></i> - which was a surprise to me, since I wasn't even expecting to see the film in the list of nominees, much less as a winner. <i>CODA</i> focuses on the Rossi family, especially Ruby - the only hearing person in a family where both her parents and her brother are deaf. As the "Child Of Deaf Adults," Ruby is relied on to be the ears and the voice for her family. But when she follows the guy she has a crush on and joins the school choir, the music teacher sees potential for her to attend a prestigious music college, which would require her to move away from her family right as they start a new business and they desperately need her help.</p><p><i>CODA</i> is a very well made, nice film. But there's something about it that just feels like we've seen it all before. There's a moment about 20 minutes in where Ruby, having literally run out of the choir audition, is seen sitting on top of a cliff sadly singing the audition song - that scene made me think "This feels like a film that probably did very well at the Sundance film festival," and sure enough, it actually set a record for the amount of money paid to acquire a film out of Sundance. The film sets that generic, not too heavy, not too light, comedy-drama tone that tends to mark much of mainstream independent cinema. I watched it twice, and I found it enjoyable both times. But here's the thing: I didn't rewatch the film because I felt any pressing desire to rewatch it, the way I did with <i>Dune</i>, <i>The Power of the Dog</i>, or <i>Nightmare Alley</i>; I rewatched it because I saw it back in September, and in the time since, the film had completely left my memory. I had to rewatch the film, because otherwise I would have had nothing to write here. My second viewing was basically one long experience of rediscovery - oh, that's right, this film is about her singing; oh, that's right, there's a whole subplot about her family's fishing business; oh, that's right, I remember this scene now. Before my rewatch, literally the only thing that I remembered was the fact that her parents were extremely horny for each other; that is the only thing about the film that left any lasting mark in my memory.</p><p>The film is a remake of a French film, <i>La Famille Belier</i>, which it seems has been little seen outside of French-speaking countries. But reading about that earlier film, it apparently came under a lot of criticism for casting hearing actors as the parents (only the brother character was played by a deaf person). The makers of <i>CODA</i> avoided that trap, casting deaf actors in all three roles, and that certainly elevates the film - not only in terms of representation, but also because the film clearly seems to have been informed by the experiences of the actors. Troy Kotsur is widely expected to win Best Supporting Actor, and if so he'll only be the second deaf person to win an acting Oscar - the first, of course, being his on-screen wife Marlee Matlin. And I can certainly understand the acclaim, because these two are unambiguously the best part of the film. (There's a reason why the only thing I remembered about the film related to their relationship.) I particularly appreciated the fact that these are not just "the deaf parents" - yes they are deaf, and a significant part of the film is spent in exploring the challenges that come with that, but they are presented as fully rounded and engaging people in their own rights. So we know, for instance, that they do have a passionate sex life - the early scene where this is discussed, and Kotsur expresses his appreciation for his wife's attractiveness, is honestly one of the funniest scenes I've seen in a while. But above all, they're just parents - they have sweet and tender moments in relating with their daughter; at other times they mess up and don't understand or appreciate what she's going through; and then sometimes they're just the annoying parent, telling bad jokes, deliberately embarrassing their kids, and taking real delight in their child's embarrassment. They both give a genuinely wonderful performance, and if Kotsur does win, while it's not the choice I'd make, it would certainly be a justified and deserved win.</p><p>The film is most effective and illuminating when it's actually exploring what life is like as a deaf person. There are the small things - the use of light as a wake-up alarm, for example, or the father's enjoyment of loud gangsta rap as allowing him to feel the vibrations of the songs, or the casual way they make jokes about their deafness. But there are also the big things - the unexpected barriers all around that unintentionally serve to exclude the deaf, or the ease with which people in their situation could become isolated and insular. At one point, her mother even admits to hoping when Ruby was born that she would be deaf, because she was worried that she wouldn't be able to connect with a hearing child. And there's a really nice moment where the family attend the choir's big concert, and when Ruby steps up to sing, the sound drops out and we are left in complete silence for the length of the song; we find ourselves in the family's shoes, as they look around at the visible responses of the people around because that's the only way they can know how well Ruby is doing. </p><p>It's also an interesting portrait of how it must be to be the only person who can hear in a family that cannot. A major problem throughout the film is the way the family comes to rely on Ruby to be their interpreter, to be the person who helps them to connect with and communicate with the rest of the world, and how they can come to feel like a burden on someone like Ruby - she can't live her life because she feels under an obligation to help others to live theirs. And the premise does set up an interesting way to explore the emotional space of being the only hearing person in a family - Ruby discovers this thing that she is passionate about, that she is talented in, and yet it is something she cannot share with her family because it is literally impossible for them to truly appreciate this art that she loves. So this is all interesting material for the film to explore.</p><p>But there are other points where the film is just clunky or obvious. Let's start at the beginning: the entire film is predicated on the improbable idea that this girl (who has never sung in public before) is so insanely talented that with only a few months practice she could get in to a top music school; she's a very good singer, but she does not come across as being good enough for that given the level of competition for a spot at this school. The choir teacher is the worst version of the inspirational teacher cliché - he's over the top, he's quirky, he's tetchy, he's the type of person who has people audition by singing "Happy Birthday" to him, and by the end of his first scene I had lost all patience with him and was very quickly growing to hate him. The jokes are frequently obvious, including not one but two scenes about people mistakenly using sign language to say something they didn't intend. There are multiple points where people should have had a particular conversation or have communicated in some way with someone else but don't, for no reason other than provoke a greater reaction later - for instance, Ruby knows that she needs to contact her music teacher urgently, but she waits until she's in the middle of a news interview while she is translating for her family before she starts txting him, when she certainly had time while the news crew was setting up. And the ending of the film plays out as though everyone in the room knows that Ruby is the main character in this story - "Yes, we have lots of rules about what is allowed in an audition in order to make things fair for everyone, but we will throw out these rules for Ruby because it will make for a heartwarming scene."</p><p>The rise of <i>CODA</i> as a possible winner feels like the Academy reverting back to form; they've had a couple of fun years giving the prize to interesting and unexpected movies like <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2020/02/1275-minutes.html#:~:text=it%27s%20pretty%20clear%20that%20Parasite%20is%20his%20greatest%20film" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Parasite</a></i> and <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2021/04/940-minutes.html#:~:text=The%20accepted%20front%20runner%20is%20Nomadland" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nomadland</a></i>, but it's time to get back to choosing "safe" films. Back in 2020, when <i>Parasite</i> won the Oscar, I commented on Facebook that "Tonight the Academy earned enough credit that I'll forgive it ten <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2019/02/1055-minutes.html#:~:text=Then%20there%27s%20Green%20Book" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Green Books</a></i>." If <i>CODA</i> does end up winning, then okay, it's a good film, but the Academy has used up one of their credits. Above all, as a movie lover, it simply didn't invigorate me in the way that many films have this year. And for a film that may win Best Picture, that's a disappointment.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqB3gMIAxdZyxRXeph7KBNCFQFGUKS2NJytrjMJiv9UdWO2VPABsEjJrTOQtJ9It8YwPXGgqJ7RInb1mURhf84Ojky3N4f4MkfmHVDEwfjvsLfH_OddRvjkWkQotRZOWp4DlUBe27EtHWEjUUyXZJ5RV70iPWS3I25ab2kk32fzOlUQejHuUmQ5UMamQ/s755/belfast.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqB3gMIAxdZyxRXeph7KBNCFQFGUKS2NJytrjMJiv9UdWO2VPABsEjJrTOQtJ9It8YwPXGgqJ7RInb1mURhf84Ojky3N4f4MkfmHVDEwfjvsLfH_OddRvjkWkQotRZOWp4DlUBe27EtHWEjUUyXZJ5RV70iPWS3I25ab2kk32fzOlUQejHuUmQ5UMamQ/w270-h400/belfast.jpg" width="270" /></a>But neither <i>CODA</i> nor <i>The Power of the Dog</i> were always the presumptive winner. Early in the awards season, Kenneth Branagh's film <i><b>Belfast</b></i> was generally seen as the frontrunner. Inspired by Branagh's own childhood, the film follows Buddy, a nine-year-old Protestant in Northern Ireland whose world is rocked by the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 60s. Buddy tries to live the typical life of a child, going through the usual youthful hijinks, avoiding a thrashing from his mum, and spending time with his much-loved Granny and Pop. Meanwhile his father spends much of his time away from home working, and as the violence escalates, the family needs to decide whether to leave Belfast and follow their father to a new life in England.</p><p>I was actually rather pleased when it became clear that <i>Belfast</i> would not be winning. The film is likeable enough and fine, but it's not great, and while I have absolutely no doubt that this is a genuinely personal project for Branagh, nevertheless the decision to make this film at this time and in this way feels like a cynical exercise intended primarily to collect Oscars. The movie feels like Kenneth Branagh watched <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2019/02/1055-minutes.html#:~:text=Roma%2C%20the%20new%20film%20from%20Alfonso%20Cuar%C3%B3n" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Roma</a></i>, saw a director making a black-and-white movie inspired by their own childhood growing up in a turbulent and violent time, saw how close that film actually got to winning the Oscar, and decided that he had experiences in his past that could inspire a similar film - and since it's not in a foreign language, it might even be more likely to win. It just seems as though there's a transparent cynicism in the making of the film, and I'm therefore pleased that it doesn't seem to be working.</p><p>I do think the comparison to <i>Roma</i> provides a useful indication why this film is not as successful as that. While <i>Roma</i> was inspired by Alfonso Cuaron's childhood, the film is not told through the point of view of a Cuaron stand-in, but rather from the point of view of the domestic worker who worked for their family. That ensures that the central viewpoint through which the story is filtered is someone who is old enough to understand what's going on. But in <i>Belfast</i>, the main point-of-view character is a stand-in for Branagh as a child, and so everything gets filtered through that child's viewpoint - and I don't think it quite works. Certainly a lot of the film clearly shows that approach - much of the film is shot from a low-angle, as though the camera were a child looking up at the world, and there are definitely moments where we are not seeing reality, but rather events filtered through the boy's worldview (the parents and especially grandparents are certainly presented as the perfect ideals that a child would see them as, while the vision of a sweaty spittle-covered preacher speaking hell and damnation definitely feels like the nightmarish perception of a daunted child). But at the same time, Buddy is too young to appreciate what was really going on at the start of the Troubles, so the film needs to keep bringing in scenes involving the adults to drive the story forward. But then, because the film is supposed to be from the point of view of this child, they need to justify including these extra scenes by having the boy witness them. It almost became comical - it got to the point where every time one of these moments would occur, I found myself actively waiting for the end of the scene when Buddy would walk into frame or the camera would pan to reveal him, just to show that he was listening the whole time. But with most of these conversations, I felt that Buddy either wouldn't really grasp what was being discussed or just wouldn't care - for instance, when his father is intimidated by a local thug trying to force him to fight the Catholics, I don't believe that Buddy would have understood what was going on. The fact is, if the film was really as much in the child's world view as the rest of the film seemed, those scenes really should have played out with the adults speaking in a <i>Peanuts</i>-style "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDwqaMbrBME" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">wa wa</a>" tone. Instead, this kid seems unusually attentive to things that most kids his age would not notice. And that bothered me.</p><p>The movie also had a moment so gallingly lacking in subtlety that I almost feel the film should be disqualified from being Best Picture just on that basis. Midway through the film, Buddy is watching a western on TV, and I recognised the film as <i>High Noon</i>.* "That seems a bit on the nose," I thought, "referencing a movie in which the hero must decide whether to stay and fight or leave to escape his troubles, in this movie about a family that has to decide whether to stay or leave to escape the Troubles. But at least it's a comparison you would only pick up if you know the film." Until the next scene, which plays out over the ballad of High Noon, "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsDyrZVqipA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'</a>", a song with lyrics that more or less explicitly say "Don't leave, I'm staying to fight". But if that wasn't obvious enough, a while later, when we reach the point where the father actually confronts the local thug, the song plays again, while the scene itself plays like a shootout from a western, with the good guy and the bad guy staring each other down. I was honestly angry that a film could be this hamfisted; it's appalling. But that entire confrontation scene is just bafflingly terrible, from the absurd way the film sets up the situation (I don't care what reason there is; a parent wouldn't deliberately take a child into the middle of a riot) to the laughable conclusion (which is technically set up, but that doesn't help when I already didn't believe the ball-throwing scene that set it up). It's an infuriating scene that completely undercuts the movie right at what should be its dramatic high point.</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">* <i>I was actually surprised I recognised it; I'm not a big western fan, and have only seen the film once many years ago.</i></p></blockquote><p>That said, there are some rather good things about the film. It is actually quite effective when it is genuinely embedded in the child's understanding of the world. It's clear that the kids understand something scary is going on, and know that it depends on their religious belief, but that seems to be as far as their understanding goes. One of the best scenes in the film is a short moment where Buddy and his cousin grapple with how to identify a Catholic from a Protestant, and what to say when asked the question if you don't know the allegiance of the questioner, now that that distinction has become so vital to their survival. And the barricades become so much more daunting when viewed from a child's view, with jagged barbed wire looming over. But the film also remembers that even in the middle of this chaos, kids are going to be kids - the Troubles are the concerns of adults, and while Buddy is worried about them to the degree that he will be affected by them, he's much more focused on playing with his cousins, watching TV, falling in love with the smart girl, and stealing candy from the local store. </p><p>The film has acting nominations for Ciaran Hinds and Judi Dench, playing the grandparents, and okay, that's about what I expect from the Oscars. I could almost accept the Ciaran Hinds nomination - he's a much-loved character actor who has never had the awards attention that he really deserves, and his scenes with Jude Hill as Buddy, where he gets to offer some grandfatherly advice, offer slightly more interest to the role. But Judi Dench is just playing "kindly idealised grandmother", and there is nothing about the character or the performance that is in any way interesting beyond the fact that it's played by Judi Dench and she can play anything well. I simply felt there wasn't the substance to justify a nomination, and there were other actors who could have been nominated in her place. Hell, if they really wanted a nomination to go to Belfast, they could have nominated Caitriona Balfe - her performance is much more engaging, as she needs to navigate presenting the strong, idealised image of the perfect in-control mother, while having to be effectively "the parent" when her husband is (frequently) away, while also dropping hints about how overwhelmed and terrified she really is by events. </p><p><i>Belfast</i> isn't terrible - or at least, most of it isn't terrible. It's a perfectly pleasant way to pass 90 minutes. It's the type of film that you would recommend to your mother, and she would come back to you saying what a nice film it was. But when there are so many other films that do exactly what this film does, and do them better than this film, it just feels like an unfortunate waste.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKK7AXWaaiEYZBXU2TjnZc9PAFovqFySWo-FpmF16S6tpWJAzULrNsIlKnFjIggpSlaCWXLh0tLIMkQyZ6w0cyv7M5cgCotsbAxEgw8uqZCLdbRNWDs5iViXJLU3Gahc-Rr34RQL5-6Onz9faz2jyi-39AcOWIewU7Sk9cdvsGjEmbbUkQyxyIPbndXw/s755/drive_my_car.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="535" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKK7AXWaaiEYZBXU2TjnZc9PAFovqFySWo-FpmF16S6tpWJAzULrNsIlKnFjIggpSlaCWXLh0tLIMkQyZ6w0cyv7M5cgCotsbAxEgw8uqZCLdbRNWDs5iViXJLU3Gahc-Rr34RQL5-6Onz9faz2jyi-39AcOWIewU7Sk9cdvsGjEmbbUkQyxyIPbndXw/w284-h400/drive_my_car.jpg" width="284" /></a>Now here's an interesting statistic - in the first 90 years of the Oscars, there were only 10 foreign language films nominated for Best Picture. But in the past four years, each year has had one foreign language nominee - <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2019/02/1055-minutes.html#:~:text=Roma%2C%20the%20new%20film%20from%20Alfonso%20Cuar%C3%B3n" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Roma</a></i>, <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2020/02/1275-minutes.html#:~:text=it%27s%20pretty%20clear%20that%20Parasite%20is%20his%20greatest%20film" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Parasite</a></i> (which obviously also won), <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2021/04/940-minutes.html#:~:text=One%20film%20I%20loved%20is%20Minari" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Minari</a></i>, and now the Japanese film <i><b>Drive My Car</b></i>. And this newest entry is a wonderful film that absolutely deserves to be counted among that number. Yusuke is a theatre director mourning the death of his wife, while also trying to deal with his knowledge that she cheated on him. When he's hired to direct a new production of <i>Uncle Vanya</i>, he decides to cast his wife's former lover in the title role. At the same time, he reluctantly agrees to the theatre's requirement that he have a driver, a young woman with whom he slowly starts to bond.</p><p>Famously (at least in film circles), it's about 40 minutes before the opening credits play, and those earlier scenes explore the relationship between Yusuke and his wife Oto, before the wife passes away, the credits roll, and the story proper begins. Right from the start it was clear that this film was going to devastate me - coming in, I knew about the adultery and the death, so when I saw how sweet and loving this central couple was, I almost didn't want to watch. I fell just as in love with Oto as Yusuke is, so the pain of her betrayal of him genuinely cut deep. But while the amount of time spent on what is in essence an extended prologue could seem excessive, it proves absolutely essential. Oto becomes such a vital presence in the opening scenes that the substance of the film from that point on is almost defined by her absence, which allows the film to become the intense meditation on grief that it is. We spend a lot of time in the rest of the film with Yusuke listening to a recording of <i>Uncle Vanya</i> that Oto made for him, reciting Vanya's lines in response to her prompts - while in the surface it's presented as a tool for him to memorise the play, it becomes a way of keeping her alive, where he's even able to have something resembling a conversation with her. And the best moment in the film involves an extended scene of Yusuke sitting in the car with Oto's lover, for the first time each actually being honest with each other about this woman, what she meant to each of them, and the gap that has been left in their lives with her passing.</p><p>The relationship between Yusuke and his driver Watari is also a joy to observe. Watari is reserved, even sullen when we first meet her, and it's fascinating to watch the incremental steps taken as the two begin to open up to each other. The two are both carrying a great level of guilt over how their own actions may have have led to tragedies that have come to define their lives, and it's caused each of them to become insular. Yusuke is positively resentful having to share this time that he wanted to spend alone with his wife's voice, while Watari's skill as a driver may be how she makes her living, but it's also a reminder of a trauma that she's trying to escape. And so it's wonderful to watch these people coming together, looking at the other from the outside, but also able to offer perspective and reflection born from their own struggles.</p><p>Now, one thing that should be acknowledged is that the film is long - nearly 3 hours, with a story that could easily be told in half that. But the film instead demands that time. Firstly, it simply does not feel that long - I was thrown when the opening credits started, because there was no way that I had been watching the film for 40 minutes already, and the film as a whole feels like it's maybe 2 hours at the most. And yet you can feel the film taking its time - it's unhurried, and scenes just play out at a leisurely and natural pace. But I think a lot of the film's effectiveness comes from the fact that it is taking its time to tell the story. Take that central relationship of Yusuke and Watari - yes, most films would have them bonded in a much shorter period of time, but the power of this relationship is born from the time they spend together; the way silent car drives slowly build to brief sentences, increasing comfort, a growing willingness to be ever so slightly open, until you reach the conclusion and they are admitting things to each other that they have never and would never admit to anyone else. This is not something that happens quickly, and the fact that it doesn't speed through any of those stages is what makes the film convincing, and give those final admissions near power - we've been through the natural growth in this relationship, and we understand why they can now tell the other these deep secrets.</p><p>The film also spends a great deal of time exploring the text of <i>Uncle Vanya</i> - we hear Oto reading the play on the cassette tape, we spend so much time with the actors reading the play, rehearsing the play, performing it. Now, this is not <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJxvpLrp4yA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Vanya on 42nd Street</a></i>, you're not going to walk away from this film knowing <i>Uncle Vanya</i> if you don't already, but we do spend a massive amount of time in the play. And those scenes are just beautiful - Chekhov's play has real power, even in small snippets; even when given a blank affectless reading, you can't help but be enthralled. But I do find myself wondering, why this play? Of all the incredible plays that have ever been written, why choose to center on <i>Uncle Vanya</i>? As far as I can see, there's no obvious point of connection between the play and the movie's plot - the closest I can get really get is that, in his knowledge about his wife's infidelity, Yusuke feels his love for her was unrequited in the same way as Vanya's love for Yelena was. (And certainly that's an issue he works through with Watari.) But to be honest, I don't think there is a strong connection between the play and the movie - and I think that's why it works for me. We've all seen movies where a character will watch a play, read a book, hear a song, that speaks directly and unambiguously to the situation they are in, and it always hits with a clang, where you can feel the writer behind the scenes saying "this is important". The use of <i>Vanya</i> here doesn't do that, there's no one-to-one comparison to the film's events. It's in the generalities that it feels most relevant - the regret they feel for actions long since taken or not taken, or the moments where people find themselves compelled to unburden themselves by expressing thoughts long left unspoken.</p><p>But what I think is more significant thematically about the play is the fact that it's a multilingual production, with different actors playing their roles in whichever language they feel most comfortable - Japanese, Korean, English, even Sign Language. And I think that's a subtle metaphor for the sense of isolation that we can feel. We all exist in this place, we all are trying to express something about ourselves, and we may think that we understand what others are experiencing or expressing, but we never get to genuinely hear what others are truly expressing because we filter everything through our own way of understanding. It's on display in the moments after the conversation between Yusuke and his wife's lover - you can see Yusuke trying to adjust the conversation he's just had to reflect his view, until Watari speaks up, interrupting that reframing to tell him that what he's just heard is the truth, at least as the other man sees it. The challenge is to not reinterpret the world into a viewpoint that we can understand, but to expand our ability to understand others.</p><p>I had a chance to see <i>Drive My Car</i> last year at the film festival, but while it was on my initial list of films to see, the long runtime made it just too difficult to fit into my schedule. When the "best films of the year" lists started coming out a month later, and <i>Drive My Car</i> became one film that consistently appeared in those lists, every time I saw its name felt like a dagger reminding me that I could have seen this film but did not. I was therefore extremely glad for the Oscar nomination, as it made a further cinema release more likely, and thus allowed me the chance to enjoy this beautiful, rich, and challenging work. I left the cinema positively buzzing with excitement at having had such a wonderful experience. It's not an obvious crowd pleaser, but if you are open to it, it greatly rewards you.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTY4jaGrfe_mcwEHn33xH6miadLl6zMhnrjvmqtENMF1lWRDaPByIlnHIMow3pAviXlHJvsb__-wuR8P-Xz51HqNxlFLudXKGV6zYcQrdfGHEhyytn1jgeBRXNWg0YZdgnbaNdPHl7cNpC3bEZ9HyUYVikK0nvehlGeuXOPkvTkrE8pN0P5H3ufJUOig/s755/licorice_pizza.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="511" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTY4jaGrfe_mcwEHn33xH6miadLl6zMhnrjvmqtENMF1lWRDaPByIlnHIMow3pAviXlHJvsb__-wuR8P-Xz51HqNxlFLudXKGV6zYcQrdfGHEhyytn1jgeBRXNWg0YZdgnbaNdPHl7cNpC3bEZ9HyUYVikK0nvehlGeuXOPkvTkrE8pN0P5H3ufJUOig/w271-h400/licorice_pizza.jpg" width="271" /></a>One of these days, Paul Thomas Anderson will win the Oscar for Best Director - it's just inevitable. The man has had three nominations so far, and will earn many more in future. Over the past 25 years, he's built a reputation for being one of the most brilliant directorial talents working, with a career that can never be predicted. Who could have imagined he would follow up a sprawling multifaceted drama with an Adam Sandler comedy, or follow up a fictionalised version of the birth of Scientology with a complex Neo Noir comedy, or follow up a strangely kinky and erotic drama about sexual repression and dressmaking with a 1970's-set coming of age comedy. And yet his name is such a marker for quality that just knowing he's the person behind a film instantly elevates it to a must-see. Which is why I laughed when I heard that there was a film called <i><b>Licorice Pizza</b></i>, only to become desperate to see it as soon as I heard that PTA was the man behind it. The film is definitely one of the lesser of his works, and will certainly not win him that Oscar, but it's cheeky and fun and one of my favourites of the year.</p><p>The film focuses on Gary, a teenage child actor who has aged out of cuteness, and who is now building his own businesses as an entrepreneur. One day he meets and falls in love with Alana Kane, a 25-year-old who's drifting through life without any sense of direction. She's not interested in a relationship with a kid 10 years younger than her, but the two become friends and begin hanging out in a way that she's very aware is weird. And the film just follows their various exploits and experiences as they drift in and out of each other's lives over the passage of a year.</p><p>The main reason why I don't feel the film is as great as much of Anderson's previous work is simply the fact that it is extremely bitsy. It doesn't feel as though it has an actual story - it's just a collection of incidents, and the film moves from one moment to the next. Now, this is not particularly new to PTA, as it could be argued that his breakthrough film <i>Boogie Nights</i> was similarly episodic, but in that film at least there is a direction of travel that gives the film a structure, whereas here I get the sense that you could almost move the incidents of the film around into almost any order without significantly affecting the film. And that leaves it feeling slightly more weightless then I'd like. This issue was crystallised for me after the scene where they set up a water bed for Jon Peters - Peters threatens to kill Gary and his family if he damages Peters' house, they then deliberately leave the water hose running to flood the bedroom, but there's never any sense that Peters even gives them an angry phone call. Now that's not to say that this is a bad thing; on the contrary, it gives the film a real youthful energy - almost as though the film is exclaiming "We'll do what we like, and bugger the consequences, because there are no consequences," but it does mean the film feels less impactful than much of his other work. But when the film is this much fun, who really cares? After all, the Jon Peters sequence is also easily the best part of the film - not only does it have a hysterically funny performance by Bradley Cooper as the unhinged Peters, but it also has the incredible scene where Alana has to drive a truck with no gas downhill in reverse. It's brilliant, more exciting than almost any action scene (outside of <i>Dune</i>) this year, and in that moment I didn't care whether Jon Peters would be annoyed about his house being flooded; I was just entirely thrilled at this remarkable scene.</p><p>There has been a lot of commentary about the appropriateness of focusing the film on a relationship between a 15 year old boy and a 25 year old woman. To be honest, it's something I do find myself feeling uneasy about, and it has occupied a lot of my thinking about the film. But to its credit, the film knows that there's something uncomfortable and odd in this friendship, with multiple scenes that specifically comment on how weird it is - in many ways, that's what the film is about. At the same time, it kinda makes sense when you think about it. Alana may be 10 years older than Gary, but she's not 10 years more mature - she has no sense of direction and is drifting through life taking random jobs when they come up, whereas she's impressed by Gary, who has started multiple successful businesses and has a clear vision of where he wants to get to. It's almost as though her immaturity and his maturity means the two meet at some middle level. She's in this weird space where she just needs some kind of affirmation, and Gary gives her that - and the film understands that there is something about that that is actually toxic for the two of them. But the film never lets you forget that Gary is only 15 years old - there's one scene where Gary tries to impress Alana by telling a crude joke on television, in a moment that instantly reminds you that this is a child who still doesn't really know what it is to be an adult. All of which means I feel I can't criticise the film for being about this undesirable relationship, because the film knows that it's a bad situation, even explicitly states as much - and besides, just because the film portrays this situation does not mean the film approves of what the characters do in that film. And anyway, this film does not feel like it's heading towards a happily-ever-after; we've also seen enough to know that, however the film ends, these two will just continue to move in and out of each other's lives for years to come.</p><p>The film is held together by a pair of phenomenal acting performances by two actors both making their film debuts, although both have notable connections to show business. Cooper Hoffman, playing Gary, is the son of the late and much missed Philip Seymour Hoffman, who until his passing was a PTA regular. Not only does he look remarkably like his father, he has that same mix of confidence and awkward desperation that I think was the hallmark of PSH's work, and I'm very excited to see where his career leads. Alana Haim, in the role that bears her name, has apparently already established a notable music career, and here just commands the viewer's attention. Her character is a woman whose life is a complete mess, who carries an air of being above it all, and yet who carries a natural spark that does irresistibly draw people to her. I don't know whether she plans to carry on acting, or just return back to music, but if we never get another Alana Haim performance, then at least we got this one.</p><p>There are a couple of scenes in the film that have been the subject of significant criticism surrounding claims of racist content that I do feel need to be addressed. John Michael Higgins plays the owner of a Japanese restaurant in the valley, who at some moments communicates with his Japanese wife by speaking English with an extremely broad, exaggerated mock-Asian accent. It's understandable why people have complained that the film encourages people to find this imitation accent funny and laugh with the racist attitudes on display. And almost certainly there will be people who did find the scene funny for that reason - there's no real way to avoid that, in the same way that many films have had their intent misinterpreted by part of their audience. And if you're Asian, and you feel the film was making fun of you, I understand that. But to me, Higgins is playing a character who is so absolutely cartoonish and absurd that it's impossible for me to believe the film is not making fun of him in those moments. My gosh, in his second scene, the film goes out of its way to point out that his wife is a different woman from the first scene - he's ended his first marriage, and remarried a new woman who is also Japanese. It could not be clearer that this is a man who fetishises Asian woman but who refuses to genuinely engage with their culture. If that refusal to engage wasn't clear enough from the fact that his restaurant is called Mikado,* the ultimate punchline is the revelation that he doesn't even know how to speak Japanese - even though he's been married to two Japanese woman who barely speak English. He's absolutely presented to the audience as an idiot, and we are invited not to laugh at his actions, but at him.</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">* <i>A reference to the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta set in a fictional Japan as imagined by people living in Victorian England. Full disclosure: I played one of the lead roles in a school production of </i>The Mikado<i>, and I genuinely love the show, while being aware of its problems as a representation of Japan.</i></p></blockquote><p>The other thing that I think is significant about that scene, is that it is part of an effort to undercut the nostalgic element that could seep into the film. When you have coming-of-age films set in a past era, it can be extremely easy to just focus on the good things about those times, the way when we reflect on our youth we only remember the good times, but PTA seems to deliberately weave moments through his film to remind us that not everything about this time was golden. So yes, there are these moments where people were casually racist and it was barely noticed; it was also a time when, even more than today, women were just objectified with no real way to respond (in her very first scene, Alana's butt is slapped by her boss without comment), it was a time when an oil crisis lead to mile-long queues to get into a gas station, it was a time when politicians couldn't be open about their sexuality, and it was a time when political assassination seemed a real and present risk (there's a moment that forcefully calls <i>Taxi Driver</i> to mind, and also made me think of the deaths of RFK and Harvey Milk a few years before and after this film). 1973 was not some idealised world, and I loved the film for the way it specifically acknowledged that.</p><p><i>Licorice Pizza</i> is an extremely entertaining and appealing work, and it serves as a reminder that Paul Thomas Anderson is such a master of the cinematic art that even a lesser work from him can be one of the most entertaining and delightful films of the year. </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-NuMLBkFp0Gv5WjyFCBAJCXQWgXpeZsxAhZLlEebqJSajawMj5REdqZ1RCwB7X3UNIeyix79V4Cm64nLVtMMubD0xlv9Ms__2ERfIK886b5e_LWftuMl8rJfrY_OmiVOT3U7Ul87hxHwa15BnLsRklpOQgUmfJqFcn_pJ4Z-qraa2NU9TqjIILHiVCA/s755/nightmare_alley.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="504" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-NuMLBkFp0Gv5WjyFCBAJCXQWgXpeZsxAhZLlEebqJSajawMj5REdqZ1RCwB7X3UNIeyix79V4Cm64nLVtMMubD0xlv9Ms__2ERfIK886b5e_LWftuMl8rJfrY_OmiVOT3U7Ul87hxHwa15BnLsRklpOQgUmfJqFcn_pJ4Z-qraa2NU9TqjIILHiVCA/w268-h400/nightmare_alley.jpg" width="268" /></a>In addition to his small but memorable role in <i>Licorice Pizza</i>, Bradley Cooper takes the lead in <i><b>Nightmare Alley</b></i>, Guillermo del Toro's follow up to Oscar winner <i>The Shape of Water</i>. It was surprising to learn that, for the first time in del Toro's career, he's not working in a fantastical realm (although he retains his usual fascination with and compassion for the real world freaks that populate the film), instead making a tribute to film noir through a new adaptation of the 1946 novel that previously inspired a Tyrone Power classic. Cooper plays Stan Carlisle, a drifter trying to escape a secret past, who stumbles into work at a carnival, where he becomes fascinated with the cold reading skills and use of codes by the "clairvoyant" performer. Several years later, Stan has left the carnival, and is using the skills he learned to work as a psychic act for high society members. One evening he is approached by a femme fatale psychologist with a scheme - she feeds him information gathered from her sessions with wealthy patients, and he uses that information to fool those patients into believing he has the ability to connect them with their lost loved ones.</p><p>I initially wasn't sure how I felt about the film; I enjoyed watching the film, certainly, but it wasn't quite working for me. But there was something in the film that I was intrigued by, that lingered in my thoughts, so I eventually I decided to go for a second screening. And that was the point where the film suddenly crystallised and started feeling much better. I think a big part of my initial issue was the starkly bifurcated structure of the film. There's the first half, which takes place at the carnival - there's no real sense of strong narrative thrust in those scenes, instead feeling primarily like a portrait of life in this world; in the context of the wider film those scenes exist primarily to set up elements that feed into the narrative later. Then there's a clear delineation between the parts - Stan and his girlfriend Molly leave the carnival they've called home, never to return, the film jumps ahead several years, and the rest of the film essentially takes place in the big city. It's at this point the main driving narrative begins, with an entirely new cast of characters, and exploring the way the city can be simply another more civilised version of the carnival and offer new opportunities to scam and exploit those around. Now I don't have a problem with that type of bifurcated structure - after all, my favourite film, <i>Vertigo</i>, has a very similar structure - but when you're not expecting it, you can be thrown by the way it can almost feel like two films in one. Once my expectations were appropriately set, it was much easier to settle in and get absorbed into the film.</p><p>The first half of the film is certainly the stronger segment of the film, despite the lack of a sense of narrative direction. You can feel del Toro's fascination with this subculture as he gets to explore this world that draws in society's rejects and outcasts, the complicated tricks and scams that drive the culture, the reliance on showmanship and storytelling to take a five-second moment and turn it into something incredible, and the willingness for people in this world of outcasts to find someone even more of an outcast and to exploit them for their own ends (this may not be a fantasy film, but there are definitely monsters). It's a fascinating culture to explore, and one you don't often get to see in films, so it was a delight to just sit and dwell in this world. By contrast, the second half, while very strong, doesn't quite have that spark of originality that you get in the first half - we've all seen films set in the big city, we've all seen art deco offices and millionaire mansions with palatial gardens, it's a world we're more familiar with, and so it doesn't have that same sense of surprise or revelation. But it's at that point that the actual plot of the film begins, and so you do find yourself getting caught up in this fascinating neo noir story of an everyman trying to pull a scam that will inevitably lead to disaster. It's nothing we haven't seen it before, but it's so well done that it's a joy to watch.</p><p>I honestly think this is my favourite performance Bradley Cooper has ever given us. At first it's a surprisingly taciturn turn from Cooper, as he just wanders the carnival in silent observation. It's a performance that feels weighed down by his past actions without ever seeming as though he feels any guilt about those actions. As he becomes more involved in the carnival the character does start to come out more, but his actions always seem motivated by self-interest, looking for how he will benefit. Eventually he does become the Bradley Cooper we are used to - a smooth talker with confidence that quickly turns towards arrogance - but with a blacker core than I'd ever seen from him; he's almost soulless, as though he's the devil walking among us. Which would explain his almost eager greeting of his fate in the conclusion of the film, in what is definitely the most chilling and frankly fucked-up moments I've seen in quite a while. This is a thrilling performance by Cooper, offering much more then I think I've seen from him before. And while the film is filled with the expected wonderful performances by Rooney Mara, David Strathairn, Toni Collette, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, and a brief but particularly devastating performance by Mary Steenburgen, this is ultimately Bradley Cooper's film, and he grabs it with both hands.</p><p>One thing I find fascinating about the film is how patently bad Stan's plan actually is. It's no surprise that his scheme goes wrong - it's the nature of film noir that things won't work out well. But what surprised me is that, when we first hear about his plan, you instantly know where things are going to fall down, because his plan relies on people not acting the way people would act - and sure enough, it plays out exactly as you think. But where in other films such poorly planned ideas might be the hallmark of an underdeveloped script (the typical "idiot plot" that only works because the characters are idiots), here it's absolutely inherent to the film and its core character - Stan has become so arrogant about how he can use his "ability" to control people that it doesn't even occur to him that he might not be able to prevent a person experiencing extreme emotions from acting naturally in response. And so when things don't go to plan, it genuinely feels as though this is the consequence of Stan's hubris. And that is smart writing.</p><p>The sad thing is that <i>Nightmare Alley</i> has not been popularly received by audiences. Making less than $40 million worldwide on a budget of $60 million, the film is a definite flop in the box office. And while it's nice to see such a strong film get awards recognition, I can't help feeling that its failure to receive even modest returns when competing against <i>Spider-Man</i> is another nail in the coffin for movies intended for adults. It deserves to do much better than it did. But don't blame me - I saw it twice.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs73VAls0b1J9K5V4qhi65SjZp-QaVRdZQ8z-9k6J9Kiky-NGfLfKUgiY1ZCjzUMvFmVV6DTMXo9TXC7iZRuenGHgLHbpOXnKw1QiYlkpZHMxAWpVgNcnmL-BONLbS4bPUODciULDsdvlvGxAkMeiLb_kOekzoXeWQMQoeKSvtWdJ5dTPqT8aWCHG2jQ/s755/west_side_story.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="519" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs73VAls0b1J9K5V4qhi65SjZp-QaVRdZQ8z-9k6J9Kiky-NGfLfKUgiY1ZCjzUMvFmVV6DTMXo9TXC7iZRuenGHgLHbpOXnKw1QiYlkpZHMxAWpVgNcnmL-BONLbS4bPUODciULDsdvlvGxAkMeiLb_kOekzoXeWQMQoeKSvtWdJ5dTPqT8aWCHG2jQ/w275-h400/west_side_story.jpg" width="275" /></a>It's been a decade or more since I was genuinely excited by a Steven Spielberg film. Spielberg has continued to make very good movies in that time (and he also made <i>Ready Player One</i>), but despite the fact that he is one of the greatest working directors, it's been a long time since he gave us anything that was truly compelling. So when it was announced that Spielberg's next film would be a new adaptation of the musical <i><b>West Side Story</b></i>, it was nice to find myself genuinely looking forward to the film. Spielberg has long discussed his desire to make a musical - which has been obvious since the opening scene of <i>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</i> - and his love for <i>West Side Story</i> particular. You get the sense that this is a movie he's imagined making for all his life, and I was intrigued to see how he would approach the material. At the same time, it's a big decision to make that film in particular - the 1961 film won Best Picture in its year, and while it's undeniably a flawed masterpiece (the use of brownface to cast white actors as Puerto Rican characters is unfortunate), it's still a genuine and much-loved classic, and so you have to wonder how Spielberg will distinguish his version.</p><p>Fortunately, Spielberg really delivers, with some of his best work in this century. There is a sense of palpable excitement to be working in this genre, and he proves himself to be a master of the form. I've seen established directors who seem almost embarrassed to be making a musical, and try to downplay that element as much as possible - no risk of that happening here, with Spielberg taking delight in the excess of romanticism on display with every musical note. I've seen other directors who try to liven up musical sequences by overediting, forcing an acceleration of pace at the expense of visual coherence. But Spielberg takes joy in long takes, often letting entire verses play out in a single take so that we can appreciate the interplay between the characters, enjoy the dancing, in exactly the same way that we would if we were watching a stage production. And let's be honest, Robert Wise was a great Hollywood filmmaker, and he did wonderful work on the 1961 film, but Spielberg is a Hollywood legend, and he's also working with camera technology that has advanced over the past 60 years well beyond anything that Wise could had imagined. So where the cameras in the earlier film were often static or limited in movement, Spielberg's camera floats, moves, and dances as though it were an extra performer in the show - it's never showy or draws attention to itself, but the camera work absolutely feels alive and energetic.</p><p>I will confess that I took a bit of time to be comfortable with the idea of the film using new choreography. Famously, <i>West Side Story</i> was originally conceived by choreographer Jerome Robbins as a vehicle for his work, and it was he who approached Bernstein and Sondheim to write the music and lyrics around which his dances would take place. His choreography was so essential that he was even credited as co-director of the 1961 film (even though he was fired after his quest for perfection in the dancing led the film to quickly fall behind schedule). Even today, they still use his work in official productions - I saw a touring version a few years ago that used the Robbins choreography. So when I heard that they had hired Justin Peck as choreographer, part of me was bothered - that original choreography is so essential to the piece, just as much as the classic songs, that I wondered whether a production that uses new choreography could really be considered to be <i>West Side Story</i>? I still don't think I have an answer to that question, but I do know that the new choreography works really well. Robbins' work was at times mocked for the way he had gangs of street thugs ballet dancing - which is an unfair criticism; people will happily accept that this is a world where those same thugs burst into song, so I don't see why dancing is such a big leap. But Peck's work has clearly taken that criticism into account - at times he references Robbins' work, but for the most part, particularly with the gangs, it feels less like they are actually dancing, and more as though there's just a stylised movement to them. It's often been said that any fight scene in a movie is just an elaborate dance between the opponents, and Peck's work here really brings that out - most notably in "Cool". The piece has always been marked as having better choreography than the song it's attached to, and here it's been reinvented from being a dance involving the entire gang to being a game of Keep Away with Tony keeping Riff's gun from him - the two are never dancing, but there's always a precision in their movements that feels deliberate. And when the film does get to go full-out musical dancing, with numbers like "America", there's a joyousness and excitement to those moments, as though the performers have been desperately waiting for the opportunity to cut free and enjoy the spectacle.</p><p>The cast is almost uniformly wonderful. As Maria, Rachel Zegler is a delight, bringing a youthful optimism and naivete that devastates as the story turns to the tragic. Broadway actor Mike Faist really makes an impact playing Riff - you get the clear sense of authority with which he controls the Jets, but also as the situation spirals you can feel his desperation as he tries to keep control of everything happening. Ariana DeBose follows Rita Moreno into a well-deserved supporting actress nomination for playing Anita - I enjoyed her lusty and energetic performance, which makes her eventual and understandable turn to rage hit with a wallop. And speaking of Rita Moreno, I like the decision to make space for Moreno in the film by creating a character for her that fills the place of Doc - it's a move born entirely out of sentiment and love for the legend, but it's also intriguing by essentially casting her as a possible image of Maria 50 years in the future (an idea driven home by giving Moreno, not Tony and Maria, the song "Somewhere").</p><p>Sadly, the one exception to the excellence of the cast is Ansel Elgort in the central role of Tony. I previously only seen him in <i>Baby Driver</i>, but there I felt he showed himself to be a solid actor. And in <i>West Side Story</i> he proves himself to also have a good singing voice - perhaps not Broadway-level, but good enough. Unfortunately, his problem is that he seems to struggle with the idea of acting while singing - as soon as the music starts, it feels as though he's so focused on the singing element (or at least, since I assume the songs were pre-recorded, trying to hit his synchronisation with his vocal track) that his performance struggles. Look for instance at his performance of "Maria". Tony is a man who has just meet the girl he loves, who is in such a delirium of passion that he loses himself in the sound of her name, and yet when he sings he has an almost distractingly blank affect that completely fails to communicate that emotion. In the moments where he's not singing, Elgort gives a fine and enjoyable performance, but unfortunately in a musical the singing is a big part of the piece, and it just does not work.</p><p>The screenplay by Tony Kushner was written with an eye to updating the work for a modern audience. And, with one exception, it works remarkably well. You get a sense of that reworking right from the start, with a massive sign speaking of slum clearance in order to construct the Lincoln Center; a fact we're constantly reminded of - a clear unambiguous statement of the futility of the fight between the Sharks and the Jets, as they fight for turf over an area marked for impending destruction. I appreciated the way he took pains to remind us of the Puerto Rican origins of half of the characters in a way the original show and movie never did, most notably by having them in conversation casually and naturally skip between English and Spanish, and even having that communication barrier be referenced at moments. I was also really impressed by the way his script made some of the more difficult songs work - for example, "I Feel Pretty". It's one of the songs that the 1961 film moved from its original location, immediately following the rumble - it works well enough on stage, where the interval give the audience time to decompress and reduce the jarring clash of tones, but in the earlier film it was felt that jumping from the violence of the rumble into "I Feel Pretty" didn't work. Kushner has a smart take by making that clash of tones the point - we as an audience are aware of the tragedy that has just occurred, but Maria has no idea, and is still living in a romantic fantasy that is about to be destroyed, and the song hurts to watch as a result. Or witness the way that "America" plays out in front of a protest against forced relocation - not only is it a reminder about the futility of the gang conflict, but it's also a nice undercutting of the song to ensure that it never over-romanticises life in America. But Kushner's greatest achievement was to reconceive the show in a way that made it feel reflective of its period, but not of its period. I was surprised when the nominations came out and his name was not on the list for adapted screenplay nominees, because I honestly think it's a masterful example of how, even working within the strictures of a musical where you have to include all of these songs with these specific lyrics, it is possible as a screenwriter to reconceive the show and bring your own vision to how the film can work for a modern audience. </p><p>There's only one point where I do feel the updating simply does not work. The play has a minor character called Anybodys, a tomboy who really wants to be a Jet but who they won't let join because they don't let girls into the gang. In the new movie they reframe the character - rather than being a tomboy, Anybodys is now a trans man, played by a trans man. Everything else seems largely the same - except that the gang cannot say "no girls allowed" (even though that's absolutely what they would have said at the time), because that would be misgendering, and in a film made in 2021 you can't casually include a scene where a trans person is misgendered without it becoming a distraction from the point of the scene. So you get this weird element where Anybodys is constantly rejected, but the reason for the rejection is never expressed. Now, obviously we the audience can interpret why the rejection is happening, but the fact that no-one says anything when Anybodys declares "I'm not a girl" suggests that they agree with that statement, which seems odd for people who are still literally rejecting someone for being trans. I can understand the impulse for the change, but it simply means, in this one area, the film feels anachronistic - people aren't behaving the way they would have behaved at the time, simply because the film is actively trying to avoid raising issues that are not the point of the film. And in that case, why make the change?</p><p>But putting that small element aside, <i>West Side Story</i> is a glorious film that invigorates and delights constantly, even when the show's emotions prove devastating. Above all, I'm just sad that it has taken Spielberg over 45 years to make his first musical. He has such an instinctive and clear understanding of the form for this type of film that I find myself wishing we could have had many more musicals directed by the man. Unfortunately it seems <a href="https://variety.com/2022/awards/news/steven-spielberg-pga-awards-2022-breakfast-1235209794/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">he has said</a> he intends to never direct another movie musical, which will be a great shame. Still, at least we got to experience one Spielberg musical, and it's a wonderful film that I expect to revisit often.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGp-xKuXGyvAdGNq1vRH3AxQ5pL0xHAMaoRU6XHPE_rrUzqA_a7sLw9WnzeYvnZESXeZTTPmacMLMXyY_qbBkjOd9mEabUFhnAe6jubHoXCnIxUMrS2Pyjfnl5OzqFsB7vjCZw6cdBFPm9e0vgS6rzNOp_O97X7l2NjEf3jRzMLglLZqrhCcGpIv-LzA/s755/king_richard.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGp-xKuXGyvAdGNq1vRH3AxQ5pL0xHAMaoRU6XHPE_rrUzqA_a7sLw9WnzeYvnZESXeZTTPmacMLMXyY_qbBkjOd9mEabUFhnAe6jubHoXCnIxUMrS2Pyjfnl5OzqFsB7vjCZw6cdBFPm9e0vgS6rzNOp_O97X7l2NjEf3jRzMLglLZqrhCcGpIv-LzA/w270-h400/king_richard.jpg" width="270" /></a>I'm somewhat frustrated by the general acclaim being given to <i><b>King Richard</b></i>, the true story of Richard Williams who, before his daughters Venus and Serena were born, wrote an 78 page plan on how he would make his daughters into tennis champions, facing racism and dismissal by those in the tennis world who thought they knew better than him, and fighting until he proved himself. Now, to be clear, <i>King Richard</i> is not a bad film; it's a perfectly fine film that is very watchable and likeable. But what it isn't is one of the best movies of the year. In fact, it runs dangerously close to hagiography, and is more a surface-level presentation of facts and events than a movie that engages with its lead character.</p><p>I don't follow tennis, so while I obviously knew about the Williams sisters, I was completely unfamiliar with their father until word of this movie began. When I look him up, I find a wealth of references to him as a "controversial figure" in tennis. But there is nothing in this film that really justifies that description. Yes, he's demanding, overbearing, and belligerent, infuriating to be around, and at times even insists that he knows better than experienced professional coaches, but there's no real sense of why he should be seen as a controversial figure. After all, he's always proven right - he tells the coaches that they are teaching the girls the wrong stance, he's right; he decides to pull the girls from the junior tours despite claims the lack of competition will affect their development, he's right. And of course, history has proven him to be right, there's no denying that, but when a film repeatedly shows you all the times that he was right, never shows him have even a moment of doubt about his decisions, presents him with the kind of hero worship that a kid will typically have for their father, then it does start to feel like it's a sanitised version of history, even if the film acknowledges that he is hardly being a saint. The one moment where I felt the film seemed to be getting deeper into who this man is and what he is like to be around comes in the scene where he fights with his wife Brandy - not coincidentally, this was the only point where I felt I was seeing real people on screen, rather than an imaginary idealised version of the man. At this one moment, she attacks his flaws, criticises him for claiming credit for their daughters' acheivements and not acknowledging her role, and even points out that the "devoted family man who would never leave his girls" has multiple children by other woman who he has effectively abandoned. It's a gripping and brilliantly performed scene, in which you feel the hurt and frustration that Brandy must have felt living with Richard all these years. But it doesn't matter, because once the scene's finished, it feels as though the film just reverts back to the status quo, and he gets back to being "King Richard".</p><p>But because the film doesn't really take the time to focus on exploring its characters, it winds up just being an uninspired recitation of events, as we trudge mechanically from this thing that happened to that thing that happened. And this means that massive events carry little weight unless they have ongoing significance. There's a point where Richard stands up to a gang, gets violently assaulted by them, takes a gun intending to kill the gang leader, but then witnesses the leader being killed in a drive-by shooting, and then makes peace with the rest of the gang. It's a massive moment in his life, and it's a well-made and gripping sequence in the film, but five minutes later you've completely forgotten this even happened, because it doesn't seem to carry any ongoing impact on Richard as a person, and it's not relevant to his efforts to find a coach for his daughters, and so it just becomes one event that carries surprisingly little weight in a film made up of many events.</p><p>A big part of my issue is that the film starts too late. When the movie begins, Richard has been coaching his daughters who are already talented young tennis players, and he's trying to promote them to coaches who might take them to the next level. And that would be a logical place to start if you are telling the story of Venus and Serena, but because they've made the decision to tell the story of Richard, I can't help wondering about everything that went before. Going way back to the beginning, where did his interest in tennis come from? There's no sense in the film that he's a particularly talented tennis player himself - he seems more of an enthusiast than a star - so how does he become so convinced that he can make tennis legends out of these girls? How does he come to know these things he taught his daughters, things successful experienced coaches don't seem to know? And what was his relationship with Venus and Serena like, how was it affected by his coaching - when he had them out there training at 4 years old did they ever feel like their father was forcing his passion for the game on to them? These are, I think, natural questions to want to ask in a story about Richard, but they are questions the film's not interested in answering. This is a fundamental conflict working through the film - the film claims to be the Richard Williams story, but it's actually interested mainly in being the Venus and Serena story, and that creates an awkwardness around the different parts of the film that feels uncomfortable.</p><p>Will Smith is one of the front runners for the Best Actor prize, and it's a fine performance, but it's not a role that necessarily feels like it's stretching or challenging him as an actor. Richard Williams may not be as fun to be around as most Will Smith characters, but Williams in a lot of ways is still a showman, oozing with charm, confidence, and certainty, and determined to prove himself right against all challenges - and that's every major role we've seen Will Smith take. Yes, he's older than the typical Will Smith role we're used to (but then, Smith himself is getting on), and he doesn't have the bounce we're accustomed to seeing from Smith, but when I watched the film, I didn't feel that I was seeing anything from Smith that I hadn't seen many times before. I've also heard suggestions that Aunjanue Ellis, as wife Brandy, may be a surprise winner in a strong category. And she does do strong work, but it really is a nothing role - except in those 5 minutes where Richard and Bandy fight. During that scene she positively steals the scene from Will Smith, as she pours out her every resentment and anger against him. It's rich, compelling, and a brilliant moment of performance by Ellis. And then in the next scene she's back to almost being a background figure - except now we've seen how good she can be, and so we feel like we've been cheated out of time to really enjoy that performance. And Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton as Venus and Serena are appealing and charming, in roles that don't necessarily call for any particular depth, but they are enjoyable to be with, and to my inexperienced eye they looked like they genuinely knew how to play tennis, so that was fun.</p><p>Look, I liked <i>King Richard</i>, it was an enjoyable time in the cinema. But it's another one in the long line of blandly enjoyable movies that gets a nomination because they're a likeable crowd pleaser, rather than because of any particular exceptional quality to the film.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPbw6z-OUzKA_anuMPcZjzlalAbRH_bDhYtazh5yKX_RkaAxIrkgOpVWFzat_7UfmiV0w_ypvb3g_0zb9UNtgNvSj_qFyJx6I8iw9GVE6TPzAUsx3ghQ7ENfCEYJolbw5L-OOHbIqyMRNNzrDtw60eaFThfgs_8hx_OPjJ64xdWoQra0GUaUS5YHxi2g/s755/dont_look_up.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="521" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPbw6z-OUzKA_anuMPcZjzlalAbRH_bDhYtazh5yKX_RkaAxIrkgOpVWFzat_7UfmiV0w_ypvb3g_0zb9UNtgNvSj_qFyJx6I8iw9GVE6TPzAUsx3ghQ7ENfCEYJolbw5L-OOHbIqyMRNNzrDtw60eaFThfgs_8hx_OPjJ64xdWoQra0GUaUS5YHxi2g/w276-h400/dont_look_up.jpg" width="276" /></a>Finally, we get to easily the most baffling movie to be nominated, <i><b>Don't Look Up</b></i>, the story of two astronomers who discover an asteroid heading directly to Earth, and their struggles to have anyone take the threat seriously. Now I will admit, I did rather like <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2016/02/1047-minutes.html#more:~:text=When%20making%20The%20Big%20Short" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Big Short</a></i>, Adam McKay's earlier nominated film about the 2007 financial crisis; he did a strong job in taking a complex issue and presenting it in a clear and engaging manner. I hated his follow-up film <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2019/02/1055-minutes.html#more:~:text=see%20nominated%20is-,Adam%20McKay%27s%20Vice,-%2C%20a%20film%20based" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Vice</a></i>, a frustratingly bad film that I feel was only nominated because the voters felt a certain way about Dick Cheney and voted accordingly regardless of the quality of the film. But <i>Vice</i> is a piece of incisive and perceptive cinema compared to the ham-fisted and ill-considered catastrophe that is <i>Don't Look Up</i>.</p><div style="text-align: left;">See, the film is intended as an allegory for climate change and the struggles climate scientists have in getting anyone to take the problem seriously. Not long after the film, <a href="https://twitter.com/GhostPanther/status/1476269416123830280" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Adam McKay tweeted</a>:</div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Loving all the heated debate about our movie. But if you don’t have at least a small ember of anxiety about the climate collapsing (or the US teetering) I’m not sure Don’t Look Up makes any sense. It’s like a robot viewing a love story. “WHy ArE thEir FacEs so cLoSe ToGether?</i></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Which, for a start, is getting perilously close to suggesting that if you don't like his film, you're in favour of climate change - and I know he's said that's not what he was saying. But the nomination of this film definitely feels less like the Academy nominating the film on its own merits, and more like the Academy responding to a cynical attempt to frame the message of the film as being more important than just what's on screen. Much like the nomination of <i>Vice</i> seemed more about being anti-Dick Cheney, a nomination for <i>Don't Look Up</i> positions the voter as being in favour of taking action against climate change.</div><p>And here's where my first problem with the film is - if the film is an allegory about the need to respond urgently to climate change, that's all very good, but what action are they wanting to take? The film offers no solution, no perspective on this issue, it just says we should do something, we need to do something, why aren't we doing something, won't someone do something please? Now, I realise that the nature of allegory often means that it does overly simplify complex issues, I understand that the impending devastation caused by climate change seems too remote and lacking in immediacy, and therefore they used an impending collision with an asteroid as an example of the type of disaster that should focus the attention but does not. But here's why I think that analogy doesn't work. If we have an asteroid destroying the world, there's one obvious solution to that problem - destroy or deflect the asteroid in some way. But that's also a problem that can only be solved by the people in charge; ordinary members of the public simply don't have the ability to do anything about an asteroid collision. That's not true with climate change, where there are more solutions than can be conceived of, and where the politicians may have a role in setting incentives to push us in one direction or another, but ultimately it's the individual decisions of every person in the world that cumulatively determine how our planet responds to climate change. And also, every solution involves complex compromises, winners and losers. After all, the most effective response to climate change would actually be mass extermination (Thanos actually had the right idea - but he needed to go much further then just eliminating half the population if he wanted to really have an effect). But if we assume that killing off most of the population is an undesirable approach, then we need to find other ways of working through and balancing different options to find a solution. Investing in electric vehicles is a good idea, but does that lead to pollution through the mining of materials to produce batteries, and we do need to somehow generate enough electricity to charge an entire nation of electric vehicles, so just how clean would that electricity be? Investment in public transport should be a good idea, but if people don't use it, it becomes an expensive white elephant and could even result in an increase in emissions. Following international agreements seems like the right solution, but those agreements can be the consequence of a million compromises, and some have argued they even have the potential to discourage already efficient production in one country and encourage more wasteful production in others. So the problem that <i>Don't Look Up</i> is trying to satirise is so much more complicated than in the film that the satire almost becomes irrelevant to the problem being satirised. (In fact, to be honest, the approaching asteroid is so far removed from the issue of climate change that, until I read up about the film, that analogy never entered my mind - before then I genuinely thought it was intended as a satire about our response to Covid.)</p><p>It's plain to see that <i>Don't Look Up</i> is trying desperately to be this generation's <i>Dr Strangelove</i>. But when Kubrick wanted to make <i>Dr Strangelove</i> as a satire about US-Russia relations and the threat of nuclear war, he didn't do it with an insulting analogy that was completely disconnected from the issue being satirised. Instead he made a comedy about someone launching a nuclear attack, he took us into the war room with the President and Generals debating how they should respond to the situation, he even gave us a scene in which representatives of the US and Russia were literally fighting. The end result is a satire that actually feels relevant to the matter being talked about. And I fully believe that it could have been possible to take a similar approach in satirising the response to climate change. You could absolutely present a problem, whether it's actually climate change or something broadly analogous, and show how it is rendered unsolvable simply because everyone is trying to find the solution that involves the least or no sacrifice on their own part - that seems like something that would actually be entirely relevant to the problem being addressed here. But no, it's simpler to say that people don't care about climate change because people are obsessed with celebrities and also Trump was bad.</p><p>But the length of the film also points to how colossally indulgent it is. The film is filled with so many avenues and diversions that you feel the film doesn't really know where it's going. What is the point of Leonardo DiCaprio having an affair with the Fox News-style anchor played by Cate Blanchett? Why is there a late film romance between Jennifer Lawrence and Timothee Chalamet? Between this and <i>Ready Player One</i>, is that just what Mark Rylance thinks all tech geniuses are like? Did you know that the problem stopping us from solving climate change is Trump's nepotism? And I realise the film is trying to satirise our tendency as a society to focus on irrelevant gossip rather than matters of importance, but the amount of time spent on the love life of a pop star, or a sex scandal involving a Supreme Court nominee, makes the film feel less like it's less satirising these distractions and more buying into these distractions itself. It's so completely all over the place that it completely lacks any sense of focus or clarity over what it's trying to say.</p><p>Now, that lack of clarity could be forgiven if the film was funny. Unfortunately, the core problem with <i>Don't Look Up</i> is that it's insufficiently funny. Again, let's look at <i>Dr Strangelove</i> - what's the funniest moment in that film? There are so many candidates: "You can't fight in here, this is the war room"; the President speaking to the Soviet premier; Jack D Ripper's "precious bodily fluids"; "You'll answer to the Coca-Cola company"; Kong riding the bomb; "Mein Fuhrer, I can walk"; Buck Turgidson's wide armed delight in describing the B-52 bombers; Vera Lynn singing "We'll Meet Again". <i>Don't Look Up</i> is a comedy that is an hour longer than <i>Strangelove</i>; there should be so many jokes in this film that it should be difficult to pick a favourite one. And yet every time I've heard anyone refer to a specific joke in the film, it's always the exact same joke - the scene in which an army general gets some snacks for Jennifer Lawrence, along with the recurring references back to that scene through the rest of the film. And I agree, that is a brilliant joke - it's specific, character-based, makes a point, and is also bloody funny. But the fact this is the near-universally agreed best joke in the film, and no-one can think of another joke that's even worth referencing, means that the film has failed as a comedy.</p><p>There's also one moment in the film, and it's a very small thing, but it just really rankled with me. You remember how in <i>The Big Short</i> the film would often pause so that we could be given an explainer on how some complex aspect of the financial system worked. Adam McKay continued to take this approach of breaking the fourth wall in <i>Vice</i>, with moments like the fake-out ending or the conversation in mock-Shakespearean dialogue. Here he breaks the fourth wall once - someone refers to something called the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which is responsible for identifying objects in space that could collide with the Earth, and the film pauses to put text on screen telling us that this is an organisation that actually exists, and here is its logo. The way the information is given to us in that moment makes it feel like it's a joke, as though we're supposed to laugh at the absurdity that such an office might exist in reality. Except that the entire film is about the risk presented by collisions with such objects, so surely it seems like a good thing that there is an organisation tasked with looking for such threats. So what is the purpose of that interruption? Is McKay seriously trying to make a joke about the existence of a thing that the film is also telling us definitely needs to exist? It's admittedly a minor point, but it's an example where Adam McKay's comic sensibility seems to actively work against the film because he seems to want to make jokes out of things that shouldn't be jokes.</p><p><i>Don't Look Up</i> is a disastrous film. And then you look it up, and you discover the film cost $75 million to make, and that makes sense because it is not cheap to cast Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Meryl Streep, but also that's a lot of money to spend on a horrifically bad movie. Honestly, if you're going to make a terrible movie about a giant space body crashing into the planet, at least have the common decency to make the destruction of Earth the final stage in a billion-year intergalactic war involving an evil AI - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonfall_(film)" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">that at least would be entertainingly bad to watch</a>. Instead we just have to sit and watch this film being insulting and smug in its sanctimony, and sit in that for an interminable 138 minutes. And it's simply not effective as a piece of anti-climate change advocacy - you get the sense that more emissions were produced in making the film than will ever be stopped by viewers taking its message on board. I feel genuinely angry that this film was nominated. </p><p>The depressing thing about a film like <i>Don't Look Up</i> getting the nomination is the fact that it takes up a spot that could have drawn attention to something more worthwhile - films that didn't even get a nomination. If they wanted to speak to the massive problems facing society today, why not a film like <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2021/12/optimism-redux.html#:~:text=but%20flawed%20movie.-,Mass,-This%20I%20loved" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mass</a></i>, addressing issues of gun violence and reconciliation with a sympathetic and sensitive approach. (At the very least, it deserved Screenplay and Acting nominations.) If that's too heavy, and they want to nominate a comedy with social awareness, you have films like <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2021/12/optimism-redux.html#:~:text=strongly%20recommend%20it.-,Zola,-Back%20in%202015" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Zola</a></i> or <i>Red Rocket</i>, genuinely laugh-out-loud funny films that both speak to challenges of female exploitation in the sex industry. <i>Annette</i> was my favourite film of the year, and while it was never going to get a Best Picture nomination, I had been certain that "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1nDfbHk6Tc" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">So May We Start</a>" was a lock for a Song nomination, so its shut-out is extremely upsetting. Or <i>Cyrano</i>, in which the classic romantic tragedy is reinterpreted as a heartbreaking musical with an intensely soulful performance by Peter Dinklage. But perhaps those films are just too small and the Academy just didn't notice them. In which case, they probably should have taken out <i>Don't Look Up</i>, and just put in anything that's better. Like, say, <i>Spider-Man: No Way Home</i>. </p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-43150832448381730502021-12-02T22:31:00.002+13:002021-12-02T22:35:50.260+13:00Optimism redux<p>So here's the thing,</p><p>I genuinely did not think I'd be able to write this post. Even as I bought my film festival tickets, I was thinking what a pointless exercise it was, that there's almost certainly be a Covid outbreak and the festival would be cancelled. Every day, I'd look at the announcement of new infection numbers with anxiety over whether they would affect the festival. Auckland had already been cancelled, then Christchurch was postponed a week after a case emerged in that city, and then a couple of days into our festival the Hamilton leg was cancelled. But while we had a short scare with one case that had travelled to Wellington, we made it through the festival unaffected. </p><p>One of the defining elements of the film festival experience is the fact that it's in the middle of winter - you're used to walking out of a cinema in the late hours into a bitterly cold and miserable night - and so the idea of a festival in November, in late spring, just a handful of weeks away from the start of summer, seemed wrong. But apparently it's the festival that brings that weather out - as soon as the festival began, we started getting really harsh winds, we started getting frequent rain, and in the last few days it even started being stormy. And then the festival ended, and the weather went back to normal. </p><p>It was a weird festival experience - with social distancing requirements, I'd find myself sitting in the Embassy, a cinema that normally holds 700 people, in a "sold out" session of 270. But still, after the let-down of last year's mostly-online festival, which (except for the small number of cinema screenings) didn't feel any different to any other night watching streaming movies, it was exciting to get back to the cinema for a proper experience of 2 1/2 weeks of intense and engaging movie viewing.</p><p>So, as always, here are my reactions, my responses to the films I saw, taken from my Facebook posts. These are not reviews, these are just attempts to record my thoughts about the films, and sometimes even just to try to process what I feel about them, in the immediate aftermath of watching something. And that's a big part of why I write these - the festival is so overwhelming that otherwise it would be too easy to just forget about most of these films, so this is a way of capturing that initial response. That means they're written mainly for myself, although they're also written with an awareness that others may read them, so I generally try to avoid giving too many spoilers. They were all written within two days of watching a film, so the films were all still very fresh in my memory. But that also means they're written in a rush, so the writing is often quite rough; I also use voice recognition to prepare them (I speak faster than I type), and while I try to catch all of the misinterpreted text, it's very possible the odd word may have slipped through that voice recognition incorrectly identified.</p><p>So here we are - Film Festival 2021:</p><p><i>[Comments on some 34 films, after the jump]</i></p><p><i><span></span></i></p><a name='more'></a><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhddDO8bwiIGRdhYYOpospNb3uERSMaJE8ttUfFYGOgGS4XDTkyGj8hU7w8ZSQJXcQ2D-h3zGAhgKkKfg7kSC-oj5XdUaL-3BVrJVbyiueS5HaXJB0IpLChSloV-jE2Q2CAZFpM39_Lg7eP/s755/riders_of_justice.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhddDO8bwiIGRdhYYOpospNb3uERSMaJE8ttUfFYGOgGS4XDTkyGj8hU7w8ZSQJXcQ2D-h3zGAhgKkKfg7kSC-oj5XdUaL-3BVrJVbyiueS5HaXJB0IpLChSloV-jE2Q2CAZFpM39_Lg7eP/w270-h400/riders_of_justice.jpg" width="270" /></a></p><p><b><i>Riders of Justice</i></b></p><p>Mads Mikkelsen stars as Markus, a skilled army officer who is forced to end his tour of duty after his wife is killed in a train crash. One day he's approached by two data analysts, one a survivor of the train crash, who believe that the crash was a deliberate effort by the Riders of Justice bike gang to kill the lead witness in the trial against the gang leader. And once they find evidence that the leader's brother left the train moments before the crash, they decide to seek revenge, drawing the attention of the gang in their direction. </p><p>The festival program made the film seem like it was going to be a Danish take on <i>John Wick</i>, but while it certainly has moments that are reminiscent of those films - in several scenes Markus shows a practiced skill and speed in taking out his disorganised targets that comes from his military experience - it does feel very different. The film is much more reflective and contemplative then you might have expected - the main theme running through the film is the question about coincidence and how different events and circumstances, many outside our control or even our knowledge, can feed into the experiences that define us. (After all, none of this film would have happened had a random unconnected grandfather not decided to buy his granddaughter the bike that she wants for Christmas from a dodgy supplier - this leads to Markus' daughter's bike being stolen, which leads to them being in the train that crashed, which leads to all this chaos and death.) The film spends an unexpected amount of time talking about these type of questions, but it's presented in an engaging and visual way that really connects the audience to the idea, and that is just fascinating to watch. </p><p>It's also unexpectedly funny - there is a constant stream of sharp jokes and genuine wit that for the most part lifts the tone of the film and prevents it from becoming dry. Not all of the jokes are successful - I was particularly uncomfortable with the running jokes the film made at the expense of the young man who had been kept by the gang as a sex slave. But for the most part, the film just works and achieves an impressive unity of tone, expertly balancing the humour, reflectiveness, and violence into a film that has a clear sense of its identity. </p><p>As we would expect, Mads Mikkelsen again proves what a phenomenal actor he is. Here he's someone completely consumed by grief and rage - he's come straight out of his tour of duty into this terrible situation, and he's someone who feels like he's so constantly coiled up, it's like he never had a chance to decompress after his time in the conflict zone, and so he's still walking around expecting a threat to come from behind every corner. But there's also an element where he is actively trying to avoid dealing with the grieving process, which frustrates his daughter who sees her father trying to escape the experience they've had and go forward with just killing people because he's more comfortable with that. It's a compelling acting performance, and one I really took delight in. </p><p>It's not a film I see myself remembering with great detail in coming years, but it's an extremely entertaining movie, and hopefully marks the start of a successful festival.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghonr4xXvqRCPbueerujTZpffWbTY-m2mEZQafarixaQJPMzw_6wQV9oAkVV8ObTCF1vsxt4bQZzZIvQYnBw_1vN8ihJiUm1GHw85tv4Ekd0B2Rs1Yg0nZ8eLbcV5T6UkADixD16gAQcH4/s755/censor.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghonr4xXvqRCPbueerujTZpffWbTY-m2mEZQafarixaQJPMzw_6wQV9oAkVV8ObTCF1vsxt4bQZzZIvQYnBw_1vN8ihJiUm1GHw85tv4Ekd0B2Rs1Yg0nZ8eLbcV5T6UkADixD16gAQcH4/w270-h400/censor.jpg" width="270" /></a><i><b>Censor</b></i></p><p>I approached <i>Censor</i> with high expectations, having heard very good things about it from critics in the UK. And I was pleased that, for the most part, the film really lived up to my hopes. </p><p>Enid is a young woman still traumatised by the mysterious disappearance of her young sister while the two of them were playing together as children. Now working as a film censor in Britain during the 1980s, the era of the "video nasties", she is disturbed to watch a particularly gory horror that is eerily reminiscent of her sister's disappearance. Digging into the director's other films, she stumbles across an actress who may be her missing sister, and so she has to investigate to find out who this woman is. </p><p>My experience of the video nasties is extremely limited. I'm not a big horror person, and certainly wouldn't want to seek out the more extreme works so, looking at the official list, the only ones I've seen are the more conventional titles - <i>The Evil Dead</i>, <i>Night of the Living Dead</i>, <i>Friday the 13th</i>, <i>Suspiria</i>, and a film called <i>The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith</i> that I saw at Film Society. So I can't really comment about the film's accuracy as a representation of a video nasty. I do know that the reputation for many of these films is that they're often very slow, punctuated by moments of extreme (and extremely fake-looking) violence - and if so, the film does effectively replicate that style. I was bracing myself for something much more visceral, and was pleased by how much the film focused instead on a tone of insidious dread creeping through every moment - you feel yourself spiralling with the character as she becomes obsessed with trying to rescue her sister from this evil filmmaker. The moments of violence, when they come, are quite absurd - they're extreme in the way that leaves the audience laughing with shock at what they're watching, but they're also deliberately unconvincing, using 1980s technology like obvious dummies to achieve an effect. The film also has a lurid use of colour that felt very appropriate - at times it put me in mind of the original <i>Suspiria</i>. (The other main point of reference I found myself reflecting on was the more recent <i>Berberian Sound Studio</i> - a very different film, but they're both works of extreme style that explore the emotional impact that cinema can have on the viewer.)</p><p>One thing I was surprised by was how the film approached the role of the censor. For a film made by horror fans, I had half-expected the person insisting on cuts and banning films to almost be the villain, but instead the job of the censor is sympathetically presented. They're working under legislation that forces them to take certain actions, and you can debate or criticise that law as much as you want, but you can still see these people trying to work to preserve the artistic integrity of the films they are cutting, while aware that they need to make the right call every time because the consequences of passing something they shouldn't can be great. I do wonder whether that's a consequence of the passage of time - back in the 80s, the film censor probably would have been seen as a villain, but these days the BBFC is much more transparent and open, and as a result their work is generally seen in a more positive light. </p><p>One thing I did find fascinating was the analogy the film made between the work of a censor protecting the public from images they shouldn't see, and the way the mind can work to censor memories and protect us from traumatic experiences. Enid can't remember what happened to her sister because whatever happened was so distressing, it became a blank void in the centre of her life. And when you get to the film's ending (and I'll avoid specific plot spoilers), the ending we see is not the ending as it actually happens, but is instead given an artificial presentation that Enid is imagining to protect herself from the horrific events that have occurred. It's a smart idea that does tie the story and the theme of the story together in a cogent manner. </p><p>My only complaint is that not all the film holds together so tightly. In particular, there's a random story thread involving a killing that was seemingly inspired by a movie that Enid passed, and the film goes to the effort of establishing mysteries - how did the media know which censor passed the film? - that it never attempts to resolve. But it's a minor plot thread that never factors into the main story, so I always forgot that it was part of the film until it would briefly reinsert itself into the narrative. And the ultimate resolution was so obvious that I had assumed it from the moment the storyline was introduced (you could probably guess it just from my description). It's not a bad idea to include that element - a big part of the video nasties controversy was the media campaign against these films - but it does feel extraneous to the film. With another couple of drafts, it should have been possible to either incorporate that storyline into the main plot, or at least expand it so that it becomes a fully-fledged supporting plotline. As it is, it just feels like a distraction. </p><p>But all in all, it's a stunning and confident piece of work from first-time director Prano Bailey-Bond. I'm definitely excited to see what she does next.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS12F5r_Mods_bNi9NGjT2QBm3Ho-nqno-ZRz5ikZRJHqIJqCAcFwpPNaArIhpIGQ1xg6_jK3Z6i2Lti9Ed84dIm5QGEjwYq9r8XfaejvOB1yK_Z8j9csNdAmjRy5-UrQax5OM55bJb1lC/s900/after_love.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="610" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS12F5r_Mods_bNi9NGjT2QBm3Ho-nqno-ZRz5ikZRJHqIJqCAcFwpPNaArIhpIGQ1xg6_jK3Z6i2Lti9Ed84dIm5QGEjwYq9r8XfaejvOB1yK_Z8j9csNdAmjRy5-UrQax5OM55bJb1lC/w271-h400/after_love.jpg" width="271" /></a><b><i>After Love</i></b></p><p><i>After Love</i> was something of a margin call for me - I kept adding and removing the film from my list. But I was so glad that I ultimately saw it, because this is such a beautiful piece of filmmaking. </p><p>Mary, a recently widowed middle-aged woman who converted to Islam as a teenager to be with her husband, is stunned when she learns that her husband had a second family, a partner and a teenage son, across the Channel in France. She travels over to confront the other woman, Genevieve, but can't bring herself to say the words, and when she is mistaken for a cleaner, she becomes close to this other family without them knowing who she really is. </p><p>The thing that really hits you about the film is just how still it is. Despite the potentially melodramatic scenario and the potential for explosive confrontation, it's extremely small and intimate. As Mary, Joanna Scanlan is called on to give most of her performance with her face. She spends much of the film either alone with her thoughts, or silently observing other people, and so for long stretches she has no dialogue - instead we're called on to read her thoughts in every subtle muscle movement. The grief of losing her husband, the pain of knowing that he betrayed her, the shock of realising how little she knew him, the confusion over how to relate to this other woman, the struggle of knowing her place in the Muslim world once the reason she chose that life has gone, are all expressed by her without a line of dialogue. When she decides not to clear up the confusion and instead work for Genevieve, you get the sense that it's not so much motivated by curiosity and a desire to pry into their life, but almost primarily as an act of service. As much as she is hurt by her husband's actions, she still intensely misses and loves him, and so the choice to work for these people feels like she's trying to do something good for him through these other people that he clearly cared for. In particular, the relationship between her and the son becomes rather close, and the tender portrayal of that relationship is a beautiful thing. (The best moment in the film occurs when she offers to make a meal for the son, and the love and care she pours into that meal shines through the screen.) </p><p>As easy as it is to focus on Joanna Scanlan, Nathalie Richard as Genevieve is fascinating. She's an intensely likeable character - we can see why Ahmed fell for her - which sets up a real tension in her performance, because we have no idea how much she knows about Ahmed and his other life, but if she knew she was the other woman, do we have to judge her for that? And then there's the pain that she's going through, which is different to Mary - she doesn't know that Ahmed is dead, so she thinks his failure to respond to her phone calls may be a sign that he's leaving her. And while she's used to not seeing her partner for weeks at a time, and is capable of living her life alone, that fear of abandonment is still palpable. </p><p>The direction by first time writer-director Aleem Khan is impressively measured. The film is apparently inspired by his own Muslim-convert mother, and that love is palpable in every moment. He's not trying to impose his own personality and flourishes on to the story, he just wants to sit and inobtrusively spend time with, in effect, his mother. And it works beautifully. Because he tends not to do a lot of cutting, each scene feels like a mini play, where we can watch the characters interact and engage with each other, which is an effective trick in building the tension of the piece. And if the film occasionally becomes a little obvious in its metaphors - a shot of the White Cliffs of Dover crumbling reflecting the collapsing of her own world, in a moment that is called back to in the final shot - well, such is life. Overall, this is a confident and beautiful work by a talented young filmmaker who will hopefully go on to give us many more great films.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj83_3QjQzzGwbKluofdZVHmCf3gNHNN7YuSegSe4Ew8sCMF0OfXUF0IifbBIEdfkudqR3J4UdAUPUvydyicdkH5wgd2Js-1MT5klpst9rtCr76sx9tdBILsb0rVLk7SQsSr-r3_FWSSflz/s755/beau_travail.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj83_3QjQzzGwbKluofdZVHmCf3gNHNN7YuSegSe4Ew8sCMF0OfXUF0IifbBIEdfkudqR3J4UdAUPUvydyicdkH5wgd2Js-1MT5klpst9rtCr76sx9tdBILsb0rVLk7SQsSr-r3_FWSSflz/w270-h400/beau_travail.jpg" width="270" /></a><i><b>Beau Travail</b></i> </p><p>This year, the "classic" section of the festival is a tribute to the late Bill Gosden, who was the festival director for 40 years, and who passed away one year ago. All of the films are movies that Bill loved and programmed during his time with the festival. </p><p><i>Beau Travail</i>, from 1999, opens with our central character Galoup writing his memoir. A former officer in the French Foreign Legion in an outpost in Djibouti, the entire film is framed as a flashback as Galoup reflects on the events that led to his discharge from the Legion. Life in the Legion is not easy, with long, punishing, and brutal training exercises, but at least they get to break free by going to the clubs and dancing, maybe more, with the girls. Galoup is extremely proud of the work he has done in building his unit, but he's frustrated that he doesn't command the respect that his commander does. One day the unit gets a new member, Sentain, and Galoup is immediately threatened. Sentain is young, attractive, likeable and popular, and skilled as a soldier, and Galoup comes to see him as a threat. Whether out of envy or some repressed desire, Galoup decides that he needs to destroy his rival before he threatens Galoup's position. This does not go well. </p><p>So I was really looking forward to this. The film has been on my list to watch for a while, and to see it in a restored version on the big screen was about as perfect and experience as you could hope for. And I know how near-universal the rapturous praise is for the film. And so I feel that I must have been missing something, because the film simply did not grab me. It started with the voice-over, which is so long and so intrusive that there was a significant period where I wondered whether there would be any dialogue in the film at all that wasn't a voice over. And it just remains everpresent throughout pretty much the entire film, this constant presence that never let you fall into the film because you're always aware that this is going to end badly - but not too badly because Galoup does seem essentially okay if he's able to write his memoirs. </p><p>And then there's just the fact that the film feels aimless. It was only in the last half hour that the film even crystalised for me around what the plot actually was - before then, it's just seemed largely like a collection of individual scenes that don't really hang together. Now, this isn't a criticism of those scenes, which stand alone as effective moments that do have an effect on the viewer. Director Claire Denis does have a nice eye for a compelling image, and some of the training sequences are fascinating and beautiful to watch, and you really can feel Denis' admiring gaze through the camera. But I simply felt that, until the third act, none of it really held together as a single work of art. And by the time it did all coalesce, I felt that the damage had already been done. I was simply out of the film. </p><p>Now, I do feel that I need to give the film another chance sometime. The film has such a great reputation that I feel it's on me that I didn't engage with the film. Perhaps I simply wasn't in the right headspace at the time, and maybe I'll respond better next time. Maybe now that I have a clearer picture about what the film is doing and where it's going, I'll pick up those threads through the a film, and hopefully it will feel like more of a cohesive whole. But for the moment, I'm very disappointed by the film.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifBqsZ2d8DmhI2w8NCb30r_aUyT166r4MJsb5y4zheplwFpA2ZSR-Gw2uYLp1ZOWySAbHDwlOzhBG5zVRDFn3CsXWLB0NmXnuRlTxk_UPblB4T0ZHVoMNKeJ-bEijZdNbb8s6T7MKa1K3N/s1500/french_dispatch.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="966" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifBqsZ2d8DmhI2w8NCb30r_aUyT166r4MJsb5y4zheplwFpA2ZSR-Gw2uYLp1ZOWySAbHDwlOzhBG5zVRDFn3CsXWLB0NmXnuRlTxk_UPblB4T0ZHVoMNKeJ-bEijZdNbb8s6T7MKa1K3N/w258-h400/french_dispatch.jpg" width="258" /></a><b><i>The French Dispatch</i></b></p><p>The new film from Wes Anderson, the film presents itself as the final issue of "The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun", essentially a New Yorker-style journalism magazine published from the town of Ennui, France, following the death of its editor. After a brief history of the magazine, and a short cycling tour through Ennui and its peculiarities, the film settles on to its main substance, presenting three of the best articles written during the lifetime of the magazine. In the Arts section, we get the story of a condemned psychopath in an insane asylum whose art, inspired by his prison-guard muse, prompts an entire artistic movement. In the Politics section, we get the story of the student "chessboard revolution" that breaks out, and how the journalist became too involved in the movement. And in the Food section, we get the story of a police officer/chef who is an expert in the distinctive art of "police cooking", and how his skill becomes pivotal to the rescue of the kidnapped son of the Police Commissaire. </p><p>So I've been looking forward to this film for a long time. I've been a fan of Wes Anderson since <i>Rushmore</i>, and his films are always an essential event for me. It's been three years since his last film, <i>Isle of Dogs</i>, and seven years since his last live-action film, <i>The Grand Budapest Hotel</i>, one of his best works. Add to that the frustration of the year-long Covid delay, and there is a lot of anticipation and weight being put on the film. </p><p>And unfortunately I don't know that the film holds up. It's not a bad film, it's actually pretty good, and as a piece of pure entertainment, it works well. It's very funny, with a lot of genuinely laugh-out-loud moments. And as you would expect, it's gorgeous to look at - Anderson has constructed a beautiful world that is almost frustrating to watch on the big screen, because you want to have the ability to pause and examine every frame and detail. I really did enjoy watching it, and look forward to watching it many times in the future. </p><p>But it's too busy, almost too self-indulgent. The idea of a New Yorker pastiche almost sounds like something you'd do in a parody of the filmmaker. And while the criticism of Wes Anderson has always been that his films are all style over substance, an unfair criticism in my view, it's certainly accurate in this case. The movie is essentially three short films joined together, and each story is so packed with incident and characters that there is simply no space to develop anyone. Take a look at the poster. There are 28 name actors listed, almost all recognisable actors, many whose names can sell a movie. But you simply can't fit that many people into a 100 minute film - they mostly wind up being glorified cameos. And while it's nice that Wes Anderson has this cast of people who he can call on to play any part no matter how small, it's a shame when you looked at that list and realise there are great actors in roles so minor you don't even remember them being in the film. Think of <i>The Grand Budapest Hotel</i> - that's a film that takes place in a very Wes Anderson world, it's a very artificial world, nothing in that film feels real and everything feels absurd, but I believe in Gustave, Zero, and Agatha, and I'm genuinely invested in and moved by their relationships. I didn't walk out of <i>The French Dispatch</i> thinking about any of the characters, because even the most significant figures are only given two-dimensional sketches before we're off telling a different story. </p><p>There's also a self-indulgence to the filmmaking. Again, going back to <i>The Grand Budapest Hotel</i> - think about how the shifts in aspect ratio (the shape of the screen) actually communicated information, namely the time period that the scene was taking place in. Here, the film shifts aspect ratio and between black-and-white and colour almost randomly. There is mostly a scheme - the film tends to use black-and-white and a 4x3 aspect ratio for the stories being reported - except for the moments where they will randomly cut to a moment in colour, or unexpectedly shift aspect ratio without obvious reason. It does wind up feeling like Anderson is just doing whatever he wants shot-by-shot. There's even a point in the film where it's suddenly becomes an animated movie for a minute, for no obvious reason other than as a way of acknowledging the cartoons for which The New Yorker is celebrated. </p><p>Now, to be clear, I did genuinely enjoy the film. I anticipate rewatching the film many times - in fact, it feels like a film that demands many viewings. But this is the first time that I've felt Anderson become the film-maker that his critics say he is. It is a film that is so focused on being witty and colourful that it forgets about depth. And so it winds feeling a mere trifle. But that's fine - hopefully we'll get more depth from his next work. In the meantime, this is fun.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii3LYcRIaUX8U43pClxOre86Ks7Pfx-OLgoFmsmVjNtdRvplOcnme6cyl51z3XqIH0s3kVg1ih93LJp_dvGiz-vWS4jf37iksMDGE9FVJvVGQ0cBdPLgCgUzqlQuB9yNJM921X5Hkfs5mW/s755/innocents.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii3LYcRIaUX8U43pClxOre86Ks7Pfx-OLgoFmsmVjNtdRvplOcnme6cyl51z3XqIH0s3kVg1ih93LJp_dvGiz-vWS4jf37iksMDGE9FVJvVGQ0cBdPLgCgUzqlQuB9yNJM921X5Hkfs5mW/w270-h400/innocents.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i>The Innocents</i></b></p><p>A nicely creepy low-level horror film from Norway, <i>The Innocents</i> focuses on two sisters: Ida, a nine-year-old who is resentful of her older non-verbal autistic sister, Anna, who she tortures - even putting broken glass in her shoe. The two become friends with a couple of other kids in the tower block: Aisha, who has vitiligo and a strongly empathic psychic connection to Anna, and Ben, a budding psychopath who likes to kill stray cats and is developing telekinetic powers. As the four hang out together, they find that they help each other's psychic powers grow, but Ben's growing powers are an uncomfortable mix with his uncontrollable rage. </p><p>It's a fascinating film that to me was an effective exploration of the capacity for children to be unbelievably cruel. Very early on, the kids pair off - Anna with Aisha, the two girls who share this strong psychic connection, and Ida with Ben, the two kids who so easily fall into cruelty against others. It initially seemed like the film was creating a conscious distinction between the cruel kids and the kind kids. But it soon becomes clear that the reason why Ida is so terrible to Anna is simply that she doesn't understand that Anna can feel pain - she doesn't cry or even respond after all - and her cruelty is born out of a lack of understanding and a genuine fascination. And while Ben is a terrible and troubled child, we also understand that he's a person who's frustrated by bullying, and who is excited to realise he has a weapon that he can wield in attack. The film in the essence was about what it means for children to develop empathy, and the consequences that can come if you don't develop away from a wholly self-centered worldview. </p><p>For much of the film, it feels much more like a coming of age film, a story about kids discovering friendship and realising the person they are - albeit with psychic powers. It's not really until the last third that the film truly becomes a horror, and I was impressed with how skilled that transition is. It's never feels like the film transforms into something else, instead the change feels like an inevitability, so that when the characters find themselves trapped in a nightmare world pursued by this horrific creature, the film has done the ground work to ensure this feels part of a coherent whole. </p><p>Unfortunately the film does fall down in the last 15 minutes. It reaches a point where there is a very clear resolution, where characters are forced to take terrible action against a massive threat, they take that action, but rather than having that resolve the story, the film undoes the impact of that scene, and then carries on for another quarter of an hour, with multiple moments that you think will mark the end of the film but that do not. It's almost as though the filmmaker couldn't decide which of three possible endings he wanted to use for the film, and so he tried to use them all, and it doesn't work. The climax of the film just becomes baggy, and I felt a lot of my investment in that ending fade away. Which is a shame, because if they had just chosen a single ending and stayed with it, this may have been one of my favourite films of the year. As it is, it's just a very good but flawed movie.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipAgUMvn8cZpsj6QfUhYyQ3x6flPc0HKi8hVgM2d4oUZ8ypQVvn34Y1jsCjF5I992_AmncQAjrZg0uBzFybTOYFGQvuLSH4vuG3WPEBIHoENC-kE0vLj3kB_Re9d_oSYhohwDy30XKPhih/s755/mass.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipAgUMvn8cZpsj6QfUhYyQ3x6flPc0HKi8hVgM2d4oUZ8ypQVvn34Y1jsCjF5I992_AmncQAjrZg0uBzFybTOYFGQvuLSH4vuG3WPEBIHoENC-kE0vLj3kB_Re9d_oSYhohwDy30XKPhih/w270-h400/mass.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i>Mass</i></b></p><p>This I loved. The impressive first film from writer-director Fran Kranz, who I previously associated with being the comic relief in Joss Whedon projects, <i>Mass</i> is entirely unlike anything I would have expected him to make. It's not a film I see myself revisiting on any regular basis - it's just too emotionally raw - but I found it to be spectacular. </p><p>In a small meeting room at the back of a church, two couples gather for a conversation. One couple are the parents of a child who perpetrated a high school shooting; the other couple are the parents of one of the victims. And after years of dealing with each other through letters, through lawyers, through the media, they've agreed to sit down in a room and try to find reconciliation with each other. </p><p>The film is essentially a four-hander, in which the rest of the world is shut out and we're just trapped with these people and their emotions - and for that you need genuinely great actors to carry the film. For that reason, I was excited for the film just to see Jason Isaacs and Ann Dowd deal with this type of material. I have less association with Martha Plimpton, and none with Reed Birney, but they all prove themselves up to the task. These are four people who are distinctly-drawn characters, who each are trying to cope with different reactions to the events, but who are all individually taking their own approaches to keeping their emotions in check. Martha Plimpton locks her jaw and is a barely contained ball of emotion, Jason Isaacs keeps her in control and tries to rationalise what happened through research and citing facts and figures, Ann Dowd is needy and just wants to be liked, and Reed Birney is just drained and exhausted. And we're reminded that these couples really are tied together by this experience; if anything it's harder for the parents of the boy who was the shooter - they don't get the relief and the public sympathy that comes with being a victim, they have to mourn their loss while the rest of the world ignores them and hates their child, and they have to grapple with guilt and wondering whether there was anything they could have done to prevent this from happening. </p><p>One thing I really appreciated about the film was how sparse it was in delivering information. If you started the film not knowing what it was about, it would be a very long time before you discover what the cause of the tension between the characters even is - and even if you know what the film is about, it's a while before it becomes clear which set of parents relates to killer or victim. We're all familiar with films where characters tell each other things they already know just so that the audience can be informed, and I loved that the film avoided that approach. There's a lot of history between the characters that is alluded to, but never detailed. And when there is information that is communicated to the audience, it's typically not given as some extraneous exposition, but is more likely to be thrown at the other party as part of an emotional outburst, or used as a weapon to challenge a statement by the other side. Which made the film feel very real. There's no point where I didn't believe the conversation, where I didn't believe that this is exactly what that character would say in response. And when we get to the end of the film, there's no finality, it's very clear that this is not the end of the story, but instead a new stage in their relationship with each other. It's an admirable piece of writing. </p><p>I was fascinated by the opening of the film, in which a member of the church staff nervously tries to set up the room for the meeting. It's an unusual tone to start the film with, because it's almost comedic in a very serious film, it communicates little or no information about the meeting that's about to take place, and other than setting up the very final moment of the film it's entirely extraneous and could easily be cut. But instead it lends extra weight to the film. You realise that this isn't someone who's nervous and awkward; her experience in the church has meant that she is experienced in dealing with AA meetings and similar sensitive events all the time. And so when you see how nervous she is in preparing the room, how desperate she is to ensure the space is right for the meeting, it instantly lets the audience know just how major the discussion is going to be. If a person found themselves watching the film without any idea of the subject-matter, that one scene would tell them just what a big deal this meeting actually is - all without ever letting the audience know what the conversation actually will be. It's a smart bit of writing that I don't think many writers would think of taking. </p><p>My only criticism of the film essentially comes with the fact that Fran Kranz is a first-time director. I find myself thinking of <i>Twelve Angry Men</i>, a film that similarly finds people trapped in a room having an intense conversation. One of the things that Sidney Lumet did in that film was adjust the framing, the camera angle, even the lenses on the camera, throughout the film to make the room feel more and more claustrophobic as the tensions rose. With <i>Mass</i>, there's a point where the characters reach a cathartic release, and it becomes clear that there is now space for them to move on. Unfortunately Kranz decides to illustrate this by opening up the frame, expanding the film out to a full scope widescreen image. Now firstly, just from a purely practical point of view, that decision is going to cause havoc with the version of the film that people watch at home. But more than that, it's a very obvious choice - opening up the frame gives characters more space, gives them opportunity to breathe, and after the tension of much of the film, it gives the film an emotional release. Suddenly I'm thinking how things changed when that character made those comments, not because I'm feeling that there was a genuine relief that happened as a result of those comments, but because the film told me that a change happened by just changing the picture shape. And I think it could be argued that the change comes too early, that not everyone has yet reached the catharsis that change signifies. It would have been better had they taken the reverse of the <i>Twelve Angry Men</i> approach, where the shooting style starts in a highlighted place and subtly shifts into a more comfortable space. But that would require a more experienced and skilled director in a way that Fran Kranz simply is not yet. Instead he understandably takes the easier and "artier" approach, but one that I do unfortunately feel was wrong. </p><p>But that misstep aside, it is remarkable how assured and strong this film is. This will be one of my highlights of the festival.</p><p>(Also, as the film reached its intense emotional high point, an absolutely devastating moment, there was a strange rattling sound in the film. Which seemed weird - it didn't seem motivated by anything in the scene, and it was quite obtrusive. It was about 30 seconds before it became clear that the rattling wasn't part of the film, it was actually in the cinema, we felt the room shaking, and we realised there was an earthquake. Of course, I responded to the earthquake as any good Wellingtonian would - noted it, decided it wasn't too serious, and ignored it.)</p><div><br /></div><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZFBQGEnXOJAV4ZrWsAWrmEwLYhmmpEv5sAihIbQQhmwtWuttOSJxk-ds-rJWNaUusdw8EnuNlanlvUVDIEKO65PSaN00P1psUGwwUNybSyLmUTIUfeTfNizqHwnYdCo4Z38jTETtBwZiv/s1258/bitter_tears.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1258" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZFBQGEnXOJAV4ZrWsAWrmEwLYhmmpEv5sAihIbQQhmwtWuttOSJxk-ds-rJWNaUusdw8EnuNlanlvUVDIEKO65PSaN00P1psUGwwUNybSyLmUTIUfeTfNizqHwnYdCo4Z38jTETtBwZiv/w318-h400/bitter_tears.jpg" width="318" /></a><b><i>The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant</i></b></p><p>It's not a good sign when the title of your film refers to the "bitter tears" of your main character. </p><p>The official screening to mark the 50th film festival in Wellington was one of the major titles from the filmography of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the famously prolific German filmmaker from the 70s and 80s. I have only a slight familiarity with the man's work, having seen a handful of his titles, so it was good to have the opportunity to enjoy this stunning film on the big screen. It's a visually beautiful film, and it was a delight to luxuriate in the richness of the film.</p><p>Petra von Kant is a fashion designer on the rise, with her work in demand by people who once rejected her. One day she meets and falls in love with Karin, a young woman who is new in town and who she suggests stay with her rather than wasting money on a hotel. But as she increasingly becomes infatuated with Karin, who regards the relationship as much more transactional, the distance between the two grows. And all the time Petra's long-suffering assistant Marlene is a constant presence, silently in love with the woman who mistreats her so casually. </p><p>The film plays out over five extended scenes in Petra's bedroom, essentially individual episodes in the story, and it gives a nice structure to the film. The film feels very intimate and raw, but the choice to focus on just these moments means that it gives extra size and scope to the scenes. Conflicts arise and play out, and there's time for them to build and escalate until they explode. Meanwhile because these scenes all play out in one room, even though it's a massive room with multiple levels, we begin to feel very trapped in this space. </p><p>In essence, each scene is its own mini-play, and with Fassbinder's filming style emphasizing long observational takes that focus on the engagement of the characters, there's nowhere to hide a bad performance. Fortunately everyone does an incredible job. Margit Carstensen as Petra is remarkable - at her height, she's imperious and in complete control, at her worst she's a pathetic shell of a person, and her portrayal of this characters decline is powerful and sympatheticly drawn. Hanna Schygulla's work as Karin demonstrates why she was an actor that Fassbinder returned to time after time - you can easily understand why someone would become so infatuated with her, and she manages to express a genuine sense of affection for Petra but also a sense that she fell into this relationship impulsively and has become trapped. And as Marlene, Irm Hermann is a stone-faced marvel, ever-present, largely silent, but with eyes that express everything you need to know about the character. </p><p>I know that Fassbinder made a few films that specifically dealt with his homosexuality, but I don't think this has been a major element in the handful of films I've seen of his to date. So one thing I immediately noted was that the film opened with a statement that said that the film was dedicated to "him who was Marlene". What was fascinating was not just the dedication itself, but also the choice to put that so prominently at the start of the film. As a result, I found myself paying close attention to the character of Marlene, who really is mistreated through the film. I haven't looked into whether anything is known about this man the film is dedicated to, but the film starts to feel very much like an apology to whoever he was. You get the sense that perhaps Fassbinder had this figure in his life who he was able to exploit and take advantage of because of an infatuation, and this film is him reflecting with regret on that treatment. (It's significant that Marlene gets the triumphant final moment of the film.) Certainly, if Fassbinder is the Petra von Kant figure, it's not a pleasing self-portrait - the woman is narcissistic, impulsive, cruel, and completely blind to anyone who doesn't exactly serve her needs at that moment. This all adds an extra layer of fascination to a movie that is already exceptionally well-made.</p><p><i>The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant</i> is an expert piece of filmmaking, and a reminder that Fassbinder was a genuine master of the art. (It's also staggering that he was able to produce works at this level of quality at the speed that he was working - this was one of three films and a 5 episode TV series Fassbinder released in 1972.) It was a delight to finally be able to enjoy this film.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpJ38bJS8feR4BNNKqv9dSh6usOjmEAgvSBpycu2_YbFBIWOFsgJBSQLLppgJ9XVoKTuVVQm6hIxy4RgUjUzxQC7gPOyjmvqvSHHb45l6zJsbDKMn6yOMY5fBog9O-FRURa9cS4jHh_azm/s1200/hit_the_road.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="840" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpJ38bJS8feR4BNNKqv9dSh6usOjmEAgvSBpycu2_YbFBIWOFsgJBSQLLppgJ9XVoKTuVVQm6hIxy4RgUjUzxQC7gPOyjmvqvSHHb45l6zJsbDKMn6yOMY5fBog9O-FRURa9cS4jHh_azm/w280-h400/hit_the_road.jpg" width="280" /></a><i><b>Hit the Road</b></i></p><p>We follow an Iranian family as they go on a road trip. To anyone who asks, they claim that they're taking their adult son to be married. But there's something about this trip that doesn't seem right. There's no joy or excitement in the car about the impending marriage, and the groom-to-be is almost completely silent, just watching the road ahead. They're paranoid about being followed. The mother massively over-reacts when discovering the young son has brought his cellphone, even hiding it on the side of the road for them to collect on the return trip. It's clear that the family have spent a lot of money, more money then they can actually afford, on this trip. And they discuss how they will explain to the young son where his brother will be after the trip. </p><p><i>Hit the Road</i> is the first film from Panah Panahi, the son of Jafar Panahi, one of the most significant figures in Iranian cinema. Some context: in 2010 Jafar Panahi was arrested for making anti-government propaganda, and ultimately he was banned from leaving the country and from making movies. This hasn't actually stopped him - he's made four films since then, and while they may not be specifically political works, they're also not non-political works. It's into this environment that his son Panah starts with this film. And again, the film is not directly against the government, we're never given any explicit background information about the events that lead to this trip, but when the family are worried about surveillance tracking them through their SIM card, it's hard not to recognise the threat they are concerned about. </p><p>But as with the work of his father, that's all in the subtext of the film, because primarily he's wanting to tell a story about people. The film is a marvelous story about a family, with some wonderful richly-drawn characters. For obvious reasons, the adult son remains something of a cypher through the film - he has a lot on his mind, and spends little time communicating. But the rest of the family are given very strong and clear personality and are just a delight to spend time with. The young child has the typical excitability of a kid that can become wearying on a long trip. The mother seems in control of the trip, but she's also a bundle of nerves who seems on the verge of crying. And the father, his leg in a cast for reasons left unexplained, is a warm figure who is just trying to keep the whole thing together. </p><p>The high point of the film, both emotionally and cinematically, comes with an extended scene that plays out in extreme long shot. We just sit and observe while the scene plays out, with the characters so far away that they're tiny figures at the bottom of the screen - so tiny in fact that the subtitles are moved to the top of the screen because you literally would not be able to see what was happening if the subtitles remained at the bottom. It's a fantastic moment, partly because it gives the characters space when they are at their emotional low, but also because the disappointment of the scene plays into the effect of the moment - we're frustrated to be held at a distance from the scene occurring, much as the characters are frustrated to be held at a distance from what they are after. </p><p>It's not a perfect film, with a couple of missteps towards the end that did not work for me - a star field sequence that seemed inspired by 2001, and a moment of lip-syncing in the final scene, both left me baffled by what those moments were intended to achieve. But for the most part, this was an extremely strong film, and promises that the Panahi name will continue to be a marker of great drama for years to come.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm6zuUhukRBO9Wz2arYRuIa0IE1rM2tbuTn66s52AP7RlX-lkNpLeEiMnaAGqHTEbMvh7u8G1lCBtVq34ttdq5z5KisaU35XBb1cJeFoVqTG3Pojr2EK8S_HaAo1DNMdDTZc-VLAgGpUes/s1200/drovers_wife.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="819" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm6zuUhukRBO9Wz2arYRuIa0IE1rM2tbuTn66s52AP7RlX-lkNpLeEiMnaAGqHTEbMvh7u8G1lCBtVq34ttdq5z5KisaU35XBb1cJeFoVqTG3Pojr2EK8S_HaAo1DNMdDTZc-VLAgGpUes/w273-h400/drovers_wife.jpg" width="273" /></a><b><i>The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson</i></b></p><p>Living in a remote hut with her four children (and very pregnant with her fifth) in the Snowy Mountains in Australia, some distance away from the nearest tiny township, Molly Johnson is fiercely independent and used to fending for herself and caring for her family while her husband is off working for months at a time. But one day, an escaped Aboriginal convict arrives, and she shelters him after he gives her some assistance. But he's wanted for the murder of a prominent local family, and this brings the authorities to her door. </p><p>In the pre-film introduction talk, the producer discussed how the film was based on the short story "The Drover's Wife" by Henry Lawson, a story that apparently writer-director-star Leah Purcell used to love as a child. So after seeing the film, I immediately had to look up the short story, because there is no way this is a story a child should be reading. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drover%27s_Wife_(short_story)#:~:text=%22The%20Drover's%20Wife%22%20is%20a,children%20in%20an%20isolated%20hut." target="_blank">According to Wikipedia</a>, the plot of the short story is basically that a snake goes under the home of the titular drover's wife, so she waits all night to kill it when it comes out, which is apparently illustrative of the "struggle of a lone woman against nature". I don't even remember there being a snake in the film - the most prominent appearance by an animal in the film is a massive bull who gets killed in the first scene. Based on what I can glean, and I have never read the story, it does seem that this is an entirely original story, drawing only on the setting and the characters from the original, but adding an extra layer of murder and abuse on top. </p><p>Unfortunately I didn't care for the film, and I'm really struggling to put my finger on why. There's nothing major that I can point to, just lots of little minor issues that overall stopped me from connecting to the film. Numerous moments where Purcell's inexperience as a director felt evident, with awkward shot selection that had me uncertain what she was trying to communicate, or that seemed to actively obscure key information. Plot threads that the film seemed to forget about (the escaped convict is accused of a major murder, but the film never engages with whether he did it or why he did it, and eventually the film seems to completely forget about the crime), or revelations that the film seems to want to treat as a surprise but that are obvious from early on. A screenplay that just feels anachronistic and heavy handed in the way it raises and talks about issues. Some of the most intrusive and insistent music I've seen in a film in a while - the use of period and modern instruments can work, but here it just distracted me, while the choice to end the film with a montage over a sickly modern version of a folk song is just baffling. None of these issues by themselves would necessarily be enough for me to discount the film, but when taken as a whole, they simply meant that I was held at arms-length, was constantly bothered by one thing or another, and could never engage with the film. The film does have great cinematography, and I did enjoy the moments where the characters stayed out of the frame and allowed us to simply enjoy the natural beauty of the area, but when your favourite parts are the moments where nothing is happening in the film, that's a problem. This was a real disappointment.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSMdbiNBZWtUjmkUg5APJrDY3m35MWqZw5Lyk17TRdVau6kEzfhD6j7mcGMgn3U78qhXcAOpL4EYcdgfNmdHi9gjgqs0dyUpRkhl_O19mvhZuk6SuLsESlkjHaT6VuYCmzLdIUvhJSMxkK/s755/bergman_island.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSMdbiNBZWtUjmkUg5APJrDY3m35MWqZw5Lyk17TRdVau6kEzfhD6j7mcGMgn3U78qhXcAOpL4EYcdgfNmdHi9gjgqs0dyUpRkhl_O19mvhZuk6SuLsESlkjHaT6VuYCmzLdIUvhJSMxkK/w270-h400/bergman_island.jpg" width="270" /></a><i><b>Bergman Island</b></i></p><p>Tim Roth and Vicky Krieps play Tony and Chris, married filmmakers who decide to go on a working retreat to the island of Faro, where legendary director Ingmar Bergman lived. Tony is a director with many years of experience who's trying to finalise the script for his new film, while Chris is still developing her career and is trying to start her new project. When they're not working, they're touring the island, trying to get inspiration from the place that so inspired one of the great filmmakers. And the inspiration works - Chris eventually develops a story about a pair of former young lovers (played by Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lee) who reunite while attending a wedding. The problem is that Chris doesn't know whether there's a movie in her idea, and she is also not sure how the story should end. </p><p>I will confess to being initially put off by the title of the film. In the past whenever I've tried to give Ingmar Bergman a go, something about it just hasn't connected with me. Now that's all on me, and it has been many years since the last time I tried Bergman, so I should definitely give him another chance. But I was worried that, if the film is so inspired by Bergman, I might not connect to it in the same way - or at least, might be held at a distance by the film making references I didn't recognise. That didn't happen - I was always engaged with the film, even the story within the story (which is a device I usually hate). Mia Hansen-Løve is a filmmaker whose name I have heard for a number of years now, and I was sufficiently impressed by her work here that I'm keen to dig into her back catalogue. The film is beautiful, and characters are richly drawn, with complex and detailed relationships. There's a lot to really take hold of in the film. </p><p>The thing I find myself struggling with is that I don't know what the film amounts to. The film leaps around from moment-to-moment, and I never could get my footing with what it was trying to say. Is the extended sequence on the Bergman Safari bus tour a reflection on the way art becomes commercialised and packaged up? Perhaps, but to what end? The film drops in little questions but never really engages with them for any length of time - how should we engage with a filmmaker whose personal life we disagree with? How are Bergman's religious beliefs reflected in his art? And as much as I was engaged by and enjoyed the film, I find myself uncertain what the story within a story was supposed to add, beyond simply being an extra story - perhaps I'm just being obtuse but it didn't seem to have any obvious connection or offer any illumination on the main story. The ultimate revelation about that story in the form that we're watching is a nice trick, but to what purpose? </p><p>And then there's the point halfway through the film where Chris starts telling Tony the story she's working on, and that becomes the focus of most of the rest of the film. From that point on, we pretty much only get the odd little interruption scene with Chris and Tony, almost solely as a reminder that this is a story being told by Chris. But those scenes felt like they were intentionally presenting Tony in a negative manner - he's not particularly engaged in the story, he's distracted, he takes phone calls, and worst of all, when Chris expresses her difficulty finding the ending to the story, he offers her very little help. But I felt that was an unfair presentation, as not only are his actions understandable - he's dealing with his own issues on a production about to start shooting - but I also felt that he was clearly listening, he offered good useful comments to address her concerns, and that when she asked for help with the ending she was looking for something that he shouldn't give her. After all, this is her story, this is something that was personal to her, and it would lessen the project if she took an ending that was given to her, rather than finding the ending herself. </p><p>Ultimately, the prime joy of the film is just in getting to watch some fantastic actors working. Tim Roth is reliably good, although he gets the least material to work with. It was a delight to see Vicky Krieps again - her work in <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2018/03/1043-minutes.html#:~:text=the%20film%20i%E2%80%99m%20happiest%20to%20see%20nominated%20is%20phantom%20thread" target="_blank">Phantom Thread</a></i> pointed to a remarkable talent, but unfortunately she hasn't become as prominent a figure as I think she deserves, and here as the central character she's positively radiant. (My friend Ethan pointed out the 22-year age gap between the two, which is a fair point, but there's a comfort and ease in the relationship between them that made the couple feel right to me.) And I'm always going to be excited to see Mia Wasikowska in a film. Her character is by necessity thinly drawn - she exist almost as an idea, a sketch of a character who is almost a placeholder in this story, but she brings such life and light to the film that you can clearly feel why Chris would be drawn to create this person </p><p>It's a beautifully made film - it's sweet and funny, romantic and sexy, thoughtful and reflective. I really enjoyed the experience of watching the film, I just don't know what Mia Hansen-Løve was trying to express with the film. But I'll take an enjoyable film any day.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9pyha_kdCrsRrauVXJzMGzxqV2XxoGxn9RFbfhfp53-swleBYrH8SGuHytx2nP2BOdSYbzl0XIdR7ToyFK3KraGdtcYbRlztaChoURchVvN3KhcDRpo6tgSfJxJbGDFUCW2r1U62SymeZ/s755/john_and_the_hole.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9pyha_kdCrsRrauVXJzMGzxqV2XxoGxn9RFbfhfp53-swleBYrH8SGuHytx2nP2BOdSYbzl0XIdR7ToyFK3KraGdtcYbRlztaChoURchVvN3KhcDRpo6tgSfJxJbGDFUCW2r1U62SymeZ/w270-h400/john_and_the_hole.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i>John and the Hole</i></b></p><p>13-year-old John seems to be largely disconnected from the world. He's doing badly at school, is getting coaching in tennis that he doesn't seem to care about, and spends his evenings playing video games. One day, while testing his new drone, he comes across an unfinished underground bunker, essentially a massive concrete hole. So he slips his medication into his parents and his sister, and while they are drugged he takes them out and traps them in the bunker. And now he is able to live life exactly as he chooses. </p><p>What's so fascinating about the film is how sympathetic I found John to be. In the abstract, you would expect a character who acts in this way to be almost some sort of sociopath completely devoid of any emotion. But that's not how he feels. There's a fundamental stage of human development where children grow from seeing the world as completely revolving around them to comprehending they hold one place in a larger society. But this is a kid who has never been challenged, never really had to grow up, has always had everything he could ever want - the film goes out of its way to let the audience know just how wealthy this family is, to the point of even putting their bank balance on screen, just so we can understand how easy it would be for them to indulge his every whim - and so it's never even dawned on John that he's not the centre of the world. It's almost that understanding that pushes him into this place of crisis, and the film is about him coming to terms with his position in existence. He needs to get his entire family out of the way because if he doesn't then he will never be pushed to grow. And so we're almost supporting John, obviously hoping that he grows up enough to let his family out of the hole, but also recognising that this is something he needs to do in order to grow. </p><p>The film is a great example of the power that experienced actors can bring to a film. On the page, there's really very little to the characters of the family members - they go in the hole, they're frustrated and angry about it. But casting strong actors like Michael C Hall, Jennifer Ehle, and Taissa Farmiga gives them the space to create engaging characters from scratch. I especially enjoyed watching the relationship between brother and sister run through the film - it's significant that she's the first member of the family to recognise that John had deliberately put them in the hole, probably because as a sibling she's used to fighting with him and thinking the worst of him. At the same time, there are moments where Taissa Farmiga is able to communicate a sense of genuine pride and her brother and how he is changing. </p><p>But the film belongs to Charlie Shotwell in the titular role. Having to maintain that level of audience sympathy in the wake of such terrible behaviour would challenge any actor, but he lives up to the task. The conflict between what he knows he should do and what he feels he must do is such a key part of the story, and it's fascinating to watch him play with this idea. There's a great deal of sadness to the role also, and I was pleased by how subtly he explores that characteristic without ever overplaying it. I was particularly intrigued by the moment where he tests whether he can drug his family by drugging their gardener. Once he's lying sprawled on the lawn, having proven the drugging works, John feels the need to slip some money into the gardener's pocket - he knows he shouldn't have done what he did, but he feels he can redeem that action by paying, even if only surreptitiously, as an act of apology. It's an interesting reflection of how we as people will often treat complete strangers better than we treat our closest loved ones. </p><p>I also loved the shooting style of the movie. Admittedly I'm always a sucker for a locked-off shot, but it brought me genuine delight when I realised the film was going to have very few close-up shots, and was mostly constructed out of medium and long shots where the camera just stands still and watches the action. Much in the way that John seems almost separated from the world around, we are forced to sit and observe events without getting in close and engaging with the world. It's an effective approach to filming this story, and it brought me great pleasure. </p><p>There was one thing about the film that left me completely baffled - dotted through the film, starting about half an hour in, there are three separate scenes featuring a mother and 12-year-old daughter that are completely isolated from everything else in the film. The characters never feature in the main story of the film, the shooting style is completely different (it's all hand-held camera work rather than static locked-off shots), and they only amount to maybe 2 minutes of the film's runtime. The first scene seems to suggest that the film's story might actually be a story being told to this girl - which would explain why these scenes were in the film, were it not for the later scenes in which the mother says and does things that are wholly and frankly unrealistic, to the point where I believe the story about a boy trapping his family in a hole more than I believe these mother-daughter scenes. The frustrating thing is that I'm not sure what those scenes were supposed to accomplish. After the film I even grabbed someone I vaguely knew just to see if they could shed any light on the matter, but we were both equally baffled buy them. It's a very strange touch, but fortunately those scenes are so minor in the context of the film that it's easy to simply ignore them, and focus on how much I enjoyed the rest of the film. Which I greatly did.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuqv_LtGXAtT8ExQI4Lk9AzH-kX04usJttHCNbqCIqkCRu_xjZCpGQx9AoQvocdPrJQ7BY1SN75A0iWXq-oGsFrCYNHBCGhtD7XpgZBl4TBuhmQeA-MJAyIna0a_qYG7Ohg29WhKH8QiLL/s755/sun_children.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="523" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuqv_LtGXAtT8ExQI4Lk9AzH-kX04usJttHCNbqCIqkCRu_xjZCpGQx9AoQvocdPrJQ7BY1SN75A0iWXq-oGsFrCYNHBCGhtD7XpgZBl4TBuhmQeA-MJAyIna0a_qYG7Ohg29WhKH8QiLL/w278-h400/sun_children.jpg" width="278" /></a><b><i>Sun Children</i></b></p><p>There's this thing that happens every year at the film festival - there are the films you are already familiar with, the titles you recognise because you've been desperate to see these films for a while now, and then there are the films that you're seeing just because the write-up sounded interesting. So you reach the time of the screening for one of these films, and you see from your ticket that you're watching a film called <i>Sun Children</i>, and you have no idea what that is, you have no expectations. And then it blows your socks off. </p><p>12 year old Ali is the leader of a gang of kids from the Iranian underclass, spending their time stealing tyres from parked cars. One day he's approached by a local crime lord - there's a great treasure hidden underneath a graveyard, but there's no way to access it directly. Instead, the nearest and easiest location to get to it is through the local charitable school. So, imagining boxes filled with gold coins, the gang of kids enrol in the school and begin the hard work of digging a tunnel to the treasure. </p><p>The film is essentially like a heist or a prison break film with kids - they have this goal that they need to achieve, it involves lots of scheming and distractions, things go right for them, things go wrong for them and they need to innovate, it's all very familiar. But there's an extra layer of tension that comes with the fact that these are kids who are literally putting their lives at risk in pursuit of this dream. </p><p>Because that's the essential point that's being illustrated by the film. The film opens with the statistic that there are 150 million children in the world today who are forced to work to support their families. While the premise of the film makes it a more fanciful and irregular version of this issue that makes for a fun movie, at it's core the movie is absolutely about the effects of child exploitation. Children become an easy tool for criminals to make use of to achieve their own purposes, an ever-renewing resource to use and abandon. And it's not just criminals forcing these children to spend their days in work. One of my favourite parts of the film was this headstrong young girl, an Afghan refugee and sister to one of Ali's gang, who when we first meet her can't come with them to play because she has a pile of items that she has to sell on the train before she's allowed to do anything. Such sales are illegal, and the consequences if caught can be devastating, but her family need her to make these sales, because it's simply an essential part of how they survive. </p><p>And it's significant that the choice was made to focus the film on a school. It's not just that the story needed somewhere that only kids could do the work; the choice was made to focus on a specifically charitable school. I don't know anything about the education system in Iran, but the film seems to argue that there is this entire class of children who are falling through the cracks, essentially abandoned by the government, and who never get the support they need to achieve a better life - and into this massive gap comes this school, which takes great pride in the opportunities it can offer these children. But it's a pointed plot point that the school is on the verge of closure, they get no state support, and that they have to beg money from donors to keep the lights on, because these kids really have been abandoned by the government. </p><p>I don't believe I've ever seen any films by Majid Majidi before, although his name is familiar as a significant figure in New Iranian Cinema - he directed <i>Children of Heaven</i>, the first Iranian film to be nominated for the foreign language Oscar. And now I feel I should dig into his work more. Here he demonstrates a remarkable talent for working with children - I believe all of the children are local street kids, but they have a confidence and ease in front of the camera that is quite charming. </p><p>It's a smart, socially conscious film that skillfully uses genre trappings to bring the audience into a discussion about serious issues in society. I strongly recommend it.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsSzfyrFm9YeWopqgoNjsXosqjPWABqEEYrIr4evlVszUAzEphhe-9PdPdsFxZxCjTK2HP7_QBCBNO3SGz155cVLcF5d80spyq5xmcYsF5TlaZ9npa-9ThPgrgK2peiuGrpZPqNPcy3sTK/s755/zola.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsSzfyrFm9YeWopqgoNjsXosqjPWABqEEYrIr4evlVszUAzEphhe-9PdPdsFxZxCjTK2HP7_QBCBNO3SGz155cVLcF5d80spyq5xmcYsF5TlaZ9npa-9ThPgrgK2peiuGrpZPqNPcy3sTK/w270-h400/zola.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i>Zola</i></b></p><p>Back in 2015, a stripper named A’Ziah "Zola" King wrote a <a href="https://imgur.com/a/WDwyW" target="_blank">150-tweet Twitter thread</a> that went viral, all about a working weekend trip that went very wrong. I tend not to spend much time in Stripper Twitter, so I only heard about the story when the news hit Film Twitter that a movie was being made out of the story. The general tone of excitement about the announcement had me curious, so I read the story - and I get it. It is a fascinating story, and despite the restrictions of the medium its clear that Zola is a natural storyteller, from an opening line that grabs you, through some evocative turns of phrase and blunt openness, to the way she gives a detailed sense of a world I couldn't even have imagined. Once the film was a massive success at Sundance in 2020, this became an immediate must-see - which means I've been waiting to see it for nearly two years. It was worth the wait. </p><p>One day, Zola meets and bonds with fellow stripper Stefani, and impulsively decides to go with her down to Florida for a few days for some quick money. She's surprised to find she's traveling, not only with Stefani, but also her insecure idiot boyfriend Derrek (who they plan to just leave in a dump of a hotel room) and her "roommate"(/pimp) X. And when stripping doesn't generate the expected income, Stefani decides to start turning tricks, and things spiral out of control. Seriously, you would not predict where this thing goes. </p><p>I remember reading an interview with Zola, and I'm very loosely paraphrasing from memory here, where she talked about how if she started by announcing that she was going to tell a story about sex trafficking in America today, no one would ever read that story. But if you adjust the framing of the story and make it entertaining, people will eat it up. And that's the challenge that the filmmakers faced here also. As detailed as she is in the tweet thread, she's telling this entire story in maybe a few thousand words. That's a lot of words for telling a story on Twitter, but by necessity there is still a lot that is elided. There's a ton of violence and threatened violence hanging over the story, but there's so much to the story and so few words to highlight it that much of that violence doesn't leave an impact. But in the film, you're actually watching these violent moments play out, while threats just hang in the air like a weight, and so there's a real risk that the film could very easily become the miserable experience that Zola was trying to avoid. So the film has to work to keep it light, keep it funny, without ever diminishing the impact and the horror of the events on screen. Which it does successfully - the film either focuses on some absurd detail or cuts to Zola for a sharp remark that cuts through the tension. It's absolutely a comedy; a pitch-black comedy perhaps, but a comedy none-the-less. (I was interested that the decision was made to cut one of the most memorable moments from the Twitter thread, where Derrek is forced to watch his girlfriend have sex with X solely as a power move. It's probably emotionally the hardest part of the story to read, and I can see it would be tough to make funny, so you get the sense that they probably decided it was easier to cut that incident rather than having to really dwell in that moment.) </p><p>It seems obvious in retrospect, but the choice to so completely embrace the story's origins in social media feels like a brave choice. After all, it's rare for films adapting an existing source to forcefully remind the audience that they're watching an adaptation, and since the story is just an outline of actual events, you could justifiably simply portray those events as they happened. But the filmmakers were smart to remember that what made the story go viral was not the story itself, but Zola's unique voice in telling it. And they do everything they can to preserve that. So we get Zola in the moment addressing the audience with hindsight of everything to come. And every time she says something that is a quote from the Twitter thread, we get the little Twitter notification sound, as an active and constant reminder that this is not being made up, that this is her voice. Now, in the aftermath of the original thread, there was some criticism thrown at Zola for inaccuracies in her storytelling, and the film is very aware that we're watching a single perspective on the events. This leads to the funniest moment in the film, where Stefani gets to tell her side of the story, apparently taken directly from a Reddit post she wrote in response. It's an interesting perspective, but if that really is what she wrote, then it is staggeringly unconvincing. But the Twitter story did end with a suggestion that she may have got her life together, and if so I do feel genuinely bad for her that all this has been dredged up against her will, and in that context, the extreme self-justification makes sense as an effort in deflecting attention. It obviously didn't succeed, but still, I like that the film acknowledged the competing perspectives. </p><p>The performances in the film are fantastic. Obviously there's Taylour Paige as Zola, and while her character is understandably frequently ready with some sharp-tongued jab, I found her almost more effective when she said nothing at all. She expresses so much with the "I'm over this" shading in her eyes, or the way you can see her constantly making the mental calculation of how she can protect herself as things get worse. (She also has a way of putting a casually disgusted spin on the phrase "It was gross" that is a thing of beauty.) I'm a fan of Riley Keough, so her casting as Stefani was another reason for me to be excited by the film, and she did not disappoint the playing most fascinating character in the film. It's a performance that's unlike anything I've ever seen from her - she's almost ludicrous in this "white woman trying to be black" role, but while it's a frequently funny performance, there's a lot of nuance to what Keough is doing. Stefani is undeniably a victim in this story, and you can feel the tragedy of every decision that has led her to this place, but she's also equally a villain in the piece, and Keough seems to understand and embrace these contradictory elements in the character, even if the character doesn't understand how bad she is. You'll recognise Nicholas Braun as Cousin Greg from <i>Succession</i>, and his casting as the boyfriend Derrek is perfect. He's almost playing white-trash Greg, but as a complete doofus along with added impulsiveness. In many ways he is the most sympathetic figure in the film - he's had the misfortune of falling in love with a girl, and all he wants is for her to stop lying to him and stop having sex with other men. But he's completely unable to control his emotions, and so when he gets himself into trouble it's often because he's exploding with frustration at this place he's in. </p><p>My only real frustration with the film comes right at the end. Firstly, I think the effort to remain so true to the story actually affects the energy of the ending. Once the main story ends, there's a final beat that needs to happen with Derrek - and it's a memorable beat that needs to be in the film. But it just stays as an extra scene that gets tagged on after the climax of the film. I almost wonder whether it would have been better to deviate slightly from the order of the actual events, and move that beat earlier in the film. You can still get the effect and the point of the moment, but without it deflating the film as it comes to its end. My other, minor, issue is probably something that wouldn't bother a casual viewer, but as someone who has read the Twitter thread, I remembered the brief epilogue that gets tagged on, where we get the final contact between Zola and Stefani a few days later, along with important extra context about what happened to X after the trip. Hell, all they needed was for Zola to do an address to camera, like she's been doing through the entire film, telling us what happened to them. Instead, here it just ends on the drive home with Zola coldly resolute that she wants never to see this woman again. Both of these factors meant that the very end of the film doesn't hit as well as I would have liked. But that's a very minor quibble in the face of an otherwise strong piece of filmmaking. This is a film that is every bit as excellent as I had been hoping.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifc2XRgEhAacvXUO22xcqKOuVwlgeE1NYueavqIT_rrGtkfVMNBOF2lPnMQfHwWY0nc8d08VdSu3_1VhscKfh-EqqUq8nBadxE5LzFMT4wV_cvYw8Kw0GoL0cyLgSgVTWRgUQfa95HQ71f/s1045/flowers_of_shanghai.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1045" data-original-width="736" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifc2XRgEhAacvXUO22xcqKOuVwlgeE1NYueavqIT_rrGtkfVMNBOF2lPnMQfHwWY0nc8d08VdSu3_1VhscKfh-EqqUq8nBadxE5LzFMT4wV_cvYw8Kw0GoL0cyLgSgVTWRgUQfa95HQ71f/w281-h400/flowers_of_shanghai.jpg" width="281" /></a><b><i>Flowers of Shanghai</i></b></p><p>My third of this year's "classic" selection, this beautiful and evocative film from 1998 takes place in the late 19th century at the "flower houses" of Shanghai, pleasure houses where men come to eat, drink, play games, and "spend time" with one of the flower girls, who work in hope of finding a wealthy patron who will buy out their contract and marry them. It's an environment where everything on the surface is calm and elegant, but there are intense emotions lying beneath. We have the young couple who become infatuated with each other. We have the wealthy young man who becomes intensely jealous that the girl he loves is seeing other men. We have the girl whose active reluctance to be there and work is costing the house money. And we watch the negotiation process as one man tries to take his favourite girl away from here. </p><p>I've only ever seen one Hou Hsiao-hsien film before, <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2016/06/power-redux.html#:~:text=the%20assassin" target="_blank">The Assassin</a></i>, which I hated largely because I was expecting a film with lots of period action sequences, and that film was all slow and reflective moments with maybe 90 seconds of action. With <i>Flowers of Shanghai</i>, my expectations were much more appropriately set, both by my earlier experience with Hou Hsiao-hsien and by the fact that the entire premise means I'm not expecting this to be some action spectacular. And as a result, I found it so much easier to fall into this world. It feels almost like a dream. I believe every scene plays out in a single shot, with the camera slowly floating around to follow the conversation as it takes place. It's a wonderful and delicate approach that gives the film an airy, almost drifting feel. </p><p>I was also struck by just how sumptuous the film was. The cinematography by Pin Bin Lee is just remarkable - it's a very dark location, but it never feels gloomy; instead it's almost opulent. But it feels like the darkness is essential, that the illusion presented by these places would not live up to the bright light of day. And so the cinematography becomes a vital collaborator in creating that deception. It also helps that he's shooting some gorgeous detailed costumes and wonderfully ornate environments. These need to feel glamorous, not just because they're catering to men who are used to having the finest in life, but also because they're a trap to draw girls in hoping to enjoy this lifestyle of comfort. </p><p>The thing I found fascinating was what wasn't in the film. These are places that project an image of elegance, of culture, of luxury, and the film embraces that projection. And sure, these are places where men go to pay for sex, but that brings the tone of the place down, so not only is that never portrayed, it's barely even alluded to. Yes, this is a world where the girls are essentially living in slavery, and are frequently abused by the aunties who run the houses, but even though the girls discuss the abuse among themselves, again it's never shown. The film is entirely about existing in the fantasies that these places project, in a way that almost emphasizes the artifice while it's in the margins that we can glimpse the reality. </p><p>I found the film utterly enchanting. It embeds itself in new in a way I was not expecting. It's a film of relatively little incident, instead filled with long conversations, but when things do happen it's remarkable how intense it can become. It's wonderful.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfjRgmQvjfNEAsCKVlsM2nn4V02ILnjQ3n3xNmtRmCQ5cKLIXurqcE6iok7HkzQABJyhjm30rThP8_sOEhLRkl6phWGp3vwPu22l1FFFrx4bHsCqIcRT8Pg7dtSvoecTXSGJ8sQR6u2w9j/s700/quo_vadis_aida.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="468" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfjRgmQvjfNEAsCKVlsM2nn4V02ILnjQ3n3xNmtRmCQ5cKLIXurqcE6iok7HkzQABJyhjm30rThP8_sOEhLRkl6phWGp3vwPu22l1FFFrx4bHsCqIcRT8Pg7dtSvoecTXSGJ8sQR6u2w9j/w268-h400/quo_vadis_aida.jpg" width="268" /></a><b><i>Quo Vadis, Aida?</i></b></p><p>I will confess that, as a teenager in the 90s, I never really followed the Bosnian war, probably the most prominent of the wars that broke out following the breakup of Yugoslavia. I remember it happening - it was such a big deal that it would be hard to have lived through that time and not have any recall of it - but I was never engaged with the conflict, never really understood what was going on. And when you hear about the number of victims in the war, the number of people outright murdered, it almost seems impossible to comprehend. <i>Quo Vadis, Aida?</i> works to counter this by bringing the impossibly large stakes down to a personal level, revolving around the safety of three people. </p><p>It's July 1995, five months away from the end of the conflict. Aida Selmanagić is a former school teacher now working as a translator for the UN peacekeeping forces. With the fall of Srebrenica, all around the UN compound are refugees as far as the eye can see, but the compound is full and can't take anyone else. But Aida's family, her husband and two sons, are not in the compound, and she knows that if they are left outside they will die. And so we spend the entire movie with Aida as she fights to find and save the men in her life. </p><p>At the core of this film is a powerful performance by Jasna Đuričić as Aida. There is an unrestrained desperation in every element of her performance - she's just a bulldog attacking everything until she gets her way. In some ways, yes they are right, they can't just let more people in or bend the rules to save this one person's family. But at the same time, you completely understand why she feels genuinely betrayed that, having spent so long serving and helping these troops, her family are now being simply abandoned. Fine, there are thousands of people out there and you can't save them all, but why can't you save these three people? </p><p>It's an intensely angry film, justifiably so, but what's surprising about the movie is that the anger isn't directed at the Serbian forces that are attacking them. Yes, their actions are outrageous and horrific (Ratko Mladić, who is a prominent character in the film, was later convicted of war crimes), but also, in a war, you almost expect these types of actions from the other side. The film saves its true anger for the ineffectual UN peacekeeping forces on the ground. Literally the first scene has the UN representative promising the mayor of Srebrenica an air strike if the Serbian forces try to take the city, only to be stunned to hear that the city has already fallen - the promised air strike never comes. At every point in the film, the UN capitulates to Mladić and his forces, and that's shocking. You get the impression that they know that the Serbian forces will use force if necessary to achieve what they want, and because the UN aren't there to fight, just to "keep the peace", they just agree to whatever demands are made, no matter how obviously insincere any promises are. So when armed Serbian soldiers demand to be allowed into the compound to search for soldiers, even though everyone on the ground knows how terrifying that will be for the refugees and how much of an intimidation move this is, the UN command agrees, just to keep the peace. When they're loading the ambulances with the sick and injured, with promises from the Serbians that the patients will be taken for care, they know none of the three previous trucks of patients made it to a hospital, but they still have to trust that maybe this will be the exception. And even though elaborate promises are being made that the refugees are all being taken to a new city to live, when the men are being loaded into separate trucks from the women and children, everyone knows what that means, but no one says it. Instead by inaction, they become complicit in allowing these massacres to take place. </p><p>One of the things that's fascinating about this conflict is that it really was all internal. This was not a conventional war, with people fighting people who lived thousands of miles away in other countries who you could easily demonize. These were literally friends and neighbours fighting each other. It's not a major part of the film, but it's one of those incomprehensible things about this conflict that the film takes care to emphasize. The woman on the negotiation team looks across the table and sees the face of an old university friend, now apparently an enemy. Aida is recognised by one of the enemy soldiers, who was once one of her students, but when this person asks after her son, she has to lie to this person because she understands that his goal in asking the question is to murder them. </p><p>It's a powerful and shocking film that stays with you. If you get a chance to watch it, do seek it out. It is well worth watching.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixx-P22nyJKgUqTRII91MWGv49yBNiVnVtIC9dOrQiDW8ynAMQ85AVnIzlEauFkxn9RgjeABARRsm3zbET7Ksc9eyiHJP6wqn8IDlZeGHdVCPcB_sIgYkmtyvuIyXRwuExWkytuOghvp7Q/s755/hand_of_god.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixx-P22nyJKgUqTRII91MWGv49yBNiVnVtIC9dOrQiDW8ynAMQ85AVnIzlEauFkxn9RgjeABARRsm3zbET7Ksc9eyiHJP6wqn8IDlZeGHdVCPcB_sIgYkmtyvuIyXRwuExWkytuOghvp7Q/w270-h400/hand_of_god.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i>The Hand of God</i></b></p><p>The official "centerpiece" screening, marking the halfway point of the festival, was the new Paolo Sorrentino film, <i>The Hand of God</i>. The film focuses on Fabietto, a 16 year old boy growing up in 1980s Naples. It's not immediately clear that he is the central character of the film; when we first really meet him, it's probably almost 10 minutes into the film, and he's transfixed by the naked breast of his aunt (who has just been a victim of domestic abuse). It's an ignominious introduction to a character who almost immediately fades into the background, lost among the cast of eccentrics in his extended family (including one relative who eats an entire block of cheese while wearing a heavy fur coat in summer just to show it off, and the elderly boyfriend of another relative who speaks through an electronic voice at great length about the importance of sifting when making a sponge cake), and the similar weirdos who live in their apartment building (including the baroness who demands attendance to her every call). Amongst these people, Fabietto is almost invisible - his only defining characteristics are his intense desire for his (admittedly extremely sexy) aunt Patrizia, and his even more intense desire for Diego Maradona to join the Naples football team. The film doesn't really centre itself on Fabietto until halfway through, when a life-changing event occurs - an event where he attributes the impact on him to his Maradona fandom - and this leads him to ... decide to be a filmmaker, I guess, for some reason. </p><p>I approached the film with some wariness, since Sorrentino's last film, <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2019/08/trail-redux.html#:~:text=loro" target="_blank">Loro</a></i>, was to me such a catastrophic misfire. Fortunately, while the film is certainly flawed, it's at least enjoyable to watch. The first half is very big and silly, and constantly funny in a ribald way. It's a film that is filled with lust for life, and with just plain lust. But there's a massive tonal shift that occurs with the big event, where the film takes a much more serious turn; while the film is still funny at points in its second half, it does feel very much like a different film. It's still an engaging and entertaining film, but it's a different film. </p><p>I was talking to my friend Rebecca after the film, and she described the film as "bitsy". And to be honest I have no better description. That's the key problem that the film has. There is so much going on in the film, and there are so many distinctive and memorable characters throughout, that it becomes easy to feel at sea, uncertain whether this character or this story beat will prove significant or is simply a piece of colour that holds no ultimate greater purpose in the film. There's no way I was ever expecting the random cigarette smuggler that raced past them in a jet boat to become as significant a character as he did, but there you are. But it's the type of film where someone might be in a single scene, and not reappear for half an hour or more, so by the point they're back in the film, you're struggling to remember where we're supposed to know this person from. And there are so many incidents that do leave you feeling bemused and baffled by their place in the film, because they feel so from out of left field. </p><p>You can tell that the film is an intensely personal piece for Paolo Sorrentino - as soon as Fabietto says he wants to be a director, you know he's a proxy for Sorrentino. But what I didn't realise until literally right now, as I was writing this and had to double check how to spell that surname, was just how personal this film is. Because the big life-changing event actually happened to a young Sorrentino, apparently pretty much as it's portrayed, even down to the Maradona element. And you suddenly realise this is even more personal then you imagine. You start to wonder how much of this film is truly imagined, and how much is drawn from his memory of this time. There's a random scene where Fabietto finds himself in an empty town square in the middle of the night, when all of a sudden the richest man in the world and a famous supermodel happen to walk past him - is that there because it actually happened? Is the bizarre scene where Fabietto loses his virginity really as random as it seems, or is that actually how a young Sorrentino lost his virginity? In any case, I think it makes sense of the film's problems. If he actually is, as I suspect, trying to construct a narrative out of scraps of memories from his childhood, then you can understand why the film could become so bitsy, because it's challenging to have the self-discipline to see where the incidents in your life need to be reworked or cut. It doesn't make the film any better to understand this, but I think it makes the film easier to comprehend. </p><p>Now, to be clear, despite my criticism, the film is a delight to watch. I had a lot of fun, and was genuinely moved at times. The best part was having the chance to watch it at the Embassy. The film is being released by Netflix next month, so it will be very easy to watch very soon, but Sorrentino is such a visually rich director that it feels like the TV screen simply isn't enough to appreciate the beauty of his movie. I was therefore delighted to enjoy the film in a venue that could present and highlight his work in the best way possible. It was a fun experience.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNIC4FT6bPmodAVka_4kaRbynrENVeeBZZyhNi7PQ7VkeuyKW2B34xIqW3IleB6dyXQi4ovVxhQSWS3K32P7FzokJYlEgaf7g0YAMArxkdGOL-THbucbYznOoznZKA5kuy3rHo9uL4Tcif/s755/cryptozoo.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNIC4FT6bPmodAVka_4kaRbynrENVeeBZZyhNi7PQ7VkeuyKW2B34xIqW3IleB6dyXQi4ovVxhQSWS3K32P7FzokJYlEgaf7g0YAMArxkdGOL-THbucbYznOoznZKA5kuy3rHo9uL4Tcif/w270-h400/cryptozoo.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i>Cryptozoo</i></b></p><p>A piece of adult animation, the film focuses on Lauren Grey, a veterinarian working at the titular Cryptozoo, a secret sanctuary for cryptids - mythological creatures like griffins, pegasi, and kraken. When she hears word that a Japanese Dream Eater has been brought to the US and is now on the loose, she teams up with a gorgon to try to catch it before it's found by the military, who dream of weaponizing its powers. </p><p>So I knew going into the film that it was a piece of animation that was not intended for children. I did not realise just how adult-oriented the film is. Literally the first scene features a hippie couple (the film takes place during the Vietnam War) stripping and having sex; the scene ends when the naked man is gored through the chest by a unicorn before the naked woman, angry at her lover's death, bashes the unicorn's head in with a rock. A few minutes later, our main characters go to meet someone who is at that moment hosting an orgy. The film does eventually decide to feature characters who are wearing clothes, but it does also go out of its way to establish multiple human-cryptid intimate pairings. You almost get the sense that the filmmakers' main purpose in making the film was to see just how much weird sex they can include. (By the way, the naked woman from the start of the film eventually reappears, still naked, and she remains naked all the way through the climax, only getting to wear clothes in the final scene.) Seriously, if this was a live-action film, it would feel exploitative.</p><p>Here's the thing: I hated this film so much. I try not to walk out of films, but this tested me so much. The story just felt empty and aimless, moving from scene to scene with no sense of direction or motivation. Even in the climax, where there is insane stuff going, kraken eating people and someone riding a pegasus to save people from a collapsing tower, there is weirdly little energy to the scene. I just felt completely disconnected from anything occurring on screen. I didn't care about why I was watching what I was watching. I was bored. </p><p>Normally when I'm not connecting to an animated film, I can at least enjoy the beauty of the animation. It therefore almost felt like an insult that they made the film as aggressively ugly as it is. Part of the problem is that it feels like individual characters and environments were designed and created by completely different teams without ever discussing their design approach. So some characters are given a basic black-and-white outline design, some are given a more detailed hand-drawn design that almost looks childish, and some (including many, but not all, of the cryptids) are given a more ornate painterly look. And there are moments where there are elements using each of these design approaches all on-screen simultaneously, and the end result is just garish and unpleasant to look at. Now, full credit to them - judging by the end credits it looks like the entire film may have been animated by only 20 people, and if so, it's impressive that so few people managed to make a complete feature length film. But just because the film was low budget and made by such a small team doesn't mean I have to like it. And I do not. </p><p>There's also the issue of framerate. An explanation: a typical live-action movie runs at 24 frames per second (fps), so you get 24 separate images in each second of film. It's common for animation to run at 12fps, with each image repeated twice, and it's not uncommon for some animation to even run at 8fps, repeating images three times. Judging by how jerky the movement in the film is, I would not be surprised if, in an effort to save money, it was animated at 6fps, or even slower - it genuinely feels like a fast slideshow rather than animation. And that means the characters lose any sense of life - it's hard to be invested in their battle to survive when you can literally see the individual still frames as they "move". </p><p>I hate this film, I resent this film for existing, I'm annoyed that I spent money on it. There is a part of me that wants to look up what other screenings were on at the time, so I can know what opportunities I passed up in order to see this thing - so far I've held off on this impulse, knowing from experience that way madness lies. But whatever I could have seen, it would not be worse than this.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuQuXpTuzwBQ84DrIcGM6EKMwVSGggMm8X5uO2dRHEGfTXkdmWu8mUDsNEGIkRTrN42bGhyphenhyphenoBrTKowIjKUd8eiMlA4I8BzMD705WQVa24nSXxJhS3jWxGQju9GuYSq0WEJTy1nEFDQBqoE/s755/a_hero.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuQuXpTuzwBQ84DrIcGM6EKMwVSGggMm8X5uO2dRHEGfTXkdmWu8mUDsNEGIkRTrN42bGhyphenhyphenoBrTKowIjKUd8eiMlA4I8BzMD705WQVa24nSXxJhS3jWxGQju9GuYSq0WEJTy1nEFDQBqoE/w270-h400/a_hero.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i>A Hero</i></b></p><p>Ashgar Farhadi is a true master of taking small, personal dramas about conflicts and moral dilemmas and exploring them until they escalate to the level almost of an intense thriller. Here we meet Rahim, a genuinely likable guy who is unable to pay his debts after his former business partner steals the money from him, and who is forced into debtors' prison. One day, his girlfriend finds a lost bag containing 17 gold coins that could cover half of his debt, but Rahim, who is out on temporary release for a few days, decides it's important to do the right thing and return the money. The story attracts media attention, and for entirely understandable reasons around keeping his girlfriend secret, Rahim winds up claiming to have found the bag himself. And things look like they're going well; a charity gets involved, raising money to help Rahim, and the local council even offers him a job - but first they just need to investigate the story, just to make sure he's not pulling a scam. But problems emerge when the story doesn't hold up, and they can't trace the owner of the coins. </p><p>The film is just a mass of complex and uncomfortable questions where everyone is trying to navigate all of these awkward truths and motivations. Was Rahim's motivation for returning the money really to do the right thing, or was he hoping his actions would help him get out of prison? Why does the prison decide to push for the story to be known to create a feel-good story about its prisoner? Is the charity just leaping onto this story as a way of building its own profile for the work it does? Is Rahim's use of his son a genuine moment of a proud and loving father, or is he hoping to build public sympathy by highlighting his son's disability? </p><p>And the thing that makes the film challenging is that at no point does anyone actually behave in an unrealistic or unbelievable way. You can completely understand and sympathise with every decision anyone makes. Does it really matter who found the bag if it was returned? Does it really matter who confirms something if what they are confirming is the truth? But all of these little compromises, white lies, and inconsequential actions build up on each other, forcing further and further response until people are being pilloried for trying to do the right thing. You almost find yourself feeling it would have been better to keep the money. </p><p>And into all these messy motivations comes a criticism of social media and internet celebrity. Farhadi seems to be looking at the consequences of virality in the film. People try to promote popular stories as a way of distracting from other issues. People see a story gaining traction, and leap on to it as a way of building their own reputation, and just as quickly throw people to the wolves as soon as it seems there's more nuance to a situation or the person is not quite the ideal hero they held up. The film is so effective at putting you in this space where you feel this frustration and anxiety of this good character being established as a villain for no reason, so when the frustration builds up to a point of complete explosion, it's entirely relatable. </p><p>Hanging over the film as a whole is anger at the concept of debtors' prison, and the insanity that in Iran, for a purely private matter that involves no crime, you could force that person into prison, completely destroy their life, and deny them the opportunity to earn money to make good that debt. Debtors' prisons are one of those ideas that we've grown so accustomed to being in our past that you don't realise that there are corners in the world where this is still a thing. You can feel Farhadi's anger at the injustice that this system creates. </p><p>It's always exciting to have a new Ashgar Farhadi film, especially when it is as good as this. It's not a comfortable watch, there are never any easy answers, and you always walk away feeling uncomfortable and uncertain, questioning your ideas about what it takes to be a good person. But it's always a fantastic journey.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjZluXdymPEgPqnlp_3IpqAjoe_A6QtGDWqWd9RB2aO5O3-tiQ3BY6CoLBXcGPQ19Nw5sF_KVka5Zu-AWH66xr91cU17tsXBhhGJ5GmLpXe-zvVCcXNsaUCTXP968jQyQNWvFxX81tjug/s755/blue_bayou.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="526" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjZluXdymPEgPqnlp_3IpqAjoe_A6QtGDWqWd9RB2aO5O3-tiQ3BY6CoLBXcGPQ19Nw5sF_KVka5Zu-AWH66xr91cU17tsXBhhGJ5GmLpXe-zvVCcXNsaUCTXP968jQyQNWvFxX81tjug/w279-h400/blue_bayou.jpg" width="279" /></a><b><i>Blue Bayou</i></b></p><p>Antonio is a Korean American, having lived in America since he was adopted at the age of 3. He has a small criminal record, a few youthful indiscretions involving stolen motorbikes, but he's fundamentally a good person. Now living in New Orleans and working as a tattoo artist, he has a fantastic relationship as Daddy to his stepdaughter, and he and his wife are expecting a second. But one day he gets into a small altercation with his wife's cop ex, and after his arrest they discover his citizenship was never formally completed. So now, facing deportation, he desperately has to do whatever he can to fight to stay in the country with his family. </p><p>If there was any doubt that this film was conceived as a piece of advocacy, it's demolished by the final moments of film, in which we learn that there are hundreds of thousands of people who immigrated legally to the United States for adoption as children, and who are now liable for deportation because the adoption didn't finalise their citizenship. We're also confronted with the photos of a dozen or more people either currently facing deportation or who were recent deportees. You watch that ending and you know this is an angry film. The good thing about the film is that it's never didactic in presenting that argument. Instead, it understands that the best way to make your argument is to present it as a piece of great drama - if you can convince people of the injustice of this system through drama, the audience will mentally start making the arguments in favour of your position for you. </p><p>To be honest, going into the screening I had no memory of what the film was about. And the film takes a very long time, probably about half an hour, to reveal the conflict at the heart of the film. Part of the reason why I think the film is so effective is that choice to delay telling the audience what the film is about. It puts us in the same position as Antonio - in the same way that he's just living his life without any idea that his life is about to change in an instant, I spent those first 30 minutes convinced I was watching a different film, a story about a kind-hearted guy struggling to provide for his family but who is held back by society's judgement of him due to his youthful mistakes. And that story is a fantastic drama. I particularly enjoyed the scenes of him and his stepdaughter - the film is impressively efficient at establishing this truly loving and affectionate relationship between the two. And then the hammer drops, and you realise you're watching a completely different film, and it just feels like a gut punch. </p><p>And from this point, the film adopts a very clear focus on the unfairness of the situation, of treating people like this when they did come to the country legitimately through proper channels and who would have no reason to suspect any need to formalise their citizenship. But it's always looking at this through the lens of these characters and how they will react. There are points where I feel a different film would take a different turn - in a desperate effort to get money for the lawyer's retainer, Antonio makes a very bad decision that in many other films would become the story - but here it's just one extra complication, another example of the types of lengths that people can be pushed to because of this policy. </p><p>I left the film extremely impressed by the actor who played Antonio, a actor I had never seen before, and it wasn't until I looked him up that I realised it was Justin Chon, the film's writer and director, in the role. He's a skilled performer, giving some lovely delicate shading when it might have been easy to be bigger. Yes he is desperate, but it's quiet desperation that the character exudes, and there's a sadness buried deep in the character that is present throughout the film but that slowly comes to the surface in the course of the film. His relationship with Sydney Kowalske as his stepdaughter Jessie is easily the highlight of the film, with a natural ease and comfort between the two actors that really drew the attention. It was also nice to see Alicia Vikander - she's an actress I really enjoy, but I don't believe I've seen her in anything in about four years (although I believe she's in <i>The Green Knight</i> which I need to see). In many ways it is a fairly clichéd wife role for her, but I enjoyed the sense of determination that runs through her character. You can tell that she feels powerless against this massive system, but she is grabbing hold of everything possible to gain what power she can find in the situation. </p><p>The only thing that I find myself uncertain about is the ending. Narratively, it's the right ending, and I think the film gets to it in the right way. But I do feel that it's too overblown. There's a particular cliché in the movies that we've all seen many times, and this film adopts three different variations on that theme. And emotionally they all work, especially the third time which really becomes the defining emotional moment of the film. But you are very aware that the scene is so clichéd, and it's the type of scene that only plays like this in a movie because in reality the people around would react in a very different way. But still, it affected me, it moved me, and that's what it was supposed to do. </p><p>It's a beautiful film. Strongly recommended.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghEEV4p2RvsA7LVS8wRMike84zfZVeeRwCo2rqThyRJzJT4mMYOFgLdDjcU71ATZaBlRHnd6Z1KVuapyyCPUCCxQPw5BO1SY66vlQS74PeSFe0l64zBlAcYAGSM8jnppyaCAK0O8J2lxdj/s1024/beyond_the_infinite_two_minutes.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghEEV4p2RvsA7LVS8wRMike84zfZVeeRwCo2rqThyRJzJT4mMYOFgLdDjcU71ATZaBlRHnd6Z1KVuapyyCPUCCxQPw5BO1SY66vlQS74PeSFe0l64zBlAcYAGSM8jnppyaCAK0O8J2lxdj/w293-h400/beyond_the_infinite_two_minutes.jpg" width="293" /></a><b><i>Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes</i></b></p><p>A delightful and innovative low-budget time-travel-ish comedy from Japan. One day cafe owner Kato is in his apartment when suddenly he appears on the TV, able to talk through the TV to himself. Somehow a connection has formed between his apartment TV and the TV in the cafe, so that the one is showing what will happen in front of the other two minutes into the future. He races downstairs, and shortly after repeats the conversation he just had from the other side. He and his friends are delighted by the discovery of this time TV - especially when they realise they can line the TVs up in front of each other and, like an infinite mirror, see not two minutes into the future, but four, six, eight, ten, twelve minutes into the future. All seems fun, although they do feel constrained to act in the exact way that they've already seen in the past. And then one of the TVs shows something very bad happening soon. </p><p>So the first thing that you need to know about the film is that it's presented as a single-take film, without cutting. Now, I'm sure it's not - there are definitely hidden cuts that I'm sure I caught - but it's certainly very long, extended takes. And that's essential to the effectiveness of the film, because it starts to feel like a magic trick. If you're watching a film, and they are constantly cutting between camera shots, then this doesn't feel impressive, because you know they only needed 30 seconds of footage to interact with. But because this was all shot with long takes, you're watching a video, and you know that video has been playing non-stop for 10 minutes, and you're watching the characters interact simultaneously with different levels and different points in time within the video, you find yourself struggling to comprehend how it's possible to make a film like this. You're just marveling at the inventiveness of this achievement. The filmmakers know that this is the effect they're going to have, so during the end credits they actually have some behind-the-scenes footage, where you can see the little iPhone camera rig they use, you can see the complicated charts plotting out everything that the different TVs are showing at each moment, you can see the stopwatch keeping track of precise timing. It's definitely a feat of careful and precise planning. But it's also an achievement of innovation and imagination. </p><p>Because all that careful planning and construction is nothing if the film is not entertaining. And it is completely charming. The characters are goofy and broad, but so much fun to be around - the type of people who will put towels over their heads to pretend to be mystical mages bringing wisdom from the future. There's a sweet little love story between Keto and the owner of the shop next door. And even when the big threat occurs that gives the film its climax, it's so silly and easily resolved that it doesn't really feel like it was anything to worry about at all. And at barely 70 minutes, it just feels like a bit of a lark, as though these friends got together and put together this bright and breezy film one day on a whim, and it's only when you really think about it that you appreciate just how much effort went into making. </p><p>Walking out of the cinema, I heard a couple of people comparing the film to <i>Primer</i>. And it's an understandable comparison; indeed it's a comparison that I'd briefly thought of myself - <i>Primer</i> is probably the definitive and most comprehensive representation of just how time travel and paradoxes would really work. But <i>Primer</i> is insanely complex - there's a point in that film where you just need to throw up your arms and accept that you don't have any idea what's happening. This is not that. The time mechanisms in this film are very clear, very straightforward, you know exactly where you are. The complexity in <i>Primer</i> revolves around the time travel logic underpinning that film; the complexity in this film revolves around how on earth they managed to film this. The logic of <i>Primer</i>, if you puzzle it out, actually makes sense; don't even try to find a logical explanation for how the characters in this film acquire some of the knowledge they discover because there is none. </p><p>But that doesn't matter, because this is just a pure piece of entertainment. It will have broken the people as they were trying to make the film, but the end result is so light and fun that there's no need to worry about the film breaking you. If you can seek it out, it's so worth it.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAFGNG4ehtTZ-0gq4eXYrD8A02tFvwZTqZe68VlisgN1y0gNaAxUA5cHrTioadOyTvdak8WuPlOGCGv3xH9T94xc9TKAS1fID68uU8F1VDbzZ1gNQ389cij1WHnUxUEw8jDAh450dbzUp0/s755/nitram.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="528" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAFGNG4ehtTZ-0gq4eXYrD8A02tFvwZTqZe68VlisgN1y0gNaAxUA5cHrTioadOyTvdak8WuPlOGCGv3xH9T94xc9TKAS1fID68uU8F1VDbzZ1gNQ389cij1WHnUxUEw8jDAh450dbzUp0/w280-h400/nitram.jpg" width="280" /></a><b><i>Nitram</i></b></p><p>A socially awkward figure lives with his parents in Tasmania, and is a constant struggle for them, setting off fireworks to annoy the neighbours, constantly demanding whatever he wants, refusing to ever concede to anyone else. He's only ever referred in the film as Nitram, a much-hated nickname because, seemingly in a dig at his backwards development, it's his actual name backwards. He's socially awkward, doesn't know how to behave, and is just generally obnoxious to be around. One day he meets an older wealthy woman named Helen living in a rundown house, they become friends, and he leaves home to live with her. But then Helen dies tragically. Meanwhile his father is heartbroken after his dream of running a bed and breakfast falls apart. One day Nitram decides to upgrade his air rifle to a real rifle, several firearms in fact. And then he buys more. He doesn't have a gun licence, but that's not a barrier to buying weapons. And then one day, Martin Bryant takes his weapons and murders 35 people in the Port Arthur massacre. </p><p>So I was really was not sure what the point of the film was. You might think that it's an exercise in trying to understand a killer and the motivations that lead to his actions. But it felt fairly generic - he's a weirdo with serious mental health issues and development problems and difficulty making human connections. This is every cliché of a killer you've ever seen, and it's saying nothing new or interesting. I finished the film, and felt that I had no more understanding of who he was then I would have had reading the Wikipedia article. Sure, I did learn things, but only because I had never before looked into who this guy was or what his story was. And the film seems to almost deliberately avoid including anything that might offer nuance. In the movie, he's an only child; in real life, he has a sister - what's that relationship like? According to Wikipedia, he had a girlfriend at the time - who was she? Instead these potentially significant relationships get thrown out because they possibly run counter to the idea of the lone weirdo that the film is focused on. Part of the reason I saw the film was because I had liked Justin Kurzel's previous film, <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2021/11/an-anti-climactic-suspense-laughter.html#:~:text=true%20history%20of%20the%20kelly%20gang%20(in%20cinema)" target="_blank">True History of the Kelly Gang</a></i>, for the way it did undercut the conventional narrative around Ned Kelly, and I was hoping for something similar here. No such luck. </p><p>I was genuinely watching the film unable to work out why it had been made. It only became clear in the final moments of the film, when a title card referenced the much discussed gun law reforms passed after Port Arthur - which I had always understood to be a success - saying that no state had ever fully implemented those measures and that there are more guns in Australia today than there were then. Okay, fine, I think this is therefore supposed to be a piece of advocacy about gun control. Now, I'm not someone who really feels strongly one way or the other about gun control - I've fired guns on two occasions, so I'm certainly not opposed to them, but nor am I particularly enthusiastic about them. But trying to make this film into an argument about the need for stronger gun control feels extremely artificial. The scenes of him acquiring the weapons feel almost incidental, necessary moments in the journey towards the final scene, not that they are the focal point of the film. And if you're trying to make an argument that the reforms after the massacre have failed, which is what the film seems to be saying, then you need to provide a lot more context for that statement then three sentences lacking nuance in a title card at the end of the film. You might be able to explore that issue if you made a film in which the failings of the gun control system in Australia are dramatised and are the core focus of the film; you don't make that point by telling a story that completely predates the current system and therefore tells me nothing about how things currently are. </p><p>I was also bothered by the fact that the film only ever referred to him as Nitram. I assume this is part of the new popular approach of never using the names of these people, to avoid giving them notoriety. And, full disclosure - it's an approach that I don't care for, and that frankly risks turning these people into boogeymen, figures who feel almost greater then human because they have no human identifier, they're Voldemort, He Who Must Not Be Named, they're figures of fear. But also, if you're trying to avoid notoriety, that doesn't work when you are literally making a movie about the person - it's hard to give a person more notoriety than that. But it also becomes frustratingly awkward - because the film instead uses a nickname that the character in the film hates, it's not a nickname that people who loved him, his parents or Helen, would ever use. And so that means in any scene involving those people, they can only refer to him as "he" or "him", in an often awkward manner. And so this entire structure of artifice is put around the film, and it's extremely irritating. </p><p>Look, is it terrible? No. But is it good? No. Its just annoyingly generic.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy-EPHZQ6gdOjxxivlAFKs2EEbVVDGj8AtB9dPBf_9Gg_4jM_2M9lJk6W0PAyzLI_7nl93kiYmR_YkDOe4ItB8RWL-cRMFiacfy2BN_hAV5E4MgCLRv42z7IEHxWTuNTWBf5WuzGasOb1B/s755/unclenching_the_fists.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="529" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy-EPHZQ6gdOjxxivlAFKs2EEbVVDGj8AtB9dPBf_9Gg_4jM_2M9lJk6W0PAyzLI_7nl93kiYmR_YkDOe4ItB8RWL-cRMFiacfy2BN_hAV5E4MgCLRv42z7IEHxWTuNTWBf5WuzGasOb1B/w280-h400/unclenching_the_fists.jpg" width="280" /></a><b><i>Unclenching the Fists</i></b></p><p>In a small Russian town, a teenage girl, Ada, is essentially trapped by her father. She's only allowed out of the house to go to work at the candy store, but otherwise is kept locked up at home by her father, who has the only key to the front door and who hides her passport, and who refuses to let her have anything that might attracts boys, whether it be forcing her to wear decidedly unsexy clothes or his insistence that she not wear perfume. His efforts haven't really worked - there is one boy who insists on hanging around awkwardly flirting with her. The only other males she's allowed to interact with are her two brothers - a younger brother who treats her as a mother and still sleeps in her bed when he has a scary dream, and an older brother who's left home and who she sees as presenting her best hope for escape. </p><p>The film won <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_Certain_Regard" target="_blank">Un Certain Regard</a> at the Cannes film festival, so I was expecting a film to be pretty special. There are a lot of things that I really enjoyed - the long scene where we watch through the car door as Ada's father tries to stop her leaving, the shock of the revelation about just how infantilized she is, or some of the awkward flirtations with Tamik (including a brilliant scene where we remain fully fixed on her face watching her reaction to what Tamik is doing). Or my favourite scene, the final interaction between Ada and her father, in which we're reminded that for all the problems in that relationship, he is still her father and she does love him. Unfortunately, something prevented me from connecting to the film, and I don't know what. To me it felt like a film where the individual pieces are more effective then the film as a whole. As wonderful as those scenes may have been, I just found that something didn't feel right about the film as a whole. This is the hardest film to respond to, a film in which my response is not passionate love and excitement to share everything that's great about the film, nor is it a bad film allowing me to rant and complain. It's just a film I feel largely indifferent to - and I'm frustrated that that is my response. </p><p>One thing I am really baffled by is the final scene of the film. The final moment of the film is barely even focused on our main characters. Instead it's presented as extremely shaky home video footage of a wedding party, in which the movie's characters happened to incidentally figure. It's so wildly out of step with the style of the rest of the film that I simply could not figure out what they were trying to achieve with the sequence. The characters in the wedding party are not significant to the rest of the film, and you almost wonder what the in-world justification is for the person making the video to focus so much on these random people, since he obviously doesn't know that these are the main characters of this film. It's an unsatisfying note to end on, which is probably a good description of the film as a whole.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsXlxHEOU-EvTmvulXPuTR5uVrBZNpJVuleIXGDG_lzl6DEyDa9BfSO3LyGsJp4cer_n51ZYjLHlC4E-5-yX6bcXpRMjWVMpt8OtOi5SK4s46vfPlR2fkS1FVVGzx9pVZaVIueE5rDTOeo/s800/millie_lies_low.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsXlxHEOU-EvTmvulXPuTR5uVrBZNpJVuleIXGDG_lzl6DEyDa9BfSO3LyGsJp4cer_n51ZYjLHlC4E-5-yX6bcXpRMjWVMpt8OtOi5SK4s46vfPlR2fkS1FVVGzx9pVZaVIueE5rDTOeo/w400-h225/millie_lies_low.jpg" width="400" /></a><b><i>Millie Lies Low</i></b></p><p>A charming New Zealand comedy drama about an architecture student who wins a chance to intern at a top architectural firm in New York. But Millie has a panic attack and needs to leave the plane, and now she has to hang out in Wellington for a few days until she can get the money for a new ticket. Unfortunately, she is an extremely proud person and cannot bear the thought of her friends thinking she's failed, so she has to fake her life in New York, posting photos on social media of her enjoying her exciting new life even as she's hiding out in a tent in the bush. And as the next few days pass, she also has to deal with her own insecurities and her feeling that her scholarship was undeserved. </p><p>It's very much a film where the entire plot could be resolved if the character just tried telling the truth, but that's really the entire point - she can't tell the truth because that would be too humiliating. And the thing that becomes clear is that the pride that holds her back from admitting her mistake is a defining characteristic. She's not immediately obviously proud, but she's someone who can't bear to have her failings exposed, and so whenever she encounters a situation where that is a risk, she'll jump to the first opportunity to escape. And that's one of the things that makes this experience so hard for her - because no one is expecting her to be around, she finds herself (admittedly rather improbably) able to discover what people say about her behind her back. And that becomes devastating for her as she discovers that no one has been fooled, and people really can see the person she is, both the good (we can understand why people are friends with her) and also the very bad. </p><p>I also found the relationship between Millie and her best friend Caroline fascinating. It's not uncommon to tell a story about bad friendship, a relationship between two people where one person is this toxic presence in the friendship. But in this film, we get to know Millie quite well, we like her a lot, but also it's fairly quickly established that Millie is the toxic person in the friendship, with her insecurities and her sense of being a fraud becoming this issue that almost defines the friendship; Caroline is constantly defending Millie, even as it's clear to everyone else that Millie does not deserve the defence and that Caroline is basically having to lie to herself in order to ignore the obvious truth. There's a moment where Caroline does something that is extremely selfish, something that is extremely hurtful to Millie, even if she thinks Millie will never learn about it. Ordinarily, if a person took this action in relation to a friend, you'd look at this person as a villain, but instead, although we retain sympathy for Millie for having to go through this experience, there's definitely a part of us that looks at the type of friend that Millie has been to Caroline, and feels that she probably deserves it. </p><p>It does have to be said that, as a Wellingtonian, it is an extremely distracting film to watch. Most of the time, when you're watching something filmed in Wellington, you might have a few scenes in recognisable locations, but for the most part there's still an anonymity to the filming locations. With this film, other than the scenes at her mother's house, every place she goes is instantly recognisable. I know that street. And I know that street. I've walked past that alleyway a hundred times. It does become a constant distraction, almost taking you out of the film. Now that's not necessarily a problem with the film, but next time it would help if maybe the struggling students could live somewhere other than the centre of the city. </p><p>All in all, it's a likeable comedy that centres on a fascinating main figure. I really did enjoy it a lot.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimH4LjrAe5Tc7oyxac3EUoo7f8couDIhg9DB5dO0x_SATbBQ2amU6jpgXiCEOuz-7b1tbAn9fwDIWoT7Ow8e6-nsisJSAqL25ltg3zfiztAb794aU3kwBmhjMK02S2NQhO_KARJ5tYhysI/s755/memoria.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="529" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimH4LjrAe5Tc7oyxac3EUoo7f8couDIhg9DB5dO0x_SATbBQ2amU6jpgXiCEOuz-7b1tbAn9fwDIWoT7Ow8e6-nsisJSAqL25ltg3zfiztAb794aU3kwBmhjMK02S2NQhO_KARJ5tYhysI/w280-h400/memoria.jpg" width="280" /></a><b><i>Memoria</i></b></p><p>One morning, Tilda Swinton, playing a flower distributor living in Colombia, is woken by the sound of a heavy THWOCK. It's not obvious what caused it - there's no building work or roadworks being undertaken nearby. She continues to hear the THWOCK - mostly just once, occasionally several times in succession. She doesn't know what the cause could be, and efforts to recreate the sound hold no solution. Eventually she goes on a journey into the Colombian jungle, where she may find some answers. </p><p>I'd never seen anything by Apichatpong Weerasethakul - the closest I'd come was the time I decided to miss a screening of <i>Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives</i> due to a headache. It turns out that was a wise choice - if this is representative of his work, then trying to watch one of his films while struggling with a headache would be impossible. <i>Memoria</i> is very much the type of film I'd imagined that he makes - it's very slow, very still, contemplative. This is a 2 hour 20 film that could easily be told in 1 hour or less. But that would run counter to the drifting, dreamlike atmosphere that Weerasethakul is working to achieve. </p><p>The film adopts a largely static observational approach where the camera will just sit and watch for minutes at a time. So Tilda will walk into a studio where a jazz band is recording, and we'll just spend several minutes watching her among the small group listening to the performance, and only after you're convinced that you'll be spending the entire performance watching the listeners does the camera turn to spend the second half of the song watching the band playing. The camera is so static that it could sometimes feel jarring when the film cut to a different angle in the same scene. Much of the time it plays out with scenes presented to us from a distance in longshot, and so it throws you when the film cuts even just to a mid shot - you grow so accustomed to watching from a distance that it feels uncomfortable to be sitting even just across a table from someone. </p><p>In a film that has so many long stretches of silence, you're really reliant on the work of your actors to carry the film. And here it helps that he has Tilda Swinton in the lead role, and present in pretty much every scene. In one moment that really stayed with me, she hears the sound several times in quick succession while at lunch with some relatives and for the first time realises that she's the only person who hears it - she almost has a nervous breakdown at that point, as she starts questioning whether this means that she's going crazy, and watching her silently go through all these emotions while trying to keep everything together in front of her family just blew me away. </p><p>The climax of the film revolves around a conversation that Tilda has with a middle-aged man (who may possibly be the reincarnation of a young man we met at the start of the film), who has never in his life left the tiny jungle village where he was born. And as they talk, he removes the scales from some fish. Then he lies on the ground, seemingly dead for an extended period, before he awakes from his "trip". And then they wander up to his home, where they continue to talk. But their conversation plays out with prolonged periods of silence, so long that at times I was startled when they started to speak again. But it's a scene that almost perfectly encapsulates the film. It's a sequence that runs 30 or 40 minutes, but not a lot can actually be said to happen in that time. And my reaction to the scene, much like my reaction to the film as a whole, fluctuated wildly. Initially, I was completely caught up in the scene, but it played on a bit and completely lost me, until the scene continued some more and completely enraptured me again - and my reaction to the scene cycled through this process several times during the runtime of this sequence. One moment I loved it; the next I hated it; then I loved it; and repeat. </p><p>Then comes the moment when we get the explanation for the THWOCK. And it is the most bizarre moment in the film. To be clear, this is a very spiritual movie, so when Tilda says that she has developed almost like a psychic antenna through which she can pick up the signals of pain in someone's life, I can accept that. That feels like an explanation that is consistent with everything we've seen in the film and the themes it's trying to explore. The problem comes when shortly after, we get a different explanation for this sound. A scene plays out involving something actually making this sound, and I think we're led to interpret this moment as being the true explanation for what's going on. And it's an unsatisfying explanation for many - especially the people in the row behind me who started sniggering at the scene. And I don't blame them. Certainly the transition from reflective spirituality to genre filmmaking for a single scene felt like an uncomfortable change that didn't fit the film. I simply don't understand what the film was trying to express in that moment, or how that explanation is supposed to tie in to the larger themes of the film. </p><p>I can see why some people like this film. I can see why some people have given it very strongly positive reviews. I can also see that most viewers would hate it. I'm somewhere in the middle. I rather liked moments in the film, moments where the film grabbed me and enchanted me, but much of the film held me at a distance and never let me in. As a result, I did find it a frustrating experience.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXW4Frg9f_bElZ4tiXcmtjf9AxUku2r7SehkWDTvqCk8iThQoEpIpZI7Cy4S6PdOZmlk36ZpNiG8GrvRB6ys9PiENGLKXN-OiyXpi8OGKO4xvqEFdiWiJ_E6jODEiSZz7QTvHzee1NS2yq/s755/shiva_baby.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXW4Frg9f_bElZ4tiXcmtjf9AxUku2r7SehkWDTvqCk8iThQoEpIpZI7Cy4S6PdOZmlk36ZpNiG8GrvRB6ys9PiENGLKXN-OiyXpi8OGKO4xvqEFdiWiJ_E6jODEiSZz7QTvHzee1NS2yq/w270-h400/shiva_baby.jpg" width="270" /></a><b><i>Shiva Baby</i></b></p><p>A delightful farce of a film. We're introduced to Danielle, an insecure and directionless student who insists to her parents that feminist studies do actually offer a career plan, while to anyone else she just lies about her entire academic career and goals. When she goes to attend the shiva of some distant relative (she's not even entirely certain who died), she is distressed to find her much more successful ex-girlfriend Maya is also present. Even more distressingly, her sugar daddy Max is also here for some reason, along with the wife and baby daughter that Danielle had no idea existed. </p><p>It's an expansion of the short film the director, Emma Seligman, made as her thesis film with the same star, Rachel Sennott. Out of curiosity, I watched <a href="https://vimeo.com/282335881" target="_blank">the short film</a> the morning after the movie, and it's a fascinating example of the process involved in expanding a 7-minute film to feature-length. Much of the dialogue from the short is reproduced nearly word for word in the feature (although it's a smart tweak to have Danielle be vegetarian rather than lactose-intolerant), but the tone is very different - the short is entirely focused on Danielle and Max, and without extra plot elements and with little time to develop, the short film becomes much more sad. You get a very real sense that, despite the commercial nature of their relationship, she's genuinely upset to realise there's no future in their relationship. In expanding the film, introducing the ex-girlfriend, making Max's wife an actual character, giving the baby real prominence as a focus of attention for everyone present, Seligman removes most of that sadness, and instead makes it just one more indicator of how much of a fuck-up Danielle is. </p><p>This is a film that dwells in the comedy of discomfort, as Danielle finds herself in this small house packed with people, trapped with all of her mistakes, and forced to confront them all. I was impressed by the control of tone Seligman demonstrates as a first-time director. Farce is a comedy style that can look very easy - just take a bunch of conflicting elements and stick them in a room together - but poorly executed farce can easily become overbroad and wearying. The film feels claustrophobic and chaotic, but it never feels crazy, and it's mainly effective in generating an overwhelming feeling of anxiety in the viewer. I was glad to watch it in cinema, because the sense of panic the film generated was at times so powerful that you're glad for the audience laughter to remind you that it's okay to find this funny. I think part of the reason why the film is effective is the fact that Danielle's lies are often unconvincing. Certainly Max's wife almost immediately registers the connection between the two, and this means that any scene between her and Danielle becomes loaded with a completely different tension to the rest of the film, tamping down on the temptation to make things go too broad - farce is often about trying to keep a dozen plates spinning, so when one of the most important plates immediately smashes, it brings a very different energy to the performance. </p><p>I had never seen Rachel Sennott before, but I definitely hope to again. She brings a delightful disaffection to her performance, and never overplays her panic as things start to go wrong - if anything she almost feels exhausted when she realises she has some problem to resolve. In the supporting cast, Danny Defarrari is fascinating as Max; he has a wonderfully sleazy charm that is just right for the character. I was excited to see Fred Melamed, perfectly playing an enthusiastically oblivious father. I also really enjoyed Dianna Agron, who I hadn't seen since I quit watching <i>Glee</i>, as Max's wife - she never makes a scene, never even acknowledges that she has realised her husband is sleeping with this girl, but in every scene you can watch her thinking, processing the information, and trying to decide how she wants to proceed with her life. </p><p>I do have to highlight the score by Ariel Marx. It's not a score I can imagine ever wanting to listen to outside of the film, but it's absolutely essential to the effectiveness of the film. The score is all discordance and awkward rhythms, and it forces you into a place of real discomfort, it never settles down, instead leaving you in a place of constant unease. It's a score that feels like it's tapping into Danielle's brain, and is just great. </p><p>I really did enjoy this one a great deal.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig6IM0DFaIg8VjksVoPY9P6XOc8X1DCs596S9nQ6iNWMgyqab_tebIVnVFwMXFrk2F2J1VYLMC4bQ38tnD3XCbTZnrlSysTWOhCvJdFO3M-zDw_TU9iyiMkJ6lateT5Y1s7Tv36zLB2Ba2/s1536/midnight.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="1078" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig6IM0DFaIg8VjksVoPY9P6XOc8X1DCs596S9nQ6iNWMgyqab_tebIVnVFwMXFrk2F2J1VYLMC4bQ38tnD3XCbTZnrlSysTWOhCvJdFO3M-zDw_TU9iyiMkJ6lateT5Y1s7Tv36zLB2Ba2/w281-h400/midnight.jpg" width="281" /></a><b><i>Midnight</i></b></p><p><i>Midnight</i> focuses on Kyung-mi, a young deaf woman. One night, while meeting up with her also-deaf mother, she stumbles across the still-living latest victim of a serial killer, and makes herself his next target. But the killer is masked, so when she escapes and goes with her mother to the police station with a helpful young man, she has no idea that he is the killer. And things escalate when the brother of the previous victim also comes to the police station looking for help to find his sister. </p><p>An immediately obvious point of reference is clearly going to be <i>Wait Until Dark</i>, the Audrey Hepburn classic about a blind woman under attack. Like that film, ingrained into this intense thriller is an effective exploration of how people with disabilities make their way in a world that's fundamentally not built for them. I was intrigued by some of the adaptations on display here - the use of a soundmeter to alert her to risks when driving, the house lights that illuminate in response to noise. And yes we're also very aware of how vulnerable she is simply because she is missing this sense - she doesn't know how loud this handle really is as she's trying to slowly and silently open the door, she struggles with communicating with the police, and she has trouble being taken seriously solely because of her disability. </p><p>In the lead role, Kim Ki-joo is fascinating. She is a character who recognises the way she is perceived because of her disability, has come to terms with the way some people will treat her, but she's still approaches the world with a generosity of spirit. But the real highlight of the film is probably Wi Ha-joon as one of the coldest movie killers I've seen in a while. He has a superficial charm to him that makes it credible that these people would feel safe with him, but there's something about the way his face can turn when no one's looking that is quite chilling, and there are moments where he's threatening the women knowing they can't do anything about it, and there's a smirking confidence to his performance that is just terrifying. </p><p>There's this unusual idea that in filmmaking object permanence isn't a thing, that anything that isn't onscreen doesn't exist until it's onscreen - it's why people are always being hit by speeding buses that they should definitely have heard but that instead don't seem to have existed until they drive into shot. I therefore really enjoyed the way the film played around with this idea. Not only do you get the scene of nearly being run over by traffic that cannot be heard, but there is a intensely suspenseful sequence where Kyung-mi is alone in her house, the scene is silent, there's nothing actually threatening on-screen, and yet we are put into a place of great suspense simply because we can see the illumination of her sound-detecting lights warning us of a threat we neither see nor hear. </p><p>The only issue I had with the film was that it makes the mistake of having a fantastic ending, and then carrying on. The second-to-last sequence of the film is a brilliant three person chase through a maze of narrow paths and alleyways; it's one of the most gripping and intense sequences I've seen in a while, and you can feel that this is the climax of the film. And it has an absolutely devastating conclusion, as one of the characters is forced to make an impossible choice. But then, rather than ending the film at that point, the film proceeds to another chase, this time a wide open and busy downtown space that I found much less exciting and believable. While there is some very nice work in that final sequence (in particular they find a nice way to end the threat of the killer without any question of Kyung-mi's culpability), it's a disappointment for a film that had a fantastic conclusion sitting right there. </p><p>Still, it's a lot of fun.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL3SdwxUTjJoV2t9ZlIF4gqwxaxR03RqFgzPqKWQdA5oBtWxf0zZlDcGi8qNrZGcQ9jM8gyIICpFoU0E2jzt1_Xeo3TU7jgdY5YOtQV6pLAWNhSGqfc8Des8ciOSmZRcoHS_aZeyx-7mrY/s1051/about_endlessness.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1051" data-original-width="736" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL3SdwxUTjJoV2t9ZlIF4gqwxaxR03RqFgzPqKWQdA5oBtWxf0zZlDcGi8qNrZGcQ9jM8gyIICpFoU0E2jzt1_Xeo3TU7jgdY5YOtQV6pLAWNhSGqfc8Des8ciOSmZRcoHS_aZeyx-7mrY/w280-h400/about_endlessness.jpg" width="280" /></a><b><i>About Endlessness</i></b></p><p>This was probably my most disappointing film of the festival. It's not that it's a bad film, it's not, and I have certainly seen much worse films this festival. But this film is not at all what I was hoping for or expecting. </p><p>As with Roy Andersson's other films, there's really no point in trying to give any kind of plot summary for the film, because there is no plot. It's just a collection of short little vignettes that play out. Some characters stop and talk to the camera about what they're thinking, others just live their lives as normal. In this film, we also have a narrator, who gives a brief little description or reflection, a couple of lines on the moment we're about to see or have just seen. There's one character who does recur throughout the film, a priest who is struggling with the realisation that he doesn't believe in God anymore, but except for him we pretty much just meet these individuals for a moment, and then they're gone. And it all plays out with drab grey people living in a drab grey world. So far, it sounds like a typical Roy Andersson film. </p><p>But in the past, the Roy Andersson films I've seen <a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2016/06/power-redux.html#:~:text=a%20pigeon%20sat%20on%20a%20branch%20reflecting%20on%20existence" target="_blank">have been comedies</a>. At times very sad comedies, at other times wonderfully absurd comedies, but they're always comedies with depth - to borrow from the title of his previous film, he's "reflecting on existence" with his films. But you're just watching these brief comic scenes play out in his work, just hanging for the moment when the joke will reveal itself. That's not this film. I believe I laughed twice in the film, once at a scene where a distracted waiter overfilled a glass and let the wine spill onto the table, and once when a dentist tries to work on a patient without anaesthesia. And there is also a wonderfully joyous scene where three girls passing by a cafe spontaneously decide to dance to the music playing. But beyond that, it's disorientingly humourless. There's nothing funny about watching a father crying as he holds his murdered daughter, the knife still in his hands, while the narrator tells us he killed her "to protect his family's honour", but now he regrets it. There's nothing funny about Adolf Hitler walking into the bunker as the war comes to an end. There's nothing funny about watching a captured soldier being tied to a post and abandoned. </p><p>Which is not to say that the film is all heavy moments. The film is in essence attempting to summarise all of human existence within its short running time. So yes, we do get the weighty moments, we also get the sweetness of a father tying his child's shoelaces in the rain, we get the pain of unrequited love, we get the relief of human connection, we get the irritation of a broken shoe, we get the dread that comes with questioning the existence of an afterlife, we get the delight of drinking champagne, we get the naivete that comes with looking at the world and declaring despite all evidence to the contrary that "everything is wonderful", we get the joy of simply dancing with complete abandon with your friends. </p><p>I didn't hate the film. I actually enjoyed my time watching the film. My only problem is that past experience with Andersson had left me watching this film expecting it to be something much, much more hilarious then it's actually trying to be. I'd be really curious to give the film a rewatch in a while, just to see how differently the film plays now my expectations have been appropriately set. But for the moment, because I had such high expectations and it was doing something so completely different what I'd hoped, <i>About Endlessness</i> is definitely a disappointment.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbgB7Bj8gm9iZ_8thR8_er0aItc2OmC3u2OT0MpZ0_upeBUm2BrVCVIgIgmVM13BEHbW6Bz2-NgPbM3-Ia5SpoLCXPqVMzhJXEsK4jKGWuQadMML8wSuueyrrtb64QxWB0zhbEGHthcqGI/s755/undine.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="534" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbgB7Bj8gm9iZ_8thR8_er0aItc2OmC3u2OT0MpZ0_upeBUm2BrVCVIgIgmVM13BEHbW6Bz2-NgPbM3-Ia5SpoLCXPqVMzhJXEsK4jKGWuQadMML8wSuueyrrtb64QxWB0zhbEGHthcqGI/w283-h400/undine.jpg" width="283" /></a><b><i>Undine</i></b></p><p>A fascinating movie that completely enthralled me, even as I'm unsure what to make of it. Undine is a historian who teaches about the architectural history of Berlin. One day she's left reeling after her longtime lover Johannes tells her that he is leaving her, and she issues him a threat - you have half an hour, and then you have to tell me that you love me, otherwise I will kill you. But that same day, she meets Christoph, an industrial diver who repairs underwater pipes, and they instantly fall in love. Until one day she sees Johannes on the street with his new partner, and shortly after Christoph has an accident and is left in a coma. </p><p>There's this weird tone of magical realism running through the film that initially left me rather baffled. Christoph finds Undine's name on some underwater ruins; when he takes her down to see them, she is carried away by a giant catfish. There's a strange phone call made by someone who definitely did not make the phone call. And there's the bizarre and beautiful conclusion, in which it's actually revealed (although I genuinely don't think it's intended to be a surprise) that Undine is not as human as she presents. Now, when I finished the film, I didn't understand what was going on, what the intent of the film was. It wasn't until I started writing this post and looked up the film to remind myself of Christoph's name that the film crystallized for me. The undine is apparently a type of water spirit from a well-known German legend, much like The Little Mermaid, in which the undine falls in love with a human but gives much the same warning to her beloved that Undine gives to Johannes. While I have no doubt that the film therefore makes complete sense to its original German viewers, who would bring all this background to the film, the issue, at least for me and for other non-German viewers, is that none of this context is on screen. Plus, we're seemingly starting at the end of the story - Johannes is presumably the person that Undine left her underwater life for, as he doesn't seem surprised or put out by the threat that she gives, as though he already knows what she is, knows that she did give that warning, and accepts it. The film feels like it's being subversive in the way it's using this legend, particularly in the way it almost allows Undine to remain human by transferring her love from Johannes to Christoph. But without establishing some sense of the rules and mythology that the film is playing with, it does become a barrier to many audiences. Now maybe that's fine, maybe he's genuinely trying to focus his attention on German viewers, in which case the choice to omit such explanation is reasonable. After all, if you were to make a movie for New Zealand viewers and only New Zealand viewers, it might be reasonable to have a scene where a character called Maui goes fishing, and not put in any explanation, because your audience will get it. But that decision then has wider impact on the film if it gets a more international release. And that's what Petzold has done here. </p><p>The thing is, there is something about Christian Petzold that I just find compelling. This is the third Petzold film I've seen, and I have real issues with each. With <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2016/06/power-redux.html#:~:text=phoenix" target="_blank">Phoenix</a></i>, it's the dozen different plot contrivances and improbable actions that I can't believe. With <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2019/07/triumph-redux.html#:~:text=transit" target="_blank">Transit</a></i>, it's the choice to take a story that's plainly set in WWII and to place it in modern times to make the metaphor painfully obvious. And here, it's the choice to simply omit so much vital context that unless the name Undine means something to you going in then you simply will not understand the film. And yet there's something about his work that lingers and compels. A couple of weeks ago I was listening to <a href="https://usaquizshow.com/" target="_blank">The Great American Pop Culture Quiz Show</a> podcast, and in one of the questions they played a brief audio clip from <i>Phoenix</i>, and instantly I recognised the sound of this film that I saw once six years ago - that's a sign of how much his films stay with you. He has a care and restraint to his filmmaking that is striking and impactful. He's not showy, there's nothing particularly distinctive about his style or the way he makes films, but yet in a low-key way his films can just be devastatingly beautiful to look at. (There's a reason why they used the image of <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/assets/resized/sm/upload/lg/83/0t/m9/Undine-2000x1125px-2000-2000-1125-1125-crop-fill.jpg?k=ed6a27649c" target="_blank">Undine in the pool</a> as the art for one of the cards that played before every movie - it's simply a stunning image.) Even if his storytelling bothers me, I know I can rely on Petzold for sublime filmmaking. </p><p>One thing I found fascinating was the focus the film had on architecture. Undine's job involves delivering lectures about Berlin through the viewpoint of its architecture, and in particular what East Berlin looked like under the GDR, and how those spaces were transformed following reunification - and this is not a minor detail, this is not a token job; we get multiple scenes of her delivering her lectures, including a scene where she practices her lecture with Christoph in between their lovemaking, so Petzold clearly felt that this was important. His past films that I've seen have had a very strong thematic focus on the war and the way the wounds of that conflict resonate through time. Similarly, here we learn how 30 years on Berlin's physical existence is still shaped by the GDR era. Even when the previous buildings are torn down and replaced, the dimensions of those buildings define the space into which these new places will go. You can still look through the city as it currently is to see the city it once was. As to why this might be the chosen profession of a water spirit, that I'm not sure of, but I think it's about the interplay of modernity and history and mythology - at one point she talks about the initial founding of the settlement that would grow to become Berlin, and it feels very intimate, as though this was a place where mythology once reigned, but as the city grew the significance of these stories faded even as their power remained and could still be seen. So it becomes a metaphor for the lingering strength of these legends in a modern world. </p><p>So these are my initials thoughts about what the film is trying to get at. They're still very bare bones and undeveloped, but I feel like I'll be reflecting on this one for a while. Suffice it to say, I really enjoyed the film, and now that I have a better grasp of the legend that the film is engaging with, I feel my appreciation of the film is growing.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBpLi1ruXx0xXpnTzqUXTDwn82Th08aLb18D4_vG6L7PfofKcgC4fUwl9eW_HWafvPYpUZXl0l0A1Mh99ZQjSzzoxln57nWdrHDpJgPdf271H984RWsLpiP7MwEeG2ZDZYPK73IJ2w66PO/s1936/paris_13th_district.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1936" data-original-width="1276" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBpLi1ruXx0xXpnTzqUXTDwn82Th08aLb18D4_vG6L7PfofKcgC4fUwl9eW_HWafvPYpUZXl0l0A1Mh99ZQjSzzoxln57nWdrHDpJgPdf271H984RWsLpiP7MwEeG2ZDZYPK73IJ2w66PO/w264-h400/paris_13th_district.jpg" width="264" /></a><b><i>Paris, 13th District</i></b></p><p>In an apartment in Paris, Emilie is looking for a roommate. She's surprised to find the applicant Camille is male, but he's nice, and he's hot, and they casually fall into a roommates-with-benefits arrangement, until he decides to end the arrangement and things go south. Meanwhile, Nora is a 32 year old adult student going to law school; already distanced from the other students by her age, she becomes the subject of much taunting after being mistaken for a pornstar, and is forced to quit school. Instead she starts working at a real estate agency with Camille, and as the two start a relationship, she also seeks out the pornstar and starts chatting to her online. </p><p>So you can tell the type of film this will be pretty much from the opening scene, as we find Emilie sitting naked on her couch singing karaoke. And as the film progresses, it's confirmed that this is a film in which three of the four leads are attractive young women, one playing a literal pornstar, who are all willing to take their clothes off on camera, and so the film has them do it as often as possible. The film is interested in their sex lives, seemingly to the exclusion of all else - there's even an absurd scene where Emilie, having just matched with someone on some Tinder stand-in app while working as a waitress, asks a coworker to cover for her while she "runs an errand", so she can run home, have sex (multiple positions), before returning to work and literally dancing between the tables with real "just got laid" energy. The film genuinely starts to feel like there is someone off screen with a stopwatch tracking how long it has been since we last saw boobs; it feels exploitative, and the decision to shoot in black and white started to feel like a cynical exercise to justify the nudity by proclaiming that "It's art". </p><p>The sad thing is that there are some wonderful performances by excellent actors who are not well used by the material. Noémie Merlant as Nora is just a star, playing the role with the most subtlety and shading to her character. Depending on her circumstance, she's either confident or timid, forthright or completely closed off, consumed by desire or shrinking violet; she navigates those turns expertly, and is just a fascinating performer to watch. Lucie Zhang as Emilie has much less to play with, as her character is basically just trying to survive until her next lay, but she's an appealing and charismatic screen presence. And Jehnny Beth as the pornstar Amber Sweet really does have a nothing role, existing simply as a presence on a computer screen, but she's interesting enough that I wanted to see her enter into the film's narrative more. </p><p>The film is filled with strange choices and forgotten plot threads. They take great care to establish that Camille is a teacher, but we never see him teaching, and when we do see him at work he's suddenly a real estate agent for some reason; the film gives some hand-waving excuse about why he's no longer a teacher, but it's a lot of additional complication when the simplest thing would be to just have him be in real estate from the beginning. The film includes a scene where Nora encounters one of the students that taunted her, and out of nowhere Nora punches her in the face; it's in the middle of the street, there are witnesses, there will be no difficulty identifying her, she should definitely be facing some kind of assault charge, and yet the film forgets this happened the moment the scene ends. They have a subplot in which Camille's sister aspires to be a stand-up comedian; we hear about all the original material she's writing, but the only joke we actually hear her deliver is a very well-known joke I instantly recognised as being by Jerry Seinfeld - again they hand-wave it with a line about how she didn't write all of her material, but if the film's writers couldn't think of a single original joke (and it doesn't have to be a great joke - she is only starting, after all), why not have her aspire to something else? </p><p>There are also so many interesting story directions the film could take but just ignores. There's an occasionally recurring plot involving Emilie not visiting her Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother in a rest home, and then once she does visit her she finds the experience too distressing. But later, when she takes in a new roommate, she offers to discount the rent if the roommate will pretend to be her and visit the grandmother regularly. That's the last we hear of this arrangement, but did that happen, and what was the experience like for the roommate? What about the younger sister, who struggles with a bad stutter that goes away whenever she is performing - that sounds like something I'd like to explore. Sure, the idea of her being a stand-up is bad, but you could easily achieve the same goal by her wanting to be an actor. </p><p>Most frustratingly, there's the story of Nora's friendship with pornstar Amber, which to me tells the story from the completely wrong point of view. I would imagine that people in that type of profession would have to be extremely protective of themselves, and create a clear delineation between their personal and their professional lives. There's a moment where Nora asks Amber what her real name is, and you can see Amber tense up, you can tell this is something she gets asked a lot and cannot answer for her protection. And so it threw me when Amber answers the question, and even gives Norah her private details so they can chat for hours outside of the expensive cam service. But they tell this entire story from the point of view of Nora, with Amber as just this fantasy figure on screen, when it's much more fascinating to see that friendship from Amber's point of view, explore that delineation between her public and private persona, and understand what it is that she needs that she gets from this friendship. </p><p>This was just frustrating. Whenever the filmmaker was given a choice about which direction to take the film, he always chooses the more prurient option. There's the germ of an interesting film in here, but this isn't it.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbqFHY19j8eRbCrgEfF_qiNh1x2YySvIyChY185_OFI-l1g8zPH5wSzv6u7GxrWv7rlkNW6HxeQP0-QLD4rtcQ7zCQrwWFPXGn3XNmrZMCflO4ztjFLw1EGRHP21VVV2kzxNBwgWc4wCuu/s1091/written_on_the_wind.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1091" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbqFHY19j8eRbCrgEfF_qiNh1x2YySvIyChY185_OFI-l1g8zPH5wSzv6u7GxrWv7rlkNW6HxeQP0-QLD4rtcQ7zCQrwWFPXGn3XNmrZMCflO4ztjFLw1EGRHP21VVV2kzxNBwgWc4wCuu/w264-h400/written_on_the_wind.jpg" width="264" /></a><b><i>Written on the Wind</i></b></p><p>The last of this year's "classic" screenings was this melodrama by Douglas Sirk. My knowledge of Sirk is sadly fairly limited, having only seen a couple of his films at Film Society a number of years ago, so it was nice to finally see possibly his best-known title. </p><p>It's night, and Robert Stack is drunkenly racing his sports car down the road until he arrives at his mansion to angrily confront Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall. Shots are fired, and Bacall collapses to the ground. Cut to a couple of years earlier, and Hudson is the best friend of Stack, portraying the playboy son of an oil magnate. Hudson meets executive secretary Bacall, fairly promptly falls for her, and is disappointed in her when she is fairly easily won over by Stack's incredible wealth and marries her. The relationship seems like a positive influence on Stack, until he starts drinking after learning that he cannot father children. Meanwhile Stack's sister, in an Oscar-winning performance by Dorothy Malone, is devastated that Hudson doesn't want to be with her, so quells that pain by going home with any guy she can. </p><p>It's probably the fact that the film was set among the oil wealthy, but the film this brought to mind was <i>Giant</i>, the James Dean film from the same year (also starting Rock Hudson) - which was odd for me because I really did not like <i>Giant</i> and haven't thought about it since watching the film 15 years ago. Now, I may be misremembering that film but in my memory, <i>Giant</i> took the grand settings and wide-open spaces to tell the American epic, a story of importance about how this country was made. It was nominated for a bunch of Oscars, won for Directing - and it's a film I never hear referenced. By contrast, certainly Sirk's films are painted today with a justified reputation of being classics, but there's something about <i>Written on the Wind</i> when compared to a film like <i>Giant</i> that feels almost disreputable, a bit trashy. There's so much sex and alcoholism and abuse and fighting and nymphomania and maybe even hints at homosexuality, but it's all done with glamour and beauty and some incredible use of Technicolor. This really does feel like the forerunner to the primetime soap operas of the 1980s (obviously the setting, with oil wells littering the country, calls to mind <i>Dallas</i>), with unimaginably wealthy people living impossibly glamorous lives of debauchery, with a sexual frankness that's surprising for a film made at a time when the Hays Code was still very much in control. </p><p>To be honest, the more I think about that, this feels like it broke my mind. I'm suddenly realising Douglas Sirk may be a different director to the person I'd imagined, and now I feel I really need to dig in to his work and see what he was really like as a filmmaker.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie0CiEG2SWdj38ZwT317gOObVG0V5KgFsvlhv4DnvOcnrGb1HkBw5KOokgchWpyIFsAiJvYDU7_q9JAwFxuLcg9r7Rq-qLsp2yaVjW6B_R2IrgmQPYj00oVkND-Tu3jj9JJ6a9COOb3-lJ/s755/apples.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="531" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie0CiEG2SWdj38ZwT317gOObVG0V5KgFsvlhv4DnvOcnrGb1HkBw5KOokgchWpyIFsAiJvYDU7_q9JAwFxuLcg9r7Rq-qLsp2yaVjW6B_R2IrgmQPYj00oVkND-Tu3jj9JJ6a9COOb3-lJ/w281-h400/apples.jpg" width="281" /></a><i><b>Apples</b></i></p><p>An intriguing and sad little comedy from Greece, <i>Apples</i> takes place in a world in which an epidemic of amnesia is taking control. Thousands of people are just forgetting who they are. The film focuses on one man who is on the bus when he forgets, and without any identification or idea where he was going or where he lives, he's just taken to the hospital. But then the doctors propose a new treatment - the patients take part in various common life activities, not as a way of trying to recover lost memories, but as a way to start to build a new identity. They have to take part in an activity - ride a bike, go clubbing, see a movie - and take a Polaroid picture of themselves doing this activity. The cameras eventually become a defining mark identifying those who have forgotten from those who have not. And then one day he meets a woman who has also forgotten, and they become friends, undertaking their individual activities together. And through all that, we get brief hints that perhaps his memories are coming back to him. </p><p>It's an absolutely terrifying concept, but it underpins a film that is sweet and gentle. The film is essentially contemplating what it is that defines the person we are - to what degree are our personalities ingrained, and to what degree are they developed through our experiences. Here, the people who have forgotten are genuine blank slates, entirely affectless - and that's the point of the experiment, to see whether they can create personalities through experiences. But because these people are essentially going through identical experiences, they're all essentially remaining identical people. Because it's not just the experiences that you have that define you, it's the context around you having that experience. It's not necessarily, say, that the experience of having your first drink of alcohol per se means anything; the more significant question is how old you were, why did you have that drink, and who were the others around. And we're also defined by the experiences we don't have - there's a scene where he has to go to a strip club and get a lap dance; that's an experience I've never had, and I think that fact in itself defines a lot about me. But when these people are going through these experiences in a rote manner, it actively works against the development of personality by denying people their choice of what to do. </p><p>There's a scene late in the movie that I think speaks to the core point of view of the film. The man has been tasked with visiting with an old man in hospital who's on his way out, and to just talk and spend time with him. And as they talk he discovers that the old man has a wife, but she's one of the people who have forgotten, and the man reflects that perhaps this is better. The pain of grief only afflicts us because we are able to remember what we lost. But is it really better to forget, or would that simply be replacing one pain with another, if we're aware of a gap in our mind with no idea what's supposed to do it? Inevitably, it forces one to think of <i>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</i>, certainly the best cinematic exploration about identity and memory and how our experiences define us. This is not as good as <i>Eternal Sunshine</i>, but it is intriguing and fascinating, and I really did enjoy it. </p><p>I don't know how easy it will be to see <i>Apples</i>, but if you do get a chance, it is well worth your time.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0s1eCzyjscPE4EF-R4JJ5F1iU0moA9wWhN_-HomnLUz_e0hTPAXnIG5Nn61PZV2uesh3Su1Z1dFVr1IwDg1CmJuj5vAkO_10DamGLw89rW0cR1ub7pBYrc5x-RdzXrjObZQWZES9MCflB/s1732/one_second.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1732" data-original-width="1166" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0s1eCzyjscPE4EF-R4JJ5F1iU0moA9wWhN_-HomnLUz_e0hTPAXnIG5Nn61PZV2uesh3Su1Z1dFVr1IwDg1CmJuj5vAkO_10DamGLw89rW0cR1ub7pBYrc5x-RdzXrjObZQWZES9MCflB/w269-h400/one_second.jpg" width="269" /></a><b><i>One Second</i></b></p><p>The new film from the great Chinese auteur Zhang Yimou. During the time of the Cultural Revolution in China, we see a man trekking across the desert desperate to get to a small town that is due to show a movie. Unfortunately he's too late - the screening has taken place, and the film reels are packed on a bike and ready to go to the next town. But then he sees a young girl steal one of the reels, and he chases her down, desperate to make sure that nothing will prevent the next screening from taking place. And so this antagonistic relationship develops between these two people with diametrically opposed goals. And even if they get all of the film reels to the next town, there are other problems that will emerge to prevent the screening. But still the man is desperate to ensure the screening proceeds, just so that he can watch one single second of footage. </p><p>It's been a long time coming for this film. The movie was originally supposed to screen in Berlin in 2019, until China withdrew it at the last second due to "technical problems" - which most people assume means it had some content that the Chinese censors needed to cut. And I can believe that there was material in this film that had to be removed - there is certainly some criticism, albeit soft criticism, about aspects of life in Mao's China that I can easily believe might initially have been stronger. </p><p>I really enjoyed <i>One Second</i> - a delightful reflection on the power of cinema. If there's one thing we've learnt over the past two years, it's the power of a communal experience, of sitting in the dark with an audience sharing this time together. Here we have this town that always comes together whenever there's a movie to watch - and these are not new movies, they've seen them all before and can even debate the merits of one title versus another, but they just love to gather in one place, watch a great story, enjoy singing the patriotic song, and have a wonderful shared time as a group. And there's this fantastic sequence, when it seems the screening may be cancelled, where the community excitedly comes together to work to ensure it can proceed, because that's how important this experience is for these people. </p><p>It's very easy for us in our world to become very blasé about the moving image. We are so used to carrying around these powerful movie cameras in our pockets that we've forgotten what a magic trick it really is. For almost the entirety of human existence, a moment is lost once it happens, and exists only in the memory. But 125 years ago this invention of the moving picture changed the world, and suddenly time could be preserved. And that's so incredibly important, so valuable to people. But also, it's such a fragile medium. Physical film is so vulnerable to scratches and damage, digital media has its own challenges and risks. But it's so important to protect, because there is such rich power in the moving image. </p><p>One thing I feel I haven't made clear is just how funny the movie is. Zhang Yi and Liu Haocun are a wonderful double act, and their repeated efforts to cross and double-cross, to trick and to catch each other were a total delight, and ensured that there was a constant bed of laughter rippling through the audience throughout the screening. And yet the respect and affection that develops between the two for each other still feels genuine and heartfelt - frankly I don't think the film would have worked had it not. </p><p>Ultimately it does feel like lesser Zhang Yimou. It's certainly moving at times, but it doesn't have the rich emotional underpinnings that many of his best films have; and while it's certainly a beautiful film (<i>Dune</i> is going to be hard-pressed to beat it for stunning shots of vast deserts), the more natural design doesn't blow you away in the way that his more visually extraordinary films do. But it's a sweet and charming story that at its core celebrates something I love.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOGmfqLzCEY1hLV9L_1N1Kg0AORM3NdnshyoouyHFFlOwD4Th2GgAuVhyF2TgkZOP2KzrGijC5ZzH5a8VJ9eSIcP5D0YC_BnrLfb5y82HOKZ_M1DKnT4c8yBEHBPk2nAF-RypBnN6VQuDG/s755/titane.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="515" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOGmfqLzCEY1hLV9L_1N1Kg0AORM3NdnshyoouyHFFlOwD4Th2GgAuVhyF2TgkZOP2KzrGijC5ZzH5a8VJ9eSIcP5D0YC_BnrLfb5y82HOKZ_M1DKnT4c8yBEHBPk2nAF-RypBnN6VQuDG/w273-h400/titane.jpg" width="273" /></a><b><i>Titane</i></b></p><p>Before the screening, we were reminded that this is only the second film from a female director to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes. The first woman to win the prize was Jane Campion. Well, <i>The Piano</i> this definitely is not. </p><p>I've been interested in this film for a while. I was really impressed by Julia Ducournau's first film, the cannibalism horror <i>Raw</i>, so was already interested to see where she would go next. I was certainly intrigued when she won the Palme d'Or, and even more so when every critic I saw gave some variation on the advice to "watch the film without reading about it in advance or having any idea where it's going". So that's what I did - and when you don't know where it's going: wow, what a ride. </p><p>(And I'm spoiling pretty much everything about the film now, because I just have to. You have been warned.) </p><p>Alexia is an exotic dancer who performs at car shows, doing incredible routines on the hoods of the vehicles. One night as she's leaving the show, she's confronted by a stalker, and stabs him in the head. While showering to clean herself up after the killing, she hears a noise which leads her out to a car that seems to be alive. So she gets into the backseat of the car and ... has sex with the car (?). And becomes pregnant (?) to the car. She then proceeds to murder a lot of people in a very short space of time. (It's at this point, about 30 minutes in, that we had our first walk-out from the cinema.) And so Alexia, trying to evade capture for her many murders, takes on the identity of Adrien, a long-missing teenage boy who is the son of the local fire chief. But if she's going to convince as a boy, she needs to hide the fact that she has a pregnant belly and breasts, along with hiding the fact that her belly is being ripped opened by the child(?) inside her and that her breasts are now lactating motor oil. </p><p>Yeah, so... that's a thing that happened. </p><p>I genuinely do not know how a film as insane as this won an award as prestigious as the Palme d'Or. All I can think is that the quality of the filmmaking is so undeniable that it had to win. There's such bravura confidence and talent running through every minute of the film that it just astonishes you. There is a control over the audience's response on display in every moment. Here's one example - there's a moment where Alexia is bashing someone in the head with a stool, and you can feel the audience cringing in pain. But then she flips the stool, and kills the person by ramming the stool leg down the person's throat - at which point the entire audience laughed in uncomfortable astonishment at what we just saw. But then, she's feeling exhausted, so needing a rest she sits down on the stool, which gets a genuine laugh because it's a genuine joke. And the film is constantly making that transition between shock horror, shocked laughter, and genuine laughter, and it always feels like at every moment Ducournau knows what response she's trying to get and is getting. </p><p>You can feel the director's confidence right from the start of the film. After a brief prologue involving Alexia as a young child, the film proper starts with a stunning shot (apparently a genuine single take) as Alexia walks through the crowded car show, navigating all the corners, until she reaches her car, and gives this elaborate performance with the car, almost giving it a lapdance. It's packed and chaotic, and almost completely overrides your senses with the garish artificial lighting and the overpowering chrome gleam everywhere. You admire the technical achievement in filming this sequence, but more than that it imparts a real sense of Alexia as being in control over this environment. We feel exhausted in this place, but she feels at home. It's an opening that makes a statement - that we're about to spend the next few hours in the hands of a genuine visionary. </p><p>The thing is, while the first half of the film is absolutely insane, it's really in the second half of the film that we get to the rich emotional core of the film. As the film was unfolding, I found myself remembering <i><a href="https://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2013/06/shadow-redux.html#:~:text=the%20imposter" target="_blank">The Imposter</a></i>, a documentary from a few years ago. That film was about a person who falsely claimed to be a long-missing child and went to live with this child's family. A big part of that documentary rested on the question of why this family was so willing to receive this imposter and were so easy to convince that he was the missing son. <i>Titane</i> basically rests its explanation in grief - there is an incomprehensible pain that comes with knowing your child has died, but it's even harder when your child is missing and you have no definitive answer as to whether they are alive or dead, and so it almost becomes an emotional release to have someone they can accept as their son. By the end of the film, no-one believes that this is Adrien, and yet everyone carries on as though it is, because it's easier to have Adrien back, even if he's not. </p><p>This is absolutely Agathe Rousselle's film - everything hangs on her. The first half goes to such extreme lengths to alienate us and present her as a monster that you almost can't imagine spending nearly 2 hours with her. And yet by the end, she so transforms the character that you feel genuine sympathy for her. The thing that makes it even more impressive is how little dialogue she has. Now, in the second half, that makes sense - she's pretending to be a teenage boy, and if she speaks that ruse will end quickly, so she pretends to be silenced by trauma. But even in the first half she's taciturn to an extreme. Instead the entire character is embodied in her physical performance - Alexia is a dancer, so her entire being is about physical expression, and this runs through the performance. Every movement, every look, every lip movement expresses the soul of this character. It's a stunning display. </p><p>But the film also has an excellent performance by Vincent Lindon as the father of Adrien. The film is very much engaged with ideas of masculinity, and it's in Vincent and his role as fire chief that these ideas get their fullest exploration. There's a machismo running through his scenes and those of the other firefighters that is almost overpowering - Vincent even resorts to taking steroids out of fear of aging and a perception that he needs to be able to dominate the other men. And when it comes to his scenes with his son "Adrien", it's fascinating to see his discomfort at how expressing any form of affection conflicts with his perception of being a man. And there's also a lot of regret in the performance - we never learn what happened to Adrien, but I had the impression that it's possible Adrien, at least initially, might have run away, perhaps in response to a father who was never comfortable being loving, and so the way he treats "Adrien" feels like he's trying to redeem his past actions and force himself to be different this time. </p><p>This is not a film I would recommend to many people. This is a film for people who watched David Cronenberg's <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(1996_film)" target="_blank">Crash</a></i> (not the one that won the Oscar; the one about the sexual appeal of car crashes) and decided that film wasn't extreme enough - something that has never before been said about Cronenberg. It's tough and provocative and uncomfortable, but it is also a masterful display of filmmaking talent that feels almost instinctive. I think I liked it.</p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-28480837091843980162021-11-04T23:24:00.002+13:002021-11-05T00:12:21.086+13:00An anti-climactic suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings... mainly happy endings<p>So here's the thing,</p><p>With the 2021 film festival starting tonight (with a screening of <i>The Power of the Dog</i> that I couldn't get tickets for), I find myself reflecting on last year's festival, and how that was a strange anticlimax of a festival. While New Zealand was fully open by the time the 2020 festival took place (certainly much more so then we are now at the time of the 2021 festival), the festival organisers did not know that when they had to put in place the plans for a Covid-affected festival. Which is why, rather than the massive number of screenings in packed cinemas, we instead had a festival that was largely driven by online screenings at home, with only a small number of cinema screenings at (with one exception) a single cinema, the Roxy. And I love the Roxy, I'm there at least once every weekend, but there is something special about the big screen at the Embassy and sitting in a packed crowd of 700 people in that cinema. And so it was disappointing that I wouldn't be able to have that experience at last year's festival.</p><p>The thing is, I get excited about the festival as an event. I love spending the weekend before tickets go on sale constructing spreadsheets to track all of my films and figure out the best way to maximise my viewings. I get excited by the experience of buying tickets, whether it's queuing in the cold for hours on end (as I used to do), or the frustration of fighting with the festival website to get the tickets I want - that's all part of the thrill knowing that the festival is about to happen. It makes it feel like an event.</p><p>But there was no sense of the event in the festival last year. For those films that I was seeing in cinema, the screenings just dropped on the cinema's website like any other movie - no mad rush to get my seats. And even with the smaller cinema size (200 seats at the Roxy vs 700 at the Embassy), I don't think any of the films I attended were sold out, not even the "big event" films that always sell out quickly. And for those screenings that weren't in cinema and were only available online - well, there was no need for haste to secure tickets; I just rented the movies online as they became available. And my film numbers this year were well down on usual - only 21 films, when most festivals I'd be doing over 30, up to 40 films. </p><p>My waning enthusiasm even fed through to the usual Facebook posts where I reflect on each film. I found it a struggle motivating myself to write about each film, and indeed I eventually gave up without ever recording my responses to my final two films of the festival. But, for what it's worth, here are the posts that I wrote responding to almost all of the films I saw at last year's festival.</p><p><i>[Comments on a number of the 2020 film festival movies, after the jump.]</i></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/the-truth/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><span><a name='more'></a></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPJEezqeIDr553UY2gMwMKWl2sTVVMHWH2eblJ_CRMH3gP1zG-tpK0EJMinAmImZQdhCZNSioJWKe4NNtSPfCiIqFF5BTLc_b4e0TmIHL-VaLQE0qR3HyROsIzIgqCQDFltQot3ejuy1qI/s755/truth.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPJEezqeIDr553UY2gMwMKWl2sTVVMHWH2eblJ_CRMH3gP1zG-tpK0EJMinAmImZQdhCZNSioJWKe4NNtSPfCiIqFF5BTLc_b4e0TmIHL-VaLQE0qR3HyROsIzIgqCQDFltQot3ejuy1qI/w270-h400/truth.jpg" width="270" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/the-truth/" target="_blank">The Truth</a></i></b> (in cinema) <p></p><p>The new film from Japanese master filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda finds him leaving Japan to tell a story that feels distinctly European. The legendary Catherine Deneuve stars as Fabienne, a celebrated French actress whose newly published memoir presents a rosy and idyllic portrait of her life and her family - a view not shared by Juliette Binoche as her screenwriter daughter (who comes to stay with her second-rate-actor husband and their young girl), who remembers a mother who openly expressed a preference for being a great actor and a terrible mother then the other way around, who ignored her daughter's needs, and who callously hurt even her closest friends.</p><p>There's often a tendency for filmmakers with experience working in a particular culture to lose something distinctive when they leave to make a film in a different country and a different culture. So when I heard about Kore-eda making a film with Deneuve, Binoche, and Ethan Hawke, while I was excited to see that cast working together with a great director, I was inevitably concerned that the film might lose some of what makes Kore-eda's work so fantastic. His films are marked by richly defined characters, a lack of incident, and an affectionate observational tone, and I was delighted to realise that this was carried over. It feels like a genuine Kore-eda film, with rich, lived-in characters that have history and shared understanding, and while we learn enough to comprehend the events, we're let in slowly and naturally, and even when the film ends there are significant gaps in our understanding, as though we really were just observing a family that don't feel the need to provide expository dialogue to explain everything they've ever done.</p><p>As expected, the performances are uniformly excellent. Deneuve is wonderful, portraying a character who could be genuinely nasty - she's constantly on the attack and undercutting her daughter with passive-aggressive barbs - but she clearly communicates the pain and regret that underlies her actions, and as a result, we feel genuine sympathy for her. Similarly, Binoche carries a lifetime of understandable frustration and resentment, but this never overwhelms her love for her mother, and the real joy of the film is just in watching these two women work and act together, portraying the developing connection as they work to overcome their history and build a new relationship. </p><p>I do feel that this is a lesser Kore-eda film - which is not a criticism, even a lesser work of his is pretty great. But one of the things that I think marks his work is a sense of authentic experience, where you feel that Kore-eda is digging into his own past for experiences that he can mine for his work - I always come back to the moment in <i>Our Little Sister</i> where the sisters make plum wine. But here, he's working with a European culture that is very different then the one he's used to, and so he doesn't feel like he has those same memories to draw on. I also felt that the script at times felt somewhat on-the-nose, as though he wrote the script in Japanese, and it lost some of his usual subtlety as it was translated into French. But that said, whether he had made this film in Japanese or French, we are inevitably at the mercy of the subtitle translators, so it's difficult to know where the fault lies in this. It's not a major problem with the film, just an observation about something that occasionally disappointed me. Also, the films I've seen of his have otherwise always had a down-to-earth cast of characters (his last film was about a poverty-stricken family of shoplifters), so it's disorienting to watch a film that's focused on such an immensely wealthy and high profile family. But these are comparatively minor quibbles.</p><p>The film is another reliably beautiful and compassionate portrait of the complexities of family life, and it was an absolute delight to be so captivated by it. I'll be interested to see where Kore-eda takes his career, whether he returns to Japan or continues to tell his stories in other countries. And if it is the latter, I'll be excited to see how his work grows and changes as he becomes more used to working in languages and cultures other than his own.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/true-history-of-the-kelly-gang/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKWiAASHa-vlFcMorf5SMtiMbvlMonS6DznAmySmHndH8AKXgYNpt30yQFpvTpFa5hcflnZqezFTsZyn-MBfNrEPv1BuPT2OcdARcSXGsUvzNkycy6oi-3Zj8zYAlQ-Frw6ojBKk9WjmYi/s755/true_history_of_the_kelly_gang.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKWiAASHa-vlFcMorf5SMtiMbvlMonS6DznAmySmHndH8AKXgYNpt30yQFpvTpFa5hcflnZqezFTsZyn-MBfNrEPv1BuPT2OcdARcSXGsUvzNkycy6oi-3Zj8zYAlQ-Frw6ojBKk9WjmYi/w270-h400/true_history_of_the_kelly_gang.jpg" width="270" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/true-history-of-the-kelly-gang/" target="_blank">True History of the Kelly Gang</a></i></b> (in cinema)<p></p><p>Inspired by the story of Ned Kelly, <i>True History of the Kelly Gang</i> introduces us to Ned in his youth, the son of a drunken wastrel and a withholding mother who prostitutes herself. And we follow him as he's taught to be a bush ranger, sent to prison, comes out trying to prove that he's different to his disreputable family, until he finds himself inevitably forced into a life of crime, leading inevitably to a violent standoff and his eventual hanging.</p><p>I don't know much about Ned Kelly, beyond the obvious bullet-proof armour, and I'm not sure I know that much more about him now. The film opens with a title card that warns us "Nothing you are about to see is true," so I don't know whether I can take anything in the film as an accurate representation of his story - especially as the film seems to actively veer away from expectations and iconography of the story. I don't know whether it's true that the gang wore dresses as a psychological trick to make their enemies think they're insane - we spend more time with Ned wearing a sheer see-through lace dress than we do with him wearing the armour - but it's certainly an interesting story. And the film really takes advantage of the freedom that opening title card gives it to do whatever it wants to do, without needing to be bound by "the real story". So we get a film that feels much more expressionistic and surreal, feeling less like a story than a collection of moments that just feel disorientating and bizarre, with a filmed image that at times actually draws attention to how constructed the elements in the frame are, and a movie soundtrack that is frequently period-inappropriate (electric guitars wailing) while accurately reflecting the mood and sensibility of the film. The film culminates in an incredible presentation of Ned Kelly's final standoff against the authorities, filmed with a shocking strobe lighting effect that actively assaults you and makes it hard to watch, even as the authorities are presented wearing cloaks that glow in the dark. It's a stunning moment that almost certainly has nothing in common with how you would portray the actual events, but that convincingly communicates the experience of being a man trapped and forced into making one last stand. </p><p>At the same time, there's real emotion and richness to the film. Ned is presented as someone who is constantly trying to prove himself to his mother, from the moment where as a young child he somehow kills a cow and brings it home to prove to his mother that he can provide for the family in a way his father cannot, to the sadness of their final interaction before Ned's execution. And is there something uncomfortably Oedipal in their connection? Well, you couldn't say it's not there. But you never feel like you know where his mother will be - one minute she's refusing an offer to give Ned an education because she needs him around her, the next she's selling him off to work as a servant to a criminal. And so many of his actions are driven by this emotional insecurity which we absolutely understand and connect with.</p><p>George Mackay is just a revelation here, physically imposing while somehow gangly and uncomfortable, and with a pronounced glower in his eyes. And his work with Essie Davis, the way he reverts back to a young boy in her presence, is just remarkable. Davis is herself impressive, with a cool and determined impassiveness that communicates the sense of a woman who understands what it takes to survive in this barren land. And the supporting cast is filled with excellent actors doing enjoyable work. Nicholas Hoult is continuing this bizarre career he's built of playing complete assholes with such delight that you find yourself wanting to like them. Thomasin McKenzie brings real tenderness and sadness to the role of a young mother and prostitute that Ned falls in love with. And even in the small roles, the film is packed with notable performances - I wasn't expecting Charlie Hunnam or Russell Crowe to turn up for 5 or 10 minutes and then leave the film, but I was glad they did, with Russell Crowe's work in particular being a real spark of life that comes to define the person that Ned becomes.</p><p>Ultimately, it's a fascinating movie that explores the slow progress and inevitability that can lead a person inexorably towards a path of destruction, but it does so with such energy and lightness of touch that it never feels like a burden. I really enjoyed this one.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/relic/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgANJfHp27IXCnjVLc0SRqsEoV7nAopUw13GdlUKfoqsvFQ_NwUEXDfqQdKS164M_AOhL1yW2DfF9D1sJggI3CTYUH7RAuUyoS4_cO1SMvexsNviUw2__Q6uIWkB4kXR4ddj50ufUIFrU5c/s755/relic.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="511" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgANJfHp27IXCnjVLc0SRqsEoV7nAopUw13GdlUKfoqsvFQ_NwUEXDfqQdKS164M_AOhL1yW2DfF9D1sJggI3CTYUH7RAuUyoS4_cO1SMvexsNviUw2__Q6uIWkB4kXR4ddj50ufUIFrU5c/w271-h400/relic.jpg" width="271" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/relic/" target="_blank">Relic</a></i></b> (in cinema)<p></p><p>When her elderly mother goes missing, Kay (played by Emily Mortimer) travels with her twentysomething daughter to her mother's house in the hope of finding her. But after three days missing, the mother just turns up, making a cup of tea, and claiming to be unaware of having gone missing at all. Kay is convinced that her mother has dementia, and starts looking into care options - but does dementia really explain all of her mother's strange actions, or the ominous shadows that intrude in the house, or the growing mould patch and the mysterious banging noises that can be heard behind it?</p><p><i>Relic</i> is a really clear example of the strengths of the horror genre. We're all afraid of getting old, of our bodies ageing and decaying, to say nothing of the absolute terror that comes with the prospect of dementia, of losing your mind - and possibly the only thing worse than that, having to care for someone you love as they are transformed by dementia. It only takes a few slight tweaks to turn that idea into a horror film, and then use that to explore real ideas and questions about the nature of our existence. And the film is extremely effective as it explores that idea. And it's a metaphor that allows a great deal of flexibility in its horror exploration - one moment it's an unsettling psychological thriller, the next the decaying body of the grandmother pushes the film into pure body horror, or suddenly it's like she's someone or something else and it's a monster movie.</p><p>I also really appreciated the film's bravery in never really explaining what was going on. Sure, it hints at different things, we get little elements of backstory, but it's only ever snippets, we never get all the pieces, so it just all seems incomprehensible. And that's part of the effectiveness of the metaphor, because from my understanding the type of transformation that a person undergoes as they deal with dementia can seem impossible to explain or comprehend. Similar films will usually reach a point where they stop the story to drop a lot of exposition, explaining every detail about who the monster is and what it's doing, and I admired the film's bravery in leaving all that so ambiguous.</p><p>Which is not to say that I think the filmmakers haven't done the work in establishing their film's mythology - it's pretty clear they have a clear understanding of everything that is going on in this house. In some ways, that's the reason for the one part of the film that I think doesn't work - there's an extended sequence where one character gets trapped in an impossible space that is shifting and changing around her, and while it's a very effective sequence viewed in isolation, it's the one part of the film where I found it lost track of the dementia metaphor, because this felt too separated from it. It seemed to me that in developing the mythology they developed the idea of this impossible space as part of the background to understand what's going on, and then kept the scene without ever considering whether it truly connected to what the film was about.</p><p>But to avoid ending on a small criticism, I will say that I loved the ending. You expect your typical horror film to climax with some massive horror sequence, with our main characters being chased through the house by whatever monster the grandmother has become. And that is indeed what the film does, until it stops, and become something very different, something emotional and moving. The film still remains a horror film - there's an extended piece of body horror in that final scene - but it also becomes a rich and beautiful moment with these characters, three generations of women from a single family, being united in their shared love and connection for each other. But it's not just some heart-warming ending - there's a nice bite to it as we are reminded that we all grow old, that having gone through all of this with her grandmother, at some time the daughter will go through this again with her mother, and then at some point she will be the person transformed and her future children and grandchildren will be the ones having to deal with her. It's a fantastic ending to what is overall a very strong film.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/just-65/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4oGhPcGM5odbXv_Swt4j519vEzKgh5adAKzHNg9hDoQs7jMNbWoWPK5y7PmBgQTrNJjxmbpo6TSqnW3QJW5T8lRoHndwtCTn-Ft1kHOwJm0Y6GrlmqnacqLFEZhr0w0ifgSXWHDcNhOA1/s750/just_6.5.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4oGhPcGM5odbXv_Swt4j519vEzKgh5adAKzHNg9hDoQs7jMNbWoWPK5y7PmBgQTrNJjxmbpo6TSqnW3QJW5T8lRoHndwtCTn-Ft1kHOwJm0Y6GrlmqnacqLFEZhr0w0ifgSXWHDcNhOA1/w266-h400/just_6.5.jpg" width="266" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/just-65/" target="_blank">Just 6.5</a></i></b> (at home)<p></p><p>A rather sharp crime drama from Iran, <i>Just 6.5</i> follows a group of drug cops in their efforts to stem the rising numbers of crack addicts in the country by taking down one of the main drug kingpins. We follow them as they arrest and interrogate everyone they come across (the jail cells become absurdly overpacked during the course of the film) in an attempt to find a hook that will allow them to catch their guy. And then, about halfway through the film, they catch the target, and the film becomes just as much his film as the cops, as we watch him pull every trick he has to try to manoeuvre his way out of being executed for his crimes.</p><p>I was surprised by how little the film felt like it came from Iran - the only real indication that it came from the notoriously strict religious regime is a brief conversation where one of the cops discusses his reconciliation with his estranged wife, and he's asked if that reconciliation took place to help secure a promotion, since being married is apparently a prerequisite of the job. But beyond that, this just feels like a really strong entry in a film genre that could have been made almost anywhere. I've seen comparisons to films like <i>The French Connection</i>, and that's not a bad point of reference, with a cast of obsessed cops ferociously doing everything necessary to catch the target, and a number of genuinely thrilling and suspenseful action sequences. In particular, I loved the foot chase that opens the film, which ends in frustration for the cops who lose their target, never to find him again (it's a recurring point of frustration through the rest of the film) - although the audience knows where the guy went, in a moment I've kept thinking about over the past few days.</p><p>But it's not all about being an exciting crime film. There is some interesting and challenging discussion about drug policies and the approach to fighting addiction. The title comes from an end-of-film discussion about how, when the main cop characters started their job, Iran had 1 million drug addicts, and now that's blown out to 6.5 million. But it is also "just" 6.5 million, and without their efforts it could have been 20 million. The entire film feels like an exercise in futility, and for all they talk about how "this guy is the guy to take down", there's always someone higher up that they can't catch, there's always someone else ready to fill the space. And then there's frustration over the harshness of the penalty for being found to be dealing drugs, execution for comparatively minor quantities, which results in perverse incentives for people to increase the quantity of drugs they deal - if you're just as likely to be killed for a small amount as a massive amount, there's no reason not to go big and enjoy it while it lasts. (There's also a nice moment where the drug lord, who had to be saved from a suicide attempt when he was arrested, realises that he could be executed, and expresses bafflement that they stopped him from dying for the sole purpose of killing him.)</p><p>It's a strong, solid piece of cinema. It's a shame this year's mostly-at-home streaming film festival meant I never got to watch it on the big screen, because I feel it would have played well with an audience, but I'm glad I had the chance to see it.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/heroic-losers/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiGf6BOmEIrAUnoB1pTD1wSKiiTqXa5oSdByknUk_mrBLIzqGGdzop-y-N4r3M_VayRVS5SkGLnWHF7QZqBI-HGaHLhd-JWaXDUiRK-982NiohmM36N7pJ7XkWCi2BXo080UhkwUXIVN2j/s1029/heroic_losers.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1029" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiGf6BOmEIrAUnoB1pTD1wSKiiTqXa5oSdByknUk_mrBLIzqGGdzop-y-N4r3M_VayRVS5SkGLnWHF7QZqBI-HGaHLhd-JWaXDUiRK-982NiohmM36N7pJ7XkWCi2BXo080UhkwUXIVN2j/w280-h400/heroic_losers.jpg" width="280" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/heroic-losers/" target="_blank">Heroic Losers</a></i></b> (at home) <p></p><p>A group of people living in a dying town in Argentina form a co-op to purchase and operate a granary, in order to help secure the town's future. They pool their money, and all looks like it's going well, until a caption appears on screen to tell us that this is taking place in August 2001 - which the Argentine audience will recognise means a massive banking crisis is about to hit, with massive restrictions on the amount of money that can be withdrawn. Suddenly their hundreds of thousands of dollars are inaccessible, and then they learn that a local lawyer (who knew this crisis was coming) bribed the bank manager to help him take all the money held by the bank (including their money), and all that cash is now in a heavily-alarmed secret vault hidden in a field in the middle of nowhere. So our heroes must come together to hatch a plan to break into the vault and steal back their money. </p><p>So yes, it's basically a heist film, a low level <i>Ocean's 11</i>. And that's really all there is to the film. To my mind, it doesn't really go any deeper - it has a few lines of dialogue that touch on the impact that the 2001 crisis had on ordinary citizens, but it doesn't really go any deeper than that, doesn't go into the causes of the crisis, because the crisis is really just a vehicle for getting the film's story started. So there's not really all that much depth to the film.</p><p>But that said, it is an extremely enjoyable crowd-pleasing film, and once again I wish I had seen it in a cinema, because it would have been fun to experience this with an audience, laughing at the jokes, getting caught up in the suspense as the plan seems like it's failing, cheering when things work out - just the general joy of experiencing a well-made film with an audience. There's a wide cast of appealing and distinctive characters, and while inevitably only a handful get the time to develop beyond two-dimensions, they're all fun to be around, and they all play a valuable role in the story coming together. The comedy is broad, but not annoyingly so - there's a very funny plot line about one character infiltrating the lawyer's house by posing as a gardener, despite knowing literally nothing about plants, that I have to admit made me laugh. (He also has a sweet flirtation with the lawyer's assistant, which is fun.) And they even managed to do the standard heist film trick where there's one element of the plot that's kept hidden from the audience, but while I often feel those surprise reveals can play as a cheat, here I thought the film played straight with the audience.</p><p>It's not a great film, but oh my gosh is it a fun film.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/the-unknown-saint/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQwMd_mQyslYTJSB5_GWjUKRcrLuMK6wSnjcsapNk6xhkNPQfF-hsMNNQkfKcWW3sYwTSth_6z3qlDaDn_20cjJy6plJo1NWPoySf4EueYlKvwgCln7hyphenhyphenP9LzcYohtRvInfe4d4jWmNpdY/s1000/unknown_saint.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQwMd_mQyslYTJSB5_GWjUKRcrLuMK6wSnjcsapNk6xhkNPQfF-hsMNNQkfKcWW3sYwTSth_6z3qlDaDn_20cjJy6plJo1NWPoySf4EueYlKvwgCln7hyphenhyphenP9LzcYohtRvInfe4d4jWmNpdY/w300-h400/unknown_saint.jpg" width="300" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/the-unknown-saint/" target="_blank">The Unknown Saint</a></i></b> (at home)<p></p><p>We come into this film immediately meeting our main character, an unnamed thief driving in the Moroccan desert on the run from the cops. Desperate to protect his bag of stolen money, he runs to the top of a nearby hill and buries the bag, marking the spot by making it look like a grave, before being arrested. Several years later, he returns to the once isolated location to find a new village has been built nearby, while the "grave" has been mistaken for the grave of of an unknown saint and has had a mausoleum built around it where people come to worship, preventing the from digging up his bag of stolen money.</p><p>So the film is really rather fun. It's an intriguing set up, it has some genuinely laugh out loud sequences, and the nearby village offers a solid cast of characters that you do enjoy spending time with. But I did feel that the film held me at a distance. When the film finished, I honestly don't know that I knew anything about that central thief character. He stole the money, he wants it back, and he's generally good at conning people - and that's about all you get about the main character in the film. You get slightly better characterisation with a couple of the supporting characters - the doctor who is new to the village and doesn't understand why his sole function seems to be to provide the neighbourhood hangout location, and the male nurse who is resentful towards the Mausoleum of the Unknown Saint for drawing people away from seeking medical help in favour of seeking a miracle - but the most part everyone seems like a stock character.</p><p>My big issue with the film comes back to a very simple question - how does this happen? How do you come across a grave of a person you don't know, and come to the conclusion that it is the grave of a saint? And how is it that the people in the village are so convinced that the saint has healing powers, leading them to think they just need to visit the mausoleum to receive a miracle? The film almost seems to have been conceived with the image of the bare empty hill contrasted with the image of that same hill with a mausoleum on it, and it certainly is a very funny point of comparison the first time you see it. But I struggle to believe the fundamental premise of the film. I simply don't understand how this belief in the unknown saint becomes a thing, and there's very little detail provided to us on this point - we just have to accept that it happened. But I do think the film could be much stronger if it better accommodated that fundamental question and gave a better justification for its fundamental premise.</p><p>Beyond that, the film is fine. I had fun watching it, but it really hasn't stayed with me.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/instinct/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGMm4v4hFF1Q1mG6NM_ss8a0kiJMNhxun6HpXLtx-hvRGo0K8WgwZJSsIZQQ0mCFDd1M2BZmmJbW_l6BaFR0xYt7HctGzlru-j1ujpleIr_jhIeJgnIibwZxwXbc5Mp_Z0MPvSsm8VsZDK/s755/instinct.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="529" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGMm4v4hFF1Q1mG6NM_ss8a0kiJMNhxun6HpXLtx-hvRGo0K8WgwZJSsIZQQ0mCFDd1M2BZmmJbW_l6BaFR0xYt7HctGzlru-j1ujpleIr_jhIeJgnIibwZxwXbc5Mp_Z0MPvSsm8VsZDK/w280-h400/instinct.jpg" width="280" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/instinct/" target="_blank">Instinct</a></i></b> (in cinema) <p></p><p>To be honest, I had no interest in seeing <i>Instinct</i>. Given the subject matter, it seemed like it would be a really rough film to watch, and I didn't really want to put myself through that. But then they announced a special screening at the Embassy in connection with the Film Society, which I'm a member of, and so I decided to go - especially since this would be the only time this year that a film festival film screened in the festival's traditional cinema home.</p><p>The film follows Nicoline, a prison therapist who takes up a new job, and is immediately drawn to Idris, a young man with a history of sexual assault. His casefile is filled with stories of woman who he befriended, spent time with, won over, seduced, and then, after winning their trust and their willingness to share a bed, he instead violently assaults and rapes the women. But he's been in prison for a number of years, and the prison workers see a lot of growth in him - they see him as genuinely reformed, as someone who could even be eligible for unsupervised day release. Nicoline is unconvinced, seeing signs in him that make her think he's not yet fully reformed. But as the two repeatedly interact, it becomes clear that Idris has developed some kind of intense emotional hold over Nicoline, and they start an extremely inappropriate emotional relationship.</p><p>Unsurprisingly, it's not a fun film. You find yourself on the edge the entire time just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Every scene plays as intimidation, with Idris standing much too close to Nicoline and towering over her, so we are constantly uncomfortable. And perhaps it's just that we are coming to this film knowing what it's about, and we're so in Nicoline's head and her experiences that we're not really conscious about what is noticeable to the other staff, but he feels so blatantly threatening that you wonder what the other staff, so certain that he's reformed, are thinking. </p><p>This is a female-led project - the screenwriter is a woman, the director is a woman, and Carice Van Houten (who plays Nicoline) executive produced, and so I'm assuming that the purpose of the film was to tell this type of story, where a woman becomes the victim of a terrible crime, from a more understanding and nuanced point of view than many such stories have been told in the past. And certainly I did appreciate the more interesting character that Nicoline was - neither a timid shrinking violet for whom victimisation was almost inevitable, nor an overly confident and strong woman who we can't believe would let herself get in this situation. Instead, Nicoline is a smart and capable woman, but also someone who is insecure and somewhat aimless - even in her 30s, she seems to not really know what direction she wants her life to take, she deliberately takes this job on as a temporary job, and when the idea of making the job permanent is raised, she refuses, lying that she hopes to travel. She is presented as having very little personal life, and while she has some slight flirtation with another staff member teaching basketball to the prisoners, she never really seems all that engaged with him, or indeed anything else outside of her work. This all means that it feels like it was understandable that someone who presented some risk and danger might be able to get under her skin and take hold of her.</p><p>And now we come to the crux of the film, and this was something I found extremely frustrating - and I hesitate to mention it for fear of being accused of victim-blaming, so I'll make my point by analogy. We should live in a world where we are able to leave our doors unlocked without needing to worry about being burgled. That's not the world we live in, and so we lock our doors. If we leave our door unlocked, and someone comes in and burgles the house, that's their choice and responsibility, but they were probably always going to burgle someone, and you just made it more likely that you would be the victim. But what happens in this film is not leaving the door unlocked, it's like leaving the door wide open when you know there is a burglar standing 10 feet outside your door waiting to burgle you. And in the case of this film, I'm talking about a literal door. There is a moment where she has the choice to close and lock a door, and she will be safe. She knows she should close the door. She actually says she's going to close the door. And she has a good 10 seconds where she has the opportunity to close and lock the door, and all will be right. Instead she makes a conscious choice to leave the door wide open, and that choice directly leads to her becoming a victim. And I think that's the point where the film lost me, because I felt I didn't understand her choice in that moment given that the consequences of her choice were so obvious and so terrible. The most generous interpretation I could give that scene would be to say that maybe she chose to become a victim in order to prevent others from becoming victims, but that's a spurious explanation for something that just doesn't make sense - there are many different actions she could have taken based on things that had already occurred that should have been enough to keep him locked away, but she doesn't. And unfortunately, that one scene is the entire crux of the film, and when you don't understand the main character's motivation for her actions in that scene, it does undercut the rest of the film.</p><p>It's a well-made film, and I do like that it has really forced me to revisit and reflect on it over the past week, but I do struggle to get past that key choice that she makes in the film's climax, and it is certainly not an enjoyable viewing experience. I wouldn't recommend the film, but I also wouldn't discourage anyone who's interested in it from watching it.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/corpus-christi/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirsyCCCyU6GVQiVc8n0GDxv2N7cy0eQkbm5tEhOG4-G_a4cEPxCPC7ZswKY2SUBrPc2R_h2VXxRO6-Cp_b5XTMsquo-MffNhYp7pOhNGxEPolowgVkg-6uxwY3D7_PDiC1jy8YAkZqUoJI/s755/corpus_christi.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="524" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirsyCCCyU6GVQiVc8n0GDxv2N7cy0eQkbm5tEhOG4-G_a4cEPxCPC7ZswKY2SUBrPc2R_h2VXxRO6-Cp_b5XTMsquo-MffNhYp7pOhNGxEPolowgVkg-6uxwY3D7_PDiC1jy8YAkZqUoJI/w278-h400/corpus_christi.jpg" width="278" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/corpus-christi/" target="_blank">Corpus Christi</a></i></b> (at home) <p></p><p>At a casual glance, <i>Corpus Christi</i> looks like it might be rather a fun film. The premise (former convict masquerades as local priest), or variations on it, has been the basis for a number of successful comedy films. And the photo used in the poster as the key image to represent the film makes it look rather fun - the priest standing, his arms outstretched, a joyous look on his face, and in the background lots of parishioners also looking like they're happy and smiling. So I entered the film not really remembering the website's description of the film terribly well, and expecting something fairly light and fun. But when the film starts, and the first scene has a character bullied by having his penis put inside a workshop vice, you quickly realise this is not a fun film.</p><p>Daniel is a young man looking to be released from juvenile detention. During his time locked up, he did develop an interest in Catholicism, and was even interested in joining the seminary, but the prison chaplain told him that he would not be an acceptable candidate given his background and his crime. But after release, he finds himself in a small village church where he is mistaken for a visiting priest, and when the local priest has a health issue that incapacitates him, Daniel is asked to take over. He quickly learns that the community has been torn apart by the death of six young people in a crash involving a drunk driver, and he has to guide his parishioners through this issue.</p><p>It's a really interesting portrait about the place of the church in the context of a wider community. Leaving aside the basic question about whether a person has faith or holds to in the fundamental tenets of the religious belief, the film seems to argue that the church has a vital role in simply providing moral leadership and guidance for the community - and possibly that the church has, in its actions and it's inactions, failed to provide that. This is a community that has turned genuinely toxic as a result of the loss of these young people - people are sending anonymous poison pen letters to the grieving widow of the drunk driver who caused the accident, she's being openly shunned in the community, and when they put up a photo board to remember the people who died in this crash, they pointedly exclude the driver. And those in leadership at the church knew about all of this and apparently did nothing to stop this, and by their inaction seemingly made things worse. But when Daniel comes to the position, because he so totally understands his own need for forgiveness and redemption, he's able and willing to push people to find forgiveness for the person they blame for their loss, and in so doing create space for healing to come to the town.</p><p>At the centre of the film is a stellar performance by Bartosz Bielenia as Daniel, who really is remarkable. Again, this is a role with a number of beats that could easily tip the film into comedy - there's the moment where he has to Google how to take a confession while he's in the booth taking confession, or several scenes where he has to deliver a message from the pulpit or a prayer in a public setting, and his approach and style is wildly outside of expectation. But Bielenia is able to avoid pushing the film into humour simply by the power of his performance - he's always someone who is weighed down by his past, you always feel his need for redemption in all his actions, and so he provides that anchor that keeps us in a place where we have to take the drama seriously.</p><p>This is not a casual piece of entertainment. This is not a film that you turn on to pass time. This is a film that challenges you, that engages you, and that honestly moves you. And I was so impressed by it. Strongly recommended.</p><p><br /></p><p><i><b><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/the-perfect-candidate/" target="_blank"></a></b></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrGQaTMMMOHTwPibC2t8Fe8EADUD-sAMizk3_rzHOgAqysq6cmqeTmBqvxPCobzw5fzTeD3VpL-Css2w7-P_ScmBcbiq8HUykDohwQMVqWBOEPteqUl6l8OJ5805PlTXu3yCHgge4XjypD/s755/perfect_candidate.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="538" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrGQaTMMMOHTwPibC2t8Fe8EADUD-sAMizk3_rzHOgAqysq6cmqeTmBqvxPCobzw5fzTeD3VpL-Css2w7-P_ScmBcbiq8HUykDohwQMVqWBOEPteqUl6l8OJ5805PlTXu3yCHgge4XjypD/w285-h400/perfect_candidate.jpg" width="285" /></a></b></i></div><i><b><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/the-perfect-candidate/" target="_blank">The Perfect Candidate</a></b></i> (in cinema)<p></p><p>Maryam is a female doctor in a small hospital/clinic in Saudi Arabia, a country that is so restrictive in its attitudes towards women that she regularly has male patients who choose to be diagnosed and treated by male nurses rather than a female doctor. She's also frustrated that the road outside her clinic is unpaved, which means the trolleys carrying emergency patients must be dragged through a literal mud swamp to reach the building. So, when she has an opportunity to run as a candidate for local council, she decides to do so, running on the platform of getting a proper road outside the clinic.</p><p>I really liked Haifaa Al-Mansour's previous film <i>Wadjda</i>, about a young girl transgressing against expectations for woman by wanting to ride a bike, and so was excited for another thoughtful exploration of what it's like to be a woman in this society and the strictures that are imposed on them. And everything about Maryam's efforts to run and the barriers she encounters is fantastic. There's the way she's not allowed to even be in the same room as men while she's campaigning, which forces her to sit in a back room trying to campaign through videoconferencing - and in one moment where she desperately has to get into the room with the men, she has to hurriedly put on her head covering as she runs. There's the scene where she films her video announcing her candidacy, and she winds up wearing a full head covering, with not even her eyes visible, so that she's just this black shape on screen. There's the casual way she's dismissed as a candidate - when she goes on a TV interview to talk about the need for paving this road, the interviewer just wants to talk to her about increasing public gardens, because that's all a woman candidate could be interested in. There's the women who seem to buy into her campaign, but then say they can't vote for her because their husbands wouldn't like it. Or there are just the general restrictions around everyday life - the need for her to have signed approval from her father before she can travel abroad, or the wedding parties where the women are all having fun until they announce the men are on their way, at which point they all grab their head coverings and subdue themselves. Or the absurd fact that as a doctor she apparently has to diagnose and treat people while wearing a full burka. All this is fantastic.</p><p>Unfortunately Al-Mansour makes a number of decisions that I do not understand. Firstly, there's the decision to make her decision to run an accident - she doesn't intend to run for local council, but there's someone she needs to speak to, and the only way she can get in to see him is by lodging an application to run. While she does quickly decide to genuinely run for council, the contrivance in getting her to that place seems really unnecessary - why do you need this complicated process when all you need is for her to be annoyed at the council for not fixing the problem (which she is), and then decide the only way to fix it is to run herself. Sure, the contrived process presented in the film does allow a chance to highlight another restriction imposed on women, but I feel the film is significantly impaired by seemingly removing the ability of its main character to deliberately make this massive decision.</p><p>There's also a strange creative choice to split the focus of the film to also include Maryam's father, a performer in a wedding band, who has an opportunity to go on a tour, including into some areas where extremists are opposed to the idea of playing music. And that's really interesting, and you could make an excellent film exploring that idea, but this film already has a fantastic premise, and so all the material with the father just feels like a diversion or extra padding in this film. I didn't really care about him or his story, so every time we went to him I just wanted to go back to see what Maryam is doing. The only point when her father's story actually seemed relevant to the main plot was at the start, when her father's absence is a key part of the contrivance that leads to her accidentally running for council. But as I've already said, that was a bad idea, and so the father's subplot is just another negative consequence of that poor decision.</p><p>Which is a shame, because this is 75 percent a fantastic movie that I loved, and so I'm disappointed to find there's 25 percent that I really didn't care about. It's not enough to actually just like the film, or even caution people from watching the film - it's just a disappointing bit of blah in an otherwise great film.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/the-kingmaker/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgux5hW068ANOn6ynEUjkICgbh4cE9K6fqiLWOwYMF8tgi2e0j-AbCUm7TMte4rwt8eHWNhVnKl461kgRe_kpQPKq1kCFBSAcPiEq581ts9C04AtWFlkBNCy1LOu5gS21StrCGjw_OOC5zZ/s755/kingmaker.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="503" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgux5hW068ANOn6ynEUjkICgbh4cE9K6fqiLWOwYMF8tgi2e0j-AbCUm7TMte4rwt8eHWNhVnKl461kgRe_kpQPKq1kCFBSAcPiEq581ts9C04AtWFlkBNCy1LOu5gS21StrCGjw_OOC5zZ/w266-h400/kingmaker.jpg" width="266" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/the-kingmaker/" target="_blank">The Kingmaker</a></i></b> (at home)<p></p><p>I was really excited to see Lauren Greenfield's new film, <i>The Kingmaker</i>, in the festival listing. Greenfield made a fantastic documentary a few years ago, <i>The Queen of Versailles</i>, about a wealthy couple building a massive mansion as a replica of the Palace of Versailles when the 2008 financial crisis hit. So I was intrigued to discover her new film was about Imelda Marcos, former first lady of the Philippines, another woman famous for conspicuous extravagance and consumption, complete with extensive interviews with the woman herself. </p><p>I really liked the way the film unfolds. You get the sense that Imelda Marcos must have felt this film would be an opportunity to rehabilitate her reputation internationally, and early on the film seems like it actually is the film that she's expected. The film introduces us to Imelda the saint, generous to a fault, handing out money to children as she is driven along the road, or going to visit the cancer ward she funded where she is so moved by the sick children that she starts handing them money. So right from the start, you can see the film being pointedly critical - she's someone who made her wealth stealing untold amounts of money from the people of the Philippines, and she feels her conscience is cleared by handing out a few token notes of cash. She's enjoying her largesse, but shows no interest in engaging with the people she's shoving money at - she barely even looks at then. The film spends a lot of time in interview with her, and she seems to have spent so long in self-justification that she has convinced herself that anything she says will be accepted - that we will, for instance, just admire her impressive art collection without ever thinking about how it was funded, or that we would feel great sympathy for someone who is unjustly kept from accessing her (millions upon millions of dollars of allegedly stolen) money being kept across 170 different banks. But as the film goes on, as it explores the history of the Marcos regime and the control that Imelda had over her husband's reign, as we learn about all the corruption, the imposition of martial law, the human rights violations, the torture, the violence, you're drawn down into the depths until emotionally it almost feels like a horror film. There's the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr, Marcos' chief political rival, which Imelda claims to have played no part in and which she almost seems to believe (although it's a claim that doesn't seem to have much credibility), which ultimately lead to the downfall of her husband's regime. </p><p>But even after they flee the Philippines, the film feels like it's getting darker and darker. That's because earlier in the film we were also introduced to her son, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr, who is running for vice-president - and again it initially seems like a possibly positive portrait of a likeable man, but as the film goes on it becomes more and more a story about a woman who has groomed her children to feel an entitlement, a destiny to rule. We see sequences where Imelda is treated almost as a celebrity by her adoring public, which is absolutely chilling given the stories that we've heard by this point. This is a woman who talks casually about her friendship with Mao Tse-tung, Gaddafi, and Saddam Hussein, being treated almost as a messiah. It all culminates in a sequence set around the election night, and the question of whether Bongbong wins or loses the election for vice president. But it's also the night that the infamous President Duterte won on the back of promising to execute people for even minor drug crimes. And so there's a discussion about how this was inevitable - that the Marcos family left the country in such dire straits that it really pushed the country into economic decline, and that people in such desperate situations often find themselves clinging to strongmen like Duterte who promise that there's a simple solution to their economic woes. And then we learn that Duterte was funded by the Marcos family fortune as part of Imelda's efforts to secure her family's political position and influence, which means it doesn't matter whether Bongbong won or lost, because their influence is getting ever stronger.</p><p>There's a story told very early on in the film, presented as an amusing little anecdote, about how they decided to build a safari in the Philippines, so they had to have wild animals brought over from Africa and left to live on an island. Then we meet one of the people that had previously lived on this island, but who was forced to leave her home in order to make way for the wild animals, and suddenly we're aware of how completely separated from the consequences of her actions Marcos is. They wanted a safari, so they got a safari, and they don't need to think about the little people who were displaced in order to indulge their fancies. It's a story the film returns to repeatedly, and every time the story gets darker and darker as the full implications are revealed. We hear how, after the removal of Marcos, the displaced people returned to their historic home, but now they constantly have to fight to protect what they have from being consumed by animals that are out of control. Ultimately, we hear how horrifically sick and uncared for these animals are, or how they are terribly stunted due to multiple generations of inbreeding. It's a fascinating story that the film uses to great effect as being symbolic of the influence of the Marcos family as a whole. </p><p>It's a fine piece of documentary filmmaking, and I particularly appreciated the way the film was structured, taking it away from a strictly linear chronological retelling, and more into a decline from puff piece promotional material to something much more chilling and shocking. I recommend it.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/ema/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ywts46PsYukYMcKq4aLWkIfxRKwqpOYTfae0oeOZ4aBfDnBtlhxvt8mJufWlb6UCyxeuAHG0OS9KwQYy1nR62iiAhzI0Zy-ZZ3w6QdkK_RJFw7Oim_oJjV5rIjkjpVdl-BRtyZsQcmJ4/s755/ema.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="531" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ywts46PsYukYMcKq4aLWkIfxRKwqpOYTfae0oeOZ4aBfDnBtlhxvt8mJufWlb6UCyxeuAHG0OS9KwQYy1nR62iiAhzI0Zy-ZZ3w6QdkK_RJFw7Oim_oJjV5rIjkjpVdl-BRtyZsQcmJ4/w281-h400/ema.jpg" width="281" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/ema/" target="_blank">Ema</a></i></b> (in cinema) <p></p><p>Over the past few years, Chilean director Pablo Larrain - who made films such as <i>Tony Manero</i>, <i>No</i>, and <i>Jackie</i> - has apparently become someone whose name alone is enough to make me interested in a film. So when I saw his credit in the festival programme, I didn't even bother reading the description - I knew I wanted to see it and I didn't want to know what to expect. </p><p>The film has a deliberately fragmentary and disorienting opening that I loved. The first image we see has a hanging street lamp in flames. We then watch intercut sequences of dancer Ema giving a striking performance with her dance troupe, of her visiting someone at hospital, and of her visiting an official pleading for her son and being told that she's not a good mother. Gradually we come to understand that twentysomething Ema was married to Gaston, her (significantly older) choreographer, and when the couple were unable to have children they decided to adopt a 12 year old boy. But the boy was troubled and had behavioural issues, including a pyromania that culminated in setting Ema's sister on fire, leading to Gaston insisting on returning the young boy, who is adopted out to another family. But Ema struggles with the loss of her son, which also leads to the breakdown of her marriage, and she begins to vent her grief by acting out in a variety of ways - whether it be stalking her son, bedding any person (man or woman) she chooses, or indulging her own pyromania.</p><p>The film is quite extraordinary. The character of Ema specialises in a dance style called reggaeton, which is kind of earthy and impulsive and fluid, and filled with a vibrant edgy energy, and her dance sequences really are impressive (I was particularly glad this was one of my in-cinema festival films, because the sound presentation of the music was so strong in a way that almost no home audio system could reproduce). And indeed, that's much like how the film itself is presented to us. It feels like it's constantly moving, spiralling in this direction or that direction, leaving us struggling to catch up. I particularly enjoyed the way Larrain uses montages to present many of the experiences that she has in the film. It seems to be saying that the individual experiences she has really aren't all that important, and to linger on them would give too much weight to one particular event all the other. What matters is the totality of her experience, and how they shape her and move her into the place she finds herself.</p><p>In that title role, Mariana Di Girolamo is exceptional. It's a compelling and intriguing character, a person who is very pointedly not dealing with the pain of her loss, and so that needs to be ever-present, even if pushed aside. It's also a wonderfully physical performance - as a dancer, Ema is always connected to, and very comfortable in, her body, and the film just loves to sit and watch her move. She also has something of the child in her - at times she's impulsive and acts without thinking, at other times she thinks too much, developing schemes and plans with too little consideration given to those affected by her actions. It could easily be a character that is offputting, but Di Girolamo brings a natural life and excitement to the character and makes her feel feel very real and understandable. No matter how badly she's behaving at the moment, she always has our sympathy and we're always rooting for her.</p><p>As her husband Gaston, Gael Garcia Bernal gives an intriguingly subdued performance. He's someone who feels warn down and exhausted - if his wife is avoiding the loss of this son, he's almost overburdened by it, especially as it was his choice to give this child back and because he's the one responsible for them being unable to have their own children in the first place. It's also a very uncertain role - he doesn't really know where he stands with Ema, and so he has to navigate around her.</p><p>I did find myself troubled by the way the film ended. Without going into specifics, Ema manages to find a way to get what she thinks she wants, and she does so in a way that she seems to think is perfectly fine (and no, her ultimate solution is not what you're thinking). At the same time, as an audience, we're very aware of the damage that has been done, and that will be done, as a result of her actions. And it was for that reason that I found myself looking at the credits to see who wrote the film. And it looks to me like the film was written by three men. And that does bother me somewhat. There's an irrationality and a delusionment to that ending that I think runs the risk of seeming to be promoting a "women are crazy" narrative. I don't think that's what they were trying to do, but I am curious how the story would change if they had a female involved in writing the story. Still, overall I found it an impressive piece of filmmaking that I really enjoyed.</p><p><br /></p><p><i><b><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/before-everest/" target="_blank"></a></b></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif1l1zmZXRHDY1pMSOKCNM6M_mFZnSI0bC78B2GNGbSt_JdRdPE0w1U4BapphfuDQD-lEcQAid7gkVxNrigW-iGO85VrO4abY5Pg6xBZCLgvnIxCJ8kIZyrf5hCHiLxjKYaMLvy3RtiTOY/s2000/before_everest.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="2000" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif1l1zmZXRHDY1pMSOKCNM6M_mFZnSI0bC78B2GNGbSt_JdRdPE0w1U4BapphfuDQD-lEcQAid7gkVxNrigW-iGO85VrO4abY5Pg6xBZCLgvnIxCJ8kIZyrf5hCHiLxjKYaMLvy3RtiTOY/w400-h225/before_everest.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></i></div><i><b><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/before-everest/" target="_blank">Before Everest</a></b></i> (in cinema) <p></p><p>In his autobiography, Sir Edmund Hillary referred to his fellow climber, Earle Riddiford, who he'd climbed with on several key expeditions in the Himalayas prior to the ascent of Everest, saying "I didn't much like him, none of us did. I never had to share a rope with him, and I would never want to" - which to a climber is a terrible insult. These comments confused and upset Riddiford's wife and children, who had always understood Hillary to be a good friend of their father's, and so they made this documentary as an attempt to correct the record on their father.</p><p>It's not a good documentary, on a number of levels. Part of the problem is is that there's the germ of several interesting films in here, but there's a basic failure to decide what the story is that's being told. You could make something interesting from the idea of what it's like to be someone whose father was publicly criticised by an untouchable hero - it would be tricky to do, but done well I think that would be a fascinating film. Or you could just go the conventional route and tell the story of the less well-known early expeditions that paved the way for the story we all know. You could easily make an excellent film out of that. This tries to tell both those stories, along with the rather boring story of a family trip to Nepal to visit the mountain their father climbed, and as a result it's a film that does nothing well.</p><p>The fact is, when they're dealing with Hillary's comments about their father, they just come across as sulky. "He said a mean thing about my dad, Wah!" They don't really go into any further depth than that. They never get any answer about why Hillary might have made that comment, so it just becomes a question the film asks at the start of the film and never answers. But if the Riddifords really want to know why Hillary might have said that he didn't like their father, perhaps they could have started by asking themselves. After all, we learn that the director Richard was for many years estranged from his father, as was his sister Anna, while the marriage between their parents was described as troubled. So when they leap to the defence of their father, who they didn't get along with, to argue over the comments by someone else who said he also didn't get along with their father, it rings hollow. Perhaps you don't need some mysterious event to have taken place on the expedition in order to explain Hillary's comment; all you need is for someone to be irritable and unpleasant to be around, and then to be trapped on a mountain with that person. Mystery solved.</p><p>But here's the thing: I also don't understand the choice to frame the film in that way. We're talking about two sentences in an entire book; even if it's a really popular book, which I believe it was, how many people will really remember this side comment about Riddiford? So if you want to make a film that will correct the record about your father, just make a film about your father and the impressive things he did. "This is my father, Earle Riddiford. He organised the first New Zealand climbing expedition to the Himalayas. He climbed Mukat Parbat, an achievement which led to Ed Hillary and him being invited on the initial expedition to survey Mount Everest, which in turn led to Hillary's incredible achievement a couple of years later." There you are - record corrected. And if that had been the film that had been made, I would have walked out of that film thinking about what an impressive person Riddiford must have been - after all, I never read Hillary's autobiography, so would have had no idea what he thought of Riddiford had they not spent the entire film sulking about it. Instead, I walked out of the film thinking about how, as impressive as his achievements were, he must have been a bastard to be around. The film actually amplifies Hillary's comment. And I'm not sure that's what they wanted from the film.</p><p>And leave aside the counterproductive framing of the story - it's a bafflingly poorly made movie. I was surprised something this amateurish had made into the festival. Almost nothing in the film feels professional. Interviews and conversations feature moments where we hear the initial setup conversation between the filmmakers and the interviewees, which give us no new information, just recap things we already know, and which should have been cut from the film. Some of the camera work is frustratingly bad - most bizarrely, a shot of someone setting up a kitchen table before a gathering where the shot was filmed through an open window from outside the house, and distractingly we can see the reflection of the film-maker in the window through the entire shot. There is also some beautiful footage flying over the Himalayas, which is impeded somewhat by the fact that it has a slightly murky quality that lets us know this footage has been shot through the glass window of the plane - so suddenly I'm not thinking about the beauty of this mountain range, but instead I'm wondering how difficult it would actually have been to have the camera outside the plane, the way most other filmmakers filming this type of material seem to manage to achieve. Or there is some strangely amateurish editing - in one sequence a grand and spectacular music cue is cut short instantly with a hard cut to a new subject, with no effort to blend the music away. Even the on-screen titles and captions looks like the type of generic titles available in off-the-shelf basic video editing software. To be honest, I walked out of the film convinced that this was the work of a first-time filmmaker, someone who is enthusiastic about cameras and filming video, but who had never before made a movie. And so I was shocked to discover the filmmaker is someone with 30 or 40 years of filmmaking experience, both documentary and narrative. This does not feel like the work of an experienced filmmaker.</p><p>What's disappointing is that I genuinely think there is the potential for an excellent documentary to be made from this material. Perhaps the director was simply too close to the material to get the necessary distance, but for whatever reason, almost every decision made in the film was the wrong decision. And that just leaves us with a bad film.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/kubrick-by-kubrick/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib9ukOmsZ6rvNm9kftyv3YUideRGJFlm9qsbbEvBVJU_ZOSmysyIBSYYjfiSaWgoHWZhcSb_uoARhYHVIgKO4ojI7GNDR3oLP_zjdntIdJ4CysohtJr9GrzIO67UyTJMTEbryDfJqjMuJd/s864/kubrick_by_kubrick.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="648" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib9ukOmsZ6rvNm9kftyv3YUideRGJFlm9qsbbEvBVJU_ZOSmysyIBSYYjfiSaWgoHWZhcSb_uoARhYHVIgKO4ojI7GNDR3oLP_zjdntIdJ4CysohtJr9GrzIO67UyTJMTEbryDfJqjMuJd/s320/kubrick_by_kubrick.jpg" width="240" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/kubrick-by-kubrick/" target="_blank">Kubrick by Kubrick</a></i></b> (at home) <p></p><p>There are a handful of legendary interview books with famous directors, where someone just sat down and interviewed some great film figure for an extended period, and turned that interview into the definitive record of the director's view of their own work. <i>Hitchcock/Truffaut</i> is the most celebrated example of this, and is an essential read for all film lovers, while another key text is Cameron Crowe's interview with Billy Wilder, <i>Conversations with Wilder.</i> I'd never heard of <i>Kubrick</i> by French film critic Michel Ciment, but after watching this documentary drawing on audio recordings of Ciment's series of interviews with Stanley Kubrick, I immediately went and ordered a second-hand copy of this out-of-print book, and I'm excited to read it. Kubrick was famously reluctant to speak to the press about his work, and if this documentary is any indication it will be fascinating to dig deeper and see what he has to say.</p><p>The film has the expected conventional start, running through his early life, his initial work as a photographer for Look magazine, his entry into filmmaking with his documentary shorts, culminating in his first narrative feature film, <i>Fear and Desire</i>, which he famously hated and withdrew from circulation - it's amusing to hear him describe the film as "pompous". (The film has really only been widely available in the last 10 years, and speaking as someone who now owns a copy of the film, it's pretty bloody terrible, albeit with flashes of the filmmaker he would become. And it's definitely pompous.)</p><p>After that reasonably conventional entry into the film, I really appreciated that it stopped being a strictly chronological run through his films, instead adopting more of a thematic approach to the material, following a train of thought that connects one film to another. This does mean that some films get short shrift - of his early films, only <i>Paths of Glory</i> gets much attention, in a segment where it's discussed in context of his other war films, <i>Dr Strangelove</i> and <i>Full Metal Jacket</i>, while I was surprised that <i>Lolita</i>, the first of the "canonical" Kubrick films, is almost ignored. But despite that, it felt like a really strong way to approach this material - we're not examining a collection of films, we're looking at a body of work as a whole, and looking for connections and commonalities between these seemingly disparate movies. For instance, I'm not sure that I ever would have thought to draw a connection between Pvte. Joker (who wears both a peace symbol and a helmet that says Born To Kill as a Jungian thing) and Alex (a young man whose interests are rape, ultra-violence, and Beethoven), so it's intriguing to hear Kubrick talk about them as the same character - in both cases he's trying to create a figure for audience identification that will force us to really examine our own human darkness.</p><p>One thing I was rather pleased about was how well-represented <i>Eyes Wide Shut</i> was. I had been prepared for the film to be completely ignored - after all, Kubrick died a matter of days after finishing his initial cut, so when would he have discussed the film? What I had forgotten was that Kubrick had been working on the film on and off for over 30 years, so while his discussions about the film might not necessarily be reflective of the film he made - perhaps when he made this comment or that comment he was talking about the comedy version with Steve Martin he was working on at one point - it still gives a strong insight into Kubrick's thoughts on the material and what it was about the project that spoke to him.</p><p>It's also fascinating when he starts to talk about things that touch on the legend of Stanley Kubrick. So, for instance, it's well-known that Kubrick was prone to almost over-researching in preparation for a project, and it's therefore interesting to hear him describe the hundreds of boxes that contained 18th-century paintings torn out of art books in an attempt to find genuine period clothing designs for the costumes of <i>Barry Lyndon</i>, because for Kubrick realism was his ultimate aspiration - that same focus on realism was what prompted him to shoot the film entirely by candlelight.</p><p>There is of course the very strong perception of Kubrick as a genius planner who would have every aspect of the film planned out in advance, no mistakes ever allowed, but that's a notion that gets easily dismissed, as we hear him talk about his need to constantly improvise to work around the unexpected issues on-set that always arise. </p><p>And then there are the stories about his taking an excessive number of takes - driven in a large part by a need for everything to be perfect. You get Shelley Duvall, probably the person most notoriously subjected to Kubrick's excessive number of takes, talking about how the more times you go through a scene, the more you start to reach a place as an actor where you're not even conscious of performing, you're just naturally existing in this space and this scene. But, as another contributor tells us, the quest for perfect is impossible and could easily become an actual impediment. What's the point of having a perfect acting performance if you take so long and shoot the scene so often that now the hastily put-up wallpaper is now peeling off the wall?</p><p>But that actually brings me to probably my main problem with the film. The film has a lot of archival interviews with actors and other filmworkers discussing the experience of working with Kubrick. But while I enjoyed watching those interviews, and it was interesting hearing these people reflect on that experience, you do feel that this is a distraction from what the film could have been. I would have loved nothing better then a full-length feature film documentary that was just Stanley Kubrick speaking about his work, so whenever we go to hear what Tom Cruise or R Lee Ermey have to say about him, as great as they are, it just feels like the film is moving away from what made it special.</p><p>The film ends with a really nice quote by Kubrick that really does summarise his work, why it works so well, and why I always leave a Kubrick film feeling enriched: </p><p>"How disappointing you make the end of a film is a matter of taste or artistic preference, but you are always faced with the problem of, are you going to try to reinforce this illusion, which melodrama fosters, or are you going to try to reflect what one sees about life? Melodrama uses all the problems of the world, and all the disasters which befall the main characters, to finally show you that the world is a fair and benevolent place, and all the tests and trials and seeming misfortunes which occur in the end just reinforce this belief. But tragedy, or honesty or an attempt at presenting life in a way that seems closer to reality than melodrama, can leave you with a feeling of desolation. But certainly the formula approach, which presents the world in a way other than it is, doesn't seem to have a great deal of merit unless you're just making entertainment."</p><p>Ultimately it was a fascinating and enlightening documentary about one of cinema's great artists. While I personally would have liked the film to have used even more of the interviews with the man himself, that's probably a consequence of the film's title - when you call your film <i>Kubrick by Kubrick</i>, you set up expectations that the film deviates from at times. But regardless, it's still a well constructed documentary that I thoroughly enjoyed.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/dinner-in-america/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTzl79wcC0fynKBF5pZRKQ4wY84hbyIKud8fRafmxqSoeposFskrTPwPmiDiMf4uWat-t2_gfm0NASMwtH6Y485_fzQ-m8ISvVyVrz5jDC4THxgUNChfXoweKO-oQ3QiVf9LLewRhCXlZm/s987/dinner_in_america.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="987" data-original-width="670" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTzl79wcC0fynKBF5pZRKQ4wY84hbyIKud8fRafmxqSoeposFskrTPwPmiDiMf4uWat-t2_gfm0NASMwtH6Y485_fzQ-m8ISvVyVrz5jDC4THxgUNChfXoweKO-oQ3QiVf9LLewRhCXlZm/w271-h400/dinner_in_america.jpg" width="271" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/dinner-in-america/" target="_blank">Dinner in America</a></i></b> (at home)<p></p><p>A socially awkward, gawky young woman called Patty, constantly the subject of taunts calling her the R-word, spends her days cleaning the cages in a pet store, and her nights taking intimate photos of her pleasuring herself to the music of her favourite punk band and sending the photos to the band's mysterious leader. One day she helps Simon, a pyromaniac drug dealer, hide from the police, and then suggests that he could hide out in her family's house, where they discover they share an interest in punk music.</p><p>I think the first thing that drew my attention about <i>Dinner in America</i> was the cast. In one of the two lead roles, you have Kyle Gallner, who I remembered playing the introverted and troubled Beaver on <i>Veronica Mars</i> 15 years ago, and I was interested to see him playing such a different role - and he does give an extremely entertaining performance, as a kind of extreme figure who follows his initial impulse, which is always excessive, but it's such a strongly combative performance that it's unclear why people even want to be around him. I was also attracted the film by the supporting cast, with actors like Pat Healy, Lea Thompson, and Mary Lynn Rajskub. Thompson has a very fun scene early on as Simon's soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend's extremely horny mother, but it's a single scene cameo, while Healy and Rajskub, as Patty's protective and conservatives parents, have more significant roles but (other than one cliche scene where they accidentally get stoned) don't really get too much to do. I came away from the film mostly being impressed with Emily Skeggs as Patty, who I had never seen before and who really is delightful. The film ultimately is her story, and I felt she and the film had a good grasp on who this character was. It can be easy for films that have a character who comes out of their shell to make the difference so significant that the character is almost unrecognisable, so I like that the Patty of the end of the film is clearly the same Patty as at the start, but just slightly more free and confident.</p><p>Unfortunately, I didn't really like the film. The opening 10 or 15 minutes are almost aggressively unpleasant - the filmmakers seemed to hold to the idea that having people yelling a lot is automatically funny, while the filmmaking felt hyperactive and unstable. The film does ease quite a bit, but then it just starts to feel aimless - it takes about half an hour for our two main characters to even meet, and (unless I missed something) another 15 minutes before the main hook of the film is revealed, by which point the film is nearly half over. From that point, it doesn't actually soften (after all, when the corpse of a dead cat is a pivotal element in your revenge scheme, there's something excessive going on), but it does become something that I didn't hate myself for watching. That said, I still wouldn't actually say that I enjoyed it.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/driveways/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9r2TWZWqxsvbr_GEZN9YizKYFRvuRqwAngFIxzM2w8LQ5EwiWT__gV0KxgqRlRQygCoBJgQk9dmoblZO30idEcCU7Hm65Gcr-ETsgHxhE_gYqS3vhFyZY__ULyZcpVn20p4znUkHFTFUC/s755/driveways.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="511" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9r2TWZWqxsvbr_GEZN9YizKYFRvuRqwAngFIxzM2w8LQ5EwiWT__gV0KxgqRlRQygCoBJgQk9dmoblZO30idEcCU7Hm65Gcr-ETsgHxhE_gYqS3vhFyZY__ULyZcpVn20p4znUkHFTFUC/w271-h400/driveways.jpg" width="271" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/driveways/" target="_blank">Driveways</a></i></b> (at home) <p></p><p>My favourite film from the festival, <i>Driveways</i> is the story of a friendship between an eight-year-old Asian American boy and an elderly Korean War veteran. After Cody's aunt dies, his mother brings him to stay in this small town while she prepares her sister's house for sale. But the two sisters had been estranged, and his mother Kathy discovers her sister was a hoarder and she is facing months of work to tidy the house. Meanwhile Cody wanders next door where he meets Del, who seems to spend his day sitting out on a porch or going to the VFW to play bingo. And the two become really close friends despite the eight decades that separate them. </p><p>And that's really all there is to the film. It's not a film of great dramatic event, it's not a film where you're on the edge waiting to see where this story will go, it's just a film about spending time with these characters. It's a slow, observational film in which none of the actual events really matter, and the weight of the film come from the often unexpressed emotion that underlies everyone's actions. And when the film does have the opportunity to really exploit events for some real pathos - say, the birthday party that doesn't turn out as expected, or Del's friend who's developing dementia - it determinedly undercuts that impulse in favour of a more subtle and understated emotion. And I really loved that.</p><p>When I heard that Brian Dennehy had died, I was surprised by how much that news affected me. Dennehy really had his heyday in the 80s and 90s, right at the time when I was growing up and becoming passionate about movies and TV, and he was one of those figures who it seemed was always on TV. I hadn't really thought about him much lately until the news came out, so this was a wonderful opportunity to really engage with his work and appreciate just how talented he was. It's a wonderfully taciturn performance, in which everything is unstated and understated, and yet there is such a wealth of emotion running through everything. Del is someone who failed to be the parent he should have been to his own child, and who therefore sees in Cody a chance to be the supportive father that he should have been for his daughter.</p><p>I have enjoyed Hong Chau as an actress ever since encountering her on <i>Treme</i>, and especially after having had a great year with her work on <i>Watchmen</i> and <i>Homecoming</i>, I was excited to see her here. And that was a slight disappointment for me - as the person with the lead acting credit in the film, I was expecting her to be a more prominent role than she had - it is definitely a supporting performance behind Dennehy and Lucas Jaye as her son. But she does do excellent work here, as a woman who is coming to terms with the loss of her sister, and with the discovery that she simply didn't know her sister at all and now can never recover that relationship, while simultaneously having the parental concern over her son, trying to protect him and help him discover who he is without over-mothering. </p><p>And as Cody, Lucas Jaye is just an absolute delight. Director Andrew Ahn manages to get a performance out of the young boy that is absolutely natural and believable. There's something about the way his eyes light up with excitement whenever he sees Del that makes the rest of the film work - you fully believe the friendship and genuine love between these two people. If there had been any sense of artifice in the performance, it would have rendered that central relationship unbelievable and destroyed the entire film, but because it's such a genuine performance it really lifts the film. </p><p>It's really is a hard film to put into words just how and why it is so good. It's just a film that gets every note and beat exactly right. There are terms like "feel-good movie" or "heartwarming", and ordinarily I would run a mile from any film that described itself like that - such films often come by their emotion cheaply - but that's the only way I can describe what this film does. It's a film that presents its characters with honesty and true warmth, so that even when the film's events become rough - and the film does climax with a scene that is a real punch to the gut - that warmth and love still radiates through the film. It's a beautiful piece of filmmaking, and I loved it.</p><p><br /></p><p><i><b><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/the-county/" target="_blank"></a></b></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZY-by0x43QAMMCAaCR8re6H1yxtu9XC-IDhjSUoEEmv_Y2px0hGyy4CzL4CBzPVf84sB2nclVmYfdCaHXHnZEFZlED9Xj-LreuzYpnlHOu70F_zdDTS9ltUfsol2LPHJcZyexbuTDh6J1/s755/county.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="531" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZY-by0x43QAMMCAaCR8re6H1yxtu9XC-IDhjSUoEEmv_Y2px0hGyy4CzL4CBzPVf84sB2nclVmYfdCaHXHnZEFZlED9Xj-LreuzYpnlHOu70F_zdDTS9ltUfsol2LPHJcZyexbuTDh6J1/w281-h400/county.jpg" width="281" /></a></b></i></div><i><b><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/the-county/" target="_blank">The County</a></b></i> (in cinema) <p></p><p>Although I still had a few films to watch at home, <i>The County</i> was my final in-cinema screening of the festival. And it was pretty strong. Inga works with her husband on their dairy farm in a remote part of Iceland. Members of a local farming co-op, they're forced not only to sell their milk to the co-op, but also to buy all of their (massively overpriced) farming supplies from it, and they're also massively in debt to the co-op after being pressured to take out massive loans to fund mechanisation of the milking process. It seems that almost everything in their life is governed by the co-op, and if anyone tries to step out of its control, the organisation will destroy them. But after her husband dies, Inga, blaming the pressures of the co-op for his death, decides to fight and take down the corrupt organisation.</p><p>I was initially a little bit thrown by the tone of the film - I was expecting the film to be much funnier, I think largely because of the comparison the festival programme made to <i>Woman at War</i>, a film that was undoubtedly a comedy. Instead, it's rather an effective piece of polemic, attacking these structures that are apparently quite common in Iceland. There's a real anger that runs through the film, outraged at the way these organisations, which were established to help provide support for their farmers, can instead grow to take a destructive position in the community, taking advantage of the vulnerability and the reliance of the people they are supposed to service to cement the power of the organisation itself and those in control of it. Which I realise is making the film sound extremely heavy - it's not. It may not be especially comedic, but it does have a lightness of touch and a constant focus on being entertaining. And they even managed to have one genuinely funny, laugh-out-loud moment, a great scene in which Inga decides to dispose of her excess milk in a way that makes her feelings about the co-op very public. But part of what makes that scene so fun is that we've spent so much time caught in the web of the co-op, existing in the same frustrated emotional space as Inga, that in that moment we feel the exact same release that Inga feels - and it's so freeing. </p><p>I really did enjoy the work of Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir in the central role of Inga. I could be wrong about this, but I think this is one of those instances where the main character is the focal point of literally every scene in the film, and I suspect these types of performances could be tough on the actor - you need someone who is abrasive enough that she antagonises all around her, while being appealing enough that we are happy to spend all that time with her, because there's no respite if we don't like her. Egilsdóttir is absolutely perfect in the role - her introductory scene, literally wrapping a half-born calf in chains to wrench it out of its mother with every ounce of strength she has, was particularly successful in instantly communicating exactly who this character was, her strength and determination, and by the end of this wordless scene, I felt I had an absolute understanding of whom Inga was. And one thing I particularly enjoyed was the way the film would often step away from the main plot, the conflict with the co-op, instead simply allowing us the space to observe Inga as she navigates her way around the farm, constantly in command of its operations, never allowing the loss of her husband or the stresses of the conflict get in the way of her effective management of her business. It's a wonderfully physical performance, at some points I believe almost wordless, relying on a sly stare or a physical posture to communicate much about the character. And it's extremely effective.</p><p>One thing that really impressed me about the film was how perfectly executed its ending was. And I'm going to avoid spoilers, but I will say that the film culminates in a scene in which a decision has to be made, and I found myself really curious how the film would resolve itself. If the decision goes one way, then the film becomes downbeat and overly depressing; if the decision goes the other way, the film becomes overly happy and optimistic. The film seems to be aware of the possibility of this conflict - the moment of decision is shot in a way that almost seems as though they wanted to leave the outcome ambiguous, never answering which way the decision went. But it turns out the film manages to thread the needle perfectly, simultaneously giving us an ending that is both hopeful and defeated, or defeated and hopeful, whichever way you look at it. It's not a happy ending, it's not a sad ending, it's not an ambiguous ending, it's all of them and none of them. And it's a brilliant, perfectly satisfying ending.</p><p>I found it a particularly enjoyable film, and the communal experience of watching such an entertaining film was a particular reminder about the value of the cinema experience. I obviously understand the reasons for the decision to go with a primarily online film festival this year, but there is no experience like watching an excellent film with an engaged audience, and <i>The County</i> really emphasised that. I just hope that next year we can get back to the cinema experience for the festival.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/exile/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxNvllJIQLWpRo1jUe0kTx9NVvyub68ZoPp7YeT_NRnqSHhBbcDbvAQFChJjbFdAkb_xYNwMtLdHvdy9oh0WwsPljHplO2d7IMP0Q3Y-6rYpKSz8tmtQcKFVUqPIzykb5EbqKdEHKlHc1n/s580/exile.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="580" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxNvllJIQLWpRo1jUe0kTx9NVvyub68ZoPp7YeT_NRnqSHhBbcDbvAQFChJjbFdAkb_xYNwMtLdHvdy9oh0WwsPljHplO2d7IMP0Q3Y-6rYpKSz8tmtQcKFVUqPIzykb5EbqKdEHKlHc1n/w276-h400/exile.jpg" width="276" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/exile/" target="_blank">Exile</a></i></b> (at home) <p></p><p>We first meet our lead character Xhafer, an immigrant from Kosovo now living in Germany, when he returns home to find a dead rat hanging on his gate. It's an obvious and open attack on a man who already feels like an outsider because of his status as an immigrant, but it's also an attack that is very specifically targeted at him, touching on a particular point of sensitivity for him. Meanwhile the attacks keep coming - he's left out of work emails communicating vital information, he's misidentified as Croatian at meetings, and he's constantly undercut by one co-worker who he starts to suspect was responsible for leaving the rat. Meanwhile his wife is slowly separating from him, casually dismissing his feelings of being persecuted while seemingly having an affair.</p><p>It's a fascinating and very personal portrait about the experience of being an outsider in a community - I note that writer/director Visas Morina is himself a Kosovan-born immigrant - and I appreciated its nuanced approach to the subject. Xhafer is very willing to attribute whatever attacks he comes under to racism, but while the film doesn't dismiss that as a motivation for certain actions, it's very much about the facts that race is just one thing that defines who we are, that our interpersonal relationships are formed by the unique cocktail of all of our characteristics, and it can be easy to use those characteristics that we have no control over as a way of avoiding trying to address those things that we can change. Xhafer is so busy focusing on his victimhood that he's blinded to the fact that he's also kind of an arsehole, and that he makes himself into someone that people simply don't want to have to deal with. And as for the person who he suspects of specifically targeting him - it turns out that that person has very particular personal reasons for resenting him which also have nothing to do with race. But that's not to dismiss the place of racism in the attacks he experiences; more that his sensitivity about being different in this society causes him not to consider how his actions have contributed to his experiences.</p><p>I really was impressed with Mišel Matičević as Xhafer. We spend the entire film with him, caught up in his worldview, unable to see anything else. We're almost trapped with him, and he could be a very difficult character to have to spend time with - he's increasingly paranoid, frustrated, angry, and all this is just stewing and building, and this is the space that we called on to dwell in. But Matičević gives a sympathetic performance, which allows us to engage with and root for him despite all his frustrations.</p><p>A big part of the film's success is also due to the understanding brought by Morina's direction, which manages to throw the audience into this unsettled headspace, as he roams his sickly and claustrophobic workplace (great production design work). It's a filming approach that I wasn't initially prepared for - the festival programme compared the film to the work of Michael Haneke and Ruben Östlund, and there definitely is a thematic similarity between their work and this film, but while both those two have a cooly static and observational style, Morina's camera is much more active - but once my expectations were adjusted I was able to settle in and appreciate the skill on display. It really is an excellent and gripping film, and I recommend it.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/perfect-10/" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhclnObj3ROY0pWRv8NPiLRW0jjjuO7I2SkpRxHAAyXCyt-y5vT3i50x58FMyhtu9hIFi23BRNUILVMpDKaJnkDseMuwHWF5-ZKelHlDvpSJ599cXf_aOgiCA-ah34plelCB0UmXOGqoXQr/s755/perfect_10.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="521" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhclnObj3ROY0pWRv8NPiLRW0jjjuO7I2SkpRxHAAyXCyt-y5vT3i50x58FMyhtu9hIFi23BRNUILVMpDKaJnkDseMuwHWF5-ZKelHlDvpSJ599cXf_aOgiCA-ah34plelCB0UmXOGqoXQr/w276-h400/perfect_10.jpg" width="276" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/perfect-10/" target="_blank">Perfect 10</a></i></b> (at home) <p></p><p>A pretty great British coming-of-age film <i>Perfect 10</i> follows Leigh, a young teenage girl whose only apparent interest is gymnastics, something she had shown a talent and a passion for, which her coach tries to nurture despite her recent decline in performance. One day she comes home to find an older teen boy, Joe, in her house - he explains that he's her previously unknown half-brother, and they start to hang out and build a new relationship. But Joe is also involved in some petty and not-so-petty crime, and he starts to draw Leigh into his lifestyle.</p><p>I was just utterly charmed by this film. I loved how completely true the portrayal of her life was - I was never a teenage girl, never did gymnastics, and my criminal activities have been limited, but the film was filled with moments that had me flashing back to my own experiences, and it hurts me to recall them just as much as it hurt Leigh to go through them. In particular, the way it portrayed the social anxiety of teenage life, the way that bullying, embarrassment, and insecurity can act against a person and cause them to abandon something that they love, felt very real. I also thought it was fascinating how the film explores the idea of a reconstructed family, of the emotional confusion that must come with suddenly finding this person in your life and needing to discover who you are in relation to this other person. The film culminates in a great sequence in which Leigh's two worlds, and the only two people who really show her any love in the film, come into collision, and it's fantastic and suspenseful.</p><p>In the main role, Frankie Box is just perfect. She's a typical teenager, sullen and uncommunicative, at times stubbornly so, and because she says so little she has to rely on her physicality and her expressions to communicate the mental space in which she exists, and it's impressively clear. And then there are the moments where she actually gets to be happy or proud of herself, and she just lights up the screen with a radiating joy that was infectious. I believe this was her first film, and I differently hope to see more from her.</p><p>I also really enjoyed Sharlene Whyte as Gemma, the woman who runs and teaches at the gym. She has a really challenged relationship with Leigh, constantly trying to reach her and engage with her, and there's a clear pride that she takes in who work and the influence she has on girls who otherwise may not have the outlet to explore their talents, a palpable affection that Gemma clearly has for Leigh, and a determination to create a connection what's her. It's a nicely appealing performance.</p><p>I really appreciated the simplicity of the film's direction. It sits very much in the tradition of British social realism, but whereas such films often to me feel positively miserablist and disheartening, there's a lightness of touch that keeps <i>Perfect 10</i> from getting too weighed down or hopeless. Which was a relief, because I liked Leigh so much that the film would have been unbearable had it taken a more pessimistic stance. Instead you finish the film with a sense of real hope, which was not what I was expecting from a film of this type. It's a beautifully understated gem of a film, and I very much enjoyed it.</p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA9dN1a8UQgC5nsX3Q0P8KvXk0RaHCcGoBsnAkAObqYUyRqPRJgrV0mkQmE8TqBuc_GEJzwduEqdE8rU7oC4nMtv4VcJ5_S-QGhAE4bZVhvpmeYouIueyCmB5CQsMJaWelyeUkelKMLTk5/s586/leap_of_faith.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="586" data-original-width="392" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA9dN1a8UQgC5nsX3Q0P8KvXk0RaHCcGoBsnAkAObqYUyRqPRJgrV0mkQmE8TqBuc_GEJzwduEqdE8rU7oC4nMtv4VcJ5_S-QGhAE4bZVhvpmeYouIueyCmB5CQsMJaWelyeUkelKMLTk5/w268-h400/leap_of_faith.jpg" width="268" /></a></div><b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/leap-of-faith-william-friedkin-on-the-exorcist/" target="_blank">Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist</a></i></b> (at home)<p></p><p>Director Alexandre O Phillippe has developed a real reputation in recent years for insightful and probing documentaries about significant films that take a different approach than just a standard "making of". I sadly missed <i>Memory</i>, his documentary about the movie Alien, but I was extremely impressed by <i>78/52</i>, in which he made a entire documentary exploring and examining a single movie scene, the shower scene from <i>Psycho</i>, in order to illuminate the scene and the movie in a way I don't think has ever been done before. So I was intrigued by the idea that Phillippe just spent 6 days talking to William Friedkin about <i>The Exorcist</i>, in order to get really deep into examining his thought process in trying to create some of the most shocking and terrifying scenes in movie history.</p><p>Earlier when I saw <i>Kubrick on Kubrick</i>, I expressed frustration that the film was constantly cutting away from interview with the director to get comment and reflections from other collaborators. <i>Leap of Faith</i> is pretty much exactly the film that I wanted the Kubrick to be - it's all William Friedkin (even the interviewer is entirely omitted saved for one moment where his comment is necessary to understand Friedkin's response). And there's never any sense that the film is padding out the runtime by using film clips; what clips are used are carefully chosen to illustrate a specific point and no more. The entire film really is an opportunity to sit and listen to William Friedkin discuss his work for 105 minutes. </p><p>He talks about how focused he is on setting the mood of the piece, rather than focusing on the beat-by-beat storytelling - an art which he laments has been lost. After all, if you're just telling the story of Regan's possession, you could very easily cut the introductory scenes in Iraq which at first glance can feel irrelevant - but those scenes are so vital to establishing the ominous tone of the piece, in a film that does take its time, and making clear that the film is not just focused on the modern day world, but is about a battle that has taken place for thousands of years. Similarly, those early scenes of Chris and Regan could certainly be trimmed, but they're absolutely essential for establishing the warmth of the relationship between mother and daughter, and to firmly establish the degree of change that Regan experiences once she is possessed, shocking the audience and allowing in the possession scenes to build in intensity.</p><p>He discusses his inspiration as a film-maker - the cinema, literature, and art, that feed into his work. I was particularly intrigued to learn that the iconic image from the movie, the shot of Father Merrin approaching the house, the moment that was the basis for the movie poster, was actually inspired by a painting by René Magritte. But he talked about how you always need to be open as a director to finding those grace notes that lift the film - the unexpected beam of light, or the way the nun's gowns catch in the wind - capturing these moments that are inconsequential, that don't push the story forward, but that reflect those images that linger in the memory and that enrich both the film and life.</p><p>Understandably, the film spends a lot of time on the movie's music, which was an entire saga by itself. I had previously heard the story about him approaching the legendary Bernard Herrmann to do the score, where the famously difficult composer declared that the film was a "piece of shit" and insisted that the score needed a church organ, a shockingly cliched idea from a man who was often so inventive. I love Herrmann, and would have be fascinated to see what he would have done with <i>The Exorcist</i>, but those ideas do sound very wrong for the film. I had not heard the story about how Friedkin had approached his friend Lalo Schifrin, composer of the <i>Mission: Impossible</i> theme, to do the film, only to be disappointed when the score delivered was loud and bombastic, not the quiet and unsettling work requested, and how his decision to reject that score actually ended their friendship. He also discussed digging through hundreds of recordings trying to find the right piece before he found "Tubular Bells", the beautiful but rhythmically unsettling piece that became irrevocably tied to the movie.</p><p>I just found the film fascinating and illuminating. Friedkin is reflective and thoughtful, philosophical and intelligent, and even though he must have spoken about this film hundreds of times, he still discusses it with passion and excitement. If you know and enjoy <i>The Exorcist</i>, it's an obvious must-see, but even if you've never seen that film, his insights and reflections about the art of cinema as a whole make this film worth seeking out. I really loved it.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>-----==========-----</b></p><p>And then there were the last two films I watched in the festival, the ones I never got around to writing about. And nearly 1 1/2 years later, my detailed memories of the films have pretty much gone, at all I'm left with are moments, images, and impressions.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2xse8kr8FSScpA-muwEw-49l0y2XJuEpKzM_fsX6v2_DMpqhgCVMKeD1H51vlXrUiwAxouWvMJLbp2y-dBr8J0-L8_ktPo_nPacp5uAbT4DMfWp8c7XaSQBs0ikO-sGUVmMUPO2WLqt24/s1024/long_walk.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="691" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2xse8kr8FSScpA-muwEw-49l0y2XJuEpKzM_fsX6v2_DMpqhgCVMKeD1H51vlXrUiwAxouWvMJLbp2y-dBr8J0-L8_ktPo_nPacp5uAbT4DMfWp8c7XaSQBs0ikO-sGUVmMUPO2WLqt24/s320/long_walk.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>The first was a film from Laos, <b><i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/the-long-walk/" target="_blank">The Long Walk</a></i></b>. The film is probably technically science fiction film, apparently occurring in a near future given specific technology in use, but it doesn't feel that futuristic. That's because the film largely takes place in a small village when nothing has changed for hundreds of years, centering on a man who is routinely called on to euthanize the elderly in the village. In many ways the film is more of a ghost story, with these unsettling figures a constant presence. And it's a time travel movie, but one where the characters travel through spiritual means rather than mechanical, as our main character finds himself revisiting and interacting with vital moments from his past. And it's here that I confess that part of the reason why I never got around to writing about my response to the film at the time was that I had a bit of a headache that night - the only reason I watched it that night was because the film was about to expire - and <i>The Long Walk</i> is not an easy film to watch when you're having difficulty focusing. I was honestly struggling to keep up with the film, which was a disappointment because I did like it a lot. But what I'm left with is just flashes of moments - the ghostly woman who is always there, the detailed way the main character would put together his poisons, the utter beauty of the forest environment. Above all, I find myself remembering the scene in which a character finds himself trapped in a hut that is burning down, and how effective I found the film was in expressing the terror of that moment. It was a really good film, that I just was not in the right state to process. I don't know how easy it would be to find the film, as it feels very much like the type of film that you see at a film festival and never hear from again, but I would definitely be keen to revisit the film at a time when I'm more up to following the narrative.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTumiVXPN9mXo25JnA41DqJi8ecqM04KZyzQDhOxhH94rMfGzLjjPLifxYSonDjWgomlXCG2Uac1izwWGo0nQv8lxeOg2WmHH9Z1RzaFD-99cpUAZ3B7QhVcL2RcVaHFeantquylXA-6vp/s944/last_wave.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="944" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTumiVXPN9mXo25JnA41DqJi8ecqM04KZyzQDhOxhH94rMfGzLjjPLifxYSonDjWgomlXCG2Uac1izwWGo0nQv8lxeOg2WmHH9Z1RzaFD-99cpUAZ3B7QhVcL2RcVaHFeantquylXA-6vp/s320/last_wave.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>The final film I watched, which is much more accessible, was (I believe) the only classic film of this festival, the restored version of Peter Weir's movie <i><b><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/archive/the-last-wave/" target="_blank">The Last Wave</a></b></i>. I had never heard of the film before, but I was rather impressed by it. The story focuses on Richard Chamberlain, improbably playing an Australian, as a lawyer hired to defend several Aboriginal men accused of murdering another. As he works on their defence, he also finds himself experiencing a strange connection to one of the defendants; it becomes clear that the killing is connected to aboriginal beliefs and practices, and that the dreams he's having are warnings of an impending apocalypse. It puts me in mind of another Peter Weir film, <i>Picnic at Hanging Rock</i>, which also deals with the interaction between the mystical supernatural and a more recognisable modern world - but while it's not as great as that earlier film, it is a strong piece of cinema. The main thing I found myself thinking about it after the film was how impressed I was with how honestly the film seemed to engage with the aboriginal worldview, albeit through the lens of a white person. Now, admittedly, I know nothing about any of this, so it could all be completely misinformed and I would have no idea, but this film is over 40 years old, and it just seemed unusual to me for a film of that era to so completely focus on exploring and engage with Aboriginal culture and beliefs in a serious way. There's a lot in the film that I felt I didn't quite get a handle on, but that's because I was coming to it from such a different cultural perspective to that being explored in the film, and that's a good thing. As I write this, I find myself thinking how many moments and images it has that linger in the memory - I definitely need to revisit it.<p></p><p>And that's it for my 2020 festival. My 2021 festival starts tomorrow, and hopefully will go well. </p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-82601469300518143752021-10-25T20:16:00.002+13:002021-10-25T20:37:59.572+13:00The optimism of suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings... mainly happy endings<p>So here's the thing,</p><p>For as long as I've been going, the film festival has always been a fixture of the July calendar. So many of my memories of the festival are marked by walking out of a film into a bitterly cold Wellington winter wind. So it was a surprise when it was announced that this year the festival would be taking place in November. The theory was that the delay would allow time for the population to be vaccinated, in order to minimise the likelihood of the festival being affected by a lockdown. After the disappointment of last year's largely online festival, the hope was that this year we could enjoy a fully in-person festival with packed cinemas.</p><p>Yeah, that didn't happen.</p><p>Ironically, had the festival taken place at the normal time, it would have run unaffected - at least in the main centres. In July, the entire country was open, with no limitation on numbers (indeed, that month, I was in Auckland for a sold-out performance of The Lion King with thousands of other people). However, a few weeks later, a Covid outbreak in Auckland saw the entire country go into lockdown, and while most of the country is now open-ish, the continuing lockdown in Auckland has seen their film festival cancelled, while the festival for the rest of us is severely affected by number limitations and the need for social distancing. And frankly, I'm still skeptical that the festival will take place at all - we do still have a couple of weeks where things could change and force the cancellation of the festival. But at the moment, I'm hoping that won't happen - and so on that basis, on Wednesday I got ready as usual to buy my festival tickets.</p><p>They were due to go on sale at 10am, so at 9:30 I load up the webpage so that I can be ready. To my surprise tickets were already available for purchase. So, I hurriedly select all of my films, at which point the system tells me that it can't process my order because I'm purchasing more than 20 tickets. OK, that's fine, I break it up into two orders, using two different browsers. The browser purchasing the first half of my order got hung up on one title, sticking at "19 out of 20", but the browser processing the second half of my order went fine, and I even got past the stage of making payment, before the system told me that it had closed. OK, that's fine, I knew I was being a bit cheeky, and the tickets weren't supposed to be on sale yet; I'll need a refund, but they'll be busy right now, so I will talk to them about that later in the day.</p><p>Meanwhile, the clock ticks past 10, 10.15, and then finally they put a banner on the screen advising that there's been a delay, and tickets will be on sale as soon as possible. After a while, someone calls me about my refund, and happens to mention that tickets will go on sale at 11am.</p><p>Sure enough, tickets go on sale shortly after 11, and I started frantically ordering again. And the second half of my order went through seamlessly - although a big part of the seamlessness is probably due to my decision to not bother with using seat selection, since the number of seats was so limited that I decided I had to just accept what they gave me for fear of missing out. But once again, the front half of my order kept hanging on one film, and I didn't know which film. So I decide to divide the remaining films in half and go again. By this point, the opening night film, <i>The Power of the Dog</i>, was sold out - that was probably the cause of the problem. (The loss of that film wasn't a big deal for me - it is due to go on general release during the festival, so I'll get to see it elsewhere.) But once again, the back half of my order goes through, while the front half gets stuck on one film. By this point, I start ordering my remaining movies one day at a time, and once I discover the problem lies with one of the films on the opening Saturday, buying tickets movie-by-movie.</p><p>Which is how I realised that the cause of my ordering problems was a film called <i>After Love</i>. The system just would not let me purchase that ticket. (Indeed, its now been five days since tickets went on sale, and they've now simply shut off website bookings to that session because they cannot fix the issue.) The annoying thing is that that was one of my marginal titles to begin with, and had I not selected it, my ordering process would probably have been fairly smooth and straightforward. As it is, it probably stopped me from getting tickets to that opening night film, and definitely meant I got much worse seats to some of the more popular films then I would otherwise have had. Oh well; such is life.</p><p>It's a comparatively light festival for me this year, only 34 films - and that's assuming I gets tickets to the film I haven't yet been able to get tickets for - although as usual there were a lot of films I had to abandon any hope of seeing due to irreconcilable clashes with other screenings. </p><div>So I'm seeing:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhhWZRoQlOKO8Cdi0Ae0DRvBmH1FeZcXEqA9lLD6obnGOIWVcbx59jXJuGpYeFbJJYJABU4I74fCAdyEpyLW9SboEJ8UwpbSfDzD6U_LAFS5_E37VqCwgsQYPPQ-P_WhMtKvABqmRJ2hGQ/s1286/NZFF21.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1286" data-original-width="909" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhhWZRoQlOKO8Cdi0Ae0DRvBmH1FeZcXEqA9lLD6obnGOIWVcbx59jXJuGpYeFbJJYJABU4I74fCAdyEpyLW9SboEJ8UwpbSfDzD6U_LAFS5_E37VqCwgsQYPPQ-P_WhMtKvABqmRJ2hGQ/w453-h640/NZFF21.jpg" width="453" /></a></div><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/riders-of-justice/" target="_blank">Riders of Justice</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/censor/" target="_blank">Censor</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/after-love/" target="_blank">After Love</a> (assuming I ever get to buy a ticket)<br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/beau-travail/" target="_blank">Beau Travail</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/the-french-dispatch/" target="_blank">The French Dispatch</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/the-innocents/" target="_blank">The Innocents</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/mass/" target="_blank">Mass</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/the-bitter-tears-of-petra-von-kant/" target="_blank">The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/hit-the-road/" target="_blank">Hit the Road</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/the-drovers-wife-the-legend-of-molly-johnson/" target="_blank">The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/bergman-island/" target="_blank">Bergman Island</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/john-and-the-hole/" target="_blank">John and the Hole</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/sun-children/" target="_blank">Sun Children</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/zola/" target="_blank">Zola</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/flowers-of-shanghai/" target="_blank">Flowers of Shanghai</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/quo-vadis-aida/" target="_blank">Quo Vadis, Aida?</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/the-hand-of-god/" target="_blank">The Hand of God</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/cryptozoo/" target="_blank">Cryptozoo</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/a-hero/" target="_blank">A Hero</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/blue-bayou/" target="_blank">Blue Bayou</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/beyond-the-infinite-two-minutes/" target="_blank">Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/nitram/" target="_blank">Nitram</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/unclenching-the-fists/" target="_blank">Unclenching the Fists</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/millie-lies-low/" target="_blank">Millie Lies Low</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/memoria/" target="_blank">Memoria</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/shiva-baby/" target="_blank">Shiva Baby</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/midnight/" target="_blank">Midnight</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/about-endlessness/" target="_blank">About Endlessness</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/undine/" target="_blank">Undine</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/paris-13th-district/" target="_blank">Paris, 13th District</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/written-on-the-wind/" target="_blank">Written on the Wind</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/apples/" target="_blank">Apples</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/one-second/" target="_blank">One Second</a><br />* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/wellington/titane/" target="_blank">Titane</a></div><p style="text-align: left;">One of the first films announced for the festival was one of the titles I was most hoping for: <i>Zola</i>. the adaptation of a viral Twitter thread in which a stripper told the story of how her working trip to Florida went bad. After the film was announced, <a href="https://imgur.com/a/WDwyW" target="_blank">I read the thread</a> out of curiosity, and it's quite a story, and given the high praise the film has elicited, I'm hoping for a great movie. And it has Riley Keough as one of the leads, which is always a plus.</p><p style="text-align: left;">In the same way that I didn't need to worry too much about missing out on <i>The Power of the Dog</i>, I probably didn't need to worry too much about catching <i>The French Dispatch</i>, since that is also due for release during the festival period. But I love Wes Anderson, and this is one title that has been delayed a year, so I just need to see it as soon as possible.</p><p style="text-align: left;">As I was looking through the programme, I saw <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/assets/resized/sm/upload/nl/bm/f6/8r/_AboutEndlessness_HERO-2000-2000-1125-1125-crop-fill.jpg" target="_blank">a single image</a> from <i>About Endlessness</i>, instantly realised "Oh, I guess Roy Andersson has a new film," and that made me excited. Andersson has <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/assets/resized/sm/upload/4d/25/i5/ol/A%20Pigeon%20Sat%20on%20a%20Branch%20Reflecting%20on%20Existence_Still%20Ballet-2000-2000-1125-1125-crop-fill.jpg" target="_blank">an</a> <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/assets/resized/sm/upload/7r/tb/pc/2s/A%20Pigeon%20Sat%20on%20a%20Branch%20Reflecting%20on%20Existence_%20Key%20Still-800-800-450-450-crop-fill.jpg" target="_blank">instantly</a> <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/assets/resized/sm/upload/3w/fh/9y/rk/A%20Pigeon%20Sat%20on%20a%20Branch%20Reflecting%20on%20Existence_Still%20restaurant-2000-2000-1125-1125-crop-fill.jpg" target="_blank">recognisable</a> <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/assets/resized/sm/upload/gd/22/t7/2i/YOU%2C_THE_LIVING_BY_ROY_ANDERSSON_-_01%5B5%5D-2000-2000-1125-1125-crop-fill.jpg" target="_blank">visual</a> <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/assets/resized/sm/upload/48/7z/ln/b8/30506-2000-2000-1125-1125-crop-fill.jpg" target="_blank">style</a>, possibly even more distinctive than Wes Anderson, so much so that a single frame can identify his work. But it's not that I'm excited by drab grey photography - I enjoy the way he sets up these little scenes that play out in front of the camera with a minimum of intervention, and them uses them for absurdist and melancholic humour. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I adored Julia Ducournau's first film <i>Raw</i>, an impressive horror film about a vegetarian veterinary student who develops a taste for human flesh, so was intrigued when her follow-up <i>Titane</i> won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Every time I heard anyone mention the film, they always started by saying to not know anything about the film, so I've deliberately avoided reading anything about it, not even the write-up in the programme. I have no idea what to expect from the film, but I am expecting it to be something.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I'm not expecting to enjoy <i>Mass</i>, a four-hander about a meeting between two sets of parents where one son killed the others', but it has an excellent cast, and the critical response has been strong, so I'm hoping for something thoughtful and challenging. </p><p style="text-align: left;">A number of critics I respect have heavily praised <i>Censor</i>, a horror film revolving around the UK video nasties of the 1980s, which does sound like a great idea for a film. </p><p style="text-align: left;">It's always a thrill to see a new Zhang Yimou film at the Embassy - the man is a master of visual artistry. I've been keeping an eye on the news of <i>One Second</i> ever since China pulled it just before its premiere, and while the film we'll be getting will no doubt have been subject to censorship by the country, any Yimou is exciting. </p><p style="text-align: left;">While I had issues with the most recent films of Christian Petzold and Paulo Sorrentino, they are significant cinematic figures, so I'm certainly excited to give <i>Undine</i> and <i>The Hand of God</i> a chance. </p><p style="text-align: left;">The work of Jafar Panahi is always a must-see, and so I was intrigued to hear <i>Hit the Road</i>, the first film from his son Panah Panahi, was so well received. Hopefully he's inherited some of his father's mastery. </p><p style="text-align: left;">The classic film selection allows me to tick off a number of titles I've heard about but have never seen and probably would never have got around to otherwise - <i>Beau Trevail</i>, <i>The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant</i>, <i>Flowers of Shanghai</i>, and <i>Written on the Wind</i>.</p><p style="text-align: left;">And then there are just the titles that sound intriguing. I'm always a sucker for a Korean thriller, and the idea of a serial killer hunting a deaf girl (<i>Midnight</i>) seems fun. <i>Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes</i>, a one-take film with a guy getting video messages from two minutes in the future, sounds like a delight. A bunch of Iranian street children teaming together to steal from a charity (<i>Sun Children</i>); a revenge thriller starring Mads Mikkelsen (<i>Riders of Justice</i>); a world experiencing a pandemic of amnesia (<i>Apples</i>) - these all sound like fascinating films that I might otherwise never get to see.</p><p style="text-align: left;">All in all, despite my reduced number of movies this year compared to the past few years, it still looks like a very promising festival, and I'm excited for it.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Assuming it all still goes ahead, that is. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="397" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_ehXnZsTmfk" width="648" youtube-src-id="_ehXnZsTmfk"></iframe></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-44706758595462157142021-04-25T14:29:00.004+12:002021-04-25T14:29:49.180+12:00940 minutes<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>So here's the thing, <p></p><p>There's a basic pattern with David Fincher films. His even-numbered films are good, great, iconic even - <i>Se7en</i>, <i>Fight Club</i>, <i>Zodiac</i>, <i>The Social Network</i>, <i>Gone Girl</i>; these are the films that people talk about when they talk about Fincher. His odd-numbered films are at best fine, sometimes actively bad - <i>Alien3</i>, <i>The Game</i>, <i>Panic Room</i>, <i>The Curious Case of Benjamin Button</i>, <i>The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo</i>; I can't imagine ever feeling any pressing need to rewatch any of these films.</p><p><i>Mank </i>is an odd-numbered Fincher film.</p><p><i>[Comments on </i>Mank<i>, and the other seven nominees - </i>Nomadland<i>, </i>Minari<i>, </i>Promising Young Woman<i>, </i>The Trial of the Chicago 7<i>, </i>Judas and the Black Messiah<i>,</i> The Father<i>, and</i> Sound of Metal<i> - after the jump.]</i></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIe4_WqEJrVySRakR43S1BwU_1AB-uEhUy0UyHfkUwVOOeagX3rxS3CrYoeknRBwBD96hsCX-tl-Z4sTdL58e1LG2LiNEv5HPJXF9m-Hg6AwufngiHwcHo7wiRmfMR3l1bLDvV_LUNsjBq/s755/mank.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIe4_WqEJrVySRakR43S1BwU_1AB-uEhUy0UyHfkUwVOOeagX3rxS3CrYoeknRBwBD96hsCX-tl-Z4sTdL58e1LG2LiNEv5HPJXF9m-Hg6AwufngiHwcHo7wiRmfMR3l1bLDvV_LUNsjBq/w270-h400/mank.jpg" width="270" /></a>Which is not to say that it's terrible; looking at that list, I'd say it's close to the top of those odd-numbered films. But there was a frustrating inevitability when the Oscar nominations were announced, and <b><i>Mank</i> </b>topped the list for number of nominations. Hollywood loves films about Hollywood, so almost any half-decent film on the subject is likely to do well; couple that with the fact that this is a film about the behind-the-scenes drama of the making of the "greatest movie ever made", and I'd be shocked if it wasn't a frontrunner. But it is an absolutely forgettable film, which is frustrating coming from a director who has demonstrated the talent to make so many vital and indelible movies.<p></p><p><i>Mank </i>tells the story of legendary screenwriter Herman J Mankiewicz, framed around his efforts to write the script for <i>Citizen Kane</i> while holed up in bed recovering from a broken leg. This becomes a framing device, through which we explore Mank's experiences in Hollywood through the 1930's, his work as a screenwriter at MGM under Louis B Mayer, his growing interest in left-wing politics and the role of the film industry in exploring issues, and his friendship with actress Marion Davies, famously the mistress of the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane, William Randolph Hearst. And we watch as his alcoholism increasingly isolates him, and as Davies, one of his few remaining friends, feels betrayed by his work on a film that she sees as a hatchet job on her lover.</p><p>The main problem with <i>Mank </i>is that the script simply isn't that good. The script was written by Fincher's father, Jack Fincher, over 20 years ago, and Fincher has been trying to make it ever since. Jack Fincher died in 2003, and so it was really does feel as though making this film is a tribute to his father. But you get the sense that this means that Fincher simply didn't have the necessary space to examine the script and identify where it falls down. The framing device really isn't that dynamic, amounting largely to Gary Oldman lying in bed dictating the script to his secretary, and while the rest of the film, flashing back to the prior decade, is more engaging, it still feels largely aimless, with the film not so much telling a story as telling a bunch of anecdotes from which we are supposed to interpret meaning. There's simply no flow to the film. Plus you don't really get any sense of who the characters are. Indeed, it seemed to me that the film took for granted a level of knowledge that I'm not sure a regular audience would have. I mean, I know who Louis B Mayer is, I know what an important figure he is in Hollywood history, but for a person who is a major character in the film, it seems to take little or no effort to explain to a casual film watcher who this person is.<i><b>*</b></i> And I do feel that's true of pretty much every historical figure in the film. The one exception is probably Marion Davies, and that's largely because the film has to show you who she was as a person, because her relationship with Mank lies at the core of the film. Rather bizarrely for a film that is at least centred around <i>Citizen Kane</i>, Orson Welles is almost non-existent in the film, an occasional voice on the phone and barely present on screen. </p><p><i><b>*</b> And if you don't know who Louis B Mayer is, I strongly recommend the <a href="http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/2020/1/20/mgm-stories-archive" target="_blank">MGM Stories</a> series on the <a href="http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/" target="_blank">You Must Remember This</a> podcast, in which Mayer is understandably a major figure.</i></p><p>The film is also severely hampered by the fact that the audience is inevitably going to be comparing the film to <i>Citizen Kane</i>, arguably the greatest film ever made. And no film is ever going to hold up against that comparison. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that because the film is about <i>Citizen Kane </i>then it is necessarily going to be compared to <i>Kane</i>; you could very easily make a movie about that film that never invites that comparison, simply by defining your own identity. The problem is that, with <i>Mank</i>, David Fincher chooses to invite the comparison by invoking <i>Kane </i>constantly. It's there in the black and white cinematography that consciously evokes Gregg Toland's work, in the construction of the film constantly flashing back and forth through time, in the choice to create a sound mix that deliberately sounds like it was playing in a 1940s movie cinema (complete with artificial echo), in the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that has echoes of Bernard Herrmann's style, even in individual scenes and moments that look like they've been deliberately constructed to be reminiscent of moments in <i>Kane</i> (seriously, they actually mimic the dropped snowglobe scene). It seems as though the only choice Fincher made to put any distance between his film and <i>Kane</i> was the choice to film in widescreen - and to be honest, I was so surprised that he made any choice that deviated from <i>Kane</i> that I actually went back just to double check that it was indeed in widescreen. But if you're going to force me to think about <i>Citizen Kane </i>during your film, then I'm going to be aware of how your film is not is great as that film. I saw <i>Mank </i>in a cinema, completely shut off from all distractions, but still there were points where the film struggled to hold my interest; a couple of days later, I rewatched <i>Kane </i>at home, a film I've already seen many times before, with every distraction known to man at my fingertips, and it fully grabbed me and held me for two hours. And so I can't praise <i>Mank</i>, because I can't help but be aware that it didn't have that effect on me. </p><p>Now, the film is not completely without merit. David Fincher is a great filmmaker, and you can see his delight in playing with black and white cinematography for the first time. Plus, much like he enjoyed examining the 70s in <i>Zodiac</i>, you can see him really loving exploring a recreation of the 1930's studio system. The portrayal of the Hollywood studio system during its height is fascinating and enjoyable, and I loved the way Arliss Howard captured the contradiction of Louis B Mayer, how he appealed to creating a sense of family while also being an astonishingly ruthless figure. (One of my favourite scenes involved Louis B Mayer addressing a room of studio workers to insincerely convince them to agree to a pay cut.) Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies is the best part of the film, and the film would be worth watching even if only for her affection for Mank and her sense of betrayal when he chooses to write a film so openly attacking her lover. And casting Charles Dance as William Randolph Hearst is brilliant; in just a handful of scenes he brings an air of innate power and control, and when he looks witheringly and dismissively at Mank you feel tiny, which makes the choice to write a work like <i>Kane </i>feel especially daunting. (It just makes you disappointed, of all the stories connected to Kane, that they decided to tell this story. The story of the relationship between Hearst and Davies is fascinating - hear <a href="http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/youmustrememberthispodcastblog/2015/9/21/mgm-stories-part-two-marion-davies-william-randolph-hearst-and-citizen-kane" target="_blank">this episode</a> of You Must Remember This - and could make a great film.) Sadly the worst performance in the film comes from Gary Oldman in the title role - it's just a very broad portrait of a self-destructive alcoholic, lacking any real nuance or subtlety, it's just exhausting to watch.</p><p>But the film was fine. I was glad to have had the chance to see it on the big screen, where the beautiful cinematography was best highlighted, and I was sufficiently entertained during the movie, but I haven't thought about it at all since the movie finished. It's the film that leads the nominations, but it looks like it's probably not taking home that many awards, which I'm glad about, because it really doesn't merit them.</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJv0be8VLOAHsCVynZGPGAUabZwYWYPvlGNDnhT6e604ijNQDhflao31YgHoLcdWtSNXdKCzYb7Vt52JbskB6ZLQOzmrFqr7yGDaPUysdLRwVI4ii3g_ihnRRduEa80w3QBoMr1RQZZQjH/s755/nomadland_ver2.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="504" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJv0be8VLOAHsCVynZGPGAUabZwYWYPvlGNDnhT6e604ijNQDhflao31YgHoLcdWtSNXdKCzYb7Vt52JbskB6ZLQOzmrFqr7yGDaPUysdLRwVI4ii3g_ihnRRduEa80w3QBoMr1RQZZQjH/w268-h400/nomadland_ver2.jpg" width="268" /></a><p>The accepted front runner is <i><b>Nomadland</b></i>, the new film from Chloe Zhao. I really liked her earlier film, <i>The Rider</i>, which really grew on me over time the more I thought about it. While I liked <i>Nomadland</i>, it hasn't quite had that same effect on me, because I do have some issues with it. The film is based on a non-fiction book of the same name, about a community of people who live in vans and roam around America. The film brings in a fictional narrative - Frances McDormand plays Fern, a widow who loses her home after the main employer in her town closes; finding herself houseless, she packs her life into a van and sets off to see the country and pick up whatever temporary job she can find.</p><p>It's possible that part of my issue with the film is grounded in simply having too much knowledge. Part of what made <i>The Rider</i> so fascinating was the realism inherent in the filmmaking - Zhao is someone whose interest is in exploring the boundaries between documentary and narrative film. So with <i>The Rider</i>, she doesn't use professional actors; she's inspired by a real person, and then casts his friends and family to play his friends and family, and while the story is fictional, there are stretches where you're just watching these people doing whatever it is that they normally do - you're just watching this real-life horse trainer train a horse. And so there's a palpable sense of reality in the film. And she takes a similar approach in <i>Nomadland</i> - the end credits are filled with names like Bob Wells as Bob, Linda May as Linda, or Charlene Swankie as Swankie, and the similarity in names between the actor and their character tells you that these are real people effectively playing themselves. And there are long stretches where you have one of these characters just talking, and you get the sense that this isn't the character speaking, it's the actual person reflecting on their life. And that's really fantastic and gripping, and I loved having the opportunity to just sit and listen to these stories. The issue I have comes when you introduce famous Oscar-winning Hollywood actress Frances McDormand playing this central role - now, Frances McDormand is hardly an example of Hollywood glamour, throughout her career she's demonstrated her interest in exploring real people, and apparently she did genuinely live as a nomad for months while making the film. But still, there's something jarring when you bring recognisable actors like Frances McDormand or David Strathairn and have them act against real people - it breaks the reality to a degree. Now, it helps that Fern is a newbie to the community, she's not supposed to feel quite as at home as some of the others around, and a lot of the conversations she has with members of the community occur in part because they have to explain one thing or another to her, but still something about it didn't quite work for me - the mix between documentary and narrative felt off.</p><p>And then the film threw me even more in the last part of the film. Again, to see why, you can look at the end credits - because the cast are listed in order of appearance, there's a clear dividing point where we go from most of the actors sharing names with their characters to actors whose character names differ from their own. And that's because the last part of the film fairly clearly moves away from this pseudo-documentary style and becomes more purely narrative, as Fern goes to visit her own family, as she goes to stay with David Strathairn and his family, and as she goes to visit her old home town. And those parts of the film feel much more like a conventional film, because you can feel that these are regular actors working with a script of some kind. And so you've got this film where a large part of the film feels mostly like a documentary, but then you've got this other part that is clearly narrative like any other film, and the merging of those two parts simply did not feel natural to me.</p><p>And yet, for a film that I did find structurally flawed from the start, I genuinely did like the film. Chloe Zhao is very clearly a talented and humane storyteller - there's a lot of tragedy and pain in the back stories of these people, stories of lost lives and lost family, and the moments where these people talk about the circumstances that led them to this life are heartbreaking. But at the same time, she ably manages to avoid turning the film into misery porn, focusing primarily on the joy and love of this strange community that has developed around this lifestyle. Very few of these people would ever have imagined living this life, would never have chosen a life of living in a van with so little security, but there's a genuine sense of excitement and enjoyment in the freedom and opportunity the lifestyle offers them. And Zhao is clearly very interested in understanding and exploring that mindset. She's helped incredibly by Frances McDormand, who as always does approach her character with honesty and interest, seeking to genuinely understand and empathise with the type of person that would be in this situation.</p><p>The film is also beautifully shot by cinematographer Joshua James Richards, who worked with Zhao on her two previous films. This is a film of vast open spaces, a film where part of the joy of the lifestyle is the ability to just go and explore the many environments of the country, and so Richards takes genuine delight in capturing some of that overwhelming beauty. There's a particular sequence where Fern goes to visit the Badlands National Park, and the scene takes place as the sun is setting, and I honestly think it's the most visually beautiful sequence I've seen in quite some time.</p><p>Look, it is an excellent film, and one I genuinely enjoyed. Its emotionally rich, and authentic in its explorations of this almost-accidental community. I will be honestly happy should the film win, because there is so much of the film that I loved. There are just films I liked more.</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJhMK9M6lHjxvguk-DphuYAxdaO_O1uoYjV-0r1cFcZQ79Q092O8CrmemveaQGixXYdTqBGsFfF2lmDECEiUb5lHrn-tU2UZglTkyeml5dlrYC2SwtB1XV9M8WEzkIxGTr_K_m1BARrHwy/s755/minari.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="521" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJhMK9M6lHjxvguk-DphuYAxdaO_O1uoYjV-0r1cFcZQ79Q092O8CrmemveaQGixXYdTqBGsFfF2lmDECEiUb5lHrn-tU2UZglTkyeml5dlrYC2SwtB1XV9M8WEzkIxGTr_K_m1BARrHwy/w276-h400/minari.jpg" width="276" /></a><p>One film I loved is <i><b>Minari</b></i>, a delicate flower of a movie, a thing of deep but subtle beauty. A portrait of the challenges of the American Dream, it follows a young Korean immigrant family, the Yi family, as they move to Arkansas in the 1980s; while the mother works to provide for the family through the long and laborious work of chick sexing, the father pursues his dream of becoming a farmer, growing distinctly Korean vegetables for the growing Korean community, and hopefully making enough money that his family can move out of the caravan they currently live in and into a real house. Then the grandmother moves over from Korea to live with them, and their young son in particular does not respond well to the interloper.</p><p>It came as no shock when, after watching it, I discovered that the film was semi-autobiographical, that writer-director Lee Isaac Chung did himself immigrate from Korea as a young child in the 80s and grew up on a farm in rural Arkansas. It has that air of genuine honesty and lived knowledge in every detail. You can tell that he's summoning up memories of people and experience to fill the film, and there's no artifice, every moment feels perfectly observes and real. One thing I did appreciate was that the obvious stand-in for Chung, the young son David, is often an unpleasant brat. It can be easy when making a film that draws so much from your own life to try to soften your edges, to hide the parts of you that you are ashamed of. But Lee Isaac Chung is honest in exploring that character - his open dislike of his grandmother, this strange woman who smells like Korea and has intruded into their family, is a major part of the film, and he will play cruel practical jokes on his grandmother that genuinely shocked me. And I appreciated that there's no straight line in the improvement of their relationship; every moment you think that he's starting to soften towards the old woman, every time there will be a nice interaction between the two characters, he'll turn back into the brat, as though he's catching himself starting to like this woman and trying to fight it. It's a very real portrayal of the way children can often think, and I did love it.</p><p>It's also a fascinating portrait of the struggles involved in being an immigrant, coming to a country with nothing, and having to work to achieve your dreams. The efforts of father Jacob, wonderfully played by the reliable Steven Yeun, to hold his vision together in spite of the myriad of challenges facing him are gripping to watch, as every new problem becomes a barrier that could derail their entire life. And the frustrations this has on the rest of the family are carefully explored, especially in its examination of the tensions in the marriage between Jacob and Monica, who worries that they've thrown away a safe and secure life in order to pursue a dream with colossal risk, and where nothing seems to be falling into place. And in the meantime, the farm becomes all-consuming - Jacob even carries a crate of vegetables into his son's medical appointment because he can't risk leaving them in the car in the heat of the day - which infuriates Monica. The reason this conflict is so effective in the movie is that we find ourselves agreeing with each side, so you find yourself taking the point of view of the last person who spoke - when Jacob is speaking, we are caught up in his excitement for his dream and desire to build a new life; when Monica speaks, we are convinced by her fears and concerns about chasing a fantasy that might never eventuate. And this tension is part of the reason why the film remains in the mind long after seeing the film.</p><p>I was a bit disappointed that the character of the daughter was largely forgotten about. The conflict between the parents, between the mother wanting to follow the safe and secure path and the father looking to pursue a crazy dream, is fundamental to the themes of the film. And the fluctuating relationship between the grandmother and grandson are pivotal to the emotional core of the film - plus the son has health issues that makes his mother constantly fret over his safety. (And he is the stand in for the writer-director.) In this context, it might be understandable that the daughter might feel as though she gets overlooked, but it's disappointing that the film herself seems to overlook her. While I had a strong sense of who the rest of the family was, and even some characters outside of the family, I often forgot did they even had a daughter. And that does feel like a shortcoming of the film - but it's probably the only shortcoming the film has.</p><p>I do love the choice to make the film largely in the Korean language. You wonder how much pressure there might have been to make the film completely in the English language, or at least to have the grandmother be the only character speaking Korean. After all, this is an American movie, the family are able to speak English, and it would have been tempting to remove language as a barrier to the audience. But it's absolutely the correct decision to have Korean as the prominent language in the film. For a start, I assume it's authentic to the director's experience - Lee Isaac Chung probably grew up speaking Korean at home and English in public. But it also emphasises the fact that this is an immigrant family, which is so foundational to the film - if this family did walk around speaking English everywhere, I think you would lose the sense of these people being outsiders, they would just become another Asian-American family who could have been here for generations. And, by being a distinctly American film that is largely not in English, it will hopefully open the door for other stories of the American experience that may have been overlooked in the past.</p><p>I was initially concerned by the choices that were made in creating the character of Paul, a local man who comes to work on the farm. When he's introduced, he is presented as a clear eccentric who decides to pray in tongues in front of Jacob, a nominal Christian who is visibly uncomfortable at the experience; later we learnt that Paul spends every Sunday walking for miles while carrying a full-sized cross. And so I was frustrated at the film for choosing to make the Christian character a "weirdo". After all, I was raised a Pentecostal, I pray in tongues in my personal life, but I would hope that I would have the sensitivity to recognise if I was making people uncomfortable. But as the film goes on we gain a real appreciation for the love and openness by which Paul welcomes the Yi family. By the end, I did find him an extremely challenging character - I do know that I'm not anywhere near as fully committed to Christ as Paul was in the film, and nor do I show the level of love and care for those around us that Paul does. And so it becomes an interesting and challenging portrayal of a character, because as uncomfortable and trying he is as a person to be around, he is also one of the best examples I've seen lately of a true Christian living life as they should.</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT-Xv1-F-2ptt7D-QpzNYF5jhj4ThrZcOMfPePuVdQ9t0DaoRda0RM3SbBBemsluhF2BWQuIY_GbPd88Q5jGCRuW-6ungnlNhzc3hLmudYiu8B0kgsVaF3DxLef77KYrn9pbtTb-FsSwUT/s755/promising_young_woman.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT-Xv1-F-2ptt7D-QpzNYF5jhj4ThrZcOMfPePuVdQ9t0DaoRda0RM3SbBBemsluhF2BWQuIY_GbPd88Q5jGCRuW-6ungnlNhzc3hLmudYiu8B0kgsVaF3DxLef77KYrn9pbtTb-FsSwUT/w270-h400/promising_young_woman.jpg" width="270" /></a><p>The film I was probably most surprised and pleased to see nominated was <i><b>Promising Young Woman</b></i>, the first film written and directed by Emerald Fennell. I really was not expecting it to be in the list of nominees; I knew there had been a lot of buzz around it, but it is an intensely polarizing film, and simply does not feel like an Oscar film. Starring Carey Mulligan, the film focuses on Cassie, a 30 year old woman who dropped out of medical school after her best friend was raped while intoxicated; aimlessly drifting, she now spends her nights going to bars and pretending to be wasted until someone tries to take advantage of her, at which point.... Then one day she learns that the main person behind the rape is now a successful doctor and planning his wedding, and this sparks her to seek revenge, not just on the perpetrators of the crime, but also all who enabled it to happen.</p><p>The film makes so many fascinating and unexpected choices, almost all of which for me really landed. For a start, it's effectively a rape-revenge film, a genre of film long established as a feature of the exploitation market. And while we've increasingly had films that re-evaluate the genre from a feminist perspective, there's always the point where you have to grapple with the rape scene, and the risk that a portion of the audience might enjoy such scenes in a way that was not intended. But by putting that crime in the long past, our focus ceases to be on the event itself, and more on the lasting consequences it had on those affected - they somehow managed to almost completely remove the rape from the rape-revenge film. (There is one moment where the film does toy with rape imagery in a way that is clearly deliberate, but does so in a way that is utterly horrific and non-exploitative, and is quite brilliantly done.)</p><p>I was also surprised by some of the story choices the film takes. This is probably partly influenced by the promotion of the film, which made it seem more like a typical revenge film, but I walked into the film expecting it to be about a woman who attacks or even kills people who take advantage of incapacitated woman. And so it threw me to realise that's not the direction this film takes. And I've seen a number of people criticise the film for not being brave enough to take that approach, but I admire the choice to not do that, because that's the story that always gets told with these films, and this film knows that and plays with it (witness the early scene where we're supposed to think she's just murdered someone, only for the blood stains to be revealed to be ketchup from a hot dog). But the ending of the film would hold completely different meaning if she was this avenging figure of violence, and I find the film so much more fascinating because that's not what she is.</p><p>I particularly admired Fennell's direction, which held the promise of an exciting new voice. She has a fantastic sense of style, and gives the story a candy-covered artifice that frequently sets you off balance, leaving you unprepared for the venom that lies underneath. She proves herself adept at navigating the conflicting tones of the story, jumping all the way from romantic comedy to outright horror with confidence and a certainty of tone. Possibly even more than my surprise at its nomination for Best Picture, I was shocked to see Fennell nominated for Best Director, but it's a well-deserved acknowledgement of her genuine skill as a filmmaker, and I'm excited to see what she does next.</p><p>Now, there has been some criticism of the film for effectively ignoring Nina, the rape victim who is central to inciting the events but regardless barely features in the film. And that's a valid point. But I also think that that would be a different film, and we are not short on films about victims turning the tables on their victimisers. That would be a story about a person trying to overcome direct trauma; this is a story about a person who is trying to cope with their own guilt over the many ways that she failed her friend - it's a different film, and in many ways a more original film. And the film is aware of Nina's absence from the narrative - there's even a scene involving Nina's mother where this is specifically discussed.</p><p>I was also fascinated by the choice to explore the wider culture that facilitated the crime and allowed those involved to evade consequences. It's easy to rage against people who are involved in a crime, it's more interesting to target the systems that support the perpetrators. And I was intrigued that the film pays particular attention to several women who by their actions chose to side with the culprits rather than the victims, as though the film was particularly outraged at the idea that these women would abandon female solidarity. But the way Cassie chooses to take revenge on these women by destroying them emotionally is particularly heinous, a choice that really made me respect the film. Cassie is not a "good" character, and in some ways we are supposed to see her almost as a villain, albeit in a film that has characters who are much more villainous. But we are still supposed to sympathise and empathise with her, and we are put in a place where we understand her rage at these people also. The film achieves a delicate balancing act that I was genuinely impressed with.</p><p>I've also seen a lot of criticism of the message that is sent by the film's ending, about what the film is saying to women who have been the victim of assault, asking where the message of the film gives any hope for these woman. And I'm going to try to be vague about this point, and avoid spoilers, but to me I found the ending perfect. It wasn't the ending I wanted, indeed initially I hated the ending, but the more I lived with it and reflected on it the more I realised that was the ending the film needed. I have heard that Emerald Fennell originally intended the film to end earlier, after the scene in the cabin - I wouldn't have liked that choice, which would have left the film with a sour taste. As it is, the film manages to have a "happy ending" that is nevertheless bitter and angry and cynical. I've heard a number of commentators who seem to have wanted Cassie to go almost <i>Kill Bill</i> at the end, almost as though that would improve the message of the film. But to me, the point is that what Cassie is doing is not healthy, is extremely self-destructive. You're not supposed to look for hope in her story, because what she is doing is wrong. And yet weirdly, even though I do think the ending is unrealistic, a "movie ending", I also think that there's an honesty and truthfulness in it. There's a fascinating fatalism to this ending, a message that ultimately it's not possible to get justice. It's not a happy message, but it's a realistic message.</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkt9jtDJpOHHbW23cMLoFshCS1YR16SBKKs8kW7DAB605glsxOUsx2czSDItjUhv4FFkNTxDrZmvMa-gdJ_61JiL_6cYPz-NHfLE0gq0wcSoOX8kodPidDD1e1DuKixrdOkmjrFLtVOK6G/s755/trial_of_the_chicago_seven.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkt9jtDJpOHHbW23cMLoFshCS1YR16SBKKs8kW7DAB605glsxOUsx2czSDItjUhv4FFkNTxDrZmvMa-gdJ_61JiL_6cYPz-NHfLE0gq0wcSoOX8kodPidDD1e1DuKixrdOkmjrFLtVOK6G/w270-h400/trial_of_the_chicago_seven.jpg" width="270" /></a><p>The baffling thing about the nomination of <i><b>The Trial of the Chicago 7</b></i> is that it means that there was a significant number of members of the Academy, people who work in the movie industry and who you'd hope would have some appreciation for the medium, who looked at this film and genuinely thought it was one of the best movies of the year. I do feel that, even if this was genuinely the best movie that you saw in 2020, surely you would assume there must have been better films that you just didn't see, and it's better to not nominate anything rather than nominating something so clearly undeserving.</p><p>A dramatisation of the trial of eight counter-cultural figures charged with various crimes, including conspiracy, in the aftermath of violent protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the film is the second directed by Aaron Sorkin, working from his own script. And that's really where the problem starts. At his best, Sorkin is a great writer; he is not a great director. He relies too much on the spark of his own words to tell the story, and doesn't put enough effort into his directorial storytelling. When you think of how masterfully directors like David Fincher, Rob Reiner, or Danny Boyle brought Sorkin's work to the screen, the degree to which his effort as a director falls short becomes obvious. The direction is very conventional, with very basic setup shot construction, and no sense of a film-maker behind the camera. Fatally, he struggles to create any sense of urgency in the film, and so it just becomes baggy, weighed down by a bunch of distractions that detract from the importance of the issues at the centre of the fight.</p><p>I'm sorely tempted to make a joke about how "As a director, Aaron Sorkin is a great writer". Unfortunately I can't in good conscience make that joke, because the greatness of his writing is also not on display here. I know nothing about the actual trial, so I will assume that the film is being accurate in the way it presents the trial as a farce. Leaving that aside, there is never any sense that these people are fighting for an important principle, the right to free speech and protecting the ability to protest a government's actions that you consider unjust. In fact it frequently loses track of the fact that these are people fighting to stop a war where thousands of young men are being killed. Instead it constantly degenerates into a collection of scenes where characters pull one absurd stunt or another, most notably Sacha Baron Cohen who plays Abbie Hoffman as though he is always trying to find some low-level Borat-style stunt to antagonise the judge. Is it entertaining when Hoffman comes to the court dressed in judge's robes; yes of course it is, but it doesn't actually tell me anything. This is a trial that lasted for 5 months, being boiled down to a 2-hour summary, and yet the film keeps getting distracted by gags that tell us nothing other than that Abbie Hoffman was a provocateur. Still, at least you walk away knowing something about Abbie Hoffman, even if it's as this one-dimensional figure; I genuinely finished the film feeling I knew nothing about most of the defendants, who for the most part just became faces sitting behind a table with very little characterisation or efforts to distinguish one from another. There's a moment in the film where a key plot point comes down to the way a particular character happens to speak, his tendency to elide words in his sentences, but we don't spend enough time with that character and learning how they speak for that moment to land. There's a moment in the film where Black Panther leader Fred Hampton is brutally murdered; Hampton is a recurring figure in the film, but he's just the guy who sits behind one of the defendants whispering advice, and we never actually know him as a character, so we really feel nothing when he is killed, and nor does the film pause to really explore how that defendant is affected by the death. Or what about Frank Langella as judge Julius Hoffmann; he's effectively the main antagonist in the film, and Langella is a great actor, but he's a cartoon here, only called on to be exasperated and constantly yell "Overruled", before telling us in an end card that he was later considered to be incompetent. How about taking the time actually develop Hoffman as a character, give Langella something to play, and make the effort to actually explain who this person was and why he was giving rulings that were patently spurious.</p><p>The fundamental problem is that there is simply too much material here to fit in a 2 hour film. It would have been so much better had Aaron Sorkin gone to HBO, and offered to tell this story as a 4 or 6 episode limited-run series; we could have had time to actually develop all of the characters, actually explore the issues and tensions that were at the core of the trial, with the antics of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin becoming some extra seasoning that spices up the material, rather than overpowering everything else as it does in the film. Ultimately the film doesn't have enough time, and so its message becomes a blunt instrument that it has to hit you across the head with, rather than being a work that's more cutting and incisive.</p><p>And the thing was frustrating is just how much a great cast was wasted. I'm not typically a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen, but he's excellent casting as someone who's always looking to stage one stunt or another, and being used to seeing Jeremy Strong as the repressed figure he plays in <i>Succession</i>, it's a delight to see him playing Cohen's collaborator in provocations. I'm always happy to see John Carroll Lynch playing a John Carroll Lynch-type, I've already expressed my appreciation for Frank Langella's work, and then as we go down the list, you get people like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, John Doman, or Michael Keaton. It seemed as though every few minutes I would get excited when another actor I appreciate appeared on screen, and then the film would give them some stock characterisation that offered nothing of interest for them to do. Its baffling how every opportunity for drama, every opening for your actors to test themselves, just seems to go to waste. </p><p>To be clear, its not that this is a bad film - it's fine, it's just not a great, or even good, film. And that's what you should want before you proclaim a film as a contender for Best Film of the Year.</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmlbJalrhZ_xrjA_gD2dsyXblWt6TLN7bOv9BNO2yh7g1cT_7PB_62o_mwnZ6g5Q_peLj_JOgbCzPBCdnACV-oP42WHdBYE1sShwqRlQGV4-_NxBQOKhOhIObMWFPWCoo3ua6jCswnLTlg/s755/judas_and_the_black_messiah.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmlbJalrhZ_xrjA_gD2dsyXblWt6TLN7bOv9BNO2yh7g1cT_7PB_62o_mwnZ6g5Q_peLj_JOgbCzPBCdnACV-oP42WHdBYE1sShwqRlQGV4-_NxBQOKhOhIObMWFPWCoo3ua6jCswnLTlg/w270-h400/judas_and_the_black_messiah.jpg" width="270" /></a><p>In an interesting coincidence, the death of Fred Hampton, which forms a small part of <i>The Trial of the Chicago 7</i>, is the main focus of <i><b>Judas and the Black Messiah</b></i>, the second film from writer-director Shaka King. The film focuses on William O'Neal, a low-level criminal who is pressured by the FBI to become part of the Black Panther party and inform on the rising star of the Illinois chapter, Fred Hampton, seen by J Edgar Hoover as a very real threat to society due to the power of his oratory. Hampton comes to power in the party and brings together a "rainbow coalition" of organisations representing various ethnic interest groups. Meanwhile O'Neal gets close to Hampton, even becoming the head of his security detail, all the time helping the FBI to find ways to deal with the Hampton problem, despite his own growing belief in the movement.</p><p>Much of the attention around Judas has understandably being focused on the Oscar-nominated performances of Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield - and it's entirely justified. Kaluuya is just magnetic as Fred Hampton, a figure with great charisma and intelligence, an intense force of will, and the ability to genuinely inspire people. A big part of Hampton's story was the way he managed to unify various conflicting organisations under one umbrella and get them working towards a common goal, and in his performance you genuinely feel that Kaluuya has the authority and power to bring about this outcome. The film's title, calling him a "Black Messiah", might seem somewhat hyperbolic, but seen in the context of the film, you can believe that this is genuinely how people might see him - both his followers, and those who are threatened by him and who may want to suppress his influence. It's a powerful performance, and it's immediately understandable why people are so focused on that performance as one of the frontrunners for the award.</p><p>People seemed to be more surprised by Stanfield's nomination playing Bill O'Neal. But to me he's giving the more fascinating performance. Lakeith Stanfield has to exist in a world of squirrelly discomfort. At the end of the film, there's interview footage of the real O'Neal where he talks with pride about being involved in the civil-rights movement and the fight for the black community, seemingly without ever considering the fact that he was also actively involved in the murder of one of the key leaders in that movement. Stanfield manages to make his character feel like someone who would be unable to recognise the inherent contradiction in those positions because that's the world he exists in. He's genuinely inspired by this figure, and yet he is actively working against this person who he honestly believes in, and he'll be frustrated when he doesn't manage to entrap them. He'll condemn people for given information to the police about their activities, all the while being the authorities' most significant informant. He's never able to be comfortable, he's always on the edge, while at the same time he has to project an air of confidence and command since that's what is required when you are the head of security in a militant group. The way Stanfield is able to exist in this uneasy and uncomfortable space for the entirety of the film is absolutely impressive, and I loved just watching that performance.</p><p>A lot of commentary has been focused around the fact that both actors have been nominated in the Supporting Actor category, which does raise the question about where the dividing line between a lead and supporting actor is. I've seen a lot of people declaring Kaluuya should have been nominated for lead actor, with Stanfield in supporting. But this to me fundamentally misunderstands the difference between a lead and a supporting role. Kaluuya absolutely gives the more prominent and magnetic performance, but that doesn't necessarily make him the lead. The film is unmistakably centred on O'Neal - it starts and ends with him, both in the story and in the interview footage that frames the movie, it's his personal journey that we're watching, and it's his interior conflict that forms the core emotional basis of the film. But an inability to understand the delineation between lead and supporting actor is just an ongoing problem with the Oscars (witness Denzel Washington in <i>Training Day</i>, or particularly Anthony Hopkins in <i>The Silence of the Lambs</i> - both clear supporting performances that won for lead actor). The fact is that Lakeith Stanfield was the lead of the film, and absolutely should have been nominated as such. Take out Gary Oldman and his unfortunate performance in <i>Mank</i>, put in Lakeith Stanfield, and I think that would be a perfect list of Best Actor nominees.</p><p>My only real problem with the film comes literally at the end, when a title card informs us that Fred Hampton was only 21 when he died. I was genuinely shocked by that discovery; never did it occur to me that the 30-odd Daniel Kaluuya might be playing someone so young. As great as his performance is, I wonder whether casting someone so noticeably older than the character being played undercut the film dramatically; the character is impressive in the film, but it's even more impressive when you know that this guy was barely an adult. And if anything, I have an even bigger issue with the casting of Lakeith Stanfield as O'Neal; I don't think the film gives us any indication of how old he was, so I was shocked to discover after the film that he was only 20 at the time the film ended, and more importantly that he was only 17 when he agreed to work with the FBI. That completely changes his character. I think it's so much easier to understand how a 17 year-old, still a kid, facing years in prison might decide to turn informant, and it might even make his character more sympathetic as we might feel that he never had a chance - we understand why he might grab onto this offer out of desperation, and then feel he was trapped. But someone who is an adult, who has been an adult for a decade, feels much more like someone who had other options, and who chose this path purely out of self-interest, and this makes the character much less likeable. None of this is a criticism of the actors, who do great work with the material and genuinely deserve every accolade they've received, and I can understand why they would have been cast in these roles. But I do think that the casting choice to age these characters up was unfortunate, and I think it would have been fascinating to see how different the film would be had the film been more true to the reality of these people.</p><p>But casting choices side, <i>Jesus and the Black Messiah</i> is an excellent movie, an interesting telling of an aspect of the civil rights fight that is possibly not as widely known, and well worth watching.</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXaQKDPwiNqi8NwUiuWzM8NtZD1p4xnZc9SWj89dcXUrgtdMjKFBVU5UL-5FicfxhfJ9kw8hmxVc84RNPiqATwcYuDJ_FBDycJv-jn8-Y0rNIyNXtjPfnChdMckU9C9ufCuJEOCLY8Dytr/s755/the_father.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="604" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXaQKDPwiNqi8NwUiuWzM8NtZD1p4xnZc9SWj89dcXUrgtdMjKFBVU5UL-5FicfxhfJ9kw8hmxVc84RNPiqATwcYuDJ_FBDycJv-jn8-Y0rNIyNXtjPfnChdMckU9C9ufCuJEOCLY8Dytr/w320-h400/the_father.jpg" width="320" /></a><p>To be honest, I had no idea that <b><i>The Father</i></b> even existed until about a week before the Oscar nominations, when I saw the trailer playing before a movie. So I was genuinely shocked when the film appeared as one of the Best Picture nominees. I will confess to somewhat dismissing the film - a film about a daughter trying to deal with her father's dementia is fairly standard awards-bait and well-worn ground, and while the trailer does point to the film doing something unexpected with the material, I was still expecting it to be a fairly generic version of a film we've seen many times before. I was wrong.</p><p>The film starts with a scene we've seen play out many times, with Olivia Colman as the daughter telling her dementia-struggling father, played by Anthony Hopkins, after he chases yet another care nurse away, that she's moving to Paris and won't be able to care for him anymore. So far, so as expected. Suddenly the film throws you for a loop - unexpectedly there are people living in the house with the father, people don't seem to be who we thought they were, conversations that we saw happen apparently never took place, time seems to loop back and repeat on itself. And you're left feeling intensely uncertain, like the entire world of this film has gone insane, and you're the only person who can recognise how wrong the world is. It's an astonishingly effective approach because, more than any other film on this subject I've ever seen, it manages to put the viewer in the position of experiencing things the way the dementia patient experiences the world. I've seen many films about how hard it is for a person to struggle with a family member dealing with these issues; I've never seen a film so effectively engage with the experience of being that dementia patient. And yet at the same time, even though we're never fully certain what parts of the film are true and which parts of the film are the consequence of his broken mind, we're still clear enough that we can follow the story and sympathise with the frustration of the daughter. So the film somehow manages to tell the story from the perspective of both the father and the daughter, even though the entire way they even perceive reality is so completely at odds with each other. It's a positively miraculous piece of filmmaking.</p><p>There's a common thing where an actor reaches a certain age and they start getting nominations that is less about the quality of the work in the specific film, and more about acknowledging the body of work throughout their career - when I saw Anthony Hopkins' name among the nominees, I have assumed that was what this nomination was. I could not have been more wrong. This is a powerful and moving performance that requires Hopkins to draw on every acting skill he ever developed. At times he's just like any other person, as full of life and power as anyone, and you can see the man who has been fully in control of his entire life. At other times he will turn vacant and become someone who is clearly unable to care for himself. Or perhaps he'll start expressing an impotent rage at a world that he's losing his bearings in. There's a particular moment in the film I keep coming back to, where he's talking to someone and he's sweet, charming, energetic, lifeful, and then in the space of maybe five words he completely flips and is suddenly filled with venom and bile and anger, and it happens so fast that it takes a moment to even register what just happened.</p><p>And then there's Olivia Colman, who everyone knows is wonderful, and this film just reminds you why we love her. It's a beautifully nuanced performance, because she can almost never let her emotions become visible. Just watch the way she smiles at her father, the way she communicates that she's never happy, but she smiles to comfort and reassure her father, even while she is absolutely emotionally devastated and drained. A big part of her character's frustration comes from the fact that she knows her father doesn't understand the pains he's putting her through - he'll repeatedly talk about how his other daughter hasn't been to visit, which is upsetting to Colman as a constant reminder of the death of her sister, but she has to hide that pain to avoid retraumatising her father by causing him to learn of his child's death all over again. There's really only one moment when we get to see exactly how she's feeling and the burden that this is having on her, and the pain and regret that infuses her performance is just palpable. For the rest of the film, it's all just in undertones, and it's an incredible performance.</p><p>As for the rest of the cast, they're really all in minor supporting roles, but the film rests on the effectiveness of their performances. It's difficult to talk about these performances, because I can't really reveal who they're actually playing; so much of the film centres on the question of who these people are. A couple of months ago, a screening of <i>Rushmore </i>left me and a friend wondering what happened to Olivia Williams, and while this is not a large role, her interactions with Anthony are some of the most beautiful and tender in the film. Mark Gatiss has an enjoyably casual element to his performance, as though he is irritated by the need to deal with this old man losing his mind. Rufus Sewell is utterly hateful, nasty and selfish, in many ways the villain of the piece, but he brings a nice shading to the character that makes him feel less awful, and more someone who is simply frustrated as having to deal with this situation. And Imogen Poots delights as a character who seems extremely vulnerable but who manages to tap into an impressive strength.</p><p>The film is the first film to be directed by Florian Zeller, based on his own play. It's an confident piece of directing, that shows no signs of Zeller's inexperience in the medium. It probably helps that the play, which I understand is very well-regarded, offered a strong starting point for the film, and there's little effort made to expand it from its stage origins, so he feels very comfortable working in this environment. Often it's a valid point of criticism that a film adaptation of a play still feels too much like it's been performed on stage, but here I think it's one of the film's strengths. The film takes place pretty much entirely inside, mostly in the one apartment or another, occasionally stepping out to a hospital or doctor's office, but we never go outside. This lends a real air of claustrophobia to the film, as we feel just as trapped in this apartment as the father does. </p><p>And particular attention really has to be paid to the production design, which really stood out for me. They need to pull off this nice little trick where all the spaces where the film takes place are clearly distinct and delineated from each other, each location has its own clear markers and character, while also being sufficiently close in design that it becomes easy to lose track of which space we're in, forcing us into this same disoriented world that Anthony exists in. Add to that the need for everything to feel closed in; these are massive, cavernous apartments, but the production design doesn't give us any space to breathe, these spaces feel oppressive, enclosing, disorienting, without any sense of air, which just leads to the sense of being trapped which is so pivotal to the film.</p><p><i>The Father</i> is a great example of the good effect that the Oscars can have. I probably never would have seen this film; no matter how good the reviews were, I expect I would have rejected it as yet another dementia story, but because of the Oscars I was forced to watch it, and therefore had the delight of learning just how new, original, fascinating, and emotional this film was. I walked away from the film close to in tears, but also excited by how this film used the medium to explore these issues. It's a brilliant film and I loved it.</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinEtHuTfri-6rRs4l3DqD5is9WhViPQoXXNQSaXTFveR8k94t_4e3nhQ1w2y_Vca-Fg1xPFbcoClU8E4VYPQYfQ5zmJlWy0q5Ix_2yY5k4aaG70qDYcrd2Gfnwtl4jdax-cbZyI7XuRj62/s755/sound_of_metal.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinEtHuTfri-6rRs4l3DqD5is9WhViPQoXXNQSaXTFveR8k94t_4e3nhQ1w2y_Vca-Fg1xPFbcoClU8E4VYPQYfQ5zmJlWy0q5Ix_2yY5k4aaG70qDYcrd2Gfnwtl4jdax-cbZyI7XuRj62/w270-h400/sound_of_metal.jpg" width="270" /></a><p>As I did <i><b>Sound of Metal</b></i>. They say that, surprisingly, the most important element in creating the cohesive experience of a movie is not what appears on-screen, but is actually the audio. They've apparently conducted experiments that show that people find it easier to accept a film with poor picture quality but good audio then a film with good picture quality but poor audio. It seems counterintuitive, since for the first three decades of the medium they didn't even have sound, but these days it really is the audio track that ties the film together and makes it feel convincing. And <i>Sound of Metal</i> is a perfect example of the importance of sound in communicating an experience that can never be shown visually.</p><p>Riz Ahmed stars as Ruben, a drummer in a metal band with his girlfriend Lou. One day he's distressed to realise he's having trouble hearing, and learns that his hearing is at a 20% level. But being unable to imagine doing anything else, he continues to play until his hearing is almost completely gone. While he holds on to the dream of an expensive implant that will restore his hearing, Lou pressures him to join a community of deaf people, particularly taking on a mentor to guide him through this experience and working with a school of young deaf children, and help him to learn to live with himself and the reality of his new existence.</p><p>The film is a beautifully written exploration about what it's like to have your entire life change in an instant, and the struggles of coming to accept a new reality. Now, I have no doubt that the film probably elides and simplifies a lot, a necessary concession to time limitations and an audience that is probably fairly new to this story, but it still feels like it approaches a challenging and devastating situation with sympathy and honesty. There's a moment where Ruben is told that the way he's talking, about spending vast amounts of money chasing every little opportunity to preserve some kind of hearing, makes him sound like an addict, and it's not a bad comparison - the film makes very clear that he will throw away everything in his life in order to avoid having to deal with the problems he's facing. I was really impressed by how subtle a lot of the writing was - we're told that Reuben has been clean for 4 years, so when a moment later we learn he's been with Lou for 4 years, the film manages to communicate the couple's entire history and backstory in just two words. And I appreciated that the film never feels like it's taking the conventional route - this is most notable with the character of Lou; after being so prominent in the first part of the film, she's largely absent through the middle part, only returning towards the end, and you feel that you can predict where the tensions in their relationship will come from, and when the film reaches that point it does something completely different and intensely satisfying.</p><p>The film is anchored around Riz Ahmed's performance, and it's a powerful reminder of just what a great actor he is. His character is filled with a constant nervous energy that drives him to always be moving, completely unable to just pause and be at rest, and that's why this experience terrifies him so much - it's not just the fact that his entire life revolves around making music with his girlfriend, not just the knowledge of everything that he is losing as his hearing goes, it's that he's genuinely panicked at the thought of calm, he can't cope with the idea of silence. He's a frustrating character, compulsive, impulsive, belligerent, frequently lashing out in anger at anyone around who will take it, and the way Riz Ahmed brings these elements to his character while retaining the audience's sympathy is compelling and remarkable, and I adored watching him. He has been nominated for the Oscar for this performance, and it would be absolutely deserved; it's a performance of immense vulnerability and honesty, and truly is one of the best of the year.</p><p>Also nominated is Paul Raci in the role of the deaf mentor Joe. He's someone who's been working for decades in minor roles, and to be honest I'd never registered him before, but it's exciting when someone like that gets an opportunity to play a career-making role like this and so completely nails it. He's a genuinely supportive figure, someone who has clear sympathy for what Ruben is going through and who understands what he needs, but is also not willing to sugarcoat things and who is determined to challenge Ruben when necessary. It's a fantastic and compelling performance, and the scenes of these two talking are easily the highlight of the film.</p><p>I was also excited when I realised that Lou was played by Olivia Cooke, who I've been a fan of for almost 10 years at this point. And I am genuinely surprised that there hasn't been more awards discussion about her work here; while it's not as immediately obviously great as Ahmed or Raci, she brings a lot of the emotional grounding to the film, and you can feel the weight of Lou's unexpressed history in her interaction with Ruben, you can see that Ruben has been there for her when she was going through bad periods with her addiction, and that she's determined to give him the same support that he gave her. It's beautiful work, and I just hope that one day she gets the recognition she deserves.</p><p>Sadly I had to watch the film at home, but I would deeply have loved to watch on the big screen - less so for the visuals (although it is a beautifully shot film), but more for the all enveloping soundscape, which was effective at home but would have been fantastic with the full power of a cinema sound system. The audio of the film is constantly treated in a way that emphasises the experience of Ruben as he goes through this experience. Sometimes the sound is perfectly normal, at other points it's muffled and stodgy, or perhaps there's a harsh digital processing applied to the audio, and sometimes the sound is just completely dropped out and we're just left to sit in silence. At points you can tell that they're using low frequency vibration to communicate the physical aspects of sound that can still be experienced even as hearing loss occurs - something that would have been extremely effective in cinema. And it's all done in a way that is often intentionally disoriented, leaving conversations in sign language unsubtitled, so we're left to experience everything just as Ruben does. It's extremely effective use of a vital element in filmmaking, and I'd be shocked if it doesn't win the Oscar for best sound.</p><p>There's a famous quote by Roger Ebert: "For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us." And that's what <i>Sound of Metal</i> does to an impressive degree - for a moment, it helped me understand what it would be like to experience the world as a deaf person. It's a brilliant film, one of my favourites of the year, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. </p><p>All in all, its a pretty good batch of nominees. There are a couple of films that aren't great, but there are a lot that are, with a number of films taking some big swings in experimenting with the form and succeeding for the most part. After the weird year that 2020 has been, it's pleasing to see that there is still great cinema being made.</p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-78599804492672480022020-02-09T23:03:00.002+13:002021-04-24T22:48:21.317+12:001275 minutesSo here’s the thing.<br />
<br />
I've been a fan of director Bong Joon-Ho for over 10 years, ever since the one-two punch of seeing his first film, the hilarious <i>Barking Dogs Never Bite</i> (about a man driven to consider killing his neighbour's incessantly barking dog), and then shortly after seeing his then-newest film, <i>Mother</i> (about a woman trying to prove her son's innocence of murder). I didn't immediately realise that these films were from the same director, but as soon as I put that information together, I became a committed fan. He's one of the most fascinating, unexpected filmmakers working today, and when I saw his newest film had won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, that set very high expectations, and I was excited to see whether could live up to them. I've seen it twice now, and as great as his other films are, it's pretty clear that <i><b>Parasite</b></i> is his greatest film, at least to date, and it's a perfect display of his skill and his quirks as a film-maker, and his particular thematic obsessions.<br />
<br />
<i>[Thoughts on all nine Best Picture nominees – </i>Parasite, 1917, Once Upon A Time In… Hollywood, The Irishman, Marriage Story, Joker, Little Women, Jojo Rabbit, <i>and </i>Ford v Ferrari<i> – after the jump.]</i><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBwZXxdjg8VB7EODM3Ut1dsVReENFfryJccYmCktCFZGLQc90efFBZVKiOaM2G0uS14d2vQfcwkn_YZgo63Bm62WahDhhgMeSnEIBHP-oz4WY_6dQor870TAMmTfuMMMLFSIUgSCMs8n3I/s1600/parasite.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBwZXxdjg8VB7EODM3Ut1dsVReENFfryJccYmCktCFZGLQc90efFBZVKiOaM2G0uS14d2vQfcwkn_YZgo63Bm62WahDhhgMeSnEIBHP-oz4WY_6dQor870TAMmTfuMMMLFSIUgSCMs8n3I/s400/parasite.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
The film focuses, at least at the start, on the Kim family, almost literally living below the poverty line in a subterranean basement apartment, stealing WiFi and making money folding pizza boxes. One day, the son gets an opportunity (via a forged diploma) to work for the incredibly wealthy Park family; seeing a way for his entire family to move ahead, he first helps his sister, and then his parents, con their way into jobs with the Parks. All seems to be going well, until everything starts to collapse in a way that could never have been predicted.<br />
<br />
In an ideal world, <i>Parasite </i>would win the Best Picture Oscar. I don’t think it will because, as happened last year with <i>Roma</i>, they can just give it the award for Best International Film (formerly the Best Foreign Language Film award) and then they can save the Best Picture Award for a film where they actually speak English. (And if that sounds like an exaggeration, see one of the Hollywood Reporter’s “<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/brutally-honest-oscar-ballot-irishman-was-boring-tarantino-amazing-1275576/item/best-actor-2020-brutally-honest-ballot-1-1276074" target="_blank">brutally honest awards ballot</a>” articles, where an actual person voting for the Oscars says that they “don't think foreign films should be nominated with the regular films.”) And it's galling, because while there are some really good, strong films that have been nominated (and many more that haven’t been), there's nothing that comes close to being as fantastic as <i>Parasite </i>is.<br />
<br />
The thing I'd love about Bong Joon-Ho is the admirable control that he has over the tone of a film - which is impressive given the wild variation that runs through his output. Throughout all of his films, he gives us work where we're never quite certain what the tone of the film will actually be. He'll set up a situation of incredible suspense, or perhaps give us a moment of unexpected violence, and then he'll punctuate it with some unexpected comedy. It's particularly marked in <i>Parasite</i>, because the film makes such a dramatic change. The first half of the film seems like it will be a fairly light comedy - there's an unmistakable biting satirical edge, but at the same time it has the fun breeziness of a small-scale low-stakes con film. (Just look at the masterfully executed scene where the family use a peach and a sachet of hot sauce to secure a job - it could almost be a scene from <i>Ocean's 11</i>.) But then the film reaches a point where it goes dark, and it goes dark fast. (A friend of mine even commented that he found the film worked better on second viewing, because on first viewing he was slightly thrown by that dramatic shift from light fun laughs into bloody black comedy.) But the film never feels like it's out of director Bong's control - he uses that initial lightness of tone to lull the audience into a sense of comfort, much as the Kims allow themselves to feel comfortable and that they have everything under control, and so the sudden change from silly fun to shocking blackness throws us as much as them. At that point, the film becomes positively Hitchcockian, achieving a sustained level of intense suspense throughout its second half. But throughout that shift, the film remains consistently funny, often at the same time as it shocks us. Witness, for instance, a particular moment where one person falls down a set of stairs - it's a brutal physical moment, but it's also a perfectly timed, staged, and performed piece of slapstick comedy that also leaves the audience both laughing out loud and wincing in genuine sympathetic pain. And that ability to perfectly balance the tone, to lighten some rather tough moments with comedy without lessening the impact of the drama, is the reason why the film is so incredibly entertaining.<br />
<br />
Watching the film a second time, one of the other things that I found myself noting was the design of the house. It's not really something that I took too much notice of first time, because I’d just assumed they rented someone's house for filming, probably supplemented by a few extra rooms built as sets on a soundstage – that’s what they usually do. But it seems that Bong Joon-Ho had an incredible detailed understanding about exactly what the house needed to be, what every shot inside that house needed to look like, and so they had to construct the actual entire house from scratch. Once I learned this, I was in awe at the house, with all its alcoves and subtle corners where people could hide, or all the random steps throughout the house that felt treacherous, as though they could easily trip people up (all elements that would prove essential to the film). Suddenly the brilliant visual of the stairway into the basement, a gaping black hole in the middle of a richly golden wall, isn't just a convenient visual they found on location, but a piece of design inherent to his vision for the film. I love the wide open window looking out onto the backyard, which left me constantly on the edge in suspense, always anxious that there would be someone in the garden to witness the schemes of the Kims. There's a fantastic extended shot where the film descends into the depths of the basement, and I found myself impressed, both at the shot and at the marvellous construction of this location. So much of the film depends on having a clear understanding of the structure of the house and where different characters physically are in relation to each other, and I was impressed with how clearly Bong communicated the physical geography of the location.<br />
<br />
Bong Joon-Ho's work has also been defined by a strong social sense, with works like <i>Snowpiercer</i>, <i>The Host</i>, or <i>Okja</i> being particularly angry at the way the world is. But as much as I enjoy his work, at times his message can come across as too obvious - I love <i>Snowpiercer </i>as an action film, but it is not subtle in its metaphors. <i>Parasite </i>continues this passion, while approaching its themes with a delicacy that I really appreciated. Just consider the title, which is never explained in the film - it's a title that works as pure metaphor. If a parasite is a being that finds a host, takes hold of it, and feeds off it to keep itself alive, then the Kims are obviously the parasites, driven out of desperation to feed off the wealthy Park family. Or perhaps it's the Park family that are the parasites, having built a life that requires them to feed off those around them to survive; certainly the inability of Mrs Park to function without the assistance of those around her points to a person who is unable to control her life, as though she is being led through her life by her host. And then we're also presented an argument about the desperation of people disadvantaged by modern economic structures, as we see people at the bottom of the ladder needing to fight to secure any position, all the while the wealthy sit comfortably, completely unaware of the impact that they have on those below. But what's smart about this film is that, while all this messaging is unmistakably in the film, the film never becomes didactic or preachy. It's a beautifully constructed satire of the way our economic system works, while at the same time always retaining a light touch in the way it presents its arguments and never losing track of the need to be first and foremost a fantastic piece of entertainment.<br />
<br />
In short, I love <i>Parasite</i>, and would love nothing more than for it to win. I don’t think it will happen, but there is a small sliver of hope for a <i>Parasite </i>win. The votes for Best Picture aren’t cast based on a first-past-the-post outcome, but based on a preferential ballot. I’m holding on to the fact that <i>Parasite </i>is the one film that everyone universally seems to love; hopefully that means enough people give it their #2 or #3 ranking to push it over the line, ahead of films with more divided support.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOFGszhx9_TxjPjsD424guz-HcARdZhzR3YTuNbHO2GVusWDNn51CAZkOFSkeHm_6mGzmqzl-ns-7X8wE4VoJ4nRjOM22FuSg7HNJmXK8Q0Fvno4lN1KWEaEd4EIzRlolAx33SU66r-bUz/s1600/1917.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="477" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOFGszhx9_TxjPjsD424guz-HcARdZhzR3YTuNbHO2GVusWDNn51CAZkOFSkeHm_6mGzmqzl-ns-7X8wE4VoJ4nRjOM22FuSg7HNJmXK8Q0Fvno4lN1KWEaEd4EIzRlolAx33SU66r-bUz/s400/1917.jpg" width="252" /></a></div>
But who am I kidding? Best Picture will be won by <i><b>1917</b></i>, the story of two soldiers in the trenches in World War 1 who are tasked with travelling nine miles overnight through no-man’s-land to hand-deliver a message cancelling a planned attack that would otherwise be a catastrophic massacre.<br />
<br />
I had the opportunity to see <i>1917 </i>at the IMAX cinema, which really is the way to see the film because it is first and foremost a piece of cinematic spectacle. The entire film is presented to the audience as though it is one single continuous shot (although in actuality it is digitally stitched together from dozens of takes, with the longest take apparently only 3 1/2 minutes long). Here's the thing: it's an impressive achievement, and for the most part it does work, with the gliding camera just following our main characters, never separating from them, never giving us any warning of impending threats, following them through this relentless progression towards the front line. It does act as a constraint and a challenge for the filmmaker, removing one of the main cinematic tools - you can't cut away to the ominous figure of a sniper to build suspense, and so you have to find other ways to do so, using things like framing to put opposing characters on screen together – so we see a German wander into frame, and suddenly the audience are on edge waiting for the characters to be discovered. And I did feel that was reasonably effective.<br />
<br />
But the problem I have it is that it does feel gimmicky, and I don't know that I have a good grasp on what exactly they were trying to achieve. Sam Mendes directed the last James Bond film, <i>Spectre</i>, which opens with a long supposedly single shot following Bond from the streets of Mexico to the rooftops where he conducts surveillance and attempts an assassination. It didn't really work for me in <i>Spectre</i>, but this film really feels like Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins had so much fun with the challenge of shooting that scene that they decided to try to do it for an entire film. And yet it never really feels to me like it is one shot, because there are multiple moments in the film where you can see or feel them trying to cheat the shot and piece together two takes into one. (There are points where the joins between the takes are really noticeable.) The thing is, people talk about how for an audience watching a film, a cut is like a release. Part of the effect of a long shot is that, consciously or unconsciously, we are aware that the film hasn't cut, and as time goes on we increasingly need the film to cut to a new shot just to give us that release of tension, because otherwise we're just trapped with the characters. (Look at the film <i>Victoria</i>, which did genuinely film as one single take without a single cut; much of that film's effectiveness came from feeling completely caught up with the main character without any way to escape.) But if you're going to fake your long shot, the audience can still feel your shot cutting, even if they're not aware of it, so rather than the tension slowly building up, it still has the effect of giving the audience the release they want, without any of the advantages of actually being able to edit your film.<br />
<br />
And my other problem with the approach comes down to timing. This isn't a surprise - I'm the person who was annoyed by <i>127 Hours</i> because <a href="http://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2011/02/8648-minutes.html" target="_blank">I couldn't work out what the 127 hours actually referred to</a>. In this case, because we're there with the soldiers every step they take, you feel like you've actually been on this full trip with them. I've even seen people refer to this film as taking place in real-time, which is demonstrably incorrect, but also an understandable mistake. By taking this approach, we've seen every step the characters took between their two destinations, so of course it must be in real time, and so it bothers me when I realise that there's no way they could possibly have travelled the nine miles to reach the front line. But had they done something differently, say, taking an approach that used a lot of long takes for major sequences, while allowing for cuts in less intense scenes to allow the characters to get a breath, it would have created enough space in the story for us to assume that they must have also travelled a number of miles in the cuts between shots. But that's just me being stupid and focused on petty concerns.<br />
<br />
The thing is, the film winds up feeling very much like something to be experienced rather than being a piece of art to engage with. Last year, there was a massive controversy when Martin Scorsese compared the Marvel movies to theme park rides, but I honestly felt that's a comparison that can also easily be made with <i>1917</i>. I didn't really walk away from the film feeling that I knew either of the main characters terribly well, other than the fact that one of them had a brother who he didn't want to die. And while there are plenty of appearances by much loved actors like Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, or Benedict Cumberbatch, they’re only ever cameos and establish no real characters. Meanwhile there's barely ever a moment for the film to pause or reflect, it's always moving, moving, moving on to the next moment, the next set piece. And many of the set pieces are fantastic, with the suspenseful walk through abandoned German trenches, a shocking plane crash, a beautiful night-time firefight in a demolished city illuminated by flares, and, in the film's most emotional and beautiful scene, a moment watching a group of soldiers waiting for the order to attack, passing time by singing traditional folk songs. But there is also theme-park-style silliness, particularly in the climactic scene where one character unnecessarily runs in the middle of a battle seemingly solely for the spectacle of having a shot of him in the middle of a field with explosions all around.<br />
<br />
And then there are the irritating moments where you can feel the presence of the screenwriter controlling the events. This is most egregious in the moment where the soldiers come across an abandoned farm, and find a full pail of milk. We don't know how long ago the farm was abandoned, but somehow the milk is clearly still fresh despite sitting in the sun for however long. (Presumably the farmer was in the middle of milking the cow when they had to flee, and in the middle of that chaos the pail was miraculously never knocked over by either the farmer or the cow, and that all presumably happened earlier that day.) One of the soldiers decides to fill his canteen with the still-good milk, which proves extremely helpful an hour later when he finds himself in a situation where he desperately needs milk and the only source available is the milk he saved in his canteen. All that just felt like so much artifice constructed in reverse in order to get us to that later scene. And it annoyed me how transparent that writing was. And above all, I was bothered because the story never felt to me like a genuine experience that occurred. It's so important that this message be delivered that the characters almost have plot armour, simply because someone has to survive to deliver the message, and so no matter how overwhelming the challenges they encounter may be, you never really feel like they’re in any real danger. Again, you can see the writing keeping the characters safe, and that irritates me.<br />
<br />
Still, while it really is an empty spectacle, it does generally work as a tribute to the heroism of soldiers at war, choosing to put their own lives aside in order to save others. And as a portrait of those men with that mindset, I did like it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzHfX9uXR-j0pLNRF4EWZaajKiqBz5KDi7DMW24B8CI7Z7DUdnC8R3Uk7KLzC_X9ZfI5n_-85GCt26A2rjQC0Jkkm06NV-ZWpDH9gRhMiHAyLpZ8D8gQMgX7JvpezkYq2DU3ccBlQ4_Os2/s1600/once_upon_a_time_in_hollywood.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzHfX9uXR-j0pLNRF4EWZaajKiqBz5KDi7DMW24B8CI7Z7DUdnC8R3Uk7KLzC_X9ZfI5n_-85GCt26A2rjQC0Jkkm06NV-ZWpDH9gRhMiHAyLpZ8D8gQMgX7JvpezkYq2DU3ccBlQ4_Os2/s400/once_upon_a_time_in_hollywood.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
For a long time, it seemed like the front runner for the Best Picture Oscar was going to be <b><i>Once Upon A Time in... Hollywood</i></b> - a result I'd be much happier about than if <i>1917 </i>wins. Officially the 9th film from Quentin Tarantino, the film takes place in Hollywood over 6 months in 1969, and focuses on fictional movie star Rick Dalton and his regular stunt man and friend Cliff Booth, along with his Cielo Drive actress neighbour Sharon Tate and a bunch of fucking hippies living out on a movie ranch somewhere.<br />
<br />
As is to be expected with a Tarantino film, a significant emotional part of the film is driven by nostalgia, in this case nostalgia for the Hollywood that he grew up in. There's a sense running through the film that 1969 marks a real turning point in Hollywood - while the New Hollywood wave had already started, with films like <i>Bonnie and Clyde</i>, <i>The Graduate</i>, or <i>Easy Rider</i> having already come out, it was really in the 70s that the movement took hold. Tarantino seems to see Tate-LaBianca as a dividing line that broke the Hollywood of his youth, a trauma that led to the rise of New Hollywood. Rick Dalton, the Leonardo DiCaprio character, is not the type of person that will survive the transition into New Hollywood; he's a talented actor but an aging actor, and one who never had his talents stretched or tested, so when Hollywood changes he will be left behind. As presented here, Dalton is very much the type of actor that Tarantino likes; I can see him being very much like Robert Forster but one generation earlier, and I can’t help wondering if we’re supposed to see the director of Lancer as a somewhat absurd 1960s version of Tarantino, trying to revive Dalton’s career the same way he revived Forster’s.<br />
<br />
One of the most debated elements of the film revolves around Cliff Booth's backstory, and in particular the unresolved question about whether he murdered his wife. The film never lets us into the character's mind on that issue, and when a flashback shows us what happened, the killing could genuinely be interpreted as accidental or deliberate. And I find that choice intriguing, especially as Clint Booth is supposed to be one of our heroes, and because Brad Pitt is so likeable and charming in the film, it seems odd to go out of your way to establish him as a potential wife murderer. (It inevitably calls to mind Robert Wagner, who has had a long and successful career despite rumours about his involvement in the mysterious drowning of his wife Natalie Wood while on a yacht.) But there's the interesting fact that people still seem to be willing to work with him - we only hear about one person who doesn't want to work with Cliff, and in that case it's because the guy is worried about his wife's response to him working with a murderer. In other words, Cliff may have committed a horrific crime against a woman, but all the men seemingly turn a blind eye, while it's the women who have to demand justice. Which inevitably leads me to think about Harvey Weinstein. So much of Tarantino's career is tied up with Harvey Weinstein, and vice versa, that it's impossible to talk about the one without the other. And Tarantino has spoken about his knowledge about the accusations - Uma Thurman and his former girlfriend Mira Sorvino both told him about their experiences with Weinstein, but Tarantino has admitted marginalising those incidents, finding ways to justify believing that they weren't as bad as he was hearing, saying that he wishes he had taken a stronger stand, and stating that he had known enough to do more then he did. But it was convenient for Tarantino to turn a blind eye, because Weinstein was so good for his career. So now I find myself wondering whether Tarantino made a film in which Brad Pitt plays Harvey Weinstein as a hero. No, of course he didn't do that - but he did make a film in which we are invited to turn a blind eye to a horrific crime against a woman because it's more convenient for us to do so, because we want to like Brad Pitt. And so many people will compartmentalise, will argue "No, he didn't do it deliberately, it was an accident", or even "Sure, he probably did it, but it was understandable in the moment", because we need to do that in order to justify continuing to hang out with this guy and enjoy spending time with him. I find that a fascinating idea to include in the film, as though Tarantino is exploring how difficult it is to make the right choice when it seems more advantageous to us to make a different decision. And if it seems like I'm making too strong a connection from too little evidence, don't forget that one character that appears briefly in the film is Sharon Tate's husband Roman Polanski, who everyone knows and accepts committed statutory rape of a 13 year old girl and who has continued to have a successful career, even winning an Oscar, while evading justice. In short, I definitely believe that Tarantino is using Cliff Booth as a way of speaking about the abuses in the Hollywood system.<br />
<br />
My only real disappointment with the film comes with the ending - and it's not really disappointment with the actual ending of the film. As soon as they announced the film and said who Margot Robbie was playing, you immediately know what is the end of the film was going to be - the only mystery was how Tarantino was going to present that ending on screen. That's possibly a slight flaw on Tarantino's part, because we know the way that he has his fictional characters engage with history, and so while that interaction with history is still exciting, it possibly lacks some of the impact that it previously had.<br />
<br />
Which is why I'm really curious how people would respond to this film if they don't know the true story that underpins it. The name of Charles Manson is never mentioned, and while the character does briefly appear on screen, he's never associated with the "Charlie" that the hippies speak about. The only real solid indication about where this film is going comes from the presence of Sharon Tate as a main character, albeit a main character whose story for much of the film seems distinctly separated from the rest of the film. But if you don't recognise the name of Sharon Tate, does the ending work, does it make sense, or does it just seem like something that comes out of the blue? I genuinely don't know. What I can say is that, as someone who deliberately went to the effort to familiarise myself with the Manson story, I found it an extraordinary and moving piece of cinema. (And if you're not familiar with the Manson story, I strongly recommend the <a href="http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/?category=CharlesManson%27sHollywood" target="_blank">Charles Manson's Hollywood</a> series of the excellent <a href="http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/" target="_blank">You Must Remember This</a> podcast.)<br />
<br />
What makes the rise of <i>1917</i> particularly disappointing is that it means that Tarantino might very well never get the Oscar that he deserves. He's been very open about the fact that he only wants to direct 10 films and then retire, not wanting to become an old-man director making bad films that take away from the greatness of his career. And while such announced retirements often don't stick - Miyazaki is currently making a new film, while Steven Soderbergh has directed four movies and three whole seasons of two TV shows since he retired - when you hear Tarantino talking about retiring, I actually believe it. In fact, Tarantino has even suggested that he might retire now, happy to go out on the success of <i>OUATIH </i>rather than risking making a bad 10th film. So we're looking at a director very possibly coming to the end of his career, still making vital and vibrant films, but while he's been awarded twice for his writing, he's never once won the Oscar for directing, nor have his films won Best Picture. And while there is a long list of great directors who have never been recognised by the Academy - Hitchcock, Kubrick, Welles, Fincher, P T Anderson, Lynch, Kurosawa, Altman for a start - it would also be nice if one of the most vibrant and important filmmaking figures of the last 30 years received that recognition.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMvcsc0sSj4qspOmVtLhyphenhyphenUxl1Yewb_dYHflPHJuDyr2QuLf2TftKhdDIshrbTnt-iTbsflGOIdKMiq2qzimjXeaVkXA6Ka1SvLQt2_-jMMsUpY-v7-v9PmQanoaIBGZSTabizsQaxKcyKL/s1600/irishman.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="516" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMvcsc0sSj4qspOmVtLhyphenhyphenUxl1Yewb_dYHflPHJuDyr2QuLf2TftKhdDIshrbTnt-iTbsflGOIdKMiq2qzimjXeaVkXA6Ka1SvLQt2_-jMMsUpY-v7-v9PmQanoaIBGZSTabizsQaxKcyKL/s400/irishman.jpg" width="272" /></a></div>
One of the frustrating things about the rise of Netflix as a movie studio has been their reluctance to make their films available for viewing in cinema. Unlike Amazon Studios, which typically gives its films a big screen release and also a DVD release in addition to making them available on their streaming service, Netflix has always tried to tamp down any way of watching their films that doesn't involve watching the film on their service. This meant, for instance, that as a fan of Bong Joon-Ho, I was bitterly disappointed to not have the chance to watch <i>Okja </i>on the big screen or to own a Blu-ray copy. Fortunately, it seems that this attitude is slowly easing. Last year, we had a local cinema screening <i>Roma </i>for a couple of months, and the upcoming release of a Blu-ray release of the film by Criterion seems to indicate a new approach, at least for its prestige titles. This year, several of the highest profile Netflix titles have had a limited cinema run, which I was delighted by because it's meant that I could have my first time watching the new Martin Scorsese film be on the big screen, rather than sitting at home.<br />
<br />
<i><b>The Irishman</b></i> is a fascinating film, bringing together Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and (in a brief role) Harvey Keitel, all working once again with Martin Scorsese, and also bringing in Al Pacino, who has somehow never worked with Scorsese before. Based on a book that captures the reminiscences of Frank Sheeran, an apparent mob hitman, the film follows Frank as he slowly rises through the ranks of the teamsters until he eventually meets and becomes friends with the legendary teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. And we follow their friendship through many years, through Jimmy Hoffa's rise and fall and rise and eventual fate.<br />
<br />
The film is obviously supposed to call to mind many of the crime movies that the younger Scorsese made with these actors - films like <i>Mean Streets</i>, <i>Goodfellas</i>, or <i>Casino</i>. And so in the lead up to the film, there was a lot of commentary about how it seemed that Scorsese was basically just returning to his old bag of tricks. But frankly that's a very shallow analysis. Those films were made by a man 25, 30, 40 years younger then Scorsese is now. He's not the same man that he was then, and his focus and interests are not going to be the same. There's a mournful quality to the film that simply isn't in those earlier films. Those films are filled with excitement and delight; the stories are presented from the perspective of the main characters who on the whole are excited and enjoy the life they lead, despite any ultimate negative consequences. But in <i>The Irishman</i>, the story is presented to us from the perspective of someone who looks back at his life and is saddened by it. As everyone he knows dies, he finds himself at an old age living alone, burdened with guilt, with little or no connection to anyone, and the film reflects that tone in the way tells its story. It's not high energy, there's not the constant sense of danger or of things about to collapse; it's slower, more conversational, more relational, sadder. Superficially, this may look like "another mob movie from Scorsese, like all the others", but it's infused with a level of reflectiveness that comes with old age that really isn't in his other crime films. It's not a film that worships these characters, but one that actively warns against that.<br />
<br />
You can particularly tell the difference by comparing the climactic sequences in <i>Goodfellas </i>and <i>The Irishman</i>. In both sequences, a film that have been spanning years or decades suddenly slows down to spend an extended amount of time focused on the events of one single day. In <i>Goodfellas</i>, that sequence starts with Henry snorting a line of coke, which influences the way the rest of the day's events are presented, giving the entire sequence a nervous energy and hyperactive jumpiness. But in <i>The Irishman</i>, there's nothing like that; the filmmaking is exactly is sober as the characters, and there's an incredible sadness that runs through the sequence, as almost everyone knows what's about to happened, is resigned to it happening and to their role in ensuring it happens, all the while wishing that things could end in some other way. It's a sequence that could easily be cut down, especially as what little dialogue is in the scene is largely irrelevant - there's an extended dialogue about whether a fish will smell out the car - but those moments feel like a relief, because the thing we know will happen hasn't happened yet, even though at the same time we're one minute closer to this thing happening. It's a fantastic, agonising sequence, and I love that Scorsese decided to spend as much time on it as he does.<br />
<br />
One of the other things that's wonderful about the movie is the fact that it feels like the actors care. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are some of the greatest actors we've ever had, but it's been a long time since I felt they were engaged by the work that they were doing. Not here; they feel excited and invigorated by the material and by the sense that they are working on something that is important, something that will be remembered. But the person I really found myself thinking about was Joe Pesci, who's been more or less retired for 20 years, and how compelling he was. It's a very different performance from him: much of his work, particularly with Scorsese, has been defined by characters who feel dangerously out-of-control - the "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWINtUCshxY" target="_blank">Funny how?</a>" scene in <i>Goodfellas </i>only works because you believe he's someone who might realistically kill someone because they laughed at a funny story. But here he gives us a character who's much more managed, controlled, and yet has incredible authority and power, rather than relying on any fear that he might personally create. And so he's able to get people to do things that they don't want to do, not by threats of violence, but simply by saying that it has to be done. It's a wonderful performance, and I was glad that he decided to return just to remind us how great he can be.<br />
<br />
My one real problem with the film is with the choice to tell this story. The film engages with a particularly famous crime, and you know that the film is going to deal with that crime from the second a particular character appears on screen, because these days that character's name is primarily remembered in connection with that crime. But I was puzzled when the film eventually reached that scene, because that particular crime is famously surrounded by mystery and rumour, and yet this film is so definitive about what happened. Looking online after the film, I found that the general opinion seems to be that the book on which the movie was based was unreliable, that Frank Sheeran was certainly around the people he discusses, but it is no reason to think that he was the kind of major figure, involved in multiple high-profile unsolved cases, that he's presented as in that book or in this movie. You almost get the sense that Sheeran is probably a bit of a fantasist, claiming involvement in crimes he had nothing to do with, to ensure he's remembered after he dies. And I do think that people are walking away from this film believing that what is shown is what happened, because I have spoken to people who believe the film is true. And I don't blame them; I probably would have accepted the story presented here as being more or less true; the only reason I didn’t is because I knew enough to know that the film was inconsistent with my own understanding about what happened, which prompted me to look into it. But it makes me uncomfortable to think about the film seemingly misleading the audience about its truth, especially if it potentially means building up the reputation of someone who potentially was more interested in being famous than being honest.<br />
<br />
But it’s still a brilliant film, and a fantastic culmination for Scorsese's career. Which is not to say that his career is over or ending – I hope he continues to produce films for many years, especially as his recent films (<i>The Wolf of Wall Street</i>, <i>Silence</i>, and now <i>The Irishman</i>) have been every bit as vital and exciting as anything he’s made. But we are closer to the end of his career than the beginning, and if anything happens and he never gives us another film, then at least he gave us this one.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLFDOdIRZ4hC_MLWjjf-0evKcsm9_9zL_mIGzYPRCisHeBFfQgGNJ1HBcwxFXTepbAXSNazKCeky7zPXOCQ5MjvjIte2aQJwYG1ho_fjWpuxhkrrL6keyKRZdKkW_ZAzKaQr78i4Bj307P/s1600/marriage_story.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLFDOdIRZ4hC_MLWjjf-0evKcsm9_9zL_mIGzYPRCisHeBFfQgGNJ1HBcwxFXTepbAXSNazKCeky7zPXOCQ5MjvjIte2aQJwYG1ho_fjWpuxhkrrL6keyKRZdKkW_ZAzKaQr78i4Bj307P/s400/marriage_story.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
The other big Netflix film is <b><i>Marriage Story</i></b>, the Noah Baumbach drama about a couple working through the pains of divorce, of building their new lives, of finding a way to co-parent their child while living in opposite ends of the country, and of navigating the horrifying legal industry that has built up around divorce.<br />
<br />
I've enjoyed a lot of Noah Baumbach's work in the past, but I don't know that very much of it has really stayed with me. But <i>Marriage Story</i> changed that, because right from the start it establishes itself as a great piece of filmmaking. That opening scene is one of the best I've seen in a long time, with the two main characters talking about what it is that they love about the other. There's nothing big and grand; it's real and it's intimate, with the characters talking about the little things that over time they've come to see and love about each other just because they've been together so long. It's a beautiful sequence that completely sells us on this couple and on their love - so much so that I can imagine someone watching the film, not knowing in advance what it was about, and being shocked to realise that this was an exercise a couple was working through with their counsellor as they prepare to end the marriage. But it's a smart and effective choice, because it manages to sell us on the reality of this relationship, and also succeeds in allowing us to fall in love with each character remarkably quickly, so that when they start talking about ending the marriage, it's just as meaningful and upsetting to us as it is to them.<br />
<br />
Here's the thing: when a movie features a divorced or divorcing couple, I often feel that the movie seem to have forgotten to make them seem like they work as a couple. They get so focused on making clear that these people aren't together that they forget that they must have been something that made them get together in the first place. And that's what I liked about <i>Marriage Story</i>: I understood why they were together, I understood why they worked so well as a couple, and I also understood why they shouldn't be together. And it's not just that the opening 10 minutes establishes them as a couple, it's all the way through the film - it's in the shared jokes, in the way they know what the other is thinking. Even when things get rough, there are moments when one person will do something, and the other will get a look on their face that seems to say "that's the person that I fell in love with". Because unexpectedly, the film winds up being a love story between two people who couldn't be together and so had to learn to love each other apart.<br />
<br />
Because of the nature of the story, you need pretty much the best actors you can get. You need people who can navigate the balance of love and hate without ever tipping too far into one direction or the other. I never fail to be amazed by the work that Adam Driver does; here he's unthinkingly selfish but also good-hearted and charming. Meanwhile Scarlett Johansson feels like someone who has been genuinely broken and desperate to make something of her life that is hers, but also regrets that things are where they are. It's generally accepted that Laura Dern will win the Supporting Actress Oscar, and deservedly so; she is incredible as a lawyer who weaponises her ability to connect with women at the low point in their lives to slowly draw them into a process that for her is really more about winning the game then helping her clients. And the rest of the cast is equally great - everyone loves Alan Alda, and the film uses that to great effect by introducing him as the kindly divorce lawyer we all would want but don't need; Ray Liotta is perfect casting as the tough divorce lawyer we would need but don't want; and the actors playing Scarlett Johansson's family are also fantastic, whether it's Julie Hagerty being delightful as the mother who's disappointed to lose her son-in-law, or Merritt Wever as the sister, a sadly small role but that does get involved in a wonderfully funny piece of business involving the serving of divorce papers.<br />
<br />
Speaking of which, as much as this film is emotionally raw and devastating and frequently hard to watch, it's also extremely entertaining. And that's because the film is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. I had the opportunity to see the film in cinema, and it saddens me that most people won't get to have that opportunity, because it was so wonderful to be there with other people discovering together that this was a film that it was okay to laugh at. Sure, Noah Baumbach's films have a definite comedic element to them, but I don't think I've ever laughed at anything he's ever made quite as much as I laughed at this film. Even in the most emotionally raw scene in the film, the notorious fight scene, part of what makes it so shocking to us is the fact that just a minute earlier, in that very scene, we were laughing with the characters, and so that sense of escalation feels quite shocking. And that's part of why I think the film is so effective: the comedy lightens the tone of the film, and makes it something that is not just bearable but actually entertaining to watch, but it also disarms us, making the unpleasant moments more awful because we're simply not prepared for them.<br />
<br />
I've done a lot of reading about the film over the last few months, and the one question that people always wind up coming back to is whether or not the film is even-handed in the way it deals with its two main characters, or whether it takes one person's side. For me, I think there's no question: the film is about as even-handed in its approach to its characters as it could possibly be. Coming out of the film, I was surprised and impressed with how fairly it presented both characters, and everything I've read since then has solidified that position. I've read many arguments about how the film was on Adam Driver's side and how Scarlett Johansson was presented as a bitch; I've read many arguments about how the film was on Scarlett Johansson's side and how Adam Driver was presented as a bastard; and I always find both arguments completely convincing, until the next time I hear the opposing argument. And that to me tells me that the film is fair in the way it deals with these characters. And that was a real relief to me. I recently watched <i>Kramer vs Kramer</i> (which until this film was probably still the most significant film about the divorce process) for the first time, and what surprised me about that film was how totally that film was on Dustin Hoffman's side, and how blatantly it treated Meryl Streep as someone who was flighty and indecisive and really rather terrible. And so I like that we now have a film like <i>Marriage Story</i>, which is able to honestly explore the realities of divorce, something that is an extremely common life experience, without coming across as bitter or vengeful.<br />
<br />
The one area where the film is not even-handed is in the way it feels about the divorce industry. I found its portrayal of the legal system around divorce engaging and frustrating, particularly in the way the system almost seemed to trap people. The film reminds us at the start that there are alternative ways to deal with the conflicts that arise in the course of a divorce, but the second one person brings in a lawyer, everything starts to escalate, the other person needs to bring in a lawyer, and everything accelerates out of your control. There's an unmistakable distaste for the divorce lawyer community, particularly in the way they deal with people going through the worst experience in their lives and treat it as a kind of sport for themselves - a point that's made in particular in one of the final scenes, where one of the lawyers mentions that they managed to push for more than their client wanted, just so that they could say that they had won. It’s awful and terrible, and what makes it worse is that as an audience member you feel just as beaten down, just as destroyed by the process as they do.<br />
<br />
I have a few qualms about some late-film developments - particularly a scene where one character seems to come perilously close to dying (I do not know what Baumbach was going for there), and another scene involving the son reading something personal that I just found unbelievable. But, with those mild qualms excepted, the film is pretty fantastic, and I loved it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjy1M7rEu9C_ETF6zIkhKywSb-QBp3kkFoHj9R4SrmaFuC8ciDdR2givb3xmWutYFU7ExdTupNuIfBMsINE3NKXBB4oc-_rTSzoODna00tskySX5OhN2UK9hted06zYGFMgvi_uU9o7kGa/s1600/joker.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjy1M7rEu9C_ETF6zIkhKywSb-QBp3kkFoHj9R4SrmaFuC8ciDdR2givb3xmWutYFU7ExdTupNuIfBMsINE3NKXBB4oc-_rTSzoODna00tskySX5OhN2UK9hted06zYGFMgvi_uU9o7kGa/s400/joker.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
When I look back on the films of 2019, I find that the film I'm most baffled by is <i><b>Joker</b></i>. I walked into my screening with genuine excitement. This was the film that unexpectedly won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the top prize at one of the most prestigious film festivals. That was a film about which there had already been so much discussion, articles praising the film as a masterpiece, articles condemning the film for being dangerous. Earlier I had been sceptical of the film, particularly as it came from the director of <i>The Hangover</i>, but this response had me feeling optimistic, expecting a film that would surprise and delight me. The Friday night crowd at a close to capacity Embassy Cinema clearly loved it, giving an enthusiastic round of applause when the credits rolled, something that usually only happens doing film festivals. A couple of seats down, I could hear a girl talking to her friends with such enthusiasm about how great the film was. And it went on and on: week after week at the top of the box office, making so much more money than anyone could have expected. And I was baffled. I simply couldn't understand why the film that I saw was getting this kind of rapturous response.<br />
<br />
The only reason why it's worth watching this supposed origin story for the Batman archvillain Joker is for the performance by Joaquin Phoenix, playing the sad-sack clown and aspiring stand-up Arthur Fleck. Troubled by a mental illness that compels unprompted laughter, pushed down by a world that is threatening and dismissive of him, burdened by having to take care of a mother who is seemingly delusional, lifted by a dream that he might be able to inspire laughter but lacking the talent to do so, Joaquin Phoenix uses his emaciated frame to create a compelling character. Arthur Fleck is almost the definitive pathetic character, and it is an unexpectedly sympathetic performance. Even as we know where the character is headed, we do remain on his side, desperately hoping that he'll take a turn and move in a different direction. And when he does make the decision to become the Joker, there's a genuine transformation in the performance - he still feels like the same man, but there's a joyousness and excitement in the character that was never previously there, almost as though he feels liberated by having found his purpose for being.<br />
<br />
But here's the thing. This is supposed to be an origin story of the Joker, and I don't buy this character as being the Joker. The Joker is supposed to be the criminal mastermind, the greatest foil to the World's Greatest Detective. He's a man who's always plotting, always planning, always has schemes and schemes within schemes. Even when he tries to deny his planning (like when Heath Ledger's Joker claims to just do things, and describes himself as a dog chasing cars), he still has multiple plans in play. What makes the Joker so dangerous is not that he's insane; what makes him dangerous is that he's insane and smart. But that's not this Joker. The Joker of this film is impulsive, out-of-control. He commits multiple murders during the course of the film, but there's never any sense that he has a reason for doing so - they all just happen to him. Even at the climax of the story, when you would think that the Joker would finally be fully formed, his plans don't come together - just look at that final killing that he commits, and remember that he went into that situation with no intention of killing that person; that was a last minute impulsive action that he took. Heath Ledger's Joker planned to reveal the darkness in the hearts of the Gotham population by tempting them to blow up a ferry containing a bunch of prisoners, because he wanted to make a point; Joaquin Phoenix also reveals the darkness in the hearts of the Gotham population, inspiring a massive riot and chaos in the streets, but that was purely accidental, a bizarre overreaction to a shooting in self-defence without any broader purpose. One makes plans; one does not. Despite everything they want to tell you, this is not the origin of the Joker; this is the origin of a mentally ill man who wears clown make-up and laughs uncontrollably. They may appear superficially similar, but they are very, very different.<br />
<br />
Part of the reason why I was so baffled by the film's popularity was because the film says nothing. Oh sure, at a superficial level, it might seem like has something to say, but I really do think that's mostly because it apes the work of Martin Scorsese, particularly <i>Taxi Driver</i> and <i>The King of Comedy</i>, so, so much, and because those films did have insight about people who have been pushed aside by society, then therefore this must also. But the film really is a piece of pseudo-profundity that is at its core extraordinarily empty. The clearest message of the film seems to be that we should fund mental health services adequately, or else people with mental illnesses will... go insane and murder a lot of people? Is that what the film saying? I can't help feeling that, if I was someone who struggled with mental illness, I would look at this story, where the character is not just generic comic book "insane" but is suffering from a very specific diagnosed and named condition, and find the film really rather offensive. If this is what it's like when Todd Phillips tries to get a message out in support of a disadvantaged population, then I really feel that I wouldn't want his support on anything that I was struggling with. The film does also have another message, an "eat the rich" narrative in which the awful wealthy people abuse those underneath until the people rise up against them, but it’s presented in a way that is just absurd (I simply do not believe the uprising would happen in the way it’s presented) and the message is simply half hearted - and it's hard to take seriously when the director of this film made $150 million giving us the <i>Hangover</i> trilogy (so, thanks for all your work on making the world a better place).<br />
<br />
The film’s homage/borrowing/theft of Martin Scorsese’s work also leads to the film’s worst element, the presence of Robert De Niro as the local late night talk show host Murray Franklin. When I mentioned earlier that it had been a long time since I felt he was engaged by the work that he was doing, this is exactly the type of role that I was thinking about. De Niro is woefully miscast. Think about any long-running talk show host: they’re charming, they have charisma, perhaps a bit cheeky, whenever they deliver a hacky joke they work hard to sell it, they’re fun to watch. And they need to be, because they need you to want to sit up until midnight or later to watch the show, so they want you to engage with the show, have fun, walk away feeling good as you go to bed, because otherwise you’re simply not going to stay up late watching them. Murray Franklin has none of that. When he delivers his hacky jokes he gives them no energy; he just seems bored by the entire exercise. The notion of people sitting up night after night to watch this guy is baffling. The problem is that De Niro was never cast to play Murray Franklin, for which he’s completely wrong; instead, 35 years ago, he was cast to play Rupert Pupkin, a guy with little talent but who dreamed of being famous and was obsessed with Jerry Lewis’s talk show host. In other words, someone at some point realised “We’re taking a lot from <i>The King of Comedy</i> here; let’s see if we can get De Niro to take on the Jerry Lewis role.” But just because someone, even a great actor, was cast in one film doesn’t mean he’s right for all the characters in that film. Jerry Lewis was a comedy icon, and was the right person to play a comedy icon. De Niro was right for playing Pupkin because he really didn’t have the ability to do what Jerry Lewis was doing. So to now push De Niro into playing the Jerry role is just patently doomed to failure. It’s a baffling choice, and illustrative of just how poorly considered so much of h film really is.<br />
<br />
The other thing I found frustrating about the film was how little it thought of its audience. There's a moment where there's a revelation of something that reconfigures our understanding of what the film is actually doing. And that's fine - that particular revelation isn't particularly new or original, but it is effectively done, and does make sense of something that I was to that point dubious of. But here's the thing: it's a revelation that only takes a couple of sentences to communicate. Once the character says those words, it's instantly clear what has been happening. This isn't our first film, we've all seen films that have done very similar things, and we have the ability to fill in the blanks. But the problem is that the film doesn't trust us to do that, so they stop the film to give us a variety of flashbacks, showing us moments from the film again so that we can reconsider what was happening in those moments given the new information. Now admittedly, in terms of total running time, there probably wasn't too much time taken up with this material - maybe 30 seconds or a minute. But it felt like an interminably long time, because it wasn't necessary. We get it, we don't need all this explanation. It made me feel like the film thought that I was stupid and wouldn't understand what was going on without this clarification. And I really hate it when films talk down to me. But the film has been made to appeal to idiots who may need that kind of explanation, and that is depressing.<br />
<br />
And now, having said all that, I have to defend the film. (Sigh.) The other big criticism that was levied against the film expressed a fear that, by giving a considerate and sensitive portrayal to its central character, the film might somehow be dangerous, that incel types might look to its central character and find inspiration in his actions. Frankly, I find that notion to be absurd. Here, I'd like to go to back 20 years, to the release of <i>Fight Club</i>. In that film, you have a muscled, tough, charming Brad Pitt playing Tyler Durden, a man who espouses genuinely dangerous ideas about the need to tear down our society. We didn't have a pre-existing association with the name of Tyler Durden, and that film never tells us that he is wrong, instead entirely relying on our personal moralities to understand that we need to reject his worldview. And yet people are fine with <i>Fight Club</i>, as they should be; it's a fantastic film. But compare that to this film. Okay, we may not have any particular association to the name of Arthur Fleck, but the name of the Joker certainly holds meaning to us. He probably rivals Darth Vader as pop culture's most iconic villain. We don't need the film to tell us that what he's doing is wrong, because we have 80 years of history telling us that what he's doing is wrong. But suddenly people are worried that certain people will look at the sympathetic portrayal of its central character, feel a connection to him, and be inspired to act in a similar way? You would hope that someone who felt sympatico with the Joker would question some things about their lives, but even if they don't, that's on them. This whole criticism really is just this year's version of "movies make people killers", and it's extremely annoying - particularly because it forces me into the position of having to defend a film I do not like.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBFPmfWjhF5XKa8sD0AwsZlOsD4K9iGqGvwD84jG1iVl2S_7DsYVXeMJ1ohWqMEgsHsGFHTiwwah79smWA9K07T3oAhNIzCwDDsee349oOqMuE4y9qI0Q3g81v4SgsI-7qGVy5_EzVpRKW/s1600/little_women.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBFPmfWjhF5XKa8sD0AwsZlOsD4K9iGqGvwD84jG1iVl2S_7DsYVXeMJ1ohWqMEgsHsGFHTiwwah79smWA9K07T3oAhNIzCwDDsee349oOqMuE4y9qI0Q3g81v4SgsI-7qGVy5_EzVpRKW/s400/little_women.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
A much, much more deserving nominee than <i>Joker </i>is the new adaptation of <i><b>Little Women</b></i>. I never read the novel as a child; I'm a guy, and it's not really a book that boys read. For much the same reason, I'd never felt any pressing urgency about seeing any of the film adaptations. But I like Greta Gerwig's work, and so while I was surprised when I heard she was adapting <i>Little Women</i> (to me, she has a very modern sensibility that wouldn't seem to mesh with a period piece like this), I was still excited to see the film.<br />
<br />
You can tell almost immediately, even as someone without any familiarity with the source material, just how much Gerwig is bringing a modern (but not anachronistic) approach to the film. She starts the film halfway through the story, with the sisters all separated and building their lives separately as adults. And then having established the women that the sisters become, the film takes us back in time to meet them as young women, cutting back and forth between the time periods. It's not the way we're used to stories from that era being told, but it's remarkably effective. It almost frees you from the sense of narrative, where a series of events happen to almost imperceptibly cause the characters to grow and change over time. Instead, by introducing us to the characters as grown woman, we have in mind the people they become, and we carry that as we go back and see their flaws and immaturities. We become more aware of the journey because we know from the start what the destination will be. The effect of this is apparently most notable in the character of Amy, the youngest of the sisters – although, to be honest, this was something I wasn't aware of watching the film because I didn't have the experience of reading the book; instead, this was an observation made on several podcasts that I listened to after seeing the movie. There's a point in the story where the young Amy, angry and jealous at her older sisters, does something that is truly hurtful and emotionally devastating, so terrible that in the moment you wonder whether the person she does this to will never be able to forgive her. My understanding is that in the book that moment comes so early in the story that it colours the way you see Amy for the rest of the book, and that many people genuinely hate the character of Amy because of this action. But by reframing the story, we get to see Amy as an adult first, with her passions and talents, and so when we go back and witness this terrible action, while it still horrifies us, we've already grown enough affection for the character that we are able to view her actions in that moment as the impulsive actions of someone who was still incredibly immature, and we understand that she will grow out of being that person, because we’ve already seen her having grown out of being that person. It's a storytelling approach that gives the character redemption in the eyes of the audience that apparently isn't really offered in many of the other versions. Now, with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and if the film's restructuring helps the character of Amy, I think it disadvantages the character of Beth - and that's probably something that's more noticeable to me because I don't have any pre-existing feelings about the character. Beth seems to be a less prominent character in the second half of the story then she is in the first, and by restructuring the film in this way, we never get to spend the initial concentrated amount of time with Beth necessary to connect with her in the way that we connect with the other three. And I do think that diminishes the impact of her story. Still, for the most part, I think it's an extremely effective storytelling device.<br />
<br />
This approach to telling the story brings to the forefront Jo's love of writing, and also offers an unexpected opportunity to be more true to the novel of <i>Little Women</i> than the novel of <i>Little Women </i>is. Louisa May Alcott was apparently not happy with the eventual ending of her novel, a semi-autobiographical novel that ended with her main character in a very different place from where she found herself. Her original ending was more in tune with her own life, but the publishers pressured her into revising the story and giving it the ending that we now have. I know this because after the movie, I felt the need to look up to specifically see whether that had happened with the novel. In telling this story, Gerwig uses the opportunity provided by her approach to the story to elegantly point toward a different way that the story could have ended. If you're expecting what is evidently the familiar ending to <i>Little Women</i>, with the train station and the umbrella, that's presented here, and it's absolutely shown as the canonical ending to this story. But it doesn't quite feel real - in some subtle ways it's almost more like a romantic comedy ending than the more grounded tone of the rest of the film - and it's framed in a way that makes clear that there is a different way the story could have gone, and that that other ending might be more true to who this central character really is. It's a fantastic and smart piece of writing, managing to be faithful enough to the story to apparently not alienate book fans, but also being clear enough in establishing its deviation from the accepted story that even a non-book reader like myself could see and understand how and why it was moving away from the novel.<br />
<br />
One of Greta Gerwig's strengths as a writer is her ability to convincingly capture the voices of young women and the way they relate to those around. I think about <i>Lady Bird</i>, and about how convincingly that film portrayed the problems between a teenage girl and a mother who struggles to connect with her, and also the love and constant tension between the two teenage friends, or a film like <i>Mistress America </i>with the two soon-to-be-stepsisters trying to find their relationship. And Gerwig brings that clarity of understanding to her portrayal of the sisters. One of the things I was aware of from the culture at large is how distinctive each of the four characters are - Meg the romantic, Jo the strong-willed, Beth the sweet and shy, and Amy the proud. And that's definitely who these characters are, but it would have been easy to define these people primarily by their characteristics. Instead Gerwig gives them a real sense of family - these are women who have their own personalities, sure, but they're also women who grew up together and developed a common way of speaking and communicating between themselves. When you watch them interact, they genuinely do feel like sisters who have a lifetime of experience with each other. So we see a bit of each of the girls in all of them, and the characters are defined less by one major characteristic than by one aspect that's slightly stronger in one then the others.<br />
<br />
My only real problem with the film is a problem that I imagine must be encountered with every adaptation of the story - the story spans 7 years, during which the characters grow and change a lot. But at the same time, you can't really recast the roles between the teenaged and the adult women. So we are forced into a position where we just have to accept these adult women playing much younger girls. And it mostly works - it helps that Hollywood's tendency to cast older actors to play teens means that I tend to have difficulty telling if someone is 15 or 25 - but it doesn't really work when it gets to the younger sisters, particularly Amy. I was shocked when I discovered that Amy is supposed to be 12 years old - Florence Pugh is great in the role, but she is 24 and she never, never reads as being that young. But I can live with that, because Florence Pugh is amazing.<br />
<br />
Indeed, the performances in the film in general are wonderful, especially by the two actresses that have been nominated. I’ve admired Florence Pugh since she was so great a few years ago in <i>Lady Macbeth</i>, and this year she’s given us three fantastic performances – as real-life professional wrestler Paige in <i>Fighting With My Family</i>, as a grieving woman caught in a toxic relationship in <i>Midsommar</i> (one of my favourite films of the year), and now as Amy. I was impressed with the way she presented the transformation of her character, from immature and bratty youth to the thoughtful and artistic figure she becomes, all the while feeling absolutely the same character. I also unsurprisingly loved Saoirse Ronan as Jo, exhibiting a kind of frustrated passion, at time so urgently overflowing that she can barely get her words out. But it’s also an unexpectedly sad performance, as Jo is forced to consider the tension between her desire for a career and a creative outlet as a writer, and the pressures of society to marry and settle down, because she feels she can't have both; if she could only have one she would absolutely choose to pursue her career, but she feels doomed to loneliness if she ever follows that desire, and that heartbreak lies at the core of her performance. It’s beautiful work.<br />
<br />
I adored <i>Little Women</i>. It’s genuinely baffling that Gerwig wasn’t nominated as Best Director, because it is such a beautifully achieved work of cinema. It was the first film I watched this year, and it was a perfect movie to start the year. And, while I doubt I’ll ever read the book (at least I'm honest), I’m definitely excited to look into some of the other movie versions.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbR5B8wci8_uQhxSNkGWEwAes6JBegzyApP_0pgNye8ts4qxhw8gMmiomPCkdlcBpVQhCed81on3sI3yJCBjM2a7WvN9y54JabMuH_7dOUoQ4v3c1vMfJ4vtWUu6srUtZAyczdxcwUXYAz/s1600/jojo_rabbit.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="505" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbR5B8wci8_uQhxSNkGWEwAes6JBegzyApP_0pgNye8ts4qxhw8gMmiomPCkdlcBpVQhCed81on3sI3yJCBjM2a7WvN9y54JabMuH_7dOUoQ4v3c1vMfJ4vtWUu6srUtZAyczdxcwUXYAz/s400/jojo_rabbit.jpg" width="267" /></a></div>
As a New Zealander, I know that I'm supposed to love <i><b>Jojo Rabbit</b></i>. There's a real sense of national pride that is attached to the film, and to director Taika Waititi, that almost makes you uncomfortable at the notion of saying anything less than fully laudatory about the film. And don't get me wrong, I love Taika Waititi's work, I find him an exciting and intriguing filmmaking voice, and I'm always excited to see what his next project will be. And for the most part, I really enjoyed <i>Jojo Rabbit</i>. But it has to be said, I don't believe the film quite succeeds at what it's aiming for. Still, you certainly can't criticise him for lack of ambition. The film focuses on a boy growing up in Nazi Germany, who is completely won over by the Nazi propaganda he sees around him, to the point that he literally has Adolf Hitler as an imaginary friend. And then one day, he discovers his mother is hiding a young Jewish woman in the walls of their house, and while he's initially horrified by the discovery, and torn with uncertainty over what to do, he slowly realises that Jews aren't the hideous monsters he's been led to believe.<br />
<br />
I really did enjoy a lot about the film. It's an engaging and entertaining piece which sets its tone right from the start with the anachronistic sound of the Beatles singing “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qAazPVLONM" target="_blank">Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand</a>”. It’s an unexpected opening, but it sets an energetic and irreverent tone that lasts all the way to the end credits and David Bowie singing “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb6Gbi1MpoE" target="_blank">Helden</a>”. Most of the core performances are fantastic. It’s genuinely surprising that Roman Griffin Davis had never acted before; he’s natural and sweet, and manages to come across as someone who is genuinely good-hearted, and who has hooked onto his Nazi beliefs because he needs something to hold onto after the loss of his father. There are points where his character does some really rather terrible things, emotionally abusive things that could easily have turned the audience away from the character, but because at his core he comes across as a fundamentally good kid whose actions are driven more by lack of understanding than ill will, I still really liked him. His scenes with Thomasin McKenzie, so fantastic in <i>Leave No Trace</i>, were the emotional core of the film, and the weird connection that built between the two, a pseudo-brother-sister relationship that is simultaneously playful while strained by the constant threat of discovery, were instantly memorable. Archie Yates, playing Jojo’s best friend, was a real discovery; his constant optimism and excitement even when all signs pointed to utter defeat (soldier uniforms made of paper!) was utterly charming. Scarlett Johansson does beautiful subtle work here, communicating genuine pain as she realises her son is espousing the hateful ideas she is fighting, and struggling to know how to respond. And as imaginary Adolf Hitler, Taika Waititi is a genuine highlight, always showing that he’s the creation of a 10-year-old boy, which allows him to be playful and silly as you like, while also communicating this idea that he’s been created as a father figure for someone in desperate need of a father.<br />
<br />
I also think that Waititi is becoming an excellent visual filmmaker. There's a particular moment that impressed me where we see a pair of shoes, and just the sight of these shoes has an instant emotional impact. The thing is, I'm not a shoe person, I never pay attention to what people wear on their feet, and yet somehow Waititi managed to teach me to recognise those shoes, so that when we see them, even separated from the context of the person wearing them, they're transformed into a symbol of the person themselves. It's a nice piece of filmmaking that did impress me.<br />
<br />
So there’s a lot to like about the film. But to understand the core problem with the film, all you need to do is look at the film poster. The poster proclaims itself to be "An anti-hate satire" - note that word: satire. And before you think that's just promotion-speak, I remember hearing Taika Waititi from very early on also describing the film as a satire. So I have no doubt that when he made the film, Waititi had the intent of making a satirical film. And on that measure, I do think he falls short, because I see precious little satire here. I don't think there is any doubt that the reason why this film was made now was because we live in a world where certain parts of the population that hold a neo-Nazi worldview have seemingly been emboldened in recent years, and I think the motivation to point out the ridiculousness of those ideas and the dangers they present is a good one. Unfortunately, it gets lost in the film. The only point where the film seems to actually be saying anything about hatred of others come in the moments where Jojo is surprised that Elsa doesn't have horns, or something similarly absurd that he's picked up from Nazi propaganda. Instead, the film seems to want to make jokes about how annoying it must have been to be a Nazi and have to "Heil Hitler" every person in the room. Now, that's a funny joke, I love that scene, but if you're wanting to make a point about the rising Nazi sympathies in the modern world, then that's a scene that's not going to say anything of substance about the film's message.<br />
<br />
And then there's the choice to undercut the threat of the Nazis by turning pretty much every single Nazi character into a figure of fun. I honestly don't know if there are any genuinely bad Nazis in the film. There are people like Sam Rockwell, Alfie Allen, and Rebel Wilson, who play the local officers in command of the Hitler Youth. They might have been threatening, if at every moment they weren't played for broad silliness in a way that undercuts any danger posed. The Gestapo officers might present a threat, but at the same time, their appearance in the story is played for such laughs that it is difficult to take them seriously - and when they do do something that is genuinely horrifying, it all happens offscreen, so we never actually witness to them doing anything that would undercut the fun memories we have of them saying "Heil Hitler" 30 times each. I know that this is supposed to be a comedy, but they really needed some characters that they could take seriously. They already had the reliable comedy of Taika Waititi's very funny version Hitler; they needed to almost bank that comedy and say that, because we've got those laughs built up, we can therefore treat a few of the other characters seriously. As it is, the film undercuts itself much too much, and I just don't know that it works.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9q_gRxYn8bSDm3kkSSZrTMpGj54pbjtl1mU0UtX7HiBx2JMnJG0VNRErzPLxYGzV4KhSzBuE9_I_cs0zteccPAZpgXobGWnWc8WfN6t99t1KTJ886tA86WqMbB27yuIKdHWDthgorL1RL/s1600/ford_v_ferrari.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9q_gRxYn8bSDm3kkSSZrTMpGj54pbjtl1mU0UtX7HiBx2JMnJG0VNRErzPLxYGzV4KhSzBuE9_I_cs0zteccPAZpgXobGWnWc8WfN6t99t1KTJ886tA86WqMbB27yuIKdHWDthgorL1RL/s400/ford_v_ferrari.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
For me, the most surprising film to be nominated would have to be <b><i>Ford v Ferrari</i></b>, the film about racing car designer Carroll Shelby, hired by the Ford Motor Company to help it design a car that would beat Ferrari and win the Le Mans 24-hour race, and the impulsive and hot-tempered driver Ken Miles, who Shelby brings in to help secure the win.<br />
<br />
Now, when I say that this is the most surprising Best Picture nomination, I am in no way criticising the film. James Mangold is a skilled and solid film-maker, who has made a lot of films that I genuinely enjoy, and this is another strong entry in his career. But the notion that this is one of the best films to be made in 2019 just makes no sense. It's not the worst of the nominees (it's much better than <i>Joker </i>for a start), but whereas with <i>Joker </i>I could at least understand why that film was nominated (it was a massive hit with pretensions of quality, and these days a strong box office can certainly help secure a nomination), I simply can't see what it is about <i>Ford v Ferrari </i>that would have had such appeal that it could secure nomination.<br />
<br />
It does have a lot of good qualities. The performances are, on the whole, very strong. Most attention has really been focused on Christian Bale, and it is a very good performance, but it is a performance we've seen Christian Bale give many times before - the frustrated, temperamental talent who expects the world to shape around him. More interesting was Matt Damon's work as the man trying to achieve his vision for a great race car while working within the demands of the company that employs him - there's a pinched tension, particularly in his scenes with the Ford executives, that feels like he's always exhausted and frustrated with whatever demands have been put on him. It's not an original comment to say that the film is really about filmmaking - most films about creative people, of any type, are - and it's clear that Damon here is the stand-in for director James Mangold, frustratedly trying to preserve his vision and his artistry in the face of a massive company that is pouring millions of dollars into a project but demanding very specific results while also expecting the creatives to compromise their vision to meet corporate expectations. It's always a nice surprise to see Tracy Letts on-screen, here playing the new generation of Ford CEO, trying to live up to his grandfather's vision and reputation, but allowing personal slights to overcome reason. The film is also beautifully shot, with scene after scene of striking and rich images. I loved the relationship between Miles and his hero-worshipping son, including one of the best scenes where we learn about the challenges of the Le Mans race by having the son draw a diagram of the racetrack so that Miles could talk his way through bend by bend. And the actual race, once we get to it, lives up to the hype, thrilling and exhilarating and suspenseful, but also lasting a good half an hour, so that we get a sense of the exhaustion that comes with a 24-hour race.<br />
<br />
And yet the film also seems to have little interest in the realities of the race. It wasn't until I watched the film and went online for information about Le Mans that I understood that it's not a race to be the first to complete a set number of laps, but rather that's about being the car that drives the longest distance in the time available - a strange omission given how pivotal that information is in the race outcome. You also might come away from this film thinking that Ken Miles was the only driver in that car for all 24 hours - the film comes close to erasing the co-driver that shared driving time. The film also seems tempted often to take the easy approach to tell the story, resulting in scenes that frequently play as unconvincing. There's the absurd scene where Shelby locks his boss, Ford executive Leo Beebe, in a room while Miles takes Ford for an extremely fast ride in the car. Indeed, the entire way the film treats Beebe is frustrating, with the man presented as a two-dimensional villain obstructing our heroes for "reasons". Or there's Ken Miles' stereotypical put-upon wife, frustrated by the fact that her racecar-driving husband wants to race cars, and who only distinguishes herself by the daft scene where she drives at stupidly fast speeds, overtaking on blind corners, all the while hectoring her husband to tell her the truth - the character is otherwise so bland and uninteresting that you get the sense she's only in the film because they wanted to have the relationship between Miles and his son, and so they needed to include the mother. None of these problems make this a bad film, but they do take away from the film, cause it to feel more ordinary, and make it seem odd that it's had the recognition it has.<br />
<br />
I will admit to being dubious about the film ever since I first heard its title. <i>Ford v Ferrari</i> is such a blunt nothing of a title, completely lacking in any kind of poetry or mystery, just declaring "this is what you're going to get". But having seen the film, I was surprised by how effective and evocative, how thematically rich, the title actually is. The film is not actually about the competition between these two carmakers - after all, while Henry Ford II is a significant character in the film, I'm not sure if we ever even hear Enzo Ferrari speak, and all we ever learn about the Ferrari racing team is their main driver's name. This is a film that's absolutely about Ford being driven to prove himself and his company by beating Ferrari and winning the Le Mans 24-hour race, and as presented here, that determination to win is absolutely petty and wholly driven by wounded pride after Ferrari said mean things about Ford to the media. But our main characters are far away from that fight - their lives are being dictated to because of that competition between the two companies, but they don't care about defeating Ferrari - except to the degree that they want to win the race, which means they have to beat everyone. This means that the title of the film, by framing it around a competition that the company heads care about but that our core characters are barely aware of, presents the film as a fight between the pettiness of the corporate overlords and the determination of our main characters to come out the other end intact. It's still not a great title in the abstract, but I do like what it says about the film.<br />
<br />
And so that’s it. All nine films. I’m resigned to a <i>1917 </i>win, but please, please, please let there be a <i>Parasite </i>upset. That’s all I want.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-74003610100696830312019-11-13T23:58:00.015+13:002021-10-25T20:42:55.478+13:00Trail reduxSo here's the thing,<br />
<br />As usual, here is a post collecting my responses to the films of this year's film festival. They were written rather quickly, and posted to my Facebook within a day or two of each film, so I certainly wouldn't call them "reviews". They're just a reflection of my response to the film - how did I feel about them, what did I find myself thinking about when I reflected on the film.<div><br /></div><div><i>[My thoughts on all 38 of my festival films, after the jump.]</i></div><div><div><a name='more'></a><br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrnarDBtJuVlfJulzRDtv61VIn0xyHerpJ8oEYBIKPch0lWYqM1RmXPDx011f-x9_eHcHcuzCtYHekSFlEX9iRICD4jLreGxTEorsUHFzID-Mkg-Edy0PqBGygFqMEUcC3NY7wY5UtD09J/s755/whistlers.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="489" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrnarDBtJuVlfJulzRDtv61VIn0xyHerpJ8oEYBIKPch0lWYqM1RmXPDx011f-x9_eHcHcuzCtYHekSFlEX9iRICD4jLreGxTEorsUHFzID-Mkg-Edy0PqBGygFqMEUcC3NY7wY5UtD09J/w259-h400/whistlers.jpg" width="259" /></a></div>The Whistlers</i></b><br />
It was an inauspicious start to the festival, with a film that was, fine, I guess. The film followed a corrupt cop who comes to an island to learn their local whistling language as part of a broader scheme to help free a businessman from jail and secure a significant amount of money acquired through criminal dealings.<br />
The fundamental problem that I had with <i>The Whistlers</i> was that it felt like the film was trying to keep me at a distance. After the film, I heard the woman in the seat behind me saying that she felt lost and had no idea who anyone was; I don't think I was quite as bad, but at no point did I feel like I really had a firm grasp on any of the characters or what was motivating them beyond money. By the time of the climactic shootout, it didn't really matter to me because I didn't care about any of the characters, and because I felt like I didn't have a connection to any of the characters I wasn't invested in the outcome. The main character in particular seemed stoic to the point of emotionlessness. I have no idea who this person is, what his story is, what led him to his current position; I know nothing or about him beyond his direct actions in the film.<br />
I also questioned the reality of the whistling language. I don't know - it may be that this language was a real thing, in which case that's fine and I apologise - but the way the language was explained to us as working, it seemed almost seemed to strip so much out of the language as to effectively render all communication utterly impossible. It's like - I can quite easily believe you could strip the vowels out of a language and effectively communicate just using consonants (we already do that often), but you couldn't strip out the consonants and communicate only with vowels, and that's is similar to what the whistling language seemed like it was doing. And so when you have scenes with characters communicating quite complicated messages, I found myself questioning how it would be possible to say these things through simply whistling. The most frustrating thing was that the whistling seemed largely pointless as a device, as there was nothing in the film that particularly relied on the whistling in a way that couldn't have been achieved through more conventional means.<br />
The film had an annoying tendency to pick up potentially interesting ideas, but just as quickly abandon them never to be mentioned again. Early on, it seems that's though the film is taking place in an extreme surveillance state, with characters being spied on out on the street, or from hidden cameras in hotel rooms, all bugs in people's offices, and we see the way people have learned to work around those surveilling them. But I never felt that it clearly explained what was going on with the surveillance, and after a while it just stopped being a thing in the film. Connected to this, we learn that the police chief's office is bugged after she has to go into the corridor away from prying ears to ask someone to plant some evidence. This seems to set up a conflict where the "good guys" are just as bad as the bad guys, but after that scene ends, it's something that's never mentioned again, and I felt that we were supposed to see the police chief as a genuinely good character. And that just doesn't work.<br />
I was also puzzled by the way the film ends. In the second to last scene, one character tells another character to meet them at the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. Unless I missed something, I don't believe Singapore was ever mentioned at any other point in the film, so it comes out of nowhere. The final scene then plays out with one person walking around these gardens in the middle of an admittedly spectacular light show, looking for the other person. It doesn't feel like this is part of the film, especially since the film feels more interested in showing us the light show then in showing us the characters being reunited. Not that it matters too much, since I felt so little connection between the characters that I didn't really care about their reunion, but I also don't care about the light show we were being shown since those things are always more spectacular in person. Still, to have the final scene of your film be the reunion of two major characters, and have that take second place to a light show just shows how absent the characters felt from the story being told. It frankly felt as though the director had seen the light show on his holiday and decided to force it into a film he'd already made - it feels that disconnected.<br />
It has some nice sequences, and I was certainly entertained by what was going on, but I simply felt that it ultimately didn't create the connection with the audience that it needed.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHjcfGTAcZMrzy6wTsNbkivY_mGtV1y6BhIwWQC_Hj_Lsq5bREjkg0LIrgZE-WpwI3sc_uYk7Vka3R5Ue2lM-_FOzp0QFZddI8VeWiimVlBuaauPb4YDeqAtxs1id1jTu5rbVTWP2o0L0r/s755/la_belle_epoque.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="567" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHjcfGTAcZMrzy6wTsNbkivY_mGtV1y6BhIwWQC_Hj_Lsq5bREjkg0LIrgZE-WpwI3sc_uYk7Vka3R5Ue2lM-_FOzp0QFZddI8VeWiimVlBuaauPb4YDeqAtxs1id1jTu5rbVTWP2o0L0r/w300-h400/la_belle_epoque.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>La Belle Époque</i></b><br />
An utterly delightful romantic comedy, <i>La Belle Époque</i> focuses on Victor, a 60-something cartoonist in a largely loveless marriage with a woman who is thrilled by all the technology of the modern world and who is frustrated at her husband's stubborn preference for a world of pen and paper. After his wife throws him out of home, he decides to use a gift he received - a complimentary experience with a company that recreates historical periods for people who want to know what it was like to live during, say, World War 2. But rather than trying to experience being one of Hemingway's drinking buddies, or life as a French aristocrat, he chooses to return to a small cafe in 1974 and relive the day where he met and fell in love with his wife. And as he experiences the start of this relationship again, with a young actress playing the role of his wife, he starts to reconnect with the person he was and the woman he fell in love with.<br />
It's an enjoyable reflection on the power of nostalgia, and the dangers that it can pose. Victor talks about the world of 1974 with great affection for the smoke-filled cafes and the hedonistic drug-fuelled parties, and lovingly recreates those moments in delicately detailed drawings, but he's blind to the faults of that era. He doesn't seem to understand that what he loved about that time was not that 1974 was an ideal time, but just that he was young and excited and eager to understand the world, in a way that the man he's turned into, irritable and resistant to change, has lost.<br />
This nostalgic experience also seems to presented itself as an easy trap for him to fall into. We see him becoming increasingly desperate to remain in that world, regardless of the expense, because it feels so comfortable and exciting to him. But it's also clear that he's been driven by the challenges of his relationship with his wife; he doesn't understand her as she is now, and though it's clear that he wants to try to restore the marriage, he seems almost unable to conceive of how to do that. And that's why his return to this world has such an allure, because at least there he knows what to do, what to say, in order to get his wife to fall in love with him, because he's already done that once before. What's hard is trying to find the way to connect with her now.<br />
I found myself somewhat uncertain about the romantic relationship between Margot, the actress playing the role of the wife, and Antoine, the director steering the experience. There's a weird toxic codependence between the two, that is played for laughs in an uncomfortable way. I'm not entirely certain about that element of the film. I think it might be that the relationship is intended as a contrast against the idealised romanticised version of Victor's version of him falling in love. Despite Victor's constant insistence on correcting every detail, we never actually see what 1974 was actually like and how their relationship actually started - there's never any flashback to show us all the early little problems and fights that Victor has erased from his memory; we only ever see the version where rose petals fall from the ceiling as he watches her dancing. But I think in Margot and Antoine, we're supposed to see the turbulent emotions that come with being young and in love, and we're supposed to then apply those observations over to Victor and Marianne. The problem is that the relationship between Margot and Antoine is so rough, is so constantly on the verge of breaking up, that if that's what we're supposed to take from it then it feels much too much. And if it's something else, then I'm not entirely sure what we're supposed to take from that part of the story.<br />
Still, it really is a wonderful movie, and a fantastic end to the first day of the festival.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqcuL6gW90k7Ht3l3HIjc9pnFMJak1YwkLht2O8W52mWSCrHFhL_ND2V1thK_TvYwxZHMBn1SPFzD-qP8Djhyphenhyphen1NUZqPFrxQ_GmrgY_-1b2BsvhUGH3eSetGENn2-axWMGTohqRe1UCTUX8/s755/making_waves_the_art_of_cinematic_sound.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="497" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqcuL6gW90k7Ht3l3HIjc9pnFMJak1YwkLht2O8W52mWSCrHFhL_ND2V1thK_TvYwxZHMBn1SPFzD-qP8Djhyphenhyphen1NUZqPFrxQ_GmrgY_-1b2BsvhUGH3eSetGENn2-axWMGTohqRe1UCTUX8/w264-h400/making_waves_the_art_of_cinematic_sound.jpg" width="264" /></a></div>Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound</i></b><br />
One of the surprising things about film, given the fact that it is a visual medium, is that sound is arguably more important to the medium than picture. There have been experiments that have shown that people are more willing to accept a film that has a bad picture but good sound, than a film that has good picture but poor sound. It's almost like the reality of the medium is established by what we hear, rather than what we see. It's something I can confirm is true from personal experience. Last year I was at a screening of a film that I knew had been shot on an iPhone. The picture was surprisingly good, but the audio was incredibly muddy, something that I assumed reflected the films low-budget origins, and I just wasn't getting into the film. After about 10 minutes, someone in the projection booth clearly realised there was an incorrect sound setting, fixed it, and suddenly the sound was crystal-clear. And from that point, this film I had found impossible to get into suddenly was transformed into something I really enjoyed.<br /><i>
Making Waves</i> was a solidly made documentary giving an engaging and accessible introduction to the place of sound in cinema. The thing about sound is that it's supposed to be invisible, you're not supposed to be aware of it, it's just supposed to be a natural part of the world that you're watching. So the documentary opens with a fascinating sequence establishing the significance of sound to cinema by looking at the opening of <i>Saving Private Ryan</i>, how the film visually has a very narrow focus on just the immediate world of Tom Hanks' character, and how it's in the sound that we get a sense of the wider chaos of the battle that is taking place out of view of the camera.<br />
From there the documentary expands out into a history of sound in film. One thing I never knew was that the movie camera was initially developed by Edison with an idea that it would be paired with his phonograph - sound was always part of his vision for cinema, even if ultimately they didn't have the technical ability to achieve it. It then takes you through the major landmarks and advances to sound technology - <i>The Jazz Singer</i> being the first film to have fully synchronised dialogue, or <i>King Kong</i> with its revolutionary use of animal effects reconstructed to create new sounds for Kong and the dinosaurs. It talks about the ability of radio to construct fully immersive soundscapes, and how Orson Welles brought his experience from radio when he was constructing the soundscape for <i>Citizen Kane</i>. There's brief discussion about people like Kubrick and Hitchcock, who had an innate understanding of how to make the sound work for effect, rather than just accompanying the image. There's the way the Beatles innovations with stereo took a good decade to feed through into cinema, and how it was Barbra Streisand's work on her version of <i>A Star is Born</i> that really established stereo sound. And then there's a fantastic extended sequence dedicated to Walter Murch's work on <i>Apocalypse Now</i>, creating probably the first significant six-speaker sound and effectively creating modern movie sound. Then there's the movement away from cutting sound on magnetic tape towards the flexibility of editing audio digitally. And all the way through the film it takes detours to give miniature biographies of the modern legends in cinema sound - people like Walter Murch, Ben Burtt, and Gary Rydstrom.<br />
And then the film starts to explain exactly how sound for a movie is created, taking you through the individual elements of dialogue, sound effects, and score. We learn what's involved in using the original on-set dialogue versus recreating the dialogue in ADR. We learn about sound design, about finding sounds in the real world that can be repurposed and reconstructed to create something new or to punch up something that already exists - like the jets in <i>Top Gun</i>, which had animal growls added to the sound to give them more impact. There's the section on foley artists, showing them painstakingly create crunching footprints or the sloshing of wet clothes. And finally there's a brief discussion about the place of music in aiding the impact of the film.<br />
It's a well made and engaging film, that I think most people would find unexpectedly fascinating. It offers a convincing demonstration of the significance of sound design in affecting the way we watch movies. But it is definitely a film that is very introductory. It has much too much to cover in only 90 minutes, and so it does feel like everything is a little bit disjointed, and the film is constantly jumping from topic to topic to try to squeeze everything it can in. But for what it is, it's a thoroughly entertaining and fascinating piece that I enjoyed.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYz6qWrYeNdTUgg2vE648Qk8RWQXqMYdr9-ciO_2OsGMH3M9Yg5j0vLeW_VmUhro_plreJhAjQ2dv33G5r1NXH2q7avNRIv-6LECkF7SOFdqwJkdvsDVMpE9Euk4ii4c-fGug2R0ocsfrR/s755/apollo_11.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYz6qWrYeNdTUgg2vE648Qk8RWQXqMYdr9-ciO_2OsGMH3M9Yg5j0vLeW_VmUhro_plreJhAjQ2dv33G5r1NXH2q7avNRIv-6LECkF7SOFdqwJkdvsDVMpE9Euk4ii4c-fGug2R0ocsfrR/w270-h400/apollo_11.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>Apollo 11</i></b><br />
An incredible tribute to the single greatest human achievement, <i>Apollo 11</i> is a fantastic cinematic experience and should be sought out, on the big screen if at all possible. With the exception of a handful of brief simple diagrams explaining the different stages of the mission, the film is constructed entirely from audio and visuals shot at the time, including some incredible footage shot on large format film documenting aspects of the mission that I've never seen before. There are no talking heads, there's no retrospective commentary, there are no recreations. It's all what happened at the time.<br />
What's fantastic about the choice to only use historical material is that it manages to put you in the mindset of those who were there at that time; you can see and feel the tension and the suspense and the excitement as the mission reaches each new stage, each new opportunity for something to go wrong. And so it takes this event that is so well-known, so completely documented, and presents it in a way that makes you feel like you've never seen it before. I've never been more fully aware of the colossal power of the engines taking off. I genuinely found myself sitting in genuine suspense as the lunar module came down to land on the moon. I wanted to applaud as the astronauts returned to Earth. These are images and moments that I've seen countless times, but the way the film presents them makes me feel as though I'm experiencing them for the first time. Part of that is a conscious choice by the director to rely on lesser-known footage. Even the moment of Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon is presented in a way I have never seen, with the film using high angle footage from a camera mounted on top of the lunar module looking down at Armstrong. It's not the best angle to see the moment, but we've all seen the broadcast footage, we don't need to see it again, and this gives us something new, something fresh, a different perspective on one of the most-watched moments in human history. And I realised that, while that first step is so well known, the rest of the mission was basically a blank for me. I don't know that I've ever seen that the footage of Buzz Aldrin coming down to join Armstrong on the moon. I don't know that I had a clear knowledge of what they did once they got there. But the film corrects that, because it's not focused solely on that one moment, but on the mission as a whole.<br />
And there's a surprising humanity to the experience. Moments where we get to see all these people not as legends completing this momentous achievement, but just normal people working together and acting as though this was any other workplace. They discuss the news (given the importance of JFK in inspiring the mission, it was interesting to hear them discussing the events in Chappaquiddick). They make jokes (there's a fantastic moment where Buzz Aldrin is coming down on to the moon and he makes a joke about taking care not to accidentally lock the door). They chat. They listen to music. And then they go and do something incredible.<br />
My only disappointment was that it wasn't possible for me to see it on an IMAX screen; the Embassy is a fantastic screen and I love it deeply, but it must have been an overpowering experience to watch on the IMAX. Still, whether on the big screen or the small, <i>Apollo 11</i> is an absolutely incredible experience. If the mission is the greatest achievement in human history, the film does a great job in focusing on the human element, rather than just the achievement. It's worth seeking out however you can see it.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGIJyLYXTDdd0vb8mzq-jgDdWmLoVV1FcCKYVHw6DO6rgCYPxm_nu6sR-tDC87ehgDsHlXUyA_uYQasSrfbGuQZ3cGaWqDxgT2jn0UfYP7Qy5Rxupg26c17diXS_UjbBC36igQy267Ggyw/s1000/Varda-by-Agn%25C3%25A8s.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGIJyLYXTDdd0vb8mzq-jgDdWmLoVV1FcCKYVHw6DO6rgCYPxm_nu6sR-tDC87ehgDsHlXUyA_uYQasSrfbGuQZ3cGaWqDxgT2jn0UfYP7Qy5Rxupg26c17diXS_UjbBC36igQy267Ggyw/w300-h400/Varda-by-Agn%25C3%25A8s.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>Varda by Agnès</i></b><br />
This was the first Agnès Varda film that I've ever seen, and I don't know if it was the best place to start, or the worst possible place to start. The film is constructed essentially from several talks given by Varda in which she reflects on her life, her career, and her art. I found it genuinely entertaining, and Varda is an engaging and thoughtful speaker, and it's increased my excitement at the prospect of experiencing her work. And having seen this film, I do think that it will give me a useful starting point for thinking about her films as I watch them. But for the moment, as I'm watching this specific film, when she talks about the two halves of <i>Cleo From 5 To 7</i>, it didn't mean a lot to me because at the moment <i>Cleo From 5 To 7</i> is just the title of a famous film that I've heard of but have no relationship with.<br />
It's for that reason that I think the part I most engaged with was the section where she was discussing some of her video art installations, because there was less of an expectation that people would be familiar with what she was talking about, and we therefore were given greater context for whatever point she was making. At the start of the film she talks about three words that underpin the work of an artist - inspiration, creation, and sharing. And it's in the section on her art that we are able to best observe the importance of sharing art, the impact that her work has on people watching it. At one point, the film takes a couple of minutes to talk about an art piece she did inside a small shed set around the grave of a much-loved cat. We watch several children having the experience, they talk about what they're feeling after watching the video, and then there's a nice moment where one young girl runs back into the shed to watch the video because it's better to watch when there aren't other people around. The girl's excitement at experiencing this artwork is genuinely a delight.<br />
I enjoyed the film; I enjoyed the playfulness of it, and it made me excited to start to engage with Varda's work during the rest of the festival. But this was a difficult film for me to reflect on, because of my lack of context for her work and because it was so focused on her work piece-by-piece, without necessarily providing an overarching perspective of her work as a whole. Still, I had fun.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOh1Hhh6TGQDFVMEaPERQyA3VV3wtP1HcTHnP3lOcsggSdj-go_lMstk62xtjc1rLYsssbNOd8KjhRzviw4ZMgCPOcHGoxH53qRWKNZcECsZC4BnbB1uqLcyZJy7bFImyrt7etMU5NDlYV/s755/apocalypse_now_final_cut.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOh1Hhh6TGQDFVMEaPERQyA3VV3wtP1HcTHnP3lOcsggSdj-go_lMstk62xtjc1rLYsssbNOd8KjhRzviw4ZMgCPOcHGoxH53qRWKNZcECsZC4BnbB1uqLcyZJy7bFImyrt7etMU5NDlYV/w270-h400/apocalypse_now_final_cut.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>Apocalypse Now: Final Cut</i></b><br />
Francis Ford Coppola marked the 40th anniversary of his legendary film about a soldier sent up-river to kill a rogue colonel during the Vietnam War by restoring and re editing the film into what he's called the <i>Final Cut</i>. I don't know that I need to say too much about the film itself - it's a truly incredible experience, bizarre and nightmarish and funny and terrifying, and any attempt to try to express a response to the film will inevitably feel inadequate and superfluous. You should have seen it, and if you haven't then you've been living life wrong and need to address that failing as soon as possible.<br />
It's never been a short film - the original theatrical version was 153 minutes long, and in 2001 he released his <i>Redux</i> version that added an extra 50 minutes to the film. This <i>Final Cut</i> falls somewhere between the two, running almost exactly for 3 hours. And I think length-wise this is about ideal for the film. At 2 1/2 hours, the original film is just too short, without the time to really linger in the world. The film is supposed to be bizarre and hallucinatory, and we're supposed to feel like we're going mad with the characters, but in the original version there just wasn't the time to achieve that effect. The <i>Redux</i> certainly had the necessary time, but it was much too long, testing the patience of the viewer. But with the <i>Final Cut</i>, it achieves the necessary balance, allowing the audience to walk out of the film exhausted and drained, but still engaged with the film.<br />
Having just watched the documentary about cinematic sound, with its discussion about how <i>Apocalypse Now</i> created the sound of modern movies, I found myself very consciously engaging with the way Walter Murch used every sound at his disposal to create this world. The slow throbbing of helicopter blades, the eerie stillness of the jungle, the power of the boat engine, the wild climax of the music, all feed into the impact of the movie. My favourite moment of sound comes in the Ride of the Valkyries attack. We've heard Lt Kilgore talk about how they play Ride of the Valkyries loud because it scares the villagers, and then we sit and listen to the music for a minute. And then there's a sudden silence, as we go to a small school in this village, where all is peace and calm, and then ever so quietly we hear the music in the background, building, and slowly people hear the music, and they recognise what it means, and there's a panic that builds, even as the music is only faint. Eventually the helicopters arrived, and the music is loud, and the explosions are deafening and chaotic, but for that one moment, there's a genuine terror that is communicated in the quiet. And it's a fantastic moment.<br />
If there's one thing I think the <i>Final Cut</i> has proven, it's that Coppola's big disappointment with the film was his inability to include the French Plantation in the original film - it feels as though both the <i>Redux</i> and the <i>Final Cut</i> exist primarily to restore that scene to its rightful place. And it's a shame, because I think most people who saw the <i>Redux</i> agreed that the worst part of it was the French Plantation sequence, which was just too long and tiresome; it doesn't feel quite that bad here, although I don't know if that's because he's edited the sequence further, or if it just feels better because the film preceding it is tighter. But the problem with the sequence is that it doesn't feel relevant to the film. The film is about the insanity of war - there's a scene where Colonel Kurtz bemoans the idea of the US military providing aircraft to rain death and destruction on a populace, but not letting its soldiers write the word "Fuck" on their aircraft because it's obscene, and it's that kind of bizarre insanity and hypocrisy in war that the film is exploring. But that's not what the French Plantation sequence is about - instead it's a long engagement with the history of colonisation in Vietnam, which is a significant issue, but it stops the film's momentum dead. It feels like an idea that Coppola had and just couldn't let go off. There's a famous idea in art that you need to be prepared to kill your darlings, you need to be prepared to remove that thing that you love if it will make the work better as a whole. When the original cut of <i>Apocalypse Now</i> came out, technical problems with the French Plantation sequence meant that it couldn't be included; this meant that the choice to kill that darling was made for him at that time, and it's a shame he wasn't ever able to let that go.<br />
I'm no expert on <i>Apocalypse Now</i> and the various versions, so I can't be definitive about what was and was not trimmed or added for the <i>Final Cut</i>. The only thing I know is in the <i>Redux</i> and not in the new cut is the second appearance of the Playmates. I think I would have rather they had dropped the French Plantation sequence and kept the reappearance of the Playmates. That's not a great scene either - it feels too coincidental to run into them again, and it's always felt a bit distasteful in the way the men trade their fuel for a couple of hours of intimacy with the girls - but that at least feels a part of what the film is exploring, in the way that the men take advantage of the danger and threat of the war and the desperation of these girls to get out to get what they want. They could have kept the Playmates scene, dropped the French Plantation sequence, have kept the film pretty close to that 3 hour run time, and then I think we would have had a version of <i>Apocalypse Now</i> that was pretty damned perfect. Instead, <i>Apocalypse Now</i> remains what it always was, a flawed masterpiece. But what a masterpiece.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd-_0sQ0INXZuojA44wHta0W26Z4sPrX_F55DQxHvEbQD10rVXkvA8766WX2lBzJD0ErBbqvPZbL4E8BZfi3cYBvV3amkNzb4DXaJ0yhyu5nhyHGfr214wuM6qj7-17ENE4yVtsQ_F1vNy/s1482/midnight_family.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1482" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd-_0sQ0INXZuojA44wHta0W26Z4sPrX_F55DQxHvEbQD10rVXkvA8766WX2lBzJD0ErBbqvPZbL4E8BZfi3cYBvV3amkNzb4DXaJ0yhyu5nhyHGfr214wuM6qj7-17ENE4yVtsQ_F1vNy/w270-h400/midnight_family.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>Midnight Family</i></b><br />
At the start of the film, a card on screen informs us of an astonishing fact. In Mexico City, with a population of 9 million people, there are only 45 ambulances funded by the Government. This massive shortfall has led to the rise of private ambulances, competing with each other to respond to callouts in the hope that whoever is injured is insured or has the ability to pay for the services they deliver. The film focuses on a private ambulance operated by the Ochoa family - in particular concentrating on the charismatic 17-year-old Juan, who operates the ambulance with his father Fern, while his younger brother Josue skips school in the day and spends the night hanging out in the back of the ambulance.<br />
The experience of the film is frequently exhilarating - when the call comes out for medical service, and the family spring into action, racing to be the first to get there to help. We ride with the ambulance as they tear down the streets, sirens blaring, Fern on the loudspeaker yelling at people to move out of the way. And when they do get there, and they are able to help the person, you get this sense of the great pride that these people taken their job. But at the same time, they are a business, and so there are nights where they walk away having lost money, because they provided a service, they used medical supplies and petrol, for a person who doesn't have the means to pay them for what they did. And that leaves the family barely above the poverty line, with one moment where the family even needs to borrow money to put petrol in the ambulance.<br />
And yet, the film never quite goes the way of portraying the Ochoa family as great heroes. After all, there are multiple moments in the film where we ride with them as they race at high speed down narrow streets alongside a competing ambulance both trying to be the first to get there to take the work; there are even times where you wonder whether they are going to cause a crash themselves trying to beat another operator. And then there are the moments where they seem too eager to encourage their patients to go for care in a private hospital; it's never said, but you get the sense they get paid by the hospital for the patients they bring to them. (In one deeply upsetting moment, a mother whose daughter has just died accuses them of letting her die because they brought her to a private hospital rather than taking her to a much closer public hospital.) But that's the nature of the system. Above all, the film is an indictment of a severely broken medical system, which has out of necessity forced the creation of these private ambulances and these insane practices. But then the police service doesn't seem to be much better, with police constantly insisting on bribes before they will allow these ambulances to operate (and even at one moment seeming to be about to arrest Juan on some spurious basis).<br />
Throughout its runtime, the film remains strictly observational, just letting the events play out in front of the camera. But the presentation of the events leaves us in no doubt that the film is fuelled by an anger at how dysfunctional the medical system is in city. Above all it's a gripping insight into a world I never would have imagined existed.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyCs_T24J31u8uPiGdUAlXXSc9jhZhcHKhdUZjK99sPGqXoaqM3rcRvantyWJTPuFWw0N7hmHDbR_vAp1I5LZFBmYPuhW4aR6n9FjtgpjI72q_Kimn3h0Cuz0g5MBRxfre_FeTB2b84wZC/s755/farewell.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyCs_T24J31u8uPiGdUAlXXSc9jhZhcHKhdUZjK99sPGqXoaqM3rcRvantyWJTPuFWw0N7hmHDbR_vAp1I5LZFBmYPuhW4aR6n9FjtgpjI72q_Kimn3h0Cuz0g5MBRxfre_FeTB2b84wZC/w270-h400/farewell.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>The Farewell</i></b><br />
A fantastic little drama, <i>The Farewell</i> stars Awkwafina as Billi, a woman whose family emigrated from China to the United States when she was a child. She's remained close to her grandmother in China over the years, and so is distressed when she learns that the grandmother has terminal cancer but doesn't know, as the family has decided to keep it a secret from her. (Apparently this is common in China.) Instead, Billi's cousin is being press-ganged into marrying his girlfriend of three months, so that the entire family can have an excuse to come together in China and have one last family gathering with the grandmother.<br />
Based apparently on the actual experiences of writer-director Lulu Wang, the film is an intriguing exploration of the conflict inherent in life as an immigrant. At this point, Billi has spent about half her life living in China and half living in the States; she's reached a point where she feels comfortable in America, and certainly would identify herself as an American, but at the same time her family moved to the United States when she was old enough to clearly remember the experience, to know what it was like coming to a new country where you're alone without your support systems, not knowing the language, and trying to find a new identity and a new life in this new country. And she is also old enough to very clearly remember her life in China, enough to recognise and be astonished by the amount of change that has occurred in China over the past decade or two. And so she finds herself very much caught between these two worlds and these two cultures. When it comes to the issue of the lie that is at the centre of the film, it seems almost impossible to her that people would go along with this, see this as something acceptable, because she exists in a world that emphasises the importance of the individual, and so she struggles to understand a culture where a person's life is not just theirs but their families'. It's in that cultural context that it is acceptable to not tell someone that they're dying, it's reasonable to create false medical results declaring that the matters of concern proved to simply be benign shadows, it's okay to secretly give someone medication telling them that it's just vitamins. The way the film explores the challenge of this cultural conflict is subtle and nuanced and always sympathetic to everyone involved.<br />
Up to now I haven't really cared for what I've seen of Awkwafina, whose comedic work in films like <i>Ocean's 8</i> or <i>Crazy Rich Asians</i> always felt very big and broad. Here, however, she is fantastic, giving a performance that is gentle and restrained. Much of the character is defined by this fundamental conflict that is warring within - she's already grieving for the grandmother she knows she's going to lose, and she's someone who struggles to hides her emotions, but she needs to make it seem as though she is excitedly celebrating the joyous event that is this impromptu wedding, all the time feeling severe discomfort at this cultural difference that says that it's OK to keep something like this secret. And I was genuinely surprised by just how clearly and carefully Awkwafina manages to communicate that struggle. At the same time, having someone in the role whose background is comedic gives her the ability to bring out the natural laughs inherent in the absurdity of the situation. It's impressive work, and I'm now much more interested in seeing what she does in future.<br />
And it's not just Awkwafina that manages to bring the comedy to the film. For such a serious and emotional drama, it's impressive just how constantly funny the film is. One of my favourite running jokes in the film revolved around the constant bewilderment of the Japanese soon-to-be bride, who at times seems completely overwhelmed by the experience, extremely uncomfortable at being pressed into marriage so soon into the relationship, and just utterly bewildered at being in this environment where she doesn't know the language or understand what's going on, and just has to smile and get through it. I also adored the performance of Zhao Shuzhen as Nai Nai, the grandmother at the centre of the film. There's a hilarious strength and determination to the character that feels very real, and when at the end of the film Lulu Wang includes footage of the real Nai Nai, it becomes clear just how genuine and loving the portrayal is.<br />
An absolute delight, and well worth seeking out.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsRxmyhmjFhilP5nRRQJux3wJjaGYNiphMoFQTC3yr13ecAadKDBVU-hhEN2Ib4WzxF36P8rJ5FEbqqC9_yuhWzPA8R4qmNQQI7-Ti1PGOc0TUW1Vqm8REMDbvA6xuk-6ClUpwdivmKBp4/s755/meeting_gorbachev.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsRxmyhmjFhilP5nRRQJux3wJjaGYNiphMoFQTC3yr13ecAadKDBVU-hhEN2Ib4WzxF36P8rJ5FEbqqC9_yuhWzPA8R4qmNQQI7-Ti1PGOc0TUW1Vqm8REMDbvA6xuk-6ClUpwdivmKBp4/w270-h400/meeting_gorbachev.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>Meeting Gorbachev</i></b><br />
I was a bit surprised when I saw that the new film by Werner Herzog was an interview with the final president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. But I was intrigued - while I'm not much of a fan of Herzog's narrative films, I do really enjoy his documentaries, which allow his distinctive personality free rein. And some of my favourite moments of Herzog being Herzog come in his one-on-one interactions with other people, and so I was curious what the film would be like.<br />
The film was certainly fascinating, but Gorbachev does feel rather closed off, although admittedly it's possible that may be a consequence of the way the interview was conducted. Herzog asked his questions in English, while Gorbachev answers in Russian, but with no obvious sign of a translator telling Herzog what Gorbachev just said. So when Gorbachev pauses for a moment midway through his reply, it's unclear whether he's taking this time to reflect on what exactly he wants to say, or whether he's just pausing to allow the translator time to translate and the audio of the translator has just been stripped from the film. But for whatever reason, those extended delays in his answers mean it does feel as though he is being very guarded in what he says. Couple that with the fact that Herzog is very clearly an admirer of Gorbachev, which forces him into a position where he's much more respectful then he often is. (As a friend of mine observed, it almost seemed as though the film existed as an excuse for Herzog to meet Gorbachev.) All of which means that it really doesn't feel like a Herzog film - if it weren't for the fact that Herzog appears on screen, I don't think you could have guessed that he was behind it. There's really only one moment where Herzog's personality as a film-maker comes out, when a string of three identical funerals are presented in quick succession to chart Gorbachev's rise to the leadership of the Soviet Union.<br />
Which brings me to the other thing that surprised me about the film. With the understanding that the film was primarily an interview with the man, I was not expecting quite as much archival footage - not that I'm complaining, since I suspect without the context provided by this material I would have been lost. I was more bothered by the prominent use of talking heads from people that had interacted with Gorbachev during his time as leader - some of these commentators seemed to have almost as much screen time as the Gorbachev interviews, and that balance did feel wildly off.<br />
And that's especially true given how good the actual interview with Gorbachev was. It was fantastic whenever the film just let Gorbachev reflect on his experience. When you hear him talk about the thinking that led him to identify the need for perestroika (economic reform) and the way he identified the necessary changes to achieve that reform, it's fascinating. When you hear about his passion for ridding the world of nuclear weapons, and his frustration at modern brinkmanship that may be restoring the nuclear arsenal, it's great. There's a moment where he talks about some peace talks held between him and Ronald Reagan, where coming out of the talks the US felt that nothing had really been achieved, and said so publicly; Gorbachev discusses how he simply decided not to buy in to the negativity and despondency coming out of the discussions, instead declaring the talks to be a great success, thus making space for the other parties to the negotiation to also alter the perception of the talks. And there's an incredible sadness to the interview when he talks about how much it pained him to see the breakup of the Soviet Union, or how his dream of truly democratic rule in the country was stymied by those in power whose self-interests would have been affected by democracy.<br />
As a documentary, as an insight into one of the most significant people of the 20th century, it's very good. It just lacks the personality of its filmmaker, and that's a slight disappointment.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifF5OCndXABrurZX_5q99WDP0OkwgLycCFtw45Kr7ChPuA48ncf3Ga-F2vFJLbKJAk8MHJeh6xq59ayd8HuNoh2wP7bLAmEwoFTJvmvCAmbb6fM2Gn2bSeaYlHifnSHOhEdP04kpx9bRbA/s755/in_fabric.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="513" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifF5OCndXABrurZX_5q99WDP0OkwgLycCFtw45Kr7ChPuA48ncf3Ga-F2vFJLbKJAk8MHJeh6xq59ayd8HuNoh2wP7bLAmEwoFTJvmvCAmbb6fM2Gn2bSeaYlHifnSHOhEdP04kpx9bRbA/w271-h400/in_fabric.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>In Fabric</i></b><br />
The film opens with a middle-aged woman, newly separated from her husband, going to a department store during "the sales", to buy a dress that she can wear on dates. She buys a striking ambassadorial dress in an arterial red colour, at the urging of the somewhat creepy verbose saleswoman. The dress is striking on her, although she does notice a rash forming on her body after wearing it. And the dress seems to have a life of its own, moving from room to room, at times apparently floating in mid air. And then, after she learns that a woman was run over at a zebra crossing shortly after modelling that exact dress for the store catalogue, she becomes convinced that the dress is possessed, almost demonic.<br />
So where does one start with <i>In Fabric</i>? How do you talk about the disarming bloody horror of a washing machine gone mad? How do you describe a film that in one scene has a dress crawling along the ceiling and then dropping down to suffocate the person below? What is there to even say about a film that has a scene of the elderly store owner pleasuring himself while watching his saleswoman give an erotic sponge bath to a mannequin with anatomically accurate bleeding genitalia? I mean, objectively this is a very silly film, and those of us in the cinema all knew that, but we all came into the film knowing we were seeing a film about an evil dress - the rounds of laughter echoing around the cinema could easily have been derisive and mocking from those who weren't on the film's wavelength, but I thought they were laughs of delight and joy from those who got the film and were excited to see where it would go.<br />
I loved the choice to never put a name to what was going on in the store; I assume it was witches, but that may simply be because I was reminded of the original <i>Suspiria</i>. And the way Strickland shoots these woman, all tall and severe and amusedly strict comes across as strangely perverse and erotic. I was reminded of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9031777-if-you-think-that-you-can-hide-what-your-interests" target="_blank">something that David Fincher once said</a>, "If you think that you can hide what your interests are, what your prurient interests are, what your noble interests are, what your fascinations are, if you think you can hide that in your work as a film director, you're nuts." Strickland clearly isn't worried about the film revealing his fetishes, he positively revels in them. Indeed, in all of his films, I've found Peter Strickland to be a very tactile director, very in touch with cinema as a way of connecting with your senses. Here I loved the subtle sensuality of the film, and the way that the fabric was shot with such clear in such detail that it seemed as though you could since the way the fabric feels under your fingers.<br />
So what does the film add up to? At the moment, I'm honestly not sure. There's certainly a degree of commentary on consumerist society, on the compulsion we have to rush into the shop in response to never-ending sales pitches, but beyond that I'm currently not entirely sure what deeper message I'm supposed to take from the film. But I'm excited to read the wider commentary on the film and see what other people see in the film.<br />
This is almost the definition of a film that is not for everybody - if you hear that this is a film about an evil dress and the erotic allure of shop saleswoman, and you think that sounds silly, then you're not going to care for the film. But if you hear that description and you don't immediately start laughing, then you might be at the right wavelength to connect with and sincerely enjoy the film.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0MPRkCMpejWjBCDl4YMbHmiFOydc4jU7J1zT4O31BtUSzi27vDkDYhfy6mjO39gyFuuejHQD7L2o-vJt9YDPmx_UrSs0E0NwuhNel66FGeokj_IZAkP-QuuXTyg8lijX8dEO_Tkz1hJ-g/s1000/judy_and_punch.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="675" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0MPRkCMpejWjBCDl4YMbHmiFOydc4jU7J1zT4O31BtUSzi27vDkDYhfy6mjO39gyFuuejHQD7L2o-vJt9YDPmx_UrSs0E0NwuhNel66FGeokj_IZAkP-QuuXTyg8lijX8dEO_Tkz1hJ-g/w270-h400/judy_and_punch.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>Judy & Punch</i></b><br />
I really didn't have much familiarity with the old Punch and Judy puppet shows; what little knowledge I had comes from references in other pop culture. I knew about the existence of some of the characters - obviously the titular husband and wife, but also their baby, the policeman, and the dog that steals the sausages. And obviously I knew that a lot of the humour came from the character of Punch violently assaulting his wife Judy and others. So I was a little bit curious about the notion of a feminist retelling of, and an ostensible origin for, the Punch and Judy story.<br />
Set in 17th century Britain, in a small town optimisticly called Seaside (although it's nowhere near the sea), we meet the entertainer "Professor Punch", who works with his talented wife Judy to put on elaborate and complicated marionette performances, that always ultimately conclude with one character giving a good walloping to another. Punch is a respected member of society, and is even invited to throw the first stone whenever they have to stone a woman for witchcraft because she looked at the moon too long. But one day while caring for the baby, the dog steals Punch's breakfast sausages, he drunkenly gives chase but trips, and accidentally flings the baby out the window to its death. When Judy returns home and asks Punch where the baby is, Punch beats her to death because he's sick of her nagging, and then blames the deaths on his senile servant Scaramouche and wife. But there are real witches living in the nearby forest, and when they decide to resurrect Judy, she decides to seek revenge on the man who murdered her.<br />
It's a pretty impressive film, especially for a first-time-feature director. Mirrah Foulkes gives the film an unexpected sense of scope and scale, especially for a film that does take place in such a limited locale. There's an ambition, with a fully realised world that exists with its own cultures and traditions, its own in jokes, and characters who we glimpse only briefly but who feel very real and lived in. And I think she generally does a great job in dancing around the context of the society as it would have existed at the time. Often when you see films that seek to retell an older story through a modern context we wind up with a story in which characters behave the way a person might behave today, regardless of how much that may or may not make sense in that time period. But here there's a sense that the characters, especially the woman, are all very aware that they "know their place", and when people do act outside the boundaries of accepted behaviour, they do so explicitly and with full understanding of what their actions mean. And I think it's a film that doesn't rely on any knowledge of the traditions around Punch and Judy in order to grasp or enjoy the film - if the film relied too much on an audience knowing all the references and all the characters, then I think the appeal of the film would be restricted, especially given the outdated nature of the show, but I do think anyone could watch the film and not even know that there was a puppet show to reference and enjoy it.<br />
The performances in the film are a great deal of fun. I realise we've reached a point where the fact that Mia Wasikowska gives a great performance can just be taken as given, but I loved her soft, steely work as a woman who is used to fading into the background and letting her husband take the prominent role, but who is strong willed and not willing to just take whatever is given to her. Damon Herriman as Punch is someone I'm not familiar with, but I'm instantly interested in him. He gives a performance that is filled with charm and charisma, but he's someone who craves the limelight and who is willing to do or say anything, sacrifice whatever he needs to, in order to it the fame he deserves. (I'm particularly intrigued because I know Herriman is playing Charles Manson in the new Quentin Tarantino film, <i>Once Upon a Time in Hollywood</i>, and there is such overlapping between the two characters that I'm now even more excited to see what Tarantino does.)<br />
I will confess to being bothered by a couple of small creative choices in the film. Firstly, there's a lot of music that stands out as period-inappropriate, whether it be music by Bach played on a Moog synthesizer, or Leonard Cohen's song "Who by Fire". Secondly, there is an unusual moment during the climax in which one character recites one of the best-known speeches from the movie <i>Gladiator</i>. Both of these matters came up during the Q&A after the film. Mirrah Foulkes explained the music by talking about how she felt that the tone of the movie was very unusual, and how they had to look very hard to find an artist with ideas that would work well with the film. But I'm not sure that this did work; I did find myself constantly distracted by the music, especially when it seemed as though some of the synthesizer music was supposed to be diegetic, as in the scenes where it scores the puppet show. I was more bothered by the <i>Gladiator</i> quote, which does come at the climax of the film and which distracted me, as for a moment I had to pause and try to remember which film that particular quote came from. Foulkes defends the reference, saying that it's intended to highlight that Punch and Judy didn't invent violence as entertainment, and that throughout human history we've always looked to be entertained by violence. And that is a solid justification, but the problem is that the moment itself distracts right at the point where we are supposed to be most in suspense at what will happen next, and I'm not sure that the justification she gives for the quote is necessarily communicated in the film itself. Not every screening gets to have the director there to explain what she was trying to achieve in the moment, and so it does feel like a misstep on her part. Still, this is her first film, and for the most part it is an impressively confident and assured piece of work.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi32i0H9r06I7WSMaeyd2az_FERxAOmK0h1wxToghn9oLB9iDcRtt3NeiAS6EUzy0sQr4zy0BaZvQcmkIBQeLW61cHbyC64T9UmwtP7pcll2z15RgLWMNK-Byi4vbxq2wm0fGku4mnwhXFL/s755/high_life.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi32i0H9r06I7WSMaeyd2az_FERxAOmK0h1wxToghn9oLB9iDcRtt3NeiAS6EUzy0sQr4zy0BaZvQcmkIBQeLW61cHbyC64T9UmwtP7pcll2z15RgLWMNK-Byi4vbxq2wm0fGku4mnwhXFL/w270-h400/high_life.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>High Life </i></b><br />
A beautiful, contemplative, almost hypnotic piece of science fiction cinema, <i>High Life</i> opens with Robert Pattinson travelling on a spaceship with only a young baby for company. Every day he has to give a report on his actions, in order to receive another 24 hours of life support, although he observes that people won't receive these reports for hundreds of years - if there even are people alive to receive these reports. And then, in an effort to preserve was little resources he has, he decides to abandon the cryogenically frozen bodies of his former shipmates. It seems that everyone on this ship, Pattinson included, were death row prisoners offered a reprieve in return for agreeing to be human guinea pigs in a ship undertaking a one way trip towards a black hole. While en route, the ship's doctor, played by Juliette Binoche, conducts experiments into reproduction on the shipmates. But it all ends disastrously, until the only people left alive are Pattinson and a young baby.<br />
Science fiction is a genre that has traditionally been used to explore the question of what it is that makes us human. The answer, according to <i>High Life</i>, seems to be our physical form. It's a very fleshy film; I don't know that there's a single bodily fluid that doesn't appear on screen at some point in some way during the film. The film also argues that the human experience is defined by the ultimate fate of our physical form, with death constantly pulling at us like the slow pull of a black hole that takes us away from the familiarity of all existence. And then there's the strong focus on our base instincts running through the film, whether it be our violent impulses or more significantly our sexual desires; there's even a room, called "the box", filled with devices that exist solely for the purpose of allowing people to relieve these desires. But it's clinical and routine, and for some people the desire for what is unattainable is stronger than permissible relief - the fact that Robert Pattinson has decided voluntarily to be celibate makes him almost the focus of constant attention from the doctor, and there are other people who also seek to impose their will and their desires over the choice of others.<br />
All of which is making the film sound as though it's some kind of outer space exploitation film. It's really not. Despite the film's focus on the base instincts of its characters, the film keeps itself away from indulging the impulses of the audience; there's nothing titillating about the film, nothing that feels gratuitous, if anything it's more likely to repulse rather than arouse. It is slow, it is contemplative; I've seen comparisons to <i>2001</i>, and that's not a bad point of comparison, except there is more of a sense of human experience in <i>High Life</i> than in Kubrick's work. But even in moments that would in other films seem erotic, here the film stands separated and disconnected from the moment.<br />
And besides, all that seems to focus only on one half of the film. As terrible as the interactions of the convict shipmates are, there's also this other half of the film where Robert Pattinson has to raise this young girl. And as much as the film is aware of how impossible it would be to raise a child in these circumstances, quite literally alone without any support, there's still a genuine delight and innocence in those scenes that is simply joyous. There's one scene in particular, where Pattinson helps the girl walk for the first time, which is just beautifully and lovingly shot.<br />
But the presence of the girl in the story also creates some interesting shading. As I said, the film establishes this idea the bizarre death row convicts seeking to redeem themselves for their sins. But that makes it sound rougher than it perhaps is. There's a scene where the doctor mocks the other shipmates for not being real criminals, observing that she's the only one that did any kind of real crime; for the most part these are not hardened criminals or evil people, but simply people who got caught up in a situation that went out of their control. (That's certainly true for Pattinson's character.) And in that context, the experience of finding yourself stranded in deep space seems like cruel and unusual punishment for the crimes these people committed. But it seems especially tragic for this young girl who will grow up never knowing a world that isn't the spaceship. She claims to be okay with it, that there's nothing she needs that she doesn't have, but there's still something about the human experience that pulls in her - her entire knowledge of the world comes from videos, when she sees footage of people praying, she decides to try it, just to see what people are feeling when they do it.<br />
I don't believe I've ever seen any films by Claire Denis before, and I feel that is an oversight on my part. Right from the start, with the images of bodies floating slowly down past the screen, Denis constructs unique and stunning visuals that presenter moments that should feel completely familiar and routine, but that instead seems strange and alien. You need look no further than the scene in which Juliette Binoche makes use of the box, where her writhing and orgasmic gasps seemed bizarrely mechanised and lacking in humanity.<br />
It has been two days since I saw the film, and ever since then it has been running through my mind as I've been trying to grapple with it, trying to find the words to describe it. There are a million things I want to say about the film, and I simply don't know how to begin to express them, or how to even approach understanding what the film is saying. I just know that I love it.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijuCt4xmWIhhCdsjp5KsL8PgnBFJC3enhOsx1j4bfqv64vwurGDMZB5Mr0nec2lw8kyc_qNJgUT7ePHFCrPurORpvfu2zpA6jV_cRoFSwq2rZVNo_RWsTOqlHVZ3j2XdhJ1F57sXIaA9SZ/s1023/daguerreotypes.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1023" data-original-width="696" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijuCt4xmWIhhCdsjp5KsL8PgnBFJC3enhOsx1j4bfqv64vwurGDMZB5Mr0nec2lw8kyc_qNJgUT7ePHFCrPurORpvfu2zpA6jV_cRoFSwq2rZVNo_RWsTOqlHVZ3j2XdhJ1F57sXIaA9SZ/w273-h400/daguerreotypes.jpg" width="273" /></a></div>Daguerréotypes</i></b><br />
During the mid 70s, director Agnès Varda was living on a street in Paris, Rue Daguerre. One day, she was looking at the window of one shop on that street, a seller of perfumes and hosiery, thinking about how the items on display in the window hadn't changed in 20 years. And this gave her the idea of making a documentary about the various shopkeepers that work in the shops on her street. There's a baker, a tailor, a hairdresser, a butcher, a driving instructor, a musical instrument shop, a general store, and they all allow her in to observe them and their customers as they work.<br />
The film is just utterly adorable and charming. I was enchanted by how much affection and love was on display in the film. It's really vital to the film that this is not just a film about shopkeepers, it's a film about these shopkeepers. Because these are the people who work on the street that she lives, these are people who Varda sees every day, who she knows well, and who know her well. And because of that, even when you can tell that certain people aren't especially happy about being filmed in this way, they're still willing to go with it and put up with the experience because it's Agnès that asked them, and they like Agnès.<br />
For the most part, the film is often very observational. The film will just sit and pause, and watch the baker as he goes through the process of preparing and baking baguettes, or the butcher as he goes about cutting individual cuts of meat, carefully trimming all the fat away for his customers. Or perhaps it becomes less interested in the shopkeepers for a moment, and instead starts watching the customers. Or perhaps it goes outside to listen to a busker, only slowly turning across to reveal the disapproving looks of the nearby shopkeepers.<br />
And there's never any attempt to try to hide the process of filming. Right at the very start, there's a moment where they're filming a couple of shopkeepers, but then the camera gets distracted by a passerby who's staring at the camera, and so the camera just starts following him as he walks down the street, until finally the film decides to return to the shopkeepers. Placing this moment right the start of the film establishes a fairly fundamental ground rule, that they're not going to pretend as though the cameras are invisible. All through the film, there are certain people who never seem to entirely feel at ease on camera, who feel awkward and stilted, and Varda just decides that that's okay, that she won't create an artifice around the filming.<br />
There's also some wonderful playfulness in the film's editing, particularily around the second half when she introduces a magic show. She enjoys cutting between moments of the magic performance and the work of the shopkeepers. So a scene of the magician stabbing a knife into his own arm is intercut with the butcher trimming a cut of meat, or a magic trick in which the assistant's head seems to vanish cuts to the driving instructor telling his pupils not to lose their heads, or the folding up of a magic box interplays with money being stowed away inside a small cardboard box.<br />
And then there are some wonderful little moments where the film just pauses to celebrate our common experiences. So she'll include a montage of people discussing how long they've been working on the street, with some people being there for 40 years, others only a couple. Or she'll have each of them discussing what they dream of, with one person's dreams of the IRS proving particularily amusing. Or, in the best of these sequences, she has each of them telling the story of how they fell in love with their spouse. (One of my favourite laughs in the film comes when the baker's wife tells the story of how she fell in love with him, and it's so sweet and romantic and loving, and then they cut to the baker telling the exact same story as a recitation of dates and facts without an ounce of romance.)<br />
Above all, it's a film that, when seen 40 years later, is particularly nostalgic. There's a degree to which a lot of these quaint little shops had stood unchanged for so long, so much so that it was believable that a store might not change its window display for 20 years. But these are shops that really do feel like these days time will have passed them by. For me, I think the moments that made me most nostalgic were the scenes in the butcher's shop. I remember as a kid going to the butcher with my mum, it was just a regular occurrence; these days, I couldn't even tell you where a butcher's shop is, and what we gain from the convenience of buying meat from a supermarket we definitely lose in personal connection and service.<br />
A simple, yet brilliant piece of work. Every minute of the film had me completely sold.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOBX03AqkT7B9y6XqLlvNXx4IB7jJmCdQnkAytu38imZajIGdqUx2uO0d2CDCb3qXTfRj8TOisCo92i3QVorEhVOTXzJcfZtqz5Mc9-PO4iWrk0WBD0c5GtkLIbSpAb0ErsaL-9CZgBd-5/s755/monos.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="511" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOBX03AqkT7B9y6XqLlvNXx4IB7jJmCdQnkAytu38imZajIGdqUx2uO0d2CDCb3qXTfRj8TOisCo92i3QVorEhVOTXzJcfZtqz5Mc9-PO4iWrk0WBD0c5GtkLIbSpAb0ErsaL-9CZgBd-5/w271-h400/monos.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>Monos </i></b><br />
Far up at the top of a remote mountain, a group of teenage soldiers train. Members of a rebel militia called "the Organisation", these children have been tasked with guarding an American doctor who has been taken hostage. But they're kids, so they don't really take their work to seriously, especially after the team leader partners up with one of the girls in the group. But then disaster strikes when one of the kids, while goofing off and firing his machine gun erratically, accidentally kills the cow that they were quite specifically instructed to take good care of. This leads directly to the death of a different person, and the opportunity for them to place the blame for the cow's death on this dead person and protect the actual guilty party from execution by firing squad. But this turn of events causes the group to slowly pull apart.<br />
Here's my essential problem with the film: I didn't feel that there was a clear story being told. As the film progresses, the story increasingly becomes fractured, as at several points in the story the film would decide to focus on one particular character or another, concentrating on their story alone to the complete exclusion of all other characters. There were several times during the course of the film that I actually thought that the film was finally revealing that this character was the central character of the film, until the film would suddenly remember that there were other people in the story. In one instance, there is a character who is tied up to a tree, and the film leaves that person there, and waits so long to reconnect to that person that I had completely forgotten that they existed, and when they appeared on screen I found myself wondering how many days they had been tied up. It may be that this fracturing narrative is by design, that the intention was that the way the group was fracturing would be reflected in these little mini-narratives, but in that case it almost seems as though the filmmakers simply struggled to find the right balance to tie these narratives together. It gets so bad that the storyline of one major character is seemingly hand-waved away in the audio of a television news report, as though they realised they simply don't have enough time to resolve that person's story. The end result was a film where I walked out after the screening uncertain about what the actual story being told was.<br />
I also have to mention the music, which did not work for me at all. I found it frequently intrusive and jarring, and worked against any connection that the film was establishing. I was a bit surprised when I noticed Mica Levi's name in the end credits. I wouldn't say that I liked her work in films like <i>Jackie</i> or <i>Under the Skin</i> - she has a very atonal style that doesn't appeal to me - but I did find that work memorable and generally find she does a good job in making her style fit tonally in the context of the rest of the film. But here the music was constantly distracting me and drawing me away from the film. There was something about it that simply felt very out of place in comparison to the rest of the film.<br />
But whatever you might think of the film, it has to be said that the film is extraordinarily beautiful. The first part of the film was more stunning then I have the words to describe, with the location being the top of a mountain so high that it seems to sit above the cloud cover, so that in every direction you look all you see is an expanse of clouds, and the film makes great use of the almost mystical air that the location offers. It's the kind of location that I don't remember ever having seen before, and I honestly never would have imagined that such a place existed. Eventually they do have to leave that location, and the story is transplanted into the middle of a jungle, a location much more familiar cinematically but no less beautiful, and with a much greater air of danger.<br />
The thing is, this is not a bad film. This was not a dull film. I enjoyed watching the film, I was engaged by the characters, I was always interested in what was going on. This is a solid piece of filmmaking that felt like it was held back from being as good as it could be by a lack of clarity of vision. And that was my main disappointment with the film.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwQHln03LYa0fNySp39PST-dYnAMJWfvElg46Gi825acv4NY9XF-aZNxRVrmK1X2qVOPwQGNEYEPWsrCtwsGvmXtFr0kWEEfR3I7Z2-NLf-ZoBQ1s4HOimtACwRJHSNGqYnx5BQBkcVvvl/s755/amazing_grace.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwQHln03LYa0fNySp39PST-dYnAMJWfvElg46Gi825acv4NY9XF-aZNxRVrmK1X2qVOPwQGNEYEPWsrCtwsGvmXtFr0kWEEfR3I7Z2-NLf-ZoBQ1s4HOimtACwRJHSNGqYnx5BQBkcVvvl/w270-h400/amazing_grace.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>Amazing Grace</i></b><br />
In 1972, a 29 year old Aretha Franklin was already well established as one of the great soul singers, when she decided to go to New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in LA and record a live album of gospel music, which would become the best selling gospel album ever. Director Sydney Pollack was hired to film the recording, but a lack of experience shooting documentaries led to technical difficulties that meant it was impossible to sync the audio with the visuals. And so for over 45 years, the film went unseen. Now, with the aid of modern technology, the movie is finally completed.<br />
The film does have flaws. I don't know what planning went into preparing for the process of shooting this film, but it certainly does feel as though Pollack turned up expecting to be able to just shoot on the fly without planning which shots to get when, and so there are points where certain shots look awkward, where people are obscured, or where shots come in and out of focus. But that can't be helped today, we can't go back in time and reshoot this performance. What we can change today are the editing choices being made when compiling the footage. In particular, there are two songs, a total of four moments, where it seems almost as though the editor couldn't decide which of two shots they want to use, and so they shrunk the images down and showed them both on screen simultaneously as a split screen. It's a jarring approach, largely because such split screens are used for maybe 30 seconds in total of the film, and otherwise they're simply not part of the vocabulary of the film, and so they really do stand out as though the editor was simply too afraid to make a choice.<br />
That's what bothered me about the film. One of the things I loved about the film was how open it was about the process. I've seen concert films in the past where the performance has been shot over multiple nights, but edited together as though it were a single seamless performance. Nothing like that happens here. Now, admittedly, part of that might be the fact that Aretha wears different clothing on the two nights, meaning that it's impossible to seamlessly cut the two together, but at the same time it also feels as an inherent part of what this film is. It's a record, not of what we would imagine this celebrated recording to be like, but what it actually was like to be in that church on those nights. And so it's not a seamless experience. Instead we hear the church reverend giving the people instructions to make themselves heard on the audio recording or how to behave when on film. There are technical difficulties, there is a moment where Aretha starts singing and two lines in stops and asks to start again. There's no attempt to hide the cameras; instead we can see Sydney Pollack in the background frantically waving at cameras to grab that shot. While we are watching Aretha pouring her heart out, you can see the various technicians working away in the background.<br />
And yet, in all that chaos, the film emerges as a celebration of this incredible voice. Aretha can really sing, and it's just a delight to get to sit and for 90 minutes enjoy that voice. It's a fantastic experience, and well worth seeking out, and I would urge anyone with the slightest interest to seek it out in a cinema with the best sound system you can find.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyext5ygeQ3-Jh1XiP4ToeBmoFAbHlVai6w3uvVs0l4ajj-jlp6suMA9oELl3vWCDtQudknAfZij4jk3V2z-F0uwfPlFD3uxDCy2ZF6qOfbudr-YZM3TwUc5roQoWJFw2e_W2IfcDe-2Iw/s755/loro.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="521" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyext5ygeQ3-Jh1XiP4ToeBmoFAbHlVai6w3uvVs0l4ajj-jlp6suMA9oELl3vWCDtQudknAfZij4jk3V2z-F0uwfPlFD3uxDCy2ZF6qOfbudr-YZM3TwUc5roQoWJFw2e_W2IfcDe-2Iw/w276-h400/loro.jpg" width="276" /></a></div>Loro</i></b><br />
Sergio is a young man in Italy with political aspirations. One day, while having sex with a prostitute, he notices the tattoo she has of Silvio Berlusconi's face. This inspires him with a plan to try to work his way into Berlusconi's trusted circle, a plan that involves lots of prostitutes, lots of drugs, and a rented villa next door to the Italian Prime Minister's house, in the hope that the man will observe all the partying going on. But Berlusconi is busy with his own affairs, trying to keep himself in power and secure his numbers in Parliament, trying to keep his reputation in the face of media scandals, and trying to keep his marriage together despite his many infidelities.<br />
So the film for me just did not work. At all. If you're going to make a film about Silvio Berlusconi, that's fine, but make a film about Silvio Berlusconi. The film opened with a card on screen telling us that some of the characters in the film were fictional and were not based on anyone, that the story was primarily fictional and the actions of the fictional characters were imagined, but some of the characters were real people, that the events in the film in relation to those characters were truthful to the best of the filmmakers' knowledge and were based on news reports. This set up this expectation that the film is primarily about characters like Sergio, and that Berlusconi was just going to be a character a supporting character in their story. And indeed, Berlusconi isn't in the film at all for the first 20 or so minutes, but then all of a sudden he's in the film, and from that point this is absolutely his film, to the point that the film seems to largely forget Sergio (at one point it probably goes a good hour without him even appearing on-screen) and you wonder what the reason of starting the film with him even was.<br />
And then there's this weird tonal inconsistency that goes through the film. The first 20 minutes seem like they're setting up a film that is aiming to be <i>The Wolf of Wall Street</i> (but that isn't quite as good). It's over the top, it's wild and anarchic, there are pills and boobs everywhere, and it's all hedonism all the time. And then Berlusconi comes in, and that tone just stops. Outright. And instead it's much more sedate, much more of a character story, and it is completely at odds with the film that it had been up to now. And that wild hedonistic tone never returns, not even during one of Berlusconi's famous bunga-bunga parties, which as portrayed here just feel sad and pathetic. And so it becomes unclear why the film decided to open in that way. This is a film that starts seeming like it will be the <i>Wolf of Wall Street</i>, and ends with a long scene of a statue of Jesus slowly being pulled from the rubble of an earthquake-destroyed church. And if you're wondering how a film can possibly move between those tones, it can't. Neither of these sequences feel like they're part of the film that this actually is.<br />
Part of the other problem is that many of the characters, most particular Berlusconi, feel less like human beings and more like caricature. They're so covered in obvious makeup to help them look like the real person that they look ghoulish and distracting and inhuman. The film makes a real mistake by having the self-indulgence to ask Toni Servillo, who plays Berlusconi, to also play a former business partner of Berlusconi in one scene. For a start, it's incredibly obvious that these are both the same actor, especially as the scenes are very clearly being shot in a way that use the most basic techniques - a simple split screen! - to put the two on screen at the same time. But it's also a mistake because it reminds us what Toni Servillo looks like, and he looks so normal compared to the garish figure he's playing in the rest of the film that any hope of us not seeing the makeup is completely destroyed.<br />
And then there's the decision to just portray Berlusconi in the way he's shown here, as a comical gurning clown who never seems to have any depth or humanity. Now, I hear you say, perhaps that's just a reflection of the way the film wants to portray Berlusconi, that Berlusconi was a corrupting and terrible influence on Italian politics, and deserves to be held up for mockery, and perhaps he just didn't have the depth to explore. And I could respect the film if that's what was trying to do. The problem is, in the last 20 minutes of the film, that stops being the Berlusconi that is portrayed. As his marriage is coming to an end, the absurd smiling stops, and the film seems to try to get us to sympathise with Berlusconi, actually feel sorry for them. But if that's what you're planning to do, then you can't spend the rest of the film presenting him as a one-dimensional clown. It just doesn't work.<br />
The film is beautiful - you can always rely on Paolo Sorrentino film for beautifully constructed images - but it's all in service of a film that is just an utter mess from beginning to end. The annoying thing is that I had an instinct that's what this film would be like. The grinning image in the festival programme of Servillo as Berlusconi did not look good to me at all, but I decided to give it a go because I have enjoyed Sorrentino films in the past. And I regretted that choice.<br />
Now, to be fair, I am aware that this was originally a two-part film, and this was the cut-down version that removed a full hour out of the running time. It's possible that's some of my problems with this film may be resolved in the complete cut. But if so, all that does is call into question the editing decisions when cutting the film down; after all, this version of the film is intended to stand on its own, and should be judged on that basis. And many of my problems are so inherent to the film itself that I don't think any number of additional scenes could resolve. The film is quite simply a mess.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf6JwA7jG0L-5dw9YW_xv2p-ngjRdpiQIUx276h3dVLBGCbjIKrhQdt13BgaGIKVPY_-BgLgBck_K7_M45oxffu3HWKjRgzxyHbtGMXmYah-7DIyS7GwEnc13fz-Tij4rOw1IPjjA1ygKH/s755/maria_by_callas.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf6JwA7jG0L-5dw9YW_xv2p-ngjRdpiQIUx276h3dVLBGCbjIKrhQdt13BgaGIKVPY_-BgLgBck_K7_M45oxffu3HWKjRgzxyHbtGMXmYah-7DIyS7GwEnc13fz-Tij4rOw1IPjjA1ygKH/w270-h400/maria_by_callas.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>Maria by Callas</i></b><br />
I was familiar with the name and artistic reputation of Maria Callas, the soprano who was one of the greatest opera singers of the 20th century, but I was completely unfamiliar with her story, and don't think I had ever actually heard her sing, so I was very interested to see this documentary. The documentary charts Maria Callas' story, from her rise as an artist in the 1950s, through the various controversies and challenges as she earned a reputation for being a diva, the end of her marriage, her relationship with Aristotle Onassis both before and during the marriage to Jackie, and through to her death by heart attack in 1977 at the age of 53.<br />
The catch with the film is that it's told entirely in her words: her interviews, her diaries, her letters, her unpublished memoir. And so, throughout the film, we're getting to know her as she saw herself and her experience, and that offers some valuable insight and understanding. The problem with that approach is that we are all the heroes of our own story, and we are all blind to our own failings, or prone to self-deception to justify our flaws. It very quickly becomes evident that she was a difficult person to have to work with, very much the stereotype of the prima donna. You get the sense that she may very well have been one of those people who threw her reputation around to demand what she wanted. But because we only ever hear her viewpoint, we only ever hear her excuses for her actions. And while there is probably truth in what she says, you always feel that there is more to the story that we're not getting. This was particularly driven home in a moment when we see a 10-second clip of the head of the Metropolitan Opera, one of the great opera companies, explaining that they had decided to end their contract with Callas. We then watch an interview with her, and which she explains that she was dissatisfied with the way the company was treating her, with the way the cast around her was constantly changing, or with the quality of the productions she was being offered. And perhaps that's true. But you do feel that there is more to the story. If you are one of the leading opera companies, and you have one of the greatest singers under contract, surely you do what you can to keep that person and do not choose to end their contract, unless that person creates such problems that it's not worth the hassle of having them around. But we never get an opportunity for any opposing view, or any other perspective. This is a film in which you very much need to read between the lines to interpret the way other people saw her.<br />
That said, the film is a delight to watch as an opera fan, just to finally hear this voice that I've heard referenced so often, and to realise it is every bit as extraordinary as people say. It's just a shame that she was working at a time when sound recording was relatively primitive. There are moments when she is singing, and you can hear the recording struggling to capture it, the sound of her voice and the orchestra just turning into mush and you wish for the audio precision of modern technology. It's just barely good enough that you can appreciate her greatness, and to realise what a magical experience it must have been like to hear her perform live.<br />
It's also fascinating to watch the film and realise just how recently opera was still a major art form, and key figures had name recognition. I can't imagine any of the major opera singers today being mobbed in the way Callas was, or being the centre of such media attention, or having people queue for days to get tickets to hear them perform, but only 50 years ago that was what the world was still like.<br />
Ultimately, I enjoyed the film, qualms about its perspective aside. She had an interesting story that took some left turns that I did not see coming, and the music is fantastic. And to be honest, that was the reason I wanted to see the film in the first place.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoLFDxBGYdGSBiqj_KlL_RI6U1ZB405jv7xHiTuz4bJ-lda2rMHvGOOhAJ-hWk3Z6C1n0lyq9Iac0BxJDLTIEdIKl6-mHKzFi9aO02iBArtao77LnQvRPvZWvH8Or8xBfhNAl-KnQ5myD_/s1023/what-she-said.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1023" data-original-width="682" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoLFDxBGYdGSBiqj_KlL_RI6U1ZB405jv7xHiTuz4bJ-lda2rMHvGOOhAJ-hWk3Z6C1n0lyq9Iac0BxJDLTIEdIKl6-mHKzFi9aO02iBArtao77LnQvRPvZWvH8Or8xBfhNAl-KnQ5myD_/w266-h400/what-she-said.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael</i></b><br />
I've never read Pauline Kael, although as a film fan it's impossible not to know the woman's reputation. She was one of the great voices in film criticism, and someone who really shaped the way that people think about cinema. This documentary follows her career from her first review, commissioned after someone overheard her arguing forcefully against Chaplin's film <i>Limelight</i>, through her time as a reviewer on the radio, her movement into print criticism, until she established herself as the leading film critic for the New Yorker, complete with devoted fans who would hang onto her every word as though it were gospel.<br />
The film discusses her place as a passionate advocate for cinema. It discusses her review of <i>Bonnie and Clyde</i>, which at the time was being trashed critically, so much so that the magazine she was writing for refused to publish her positive review simply because it was so against the accepted opinion. That review was eventually published by The New Yorker, which started her time writing for that publication, but it also completely changed the conversation around that film, and started the American new-wave movement of the late 60s and 70s, about which the film argues Kael wasn't just a chronicler but an actual creator of the movement. The film discusses her passionate championing of films, with the studio actually running her entire two-page review of <i>Last Tango in Paris</i> as an advertisement for the film. But it also discusses how caustic and poisonous she could be when she didn't like a film (her review of <i>The Sound Of Music</i> is brilliant and brutal and laugh-out-loud funny, and the film shows you some of the hate mail the review provoked). But even when people disagreed with what she had to say, they still wanted to read her because she had such a careful skill in constructing her arguments and she was very focused on finding the exact turn of phrase to precisely articulate what she was trying to say.<br />
But at times, you do get the sense that she perhaps just took delight in being able to tear people down. There's a famous story about the great David Lean, director of <i>Lawrence of Arabia</i>, being invited to a lunchtime gathering of New York film critics, only to discover that it would be two hours of these critics, led by Kael, condemning him for his (admittedly not great) film <i>Ryan's Daughter</i>. I had heard the story before, but this was the first time I'd actually seen David Lean telling the story, and as he's remembering the experience you can see the emotional devastation that it had on him, so much so that it was nearly 15 years before he could bring himself to make his next film. Towards the end of that meeting, David Lean apparently commented that he didn't think these critics would be satisfied until he shot a film on 16mm in black & white, and Kael apparently responded, "No, we'll let you use colour." There is such cruelty in this story that you feel bad laughing at that line, but it is such a funny line that you can't help but laugh at it. And that's the reputation that Pauline Kael had - as someone who was passionate and intelligent, caustic and poisonous, and incredibly sharp and funny.<br />
Every time I hear the name of Pauline Kael, I always think how I need to seek out some of her books and dig into some of her writing. And now, having seen this film and having enjoyed what brief excerpts from her reviews they had time to include, I really need to seek out some of her books and dig into some of her writing. There's such a sharp wit and pithy precision in her expression, and there was clearly such insight and careful thought in the ideas she was expressing, even if I disagreed with her view. I also loved this film as a passionate defence of the role of criticism as a way of sparking conversation about cinema. The value of good criticism isn't just in a film's Rotten Tomatoes score as a binary Good/Not, it's in the way that it causes people to think about a work in a new way, or to open themselves up to experiences they might not otherwise be willing to have. And the film is a fascinating celebration of this.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMf4R_UwRwPYuvqHM-KqIZuFAz6jVotvx-nF2kVhyphenhyphenfy4rVV5jBXhfhZnSOVro32_nmPnmIvBBrLYqlXs-cDl68ozYRUEBT5n8B8btbC3_mZ42wQmx_n88nZwSurvaPltNuqtlkoZXpSo0g/s1000/amazing_johnathan_documentary.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="675" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMf4R_UwRwPYuvqHM-KqIZuFAz6jVotvx-nF2kVhyphenhyphenfy4rVV5jBXhfhZnSOVro32_nmPnmIvBBrLYqlXs-cDl68ozYRUEBT5n8B8btbC3_mZ42wQmx_n88nZwSurvaPltNuqtlkoZXpSo0g/w270-h400/amazing_johnathan_documentary.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>The Amazing Johnathan Documentary</i></b><br />
So this is probably my favourite film of the festival so far, certainly the most entertaining and the film I've laughed hardest at.<br />
In 2014, comedy magician The Amazing Johnathan, was diagnosed with a terminal heart condition and given one year to live, forcing him to retire from his headline act in Vegas. Three years later, director Ben Berman has been shooting a documentary about Johnathan for six months. It's clear that Johnathan is stifling with frustration at spending the days with nothing to do except for swimming in the pool, throwing sandwich meat at the walls, and taking the odd hit of meth. And so, against doctors' orders, Johnathan decides to go out again for his farewell tour, his wife by his side worried about him dying on stage. And then one day, in the lead up to the performance, Johnathan casually mentions how excited he is that there will be two documentary film crews filming the tour. It seems that Johnathan was approached by the makers of Oscar-winning documentaries <i>Man on Wire</i> and <i>Searching for Sugar Man</i>, also wanting to make a documentary about the tour, and he also granted them permission. But the unexpected arrival of the second documentary crew is not the last of Johnathan's revelations, and as Berman is constantly surprised by new information being dropped by Johnathan, he starts to question the reality of anything he's been told.<br />
One of the frustrating things about this film is that the story is so filled with absurd twists and turns that I feel like I'm limited in being able to talk about it, because I want people to see this film, and I want them to be surprised and shocked in the same way that I was surprised and shocked.<br />
I do need to be really clear about one thing. When I say that this was the funniest film I've seen this festival, that is not because the film is about a comedian and he says things that made me laugh; I'm honestly not sure that I laughed once at any of the The Amazing Johnathan's jokes. Instead, there's a genuine comedy that has brought out by the quality of the filmmaking. Right from the very start, the film opens with a moment where Berman asks Alexa what the best documentary about The Amazing Johnathan is; Alexa's reply was that "the jury is out on that question". That plays as a very funny and silly scene in the moment, but it's before we know about the existence of the second film crew, and so the scene becomes funnier in retrospect as the story develops. Berman is able to punch up each new surprise piece of information for maximum comedy value, and his exasperation at every new development is fantastic. He includes talking head interviews with people like Weird Al Yankovic and Penn Jillette, seemingly less because of their insight into The Amazing Johnathan, and more so that he can include their astonished and hilarious reactions as he's telling them the story of everything that's going on. He manages to take restrictions and turn them into reliable running jokes through the film. He decides to incorporate the presence of the second film crew into the story, but when they refuse permission to appear in the film, he blurs their face, obscures their voice, even hides their names, and then uses the footage in a way that makes every appearance by a blurred face hilarious. There's one moment where he plays footage with a key element censored by a large black box for legal reasons, and then he stops the film to play legal advice telling him that not even the box would be sufficient. This is a film in which even the on-screen credit for the film's executive producer got a genuine laugh from the audience. If there is any way to make anything in this film funny, you feel that Berman did it.<br />
One of the big challenges that Berman finds himself dealing with is how he can make a documentary film that distinguishes itself from another documentary about the same subject, with pretty much the exact same footage shot of the same events, because he knows that he has no chance against Oscar-winning filmmakers unless he can find something different about his film. The solution he lands on is to move the film away from being about The Amazing Johnathan and turn it into a much more meta film about that conflict. He includes footage of him discussing the project with his friends and family, asking them for advice. There's a moment where he starts comparing interview footage that he shot with other footage that he didn't shoot, just to show the challenge of making something different while working with a man who seizes a good line and reuses it over and over again. At one point he plays the entirety of the film that we've just watched to his parents seeking their advice for where to go from here. There's even one part of the film where he's offered the chance to do something absolutely insane, something that will certainly allow him to distinguish his film from the other, but that may very well risk damaging his life forever, and he seems to genuinely grapple with how far he's willing to go to make this film work.<br />
It's a fantastically entertaining film, and I highly recommend it.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEJpwc__0En5C-siP_7lIzcfd1D00YdgoODGHVHmAuqGva1lp1mJKM5WrthXKWdSvBBMbpp6LkbWf2C4ahGpeWB7_lG1i78AR3QDSLVPx7sm4ObOaR6G5o0-bvJmZiy5r9I4vn9Z4P_WhQ/s755/we_are_little_zombies.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEJpwc__0En5C-siP_7lIzcfd1D00YdgoODGHVHmAuqGva1lp1mJKM5WrthXKWdSvBBMbpp6LkbWf2C4ahGpeWB7_lG1i78AR3QDSLVPx7sm4ObOaR6G5o0-bvJmZiy5r9I4vn9Z4P_WhQ/w270-h400/we_are_little_zombies.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>We Are Little Zombies</i></b><br />
A delightful, unusual comedy from Japan, <i>We Are Little Zombies</i> tells the story of four young teenage orphans (three boys, one girl) who meet at the crematorium and become friends, bonding over their lack of response to the deaths of their parents, which causes them to compare themselves to zombies. They decide to run away together and have an adventure, going on various quests until, inspired by an encounter with a group of homeless men playing as a band, they have the idea of forming a pop band called Little Zombies, wearing colourful costumes constructed out of trash. While their singing is not the best, their appealing personalities and tragic backstory leads them to become a viral sensation, overwhelmed by the world of pop stardom.<br />
The film navigates some really delicate tones. It's hard to manage to be a film that is so bright and cheerful while also being a film where, say, a 13-year-old girl is orphaned after her parents are murdered by an adult who is obsessed with her, but somehow this film manages it. It's a film about the way that we deal with grief and our willingness to show or to hide it, and perhaps the film works so well in navigating these tones because it outwardly treats the experiences of the orphans with as much distance and lack of emotion as they do. The kids were all subject to some kind of parental neglect, in one form or another, and you do feel that this is one reason why they have so little emotional connection to their experience, and so the film becomes very much about these children coming to terms with their emotions - We are zombies, but alive.<br />
The other reason why these characters are so disconnected from the world around is the vast array of distractions that are open to all of us. The first child we meet, Hikari, is never without his favourite portable gaming device, and this becomes a major element throughout the film. Think of <i>Scott Pilgrim</i> and how that film interpreted the world through video games, and then amplify that approach, and you'll get something of an idea of what is going on in the film. The musical score sounds like a midi score played on a video game chip, the film is divided up into individual stages like video game levels, each stage has its own unique visual style or approach, the characters often have particular challenges or tasks to complete in order for the stage to be completed, and there is significant discussion about the concept of the end-of-level-boss and who that boss will be.<br />
The characters in the film are all very well-drawn and distinctly defined, and I really loved spending time with them. But the most interesting character of the four was the girl, Ikuko. With any type of film like this, where you have a group of young kids made up mostly of boys with one girl, maybe two, there's often a tendency to turn the girl into a prize to be won by one of the boys at the end of the film. Here, Ikuko is someone who is specifically seen for her sexuality despite her young age - her parents specifically described her as a femme fatale, and that was before they were murdered by someone obsessed with her - and as a result, she has no patience for it, frequently rolling her eyes in irritation as the boys start fighting over her. It's a wonderfully funny subversion of a rote trope, and I really enjoyed it.<br />
One thing I really liked about the film was the way it pointed to the negatives of modern-day fan culture. It's not an original observation to say that the internet has empowered a lot of vile and destructive behaviour by fans, but while it's only a small part of this film I don't remember ever seeing it portrayed quite as effectively as it is here. Outside of internet culture, it would be absurd that this group of trash-wearing children would become stars, but in an age where there are no cultural arbiters it seems weirdly plausible. More worrying is the portrayal of fans whose identity become too closely connected to their favourite artists. There's a genuinely chilling part of the film where, through excerpts from internet discussions, we observe as Little Zombies fans try to hunt down the bus driver whose mistake led to the deaths of Hikari's parents, and torment him for his actions.<br />
The film take some fantastically weird turns as the story progresses, including a segment that felt almost like it might have come out of David Lynch's <i>Eraserhead</i>, but the film is so wild and out there that it allows you to just follow the right, completely confident that the filmmakers know exactly where they're going.<br />
The songs are catchy and fun, the characters are rich and drawn with warmth, the film cuts its sentimentality with an honest cynicism, and there's an indeniable confidence in its over-the-top construction. I loved <i>We Are Little Zombies</i>.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ2y9txcv_P-g8ELIVDIIvCnSIIBYXfs0k9TMfUNpbk_QPQ35seeCI76jywY2DNZB-IjDnJQ-6tlqr_UecCCCFMUxrifzR7ulZs7ORN3MTmBoCdTTxlo7FgWlLpD-CpmswOb8mV1FitzPT/s1200/andrei_rublev.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="630" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ2y9txcv_P-g8ELIVDIIvCnSIIBYXfs0k9TMfUNpbk_QPQ35seeCI76jywY2DNZB-IjDnJQ-6tlqr_UecCCCFMUxrifzR7ulZs7ORN3MTmBoCdTTxlo7FgWlLpD-CpmswOb8mV1FitzPT/w210-h400/andrei_rublev.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>Andrei Rublev</i></b><br />
Part of the Classic section of the festival program, <i>Andrei Rublev</i> is one of the best-regarded films by the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Inspired by the celebrated painter of religious icons, the film charts about 20 years in the early 15th century, and follows the artistic monk Rublev as he accepts an invitation to travel to the town of Vladimir to paint a fresco in that town's church. After a long journey, he arrives in Vladimir, only to struggle with the commissioned work, a painting of The Last Judgement, as he feels uncomfortable with the idea of using terror to push people into faith. Eventually the town is attacked by Tatar invaders, and much of the town is destroyed; during the attack Rublev kills a man to save a woman from being attacked, and the regret over that action causes him to take a vow of silence and to withdraw from his artistic efforts. Over the next ten years, the town is slowly rebuilt, even as famine and plague afflict the region.<br />
This was the fifth film by Tarkovsky that I've seen, and he's a filmmaker I never really connect to. His works are undeniably slow - here, we have a three-hour black and white film set in medieval Russia about a painter, in which a good hour is spent following him on a journey from one town to another, and the film is filled with extremely long discussions about art and religion and sin and forgiveness and regret and pain and revenge and envy. And at those points, I did find myself slowly drifting off, losing focus, losing connection to the film, to the point that I did need to go to Wikipedia just to clarify one or two points about which I was uncertain.<br />
But there was also a lot that I really liked in the film, that managed to get me to connect to the film in a way that no other Tarkovsky film ever has. There's a fantastic opening sequence, in which a man has constructed a hot air balloon; despite the attack of a horde of people trying to keep him on the ground, he takes off in the hot air balloon and, for a few brief moments, has the joyous experience of flying. It's a remarkable sequence that I found exhilarating and thrilling. Later on, there's a fascinating sequence where Rublev encounters a group of naked pagans celebrating a ritual, who condemn Rublev for his Christianity that has sought to oppress their beliefs. There's an absolutely awe-inspiring battle sequence in which the town of Vladimir is destroyed; it's a sequence that has a breathtaking sense of scope and size, and it absolutely gripped me throughout. And finally, there was an extended sequence involving the making of a massive bell and placing inside its tower; I was fascinated by the way the film portrayed the methodical process involved in casting a bell, was astonished to realise just what an engineering feat it was to construct these massive towers and raise these bells to sit within them, and was absolutely gripped with suspense as I waited to see whether the bell would indeed ring.<br />
So while, on the whole, I didn't really care for the film and largely found it as disengaging as most of Tarkovsky's films have been for me, there were significant parts of the film that did grab me, and managed to achieve a connection that his work usually does not. And it must be admitted that the film is genuinely beautiful, with Tarkovsky constructing some stunning imagery that looked incredible on the big screen. And because of that, I was glad to see the film.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-1yR3UdDikPCFUW0SXxN_0rWIodF94slBYsUrOOzVpHazul-NYOCeceF-CwbPftgOutxjppPW0kjEOZOdR5Ll68AktLzLRX3ulRaIiKT9xbMenPiSU59STbBFTvn8f1QdYiJDqYL-mccq/s755/vagabond.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-1yR3UdDikPCFUW0SXxN_0rWIodF94slBYsUrOOzVpHazul-NYOCeceF-CwbPftgOutxjppPW0kjEOZOdR5Ll68AktLzLRX3ulRaIiKT9xbMenPiSU59STbBFTvn8f1QdYiJDqYL-mccq/w265-h400/vagabond.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>Vagabond</i></b><br />
A few days ago, I saw <i>Daguerréotypes</i>, a documentary that was my first proper experience with the work of Agnès Varda. And it was fantastic. Now, with <i>Vagabond</i>, I had a chance to see what her work as a director of fictional narrative was like. And it was fantastic.<br />
The film opens with the discovery of the body of a young homeless women, frozen to death, lying in the middle of a drainage ditch in a vineyard during the French winter. The film then cuts back several weeks earlier, purporting to be the memories of those who encountered the young woman, Mona, in the last weeks of her life. So we watch as she hitchhikes across the country, crashes in empty or derelict houses, finds the odd guy to sleep with for a night or two, picks up the odd job that never lasts, steals things and tries to sell them for a bit of money, and generally just tries to survive. Which we know she won't.<br />
As presented here, Mona seems like someone who should be really hard for the audience to care for. She's actively abrasive and unpleasant, almost deliberately defying you to dislike her. One of the first interactions we see of her has her hitchhiking and being picked up by a truck driver, who drops her off again very soon after she criticises the truck for being rubbish because it didn't have a radio - the driver realising this girl will be too much hassle. People will help her, will buy her food or offer her shelter, and she'll express no gratitude at all - I don't think the phrase "thank you" is spoken once by her in the film - almost as though to thank someone is to admit that they did something to help her, which would mean admitting that she needed help, which she can't do because she's so determined to be self-reliant. People will help her, but the second they stop helping her, she'll pull an obscene gesture to make sure they know that she didn't need the help. At one point, someone offers her a bed and a job trimming grapevines, but tells her that he shares his flat with some other guys who are currently on holiday, and when they return he may not be able to offer a bed anymore; when the other guys return and do say that she can't stay with them, she loses her temper, angrily returns the scarf that he gifted her, and accepts his offer of a ride to the station, but loudly claims he only wants to get her away faster. And yet it seems that she doesn't need to live like this, as she claims to be smart, even able to speak English, at least to a high school level, and apparently has secretarial training, although she decided to quit her job because she didn't like having a boss tell her what to do, instead choosing this life as a way to turn away from society and its expectations.<br />
All this should make Mona a completely frustrating person to have to spend close to two hours in the company of. That she's not is, to a large degree, due to the incredible performance by Sandrine Bonnaire. She gives a fantastic charisma to the character, giving her a spark of fire and determination, but revealing the inherent vulnerability and fear that underpins the character. She never feels genuinely angry, and her rages only ever feel like acting out by someone who wants to hold people at her distance so that she can never be let down by them. It's a beautiful, compelling performance. And it's absolutely vital that she give such an appealing performance because it's inherent in the film that she is someone that people, for the most part, look back on with fondness despite her behaviour. She's not someone that people pick up, drop off, and never think about again; instead she's someone that those who encountered her continue to think about and worry about weeks later.<br />
And those other supporting performances are so vital to the success of the film. Most of them are tiny, only a scene or two, and there's only a handful of characters that would have more than 5 minutes on screen. And yet, each of the characters seems fully realised and richly constructed. Each of them has a different relationship, a different way of connecting with Mona, and those differences feel very natural given who these different people are and how they would naturally interact. The film doesn't work if these characters feel false, but they always hold up and feel honest and genuine.<br />
And it's clear that Agnès Varda genuinely loves Mona. I loved the choice to end the film before Mona's death. We've known since the start of the film that she was going to die, we've known how it was going to happen, and now we reach the end of the film and we've seen her wind up in that place, and we see her desperation and sadness as she's lying there, and it's devastating. I didn't want to watch Mona die, it was going to hurt too much, and so I was glad to discover that Varda felt the same way. Not that I was surprised, as Varda had already made the decision not to show Mona's previous lowpoint, looking away when the character is raped. It's like Varda knows that she's causing this character to suffer tremendously, and the least you can do is not lingering on her pain when the character is suffering the most. Especially since this character in particular would hate to be seen at that moment of weakness.<br />
There's a moment that is essentially an expression of the thesis of the film. Mona has been offered accommodation in a caravan, a small plot of land that she can work, and a few goats. But Mona is incredibly resentful at being asked to do anything in return for the gifts that she was given. The goat farmer sits down with her and explains how you can't live a life alone, that you need other people, that you need society to live. A stubborn self-reliance, a refusal to accept help, will just kill you - he's seen it. It's only when you can accept that you can't do everything and ask for help that you can survive. The tragedy of <i>Vagabond</i> is that Mona hears these words, and chooses to reject them, and thus seals her ultimate fate.<br />
I love this film, and was devastated by it. It is a beautiful piece of work.<br />
<br />
About these festival film responses - I actually do the initial drafting of them by turning on voice recognition and then just letting it run as I express all of my initial thoughts. Later, I do a lot of tidying up, pruning, expanding, rewriting, but the initial effort to make sure I've captured exactly what I think is all done by voice recognition.<br />
What's great about that is that, if you see a film that you absolutely hated, and there's no-one at the movie that you can talk to about how much you hate it, you can just turn on voice recognition and yell and rant about how much you hated that film for 15 minutes. And it is so satisfying.<br />
Case in point:<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4JV2oxI-Ttk4hNi8U_743Sd9L4uxwxNnoVPCxbwpw6-guUGKtgnAigxD-5Oxbv1TkkEPxYKWT8E_xWkFw3Ub0TViHQ5Ti3_OsALLIlBqAzVsIm4OCb6pBf65f3RW1rqySKmKUPVpRqJ-Q/s755/who_you_think_i_am.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="521" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4JV2oxI-Ttk4hNi8U_743Sd9L4uxwxNnoVPCxbwpw6-guUGKtgnAigxD-5Oxbv1TkkEPxYKWT8E_xWkFw3Ub0TViHQ5Ti3_OsALLIlBqAzVsIm4OCb6pBf65f3RW1rqySKmKUPVpRqJ-Q/w276-h400/who_you_think_i_am.jpg" width="276" /></a></div>Who You Think I Am</i></b><br />
Juliette Binoche stars as Claire, a university literature professor, trying to rebuild her life as her ex-husband is starting his new life with his much younger girlfriend. She's also hooking up with a younger man, although he seems less invested in the relationship, and seems to be trying to distance himself from her. One day, she impulsively decides to create a Facebook profile for an imaginary twentysomething called Clara, and sends a friend request to the best friend of her occasional lover, hoping to follow the lover through the friend. And this starts a slow friendship that turns romantic, although he's obviously oblivious to the fact that he's being catfished. They chat online, and she agonizes over every word choice that might reveal her age; they talk on the phone, and she adopts a high-pitched, breathy, youthful tone of voice. And then he starts to press to meet her, which is obviously impossible, and so the relationship starts to go wrong.<br />
Full warning: this film made me actively angry, but to explain why, I do need to talk about the final part of the film. I'll try to avoid specific details, but there will be spoilers. Not that you should care, because you really shouldn't see the film.<br />
I struggle to remember the last time I saw a film that so completely manages to destroy itself in its third act. The first two acts of the film are enjoyable, with an engaging performance by Binoche, and I was really curious about a development that occurred as the central relationship broke down, and where that might take the story. But instead, what the film does is decides to pretend that development didn't take place. The entire film is presented as Claire telling her story to her new psychologist, and after this development, Claire is so upset by what happened that she presents the psychologist with a written story that imagines how things might have turned out differently if she had chosen a different course of action. And so the entire third act, the supposed climax of the story, is explicitly presented to us as a fictional imagining by the main character.<br />
I was reminded of an Oscar-nominated film from 10 or 15 years ago (and I won't name the film because I don't want to spoil it, but if you know the film you'll recognise it). In that film, the climax involved a revelation that the second half was a fictional story written by the main character, who felt so guilty about something they did and the consequences of that action on other people that they felt the need to write a happy ending for these people that they never had in reality. It's the exact same ending! The difference is that the earlier film works because we don't know that it's fictional, and so we remain invested in that story up until the moment of the twist ending, and then the revelation of what really happened hits the audience like a real gut punch. But in this film, we learn about the reality with half an hour to go, and then we have to sit and watch something that the film actively tells you isn't real even within the world of the film. And meanwhile, there are genuine consequences that Claire should be trying to deal with following those climactic developments, but the film doesn't even attempt to deal with those because it's so busy telling this imagined story.<br />
Also, you know the phrase "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach". It turns out there's a very good reason why Claire is teaching literature rather than writing it. In particular, she gives her story the most cliched ending imaginable, an ending I have seen literally dozens of times. The frustrating thing about this particular ending is that there is only one way this ending can be filmed, as any other perspective or angle on the events would completely destroy the ending, and so it winds up being a situation where as soon as you see this character doing one thing and you notice the framing of the shot, you know definitively what's about to happen, because you've seen that exact moment countless times. Claire tries to defend her ending by arguing that it would make a good movie, but it wouldn't, and I know this because I'm literally watching a movie with that ending and it's not good.<br />
But just because the film tells you that this ending is a fictional story doesn't mean the film is devoid of twists. On the contrary, by my count, there are at least three twist revelations that take place in the last 5 minutes of the film. That's a lot to put into a film - too much, as there's not enough time for the film to actually explore the dramatic consequences or thematic meaning of these twists, which instead seem to exist just for the hell of it. And because of these twists, the film needs to adopt some incredibly awkward storytelling to preserve the surprises. There's one twist in particular that is just dire, especially as in order for it to work, it relies on one character being actively evasive about an issue they have no reason to be evasive about, and other character conversations have to be written in a stilted and unnatural manner to obscure a key piece of information. But they have to behave in this way, because otherwise the twist won't be a twist, and that's the most important thing about the story.<br />
The frustrating thing is that the first two acts really did set up an intriguing story. These days it's not particularly unexpected to examine social media, and explore its potential for causing serious damage to people from a distance without us ever needing to deal with the consequences. That may be an unoriginal idea, but a competently made film could do really well in exploring that idea, especially given how the end of the second act sets up the story to proceed. But instead the film seems actively uninterested in these ideas, or indeed in having anything to say. A film that just sets up the situation, then pretends that something else might hypothetically have happened in another universe, and then throws a bunch of end-of-film reveals, does nothing to engage with the actual consequences of what the character may or may not have done. And that leaves the film feeling absolutely pointless.<br />
I was so angry at this film; to be honest, I was surprised by how angry it made me. But I think the reason why I was so enraged was because I was genuinely engaged by the first hour or more of the film, and genuinely wanted to know what would happen next. And so, when I discovered the film had no interest in exploring that question, it felt like a genuine betrayal. I felt that the film had wasted my time.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc7t_s7C652KFUgsCVrJpQB_UDomxoTvfMf5hQ6700Pfgpv5Rsa_YzuVVdNZImssowQFWuoCGVIhBLHUpzvThdDhwVQ6QwCZMBDzCQ0bILX7s-js5Be-cBTgjAkU7nS4IViCgc4J3YWl9s/s755/nightingale.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc7t_s7C652KFUgsCVrJpQB_UDomxoTvfMf5hQ6700Pfgpv5Rsa_YzuVVdNZImssowQFWuoCGVIhBLHUpzvThdDhwVQ6QwCZMBDzCQ0bILX7s-js5Be-cBTgjAkU7nS4IViCgc4J3YWl9s/w270-h400/nightingale.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>The Nightingale </i></b><br />
A film that is brutal and brilliant, unpleasant and enthralling, <i>The Nightingale</i> tells the story of Claire a young Irish woman convicted of some petty crime and sent to Tasmania during the early-19th century. She's served her time, but the local lieutenant, Hawkins, refuses to sign her release papers to allow her to build her life with her husband and young baby. One day, Hawkins and his lackeys rape Claire and murder her husband and baby, before heading off on a 5 day expedition. Claire is determined to pursue the men alone, no matter the risk to herself, but she is persuaded to take an angry Aboriginal tracker Billy as a guide.<br />
I was interested in seeing <i>The Nightingale</i> because I had greatly admired Jennifer Kent's previous film, T<i>he Babadook</i>. But having seen reporting about how rough the film was to sit through, about the three separate rape scenes in the film, I certainly wasn't looking forward to the experience. There's a long history, particularly in exploitation or shock cinema, of the rape-revenge film, and they often have a reputation for using the inciting crime as an opportunity for a bit of titillation for the audience, as well as providing the justification for the excessive violence to follow. And it's here that it matters that the film was written and directed by a woman, because it feels like it approaches those moments with great care, being respectful to the victims of the crime, staying bedded in the experience of the victim, and being very clear that the crimes are more about an exertion of power over others, rather than just about sex.<br />
And that's a key part of the film as a whole - everything that Hawkins does seems to be governed in some way as an assertion of power and authority over others, because his position allows him the authority to do whatever he likes without challenge. His refusal to sign Claire's release papers allows him to assert power over her, that she is his property. When she says that she will complain about what he does to her, he mocks the idea, because he automatically has reliability and standing through his position as an officer in the British Army. Throughout the film, he commits murder with a casual impunity. He'll sit with his lackeys and loudly discuss the crimes they've committed while the rest of their party sit a couple of feet away listening. Or they'll tie up and rape a woman that they come across, while fully within earshot of everyone else, who know exactly what's happening but who seem unable to do anything out of fear. He will happily commit these crimes, because his position gives him power and authority to override any consequences. And it's not just Hawkins and those who support him who feel free to commit whatever crimes he commits without penalty; there's a sense of lawlessness and a lack of restriction for anyone who is a white male in this country - witness the men who casually murder a whole group of Aboriginal men in chains for no reason. Because that is what the film is about. The film is about how modern-day Australia is built on a history of violence and destruction and exploitation. As terrible as the crimes are that we witness, and they are terrible, they're nothing compared to the moment where we hear about multiple tribes being completely wiped out, or the mournful way Billy constantly bemoans the loss of his ancestral land to "England".<br />
I really appreciated the portrayal of Claire as a woman dealing with intense trauma and survivor's guilt. It's there in her determination and stubbornness to try to seek revenge, less for herself and what was done to her, and more because she feels she's the only person who can ensure that these men will pay for the murder of her family. It's in the way she almost loses control when lashing out at one of the men, and then her horrified response when she realises what she's done. It's there in the moment that she finally sees Hawkins for the first time, having spent the entire film chasing him, and she is suddenly paralyzed at the sight of the man who has committed these atrocities. And there are some fantastic dream sequences that are incredibly effective in communicating how the trauma continues to affect her without any hope for respite; while this isn't a horror film, in those moments Jennifer Kent demonstrates that she retains the skill as a horror director that was on display in <i>The Babadook</i>, with moments of pure terror that were no less effective because we know they were a dream.<br />
And it has to be said that the film would be nowhere near as effective were it not for the performance of Aisling Franciosi as Claire, who is great in communicating the traumatised state of the character, but also convincing as someone who was taken away from her home at a young age and who has had to learn to build her life alone in a new country, and who therefore feels like she has the strength to conceivably hunt down these men. Similarly, Baykali Ganambarr brings a mournful resentfulness to the role of the guide Billy, constantly aware that this was his home but that now around every corner is someone who could kill him for existing. And I found the growing relationship between the two compelling and convincing; she's initially actively and realistically awful to him to him, and it never feels like they actually become friends, instead simply becoming bonded out of a mutual hatred of the English and a growing understanding of the horrors that each has experienced.<br />
I feel like I'm reluctant to say that I liked the film. It's not a film that you like. But it was a brilliantly made film, and one I deeply appreciated.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ7JGDpiDu_IlCRMgQCfnOLbksnk0SJoBPvXa_e9qRLo-7EGN1G-EHR0RBG2RB23Tp1duFQ6-s4aPdSd4wJ0H4tj7gV1MJJ_mhIjpDSPn46eU1L8_0DhpJBTNH0W8P_mG1fqXiapONphkW/s755/escher_journey_to_infinity.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ7JGDpiDu_IlCRMgQCfnOLbksnk0SJoBPvXa_e9qRLo-7EGN1G-EHR0RBG2RB23Tp1duFQ6-s4aPdSd4wJ0H4tj7gV1MJJ_mhIjpDSPn46eU1L8_0DhpJBTNH0W8P_mG1fqXiapONphkW/w270-h400/escher_journey_to_infinity.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>Escher: Journey into Infinity </i></b><br />
The film opens with a quote by M.C. Escher in which he declares that he believes the only person who could ever successfully make a film about his art is himself. It's a bold gamble to open your film like that, because you really are setting yourself up for failure, which they did here. A frustratingly middling documentary about a genuinely fascinating subject, the film seeks to cover the life and work of M.C. Escher in about 80 minutes, which really is not enough time to do justice to what it's trying to achieve. It feels very much like one of those documentaries that plays on a channel that you usually skip over but have to pay for because it's part of the pay TV package. It's a documentary, it's fine, you're engaged while you're watching it, it's interesting and you'll learn something, but there's nothing particularly special about the film.<br />
Told largely through his own words, as written in letters and diaries and read by Stephen Fry, Escher was the Dutch artist whose work illustrating impossible objects and tessellation was ubiquitous in every mathematics classroom I was ever in. The film basically gives a general overview of his life, as well as examining his own thoughts on his work.</div><span><!--more--></span><span><!--more--></span><span><!--more--></span><span><!--more--></span><div>
The problem is, the film winds up feeling very surface-level. The material about his life is fine enough as it is, but it does feel like there's really not a lot to his life of any particular interest. They spend enough time on his life that it feels like it's using up quite a bit of time in the film, but not enough time to actually get much insight into who he was - there are a couple of points where they make elliptical references to problems in Escher's marriage or to his wife's mental illness, but there are no details and so I find myself asking why they felt the need to mention it. It's also frustrating because Escher is not a particularly personal artist and so, other than learning about his encounters with particular ideas or designs that actively inspired him, it feels like the film is just killing time when they discuss his personal life.<br />
Especially as the film is so much stronger when it's not about Escher's life, and is zeroed in on his artwork, which is the only reason we're watching the film in the first place. It is fascinating to hear Escher's own words as he expresses his frustration at his difficulty trying to get the physical form of his artwork to replicate the ideas he has in his head, at the little imperfections that make their way into his work. There are some fantastic moments where we learn about his process, where we see his initial sketches and ideas as he tries to construct his pieces, and then see how these are reflected in the final artwork. And we hear him talk in detail about particular pieces, describing and deconstructing every element of some of his most famous works to analyse the ideas that he's trying to communicate through these designs - how this piece is an attempt to communicate the concept of infinity, or how in that piece he's playing with the way that 2-dimensional shapes can appear as 3-dimensional objects. And that is genuinely fascinating, hearing a person as thoughtful and detailed as Escher analysing his own work is quite remarkable. At one point towards the end of the film, he again dismisses the idea of being an artist, observing that an artist's primary focus is always on creating a thing of beauty, where his focus is on trying to create a sense of wonder - and that does feel like a very simple but articulate summary of Escher's work.<br />
The film really does feel very slapdash. Here's an example: in the first minute or two of the film, the film talks about how Escher in the late 60s heard that hippies were buying pirated prints of his artwork that had been coloured to transform the stubbornly black-and-white work of Escher's originals into bright multi-coloured fluorescent art artworks, and how baffled he was trying to understand what about his very cerebral artwork would appeal to drugged-up hippies. Later, as we start to arrive at the end of Escher's life, we reach a point where the exact same story is told to us with little or no variation. I'm not entirely certain what the purpose of telling that story twice was, but as I was watching the film, I did find myself thinking "We know this, you've already told us." It does feel remarkably sloppy to tell the story twice without there ever even being a sense that the retelling brings out something new.<br />
There's also some incredibly annoying, cheap-looking CGI effects that are implemented to try to visualise some of the images described in Escher's writing, or to try to bring elements of his artwork to life, at one point even having birds fly out of the artwork and out into the real world. It almost never works, and just makes the film feel tacky and immature, and even feels a little disrespectful to an artist who put such great care and consideration into his work.<br />
There's one other thing that bothered me about the film. I believe that there are only three people that provide talking head interviews in the film. Two of these are Escher's sons, and that makes sense. The third is Graham Nash, from Crosby Stills and Nash. He doesn't really have that much to contribute - he was essentially an admirer of Escher's work who one day phoned Escher as a fan and who was told by Escher that he didn't consider himself an artist, rather a mathematician. You don't need Graham Nash to tell us that, as it's very clear from the rest of the film that's how he felt. Then the film actually ends with Nash talking about how he feels the art world undervalues Escher, and how he feels one day his work will become much better appreciated. Thank you for that insight, Mr folk-rock musician. It feels very much like the documentary filmmakers wanted someone famous in the film, couldn't get Mick Jagger (who once asked Escher to design an album cover), and so decided that Nash will do, without any consideration to what his purpose for being in the film should be and whether he adds anything.<br />
Still, it was fine. While I would have preferred the film spend much more time examining the artwork, to the exclusion of almost everything else, I walked out feeling like I heard a greater appreciation for the man and his work, and that's really all I wanted from the film.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ZXNuI6u-bLhpSbbNRSQJajjgqiUsvxFI-JUngicvXwSZtdVL3EoBDeFJtIFLmX7be2zUsXmhPaW9XyspDNFSooDc4RbQkvEYjJ_qlAvkcK1P_cxhF6eLDLt3kAgk_btcBk_rK1ZBSiPN/s1506/fly_by_night.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1506" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ZXNuI6u-bLhpSbbNRSQJajjgqiUsvxFI-JUngicvXwSZtdVL3EoBDeFJtIFLmX7be2zUsXmhPaW9XyspDNFSooDc4RbQkvEYjJ_qlAvkcK1P_cxhF6eLDLt3kAgk_btcBk_rK1ZBSiPN/w265-h400/fly_by_night.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>Fly By Night</i></b><br />
An entertaining if undistinguished crime thriller from Malaysia, <i>Fly by Night</i> tells the story of four taxi drivers, including two brothers, that have teamed up to identify potential people they could extort money from. As they take their wealthy passengers home, the drivers assess their value for extortion and look for potential problems or openings to take advantage of. But after they extort money from a senior official, their actions come to the attention of a cop who's determined to take them down. Meanwhile the younger brother and his best friend are becoming impatient with the small amounts of money being brought in, and look to separate out and undertake their own efforts. But when they find themselves in debt to a local gangster, and desperate to get a large amount of money very quickly, they decide to take advantage of an opportunity offered by a jilted mistress looking for revenge on her former lover.<br />
This is very much the type of film that Hollywood used to make a lot of, but that seen to have fallen out of fashion. These days you often get the massive-budget special effect blockbuster films, or the low-budget films that cost nothing to make. But you don't often gets these mid-budget movies, films that aren't big special effects extravaganzas, that do have a strong focus on characters and their interactions, but also have a budget that allows them to do some solid action work. And this is a good example of that type of film; I do miss these films, and I'm glad to see that they are still being produced elsewhere. But as I was watching the film, I did find myself wondering if this film would be playing in the film festival if it were in English. Does the fact that it's from Malaysia give it an impression of significance that it wouldn't otherwise have?<br />
The film holds very much to the standard cliches. There's the gunfight that takes place in a quarry in the middle of nowhere. There's the thrilling chase between a motorbike rider and a seemingly infinite number of police cars, all swerving to avoid people carrying things out into the middle of the road or crashing into piles of boxes. There's the wild card that messes up the plan, here the jilted mistress who jumps in just because she doesn't trust them to get her the ring that she's after. There's the deranged gangster who will gleefully torture people, in this case pouring boiling hot tea over people's faces, and who takes delight in his power over others. There's the brutal interrogation of a person suspected to be lying, in this case a genuinely horrifying moment where a person is questioned while having a screwdriver slowly driven in through their ear. It's all done with a great deal of style and skill, and it's impressively polished, especially for a first-time director who shows genuine talent and noticeable confidence and control over the film. I was greatly entertained, but I don't know that there was much in the way of substance to the film, or that I'll think about it too often. It just does what it wants to do really well. If this is the type of film that appeals to you, and you can find it, it's certainly worth watching.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXts48kH3uycugnp3RJZQMVCHmMTtboWnHrBFyoeCqOv2Sw5stvyh5L2UnAkZF2skftMTx3G-fd_eczWTuqDHUKOyH5h7J4W-e9mEuiOkVZcVEtkZ9eju2PILkk8b2OiDwc26au4Y1QVRG/s755/day_shall_come.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="513" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXts48kH3uycugnp3RJZQMVCHmMTtboWnHrBFyoeCqOv2Sw5stvyh5L2UnAkZF2skftMTx3G-fd_eczWTuqDHUKOyH5h7J4W-e9mEuiOkVZcVEtkZ9eju2PILkk8b2OiDwc26au4Y1QVRG/w271-h400/day_shall_come.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>The Day Shall Come</i></b><br />
Moses is a man living in Miami who has formed a small religious organisation with a belief system based around a "star of six" key black figures, including Jesus, Mohammed, General Toussaint, and Black Santa. He got his beliefs from a duck; normally Satan speaks to him through the duck, but one day Satan was distracted and God spoke through the duck when Satan wasn't looking. He preaches about a black jihad that will wash away the white man from his position of accidental privilege, but he will not allow his followers to take up guns or other weapons to bring about this change; the strongest weapon he will allow is a toy crossbow. Mostly, he seems to just focus on keeping his followers away from drugs and gangs by having them grow food and raise animals at his house in the middle of the city that he's turned into a church/farm. He's picked up a handful of followers, by which I mean a literal handful - he has five followers, including his wife and daughter. All in all, he's harmless, a mild schizophrenic whose only real interest is in helping his followers improve their lives. Which is why it's unfortunate that he's just come to the attention of the FBI, which is really keen to catch him committing acts of terrorism, and doesn't really care if they have to encourage him down the path a bit.<br />
It has been nine years since writer-director Chris Morris made the incompetent-terrorists comedy <i>Four Lions</i>, and so it was exciting to see what he would give us in his new film. If anything, I think his target here is better honed. I loved <i>Four Lions</i>, I thought it was absolutely hilarious, but that was a film about terrorism in which it was easy to laugh at the terrorists because they were goofy and silly, they were idiots, and it's fun to laugh at idiots doing supremely dumb stuff.<br />
Which makes Morris' target in <i>The Day Shall Come</i> much harder. Here, he's focused all of his attention on the FBI, which has the weight of the Government behind it, so that there are real consequences to their idiocy. And what's horrific here is how the FBI is portrayed as actively manufacturing threats. Moses and his followers are nothing, they're harmless, and pose no threat to anyone. They just want to be left to take care of their little urban farm, but they can't afford the rent, and so when someone turns up offering to give them $50,000 and an entire cache of guns, of course they're interested because they need the money; it doesn't matter to the FBI that Moses plans to make the guns inoperable by putting them in concrete and using them as fence posts, because if he receives the guns that's proof of terrorist intent. The entire motivation seems to be that the agency has been tasked with catching terrorist threats, but it's hard to find actual terrorists, and it's much simpler to create your own and then have them arrested - and they're deliberately targeting the stupid or naive or mentally unwell in doing so. (I've read interviews with Morris where he talked about some of the actual cases that inspired the film; the satire here doesn't seem that far from reality.) And then there's the usual competitiveness that builds up between different law enforcement agencies that serves simply to escalate situations because they have to show that they are responsive to threats that they've created and that they know are non-existent - at one point, as they're discussing declaring an actual threat in order to deal with a non-existent threat, it's actually commented that the sentence makes no sense if you say it fast, and so you have to express these sentiments slowly in order to keep the contradictory elements as distant from each other is possible. That is a very funny joke, and it's absolutely horrifying to think about.<br />
But while Morris may be aiming his satire at a much more significant target, it's all so much harder to be funny. Moses is a genuinely funny character, but the humour is made more uncomfortable by the fact that his delusions do come from a place of mental illness. And there's a very funny but bitter running joke around the FBI covering over the activities of a pedophile in return for his assistance helping to run these sting operations. And then there's just the fact that Morris knows how to write stupid and self-serving and venal people like few others. But when the joke is that these people are trying to actively manipulate a fundamentally good and nice guy into destroying his life just so that they can get a promotion, and it all seems shockingly realistic and convincing, the laughs don't come quite as freely. There's also something weird going on in the pacing of the film, which feels like it's going along quite gently, slowly building up, and then all of a sudden BANG and I was shocked to realise that we're at the climax because five minutes earlier it didn't feel like we were anywhere near the end of story.<br />
But these are minor issues about a movie that is really very strong. <i>The Day Shall Come</i> is a reliably funny film that has genuine bite in its satire. I just hope we don't have to wait another nine years for Chris Morris' next film.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqROpX2kGPlmm6jiGY85ter3wfpEc3UVAVmWVFjpAD8P_kzxbAXv4a433QISbWGykxj93z505ldfgdZBkzBzdgAgBBogwfblT5qTDWNQi-3OFNaMrOP5cU5LFuev44yQAV3WY2ZiGeYcoC/s755/under_the_silver_lake.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqROpX2kGPlmm6jiGY85ter3wfpEc3UVAVmWVFjpAD8P_kzxbAXv4a433QISbWGykxj93z505ldfgdZBkzBzdgAgBBogwfblT5qTDWNQi-3OFNaMrOP5cU5LFuev44yQAV3WY2ZiGeYcoC/w270-h400/under_the_silver_lake.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>Under the Silver Lake</i></b><br />
This was probably the film I was most curious to see how I responded to it. I'd really enjoyed David Robert Mitchell's earlier film <i>It Follows</i>, and had therefore been following the development of <i>Under the Silver Lake</i> for several years. But I knew that, while some people really liked the film, the majority seemed to strongly dislike it (indeed, as I was driving to the cinema I was listening to Mark Kermode list it as the second-worst film of 2019 so far) and it had a famously disastrous cinema release in the US. Having seen the film, I love the film, even as I understand people hating it.<br />
Andrew Garfield stars as Sam, an unemployed wastrel on the verge of being evicted, largely because he doesn't care about finding a job, and instead spends all his time trying to crack the codes that point to the vast conspiracy under which we all live. One evening his attractive neighbour invites him to spend the night, but when her roommates turn up, she decides to postpone until the next day. So the next day, he turns up expecting to get laid, only to discover the flat is empty, and they moved out in the middle of the night. This makes no sense to Sam, because she was going to have sex with him, and so something must be wrong. And so he applies all of his focus to finding the girl to understand why she left him, a quest that seemingly grows more urgent after she turns up dead with a millionaire in a car crash.<br />
The film is insane. Absolutely bonkers. And I really admire Mitchell's ambition with the film. There's a lot of Hitchcock running through the film, most obviously <i>Rear Window</i> and <i>Vertigo</i>. But it's also very clearly inspired by LA neo-noir - I've seen a lot of comparison to <i>Chinatown</i>, to me it reminded me a lot of <i>The Long Goodbye</i>, while <i>Inherent Vice</i> seemed like a more recent touchstone. Then there are the echoes of dark-side-of-Hollywood films like <i>Sunset Boulevard</i>, or <i>Mulholland Drive</i> which felt like a major influence. But it's all wrapped up in this film that is so insanely paranoid that it borders on incoherent. There's a line of logic that means that you understand at every point how you got there, but it relies on absurd leaps that wouldn't make sense anywhere else then in this film. This isn't a film where a hero follows actual clues to reach the solution, instead, he cracks codes hidden in cereal boxes and historic magazines and pop songs, and it's in cracking these codes that Sam is seemingly led to the answer he seeks. And it's apparently the correct answer, which means that all of these insane and incoherent ravings are apparently true.<br />
And then there at the weird touches that Mitchell seems to throw in, almost more for colour then for coherence. Why is there a naked female assassin wearing an owl mask? Why is there a scene where a cardboard box containing a used vibrator is grabbed by a person wearing a pirate costume who then runs away like he's holding a treasure chest? Why is there a scene where a character is beaten to death with a guitar that was literally owned by Kurt Cobain? I don't know, but I was completely sold by the film.<br />
One thing I found fascinating was Andrew Garfield's absolute willingness to make Sam into an utterly repulsive character. He's completely unsympathetic, and almost certainly a sociopath. The film was in development many years before Me Too, but the character feels like an exploration of sense of entitlement that has allowed those behaviours to flourish. He's physically repellent as well, dishevelled and wearing a stream of t-shirts that look unwashed - he looks like he's smells, and that's before he gets sprayed by a skunk, after which he definitely smells because everyone tells him so. And yet he's bizarrely able to just walk into any exclusive party he chooses, almost as though he only needs to carry himself as though he assumes he will get in and he will - the staff presumably assuming that he must be pretty important to have reached a point where he doesn't need to hear about how he looks or smells.<br />I get why people hate the film, I really do - but I found it completely enthralling.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYGObbsV2R_643lrDYYUgaDbt3wLpJXh29OPLdCryJ4CBLk6eYMTjU91_VU_iH1c0xY7UaISwC8-ZPSs0LUxGZDiCgGUYrNtWLomDkgcAAHsWUn26rXpR6z4DsN8l3nVipguw7sWMOIwJc/s755/vivarium.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYGObbsV2R_643lrDYYUgaDbt3wLpJXh29OPLdCryJ4CBLk6eYMTjU91_VU_iH1c0xY7UaISwC8-ZPSs0LUxGZDiCgGUYrNtWLomDkgcAAHsWUn26rXpR6z4DsN8l3nVipguw7sWMOIwJc/w270-h400/vivarium.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>Vivarium </i></b><br />
Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg are a young couple looking to buy their first home together. One day, they wander into a storefront promoting a new suburban development called Yonder. The two aren't all that interested in the development, and they are put off by the seriously unsettling salesman giving them the hard sell, but they agree to go out and look at properties. Yonder is a bizarre location, with streets upon streets of literally identical buildings, looking like something that shouldn't exist. And then the salesman disappears halfway through showing them house #9, and they can't find their way out of the neighbourhood, driving for hours and hours until they run out of petrol, yet always returning to #9. And so they're stuck. Every day there's a delivery of food and essentials, although they never actually see anyone deliver the package to them. And then one day, they are delivered a baby in a box with a note, "Raise me and you will be released". But the child is weird and off-putting, and they very quickly come to resent this creature forced on them.<br />
It's an effective little science-fiction horror film, albeit one that eschews gore and excess in favour of a lingering sense of dread and fear. And so much of that effect is entirely reliant on the performances of Poots and Eisenberg. I was so impressed with the way they communicated the slow loss of hope and the growing resignation at their new reality; you really can see the light fading from their eyes, until they almost feel as though the life they previously lived was an imagined experience. Look at their sad nostalgia as remembering the experience of feeling the wind on their face, or the way they sneak into their car, just because it's the only thing in Yonder that didn't come from that place, and so it actually has a smell, which reminds them of outside. And there's a nice little scene in which they discover a brief opportunity to experience music again, and for a few moments they can let themselves go and experience joy and dancing to the music.<br />
There's a sad and bitter pessimism to the film, which very much wears its themes on its sleeve. It's not difficult to see the film as being about the burdens and pains of marriage and parenthood stifling experience and forcing people into traditional gender roles. Everyday, Eisenberg goes off to work, which means spending the day digging a hole to try to find some way to escape, because that's the only thing he can think to do, and he refuses to let Poots help him. And so Poots finds herself fulfilling the role of mother for this unsettling child, even as she stubbornly fights it, even loudly and repeatedly telling him "I'm not your mother". The child is truly nightmarish, with a screech that penetrates and an uncanny ability to imitate and reproduce every conversation the couple have, because every child learns how to act from their parents.<br />
The boy was probably my favourite part of the film, especially the performance of Senan Jennings who played the growing child. Jennings certainly gives a uncanny performance, never quite threatening but very far from safe. The couple feel as though they constantly being watched by him, and he has this penetrative stare that I found simply bone-chilling. They also apply some very nice trickery to the boy's voice - I think it's digital manipulation, but it could easily be as simple as another actor voicing the character - that ensured that he never sounded the way he felt like he should, so every time he spoke, the audience was held at a distance and never allowed to feel comfortable with him. It's a very smart idea that really reaps dividends in audience response.<br />
The Yonder neighborhood is certainly fascinating and memorable, but it's probably the film's only real disappointing element. The suburbs have long been an easy thing for movies to poke fun at, and it's never really been that successful a target. But here the typical jokes about identical cookie-cutter houses are taken to an extreme, with identical two-storey houses all painted the exact same shade of green, all looming and imposing and spreading as far as the eye can see. As a visual for a horror film, it's fantastic, easily communicating the sense of feeling trapped and isolated in a world without personality, but as a piece of satirical comment, it feels very easy and dismissive. And there's no doubt that this is actively intended as a comment on the suburbs, as even before we arrived at the neighborhood, the salesman defensively tells the couple, "I know it's in the suburbs, but...". Still, I did love the Yonder neighborhood for its design as something created by someone who doesn't understand people. I laughed out loud at the artwork inside the house, paintings of the exact room the painting is in. I loved the way the clouds looked exactly like clouds and therefore nothing like clouds. If you were to imagine a housing development created by beings that don't understand people, this is exactly what that would look like.<br />
All in all, I really enjoyed the film. It's an entertaining piece of dread-filled horror, and I was pretty impressed by it.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIcbM_oMNe3jn7du-Tkg7ruj7ZsWlhHWPWxTavpdh4HzM4rwx9ySbqEu7Hnb_2dtPep36eG6lW6lgPceTQZiKiOJ50HtLVEmeP4XHUuDwXXi3_OT4meKSOFtTFRgD1hlITzOYjjgRB_ZIs/s755/gangster_cop_devil.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="566" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIcbM_oMNe3jn7du-Tkg7ruj7ZsWlhHWPWxTavpdh4HzM4rwx9ySbqEu7Hnb_2dtPep36eG6lW6lgPceTQZiKiOJ50HtLVEmeP4XHUuDwXXi3_OT4meKSOFtTFRgD1hlITzOYjjgRB_ZIs/w300-h400/gangster_cop_devil.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil</i> </b><br />
A hot-headed, single-minded cop notices similarities between a brutal stabbing and other recent incidents, and starts to suspect that this is the work of a serial killer. His bosses dismiss his theory and take him off the case, so when a local crime boss is attacked in a similar incident, the cop decides to team up with the gangster, sharing information in order to try to hunt down the killer and bring him to justice (although the type of justice he faces depends on whether he's caught by the gangster or the cop). But when the gangster acquires the killer's knife and uses that to have a rival crime boss murdered, DNA on the blade leads the police to accept the presence of the serial killer, which means the two must carry out their investigation while avoiding both the cops and the minions of the dead rival.<br />
This was just terrific fun. Ma Dong-seok's work as the gangster is a real highlight, with a calm confidence to his character; he feels like someone who has faced down every threat imaginable and who knows nothing can defeat him. He's a brute with charm and wit, and he's weirdly likeable, even when he's literally ripping a person's tooth out. Meanwhile, as the cop, Kim Mu-yeol is a figure of pure stubbornness and determination, and while the idea of a cop working with a criminal who he had previously targeted and sought to take down seems improbable, his portrayal as someone who is so single-minded and focused makes his actions entirely believable, as he does feel like someone who would work with whoever he needed to in order to achieve his goal.<br />
The action in the film is skillfully executed and extremely involving, and with careful variation in the scenes. There's an excellent brawl with an attacking horde that is very fun and put me in mind of <i>Oldboy</i> (even if it's not quite as great as that). The car chases are gripping and exhilarating. There's some wonderfully suspenseful moments, particularly a foot chase around narrow streets where the threat of attack lies around every blind corner. And I was pleased by the visceral brutality of the film - these were not nice, safe people or an easy comfortable world, and the film was determined to never compromise on this.<br />
I did have a few qualms about the film, particularly its believability. The film opens with a declaration that the film is based on a true story, although it acknowledged it had been fictionalised, and more and more I do find myself wondering whether making that kind of statement actually harms a film. If you tell me that a film is largely true, then it can take you out of the film, as you suddenly find yourself thinking "That seems improbable; is that really what happened, or is that the invention of the filmmaker?", and ironically it can almost break the sense of reality of the film. So when the gangster and the cop meet a person minutes before they become the killer's next victim, or when an investigation on a seemingly unrelated kidnapping leads to the identification of the killer, these are moments which I probably would have accepted as simply a convenient coincidence in a normal film, but the second you introduce the idea of it being a true story, those coincidences feel fake.<br />
But in the end, it's just wonderful entertainment from writer-director Lee Won-tae. I had fun, and I'm definitely interested in seeing what he does next.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9cPZyZFI1ZMXICjJ5f8oB0sTb1oZtHdCkdRjBEXg3zKZ0-fhieJg1GZUGSHdXebeMFla6B4Uz8xDs_Xl6bqSvbzjwPwImvMD7UhLrBCZjlQiyuQ1p5A_29EK2l05rPC_55CVnbC_CZLIg/s846/koyaanisqatsi.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="846" data-original-width="564" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9cPZyZFI1ZMXICjJ5f8oB0sTb1oZtHdCkdRjBEXg3zKZ0-fhieJg1GZUGSHdXebeMFla6B4Uz8xDs_Xl6bqSvbzjwPwImvMD7UhLrBCZjlQiyuQ1p5A_29EK2l05rPC_55CVnbC_CZLIg/w266-h400/koyaanisqatsi.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>Koyaanisqatsi</i></b><br />
If I'm being honest, the 1982 film <i>Koyaanisqatsi</i> is a movie that I probably never would have seen were it not for the festival. It's a film I've heard many people rave about how great it is, it's a film I was definitely interested in seeing because of its reputation, but it's not a film that I think would ever have moved up to the top of my viewing list without the prompting of a festival screening at the Embassy.<br />
At the end of the film, we learn that Koyaanisqatsi in the Hopi language means life in turmoil, life out-of-balance, and that the Hopi prophesies sung as part of the soundtrack have meanings like "If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster." And that is a pretty solid summary of what the film is trying to express. It's a reflection on the natural world, on humanity's place in that world, on our power to create, our power to destroy, and the impact that we have on our world. The film contains no narrative or story, instead being constructed entirely from documentary footage without context cut together so that the meaning and significance of the work comes from the juxtaposition. And it's difficult to really express what is going on in the film. It starts with some of the most astonishing imagery of the natural world I've ever seen, moments of mountain tops with clouds swirling over valleys and ridges, or water mist throwing up at the bottom of waterfalls. And then it moves to look at humanity, all that we've created, all that we've destroyed. Perhaps we watch speed-up footage of swarms of people, or perhaps we slow down and look at a single face, perhaps alone, perhaps standing beside something important to them. Or we see a massive truck, slowly being covered by a thick black smoke until the truck is completely hidden. Shots of nuclear clouds followed by footage of people sunbathing next to a nuclear power plant. We watch the ingenuity of humans creating vehicles on a production line. We go on a ride in a car, at times the lights of the world turn almost into electric static. A rocket into space explodes and slowly tumbles for an impossibly long time. Or perhaps we watch giant buildings and bridges, great engineering feats, being destroyed and collapsing in an instant. And it's beautiful, and extraordinary. All of it. I was genuinely shocked to when the film ended to realise that we've been watching this film for 80 minutes, as I would have thought it was half that.<br />
The film is perfectly paired with an incredible score by Philip Glass, and while I knew this was his best-known work, I had no idea just how much of this score I would know note for note; his minimalist tendencies and repetitive patterns building like an urgent cry from the world - it's stunning work.<br />
I don't have the words to express my response to the film. It's a film that is entirely working in an emotional sphere, and the experience is all about the way it makes you respond. It's just incredible. I loved it.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJMfF6wlXK6AS9MqmrTIyZRYAN9Xa8WT_ClDAZFXWwsysldAGyXrs-na8DevCpBCsMbkGjEFpekKqEKKlN1T5YUeiFK0l9d0OaFuELK2ptEnfI8n3c6CyEQxWsjxWxKuCjp9yqhpXO5WPf/s755/ruben_brandt_collector.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJMfF6wlXK6AS9MqmrTIyZRYAN9Xa8WT_ClDAZFXWwsysldAGyXrs-na8DevCpBCsMbkGjEFpekKqEKKlN1T5YUeiFK0l9d0OaFuELK2ptEnfI8n3c6CyEQxWsjxWxKuCjp9yqhpXO5WPf/w270-h400/ruben_brandt_collector.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>Ruben Brandt, Collector</i></b><br />
A celebrated psychiatrist, tormented by nightmares in which he is constantly attacked by people from famous paintings, decides to team up with an expert art thief and three of his patients to steal the artworks that are tormenting him. The string of major art heists become the focus of massive attention, even earning the nickname "the Collector" for the person behind the crimes. But hot on the heels is a police detective still smarting from his previous encounter with the art thief in which he came out second-best.<br />
The animation picks in this year's festival seemed a little thin, but <i>Ruben Brandt, Collector</i> looks like it might be fun. Sadly it fell far short. My first, and most fundamental problem with the film, is that it was just ugly to look at. Part of the joy of animation is just sitting and admiring the beauty of the work in creating the image on screen. All the best animated films feature moments that I would love to frame and keep them as an example of great art. But here, the character design is actively ugly and unpleasant. When the film first introduces us to Ruben Brandt, I had an immediate dislike of his design, with his overly long face and eyes so wide apart that they literally sit on the side of his head. But through the course of the film, I came to the largely accept his design, mainly because it was one of the least unpleasantly designed characters. At least he doesn't have 3, 4, 6, or more eyes, or multiple faces, some with two faces sharing the same side of the head, others with a second face on the back of the head.<br />
And the problem with this character design is that it means I'm held at a distance because I can't work out the reality that the film exist in. Think about, say, the original <i>Lion King</i> - those characters don't actually look like real versions of the animals, but we can accept them as representations of what those animals are like, and then we can move on from there. Here, the film exists in a world where there are these famous and instantly recognisable works of art, so my first instinct is to assume that these are characters that are representations of people that are supposed to exist in our reality, and that the character design is much like a more modern artwork that completely distorts the body of the subject but still remains a representation of that figure. But then we learn that one character who is presented as a two-dimensional figure with two faces, one on the left and one of the right side of his head, really is literally two-dimensional, able to slide under locked doors or slide behind a painting without anyone noticing. Well obviously that can't happen in our reality, and so I found myself struggling to understand what the reality of the world was in this film, and why it was so filled with grotesqueries. And as a result, I couldn't get into it.<br />
And this brings me to my next issue with film. It's only a small issue, but this is a film about art, it's a celebration of art, and yet when we see representations of celebrated artworks, the works are interpreted and distorted through this design style. So if you ever wondered what Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" would look like if it were incredibly ugly, this is the film for you. If you've ever wondered what Van Gogh's "Portrait of the Postman" would look like without his detailed brushstrokes, here you are. There's a significant focus in the film on Andy Warhol's "Double Elvis", but if they hadn't told me that's what this was, I never would have guessed because it was so distorted through the design as to be unrecognisable, such that I never would have guessed it was a representation of one of the most famous figures of the 20th century. If this is a celebration of art, why distort real artworks to such a degree that they lose what makes them great?<br />
Another thing that greatly irritated me was the film's constant tendency to pause in order to throw some reference to a celebrated work of art. I'm not a great art aficionado, and so while I recognised enough to know that this was happening in the film, most of the references went over my head. The problem is that, when you have a film that is trying to do something like a major action sequence between a criminal trying to escape and a cop trying to catch them, when you pause the film, even just for a second or two, in order to throw out an irrelevant reference for those who recognise it, that affects the pacing of the action sequence, and also alienates those in the audience that may not recognise the reference. And when you're doing that constantly through the entire film, it just becomes irritating. (Although that's nothing compared to how the film made me made me hate it when it introduced a bar where the singer sang the most annoying lounge covers of Radiohead's "Creep" or Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again", and then kept playing them. Those were some references I did recognise, and hated.)<br />
The writing isn't even very good, with characters that I simply felt the film seemed uninterested in exploring in any depth. Take for example the cop trying to chase them. This is a man who doesn't know who his father is; we know this because on Father's Day he calls his mother to ask "What's my father's name?", and his mother refuses to answer. And then, having established in that 10-second exchange that he doesn't know his father, the film largely forgets that, has no interest in exploring how having no father has changed him. It seems to be something the film inserts just for a later scene where he discovers who his father is, and when he calls his mother, she can deliver a monologue that turns out to explain the entire plot of the film. There are a million ways in the film could have explained the plot, but this film just chose the laziest and most awkward and unconvincing way to do so, and then had no interest in actually exploring the consequences of that.<br />
I will give the film credit - there is one scene where the characters perform a robbery in the middle of the day, in a crowded gallery, and they do so by pretending to be performance artists where the theft of the artwork was part of the performance. That was a funny joke. But for the most part, I think this might be my least favourite film of the festival.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_lMN9iL23VcBWiPdaaylIjs144ADEnBCKXEWmPEtGo0EYHYuIPycHl2IXOOFO5sW5QTSszXODfCB0Wrgp9e0SLEQ45nY_0cko4iBvPzr3Y4pPyGD2B9YkCzT76vCyybY4VOl5gOWEJIP-/s755/wild_goose_lake.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_lMN9iL23VcBWiPdaaylIjs144ADEnBCKXEWmPEtGo0EYHYuIPycHl2IXOOFO5sW5QTSszXODfCB0Wrgp9e0SLEQ45nY_0cko4iBvPzr3Y4pPyGD2B9YkCzT76vCyybY4VOl5gOWEJIP-/w270-h400/wild_goose_lake.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>The Wild Goose Lake</i></b><br />
After a meeting of gangsters to allocate sectors for motorcycle theft turns into a brawl between people wanting to secure the most lucrative streets, a decision is made to hold the Olympic Games of motorcycle theft, to see who can steal the most bikes in two hours. But one of the gangs plays dirty, setting a trap that leaves one person decapitated and another, Zhou, on the run after accidentally killing a cop. After a reward is offered for Zhou's capture, one of the local "bathing beauties", prostitutes that work at the nearby Wild Goose Lake, is sent to help bring him in by using his estranged wife as leverage over him. But while Zhou is happy to come in, he will only do so if he knows that the reward is going to his wife and son. And so he hides out near the lake with the help of bathing beauty Liu, all while being the subject of a massive manhunt.<br />
This was sadly a bit of a disappointment. I had been a great fan of the director's previous film, <i>Black Coal, White Ice</i>, a wonderful crime thriller that really captivated me, and I was hoping for more of the same. This had a lot to commend it, but it did fall short. It's beautifully shot, fully embracing its neo-noir genre with a love for gloomy city streets at night, the colours of the neon lights reflected on the rain-drenched streets, or the harsh unnatural glare of fluorescent lights. And there's some very fun work being done in creating the contrast between the harshness of the city and the simplicity and beauty of the natural world - there is a moment of Liu standing in front of the lake that is just breathtaking.<br />
And it has some wonderful sequences. I was thoroughly entertained by an early demonstration of motorbike theft techniques, and the Olympic games of motorcycle theft really was a thrilling sequence that completely drew me in and then took me by surprise when it all went wrong in an instant. There's a great gunfight that takes place in a zoo at night, with the bursts of light illuminating the impassive face of a watching tiger. There's a fantastic brawl in a tiny apartment, with one death by umbrella in particular being particularly memorable, and the ensuing foot chase really is thrilling.<br />
But the problem is that these are small interludes, and in between the film adopts the languorous pace of someone in hiding just trying to wait the threat out. And I can understand the decision to do that, because it does reflect the experience of the character, but the problem is that I don't feel the film fills the time with anything. I don't think I really came to know the characters to any great depth, came to understand who they are or what motivated them beyond the surface level - Zhou was too stoic to connect to, and because we were supposed to not know whether Liu could be trusted they therefore couldn't explore her character too much for fear of answering that question. Instead, the film just was sedate and patient, without offering too much to hold the audience. There were some great moments in those quieter stretches that have stayed with me, like the scene where Zhou contrives to bandage his own wounds, but for the most part I simply don't feel the film justified its two hour run time. I'm still interested to see what Diao Yinan does next, but I'm hoping for something that's a bit more focused next time.<br /><br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG4soLY52SSIketLEkdQeXOeWVN0q-n2ILGCqJHeS0hmSm7yJ8zhIzD06KzzgGWxq9KL_U-mvQk8IM7nvuDUEVXeGd2BBxXF-NDt0vepTri8-HxYIUZlUY_91-HGtqRLBMLUVbQtPjGZgR/s755/les_miserables.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="572" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG4soLY52SSIketLEkdQeXOeWVN0q-n2ILGCqJHeS0hmSm7yJ8zhIzD06KzzgGWxq9KL_U-mvQk8IM7nvuDUEVXeGd2BBxXF-NDt0vepTri8-HxYIUZlUY_91-HGtqRLBMLUVbQtPjGZgR/w303-h400/les_miserables.jpg" width="303" /></a></div>Les Misérables</i></b><br />
In the best scene of the new film <i>Les Misérables</i>, a young boy runs through the streets of Paris until he arrives at a giant gathering of people in the middle of the streets, the French tricolor flag waved proudly. Except this isn't 1832, and it isn't isn't a group of students gathering in revolution and protest; rather, this is today, and the people are gathered in celebration at the victory of the French soccer team. It's a rare moment where all of France is joined together, and it's not something that happens often in this film.<br />
The film explains its title very early on in the film, when we learn that it takes place in the neighbourhood where Victor Hugo was living when he was inspired by the things and people he saw around him to write his masterwork. These days, the neighbourhood has a largely Muslim population, and had been a prominent location for drugs until a new police unit, the SCU, cleaned it up. These days, the main problem is prostitution, with rundown apartments being rented for cheap for the girls. Stephane is a cop who transferred into the SCU, and who is experiencing his first day in the neighborhood. He meets the unofficial "mayor" of the neighbourhood, who acts as a go-between between the authorities and the people in the community. He meets the local kebab store owner, a former jihadi now trying to provide a place of peace. And he meets a variety of wayward youths. But when an altercation leads to one of the youths being seriously injured, the cops are more concerned about hunting down the drone that filmed the incident rather than getting help for the youth, which leads to a violent outcome.<br />
It's a pretty bold decision to name your film after one of the great works of literature, because all you are doing is inviting a comparison that you are inevitably going to fall short on. But it's a decision that I think the film that's a good job in defending. This doesn't feel like a film that is exploiting a recognisable title for its own purposes, but rather a film that is in conversation with the Hugo novel. It doesn't have the grand sweeping scope of the novel, essentially taking place over two days rather than many decades, and it doesn't seem to have the same thematic focus on legalism, forgiveness, and redemption, but it shares Hugo's concern for the plight of the underprivileged and their oppression at the hands of law enforcement with little interest in justice. And as you might expect, the story does culminate in a massive protest complete with barricades, albeit in a very different environment.<br />
When writing a novel, Hugo had 1300 pages to build his sprawling community of characters; here they managed to do a similar job in under two hours, building a fully realised world in which the characters were convincing and well-developed without ever feeling 2-dimensional. When certain characters choose to take particular actions, the choice always felt natural and logical in response to the situation, and you quickly understand how the intervention of this character or that character intervenes will escalate or ease the tensions. What's particularily impressive is that they make their job harder on themselves by introducing an excess of characters - there's this idea that, particularly in filmmaking, you should only ever introduce a character if they have a role to fulfill in the story, because time in a movie is so limited that you don't want to waste time on irrelevancies. But here, there are several characters who don't particularly serve any plot purpose, but because they exist in the world and in this community, it's important that they be acknowledged. And their presence makes the film feel much more genuine and lived in.<br />
One big problem that I had was with the actual incident that led to everything occurring in the story. The events that sets everything off is the theft of a lion cub from a traveling circus. It's a genuinely baffling choice, because every time they started talking about the lion cub, or they go inside the circus, it feels like a completely different film, utterly unlike the urban drama this otherwise is. And the problem is, the film tries to present the ending as the inevitable outcome of the tensions in the community, but the use of the lion cub is so separate from that community that it breaks that impression. It's impossible to watch this film, and not be reminded of <i>Do the Right Thing</i> - they're both films that take place on sweltering days, in which various racial and other tensions build up until they explode, an excessive use of police violence takes place, and it all culminates effectively in a riot. But in <i>Do the Right Thing</i>, the inciting incident is Radio Raheem being an arsehole, but because Radio Raheem is part of the community and is always an arsehole, it genuinely feels like something was inevitably going to happen, and it's just that on this day this was the outcome. But in <i>Les Misérables</i>, the lion cub is a completely external problem, and so when they try to say that the pressures that are building in this community are inevitably going to explode, I have difficulty accepting that because they had to go so far outside the community to find a spark that would cause the explosion. And more than anything, that's why the lion cub doesn't work - because it completely undercuts what the film is trying to say.<br />
In many ways, there's nothing about <i>Les Misérables</i> that is especially new. I've already discussed its debt to <i>Do the Right Thing</i>, but films like <i>Training Day</i> are also an obvious point of comparison. And there's also nothing new about a film that rages to such a degree at the injustices of society and how it allows its authorities the freedom to exploit its people in this way. But it is on the whole well executed and suspenseful, and I did like the film a great deal.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5FGN96BBJDB9LMiW6aB-USQeEOrfHJHV96qSlaE3iU4iyjkxq-ut3GjdfK7VXyrwXz86_yDve1y54Z9Q-pgKx1bSD6wlqAJc9tbQBIbZaJkOFya5Au3UD3oFwVBbqSsfuSiAcYhUSlNJC/s937/jacquot_de_nantes.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="937" data-original-width="700" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5FGN96BBJDB9LMiW6aB-USQeEOrfHJHV96qSlaE3iU4iyjkxq-ut3GjdfK7VXyrwXz86_yDve1y54Z9Q-pgKx1bSD6wlqAJc9tbQBIbZaJkOFya5Au3UD3oFwVBbqSsfuSiAcYhUSlNJC/w299-h400/jacquot_de_nantes.jpg" width="299" /></a></div>Jacquot de Nantes</i></b><br />
My last Agnès Varda film of the festival, but definitely not the last Agnès Varda film I will ever see. I really have been delighted by having the chance to discover her work in the festival, and this was no exception.</div><div>
Agnès Varda was married to the celebrated director Jacques Demy for 28 years, until his death in 1990. The next year, she released <i>Jacquot de Nantes</i>, a film that plays very much as a love letter to her late husband. The film essentially tells the story of him growing up in the city of Nantes, from his time as a youngster watching puppet shows, ending with him as a young adult moving to Paris to begin his career as a filmmaker. In between, we watch the family leave the town during the German occupation, moving into the country to live with a a clog-maker. We observe his growing passion for the cinema, starting from a simple enjoyment of the movies and an excitement at getting access to a very basic home projector, through to a desire to actually create his own films. We watch him make his first experiments with filmmaking, scraping the image from old filmstrips so that he can reuse them, roughly hand-drawing animation onto these tiny pieces of film. We watch him construct an entire city out of cardboard in the attic, so that he could create elaborate stop-motion stories with clever innovations to replicate complicated camera movements. And we watch his constant fights with his parents, as they try to get him to adopt a reliable trade while he desperately wants to be a filmmaker.<br />
And all the way through, the film pauses to show us how these early experiences shaped Demy's films. So the garage that his father owned becomes the garage where Guy works in <i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i>. The aunt who comes to visit with gifts after success at the roulette wheel inspired a gambling sequence. The fairy tales told by the puppet theatre inspired various fairy tale projects. The unmarried pregnant girl next door inspired Genevieve in <i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i>. Unfortunately my knowledge of Demy's filmography is limited to just the big two films, <i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i> and <i>The Young Girls of Rochefort</i>, and so when they would show clips from his other films, I found it frustrating because I had no context for those scenes or knowledge of what the films even were. But that's a failing on my part, and in any case it's in no way necessary for you to know anything about his work to appreciate this film. And that's the thing that I probably found most compelling about the film. You often hear people talk about how their art was influenced by their own experiences, but this was the first time saw a film that sought to communicate this element of creating art, and it was fascinating to watch.<br />
The film is mostly narrative, but every now and then, they will intersperse a brief moment of the real Jacques Demy, shot apparently not long before his death. In those moments, perhaps we get a sentence or two of reflection on what we've just seen. At one point, the film cuts from the narrative of young Demy filming something with his camera to the elderly Demy displaying the actual camera that he used; at another point, Varda shows Demy about to show one of the films he made as a youth to a young boy (presumably his grandson), before cutting to the young Demy about to show his film to his parents. And sometimes the film just sits and looks at his face, or examines his wrinkles in detail. And in those moments, the film really does feel like an expression of love for the man that Varda spent 30 years with.<br />
One thing about the film that I was baffled by: the film is mostly a black and white film, but there are moments where we get brief flashes of colour, usually just a single shot but occasionally two or three shots together. Try as I might, I failed to find a logical explanation for why certain shots were in colour. I initially wondered whether they were moments where the young Demy was sitting outside the frame observing, but then I realised there were some colour moments where Demy was in the shot. Perhaps they were moments of artistry, but then why was the celebration of the end of World War II in colour? Perhaps it's a moment that inspired his art, but then there were plenty of moments where the film told us that something that inspired his work, but those moments remained in black and white. Why is this shot of a movie poster in colour, while this next shot of a movie poster in black and white? Most bafflingly, why is there a colour shot of a sign in the trade school workshop that he hated so much? I finished the film completely confounded in my efforts to understand the logic behind this decision.<br />
But really, who cares? The movie is fantastic, and not only does it make me want to watch more Agnès Varda films, but also reminded me that I really need to dig into the films of Jacques Demy. I loved it.<br />
(Also, there was one moment where the young Demy lost his temper and threw a bowl through a window. Cue shocked sounds from the audience, except for one woman in front of me who laughed four precise staccato "Heh"s.<br />
"Heh. Heh. Heh. Heh.")<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvIeLI_9AceiYPWzs0uiaEfSXE7UyA5oVIf_hHnBC_kwUfbnFcivU0ek0_uUZuGh_NUY1Cbrez7VaWVoI1Y_ODLHen6qPQTaf-SS5xGERNjaMfnsJis4La0X5gSeuFbx5ZQAB8usQsvy78/s1000/kind_hearts_and_coronets.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="673" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvIeLI_9AceiYPWzs0uiaEfSXE7UyA5oVIf_hHnBC_kwUfbnFcivU0ek0_uUZuGh_NUY1Cbrez7VaWVoI1Y_ODLHen6qPQTaf-SS5xGERNjaMfnsJis4La0X5gSeuFbx5ZQAB8usQsvy78/w269-h400/kind_hearts_and_coronets.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>Kind Hearts and Coronets</i></b><br />
I've watched <i>Kind Hearts and Coronets</i>, one of the greatest of the Ealing studio comedies, a number of times, most recently during my Christmas holidays this last year, so the film was still very fresh in my memory. But I never going to complain about rewatching such a glorious film. Presented as the memoirs of the 10th Duke of Chalfant, and written on the eve of his execution for murder, it tells the story of Louis, a young man whose mother came from a noble family, but who was disowned after she married for love. Louis' bitterness at the way his mother was treated by her family grows, as does his resentment at being denied a high-born life. And so, when he realises that there are only eight people ahead of him in the line of succession to the dukedom, he decides to murder everyone that stands in the way of him gaining his rightful title.<br />
The high point of the film is obviously the performance of Alec Guinness, playing nine different roles as the various members of the d'Ascoyne family. When you're playing nine different characters, you'll never going to get a chance to bring too much depth to any one figure, and so his performances are admittedly rather broad. But there's also a glee to the work that he's doing, and a delight in trying to find ways to distinguish the character - so much so that it seems hard to remember that the doddering old fool of a priest is the same actor playing the wide-eyed naive enthusiast, or the angry window-smashing suffragette, or the proud and determined sea captain, or the smarmy and dismissive presumed heir to the title. These are not nuanced characters, but they do feel very distinct and convincing, and very, very funny.<br />
I also enjoy how the film completely embraces the darkness of its premise. There's never any mystery about whether all these people will be murdered, since we know from the start that Louis gets all the way up to the dukedom, and so the film feels free to enjoy how terrible it's being. There are not many films that could turn the tragic deaths of twin babies into a genuine laugh-out-loud moment, but this manages that trick. And you can feel the filmmakers enjoying themselves trying to think of all the outlandish ways they can have the character commit murder. My favourite is the death by explosion, partly because the way the film deals with the moment cinematically is so fun - it might have been tempting to show the explosion, but instead it plays out off-screen while we listen to a conversation that continues even after the explosion, the sight of the initial wisps of smoke getting a genuine laugh from the audience.<br />
Another thing I do really enjoy about the film is Joan Greenwood's performance as Sibella. It would have been easy to turn the figure of unrequited love into a blandly meek character, but as presented here, Sibella is as unsympathetic and grasping as Louis is; she rejects Louis solely because she views Lionel as having better opportunity to improve her social standing, and there's a wonderful scene where Louis seduces Sibella by accurately telling her that she's vain, selfish, cruel, and deceitful. Indeed, the only difference between the two is the fact that she's not in a position where she needs to commit murder to advance herself.<br />
I do enjoy the little touches in the film that make fun of English obsession with status. The opening scene with the hangman in particular is an utter delight, from his decision to retire after hanging the duke because he can't go back to hemp after using a silken rope, to his concern about the correct way to address a duke ("Your Grace") who he is about to hang. The entire film is prompted by the decision of Louis' mother to marry someone of lower social standing, which offends against the way you're supposed to act, and there is the climactic trial sequence, which due to his social standing takes place before the House of Lords. Ealing films were always very socially aware, and in its denunciation of a system that accords greater status to people based only by an accident of birth, this film was certainly one of the finest examples of this.<br />
That trial before the Lords, however, is probably the one real flaw in the film. Once Louis finishes his work in killing all of the d'Ascoyne family, much of the comedic interest goes from the film as Alec Guinness isn't in it anymore, and because of the framing device, we know he'll be found guilty, so there's no suspense to the sequence. And so I do find that I lose a bit of patience with the film during that trial, and it seems to me that you could very easily trim a few minutes from that scene and wind up with a film that is pretty much perfect, instead of one that's simply close-to-perfect.<br />
And it is otherwise pretty close to perfect. It's wonderfully cynical, with the blackest of humour, and a sharp eye for telling a joke cinematically. It is glorious.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwgscv7YnMgDGIKjMswapxSejLPG-vwM18WfHizNynzffPTKdJbHYDzQF64_o8UP2qCVmQP7WPxUG4ur0-6mPgHxqo5ybH5-vSr8Bx-IM3FNB6aZ1bFt6_kMwVs_L_npPclksp6RUAZGWr/s755/third_wife.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwgscv7YnMgDGIKjMswapxSejLPG-vwM18WfHizNynzffPTKdJbHYDzQF64_o8UP2qCVmQP7WPxUG4ur0-6mPgHxqo5ybH5-vSr8Bx-IM3FNB6aZ1bFt6_kMwVs_L_npPclksp6RUAZGWr/w270-h400/third_wife.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>The Third Wife</i></b><br />
In Vietnam in the late 19th century, a 14-year-old girl, May, is married to become the third wife of the son of a wealthy landowner. She finds herself in an unusual position with the other wives, at some times receiving great support from the other women, but also always in constant competition with them - especially as the second wife has not produced any sons and so, if the child May is pregnant with proves to be a boy, she has the chance of taking a position of seniority from the second wife. Then one day, she happens to spy a couple involved in an illicit liaison, and the tensions that secret relationship creates prove destructive.<br />
This is just a beautiful piece of cinema, with some exquisite and elegant filmmaking. There's real care and consideration in every moment of the film. I can't think of a wasted line of dialogue, or a single pointless shot. Instead, the film quite noticeably chooses not to say something if there's any other way to express that idea, and every time there's a cut between shots it feels motivated by some new piece of information being communicated. And the film is wonderfully observational, at times just letting the events pause so that we can sit and patiently watch a wedding, or a funeral, or a punishment, or a moment of connection. And in those moments, you feel as though you've genuinely learned something about how that culture operated at that time, mostly without any need for commentary or explanation for the audience. I was astonished to discover that this was Ash Mayfair's first film, because there was such confidence and control over her medium that it seemed extraordinary.<br />
In all the rave responses I heard about the film, it had somehow evaded my notice that the film was about a 14-year-old girl and this did make me initially uncomfortable, in that I was watching a film about a child who gets married, with all that entails. (Indeed, the actress itself was even younger - only 13 at the time.) But I thought the film did an excellent job in approaching the subject matter with care and sensitivity. While the film is unavoidably in part about her sexual experiences, the film is very respectful of the youth, both of the character and of the actress, taking care never to eroticise those moments. Instead, it adopts a very sensual tone, focused very much on the sensations and the emotions of the character, both positive and negative. And this isn't a story where you can work around the character's age; I've read Ash Mayfair talk about how this story is inspired by the experiences of some of her ancestors, who were given in an arranged marriage at this young an age, and it feels important to address the fact that this really is a thing that happened.<br />
I thought the characters and the relationships between them all were wonderful. It's very much a female-driven film - the males are barely present in the story - and I enjoyed the complex mix of kindness and competition that emerged between the women. The women could be extremely supportive of May, understanding the experiences that she's going through, and helping her to find ways where she can protect and help herself. At the same time, these women are ultimately defined by their relationship with the husband, and so there is a constant jockeying for position and a constant fear that any change could threaten your status and advantage someone else. I also loved the relationship that develops between May and the young girl, about the same age, who has been pledged to be married as the first wife to the grandson; it's a very sweet relationship, and the only time that May feels like she has a genuine friend, but it's a friendship that is tinged with pain because both May and we are aware of an inevitability of pain in that relationship.<br /><i>
The Third Wife</i> was my final screening of the festival period proper, and it was a wonderful way to end 17 days of intensive movie watching.<br />
<br />
<b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCDPnKiHFP2QJxIZfDTyv2L5Xn-NavZlMr2sNrykagXzcN1bos2ggBl8jYS6H3TqAGjwLG-gzTU2BCQloDhgHYZ1yj52sOyUV6nJqVQUXqtKNqe_NM9N1YqbtZ24n0qCPKkGB-WUEm9TR4/s755/midsommar.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCDPnKiHFP2QJxIZfDTyv2L5Xn-NavZlMr2sNrykagXzcN1bos2ggBl8jYS6H3TqAGjwLG-gzTU2BCQloDhgHYZ1yj52sOyUV6nJqVQUXqtKNqe_NM9N1YqbtZ24n0qCPKkGB-WUEm9TR4/w270-h400/midsommar.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>Midsommar</i></b><br />
For the second time in two years, I find my film festival being extended into the following days due to a post-festival screening of a film that was only confirmed long after everyone's festival schedule was finalised. This year, the film is <i>Midsommar</i>, the 2 1/2 hour folk-horror film from Ari Aster, his follow-up to last year's <i>Hereditary</i>.<br />
The film follows a young couple in a toxic relationship - indeed, the guy is planning to break up with her, until she suffers the tragic loss of her parents and sister, which prevents him from ending the relationship. An anthropology student, he's planning a trip with some fellow students to observe a nine-day ritual midsummer celebration at an obscure commune in Sweden, and feels compelled to invite his girlfriend. The group are a little disoriented by the perpetual daylight, by the bizarre artwork portraying unusual practices, and by the hallucinogenics that seem a vital part of the celebration, but they're mostly fine with it. But then the celebration takes a dark turn that causes some of the visitors to want to leave, while others get in trouble for offending against the local traditions and beliefs.<br />
I was a bit apprehensive approaching the film, because I had heard a lot of people talking about how extreme some of the moments and images in the film were - and this had been from people who had seen <i>Hereditary</i>, knew about the extreme images in that film, and said that this was harder. Given that expectation, I was relieved to find the film wasn't as hard as I feared - certainly there are a couple of moments that are shocking and horrific, but one of them was almost identical to something I'd seen less than a week earlier in <i>Under the Silver Lake</i>, while another moment, while shocking, was so artful and elaborate that it looked like something that would have been in the TV series <i>Hannibal</i>. It's certainly rough, and there were moments where I did want to look away, not wanting to see what was on screen, but it's not as bad as I expected.<br />
I really am excited by how Florence Pugh is developing as an actress. I'd never seen her before <i><a href="http://matthewl-musings.blogspot.com/2018/07/matryoshka-doll-redux.html#:~:text=Lady%20Macbeth" target="_blank">Lady Macbeth</a></i> a couple of years ago, but since then she's also been great in films like <i>Fighting With My Family</i> or this, all fascinating films that really push her range as an actress. Here she's called on to be unrestrained emotionally, and she gives a performance that is vulnerable in a way I've never seen from her before. I think I've pretty much reached a point where any film is more interesting to me if Florence Pugh is in it. The other main actors are also very enjoyable. Jack Reynor is surprisingly sympathetic as the boyfriend, unexpectedly so since the film is so firmly on her side; there are a lot of problems in their relationship, mostly his fault, but at the same time he is someone who was trapped in this relationship because he doesn't want to cause pain to someone already grieving, and he never feels irredeemable. William Jackson Harper, who plays Chidi on <i>The Good Place</i>, plays a very similar role here as the academic who is simply fascinated by the culture, but here he lets that fascination override his understanding that these are real people with sincere beliefs to be respected. Will Poulter is developing a very fun career playing another in a long line of entertaining assholes - here, his resentment at Florence Pugh for coming on the trip is very funny, as is his refusal to accept his mistakes when he offends the locals. And I found Vilhelm Blomgren, playing the local who invites everyone on the trip, quite fascinating as he rides the line between sweetly charming and vaguely menacing.<br />
I really was very impressed with how much control Ari Aster had over the film and its tone. He shows himself to be an extremely patient storyteller, a filmmaker of intent, sitting back and observing as the events play out. He's not constantly trying to shock you or surprised you, instead trusting you as an audience to engage with what's going on and react naturally to events. He even makes the bold choice to keep most of the deaths off-screen, an unconventional decision for a horror film, but one that I found extremely effective because it heightened the impact of the eventual revelation. I was also surprised and impressed by his restraint in the scenes involving hallucinogenics; it must have been tempting to present those moments as nightmarish sequences, but instead he holds back, downplaying it and giving what seemed like a more realistic portrait of the experience. (There's a moment in the film where I suddenly noticed that some flowers were breathing, and I realised I had forgotten that she was still on the hallucinogen she took 10 minutes earlier; it's a very small detail, so small there's people watching the film at home on a smaller screen might not even notice it, but it's a great affirmation of his determination to tell a story subtly and visually.) It's an impressively mature piece of filmmaking for such a young director. I will also thrown by just how funny the film was - I don't remember there being any humour in his previous film, and so it never occurred to me that he had the ability to get the entire audience to genuinely laugh while also shocking them. But he understands the goofy and silly elements in his film, and he wants you to laugh at these, largely because that laughter allows you to lower your defences and makes you more susceptible to the horror when it comes.<br />
My main problem with <i>Hereditary</i> had been that the over-the-top ending felt like it came from a very different film to the more dread-filled film it had previously been. I did feel that with <i>Midsommar</i> he achieves a much better consistency of tone, without any sharp turns or improbable revelations to completely derail the film, and at every point there's a chain of logic that leads to the ending as the inevitable outcome. Now admittedly, if you're making a film in the folk-horror genre, you're always going to come back to <i>The Wicker Man</i> as a key influence, and carrying that understanding into the film could mean that certain turns feel more predictable than for someone watching this film fresh. But still, I think it works. (I was also surprised to realise that the film seems to be referencing, not only the original <i>Wicker Man</i>, but also the infamous remake with Nicolas Cage - that was an unexpected choice, but it amused me.)<br />
I did find myself uncertain about the deaths of the parents and sister at the start of the film. It's an extremely effective sequence, and makes a real statement at the start of the film. But I don't know that the film really does much with it. It becomes the excuse for why the boyfriend can't break up with her when he wants to, later on she thinks she has glimpses of her parents, and it does sever any family ties back to the US, which makes her more susceptible to the influence of the commune, but it is a marginal element of the film and could easily be dropped without being noticed. Its main purpose seems more to be about literalising the major theme of the film - the film is about an end of a relationship, and about how emotionally that can feel like a death that you need to grieve - but that is an idea the film would have been able to make very clear without having a character who's already literally grieving. Because I do think the film was very effective in portraying and exploring the relationship breakdown, the frustrations and resentments that accumulate, the reluctance to leave for fear of not having someone to support you when you need it, and the appeal of someone new and exciting over the person you've been with for years. There's a moment where she finds herself weeping over the state of her relationship, and it's in the middle of a ritual, and she's surrounded by woman who are weeping with her as part of the ritual; it's a fantastic portrait of the emotional turmoil that she's going through in her relationship, and how much she just needs the support of other people who are willing to be there for her as she goes through it.<br />
I think it says a lot for the film that, after watching it for 2 1/2 hours, I was honestly surprised to realise that it was ending because it did not feel like much time had passed at all. I wanted more to the film, and it looks like I may be able to get it. I know that Ari Aster has said he's working on an extended cut with an additional 30 minutes, and I'm really excited to see it.<div><br /></div><div>[And now I'll just throw in a note to say that I have since seen the extended cut of <i>Midsommar</i>, and indeed, I think it's pretty much a perfect version of this film. There's not a minute wasted in that version, and I simply adore it.]</div></div></div>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-36160163771517598302019-07-20T19:45:00.000+12:002019-07-20T20:02:02.325+12:00Play the music, light the lights, it's time<i>So here's the thing,</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I have this annoying tendency to put a great deal of effort into writing things for this blog and then, having done all the hard work of actually writing close to 10,000 words, never actually posting the thing because the comparatively easy work of rereading my writing, formatting it, and adding pictures and links, just seems like too much work. (Witness the way I always wait an entire year before posting my reflections on the previous year's film festival films, even though those are literally just reposts of Facebook posts that I had already written.)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>So this is a post that I finished writing over a year ago, about an event that took place in April 2018. But, having written it all that time ago, I'm only getting around to sharing it now. In posting this I've proofread it, and tweaked a couple of confusing sentences to clarify my point, but otherwise this is exactly the post I would have shared a year ago, had I gone to the effort of sharing this post a year ago. Sorry about the delay.</i><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
So here’s the thing,<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQqmDyodl9SUpJdgaDqr9iXkvzMYKhZI9bdKacrQQP3AyEkkbK2OjIYxcRaVQdKoM0In3hwy4SWxVBBV1g_qCXM4KWJJcQv4cV4x54FtCkODJvFSHnLkOXjekxpwcped3gFjORHhLrj2TV/s1600/20180414_151039+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1349" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQqmDyodl9SUpJdgaDqr9iXkvzMYKhZI9bdKacrQQP3AyEkkbK2OjIYxcRaVQdKoM0In3hwy4SWxVBBV1g_qCXM4KWJJcQv4cV4x54FtCkODJvFSHnLkOXjekxpwcped3gFjORHhLrj2TV/s320/20180414_151039+%25282%2529.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
A couple of months ago we had a fantastic event running in Wellington – <a href="https://thejimhensonretrospectacle.co.nz/" target="_blank">The Jim Henson Retrospectacle</a>, a celebration of the work of Jim Henson with cinema screenings, talks and panel discussions, all centred around a big concert. I was always going to go to the concert (I bought my ticket at the earliest opportunity), and as a movie person I was definitely looking forward to the movie screenings, but I never really considered going to any of the panel discussions until after the screening of <i><b>The Muppet Movie</b></i>. Original <i>Muppet Show</i> performer Dave Goelz (who most notably originated and still plays The Great Gonzo) was there, and after the movie he gave a Q&A with the actual Gonzo puppet. As someone whose favourite muppet was Gonzo it was a thrill to actually see this character I’ve loved for as long as I can remember, but I also found Goelz himself to be a fascinating and engaging speaker, and I suddenly realised what a fantastic opportunity this was and how much I would kick myself if I missed out on it. Which is how I found myself unexpectedly spending hundreds of dollars buying tickets to every panel discussion possible. And it was worth every cent.<br />
<br />
On the last day, a friend asked if I was going to write a blog post about my experiences. I hadn’t planned to, but the more I thought about it the more I thought it was a good idea – if only to try to capture some of my memories of the event for myself before they fade away into time. So to be clear, these are my recollections. I wasn’t taking notes during the talks, so if I say that someone said something, I mean that I’m paraphrasing what I remember them saying, but memory is unreliable and I could certainly be wrong about what they said. But, to the best of my ability, here is a incomplete record of the Jim Henson Retrospectacle as I experienced it.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
(And a quick note: there were a lot of film screenings that I attended – not just screenings of the various Muppet movies, both classic and modern, but also themed presentations, where we got to watch curated clips based around some theme, like music moments from <i>The Muppet Show</i>. The screenings were all fantastic, but I’ll skip over a lot of the screenings unless I have something specific to say about them.)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
The day after <i>The Muppet Movie</i>, I attended <b><i>Becoming Real: A Muppet Performer’s Journey</i></b>, in which Dave Goelz reflected on his career. (You can hear Goelz cover some of this same material in <a href="https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018640641/dave-goelz-gonzo-muppeteer" target="_blank">his interview with Kim Hill</a>, which is pretty good despite Kim Hill being particularly annoyingly Kim Hill-ish at times – seriously, why on earth did she ask if he's made lots of money?) Goelz was working as an industrial designer for Hewlett-Packard when one day at a friend’s house he saw an episode of <i>Sesame Street</i>, instantly became fascinated by the puppets, and he found himself spending his Sundays watching five-hour-long replays of that week’s episodes.<br />
<br />
He talked about his fascination with Bert and Ernie in particular, and it really opened my eyes to how much care is taken with character design. He spoke about Bert, about how his colour is a harsh yellow, his face is long and narrow, and the stripes on his shirt are vertical and never at rest, and how all this means we feel uncomfortable and ill-at-ease when we see Bert, because that’s what the character is like. And then there’s Ernie, who’s a nice warm friendly orange, he has a nice round head, like a ball that feels squishy and soft and comfortable, his mouth opens into a nice wide welcoming smile, and his shirt stripes are horizontal, reflecting a character who is at rest. Suddenly I realised how much consideration goes into designing these characters, because every bit of the character visually communicates everything you need to know about who they are.<br />
<br />
Eventually, Goelz tried his hand with actually making puppets, starting with making his own Ernie. (Apparently he couldn’t get the right colour fabric for his first effort, but we did see a photo of his second try at Ernie, and while it wasn’t quite perfect it was astonishingly close.) This eventually led him to the muppet workshop, where he made puppets until Henson invited him to work as a performer.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnGe8sU2Db9Qp3EOyEQOnjiWVDaVXCHHXgtBC1k6VIhCkafyvUMdergd54h3TTByJa8fIq9xvdZfbt_mc85k2tiq_kvq_j4T6yg674IzcO3av-Qw0KNarczREHpy8z5fabfbkPHrdCDskv/s1600/20180415_165728+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1344" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnGe8sU2Db9Qp3EOyEQOnjiWVDaVXCHHXgtBC1k6VIhCkafyvUMdergd54h3TTByJa8fIq9xvdZfbt_mc85k2tiq_kvq_j4T6yg674IzcO3av-Qw0KNarczREHpy8z5fabfbkPHrdCDskv/s320/20180415_165728+%25282%2529.jpg" width="268" /></a>Which is how he started playing Gonzo. I particularly loved his discussion about the development of Gonzo as a character. In the first season, the character was apparently hard to do anything with because his eyes just made him look too <a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/muppet/images/2/26/GonzoS1.JPG" target="_blank">melancholy and depressed</a>. Towards the end of that season, he reworked the puppet to add an eye mechanism that allowed a greater characterisation and allowed him to become the zany wacky character we think of. Then, when working on Muppet Christmas Carol they made Gonzo play Charles Dickens, which allowed the character to become more soulful and reflective. And so now Gonzo has all of these different subtleties and nuances to his character that Goelz can play with and explore. It was a fascinating reflection of how a character can grow and change over time.<br />
<br />
Afterwards he brought out Gonzo for another Q&A, and this time I was able to look past the general “Oh-My-Gosh-It’s-Gonzo” reaction I had the first time and just consider how the character works. It’s almost like a magic trick that’s being performed right in front of you and yet you don’t see it. Goelz is not a ventriloquist, so he makes no effort to hide that he's speaking as Gonzo, and you can very clearly see him moving the rods that control Gonzo's arms or move the leg so Gonzo can cross his legs. And yet Gonzo feels genuinely alive, to the point where you almost forget he's not real. There were points where Dave and Gonzo had a conversation and you find your eyes moving between the two as though you're watching two people interact rather than one man talking to himself. It's honestly a remarkable thing to experience.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
The weekday evening panel discussions were all held in the cinema at Park Road Post, the post-production facility owned by Peter Jackson, which was a remarkable privilege because that facility is normally never open for the public. And it is just a beautiful facility. Walking into the reception, I initially wondered if I had somehow walked into the wrong building because this place looked more like the reception at a luxury hotel than a professional workplace. Walking to the theatre, we passed prop displays and an actual Oscar (won for Sound Mixing on <i>King Kong</i>). The cinema itself was decorated in what seemed like an <i>Arabian Nights</i>-inspired style with thousands of stars lightly twinkling on the ceiling - <a href="http://www.parkroad.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/cinema.jpg" target="_blank">absolutely beautiful</a>.<br />
<br />
The session was called <b><i>Bonnie Erickson: The Woman Behind Miss Piggy</i></b>. Bonnie was really the lead figure in the workshop where the Muppets were created. (In fact, after the event I was watching some early <i>Muppet Show</i> episodes and noticed that she had her own “Puppets by” credit, while the rest of the workshop had a “With” credit, which spoke to how important she was in creating these characters.) And the entire event was just a casual conversation about her life and her work, understandably focused on her time with Henson, but also talking about her work in the company she created with her husband (which most famously created the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillie_Phanatic" target="_blank">Phillie Phanatic</a> mascot).<br />
<br />
At one point Bonnie shared with us <a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/muppet/images/3/34/Animalsketch.jpg" target="_blank">an early design sketch she made of Animal</a>. The idea is there – it’s definitely recognisable as Animal – but it doesn’t quite feel right; it feels too simple, too clean. So at the bottom of the page is a sketch drawn by Henson, and it’s a mess, it’s barely recognisable as a figure, it’s more of a scribble than a drawing, and yet it accurately captures the feel of the character. And she discussed how that kind of collaboration between Henson and those who worked with him led to the development of many of the characters.<br />
<br />
She was also responsible for creating Statler and Waldorf. She talked about how she had been on a bus one day, and as it was stopped at a traffic light next to an old gentlemen’s club, she saw two elderly men sitting in a couple of chairs drinking and talking. The image really inspired her, and when she got home she <a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/muppet/images/b/ba/Statler-waldorf-sketch-bonnie-erickson-brandy-glass.jpg" target="_blank">drew a sketch of these two men</a>, imagining that they could be really interesting characters. Henson agreed, but at the time they weren’t working on an anything where the characters would really work. A couple of years later work started on <i>The Muppet Show</i>, at which point Henson had the idea that those two old men could fit well in that show, and thus Statler and Waldorf were created.<br />
<br />
But the most significant character she built was Miss Piggy; she was originally designed as just a generic female pig character, one of a group of pig puppets being created, but when they needed a special character for some performance Henson was giving they hurriedly added a few extra features, giving her the pearls, changing the dress. They apparently went through several performers trying to find someone who could create something out of the character, but no-one really connected with her until Frank Oz picked her up. But even then the character wasn’t fully crystallised until one episode when he came up with the idea of the massive karate chop that sends Kermit flying. The idea of that massive "HI-YA!" yell and the level of aggression coming from this previously sweet character really created someone who would be special.<br />
<br />
A number of the Muppet characters were recently donated to the Smithsonian Museum, including Miss Piggy, and to mark the event Bonnie got to go to the museum to set up Miss Piggy for a special <a href="https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/around-the-mall-muppets-miss-piggy-hope-diamond-631.jpg" target="_blank">photograph with the museum’s most famous object, the Hope Diamond</a> (valued somewhere above $250 million). The whole thing was top secret, undertaken in the dead of night with armed guards everywhere, and in the middle of the exercise there was a power cut. In the pitch black everyone was understandably freaked out, guards came running in from everywhere uncertain what was going on and trying to ensure the diamond was safe. (Frank Oz apparently commented that he would have just grabbed the diamond and run; I’m not sure it would have been the most successful of heists, but it would have been a great story that you could dine out on, “the couple of minutes I possessed the Hope Diamond”, as you sat in prison.)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
The next event was also at the Park Road Post theatre, <b><i>Dave Goelz and Karen Prell in Conversation</i></b>. The two of them had worked together a number of times, most notably on <i>Fraggle Rock</i>, where Prell played the enthusiastic Red and Goelz played both the glum Boober and Travelling Matt.<br />
<br />
Prell had originally started working with Henson on <i>Sesame Street</i>, playing a number of characters, most notably an excitable monster. But by Prell’s own admission she didn’t really know what she was doing, she was putting too much energy into the character, it was too big, and it didn’t work. After a year or two, she was let go from the show, which was an understandable disappointment for her, feeling as though she had blown her opportunity. But Henson remembered her, and a few years later when he was working on <i>Fraggle Rock</i>, he decided she would be perfect for the character of Red.<br />
<br />
They talked about Henson’s vision for the show; he apparently often talked about wanting to create a show that would bring about world peace. Now, they were very clear to say that Henson was a realist – he did realise that a children’s puppet show could never actually achieve that goal – but it does speak to the type of person Henson was. He wasn’t someone who was content to just make something that people would be entertained by and forget; he wanted to make something that would stay with people, that would make people think, that would actually influence people. And that seems to have been a genuine concern for him – after all, bear in mind the fact that with everything else that he was involved in doing, all of the TV shows and movies he was creating and developing and overseeing and working on, he was still performing as Kermit or Ernie on <i>Sesame Street</i> up until his death. Now, part of that could have been that he created these characters and was reluctant to let other people play them, I don’t know; part of it might just be that he really enjoyed the actual work of puppetry and wanted to carry on doing that work, I don’t know; but regardless the fact is that even as he was doing all of this work and building up this massive company, he still carried on performing for 20 years on a public television children’s show. And to me, that really speaks to the type of person it seems he was; it seems that there was a sincere desire to use his artform to create some good in the world, and the best way to do that is to teach the next generation how to be good people.<br />
<br />
One of the challenges that Goelz had was with playing Travelling Matt, because the nature of the character was that he was out exploring the real world. (In fact, <i>Fraggle Rock</i> even brought Goelz out to Australia and New Zealand to film a few segments.) The challenge of this is that, whereas the set locations are obviously designed for performers to work as freely as possible, the real world isn’t designed for that. So here we have Goelz trying to scoot around on uneven footpaths, on muddy fields, and even in one occasion in a rubbish dump (which apparently required Goelz to be hidden under the rubbish).<br />
<br />
One of the recurring jokes that was made throughout the retrospectacle, that I think almost every performer made at one point or another, is the importance of hygiene as a puppeteers. Yes, hygiene is important in general, but it’s especially important for puppet performers who get so incredibly close to each other. This is obviously true when you have two people having to squeeze together tight to play a single character, but even if a character is played by one person it’s still an issue. After all, you can’t maintain a comfortable distance between performers, since a comfortable distance for six-foot-tall people puts much too much space between characters that are only a couple of feet tall. So if you imagine a scene where all five Fraggles are on screen together, we saw photos of what was going on beneath, photos of five or six performers squashed into a tiny area and trying to find their own space in which they could perform.<br />
<br />
A discussion about that need for hygiene prompted Dave Goelz to recall his time in England shooting <i>The Muppet Show</i>. One day he was driving to work and was worried about his breath, so he pulled into a small store to buy some mouthwash. They had Listerine, and sitting next to it was some English brand he had vaguely heard of but didn’t really recognise. Figuring the English brand couldn’t taste any worse than Listerine, he bought the unknown brand and gargled it in the car park; it still tasted pretty bad. He started driving when all of a sudden his mouth started to foam up, until he had to stop to clear his mouth. And then it happened again. And again. And again. And suddenly he realised where he recognised that mouthwash brand from, which is why when he arrived at work he immediately had to seek medical help for gargling Dettol disinfectant.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
Friday night brought a screening of <i><b>The Dark Crystal</b></i>. This isn’t a film I hold terribly much affection for; I think I really only saw it once or twice as a kid, and never really cared for it, finding it really rather dull. I did rewatch the film a couple of years ago when <a href="https://www.filmspotting.net/nextpictureshow/" target="_blank">The Next Picture Show</a> podcast <a href="https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/FLM2375047009?selected=FLM2551409210" target="_blank">paired it for a discussion</a> with <i><a href="https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/FLM2375047009?selected=FLM9090778994" target="_blank">Kubo and the Two Strings</a></i>, and the film didn’t improve for me. But watching it on the big screen, I found that I enjoyed the experience a lot more. The film certainly has flaws, but it does have a lot of strengths in its visuals, and that’s really brought out on the big screen. Henson succeeded in designing a cast of puppets that look nothing like the Muppets, and the design work for the most part is incredible. The frustrating thing is that after giving us such wonderful creatures as the Skeksis, the Mystics, Aughra the Oracle, the Garthim, or Fizzgig, he then centres the film on two Gelflings, easily the least interestingly designed creatures populating this world, and in particular on the exceptionally bland male Gelfling named Jen, who seems to have no personality beyond “nice”. And yet the film as a whole was so stunningly beautiful, was such a visual feast, that as an experience it made an impact that home viewing never could.<br />
<br />
Dave Goelz had played Fizzgig and the Skeksis who became the new Emperor, and he gave a typically entertaining Q&A afterward. The most interesting revelation to me was the discovery that the film had originally been intended for all the creatures to speak in a made-up language, and this changed only after the film was shot and made no sense to anyone, at which point English dialogue had to be written that matched the mouth movements of the characters speaking this imagined language. Suddenly the film and its flaws made so much sense. (He also mentioned visiting the set of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSV42j8lccg" target="_blank"><i>Dark Crystal</i> prequel series</a> currently in production, which I’m suddenly more interested in; the film established a strong world and beautifully designed creatures, and if they can have a solid script to start with then it could work out well.)<br />
<br />
It was also fascinating to hear him describe the set, and especially the insanity of the Skeksis scenes; since each Skeksis required five or six operators to perform the character, in any scene with a number of Skeksis on screen you would have an insane set with 30 or 40 people around trying to bring these creatures to life. The exercise of performing a Skeksis was understandably tricky, since there were so many people involved in operating a single character, it initially took a lot of practice and effort to get them all co-ordinated and working together as though they were one. However, after a few weeks of this, the performers for each individual Skeksis all came to know and understand how each other work, and they became much more comfortable being more free with the character knowing that the other performers would be able to follow their lead – he compared it to a jazz group being able to instantly follow and support when one of the musicians goes off on their own improvisation.<br />
<br />
The other good thing about the film was that it prompted me to go back and rewatch the <a href="https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6stxvl" target="_blank">second episode</a> of the <i>Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Challenge</i> reality show, in which the puppet designers had to create new Skeksis that had adapted to different environments. It reminded me just how fascinating that show was in giving an insight into the art of creating these puppets; it was a shame it only ever ran for one season. If you’re able to seek it out, the entire series is worth watching.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
One of the most interesting screenings was a screening called <b><i>Muppet History 101</i></b>, a compilation of clips that took us through Henson’s career up until the start of the <i>Muppet Show</i>. It was fascinating watching scenes of the original Kermit from <i>Sam and Friends</i>; seeing some of his earliest work making commercials; learning that, while Kermit predated him, it was Rowlf who was actually the first popular Muppet star after making regular appearances on <i>The Jimmy Dean Show</i>; watching the original pitch video promoting <i>Sesame Street</i> to PBS member stations that were considering showing the programme (I also realised that, until I saw the explanation of the title in the video, I had never once connected <i>Sesame Street</i> to “Open Sesame” and the idea of using the show to open up a world of riches to the children watching); all the way up to watching some of the special commercial spots recorded to promote <i>The Muppet Show</i>. The entire session was absolutely fascinating.<br />
<br />
One thing I found interesting was learning just how revolutionary Jim Henson’s work really was. We’re all familiar with the cliché of the puppet theatre, but it was genuinely innovative when Henson had the idea to, in essence, use the framing of the television screen as the theatre while the performer sits below the camera watching their performance live on monitors and adjusting what they do based on how it appears on screen.<br />
<br />
A few days earlier I had come across <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5W60VwDkas" target="_blank">an early version of "Mahna Mahna"</a> that had been performed in the first season of <i>Sesame Street</i>. The puppets are generic Muppets, a couple of ordinary girls and a rough bearded man, rather than the pink aliens and the wild figure we’re used to, and the pacing and comic timing is not quite as perfect as we’re used to, but it is essentially pretty much <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTXyXuqfBLA" target="_blank">the exact same routine we’re used to</a>. So during the Q&A with Muppet historian Craig Shemin I asked if there were any similar instances of a recognisable sketch that exists in early prototypical forms; the answer was No, that "Mahna Mahna" was really the only example of a sketch that was developed over time in that way. But it did prompt him to talk about the origins of the song; it’s an Italian song that Henson used after hearing it used over <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXo1ufdQ4sg" target="_blank">footage of girls in a sauna</a> in a documentary about sex in Sweden called <i>Sweden: Heaven or Hell</i>.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
That afternoon there was a free <b><i>Muppets Quiz</i></b>, and this was fun and frustrating. It wasn’t like one big pub quiz, but a collection of smaller quizzes on a theme. Each round had three new contestants, and the winner in each round won a prize, and they were really great prizes – books or toys all autographed by the performers. The third round was a Movies round, identifying a real movie from a Muppet parody photo, and unfortunately I was unsuccessful in getting into that round. So I had to sit in frustration while the people who were actually chosen struggled to remember the name of <a href="http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/File:MissionImprobable.jpg" target="_blank">Mission: Impossible</a> and had no idea what <a href="http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/File:Ratton.jpg" target="_blank">Patton</a> was. I would have really cleaned up on that round.<br />
<br />
I did eventually get chosen for the second-to-last round, a predict-the-future quiz in which we watched the starts of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmhIizQQol0" target="_blank">a collection of early coffee commercials made by Henson</a>, and had to guess from multiple choice options what would happen to Wontkins. Unfortunately after a couple of questions I fell behind; in the end the other two players were tied and I was one short. The annoying thing was that, with one of the questions I got wrong, immediately after giving my answer I noticed slight cracks in the wall, realised the correct answer was that the room would collapse, and started kicking myself for getting that question wrong, even before they even played the rest of the video; if I had had the quickness of mind to at least ask to change my answer I would have tied, and I know I recalled the answer to the tiebreaker question (“What is Lew Zealand’s act?”) faster than the other two, and could have won an autographed Funko Pop of Bert. As it was, I lost. (Sigh.) I still find myself thinking about that quiz, kicking myself over the questions I got wrong or for not even thinking to change my answer in that one question.<br />
<br />
But in between each round they would show a short video of something interesting. Which is how I discovered <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acBixR_JRuM" target="_blank">this ridiculously fun <i>Sesame Street</i> song</a>. There’s also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiQsaEdJ1aI" target="_blank">a different version of the video</a>, which is mostly the same but has a lot of surprises in itself; I can’t decide which I prefer since they’re both great.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
Easily the best panel discussion came next – <b><i>The Art of Television Puppetry</i></b>, presented by four <i>Sesame Street</i> and Muppet performers, Matt Vogel, Eric Jacobson, Peter Linz and Carmen Osbahr. The key word in that title is “Television” – this was not a discussion about puppet work in general, but what is specifically involved in getting puppets to work in an engaging manner on television. So they had a camera and screens showing us how the puppeteers’ work on-set translated to home viewers.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCnKaf9xB_Kq3vvB6f20FOGiop9Jm2xd8HgIGBWyy1x28AA4yjSJFlza0t5c0PGHy87tgYMvIQpvNxJpa4DdhoU0bex6aa0MgNHEkFIsBcZUKupuBSpYhh49qvWX_f0cOto9qTAAQjZUp2/s1600/20180422_161159+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1343" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCnKaf9xB_Kq3vvB6f20FOGiop9Jm2xd8HgIGBWyy1x28AA4yjSJFlza0t5c0PGHy87tgYMvIQpvNxJpa4DdhoU0bex6aa0MgNHEkFIsBcZUKupuBSpYhh49qvWX_f0cOto9qTAAQjZUp2/s320/20180422_161159+%25282%2529.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
I had already known, for instance, that most Muppets fall into two categories – rod puppets and hand puppets (with full-costume puppets like Big Bird as a rarer third category). You can see those two main types of puppets if you look at Bert and Ernie. Bert has rod hands; his hands are entirely for show, they’re not functional, can’t hold anything without help, and they’re just attached to rods, so the puppeteer uses their right hand to control the mouth and head of the puppet and their left hand to control the rods that move their hands. Puppets like Ernie require two puppeteers to function because they have real practical hands: the lead puppeteer controls the head and mouth with their right hand and wears the left hand like a glove, while a second puppeteer performs as the right hand and is generally supposed to support and follow the lead puppeteer. I had heard about this before, had even seen photos of <a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/muppet/images/b/b1/Ernie_bert_jim_frank.jpg" target="_blank">Henson and another performer working together to play Ernie</a>, but I loved watching it and seeing how this all works out in practice.<br />
<br />
(In a different session I learned that an interesting exception to this approach is the Swedish Chef. Because so much of the Swedish Chef performance comes out of the interaction of the hands, you can’t have two different people playing the hands, so Jim Henson used to play the head and mouth of the Chef while Frank Oz used to be both the left and right hand of the character. Also, because he was always dealing with real food and liquid they couldn’t make the hands out of felt, so the Swedish Chef has actual real human hands – which is why when <a href="http://www.movingimage.us/exhibitions/2017/07/22/detail/the-jim-henson-exhibition/" target="_blank">the Museum of the Moving Image</a> acquired the Swedish Chef puppet they arranged for a cast to be taken of Oz’s hands for the display.)<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDV7FojRKQ7YXdn8Ye1NiobGP0guv6rIwYr8tEfSdGZ8JJ320hUwHJppawhHsqxFSyAGO4MD1uJupbKc4rynOrOWI30e70UaWuk6WDsprybQ2pPqx4GOctNznlFgPBo_jIPL6PsvbYuvxi/s1600/20180422_160059+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDV7FojRKQ7YXdn8Ye1NiobGP0guv6rIwYr8tEfSdGZ8JJ320hUwHJppawhHsqxFSyAGO4MD1uJupbKc4rynOrOWI30e70UaWuk6WDsprybQ2pPqx4GOctNznlFgPBo_jIPL6PsvbYuvxi/s320/20180422_160059+%25282%2529.jpg" width="273" /></a>The big thing is that as a performer you obviously need to have your hands raised above your head for an extended time while you work – which was why the entire audience found ourselves trying to hold our hands above our heads for a couple of minutes and many of us failing to do so (I managed to make it until we were told we could lower our hands, though it was difficult). While working, the performers aren’t focused on what they’re doing above their head, and instead are looking at little television monitors below them that show them the actual live feed of the work they’re doing, which means they’re watching and adjusting their performance as they do it. The challenge of that is that everything is reversed, so if you move to your left your character moves to the right of the screen, and it can apparently take many years to really get used to that. It was also fascinating to learn that <i>The Muppet Show</i> stage was actually built six feet off the ground, so the puppeteers could stand as they worked, whereas because the <i>Sesame Street</i> set is an actual practical set the puppeteers need to keep as low as possible to the ground and make their way around on little trolleys that look like bar-stools on wheels.<br />
<br />
Another interesting point is that, when you’re making a puppet talk, you need to keep your fingers more or less still and only move your thumb. Firstly, this mimics the way we actually talk – the thumb is attached to the lower jaw of the puppet, and when an actual person talks they really only move their lower jaw. But more significantly, the puppeteer’s fingers largely control the puppet’s head movement, and if you’re moving your fingers up and down when the puppet is talking then its head will just be constantly shaking up and down and losing all eye contact with the viewers at home. It’s also apparently quite common for new puppeteers to instinctively close their hands on each syllable, which means their characters are speaking through closed mouths. They then had us, with our hands in the air, practicing our hand movements as we counted up to 20, and since we were so busy focusing on only moving our thumbs, keeping our hands open on the syllables, and trying to get the number of syllables in 17 correct, we completely failed to notice Count Von Count until he announced his appearance, having been drawn to the sound of a room full of people counting. There was a palpable excitement in the room when we heard that voice and all suddenly realised who had arrived.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiupwRhLbSJsqWKAbixJwTEQJodC_TlcOZrK2fpUi92PLZVAXA5luYFCy8J5qR5EAVLwC6OALBr2fsOHPnIeQh3ft33sHZQLJBiJaBdQ0p2eSPZmhaU9Wrx7BAN8PGxUOUY4FQb3u3BeECY/s1600/20180422_154557+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1563" data-original-width="1600" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiupwRhLbSJsqWKAbixJwTEQJodC_TlcOZrK2fpUi92PLZVAXA5luYFCy8J5qR5EAVLwC6OALBr2fsOHPnIeQh3ft33sHZQLJBiJaBdQ0p2eSPZmhaU9Wrx7BAN8PGxUOUY4FQb3u3BeECY/s320/20180422_154557+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I was fascinated to learn that the Muppets are generally all cross-eyed – it’s subtle, but once you know it it’s definitely there. The idea is that the cross-eyes almost create a triangle, as though they’re focused on one specific point a bit in front of their nose. They also talked about how much of <i>Sesame Street</i> work involves looking through the camera to talk to the audience at home. If you have an actual person on screen that’s easy to do; they just need to look straight into the camera. But if you have a puppet that can’t actually see, then you as a performer need to learn to find that point where your character is looking through the camera. What makes it particularly difficult is that, as they demonstrated to us, it only takes the slightest adjustment up, down, or to the side, and all of a sudden the character seems to be staring off somewhere else. It apparently takes years to learn how to instantly find that point. After showing this to us, they had Grover come running from off-screen into the middle of the screen, then turn and BANG he’s looking at us: this was something I must have seen hundreds of times and never considered, but suddenly the entire audience burst into applause because we suddenly understood how difficult an effect that is to achieve and how much precision is involved in it. As part of this, they never have a character fully in profile, instead even when they’re walking across the screen they’re always subtly turned towards the camera so that you can always see both eyes, in order to maintain that connection. And after learning all of these tricks, it was pointed out that all this only works on the one specific camera that happens to be filming the characters at the time. So, whenever the camera changes to a different angle the performers need to quickly make adjustments to their character’s positioning so that they continue to work in the new shot. There’s an incredible amount of work and effort that goes into making these characters seem as real and as convincing to the home viewer, and I came away with a great admiration for these people who can make it seem so effortless.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
The final event at Park Road Post was on a Monday, which meant I had to miss Film Society. I generally try not to miss Film Society if I can help it, but I felt I had to skip that week’s screening because I didn't want to miss the talk. That decision was made a little easier when I realised that week’s film was a German film about late-term abortion (apparently a very good film). To be clear, Film Society movies are usually more enjoyable than that probably sounds, but regardless, when faced with a choice of a tough emotionally brutal abortion film or an evening of joy with the Muppets, my decision was obvious.<br />
<br />
I’d arrived early for the talk, as I had for all of the talks – fear of getting caught in rush hour traffic while trying to cross the city meant I just went there straight after work and then waited for an hour. But that day they were putting on a celebratory event for everyone involved, and those of us waiting for the talk were invited to attend. And so I got to talk to all of the people, particularly all of the puppeteers, I’d seen and heard from over the past ten days. I get very nervous around famous people, even in the case of people like this; I would have walked past these people on the street without a second glance, but in this context I was overwhelmed because I knew that that guy plays Gonzo, or that guy is the new Kermit or Big Bird. In most cases, these were the new generation of performers; I grew up watching Jim Henson and Frank Oz play Ernie and Bert, and had stopped watching <i>Sesame Street</i> long before Peter Linz and Eric Jacobson took over the roles, but just the knowledge that these are the people who continue giving life to these characters I love had me star-struck.<br />
<br />
The session was called <b><i>Extending and Honouring Jim's Legacy</i></b>, and it was a discussion with the same four performers from <i>Sesame Street</i> who had demonstrated television puppetry the previous day. It was a really interesting discussion, and I remember none of it, because the rest of the experiences of that night pushed away my memory of what was said. Because there was a point in the talk where they brought out the puppets, and suddenly there’s the Count and Bert and Ernie and Rosita in front of me.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoIPfGBcTZh-0r2z72nrCybSw02gCNufdWrZxu-ryYIMSFLoYqcJQnSlDWs3JeS98uqD1sR83LacVzQcdJ6awqIWJKgKMdsKB0abZj4zz-aNphYMJqR4Ms_eOehhycpyTGLpa8LYiPuR3l/s1600/20180423_192948+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="610" data-original-width="1600" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoIPfGBcTZh-0r2z72nrCybSw02gCNufdWrZxu-ryYIMSFLoYqcJQnSlDWs3JeS98uqD1sR83LacVzQcdJ6awqIWJKgKMdsKB0abZj4zz-aNphYMJqR4Ms_eOehhycpyTGLpa8LYiPuR3l/s400/20180423_192948+%25282%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Talking to my mother, I’d made a comment about how it felt a little silly to be so excited to see a bunch of puppets from a kids show. She made the point that it was understandable – <i>Sesame Street</i> was a show I loved as a kid, and indeed I apparently taught myself to read by watching the show. But I think it’s more than that. It’s not just nostalgia for a show that I once loved; after all, would a kid who grew up watching <i>Barney</i> or <i>Teletubbies</i> have the same type of reaction meeting those characters as an adult as I was having to seeing the <i>Sesame Street</i> characters. The characters feel real because they are real; several people described how much Jim Henson was like Ernie and Frank Oz was like Bert, so when they were creating those characters they were bringing their own dynamic to them. And while the Count might be largely based around a simple pun, his passion for counting feels absolutely real; we all have something that we are absolutely passionate about and that makes us light up when we think about it, so while I might not love counting as much as the Count does, I recognise his passion because it’s exactly how I feel about movies.<br />
<br />
One thing that I really came to understand throughout all of these talks is how much of a full performance is being given whenever these characters come to life, and how dismissive it is whenever you hear them described as just “doing the voice” of Kermit or Gonzo. And in this session, watching the performers interact and play off each other as the characters, having fun between themselves, these are genuinely funny comedic performances. They may be characters from a show for young children, but I cannot imagine anyone not being fully entertained.<br />
<br />
To me, the most memorable example of a performer bringing his puppet fully to life was probably Matt Vogel playing the Count. There was a point in the Q&A where someone in the audience asked if the Count wanted to learn how to count in Māori; I don’t know how Vogel feels about learning new languages, perhaps he’s really interested in other languages or perhaps he’s not, but in that moment he was playing the Count and the Count’s excitement at learning a new way to count was palpable. At the start of the evening someone had made reference to the 9000 stars in the ceiling of the theatre, and later on in the evening when someone mentioned the stars to the Count he seemed genuinely sad, commenting “I heard the woman say that before, and I wish I didn’t know that; I would have loved to just sit back and count them all one by one.” I do feel confident in saying Vogel personally would not have actually wanted to count all of those stars, but when the Count said that I completely believed him and actually felt sorry for him not getting to do this thing he would have loved to do.<br />
<br />
A couple of months earlier, I had watched the entirety of <i>Sesame Street</i>’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLRx_l5UKhk" target="_blank">“Death of Mr Hooper” episode</a>, not just that specific scene but the entire episode, because of a discussion about it on the <a href="https://www.extrahotgreat.com/190" target="_blank">Extra Hot Great podcast</a>, and had really been impressed with how the show worked as a whole. It’s only actually about the death of a beloved character in the last ten minutes, and the rest of the show just seems like it could be any ordinary episode, but all through it subtly builds in elements and ideas and themes so that when you reach that emotional moment they’ve laid the groundwork for it all to work with the kids watching. It’s a masterful episode, a landmark of television history, and a great example of Jim Henson’s legacy, using the show to teach kids not only about how to read or count but wider ideas about how to live. So I asked a question, using that episode as a springboard to ask about similar episodes the performers had been involved with. Matt Vogel, who was Big Bird’s understudy for twenty years and who recently took over the role full-time, talked about how Big Bird tends to be the focal point of many such stories, citing in particular an extended storyline where Big Bird lost his home after his nest was destroyed and another storyline about a group of birds bullying Big Bird for his size. Meanwhile Carmen Osbahr discussed her efforts to use the show to <a href="https://www.sesameworkshop.org/what-we-do/military-families" target="_blank">help children cope with military parents away on deployment</a>.<br />
<br />
At the end of the talk there were two young children who wanted to give a picture they had drawn to the puppets, and after that happened it was suggested that we should all sing a song together, eventually landing on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhbsb_tkGL0" target="_blank">Sing, Sing a Song</a>. And as the song carried on they came out and started shaking hands with people. Which was how I shook hands with Count von Count. And that was a real thrill. And then the panel ended, and everyone started going up and taking photos with the puppets. I was a bit reluctant to – after all, we were asked not to take photos inside Park Road Post – but this was literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And so I went up and actually got to meet Ernie and Bert and the Count and Rosita, which is just incredible, and I think about that experience and it still seems amazing that this actually happened to me.<br />
<br />
And there’s something weird about meeting these characters; you genuinely feel like you’re talking to them, not to the person next to them who’s actually doing the talking. So when, for instance, I was with Carmen Osbahr, I actually spent the whole time talking to her character Rosita. Now, it would be one thing if this were Bert and Ernie or Kermit or Gonzo, characters I’ve known all my life, but Rosita was a character I had no connection with; I was a teenager when Rosita started on the show in 1991, and had long since stopped watching <i>Sesame Street</i>. But rather than engaging with Carmen as an adult, I found myself apologising to Rosita for not knowing who she was and promising that I would go home and watch some videos of her (a promise I did actually keep; I’ve since watched maybe a dozen Rosita videos, just because I promised this puppet that I would). But that’s the power of these characters and this art form; they almost render the performer invisible, even though they’re literally standing next to their character.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
I took advantage of the Anzac Day public holiday to go to a screening of <i><b>Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird</b></i>, which was fascinating to watch. Sure, it’s very obviously targeted specifically at young children – unlike the Muppet movies which are films that I can comfortably watch as an adult, I definitely felt too old for the <i>Sesame Street</i> film. But it was enjoyable to watch and spend time with these wonderfully fun characters. (Although I wasn’t convinced by the running joke where the Cookie Monster eats a car.) And the film stands as a tribute to the incredible work of Carol Spinney as Big Bird. Once you understand just <a href="https://archive.org/details/themechanicsofbeingbigbird" target="_blank">how the Big Bird puppet works</a>, you realise that thing is just insane. And so, when the film starts with Big Bird roller-skating down Sesame Street and or reaches its climax with him jumping from a moving truck onto the front of a following car and you remember that Spinney is doing these things while literally blind inside the puppet, the work that he is doing is staggering – and that’s before you get to the actual performance he gives, which is sweet and nuanced and wonderful. It’s definitely a young kids’ film – I wouldn’t be able to recommend it to an adult in the way that I might recommend a good Muppet movie, for instance – but there was definitely enough in the film that I was glad to have seen it.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhW-glrUwCm5q1BZK9GfHMRlGt0hKfuyCoxwIBj8e4qCnfU1Vz_pED2iCTlcM4ZVCDQjxWgh9Hk8lzI58Yzca7fYygHAsYaQu6NMuMPCz2JY4HJVLzpOSQzknvDw-q-_EAgr9mgDD4C613/s1600/20180427_202905.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhW-glrUwCm5q1BZK9GfHMRlGt0hKfuyCoxwIBj8e4qCnfU1Vz_pED2iCTlcM4ZVCDQjxWgh9Hk8lzI58Yzca7fYygHAsYaQu6NMuMPCz2JY4HJVLzpOSQzknvDw-q-_EAgr9mgDD4C613/s400/20180427_202905.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
After two weeks of screenings and talks, we finally came to the main event – <b><i>The Jim Henson Retrospectacle Live in Concert</i></b> at the Michael Fowler Centre. I attended the Friday evening performance, and it really was a great show. It opened with Kermit on stage playing the banjo and singing "The Rainbow Connection" with Bret McKenzie, who hosted the show. The show was basically a retrospective of Henson’s career; the entire show was basically structured around Henson’s career, generally starting with <i>Sesame Street</i>, then into the Muppets, with a brief detour into the music of the <i>Dark Crystal</i>, then into <i>Fraggle Rock</i>, and then into more recent post-Henson Muppet works, interspersed with short video packages of footage of Henson working. We had the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra providing musical weight, and you could really get a sense of the musicians enjoying playing with the puppets – particularly the percussion section, which had a very funny moment putting on noise protection when Animal went to play a massive gong. But what was really surprising to me was how full the show was, and just how many characters we had throughout the show. I had been speaking to one of the performers a few days earlier, and he had mentioned that there were going to be five main puppet performers in the show (there were also a couple of support puppeteers doing right-hands or flying bats around the Count). I had imagined a stage filled with Muppets, and instantly realised that wasn’t going to happen – especially since the strain of performing with puppets held above their hands means the performers can apparently only do four or five minutes in a stretch. But what we got was something quite special. Rather than just the mass of characters I had imagined, it was generally one or two characters appearing at a time, talking, singing a song, and then leaving. And the variety of characters was impressive – while I expecting many of the <i>Sesame Street</i> characters I had seen and knew that characters like Kermit or Miss Piggy or Big Bird were here, I had no idea that characters like Oscar the Grouch or Animal were here until they suddenly appeared. And while it was an obvious choice for someone like Lew Zealand to come to New Zealand, it was a complete surprise when <a href="http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Snowths" target="_blank">the Snowths</a> appeared to accompany Bret in singing "Mahna Mahna". One of the best parts was the appearance of Big Bird, who no matter how much you’ve seen him on television, you never quite get how absurdly massive an eight-foot-tall bird puppet is until you see it in real life. (It also gets into this weird space where you are both aware of and forget the practicalities of the performer inside Big Bird; there was a point when, as Big Bird was leaving the stage, he seemed as though he was about to slam his head into the bottom of the gallery above the stage and I found myself worrying about the effectively-blind performer inside the puppet similarly slamming his own head, forgetting that the performer is not himself eight feet tall.)<br />
<br />
One thing I loved about the show was that there was no effort to hide the puppeteers. We got to see them all scooting around on stage on little bar-stool-trolleys holding the puppets above their heads. When Kermit was playing the banjo we could see Matt Vogel controlling the mouth and body while Peter Linz would control the hands, left hand strumming the strings while the right hand moves up and down the neck. I’ve heard that there have been concerts in the past where they hid the performers, but I was so glad they didn’t do that here. Does it affect “the illusion” that the Muppets are alive? Perhaps, but we all know they’re not alive. So from the point of view of this show being a celebration, not just of Jim Henson’s characters but of Jim Henson himself, it made sense for the actual performers to be so visible and to show them working in this art form that he loved.<br />
<br />
So the show itself was great. My personal experience was not. I had secured my seats for the show as fast as I possibly could; I bought them through a pre-sale about ten minutes after they went on sale. When I went to buy, it offered me A, B, or C Reserve. I went for the best seats possible, A Reserve, and was surprised to find the A Reserve seats were all up in the gallery, not down in the stalls close to the stage. Never mind, I figured there’s probably a good reason for that – at the time I thought the puppeteers would probably not be visible, and if so there would need to be a raised screen hiding them, which might make the view from the stalls difficult. So I trusted the ticket sellers and bought a seat in the gallery, because those were the “best seats”. I’ve since discovered that there was Premium Reserve seating, which I hadn’t been offered, which were the seats up front in the stalls, exactly the seats I had wanted; I would have happily paid whatever I needed to for one of those seats, to be up close to Kermit or Miss Piggy or Big Bird. Instead, I found myself literally in the back row of the gallery at the far end from the stage; there was no seat in the theatre further away from the stage than mine, and only the seats with an obscured view could have been worse. And for this seat, I paid A Reserve prices.<br />
<br />
To make my experience worse, the women in the seats next to me arrived more or less drunk – I know they had been drinking because they walked in carrying their drinks. They felt the need to video large parts of the show, hiding their phones when the attendant stuck their head in. They seemed particularly eager for everyone around to know how they felt about the characters on stage, most notably squeeing “OH! Big Bird!” when he appeared on stage. (Yes, we’re all excited to see Big Bird; however those of us who are adults are able to contain our excitement.) When the NZSO took a few minutes to play music from <i>The Dark Crystal</i> (which is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPdowP_aBXY" target="_blank">really wonderful music</a>), they sat and talked to each other because presumably they didn’t care if there weren’t Muppets on stage. They left the theatre multiple times during the performance, and then walked out during the final song of the performance.<br />
<br />
In short, while the show was fantastic, brilliant, everything I would have wanted, my experience fell far short of what I wanted because my seat was terrible and the women next to me were awful people. To be honest, every time I think about the show I feel an overriding sense of frustration, and I have to remind myself about all the incredible experiences I did get to have that far exceeded my concert disappointment; sure, I wasn’t as close to Kermit as I would want, but I got to actually meet and talk to Ernie and Bert.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
The final screening of the series was <i><b>The Muppets Take Manhattan</b></i>, which I realised is probably the Muppet movie I’ve seen most often. I remember going to it in cinema as a kid, I remember watching it on TV broadcasts on multiple occasions, but it has been years since I last saw it, and it was fun to revisit. Thinking after the movie, I was struck by the large gap in time between the release date of <i>The Muppets Take Manhattan</i> (1984) and <i>Muppet Christmas Carol</i> (1992), with the latter coming a couple of years after Jim Henson died, and I found myself wondering whether there had been any unmade Muppet movies that Henson had been involved in. So I took advantage of the Q&A to ask about it. Apparently the idea that was closest to being made was a movie called <i>Into the Jaws of the Demons of Death: The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made</i>, which sounds great. The premise was that Gonzo is the director of the film, but after he wastes almost the entire budget on a massive opening title sequence they’re forced to drastically cut costs, reusing the exact same street for every exotic international location or gradually downgrading the film stock from 35mm to 16mm and ultimately to B&W 8mm. Apparently the reason it was never made was ironically because the effects required to produce the cheapest Muppet movie ever would be too expensive and would blow the budget. But these days, with effect costs being so much lower, this seems like a great idea for a uniquely Muppet movie, and I would love if one day someone could resurrect that script and produce it.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----==========-----</div>
<br />
The final session was called <b><i>Celebrating Jim</i></b>, essentially just a discussion between those who actually knew Jim Henson when he was alive – performers like Dave Goelz, Karen Prell, and Carmen Osbahr, Muppet designer Bonnie Erickson, Arthur Novell, who was Henson’s PR manager and who founded the Jim Henson Legacy, and Craig Shemin, former writer, Muppet historian, and President of the Jim Henson Legacy. And it was just a chance for them all to reflect and tell stories about their time working with Henson. Some of those stories were stories I’d already heard told over the past fortnight, some were new. One of my favourites was a reflection on the relationship between Henson and Frank Oz, and in particular how their personality differences were brought out in the characters of Bert and Ernie, with Henson’s exuberance and excitability coming out in Ernie and Oz’s caution and care defining Bert. At one point they described a time when the two went on a roller coaster together; the photograph of the two of them together on the ride showing Henson laughing with delight and Oz wide-eyed in horror, exactly as their characters would be.<br />
<br />
One thing I was fascinated to learn was each episode of <i>The Muppet Show</i> would take three days to shoot, but each episode’s special guest star would only be required for the first day. Between their involvement in the behind-the-scenes plotlines and their multiple on-stage performances, the guest stars feel like they really are a dominant part of the show, so it’s surprising to realise just how little they actually were in the show.<br />
<br />
There was some discussion about the use of guest stars. Apparently, after the first season when the show had established itself, they generally didn’t have too much difficulty getting guest stars who were willing to be on the show, and that when they were turned down it was usually due more to scheduling conflicts or the hassle of someone flying to Britain for such a short time than people not wanting to do the Muppets. The main difficulty they had was finding appropriate people to ask. Being in the UK, they had easy access to plenty of British performers, but they couldn’t just rely on British celebrities, because the show was being sold internationally so they needed names that would be recognised everywhere. So the British performers tended to be big-names – John Cleese, Elton John, Peter Sellers, or Spike Milligan – while the overseas performers might not be quite as well-known but would have had a general recognition internationally.<br />
<br />
This challenge in finding guest stars at the appropriate level apparently led to one of the final episodes in the series, where they needed to find a guest last minute after a scheduled guest had to cancel, but they had pretty much run out of sufficiently famous UK stars to appear on the show. So they found themselves asking one of the show’s writers, Chris Langham, who was basically a complete unknown, to be that week’s guest star. And then <a href="https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Episode_519:_Chris_Langham" target="_blank">they built the entire show</a> around the fact that he was an unknown – the joke of the episode was that he was just a messenger who happened to be at the theatre when the scheduled guest cancelled. But despite the fact that Chris was part of the show's staff, they still treated him like one of the celebrities, sending him a limo to bring him to the studio, and then buying the entire cast and crew autograph books so they could press him for an autograph when he arrived.<br />
<br />
One of the things that I really appreciated the entire event was having the chance to meet all of these performers and people who have contributed to Henson’s work over the years. And the great thing about that final panel was that pretty much everyone involved in the event was there, whether they were actually speaking as part of the panel or were just in the crowd listening. And so afterwards I had a chance to go around and see these people one last time, to wish them all well, and to thank them for coming and for their work which does mean so much to me, whether they were working on these shows at the time I was watching them or they are continuing Henson’s work for future generations to enjoy.<br />
<br />
Finally, I also feel I do need to acknowledge the wonderful <a href="https://www.square-eyes.co.nz/" target="_blank">Square Eyes Film Foundation</a> which was behind the event, and particularly the work of creative director Nic Marshall in bringing it all together. Over ten years Nic has apparently been working and negotiating to bring this to Wellington, and it was not an easy task, especially when you remember that the rights to these characters are now all over the place – the Muppets with Disney, <i>Sesame Street</i> with Sesame Workshop, and <i>Fraggle Rock</i> and the other properties with the Jim Henson Company. Bringing all these companies together and coordinating all the pieces to allow this celebration to take place must have been a massive and daunting task, but it meant we all got to enjoy a fantastic event. And for all her efforts to achieve this, I was very grateful.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-66782101110473200752019-07-20T12:01:00.001+12:002019-07-20T12:01:36.159+12:00Triumph ReduxSo here's the thing,<br />
<br />
As usual, as we come up to this year's film festival (less than a week to go!), I remember that I never got around to posting my responses to last year's festival films. So here they are. These were originally posts on Facebook that I wrote after watching each of the films at the film festival, recording my immediate thoughts on each of the films I saw. These are not reviews - although I admit that in posting them I certainly hope that my comments on the films I liked will encourage people to seek them out - but are more an attempt to try to capture my responses to the film, so that in future years when I remember a particular film I can have something to refer to to recall how I felt about it at the time. It also forces me to actively reflect on each film, rather than just going from film to film without really engaging with each of them.<br />
<br />
Please bear in mind, these are not crafted, but rather impulsively written. Seeing them all collected together, I can see the writing tics that I resort to far too much.<br />
<br />
<i>[My reactions to all 40 films I saw at the 2018 festival come after the jump.]</i><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkrf4FdFEuPkwT_bkUMYyc83novkWccNt1JYvY9IlbNFPrN6vxOq2L1Uw2E98K-Qx8lFVjLqpmR803lOimKhSNZFBSkufumuzVOkD5-1dSA6hj1Jk6OFEkkYQ0742DkP-Y3Am4gbdtlWpo/s1600/birds-of-passage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="523" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkrf4FdFEuPkwT_bkUMYyc83novkWccNt1JYvY9IlbNFPrN6vxOq2L1Uw2E98K-Qx8lFVjLqpmR803lOimKhSNZFBSkufumuzVOkD5-1dSA6hj1Jk6OFEkkYQ0742DkP-Y3Am4gbdtlWpo/s400/birds-of-passage.jpg" width="276" /></a></div>
<b><i>Birds of Passage</i></b><br />
The official Opening Night film of the festival, <i>Birds of Passage</i> spans a period of about 15 years in Northern Colombia, opening in a small village in 1969 with a Wayuu tribal coming-of-age ceremony for a young woman. Raphayet, an older outsider with family ties to the village, wants to marry the girl, but when the family imposes a heavy dowry, the only way he can hope to generate the necessary money is to by selling marijuana. His domineering mother-in-law realises how Raphayet must have made this money, but still allows him to marry her daughter, seeing in him an opportunity to make a better life for her family. The drug business grows for several years, until Raphayet’s friend and business partner gets too involved in the business dealings, people die, and the entire exercise escalates out of control. And it all worsens over time, as people involved in the operation are poisoned by the power that this lifestyle creates and start to feel an entitlement to whatever they desire.<br />
What really worked for me about the film was the sense of the clash between film genre and cultural traditions. The film is filled with sequences that should feel like clichés, with moments we’ve all seen a million times, but there's an energy and freshness that comes from this utterly original context. So there’s the scene where there’s a tense standoff and everyone is pointing a gun at everyone else; there’s the moment that seems to happen in every crime drama where one character sneaks up on another character while he’s having sex; there are characters who forcefully remind you of previous film characters, like the hot-headed curly-haired blonde who had me seeing him as a more-detestable Sonny Corleone. But they exist in this world of highly structured rules and traditions, and the way the film explores that tension is really fascinating. The term “alijura”, meaning outsider, is used frequently – right from the start when Raphayet is condemned for being such an alijura that he doesn’t know the correct way to deliver a dowry. But you get the strong sense that these traditions don’t just exist for the sake of it; these are rules and patterns of behaviour that have developed over time as a result of situations that have gone badly in the past and in an attempt to stop them from occurring again. So, for instance, there are very strong rules about how communication is to be carried between parties in conflict, with messages being taken by the Word Messenger, and there are careful rules about how this person is to be treated, and when the family finds themselves dealing with someone who doesn’t respect these traditions, the situation inevitably escalates. But there’s a very clear sense that the decision to hold to the traditions is seriously damaging to them; in a world where the enemy is not bound by these rules you cannot follow those rules yourself because that will put you at a disadvantage - but that just means abandoning the very lifestyle that they’re trying to preserve.<br />
That merging of the crime drama and the tribal tradition tale is done really quite expertly, with the characters moving constantly between the desert-hut life that their people have lived for hundreds of years and a more modern lifestyle. It’s weird to see this drug-dealer walking around wearing sunglasses and western shirts, and then they’ll cut to a full-body shot and you’re reminded that this guy is walking around in a traditional skirt that is little more than a loincloth. There’s a surprising amount of focus given to necklaces, but we learn that in their traditions these necklaces will be used to offer protection, so even as the characters are dealing drugs and smashing their way into “graves” to recover the hidden stashes of weapons, the family matriarch will be holding onto necklaces that keep her family from harm. And it seems weird to think about the opening coming-of-age-ceremony sequence, complete with the traditional dance, which feels exactly like life has been for these people for generations, and reflect that this is the same film that culminates with a gang of people with machine guns and a bazooka firing on a crime lord’s house. As Raphayet takes power, he moves his family away from the desert-hut they’ve always had and moves them into a mansion – a stark white multi-tiered blocky modernist mansion that exists in the middle of the desert without any sign of life for miles around (the sight of that mansion is so bizarre that it got a laugh from the audience the first time we saw it) – but then the film keeps coming back to these meditative images of the bizarre-looking legs of birds just wandering around the mansion like they would wander around any other tribal village.<br />
There’s a fairly well-executed line of condemnation in the film against the west and its international interventions, a pet theme of the directors. The entire film only starts because the US Peace Corps have come to Colombia, supposedly to stop communism, but in practice mainly with a focus on just trying to get high and get laid; it’s never heavy-handed or commented on, and the American characters disappear pretty quickly from the film, but as the pile of bodies builds up, you’re always aware that these people would never have died had the Americans not come to this country and disrupted their traditions with their better ways.<br />
I really did have a lot of fun at <i>Birds of Passage</i>. While it’s not quite up to the level of <i>Embrace of the Serpent</i>, an earlier film from the same creative team that was one of the highlights from last year’s Film Society schedule, it is a very strong film. It does require some patience, but in return it offers some great rewards.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHs6PcpcHlS28FDaEo8yIP2bGJbccK2mptRSLy2y1VqpD3hcTvfmanBFUrLRRJGHw-tbawiBK73WnQRyYOW0B8FbgNnBwR38-wtlmwgIND_l5eJbM_bs2GY5Az98F7POq9tD-u3VlqT51v/s1600/american_animals.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHs6PcpcHlS28FDaEo8yIP2bGJbccK2mptRSLy2y1VqpD3hcTvfmanBFUrLRRJGHw-tbawiBK73WnQRyYOW0B8FbgNnBwR38-wtlmwgIND_l5eJbM_bs2GY5Az98F7POq9tD-u3VlqT51v/s400/american_animals.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
<b><i>American Animals</i></b><br />
I had really enjoyed Bart Layton’s earlier film <i>The Imposter</i>, a fascinating documentary that skillfully intermixed documentary material with narrative filmmaking that went beyond mere recreation. In <i>American Animals</i>, Layton flips the approach – it’s now undeniably a narrative film, with recognisable actors in the lead roles, but interspersed throughout the film are appearances by the actual people who were involved in the story, commenting on events and offering their own memories of what went on.<br />
The film is about university students Spencer and Warren, played by Barry Keoghan and Evan Peters. Spencer, an art student, feels frustrated that his life has been too easy, that he hasn’t had the trials to give his art meaning, while Warren is just a bored student on an athletic scholarship who can’t be bothered going to practice. But one day Spencer discovers the university library’s rare book collection, with one book in particular worth $12 million, all being guarded over only by one older librarian (Ann Dowd). And so they begin to plan the perfect heist, which requires bringing in a couple of other friends into the scheme. Given that the film features the real people openly talking about the events, you can guess how well their perfect heist actually goes.<br />
The film has a lot of fun with the fantasy of the heist as opposed to the reality. We’ve all watched crime films and imagined how we would pull off the perfect heist, but the problem is that what seems simple and easy in our imagination is incredibly hard and imperfect in reality. What I found particularly amusing was how, because there’s really no real place you can go or information on how to plan a heist, they find themselves studying the great heist movies – <i>The Killing</i> and <i>Reservoir Dogs </i>being the two most prominently featured examples, which is interesting because as I remember it, neither of those films’ heists ultimately succeed. And then you get to the actual practicalities of the heist, and particularly the need to subdue the librarian. Early in the film, we see the suave cool movie version of the scene, where the librarian is tasered and instantly collapses unharmed, the heist is pulled off with expert timing, and it all plays out with Elvis on the soundtrack. And even though most of the participants refuse to take part on the actual incapacitation of the librarian, because they all deep down know it won’t be as simple or as painless as they imagine, they nevertheless rely on that fantasy version to justify their involvement. And when the actual robbery comes, and they are forced to deal with the practicality of the event, it’s not easy, it’s not painless, and even though it’s a comparatively mild moment of violence by movie standards, it’s still shocking and horrifying and deeply, deeply traumatising for the woman being attacked. (The real librarian really only appears at the end of the film, which I did appreciate; we get to hear her viewpoint about the kids who planned this all out, but the film relies on its filmmaking to communicate the terror of the experience, without forcing her to relive the experience - incidentally, there's a really interesting interview with the real librarian <a href="https://amp.kentucky.com/entertainment/movies-news-reviews/article212454259.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)<br />
And even after they've dealt with the librarian, they still need to pull off the rest of the heist. And Layton displays some impressive cinematic technique, making the heist thrilling and suspenseful, even as we know exactly how it's all going to end. And we can see how it's all going to end, because we can see them making the exact same mistakes that we all know to avoid making and that we would certainly never make were we in that position. Because we would be better at this than these idiots.<br />
One thing I really appreciated was how the film focused on the difficulty in trying to deal with stolen goods once they've been taken. You can't just take a $12m stolen book to a fence and get them to connect you with a buyer; you need to be able to provide proof of the authenticity of the book, and that comes from reputable organisations who don't deal in stolen goods. And so you get our leads trying to put in place measures to delay the reporting of the theft of the books so that they can have time to get the books to Christie's to get them appraised before anyone realises the books are stolen - and this becomes another source of tension. It's something that I don't remember ever seeing a film deal with before; it feels particularly unique to this film. And it is thrilling.<br />
As with his earlier film, there’s a strong sense of the unreliability of the story being told. So there are points in the story where we find ourselves watching a scene, and the actual people will disagree about the details – who brought up this idea, or where they were when they had a conversation, or what that person looked like or might have been wearing – and the film will change itself to reflect these differences of memory. Layton does a nice job in balancing that approach, recognising the moments where it’s safe to throw a bit of unreliability into the story in order that it colours the rest of the film without ever being overbearing about it.<br />
That said, one problem I do have with Layton’s work is that he often seems to want to throw odd twists into the tale right at the end of the movie. It happened in <i>The Imposter</i>, with a late-in-the-film suggestion about a possible murder for which there is no real evidence. And it happens here, with the real Spencer casting doubt on whether Warren actually did something that he tells us he did, and that we watched him do in the narrative. While it’s another instance of the unreliable narrator that drives the film, it also didn’t seem to add anything of substance to the film, and I personally found the suggestion that Warren didn’t do this thing unconvincing, if only because I don’t believe his actions if he didn’t do this thing – and besides, as with <i>The Imposter</i>, there’s no actual reason to think that he didn’t do it.<br />
Still, <i>American Animals</i> is a fun film and worth seeking out.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZY45PHCbKUORLKQK918AYmAhMT2jy7V9u6wOHmnJZj1laT9Xy0aEfVih4iJV31FUlz1aZjpUtPIKzsxEw62Yn7xs-fk_DeLhnhTC3IRctXXa4g5BrcvNdf2-xkOLD5WnSDp6lbmXOJbci/s1600/cleaners.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="724" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZY45PHCbKUORLKQK918AYmAhMT2jy7V9u6wOHmnJZj1laT9Xy0aEfVih4iJV31FUlz1aZjpUtPIKzsxEw62Yn7xs-fk_DeLhnhTC3IRctXXa4g5BrcvNdf2-xkOLD5WnSDp6lbmXOJbci/s400/cleaners.jpeg" width="282" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Cleaners</i></b><br />
A fascinating documentary, <i>The Cleaners</i> initially starts out focusing on the people in Manila working for a company contracted to clean social media feeds of disturbing and offensive videos and photos. They have to meet a target of 25,000 images checked a day, which works out to one photo a second for seven straight hours, which is insane. They have to make calls based on strict criteria with little leeway, so for instance the famous photo of the napalm girl during the Vietnam war is deleted because, even though it's an important and known historical record, it features a minor girl and it features genitals and so therefore it has to be removed. The cleaners talk about the mental anguish that it inflicts on them, whether it be the images of children being sexually abused that linger in their minds, or the live streams of people committing suicide that they have to watch. There's one person who has seen so many videos of beheadings that he can look at a photograph of a beheaded person and identify the type of blade that was used to kill the victim.<br />
And so that is a really fascinating film. Trying to make an instant decision about the offensiveness or acceptability of this image or that video with the knowledge that you're only allowed to make three mistakes a month puts the staff under incredible pressure. And it doesn't seem as though the companies have much in the way of support to help their hundreds of staff deal with the horrors that they are looking at on a daily basis. There's a clear indication that the reason this is all done in places like the Philippines is because it's cheap; you can get hundreds of people who are so desperate for any work that they will take a job for low pay that involves hours and hours of looking at the worst that humanity can do to itself. And there are some fascinating discussions about what should and should not be allowed to be available online. For instance, we hear from one former Google executive who discusses a couple of videos of the hanging of Saddam Hussein that were leaked onto YouTube shortly after his death, and how she personally had to make the call about whether to let the videos stay on the site or not. In the end she decided to let the video of the actual execution stay up for historical significance, but she decided to take down a video of the body after death because it felt gratuitous, but at the same time she admits that she doesn't know if she made the right choice or not.<br />
But at the same time the film goes much wider than just the people having to make these instant decisions. So while we watch them trying to assess whether or not a painting of a naked Donald Trump or a photo of a drowned refugee child is offensive and contravenes their rules, we also meet the people who generated those images and discuss hear from them what impact those choices have. We see the photographer painstakingly removing dead children from photographs leaving just a blank white space as a protest against Facebook's censorship. We meet the people trying to report news about the horrors being done in conflict zones struggling to keep essential information available, having to save every video they find as soon as it's uploaded because there's no way to know whether it will be available in an hour's time. And we hear their frustration when they come up against censorship by people who don't fully understand the cultural context of content. And all that is really fascinating.<br />
The problem is that the film starts to go a little too broad. In particular, in the last third, it starts to look at the wider social environment and how polarised politics has become, and condemns the social media companies for creating a world where this has been facilitated, where people can create their own bubbles and never be challenged with other viewpoints. And that's a very valid criticism, but it is a much wider issue than this film was previously dealing with. These are all matters that could be or should be discussed in more depth then at the tail end of a documentary. At the same time, I think it's something that we all fundamentally know and recognise, and so it doesn't feel as much of a revelation as I think the filmmakers think it might be, whereas the information about the work of the cleaners was genuinely interesting and unexpected. I think the film really needed to keep its focus on their work, and leave the wider commentary about the broader impact of social media for another documentary. Still it was an excellent film, hard to watch at times, but I would recommend it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoEXCYgbT448OLGGDWSaDyiyLPo455wsPS4alEWXoTc0HCnCgt8FAfaKO-t9lzJhWm_MsKzAluY2pmAgEigq28qxTrTXYTQ_XnDcDAS41AIdbGlZYg_i13XwS8L8Gu-0BScUHP8enM_2Qu/s1600/monterey-pop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoEXCYgbT448OLGGDWSaDyiyLPo455wsPS4alEWXoTc0HCnCgt8FAfaKO-t9lzJhWm_MsKzAluY2pmAgEigq28qxTrTXYTQ_XnDcDAS41AIdbGlZYg_i13XwS8L8Gu-0BScUHP8enM_2Qu/s400/monterey-pop.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<b><i>Monterey Pop</i></b><br />
So that Jimi Hendrix really knows how to play guitar.<br />
For what it is, <i>Monterey Pop</i> is extremely entertaining. Legendary documentary filmmaker D A Pennebaker set out to capture the three-day Monterey International Pop Music Festival in 1967. And it seems like it was a fantastic concert, with some of the most important artists from the late 60s giving legendary performances. One of the challenges that I have watching the film is that I'm really not a music person, so with many of the performances I often wouldn't know who I was listening to, even when they were singing a song I know. I found myself being appreciative of those artists who would project their names on the background or who would have their band name on the drum kit, just because it would let me know whose work I was enjoying. But the performances were often quite extraordinary. Janis Joplin sings this powerhouse song that astonished me. Otis Redding has a clear playful delight enjoying the event that is just joyous. The Who give great power to their performance of My Generation, and the performance-ending guitar-smashing lends the set an air of being genuinely out-of-control. I really enjoyed Hendrix’s work playing “Wild Thing”, although I was less convinced by his decision to light the guitar on fire; it was a stunt that felt like a transparent attempt to outdo the Who’s destruction, but it felt pre-planned (if only because of the need for lighter fluid) in a way The Who did not. I don't think I've ever seen Ravi Shankar actually play before but his extended sitar performance at the end of the film is just one of the most stunning and exhausting pieces of music that I have ever seen. Not every song was great - as a Simon and Garfunkel fan, I was disappointed that their only song was Feelin’ Groovy, which is a song I enjoy but that does feel somewhat hollow when compared to the blindingly great work being done by the other artists. Surely Simon and Garfunkel must have had something better in their setlist for Pennebaker to include. But that’s what happens when you have to select one song to represent an artist.<br />
But that leads me on to my main problem with the film - it's just too damned short. The film is inevitably going to be compared with <i>Woodstock</i>, which I finally saw a couple of years ago when it screened as part of the film festival's Autumn Events. <i>Woodstock</i> is a very long film, possibly too long at over 3 1/2 hours. But it does give you a genuine sense of having been at that festival. It has the time to let the performances breathe, with multiple songs allowing the artists to build their shows, even in the abridged sets we got. And you also got time just dwelling in the atmosphere of being at Woodstock. The problem with <i>Monterey Pop</i> is that it's only 80 minutes long, which means almost all of the performers get just one song to represent their work, with no time for their shows to develop. And there's also no sense of the wider context of the festival; I found myself needing to look it up on Wikipedia just to discover what the event actually was. You get the odd little scene, like the girl we meet wiping down the seats in preparation for the show. But there's never any real sense of what it's like to be there. There's also some weirdness around the editing of the show. It would frequently cut between daytime and night-time in a way that felt almost erratic. You never really know when you are in the context of the show. It was made even worse towards the end of the film, when they bring in footage of The Mamas and the Papas performing a second song that seemed pretty clearly from the same set that opened the film, so you were left wondering "why is this here, why put this song now at this point in the film?".<br />
Still it's a very fun film for what it is, and watching it on the big screen with a full cinema sound system is just a great experience. Thoroughly enjoyed it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFIGiy_34WFOCOqicLgoMIDuVUqd9Kbz1-DJzp5GFAmoVhLMmWl_MvbkujspadhHXsNKs2miaGcFOy6iY_KwRCsq1vXqLdpi5gaSpJkS_ZQqRughktEGQkAzhApQREFpVuUSpdv1ZQNHFL/s1600/kindergarten_teacher.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="521" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFIGiy_34WFOCOqicLgoMIDuVUqd9Kbz1-DJzp5GFAmoVhLMmWl_MvbkujspadhHXsNKs2miaGcFOy6iY_KwRCsq1vXqLdpi5gaSpJkS_ZQqRughktEGQkAzhApQREFpVuUSpdv1ZQNHFL/s400/kindergarten_teacher.jpg" width="275" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Kindergarten Teacher</i></b><br />
A film that starts out seemingly as a character drama and that only slowly reveals himself to be a low-level thriller. Maggie Gyllenhaal stars as Lisa, a kindergarten teacher and aspiring poet who can see that her artistic ambitions will never be realised. One day she sees one of her students, a boy named Jimmy, start pacing up and down, almost in a trance, while he starts writing out loud a poem far more advanced than should be expected from a boy of 5 years old. Believing him to be a child prodigy, she decides to take the boy under her wing and nurture his talent. But her motivations seemed shaded, particularly after she decides to present one of the boy’s poems as her own work in her poetry class.<br />
It's quite a fascinating film. There's a moment where someone tells Lisa that she's not an artist, she's a dilettante, she's an art appreciator. And so she finds herself recognising the talents of this young boy, and out of a frustration that these talents will be lost she finds herself driven to extremes to try to nurture him. Trying to help people understand the level of this child’s prodigious talent, she frequently compares him to Mozart, and in a strange way, that led me to reflect on the film <i>Amadeus</i>, with Gyllenhaal almost as a reverse-Salieri. She seemed almost cursed with enough understanding to recognise her own lack of talent, and the ability to appreciate the clear talents of the boy before her - the difference obviously being that she tries to nurture the talents in the boy, rather than actively destroy it as that film’s Salieri did, but there’s not a lot of difference in the end result. Lisa seems almost helpless in the face of this genius; at every point when she's faced with a choice, she always seems to choose the wrong path, as though she's being driven by her determination to capture this child’s work almost to her own destruction. As an audience member, you’re sitting there yelling at her “Don’t give the child your personal phone number; don’t sneak off with the kid; don’t do this; don’t do that; it will be bad for you”, and yet we could understand her motivation, even as she takes actions that will certainly wind up suppressing and destroying this talent she loves.<br />
Maggie Gyllenhaal is just a heart-breaking figure here; her sadness at her inability to live up to her own artistic ambitions, her frustration at her family’s failure to make use of their own abilities, pour out single-mindedly onto this young child. In the hands of a different actress the character would be an actual villain, but she manages to retain an incredible sympathy even as she does take terrible steps; there’s a moment where she makes one final choice, and there were audible gasps in the audience as we realised that she had just passed the point of no return, and from that point the film was just filled with unbearable tension as we were waiting for the ultimate outcome. And yet even as that outcome arrived, we wanted the best for her; at the end of the film she just has one small request, one tiny thing that will allow her to try to recapture some small amount of dignity, and it’s unbearably tragic.<br />
My one frustration with the film is with the believability of the poetry. I entirely recognise that there are child prodigies in the word, but I question the believability of this child being such a prodigy at poetry. Poetry is such a specific talent, and is so reliant on a tool like language that we use every day, and the poems he’s writing seem almost too advanced given the way he speaks when he’s not writing a poem. It’s not something like music that draws on talents that otherwise aren't easily seen in everyday life and where you could easily lose a prodigy if he’s not nurtured; I feel that if a child had this talent it would bleed out into the way he communicates normally, and I didn’t feel that. In fact, I sent much of the film waiting for the reveal that the child wasn’t writing poems and was actually reciting some obscure poems that his uncle had been reading to him, and was surprised when that reveal never came. But I was willing to put that quibble aside, because I otherwise did find the film to be incredibly strong.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS4v6Di5NKLuNaKBm3BF8ySvjwyA1IhK2ObKD4trlmWEPq8UXnWEZB2_KH1jO9-2S9T_kaCERL3NzD-RNA9yq3hLVgUNNdLhL4sYjZNXsm1YKDqYMOLbbMboIynxF4AdOiuW13v4JPxVTp/s1600/you_were_never_really_here.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS4v6Di5NKLuNaKBm3BF8ySvjwyA1IhK2ObKD4trlmWEPq8UXnWEZB2_KH1jO9-2S9T_kaCERL3NzD-RNA9yq3hLVgUNNdLhL4sYjZNXsm1YKDqYMOLbbMboIynxF4AdOiuW13v4JPxVTp/s400/you_were_never_really_here.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
<b><i>You Were Never Really Here</i></b><br />
I've really liked everything I've seen so far in the festival, but this is the first film that I absolutely adored. Essentially a contemplative and meditative take on films like <i>Taken</i> or <i>John Wick</i>, with a little bit of <i>Taxi Driver</i>, the film stars Joaquin Phoenix as Joe, an ex-special forces veteran who specialises in recovering missing people. Hired by a senator to save his daughter from a brothel for underage girls, the rescue initially seems as though it should be fairly straightforward until he discovers that there are larger forces behind the sex trafficking operation.<br />
I really need to dig into the work of director Lynne Ramsay – I’ve previously only seen <i>We Need To Talk About Kevin</i>, which was excellent, and her work here is similarly astonishing. Her scenes are fragmentary, often sparsely written, with only the bare minimum dialogue needed to move the story forward. And there’s a strange beauty to the way she shoots her moments; she’ll often work in close-up – not close-ups of a character’s face, like most films would employ, but close-ups of some other detail that would usually go unobserved. There’s a great moment of a jelly bean being crushed where you can feel Ramsay just zeroing in on that one thing and delighting in every little change as the sweet is transformed. Meanwhile there's a bizarre, heightened, almost fantastical element to the film that often left us somewhat disoriented. Her approach that makes the climax fascinating as we suddenly find ourselves behind the action, knowing that there are things that we haven’t been shown and trying to work out why we weren’t shown these things, all the while trying to catch up and find out what is really going on. Ramsay also employs some fun techniques to filming the action, with one particularly memorable action sequence playing out over black-and-white surveillance cameras in a manner that effectively communicates both Joe’s skills in fighting and killing people but also his experience in these types of situations and his absolute understanding about how to work around the cameras to preserve his identity. Her approach to the action is skilled, but the violence is rough and nasty, without the sheen or the fun of a <i>John Wick</i>. He’s not running around like some expert taking people down with headshot after headshot; his weapon of choice is a ball-peen hammer, which means he has to fight in close quarters, bludgeoning people to death, almost as a way of getting out his anger and frustration with the world.<br />
Joaquin Phoenix is just extraordinary here. It's a tragic and mournful performance; he’s a person who is haunted by memories of witnessing his mother being abused by her husband, of witnessing children being murdered while on patrol, by just the total horrors that he's encountered throughout his life, unable to shut out the world, and so he spends the entire film constantly on the verge of suicide, kept alive only by his need to care for his mother (I loved their relationship) and a need to protect the helpless in order to make the world right.<br />
I also appreciated the sense of genuine trauma that seems to run through the film. Joe’s suffering marks every moment of Phoenix’s performance, but he’s easily matched by the traumatised girl Nina. Usually with films of this nature, there's a sense that all the person being rescued needs is just to be picked up and taken away from this situation and everything will be okay, but Ekaterina Samsonov’s performance makes clear just how damaged this young girl is from the experiences she has endured, and if she is able to make it out of the end of the film there is no doubt that she will be dealing with this for the rest of her life.<br />
It feels weird to be praising a Jonny Greenwood score that wasn’t written for Paul Thomas Anderson, since for me the two are so intertwined as collaborators, but I see that the last time Greenwood composed a score that wasn’t for PTA it was to accompany We Need To Talk About Kevin, so it makes sense that Ramsay would return to his work. His work here is harsh and insistent and jarring, it never fades away but sets you on edge and demands that you hear it. It’s not music I would ever just sit down and listen to for fun, but it matches so perfectly with the film that I cannot imagine the one without the other.<br />
It’s a stellar film, a marvellous cinematic experience. It’s intense and exhausting and horrific and not fun, but I adored it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdKRxJH875xoWOucpnTMmTDvIMmV0oxiFJMZPn2x45YdZRLX3iPMqB6B83W32RE7EzzAsaloeVZHmagoRu9QAne8a_Jf4P1-XdYwkT0zpz9_kYHb_knH7Ec6onUnckuK3jkc3cFYQIvH4d/s1600/green-fog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdKRxJH875xoWOucpnTMmTDvIMmV0oxiFJMZPn2x45YdZRLX3iPMqB6B83W32RE7EzzAsaloeVZHmagoRu9QAne8a_Jf4P1-XdYwkT0zpz9_kYHb_knH7Ec6onUnckuK3jkc3cFYQIvH4d/s400/green-fog.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Green Fog</i></b><br />
I've never seen any Guy Maddin films before, so the opportunity to see his new film <i>The Green Fog</i>, which he made with Evan and Galen Johnson, was a particular excitement for me. It's not a film that would have wide appeal at all, if only because there is no plot, little dialogue, no characters, pretty much nothing conventional for you to hold onto. The only way I can see this film appealing to anyone is if they know Alfred Hitchcock's <i>Vertigo</i> intimately - you couldn't just have seen it once or twice, you need to know its every beat, every moment, every location. But if that's you then the film works incredibly well. Fortunately, <i>Vertigo</i> is my favourite film and so <i>The Green Fog</i> was exactly right for me.<br />
The film is essentially a compilation of clips from dozens of movies, TV shows, even music videos, that have been shot in San Francisco, all pieced together to form a type of remix of <i>Vertigo</i>. So the film opens with scenes of people climbing fire escape ladders, scenes of various chases across rooftops, scenes of people falling from rooftops, all echoing <i>Vertigo</i>'s famous opening sequence. From there it moves on scene-by-scene throughout the rest of the film. So when Scotty was following Madeline, we get extended sequences of various cars driving around the San Francisco streets, we get people going into flower shops or churches or looking at paintings, much as Scotty and Madeline did. But the connections are not always entirely straight-forward or obvious; the sequences of Judy's transformation, for instance, are represented just as much by people renovating their houses as they are trying to change their personal appearance.<br />
There's a real wit at times to the way the editing works. We open with the famous opening shot of <i>Vertigo</i>, with the horizontal bar of the fire escape ladder, but instead of a figure immediately climbing over it, we cut repeatedly between that shot and a scene of a person slowly trying to clamber up a fire escape, while we all wait in anticipation at the top of the building. The sequence representing Scotty's mid-film catatonic state is composed almost entirely of footage of a young clean-shaven blank-faced Chuck Norris, which once we realised what was happening was hilarious. And the climactic moment where Scotty has his sudden realisation is represented by Donald Sutherland's final moment in <i>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</i>, which caused much laughter in the audience.<br />
But what was it all in aid of? I'm not entirely certain. I think to a large degree it's a celebration of the city of San Francisco, its incredible cinematic beauty, and its long history as a movie location. I think it offers an interesting point of view about cinema as an art form - you see moments pieced together where you can tell that some are just generic and workmanlike and uninspired, while other moments feel dynamic and thrilling and inventive, even when they're trying to achieve the exact same thing, and that contrast is fascinating to see. It's interesting to watch some of these performances being stripped of the dialogue, so that you can see the way some actors really do make use of all of their acting skills to communicate with the audience, while others seem rather blank-faced when they lose their vocal work. But ultimately I'm not sure what else I should be taking from it. I'm excited to go in search of some interviews with Maddin and see what he has had to say. In the meantime, I really enjoyed this film, even if I wouldn't expect anyone else to.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuB3tjOmGDJcn5mlKUSxMZM1XQ2Mpz2X5xM_j_iTqlpY2ph159pgJwwJjNbx-gopW7IhTCDqdSO_V0IkmfuuIxGE9fd3Gbzgs-x0OMCd_nh9tpvZVnc0QYTlKx4psy3DT9t6z81wXYT7EC/s1600/mirai.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="991" data-original-width="700" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuB3tjOmGDJcn5mlKUSxMZM1XQ2Mpz2X5xM_j_iTqlpY2ph159pgJwwJjNbx-gopW7IhTCDqdSO_V0IkmfuuIxGE9fd3Gbzgs-x0OMCd_nh9tpvZVnc0QYTlKx4psy3DT9t6z81wXYT7EC/s400/mirai.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<b><i>Mirai</i></b><br />
A delightful and sweetly observed anime film that centres on a young child, Kun, after his mother returns from hospital with his new sister Mirai. Initially resentful of the baby, he's visited by the human-form spirit of his dog, the former prince of the house who complains about how he's been ignored since Kun was born. He's visited by Mirai from the future, a teenage girl who tasks him with a mission to ensure she isn't cursed to remain a spinster. Angry after being forced to tidy his toys, he encounters his mother as a young child and plays with her. After struggling to learn to ride a bike, his great-grandfather teaches him to ride horses and motorbikes. And after declaring his intention to run away from home, he finds himself going on a spectacular tour of his family's history and their future.<br />
Quite without realising it, I seem to have become a bit of a fan of Mamoru Hosoda. After hearing his credits mentioned during the pre-film introduction, I suddenly realised how many of his films I had enjoyed without ever putting them together as the work of a single artist - <i>The Girl Who Leapt Through Time</i>, <i>Wolf Children</i>, <i>The Boy and the Beast</i>, all utterly charming and delightful films. <i>Mirai</i> is a film that sits well with those titles. There’s a keen observation to the work, and an honesty to its approach that undercuts its sweetness. Kun is not an especially likable child; he’s a 4-year-old who is tiresome and demanding, and the way he vacillates between loving this newborn child and being intensely resentful of it felt very honest and real to me – there’s a fantastic scene where he starts out reading Mirai a story, but then it morphs into the train-mad Kun showing the baby all his toy trains, explaining which lines each different model serves, before ultimately getting so annoyed at the baby that he starts hitting her with a train.<br />
One thing I appreciated was the film’s decision to not tie itself down about the reality or otherwise of the magical sequences. There’s a wonderful fantastical element to the sequences, which are beautifully animated, often with a watercolour style or intense stylisation that really sets those moments apart from the rest of the film. There’s an unexpected darkness to some of these fantasy moments as well, with one moment in particular (where Kun finds himself trapped on a bullet train straight out of your nightmares) proving to be surprisingly disturbing. (The main child in the film might be 4 years old, but I wouldn’t let a 4-year-old watch the film, solely because of this sequence.) But the film never declares whether this is really happening or is just part of his playtime imaginings, and there are good reasons to argue in either direction. What matters is the emotional journey that they represent, and I really did find that story believable and compelling. The thing I particularly liked was its honesty towards his relationship with his sister and how this was shaped by these fantastical visitations; while his affection for her does develop after he encounters Mirai of the future, he does take time to really connect this annoying little baby with the mature teenager he encounters, without the kind of easy instant change many movies resort to, and the emotional climax of the film revolves around him being willing to accept her existence as part of her family.<br />
In the family-film anime world, Studio Ghibli obviously dominates for good reason, but this was a nice reminder that there is great work being done beyond that environment. <i>Mirai</i> is a wonderful film, sweet without being saccharine, and well worth seeking out.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio2rxSnLbJoAwOxSLJWOXq9HZEG9-lNU3liDDNqBJqefgUPi0WKqRjcT4wU2aECMey4Vkh8gfKzWEwJFygtpPUcmYxpgvcYQKdvvPMKP6GFBMaHVdLIYGMyJfDyNJOB_7i2f5TMXw27fx_/s1600/leave_no_trace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio2rxSnLbJoAwOxSLJWOXq9HZEG9-lNU3liDDNqBJqefgUPi0WKqRjcT4wU2aECMey4Vkh8gfKzWEwJFygtpPUcmYxpgvcYQKdvvPMKP6GFBMaHVdLIYGMyJfDyNJOB_7i2f5TMXw27fx_/s400/leave_no_trace.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
<b><i>Leave No Trace</i></b><br />
<i>Winter's Bone</i> was my favourite film of 2010, an absolute masterpiece of suspense that starred a then-unknown Jennifer Lawrence. It was the film that really created her career; I remember when Lawrence was announced for <i>The Hunger Games</i> not long after seeing it, knowing she would be perfect for the role because there was so much similarity between Ree and Katniss. So it's depressing to realise that, while Lawrence has been a major movie star for nearly a decade, it has also taken that long for that film's director, Debra Granik, to give us a new narrative film.<br />
<i>Leave No Trace</i> opens with a young teenage girl, Tom, seemingly camping in the middle of the forest with her father, Will. But very quickly it becomes clear that these are not people out on a holiday for a few days - they have a garden, they’re well-stocked, they run drills on how to respond if anyone finds their campsite, and it's clear that they've been living out there for quite some time; they could very easily have been out there for years. But one day they're discovered, taken in, and offered a proper house and an opportunity for Will to work. Tom is quite excited about the possibility of having a regular life in a regular house, even if she is nervous about having to socialise with other kids. But Will chafes against the constraints of living in a house with modern comforts - his first response is to hide the television in the closet, he rejects the bed in favour of sleeping outside, and refuses to take a cell phone. And then one night, afraid that his reluctance to accept modern living might lead to them taking Tom away from him, he wakes her up and takes her out in to return to their old life alone.<br />
So this lived up to my every hope. I found the portrait of this father/daughter relationship utterly compelling, and ultimately heartbreaking. It’s clear that Will is a veteran suffering from PTSD and who genuinely cannot bear the thought of having to be around other people, and this infuses into Tom's life. She longs for a normal life, but she has taken on the burdens of a father who desperately needs to be alone, and so without realising it she's chosen to sacrifice the life that she needs because she has to support him. She holds to her father because for her home is where her father is, and she needs to learn to find her own place separate from him; this is not a story about a parent needing to let go of their child, but the child helping her father let her go. The relationship between Ben Foster and Thomason Harcourt McKenzie was absolutely convincing, with a natural intimacy and understanding between the two that felt real and lived in. McKenzie, a young New Zealand actor, has been the subject of significant praise, but this isn’t just a small country taking excessive pride in the success of one of our own; she is exceptional, giving a heartfelt and genuine performance while working closely with one of the most interesting character actors around.<br />
In the Q& A afterwards, Debra Granik commented how this is not a film that has an antagonist, it doesn't have a villain. It has a complete affection for all of its characters. It looks at the people who are pushed out to the margins and connects with them at an genuinely loving way, but it also looks with understanding on those people who are representatives of the system that they’re fighting because it knows that these are people who are desperately trying to do the right thing in the midst of an incredibly tough situation. It's just a story about people dealing with their own issues in their own way, and the burdens that are created when you have this deeply damaged person trying to care for another person in the best way that he knows how.<br />
One hallmark of both <i>Winter’s Bone</i> and <i>Leave No Trace</i> was the use of non-actors in smaller supporting roles, local natives who lend a sense of authenticity to the world, and as in that earlier film it worked really well. Often when filmmakers use real actors it can become something of a barrier in the film - people feel awkward and uncomfortable, giving stilted performances - but Granik seems to have a real talent for helping people feel natural and open on set. And that really reaps rewards; one of the best scenes in the film comes when Tom meets a beekeeper, and the resulting sequences of the beekeeper introducing Tom to these animals feel quite remarkable, simply because this was a real beekeeper introducing Tom to her own bees that she has a genuine connection to. In that moment, you’re not watching a bunch of actors act; you’re watching a real relationship being formed between people and creatures in a way that you could never achieve with a conventional cast.<br />
Much like <i>Winter’s Bone</i>, <i>Leave No Trace</i> will definitely be pretty damned high in my ranking of films from the year. It was a fantastic first weekend of the festival for me, with ten really good films and no bad ones, but this was easily the highlight.<br />
(Also, the film featured a scene where the characters prepared some fried mushrooms. They looked so good that I impulsively decided to make a late-night stop at the supermarket on my way home to buy some mushrooms and then fry them when I got home. This was literally the first time I have made fried mushrooms in my life.)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ8Fa3z9oaQEdr7_6AqQYtypIFSR-YNj3vJgN6kAmGnCoC2UG6sRZ9q6HsrOyjYECLwHffDzzqjMf_KQue6LvDUreQtGOttnSueq-i9PRGb8XVAYYdSnIpBhR0N8AKbKToD3FfzxWBVYCq/s1600/piercing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="512" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ8Fa3z9oaQEdr7_6AqQYtypIFSR-YNj3vJgN6kAmGnCoC2UG6sRZ9q6HsrOyjYECLwHffDzzqjMf_KQue6LvDUreQtGOttnSueq-i9PRGb8XVAYYdSnIpBhR0N8AKbKToD3FfzxWBVYCq/s400/piercing.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>
<b><i>Piercing</i></b><br />
So I'm definitely going to be judged for liking this one as much as I did.<br />
The movie has a pretty incredible opening, with a father holding an ice pick inches away from the face of his newborn baby; we're unsure if he's trying to convince himself to plunge the ice pick into its face, or convince himself not to. He eventually restrains himself but then, as he holds the baby, it looks at him and in a deep voice declares "You know what you need to do". And so the father makes plans to check into a hotel, hire a prostitute, and murder her; he has to do this, just to relieve this tension in him. Mia Wasikowska plays his planned victim, who turns out to have her own self-destructive tendencies that might make her more open to his intentions then he had intended or desired.<br />
This was a weirdly, disturbingly fun time. There is a creepy, dark relationship that develops between the two that was just an utter delight to watch. Wasikowska radiates with a kind of sinister innocence and nasty playfulness that leaves you constantly on the edge; you're never entirely certain where you should be with this character, but you're always excited to see where she will take the story. Meanwhile, Christopher Abbott, as the would-be killer, has to maintain a sense of genuine menace while also carrying much of the film's comedy; his scenes rehearsing all the post-killing steps he'll need to follow, or his absurd efforts to avoid leaving fingerprints in the hotel, or his disorientation as the situation goes out of his control, was a reliable source of laughter throughout the film. The twists and turns that took place, both in the characters' relationship and their actions towards each other, were just enthralling and exciting and horrifying and hilarious, but never dull, never boring, never ordinary. And the film had this eagerness and commitment to its premise that I found weirdly likeable; from very early on, I found myself shocked and pleased at how far the film was willing to go.<br />
One detail that I particularly enjoyed was the use of miniatures throughout the film. The film takes place in a city of high-rises that look unlike any high-rise has ever looked, and while there is some beautiful design work that went into these incredible miniatures, they are deliberately shot in a way that they never feel more than a foot tall. The film never attempts for realism, we're always supposed to be fully aware that this takes place inside an artificial reality, and in that context the artificially of the miniatures worked perfectly.<br />
I will admit that I’d found myself struggling to place the inspiration for the film; it was clearly drawing on some film tradition, but I wasn’t really able to place it. It wasn’t until the end credits when I noticed that half the music tracks were composed for films with Italian titles that I realised it must be drawing on the Italian giallo horror style. (Admittedly, giallo is a big blindspot for me; my sole experience with the genre is a single viewing of <i>Suspiria</i> a couple of years ago). As soon as I realised this, it made complete sense; the bright lurid colours, that beautiful retro setting (the 70s were probably the highpoint for giallo), the delight the film took in its exploitativeness and its bloodletting - to me as someone who really only knows giallo by reputation, these all felt like hallmarks of those films.<br />
This is not an important film, nor a deep film; it's just a film that, if you connect to it on its level, just wants to entertain. And I was entertained.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMvHV0uaof_c-bF-WjRzUJ1ouZxG7qMSwIA_1AQzbzm-RErlFsdz3yH2u2oBiIn0DElGwhF3ox0mpP1UOOz-dPCia_6NsGz9gjDHuw-sSHuz3q9HhQptUkE2lGRffYajkr5E75CMJTIeEi/s1600/bombshell_the_hedy_lamarr_story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMvHV0uaof_c-bF-WjRzUJ1ouZxG7qMSwIA_1AQzbzm-RErlFsdz3yH2u2oBiIn0DElGwhF3ox0mpP1UOOz-dPCia_6NsGz9gjDHuw-sSHuz3q9HhQptUkE2lGRffYajkr5E75CMJTIeEi/s400/bombshell_the_hedy_lamarr_story.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
<b><i>Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story</i></b><br />
I'm not really sure how familiar I was with Hedy Lamarr prior to seeing this documentary. To be honest, I don't think I've even seen any of her films. But I thought I knew the general overview of her story - how she was one of the great Hollywood beauties, and how it has only been in the last couple of decades that she's been recognised as one of the most significant inventors of the 20th century. But it turns out to be a much more incredible life than even that.<br />
She was born an Austrian Jew in Vienna, where from an early age her father inspired a love of machinery and science in her. After her incredible beauty developed as a teenager, she became a movie star in Austria, where she scandalised the world after starring in a film called <i>Ecstasy</i> which featured both a nude scene and a scene where she simulated an orgasm. Her first husband was a Jewish manufacturer producing munitions for the Nazis. After a late night escape for America, she became part of the MGM stable of stars. In her spare moments she would return to her trailer, which she had set up as a workshop for her inventing. During World War II, she worked with a composer friend to invent frequency hopping technology for guided missiles, where the radio signal jumps around between different frequencies to make them impossible to jam - the initial version of this technology relied on player piano rolls to track the frequency hopping, but today this technology is fundamental to WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth. When her career went into decline, she tried film producing at a time when actors didn't produce movies. After her career ended, she moved to Texas where she married an oil tycoon, one of the six short-lived marriages she had. She was an early adopter of plastic surgery, and apparently even applied her inventor mind to the surgery, suggesting ways of hiding the scarring that had never been tried before but are now commonplace. And then in her last years she became a recluse, seldom even letting family members come to see her. And although she apparently never saw a cent from the frequency hopping technology, in her final years she was finally recognised for her place as the inventor of a technology that has become vital to modern life.<br />
If I'm being honest, Bombshell isn't an especially great piece of documentary filmmaking. It's good, entirely serviceable, but not great. But then it doesn't need to be. Sometimes all you need from a documentary is for the filmmaker to simply step back, become invisible, and tell the story. And in this case, Hedy Lamarr's story is so unbelievably incredible that all you need is for her story to be told straight without excessive flourishes. You just find yourself hanging on to every moment of the film, wondering where on earth this story could possibly lead to next. The filmmakers were lucky enough to get access to the tapes of an extended telephone interview with Lamarr from about 10 years before her passing; even in her advanced age she retains a quickness of wit and a clear intelligence that makes her a compelling and fun figure to spend time with.<br />
When I saw how involved her family members were in the project, I was initially a little bit wary. Often in these types of projects, you get the sense that the family really wants to whitewash and preserve the reputation of their loved one. Fortunately this doesn't seem to have been the case with this film - it's much more honest about her shortcomings then I might otherwise have expected. They're upfront about her addiction to methamphetamine, at a time when use of such drugs was encouraged and the damage they cause was not yet appreciated. They're open about her career failures and how she contributed to these. And most notably they're honest about how hard she was to share a family with - there's a sad story about a young boy who was originally adopted by Lamarr and then was essentially abandoned after things didn't work out quite as expected, or the story about the granddaughter who only ever met her grandmother a couple of times and who was sent an autographed photograph from Lamarr's heyday, because Lamarr seemingly didn't seem to recognise her granddaughter wanted to know her, not the movie star. Most surprisingly, they even give voice to those who accuse her of stealing her most famous invention - it's an accusation that doesn't seem to really stick, motivated mostly out of a scepticism than a beautiful woman could also be smart, and Lamarr does seem today to be generally recognised as the co-inventor of frequency hopping, but just the film's willingness to admit that accusation is out there was surprising to me.<br />
It's an unexpectedly tragic story, a woman who was almost cursed by her good looks which led her to be judged and dismissed and never really seen is the person she really was. It's a fascinating and fun opportunity to appreciate this incredible woman. If you can get an opportunity to see the film, I wholeheartedly recommend it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5Mi_oOsBlWCgnAx5q42vVc0Fj0X7bzOMqtwEsKJeJdlZq1psOaFHNCkDfIly6AJx4eJhXyhd8tYbnMk1hnFqJLNXCfms4XeOiCpmzum65g0rXMcXW0mvN9sSevAMbkRLPfxVPZS17-EPf/s1600/rider.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5Mi_oOsBlWCgnAx5q42vVc0Fj0X7bzOMqtwEsKJeJdlZq1psOaFHNCkDfIly6AJx4eJhXyhd8tYbnMk1hnFqJLNXCfms4XeOiCpmzum65g0rXMcXW0mvN9sSevAMbkRLPfxVPZS17-EPf/s400/rider.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Rider</i></b><br />
Brady Blackburn is a minor celebrity on the rodeo circuit until one day when he's thrown off a broncing horse and suffers a near-fatal head injury. Unable to ride, he passes his time hanging out with his friends, being a big brother to his younger autistic sister, being in conflict with his father, and hoping against hope that he'll get to ride again. But it's a forlorn hope, as the doctor makes very clear that if he steps into the rodeo ring and gets on the back of a horse then he will die. And so he has to try to discover who he is outside of being a horse rider.<br />
The thing that’s really notable about the film is that it’s effectively a true story. Brady Jandreau, who plays Brady Blackburn, was a talented rodeo rider until nearly dying from a head injury caused by being stepped on by a horse. His injury prompted director Chloe Zhao, who knew Brady, to start filming this film shortly after. When the film opens with Brady prying bloodied medical staples out of his skull, that’s real, and doctors really have told him that he can never ride again. When we see Brady talking to his father Wayne, that’s his real father; that really is his sister Lilly, and she really is autistic. Those are his real friends he’s hanging out with, including his best friend Lane Scott, who was indeed a well-known rider until an accident paralysed him and left him unable to speak. (His heartbreaking scenes with Lane are probably the hardest scenes in the film to watch, simply because Lane serves almost as a symbol of just how bad Brady's injury could have been, and therefore how lucky he truly has been.)<br />
This is one of those films that's really grows in the mind. When I saw the film, I initially liked it, but it was probably my least favourite of all my films in the festival so far - honestly, it was a bit slow, and didn't fully grab me at the time. But over the past day since I saw it, I've found myself coming back to and thinking about the film, and the more I reflect on it, the more I find myself really liking it. It's not the most immediately dynamic movie, and there's a particularly mournful tone running through it, but it's also rich and contemplative. There's a fascinating consideration about what it means to be a man, particularly in this world that is built from the iconography of the cowboy and the western, and how Brady has to deal with the loss of the only thing he knows how to do. You'll get the sense there's really very little opportunity for people in this area of South Dakota, and Brady had a definite opportunity to build a good life for his family, so much of the film is focused on him trying to come to terms with that loss and with him trying to find it in himself to be willing to move on. There's an absolutely incredible extended sequence of Brady taking a wild horse and just slowly working with it, teaching it, earning its trust, until finally he has a tame horse. It's fascinating to watch the tenderness that develops in the relationship between man and horse, and how much work goes into developing that. I also really loved the cinematography, which is definitely playing with those Western sensibilities, capturing the way the light dances across these wide open fields. I was particularly glad to have had the chance to see this in a cinema, where you can just bask in the beauty of the image.<br />
My main frustration about the film comes back to the idea to do this as fiction. The parts of the film that I loved were the genuine moments, where Brady is just alone working the horses, or where he’s reflecting on the impact this injury has had on his life, or where he’s visiting with his injured friend Lane, or where he’s just being a brother playing around with his sister – moments that would probably play pretty much identically whether the film was fictional or not because they seem like genuine moments to begin with. The moments that didn’t work as well for me were the moments where people had to actually act – admittedly, Brady did seem to become more comfortable acting through the film, as would be expected for someone who is on screen in every scene of the film, but none of the other actors seem to have had enough practice or to have received the necessary support to ever seem at ease on screen, and it frequently took me out of the film. I found myself wishing they had made this as a documentary, capturing the truth of the best parts of the film without the distraction of people trying to pretend that they’re not in the room with a movie camera. But if you're willing to look past that, you'll find a beautiful and tender piece of filmmaking.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDuQTxvNyKjL9Ka8LAjbspKjdB6sYXfBrCIGPPRW2QpHewJiVBlOjoYUl7tF8BVbN9FMl-0HUVylscbBhySddU3vN0MeF37rttn61cESNB_FQO4yAeiGu0diKFF8ZddNuIWJpmcqI8lrY/s1600/woman_at_war.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="668" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDuQTxvNyKjL9Ka8LAjbspKjdB6sYXfBrCIGPPRW2QpHewJiVBlOjoYUl7tF8BVbN9FMl-0HUVylscbBhySddU3vN0MeF37rttn61cESNB_FQO4yAeiGu0diKFF8ZddNuIWJpmcqI8lrY/s400/woman_at_war.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
<b><i>Woman at War</i></b><br />
A likeable Icelandic comedy, <i>Woman At War</i> tells the story of Halla, a woman who, outraged at the impacts that globalisation and environmental destruction is having on her country, decides to wage her own form of eco-terrorism by attacking power pylons to cause them to short out. Her attacks are so successful that she provokes a nation-wide crisis and a massive investigation to find "the Mountain Woman". At the same time she's excited to learn that she's been accepted as an adoptive parent to a 4-year-old Ukrainian orphan.<br />
With the exception of one running joke, which I'll comment on shortly, much of the film relies on a fairly dry and dark sense of humour that I found extremely appealing. Lead actress Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir (thank you cut-and-paste) seems to be having an extreme amount of fun making fun of both self-righteous eco-terrorists convinced of their own moral superiority and of smug yoga teachers taking pride in their own self-actualisation. I was also pleased by how well the drama of the film worked without undercutting the comedy. There's a genuine sense of tension that builds around the hunt for the Mountain Woman that I was completely caught up in. The high point of the film is a fantastic extended sequence in which Halla finds herself running across the Icelandic countryside, after a particularly spectacular pylon attack, being hunted by drones, helicopters, and men with bloodhounds. It's an absolutely thrilling sequence, made even better by the fact that the Icelandic countryside is simply stunning and almost unlike any other location that I've ever seen. Even if there was nothing else in the film to like, it would be worth watching just to see the stark beauty of this country.<br />
The music for the movie is provided by a small three-piece band and a group of three female singers. I know this because, in a curious running joke that I'm not entirely certain I understand the point of, they decided to show the musicians on screen every time they play. I'm pretty sure I remember that same joke being done about 20 years ago in <i>There's Something About Mary</i>, so it's not exactly an original joke, but the audience did seem to find it very funny, laughing pretty much every time it happened. I just found it to be distracting. It reached the point where I couldn't simply be enveloped in the film because, even when we're watching a serious dramatic moment, every time I heard a note of music I would be waiting for the band to appear in some unexpected location. Sometimes you can see the band before the music starts and you find yourself distracted waiting for them to start playing. Often the film acts as though the band doesn't actually exist, and the characters can't see the people, but there are points where the characters do seem to actually see and respond to the band. And at other times the film decides to actually involves the band into the action - witness the moment Halla decides to turn the television off, and one of the band members actually picks up the remote and turns the television back on so she can continue watching. It's something of a baffling choice that I found extremely distracting and frequently took me out of the film, and I'm uncertain what they thought they were actually going to achieve with that gag.<br />
I was also somewhat bothered by the decision to give Halla an identical twin sister. I'm not complaining about the character herself, as she is very funny - it's always a reliable source of comedy to make fun of yoga teachers. But you don't casually include an identical twin character into a movie, especially when it means that visual effects are required to duplicate the actor - that's something you do when you need there to be someone who does look identical to your lead. And Halla's sister Asa is not well integrated into the film, really only getting a couple of scenes before the film's climax, so that her presence feels less like an essential element in the film, and more like the screenwriter wrote himself into a corner and grabbed the idea of an identical twin to get himself out of it. Which also unfortunately means that the conclusion of the film is rather predictable.<br />
Still it's a fun film, and I was very happy to see it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvJAVrnu2A1yRRzoJc1pgzzspyJ0qAkgNrLr7MUIUPPMoeeQsuBCEqCCalqjFk8tnY3Y1VFaifZLVX1IiwXLDQSkW9cD2yIJuelgcMF_54DNTw2ipeeN6maUZOUb3y5ttv-rFIB90HkGXv/s1600/angels_wear_white.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="990" data-original-width="660" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvJAVrnu2A1yRRzoJc1pgzzspyJ0qAkgNrLr7MUIUPPMoeeQsuBCEqCCalqjFk8tnY3Y1VFaifZLVX1IiwXLDQSkW9cD2yIJuelgcMF_54DNTw2ipeeN6maUZOUb3y5ttv-rFIB90HkGXv/s400/angels_wear_white.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
<b><i>Angels Wear White</i></b><br />
It was sad to see a fairly small crowd at the Embassy for the only festival screening of <i>Angels Wear White</i>, a quiet but compelling drama from China that really did deserve a larger audience. The story focuses on Mia, a young woman without identity papers working illegally in a seaside hotel. One evening she checks in an older man with two 12-year-olds into two separate rooms; feeling that something is wrong, she later notices the man in the hotel corridor pressuring the young girls, and uses her phone to video the surveillance video as the man forces his way into their hotel room. A few days later, Mia learns that the man has been accused of raping the two young girls, Wen and Xin, but the surveillance tapes are recorded over, and because there's no evidence that the man ever entered the girls’ hotel room he won’t be charged. Realising that she has the only evidence that will prove his guilt, and under the pressure of being an illegal in desperate need of money to get fake identity papers, she finds herself forced decide whether to use the video to further her own needs or to help the girls.<br />
It’s a fantastic film that explores Chinese attitudes to women, sexuality, and purity. There's the casual way the police conduct their investigations, allow the influence of the accused and the fact that the girls were probably asking for it to influence their investigation. There's the abusive boyfriend of Mia's work colleague, who suggests that there are "other ways" Mia could pay for the identity card, and who inquires into whether Mia is a virgin because "there are people who will pay for that". There's the fact that the rapist, Commissioner Liu, is the boss of Wen’s father, and had been made the girl’s godfather in an attempt to curry favour – the suggestion that he may have essentially prostituted out his daughter for career advancement is made but then left hanging. There's the scene in which we hear about an operation to "restore virginity". And in one of the best sequences in the film, there's the scene where Wen goes walking along the beach and finds herself running into multiple wedding photo shoots, the brides all in elaborate white dresses that for Wen forcefully remind her of her trauma.<br />
Wen Qi’s work as Mia is exceptional. She’s a character of extremely strong will and real determination, but in many ways that has led her into her current situation, where she is extremely vulnerable and susceptible to exploitation, and the way. But I also think attention needs to be given to the performance of Zhou Meijun as Wen, one of the two girls who becomes effectively the second lead. It's a very quiet performance that feels genuinely damaged and awkward, as though she is genuinely struggling to deal with a life-changing experience that she's not equipped to deal with, and all the while her mother is angrily (and violently) holding her responsible for her own victimhood.<br />
The movie open with footage of a massive statue that dominates the beachside recreating Marilyn Monroe in the <i>Seven-Year Itch</i> pose, her dress flying up around her. It's a disconcerting image to open with because, with a statue that large, if you're anywhere in the vicinity of the statue you’re almost forced into a position of looking up the statue’s dress. (Indeed, I think it’s only late in the film that we even see the statue’s face; while it’s obvious who it is, for much of the film the statue might as well only consist of legs, dress, and panties.) The film comes back to that statue repeatedly; over time we see the lower leg being damaged and defaced, until the final shot which is once again an upskirt shot of this statue. It’s a fairly heavy-handed metaphor in the film that feels very uncomfortable in a conscious and deliberate way, but it worked for me. The statue is clearly supposed to remind us of the medical exams that the girls go through to ascertain whether or not they were raped, or the virginity restoration operations. But I think we’re also supposed about Marilyn and the fact that this woman, who was a genuinely talented actress, is primarily remembered in our culture for this moment that unambiguously sexualises her, and ponder the attitudes to women that are reflected in a culture that would build a monument like that right next to a children’s playground.<br />
The only thing that disappointed me about the film was the fact that the film seemed to focus so much on Wen and her struggles that the second victim, Xin, almost feels like she gets lost in the mix. There's a point later in the film where we see Xin, and to be honest it almost disoriented me because I had kind of forgotten that she existed. Xin seems to exist in the film less to be a character in her own right, and more because they needed a second girl so that they could use her parents as a contrast – while Wen’s mother is enraged at her daughter for actions that contributed to the rape, Xin’s parents see these events as an opportunity to get the wealthy culprit to pay for Xin’s expensive schooling. It’s an fascinating element for the movie to explore, but it’s unfortunate that in doing so it did somewhat overlook one of the victims at the centre of the story.<br />
But this is a small quibble about a fantastic movie. If you can somehow find it, it is well worth watching.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW6JFBS_FFsnZHxebDMIWI1EWAY9yWJBjscM_n3F6C7n67hKDXYFv7WdXLo-JhXJzMPdLaDijU6v8U3cLGu1qJehYBa77A39rGPhQ1392HF7r8k_s4Dg5Qg15yz3jTD0D_gvCbq_f8cfpj/s1600/searching.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW6JFBS_FFsnZHxebDMIWI1EWAY9yWJBjscM_n3F6C7n67hKDXYFv7WdXLo-JhXJzMPdLaDijU6v8U3cLGu1qJehYBa77A39rGPhQ1392HF7r8k_s4Dg5Qg15yz3jTD0D_gvCbq_f8cfpj/s400/searching.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<b><i>Searching</i></b><br />
<i>Searching</i> is a compelling thriller about a father named David, played by John Cho, who conducts a desperate search after his daughter goes missing one day. The hook of the film is that it takes place entirely on David's computer screen - we watch him FaceTime with people, search the computer, search the Internet for any type of clue that would allow him to locate his daughter. It's a skilfully constructed thriller that effectively explores the degree to which our lives are lived online and through our devices, as well as examining the degree to which parents can easily become divorced from the lives of their children.<br />
It's not the first time that a film has approached its storytelling through the use of computer screens. A couple of years ago, there was an extremely effective horror film called <i>Unfriended</i> that similarly played out entirely over Skype, and I seem to remember hearing about an episode of <i>Modern Family</i> that used a very similar style. But it's still new enough that it feels fresh and original as a means of storytelling. It also means that they are still exploring the limitations of storytelling in this style. Think about this as essentially a new version of the found footage film - in the same way that found footage films need to find some excuse for people to be recording events when no person would stop to record them, there are points in <i>Searching</i> where the characters are doing things for no reason other than for them to be captured in the film. So for instance, David will often just leave the FaceTime video screen open even when he's not using it, just so that we can capture the video of him making phone calls. Similarly there are points where he watches news videos about events that he is already very well-informed about, just so the audience can get that information. But, for the most part, it works and is surprisingly effective in communicating information. Witness the opening sequence of the film, where we watch David creating a new user account on his Windows XP machine for his 5-year-old daughter and then, in the course of a few minutes of screen time, we're taken through 10 years of life, the joys and tragedies, until we brought completely up to date. It's a remarkably impressive sequence, that manages to elicit an unexpectedly emotional response from a few photos and internet searches and email subject lines. And this storytelling approach even opens up a few unexpected opportunities for humour of recognition - witness the audience's laughter when David has to access his long unused XP machine, and immediately gets a notification about it having been 2 years since his antivirus was last run.<br />
Once the mystery gets going, it's extremely compelling, with a wide variety of plausible suspects and red herrings for David to pursue. My one real disappointment is with the film's ultimate conclusion. I do think that the film plays fair with its audience - on reflection, I do recall various elements throughout the film that point to the ultimate conclusion, and I suspect if I go back and rewatch the film again, it will be much more obvious now that you know what you're looking out for. But it is a conclusion that relies on a particular actor giving a specific performance, and I'm not certain that the actor has the ability to effectively pull that off. But that's a small complaint in the context of a very good film.<br />
John Cho is an actor I've enjoyed before, but he gives one of his best performances here. It's an unforgiving filmmaking style, with so much of it by necessity being shot fully in close ups, and he needs to convince us with every concerned wrinkle just how desperate he is to find his daughter, and yet it also needs to feel utterly natural. His disorientation, his hurt and sense of betrayal, his shock at realising how little he understood about his daughter, are all given a wonderfully nuanced performance.<br />
It's an excellent film that makes a very strong case for its filmmaking style being, not just a noteworthy gimmick, but a legitimate approach to telling this story in the only way that it could be told. Extremely entertaining, and well worth seeing.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6AWMcWx8sAQsdSgIKalWZbwrLANYIqz5cNmExAJ6V1Nc0nlppjXmIHxTmUtH4G0pDwt4i5M7w3XR1U3xaIhLmGG06o0orkDeIEnJI8Ix25zRfJnSewVmlv2gmcNN7JNWmsWdD8cwvFa29/s1600/mandy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="529" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6AWMcWx8sAQsdSgIKalWZbwrLANYIqz5cNmExAJ6V1Nc0nlppjXmIHxTmUtH4G0pDwt4i5M7w3XR1U3xaIhLmGG06o0orkDeIEnJI8Ix25zRfJnSewVmlv2gmcNN7JNWmsWdD8cwvFa29/s400/mandy.jpg" width="280" /></a></div>
<b><i>Mandy</i></b><br />
Well, it took 7 days and 16 films, but I finally had my first festival film that I didn't like. In fact, that's an understatement - I hated pretty much every single second of this film. Nicolas Cage plays the Nicolas Cage character, this time called Red, a forestry worker living in the Smoky Mountains in 1983 and happily married to a woman called Mandy. But one day a hippie apocalyptic cult driving through town happens to see Mandy, and the aspiring folk music singer that leads the cult declares that he wants her. And so the cult, accompanied by a group of bikers (who may be regular bikers gone insane after a bad drug trip or literal demon bikers from Hell) kidnap Mandy and take her back to their base. But when Mandy laughs at the manhood of the aspiring folk music singer that leads the cult, they burn her alive in front of Red. Red does not take well to this course of events and, after meeting with Bill Duke (who is in this film for some reason), decides to forge himself a massive silver axe and go and take on the hippie apocalyptic cult himself.<br />
Well, that sounds like it could be an interesting movie. It's not. Words can't begin to describe how deadly dull I found this movie. It's a weird combination of the worst impulses of Terrence Malick and David Lynch. It has that drifting reflective tone that Malick often employs, but without the sense of beauty or awe, adopting instead the nightmarish tones of David Lynch without the sense of depth or instinct, while mimicking the excessive sound design but using it almost as a cheap trick.<br />
There's a fairly fundamental inconsistency in the main character. Throughout much of the film he is relatively silent and taciturn, without any of the indulgence is that one normally expects from Nicolas Cage. That is, until we reach the second half, when Nicolas Cage turns into Nicolas Cage. There's a moment early on in his rampage where someone cuts his shirt, and his response is to say "That was my favourite shirt". It's a quippy response that is not the type of person that Red was initially established as. From that point, it's just silly. There's one scene, for instance, where Red is fighting one of the bikers until he manages to slit the biker's throat and finds himself covered in blood gushing from the biker. Suddenly the television explodes, as another biker has walked into the room. Red jumps up, runs to the new biker, grabs him by the head and twists it to break his neck. Nicolas Cage then gives his standard bug-eyed crazy man look, that just felt goofy in that moment, as though it was Nicolas Cage just being Nicolas Cage rather than inhibiting his actual character. And then he just grabbed a massive pile of cocaine on a piece of glass and shoved his entire nose into the powder. (Later on he goes on a really bad drug trip after randomly sampling some icky-looking substance he finds, which leads me to take away the lesson that when you're attacking a hippie apocalyptic cult, don't assume that every substance you happen to find is safe to consume.) Now it's not that I need my films to be dry and serious, but I would really like it if films felt like there was something approaching consistency in the tone that they were aiming for, or at the very least if there was some sense that the variation in tone serve the purpose. I see nothing like that here. Red does not feel like the same person he was in the first half of the film, and much of that change does not feel motivated by the traumatic experiences he goes through, but just a screenwriting contrivance because if you hire Nicolas Cage, you want him to do the full Nicolas Cage.<br />
I can't overstate how extraordinarily lethargic and aimless the film actually feels. For every minute of a "my chainsaw is longer than your chainsaw" fight, we get 10 minutes of speechifying, with characters delivering endless monologues so extended that you would lose track of what they were actually talking about, and all the while the film is adopting a frustrating hallucinatory approach. And even when they do something interesting, they seemed determined to kill it - witness, for instance, a remarkably creepy scene where Mandy's face morphs into the face of the cult leader while he delivers a speech, with the faces eventually landing on a middle ground that is neither Mandy's face nor the cult leader. It's an impressively unsettling image, but the speech and the scene goes on for many minutes longer than necessary to get the point, and so it just becomes a dull viewing experience. I do not check my watch when I'm watching a movie, I haven't done so for years, but with Mandy I couldn't help myself, checking the time six times during this two-hour film. The first time I checked it, I was astonished to discovered that half an hour had already passed, which really didn't seem possible. The film felt like it had been going for so much longer, but at the same time it seemed impossible that the film could have been going on for as short as 30 minutes, given how little of any substance that actually taken place in the film. The entire film just felt like it was a test of endurance.<br />
Do not let the write-ups, promising some kind of bonkers midnight film, fool you. This is a dull and bad film, and I can find nothing in this film worth recommending it for.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8pZEGNfvCH4aD9notRfWXzXAXYK1LEdisAO3KpdCbAq_NqBs_sleC9Lent7AwFGMwDeyXLJnZyhzQDshETpxAd2EoZAvY6ENdWjzt7vUL6XOaScpna3BxLlZIjxkgAAib0Z2IXLNJ9DY2/s1600/madelines_madeline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="513" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8pZEGNfvCH4aD9notRfWXzXAXYK1LEdisAO3KpdCbAq_NqBs_sleC9Lent7AwFGMwDeyXLJnZyhzQDshETpxAd2EoZAvY6ENdWjzt7vUL6XOaScpna3BxLlZIjxkgAAib0Z2IXLNJ9DY2/s400/madelines_madeline.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>
<b><i>Madeline’s Madeline</i></b><br />
<i>Madeline’s Madeline</i> had me absolutely fascinated and disoriented right from the opening moments. We see Madeline, a 16-year-old girl, being a cat, purring, lying in the sun, having her mother pet her. And then she picks up a hot clothes iron, and slowly walks up on her oblivious mother. Two minutes in, and I’m completely sold. The film then jumps to a few months later, with Madeline having returned home from her latest stay in the psych ward. She joins an experimental theatre group, one of those groups where they do acting exercises like “be a turtle” and where they don’t start with an actual script but just workshop the production, with everyone throwing in their own ideas and letting the piece develop. But the group’s director, Evangeline, is just fascinated by this young girl and so, as they endlessly workshop, the theatre piece starts to change until it becomes a piece about Madeline and her troubled relationship with her mother.<br />
Much like the theatre group’s work, there’s a deliberately experimental feel to the film that I think many would find off-putting, but that is very carefully considered and skilfully executed – director Josephine Decker always feels in complete control of the work. That experimental tone seems to be born out of Madeline’s mental illness, almost as though it’s an attempt to communicate the way she experiences the world. It feels distorted, drifting, disorienting, at times the film feels almost garish, as though we’re in this world that we don’t understand or focus on.<br />
I’ve seen a lot of strong performances so far in this festival, but I can’t imagine there being another performance as incredible as Helena Howard’s work as Madeline. We’re told throughout the film what a talent Madeline is, and while we’re never really certain to what degree that is true of Madeline – there are moments where it seems as though her incredible acting is just letting go of her mental health – it’s undeniably true of Howard. She provides the anchor for the film, and influences the entire tone of the movie. She is appealing and sweet and charming but always feels like there’s something unsettling and genuinely dangerous underpinning this girl. And then on top of that we need to deal with the simple rush of hormones that comes with being a teenager, and this is all mixed up into this toxic cocktail of a performance. There are moments that feel as intense as any thriller simply because there’s a line that should not be crossed and we really do feel as though we really cannot be certain that she knows where that line is. And the challenge of the performance is that all the way through we have Evangeline standing on the sidelines declaring what an unbelievable acting talent Madeline is, and so we’re constantly having our attention drawn to actively consider whether Howard’s performance is so good that Evangeline would say that of Madeline, and it’s seamless. The climax of the film comes where Madeline gives an improvised piece that is just every moment we’ve seen of her relationship with her mother, and it feels exhausting going through this journey with her, but it’s also a moment of perfect performance for Howard. I hope that we’ll see more of Helena Howard.<br />
But the other performances are great. I’ve never really cared for Miranda July in the past, as she often seems very indulgent in her personal work, but working for another director she’s forced to suppress that and instead brings a nice vulnerability and sense of being utterly overwhelmed. There’s certainly a love for Madeline, but it’s tempered by an utter exhaustion with having to deal with this child who is so much more work than most kids, and she has the trauma of having been violently attacked by her own daughter, and then there’s the grief at whatever it was that happened that led to her having to deal with all this on her own.<br />
And Molly Parker’s Evangeline is similarly wonderful. There’s something weird and uncomfortable about Evangeline’s relationship with Madeline, and we understand that it’s probably because Evangeline is pregnant and she sees Madeline as a possible future for her daughter. And so this unhealthy pseudo-parental relationship builds up between the two, and she tells herself that she understands who Madeline is but she only knows who Madeline presents herself as. And this blinds her to the degree of dependency that she has formed with Madeline, and to the degree that she is taking on this mother role without knowing what her mother has to deal with.<br />
It’s a consciously disorienting and uncomfortable viewing experience, but I found it a fascinating and rewarding experience.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEQfAOGzV8XszOY2MlkLioRAOWbK2EDWHVpPADlY3cdnZAciHmaXjsTL1a_zI1cv_BYSLqO5GTl9lzPBaox4mWFG9CL2-mjLcE0ikOc3FIT3uybgPAjCODRVzz7i5Cfl2OJLW8wd3rK77o/s1600/three_identical_strangers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="640" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEQfAOGzV8XszOY2MlkLioRAOWbK2EDWHVpPADlY3cdnZAciHmaXjsTL1a_zI1cv_BYSLqO5GTl9lzPBaox4mWFG9CL2-mjLcE0ikOc3FIT3uybgPAjCODRVzz7i5Cfl2OJLW8wd3rK77o/s400/three_identical_strangers.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
<b><i>Three Identical Strangers</i></b><br />
In 1980, a guy called Bobby goes to college; it’s his first time there, but everyone acts as though they know him. Then he discovers he looks exactly like Eddy, a guy who went there the previous year; after learning that they were both adopted from the same adoption agency and share the same birthday, they’re overjoyed to realise that they’re reunited identical twins. The story makes the news, where it’s read by a third guy, David, who also looks identical to these two, who was adopted from the same adoption agency, and who shared the same birthday. Reunited identical triplets. The three become inseparable, doing news interviews (the number of interview clips the film can draw on is surprising), living together in New York in the 80s, sex, drugs, rock and roll. And that's about all I really want to say about the events of the film – sadly, I went into the film having heard more about where the story would go, and I wish I could have gone in completely fresh. Suffice it to say, this may start off seeming like some nice heartwarming story – and that’s how this story played out in the media for a long time - but it heads into some dark and upsetting territory, complete with moments and revelations that play in the film like a twist ending.<br />
Fairly fundamental to the film is the question of nature vs nurture – after all, it’s one of the most essential questions about who we are as humans, and here we have what seems to be a perfect case study for the question. And the film seems, at least initially, to fall very much on the nature side. After all, when you see them together it’s uncanny; the way they sit or smile, or just instinctively have the identical response to a question. And they talk about how they all have the same interests, such as being on the wrestling team. Even our thoughts seem to be dictated by our genes – there’s one point where they discuss having “an original thought”, only to discover their brother just had the same thought. The film even makes jokes about it; there’s a very funny sequence where we get their wives discussing how they got the real catch of the triplets – I got the best looking one; I got the funniest – and we’re invited to laugh at this because it seems so absurd to try to identify the cutest one or the funny one.<br />
Except that it’s not. The film ultimately argues that we as humans, when watching this story, are hardwired to look for similarities and connections between these people. And those similarities are certainly there, but they’re also being played up by the brothers who know that people are looking for these similarities. But just because they all smoke Marlboros or have the same taste in women doesn’t mean that they’re the same person, these are all surface-level similarities, and as the film unfolds it becomes clear that the people these guys became is governed just as much, if not more so, by the influence of their parents; putting aside the superficial connections, it’s ultimately nurture that can really affect who a person is at their core. Part of the question of the film comes down to free will – if these guys are so similar because of their genetics then is our life set before we’re born? – and what the film does is come down against free will, but in a different way. We aren’t necessarily destined to follow a fate that is laid out in our genes, but there is an inevitability in our actions that may be influenced by our genetics but is ultimately shaped and governed by our experiences. (Admittedly, I am someone who is personally sceptical about the possibility of free will, so I might just be seeing the film confirming my own personal views.)<br />
A friend of mine had a bit of a complaint about the film's approach to its events - his big problem was about the film initially hiding a case of teenage mental illness until later in the film - but I thought it was perfectly acceptable. The film is very carefully structured so that it gives you that sense of initial heartwarming joy and optimism, and the darker and more sinister elements are only introduced later on. But what that means is that there are elements that chronologically take place very early, but are only revealed much later in the film because they would detract from that early optimistic tone. The film doesn't portray its events with a strict "and then this happened" approach, instead telling its events like a storyteller with as much focus on the ebb and flow of the story. And I think that's why the film is so successful.<br />
There are so many more things that I want to say about the film, but I won't because I want people to see it and be surprised by. This has probably been the most popular film of the festival, with every regular screening sold out, and the three screenings added to the programme to meet demand either sold out or selling well. And there’s a reason for that success. It is an excellently constructed, impressively cinematic documentary, that plays as well as any top Hollywood thriller. It's a great film to watch with a packed audience, where you can feel the communal gasps of shock as the story develops. Highly recommended.<br />
(Also, just 20 minutes after the movie, I was walking past a second-hand bookshop when I noticed a book outside in the cheap box called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Identical-Strangers-Memoir-Separated-Reunited/dp/1400064961/ref=sr_1_1" target="_blank">Identical Strangers</a>; surprised by the title, I looks at it, and realise it was written by some twin sisters separated at birth who had been prominently featured in the film. So, that's a weird coincidence.)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_N8oMK6wtb2VqrECcB_tMMGTmtrzMlyRDbOrD78ydwejj-nVNxgHqSWThronpNW9EieIYyOS5biWvnohZg2qCGn_CVBodPu6-xjdPdpaRKH9qGEia7RjoWXmgigqUt4LtKjLG56PZvbsQ/s1600/beirut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_N8oMK6wtb2VqrECcB_tMMGTmtrzMlyRDbOrD78ydwejj-nVNxgHqSWThronpNW9EieIYyOS5biWvnohZg2qCGn_CVBodPu6-xjdPdpaRKH9qGEia7RjoWXmgigqUt4LtKjLG56PZvbsQ/s400/beirut.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<b><i>Beirut</i></b><br />
Jon Hamm stars as Mason, an American diplomat working in Beirut in 1972. The city is a confusion of different cultures and ethnicities and factions, but Mason has managed to navigate these and build a comfortable life for himself, with a beautiful wife and a nice home. But after an attack on his house mortally wounds his wife, Mason decides to leave the country. Ten years later, he's an alcoholic and working as a labour dispute negotiator when he's asked to return to Lebanon to help negotiate the release of a hostage, who happens to be his closest friend from his time in the country. He finds a city devastated, fiercely divided between all of the factions, and completely corrupt in the highest levels of government.<br />
<i>Beirut</i> is just an impressively strong and compelling piece of filmmaking. As a friend of mine observed after the screening, it's the type of film that used to be made all the time and that would be a big blockbuster. Look, I do enjoy a lot of the modern big-budget superhero films and the like, but it's nice to watch something that isn't a film with a great big beam of light piercing the sky that needs to be stopped, this isn't a film about stopping some massive world world-ending catastrophe, this is just a film about one man trying to save another person and he's completely overwhelmed. There are genuine stakes to the story, it's literally life or death, but it's not so over-the-top that it loses all meaning. Instead, because we're sold by the character and by the situation, we're therefore completely caught up in everything that happens in the film.<br />
One of the things that's really fascinating about the film is the interaction between the different cultures in this country. Mason finds himself needing to move between the various forces at play, trying to locate a person who went missing 10 years and who is probably being held as a secret prisoner and it's just absolutely enthralling to watch. He's got the Israelis on one hand, he's got the PLO, he's got the Christians, and he's got these terrorists who don't seem to be entirely connected to anyone, and he's trying to negotiate with all of them to elicit information that he needs to locate this missing person. And there's a constant suspicion, because you never know whether the person that they're talking to really has what they need, or whether they're just trying to string them along to see if they can gain some advantage, because all of the communications are undertaken in a form of doublespeak. And there are all the tensions that come into play as well; the Israelis needing access to better satellite information to identify fake PLO outposts, while the PLO are highly motivated to help in order to avoid encouraging an Israeli incursion. And in the middle, you just have Jon Hamm fighting this fight using only his negotiation skill to pressure people into undertaking actions that they don't want to, that might not even be in their best interest, just because he was able to convince them that it was a good idea. And it's enthralling. This is an action thriller that manages to be intense and utterly compelling, despite the fact that I don't remember its main character ever picking up a gun.<br />
It's not the best movie of the year, but it is a strong work that reminds you just how effective simple, good storytelling can still be in modern cinema.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ecpKmkm696oWR3IsroYuU5QiETBYTxVOCNGwnW9ueVXF3pvxUFpERVOiuUybLKo-ezCat-wTHKUFuSkzZMtcASLYqZafx2C3nWWiSFBWqpSe3x5heAqN7upLvdkFmvDC_mTuUtHW7cIA/s1600/king.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="511" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ecpKmkm696oWR3IsroYuU5QiETBYTxVOCNGwnW9ueVXF3pvxUFpERVOiuUybLKo-ezCat-wTHKUFuSkzZMtcASLYqZafx2C3nWWiSFBWqpSe3x5heAqN7upLvdkFmvDC_mTuUtHW7cIA/s400/king.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<b><i>The King</i></b><br />
Well, it certainly doesn't lack for ambition.<br />
<i>The King</i> is a documentary that is, at least in theory, focused on a Rolls Royce owned by Elvis Presley in the mid-60s. The makers of this documentary fill the car with a ton of cameras and recording equipment, essentially turning the car into their own mini-studio, and then take it on a tour of America, picking up recording artists who offer their own performances from the back of the van, picking up cultural commentators to talk about the place that Elvis holds in popular culture, or just picking up celebrities to talk about the experience that Elvis must have had living as one of the most famous people in the world. You get some fantastic musical performances throughout the film –obviously there are snippets of Elvis performing, and they are great, but I mostly enjoyed the performances by the artists playing in the back-seat of this car. There’s a jaw-dropping performance by country band EmiSunshine and the Rain; there’s a gospel choir performing Chain of Fools; there’s a wonderfully sensual performance of Fever when Elvis goes to Vegas.<br />
But that’s not what this film is about. At the end of <i>The King</i>, Ethan Hawke essentially sums up the premise of the film by observing that Elvis Presley, at every stage of his life, was offered a choice between something that would be creatively satisfying or something that would make the most money ever, whether it's his decision to sign the largest movie contract ever to make a bunch of rubbish movies, or his decision to take the biggest paycheck ever and locate himself in Vegas for the last years of his life when he really wanted to tour and see the world, and every time he took the money. And what the film is trying to say is that Elvis's life and career is essentially symbolic of the entirety of American culture since the 1950's. It's basically a massive cultural commentary on the place that America is at now.<br />
So the film charts Elvis’s life, from a poor family in Tupelo, attending a black church and discovering a love for black music, being discovered by Sam Phillips as a face that white people will accept to bring black music into their homes, the massive celebrity, his falling under the control of huckster Colonel Tom Parker, his overseas service as Private Elvis Presley, his career as an unconvincing actor making generally poor movies, and finally becoming embedded into Vegas. And he uses that to talk about the American dream, the rise in poverty, segregation, American interventionism, cultural appropriation, civil rights, the decline of American agriculture and manufacturing, the rise of entertainment as America’s chief export, addiction, and Trump vs Hilary, as well as everything else. It culminates in an extraordinary sequence from his final TV special where Elvis performs an astonishing impassioned performance of Unchained Melody while the editors try to throw on screen every single significant cultural moment onto the screen, up to and including an appearance by Barney the Dinosaur. It’s a feat of editing the like of which I don’t know that I’ve ever seen before. But...<br />
There’s a point in the film where the car breaks down; sitting in the cab of the tow truck, the director has obviously been describing the film that he’s making, and when he asks the tow truck driver if he understands his vision for the film, the driver observes that he doesn’t think the director even knows the film he’s trying to make. And that’s pretty much where I came down on the film. There’s too much packed into the film, and it’s all packed around this car as a metaphor for America. The film even takes time to speak to David Simon, creator of <i>The Wire</i>, who starts to argue that the metaphor doesn’t really work because Rolls Royce cars were never made in America, and you really need to use one of Elvis’s Cadillacs for the metaphor to hold. Which means that, in addition to trying to be a documentary about Elvis’s life, a concert documentary, and a commentary on 70 years of American culture and history, the film’s now starting to offer criticism on itself. And it’s all interesting and fascinating, and I was always engaged, but it’s too much. There are limits to the amount of information and the number of ideas you can pack into a single 2 hour film before you just lose the audience because they’re simply not capable of keeping track. This felt like the director had so many ideas for the film and he wanted to force everything into the one piece. But there’s a lot of really good material in here, and I wouldn’t want to cut anything. My ideal form for this documentary would be a four- or six-part TV documentary. In each episode you could start with Elvis at a new stage of his life, and from there spread out and explore a small number of discrete topics relevant to this point in his life, but with enough screen time that you can actually devote a solid chunk of time to really dig into the ideas being argued.<br />
I would absolutely recommend the film. It’s a lot of fun, and I really do admire the ambition of the film. But it really is an example of a film that exceeds the practical limits of the 2-hour documentary movie.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrcLQ2g1uuZdQMkAd-FUsdt6AHN9-M_LjA63VPAMbnOee6LG7_BxDgvj3KifXVHnFM71Dh3-aUabyih8gKqIoE0wuT_uBrDRYr-qQfwTpSW-taWp1oj07rPBOnDB2M-qAT4xsE2YRK9c7i/s1600/transit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="707" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrcLQ2g1uuZdQMkAd-FUsdt6AHN9-M_LjA63VPAMbnOee6LG7_BxDgvj3KifXVHnFM71Dh3-aUabyih8gKqIoE0wuT_uBrDRYr-qQfwTpSW-taWp1oj07rPBOnDB2M-qAT4xsE2YRK9c7i/s400/transit.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<b><i>Transit</i></b><br />
One of the things I do when I'm planning my festival schedule is to read the programme several times, making note of the films I'm interested in, and then that's it. Once I have my schedule I don't re-read the film descriptions. And if there's a film I decide on my first read through that I'm interested in seeing, I don't re-read those write-ups when I re-read the programme. Which means that I often have the experience I had with <i>Transit</i>, where I find myself watching a film with no memory of which, of the 150 films I read about, this film actually is, and just trying to discover it without any expectations. And so I was not prepared for what the film was.<br />
It opens in France, which has been occupied by German soldiers who are rounding up Jews to put them in camps. Every person you meet could betray you at any moment. Our main hero, Georg, is tasked with delivering a letter to a writer from the man’s wife, but when he tries to do so he discovers that the writer has committed suicide. So he jumps on a train with a wounded friend, and escapes to Marseille; on arrival, the friend has died, and so he hides away in the masses of people trying to get letters of transit that will allow him to leave Marseille and head for Mexico or America or wherever will take them. But while he waits he connects with the wife and child of his dead friend as they wait for an opportunity to leave the city. And as he visits the American Embassy every day, he finds himself meeting the wife of the dead writer, who is refusing to leave Marseille in anticipation that her husband will arrive and leave with her.<br />
Here’s the thing: if this film seems like a World War II film, you’re absolutely right. It feels very much like <i>Casablanca</i>, if that film were focused less on Rick and Ilsa and more on the teeming throngs of people in that city dreaming of being on the plane to America. And indeed, I see that the film is based on a novel written during World War II, and it feels like it. But it’s not, because we can see the cars, the trains, the coffee machines used by the baristas, and the black-clad German forces, and we can see that it notably takes place in modern day. Except that there are no cellphones, none of the technology that we’re used to, they’re still communicating entirely by letters passed from person to person, and the documents granting permission to leave look like something from the 1940s. I spent the first few minutes just trying to work out what year this took place in, and once I realised what the film was actually doing, I spent a lot of the rest of the film just baffled by this choice.<br />
What I think Christian Petzold was aiming for with the film was to tell a story about the modern refugee crisis, and he found this World War II novel that he thought could work, but he was worried that the setting might hide his point, so he tried to tell this story, more or less keep it in World War II, but also give it this modern context so that we can all draw parallels. And it’s a bizarre choice; I think this story would make that point regardless of when the film actually took place. A skilfully-made film (and I do think Petzold is a good filmmaker) should be able to draw those parallels between historical events and the modern day world. After all, I’ve seen <i>Casablanca</i> twice this year, and both times I found it was impossible to watch any of the scenes about the people trying to leave this city and not think about modern-day refugees. Or if you’re genuinely worried people will miss your comparison then there’s a different approach; try to actually update the novel and tell a version of this story that is about refugees in a modern-day context – you’d need to make a lot of changes to the plot, but it could work. But this weird halfway point for me doesn’t work at all.<br />
Making the film even more frustrating: the plotting of the film is very dependent on people simply not communicating. It just feels infuriating when you have two characters talking, and the woman is all excited because she thinks that her husband is going to be coming on the boat and escaping with them, and the man knows that her husband is dead and he’s been pretending to be her husband in order to secure passage out of the country for both of them, and he doesn’t say a single word about it. It’s another example of the kind of frustrating rubbish where the characters behave in idiotic ways that no human would behave simply because there’s no story if they actually talked to each other.<br />
This was my second film by Christian Petzold. My first experience with him was <i>Phoenix</i>, a film that was extremely well-made but reliant on an utterly absurd plot element about 1940s plastic surgery and a husband not recognising his wife. I think in selecting this film I was hoping to see how well Petzold would work with a better story. But instead Petzold makes this utterly distancing creative decision to merge the past and present into one, and that didn’t work for me either. And yet I like the actual filmmaking on display, the way Petzold shoots these scenes, even if I’m not convinced by the creative decisions that went into creating the scenes to begin with. So I feel like I might continue with Petzold, hoping that one day he’ll give me something I genuinely unreservedly like. Because I’m sure he has it in him.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAHwpYuLGpNDB25_aZXrbHe5u8-uPO-VA5BwqbTKxyOR66GU7D9IBq2rMfZVVsskxBRS7HmepkQIqUyq9tWimuHnT45n78AVb33Cy5-13dmEB_pyfKAACbxkP-yoMn0eMClP5cLbFGcEvQ/s1600/shoplifters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="556" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAHwpYuLGpNDB25_aZXrbHe5u8-uPO-VA5BwqbTKxyOR66GU7D9IBq2rMfZVVsskxBRS7HmepkQIqUyq9tWimuHnT45n78AVb33Cy5-13dmEB_pyfKAACbxkP-yoMn0eMClP5cLbFGcEvQ/s400/shoplifters.jpg" width="293" /></a></div>
<b><i>Shoplifters</i></b><br />
<i>Shoplifters</i> was the fifth film I've seen by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, and while they've all being excellent and beautiful pieces of filmmaking, I think this might possibly be my favourite of the five. The film tells the story of a family of five - a father, a mother, a teenage girl, a young boy, and a grandmother all living together in a tiny little house. Living in severe poverty, they really only survive on the grandmother's tiny pension, the income from whatever low-wage job the parents can find, and whatever earnings the teenager shares from her work in a teasing peepshow. They mainly survive by stealing from the local shops, a skill that the father takes great delight in teaching his son. One day they notice a young girl hiding from her abusive family outside her home; out of concern for her well-being on this cold night, they take her in and feed her, but when they realise that her parents don't seem particularly bothered by her disappearance, they decide to keep her and welcome her into the family.<br />
The thing that really marks Kore-eda's work is this complete fascination with family and the way we relate to those closest to us. And his families are never as simple as a basic nuclear family: there's always either a degree of separation or some artificial construction in the family. Whether it be the families separated by divorce or the families who discover a relative they never knew existed, he always seems fascinated ultimately with the way people choose to form and to hold their family together. This is probably the most united a family I've seen in any of his work, held together by this incredibly strong bond, but even here we have a family that has, at least in part, expanded itself by kidnapping a young girl and taking her away from her real family. And while the motivation for this is entirely sympathetic - there's an absolutely heartbreaking moment where the mother talks to the girl about the abuse that she's suffered and we're never in doubt that the girl will be loved and treated much better in her new family, as long as we're comfortable with her being inducted into the family art of shoplifting - we are certainly aware that there is an artifice holding this family together that they actively choose to overcome.<br />
The thing I find most charming and fascinating about Kore-eda is his attention to the little moments of interaction. His films tend not to be filled with big moments or significant drama, they work best when we're just spending time with his characters. So here we get to just sit and watch the characters as they gaze up into the sky at some fireworks that we never see because we just get to enjoy the bonding that they share over this spectacle. The film has a fascination with eating - I don't know how many scenes there are in this film where we're just watching these characters sit as a family around a table, dunking their noodles in their soup, and eating, all the while just talking and enjoying their time together. There's a wonderfully funny scene where the father and mother, eating dinner alone, suddenly realise that they have the house to themselves for the first time in who knows how long, and the film just takes great joy in watching these two sitting around laughing and enjoying each other's company in the afterglow of their intimacy. And, in probably the best sequence in the film, the family take the train out to the seaside for a day at the beach; while they're out there, the father notices his young son's attention being distracted by the girls in their swimsuits, and recognising his son's growing discovery of his sexuality the father bonds with his son over their mutual love of boobs. No, really, it's sweeter than it sounds.<br />
I'll be really interested to revisit this film, because I'm currently not sure how I feel about the third act, and that's all due to circumstances outside of the actual movie. My seat in the cinema was more cramped then I would usually like, and around the time that the film starts to reach its conclusion, my leg started to really ache and I found myself desperate for the film to end so that I could stretch. And so it was in that context that I found myself feeling that the film's resolution seemed to drag a bit. But the rest of the film had been so perfectly executed that I'm pretty certain if I was to rewatch the film in more comfortable circumstances it would work much better for me. And the ending is really fantastic, drawing together a multitude of tiny little plotlines, some of which we never really realised had been seeded until they became important, to bring the story of this family to the only conclusion that could have made sense. I just wish I could have enjoyed it without distraction.<br />
It took me a long time to get around to watching Kore-eda, and that's something I really do regret. He really is a master of simple character-based drama and I'm at a point where I can't imagine ever not being excited by his work. I cannot overstate how wonderful this film is.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxVNWSiU6IK4Pt-86gsgZNGz8uChZucOdw2_O9R0e6GObD8A2ouR1W60rV2bhHAHRR4S5HaQUFUnmPh5aExLcngXdxMg93uR0lTv-lZGGbFQEGYIYqkCLnVITvF49yUdCYPEVY47pPoX0c/s1600/guilty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxVNWSiU6IK4Pt-86gsgZNGz8uChZucOdw2_O9R0e6GObD8A2ouR1W60rV2bhHAHRR4S5HaQUFUnmPh5aExLcngXdxMg93uR0lTv-lZGGbFQEGYIYqkCLnVITvF49yUdCYPEVY47pPoX0c/s400/guilty.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Guilty</i></b><br />
An excellent Danish thriller, <i>The Guilty</i> focuses on disgraced police officer Asger, who has been demoted to the emergency call centre while waiting for his trial over an incident on the job. One day he receives a call from a woman, Iben, who pretends to talk to her daughter. Realising that he's speaking to someone who has been kidnapped, he has to work desperately, occasionally through less than legal means, to find a way to find out who this woman is, and where her abductor is taking her.<br />
Hitchcock used to be a great fan of making movies where he would isolate the events to a single location, testing his ingenuity to find ways to have the action play out within this deliberately limited area. And that's really what happens in this film as well, only more so. By setting the film in a call centre, and never leaving that location, director Gustav Möller is effectively creating a thriller where the entire film plays out in a room that is miles away from any of the action. We never see the faces of any of the players in this kidnapping, we never see what's going on, we are just forced to imagine the film's events through the soundscape that is created by the audio of the phone call. But it all proves astonishingly effective and absolutely gripping.<br />
One thing that the film does very well is communicate the frustration that comes with having to deal with this type of situation remotely. There's nothing that Asger can do directly to help Iben, he can't try to comfort the scared daughter, he just needs to try to direct the events remotely, and you can feel his frustration when people don't respond to the situation in the way that he feels as required. And in the meantime he just has to sit and wait, and there are significant parts of the film where we are just sitting and waiting in a long silence with him for whatever will come next. Or there's the frustration that comes with phone calls not being picked up, and there are points in the film where a phone goes to voicemail and you feel like you want to scream because you're so frustrated and desperate to know what's going on.<br />
One of the challenges that comes with filming a movie in a single location is just the need to keep the film visually interesting, and Möller does well in creating variation in the location and communicating Asger's frame of mind through his environment. He starts the film in a wide-open call centre surrounded by colleagues, but as he desperately tries to take control of the situation (and hide some of his less-than-legal actions from his colleagues), he increasingly isolates himself until by the end he's caught in a room all alone, with blinds blocking out everything that's not this rescue, in a room lit only by the harsh red light that shows he's on a call.<br />
The performance by Jakob Cedergren as Asger is impressive. He is effectively the only person we see on screen to any substantial degree, and so he has to carry the entire film on his face. And so much of his performance is not being big and dramatic, it's all about reacting to this situation and finding the right way to respond to the developing situation. And it's a masterful effort.<br />
I was completely caught up in this film, completely sold by its various twists and turns, and absolutely horrified at points by some of its shocking developments. I love its inventiveness, and Möller's confidence in his ability to achieve this changing work. I see this is his first film, and I'm very interested in seeing where his career takes him.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsbNJ6EPMiSyxh65uodCOc2n5T2sS7m7X03vPW2tA3Mnd6LSlXa95t4FGoRqfriLFnKOQ5a4EImFPfir0BQ5c-QUnxLq8cnLY1jHR9WeQcDYw6J-G80uGebvmK9uxd0GBAjAGeMfS85YgZ/s1600/lean_on_pete.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsbNJ6EPMiSyxh65uodCOc2n5T2sS7m7X03vPW2tA3Mnd6LSlXa95t4FGoRqfriLFnKOQ5a4EImFPfir0BQ5c-QUnxLq8cnLY1jHR9WeQcDYw6J-G80uGebvmK9uxd0GBAjAGeMfS85YgZ/s400/lean_on_pete.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<b><i>Lean On Pete</i></b><br />
A fascinating and at times difficult character drama, <i>Lean On Pete</i> focuses on Charlie, a 15 year old boy stuck living with his father and a constantly changing flow of girlfriends. One day while out running, Charlie comes across a horse training track that he never knew existed, and when he's asked to help the grumpy horse owner, played by Steve Buscemi, he recognises an opportunity to get a permanent job and earn some money. Although he's warned not to treat the horses as pets, he quickly becomes attached to Lean On Pete, an ageing horse whose best days are behind him and who the owner is dragging out to get every last race out of him before being sent to Mexico for slaughter. And so when the day comes for the horse to be sold to the slaughterhouse, Charlie impulsively declares that he wants to buy Lean On Pete.<br />
One thing that I really loved about the film was the filmmaking style that Andrew Haigh brings to his work here. This is not a film that's constructed in the editing room; most of the scenes play out in a single long shot, with barely any cuts or reverse shots. There's a wonderful confidence that comes in Haigh's approach; he has a clear vision for what the film is going to be, and he understands exactly how he will achieve it before he ever sets foot on the set.<br />
Part of his vision for the film involves the centrality of Charlie Plummer's performance in the lead role. What that means in practice is that Charlie is on screen in some way, whether in close up or off in the distance, in almost every single shot of the film. This was something that I registered fairly early on in the film, and found myself keeping an eye on, and there was only one shot in the film that I noticed didn't seem to feature Charlie. (In fact, it was so unusual to the scheme of the film that there would be this single shot that didn't feature our main character that I'm almost more inclined to assume that he was in the shot and I just didn't notice him.) But that singular focus on Charlie is fairly fundamental to the way the film works. Charlie is taken on a frankly astonishing journey throughout the course of the film, and the advantage of this approach that focuses so completely on our lead is that it means that we never get space away from him, we never get any moment where we can pause to think. We get as totally swept up in these events as Charlie does.<br />
The performances in the film are great. Obviously Charlie Plummer needs to carry the entire film, and he does so with a beautiful and heartbreaking performance. He gives us a lead character who is compassionate and loving, profusely determined, and it's this mix of characteristics that allows him to make the journey that he does in the second half of the film. Possibly his most defining characteristic is his determination to not allow himself to become embittered, a clear response to Steve Buscemi as the horse trainer, who came into this field because he did love horses once, but who has spent so long around these animals that he wishes he could never see another horse again in his life, and who sees these creatures not as living creatures worthy of respect but as a tool to be exploited and then cast away. Chloe Sevigny makes a brief appearance in the film as a jockey, and she fairly firmly seems to fall in the middle ground between the two: while the harshness of her experiences have definitely pushed her more towards the cynical and exploitive end of the industry, she's not so far away from the young horse lover that she was that she can't appreciate and even admire the passion that Charlie brings to the work.<br />
It's a beautiful piece of cinema, with some unexpected plot developments that send the story spiralling off in directions I never would have expected. There's a point late in the third act where it almost seems impossible that this could be the same film as the one we started several hours earlier, but the consistency of development in the lead character means that this direction feels almost inevitable. It's a fantastic film, and I really did love it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW45bBbPHxF8X5he08OQIjWjlY3O8QybhVNmr3cgoGwlwsDHQjVYXbIBC9NIarplGlTJnNfwR2cl77xOHRP9WJCW5YnZ4t3Fi9UWlV033zhyVWxYAW4ZfWw04zArDTBuyzTPbrlCxgvF7I/s1600/Capharnaum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="907" data-original-width="681" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW45bBbPHxF8X5he08OQIjWjlY3O8QybhVNmr3cgoGwlwsDHQjVYXbIBC9NIarplGlTJnNfwR2cl77xOHRP9WJCW5YnZ4t3Fi9UWlV033zhyVWxYAW4ZfWw04zArDTBuyzTPbrlCxgvF7I/s400/Capharnaum.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
<b><i>Capharnaüm</i></b><br />
<i>Capharnaüm</i> has a pretty impressive opening - Zain, a young 12 year old boy in Lebanon, sits in court opposite his parents, who don't understand why they've been summoned. Zain, who we learn is currently serving 5 years in prison for stabbing someone he describes as a son-of-a-bitch, has decided to sue his parents for giving him life. The film then flashes back about 12 months to show us the course of events and the unending stream of misery that would lead to this outcome. We watch his home life, in a family so neglectful that they just tie a chain around the leg of the youngest baby to keep him still, while Zain has to help his parents smuggle drugs into prison. One day his 11 year old sister has her first period, which absolutely terrifies him since he knows this will mean that his parents will marry her off to the local shopkeeper who keeps plying her with sweets. His efforts to keep secret his sister's physical development are unsuccessful and, after she leaves the family for her new husband, Zain decides to run away from home. He then encounters Rahil, an undocumented immigrant who has to smuggle her one-year-old child into work in a carry case. Zain finds himself tasked with taking care of the baby while Rahil goes out to work to make the money she needs to buy forged documentation, fighting to avoid selling her son to child-traffickers, but after Rahil goes missing, Zain finds himself alone and struggling to take care of this young baby.<br />
The film is quite an intense experience, and not exactly enjoyable. It’s a story of complete squalor and misery and struggle and is utterly brutal. But I don’t know that I buy that the film stays true to that opening scene. Zain doesn’t feel like someone who genuinely believes that it would be better had he himself never existed – in reality he’s making the point that his parents should never have another child, but that’s a less attention-grabbing start for the film. The conviction that underpins his action, his anger at people who have children without the ability to care for them, makes sense, but how far is that supposed to go? Yes, his parents are awful, evil people who should not be having children, but if we are talking about people who shouldn’t have children, what does that mean? How do you stop that? Forced abortion? Forced sterilisation? And how do you decide who should and should not have children? Sure, I might be horrified at the thought of his parents having kids, but what about Rahil, who does seem like a genuinely good mother and who is fiercely protective of her child despite her circumstances making it difficult for her to care for him? It would undoubtedly be better for her and her kids if she doesn’t have any more, but do we actually stop her from having kids? How? Because the film is framed around this argument by Zain, who is so sweet and likable and so forceful in his arguments, and because it never really presents any opposing arguments, the film seems to buy into what he is saying without ever posing the next question. So how are we supposed to view this as an audience? Are we supposed to uncritically accept Zain’s argument as the viewpoint of the film, or are we supposed to recognise for ourselves that this is the simplistic view of a young boy who doesn’t really understand the realities of a world and who thinks it’s easy enough to just point and say “You don’t get to have children.” And if it is the latter, why is that not in the film?<br />
Zain Alrafeea’s work in the lead role is impressive, a mix of youthful naiveté and cynicism brought on by the brutality of his experiences. He’s a smart and inventive kid, with the toughness necessary to fight to get what he needs. He is also impressively foul-mouthed, in particular in one scene where he uses a mirror to reflect a neighbour’s screening of Winnie the Pooh for his young one-year-old ward but then provides obscene dialogue for the characters that more closely resembles the conversation at an orgy. Yordanos Shifera’s role as the immigrant mother Rahil is similarly excellent, all heartbreak and desperate agony as she tries to keep the child-traffickers away. And then there’s young Treasure Bankole as the infant Yonas – obviously at such a young age he’s not really giving a performance so much as just living and responding naturally to stimuli, but he is sweet and charming and affectionate and what happens to him is devastating. I would be really curious to see the behind-the-scenes of this film, because there are some points where the production seems actually dangerous for young Bankole as an actor, with moments where we see Alrafeea carrying Bankole as they walk down a side of a busy street where a single stumble could be disastrous, or leaving him free to run around disconcertingly close to the street – I would hope, would assume that there were off-screen measures to keep him safe, but I did have moments where I wondered if it was even okay to watch this, if merely watching the film was somehow encouraging child endangerment.<br />
Ultimately it’s a strong film when it comes to its portrayal of life for the poorest and most disadvantaged people in Lebanon, which is what most of the film is, but it’s wrapped around a premise that does seem as though it was written for impact and shock value rather than being fully fleshed out as an underpinning of the film.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUFEJNckW5ljYwfXtrGnQ2lr8cVkSNV4Fixfayw_MUSrDsrxZz7B1JZ63BW3FWdLIqRxRs7QvbaLJZYOlXHLvKOy5MrpAxWoBBhw7ngW9ubs85iuicXZcA7NwjiTv3LsXj7h1lEMFjQrPV/s1600/arctic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="922" data-original-width="650" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUFEJNckW5ljYwfXtrGnQ2lr8cVkSNV4Fixfayw_MUSrDsrxZz7B1JZ63BW3FWdLIqRxRs7QvbaLJZYOlXHLvKOy5MrpAxWoBBhw7ngW9ubs85iuicXZcA7NwjiTv3LsXj7h1lEMFjQrPV/s400/arctic.jpg" width="281" /></a></div>
<b><i>Arctic</i></b><br />
Mads Mikkelsen stars as Overgard, the only survivor of a plane crash in the middle of the Arctic. When the film opens, he’s clearly been there for a while, and has worked up his daily routines precisely – clearing away that day’s snow from his giant SOS sign; retrieving any fish caught on his lines and storing them to cure for eating; spending a few hours with his hand-grinder battery powering his radio signals; and then sleeping inside the plane. One day his radio attracts the attention of a helicopter in the middle of a snowstorm, which then crashes, leaving the only survivor a Thai woman without the ability to speak English. Overgard discovers a detailed map in the wreckage, including the location of a seasonal station that is a long, but achievable, distance away. With the woman badly injured, and the injury slowly becoming infected, he decides he has no option but to put her on a sled and pull her to survival.<br />
When the film ended, there was a very noticeable collective sigh in the audience, as though everyone watching the film had just spent the past 90 minutes holding our breaths in. It’s an understandable response, as <i>Arctic</i> is an impressively suspenseful and intense experience. Mikkelsen is, as usual, a marvel here. While he is technically not performing alone, having this young woman to work opposite, the nature of her role is basically just to exist without ever any real interaction; her dialogue essentially consists almost entirely of breaths and coughs. And so, with such a limited partner to engage with, he's largely carrying the entire film, and much of the film's limited dialogue consists of muttered calculations or the occasional exasperated response to the latest frustration. For all intents and purposes it might as well be a silent film, with Mikkelsen communicating his entire experience in his weary, exhausted face.<br />
The film is also worth seeing on a purely visual basis. It was shot on location in Iceland, and should be seen on the big screen if for no other reason than as a pure celebration of the utter beauty of that country. I would never want to visit there - it looks really cold - but one of the great advantages of cinema is that it allows you to enjoy the wonder of the world without the inconvenience of travel.<br />
One thing I do find frustrating about these types of “survival of the human spirit” stories is that I’m often unsure how convinced I am by the events. There’s a part of me that looks at what happens in this film and naturally just asks “Could anyone really survive all of that? Could that really happen?” It would be one thing if it was a true story – the obvious example is <i>Touching the Void</i>, an insane story about a guy surviving on a mountain despite a broken leg, being dropped off a cliff, and being left for dead; I wouldn’t believe that if I didn’t know it was true – but in fiction films like this, when you have people surviving against impossible odds, it can often feel that the only way they could ever actually survive is by convincing the screenplay writer to let them survive, and that makes it feel a bit less genuine.<br />
My main problem, however, comes down to the last five seconds of the film. The film is clearly building up to one particular ending, and I was really engaged by this ending. And then in the last few seconds it pulls the rug out from under us and has the story end in a completely different way. And that did disappoint me; I felt cheated out of the ending that this story, this journey, really deserved. That was a shame. Still, it’s an intense and engaging film that I enjoyed greatly, regardless of some minor disappointment about the ending.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXiLS0GaxxjXP4vvkdnJngMa3aJ8Tb6UrHpyjI19A-d2fBVAfOckSf3fiLSqegDidDbr5NJmBhrj6XtrE7iVs3JxHMMwoGXlp_3wxthHrLy7VWK6LiYAdYbA-AcegDyNPE_pgaQXqEsqvT/s1600/mckellen_playing_the_part.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXiLS0GaxxjXP4vvkdnJngMa3aJ8Tb6UrHpyjI19A-d2fBVAfOckSf3fiLSqegDidDbr5NJmBhrj6XtrE7iVs3JxHMMwoGXlp_3wxthHrLy7VWK6LiYAdYbA-AcegDyNPE_pgaQXqEsqvT/s400/mckellen_playing_the_part.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<b><i>McKellen: Playing the Part</i></b><br />
Back when I saw the Hedy Lamarr documentary, I observed that her story was so fascinating and full of surprises that all you really needed to do to make a good documentary was just tell the story straight and not get in the way. Ian McKellen is not Hedy Lamarr; if you were to ask someone to imagine what McKellen's life story was like, they would probably get pretty close - there's no real surprise to his story. And so, in making a documentary about McKellen's life, they really did need to work a lot more to ensure that the documentary would remain engaging.<br />
The documentary is structured essentially around McKellen sitting in a comfortable chair and talking about his life to camera. There's presumably someone asking him questions, but that entire part of the process is invisible. The film is essentially just McKellen looking into the camera and reflecting on his life, his career, and his experiences. We hear him talk about his first efforts to entertain his family by mimicking Charlie Chaplin. We hear him talk about how the theatre became an outlet for someone who otherwise felt isolated at school because of his homosexuality. We hear him talk about the early stages of his career, as people were discovering his name for the first time - in one case quite literally, when the reviewer apparently didn't know his name and so had a review headline that literally asked what the name of this new actor was. We hear him explain how in the theatre acting is not about the face, but how instead it's all about the actions, the silhouette, the way the figure moves, and it's all about trying to very simply communicate vital information to an audience that might be too far away to observe his face. We hear how he was invited to join the Old Vic, one of the most important theatrical institutions in the world, and how he decided to turn it down because there would be too much competition for the important parts, instead joining a new theatre troupe that would give him opportunities to play the big roles that he wanted to play. We hear about his early efforts on television, and even get to watch a small sampling to see how genuinely bad his on-screen work was at that time, and how it only improved once he started playing Shakespeare in tiny, more intimate theatres and realised he could apply those skills to television. We hear about him moving to America, and winning the Tony Award for his work in Amadeus, which I had no idea he was ever in. We hear about him deciding to come out in the context of the AIDS crisis and the passage of anti-gay legislation, and how this provoked him into becoming a prominent gay activist. We hear how, at least in the context of his film career, he categorises it as either before <i>Richard III</i> or after <i>Richard III</i>. He talks about his Oscar nomination for <i>Gods and Monsters</i>, and how demoralising all the self-promotion to try to secure votes can be. And he talks about what it's like to be one of the stars in two of the largest movie franchises in recent history, what appealed to him about the <i>X-Men</i> movies, his efforts to more closely resemble the imposing figure that Magneto is in the comics, his joy at filming <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> in a real world environment, and how depressing it was to have to shoot huge parts of <i>The Hobbit</i> completely on green screen.<br />
Because McKellen sitting in a chair talking for extended amount of time is not the most engaging or cinematic documentary, the film makes great use of a wide variety of archival material showing McKellen is a younger (or not so young) man. Sometimes these clips are intended to simply illustrate the point that McKellen is making, other times it seems as though these clips are simply approaching this event with an ironic eye. It's not the most original way to tell a story in the circumstances, but it is skilfully put together and always engaging for the audience. But when it comes down to it, the film is Ian McKellen. McKellen is an engaging conversationalist, with a dry wet that is frequently laugh out loud funny. And so, while the film may not be groundbreaking or important cinema, it is always an entertaining and fascinating experience.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLnBdChWBBNlYwkR3PxKVbKs8Kw-jidJDPBDQ7niNlxDPH3MrgZTsi3fLHWzQ916xYAFmIjr9n8ZnWvxMoebqOEppVmET5-O7Ma_eqBXpUYdwvGGmzSlITWBjxYtjRxputSubgLGt7YmKw/s1600/Ash_Is_Purest_White.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="733" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLnBdChWBBNlYwkR3PxKVbKs8Kw-jidJDPBDQ7niNlxDPH3MrgZTsi3fLHWzQ916xYAFmIjr9n8ZnWvxMoebqOEppVmET5-O7Ma_eqBXpUYdwvGGmzSlITWBjxYtjRxputSubgLGt7YmKw/s400/Ash_Is_Purest_White.jpg" width="292" /></a></div>
<b><i>Ash Is Purest White</i></b><br />
The movie begins in 2001, with Qiao the girlfriend to a low-level gangster called Bin living in a small Chinese mining town. But the fortunes of the town, and the influence of the gang, are declining, and there's an increasing confidence by others to attack members of the gang. This culminates in a massive attack on Bin, which is only stopped when Qiao fires a couple of warning shots using Bin's gun. She saves his life, but is sent to prison for 5 years for possession of an illegal firearm, and on coming out of prison she is distressed to discover that her boyfriend has moved on and is now in a relationship with someone else. The film then follows the changing relationship between Qiao and Bin over the years until we're brought up to date in 2018, all the while observing the technological changes and increasing westernisation of China.<br />
Just before things start to go wrong for Qiao, there's a moment where she is out in the countryside with Bin, looking at a volcanic peak. And they have this conversation about how the heat from the volcano is so intense that it destroys any impurity in anything it burns, and so the ash that comes from the volcano is as white as possible. It's an annoyingly obvious metaphor for the journey that she will undertake during the rest of the film. And this is the type of film where you can tell that it is about to end because there is a bookend scene with the two of them return to that volcano, even though that scene could actually take place anywhere. And I feel like that almost says it all about this film. It's a film that I think, had I seen it at another time of the year, I might have had more of an appreciation for it as being something different to the standard Hollywood movie. But in the context of the film festival, where I am seeing so many fascinating and intriguing movies, it just didn't grab me. It's just too obvious, too ordinary, and there were points in the film where I was even a little bored, since it's not the most dynamic of movies. I did rather enjoy Zhao Tao's work as Qiao, and the way she charted her character's change from a youthful, almost arrogant confidence into a woman who has a certainty that is informed by experience. But ultimately I just wasn't grabbed by this one to the degree that I would want.<br />
<i>[EDIT: This is actually <a href="https://www.filmsocietywellington.net.nz/db/screeningdetail.php?id=871&sy=2019" target="_blank">one of the films</a> screening in the 2019 Wellington Film Society schedule, and I'm rather looking forward to it. Obviously I </i><i>initially </i><i>didn't respond too positively to the film, but I have seen so many critics I respect express a love for the film that I'm rather excited to have a chance to revisit it separate from the festival. Hopefully it will come across differently on second viewing.]</i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Z8yMg66W4RLjCDdoWTrIqHJvTrZyJqouaMO74DbClvAe6Ag4Dt8xwpf4ydMaxbSrT6ilqRL5Fx7hKc91xbpp_RoZ_f9i8gBrHMepNOdnPSpJe8Dyzp5Gb6S9KvcRHYoVaVg8gg41yXb7/s1600/brimstone_and_glory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="889" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Z8yMg66W4RLjCDdoWTrIqHJvTrZyJqouaMO74DbClvAe6Ag4Dt8xwpf4ydMaxbSrT6ilqRL5Fx7hKc91xbpp_RoZ_f9i8gBrHMepNOdnPSpJe8Dyzp5Gb6S9KvcRHYoVaVg8gg41yXb7/s400/brimstone_and_glory.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
<b><i>Brimstone and Glory</i></b><br />
So this was easily one of my most enjoyable films of the festival, but I don't know how much there is to say about it because so much of the joy of the film is purely about experiencing it.<br />
Every year in the Mexican town of Tultepec, a town apparently known primarily for fireworks manufacture, they celebrate a festival in honour of the patron saint of fireworks makers, a man who rescued people from a hospital in flames without receiving a single burn himself. The festival is apparently broken up into two main parts: in the first they build massive towers of fireworks, while in the second they build massive decorative bulls lined with fireworks that they run with.<br />
I was a bit uncertain about seeing this one. To me, fireworks displays on screen never really feel like much. When you're actually there, and can feel the power of the explosion, fireworks are absolutely incredible, but when you're watching television and they set off some massive fireworks display in honour of some big event, the experience doesn't translate. And I was afraid that this would be a very similar experience. What I forgot was that I wasn't watching this at home on my television, I was watching it on the big screen, and that makes a big difference. The other big difference is that with many of those big public fireworks displays, the television footage is shot from a great distance, whereas in this film it's all shot from very close up to the action.<br />
This is one film where you don't need to worry about when we're going to get to the fireworks factory, since we get there almost immediately. It is disconcerting, however, to watch the manufacture of these fireworks. For a start, there's no factory; this almost seems to be just people manufacturing things in their backyard, pounding away at the fireworks while using an old wooden crate for a seat. We see how many of the people making these products are just children, and at one point we hear from a grandmother who lost her son to a mistake while making fireworks, and her distress now that her young grandson has gone into the business. We see the people carefully constructing the fireworks one part at a time, and we can't help but notice the one person with an arm that ends in a stump. And then there are the preparations for the actual festival, which are their own level of insanity. In one absolutely terrifying moment we watch scenes shot by a GoPro attached to someone's head as he climbs I don't know how high, without a harness or any safety gear, to help set up the fireworks at the top of this massive tower - I don't have a fear of heights, but I felt like I was hyperventilating through much of this scene, and others around me were audibly freaked out. The towers are so tall that in one moment one of the towers actually acts as a lightning rod, setting off all of the fireworks earlier than expected, requiring the workers to frantically try to climb the tower and stop the burning fireworks from up close.<br />
And then we come to the actual festival. This film loves the fireworks, and it's so incredibly beautiful that I struggle to describe. In slow motion, the film allows you to really just marvel at the intricacies of the chemical reactions, the different colours and shapes that are created, the billowing smoke and the way it's illuminated by the sparks and flames behind it, until it almost looks like footage from space of a cloudy nebula. Or it's shot in real time, allowing you to experience the sheer awesome power of these massive explosives. And then nothing can prepare you for the incredible experience that is the running with the bulls, where these giant bull figures are just in flame, with more fireworks than you can imagine going off, it seems completely out of control, and people are literally a couple of feet away from these explosions raining down all around them, and they're dancing and they're cheering and they're singing and they're having a phenomenal time with this utter chaos surrounding them. I can think of nothing that terrifies me more than being at this festival in the middle of this chaos, and I can think of nothing I want more than to be as joyous as those people at this festival in the middle of this chaos.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirumAZn2UVpWVG4Hbqod-lOKZeEwnIb9JF5Coqhsm2j2PMi8s4mkrjHId70z38cuwh3z4umE0Excv6DrVS8MySfts1igsjCS1zG7M1JK27mcqZxfgxCGIcbfbpSfo3AevLYin9F1HJrVDk/s1600/first_reformed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirumAZn2UVpWVG4Hbqod-lOKZeEwnIb9JF5Coqhsm2j2PMi8s4mkrjHId70z38cuwh3z4umE0Excv6DrVS8MySfts1igsjCS1zG7M1JK27mcqZxfgxCGIcbfbpSfo3AevLYin9F1HJrVDk/s400/first_reformed.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<b><i>First Reformed</i></b><br />
I've seen a lot of films this festival that I've really loved, but this felt different, this felt special.<br />
Ethan Hawke plays Reverend Toller, the minister of a tiny Protestant church celebrating its 250th anniversary, kept alive mainly through the largesse and support of a nearby mega-church. Already going through a crisis of faith, one day Toller is approached by one of his church members, Mary, asking if he will speak to her husband, an environmental activist pressuring Mary to have an abortion because it's wrong to bring children into this world. His conversations with Mary's husband, and his own reflections and investigations into the matters they discuss, deepens his crisis of faith as he grapples with the role of the church in protecting God's creation, especially as he realises much of the restoration of the church for its anniversary celebration has been paid for by a man whose business is responsible for significant environmental damage in the area.<br />
Ethan Hawke is just a marvel here. We learn very early that he is extremely sick, but he's taking the common masculine approach of just acting as though if he doesn't actually know about what's wrong then he can pretend that nothing is wrong, and we learn that that's clearly the way he deals with everything in his life. There's a point where we learn about Toller's backstory, which involves a dead son and an ended marriage, and his entire character just suddenly makes complete sense. This is a person who seems to be using the ministry almost as a way to escape from his world, to avoid having to deal with the unbearable grief that he's experiencing. And in his interaction with Mary's husband and with the ideas discussed we see the two of them almost feeding off each other, unwittingly pushing each other deeper into depression. It's an extremely vulnerable performance that he gives, although the character himself is struggling with his own pride, with his willingness to accept the need for help. He has this wonderful relationship with the choir director from the mega-church, and I found it fascinating to watch how resistant he was to that connection, because she reminded him how much he did need assistance to deal with everything in his life and he couldn't let himself accept that. I particularly appreciated that the film doesn't resort to the typical crisis of faith issue - where the character is struggling with whether or not to believe in the existence of God - instead being about a character who's really trying to find his place in relation to God, moving from a more intellectual understanding of who He is into a deeper confidence about what it means to believe in God and what our role is as custodians of His creation. His struggle is illuminated in the film by the notes that he makes in his private journal, and Hawke makes these long stretches of voice over feel real and personal and intimate, filled with agony and conflict. It's a marvellous and nuanced performance that is easily one of the best this year.<br />
I also really appreciated the work of Cedric Kyles (also known as Cedric the Entertainer) as Pastor Jeffers, the pastor of the nearby mega-church. It's a role that would have been very easy to almost turn into a villain - after all I think criticism could legitimately be made that many such churches have become almost more focused on the pastor's status rather than being oriented towards Christ - but Jeffers is portrayed both as a strong figure who might believably come to lead such a church but also as a supportive figure who might have differences of opinion with Toller, and who might have slowly allowed the influence of money to be more of a consideration then it should, but who always seems very genuine and heartfelt in his desire to support and care for those under his charge. If it had been a typical type of mega-church pastor, then the film might have felt more like a condemnation of Christianity, but as it is it feels much more like an honest exploration of ideas and challenges through these characters.<br />
This was my first experience of a film directed by Paul Schrader, and I'm regretting that it has taken me this long to get around him. Obviously, I'm a big fan of his work writing for Martin Scorsese, having written the script for four of Scorsese's greatest films, but I never really felt an urgent need to look beyond into his own work. This was wrong. He has a wonderful command of turn, giving the film an eerie quiet, emphasising the sense of isolation that Toller experiences as he shuts everyone else, forcing us to just sit and linger in this increasing desperation. One thing I found particularly fascinating about Schrader's direction is his decision to use the academy ratio of 1.37:1, which was the ratio historically used by movies before widescreen was developed. The more-square screen shape is a perfect fit for the film - it's a shape that emphasises height over width, so perfectly fits the church with its spire, but doesn't give a lot of room for the characters to move around, emphasising the degree to which people feel constrained by their circumstances. Indeed, there are many points where the characters actually do walk off screen for a moment or two, leaving the image empty for a moment, but they're always drawn back into the image frame - emotionally it feels almost as though they have tried to escape from their environment but been forced back into the place they were trying to escape from.<br />
My only frustration with seeing the film doesn't actually come from the film itself, but rather the conversation about the film. Pretty much every time I hear anyone discussing <i>First Reformed</i>, without fail they always wind up comparing the film to a particular well-known classic movie, a movie so absorbed into modern culture that even if you've never seen it you still know about it. And I will be honest, I was intrigued by the comparison, because this other film would at least initially appear to have little in common with <i>First Reformed</i>. But once you hear that comparison, it's so accurate that it's almost impossible to not think about. And so I found that disappointing, because I feel like that advanced knowledge put me in a space where I was waiting for the film to arrive at a particular place rather than being led on the journey to this ultimate end. But that's just my fault for reading too much about the film before seeing it and judging it for myself. But that might also have shaped my viewing of the film. A friend of mine commented that he didn't really believe the journey that led Toller to that end, whereas I completely bought it, possibly because I went in expecting to see that kind of story. But then I think this is definitely a film where everyone will see different things in the film. A different friend made a comment on Facebook about being amused by the people shamefacedly throwing away their garbage at the end of this film about environmentalism and the need to save the planet, when it never really occurred to me to see it as a film about that. For me it seemed entirely about the character and his emotional journey, and the save-the-planet concern was just the hook that motivated his personal story. The key thing is, whatever story you do find in here, you'll find it in the context of a beautiful, powerful, and challenging work of cinema. It has been a couple of days since I saw the film, and I'm still grappling with it, still dealing with it, just trying to work out what it all means and is saying. The one thing I do know is that I adored it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj60iiyGL49_kl6l4FeJyk6StxLKke6WbbsmE3hkd96XkdUrszVIPwdcj7yCy9wBuOxYoL1BXB-VA7JUoYGUqieCHbNbIZcASsJI-51eKpmWliIz9S0C7VrT1z_7SNIxKhZoPuF5CWGuUS9/s1600/third_murder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="534" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj60iiyGL49_kl6l4FeJyk6StxLKke6WbbsmE3hkd96XkdUrszVIPwdcj7yCy9wBuOxYoL1BXB-VA7JUoYGUqieCHbNbIZcASsJI-51eKpmWliIz9S0C7VrT1z_7SNIxKhZoPuF5CWGuUS9/s400/third_murder.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Third Murder</i></b><br />
When the festival programme listed two films by Hirokazu Kore-eda, I was very excited, especially since one of the films won the Palme d'Or at Cannes - and <i>Shoplifters</i> really was great - but at the same time I was surprised to see that his other film was a legal drama, since it's not the type of film that he's really known for.<br />
The film opens with two middle-aged men walking together when one of them suddenly hits the other on the back of the head with a wrench. We then see him pouring fuel over the body and sitting it alight. We jump to find the man, Misumi, in prison, having already admitted to murdering his boss. It seems that he's only recently out of prison, having served 30 years for the murder of two loan sharks, and Misumi's lawyer calls for extra assistance from a noted defence lawyer, the son of the judge who presided over his trial on the first two murders.<br />
So the film is fine, but not much more. Here's the problem - Kore-eda tends to do his best work when he's dealing primarily with characters. For me, the first thing I think of when I think about him is the scene in <i>Our Little Sister</i> where the four sisters are just together pickling plums - a small scene that is just about enjoying the company of these characters and their connection. But that's not something that really works too well in a legal drama. There needs to be a strong narrative drive forcing the story forward, and that's not really what he does. Part of the frustration is that we don't have a clear alternative narrative. The film throws out lots of theories about why the murder might have taken place, but Misumi changes his story about what happened so often that you never feel like you have anything solid to rely on. It even culminates in one theory that even suggests that it might not have been Misumi who committed the crime in the first place and that the opening scene might have been misleading. Or perhaps not; who knows. The problem is that, because there is so much uncertainty around the story being told, it just becomes about trying to untangle the story being told and solve the mystery, and so we don't really get the time to focus on the character work that is his real strength. The film does make minor indications towards those character beats, particularly looking at the lawyer's relationship with his daughter, but it's never has the time available to really expand or explore these. And that just makes it a disappointment.<br />
I still really do like Kore-eda, so while this was a disappointment, it hasn't cause me to lose faith in his work. I went into this knowing this was an aberration from the material he's best at, and I also know that he bounced back from this with one of his best films, because I've already seen it. And this is not a bad film by any means - it's beautifully shot and has very strong performances - but it just lacks the forward momentum that the story needs. But as a friend of mine observed, it must be hard to have your career built around making one type of film, and so it's very possible that this was an opportunity for him to stretch his muscles and do something different that interested him. And I don't blame him for exercising that need for variety. I'm just hoping for more great films from him, rather than just-fine films.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKx09EtSwQxCLemil5-IEWNjm5AwWY8tpAbmxI0a6bSsHpOcqPMxKbD_6A1JRAKRak5nlxDT2Xymm96pB56ss1hSx6qUAQGcvjgr1XDWfqn68983nVUZ7gWSnqYv89tfqBNdF8kNPFSpJa/s1600/border.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="492" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKx09EtSwQxCLemil5-IEWNjm5AwWY8tpAbmxI0a6bSsHpOcqPMxKbD_6A1JRAKRak5nlxDT2Xymm96pB56ss1hSx6qUAQGcvjgr1XDWfqn68983nVUZ7gWSnqYv89tfqBNdF8kNPFSpJa/s400/border.jpg" width="260" /></a></div>
<b><i>Border</i></b><br />
When you're seeing as many festival films as I am, it's quite common to walk into a film knowing the title of the film but not really remembering what the film was about. What tends to happen is that, as the film plays, something will happen that will spark a memory and you'll remember something about the write-up of the film that made you want to see it. <i>Border</i> was a strange experience for me, because I spent the entire film thinking that nothing about this film seemed at all familiar from the description in the programme. It wasn't until the end credits when I recognised the name of John Ajvide Lindqvist, author of the original novel that <i>Let the Right One In</i> was based on, that I realised why I probably decided to see this. It seems the film is based on a short story by Lindqvist, but this film falls short of that earlier film.<br />
Tina works as a customs officer in border control. There's something visibly different about her: she almost seems like a modern day neanderthal, with a prominent forehead and a big jutting overbite. But there's also something almost animalistic about her, particularly the way she sniffs intently, as though she's able to smell people's guilt and sin. She's successful at it, such as when she smells out the memory card filled with images of child sexual abuse hidden inside the case of someone's phone. But then one day a man, Vore, comes through customs who has a very similar neanderthal look, and it seems that they both share similar markings, including an odd scar on their back, and Tina becomes fascinated with him.<br />
So it was an interesting film. I don't know that I disliked it, but at the same time I'd struggle to say that I liked it. It establishes a slow, uncomfortable, unsettling world, and is shot with a gloomy tone that settles over the film. The story is engaging enough, but I never really felt caught up in it. I really liked Eva Melander’s sympathetic performance as Tina; she’s completely consumed by makeup, but she manages to work through those restrictions to give a sad and emotional performance as someone who has been either rejected or exploited her entire life because of her looks, and who is suddenly overjoyed to be seen as someone worth of affection. I was less won over by Eero Milonoff as Vore; he’s basically a big hulking brute with very little nuance. I’m assuming the central idea underpinning the movie is the idea of “the other”, that when we mistreat others because of our differences then we wind up creating our own enemies, and that’s fine, but it’s fairly obvious in its execution, and as the backstory for the two main characters becomes more convoluted I think the metaphor possibly breaks down. (It’s probably also worth noting that, as with <i>Let the Right One In</i>, there’s an unexpected moment of revelation involving characters’ genitals that largely left the audience audibly reacting, in a what-the-hell-are-we-seeing kind of way. I wouldn’t ordinarily comment on this, but since I’ve only seen two films based on Lindqvist works and both of them featured such moments, I figure it’s worth highlighting as a somewhat unusual connection between the two.)<br />
Ultimately, it was fine, but unmemorable. I had been hoping for something similar to <i>Let The Right One In</i>, and it definitely wasn’t that – I think there’s something just primal and universal about the vampire myth and particularly tragic about the story that earlier film told, and that’s not really here in this film. But I’m curious to read Lindqvist’s original story. It was apparently a short story that was expanded by Lindqvist for the movie, and it might be interesting to see what material was added for the movie (I have my suspicions). When I read <i>Let The Right One In</i>, I was surprised to find that the story itself was essentially the same, but that he provided some extra background information that completely changed my conception of who these characters were and how they related to each other, and ultimately changed the story that was being told. In this case I’ll be interested to see what was essential to the story and what was extra shading introduced into the movie, and whether the story also offers additional context for the story. But at the same time, I don’t feel like I need to go out of my way to seek out the original story; I’m curious to read it, but not particularly excited. Which pretty much sums up my feelings on the film as a whole.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEVTTTcB9kHuWE51C4id1uucB_6WfxvTEfvLlRA4N553ADkrQbqkQdjio8xHFMRwYOwCVeFNvBJXoi9tZ3vhq4wHvS32C5POeWBAcYNyK3EkorJHdFq-XYSQe4TwSER-PKCj-ESuiTTsaN/s1600/filmworker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEVTTTcB9kHuWE51C4id1uucB_6WfxvTEfvLlRA4N553ADkrQbqkQdjio8xHFMRwYOwCVeFNvBJXoi9tZ3vhq4wHvS32C5POeWBAcYNyK3EkorJHdFq-XYSQe4TwSER-PKCj-ESuiTTsaN/s400/filmworker.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
<b><i>Filmworker</i></b><br />
I've been familiar with the name of Leon Vitali for many years at this point - it's difficult to take an active interest in the work of Stanley Kubrick without coming across Vitali's name. And I knew the broad one-sentence summary of his story: that he was an actor who, after working with Kubrick on <i>Barry Lyndon</i>, decided to leave his profession and work as Kubrick's assistant for the rest of the director's life, and who has since Kubrick passed away become almost the most prominent voice for what he would have wanted with his work. <i>Filmworker</i> is a fascinating documentary that explores the professional life of Leon Vitali and his relationship with the great director.<br />
Vitali was seemingly an actor on the rise when he was cast as <i>Barry Lyndon</i>'s sullen stepson, where he apparently impressed Kubrick sufficiently that the role was expanded. At that time, Vitali first became fascinated by all of the behind-the-scenes workers all endeavouring to achieve the singular vision of the director, and after demonstrating some interest in that area, by working unpaid in the edit suite on a <i>Frankenstein</i> film that Vitali starred in, Kubrick offered Vitali a job as his assistant, a job he would fulfill for over 20 years. During that time he did everything imaginable, from casting to acting coach to sound effect work to research to scrutiny of film prints to managing the paperwork to advertising to keeping track of film trims to cleaning his house and even the occasional bit of acting. (There's a fantastic story about filming <i>Eyes Wide Shut</i>, where Vitali played eight different roles in the masked orgy scene, including the red cloaked Master of Ceremonies, and how in between takes Vitali would have to run up and down the stairs while wearing six-inch platform boots to hunt out some piece of film that Kubrick wanted.)<br />
I was really impressed with the number of people who offered their voice to the film. The biggest surprise to me was the appearance of Danny Lloyd, who I'm not sure discusses his experiences on <i>The Shining</i> very often. But Danny famously worked most closely with Vitali, who was able to use his experience and understanding as an actor to bring that incredible performance out of the young child. On the other end of the spectrum, he was also the person who really helped shape the real-life drill sergeant R Lee Ermey into the actor who was able to give one of the most memorable performances in cinema history: the late Ermey gives an enjoyable interview where he discusses being the technical advisor to the film, and deliberately trying to use that as an opening to get the role, and thus create his entire acting career. (We also hear from Tim Colceri, who was famously originally cast as Hartman before being replaced, and how angry he was at Kubrick for just sending Vitali to fire him.)<br />
One of the most significant things about Kubrick was his refusal to compromise, and his expectation that everyone would be fully on top of their game. (They even had to cast three different actors as George III for <i>Barry Lyndon</i> because the first two weren't ready.) So the pressure working for Kubrick was absolutely intense, and the man had an incredible temper when you fell short, but at the same time the satisfaction that came with being commended for a good job was incredibly meaningful. And you get an insight into just how important every detail was. Vitali talks about how he would review every print that was send out to theatres wanting to have revival screenings of Kubrick's old films and how, in the release of <i>Eyes Wide Shut</i>, Vitali personally viewed every fifth print in its entirety, just to make sure it's what Kubrick would have wanted. I remember when Warner Brothers rushed out a DVD box set immediately after Kubrick's death, and the general outcry that occurred at the poor quality of the release, and when you know how protective Kubrick was over the quality of his back catalogue, it's easy to understand just what an outrage that release really was.<br />
There's really too much to talk about with this film. It's just story after story after story of who Kubrick was and what it was like to have to support such a demanding and exacting person. It seems exhausting, and almost everyone comments on how hollow and sunken Vitali often seemed, worn down by the constant demands. But this isn't some damning portrayal of Kubrick as a monstrous figure, although they acknowledge the famous stories about his temper or his demanding hundreds of takes. When you hear Vitali talk about Kubrick, it's clear that his work was motivated out of a deep love for the man. Indeed, curiously for a person whose background is in acting, Vitali seems uncomfortable with the attention that comes with being the central figure of a documentary, and seems to have agreed to make the film solely as a way of trying to celebrate this person who he genuinely admired, and as a way of putting on record the man that he knew.<br />
For me the most shocking thing was to learn how shut out Vitali apparently became after Kubrick died, seemingly almost resented for his attempts to protect the work of Kubrick. I can't imagine that there's anyone else more knowledgeable about Kubrick and his work then Vitali, and yet we hear stories of him having to borrow money from his children while having to volunteer to inspect film prints in the way Kubrick would have expected. It was a relief to note in the film's postscript that Vitali was involved in the recent 70mm release of <i>2001</i>, and has now been hired to catalogue Kubrick's paperwork.<br />
Above all, this is a fascinating story about a man who chooses to effectively give up his own life in order to serve and assist another to achieve their own goals. It's an extremely entertaining film, and I recommend it.<br />
(It was also a useful reminder that it has been years since I last saw <i>Barry Lyndon</i> and <i>Eyes Wide Shut</i>, and I really need to rectify that as soon as possible.)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMm9x4AcC7huwYDkRMHDd7xF9W0ynF-TqUgph0wsC-7yj4OlTaeU6JOtP42fyzJZb2DYe7zhI0F0eHrcbKhWtcGR8zWdWM3X9y93HHijpVKMi4aWAaaVFlwSxk351TAswQ5diTxa486Dt0/s1600/world_is_yours.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMm9x4AcC7huwYDkRMHDd7xF9W0ynF-TqUgph0wsC-7yj4OlTaeU6JOtP42fyzJZb2DYe7zhI0F0eHrcbKhWtcGR8zWdWM3X9y93HHijpVKMi4aWAaaVFlwSxk351TAswQ5diTxa486Dt0/s400/world_is_yours.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
<b><i>The World Is Yours</i></b><br />
Francois is a French gangster who has decided to leave the criminal life and pursue an honest income as the owner of the Mr Freeze ice block North African franchise. But to acquire the franchise, he needs his €80,000 savings, which he had entrusted to his mother, who it seems has gambled the money away. So, in order to make the money he needs, he has to approach the young impulsive upstart who has taken over his former boss's business, and agree to help him in a hashish smuggling operation. To help him with the operation, he invites along a young woman who he is infatuated with, who is really not interested in him at all but is keen on a free trip to Barcelona, along with a couple of young Brit-hating thugs who livestream their assaults, and a longtime criminal who is terrified of the lizard people who rule the world. The meeting with the Scottish drug lord who is supplying the hashish, and who is terrified that his criminal operations might lead to him inadvertently been caught up as a party to terrorism, does not go well, and Francois finds himself conned out of the €200,000 he had been given for the exchange. So, out of desperation, he has to call on his con artist mother for help. And it's at this point that the entire situation just starts to spiral out of control, leading to a massive operation involving luxury resorts, kidnapping, a pirate raid on a ship, a grenade in a young girls backpack, and the synchronised intervention of people across multiple countries to make everything work perfectly.<br />
This was just an utter delight to see. I love the film festival, it's a fantastic opportunity to see some of the best films being made today, but sometimes it can start to feel a little wearying. So many of these films are serious and dramatic and thought-provoking, so after two weeks of such serious cinema it was such a refreshing experience to see a film that is so completely focused being a pure entertainment above all else. It's not trying to make any particularly deep arguments, it's not trying to expose you to new ideas or new points of view, it just wants to be please as many people as possible, but to achieve that without dumbing itself down or aiming for lowest common denominator thrills. And it is extremely effective in achieving that goal. It's a glorious piece of Tarantino-esque tomfoolery, light as a feather, laugh out loud funny, but never so silly that it undercuts the seriousness of its drama. The characters all get their own eccentricities and enjoyable comic set pieces, but at the same time the audience was so sold on the characters that at certain moments where certain people were asked to make a choice and took the wrong option, you could hear the audience audibly disappointed with the direction the person chose. The cast was a delight, with Vincent Cassell in particular having a great deal of fun playing a man who obsessively watches conspiracy theory videos and is increasingly terrified by the number of triangles the Illuminati have scattered through the world. I also enjoyed Oulaya Amamra as the impossibly sexy Lamya - her character is in many ways the most difficult to play, being someone who is at all points unreliable and liable to double cross whoever she's with, yet at the same time being someone we can all be so infatuated with that we can understand someone actively trying to trust her despite all evidence to the contrary. The set pieces are great - there's a brilliant sequence early on where Francois' mother leads a team of females on a heist to steal thousands of euros of goods from a high-end department store, and the sequence is shot with such confidence and verve that you instantly realise that you can rely on this director to guide you through this fantastically entertaining film. If only all movies could be this effortlessly fun.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdy88rwdxk7XEonFQoaBeCKjo_Qd0yG7_ABsrBxbQb4BrX9R7rVppfbXK5gsm1yKDtEHbHWQ4-0PzZiwBujv6Dkns-JngJSJQNdm0E4QCaq9yQstp1E4H7uXd-rBk2hbMtthl8lZgeycLI/s1600/science_fair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="884" data-original-width="598" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdy88rwdxk7XEonFQoaBeCKjo_Qd0yG7_ABsrBxbQb4BrX9R7rVppfbXK5gsm1yKDtEHbHWQ4-0PzZiwBujv6Dkns-JngJSJQNdm0E4QCaq9yQstp1E4H7uXd-rBk2hbMtthl8lZgeycLI/s400/science_fair.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<b><i>Science Fair</i></b><br />
About 15 years ago, the festival showed a fantastic crowd-pleasing documentary called <i>Spellbound</i>, about a number of children competing in the finals of the national spelling bee. It's a surprise to realise that it's taken so long since that film to apply the same format to students competing at the top level in one of the other iconic aspects of American education, the science fair, as we focus on a number of different students travelling from across the US and internationally to compete in the International Science and Engineering Fair. A good result for these students could be a ticket into a top tier university or into a great job opportunity.<br />
As with the earlier film, much of the first part of the film is taken up with introducing us to our main characters. It's fascinating to watch how wildly the cultures in different schools vary. Some schools really seem to focus intently on science fair, with one school having a reputation as a powerhouse - from here we meet a 14 year old girl developing a test for arsenic in groundwater to help prevent cancer in third world countries, and a team of three seniors, including an amusingly frat-boy surfer type, working to develop an electronic stethoscope. But other schools seem to have a shocking lack of interest in fuelling interest in this area - we visit a school in the South that primarily focuses on its sporting achievements, despite the football team not having won in a year, while not even the science teachers are interested in supporting one young Muslim girl wanting to study brain wave patterns to understand risk-taking impulses. (She eventually gets sponsored for the science fair by the football coach, who quite openly admits to having no idea what her work even means.) We meet a kid who nearly failed maths class because he had so little interest in the assigned lessons, but at the same time who is completely fascinated by number theory and the potential of artificial intelligence. There's one school where the documentary focuses more on the teacher then the students, because she has incredibly managed to help nine different teams reach this year's science fair. And the fair is international as well. We meet a kid from Germany who has taken the old Flying Wing airplane design from the 20s, which failed because it was horribly unstable, and has managed to make the design function. And we meet a girl from an underfunded school in Brazil who has managed to develop a medication that inhibits the growth of the Zika virus.<br />
Since this film is so obviously drawing on the <i>Spellbound</i> film for inspiration, it's interesting to reflect on the differences in the competitions being portrayed and the impact that this has on the film cinematically. The spelling bee is inherently dramatic, in that every time a person steps up to the mic, there is an intense tension over whether they will get this next word right or wrong. Plus there's also a nice clear criteria: you either spell it correctly or you're out. With science fair, it's all about the process of setting everything up, with practicing your presentation, with making sure that the people are able to present their ideas in the best way possible. But the actual judging is behind closed doors, and all we get is an announcement about which people came top in their field or not. I understand why there's no point where the judge's explain their choices, why they chose to reward some exhibits over others, but I do wish we could have had some clearer explanation of the results. There were some projects that I found quite extraordinary, and was shocked to discover that they didn't even place, and I would love to know why they didn't do as well as it seemed as though they should.<br />
But there's another big difference between <i>Spellbound</i> and this film. What the kids do in the spelling bee is genuinely impressive, being able to hear an insanely complicated word and being able to instantly identify how to spell it by understanding the functioning of the different language roots. But at the same time, as impressive as it is, it is just spelling really well. What's exciting about the work being done in science fair is that it feels like it could genuinely change lives, change the way our world functions. There's a point where there's an observation about how we live in a world that is increasingly intellectually less curious, and so events (and films) like science fair are important to celebrate and encourage the people who are creating our future. These kids have the ability to take an idea and pursue it until it becomes something that is world-changing. There is genuinely innovative work being done in the science fair, and someone comments that the reason for this is that kids have not yet developed their full expectation of the way the world will work, and this frees them up to genuinely think in an unexpected or innovative manner and find new solutions to problems that plague us.<br />
In case you haven't picked up on this yet, the film does feel somewhat derivative of <i>Spellbound</i>. That's fine - <i>Spellbound</i> is a great template to follow for this type of film, and I struggle to think of a better way to tell this story. But it does mean that this film isn't breaking new ground or doing anything particularly innovative with the documentary form. I do find myself wondering what is involved in making a film like this, and just how much they had to film to produce it. After all, they are filming the one kid who ultimately wins Best in Show, and the likelihood of them just happening to cover the final winner by chance seems fairly remote. I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't dozens of kids filmed just in case they won, and who weren't included once they fell short.<br />
Ultimately, this film is a celebration of the insane work of these kids, and it's a delight to watch. Strongly recommended.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0pPjm4dcP5IsDHi-Vg6rWypDdC9PjPRhpJDLgylq3KncKrJ1_uD_gnn58ZT_-NfociQoVFMwmsVyQ9o43e9FbQINYxBm0yYQPr1DGBfa7OTGoH-fpurAPyz57w-TFb1EkRPiZJy01f5VQ/s1600/wings_of_desire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="949" data-original-width="670" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0pPjm4dcP5IsDHi-Vg6rWypDdC9PjPRhpJDLgylq3KncKrJ1_uD_gnn58ZT_-NfociQoVFMwmsVyQ9o43e9FbQINYxBm0yYQPr1DGBfa7OTGoH-fpurAPyz57w-TFb1EkRPiZJy01f5VQ/s400/wings_of_desire.jpg" width="281" /></a></div>
<b><i>Wings of Desire</i></b><br />
What is there to say about Wim Wenders <i>Wings of Desire</i> that hasn't already been said? It's one of Wenders' most loved films, and one of the most essential works of 80s cinema. Everything that can be said about this film must surely have been said, and if there is anything new to say then I'm not the one to say it because I'm still pretty new to the film - this was only my second viewing, my first viewing being a number of years ago when it had a random screening at the Film Archive. But it was a delight to see it at the Embassy, on that large screen, with an achingly beautiful restoration, and it reinforced for me that this is a film I need to revisit much more often.<br />
Bruno Ganz stars as Damiel, an angel who, along with his friend Cassiel, spend their days wandering around West Berlin during the era of the Wall, observing the people, hearing their thoughts, watching them at their most spiritual and at their lowest points. Damiel becomes frustrated at the limitations of being an immortal being, always observing life and its joys but without the ability to experience pleasure at even the most simple things. Then one day he finds himself at a circus about to close down for the year, where he is entranced by the beautiful trapeze artist Marion and he longs to make himself known to her.<br />
One thing I found fascinating by the film was perfectly paced the film is. Which seems like an odd thing to praise in the film, since it is over two hours long and I'm not sure you could say that there's two hours’ worth of events in the film. But it feels perfectly measured, and the film therefore feels much, much shorter than it actually is. Part of that is just the constant delight in discovering what this film is; it never sits still, but moves around in a fascinating way. One minute we are wandering through a house and observing a young family, the next we're with a prostitute bemoaning her choice of street corner, then suddenly we are flying through the air with our trapeze artist, then we're in a club dancing amid the swarm of humanity, and then we're wandering around the deserted public library. The film might be setting this slow, contemplative tone but it's never lingers in a way that might otherwise make the film drag.<br />
Bruno Ganz is fantastic here. The nature of the role is such that he's seldom called on to actually speak, but he's a constant presence in the film, and he brings such an air of desperation to his performance that is devastating. One of my favourite moments in the film has him attending a circus performance, and he has a giddiness to him that is quite infectious. Now, part of that might be that he's about to see his beloved Marion perform, but it also seems that part of his excitement was with the fact that the circus was filled with kids, since children are the only people who can see angels, and so it felt as though Ganz was almost delirious with excitement at the prospect of being seen and recognised and acknowledged in his own existence.<br />
I also adored Solveig Dommartin as Marion. She gives a gloriously mournful, lonely performance as the trapeze artist trying to find something that will fill this aching hole in her soul. There's a fantastic sequence where she sits in her trailer and just sings along with a Nick Cave song, and the pain and sadness of her life seems almost to overwhelm her. It's remarkable work.<br />
Peter Falk has a small but wonderful role in the film. He plays Peter Falk, the star of Colombo, who has come to Berlin to work on a film and who becomes a figure of fascination for Damiel. For much of the film it seems like just an odd quirk of the film to have such a recognisable actor playing himself - it seems like a way of quickly establishing this film has taken place in our reality - and it's amusing the number of people who see him and respond with Columbo jokes, but he proves to be an absolutely vital figure in the film. And he gets one of the best scenes in the movie, where he find himself effectively monologuing about the joys of being human, of getting to enjoy the simple pleasures, things like rubbing your hands together when it's cold, or enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee, or a cigarette, or combining the coffee and smoke into one wonderful experience. There's a wit and a charm to his performance, and I struggle to think of anyone who could have been more perfectly matched to this material.<br />
I adored the cinematography and visual flair that was brought to this film. There's a note attached to the start of this restoration that explains that, because of technical limitations at the time, every print that had previously been made of the film was many, many generations away from the original camera negative - which is upsetting because there is such a striking and bold and beautiful sensibility to the film that it's a shame to think that for three decades all anyone could watch was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. The film is shot with this striking rich black and white cinematography that makes Berlin look like the most beautiful city imaginable, and feel less grounded, as though this really is a world in which angels wander and observe our behaviour. There is also a moment in which the film makes a transition into colour for a while, and it is beautiful, but the colour also makes the film feels grounded and real in a way that the black and white never does, and it almost feels like a relief when the screen returns to black and white, because it gives the film that overarching beauty that it demands. But if I had to criticize the film on any point, it would probably be on the scheme around that transition into colour. Before the big central moment that changes the film, there are a few random points throughout the first part of the film where the film does transition into colour very briefly. I think that's the one point where Wenders does make a mistake; I feel that that transition into colour would be so much more effective if we hadn't already seen at multiple points the film go, however briefly, into colour. I'm also not entirely positive that the logic underpinning that transition into colour really holds with some of the earlier scenes. In particular, there's a moment where we see footage apparently from the concentration camp, while we later on see film footage of people rebuilding the city, and while the concentration camp footage is in black and white, the rebuilding scenes are in colour. And I'm not sure I can parse the logic for these two scenes being treated differently, other than just the fact that they were able to get colour footage of the one moment but not of the other. But it is a moment that might possibly undercut the film in a way that I don't think is intended. But to be clear, that is an extremely minor quibble in an otherwise fantastic piece of cinema.<br />
The film prominently features the music of Nick Cave, not just in the previously mentioned scene where Marian sings along to his album, but also in multiple scenes where characters go to a nightclub where Cave is performing. It's not a musical style that particularly appeals to me, but the way Wenders presents the music makes it feel vital and gloriously alive.<br />
One thing I'm excited to do is look into whether there has been any commentary written about the role of the Berlin Wall in this film. The wall is extremely prominently featured in multiple scenes, including one pivotal moment that takes place in the No Man's Land between the two sides, and I'm very curious to see why the wall was such a big part of the film. It could be that the wall was just a big part of West Berlin, as possibly the thing Berlin was best known for at the time, and it would be hard to make a film set in that city without featuring the wall. But it feels as though we're supposed to see the separation between the angelic and the human realms as symbolic of the division that existed in the city at that time, where everyone exists as a resident of this one great city but yet there's an inability for people on one side to truly connect with the other. No doubt there's a lot that has been written on the topic by many people with more considered insight then I could offer on the topic, and I'm looking forward to seeing what has been said on this.<br />
It's a vital, fantastic, glorious work of cinema, and it was such a joy to get to revisit it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXQ4dCOE2ajEjnrZ7FkVhC7fCntgbc4Yjc1c6yJTgQ8SdoLqO4Im7zzFS85DutM5gXi1yKIXpIGxIxFaqFFSpLgtWoIISZtys3Oq9MR9U5i2KZ70fUvuMxIKIeBdX3-Lz4LMZjVBokimpG/s1600/3_faces.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="943" data-original-width="693" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXQ4dCOE2ajEjnrZ7FkVhC7fCntgbc4Yjc1c6yJTgQ8SdoLqO4Im7zzFS85DutM5gXi1yKIXpIGxIxFaqFFSpLgtWoIISZtys3Oq9MR9U5i2KZ70fUvuMxIKIeBdX3-Lz4LMZjVBokimpG/s400/3_faces.jpeg" width="293" /></a></div>
<b><i>3 Faces</i></b><br />
My first film of the (official) final day of the festival was the new film from Jafar Panahi. There are few things that's fascinate me more than the state of Jafar Panahi's current career. The Iranian director is close to half way through his 20-year ban on making movies, and he seems to have reached the point where he doesn't even try to hide that he is still making movies. In his earlier films he was at least playfully coy about whether he was making a movie - in <i>This Is Not A Film</i>, he's on-screen describing the film that he would make if he was able to make a movie, while I believe that <i>Taxi</i> has no credits, so technically no one knows who directed that film. But <i>3 Faces</i> opens with a very clear on-screen credit, a film by Jafar Panahi, so I guess he's just being open about this now.<br />
<i>3 Faces</i> opens with a video selfie being shot by a tearful young woman, Marziyeh, walking through a cave as she addresses actress Behnaz Jafari. Marziyeh talks about her aspiration to become an actress, her family's refusal to let her leave the village to study acting because it will bring dishonour on them, her repeated failed efforts to contact Jafari and get her to come to the village and convince Marziyeh's family to let her leave. And then Marziyeh hangs herself. Jafari (who plays herself) is understandably concerned by this video, but is uncertain whether it's real or not, especially as she knows nothing about Marziyeh's claimed efforts to contact her. And so she drives with her friend Jafar Panahi to try to find the village where this girl lived in hope of understanding what is going on. And when they do find the village, they are concerned to discover that Marziyeh has not been seen for three days.<br />
The focus of the film is very much centred on the female experience of living in Iran, and what it's like to have your life dictated by those around, with limited ability to define who you are as a person. One of the scariest moments in the film comes when they visit Marziyeh's family, and we encounter her brother, who is all uncontrollable rage at this awful girl who has dishonoured us with her desires for something better than the life offered by this tiny village. The very fact that suicide seems like a credible and understandable response to her inability to escape her home shows just how hard this life really could be for her, and for many like her.<br />
There’s this road that leads up to the central village which is long and windy and too narrow for two cars to pass, and so the village has developed this complicated process where cars approaching the road will honk their horns to see whether anyone is on the road, and then there’s an increasing process of honks as people try to signal whether their need to drive down the road is more urgent than the car coming the other way – the scene in which this process is described really is very funny. But it feels like it’s a nice commentary on a country that is too wedded to the way it has always done things. There’s a moment where we hear about Marziyeh in frustration just deciding to grab some tools and try to expand the road until they took her tools away, not because it couldn’t be done (which it obviously couldn’t be, not by one person), but because that’s not work for women. There’s no obvious reason why the road couldn’t be expanded; it’s just that the whole honking system has worked well for them in the past and they have no motivation to change it, much like a country that sees no reason to allow women to take an increasing part in society just because things have been fine without female involvement in the past.<br />
I really do enjoy Panahi’s filming style. He’s very minimalistic in his work, often simply framing the film and then letting the scenes play out in these beautiful extended takes in front of the camera. And it’s a wonderfully flexible approach: there are points where we are deliberately not shown what is happening, where we hear characters arguing or yelling behind closed doors but we are deliberately kept at a distance away from what is going on. At other points it’s actively funny; in one moment a character is seen standing near Panahi’s car while picking up a large rock; when the next shot proves to be to a shot through the windscreen, the audience couldn’t help laughing as we noticed the smashed glass.<br />
As always, it’s really interesting to view the film through the lens of Panahi’s current circumstances. While Panahi is a character in the film (and is definitely becoming more comfortable on screen) he’s very much a hanger-on, an observer in the events rather than an active participant. It’s almost as though the Panahi stand-in is actually the young girl Marizyeh, who does after all start and end the film – she is someone who is creative and talented, bursting with ideas that she wants to express, but she feels oppressed in this world that is trying to silence her, that is trying to force her to be quiet, to know her place, and to not push for a better world. The film is obviously directly about the place of women in Iranian society, but I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to find an interpretation that also discusses Panahi’s situation. (The film is also rather playful about Panahi’s situation; he’s asked multiple times if he’s travelling to this village in order to make a new film, a question he always answers with a firm No.)<br />
One thing I found interesting was the involvement of a minor character (I don’t believe she’s ever seen except in long-distance) called Sherazad, a woman who had been an actress before the Islamic Revolution. There was a long period after the revolution where Iranian cinema was famous for telling these incredible stories about children, and I remember reading that this was because the authorities imposed so many restrictions on movies with men and women together that the only practical way you could have male and female characters together was to have them be pre-pubescent children. But that obviously has an impact on the people who were previously working in the industry, and in Sherazad we see someone who in a very real way was a victim of that change, someone who previously had a happy life but who has now been forced into a very insular and withdrawn life away from the world that she had previously enjoyed. It's a small but tragic indictment on a government that would seek to control the expressions of its artists and the impact that this has on real people.<br />
Watching this film, I found myself realising that, although I really do enjoy Panahi’s post-ban films, for some reason I’ve never really gone back to look at his earlier films. I have seen his beautiful debut film <i><a href="https://www.filmsocietywellington.net.nz/db/screeningdetail.php?id=532&sy=2010" target="_blank">The White Balloon</a></i>, which screened at Film Society back in 2010 and which remains one of my favourite Film Society discoveries, but I’ve never dug beyond that into his other early work. And I really need to change that.<br />
I have no doubt that there is a lot in this film that I completely failed to comprehend. Panahi is a smart and informed filmmaker who is able to use his work to cut at the problems in Iranian culture and its political system without ever coming out and baldly stating what his message is. But what that does mean is that his works can feel as though there are elements and messages that are invisible and impossible to understand by someone who isn't completely ingrained in the culture. But there's also a degree to which it doesn't matter, because his films are so entertaining and intriguing that, even if you don't know what point the film is trying to make, you can just enjoy them as an interesting story well told. And this was really enjoyable.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3OnikPMMYuEshsv8FvWCaQmUZN63xPEXhkY_VwdIwngLyyWXA2nlCV_xSmsCc-x2-aEY7oKn4fqZlQM7Si4QVN9gcLdJ0vgGl4YWnqCkSLt8c2cgBvrZW453cG7W3FYWrTK9l8frdLeBr/s1600/burning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="529" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3OnikPMMYuEshsv8FvWCaQmUZN63xPEXhkY_VwdIwngLyyWXA2nlCV_xSmsCc-x2-aEY7oKn4fqZlQM7Si4QVN9gcLdJ0vgGl4YWnqCkSLt8c2cgBvrZW453cG7W3FYWrTK9l8frdLeBr/s400/burning.jpg" width="280" /></a></div>
<b><i>Burning</i></b><br />
A fantastic and intriguing South Korean drama, <i>Burning</i> focuses on Jongsoo, a young man living in the city who is forced to move back home to take care of his father’s farm after his father is arrested for assaulting a public official. At the same time, he runs into Haemi, a young woman he knew as a child, and the two start dating. She even asks him to take care of her pet cat while she's in Africa for a few weeks to find herself. But there are some weird things about Haemi, like the fact that her cat is never seen despite being kept in a tiny one-room apartment with nowhere to escape to, or the fact that she has memories of events from their childhood that no-one else remembers. She returns from Africa with a friend, Ben, a slightly older and much wealthier man who she became close to on the trip, and the two increasingly hang out together, which distresses an increasingly possessive Jongsoo. Then one day the two visit him out at his father's farm and, while high, Ben confesses that his hobby is to burn down disused greenhouses, and he’s in the area scouting out a greenhouse to destroy. And it's at this point that the film changes from being a small drama about a troubled relationship into a mystery that increasingly consumes the entire film.<br />
Director Lee Chang-dong displays an impressive control of tone throughout the entire film. I didn’t remember anything that the write-up said about the film, so had no idea it would become a mystery, and so for the first half of the film I was just watching this intriguing story about a troubled relationship between these two ultimately likable but flawed people. And it’s engaging and fun, and Jongsoo is so completely out of his depth and earnest that he’s a sympathetic figure despite his fairly significant flaws. And then the turn comes, and it comes so quietly that you don’t instantly realise that the film has become a mystery, but once you do there’s an unbearable level of suspense and tension maintained right through to its ultimately inevitable conclusion.<br />
One thing I really appreciated was that the film’s almost stubborn refusal to answer questions, or to be clear about which questions we should be asking, or even whether we should be asking questions in the first place. Yes, it’s a mystery, but part of the mystery is deliberately about whether there is a mystery at all. And so we’re sent into this utterly disorienting spiral as we’re trying to get a grasp on anything firm at all. There’s a host of questions all around, with different people behaving in ways that create different suspicions, but I struggle to find a single unifying explanation that makes sense of everything.<br />
Here’s an example: During the last half of the film, we find ourselves following Ben quite a lot as Jongsoo tries to understand his involvement in the mystery, and the tension in these sequences is unbearable. In my favourite sequence, Jongsoo is trying to follow Ben in a fairly conspicuous truck that Ben should recognise but doesn’t seem to. Ben turns down a country road, Jongsoo follows, but then Ben seems to vanish when he goes around a bend. Then a minute later Ben is behind him – did he just pull off the road for a minute and Jongsoo missed it, or did he know that Jongsoo was following him and is he trying to trap him? But Jongsoo pulls off the road and Ben drives past, parking on top of a nearby hill. So Jongsoo climbs the hill and hides behind Ben’s car, maybe two metres away from Ben, who’s looking out at the view with an unusual look. Is he just innocently enjoying the view oblivious to Jongsoo’s presence? Or is he guilty, and so focused on his thoughts about his actions that he has genuinely not noticed Jongsoo? Or is he guilty and deliberately toying with this person he knows is there but is pretending not to? All three seem like credible explanations. Another credible explanation is that this whole scene is all a dream, since the next scene opens with Jongsoo waking up, but it doesn’t play that way, especially as it’s not markedly different from the rest of the film and there’s no obvious indication that the wider film might be his imaginings or delusions.<br />
All of which makes the film sound as though it could be an unsatisfying unknowable experience, like an inferior Lynchian experience that throws out mysterious elements without ever resolving them. On the contrary, it’s immensely satisfying and intriguing, largely because this is all focused on putting us all in the mindset of Jongsoo; it’s not about us solving the mystery, it’s about us understanding the journey that leads him to his endpoint. He never knows the answers, he never actually grasps what might be happening, he just has to act on his limited information. And it’s a gripping journey that he goes on and that we are carried along with.<br />
I also have to note that the film is beautifully shot and took a particular delight in the use of silhouettes, with a couple of scenes that are probably my absolute favourite moments of cinematography in the festival. In one, we watch a figure looking at a greenhouse in flames, and the way they shot the waves of flames consuming the structure was strikingly beautiful. In another, a (somewhat high) Haemi stands topless, her back to the audience, watching the setting sun and offering her profound observations while the film delighted in the shape of her silhouetted body as a pitch black contrast against the changing colours of the sky. It was just an extraordinarily beautiful and memorable shot, and a great use of cinematography as storytelling, because this proves to be an unexpectedly significant moment, and the cinematography fixed this moment in the audience's mind.<br />
This is one of those films that just gets better in your mind. I really enjoyed the film while I watched it, but as I reflect on the experience and the way the film worked my appreciation and love for it grows. It's just so good.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq345qH_wSTYt__sgs0XWPe1nDc_tatE2P_NomDIySiqSoBWRXoQU7G9QKQB0qmwJM8iP6waPhpL5cfvZAHOeEVrr8H5S3u6BMGrEZGJfYxR16_s23uWGAOOpPjiHNoC1PepT4-t_wUzhr/s1600/cold_war.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="663" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq345qH_wSTYt__sgs0XWPe1nDc_tatE2P_NomDIySiqSoBWRXoQU7G9QKQB0qmwJM8iP6waPhpL5cfvZAHOeEVrr8H5S3u6BMGrEZGJfYxR16_s23uWGAOOpPjiHNoC1PepT4-t_wUzhr/s400/cold_war.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>
<b><i>Cold War</i></b><br />
The official Closing Night film of this year's festival was this sweet, charming, tragic Polish musical charting 15 years in the lives of a young couple. The film opens in 1950, with pianist Wiktor putting together a group of singers who he can build up as a touring choir performing a celebration of Polish folk songs; he soon starts a relationship with one of the girls in the group, a woman named Zula. The choir is successful, and starts to come under pressure from the communist government to supplement the folk music with songs that will communicate certain socialist ideals, until they ultimately find themselves singing hymns to the glory of Stalin. While on tour, Wiktor and Zula make plans to escape to the West, but in the last minute Zula doesn't come and Wiktor has to leave for Paris alone. And so the film follows the two of them through to the mid-60s, as they enter and exit each other's lives, with their tempestuous relationship waxing and waning repeatedly over time.<br />
The main appeal in the film is as a musical, as we explore the couple’s work together and apart as musical artists. There’s a wonderful variation in the musical styles being explored here, from folk to 50s-rock to lounge, even a mock B-movie score, and it’s always a delight. There are some fabulous sequences set to popular music, but the real highlight is in the lesser-known (to our ears) songs. The moments where we just sit and listen to the choir singing these traditional Polish songs really are delightful. In the case of one song, as the film progresses we hear it repeatedly as it is reinterpreted into different musical styles and even into different languages, and it’s fascinating to hear how much such a simple musical idea with a particularly distinctive hook can be so completely transformed while retaining its essence.<br />
I adored the central performances. Joanna Kulig as Zulia is utterly radiant, someone who demands the attention of the audience, while Tomasz Kot as Wiktor carries a nice sense of weary resignation to his composer character. What I found particularly surprising was just how strong they were as musical performers, particularly Kot’s work as a piano player. I’m not sure whether he previously played piano or whether he learned it for the movie, but there are moments where the film takes care to highlight the fact that there is no fakery involved as he’s playing some exceptionally intricate and complex pieces. It’s nice when a movie that is so focused on musical ability takes care to convince its audience that its characters really do have the talent to survive in this world.<br />
The film is shot with this beautiful black and white cinematography. I often find that there can be something unsatisfying about modern black and white movies. It's almost as though people have lost the skills to do it well, and so images often come across as murky and indistinct, until the image feels like it's composed of subtle variations in grey. That's not what this film is like. There's a clear understanding of how to use the contrast between light and dark to make the image pop, where every subtle variation in the image is clear and distinct, and where every image, no matter how unimportant, feels like it demands your attention. Stunning work.<br />
One thing I found fascinating was how honest the film was about the burdens of leaving your home for another country. To us, it seems like the most obvious choice to leave the repression and control of communist Poland for the freedom of Paris, and the characters agree that it’s the right choice, but yet Poland becomes somewhere they just cannot leave behind. It means a lot to have to abandon your home, your country, this place you’ve grown up, and even when they do leave, they’re left with a hole in their heart, a longing to return to a home that means so much. It’s extremely effective in communicating the reality and complexity of these emotions. I read that in creating the central characters, director Pawel Pawlikowski was inspired by his parents, who in addition to seemingly having a turbulent relationship did also leave the country for a number of years, and you get the sense that the film is very much influenced by Pawlikowski hearing from his parents exactly what the emotional experience of leaving you’re your home really is like.<br />
This is a complex emotional film. It’s not a feel-good film by any means – there’s a definite darkness and sadness in the shape of the story and in the bitterness that exists between our leads at certain points – but at the same time there’s a genuine joy in the transformative power of music. Ultimately it was a real delight, and a pleasing way for the film festival to officially close.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw0x42r6x6iIEGeg25_gLZTheefYIrumwdm1Vd9N1eDkqFkNn9DBBE4-OWRFC6D-16al_8F4nN6S4QtYoEEsVXqM5A6E-IICw__G8CaoAfmRZ_8xKACyjn84i58_UuWzR_vPkWardzWqvR/s1600/sign_o_the_times.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="497" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw0x42r6x6iIEGeg25_gLZTheefYIrumwdm1Vd9N1eDkqFkNn9DBBE4-OWRFC6D-16al_8F4nN6S4QtYoEEsVXqM5A6E-IICw__G8CaoAfmRZ_8xKACyjn84i58_UuWzR_vPkWardzWqvR/s400/sign_o_the_times.jpg" width="262" /></a></div>
<b><i>Prince: Sign O The Times</i></b><br />
The film festival officially runs for 17 days, from the opening Friday until the closing Sunday. Every year, they always add a few extra screenings of particularly popular films in the week after the official end of the festival, but when I have attended these additional screenings I've never counted them as part of my festival count, because they're outside the 17 days. This year is an exception, for two reasons. Firstly, the Prince concert film <i>Sign O The Times</i> was not originally part of the programme, and as a late addition had its one and only festival screening on the Tuesday after the festival ended, so it was never possible to see the film during the official festival time period. Secondly, counting the film as part of my official festival count means that I had 40 films this yeah, and I like round numbers.<br />
I'm not really much of a music fan, much less a Prince fan. When I think of his music, I know 1999, I probably would recognise Purple Rain, I'm familiar with those of his songs that are able to be heard in the 1989 <i>Batman</i>, and I know When Doves Cry from the cover of the song that features in Baz Luhrmann's <i>Romeo + Juliet</i>. But I was still interested in seeing the film, particularly since it does have a very strong reputation as one of the best concert films ever made. And I have enjoyed concert films in the past, even when I'm not much of a fan of the artist. I thought Talking Heads' <i>Stop Making Sense</i> was fantastic, I really enjoyed the Rolling Stones concert film <i>Shine a Light</i> that Scorsese directed, and more recently I had a great deal of fun with the <i>Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids</i> concert film directed by Jonathan Demme. But what I realise is that with each of these films, even if I'm not a fan of the artist, I've absorbed enough about their work through cultural osmosis that I can recognise the occasional song, which gives me a way in to the artist. But in the case of Prince and this film, I have never heard any of these songs before, and so I didn't have a way in to the film. They were well performed, but I just didn't feel that these songs were all that memorable. I guess the ultimate test for me is whether or not the film engaged me enough that I would want to dig deeper into discovering the artist's work; those earlier films had that exact effect on me, and this did not.<br />
I was uncertain about many of the design choices adopted during the film. Why is the concert stage setup to look like a mock red light district? Why is that keyboard player dressed as a doctor? Why is that guitar player wearing what can only be described as a tassel blindfold? In fact, there's a weird erratic visual approach to the costume meaning of everyone on stage that just felt incoherent; I'm sure that Prince could have explained what all of the design choices were supposed to mean, but as a viewer it wasn't communicated and just felt random.<br />
The film also has these incredibly irritating vignettes, short scenes that are presumably supposed to illustrate some point or other. But I never felt like I could grasp what the point of those moments was supposed to be, especially since there was a wild variation in the scenes. Why are some vignettes played out on stage in front of the concert audience, while others played on backstage set away from the concert audience, and still more scenes are seemingly filmed separately from the concert, without any obvious rationale. I assume we're supposed to take something away from the vignettes, and they're supposed to be important judging by the choice to feature short glimpses of these scenes in one of the final songs, but I couldn't see any obvious structure or purpose to the moments. They just felt like pretensions of an artist who seems to be convinced of his own genius, and who wants to be seen to be giving his work more significance that is perhaps would hold.<br />
And yet, as little as I cared for the songs in the film, and Prince's artistic pretensions, the fact is that guy was a born entertainer. He's a good singer, and fine as a composer, but watching him dance was an utter delight. And he surrounds himself with fellow performers who really are operating at the top level. I don't know that I've ever heard of a concert film where the most memorable thing was the dancing, but there is one dancer in particular who just brings such energy and power to her movement that it is stunning. Then there's a blistering drum solo that is difficult to comprehend how the drummer is even playing that thing. And there's a backing vocalist who gets one moment to shine, but when she does her voice just feels like it batters you.<br />
The fact is, for all that I didn't really care about Prince's music, I was still thoroughly entertained by an impressive display of performing talents. And I did really enjoy it.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-17952588832315312312019-07-06T23:27:00.000+12:002019-07-31T19:22:33.512+12:00Trail of Suspense, Laughter, Violence, Hope, Heart, Nudity, Sex, Happy Endings... Mainly Happy EndingsSo here’s the thing,<br />
<br />
Thursday morning, I posted a comment on Facebook: “Preparing myself for the most stressful day of the year.” Film Festival tickets were going on sale, and remembering the last few years fighting with a website that was constantly crashing or failing in one way or another, I was resigned to another few hours of frustration as I tried to secure my tickets.<br />
<br />
It wasn’t a promising start. As in the past few years, I broke my purchases up into smaller groups, in order to minimise the risk of the website crashing right as I was finishing a massive purchase. I selected my first group of films, went through to the page where I told them how many tickets I wanted for each film, went to progress, and... nothing. Just a screen with three dots cycling around. I was sitting there waiting for several minutes until I remembered that last year there had been some advice about not using Internet Explorer on the site. I pulled up the site on Chrome, and it actually worked. Yay!<br />
<br />
That is, until I tried to select my seats, to avoid the automatic seat allocation (which is always rubbish). My first seat selection worked perfectly. But my second seat selection actually changed my first, so I was sitting in the same seat for both films, even though the second film was already selling well and my seat was much worse for that film than the first. I tried to fix the seat for the first film, but just got caught in a cycle where I would select a seat, click OK, and return to the same seat selection screen. I closed out of it, and went back in. Same result – getting the tickets was perfect, selecting the seats was non-functional. Then when I closed out, I found myself logged out of the festival website. Memories of past years, of the site logging me out and not letting me back in, flooded my memory. But I was surprised to be able to log back in quite easily. By now I could see the major setpiece screenings were already selling well, even though tickets had only been on sale for 10 or 15 minutes, so I decided to abandon the seat selection and just take what they give me. It worked; half an hour after tickets went on sale, I had all of my tickets purchased. I’m not happy with some of my seats, particularly in the smallest screens – I prefer to be centred to the screen, and most of my films in those smallest screens find me sitting quite sharply to one side or the other, making the angle to the screen quite bad – but I can live with it, especially since the purchasing experience was otherwise really smooth.<br />
<br />
Good work, film festival website people. While there’s still work to allow people to decide for themselves where they would prefer to sit, the preparation for the peak demand when tickets went on sale was finally perfect. And for that I am grateful.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrwfplqVxkoAjRtgp25ASshFJ-klb1qE-QUw3cQrXzmLzsRLqfVZXAVYRUHxRYP6bwHsA2iA39qllV2NZ1MaU68Ram3trUyxTNV8huH5cFJGvL6N_TOytVIYp0R_IM_fDXE7vfz9FOACid/s1600/NZFF19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1133" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrwfplqVxkoAjRtgp25ASshFJ-klb1qE-QUw3cQrXzmLzsRLqfVZXAVYRUHxRYP6bwHsA2iA39qllV2NZ1MaU68Ram3trUyxTNV8huH5cFJGvL6N_TOytVIYp0R_IM_fDXE7vfz9FOACid/s640/NZFF19.jpg" width="451" /></a>Anyway, the films I’ll be seeing are:<br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/the-whistlers/" target="_blank">The Whistlers</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/la-belle-epoque/" target="_blank">La Belle Époque</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/making-waves-the-art-of-cinematic-sound/" target="_blank">Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/apollo-11/" target="_blank">Apollo 11</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/varda-by-agnes/" target="_blank">Varda by Agnès</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/apocalypse-now-final-cut/" target="_blank">Apocalypse Now: Final Cut</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/midnight-family/" target="_blank">Midnight Family</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/the-farewell/" target="_blank">The Farewell</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/meeting-gorbachev/" target="_blank">Meeting Gorbachev</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/in-fabric/" target="_blank">In Fabric</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/judy-punch/" target="_blank">Judy & Punch</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/high-life/" target="_blank">High Life</a></i><br />
<strike>* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/le-bonheur/" target="_blank">Le Bonheur</a></i></strike><br />
<strike>* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/long-days-journey-into-night/" target="_blank">Long Day’s Journey into Night</a></i></strike><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/daguerreotypes/" target="_blank">Daguerréotypes</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/monos/" target="_blank">Monos</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/amazing-grace/" target="_blank">Amazing Grace</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/loro/" target="_blank">Loro</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/maria-by-callas/" target="_blank">Maria by Callas</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/what-she-said-the-art-of-pauline-kael/" target="_blank">What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/the-amazing-johnathan-documentary/" target="_blank">The Amazing Johnathan Documentary</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/we-are-little-zombies/" target="_blank">We Are Little Zombies</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/andrei-rublev/" target="_blank">Andrei Rublev</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/vagabond/" target="_blank">Vagabond</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/who-you-think-i-am/" target="_blank">Who You Think I Am</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/the-nightingale/" target="_blank">The Nightingale</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/escher-journey-into-infinity/" target="_blank">Escher: Journey into Infinity</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/fly-by-night/" target="_blank">Fly By Night</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/the-day-shall-come/" target="_blank">The Day Shall Come</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/under-the-silver-lake/" target="_blank">Under the Silver Lake</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/vivarium/" target="_blank">Vivarium</a></i><br />
* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/the-gangster-the-cop-the-devil/" target="_blank"><i>The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil</i></a><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/koyaanisqatsi/" target="_blank">Koyaanisqatsi</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/ruben-brandt-collector/" target="_blank">Ruben Brandt, Collector</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/the-wild-goose-lake/" target="_blank">The Wild Goose Lake</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/les-miserables/" target="_blank">Les Misérables</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/jacquot-de-nantes/" target="_blank">Jacquot de Nantes</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/kind-hearts-and-coronets/" target="_blank">Kind Hearts and Coronets</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/the-third-wife/" target="_blank">The Third Wife</a></i><br />
<br />
[EDIT - And a week later they announced a screening of <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2019/wellington/midsommar/" target="_blank">Midsommar</a></i>, the new horror film from Ari Aster, director of <i>Hereditary</i>. <i>Midsommar</i> has been getting a lot of fantastic buzz, so I was very excited by the announcement. It should be a fun experience with a full Embassy crowd.]<br />
<br />
Last week my favourite podcast, Battleship Pretention, <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/episode-640-agnes-varda-with-marya-e-gates/" target="_blank">released an episode</a> covering the work of the late Agnes Varda. Listening to the episode, I realised I've never seen any of her films, so it was a wonderful surprise to open the festival programme two days later to find they had scheduled a retrospective of five of her films, including two films (<i>Daguerreotypes</i> and <i>Le Bonheur</i>) cited by one of the show's hosts as his favourite Varda films. (Add to that the film society's upcoming screening of <i><a href="https://www.filmsocietywellington.net.nz/db/screeningdetail.php?id=863&sy=2019" target="_blank">Faces Places</a></i>, and I'm going to rapidly become a Varda expert.)<br />
<br />
The classic film selection this year is quite exciting.<br />
* I rewatched <i>Kind Hearts and Coronets</i> only a few months ago, but it's such a gloriously fun and funny film, with an incredible performance by Alec Guinness, that I'm not going to complain about watching it again on the big screen.<br />
* I'm also excited by the screening of <i>Apocalypse Now: Final Cut</i>. I saw <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2002/archive-1/im:11697/" target="_blank">Apocalypse Now Redux</a></i> at the film festival in 2002, and while it's a wonderful cinematic experience, the <i>Redux</i> version is just too long and bloated, with the French Plantation scene in particular just feeling prolonged and aimless at exactly the wrong time in the film. Hopefully this <i>Final Cut</i> will be a good middle-ground between the too-short original cut and the too-long <i>Redux</i> edit.<br />
* I've never seen the other two classic films showing. I've heard great things about <i>Koyaanisqatsi</i>, which pairs documentary footage from around the world with a legendary score by Philip Glass to form a film that abandons any type of storytelling and that is primarily about being an experience for the audience, so seeing this on the big screen should be ideal. And then there's <i>Andrei Rublev</i>. This will be my fifth film by Andrei Tarkovsky, and I haven't really cared for any of his other works that I've seen (including <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/archive-1/stalker/" target="_blank">Stalker</a></i>, which screened in the festival back in 2017), but I always live in hope of discovering something I've never seen before and understanding why a filmmaker like Tarkovsky is so revered.<br />
<br />
Usually there are a few films that I was hoping the festival would be showing but that never make it onto the schedule. However this year, I can't think of anything missing; every film I looked for makes an appearance in the programme.<br />
* I was most excited to see the Japanese film <i>We Are Little Zombies</i> listed, even if only for a single screening. It's supposed to be an utterly joyous experience about teen orphans forming a pop band, and was literally the first film I checked for when I got my programme.<br />
* I was pleased when <i>Under the Silver Lake</i> was one of the first announcements. The reviews have mostly been mixed-to-negative, but some people really like it, and there's something appealing to me about a film that can be so divisive (plus I loved <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2014/archive/it-follows/" target="_blank">It Follows</a></i>). I'm curious to see which way I fall.<br />
* There's an Aretha Franklin concert film called <i>Amazing Grace</i>, with footage shot close to 50 years ago but unavailable for all this time because of technical problems that could only now be resolved. It's supposed to be an incredible experience, and I'm excited to hear it with a fantastic cinema sound system.<br />
* I've been hearing great things about <i>High Life</i>, an introspective science-fiction film that is the first English-language movie from Claire Denis. It sounds like a strange, fragmented story that has been compared to <i>2001</i> (which I love) and <i>Solaris</i> (which I don't). Should be interesting.<br />
* As a fan of both the Victor Hugo book and the musical, I'm curious about <i>Les Misérables</i>, a film that is apparently not a retelling of the original story, but that instead tells a wholly new story exploring the same themes as the original but in a modern context.<br />
* I was fascinated by the previous films of Peter Strickland (the horror film <i>Berberian Sound Studio</i>, in which the gore was kept off screen while we watch the sound effects artist creating the sound of people being torn apart, and the lesbian BDSM-inflected chamber drama <i>The Duke of Burgundy</i>). Peter Strickland makes bizarre, fascinating, personal films; had any other filmmaker made a film about a demonic dress I probably would have dismissed it, but when Strickland makes <i>In Fabric</i>, I'm curious.<br />
* I was a bit uncertain whether to add <i>The Nightingale</i> to my schedule. It's supposed to be really good, and I did love Jennifer Kent's previous film <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2014/archive/the-babadook/" target="_blank">The Babadook</a></i>, but the stories about walkouts due to the number of rape scenes gave me pause. I've decided to trust that the fact it was written and directed by a woman means that there's care and consideration in the inclusion of those scenes.<br />
* I'm glad to finally see <i>Apollo 11</i>, a documentary about the moon landing compiled from footage that was shot at the time on large format 70mm film and was then misplaced and lost, kept in pristine condition. It's a shame I won't get to see it on the IMAX screen, since that was apparently an incredible experience, but it will still be exciting to see the film on the big screen.<br />
* People seem to really love the Awkwafina comedy <i>The Farewell</i>. I'm yet to get the Awkwafina thing, since I've found her annoying when I've seen her in other films, but this film seems to call for more nuance and subtlety than her usual oversized characters, and I'm hoping she can deliver that.<br />
<br />
It's going to be a rough film festival. After the Paramount closed 18 months ago, it seemed like the festival would be badly affected by the loss of one of its main central city venues, so it was fantastic when Reading Courtenay made itself available as a venue, significantly adding to the number of screens within walking distance of each other. But now Reading Courtenay is closed as an earthquake risk, and they've had to spread the festival out even wider to find venues. I was glad to see them add the Lighthouse Cuba as a centre city venue. I have no idea what the City Gallery is like as a movie theatre, but I'm going to find out. They're even having screenings in Porirua; I have a couple of days where I have to rush from work all the way out to Porirua (in rush hour) for an early evening screening, before driving back into town to catch my second film of the night. That will be stressful, and exhausting. But hopefully it will be worth it.<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-p1UQHswM_k" width="853"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
[EDIT - And sadly, something came up last minute that meant that I had to cancel one night's screenings. I didn't mind missing <i>Le Bonheur</i> too much, since it is an classic film and therefore easily accessible elsewhere. I was more disappointed about missing <i>Long Day's Journey into Night</i>, since it seems like a title unlikely to get a theatrical release, and since it's a 3D film watching it at home won't have the same effect without a 3D TV.]Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-29525892528629986352019-02-24T14:02:00.000+13:002019-02-25T23:12:34.146+13:001055 minutesSo here’s the thing,<br />
<br />
A few years ago, I saw a screening of the 1954 Judy Garland/James Mason version of <i>A Star Is Born</i>. And I thought the film, a story of a drunk Hollywood star on the decline who meets a young talented woman and helps her start her career only to see her stardom eclipse his, was great. Then last year, when the buzz around the new Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga version started, I decided it would be an interesting exercise to actually sit down and watch all of the previous <i>Star Is Born</i>s to prepare for the new version. And it is genuinely fascinating to see how this one story grows and changes over time, reflecting changes in cultural tastes and in societal views, while remaining recognisably the same.<br />
<br />
In the original 1937 film with Janet Gaynor and Frederic March (and which I understand bears heavy similarity to 1932’s <i>What Price Hollywood?</i>), the core plot is established, and it’s surprising how largely untouched that plotting goes throughout the different versions. The main difference is the absence of music, which is a big issue – instead she’s just an actor, and we’re supposed to believe that Norman Maine sees her star appeal and talent as an actress based solely on her serving at a party, which doesn’t play very believably (and which seems even more of a contrivance when you remember that the film actually makes a joke out of her trying to serve people in a way that shows her acting skills). The 1954 remake with Judy Garland and James Mason introduced music to the story, which was the thing that revolutionised these films; it may be hard to see someone’s acting ability or star appeal from watching them serve food, but anyone who hears Judy Garland sing would instantly know she has genuine talent even if she is an unknown. With this film, she’s still an film star, but since this is the period of big-budget Hollywood musicals, that’s the type of film she makes, and this becomes a vehicle to include song-and-dance sequences from all of the films she makes. But other than that, the film is pretty damned close to the original; it seemed to me that many scenes in the '54 would play out with near-identical dialogue as in the '37. By the 70s the era of major movie musicals is over, and so the 1976 version with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson adopts the idea of her being a recording star instead, an approach that gives the story sufficient flexibility that it can change with the time and styles; I’d be shocked if any future <i>Star Is Born</i>s return to a Hollywood movie star setting. But while the 1976 version may have arrived at the ultmate form of the story, it is a flawed film – it is better than its poor reputation, but it is easily the least of the films.<br />
<br />
And now we have the 2018 version with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. There was a lot of buzz around the film, and for a long time it was widely viewed as the frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar; that buzz died down, and at this point it seems certain that it will be one of the Best Picture nominees that come up short.<br />
<br />
<i>[Comments on the 2018 A Star Is Born, and the seven other Best Picture nominees – Roma, The Favourite, Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Vice, Green Book, and Bohemian Rhapsody – after the jump]</i> <br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhSzT7Vp1Tc0y8kPub4PUpHeGXJSLacDjlOQNoksbXG0upc5_jyg1UjUmIDoTaII8dmPmfRsq881TBqyLHpWqxk0teneI4sNZth17f1XgbyYRYYycsoWCC2l2GBp5TdhO29elBPqjnQSzs/s1600/star_is_born.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhSzT7Vp1Tc0y8kPub4PUpHeGXJSLacDjlOQNoksbXG0upc5_jyg1UjUmIDoTaII8dmPmfRsq881TBqyLHpWqxk0teneI4sNZth17f1XgbyYRYYycsoWCC2l2GBp5TdhO29elBPqjnQSzs/s400/star_is_born.jpg" width="268" /></a>The fact is, regardless of its success in winning an Oscar, the new <i><b>A Star Is Born</b></i> still a fantastic film – it’s my second-favourite of the four versions of this story (it falls short of the Garland, but beats the Gaynor and the Streisand). One of the things that makes the movie so impressive is how far its two main stars are pushed out of their comfort zone. Bradley Cooper has long been established as a strong charismatic star, but here he’s called on to perform as an experienced singer, and he absolutely convinces as someone who is so comfortable singing in front of an audience, and who has spent his lifetime effectively destroying himself in pursuit of that experience. Meanwhile, Lady Gaga is a great singer, someone who absolutely deserves to be listed with legends like Garland and Steisand, but she’s pretty inexperienced as an actor, and so I was stunned by just how beautifully natural her performance was, expertly navigating the tough emotional highs and lows of the character. She also does well in modulating her performance in the concert scenes; as someone who has been performing for 10 or 15 years, working on stage must feel like a comfortable space, but she manages to drop that experience and give newcomer Ally a genuine sense of being overwhelmed, a level of inexperience and imprecision that seemed natural for someone being thrust into a situation she’s unprepared for.<br />
<br />
In addition to starring, Bradley Cooper co-wrote and directed the movie, and he does very well. Looking first at the screenplay, the thing that leapt out to me was how much more prominent Jackson Maine was when compared to his counterparts in the earlier films. And I liked that as a choice. In the earlier films, the story really does belong to the woman – which is why no-one will ever talk about “the <i>Star Is Born</i> with James Mason”; it’s always “the Judy Garland version.” The screenplay here redresses that balance a bit; it’s now not her story, it’s their story. And I liked that, partly because it brought a bit more depth to his character. The Maine character has tended to be somewhat two-dimensional; he’s a drunk and self-destructive just because he’s a drunk and self-destructive in the story. But here we understand more about his struggles, how these issues have affected him throughout his life, and I liked that the film gives him hearing issues, which might genuinely feel like a career-ending challenge that would exacerbate his problems and bring extra weight to his character’s ending. I was glad that the film was able to bring more depth to the Jackson character without ever diminishing the Ally character.<br />
<br />
I was also extremely impressed with Bradley Cooper’s work as a director. Tackling a project like <i>A Star Is Born</i> must be a major challenge for a first-time director – between the heightened emotion of the melodrama, the intimate tenderness of the love story, and the challenges of staging the musical sequences, there’s a lot to handle – but you never would have guessed it was directed by someone without decades of experience. He demonstrates an absolute confidence and a clarity of vision in navigating the story’s tonal shifts, and I’m genuinely excited to see what Bradley Cooper does next as a director.<br />
<br />
The only thing I don’t really care for is the way they dealt with the ending of the film, especially in comparison to the other versions – and with this, I have to get into spoilers, so if you don’t know about how this story ends, just skip ahead to the next movie.<br />
<br />
[SPOILERS]<br />
So I really found myself struggling with how the film deals with the death of Jackson Maine. In the first two films, after hearing about the impact he’s having on Vicki, Norman Maine walks off into the ocean and drowns. I’ve always thought that this was a concession to the Hayes Code (which imposed a lot of moral restrictions at the time and would never have allowed a suicide to be portrayed); we can understand that he committed suicide, but it’s never stated outright, and there’s just enough ambiguity that we can pretend it might be a genuine accident. The death of John Howard in the ’76 version is one of the least successful parts of the film; they don’t really give him that clear motivation for killing himself other than the fact that Esther decides not to go on tour, and when he dies in a car crash it plays as a genuine case of reckless driving rather than a deliberate act. I have read that the 2018 version was originally going to end with the drowning death, but they changed it so that for the first time it plays as an unambiguous suicide, without any possibility of being an accident. Perhaps that choice was just made because they felt that “walking into the ocean” was too melodramatic or unrealistic – suicide by drowning seems pretty rare, whereas the death they do go with is something that sadly happens every day – but the end result was that I felt that his death was a much crueller action, and the film didn’t seem to really grapple with this. See, the earlier films aren’t only ambiguous as suicides for the audience, but also for the characters – Vicki can easily accept that Norman drowned by accident, Esther can believe that John crashed his car by mistake – but in the new film Ally knows that he committed suicide, will understand that he did it out of a misguided attempt to get out of her way, and no advice from Jackson’s brother that it was Jack’s fault will make that easier. So while in the other films the death of the Maine character feels like something that will obviously cause intense grief but that Vicki or Esther can move on from because she would feel “it was an accident, nothing I can do”, here she has to carry the additional burden of knowing that her husband killed himself for her. And how do you move on from that? I don’t know that the film really grapples with that issue. Instead we just see her moving on as in any of the other versions. And that doesn’t work for me.<br />
[SPOILERS END]<br />
<br />
Still, it’s a fantastic film. I’m glad that it prompted me to watch the other versions of the story, and I’m glad that the 2018 version lives up to the standard set by the other films. And now I’m looking forward to the time in a couple of decades when we get a new version of this story.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgksnDP5Eqgd9k6iMA29w5oq7eavX-QxJ4Up41vDLsnGrspYK5sZaiE5Laoi4NRbq0SjYTShe6ba5Gz3SRyqb0jhZQKsyHF7rKNg-0tkgtOacxAl4wT0A1rUITK1HdyVmDbBb8IjwYZTXuH/s1600/roma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgksnDP5Eqgd9k6iMA29w5oq7eavX-QxJ4Up41vDLsnGrspYK5sZaiE5Laoi4NRbq0SjYTShe6ba5Gz3SRyqb0jhZQKsyHF7rKNg-0tkgtOacxAl4wT0A1rUITK1HdyVmDbBb8IjwYZTXuH/s400/roma.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
Accepted wisdom seems to be that the likely winner will be <i><b>Roma</b></i>, the new film from Alfonso Cuarón. If it does win, I believe (unless there's a film I'm missing) it would be the first ever foreign-language movie to win the Best Picture Oscar, which is quite an achievement. And <i>Roma</i> really would deserve it. The film focuses on Cleo, a young woman working as a servant for a middle-class family in Mexico City in the early 70s, and we watch as her experiences allow her to grow from a timid and meek figure to a woman of great determination and inner strength. Cuarón has talked about how he wanted to make a film that was inspired by his childhood; it's an impulse that a lot of filmmakers have, and the results can often feel self-indulgent, but Cuarón avoids this pitfall by not focusing on the children that would represent himself, but by telling a story that is inspired by the life of the maid who worked (and I think may still work) for his family, and who it's clear he has a great deal of love for. It's an approach that gives him a degree of distance from the film's subject matter but still allows him to incorporate his own memories into the film.<br />
<br />
I absolutely adored the way Cuarón chose to shoot the movie. I don't believe there's a single close-up shot in the entire movie (at least, not of a character; there are plenty of brief close-ups of objects in the film), instead he typically frames his images in either a long shot or occasionally a medium shot, and then he just has the action play out in front of the camera, only ever cutting to a new shot if it's strictly necessary. It's a brilliant idea for this film, because it deliberately keeps the audience at a distance. We never feel that we're really close to the characters, not even Cleo, or that we've participated in the film's events. Instead we feel like passive observers seeing the film's events without ever intervening. It's reflective of the idea that this film is based on real events that Cuarón observed, but more significantly it reflects the idea that this film is about a servant who is always present but never who is never fully part of the family.<br />
<br />
The other thing I really love about the shooting style is how it allows you to focus on the interaction between the characters. It's very rare for the film to have a shot where there is only one character on screen; instead almost every shot is an opportunity to watch a number of people engaging with each other. And this means that, rather than cutting from character to character, the audience is allowed to sit and watch how everyone responds to whatever is happening, whatever is being said. It also gives a wonderful sense of the place and the space that the characters exist in, both in terms of the physical environment and the social space. If the film had been shot traditionally with lots of close-ups edited together, you might lose the sense of distance in which Cleo exists in relation to the family. But here you find yourself sitting and watching the scene play out, and so you see that the family is watching TV sitting on the sofa while Cleo kneels down next to them to enjoy the show, or that the family is sitting on a bench eating ice creams while Cleo stands a pace away, part of the group but distinctly different. It's a wonderfully subtle way of visually illustrating the character dynamics, and it illustrates what has been lost as modern cinema has increasingly relied on the close-up and cuts between single character shots for storytelling.<br />
<br />
The other big advantage of this filming style is that it lessens the intrusiveness of one of Alfonso Cuarón's filming quirks. Cuarón has long had a love for filming major set pieces in a single extended take, but often it can often be distracting, and even spoil a surprise for the audience by telling them that something major is about to happen. Witness, for example, the long take in the car in <i>Children of Men</i>, where the camera is moving all around the car in a way that feels absolutely artificial, and so we can recognise that something major is going to happen long before the attack actually occurs, simply because the early parts of that scene would not be shot in that way unless something big was about to happen. <i>Roma</i> has a lot of moments where small character moments erupt unexpectedly into major set pieces – the new year party that turns into a forest fire, the shopping visit that suddenly turns into a violent riot, or the trip to the beach that suddenly turns into a dramatic rescue. These are big dramatic moments, and these scenes are shot in a single take, but because the entire film is shot with this patient observational approach and these scenes don't immediately deviate from that style, the audience is never alerted to the fact that there's about to be a major set piece until it appears. But when they come, these set pieces are incredible, with a size and a scale to the spectacle that is heightened by the way they contrast with the small intimate drama playing out in front. Most dramatic has to be the climactic water rescue at the end of the film, and I genuinely can't comprehend how they made that scene, not only in terms of finding a way to shoot it, but also how they could create that scene in a way that keeps all of the participants safe and alive. And that's the advantage of shooting this kind of sequence with a long take; when a scene is cut and edited, it can be very easy to question just how much this scene was created in the editing suite, but because the scene was shot in a single take without cuts, it suddenly feels more real, we are instantly aware of just how dangerous and scary this really is, and it heightens the impact of the moment. Certainly the beach scene would be the single most memorable scene that I've seen this year; I don't think anything else comes close.<br />
<br />
I appreciated how, while the film is filled with the nostalgia of someone looking back on the years of their childhood, it remains clear-eyed about what life was like in Mexico in the 1970s. I don't really know Mexican history, but it's clear that it was a period of intense political unrest. There's a moment where the adults hear about a planned protest, and one of the character's immediate response is to express a hope that perhaps the police won't beat the protesters this time; it's horrifying to realise that that is the first thing people in that place would think about when they hear about people protesting the government. There's also a scene where we watch the protest being put down, not by legitimate police (who don't seem to be present) but by a gang of youths who are trained to operate and suppress outside of the law, and again it's shocking to realise the scale of operation to prepare this gang of thugs that are accountable to no-one.<br />
<br />
The film is being released by Netflix, which I'm conflicted by. I'm glad that Netflix has allowed limited cinema screenings of this film, something they have previously been resistant to allow with their exclusive films, and so I had the joy of watching the film on the big screen. And it's a film that really rewards big screen viewing, as the filming style of long extended takes allows the cinema audience to really focus on examining every detail on screen as the shot plays out. The sound design of the film is also fantastic, and that's something you can really miss out on in home viewing. But its cinema release has been very limited – there's only one cinema in Wellington that was able to show it – and so only a small minority of the audience will be able to see it on the big screen; most people watching the film will be seeing it at home. But the good thing about Netflix releasing this film is that it does makes the film so easily accessible. A black-and-white foreign language film is never going to be a blockbuster, but Netflix has really put a lot of effort into making the film be part of the cultural conversation, and as a result a lot of people have probably watched the film that might never have seen it. And if the film does win the Oscar, hopefully even more people will be prompted to watch and enjoy the movie. And I'm glad about that.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4kSPzxNs8a6knY1GG7zocB_ab1Qc_Rzw9ADx1ElAhbZiq9fDR9JH3kHXj6h9fsk4RLlZL-CyvdEj5UOrHj3qQqwzDnKWYcCf-vw9BIvrFnJh0BUevjZ-K4vst34hj3Fx6tDwyeg8fUexd/s1600/favourite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="507" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4kSPzxNs8a6knY1GG7zocB_ab1Qc_Rzw9ADx1ElAhbZiq9fDR9JH3kHXj6h9fsk4RLlZL-CyvdEj5UOrHj3qQqwzDnKWYcCf-vw9BIvrFnJh0BUevjZ-K4vst34hj3Fx6tDwyeg8fUexd/s400/favourite.jpg" width="267" /></a></div>
My favourite of the nominees is easily Yorgos Lanthimos' period Regal comedy <i><b>The Favourite</b></i>, which is based on the true story of the eccentric Queen Anne, her closest advisor (and, according to the film, secret lover) Sarah Churchill, and the efforts of Churchill's cousin Abigail to take over as court favourite.<br />
<br />
I find Lanthimos to be a fascinating director who, at least in the films I've seen, favours a distinctive performance style. He directs his actors in a way that elicits a stilted, awkward, emotionless performance (the AV Club <a href="https://news.avclub.com/yorgos-lanthimos-next-movie-is-ditching-costumed-finery-1832834925">summarised his style</a> as having characters "talk like aliens who’ve only recently memorized a basic phrasebook of human expressions") that can often be at odds with the material they're working with. It hasn't always been successful for me (I think I'm the only person who didn't feel <i>The Lobster</i> worked), but it's always fascinating to watch, and when you connect with the style (as I did particularly with <i>The Killing of a Sacred Deer</i>), it can be disarmingly effective. What's surprising about <i>The Favourite</i> is that Lanthimos completely abandons that style. It's still intensely stylised, but rather than being uncomfortable and affected, here Lanthimos directs his actors to be big, to have all of the emotions.<br />
<br />
It's possible that this change in style is motivated at least in part by the script. With the exception of his very first film, Lanthimos has been involved in writing all of his films, which may mean that he was writing towards way he would direct his actors. But in <i>The Favourite</i>, he's working with a script that was written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, and which did not have Lanthimos' involvement. And so he finds himself working with a script that is big and filthy and hilarious, and that he might not have written in that way, and so it seems possible that this difference prompted Lanthimos to adjust the performances he was demanding.<br />
<br />
The result is a film that is bold and bright and disarmingly kinky. Usually with these types of Regal costume dramas there's a standard approach to the way these stories are told. And there are many great films that have been made in that style, so I am not attempting to criticise movies that adopt a more conventional approach to these dramas. But that is not what <i>The Favourite</i> is doing. Now, it's not going to the other extreme either – other than one amusingly over-the-top dance sequence, there's never any point where the film seems to be taking an anachronistic approach to its storytelling in the style of films like <i>A Knight's Tale</i> or <i>Moulin Rouge</i>. Instead the film rides the middle line quite expertly, giving us a film that is modern in its sensibilities while telling a very traditional story. It reminds me quite a bit of <i>Amadeus</i>, adopting an up-to-date storytelling style to ensure the audience never feels distanced from the reality of the characters or the fact that these are real people with genuine emotions.<br />
<br />
The result is a film that may be about people at court, but it is never courtly. It's unambiguously and gleefully lustful (including a moment where the Queen refers to having someone's tongue inside her that drew audible gasps from the audience I was with), it's joyously profane (I've never seen a film more free in its use of the c-word), it's a film that abandons a pristine approach in favour of one that is fleshy and mucky (characters constantly find themselves covered constantly find themselves covered in mud or shit, and there are prolonged scenes of characters tending to the Queen's gout-inflamed legs), and it is constantly, reliably, laugh-out-loud funny throughout its running time.<br />
<br />
The performances are all without exception stellar. There’s a problem for a film like this when campaigning for the acting Oscars, because among the three main characters there is no clear lead or supporting actress. You could legitimately argue that all three are lead characters, or that each of the three is individually supporting the other two. In order to minimise the risk of the actors splitting the votes, they've positioned Olivia Colman as Queen Anne as the lead of the film, while Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone as Sarah and Abigail were nominated as supporting. It's perhaps not the split that I would agree with – if I had to make the call I would have said that Queen Anne was the supporting role while the other two are really the leads of the film – but it's a marginal call. The Queen's journey (from taking her closest confidante for granted to understanding the value of having someone who can be fearlessly honest and frank with her) is definitely there, but it's not as compelling a character arc compared to the other two. However, as an experienced comic actor playing a character defined by her unusual, impulsive, childish behaviour, Olivia Colman does carry much of the comedic weight of this comedy film. And at the same time, she also has to marry this character with the most tragic of burdens – we're constantly aware of the heartbreak that comes with being a queen whose sole purpose in being is to give birth to an heir to the throne but who has suffered the loss of 17 children. The fact that Colman can bring all these elements together into a character who feels consistent and believable is truly impressive.<br />
<br />
The other two main characters have much clearer and stronger journeys through the film – Sarah's bluntness leading to complacency and comfort in her position and her desperation to try to retain her power when challenged, or Abigail's grasping onto the Queen in determination to make a place for herself only to find she may not be happy where she ends up – which really makes them the true leads of the film. And Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone give fantastic performances in these roles, with a real spark developing between the two whenever they come into conflict. Whether they're nominated as lead or supporting actresses, all three give genuinely brilliant Oscar-worthy performances that are always a delight to watch.<br />
<br />
It says a lot about the film that the only criticism I would give against the film is in the choice of lenses used to capture the film. I'm not really someone who can speak knowledgeably about camera lenses – other people can look at a film image and comment on the focal length of the lens, I cannot – but here it's impossible not to notice. Lanthimos make a choice to shoot a significant part of the film with an extreme fisheye lens that noticeably and distractingly distorts the image, and in those moments it took me out of the film simply because I was suddenly thinking about the way the film was shot and not what was happening in those moments. I can imagine reasons why Lanthimos may have made that choice – perhaps he's trying to comment on the way that behaviour in the court is warped by the demands of the insecure queen – but it was an unfortunate choice that ultimately didn't work for me. But that's a minor quibble in an otherwise wonderful film.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvFIVbDZYYQuSvUubaXTPzOm9SPm_xfRq3AO3DhbX4TRXZ2v7JFZ2AiU0I87EJyuaajyEC-fJVBSD99ZU4Z4fLu3C8YRT85YIA4MflgUPg3gfP41BSXYI6HArTtyIFuYEbjCHs-L-7u85o/s1600/black_panther.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvFIVbDZYYQuSvUubaXTPzOm9SPm_xfRq3AO3DhbX4TRXZ2v7JFZ2AiU0I87EJyuaajyEC-fJVBSD99ZU4Z4fLu3C8YRT85YIA4MflgUPg3gfP41BSXYI6HArTtyIFuYEbjCHs-L-7u85o/s400/black_panther.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
I do find the nomination of <i><b>Black Panther</b></i> frustrating. It’s not that I think it’s a bad film – I really enjoyed the film. But even at the time of release, I was bothered by the hyperbole that surrounded the film – people praising it as being the best superhero film ever (it’s definitely not), or the greatest movie Marvel ever made (with hindsight, it’s not even the best Marvel movie released in 2018). It’s a very good film, and in the list of movies in the Marvel cinematic universe it’s definitely upper-tier. And I realise that it’s a landmark for representation of groups that up to now have perhaps not been able to see themselves in the biggest popular movies being made today. But even the best Marvel movie doesn’t deserve a best picture nomination. Now, if the Oscars had gone ahead with its proposed category of Best Popular Film (admittedly an idea I was opposed to and was glad to see dropped) then <i>Black Panther</i> would have been a perfect nominee. But the notion that this film was somehow a highpoint of filmmaking in 2018 is absurd.<br />
<br />
Let’s go back ten years, when the films of 2008 were eligible for Oscars. The films nominated that year included <i>The Reader</i> or <i>The Curious Case of Benjamin Button</i>, films the world has forgotten even exist. That year also saw the release of the first <i>Iron Man</i> film, which started the MCU, and more significantly it saw the release of <i>The Dark Knight</i>, a film that is genuinely great and that has continued to have a place in the cultural landscape that far exceeds anything that the Oscars considered to be the best of the year. (It’s commonly believed that the failure to nominate <i>The Dark Knight</i> for Best Picture motivated the decision the next year to expand the number of nominees, in an attempt to create space for such popular films to be nominated.) Ten years on, we finally have the nomination of a big superhero blockbuster.<br />
<br />
The problem is that <i>Black Panther</i> isn’t <i>The Dark Knight</i>. It’s a good Marvel film – and I'm being sincere in saying that; I’m a big fan of the MCU and think what they have done in creating and developing a single universe filled with interlocking pieces is fascinating. But I simply have difficulty seeing that any Marvel movie could be considered one of the best movies of the year – the achievements of Marvel Studios are impressive in the totality of the world they created, not in any particular film. One of the most notable things about Marvel’s film output is that everything sits within a certain quality band – the worst of the films (say, <i>Thor: The Dark World</i> or <i>Iron Man 2</i>) are still fine and watchable, while the best of the films (say, <i>The Avengers</i> or <i>Captain America: The Winter Soldier</i>) are very good but not great. <i>Black Panther</i> is at that top end of Marvel films, but it’s not exceptional. There’s a kind of sameness to all of the Marvel films, which means that I struggle to find things to talk about in this film that distinguish it from any of the other MCU films. I do believe that the reason <i>Black Panther</i> has gained this nomination is because it’s about a black superhero, most of the cast is black, it’s from a black director, it’s a film that absolutely embraces black and African culture, it did a achieve a real level of cultural significance, and the Oscars have seized on this as an opportunity to address both the OscarsSoWhite controversy from a few years ago, as well as the snub of <i>The Dark Knight</i>.<br />
<br />
What the film does do really well is have a strong villain. Villains have tended to be the weakpoint of the MCU movies; other than Loki, for much of the series the villains have simply been forgettable. (Incidentally, that’s a problem that has extended all the way up to the series’ big bad Thanos – <i>Avengers: Infinity War</i> eventually overcame the issue, but only by making a movie in which he was effectively the main character.) Playing Killmonger, Michael B Jordan gives the character a genuine weight and sympathetic tone. He’s someone who is angry at the injustices he sees, about the way that black people are oppressed, he’s angry with his cousin T'Challa (the real identity of Black Panther) who he sees as isolating his immensely resource-rich nation when they should be using those resources to liberate black people everywhere, and his understandable rage has grown over time into an uncontrollable hatred that fuels his every actions. In a film series filled with villains whose actions seem to be prompted by “I’m the bad guy, and this is what bad guys do in these movies”, it’s compelling to have a character whose behaviour is motivated by a genuine worldview that you can understand and even sympathise with a little bit. It’s unfortunate that the strength of many of the supporting characters, whether the villainous Killmonger or Black Panther’s allies like Shuri or Okoye, wind up overpowering Chadwick Boseman as the titular hero, who winds up feeling somewhat bland. With the previous Marvel movies, the weakness of the villains didn’t really matter because the central characters were always compelling; that’s not the case here, with T’Challa to me feeling like an empty character around whom things are done.<br />
<br />
Now, a lot of people have spoken about how important it was to them personally to finally see a person of colour as a superhero. That’s great; I’m very happy for those people who could see a superhero they could identify with, especially since it’s in a film that is genuinely good. And it was great to see a film with so many talented black actors working together on a film, rather than having to fight to play the one black character in a film; you’re reminded just how many fantastic black actors we have that are underused. (I personally was surprised by how excited I was to see Isaach De Bankolé in a small role as the River Tribe Elder – I hadn’t realised just how much I enjoy his work until he appeared on screen.) And while it’s not surprising that the film did well, since at this point Marvel have established a reliable reputation that will make any film a massive success, it’s still good that we have this as evidence that having a predominantly black cast does not stop people from going to see a film. (See also <i>Crazy Rich Asians</i> as similar proof for a predominantly Asian cast.) But I continue to struggle with the idea that these wider cultural considerations, as important as they are, mean the film is deserving of an Oscar nomination. Because if you just look at the film itself, I simply don’t think it reaches that level of excellence that we should expect from a Best Picture nominee.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyVfuOWWGKzMni0H5trnpAZPcO-WSKyA2L__myD0e_tML_vxwPvbB4H3HFAO4_0F4q-p90WVd7YN7OG_9iUqpf0mZ3j0VVI-w1JjOl_0n-6gFYUU5Y_7182JSoesZVNp2uFsc2dfxfFWs2/s1600/blackkklansman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyVfuOWWGKzMni0H5trnpAZPcO-WSKyA2L__myD0e_tML_vxwPvbB4H3HFAO4_0F4q-p90WVd7YN7OG_9iUqpf0mZ3j0VVI-w1JjOl_0n-6gFYUU5Y_7182JSoesZVNp2uFsc2dfxfFWs2/s400/blackkklansman.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
Now, <i><b>BlacKkKlansman</b></i> is definitely a film that stands up as a worthy Oscar nominee. The new film from Spike Lee, the film focuses tells the story of Ron Stallworth, the first African-American police officer in Colorado Springs. One day, he sees a newspaper ad for his local branch of the KKK, decides to call them pretending to be white, and joins the Klan – only to realise that he mistakenly gave his real name. So Ron continues to be this new Klan recruit over the telephone, eventually even having regular extended conversations with the head of the KKK himself, Grand Wizard David Duke, while he enlists fellow detective Flip Zimmerman to pretend to be him in person.<br />
<br />
The film declares at the start that “Dis joint is based upon some fo’ real, fo’ real sh*t”, which may just be Spike Lee being Spike Lee, but which did feel as though he might be trying to create some distance between this film and the usual bald assertion that this is “a true story”. Certainly when you read about the actual events, it seems that the film deviates quite a bit from what really happened – the true events took place seven years later than presented, the real police officer that played Stallworth in person wasn’t Jewish, the second half plotline about a planned bombing didn’t happen, and there have been some who have suggested that Stallworth’s motivations weren’t quite as pure as presented here and that at times he was actually working against the black community. Certainly watching the film I felt it was probably not as truthful as it was presenting itself, and when I read about the real events found that the parts that rang false were usually the moments invented for the screen.<br />
<br />
But I didn’t really care, because it’s such a good film. Spike Lee can be a frustrating director, with an output that is wildly variable, but he is a talented artist and at his best is one of the finest directors working today. (The fact that this is the first time he’s been Oscar-nominated as a director, and only the third of his films to receive any nominations at all, is just wrong.) Here he constructs a thriller that is intense with suspense, and it’s such an enjoyable cinematic experience that it makes his inevitable preachiness much easier to absorb. I really enjoyed John David Washington’s work as Ron; there’s a particular way he plays his delight in fooling these people that doesn’t just feel like “I’m smarter than these guys”, but that feels relieved that he's getting away with it given the genuine threat these people present if they ever realise what’s happening. It’s arguably a slight failing of the movie that, in a film about the threat posed by white supremacists, the one person who is most at risk is the white guy (since the black guy is safely held away from the racists behind a telephone line), but that is an unavoidable quirk of this story. As the white guy constantly at risk of being discovered and killed, Adam Driver continues to be one of the most fascinating actors working today. While the real life cop may not have been Jewish, I like the choice to add that element to the film’s character, as it brings an interesting thematic element to the story – it makes him part of a minority that is hated by many people, but because he is white it has made it easier for him to distance himself from that minority status, and it’s exciting to watch Driver play with his character’s growing understanding that he has as much at stake from defeating the Klan as Ron does.<br />
<br />
One thing I found interesting is the way the film frequently focuses on the power of cinema to create lasting images that fuel us and reflect American history. The film opens with the famous crane shot from <i>Gone With The Wind</i>, with Scarlett walking through the mass of dying members of the Confederate Army, before cutting to Alec Baldwin playing a 1950s white supremacist recording a PSA while images showing the threat of the black man are projected on his face. The use of <i>Gone With The Wind</i> works well, with Scarlett being confronted with the failure of those who fought for the right to oppress black people as symbolic of people nostalgic for a bygone era of white dominance, but the Baldwin sequence is less successful, with Baldwin coming across more as a fool struggling to deliver his speech than a credible threat. Later on there’s a sequence of Stallworth walking with his girlfriend while discussing the portrayals of modern African-American culture in blaxploitation movies, a sequence that works quite well (even if Spike Lee intrusively draws attention to the scene by showing onscreen the posters of the movies being discussed). But by far the best scene of the film comes when we see the Klan members getting worked up and excited while watching <i>The Birth of a Nation</i> (the film that famously played a key role in inspiring the Klan to reform) while the movie crosscuts to Harry Belafonte, himself famed for his efforts in fighting for civil rights, playing an older man remembering the lynching of Jesse Washington (a true incident that took place the year after <i>The Birth of a Nation</i> was released). It is an expertly constructed sequence, in which we are confronted both with hateful racist images from that famed movie while being reminded of the genuine suffering and horrors that were experienced by people as a consequence. (It’s also worth noting that <i>The Birth of a Nation</i> was revolutionary for its use of crosscutting, Spike Lee now using that film’s own techniques to condemn it.)<br />
<br />
I am a bit bothered by how simple the film almost seems to make the issues of racism. The members of the Klan aren’t presented as especially bright, to the point where it seems like David Duke is the leader mainly because he’s the only one who can coherently string a sentence together. It does undercut the menace of your bad guys when they are presented as being so stupid; you almost feel that their main threat comes not from their actual plans but from the unintended consequences when they inevitably mess up. I was also surprised that Spike Lee of all people would let the police off easily in this time of Black Lives Matter and frequent claims about cops killing black people – the film basically presents this one cop who is cartoonishly racist, and while other members of the police force may tolerate his actions, it’s pretty much all resolved once they are able to get rid of this one bad cop. It seemed surprisingly simple to fix that problem. Still, I liked the film was willing to address the complicated place of the police when it comes to the black population, with extended scenes where Ron and his girlfriend Patrice debate whether it’s right for him as a black man to even be working as a police officer.<br />
<br />
Despite my issues with the film, I overall really was impressed by the movie – until the end. Here’s the thing: the film is not a subtle work. It may be set in the 70s, but the film is unambiguously made to speak about issues affecting black people today. The dialogue is frequently on-the-nose in dialogue that makes sense for the 70s, but that are clearly being reflected through a 2018 lens. (Witness, for example, David Duke’s assertion that “it’s time for America to show its greatness again.”) And I’m fine with that being the approach that is taken – half the reason you tell a true story like this is because you think some aspect of it will speak to a modern audience in some way. But it’s still sufficiently non-specifically-2018 that audiences in 10, 20, 50, 100 years can watch the film and filter that dialogue through the issues affecting black people in their time. And if that was all the film did, then the film might have been able to have lasting cultural impact. Until the final moments of the film, when Spike Lee decides to include actual footage of the riots that erupted after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, including the death of counter-protestor Heather Heyer. I can understand Lee’s desire to make absolutely clear what he’s talking about, but it’s not like the rest of the film is at all ambiguous, and it diminishes the lasting impact of the film. Suddenly this film, which could be about the way black people are treated in America in any era, becomes only about the rise of the alt-right under Trump. And so, in 10 years’ time, people will watch that ending, and many may feel comfortable thinking “we’re good now because Trump isn’t president and we don’t have literal Nazis marching down the street”, rather than reflecting on whether the wider issues the film addresses may still be relevant.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6aincKtmKUdYmeBSHml9Pxm62HnRNvW3WhyphenhyphenX5Rff5j5K5nuMwtzMXby8e6SefIGKVM4l4WdBfgq5CA0eC1wJC7w7ezNJf1DfmDC5JzFZJPEG4eNzAbcPdHxXpgXGJ2j1XymsU4DUIWO7W/s1600/vice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="484" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6aincKtmKUdYmeBSHml9Pxm62HnRNvW3WhyphenhyphenX5Rff5j5K5nuMwtzMXby8e6SefIGKVM4l4WdBfgq5CA0eC1wJC7w7ezNJf1DfmDC5JzFZJPEG4eNzAbcPdHxXpgXGJ2j1XymsU4DUIWO7W/s400/vice.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>
Probably the film that I'm most annoyed to see nominated is Adam McKay's <i><b>Vice</b></i>, a film based on the life story of former vice-president Dick Cheney. The fundamental problem with <i>Vice</i> can be seen in the scene that plays mid-credits. Earlier in the film we had a scene involving a focus group, and in this mid-credits scene we revisit that group, but this time one of the group's members, a Trump supporter, complains that the problem with the film we've just watched is that it has a liberal bias. Another group member defends the film by insisting that it's all facts, and there's no bias in facts. This prompts the Trump supporter to attack the other group member. There's no doubt that the film is on the side of the person insisting on the factual basis of the film – on-screen text at the start of the film declares that the film is factual, at least to the degree that we can know the facts given Cheney's secretive nature – so the film is pretty unambiguously declaring itself immune from criticism of bias simply because it's factual, and thus true. The thing is, that's not how it works. Regardless of whether the big picture facts of Cheney's actions are accurately presented here (and I have no reason to believe that a film is being dishonest in the way it's presenting his actions), a person can be judged not only on the basis of their actual actions but also on the motivations and character that lie behind them. And it's in the presentation of Dick Cheney's character that we see a fundamental dishonesty come into the film. Here's an example: it may be entirely factual that Dick Cheney greatly expanded the power of the presidency through his use of the unitary executive theory, but it is a character choice to have him cackle like a Bond villain the first time he hears the term, before he even knows what it means. And that's the approach the film takes throughout its entire runtime – never any subtlety or genuine interest in understanding the character, just a view of him as the worst thing that ever happened to the American presidency (at least before the current incumbent). And it’s annoyingly cynical – there’s a moment where Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld burst into laughter at the notion that they might actually believe in something, which is just a blatant dismissal of the man; whatever you think of his worldview, I have no doubt that he has a genuine perspective about the way the world works and how it should work, but this film seems to simply believe his sole interest is the acquisition of power.<br />
<br />
And the frustrating thing is that there's a perfect template for how it should have been done. As Tyler Smith of the wonderful <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/">Battleship Pretension</a> (my favourite podcast) has noted, Oliver Stone's film <i>Nixon</i> was surprisingly sympathetic to the former president. Yes, Richard Nixon did some terrible things that were corrupt and wrong and history has judged him fairly for those actions, but as I remember it <i>Nixon</i> seemed interested in looking beyond those actions to understand the person, understand what it was that motivated him and that drove him to do these things. And this was coming from Oliver Stone, one of our most prominent left-wing political filmmakers; even he managed to approach the hated Nixon with a genuine interest in who the man was. (I never saw <i>W</i>, Stone's film about George W Bush, but I understand it had a similar approach in its portrayal of that president.) Now compare this to the way Adam McKay looks at Dick Cheney in <i>Vice</i>, and you see a stark difference in approach. There's a fundamental lack of curiosity or desire to understand the man in <i>Vice</i>, and so the character just feels like a one-dimensional monster. It makes sense that Christian Bale in accepting the Golden Globe for this film would thank Satan for his inspiration, because that's how completely evil the man is presented. The only time the film seems to see him as anything less than monstrous is in his relationship with his daughter Mary – who he loves even though she’s a lesbian – but any sympathies generated by that relationship are eventually destroyed when Cheney gives his blessing to his other daughter Liz to speak against gay mariage. The film is so focused in its view of this hateful man that at one point it even actively compares him and his wife to the villainous Lord and Lady Macbeth in a scene that has the characters talking in mock-Shakespearean dialogue.<br />
<br />
And this brings me to my other big problem with the movie. I was rather impressed by Adam McKay's earlier film, <i>The Big Short</i>, about the 2007 financial crisis. One of the challenges that that earlier film had was that, in order to tell the story, the audience had to understand what a subprime mortgage or a collateralised debt obligation is, and that's not something that most people know. And so McKay adopted an approach where he would regularly break the fourth wall and present humorous sequences that would give the audience sufficient explanation to understand the film while preserving its entertainment value. And that style worked well in that film. But he continues with that approach here, even though there's no real need for it because there's nothing so complicated in the story that the audience needs that kind of dumbed-down explainer. And so he just breaks the fourth wall for no reason, with moments like the mock-Shakespearean dialogue or the moment where the end credits roll mid film as the film pretends that Cheney retired and never became vice-president. (They apparently even filmed a musical scene, but at least had the good taste to cut that moment.) But these fourth wall breaking scenes are sufficiently infrequent that they never feel part of the film's style and, because they don't fulfill any explanatory purpose, when they do occur they just feel snarky and smug. This film feels as though it was nominated solely because Hollywood hates Bush, it hates Cheney, but most importantly that hates Trump, and this was a film that the Oscar voters liked just because the film told them they are right in their views and that allowed them to express those views.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBzUPZRwfrBOVLSZtYWpopGIor1eUvYmGmApaa8olQEewu0FtkGMOWJUxtZSQ9b_KbRGdOGr2enw4dvOx1T7DJrTSztbU-_403nekhizrrZmKK7LIrvuQa6tOBrSJJKCf2sK3lJJKhylCx/s1600/green_book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="477" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBzUPZRwfrBOVLSZtYWpopGIor1eUvYmGmApaa8olQEewu0FtkGMOWJUxtZSQ9b_KbRGdOGr2enw4dvOx1T7DJrTSztbU-_403nekhizrrZmKK7LIrvuQa6tOBrSJJKCf2sK3lJJKhylCx/s400/green_book.jpg" width="252" /></a></div>
Then there's <i><b>Green Book</b></i>, which approaches the issue of racism in the American South in the 1960s with all the sensitivity and care that you would expect from the man who directed and co-wrote <i>Dumb and Dumber</i>. In 1962, the black pianist Don Shirley went on a tour with his trio of the Deep South; needing a driver, he employs a hot-headed Italian bouncer called Tony Vallelonga. And together the two of them learn to look beyond each other's differences to find common ground and understand each other's essential humanity and gain insight into who they are as individuals and blah blah blah blah blah.<br />
<br />
The main problem with the film probably stems from the fact that it was co-written by Vallelonga's son Nick, and it's much more a story told from Tony's point of view. This means that, in this story about the horrors of racism, the main character is a white man whose experiences of racism are observed rather than experienced. This is the type of film where we learn about what it was like to be a black man needing accommodation by watching Tony walk to the balcony of his nice hotel room and literally looking down to see the balcony of the rundown neighbouring hotel where Don Shirley sits alone. We never actually sit with Shirley in his hotel room and experience it from his point of view, because we're not telling his story. The film does play very much as though it's a piece of family mythologising, where Nick Vallelonga is just trying to capture his parents on film. In this context, I couldn't help noticing that, despite the film's insistence that Tony and Don remained friends until the end of their lives, the film ends with two individual photos of the elderly Tony and Don rather than a single photo showing the two together, as you might have expected had the two had a lifelong friendship. I could be wrong, but I couldn't help suspecting that the friendship and the relationship was probably more significant for Tony rather than for Don.<br />
<br />
Now, I will give the film a little credit for being willing to acknowledge Tony's genuine racism. In the first few minutes of the film, there's a scene where Tony throws out two glasses after two black workmen drink water out of them. (Never have two drinking glasses been filmed with such menace.) That's some serious racism. But at the same time, the film seems to want to excuse Tony and say that these attitudes are not his fault. Immediately before that moment, we see Tony waking up to find pretty much every male in his extended family in his lounge, which they freely admit is because they're there to ensure Tony's wife isn't raped by the black workmen. So it's not really Tony's fault that he's racist, because that's the environment he's in. After that scene ends, he seems to immediately overcome his extreme racist attitudes, and instead most of his racism seems to be born out of an assumption that all black people are the same, with Tony expressing incredulity that Don doesn't love the music of Little Richard or that he has never eaten fried chicken.<br />
<br />
It is also a road movie, which is a genre that often doesn't really work for me, largely because the genre naturally tends to be structured around a series of incidents rather than feeling like a coherent story in and of itself. This film doesn't really overcome that problem. With only a few exceptions, the film never seems have any memory about the scenes that came before. Every incident stands alone, serving only the purpose of being another example of the racist attitudes of the Deep South. Witness, for instance, the scene where Tony discovers that Don is about to be arrested for having sex with a white man at a pool, and Tony has to bribe the police officers to keep Don free. Once the scene is over, we get one moment where Tony basically says that he's fine with Don being gay, and then the film seems to completely forget about Don's sexuality, because we've moved past that scene. But that's emblematic of the film having zero interest in Don as a character.<br />
<br />
The film itself is fine; there's nothing particularly distinctive about the quality of the filmmaking. It really is a movie that is relying on the negligible quality of its story rather than on trying to make anything interesting as a movie. And the performances are a mixed bag. Mahershala Ali as always is fantastic, and plays Don as a man of intelligence and charm, a strong will, and an almost infinite patience for the impulsive idiot he finds himself travelling with. It's always nice to see Linda Cardellini working, and it's nice that a Hollywood film gave Viggo Mortensen a middle-aged wife, even if she is still 17 years younger than him. But as for Viggo, I did not care for his performance at all. It's a frustratingly broad performance, with him adopting an accent that is intrusive and distracting. He's not helped by poor script writing that almost seems to overplay his characteristics in order to highlight the impact that Don had on him. Witness the scenes where Tony writes a letter to his wife, writing a letter that seems more like a 5-year-old writing to his parents from camp than an adult writing to his wife, just so that Don can help him to find ways to express his feelings. Tony is a broad character in the script, and Viggo Mortensen does nothing to diminish the impact of this writing.<br />
<br />
The film draws its title from The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guidebook that used to provide information on hotels and restaurants in the south that were friendly to travelling black people, so they could plan their holidays around places where it would be safe for them to stay. I heard about the Green Book a couple of years ago in <a href="http://thememorypalace.us/2016/05/open-road/">episode 88 of The Memory Palace podcast</a>, and the existence of this book is a fascinating piece of American history and a symbol of just how hard it was to be black in America until very recently. (I strongly recommend that podcast episode.) And so I like that the film is hopefully letting more people know about the book and the history around it; that doesn't change the fact that it's a very poor movie.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRgnSHt5vSmVAtdEdkvqkcbZRpSc4seUZWtcwXq1EHNFYEksz24-1ml4aBQt2eqzX4OxxixVOW-yNIl0nVZ2h__eVq6KyQGQCLkpmkb59Ynz46BfPM-UYWDHmOmbqQgXykvxIT0BTbfbK6/s1600/bohemian_rhapsody.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRgnSHt5vSmVAtdEdkvqkcbZRpSc4seUZWtcwXq1EHNFYEksz24-1ml4aBQt2eqzX4OxxixVOW-yNIl0nVZ2h__eVq6KyQGQCLkpmkb59Ynz46BfPM-UYWDHmOmbqQgXykvxIT0BTbfbK6/s400/bohemian_rhapsody.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
Then there's the entirely unjustified nomination of <i><b>Bohemian Rhapsody</b></i>, the biopic about Freddie Mercury and the band Queen. Here's the thing: the film is phenomenally successful (in fact, it is apparently the highest grossing biopic in cinema history). And I completely understand why: it is a movie about Queen, it has a massive number of Queen songs playing through the film, and Queen has one of the greatest, deepest, most crowd-pleasing songbooks of any band ever, so of course people will love it.<br />
<br />
The thing is, they shouldn't love it. <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i> is not a good film. It's a middling, cliche-ridden film that is devoid of any artistry or inspiration. The film goes to great efforts to tell the audience what great innovators Queen were, how they were never content to sit still or replicate what they just did, how they were always trying to push to find new ideas, and then it pays tribute to these genius inventive musicians by making a movie that is pat and smugly satisfied with itself for carefully following the formula long established by pretty much every music biopic ever made. It's not a film that has anything to say about Freddie Mercury or the band, it's not a film that has any point of view, it's just a film that is satisfied with saying "here's what happened", even if the events portrayed on-screen bear no resemblance to what actually happened. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Mercury">Freddie Mercury's Wikipedia entry</a> offers more insight into who he was than this film does.<br />
<br />
A big part of the problem with the film is that it just lacks any focus. It tries to include a full 15 years, from 1970 to 1985 (and technically even includes events from outside that time frame, since Mercury actually got his AIDS diagnosis two years after Live Aid), which is a lot to put in a single film. Then the film also doesn't know exactly who it's about – it's mostly about Freddie Mercury, but sometimes it's about the band itself. Look at the scene where Brian May develops the idea for "We Will Rock You", a scene in which Freddie Mercury is so irrelevant that he just wanders in at the end asking his bandmates what's up – if the film is about Freddie Mercury, then that scene serves no purpose to the story being told and should have been the first thing cut. But they can't cut the scene because the film still thinks it might be about the entire band (even though the other band members exist in the film largely as a name and a face), and because they definitely don't want to lose "We Will Rock You".<br />
<br />
This is one of those biopics where everything that the characters are known for just occurs. So we watch Freddie Mercury's disastrous first performance with the band as he struggles with an uncooperative microphone stand, until he discovers by accident he can just use it as a stick microphone – just to explain why Freddie used a stick microphone. This is the type of film where Freddie Mercury can lie on a bed underneath a piano, reach out and play the piano from the underside, and improvise the introductory piano tune to "Bohemian Rhapsody" note-perfect, pausing simply to comment that the tune he just made up has promise. Look, everyone knows that in a two-or-so hour biopic you need to make changes to streamline the story, but does it have to feel so contrived? Perhaps if the film had more focus and stopped trying to be about everything then less streamlining would be needed and the film might be more convincing.<br />
<br />
But the biopic clichés don't stop there. There are the constant montages of the band performing, that seem motivated primarily out of a desire to find a way to work another Queen song onto the soundtrack. There's the record executive who fails to have the vision to see what Queen would become. There's the constant hard partying and drug taking (although interestingly the band members who are still alive and who are producers on the film were incredibly responsible family men who didn't buy into the rock-and-roll party lifestyle). There's the band breaking up over unresolved tensions, and there's the inevitable reunion as they decide to put their differences aside. There's even the climactic moment where everything seems like it’s about to fail (Bob Geldof worries that Live Aid has been a flop because no-one is donating money) until our main characters arrive to save everything (Queen start performing and instantly the phone lines are running off the hook).<b>*</b><br />
<br />
<b>*</b> <i>[EDIT, 24/2/2019 - After posting this, a friend pointed out that Bob Geldof actually acknowledged that Queen did spark a rush of donations at Live Aid, so that is seemingly true. But so much of the rest of the film was actual contrivance that it becomes impossible to recognise truth if it looks just as improbable as the fictional. Perhaps, if the film had been a little more truthful in the way it portrayed the other events in the film, then I would have believed it when it included an improbable truth.</i><br />
<i>Actually, knowing that it's true explains a lot, and is emblematic of the film's problems. Whether or not Life Aid succeeds doesn't actually matter to the film as that's not what the film is about (it would be like, if the film had ended on another concert rather than Live Aid, worrying about whether the concert would be profitable), but if Bob Geldof said that Queen saved Live Aid then we need to squeeze that detail into the climax of the film just because that's the thing that happened, regardless of how relevant it actually is to the actual story being told.]</i><br />
<br />
Then there are all the weird creative decisions that simply do not belong in this film. What is with the decision to put quotes from negative reviews of "Bohemian Rhapsody" on screen to show that the song was rejected initially? That's not part of the filmmaking style of the film, there’s no other point where reviews appear on screen, it only happens in this one scene, and so it feels intrusive. But more than that, it's pointless – the film does nothing to follow up on the bad reviews, it never has a scene where the reviews cause the band to worry that they went too far, there's never a moment where the tide shifts for the song. It's just there to throw in a chance to laugh at people who didn't immediately recognise the greatness we now accept, but it serves no wider role in the film. If you were watching the film knowing nothing about Queen, you would be convinced that the song was a hated flop, because that's what the film tells you about the song, and then you would wonder why they started Live Aid with their worst song.<br />
<br />
And what is with casting Mike Myers as a record executive just so that he can rant about how kids today aren't going to want to drive around in their cars banging their heads to "Bohemian Rhapsody" (geddit)? It's a line that only makes sense because of that casting – no real record executive is ever going to care about how people listen to a song; the only thing they'll worry about is whether people will want to buy the song, so that's what the executive would be talking about. Instead the man all but winks to us to remind us that he made <i>Wayne's World</i>, a movie in which guys drove around in their cars banging their heads to "Bohemian Rhapsody", in the kind of meta self-referential moment that simply does not belong in any movie that is trying to tell a story seriously.<br />
<br />
It looks like Rami Malek may be frontrunner to win the Best Actor Oscar on Monday, and I can understand that choice. As someone who watches <i>Mr Robot</i>, I'm used to seeing Malek as someone who is quiet, insular; it seems weird to watch him play Freddie Mercury, someone who had an uncontrollable charisma and charm, but he pulls it off. Did I finish the film feeling that he helped me have a clear understanding of Freddie Mercury was? No, of course not, because the film is only interested in what he did, not who he was. But I did finish feeling that I had just watched Freddie Mercury do stuff, that's all the film wanted Malek to do, and he did it extremely well.<br />
<br />
The film culminates in a 15 minute segment where we basically watch a recreation of the band performing in Live Aid. And in some ways it feels almost churlish to complain about that; after all, why would you complain about having the chance to listen to some legendary songs? But the film's story is over the moment Mercury walks on stage; everything else after that moment is nothing dramatically. You want to end with Live Aid so that you have a big joyous moment to end the film? I can understand that impulse. But you achieve that same purpose just by ending with the band performing "Bohemian Rhapsody", and if really necessary throwing in "We Are the Champions" to end. But having four songs is really just over-egging the pudding, and relying on the greatness of Queen to leave the audience happy, rather than relying on the filmmaking to elicit a response. Now, perhaps I should give the filmmakers credit for restraint since they actually cut two songs out of the Live Aid setlist, but instead I'm just annoyed they lacked the courage of their convictions. If you make the choice to stop the film dead just to enjoy the music, I could almost respect that, but then they really needed to commit to the idea of doing so. Cutting two songs out of the performance is a halfway house that satisfies neither the audience looking for some dramatic purpose in the last 15 minutes of the film, nor those who just want to enjoy Queen's performance of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" or "We Will Rock You". (Indeed the loss of "We Will Rock You" is particularly puzzling, since the film goes to such effort establishing the audience interactivity of the stomp-stomp-clap in that song that you fully expect it to be paid off during Live Aid, and then it's not there.) Ultimately, the film's ending is dramatically dead air, and 15 minutes is a lot of time to waste in a 134 minute film, time that could have been used to bring a bit more depth to the characters. But since this film isn't actually interested in the characters, that time would have been wasted, so why not extend the Live Aid sequence.<br />
<br />
Look, people really enjoy Queen, as do I. It's insane how many great songs they wrote. And it's fantastic to hear those songs again (especially if you saw it in a cinema with a big cinema sound system.) But that doesn't make this a movie; it makes it an extended music video. And that doesn't deserve to be in the running for an Oscar.<br />
<br />
-------------------------------<br />
<br />
Looking at the list of nominees, and seeing the number of films that really do not deserve a nomination, I find myself reflecting on the great films that deserve recognition as one of the best films of the year, but that for whatever reason the Academy chose not to nominate.<br />
* My favourite film of the year is <i>First Reformed</i>, a fantastic film about a church pastor undergoing a crisis of faith over our responsibility to care for God’s creation – Paul Schrader’s screenplay is nominated, so people in the Academy clearly saw it and know it’s great, and yet the film itself is not nominated.<br />
* The Oscars had previously nominated Debra Granik’s <i>Winter’s Bone</i>, so I had hoped they would recognise her even-more-brilliant <i>Leave No Trace</i>, about a PTSD-afflicted father raising his daughter in the woods and her being torn between her father and her growing desire to find her own place in the world.<br />
* I loved <i>You Were Never Really Here</i>, about a traumatised man hired to rescue a kidnapped girl from sex slavery – it’s basically <i>Taken</i> but with compelling character nuance and subtle storytelling from Lynne Ramsay, a director who really deserves greater acknowledgement.<br />
* If they wanted to nominate a black superhero film, rather than <i>Black Panther</i>, they should have nominated the remarkable <i>Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse</i>, a film about a half-African-American half-Puerto-Rican superhero that is genuinely fantastic and manages to be breathlessly inventive with the superhero movie format and with the possibilities of animation itself without sacrificing the emotional reality of its central character.<br />
* Or if you want to recognise more black artists, what about <i>Sorry to Bother You</i> – a satire that I fundamentally disagree with ideologically, and that admittedly is something of a confused mess (it feels like director Boots Riley tried to get his every idea into the film in case this would be his only movie), but that is also surprising and challenging and funny and entertaining and that addresses the exploitation of black people in modern society.<br />
* I would love to have seen <i>Widows</i> be nominated, a wonderful, nuanced, exciting thriller centred around four brilliant, strong female performances that also has a lot of say about politics and class in America.<br />
* I wasn’t expecting <i>First Man</i> to be nominated after it didn’t hit at the box office, but it was an insightful, focused, thoughtful, and moving character-centric biopic in exactly the way <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i> is not.<br />
* Similarly, I realise it was never going to be nominated even before it was a box office bomb in the US, but <i>Annihilation</i> was a genuinely brilliant and emotional film that shows the highs that science-fiction can achieve, and it should not be forgotten.<br />
* I couldn’t help noticing that, of the five Best Director nominations, there is one film has no Picture nomination (something that used to happen a lot, but has only happened once since the number of Picture nominations expanded) – I would never expect them to give a Best Picture nomination to <i>Cold War</i> (we’re not going to have <u>two</u> foreign language nominees for Best Picture), but <i>Cold War</i> is an excellent film and much better than many of the nominees.<br />
* And then there are films I sadly haven’t been able to see yet but want to – films like <i>If Beale St Could Talk</i> or <i>Eighth Grade</i>, both films that have been repeatedly mentioned by many people whose opinions I trust as deserving nominees.<br />
I feel that there is a genuine wealth of excellent films that could have appeared in the Best Picture category, and yet fully half of the nominees are undeserving, dull, even outright bad movies. And that is frustrating. Hopefully the Academy does better next year.<br />
<br />
(And finally, here’s an interesting fact – of the eight nominees, seven have a running length between 130 and 135 minutes long (and of these, two run for 134 minutes and three run for 135 minutes). Only <i>The Favourite</i>, at 120 minutes, falls outside this standard running time. I realise it’s quite common for Best Picture nominees to have that “just over two hours” length, but this year the pattern seems almost absurdly strong. Was the sole criteria for nominees their run time? That would certainly explain some of these nominations.)Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-21346860397001811782018-07-18T20:32:00.000+12:002018-07-18T20:32:38.666+12:00Matryoshka doll reduxSo here's the thing,<br />
<br />
As happens each year, the upcoming arrival of this year's film festival has finally prompted me to post my responses to the films I saw at last year's festival. As always, these were my initial responses, many of them written very quickly on my phone while waiting for my next screening, and all of them written within a day or two of seeing the film. So these are very rough and immediate reflections that I have left essentially as they were.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinE7_dZLQqDRHgT2CMOc3oKiLQmwHqe0jXzGGG-fVLBxotQ5FSebR36W8_ymeAxR_JslTBK17Y911SwCs3WEFy3JB5bcWzy43ZXbdEll6170GOqms2b1nP6Gxjcg14Vq5ZQ8gYA6G5twun/s1600/party.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinE7_dZLQqDRHgT2CMOc3oKiLQmwHqe0jXzGGG-fVLBxotQ5FSebR36W8_ymeAxR_JslTBK17Y911SwCs3WEFy3JB5bcWzy43ZXbdEll6170GOqms2b1nP6Gxjcg14Vq5ZQ8gYA6G5twun/s400/party.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Party</i></b><br />
First film of the festival was a short trifle of a film, less than 75 minutes long, but it felt much longer. Kristen Scott Thomas plays a newly appointed Government Minister who holds a celebratory party. But she's constantly distracted by phone calls from her lover, her husband is distracted to the point of being absent, and one guest attends the party with a gun and cocaine, and when the celebration is hijacked by one couple announcing they're having triplets and the husband revealing what's on his mind, the whole party collapses into carefully constructed chaos.<br />
Now, it could just be that I was in the wrong mood for the film; certainly judging from the laughter the audience seemed to really enjoy the film. But I simply never got into the film, which was a shame. For me there was a couple of witty lines and a handful of laughs (with one great joke in particular about a character's academic speciality), but for most of the film I was simply puzzled by what people were laughing at. It had a great cast - in addition to Scott Thomas, we had Timothy Spall, Cillian Murphy, Patricia Clarkson, Cherry Jones, and Emily Mortimer, all actors I enjoy - and they were certainly giving the film their all. Part of the problem was that the film needed a more energetic pace in moving between the situations, and because the film's pacing felt off I had time to think and realise I didn't really believe the actions of half the characters. Add to that an unfortunate decision to open with an <i>in media res</i> shot of the final scene in a way that to me contributed nothing but a distraction (the film could have been more suspenseful, where will this all end?, except the film has already told us where this will all end), and an annoying film-ending revelation that I both saw coming and yet thought made no sense except as a final shock reveal, and the whole thing was a disappointing start to the festival.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOwCrZTB0OVdXGjvPwwxkjcl3CxL08CXDz5vLtVzA_GoOIa54TxqSaiXHnjxvDCOLUcKht-RkjuSyBu-cP3WDnYw6QR16ujcQJkbzyz6xxoeev9kEsjYeXkQW7TtJzqg6WE_VBODxG2exy/s1600/square.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOwCrZTB0OVdXGjvPwwxkjcl3CxL08CXDz5vLtVzA_GoOIa54TxqSaiXHnjxvDCOLUcKht-RkjuSyBu-cP3WDnYw6QR16ujcQJkbzyz6xxoeev9kEsjYeXkQW7TtJzqg6WE_VBODxG2exy/s400/square.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Square</i></b><br />
An enjoyable, but flawed, satire about artistic pretensions from Swedish director Ruben Östlund. Claes Bang stars as Christian, a museum art gallery curator particularly excited about a new piece they’ve installed (an illuminated square cut into the ground outside) that is supposed to represent a space within which a social contract is created, where if someone in the square needs help another person will help them. One morning Christian is outraged to discover that pickpockets have stolen his wallet, his phone, and somehow even his cufflinks, and after locating the apartment building (in the poorer part of town) where his phone is now located, he decides to plaster the building with notes demanding the return of his stuff. It’s a poorly considered plan and, as with all poorly considered plans, it spins out of control very quickly.<br />
The film is a lot of fun. Bang gives a wonderfully self-satisfied performance, with a charming insincerity to his character that I really enjoyed; witness his carefully practiced “impromptu” informality when introducing an artwork. His life is filled with a lot of very wealthy people looking at art made by very wealthy artists who fill their works with messages about the evils of wealth that everyone agrees with because “it’s terrible how people suffer”, and everyone gets to feel smug and informed and enlightened but no-one actually does anything because they don’t want to challenge the comfort they live in. One of my favourite scenes involves Christian apologising to someone who lives in poverty who he has unambiguously and seriously wronged in several different ways, and yet which very quickly spirals away from acknowledgement of his own guilt and into an indictment of the “251 people who own 50 percent of the world’s wealth”, as though he’s so practiced in talking about art that blames the ills of the world on the ultra-wealthy that he has become oblivious to how he has more in common with those people than the figure of poverty he has harmed.<br />
There are some phenomenal set-pieces throughout the film, and Östlund has a wonderful patience, often filming long scenes in a single take, simply watching the scenes play out until the audience starts to be unsettled simply by the length of the scene. It reminded me of some of the works of Roy Andersson (whose films we’ve been watching at film society recently), or indeed something that David Lynch will employ to make even his more-conventional moments uncomfortable. The high point of this is the incredible dinner scene, where one artist enters to perform his work; it’s a scene that starts funny, but the longer it plays out we find ourselves feeling as uncomfortable as the dinner guests, feeling trapped, trying not to look, eventually even feeling threatened by the dangerous and assaultive nature of the performance. It’s a brilliant and memorable scene that pushes into areas I did not expect.<br />
So it’s a genuinely strong, entertaining film. But at the same time, it could be frustrating. It’s 2½ hours long, and it did not feel like it needed to be; instead it seemed as though some of the subplots were being introduced just to fill the time. The most egregious to me was a storyline involving Elisabeth Moss as an American journalist who Christian hooks up with; I really love Elisabeth Moss, and by themselves her scenes are some of the funniest in the film, but at the same time I don’t know what that plot actually adds to the film, and it feels as though it’s there just because “Hey, we can get Elisabeth Moss; umm, okayyy, we need something for her to do.”<br />
It also has a startling inability to trust the audience to understand its message. The film is named after an artwork that is supposed to indict our reluctance to help those in need, and Christian seems to constantly be encountering people in need of help. In other words, the film is not subtle in constantly reinforcing its message. But by the point where the film starts to use shots of street beggars as transitions between scenes of great wealth, you just want to yell at Östlund “We get it; these characters are hypocrites who will applaud someone who speaks on the importance of society but who are blind to the victims around.”<br />
I was particularly excited to see the film after admiring Östlund’s previous film, <i>Force Majeure</i>. This is not quite as great as that film was; the satirical targets are a little easier, the comedy of the film is somewhat broader, and the film is not quite as disciplined and focused as the earlier film. But it’s still a lot of fun, with more deep belly-laughs than I remember having had in a while. I really did enjoy it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcEuxUzR0-gqeL_fY_4ylq1Mo429P92SYF2e5H_rv_iC-TFZTNoYrWhmKntRCvImfFTSi70DM9j-FAXc2aO8KgHxWFqGWC_Yi2Qu1Vg44UrmSVUovOhZn_0Zh3B_6N1mm7VIOj-eUMeQ_x/s1600/top_of_the_lake_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="528" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcEuxUzR0-gqeL_fY_4ylq1Mo429P92SYF2e5H_rv_iC-TFZTNoYrWhmKntRCvImfFTSi70DM9j-FAXc2aO8KgHxWFqGWC_Yi2Qu1Vg44UrmSVUovOhZn_0Zh3B_6N1mm7VIOj-eUMeQ_x/s400/top_of_the_lake_2.jpg" width="279" /></a></div>
<b><i>Top of the Lake: China Girl</i></b><br />
Probably the biggest event of this year's festival was the screening of the complete second season of <i>Top of the Lake</i>, the thriller TV series written by Jane Campion and a-guy-everyone-forgets-about-because-he's-not-Jane-Campion, and directed by Jane Campion and a-different-guy-everyone-forgets-about-because-he's-not-Jane-Campion.<br />
The second season of the show has Elizabeth Moss, as police detective Robin Griffin, leaving the small rural New Zealand setting of the first season and returning to her old life in Sydney, where she is tasked with investigating the death of an Asian girl whose body is found inside a suitcase that washes up on the beach – a mystery that very quickly leads to an brothel involved in various illegal operations. At the same time, Robin decides to reconnect with Mary, the girl she had given birth to as a teenager, only to discover that Mary is starting to pull away from her adoptive parents because she’s fallen in love with a particularly undesirable boyfriend.<br />
I was really excited for this one. I’d thought the first series was brilliant, and the responses I’d seen to the second season had been equally high, so I was expecting an incredible series. So I found myself somewhat deflated by the show. When it is good it's really good, and for the most part it's really good for the first five episodes. The acting is almost entirely great; obviously Elizabeth Moss and Nicole Kidman were great, and I found Alice Englert as Robin’s daughter Mary utterly appealing. Gwendoline Christie was a particular highlight – she’s often called on to be the comic relief, and it’s an incredibly fun performance, but when the story turns into some darker directions her character flips in a way that felt true to the character. The one point where the acting didn’t work for me was David Dencik as Puss - perhaps it’s that the character was so broadly drawn, but he never felt more than a two-dimensional villain to me. (His performance was probably not helped by the fact that, with his thick East German accent and his long hair, I was weirdly reminded of Tommy Wiseau – and that was before he made a weird video so amateurish it could have been from <i>The Room</i>.)<br />
The mystery at the centre of the film is really gripping and intriguing. There’s not a lot of uncertainty around who is actually involved in the death of China Girl – we see her body being dumped and we know who dumped her – but the film builds a great mystery around why she died. It’s rich and thrilling, and the show goes into some dark and nightmarish places and I fund it genuinely fascinating. But the show’s central riches are in its relationships between the characters, particularly in the way Robin tries to enter into Mary’s life and find the place that she can fill as her birth mother while recognising that she’s not her actual mother. The tentative interactions that builds between Robin, Mary, and the parents who raised Mary were always very precise and careful and wonderful, and when things go wrong with Mary (as we always know they will) the way each party tries to assert their position with her was fascinating. And it’s a good thing that that worked so well for me, because I think the ending shows that that’s what Campion was interested in exploring with the show.<br />
So the first five episodes were very good. But even in those really good five episodes there are definite issues. For a start, there are a number of narrative shortcuts that did bother me. The most egregious of these involved Robin’s daughter Mary, whose undesirable boyfriend happens to be a middle-aged guy very closely connected to the brothel where the victim worked; the absurdity of that coincidence never stopped bothering me, as it was a clear case of the writers writing for thematic resonance rather than narrative sense. It’s the kind of problem you’d expect to see in a movie, where there’s only two hours to tell your story and so shortcuts may be needed, rather than in a TV series where you have (in this case) six hours to explore your points. It would have been a stronger choice to have her boyfriend be involved in <u>a</u> brothel rather than <u>the</u> brothel; it could have achieved the same thematic resonance without making the entire plotline feel like a cheat. Making it even more absurd, several other police figures involved in the investigation are revealed to also have their own deeply personal connection to the case, in a way that I can’t reveal for spoiler reasons, but which took a plotline that had been working for me and from the time this key revelation is made it suddenly stopped making any sense.<br />
The show also seems to feel the need in a couple of episodes to tie things up from the first season in a way that wasn’t necessary, and any time they try to actively do anything to engage with the first season it becomes a distraction from this story, and at times is actively bad. As I remember it the first season was pretty much closed; it didn’t have any dangling narrative threads that needed resolution, and this season takes place four years later, so we can just accept that things change in four years. But they felt the need to have an extended flashback in the second episode to explain why she decided to return to Sydney, and nothing in that scene made sense to me from a character point of view, and which also didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know from the first episode. (Speaking of which, she’s been living with her brother for two weeks before he gets around to saying “Sorry your wedding fell through”?) There’s also a mid-season appearance by David Wenham from the first season which is a complete distraction, provides nothing in terms of this story being told now, and just seems seriously misguided.<br />
And then there are points where I simply didn’t believe what was going on. One mid-season episode ends with an absurd scene where Robin is being attacked, nearly murdered, in a police station in a room that is literally on fire. Because that’s a thing that happens. Or there are characters I don’t believe: in particular there's a group of guys who get together in a cafe to discuss their experiences with prostitutes and review them online, awkwardly closing their laptops every time the waitress comes over so she doesn’t notice the sex sites they’re visiting; I get macho boasting about sexual prowess, but I’d have thought visiting prostitutes was something most people would try to keep private, not something they build their entire real-life social lives around.<br />
And these were all things that were bothering me about the first five episodes, the ones I liked. The sixth episode just changes the show into something completely different. Suddenly there’s a massive manhunt, someone’s taken hostage, and the solution that the person being hunted adopts to try to evade capture is one of the most idiotic ideas I’ve seen this year, and there is zero reason why the person needs to do this. And then there’s stuff about the revelation of the bad guy’s main plan, which, okay, … words fail me. I was also bothered by how quickly they resolved the central mystery. In fact, it was dealt with so quickly that I missed the explanation. The mystery is solved in literally ten seconds, with just one line of dialogue where it was explained why the girl died, and I think I missed it because I was distracted thinking about something else dramatic that had happened just a few seconds before. The only reason I know why the girl in the suitcase was killed was because I asked a friend. When you’re watching a six-hour mystery, your solution shouldn’t be able to be missed because you happened to cough at the wrong time.<br />
People seemed to really respond well to the show. There was extended and genuinely rapturous applause at each intermission. And I can’t help wondering if it’s a case of the Emperor has no clothes. People love Jane Campion, she’s an important filmmaker, and so obviously this is important and great filmmaking. But it’s not that great. It’s good, for the most part. I like it. I would never discourage anyone from watching it, because what’s good about it is really good. But it’s not as incredible as people seem to believe. It has serious flaws running through the entire show, and I simply cannot comprehend how people can not see them.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidZIxoe-sYM-1RUQHgZQhpRGVyBSr2wzSedZ3x7Xth7vt8nvds_6lHI4k1VHty949YkjNqaoTT4O9FvsuyPdYNs9_kCnHNhYMkE1gWEsPh_QeuuAxQ5W5LNQ4GKPX2KG1Idvi7pJ5D81gs/s1600/blade_of_immortal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidZIxoe-sYM-1RUQHgZQhpRGVyBSr2wzSedZ3x7Xth7vt8nvds_6lHI4k1VHty949YkjNqaoTT4O9FvsuyPdYNs9_kCnHNhYMkE1gWEsPh_QeuuAxQ5W5LNQ4GKPX2KG1Idvi7pJ5D81gs/s400/blade_of_immortal.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>Blade of the Immortal</i></b><br />
Finally, after four films, we have a film I could completely enjoy without reservations. I haven’t seen much of the work of Takashi Miike, the notoriously provocative and prolific Japanese director, but I had enjoyed <i>13 Assassins</i> a few years ago, and the idea of a new swordplay film from the man sounded appealing.<br />
The film tells the story of Manji, a swordsman whose insane sister is brutally murdered by a gang of bounty hunters trying to catch him. He avenges her death, killing every last one of them, but is mortally wounded himself, until an 800 year old witch arrives and fills his body with bloodworms that bestow immortality on him. Fifty years later, he’s hired to serve as a bodyguard for a young girl seeking revenge on the man who had her parents killed as part of a rivalry between swordship houses.<br />
One of the things I had appreciated about <i>13 Assassins</i> was how it had a slow build-up with barely any action for the first two acts, until it erupts in a spectacular unrestrained 45 minute long finale action scene. <i>Blade of the Immortal</i> is much more traditional. It doesn't have that kind of singular action scene; instead it's filled with an astonishing array of action scenes (you're never more than five minutes away from the next fight), and each action scene is innovative and astonishing. I was particularly surprised by the inventiveness that the film brought with weaponry; I was expecting the film to be largely sword-on-sword fights, but that rarely happens, instead it frequently introduced me to weapons I've never seen before (and in some cases I'm still not entirely certain how they worked) to impress me with how much Miike could achieve within the limitations of the film.<br />
This was the 100th film in Miike's career - the third he's directed this year alone - but what's impressive is that this does not feel like someone's "third film of the year". It doesn't feel rushed; instead there's still a considered craft to the film. There's a clear vision driving the film, with some beautifully constructed images, and a nice clear approach to the shooting and editing that kept these chaotic action sequences clear and coherent. I was genuinely impressed by the film; it may not be particularly rich or deep, but it fully embraced the joy and fun that cinema can offer.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFL6YhoGFPj9jfo5FMuqwVfjEV99Vr1wiGSxLsuzTfKsEhxyl0hxKXqjBilvOrthINvPw7TDaQOfreojI0KHewMcdRREtqBOu0jpJKbPE3GbY-1rOhyphenhyphenAsxsl9kCP8O8SOOk-uLtzyz2LvC/s1600/farthest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFL6YhoGFPj9jfo5FMuqwVfjEV99Vr1wiGSxLsuzTfKsEhxyl0hxKXqjBilvOrthINvPw7TDaQOfreojI0KHewMcdRREtqBOu0jpJKbPE3GbY-1rOhyphenhyphenAsxsl9kCP8O8SOOk-uLtzyz2LvC/s400/farthest.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Farthest</i></b><br />
One of those documentaries you need to see on the big screen, <i>The Farthest</i> is an wonderful film experience celebrating the achievements of the Voyager space mission, where two craft were sent to the deepest regions of our solar system to take photographs and readings of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, before heading out of the solar system into interstellar space.<br />
The first half of the film was interesting, but not especially memorable. It’s a typical after-the-fact documentary, with lots of talking heads, and that’s unavoidable. The most notable part of the film in its first half was the half-hearted effort to lessen the talking heads by using oblique impressionistic footage; the sky shot through trees, a close-up of an eye, even a raccoon raiding a rubbish bin. It’s annoying because it feels like the film’s director is trying to find something, anything to put on screen to avoid yet another interview subject speaking to camera. But it’s done in a half-hearted way, so it never really lessens the talking heads, nor does it ever become part of the visual structure of the film, so these cutaways just detract whenever they appear. And the disappointing thing is that it’s an incredible story being told – we’re hearing the mission participants explain how they launched a craft that was able to analyse and send data back to Earth using a computing power equal to the computing power present in a car-key fob – and it’s a shame that the filmmaker seemed to lack confidence in the power of that story to hold us.<br />
The real magic of the film comes in the second half of the film, and that’s point where I was glad to be watching it on the big screen of the Embassy. You’re looking at the images of these planets, of these moons, and you’re hearing these explanations of the wonders you’re looking at, and you’re confronted with the marvels of this universe. Seeing these faint images of distant worlds growing until they fill the screen, offering breathtaking that could not be imagined, hearing the excitement of the scientists as they recount the discoveries that made them exclaim Wow, until the final moment where Voyager 2, at the far end of the solar system, turns its camera around to capture images of the entire solar system, our planet a tiny speck, almost impossible to find. It is literally awesome.<br />
There's a point in the film where some of the scientists express frustration that, with all the incredible things being achieved by the mission, the media seen mostly fascinated by the golden record included with the craft, carrying a sample of our greatest music and greetings in different languages. Frustratingly it was a fascination that extended to the filmmakers. Yes, it's a significant part of the story of the Voyager mission, but it's also something extra: the purpose of Voyager was not to introduce Chuck Berry to aliens. So it's disappointing that the filmmakers keep returning to the record, even after the point where the craft starts sending these incredible images that had never been seen, they decide to go back to talking about the damned record.<br />
But when the film steps away from the record and focuses on the mission's purpose, it becomes utterly magical. I was surprised by how moved I was by the film. In those moments where they just set everything aside and just celebrate the incredible achievement of the mission and the wonders of the universe, it becomes truly a beautiful experience, and one that is worth seeking out.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih9jCIWnBapk_FZT0-MWuOOVXI2cBfoIhwTj0mHPvAqcSYYLljzVD4CcInzdWNO_-BBRimrJ1ze-Oa1MIuzrvsZDeHBhZiFvUitst5lOJUR7uCKXVaAXzW4l2RM6kSagFK6WajQ0VrwWZb/s1600/belle_de_jour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="477" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih9jCIWnBapk_FZT0-MWuOOVXI2cBfoIhwTj0mHPvAqcSYYLljzVD4CcInzdWNO_-BBRimrJ1ze-Oa1MIuzrvsZDeHBhZiFvUitst5lOJUR7uCKXVaAXzW4l2RM6kSagFK6WajQ0VrwWZb/s400/belle_de_jour.jpg" width="252" /></a></div>
<b><i>Belle de Jour</i></b><br />
I’ve never seen any of Luis Buñuel’s films – it’s one of my big blind spots as a film fan – so I was glad to see that the festival was showing a restoration of one of the director’s more celebrated works. I found the film intriguing and fascinating, but I’m really unsure what I’m supposed to take from the film.<br />
The wonderful Catherine Deneuve stars as Séverine, a beautiful young woman who is deeply in love with her wealthy doctor husband of one year. But despite the clear love between the couple, there is some kind of block for Séverine that prevents intimacy; indeed, the film seemed to hint that, despite being married for a year, she might still be a virgin. Meanwhile in her dreams she repeatedly finds herself in situations where she is forcibly stripped, bound, and beaten. One day she hears that a friend of hers has started working as a high-class prostitute; the notion intrigues her, and after talking to a number of male friends (including her husband) about their experiences with ladies of the night, she visits a brothel and secures a job working every afternoon from 2 to 5. Her initial experiences are not particularly successful, but her madam shows remarkable patience with her, and the experiences seem to free something in her. But then she becomes trapped in a violent relationship with a gangster client, and that’s not something you want.<br />
So I really liked the film. As a piece of cinema I found it utterly enthralling. Every image of the film is beautiful, striking, and filled with a cool richness. I also adored Deneuve – her character really makes little or no sense throughout the film, but she imbues the character with a strangely vulnerable strength that carried the film. I was suprised by how weirdly chaste the film is, particularly given the subject matter; after the film I came across a board with the censor’s ratings for the films screening, and was astonished to discover the film is R18, a rating that must surely be a historical artefact because I can’t see anything in the film I saw calling for much more than an M rating. But my big question walking out of the film was, what does it all add up to? What was Buñuel trying to say through the film? I’ve been trying to puzzle over this since seeing the film, and I have no idea.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoEDPzpwcTH_YFvZt5ZEJZQigXbbviol9ALmUs6ZKZ05sLEpFrPaSX3KZF_fkSz3C3S552ITqhNNuWdKXhiayB1MO6aWVXCTgb0mtCBYdwehIelZMe0MbCqAczGF4A-DCxIFunP-nTcLXq/s1600/thats-not-me.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="706" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoEDPzpwcTH_YFvZt5ZEJZQigXbbviol9ALmUs6ZKZ05sLEpFrPaSX3KZF_fkSz3C3S552ITqhNNuWdKXhiayB1MO6aWVXCTgb0mtCBYdwehIelZMe0MbCqAczGF4A-DCxIFunP-nTcLXq/s400/thats-not-me.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<b><i>That's Not Me</i></b><br />
A likeable, if somewhat, slight, Australian comedy, <i>That’s Not Me</i> focuses on struggling actress Polly who turns down a guest role on a soap, partly to leave herself open for an HBO show with Jared Leto that she has a callback for. The role on the soap instead goes to her identical twin sister Amy, and the buzz around the character sees Amy get the HBO show Polly was hoping for. Suddenly Amy’s a massive star, the gossip magazines are filled with paparazzi photos of Amy with her new boyfriend Jared Leto, and everywhere Polly walks she’s confronted with giant billboards filled with a face that’s identical to her, reminding her of the success that she hasn’t had.<br />
It’s a great idea for a film; as an actor one of the big advantages that you have is that you have your look, and the film plays a lot with the problems that looking so much like someone else would create. Polly’s career is completely destroyed by her sister’s success because she doesn’t have anything about her that can create any distinction between the two. And while the film is understandably very focused on the problems experienced by Polly being constantly mistaken for her sister, at the same time the film plays with the problems that can be created in the other direction, of being in the public eye and having someone else out there who is able to damage your reputation just through her existence.<br />
There’s also a lot of really enjoyable material about family. I found the family relationships appealing and honest; there’s the big stuff, the way parents take pride in any accomplishment, no matter how minor (one great joke features a gossip magazine cover that mistakes Polly for Amy, where the parents can’t decide whose scrapbook of clippings it should go in), down to the petty annoyances parents impose on children and the problems children create for their parents. Disappointingly they seemed to make a deliberate choice to minimise the interaction between the two sisters, possibly to reduce the special effects cost of having the two on-screen at once, because when they do get together the interaction between the sisters is really great, capturing the competitiveness and frustration of having spent your life trying to prove yourself against this other person. The main scene the two sisters spend by themselves was one of the best in the film, and I wish they had been together more.<br />
It’s also a nice commentary on the notion of trying to find your place in the world, of trying to set aside childish fantasies of “I want to be a star” and trying to find who we are as an adult. And I liked how it seemed like that was a process for Polly to come to grips with; there’s a point in the film where Polly seems to come to the revelation that she should move on, but the next scene she’s back to pursuing her dreams. In most films that kind of revelation is the climax of the film, but this film recognises that that kind of overnight change doesn’t happen. I also found it interesting to watch a movie, watch an artistic endeavour, that was about how the arts aren’t the be-all and end-all they’re often held up as. As a society we admire celebrities, we aspire to be them, we look at someone who achieves their goals and becomes a famous actor or musician and think they achieved their dream, and more importantly we might look at an aspiring ballerina who becomes a nurse and think “it’s a shame that she gave up”. There was a refreshing and critical honesty about the place of art in our society that I found refreshing.<br />
One thing I found interesting, but unfortunately unsuccessful, about the film was the way it used actual celebrities to bring a bit of authenticity to the world, most obviously Jared Leto. In some ways it’s effective in communicating the level of success of the twin sister; securing a show on HBO could mean a lot of things, but securing the lead alongside an identifiable Oscar-winning name immediately makes clear just how well she’s doing. At the same time, it sets up a barrier for the film that it has to overcome. As a prominent end credit statement makes clear, Jared Leto was not involved in the production of the film, and so the filmmakers have to constantly work around the actor’s absence, in an awkward “oh, you just missed Jared, what a great guy” way. It starts to be distracting, in a way that creating a new fictional celebrity who can actually appear in the film wouldn’t.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvk0dt4ZWhsk6880UcWQxsKTiihSYE8ZhrK1SvEjpJpgqwookYAlQdS4K4TuFVZm8XsBAvDsCIZOb7JDeSoolLdDg1HSFPRPaohr-WBx5uhXoKD2OivpwATKgwKpEwXDUM6Q03L0jZj1_6/s1600/super_dark_times.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvk0dt4ZWhsk6880UcWQxsKTiihSYE8ZhrK1SvEjpJpgqwookYAlQdS4K4TuFVZm8XsBAvDsCIZOb7JDeSoolLdDg1HSFPRPaohr-WBx5uhXoKD2OivpwATKgwKpEwXDUM6Q03L0jZj1_6/s400/super_dark_times.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>Super Dark Times</i></b><br />
One of the things I enjoy about the festival is how, with some of the titles you choose to see on a whim, by the time you come to sit down to watch the film you’ve completely forgotten what it was about the film that interested you. So you can sit and watch the film with a completely blank slate, and just discover what the film is as it unfolds before you. So when you love one of these films, it feels especially significant because you know it’s a genuine response to the film, untempered by any advance expectations.<br />
This 90s-set thriller focuses on two high school best friends, Zach and Josh, who find themselves hanging out with an annoying kid from school, Dylan, and a younger kid called Charlie. One day they’re in an isolated area of the woods, playing around with a sword when a fight breaks out and Dylan is accidentally stabbed in the throat with the sword. The kids panic, cover the body with leaves, and hide the sword. As time goes by and the body is not discovered, the friends find themselves increasingly burdened by the knowledge of their actions.<br />
It’s a common set-up for a film, the accidental death, the clumsy cover-up, the disintegration brought on by guilt. But I was really impressed by how honestly the film approached that set-up. It seemed significant to me that the central characters were teenagers; they’re still kids, trying to figure out who they are and what their place is in the world, and the idea of taking kids who aren't prepared for the world as it is and adding this incredible burden to them to see how they deal with it was rather appealing. It's essentially a heightened coming-of-age film, and it's pleasingly enjoyable. I thought director Kevin Phillips (working with a strong screenplay by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski) seemed to have a careful grasp of tone; for most of its running time it's simple, allows its characters to dictate what the film is, and really is focused on how these kids are processing their experience. He's aided by some very strong performances by the actors, particularly leads Owen Campbell and Charlie Tahant; I particularly enjoyed Campbell's slow disintegration into paranoia and mistrust as he's trying to hold everyone together. I was also impressed by the wonderfully gloomy cinematography, which gave the film a nicely oppressive tone.<br />
In some ways, I was disappointed by the end, which took this great situation and resorted to the ending of a standard thriller to find some resolution. I'd been so gripped by the strength of these characters and their attempts to keep their lives on track given unimaginable barriers, and had been hoping for it to stay with that focus, that it was a shame to see it take the more conventional route. But I have difficulty holding it against the film, since so much of it was wonderful. Definitely worth keeping an eye out for it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdJ_P-U3ey5ZIbktbk70fz5PSmIne0QCq8953BGl9Tfu-xKOZjcmozmCyREC4yaGLob4F9BzLBIC7rG3ahKh2DZtSlgYmNlvFUUw2s8ugldF1nNYUay3Nmv8CTANR3ZHLQB2XoyRe1USj6/s1600/menashe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="522" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdJ_P-U3ey5ZIbktbk70fz5PSmIne0QCq8953BGl9Tfu-xKOZjcmozmCyREC4yaGLob4F9BzLBIC7rG3ahKh2DZtSlgYmNlvFUUw2s8ugldF1nNYUay3Nmv8CTANR3ZHLQB2XoyRe1USj6/s400/menashe.jpg" width="276" /></a></div>
<b><i>Menashe</i></b><br />
The Talmud says that, to be happy, you need three things: a nice wife, a nice house, and nice dishes. Menashe, a Hassidic Jew living in a Yiddish-speaking Hassidic neighbourhood in New York, has none of these things: he’s a widower approaching the one year anniversary of his wife’s death; he has a tiny and sparse apartment; and his dishes are plastic. He works a low-paid job at a grocery store (where he constantly fights with his manager over whether the food they sell complies with the legal requirements of their faith), and so he struggles to support himself, let alone his son. The religious authorities in the community have decreed that the law prohibits children from being raised in a house without a mother; for this reason, the son must be raised by his uncle and aunt (who hate Menashe, believing he abandoned their sister in her illness) until Menashe remarries. After all, according to the Torah YHWH said that “It is not good to be alone; I will make a helper for man.”<br />
I found this film utterly charming. The lead character, played by Menashe Lustig, is sweet and affectionate, but not a stereotypical lovable oaf. The film is very honest about who this man is, where his clear failings (of which there are many) lie, and what problems he creates for himself. In a lot of ways it seems daft for him to try to raise a son when he can barely hold his own life together, and it would clearly be best for the boy to be raised by the uncle (who does seem like a genuinely good person and who clearly cares about his nephew). And yet despite all this, despite our clear recognition of Menashe’s failings, despite even the moment where the pressures get too much for him and he physically assaults his son (in a moment so jarring that you could feel the audience’s shock), we are always on Menashe’s side, always willing him to get up and take the next step to improve things. The film culminates in a memorial service and dinner for his wife on the anniversary of her death, which Menashe stubbornly insists on hosting the dinner, despite his inexperience in cooking and despite his brother-in-law’s repeated efforts to take over and make sure it’s done right. In that scene there’s a great moment of ambiguity, where a character makes a comment that may very well be genuine but is just as likely to be an untruth said to help support Menashe at a time where he needs help, and at that moment it just felt genuinely heartwarming and moving. It was sweet and beautiful, yet the film never feels like it’s trying to manipulate the audience into its reaction.<br />
One thing I particularly appreciated was the way the film invited the audience into this culture. It felt like the film was genuine in exploring what it’s like to live in this neighbourhood, which feels as if it exists in a different country from the New York City we usually experience. We observe the culture and the traditions that have developed over thousands of years, and it felt warm and inviting. I was also pleased by the way the film didn’t want to dumb down the culture, made no effort to force unnatural explanations into the film to help the uninformed audience. There were points in the film where the characters were casually throwing around terms that I had never heard before, and the film didn’t really care, because it had trust in the audience to be able to work it out without holding our hands. And that was a satisfying approach to the filmmaking.<br />
I also found the film’s sweet humour appealing; there’s very little in the film where you could point to an actual joke (the only proper joke I can think of comes in the first scene), but there’s a wry resignation infused through the film that elicits quite a few laughs. I really did think <i>Menashe</i> was a wonderful and unique film. It feels like a film that could easily be overlooked and lost over time – frankly it’s probably not a film I would see were it not for the festival – and I love that the film festival offers us the opportunities to introduce us to these experiences we might never have.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA8c4ap33bSAOiTparEkP4SrsOyqtihZ4dtv8blC4D0J5rxO7EcskGjGypfHNpBYaTa4YllhZrvFrqqT99uhpaaOkcnsMQ30lBydqWWBnjCI9G9a0mEgkKtDsMITZp95KMyd4uxupfZOzb/s1600/i_am_not_your_negro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA8c4ap33bSAOiTparEkP4SrsOyqtihZ4dtv8blC4D0J5rxO7EcskGjGypfHNpBYaTa4YllhZrvFrqqT99uhpaaOkcnsMQ30lBydqWWBnjCI9G9a0mEgkKtDsMITZp95KMyd4uxupfZOzb/s400/i_am_not_your_negro.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>I Am Not Your Negro</i></b><br />
In 1987 black author James Baldwin started work on a new book, "Remember This House", which he described as being an exploration of the history of racism in America through his personal remembrances of three murdered civil rights leaders – Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. At the time of his death Baldwin had written just 30 pages of notes setting out the ideas and arguments that he would be advancing through his book. Thirty years later, the Oscar-nominated documentary <i>I Am Not Your Negro</i> takes those notes, as read by Samuel L Jackson, and uses them as the basis for a remarkable film.<br />
Despite the pitch that Baldwin made to his publishers, those three leaders are really not the driving force for the film; they feature, and their deaths are all given particular prominence, but the remembrances of these people that the book would apparently have formed seems to have been material Baldwin would have added as he was writing. Instead those pages of notes that Baldwin wrote appear to be him trying to process what he wants to say with the book, the ideas he’s trying to communicate. And what’s interesting about the film is that it’s clearly drawing on fragmentary ideas; Baldwin feels as though he’s just trying to brainstorm and work out “I want to say this. And I want to say that. And also I should write this. And that would be a great point to make.” Now, I want to be clear: I’m not saying these thoughts are unconsidered or hastily thought out; on the contrary, they’re clearly ideas that Baldwin has been thinking about for years and seems delighted to finally get a chance to make. It’s just that the expression of these ideas is inevitably limited; every statement is a conclusion to an argument that would have been built up in the book. Which admittedly does means there’s no sense of a flow to the movie, but there’s also no sense that his words have been constructed or edited to form the argument. Instead there’s just urgency and passion and rage at the treatment of black people throughout history. And because the structure of the film is contributed by Baldwin’s words, the role of the filmmakers is essentially to compile the imagery that will accompany those words. And the filmmakers do a phenomenal job in constructing the film, mostly using archival documentary footage and movie scenes to illuminate and illustrate his words. At times the editing of the film is simply illustrative or explanatory; other times it’s almost sarcastic or ironic; and at other times it seems determined to assault the audience. The film serves as a condemnation of American culture that stretches back to the treatment of native Americans, and that bring Baldwin’s words and fears up to date with recent deaths of black youths. It’s genuinely confronting, genuinely challenging, genuinely horrifying, and there were points in the film where I would have liked nothing more than to look away.<br />
I feel it’s difficult to really say much about the film at the moment, because I don’t know that I’ve even finished processing it. The film makes a real impact on the viewer, but the nature of the film, the fact that it is constructed from this melange of ideas all thrown together, means that it will take some effort to work through. Barely did I get a chance to even grasp what idea was being communicated and the film had already moved on. This is a tough film to watch, but it’s also tough to process; I feel as though it might require multiple viewings before I could begin to formulate my own thoughts about what he had to say. For the moment, all I can really comment on is the quality of the filmmaking, and on that, all I can say is Wow.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8K6U58y6qcNAv7WL14x6Misvd5z5uHwRDpHB5eOMtcv_5Cq8cCuwhQu1byXN2yqKCJX_V8Ul-STW3UiGtYuqi2pxcxy1MwgnqKCaf36gHwuOY5un2SeCMbECgLuCKhzcRbb7sP6IEflKK/s1600/in_times_of_fading_light.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="815" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8K6U58y6qcNAv7WL14x6Misvd5z5uHwRDpHB5eOMtcv_5Cq8cCuwhQu1byXN2yqKCJX_V8Ul-STW3UiGtYuqi2pxcxy1MwgnqKCaf36gHwuOY5un2SeCMbECgLuCKhzcRbb7sP6IEflKK/s400/in_times_of_fading_light.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<b><i>In Times of Fading Light</i></b><br />
It’s 1989, and Wilhelm, a long-time member of the East German Communist Party, is celebrating his 90th birthday. And so a gathering is held to mark this occasion, with a party made up of a few family members and a lot of local officials looking to pay their respects to this important hero of the working class. But while everyone proudly proclaims the strength of the country, they whisper their belief that East Germany is on the verge of collapse. One family member doesn’t want to wait; Wilhelm’s grandson has already fled to the West, and no-one wants to tell Wilhelm because they’ve already seen him throw one person out because of his connection to someone who has defected.<br />
This is the hardest type of film to write one of these responses about, simply because I didn't respond to the film, and I don't know why. It's not a bad film; there's nothing that I can point to as being something I wish they'd done differently. And I thought it had a great premise and an interesting cast of characters. It even made me smile in some of the comedic moments. But for some reason I just found myself watching the film passively, never engaging with the film. I just don’t feel any excitement about the film. It’s not bad, it’s probably pretty good, but personally I just never connected with it. And that’s a shame.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY85wGlHSmFNk2KgvHbd0HEvurBNDeaQ0BvonbWoA558RxDqr1QjpfIs0qw53rX-C-Jx4YL5H49uYMTiSr41aOP9fSqCKg_6FmcjXjeDz4lopi950B1hP5XEonN7_tHDEGCZFqa2SYttCZ/s1600/ghost_story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY85wGlHSmFNk2KgvHbd0HEvurBNDeaQ0BvonbWoA558RxDqr1QjpfIs0qw53rX-C-Jx4YL5H49uYMTiSr41aOP9fSqCKg_6FmcjXjeDz4lopi950B1hP5XEonN7_tHDEGCZFqa2SYttCZ/s400/ghost_story.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>A Ghost Story</i></b><br />
<i>A Ghost Story</i> took about five seconds to elicit a laugh from the audience. The first thing to appear on-screen is the name of the production company, called "Scared Sheetless". At the sight of that name, a little amused ripple ran through the crowd. It was the last time anyone laughed in the film.<br />
I thought <i>A Ghost Story</i> was fantastic; I need to let the film sit with me for a while, but at the moment I think it might be my favourite film of the year (although I can imagine a lot of people hating it). The film opens with an unnamed couple, played by Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara. They're sweet, clearly in love, which is why it's so devastating when the man dies in a car crash. She comes to the morgue, identifies the body, and after saying goodbye to him covers the body with the sheet. A minute later he sits up, the morgue sheet still covering his body. As he walks out of the morgue, eyeholes form in the sheet. He sees a blinding light, but doesn’t step into it, and it closes up again. And so he returns to his home, a lingering presence, always watching, always listening, all the while looking like a clichéd Halloween ghost costume.<br />
I heard an interview with writer/director David Lowery (whose work I’d previously only experienced in his solid remake of <i>Pete’s Dragon</i>) where he discussed how the final script was just 45 pages long, which is tiny for a feature film, and how Rooney Mara when she read the script was unsure whether it was supposed to be a short film or a feature. And that points to the strengths of the film. The film is in no way driven forward by its narrative; it's soft, contemplative, and beautiful. It plays around with time, giving it a drifting sense of uncertainty. It has a couple of notable dialogue scenes, but most of the movie seems to play essentially without dialogue, adopting a haunting and poetic tone.<br />
The film caught me right from its opening scene; it only has a short amount of time to establish the relationship of the central couple, and if that relationship doesn’t work for the audience the rest of the film has nothing to hang on to. Fortunately this connection is instantly made, with a clear sense that this is a lived-in couple. There's a scene a few minutes into the film where the couple are in bed, holding each other, caressing each other; there's nothing sexual about the moment, it's just a moment of easy casual intimacy. And I found myself uncomfortable watching this moment, in a way I have never experienced before, because it seemed too real and I felt that I shouldn’t be seeing this, as though I was almost intruding on their relationship. For a film to create a relationship that feels so real and rich and intimate in a matter of minutes is remarkable.<br />
And then he becomes the titular ghost, and I thought I understood what the film was doing. Usually when you see a ghost film, the ghost is the central figure, and it’s about them trying to connect with the real world. But here we can’t see the actual person, just this sheeted figure. We never hear the ghost speak. Once or twice he reaches out to almost touch her, there’s even a moment where she almost touches him, completely unaware, but for the most part it seems he’s just a looming figure in the film. And I thought, “Okay, this film isn’t about the ghost; it’s about her working through her grief, and the ghost is just symbolic of this person that she has lost, this presence she’s always reminded of.” And as a symbol it’s incredibly evocative.<br />
There’s an absolutely stunning scene where she comes home to find a pie that has been left for her, and we sit and we literally watch her eat the entire pie. There’s no elision of time; the entire thing plays out in two long takes, apparently totalling about five minutes. The only sound we hear in the scene is the sound of the fork scraping the pie tray. Sometimes we can see the ghost in the shot, sometimes not, but our attention is always on Rooney Mara eating. I was watching this at the Embassy (which is a big cinema), and it seemed fairly full, so there were hundreds and hundreds of people there watching this scene, and it was absolutely silent. There was no restlessness, no feeling of people wondering when this scene would end, everyone seemed completely caught up in the emotional weight of this moment. It doesn’t sound like it should be that captivating, but it honestly was one of the most powerful film-viewing moments I’ve ever experienced.<br />
But then the film stopped telling the story I had thought it was telling; the film’s focus on the woman lessens and the ghost starts to step up and take the lead in his story. And what I found fascinating was how strongly I was able to connect emotionally with this figure, relate to his experience, understand what he was dealing with. It was almost as though the black eyeholes on the blank white sheet become a Rorschach test for the audience, where the emotions I read into the ghost reflect less on the performance and more on how I personally see the character and his experience and how I would feel in that place. And that means that the film I saw and experienced is very likely different to the film the person sitting next to me saw.<br />
That second half of the film is spellbinding, it’s beautiful and enchanting, and quite different to the first half. And yet there are moments where it’s unsettling, where joyous experiences suddenly transform into silent horror before moving on, all in the space of seconds. And that’s the part of the film I really need to reflect on. I understand what the film is doing in its first half, and it’s incredible. But I need to process and reflect on that second half, and grapple with what it’s trying to say. But I’m excited to revisit the film and explore it further.<br />
In case it wasn’t clear, I thought the film is extraordinary. It literally left me speechless after the screening, searching around to find something to say that might communicate the power of the experience I had had. It moved and devastated me, it brought me joy and intense sadness. This, <u>this</u> is why I love movies.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP46Qiqa1KDirgHi-soWYnHom9t05Z6txgYct-dKwgQgeaoIDz5MCLsAY7rtNweTEBLNafm9zKDso3Buf1roiepurmIY-g9Fr8WKMPdxCLgr1icqkHv-mPaEn1vDJyRueNLqjPlzjQUm-D/s1600/my_life_as_a_courgette.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="566" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP46Qiqa1KDirgHi-soWYnHom9t05Z6txgYct-dKwgQgeaoIDz5MCLsAY7rtNweTEBLNafm9zKDso3Buf1roiepurmIY-g9Fr8WKMPdxCLgr1icqkHv-mPaEn1vDJyRueNLqjPlzjQUm-D/s400/my_life_as_a_courgette.jpg" width="299" /></a></div>
<b><i>My Life as a Courgette</i></b><br />
The film festival is showing the French animated film <i>My Life as a Courgette</i> in both subtitled and English dubbed versions. My preference is always for subtitled versions, but scheduling clashes forced me to accept the dubbed version. I was somewhat thrown when the opening credits announced the title of the film, <i>My Life as a Zucchini</i>. Hmm, that's not the title I was expecting, but okay. The film's title reflects the fact that the main character's name is Zucchini - or at least it was when it was spoken. We saw his name written down a surprising number of times through the film, and every time his name was written as Courgette. This bothered me a surprising amount. Is the word Courgette really so foreign to Americans that they needed to change the man character’s name, and if so, how did the American audience cope with the fact that his written name is so different?<br />
[A note: I had assumed that this problem would not have affected me had I seen the subtitled version, but I have since spoken to a friend of mine who saw that version, and she confirmed that the character's name was subtitled as Zucchini even in that version. Sigh. I could almost understand the change in the dubbed version, since that's the version most kids would go and see, but I would have thought the subtitled version would attract a somewhat more intelligent audience that could understand what a courgette is. Apparently not.]<br />
Anyway, to the film: the central character (who I'll call Zucchini since that was the name most associated with the character in the version I saw) is a 9-year-old orphan who goes to live in a children's home. He’s initially bullied but becomes friends with the kids, he develops a crush on a girl who comes to live in the home, and he even acquires a father figure in the cop who helped him after his mother's death. And that’s kind of it.<br />
It's a sweet and understated film. Weirdly understated, in fact; for the most part there's no real dramatic stakes, and the only point where it seems like something dramatic might happen, it happens not to Zucchini but to his crush Camille (the film's climax, for want of a better word, has her fighting an abusive aunt trying to get guardianship). But the film seemed to feel that these kids had been through enough pain in their life, and to inflict more on them for the sake of drama would be unfair. Now, I have no idea whether this portrayal of a group home as some sort of oasis of joy is realistic – certainly such places are usually portrayed in a much more negative way in other films - but in the context of this film it felt tonally right. There are moments of genuine joy throughout, with an extended sequence involving a trip to a cabin in the snow that was utterly heart-warming and wonderful.<br />
What I found surprising was how open the film was about going to some dark places. These are kids who have been through tough experiences that could easily crush someone. Zucchini may possibly be responsible for the death of his mother; other kids may have been the victims of abuse; one girl has lost her mother through deportation. These are kids who are dealing with genuinely traumatic experiences, and the film seems determined to make a point in saying that kids are a lot more resilient than we believe, and that they may not be broken by these experiences.<br />
I always find stop-motion animation to feel particularly magical, and here I particularly enjoyed the character design. The kids have a very simple appealing look to them, but are clearly designed in a way that given a visual expression of the burdens that they carry. Some of that design is obvious (like the visible scarring one character has on his head), but there are a lot of nicely subtle work as well; Zucchini has this nice haunted look in his eyes that’s always present, even when he’s at his most joyful, as a reminder of the pains and the guilt he’s trying to live with. Unfortunately, I do worry that the character design, which is very simple, might make the film appealing to very young audiences (certainly if I’d seen stills of the film I’d have guessed the film was targeted at 4- or 5-year-olds); given some of the subject matter dealt with by the film, viewers really should be a little older, maybe 9 or 10, to be able to work through some of what the film is talking about. But in the context of the film, it all just feels right.<br />
My one qualm about the film was with its ending. For a start, it's a bit of a soft ending. Now that's not necessarily a problem – after all it really isn't a film that's terribly narrative-driven, and once the situation with Camille's aunt is deal with there's not that much tension left to move this whole thing forward, so a level of softness in the film is understandable. But my problem was that, even allowing for the fact that this is in theory a film intended for kids (and so happy endings are compulsory), I couldn't buy the ending. I was willing to meet the film halfway – I was willing to give it the surprisingly joyous and loving child's home – but the film seemed to want to stretch that accommodation into licence to push the story further and further into a resolution that is, even in the most generous interpretation, of dubious credibility. And that was a shame. It wouldn't put me off recommend people watch it (after all, it's definitely worth watching), but it is that small problem that did irk me a bit.<br />
This really was very simple and moving, and I found it quite a delight. I can’t emphasise enough that it’s not a film that I would recommend for very young children, but if you’ve got slightly older kids who can cope with more mature themes, it’s quite wonderful. And while I’ve talked so much about all the dark elements in the film, I want to emphasise that it manages to deal with these issues in the context of a film that remains light and sweet throughout.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9_c9m_fHhGxy1zAqSeZPv7g6dFs1YPwEEqhj6o22kaTFdqRW8v7fc-M5p_bxB0uypsdQb1VG1nLKyG5FKVA02mCHx8CwWR1krme-7RLrq59iiLvR-dpOGhni4Rcyeq_5pFX2OaCnlPwF4/s1600/wind_river.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9_c9m_fHhGxy1zAqSeZPv7g6dFs1YPwEEqhj6o22kaTFdqRW8v7fc-M5p_bxB0uypsdQb1VG1nLKyG5FKVA02mCHx8CwWR1krme-7RLrq59iiLvR-dpOGhni4Rcyeq_5pFX2OaCnlPwF4/s400/wind_river.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>Wind River</i></b><br />
Jeremy Renner stars as a skilled hunter and tracker who kills animals preying on the livestock in the region of the Wind River Indian Reservation. One day, while hunting for a pack of mountain lions, he comes across the body of a local girl lying in the snow in the middle of nowhere, fully dressed but barefoot, and with signs of being a victim of rape. The FBI sends its nearest agent, a rookie played by Elisabeth Olsen, to examine the case and determine whether the case falls under the bureau’s jurisdiction; realising that she has no knowledge of the area or how to read the clues left by tracks in the snow, she partners up with Renner.<br />
I was excited to see the film. Taylor Sheridan had previously written <i>Sicario</i> and <i>Hell or High Water</i>, both films that had been highlights of their respective years, largely on the back of a couple of excellent scripts. Now Sheridan was working not only as writer but as director. And I think it’s an interesting case study of the disadvantages of working as a writer/director on a project. It’s not that it’s bad – it’s well above average in comparison to most other thrillers – but it falls short of the other two films. And I find myself wondering: there are a lot of advantages in writing and directing a film (you know exactly what the film was that you were imagining, and you can really target the things you were trying to say), but there are also good things about having someone else direct your script. That response to the script from another person imposes a bit more discipline on the writing. Perhaps there was a key point that you had in mind but didn’t realise you hadn’t really communicated well, or maybe there’s some dialogue that doesn’t hit in the intended way, or could there be some plot element that you fell in love with when writing the script and can’t bring yourself to cut even though it adds nothing; if someone else is directing the film they can find those issues and fix them, but a writer/director could easily be too close to the material and unable to see the problems.<br />
That’s pretty much the concern I have the film. It’s very good, and plays very fast (I was shocked when the climax arrived, because it felt like only an hour had passed and we were halfway through the film, not near the end of a 110 minute movie). I appreciated the way the film sought to use its story to explore the idea of social decline in these reservations, the idea that the American Government basically created these spaces for the Native Americans and then essentially abandoned them. And as a thriller there are some brilliant moments – I loved one moment where paranoia started to build until suddenly there’s a standoff with a dozen people and no-one’s entirely certain why we’re pointing guns at everyone but there’s no way we’re lowering them.<br />
But it often does feel as though Sheridan lacks that extra voice that would force added discipline to the work. Perhaps the dialogue is a bit too on the nose (after Renner explains that his job is to hunt predators, Olsen asks “I want you to help me do that.” Because humans are predators too.) Perhaps there are some extraneous elements, like Renner’s son who the film seems to forget about. And perhaps characters are a little too prone to on-the-nose speechifying in a way to illustrate themes. There are also some awkward structural choices that also didn’t work for me; there’s a flashback inserted in a particular moment, in a film that otherwise doesn’t have flashbacks, that felt like it was motivated less by “this is the point where this flashback falls naturally” and more by “we haven’t done enough setup and the next scene doesn’t really make much sense, so we need the flashback to justify the next scene.” And the ending, once it’s reached, is completely overblown; once the bad guy starts firing a machine gun, I felt that the film had completely changed from the smaller film it had been.<br />
One thing that threw me was an end film card that appeared on screen, announcing that, in all the statistics that are kept of missing persons, no figures are kept on Native American women, and that they are the only category of person for which specific statistics are not kept; to this day, no-one knows how many Native American women are missing. Okay, that’s an absolutely horrific fact and it's terrible, but also, that’s what this film was about? I had no idea. After all, the dead girl wasn’t missing – they found her body just a couple of days after she died, before her family even realised something had happened to her. Perhaps I’m being too literal, but it felt as though the film had initially been inspired by this information, but the film had changed into something different without Sheridan actually noticing. Doing some reading about the film after the film, I found some genuinely horrifying information about life in the Wind River reservation – like the fact that life expectancy there is 49 years and unemployment is 80 percent – and I might have accepted that type of information as a reflection on the broader social themes of the film. But the information about the way missing Native American women are ignored, while horrible, didn’t feel like it had any connection to the film, and so it left me walking out of the film more puzzled than reflective.<br />
Now, to be clear: I liked the film. I was entertained by the film. If you’re thinking about going to see the film, sure, you’ll enjoy it. But I thought the film could be better, and it wouldn’t take much change to dramatically improve the film. It has almost everything it needs to be one of the best films of the year; all it needed was someone to push Sheridan a bit more. Unfortunately, that’s what the film lacked, and that’s why I’m disappointed by the film.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidln1C-n-fF3_iHxxtk1fRuyRLIx0UDNfj090SbE15NvcpL8UYuEDzM1P5UyD5xRcrKh4jyiHgV5zasHDpi9J4iMhftjlOrZnuOb951iHwY5Mo0RXKVKk2lvyZV4RBE9naDMpTBlos019y/s1600/lady_macbeth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidln1C-n-fF3_iHxxtk1fRuyRLIx0UDNfj090SbE15NvcpL8UYuEDzM1P5UyD5xRcrKh4jyiHgV5zasHDpi9J4iMhftjlOrZnuOb951iHwY5Mo0RXKVKk2lvyZV4RBE9naDMpTBlos019y/s400/lady_macbeth.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>Lady Macbeth</i></b><br />
It should be noted, for a start, that <i>Lady Macbeth</i> is not a retelling of Shakespeare's play, but rather an adaptation of a Russian novel, "Lady Macbeth of of the Mtsensk District", relocated to Northern England in the 1800s. Katherine is married into a wealthy family as part of an exchange of land but, while the marriage gives her a comfortable and wealthy lifestyle, she’s also trapped in a loveless marriage with a husband who is unwilling to play his part in producing the heir her father-in-law demands. After her husband is sent away for an extended period, Katherine starts to take advantage of the freedom that comes with being out from under his rule, whether it be to spend her afternoons wandering the country, or starting an affair with someone who works in the stables. (Indeed, for a while, Katherine is reminiscent less of Lady Macbeth than Lady Chatterley.) But as she becomes more brazen in flaunting her relationship with her brutish lover, it attracts attention that could challenge her new-found freedom.<br />
My interest in the film has been sparked by hearing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2fshTWmo5M" target="_blank">Mark Kermode's review</a> a few months earlier, and at the time I had noted it as a possible festival title to catch. But by the time I came to see it, I'd completely forgotten anything about the film. Which meant I was a little nervous; had I inadvertently had myself caught in a position of having to watch a staid costume drama that wouldn't engage me. (My fears were not alleviated by the fact that the only detail I could remember from the podcast was that they had praised the sound design and had even referenced the sound of wind in the audio clip they played from the film.) Fortunately the film proved to be a highlight of the festival so far. (And admittedly the sound design is pretty great.)<br />
I particularly loved how alive the film feels. It's not the costume drama I'd feared, all static and restrained, bound by the strictures of society. This felt raw, earthy, vital, and it took joy in bringing this messy world to life. I appreciated the tactility of the film, the way it expressed the physical experience of being in place. And running through the film was a nice spark of unrestrained eroticism; I felt the film did a great job in communicating the frustration and desperate compulsion driving these characters, so that we could believe the actions these people decide to take.<br />
I adored Florence Pugh’s lead performance as Katherine. In a lot of ways, Katherine was not a likeable character; while her bristling at the constraints imposed on her might be understandable, there's an insistent petulance in her behaviour that should be unappealing. Yet what made the character was the glee Pugh brought to her performance; this is a character who feels she's seen the worst that can be done to her, so she's going to grab every pleasure she can.<br />
It really is a wonderful film. Well worth seeking out.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_a_9FrQPxE9t3mHBKjf50RwWCXi6WSS25jKOsxzR94bagMi8MTN7IvRBbWlGWD8um_rSWF0nRw9FRq96OrF0SCwzkSXjZTmyuGj8OH8qOd9mvlCf_zu2qCILSbmLTG2XzMFhLy4xnTs7A/s1600/hostages.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="555" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_a_9FrQPxE9t3mHBKjf50RwWCXi6WSS25jKOsxzR94bagMi8MTN7IvRBbWlGWD8um_rSWF0nRw9FRq96OrF0SCwzkSXjZTmyuGj8OH8qOd9mvlCf_zu2qCILSbmLTG2XzMFhLy4xnTs7A/s400/hostages.jpg" width="294" /></a></div>
<b><i>Hostages</i></b><br />
<i>Hostages</i> is the true story of an apparently infamous event from Russia in 1983 where a group of friends, frustrated at the restrictions the Soviet government imposes to prevent citizens travelling overseas, hatch a plan to escape from the country. A couple in the group is getting married, and the plan is to use the couple's honeymoon as an excuse to catch a flight to a little-visited destination, then hijack the plane and force them to fly across the border where they can escape. Unfortunately when they come to catch the flight they discover their flight has been combined with another, meaning the tiny plane they had planned to hijack now was a much larger plane with a lot of passengers on board.<br />
The film is very clearly delineated into three parts: the preparation; the hijacking; and the aftermath. And the hijacking really is an exceptional piece of action cinema. It's genuinely suspenseful and intense, and it does a good job in clearly holding all the elements of the scene together, so that even in the middle of utter chaos the audience clearly understands exactly how things have led to the current situation and what needs to happen next.<br />
The problem I found with the film was in the first part of the film. There's a half-dozen people involved in the plan, and I didn't feel that the film did a very good job in introducing us to the various players. Certainly the film did try, giving each person their own introductory scenes in an attempt to establish the parties. Yet for some reason (and I admit this could be due to my own inattentiveness), I found that most of the participants tended to blur together until I couldn't tell who was who. The obvious exception was the newlywed couple, but that was inevitable; they're essentially the main characters in the film, and they have the fact that they are in a couple to provide a point of difference. Beyond those two, I couldn't tell you which person was who. Which in turn affects the way I viewed the hijacking; there's a moment where one character is shot in the head, and it didn't really affect me because even after spending close to an hour with that person I still didn't know exactly who they were. Meanwhile the third act exploring the consequences of the hijacking was interesting, but suffered for being both too short (the story of the aftermath felt very compressed, covering weeks and months in maybe 20 minutes) and too long (the hijacking really is the story's climax, so it's a surprise to realise just how much film remains post-hijack).<br />
I was glad I saw the film, if only for the intense enjoyment that the hijack sequence was able to offer me. I just wish the film around it had been more effective.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbfHj6Lkffo9qz-mO7kpeuQ8uJU2G351KHGz4nsKA5uqnfNWjyiQHkl_HXSkUAhDqmcd06z0Mz2PrmI4XG1_X6fgJZ8CXmRxf4NoPtboISf9iwOIM_jnkRtFxi0t9soXNXaj0nStoSBw5j/s1600/on_body_and_soul.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbfHj6Lkffo9qz-mO7kpeuQ8uJU2G351KHGz4nsKA5uqnfNWjyiQHkl_HXSkUAhDqmcd06z0Mz2PrmI4XG1_X6fgJZ8CXmRxf4NoPtboISf9iwOIM_jnkRtFxi0t9soXNXaj0nStoSBw5j/s400/on_body_and_soul.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>On Body and Soul</i></b><br />
A weirdly beautiful and charming film, <i>On Body and Soul</i> opens with mysterious footage of two deer, a stag and a doe, walking through a snow-covered forest; it’s initially unclear why these images are shown to us. The film actually tells the story of the unusual relationship that develops between two employees at an abattoir. The company’s finance manager Endre, a tired and lonely man, is curious about the new quality controller Maria, a young autistic woman who is awkward around people and who isolates herself. One day a theft happens at the abattoir, and to help solve it a psychiatrist comes in to examine the staff; during the profiling interview Endre mentions that he has dreams in which he is a stag walking through a snow-covered forest with a doe, while Maria discusses her dreams of being a doe walking through a snow-covered forest with a stag. The two quickly realise that there is some mysterious connection between them that somehow comes out in their dreams, and they begin to draw closer to each other.<br />
So I enjoyed the film. I found the characters’ puzzlement at their weird connection and their slow, tentative movements towards each other appealing. The characters were engaging, and the film has a clear affection for these people; in particular the film to me seemed to ride a careful line in its portrayal of Maria, never holding her autism up for ridicule but acknowledging the understandable frustration that can come from engaging with someone who sees the world in such a unique manner. It’s also interested in exploring the struggles and pain that can come with allowing yourself to be truly open with another person. At times it adopts a weirdly comedic tone in the middle of incredible blackness; there’s one scene in particular that elicited some uncomfortable but genuine laughter where one person phones another just because they want to talk and has no idea that the other person is literally in a life-or-death situation.<br />
My only frustration was when the relationship between the two of them became romantic. I’m normally fairly oblivious to age differences between characters, but it was inescapable here; Endre simply looks old, and Maria looks young. (The actress is 30 years old; the actor is 64.) And when you consider that the premise of the film is that she has undeveloped social skills and approaches her engagement with people in the way a child would (there is literally a scene where she replays a conversation using Playmobil toys), it starts to feel as though it’s a situation where there is the potential for someone to prey on her. I don’t think that’s what happens, but I was uncomfortable with how close the film came to that possibility. I couldn’t help feeling that the decision to pair them up was based on convention (the lead characters always pair up in these types of films); I think I would have preferred it if this mysterious connection had become the basis for a close friendship, and if through that friendship he could have helped her connect with people other than him.<br />
But on the whole I liked the film. I don’t know that I’ll remember the film all that much a year from now, but it was an enjoyable experience.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9KWuPvSNYVJFit1Gsl-eLMPizZNTnduNubZrREepOJl3iD5whYhkIEwHqXsR4AUeqn5eMARG1X585_VoCzr7Bun4qr1p9mIGixROEmhNX59VEIUMdXVWKMolknNTojA290T7mJ2uAKh1B/s1600/stalker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="516" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9KWuPvSNYVJFit1Gsl-eLMPizZNTnduNubZrREepOJl3iD5whYhkIEwHqXsR4AUeqn5eMARG1X585_VoCzr7Bun4qr1p9mIGixROEmhNX59VEIUMdXVWKMolknNTojA290T7mJ2uAKh1B/s400/stalker.jpg" width="273" /></a></div>
<b><i>Stalker</i></b><br />
Earlier this year I watched a trio of films by famed Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky - <i>Ivan's Childhood</i>, <i>Solaris</i>, and <i>Mirror</i>. Tarkovsky is widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers ever, and the films I watched are three of his greatest films. And I couldn’t connect to them at all. His films tend to be dream-like, reflective, and poetic, and I just could not find his wavelength. But I was watching these films at home where distractions abound. Perhaps this is a filmmaker who work really needs to be seen in a pitch-black cinema, where we can just focus solely on the film and allow the world he creates to envelope you. So I approached <i>Stalker</i> with a degree of trepidation, but also a genuine willingness to try to understand what it is that makes Tarkovsky great.<br />
Sometime in the future, a mysterious Zone develops; it may have been created or inhabited by aliens. It’s a dangerous place, filled with traps that will destroy the unwary, so the government decides to make it illegal to enter the Zone and surrounds it with a military blockade. But somewhere in the Zone there is a Room, and anyone who enters the Room will be given their heart’s desire. And so professional guides, known as "stalkers", help people navigate their way past the blockade and through the hazards to reach the Room. The film focuses on one such stalker, who is hired to lead a writer seeking inspiration and a scientist seeking knowledge through the Zone and to the Room.<br />
The film did not work for me. At all. I felt that the film was playing in front of my eyes without ever seeking to engage with me. One frustration I had was that there’s never any real sense of threat in the film; the only reason we have any reason at all to be concerned is because of the panicked performance of (an admittedly excellent) Aleksandr Kaidanovsky, constantly insisting that there’s danger or you can’t go there. But I don’t think we ever see one of these traps, never see any of these aliens, and we’re never given any reason to understand his panic, so we just have to accept that he’s right. And that just turns the entire film into a long slow trek through a wasteland. And I was a bit frustrated with the look of the wasteland – the Zone basically turned out to be a bunch of ruined industrial buildings. Now that makes sense, since it was a functioning industrial area before it became the Zone, but regardless, this is supposed to be an area that aliens live in and have reshaped, and it feels like they just found a shut-down factory and shot the entire film in the facility as it was. There’s one moment where I thought it had changed, that perhaps as they were pushing closer to the room we would see more of the alien influence – the characters enter a mysterious room filled with miniature sand dunes, looking and feeling utterly unlike anything on earth – but the next scene we’re back to the run-down factory location.<br />
Even when there were scenes that I quite liked – and the second half had a lot of scenes that I liked: a walk through the sewers, the sand-dune room, and the wonderfully tense scene that plays out when they reach the Room – those scenes would tend to play out too long, repeating the same beats again and again, until the scene would lose me. Now, it’s not that I’m some impatient viewer who wants his films to get to the fireworks factory already; after all my favourite film of the festival has a five-minute scene of someone eating a pie, while one episode of the <i>Twin Peaks</i> revival had an absolutely enthralling scene of someone sweeping the floor for three minutes. But those works had already connected with me, they’d given me a reason to be intrigued and to care about the world and what was happening, and so I was more than happy to stay and be engaged by them through scenes that might otherwise seem dull and dire, whereas in <i>Stalker</i> I found there was nothing that I could grasp on to.<br />
I’m not saying it’s a bad film; I recognise that it is regarded as a masterpiece, one of the great works of cinema. But for me, there was a genuine struggle to stay involved with the film. I wish I had connected with the film, I almost feel guilty, as though I’m a bad film fan for not engaging with the film. But I didn’t. I tried, I wanted to understand it, wanted to like it, but I couldn’t.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNnCbqmMExr4yOD6TAP5_YFQ-gmvHMyFi2HpQQ7CHpxIQfVEjtJnno_v9gi0KtiVjHKP1yV0mWcOtgSFxzhMFnjf_zmr7UwB2jzB92x_lRcvsMHYHea_G7dmrVbRiugPpQaoLqrYs19ivA/s1600/berlin_syndrome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNnCbqmMExr4yOD6TAP5_YFQ-gmvHMyFi2HpQQ7CHpxIQfVEjtJnno_v9gi0KtiVjHKP1yV0mWcOtgSFxzhMFnjf_zmr7UwB2jzB92x_lRcvsMHYHea_G7dmrVbRiugPpQaoLqrYs19ivA/s400/berlin_syndrome.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>Berlin Syndrome</i></b><br />
I had been anticipating <i>Berlin Syndrome</i> ever since it screened at Sundance to very strong reviews. It was the first film I checked for when the festival programme was released. In other words, I’ve been waiting for this film for six months, and walking into the screening, I knew exactly what this film was going to be. Having seen the film, I wish this could have been one of those films I’ll see this festival where I’m not exactly sure which film I’m watching. It’s a strong film, but I am really curious what the experience of the film would be like for someone who did approach the film completely free of expectations. The film takes its time revealing exactly what type of story is being told; it casually drops a few hints that the informed viewer would interpret in a different way, but for the most part it seems like one film until it suddenly doesn’t. And I’m really curious about when exactly would you realise what this film is?<br />
Claire is an Australian tourist exploring the architecture of Germany. She meets a schoolteacher named Andi; he’s charming and attractive, and they spend a few days wandering the streets, talking. It’s sweet, charming, and reminiscent of <i>Before Sunrise</i>. Eventually they return to his place and spend the night together. The next morning Andi goes to work and Claire finds she locked in, unable to leave. But when Andi returns he’s surprised to hear this; I’m so sorry, I thought I’d left you a key, you’re welcome to leave now, I’ll just go and take a shower. He’s so casual about the whole situation that she accepts that it was a mistake, she goes out clubbing with him, returns back to his place that night, and the next morning makes sure to have him leave the key. Except the key doesn’t open the door, and she realises she’s allowed herself to become a prisoner of this man she doesn’t know, in a house with no-one for miles around, and in a country where she knows no-one and where no-one will be looking for her.<br />
It's an extremely effective thriller, and one that I greatly enjoyed. Often with these films revolving around a woman in peril, I find that the film either seems to be taking a perverse delight in the suffering of the victim or else find a different focus for the story that ends up treating the victim as an afterthought. What I appreciated was that the film did neither. It's always focused on the emotional experience of the victim, rather than the physical suffering she experiences, and so because we see the story through her eyes it never feels like the film is exploiting her.<br />
The film’s title is clearly referencing the concept of Stockholm Syndrome, and I liked the way the film explored that concept. The film does a great job in putting the audience in the position of Claire, so we understand the hold he has over her and how much she fears him, we understand how much she comes to rely on Andi for her own survival, and how that translates into her attempts to keep him happy to keep herself safe, becoming this perverse relationship where she supports and enables him. While I have no doubt that the drivers of Stockholm Syndrome are much more complex than could be presented in a two hour film, I did feel the film did a good job in providing some insight into how it can occur.<br />
So I really loved almost all of the film. Unfortunately, the big challenge with this type of film is finding a way to end it believably. Assuming the filmmaker wants to end with the victim escaping her captor, you need to establish some inescapable situation and then find some loophole the character can believably exploit to escape. And I initially thought the film had done that. There’s a point where Claire sees an opportunity and distracts Andi so she can do something, and I thought "Ah, that’s smart". I could instantly see a way for her to use this thing to get a message to the outside world. She does not do that. She does something different, something that takes advantage of a particular interest of Andi’s, and I thought "Okay, if this happens and then that happens then it’s a bit convenient but I could see an acceptable solution to the problem". But instead they instead decide to contrive a solution that involved a barely-more-than-incidental character, and required the villain to encounter artificial delays so that these characters who don’t know each other would have time to come together and hatch this complicated plan that would allow her to escape. I don't know that I believed any of it.<br />
So the ending is disappointing. But the rest of the film was fantastic.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx2d-epMzQY7D_J_DdDE-UIP0oV3ldoQaSg6U-tY_O1jf__GryyijpceGKs6g70sIOpJLQxY_5akZ5jFDaVnKQGJ9g233mh3aQ59DVqdJR5GqoinFZYGa08HEdKgx8ICCO-mOm1Te5mnM9/s1600/20th_century_women.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx2d-epMzQY7D_J_DdDE-UIP0oV3ldoQaSg6U-tY_O1jf__GryyijpceGKs6g70sIOpJLQxY_5akZ5jFDaVnKQGJ9g233mh3aQ59DVqdJR5GqoinFZYGa08HEdKgx8ICCO-mOm1Te5mnM9/s400/20th_century_women.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>20th Century Women</i></b><br />
A few years ago, director Mike Mills made the film <i>Beginners</i>, a fictional film inspired by his father's life. (I never saw it, but it was very well received.) Now he’s made <i>20th Century Women</i>, a fictional movie that he’s openly acknowledged is inspired by his mother. The film focuses on Dorothea, a single mother raising her teenage son in California in 1979. Her son, Jamie, is in love with his best friend Julie, who sneaks into his room to complain about her boyfriends and sleep beside him (but not sleep with him). They take in a boarder, Abbie, a feminist punk-loving photographer; and also around the property is William, a guy who’s working to repair the building. Dorothea is worried that Jamie doesn't have any strong male influences so, since Jamie really doesn’t connect to William, she decides to enlist Julie and Abbie, the two people her son is closest to, to prepare him to be a man.<br />
I think the first thing that has to be said is that Annette Bening is absolutely stellar as Dorothea. It’s an impressively raw performance; she’s an incredibly strong character, but there are beautiful moments where she cracks and we see the pain, the disappointment, the loneliness, the vulnerability that she has had to push down in order to be able to raise her son. It is one of the best performances I’ve seen in years, and instantly made me sad that we’ve seen so little of her in years (I think the last time I saw her was in <i>The Kids Are All Right</i>). But everyone in the film is great – Lucas Jade Zumann is a new actor (with just six credits to his name) who holds his own against some very strong performers, Elle Fanning as Julie is the perfect object of unrequited affection, Greta Gerwig is great fun in her efforts to dispense wisdom and teach Jamie how to be the perfect feminist, and I enjoyed Billy Crudup’s understated charm and affection. And you need these performances to be as great as they are, because this is not a film of big drama, this a film constructed of individual character moments, and you need the performers to really lend the necessary weight to those characters.<br />
The film makes a lot of use of voiceover from Dorothea and Jamie, and I found the way the film used voiceover to be fascinating. Unless I missed something, whenever the film has voiceover discussing a character, it’s (almost) always voiceover provided by someone else. So Jamie narrates the information about his mother’s life, Dorothea offers the voiceover discussing her son’s life, and they both share the commentary on the lives of the other characters. There is an exception to this rule – at several points in the story we learn what happened to the characters after the film ends, and those voiceovers are provided by the relevant characters. But other than that the voiceovers are always told from the perspective of a character observing the person being discussed. The idea seems to be that we are the people that we’re perceived as being, but that we have control over the person that we will become. It an essential element in one of the main ideas being discussed by the film – the idea that we don’t really know other people, we just think we do. Dorothea at one time laments the fact that she’s always going to be Jamie’s mother and she’ll never see Jamie being Jamie in the real world. But when she makes that comment to Julie and Abbie, we’re very aware that Julie will also never see the real Jamie since she only ever sees the version that’s in love with her, and Abbie only ever sees the version of Jamie that relies on her as a big-sister figure. And yet the film seems to recognise that we don’t have full understanding over who we are, and that other people do often have a greater understanding of ourselves than we may possess; in one of the best scenes, Jamie tries to connect with his mother by reading her a piece of writing that reminded him of her, but the accurate observations in that passage cut too deep for her and she absolutely rejects it.<br />
I also loved the honesty the film approached to the future of these relationships. It’s clear in the film that these people are absolutely vital to each other and mean the world to each other, and yet it was interesting to hear how many of them aren’t a part of each other’s lives in the years after the film. I feel that in a lot of films there’s a sense that we’re watching people with unbreakable bonds who will remain in this circle forever, but we all know that’s simply not realistic; yes, we all have friends with whom we will remain utterly inseparable, but most of our friends are just for a season, no matter how important they are to us at the time. And the film makes clear that it’s not like these people separated because of some decisive dramatic event; they just drifted away and lost contact. And there’s sadness in those lost connections, but there’s also joy in the new lives that they create.<br />
There are a few irritating choices made. At times it seems as though the director loses faith in the quality of the film, throwing in curious artistic flourishes that seem to contribute little to the film – odd moments where the action slightly sped up for no reason, or a strange rainbow effect he throws into transitional moments. (On the other hand, some of his flourishes do succeed, with some really great work invoking the specific place and time in terms of culture – we see significant photos from the era, characters will read passages of books that mean something to them and the film will highlight when they were published, there’s even a brief piece of footage from <i>Koyaanisqatsi</i>.) I also found some of the comedy to be frustratingly broad – one scene in particular featuring a dinner party being browbeaten into saying the word “menstruation” seemed like it would never end (although that scene did at least feature a laugh-out-loud summary of the ending of <i>One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest</i>).<br />
There’s a lot more I could say about the film, but I have no time. For the most part, it’s a wonderful film – funny, sweet, and tender, with some interesting reflections on who we are and how we are shaped by the world around us. I really did enjoy it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6DJrlggeSORGZglOiTCW2tTe8UrQ6OC8fjd14VKCzR7wwxsOSXUbF4tS1x91GvD7rgoyUgmXe0gN_ZRoYjJp7j269s0Uv6CwUG2vzTbr-rv-i2HFGuWlYF4MIP19CPdd8mpWvUKzwx4hA/s1600/jasper_jones.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6DJrlggeSORGZglOiTCW2tTe8UrQ6OC8fjd14VKCzR7wwxsOSXUbF4tS1x91GvD7rgoyUgmXe0gN_ZRoYjJp7j269s0Uv6CwUG2vzTbr-rv-i2HFGuWlYF4MIP19CPdd8mpWvUKzwx4hA/s400/jasper_jones.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>Jasper Jones</i></b><br />
Charlie is a young teenager living in Western Australia in the late 60s. One night he’s woken up by Jasper Jones, a half-Aboriginal kid who’s considered the local troublemaker, asking for his help. Charlie follows Jasper to a forest where he discovers the body of a young woman hanging from a tree, her face visibly damaged by being beaten before death. Jasper insists he didn’t do it, but that this was his girlfriend and he knows he’s going to be blamed. So Charlie helps him hide the body, and then begin to investigate other possible suspects, while the town starts to panic when the news of her disappearance begins to spread.<br />
At the end of the movie, as I was walking out, I heard a woman comment to her friend "It was a much better book." I could believe it. The fundamental problem is that the film has a tone that just didn't work for me. This is a small town, a young woman has gone missing, and the film can't seem to decide if people are bothered by this or not. Even the girl's sister spends several minutes talking about <i>Breakfast at Tiffany's</i> before she casually reveals to the audience that it's her sister everyone is worried about. At times the film is aiming for intense and mysterious, or its trying to raise serious issues like racism (both with Jasper Jones' mixed heritage and with attitudes to Charlie's Vietnamese friend during the height of the Vietnam War) or darker issues I can't discuss (for spoiler reasons), but at other times it's quirky and funny, or there's an extended sequence in which we're supposed to cheer on the town cricket team. I could see a book having the space to soften the tonal shifts between these elements, but within the limited time constraints of a movie, the film had to move from dark to funny to scary to happy so fast that I never managed to find my footing. There are a few other plotting issues that may have been inherent in the source material that bothered me – most notably a key piece of evidence that is given to Charlie for no reason (the person giving it has no idea of Charlie’s involvement) and then is conveniently and improbably never even considered until the most plot-convenient time – but for the most part, this feels very much like a film that is affected by poor adaptation and a reluctance to edit and adjust the source material to meet the available screentime. I was particularly disappointed by what they did with their cast; they collected a really rather strong set of actors (obviously Toni Collette and Hugo Weaving, but also some strong young talents like Angourie Rice), but then gave them a script that often requires the characters to behave either in a very broad manner or an emotionally nonsensical manner. A film that should have been better.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuHqi0JeETlPDzT2FXE1-YF4FWqAzBN4dwqdYQHmvswpnmwmOhew_yfQzVz4qCyuhl4dq8yQu4p8th5uj9On4WONNRLLjmS_rDdZB4AwhBCYIDMBvpXjLz7U2KECuNiXHQhDSo9-_3PzbB/s1600/merciless.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1062" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuHqi0JeETlPDzT2FXE1-YF4FWqAzBN4dwqdYQHmvswpnmwmOhew_yfQzVz4qCyuhl4dq8yQu4p8th5uj9On4WONNRLLjmS_rDdZB4AwhBCYIDMBvpXjLz7U2KECuNiXHQhDSo9-_3PzbB/s400/merciless.jpg" width="283" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Merciless</i></b><br />
A Korean crime thriller, <i>The Merciless</i> tells the story of Hyun-soo, an impulsive and hot-headed young prisoner who attracts the attention and the friendship of Jae-ho, the Number 2 in a gang that uses a fish-importing business as a drug-smuggling cover. But it seems Hyun-soo is actually an undercover cop trying to build a relationship with Jae-ho to take down the business.<br />
I don’t know that there’s much for me to say about the film. The film is entertaining, to be sure, with some rather gleefully executed actions sequences. But it’s all in favour of a painfully generic storyline; there’s an attempt to mess with the timeline, jumping back and forward across the story to hide crucial information until the most dramatic moment (there must be a half-dozen twist reveals in the film), but in the end the film is doing nothing that <i>Infernal Affairs</i> didn’t do better 15 years ago. And I found that twistiness and determination to hold back vital information kept me at an emotional distance from the film.<br />
What it does have is a surplus of style. It felt as though almost every shot and scene was conceived and designed, not out of the demands of storytelling, but out of a desire to make every shot the coolest sot possible. You can feel the director announcing “It’s pitch black, and then all the car lights come on, and we see the female cop striding down the port, and then she high-fives the guy surrendering with his hands up. It’ll be so cool.” It’s not that I have a problem with movies having moments that have style or look cool – I think movies would be much poorer and weaker without such impulses – but if every few minutes I’m noticing how stylish this moment or that shot is, then the film is not doing its job because the storytelling has become secondary to visual flair, and that doesn’t interest me at all. I’m glad I saw it – some of those action scenes were pretty damned fun – but it really was a hollow experience.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgECO55tOkx4jwFSU6awAzvHDQ_fMqMAwOnISh854SkG977WahoAaw0VPmV6W24tbrC8dwvvajzZ7IvF9BlwzRpH4a-o84tsn2KOUqxBqq-bvjGlRoB7P1kcUEbcRoHhMYKobVONI7Ofm_g/s1600/abacus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgECO55tOkx4jwFSU6awAzvHDQ_fMqMAwOnISh854SkG977WahoAaw0VPmV6W24tbrC8dwvvajzZ7IvF9BlwzRpH4a-o84tsn2KOUqxBqq-bvjGlRoB7P1kcUEbcRoHhMYKobVONI7Ofm_g/s400/abacus.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<b><i>Abacus: Small Enough to Jail</i></b><br />
A surprisingly entertaining and suspenseful documentary about the only bank to face trial for alleged crimes connected with the 2008 mortgage crisis. Abacus Federal Savings Bank was a tiny bank, with only six branches, that specifically provided services to the Chinese-American community. When it is discovered that one of their staff was committing various frauds and other illegal actions, they fired him, along with several other employees identified as being involved in similar activities, and reported to the regulators about the beaches. Yet despite Abacus' demonstrable efforts to take action when its staff broke the law, the bank itself found itself on trial for conspiracy to defraud the system.<br />
There is no doubt that the film is absolutely on the side of Abacus and the Sung family that founded and still runs the bank. But the film does well to represent the prosecution's views, at times with some entertaining cuts between the parties as they seemingly comment on each other's soundbite. That said, the film never pretends to not have a point of view. There's a clear anger when the film discusses how the massive banks that were at fault for creating the financial crisis were able to point to the economic impact that would occur if they collapsed (the source of the phrase "too big to fail") to effectively escape the consequences of their crimes, and how the attack on Abacus seems fundamentally unfair in comparison, attacking a small company for much more minor infractions simply because they’re an easier and less dangerous target. There's a fascinating and well-argued idea that the bank was treated this way because of an overtone of racism, an idea that gets extra support when one of the prosecuting parties dismisses the suggestion because the case would have been treated just the same if the bank had been servicing “the South American or Indian communities”. One thing I found fascinating was in the film's discussion about the challenges of working with the Chinese community - a community where many businesses are cash-driven, which can give rise to difficulties establishing the essential information necessary to examine the strength of a loan - and how the solutions to those challenges could be seen as fraudulent, even if the underlying information is more or less accurate and the loans being made are actually much more sound than the fraudulent loans that actually led to the mortgage crisis.<br />
All this probably makes the film seem very dry. But the film has the advantage that Abacus has a very human face: founder Thomas Sung, along with his three daughters. The film could very easily become dry, but there was a lot of genuine good-hearted laughter in the audience recognising their very real family dynamics. Two things in particular leapt out to me as particularly enjoyable: the frequent discussions where everyone is just talking at once or speaking over someone trying to jump in to make a point, and the fact that the entire family seems obsessed with their father's eating (one great scene has all three sisters weighing in on how dry his chicken salad sandwich is).<br />
I was surprised by how suspenseful the film was. As the trial ended and the jury deliberations ran on for weeks, I found myself becoming more and more anxious, desperate to know what the outcome of the trial would be, parsing every comment by the interviewed jurors to try and assess which way the outcome would be. And then suddenly there was a moment where one of the daughters talked about how the wait for the verdict was affecting them, and how they were even examining the handwriting in the juror’s requests to assess the state of their considerations, and I realised I was doing that exact thing; the film had managed to completely put me in the position of the family, waiting anxiously for the verdict. I don’t know that I can immediately think of a documentary that has been quite so effective in creating this type of suspense around its outcome.<br />
It’s an engaging and enjoyable film, and one that genuinely leaves the viewer outraged. It’s a fun legal thriller, but also a fascinating view into an immigrant culture. It’s pretty wonderful.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxsy9gRuXxFvvtUbNqs3fTiqyzvMRrrstcNnKKYOQd1DQ67KrfE4E5W7NRAlfRZ2cnhdBynPtvojTpTLtMghX86LIvYff4VuKRXaHG6253R0S8vDD0-sfJOctDn8c0TRtY99j85Jm2lI6/s1600/it_comes_at_night.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxsy9gRuXxFvvtUbNqs3fTiqyzvMRrrstcNnKKYOQd1DQ67KrfE4E5W7NRAlfRZ2cnhdBynPtvojTpTLtMghX86LIvYff4VuKRXaHG6253R0S8vDD0-sfJOctDn8c0TRtY99j85Jm2lI6/s400/it_comes_at_night.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<b><i>It Comes At Night</i></b><br />
A nice slow-burning post-apocalyptic thriller with body horror elements, the film takes place in a world that has been destroyed by some kind of sickness. Our main characters – a husband, wife, and teenage son – are surviving in a well-equipped home, protected by the fact that the only entry into the house goes through two locked doors. One night a man tries to break in; he says he’s looking for supplies for his wife and young boy. They decide to trust the man, and go to collect this other family, offering them the chance to move in. But there are a lot of rules to living in this house, the most important being that after dark the doors to the outside stay closed.<br />
There’s a degree to which all post-apocalyptic films, whether it’s <i>The Walking Dead</i> or <i>The Road</i> or <i>Mad Max</i>, tend to keep coming back to the same questions: how can we retain our humanity, how can we trust people, in a world where all the structures that give us safety have gone, and what kind of paranoia can set in when survival is your entire mind-set? I found this to be one of the strongest explorations of this idea I’ve seen in a while. Often what tends to happen is that we have our core characters, and then everyone we meet after that point is basically judged against how much of a threat they are to our people. What I found effective about the film was that it managed, in a way I don’t remember seeing before, to communicate the fact that this isn’t a one-way issue: as much as it’s a risk for our leads to accept this other family into their home, knowing they could be welcoming their enemy within their walls, it’s just as much of a risk for the other family to merge their lives and resources with this family they don’t know. And of course there’s the added threat of this mysterious sickness; even if these new people are completely genuine and good people who aren’t going to try to kill them and take all their stuff, they could be carrying this sickness completely unawares and bring destruction in that way. And the film is effective in exploring how the paranoia can slowly build up.<br />
Given the way the film relies so much on the spiralling fears and suspicions of the characters to carry the horror of the film, there’s a strong pressure placed on the actors. I only recognised Joel Edgerton, playing the lead role as a man fuelled equally by desperation and caution. The only other name I recognised is Riley Keough as the wife in the other family; I’ve apparently seen her before (she’s one of the five wives in <i>Mad Max: Fury Road</i>), but now feel I need to see more of her work – she has a great scene interacting with Travis, the teenaged son of the main family, which is partly wistful remembrance of a lost life and partly a natural unconscious flirtation. Speaking of Travis, I thought Kelvin Harrison Jr was just stellar, carrying much of the burden of the plot as someone who is affected by seeing his grandfather die in a horrible manner and who now fears his own passing in a similar way; he’s a fairly new actor, and I think he has the potential to become known. But the true highlight of the film is the work of writer/director Trey Edward Shults. When I was reflecting on the movie <i>Wind River</i>, I talked about the risks that can come when one person takes on both of those roles. This film demonstrates the other side of that viewpoint: if you have genuinely strong material and a clear vision for what you want the film to achieve, and you know how to achieve it, then it can be a real joy to watch the result. Shults know the tone he wants to achieve, knows the exact purpose of every scene, and so the entire film just feels like you can trust the person behind the camera. But also you clearly feel that the man who is making the movie has a very clear understanding of the threat that is facing the characters, and so even if there are specific details that are never spelled out he’s able to subtly indicate answers to questions in a way that might be much harder, much more heavy-handed, if the project was just handed to a different person to execute.<br />
I do wonder how many people will go to see this film thinking it’s some kind of monster film; certainly the title seems to suggest that there is something specific that they need to protect themselves from. It’s something of a misleading title, since there’s really nothing like that. The titular It that comes at night is something more undefined; it’s not a phrase that I think is ever even used in the film, so we never get a full explanation of what the title is actually referring to. However I think the film is careful to suggest what It refers to; I certainly know how I interpret that title and what significance I think it plays in the film, although equally I could see any number of people arriving to a different understanding of the meaning of that title.<br />
I’ll avoid spoilers on this next point, but I’ve heard a lot of people commenting about the movie having had an unresolved ending. So much so that, as I could feel the film reaching its climax, I found myself think “It’s going to end now. … Oh, okay, well it’ll end now. … Hmm, maybe now?” at every significant scene that seemed as though it would leave the film unfinished. Perhaps it was that I was actively expecting an unsatisfying ending, but I thought the ending of the film was pretty much perfect and resolved everything that there was to resolve. This isn’t an ending where we don’t know if people are alive or dead, or if the plane that’s approaching carries rescuers or killers. I know exactly where every one of the film’s characters are at the end of the story. I may not know what happens to them after the film ends, but with very few films do you actually know what happens to all the characters once the story finishes. To me, everything resolved and I had no questions left hanging.<br />
I can see a lot of people being disappointed by this film. I can imagine people thinking it will be a scary monster film, and feeling let down when they discover its horror is much more psychological. I believe people are being let down by the ending, although I don’t know why. But if you can get in tune with the film’s wavelength, if you can connect with what the film actually is, and not what you might want it to be, there are a lot of riches to be found in the movie. I really liked it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2ySZz5IiFl6_nfvACzLOoWJ_UxpNvqOQFBVgrFifsUBbCBRohol51TGDRtC43B0AUWIIkOkFF0YoM0KKyS5JuXhNL4UfzODgpzDOpr8IuADJySgxcqRMygxVlfIl55NqoWaOprj-WZcGs/s1600/hounds_of_love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2ySZz5IiFl6_nfvACzLOoWJ_UxpNvqOQFBVgrFifsUBbCBRohol51TGDRtC43B0AUWIIkOkFF0YoM0KKyS5JuXhNL4UfzODgpzDOpr8IuADJySgxcqRMygxVlfIl55NqoWaOprj-WZcGs/s400/hounds_of_love.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<b><i>Hounds of Love</i></b><br />
So this was ... a tough watch. I'd seen a number of very strong reviews for the film, but they'd also talked about what a rough experience it was to watch the film, so I had tried to approach the film in the right mind-set. I don't know how successful I was. It's an effectively made film, but it really is extremely nasty.<br />
Set in Western Australia in the late 80s, the film focuses on Vicki, an attractive teenager who sneaks out of her mother's home to go to a party. While walking to the party she's stopped by a couple in a car, John and Evelyn; they're clearly a family, as they have a baby seat in the back, so she feels safe accepting a ride from the couple. Instead she's drugged, chained to a bed, raped and abused, and at the end of the week the couple plan to kill her.<br />
This isn't the type of film that I would usually be interested in seeing – it’s extremely raw and brutal with little entertainment value; I don't think you could call it torture-porn, but it's certainly torture-porn-adjacent – but I was intrigued when I heard that the film was about a couple that is committing these crimes. Whenever I hear about one of these cases of a couple committing these types of crimes together – apparently the film was partly inspired by an actual couple from the state who committed similar crimes – it always puzzles me, and so I was interested to have a look at a film that discusses the dynamics in a couple that would allow a woman under the influence of her partner to actively participate in these types of crimes. And the film is definitely about the two women, Evelyn and Vicki, and is particularly interested in understanding what might drive Evelyn to participate in these crimes. The film does about as well as could really be expected in a 105 minute film to explore her mind-set: the lifetime of abusive relationships; the heartbreak of children taken from her; the feeling that she needs to hold onto her man and let him do what he wants; the intense jealousy she experiences when she starts to see their victim as her rival for his affections. It's certainly one of the most sympathetic and understanding portraits of a monster I've ever seen, and I found that really interesting.<br />
One thing I particularly appreciated was the care that the film took to avoid enjoying and overly sexualising the victimisation of these girls. The film opens with ultra-slow-motion shots of girls playing netball, with lingering admiring shots lovingly panning up and down their bodies; we're clearly seeing these girls through the leering eyes of the man looking for his next victim. (I will confess, at that point I was wondering if I had made a mistake in seeing the film.) But the film wants us to feel uncomfortable at that scene, we’re not supposed to like seeing the world from his point of view, and that leering tone doesn't persist. When it comes to the moments of abuse, and especially moments of sexual violence, it knows we understand the horror of what is happening, and so it chooses to not show us these in order to avoid the possibility that the audience might find something entertaining in those scenes. There has been a lot of criticism lately of many films and TV shows using sexual violence for prurient reasons (<i>Game of Thrones</i> being a big example), and I'm reminded of stories about movie executives who would suggest rape as a way of getting more sex into a film, and so I was glad to see the film take care to avoid enjoying the suffering of the victims.<br />
There is one thing, a small thing, that did bother me in the film – and here I need to get into detailed spoilers about an important sequence towards the end of the film, so if there's any chance you might want to see the film, stop reading now. ...<br />
So, remember the scene in <i>Silence of the Lambs</i> where they attack Jame Gumb's house but he’s not there, and meanwhile Clarice finds the correct house? Remember how they intercut the scenes of the police ringing the doorbell with Jame Gumb hearing the doorbell, and they're cut together as though they're the same doorbell, but in a sudden reveal we learn that they're not? <i>Hounds of Love</i> does the exact same thing: one person goes to a house and bangs on the door; our villains hear and respond to a knocking on the door; the door is opened; and it's someone different because the first person has the wrong address. Except that the film establishes several times the reason why it’s possible for that person to have that wrong address; indeed I had already assumed the person would have the wrong address from the first time a minor character made a particular comment about something this couple is doing that could result in someone having the wrong address, and when the film reinforced this for us by actually showing them doing this thing I was positive there was a wrong-address issue. Add to that the fact that we've seen enough of the actual house to be able to recognise that the house being approached looks completely different, and suddenly this sequence simply does not work because I'm simply in no suspense about the outcome. It's a great example of how a sequence can be completely effective in one context (I'm always amazed at how perfect that <i>Silence of the Lambs</i> sequence is), and yet a near-identical sequence can fail (even if the scene itself is executed perfectly well) because of a couple of scenes that took place much earlier in the movie. It's a small misstep, but an unfortunate one in an otherwise effective film.<br />
I can't say I liked the film; I appreciated the film for being a good version of the film it was trying to be, but it's not an experience I could ever recommend.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfnajZDTrOcCmMNI_2nTLn06x4s7kUBXweBoS5JxmNzbfX2EGr6mmxWMMgG3BXvVR1K_cUern3maVIgMF8tHkI-P85uVmkhE82LU_NJr7R5uu09o3EkmyuUCrWBy6wX8qgi1OXL3eL7Esf/s1600/6_days.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfnajZDTrOcCmMNI_2nTLn06x4s7kUBXweBoS5JxmNzbfX2EGr6mmxWMMgG3BXvVR1K_cUern3maVIgMF8tHkI-P85uVmkhE82LU_NJr7R5uu09o3EkmyuUCrWBy6wX8qgi1OXL3eL7Esf/s400/6_days.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>6 Days</i></b><br />
In 1980, six terrorists entered the Iranian Embassy in London and took 26 people hostage, as part of an effort to force the creation of a separate Arabic state in Iran. As the siege progressed and political pressure to find a resolution increased, news media gathered outside to capture the events as they would occur, the SAS trained to find the most efficient way to take the terrorists out, and the police had to negotiate to find a solution that doesn’t end with bodies littering the embassy. I’ll leave you to guess how long the siege lasted.<br />
The new film from New Zealand director Toa Fraser, <i>6 Days</i> is an efficient and enjoyable factual thriller. Fraser is a strong director with a clear visual sense; the film can be visually striking but such style is never intrusive. It’s clear from early on that Fraser is trying to adopt a strong fact-focused approach to the true events; it feels scrupulously researched and carefully presented in as accurate a manner as possible. I was reminded by comparison with <i>Argo</i>, another film about a hostage-crisis in an embassy; that film featured a host of scenes that felt utterly artificial and as though they existed just for dramatic effect. This film feels as though they’ve taken great care with every detail; there were a couple of moments where things happened and I at the time wondered if those moments actually happened like that or were just minor contrivances for suspense purposes, but I then checked the Wikipedia page for the siege, and every detail I had questioned appears to have happened exactly as described.<br />
While there are a lot of elements running through the film, there are three core storylines the film is focused on: the police, the SAS, and the media. And I found my responses to each of these storylines varied wildly, so I’m going to discuss them separately. The core story of the film is probably the story of the police and their efforts to negotiate a resolution; I’d guess that’s the part of the film that has the most screen-time, and if the film has a main character, it’s probably Mark Strong playing the lead police officer – as always, an excellent performance. Frustratingly, however, it’s the more generic part of the film. We’ve all seen police negotiating with people holed up so many times before, and I didn’t feel that the film was really bringing anything new to those scenes. They’re competently made, but they didn’t have a particular spark.<br />
Whereas I though the scenes with the SAS really were great. The final siege-ending assault was a fine, thrilling action sequence. But what particularly interested me was the material about the SAS’s preparations. The film spends a lot of time examining how they go about preparing for an attack like this. We see the careful plans, the intricate models that are constructed to piece together the building layout. We see the efforts to learn the face of every suspect and every hostage so that they can avoid killing (or not killing) the wrong person. We see the time that’s wasted in preparing for a particular plan that never eventuates. And, in one of the best scenes in the film, we see them put together a quickly-constructed full-sized mock-up of the embassy so that each person in the attack can know every corner in the building and know exactly where they need to go and what they need to look out for. I really did feel that, with some of these preparation scenes, I was seeing things I had never seen before, and it was fascinating.<br />
The least successful element of the film is the examination of the media. The film mainly seems to be amused by how much snooker the BBC used to show; every time they cut to someone watching TV, it always seems to be snooker. For me, one of the problems was with Abbie Cornish playing Kate Adie. For a start, Adie has a very distinctive vocal style, and the performance quickly felt as though it had fallen to mimicry rather than an acting performance. But more than that, it feels much more disconnected from the story than the other two plots. The screening had the real-life Kate Adie for a Q&A, and she commented that the media really had no inside information about what was going on. The problem is that that’s how it feels; you have footage of police and the SAS working hard, and then you have scenes of the BBC sitting around wondering what’s happening. It’s not that compelling a story. Add to that the fact that the film doesn’t do a good job in communicating why the media story is so significant – the news footage of the attack was apparently ground-breaking, and at the time it was highly unusual for the BBC to cut into scheduled programming as they did. At the end of the film, there is an on-screen card that states that the Adie’s coverage from the siege is now considered the gold standard of such coverage. That’s all very good, but the film did very little to explain what it was they did that was so significant. (Most of my understanding comes from Adie’s comments during the Q&A.) And that’s a failing of the film.<br />
In the end, it’s a good film. It’s worth watching. It’s a solid, reliable portrayal about these events that never sacrifices truth for drama. It’s not one of the year’s best, and it definitely had flaws, but it was certainly fun to watch, and I would recommend it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnCCoZkHSh9N5XFko65TLfYQrbGIepciIxbPgTcD3FVXMPNK9xtwdySt-B1-ovM4BxYDGUIzcS6cW7Qc0dlM4inAP6_Mu_AFTj3nUhPOYyVBzFn_MNhji-yczaMRcemR9UAZ0gQWYj9aJJ/s1600/dealt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnCCoZkHSh9N5XFko65TLfYQrbGIepciIxbPgTcD3FVXMPNK9xtwdySt-B1-ovM4BxYDGUIzcS6cW7Qc0dlM4inAP6_Mu_AFTj3nUhPOYyVBzFn_MNhji-yczaMRcemR9UAZ0gQWYj9aJJ/s400/dealt.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>Dealt</i></b><br />
An entertaining documentary about Richard Turner, one of the greatest card magicians working today, who demonstrates seemingly impossible feats of card manipulation with an easy and practised manner. He also has a black belt in karate, somewhat counter-intuitively since you would expect someone whose livelihood depends on the precision of his hands would avoid punching through blocks of wood. And, although he would almost certainly hate that I’m saying this, he has been blind since the age of nine.<br />
One thing I found fascinating about the film was what it seemed to say about just how much you can achieve if you genuinely set your mind to it and focus on a goal. We learn that he practices 16 hours a day, which when they tell you that fact it seems impossible but after you see the film actually seems believable. No matter what he’s doing, he always seems to be a deck of cards to hand. We see him shuffling one-handed while working out, or while he’s at church; there’s a story about him falling asleep while shuffling two decks simultaneously and how when he woke up he started shuffling before he opened his eyes; we even hear a story about the night his wife realised he was shuffling a deck while the two of them were ..., ahem, being intimate. But that level of determination and practice really has paid off. He seems to almost have an instinctive understanding of the exact location of every card in any deck.<br />
There was a point in the film where they show archival footage of Turner performing his tricks on various talk shows, and every host stops at some point to let the audience in on something they don’t know about Turner. “Hey Richard, why don’t you tell the people at home about your eyesight,” one of them actually says. And every time this happens you can see him getting frustrated at the fact that once again his blindness is being drawn attention to. Turner wants to be appreciated for his skill and the quality of his performance, and he doesn’t want to just be known for his disability. And I can understand that. His skill level is so great that he would be a legend even if he could see. But as one of his loved ones observes, the fact that he can’t see elevates the performance, it makes it even more impressive. But Turner openly admits to being proud and that he hates people knowing he’s blind; he doesn’t want to be seen as disabled or anything lesser. He has to prove that his blindness doesn’t hold him back, whether that be through his insane exploits as a youth when he was losing his eyesight (riding motorbikes or rock-climbing using just his peripheral vision), or more recently his decision to decline an honorary karate black belt and to instead undertake the standard ten-person-fight to earn his black belt the usual way. (And he then decides not to show anyone the newspaper article about him earning the black belt because it discusses his blindness.) So it’s astonishing what Turner can do. But the film also provides an interesting counterpoint in Turner’s sister, who is also blind. Unlike Turner, who deliberately chooses not to use a cane or a seeing-eye dog, his sister has chosen to make use of these resources. They may mark her to the world as a blind person, but they also give her the ability to make her way around the town by herself with confidence. Whereas Turner, in refusing to be seen by the world as blind, has made himself incredibly dependent on his loved ones for help.<br />
So I was watching the film, and when this archival footage of talk shows started, I suddenly started to wonder: if he’s so bothered by people seeing him as blind, why is he participating in this documentary which he knows will have a strong focus on his blindness? We get a bit of an answer from the end of the film, where we learn that he has started to be more willing to accept his blindness and make use of the assistance available. There’s a sweet little scene of Turner and his sister going for a walk together, his sister teaching him how to rely on her seeing-eye-dog to be his eyes. He’s even more open about his blindness in his performance; whereas previously he would try to hide his blindness from the audience, now he’s developing shows that incorporate his life story in amongst the magic. But the shift, from wanting to disguise his challenges to being so open about it, is a significant change in character, and I don’t think we ever really get an explanation of what changed that he’s now had this change of heart. It might possibly be connected with his son’s departure for college, and the loss of him as a consistent and reliable aid, but it’s never really explored. It’s a situation where the film feels like it’s just doing too much, trying to squeeze too much material into a film that is less than 90 minutes long, and it falls short in this particular area.<br />
It’s not a documentary that will revolutionise the form. It’s just a solid documentary profiling an interesting character. But if you’re after a fun film, if you want to spend time in the presence of an engaging and funny performer, or if you just want to see some astonishing card tricks, <i>Dealt</i> is well worth seeking out.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix3z5sbrFLGI5yezn0pqkGNGheYJT0CVlejCI3zOYQQGPTIlu7N0MAMzcODA6V_ZPH7Pmuch97G5b4HH7r2NTzhx8Sj-19AyhAmejkv6-F2HEms6Hp7havKyysv5r2Bd7DZlqAjHmNxntV/s1600/killing_of_a_sacred_deer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="528" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix3z5sbrFLGI5yezn0pqkGNGheYJT0CVlejCI3zOYQQGPTIlu7N0MAMzcODA6V_ZPH7Pmuch97G5b4HH7r2NTzhx8Sj-19AyhAmejkv6-F2HEms6Hp7havKyysv5r2Bd7DZlqAjHmNxntV/s400/killing_of_a_sacred_deer.jpg" width="279" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Killing of a Sacred Deer</i></b><br />
This was my third film by Yorgos Lanthimos. I had really appreciated the subtly disturbing <i>Dogtooth</i>, but really never connected with <i>The Lobster</i> a couple of years ago and have remained a bit bewildered at the praise that film received. But despite that I was hoping for something special from his next film. What I found was a film that was absolutely fantastic, although I don't really understand why or how.<br />
Colin Farrell stars as Steven, a cardiologist who is happily married to Nicole Kidman and who has two teenage children that he loves very much. But for some mysterious reason, he also keep having surreptitious meetings with an unsettling teenage boy named Martin, who he buys expensive gifts for. Steven is rattled when Martin shows up at his work out of the blue and lies about how he knows him, and allows Martin to pressure him into going to dinner with the boy and his mother, yet Steven decides to invite Martin to dinner at his home with his family. An attraction seems to spark between his daughter and Martin, and they begin spending time together. And then Steve's son complains that his legs feel numb...<br />
One of my main problems that I had with <i>The Lobster</i> was the weird, artificial, alienating tone of the performances. The characters in <i>The Killing of a Sacred Deer</i> act in a very similar manner, but for some reason in this film it just worked for me. Its actors are deliberately affectless; characters will say "I love you so much" with the exact same flat tone that they will say "I think we should have mashed potatoes more often." Even when their actions appear emotional (in one scene a character is rampaging through a kitchen smashing glasses and plates on the floor), their tone of voice seems completely disconnected to their behaviour. It's a disorienting approach, and I'm not entirely why Lanthimos adopts it, but it works for me here. The thing that’s particularly odd about this is that this style of performance actually made a lot of sense in <i>The Lobster</i>, as that film took place in a sterile alternate world where emotion seemed to have little relevance, but it just didn’t connect with me. Whereas this film would seem to take place in our world so it should make no sense that everyone in the world would talk like this, and yet here I absolutely connected with it. It achieves a unsettling effect on the audience; we feel as though anyone could say anything and it would seem normal in the context. (Having watched Lanthimos' more recent works, I'm now really curious about going back and revisiting <i>Dogtooth</i>; it has been a number of years since I saw the film, and I don't remember whether this affectless approach to performance is present in that film or whether this is a recent development in Lanthimos' approach.)<br />
One thing I do like about Lanthimos is his skill at balancing the weird tonal shifts that runs through the film. It is a film that is genuinely funny, and frequently had the audience laughing loud and long; if you'd heard just the audience, you would think this was one of the funniest comedies of the year. But it's a thriller, not just a comedy thriller but a genuine pitch-black horrific thriller. The really odd thing is that he seems to use laughter in the complete opposite way it normally works in these types of films. Usually laughter is used as a release valve for the audience; the director lets pressure build and build, and then right at the point where the tension is most unbearable you let the audience laugh, and it lets us breathe and relax back to a neutral position. But Lanthimos seems to know how precisely to use laughter to punctuate and even build the suspense. The film climaxes in a scene that I found utterly unbearable, in a sequence that forcefully reminded me of a moment from a particular Michael Haneke film (which I’ll not name to avoid spoilers), that had me looking away from the screen desperate to escape the horrors that were about to occur, and yet even in that scene I laughed out loud multiple times. And yet somehow the tension is not alleviated by the audience's laughter; if anything the scene becomes more intense, more unbearable.<br />
I don't understand how this film works. I don't know why it works. I don't know that I even have the words to describe how it made me feel or what it made me think. I feel that I will be processing the film for weeks. For now, all I can say is, It's a spectacular film and I loved it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnsrOMEbcFWYkHIsOkTtu-XrrsNPunb3VbLxZUnFLp4lmTCE3_008NERqhwyKZvQJhnO7jmfQYPI4hmyfoJ_WjzEX53AYHX4F3vi298VrVfqq3Khs-ZcDvGqBbFcVLotAy0eOvfC5JMtTE/s1600/bad_genius.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="700" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnsrOMEbcFWYkHIsOkTtu-XrrsNPunb3VbLxZUnFLp4lmTCE3_008NERqhwyKZvQJhnO7jmfQYPI4hmyfoJ_WjzEX53AYHX4F3vi298VrVfqq3Khs-ZcDvGqBbFcVLotAy0eOvfC5JMtTE/s400/bad_genius.jpg" width="280" /></a></div>
<b><i>Bad Genius</i></b><br />
I love the film festival. I love that it gives a chance to watch some of the best movies being made today in a crowded cinema with an audience that’s open and willing to engage with whatever it is we’re going to see. But as much as I may adore <i>A Ghost Story</i> or <i>The Killing of a Sacred Deer</i>, I’m also aware that these are films that would have very limited appeal outside of the festival. But one of the other things that’s great about the festival is that it can give a chance to have a look at what the mainstream popular cinema in other countries is doing. Much as I may love the <i>Star Wars</i> films or the <i>Planet of the Apes</i> films or really enjoy what Marvel is doing, it’s frustrating to see the cinemas filled for months with one big franchise film after another, with only the occasional spark of something slightly different, something that just wants to be a solid piece of entertainment. <i>Bad Genius</i> is currently the highest-grossing Thai film this year, and it’s a fun crowdpleasing film, the kind of film that used to be a massive hit here just a couple of decades ago. It’s not great and it’s not important, but it is a very good movie of the type that I wish was being made more regularly in mainstream English-speaking cinema.<br />
The film focuses on Lynn, an exceptional student who is offered a scholarship to go to an expensive private school, where she befriends Grace, a sweet likable girl who is unfortunately not particularly strong in her studies. One day, Lynn decides to impulsively help Grace cheat in an exam, writing the multiple-choice answers on an eraser and then passing the eraser back to her. But when Lynn discovers her father is still paying massive amounts of money for the “free” education her scholarship got her, she agrees to accept payment from an ever increasing number of students in the school who are all too happy to cheat. Meanwhile the schemes increase and become ever more elaborate, until by the end they’re travelling to different countries, all in the pursuit of every opportunity to get ahead of the exam.<br />
I was really rather impressed by how much style and energy is in the film. The real challenge of this premise is that, at its core, it’s about people taking exams. It’s about people sitting in a room, with a pencil, silently filling in multiple-choice circles. There are few things that could be less cinematic. But the film approaches these scenes as though they’re a heist; it’s basically <i>Ocean’s 11</i>. Everything in those scenes feels urgent – they even have a literal ticking clock counting down the seconds until the end of the exam – and it creates a remarkably intense experience for the audience. I’m not sure I necessarily buy the success of the schemes – the "piano scheme" in particular seems like it might look decidedly suspicious to any invigilator – but then, it’s a heist film, and the heists are never believable in heist films. What matters is how much enjoyment the film squeezes out of every moment, how much it communicates the thrill of doing something you shouldn’t do and getting away with it. And the movie absolutely succeeds at that.<br />
One thing that I appreciated was how gentle the film was in exploring its themes. The film is definitely making a pointed comment about the haves and have-nots – the film is about a poor but talented student who is exploited by the wealthy who want to party and have fun and still get ahead without doing the work – but it approaches that idea with a light touch. I’ve seen so many films that feel the need to come right and have a character baldly state the theme of the film just in case the audience missed what the film was stating, and it depresses me every time, so it was nice to see a film that trusted that people are smart and are able to pick up on the ideas you’re trying to communicate.<br />
I had an absolute blast with this film. It had me from its opening moment (the rare <i>in media res</i> opening that doesn’t take away from the film) until the blindingly white closing scene and the final line of dialogue. It’s just great fun, and I’m glad to have had a chance to enjoy it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjpTptjb7uGIgqUs_33vk442B7wi5tnphFymFEBB4hSQkpd81gOUvOw1zX7g2qx7AAuiVFmrveD5CNWMK26QEvkYJJbP6XaeIeiaFuUsJJOhLxakbAV93qKnvBmJofgxY3yQ0rGT05P26y/s1600/summer_1993.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="533" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjpTptjb7uGIgqUs_33vk442B7wi5tnphFymFEBB4hSQkpd81gOUvOw1zX7g2qx7AAuiVFmrveD5CNWMK26QEvkYJJbP6XaeIeiaFuUsJJOhLxakbAV93qKnvBmJofgxY3yQ0rGT05P26y/s400/summer_1993.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<b><i>Summer 1993</i></b><br />
A sweetly moving film, <i>Summer 1993</i> is the story of Frida, a six-year-old girl orphaned after the death of her mother, who moves from Barcelona into the country to live with her uncle, aunt, and toddler cousin Anna, spending the summer trying to find her place in her new family before she has to start at her new school.<br />
This is not a film of great dramatic moments. It's essentially entirely observational. Scenes often don't have a concrete ending; we just watch until we've seen enough of a moment and can move on. Even scenes that in other films would give rise to major plot developments (one child goes missing, another runs away) are resolved almost without incident, the way they normally would be outside of a movie. But what I loved about the film is that it's entirely from Frida's point of view; I don't think there's a single scene that she's not present for. So the only information we have is what she knows. There are a few things we may be able to infer from our own understanding of the world in a way that she might not (it's pretty obvious how her mother probably died, even if the only actual explanation we get is a late-film child-friendly explanation), but there are conflicts and problems that seem to arise out of the blue and then vanish because the adults are keeping them from the children.<br />
One thing I loved about the film was how real it was in its portrayal of Frida. There's no sentiment or nostalgia in the film. Sure, at times Frida is nice and sweet and a delight to be around, but at times she is an unthinking uncaring little shit who we're genuinely angry with. (There's a moment where she abandons Anna deep in the nearby forest and then claims that she hasn't seen her that made me so furious.) And on top of her just being a kid, with all the problems that entails, there's also the fact that she's grieving the death of her mother and trying to process emotions that she's absolutely unequipped to deal with, and this infuses into everything that she does. I don't know how they got this performance from young Laia Artigas, but it's utterly natural and non-performative, and quite wonderful.<br />
There's also some very nice understated work by Bruna Cusí and David Verdaguer as the uncle and aunt who invite Frida into their life. There are already issues that they are dealing with themselves - their sister has died, and there's clearly some deeper family conflict with her that's hinted at but never explored. But they have to put all this on hold for this young girl who has gone through this terrible situation and who needs the comfort and safety of being loved no matter how much she might fight against it.<br />
A charming, understated, and honest film. Well worth seeking out.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPa1U2Ycaiab6A-Xkn0-PCHK_KMfvsVcwh7sGptt77NHJOUTL1DHiAmS8DJbmGt_u5wDbovDQdjPxYDiF_tnowBp9npNlzHrXDPBtgR_vBufm98p2Du2N9Kxb0l4N-gaw6DcDfbt6fcIVd/s1600/monster_calls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPa1U2Ycaiab6A-Xkn0-PCHK_KMfvsVcwh7sGptt77NHJOUTL1DHiAmS8DJbmGt_u5wDbovDQdjPxYDiF_tnowBp9npNlzHrXDPBtgR_vBufm98p2Du2N9Kxb0l4N-gaw6DcDfbt6fcIVd/s400/monster_calls.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>A Monster Calls</i></b><br />
I really do not want to admit this, but out of a desire to be honest about my reactions to these films, I will admit: I spent the last 15 minutes of this movie crying. I had to wipe my eyes pretty constantly just to see the screen, and judging by the sniffling in the audience during that end sequence, I was not the only one.<br />
In a strange coincidence, this was my second film in a row about a young child dealing with their grief over the death (or, in this case, impending death) of their mother. Conor O'Malley is a 12-year-old boy living with a mother who has terminal cancer. Conor insists that he's able to hold everything together (and the last thing he wants is to live with his grandmother, with whom he has an icy, distant relationship), but at night he repeatedly dreams about his mother falling into a pit and no matter how hard he tries he can't save her. And then a nearby yew tree comes to life and starts visiting him every night. And this monster makes him a promise; the monster will tell him three stories about other times that he was summoned, and then Conor will tell the monster his truth. And there will be healing.<br />
I'm reluctant to say too much about the film, since I would absolutely urge people to seek this one out. It's worth making an effort to find it. What I will say is that <i>A Monster Calls</i> is a powerful exploration about the reality of grief and guilt and the emotions that a person goes through when someone they love dearly is going through this experience. There’s a moment where we realise what the film is saying about Conor’s experience where there was an audible gasp from the audience, as people realised they hadn’t considered the film would go to such a complicated and nuanced place. This is based on a children’s book, and as a result I think we’d expected it to be simplistic, but instead it achieved a level of emotional honesty that took everyone back.<br />
There are some absolutely beautiful sequences in the film. I particularly enjoyed the scenes where we hear the monster's tales; the scenes are created for us to watch in a stylised watercolour form that is beautiful and expressive and evocative. And the stories themselves are not simplistic fairy tales; they're strange little stories about the contradictory nature of human beings, where good people are nasty and evil people help others. And they’re not necessarily stories where this person in the story obviously correlates to that person and this is the lesson that Conor is supposed to learn; the stories have thematic resonance and meaning, but nothing is spelled out and we’re trusted to ponder and discover the significance of those stories for ourselves.<br />
The only thing, the <u>only</u> thing I didn't like about the film came in the closing credits. The film ended, I was incredibly moved, and I just wanted to sit through the credits to gather myself and reflect on the film I'd just watched. But after a few minutes of orchestral scoring the credits started playing some strangely upbeat pop song about learning to fly or some such rubbish, and I just had to get out of the cinema as fast as possible. It was a remarkably misjudged tonal shift that was utterly disconnected from the movie that preceded it. An awful choice, and I was so frustrated that this was the tone I had to leave the movie on.<br />
Other than that, it is a moving and compassionate film, and I adored it. Do find it, do watch it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlHIB0rhX6m8Jlrr4T-yABgV1Mb3Pb6oSt8BauJxu-ZL265MGraLZ6x2pVokFtJdQCkMFbTZNxfiDcZyYNbUxm8SNVI4eB25BKbXPopedK6G9KPS_KYp2ZBRQLlG9Z49XJHKefQUq3ci6H/s1600/happy_end.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="675" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlHIB0rhX6m8Jlrr4T-yABgV1Mb3Pb6oSt8BauJxu-ZL265MGraLZ6x2pVokFtJdQCkMFbTZNxfiDcZyYNbUxm8SNVI4eB25BKbXPopedK6G9KPS_KYp2ZBRQLlG9Z49XJHKefQUq3ci6H/s400/happy_end.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<b><i>Happy End</i></b><br />
At a building construction site, a major collapse leaves the family-owned construction company in significant legal troubles. Meanwhile, when the ex-wife of one of the family members is hospitalised after an overdose, the father takes in his 13-year-old daughter to live with them, where she discovers he is now cheating on his current wife. And the family patriarch is suffering from dementia, and is doing things that put his life in danger.<br />
Here’s the thing: I find Michael Haneke a fascinating filmmaker. Sometimes I absolutely love him – I remember being riveted watching <i>Code Unknown</i> at the film society, and I wish I had seen <i>Cache</i> on the big screen (where every detail in those long lingering shots is massive and can be examined) rather than at home. Other times I hate him with a passion – when I watched the remake of <i>Funny Games</i>, I was so angry and wanted to be out of there so much that as soon as the credits started playing I literally ran out of the cinema and didn’t stop running until I was out of the building and down the street. (And I had previously seen the original, so I knew what I was in for when I saw the remake.) The thing about Haneke is, whether you like a Haneke film or not doesn’t matter. What he wants is to provoke a reaction.<br />
But here’s what’s weird: with <i>Happy End</i>, I had no reaction. I didn’t care. I sat and watched these characters for 110 minutes, and could barely tell you a thing about them. The film just played in front of my eyes. And the thing is, I’m not really entirely certain what Haneke would have been trying to provoke. The opening and closing scenes, with the use of footage cellphone footage with Snapchat-style commentary, along with a couple of Facebook chat sequences would seem to suggest a commentary on social media, but it’s a pretty minor part of the film. There’s probably a bit of condemnation of the response to the current refugee situation in there, but not that much of it. Much of the setup of the film – the wealthy family beset by problems and scandals – would appear to be an ideal place for some commentary about capitalism, but if that’s what it was then it really was extraordinarily half-hearted. It’s muddled and scattershot, and juggles so many different plot-threads that I never felt I could get a grasp on anything. Hell, Toby Jones is in the film for exactly three scenes in total, his scenes are so limited and so spread out through the film that there’s never a chance to understand his character (and frankly, I probably would have even forgotten who he was were he not played by Toby Jones), and yet the final scene revolves around this nothing-character’s engagement to Isabelle Huppert! And the film just feels like it’s Haneke doing what he does: here’s the lengthy still shot where we sit and look at every detail waiting for whatever will happen, or here’s the long shot of a moment of interaction in the distance that suddenly turns violent. I’ve seen all this in much better works from him. In the end, <i>Happy End</i> is something I never would have thought could have existed: a boring Michael Haneke film. And I can’t think of anything more disappointing.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYrxdXvNxmHWGMvl3jNxa75BMBBDt4X873XcszOJvIVAHE0sEtNSzHCKaX3QQdzWg-XFP09GdpRXfbjyzst-gmXNO-yYT575e-q87YdoZm0wPwmnA_hyg2c7gGz9PaCGfJ4PikzoogqyGB/s1600/beguiled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYrxdXvNxmHWGMvl3jNxa75BMBBDt4X873XcszOJvIVAHE0sEtNSzHCKaX3QQdzWg-XFP09GdpRXfbjyzst-gmXNO-yYT575e-q87YdoZm0wPwmnA_hyg2c7gGz9PaCGfJ4PikzoogqyGB/s400/beguiled.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Beguiled</i></b><br />
The new film from Sofia Coppola, <i>The Beguiled</i> focuses on a girls’ school in the South, left largely empty during the American Civil War except for the headmistress, one teacher, and five students who had no place else to go. They spend their days in lessons and tending the garden for food, and generally trying to avoid attracting attention from the troops who make their way past the school. Then one day one of the girls walking in the nearby forest finds an injured soldier, an Irish mercenary fighting for the other side, and she brings him back to the school for him to receive the care he requires.<br />
I’m always excited to see a new film from Sofia Coppola; she’s an important talent with a distinct voice and point of view, while at the same time being able to mould her talent in service of her material. (Compare the softly mournful tone of <i>The Virgin Suicides</i> to the youthful energy of <i>The Bling Ring</i>; they unmistakably reflect Coppola’s concerns as a filmmaker, yet feel utterly unlike each other in almost every way.) And I adored the film. Here’s she’s operating with a strongly Southern Gothic atmosphere that really works. Visually it’s enchanting; there’s a glorious murk to the image, lending the entire world a sense of a place that has been abandoned and forgotten. She’s accumulated a great cast – having commented just a month ago to a friend how much I missed Kirsten Dunst, it was particularly exciting to see her work again with Coppola, as the two of them really bring a lot out of each other, but everyone in the film impresses. The cast has been given a phenomenal script to work with – her characters are all precisely drawn; the younger students in particular could easily have become a mass of generic characters, but instead each of them seemed very specific in who they were and in how they related to everyone around them. And there’s a great tone of eroticism running through the film – the Powell and Pressburger film <i>Black Narcissus</i> is an obvious point of influence for Coppola, with its world of women centred around a single man and intense desires barely suppressed. One thing that I was impressed with how the tone modulated and shifted with the characters, the way the deep roiling desire of the adults would shift into youthful naiveté depending on which characters are in play at any one time, while at the same time making that shift in tone feel as if they existed on the same spectrum, that the awkward nervousness of the young girls would mature into the intense passions of the adults.<br />
One little thing did nag at me. I’m always understood Sofia Coppola to be a strongly feminist director, and so I find myself wondering why she decided to make this film. I freely admit, my feminist credentials are not up to date, but it seemed that a large part of this film is about a lot of women getting very googly-eyed over a man while he acts like a man at a smorgasbord overwhelmed by the options being presented to him. And I recognise that the behaviour of the women makes complete sense; when you’re stuck in a house alone with a bunch of women, and then all of a sudden there’s a man there, and he looks like Colin Farrell, it’s just natural that they would behave like this. And yes, this is a movie where the women’s sexuality and desire is absolutely at the foreground, and I recognise that acknowledging female sexuality is an important feminist ideal. But when you have the scene where they sing a song for him and we see Elle Fanning noticeably and awkwardly posing herself for him, or when you get the dinner scene where every woman wears their very best dress in an unambiguous effort to make themselves more appealing to the man, and we are invited to laugh at their transparent efforts (as we are), I find myself wondering what about this story spoke to Coppola as a female filmmaker. The film is a new adaptation of a novel that had previously been adapted by Don Segal in 1971 starring Clint Eastwood (I’d not previously heard of the earlier film), and Coppola has talked about wanting to retell this story from the women’s perspective (which makes me really curious about the earlier version, since I can’t really imagine what this story looks like when told from his point of view). And it’s an interesting idea to take a story that has been told from the male viewpoint and present it from the view of the women involved, but I still don’t understand why, of all the stories she could have told, she decided to tell this story.<br />
But ultimately, I don’t really care why she decided to make the film. All I care about is that we now have this film, and it is wonderful.<br />
(And one final point that I found interesting. Every year I find that there are a couple of actors who appear in multiple films in my festival schedule – for example, this year Elizabeth Moss was in both <i>The Square</i> and <i>Top of the Lake</i>. But as I was sitting in the opening credits for <i>The Beguiled</i>, I was struck by how many of those names I’d already seen in major roles in this festival. Angourie Rice had been the dead girl’s sister in <i>Jasper Jones</i>, Elle Fanning was the object of unrequited affection in <i>20th Century Women</i>, Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman had played husband and wife together in <i>The Killing of a Sacred Deer</i>, and Kidman had also been the adoptive mother in <i>Top of the Lake</i>. This is a film with just eight core characters, and this was the second or third time in the past two weeks that I had seen literally half of this cast. I just thought that was weird.)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiApMM3STS5pMcG-ScbDDNfGO2GMZN5kZw6Vj8tLpCyEek9B7SReCFQoF9SSAfmLlw_tAyEaAngp0Z4W8YTcpp5nHhPnGGbkQ83zSxwAfACFd3Nx49Q1vIymXhyphenhyphenLaCM_HWvlyvCfbOOo9r/s1600/loveless.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="521" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiApMM3STS5pMcG-ScbDDNfGO2GMZN5kZw6Vj8tLpCyEek9B7SReCFQoF9SSAfmLlw_tAyEaAngp0Z4W8YTcpp5nHhPnGGbkQ83zSxwAfACFd3Nx49Q1vIymXhyphenhyphenLaCM_HWvlyvCfbOOo9r/s400/loveless.jpg" width="276" /></a></div>
<b><i>Loveless</i></b><br />
Final day of the festival started with <i>Loveless</i>, the story of a couple whose marriage has come to a toxic end. They’ve both moved on <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">–</span> him with an attractive young woman who’s soon to give birth to his child, and her with a wealthy older man who gives her entry to a life of comfort <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">–</span> and when they do have to meet they can barely stand to be civil to each other. The couple have a son, who is not coping at all well with seeing the harsh and vile way his parents’ relationship has developed, and who the mother plans to send to boarding school and then the army. Then one night he disappears without trace and, when the police assume he’s a runaway who will turn up again, the parents turn to a volunteer group established specifically to find missing children.<br />
I was rather excited about this one. I'd been surprised by Andrey Zvyagintsev's previous film <i>Leviathan</i>, a beautiful and rich portrait of a man fighting to save his home from being effectively stolen from him. Unfortunately while <i>Loveless</i> was always engaging, it felt a bit unfocused. After an introduction to the family, the film spends rather a long time with each of the ex-spouses with their new lovers, so much so that it’s a surprise when they mention the son is missing because I had literally forgotten that they had a son. Once the son goes missing, the exes have a few scenes together but for the most part spend much of the remainder of the film separated, even though if anything this is the core relationship in the film. Part of the problem is that, whatever the film is about, it spends too much time not being about that. If the disappearance of the son is the focus, it's a long time before that's a thing; if it's about the breakdown of the marriage then the spouses spend far too much time apart to really have an impact.<br />
Ultimately, I don't know exactly what the film is trying to say. Is it a condemnation of a government that has effectively abandoned its people, forcing them to come together to do the work of protecting its citizens that the government has chosen not to? Is it a portrait of people who are looking for the new experience that will give meaning to their life without realising that they'll just fall into the same old patterns? And what are we supposed to take from the resolution to the disappearance?<br />
And I also wonder whether part of the problem is that I'm not Russian, so there are aspects of the film that just seem incomprehensible to me. For instance, it makes no sense to me that an employer, even an employer with deeply religious convictions, would apparently fire his employees if they get a divorce, but according to the film that's just accepted over there. I definitely think there's a good chance that the film's central mystery is in some ways supposed to be metaphorical of the political situation in Russia - we spend a lot of time listening or watching radio or TV media coverage of actual news stories - but if so, I'm simply not sufficiently familiar with current events in Russia to be able to pick up on what they're doing. And I freely admit, that's my own failing.<br />
The thing is, I liked the film. I may not know what exactly Zvyagintsev was saying, or think the film was a bit unfocused, but it is a compelling film with characters that I cared about and a central mystery that I was deeply involved in. A flawed but interesting work.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjCoUOiHMLs0rHcsdtw1dVJQ32CwSDQymgMaWhUU_MwMxNexK-H7ph899vi7fdVJjp3BqXDnFzxm58VVQXJvxgnI4tZbJe8NMf6M3b6TyHVJYywIECC7Ss28RzKQm1Zg7u-PFYYNGGn1nu/s1600/good_time.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjCoUOiHMLs0rHcsdtw1dVJQ32CwSDQymgMaWhUU_MwMxNexK-H7ph899vi7fdVJjp3BqXDnFzxm58VVQXJvxgnI4tZbJe8NMf6M3b6TyHVJYywIECC7Ss28RzKQm1Zg7u-PFYYNGGn1nu/s400/good_time.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<b><i>Good Time</i></b><br />
The final film of the festival was a fun, if not especially deep, thriller. Robert Pattinson plays Connie, who pressures his developmentally disabled brother Nick to help him rob a bank. Connie escapes but Nick is caught and sent for holding in prison, where he is injured in a fight and has to be taken to hospital. Meanwhile Connie, feeling guilty for the role he played in getting Nick caught, tries desperately to get the money he needs to pay bail, but when he learns Nick is in the hospital he concludes a better option might be to just break him out.<br />
I really did think this was a very strong piece of pure entertainment, with a wonderful throwback tone to it. In some ways it reminded me of an 80s-era Michael Mann film, but without the sheen of his work. Instead, there’s a grunginess to the film; while it takes place in modern-day New York, it feels as though it’s the type of New York that early-era Scorsese would portray, where you feel as though just existing in this world makes you dirty, and where it feels as though the grime is actively baked onto the very celluloid of the film. The retro sense of the film is particularly aided by the score; the synth-heavy music by Oneohtrix Point Never inescapably calls to mind the work of Tangerine Dream in their scores for films like <i>Thief</i> or <i>Sorcerer</i>, and is an absolute delight that hits the perfect tone.<br />
Robert Pattinson, an actor I’ve not necessarily cared for in the past, is doing some exceptional work here. Connie feels like a character who’s always on the lookout, running on instinct, willing to seize on every weakness of everyone around and take advantage of it to get himself ahead, but whose inherent impulsiveness keeps forcing him deeper and deeper into trouble; it’s a nervous, edgy performance by Pattinson that actively sets us on edge. At the same time it’s a portrayal that should be unsympathetic, but Pattinson lends the role a disarming level of sincerity in his love for his brother and his regret over the impact his choices have had on the one person he actually cares about. It’s particularly disorienting because he’s so amoral and uncaring about everyone else – whether they be new acquaintances (like the granddaughter of the elderly woman or the ex-convict just out of jail) or if they’re people he’s supposed to actually care about (like his girlfriend who he shamelessly exploits) – that it’s weird to see him seemingly care about another human being.<br />
It’s not a perfect film – a mid-film revelation felt particularly obvious although the film played it as a surprise, and some of the characters (the granddaughter in particular) seemed a bit too willing to just go along with Connie no matter what warning signals were on display. And it’s not that thematically rich. But after 17 days and 34 other films that were, for the most part, trying (and sometime succeeding, sometimes not) to be important and to have things to say, it was nice to end the festival with a film that just says that, above everything else, movies are just supposed to be fun. And <i>Good Time</i> is a real blast.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-62136359022743261912018-07-05T23:09:00.000+12:002018-08-18T09:03:19.899+12:00Triumph of suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings... mainly happy endingsSo here’s the thing,<br />
<br />
Film festival tickets went on sale today and, as in the past two years, I decided to not stand in the cold for four hours waiting, instead trying to book my tickets online. After last year’s mess, I made the decision to book tickets ten at a time, in the hope that a ten-film order might be faster and easier to process, and in the knowledge that having the ticket system crash on you on your ninth film is less frustrating than having it crash on your thirtieth film.<br />
<br />
It all seemed to start out well – I got through the initial screen cleanly, I selected my first ten films, went through, and got a Creating Order screen, which stayed cycling for 15 or 20 minutes. At that point I figured it wasn’t going to happen, tried again, and again, several times, each time getting stuck on that one screen. Then I discovered the tickets were down full-stop – the festival tweeted that they’d paused online bookings for the next 15 minutes to try to fix things. And then at noon, just over an hour after the “15 minute pause” started, they were finally back online. And from that point, it was smooth sailing – I was able to purchase all of my tickets pretty easily. (Hopefully the improvement wasn’t just because people just gave up trying, and that the fixes they put in place worked and can be implemented next year.)<br />
<br />
But considering it took 2½ hours for me to make my purchases, the whole experience was weirdly stress-free. Unlike last year, where the system kept making me think I was getting somewhere in purchasing my tickets and then would drop out causing me to have wasted all that effort, this year because I kept finding myself stuck on the early screens before I could even get through to my seat selections I never had that all-that-time-wasted experience I had last year. And when they actually took ticketing down, that was even better – at least if no-one is able to buy tickets then I don’t need to stress about the good seats selling out. Plus I was able to actually do some work while I was waiting, which was satisfying. So unlike last year where I was just a bundle of nerves by the end of the process, this year I was pretty much fine.<br />
<br />
So the films I’m seeing this year are:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ9lB8qfovqLL6hKlND3hwzR2JniUAjagVo2RwWAHqa-kM9osGZrj3EKMoQKHAZJMAZnjX7zGqE34acnA6EJECnViT3hGxRonywT4I8TRaoc4MijoC-Nd4BbBZKTfHp5cOt6e_tje1YKqw/s1600/NZFF18+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1546" data-original-width="1091" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ9lB8qfovqLL6hKlND3hwzR2JniUAjagVo2RwWAHqa-kM9osGZrj3EKMoQKHAZJMAZnjX7zGqE34acnA6EJECnViT3hGxRonywT4I8TRaoc4MijoC-Nd4BbBZKTfHp5cOt6e_tje1YKqw/s640/NZFF18+poster.jpg" width="450" /></a></div>
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/birds-of-passage/">Birds of Passage</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/american-animals/">American Animals</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/the-cleaners/">The Cleaners</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/monterey-pop/">Monterey Pop</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/the-kindergarten-teacher/">The Kindergarten Teacher</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/you-were-never-really-here/">You Were Never Really Here</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/the-green-fog/">The Green Fog</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/mirai/">Mirai</a> </i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/leave-no-trace/">Leave No Trace</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/piercing/">Piercing</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/bombshell-the-hedy-lamarr-story/">Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/the-rider/">The Rider</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/woman-at-war/">Woman at War</a> </i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/angels-wear-white/">Angels Wear White</a> </i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/searching/">Searching</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/mandy/">Mandy</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/madelines-madeline/">Madeline’s Madeline</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/three-identical-strangers/">Three Identical Strangers</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/beirut/">Beirut</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/the-king/">The King</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/transit/">Transit</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/shoplifters/">Shoplifters</a> </i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/the-guilty/">The Guilty</a> </i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/lean-on-pete/">Lean on Pete</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/capharnaum/">Capharnaüm</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/arctic/">Arctic</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/mckellen-playing-the-part/">McKellen: Playing the Part</a></i><br />
* <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/ash-is-purest-white/"><i>As</i><i>h Is Purest White</i></a><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/brimstone-glory/">Brimstone & Glory</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/first-reformed/">First Reformed</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/the-third-murder/">The Third Murder</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/border/">Border</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/filmworker/">Filmworker</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/the-world-is-yours/">The World Is Yours</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/science-fair/">Science Fair</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/wings-of-desire/">Wings of Desire</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/3-faces/">3 Faces</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/burning/">Burning</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/cold-war/">Cold War</a></i><br />
<br />
[EDIT - After the festival started, they had a late confirmation of another film, <i><a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/wellington/sign-o-the-times/" target="_blank">Prince: Sign O' The Times</a></i>, which pushes me up to 40 films, a nice round number and far above my previous record of 36.]<br />
<br />
Until a couple of years ago, I kept having clashes that stopped me from seeing the Hirokazu Kore-eda films, until I finally saw <i>Our Little Sister</i> a few years ago and decided I need to never miss his film ever again. This year, the festival has two films from him; another one of his slice-of-life family dramas, the Palme d’Or winner <i>Shoplifters</i>, as well as the legal thriller <i>The Third Murder</i>. <i>Shoplifters </i>should be great – it seems perfectly in line with the type of film he makes so incredibly well – but I’m almost more curious about <i>The Third Murder</i>, since that’s a type of film that really demands a lot of tension and suspense and that’s not really something I’ve seen in any of the Kore-eda films I’ve seen to date. I’m excited to see how he does.<br />
<br />
The other film I’m most anticipating is the new film from Paul Schrader, <i>First Reformed</i>. Looking at his filmography, I realised that I’ve never actually seen any of his directorial efforts, although I am a fan of his work writing for Scorsese. He’s probably best known for writing <i>Taxi Driver</i>, so I’m intrigued by the fact that pretty much every time I hear the film referenced they always compare it to that film, suggesting it’s as though Travis Bickle were a Protestant minister. A lot of people I respect have rated the film very highly, so I’m anticipating something special.<br />
<br />
I’m also really excited by <i>You Were Never Really Here</i>, the new film from Lynne Ramsey with Joaquin Phoenix as a veteran hired to rescue a kidnapped girl. I’d been extremely impressed by Ramsey’s previous film <i>We Need To Talk About Kevin</i> – that film demanded she navigate very delicately around a lot of sensitive and devastating issues, and she managed to explore that film’s central incident of violence while staying true to the horrific act that it was – and so I’m curious to see her exploring what seems to be the space occupied by films like <i>Taken</i>.<br />
<br />
I’ve consciously chosen to avoid knowing anything about <i>Leave No Trace</i>, the new Debra Granik film. <i>Winter’s Bone</i> was my favourite film of 2010, an absolute masterpiece, and so I was just satisfied to hear that the response to her new work has been strongly positive as well. It’s been hard to avoid knowing anything about the film – especially since New Zealand actress Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie is one of the leads, which means every Kiwi media outlet is publishing articles announcing how she will break out in the same way Jennifer Lawrence did after <i>Winter’s Bone</i> – but I’ve achieved it. I’m excited to sit down and discover what the film actually is.<br />
<br />
As someone whose favourite film is <i>Vertigo</i>, I’m curious about <i>The Green Fog</i>, the new film from Guy Madden (whose work is a real blind spot for me) that apparently uses footage from various movies shot in San Francisco to create what sounds almost like a constructed remake of Hitchcock's greatest film. I don’t know what that will be like, but I’m curious.<br />
<br />
There are quite a few documentaries that I’ve heard very good things about. I’m particularly excited about <i>Filmworker</i>, the documentary about Leon Vitali. I’ve known about Vitali for years – he’s a former actor who, after working with Kubrick on <i>Barry Lyndon</i>, decided to leave acting and dedicate his life to being Kubrick’s assistant, doing everything from checking film prints to being acting coach to Danny Lloyd on <i>The Shining</i>, and he’s continued to represent Kubrick’s wishes long after the man died – but he’s someone I don’t really know much about, so that should be fascinating. Similarly, <i>Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story</i> – telling the life story of one of the woman who, in addition to being one of the great beautifies of classic Hollywood, was a genius inventor whose work was vital as a precursor to technologies like wifi – is supposed to be excellent. I’ve heard good things about <i>Three Identical Strangers</i>, about three triplets separated at birth who learn of each other’s existence. <i>Science Fair</i> is supposed to be nicely heartwarming, with obvious comparisons to the spelling bee documentary <i>Spellbound</i>. Ian McKellan is an engaging and entertaining speaker, so his interview-documentary will hopefully be fun. And while it’s not a documentary, <i>American Animals</i> apparently does some interesting work incorporating the remembrances of the actual people involved in the true story into the dramatisation; reviews have been mixed, but I liked Bart Layton’s earlier documentary <i>The Imposter</i>, so I’m willing to be hopeful.<br />
<br />
Weirdly there are a couple of horse films that feature prominently in my schedule. It’s not really something that would ordinarily appeal to me, but the reviews have been so overwhelmingly positive for both <i>Lean On Pete</i> (a boy-and-his-horse type of story) and <i>The Rider</i> (about a rodeo rider who suffers serious head injuries) that I decided I had to see them both. Indeed, there was a significant amount of effort juggling all of my screenings around to find a way to make a screening of <i>The Rider</i> fit.<br />
<br />
I’m generally not a big music person, and wouldn’t ordinarily seek out concert documentaries, but I did really enjoy seeing <i>Woodstock </i>at the Embassy a couple of years ago – seeing a music film like that in the cinema, with not just the big screen but also the big sound, is the best way to experience those movies – so seeing <i>Monterey Pop</i> was an easy choice.<br />
<br />
And then there are all the films that just seem interesting. Jafar Panahi continues to thumb his nose at the Iranian authorities that tried to ban him from making movies with his latest “this isn’t actual movie” movie <i>3 Faces</i>. A documentary about a fireworks festival (<i>Brimstone & Glory</i>) should at least be a nice spectacle on the big screen. I probably would have overlooked <i>Woman at War</i>, but a few weeks ago the film society screened the director’s earlier film <i>Of Horses and Men</i>, which was so fantastic that the need to see his new film became pressing. And <i>The Guilty</i> sounds like it could be fun – a thriller that takes place entirely in an emergency call centre with our hero trying to help one of his callers.<br />
<br />
Once again the classic film section is disappointing, with only one film that really holds any interest for me at all. But that one film is Wim Wenders’ <i>Wings of Desire</i>, which is fantastic. I’ve only seen it once, a number of years ago when it had a Saturday afternoon screening at the film archive. It’s a great film, but that was not the best environment to see the film, so I’m excited to see it at the Embassy. My big disappointment in the retro section was that <i>Raise the Red Lantern</i>, screening in Auckland, isn’t going to be shown down here; when I’d heard that Yimou’s film was screening in the festival I was thrilled as I’d never seen it, so was understandably disappointed to realise the screening was from a 35mm print, as we no longer have any 35mm projectors in Wellington to show the film.<br />
<br />
I feel like it’s a pretty strong festival this year. I’m very happy with my film selections, although as always there are a few films I’m gutted I couldn’t make fit (most notably <i>Lucky</i>, the final film starring Harry Dean Stanton). The big thing to me is that pretty much every film I was hoping would be in the festival is in the festival – unlike past years where I’ve been disappointed by just how many films I’ve thought might make the festival but that never screened, this year there are really only two films I had thought might make it. I guess I knew <i>The Man Who Killed Don Quixote</i> was never going to screen – the middling reviews from Cannes and the legal action killed any hope of that happening – but it would have been nice to see the finalised film in the festival since <i>Lost In La Mancha</i>, the documentary about Gilliam’s earlier effort to film the story, was part of the festival 15 years ago. And I’d seen such a strong response to Anton Yelchin’s final film <i>Thoroughbreds</i>, the comedy about two teenage girls planning to murder one of their stepfathers, that I thought that had a good chance of making it as well. Oh well – hopefully I’ll get a chance to see these films on the big screen later.<br />
<br />
But those few disappointments aside, it looks like it should be a good festival. Less than three weeks to go.<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mHibCEaj8N8" width="560"></iframe>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-52305792068880934382018-03-05T00:07:00.003+13:002018-03-05T00:15:54.731+13:001043 minutesSo here's the thing.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back in the years where there were five Best Picture nominees, there was almost always a significant amount of overlap between the Picture nominees and the Director nominees; while it was common for one of the Picture nominees to not have a Director nomination and vice versa, usually you could rely on those awards sharing four out of the five nominations. And that overlap is why, ever since the Academy increased the number of its Picture nominees, I’ve always internally thought of the Director nominees as the “actual” Picture nominees, and the other films are the also-rans. It doesn’t always hold – <i>Argo</i> won Picture without a Director nomination, and this year <i>Three Billboards</i> seems to have a real chance to win despite Martin McDonagh not having been recognised – but for the most part it holds.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which is why I find the Director nominees so fascinating. I’ve seen a lot of attention focused on the nature of the Director nominees – two first-time directors in Gerwig and Peele and two long-time acclaimed directors who have never before been nominated in Del Toro and Nolan, as well as PT Anderson who is one of our great artists and who has never won. But what I found exciting was the level of involvement these filmmakers had with the film. Each of those films was written by their directors – <i>The Shape of Water</i> was co-written by Del Toro, while the other four films’ directors have sole writing credits. (You can also add <i>Three Billboards</i> in here as well – while the film doesn’t have a Director nomination, Martin McDonagh was the screenwriter on that Picture nominee.) In other words, none of these films are works for hire; these are all films that are intensely personal and shaped and moulded and made by their director into a unique expression of the person they are. Which is not to criticise directors like Spielberg or Guadagnino or Wright, who found scripts that spoke to them and worked hard to make those films theirs. But these five films particular feel specific and intimate and real.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>[Comments on </i>Lady Bird<i>, </i>The Shape of Water<i>, </i>Phantom Thread<i>, </i>Get Out<i>, </i>Dunkirk<i>, </i>Darkest Hour<i>, </i>Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri<i>, </i>The Post<i>, and </i>Call Me By Your Name<i> after the jump]</i><br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
In recent years, the voting for Best Picture has become somewhat unpredictable, thanks to the introduction of a preferential voting system. When assessing which film will win, you don’t just need to consider which film will have the largest number of votes initially, but which films will have more people’s second- or third-favourite. I’ve seen a lot of different analysis trying to guess the outcome, with serious analysis creating arguments for <i>The Shape of Water</i>, <i>Three Billboards</i>, <i>Get Out</i>, or <i>Lady Bird</i>. Personally, I suspect <i>The Shape of Water</i> might be the most popular film, but might not get those lower votes; most people probably will love it as their favourite film, or will hate it and give it a low ranking. <i>Three Billboards</i> will similarly have a lot of people love it and a lot of low rankings due to the (justified) backlash against the film; and <i>Get Out</i> could do well but does come up against the problem that it is a more pulpy horror film. Which is why I personally think <i>Lady Bird</i> will win.<o:p></o:p><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw1qk8Tur9urKFBtR_7P1ldwaQHMWq-Q4swskJW6p6RyG_qmSqexpLt7FNNwn630sGTP9Rz-XUYZNIqH5uU8CNuJvbeovKtnYoANXQRCKDMVaBgmJRd2E8crsz4j1OnuQbq0EiE6Syj_ob/s1600/lady_bird.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw1qk8Tur9urKFBtR_7P1ldwaQHMWq-Q4swskJW6p6RyG_qmSqexpLt7FNNwn630sGTP9Rz-XUYZNIqH5uU8CNuJvbeovKtnYoANXQRCKDMVaBgmJRd2E8crsz4j1OnuQbq0EiE6Syj_ob/s320/lady_bird.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
And I think it will be a very satisfying winner, because I found myself completely enamoured with <i>Lady Bird</i>. In a lot of ways it’s very simple – it’s basically a coming-of-age story about a teenage girl in her final year of high school – but there’s such richness and honesty to the film that it felt unique. The film touches on the expected material of the genre – through the film she has two boyfriends, both unsuitable; her first sexual experiences are disappointing; she abandons her life-long best friend in order to hang out with the “cool kids”; she clumsily struggles with her dreams and hopes and who she wants to be as an adult – and it’s excellent in its approach to these topics. I was also surprised to see the film so willing to explore the issues of class; attending a private Catholic school, Lady Bird is always aware of the wealth of those around her, even as money issues are a constant pressure for her parents. This is not an issue that the film throws out and then forgets about; it’s a constant undercurrent running through the film, whether its Lady Bird’s jokes about being born on the wrong side of the tracks, or her fantasising over her dream house and trying to hide her real house from her cool wealthy friends, or the pressures that her going to college will put on her parents.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the real richness of the film comes from the way it focuses largely on Lady Bird’s relationship with her mother. And I loved it. There’s really nothing more that can be said about Saoirse Ronan’s work here that hasn't already been sad; she is one of the best young actors working today, and over the past ten-plus years has really worked to carefully develop a fascinating and exciting career. Similarly, Laurie Metcalf’s emotional journey throughout the film is one of the most subtly pitch-perfect performances of the year (it’s a shame she’ll probably lose to Allison Janney’s enjoyable but less-nuanced work in <i>I, Tonya</i>). The two together are flawless and engaging, and their scenes are wonderfully contentious. There’s a clear love between the two that is unmistakable, but it’s hindered by their complete inability to find a way to relate. It’s particularly smart in how wrong both of them are, how both of them are basically working to damage the relationship through their stubbornness and refusal to accept each other. It’s well-known that the film is at least semi-autobiographical for writer/director Greta Gerwig, and it’s in that relationship that it most feels so. You can feel Gerwig, with nearly twenty years of perspective on her teenage years, possibly realising how much she must have frustrated and hurt her parents, even as she’s aware of the things she needed but perhaps did not get from her mother. (Admittedly, that is just my speculation, but that’s how it feels.) And that honesty affects you as a viewer; I find it hard to imagine anyone watching the film and not reflecting on their own relationship with their parents.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But with all the attention deservedly given to Laurie Metcalf, I do feel that Tracy Letts work as Lady Bird’s father Larry has been overlooked. It’s a much smaller, less showy performance – he’s just the person holding the family together whenever Lady Bird and her mother are being wilful towards each other – but it’s one that is filled with love and affection and it’s beautiful to watch. In one of his best moments, Larry has an experience of deep disappointment and then immediately encounters his son Miguel. There are a multitude of emotions Larry seems to experience in that moment – humiliation and embarrassment and frustration, but also extreme pride and joy – and his response to his son is one of the expressions of pure parental love I think I've ever seen in a movie. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Speaking of Miguel, one thing I liked about the film was its willingness to just let situations exist without feeling the need to explain anything. For instance, Lady Bird’s older brother Miguel is clearly Latin-American and unlikely to be related by birth to both parents in this very white couple. How is it that Miguel is part of this family? Who knows? Who cares? Where other films might feel a need to explain the background to this character, Gerwig is happy just to establish it as a fact; Miguel is part of the family. It’s that kind of very specific choice that makes Gerwig’s film feel so real and lived in; these characters have history and a life that existed long before the film started and that will live past the end of the film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And speaking of that sense of history running through the film, I loved Lady Bird’s deep friendship with Julie. There’s a wonderful scene when the two are fighting, and you can see Lady Bird wielding their friendship as a weapon, taking whispered confidences and secrets and throwing them back at Julie with venom; this felt like the kind of relationship where each of them knows exactly how to best hurt the other person. As Julie, Beanie Feldstein is one of the unsung heroes of the film. Her performance is easily overlooked because she’s always playing against the force of Saoirse Ronan, but you get the sense that’s just how their relationship always is; Julie is always overshadowed by Lady Bird. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Admittedly at times the comedy feels a little broad to be convincing – the film opens with Lady Bird jumping from a moving car to get away from her infuriating mother yet somehow she only has a broken arm, or there’s a moment where they bring in a football coach to take the drama club and he blocks the scene as though it were a football play without engaging with the content of the play. And there was one point in the film – a moment where Lady Bird asks her mother “Do you like me” and her mother awkwardly evades the question by talking about how much she loves Lady Bird – that disappointed me as it was the one moment where the film felt like it was obvious in spelling out its core idea underlying their conflict. But for the most part it’s a beautiful and rich film filled with subtle and thoughtful observations.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I particularly appreciated how frequently the film is willing to undercut expectations; so many times the film seems to be setting up one cliché or another, but then manages to move in an unexpected direction. Nor does it cynically exploit the emotional response of the audience; there’s a scene late in the film which had me moved close to tears, but where most films would drag such scenes how to elicit every tear possible, this film instead took the barest minimum time to establish the key information required and the emotional impact it would have but then stepped back, acknowledging the moment as an intimate and private moment between Lady Bird and her parents. Ultimately, the film is close to perfect, rarely putting a foot wrong. What makes Lady Bird so effective is that, for all the coming of age films we’ve seen, this feels different. The considered examination of the relationship between this teenage girl and her mother seems unique; it’s something I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before. I really can’t recommend this film enough. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4AjNML3wlkeU6eIx48djx3CwAyKA6YsagrhfJqeaR3PXzj-RwSG76n4VAjXlT4COgot9AneXMsIkgtwP1vpceGqVFmrhmzjkxMR8pZJSJlDEhyRWQUEP6JgsKvE6170HgL8_E5DzzQPwp/s1600/shape_of_water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4AjNML3wlkeU6eIx48djx3CwAyKA6YsagrhfJqeaR3PXzj-RwSG76n4VAjXlT4COgot9AneXMsIkgtwP1vpceGqVFmrhmzjkxMR8pZJSJlDEhyRWQUEP6JgsKvE6170HgL8_E5DzzQPwp/s320/shape_of_water.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
As I suggested earlier, I think the most popular film (even if not the actual winner) might be Guillermo del Toro’s <i>The Shape of Water</i>. I’ve heard people suggest that the film is better than <i>Pan’s Labyrinth</i>; I’m not sure I’d go quite that far (<i>Pan</i> is an incredible film, and one of the best of the 2000s), but it’s certainly del Toro’s best since then, and almost certainly his best chance for the Director award from the Academy. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film focuses on Elisa, a mute woman working as a cleaner in a government facility, who falls in love with the fish-man creature who is the subject of the facility’s research work, and who becomes determined to help the creature escape with her co-worker Zelda and her neighbour Giles. It’s a film about people who are pushed aside, people who are “the other”. In a 1950s world in which the straight white male is king, this is a film that is intensely focused on the experiences of a woman living with a disability, a black woman, and a gay man. And it’s also about a fish man, who probably counts as “other” also. And it’s about these people searching for love and meaning in a world that doesn’t notice them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Del Toro has always had a fascination for creatures of all kind, he’s talked about the beauty of monsters, and he’s talked about <i>The Shape of Water</i> as being <i>The Creature from the Black Lagoon</i> if the creature actually got the girl. Now, going into a film with that premise, you might expect something sweet and gentle, but not too uncomfortable. After all, a film with this subject matter is hardly going to push its concept to its furthest extreme for fear of isolating the audience. But del Toro isn’t interested in taking it easy on the audience, and he’s completely sincere about fully exploring that emotional space. So while the film is lushly romantic, it’s not the simple chaste romance I had expected. When we’re introduced to Sally Hawkins’ character, we’re introduced to her while she pleasures herself in the bathtub; this is not some sweet innocent figure, but a mature adult with specifically sexual needs. And when she meets the creature, it’s not just a meeting of two souls who find commonality in each other; there is an unambiguous erotic desire between the two that the film does explore and finds beauty in. Admittedly, the moment where their relationship is consummated may be logistically improbable, but you really don’t care because the film has the emotional substance to carry the moment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And at the same time, the film deliberately tries to make this relationship uncomfortable for us. It would be easier for us to accept this relationship if the fish-creature acted as though he were a man that happened to be in the body of this creature. But del Toro doesn’t do that; this is an actual animal with the impulses of an animal that are not bound by accepted human behaviour. So there are some shocking moments in the film (that I have no doubt would put off many viewers) where the creature acts as an animal, but we are expected to still look at this creature and be swept up in this central loving relationship. And it works, simply because of the richness and delicacy of the performances of Doug Jones and Sally Hawkins; they commit themselves absolutely to the realism and intensity of their love for each other. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But as with much of del Toro’s work, the film dances between wildly varying tones. So yes, it is intensely romantic, but at the same time, it is frequently horrific, in particular with some stomach-churning body horror moments. Indeed, I literally looked away from the screen in one moment where a character is dragged along the ground by a hole in their cheek. (Del Toro seems to have a thing about cheeks; one of the most memorable moments in <i>Pan’s Labyrinth</i> also features an act of extreme violence to someone’s cheek.) There’s a recurring element through the film where one character has a finger that is slowly decaying and rotting, repulsing everyone else. And then there are the many moments where the creature acts less as a romantic love interest and more as “the monster” in a monster movie. And what happens is that, as the film moves between the romance and the horror, they interact and play these tones off each other. So the love story is intensified and becomes more urgent because of the horror, while the horror feels more shocking because it seems so at odds with the beauty of the film’s romantic tone.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People have been talking about Sally Hawkins’ work for months, and deservedly so. For a start, when we look at the creature, we see something that we would expect to see in a Universal monster movie, so she needs to convince us that when she looks at the creature she sees something beautiful and sweet and lovable. We need to believe that she is completely in love with this being, as incredible as it may seem. And she has to do that without the use of her voice. And she sells it. You want to inspire the kind of look of love that she has when she’s thinking about him. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But as great as Sally Hawkins is, and as deserved as her nomination is, one thing I am disappointed by is how little attention is being given to Doug Jones’s work as the fish creature. Jones is almost certainly the best creature performer working; a beautifully demonstrative physical actor with an innate understanding of how to create a subtle and tender performance below piles of obscuring latex. The sad thing is that people will look at Gary Oldman’s work in <i>Darkest Hour</i> and be so wowed by the transformative makeup that they’ll effectively give an award just for that, but then they’ll just dismiss the truly exquisite performance given by someone like Doug Jones as “just a monster”. This is a performance. We get his pain and suffering at being experimented on, we get the cautious and tentative movement towards trusting this young woman who shares her boiled eggs with him, we get his marvel at discovering the world outside his laboratory, we get the joy of true love. There’s even a beautiful moment where Jones is called on to dance, and there’s rapture in this moment that is one of the best things I’ve seen this past year.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The rest of the actors all do well with the material they are given, although there’s possibly less subtlety in their material than is given to our leads. But I did really love Richard Jenkins’ work in particular as Elisa’s gay neighbour, Giles. Jenkins is one of those always-reliable character actors who I’m always excited to see; here, his meek resignation to a life of loneliness and heartache is tragic and moving, and the committed and loving friendship between Giles and Elisa is beautiful. Jenkins and Hawkins seem to get real joy working off each other; in particular, my favourite moment of the film comes when Elisa, trying to communicate with Giles through sign language but frustrated that he’s not really listening to her, angrily demands that he speak her words aloud. So often when we’re in an argument you don’t hear what the other person is actually saying, and the exchange of point of view that comes with actually having to express the other person’s words you’re forced to actually hear what they’re saying.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I have an issue with the film, it’s with the very end. I’m reluctant to say too much, but I did feel that it seemed to suggest a change in the central relationship so that it wasn’t about two souls connecting despite their differences, and that it sought instead to offer a reason for that connection. I did feel that was a misstep; part of the joy of the film is this mystery of these two finding each other despite everything, and the explanation that seems to be offered is a little too obvious for me. Still, it’s a quibble in an otherwise charming and magical film, one I look forward to revisiting.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxtW7y2O303zo20tgngRsDpQlfyY85KkVVv_kRunmADuZXRpMyesIRmqTz7TK1y5gICoItbCOGp-NC6ZQQAcVSulDk6iwOblOMyCFPFfHi3CX85Exuk5FbVITiZHFkPgRh2PCXjyA04EsI/s1600/phantom_thread.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxtW7y2O303zo20tgngRsDpQlfyY85KkVVv_kRunmADuZXRpMyesIRmqTz7TK1y5gICoItbCOGp-NC6ZQQAcVSulDk6iwOblOMyCFPFfHi3CX85Exuk5FbVITiZHFkPgRh2PCXjyA04EsI/s320/phantom_thread.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
The film I’m happiest to see nominated is <i>Phantom Thread</i>, the bizarre story of a 1950s fashion designer, Reynolds Woodcock, who meets a timid and quiet young waitress named Alma and is instantly fascinated by her. He invites her to live with him as both his muse and his lover, but after a while he grows tired of her, and so she decides to take measures to prevent herself from being discarded as all of Reynolds’ previous muses have been. And so the film turns into this strange power struggle between these two characters trying to achieve dominance in the relationship.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After I’d seen the film, I went to the BBFC’s website (which always has very detailed descriptions about content of concern in a film) to <a href="http://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/phantom-thread-2017">check the details for Phantom Thread</a>. Primarily I wanted to check my memory: am I right in thinking there was no sex in that film? At all? Indeed I was right – the closest the BBFC listing comes is noting that, in one scene, “a woman's nipples are visible through her slip while she is measured for a dress.” I’ve never walked out of a film being uncertain about whether it had a sex scene or not, but Paul Thomas Anderson does something in this film that I don’t understand; he somehow infuses it with such an air of intense eroticism that it feels as though we must have had such a moment, even though it’s not there. If anything, Reynolds Woodcock seems most aroused when he’s putting clothes on women rather than taking them off, and yet there’s an overpowering desire and intimacy fuelling the drama that fills the film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’d consciously decided not to kno anything about the film in advance; I’d avoided the trailers, the reviews; if a podcast even mentioned the film title I would skip ahead. After all, it’s a Paul Thomas Anderson film, so I know I’m going to see it. The one thing I knew about the film was a description I had heard someone make months ago, before the trailer even came out, long before anyone had ever seen it. This comment suggested the film was “an art-house version of <i>Fifty Shades of Grey</i>”. In all the most obvious ways, it’s entirely misleading (like I said, there is no sex in the film at all), and yet at the same time it’s weirdly apt – there’s an element of almost sadomasochism in the central relationship that is so bizarre and uncomfortable that you can imagine the <i>Fifty Shades</i> characters blanching at how extreme it becomes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The performances in this film are incredible. Daniel Day-Lewis announced that he was retiring while filming <i>Phantom Thread</i>, (he learned how to make dresses while preparing for the role, and according to some reports I’ve seen he’s planning to move to making clothing full-time,) and if indeed this is the final performance we’ll ever get from the man then at least he’s gone out on a great note. His Reynolds is an uncomfortable person to be around; there’s a precision in his voice, in his behaviour, in his mannerisms, but it’s a burdened damaged precision, as though he’s trying to hold himself together by force of will. And there’s a stubborn refusal to change; in one moment there’s a discussion about the concept of chic, which Reynolds doesn’t really understand. Reynolds really is a man out of his time; he has a very clear understanding about what he considers to be beautiful, and his clothing genuinely is striking, but its flowery excess feels increasingly out of place in a world that will come to prefer an elegance of simplicity. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve never seen Vicky Krieps before, but she is extraordinary here as Reynolds' lover Alma; there’s a blank passivity to her performance that somehow escalates the emotional turmoil the character displays. She’s called on to sell a particular turn that her character takes, and the fact that it feels natural and believable is all down to her performance. What’s particularly surprising is that the character’s motivation is often unclear – we can see she’s alone in a foreign country in her pre-Reynolds life, and so it’s entirely possible that her relationship with Reynolds is driven less by a genuine affection and love for the man (who does at times treat her very poorly) and more out of a desire to keep a lifestyle that she might otherwise be forced to give up. And yet her character somehow always remains sympathetic, despite how mercenary she is in some of her actions. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was also pleased to see Lesley Manville nominated for her work as Reynold’s ever-present sister; the careful understanding she has with her brother and the care she takes to control his environment for him is a delight to watch, even if it’s not the obvious showy performance that often tends to be noticed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I was fascinated by how effective the film was in getting you into the mind-set of the characters – the film unmistakably fetishizes the dressmaking process, and there’s a wonderful sense of tactility that it brings to the experience; as you examine the fabrics close up you can almost feel what it would be like to touch it, how it feels against your skin, and how the texture of one piece differs from the next. It was so effective that I started noticing the other ordinary clothing that people were wearing, thinking how that blouse would have a rougher feel than the one she was wearing earlier. As someone whose sole sense of the feel of clothing is wearing a new suncap to the cricket and noticing how uncomfortable it is against my forehead, to be so aware of the differences in fabric feel was a very new experience for me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paul Thomas Anderson is a filmmaker I’ve long loved. Admittedly I do feel like I may be the only person who doesn’t fully love <i>There Will Be Blood</i> (I admire and like the film, but there’s something about the tone of the film that doesn’t allow me to fully embrace it), but beyond that, his work is just uniformly incredible. After a promising start with <i>Hard Eight</i>, the man gave us <i>Boogie Nights</i>, <i>Magnolia</i>, <i>Punch Drunk Love</i>, <i>The Master</i>, and <i>Inherent Vice</i>. That is an incredible career of films that I adore. And yet I genuinely think <i>Phantom Thread</i> may be the best film he’s ever given us. I’m thrilled that this is a film that exists; I’m excited to grapple with it and delve into its riches. This is a great, beautiful, and wonderful work of cinema. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKY2jvGpEoCuXVxoEF7cpNHwKu15wWwqgVqswpdMYJe9LucfwNd5zSJqckOysHnCKjW-tNKwKp-WBmqtoOloyD9VEHye-_dWd-3FvMAhmGupX8n-smhaQKOHsdGajY2NO17zYWFXdqgh1e/s1600/get_out.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKY2jvGpEoCuXVxoEF7cpNHwKu15wWwqgVqswpdMYJe9LucfwNd5zSJqckOysHnCKjW-tNKwKp-WBmqtoOloyD9VEHye-_dWd-3FvMAhmGupX8n-smhaQKOHsdGajY2NO17zYWFXdqgh1e/s320/get_out.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
I’d never really cared too much about Jordan Peele before, largely because I never really connected to <i>Key and Peele</i>, the comedy show he made with Keegan-Michael Key. I’d liked the two of them when I’d seen them working simply as actors, but anytime they were the driving creative force behind a project, whether it be <i>Key and Peele</i> or their movie <i>Keanu</i> it just never worked for me. Which was why I was so surprised by how much I really liked <i>Get Out</i>, the new horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(A quick word about categorisation: A lot of people have described it as a horror-comedy – and indeed the film was nominated in the Golden Globes as a comedy – but that’s a description I would resist. I can understand the temptation, as Peele does have a comedy background, and the film is very funny at times. But to me the phrase “horror-comedy” tends to mean a film in which the horror and comedy are intermixed to a greater degree – think of <i>Evil Dead II</i>, where Ash’s hand is possessed and tries to kill him. <i>Get Out</i> doesn’t do that; instead it takes its horror very seriously (even if it uses its horror for satirical purposes), and uses its comedic moments – which are mostly provided by one side character in particular – to ease the tension, in the same way that any other dramatic movie will use comedy in order to allow the audience to breathe. In other words, this is absolutely a horror film, and it really does lessen the impact of the film to in any way classify it as a comedy.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film centres on Chris, a young black man who is in a relationship with a white woman called Rose. He’s invited to go down to her family’s estate for the weekend, which he does against the best advice of his best friend. Once there he finds himself the centre of attention for this community of white people, who are weirdly almost too eager to let him know how cool they are with him being black and how not-racist they are – as Rose’s father points out, he would have voted for Obama a third time if it had been allowed – and there are very good reasons why they rely on black servants. And Rose’s mother is entirely justified in hypnotising Chris to help him quit smoking. Everything is fine, everything is okay, there’s no cause for alarm. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I loved the very specific choice that the film makes in its exploration of its themes. When you hear that premise of a horror film about a black man visiting his white girlfriend’s family, you imagine a very specific scenario, you imagine a typical redneck Klan family. This is not that. This is a good, intelligent, liberal family, who take pride in their open and accepting attitudes, and who use it as a way of shielding their intentions. These are people who may profess not to be racist, but for whom a person is ultimately defined by their skin colour, who might think people from another race or another culture are fine as long as they fit into their precisely measured world of acceptability, and who consciously or unconsciously look to use people with "differences" for their own purposes. I’ve heard stories about good white liberals going to a film expecting to see a film about how terrible racists are, and then being shocked and uncomfortable to realise that they themselves were the villains of this film. And that is smart, because it doesn’t let the viewer off. If the film’s villain is some two-dimensional Klansman, it’s easy to dismiss that, say “I’m not that”. This film hits closer to home, it should make everyone uncomfortable. You can’t help but wonder, am I like the Armitages? I hope not; I don’t think so; and then you stop and you think, not just about the things you say, but the things you think, the things you might never express aloud, and you think, my gosh, I really am the bad guy. Am I?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The performances in here are almost uniformly exceptional. Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford as the parents, our main figures of suspicion and threat, give incredibly fun performances, with a sinister self-satisfied edge to their performance. Keener in particular gives a strange softness to her character that set me on edge. It’s always a delight to see Stephen Root, and he’s having delirious fun as a blind art dealer who greatly admires Chris’s artistic ability. Allison Williams is called on to walk a delicate tightrope; we can never be sure about her role in the film’s events, whether she’s aware of her family’s activities or whether she’s oblivious to them, and I was impressed by how well she manages to walk that line of sweet and sinister throughout the film. There’s also the sheer delight that is Lil Rel Howery as TSA officer Rod Williams; in addition to being the voice of the audience yelling at Chris to leave this place, he’s also called on to carry much of the comedic load of the film and he is just a revelation – his recurring obsession that they’re making people into sex slaves is one of the funniest pieces of business I’ve seen all year. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the real highlight of the film is Daniel Kaluuya’s star performance. As Chris, Kaluuya has to carry some real acting weight. He has to lie to himself, tell himself that everything is okay, and we need to see him lying to himself. He has to be uncomfortable, but accepting of that discomfort since that’s just what he expects this experience to be like. He needs to be constantly on edge, constantly questioning, but accepting of what he’s told because his imaginings are too absurd to be true. Above all, he has to trust these people, but not seem naïve for doing so despite all of the warning signals he’s given. In the film’s best-known moment, he’s even called on to give a performance while his character is literally paralysed and unable to move a muscle, and his absolute haunted terror in that moment casts a spell over the entire film. There's a reason why almost every article about the movie uses <a href="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2017/12/get_out/lead_960.jpg?1512418813">a photo of that moment</a> as an illustration.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It might seem unusual that a film like this would be directed by someone with such a comedy background, but the more you think about it the more it makes sense. They might seem like opposite ends of the spectrum, but they’re both at their core about eliciting an instinctive response. Assessing the success of a dramatic work can be difficult, as there’s a lot of variation in the specific emotional response that you may or may not get from the audience, but it’s a lot more black-and-white to determine if a comedy or horror are successful; with comedy, you either find it funny or you don’t, and with horror, you either find it scary or you don’t.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror has always been used as a vehicle for exploring the issues of the day, and what has been fascinating is reading commentary on this film from black commentators who are able to talk about how real the experiences presented in this film really are. When you make a horror film, the audience is expecting bad things to happen, and so every interaction is tinged with extra meaning and expectation of bad things to come. I’ve never had that experience of being black in a room of white people with a feeling of being judged for my skin colour, but the way the film uses the threat inherent in being a horror film to communicate that experience is extremely effective.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of my favourite podcasters, Tyler Smith of <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/">Battleship Pretension</a>, was recently talking about <i>Get Out</i> as an example of the way a message movie really should work. This is a film that is big and angry and wants to rage against a society that made its existence necessary. But it’s also a film that understands that you need to make your argument heard, and to do that you need to make a film that people will want to see. And so <i>Get Out</i> is first and foremost interested in being a piece of entertainment. It’s not interested in yelling at its audience. It wants to take them on a journey, make them laugh a bit, make them scream a lot, and then it plants a seed that leaves you reflecting on the experience you’ve just had. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYYbXJr_NHN__41DfFXlpCvG7H1S5UY7yRCa8mn-ZEj7-JHAAtIABWYHYvVQIjxb2VmU2h-IaPVVuktrCEHuxH7jv4S7aJU1-g40tc6YV91hVO9A18XR4ViQ7AOHMCyIL3_Va8om0SJOhU/s1600/dunkirk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYYbXJr_NHN__41DfFXlpCvG7H1S5UY7yRCa8mn-ZEj7-JHAAtIABWYHYvVQIjxb2VmU2h-IaPVVuktrCEHuxH7jv4S7aJU1-g40tc6YV91hVO9A18XR4ViQ7AOHMCyIL3_Va8om0SJOhU/s320/dunkirk.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
Until I went to see the Christopher Nolan movie, I knew literally nothing about the story of <i>Dunkirk</i>. Literally nothing. I’d heard the name, but had always thought it was the location of a battle until I made such a statement in a conversation at work and was corrected. So I approached the film extremely curious. What kind of war film can this be if it’s not about a battle?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In May 1940, the Allied forces were on the verge of losing World War II, with most of the troops in France pinned down on the beach at Dunkirk, trapped by the German forces that surround them, and without the capability to transport the men out of France and over the Channel to home. And so a call went out for every boat possible to sail across from England to help carry the men back home. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a weird way, the approach Nolan takes to <i>Dunkirk</i> could almost be described as experimental. He adopts a structure for the film where the film tells three stories simultaneously – the story of the troops on the beach, of a civilian boat crossing the Channel to help with the evacuation, and of a Spitfire pilot fighting the German planes above the beach. What’s unexpected is that each of those stories is told on a different timescale – the troops on the beach cover one week, the boats one day, and the plane one hour – and the timescales merge together into one great piece. In some ways it’s almost like the way time ran at different speeds in <i>Inception</i>, except in the context of a real-world war film rather than a strange science-fiction dream heist movie. But it’s an approach that weirdly makes sense. After all, the troops were on the beach for a week, but it doesn’t take a week to sail across the Channel, and good luck for the pilot who tried to fly a Spitfire for a whole day, let alone a week. But at the same time, you don’t want a situation where you spend the whole film on the beach, and then suddenly have these boats arrive out of nowhere, or unexpectedly focusing intently on this one plane that has previously barely been in the film. So to avoid that, most films would allow the speed of events on the beach to dictate the film’s timeframe, and occasionally cut to boat owner Dawson as he goes about his business or to pilot Farrier as he flies on various missions, so that they are well-established by the time they actually become important to the story. But you don’t want that, because that’s a lot of screen time wasted just to justify bringing in these characters at the eleventh hour. Instead, the shifting timeframes allows Nolan the flexibility to focus his film on the actual story he wanted to tell, never stepping away from his focus on Dunkirk, while being able to time the beats in each individual story to that he can ensure that each reaches its climax at the perfect point so that the movie as a whole can hit its climax. It’s very carefully, masterfully constructed, and while the film is unlikely to take any of the big awards, if it takes Best Editing it will be well deserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film is also experiential in a way that few war films I’ve seen really are. For a start, we’re only ever on the beach, sailing to the beach, or flying over the beach. This is not a film where we’re given any background to events; we never cut away to general or politicians debating the best tactics for achieving their goals. Instead we just spend time with the actual people whose lives will be shaped by being at Dunkirk, experiencing what they experience, and because they don’t have a broader context for the war we don’t get a broader context. But in addition, the film is remarkable in the way it communicates what it is like to be in that situation. There’s a sequence where the civilian boat rescues a shell-shocked soldier, and the absolute horror he feels when he learns they’re sailing back to Dunkirk is palpable. And we believe that response, because we were on the ship when it was sinking and we felt that terror of feeling like we were going to drown. We were in that beached boat hiding from the German bullets punching holes all around. And there was never any reprieve, because if whenever we left the beach, we were only ever cutting to a damaged plane being flown by a pilot with no idea how much fuel he has left, or a woefully unprepared boat sailing into a warzone. This film reaches a level of experiential intensity and realism that I don’t think I’ve ever encountered before in a movie. Indeed I was relieved to find the film ending after only 100 minutes; Nolan’s films tend to be longer than most, but the tension in this film was so high and so sustained that had it been as long as his regular films either the accumulated tension would be simply unbearable or he would have had to do something to ease the tension and lessen the film’s ultimate impact. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nolan makes a particularly interesting choice to keep much of the film dialogue free. It’s entirely possible this was partly driven by practical considerations – about three-quarters of the film was shot in IMAX format, and the IMAX cameras are famously noisy, but if no-one says anything, then there’s no dialogue to redub later. But it does feel like it was a choice driven primarily from creative choices. We’ve all seen war films where the soldiers hunker down and talk about the life they’ve left behind, and it never fails to give the audience a chance to pause and recover ourselves for the next onslaught, and Nolan has no interest in allowing us to do that. Admittedly it does limit your connection to the characters themselves – while you can at least keep track of those prominent characters played by recognisable actors, most of the soldiers on the beach in particular blur together and are largely indistinguishable from each other. But too much time spent on dialogue to introduce any nuance or characterisation to individual soldiers feels as though it will take away from the overwhelming experience of the movie as a whole. And that’s a trade-off I’m okay with. I can get interesting and realistic characters in a multitude of films; <i>Dunkirk</i> seems interested in giving me a different experience, and one that is utterly unique.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One thing I particularly appreciated about the movie was how much the film relied on practical effects. While it’s by no means devoid of CG effects, there was a conscious choice to minimise CG where possible. So they had thousands of extras, over fifty ships, actual WWII planes flying overhead, explosions happening around the beach and in the water. I’m convinced this focus on actually recreating the events on the actual beach, rather than just taking the easier route of filming a largely empty beach and dropping a few thousand people or a dozen ships to fill the screen, is one of the key factors that leads to the sense of genuine realism of the film and the experience it inflicts on the audience.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And all this extreme, intense experience is wrapped up in this incredible story. I’d heard the phrase “Dunkirk spirit” before, but never really understood what it meant, but after seeing this film it’s very clear what significance that idea holds. This is a story of the heights of heroism and the lows of cowardice, which is true of all war films, but the specific story being told means it comes at that idea from a completely different direction. For the soldiers who would ordinarily be the heroes of most films, it’s just a story about survival; they’re not taking on the Germans, they’re in full retreat and just trying to last. The heroism instead is by ordinary civilians who have the choice to stand back and not engage, but who instead step forward willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to accomplish something extraordinary. And in its remarkable filmmaking <i>Dunkirk</i> allows us to experience everything that is incredible and awe-inspiring about that event. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhE9G_D2w5GLfu_JjVLIzBf6Fp0VMVf0oTvDk-Tm0-qOHl1qLYgk5H5d-K85By7kDJEQJYI9vJCLEaMG8hSFr4uUMXQqYHExHNAVfpCG84UDF0bWmWQAR5lkaCH45yR5ClTzVPRyx6VDfL/s1600/darkest_hour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhE9G_D2w5GLfu_JjVLIzBf6Fp0VMVf0oTvDk-Tm0-qOHl1qLYgk5H5d-K85By7kDJEQJYI9vJCLEaMG8hSFr4uUMXQqYHExHNAVfpCG84UDF0bWmWQAR5lkaCH45yR5ClTzVPRyx6VDfL/s320/darkest_hour.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
Rather interestingly, <i>Dunkirk</i> is not the only Picture nominee to deal with those events; if you were disappointed by <i>Dunkirk</i>’s lack of behind-the-scenes exploration of the evacuation, Joe Wright’s film <i>Darkest Hour</i> is focused on the political machinations taking place at the same time, and the evacuation is a notable subplot in the film. The movie focuses on Winston Churchill in May 1940, his first month as Prime Minister, when he had to decide whether to follow the prompting of his fellow party members and push for peace with Hitler, or stand and continue to fight. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Darkest Hour</i> is probably the most obviously “Oscar bait” movie nominated this year; it’s a premium historical drama very much anchored by Gary Oldman’s performance as Churchill. I’d been a bit wary about the performance going in – I’d earlier heard a clip of the film on a podcast and it sounded completely overdone – but looking at the performance as a whole, with visuals rather than just audio, the performance works. But it seems like the type of performance that will win the Oscar but shouldn’t – it’s a situation where you feel most of his performance is done by the makeup, which completely transforms Oldman until he is unrecognisable, while he himself is just called on to do an impersonation of one of the most easily impression-able figures of last century. It feels like you’re watching Churchill, to be sure, but it never really feels like a performance that gets below the character’s surface level.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One thing I’ve always been puzzled by is the fact that, having just led England to victory in World War II, Churchill then lost the election the same year the war ended. Although the film deals with the start of his term as PM and not its end, the film does quite well in explaining this fact. It essentially suggests that Churchill was perhaps not a great leader in ordinary times – at various points in the film we’re given a litany of his various political and strategic failings – but that he was the right man to lead the nation at that one time. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Indeed, one of the things I found most enjoyable about the movie was its portrait of the degree to which Churchill had to fight tensions within his own party, with people who were waiting for him to fail. Chamberlain was reluctant to resign, having been pressured to go largely by a lack of confidence in him by the opposition at a time when the Prime Minister really needed broad support across the House, although he still retained a lot of influence in his own party. Churchill was therefore the unpopular candidate who was nevertheless sufficiently politically acceptable to fill the seat until the opportunity to take a better candidate would present itself, and much of the drama is driven by these tensions. I was impressed with how effective the film was in exploring the way these behind-the-scenes political manoeuvring can dictate the public political sphere. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As someone who has a particular passion for the parliamentary process, it was a real delight when the movie opened on a stunning recreation of the Westminster House of Representatives circa 1940. It’s absolutely stunning, filled with dark atmospheric shadows, and the (admittedly limited) time the movie spent watching the House operating was wonderful. (There’s also <a href="https://twitter.com/exitthelemming/status/951771997259882496">an entertaining video</a> of the House singing along to "Hey Jude" between takes, which is fun to watch.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The biggest problem with the film comes in a moment in the climax of the film. Having notably established that Churchill had never taken public transport in his life, on his way to deliver one of his career-defining speeches, Churchill impulsively jumps out of his car, goes to the Underground, asks for directions to how to get to Westminster, then gets on the train and spends his ride talking to people about how they feel about the war. Firstly, and this is picky, but it took me out of the film when they established that Churchill was only one stop away from the Westminster station but he’s able to have an extended discussion during the time to travel that one stop; as an experienced train commuter (albeit in Wellington rather than London) while I was watching the film I thought the time seemed much too long, a fact that was borne out by similar criticism I seen from people with actual experience of the London Underground. It was particularly annoying because the solution was so easy; have him be three stops away rather than one.<br />
<br />
But the bigger criticism of that moment is just that the scene plays as false; I didn’t believe that the Prime Minister, going to a major speech, would take the train for the first time ever just to talk to people. I’ve read articles with the screenwriter who admits that it didn’t happen but argues that it could have happened, that Churchill was known to vanish and be found wandering around talking to people and asking their opinions. And that’s great to know. But the execution here means the moment feels untrue, unconvincing, which meant that it didn't work. All they needed to do was establish that this is something he does, have an earlier scene where no-one can find him and he’s out wandering the markets, and suddenly the train scene works better because it’s part of established behaviour. But as it is, as a stand-alone sequence, it was so unsuccessful that when I left the film the only thing I could think about was how much I hated that scene. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Darkest Hour</i> is for the most part a perfectly entertaining film, but it's definitely a film that feels out of place when compared to the quality of much of the rest of the field. It does feel as though every element of the film was designed specifically to increase the chances of winning an Oscar. It will probably achieve its goal, if only because the Academy has always liked to recognise big performances with lots of transformative makeup rather than having to consider the more subtle nuances that come with giving a more complex and interesting acting performance. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH1MeO1SsTtX2yqfMJ5-J4m5i-UJZGh5vW-xOeY9kmb1aieVeEdZ17ZJ1G6hZPIUS3O27r0132lN4ITmfb-MVKemNRhFxo7RPqORXqNOW0dgLKrxuoVQsVyogBS13l95PUcMr9aA6seBmP/s1600/three_billboards_outside_ebbing_missouri.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH1MeO1SsTtX2yqfMJ5-J4m5i-UJZGh5vW-xOeY9kmb1aieVeEdZ17ZJ1G6hZPIUS3O27r0132lN4ITmfb-MVKemNRhFxo7RPqORXqNOW0dgLKrxuoVQsVyogBS13l95PUcMr9aA6seBmP/s320/three_billboards_outside_ebbing_missouri.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
Another film that’s likely to take several acting awards is <i>Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri</i>. I went into the film uncertain what to expect; I’d heard some rapturous reviews coming out of film festivals, I’d enjoyed some of Martin McDonagh’s prior work, and the trailer made me laugh out loud, but then the backlash struck, with some critics I really respect and trust really disliking the film. In the end, I think it falls somewhere in the middle. <br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Frances McDormand stars as Mildred, a mother whose daughter was raped and murdered seven months earlier. Angry at the lack of progress in finding her daughter’s killer, she rents three billboards to post questions about the police’s lack of action. While the billboards specifically name Woody Harrelson’s chief of police, her anger tends to be targeted towards one police officer in particular, played by Sam Rockwell, who has been accused of apparently torturing a black man while in custody.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s a lot to like, even love, about the film. The dialogue in the film is probably the film’s greatest strength, particularly in its use of profanity. Mildred in particular is an angry character, justifiably so, and her dialogue is often a constant stream of profanity that feels like an explosion of rage that she can’t express any other way. At the same time McDonagh is an extremely witty writer, and in particular he has a talent for a rhythmic and creative use of relentless profanity that reminds you of the best work of Armando Ianucci, Which means that the way he uses profanity to heighten the dialogue has an effect of making it extremely funny. Which is fascinating, because I can’t understand how it works; how do you take a serious character, make their dialogue genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, without undercutting the seriousness of the emotions driving that dialogue? And yet that's what he does. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But there are also issues. For a start, McDonagh seems to have wanted to put so many more issues into the film than it has space for. The most glaring example is the issue of race. I’ve actually heard interviews with McDonagh where he talked about wanting to talk about racist attitudes in the police. So we hear people talking about how Sam Rockwell’s character tortured a black man in custody, Mildred gives an interview in which she talks about the police being too busy torturing black folks to catch her daughter’s killer, and in one scene where Mildred calls Rockwell a “n***** torturer” she is corrected by Rockwell that the phrase is “person-of-colour torturer” in the exact way that makes clear he has had to be told not to use the N-word. But we never see the supposed torture of the black person, we barely have any black characters of any substance, and when we do see the supposed racist police officer violently assaulting someone it’s a white person he’s attacking – he even states as he does it that he’s not torturing this person because he’s a racist, it’s because he’s an asshole who hates everyone. All of which means this theme McDonagh wanted to address is actively undercut by the film he’s made. The disappointing thing is that, with a couple more drafts, the film could be effective in discussing these issues, but as it is its interest seems half-hearted, as though it’s leaping onto the Black Lives Matter bandwagon without adequately integrating the idea into the film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the film does that all the time. McDonagh decides he’s angry with the Catholic church for all the child sex abuse scandals – which is an entirely reasonable position to take – but it doesn’t fit in this film, so he has to force it into the film in an entirely artificial way, introducing a local priest for a single scene for Mildred to yell at. The problem is, if Mildred is raging at the world because of her situation, she has the audience’s sympathy; if she’s raging over the generally evil state of the world, then she’s just an angry figure who is using her daughter’s death to justify her behaviour, and that is much less sympathetic. A similarly poorly considered plot element arises when the film decides to have a main character commit suicide; this should be a big deal, but it seems to have happened largely for the personal development of another character – development that could have happened in another way that didn’t involve killing a character I was invested in. There is so much that happens in the film just because, and it feels lazy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then there are the points where McDonagh simply doesn’t seem to have thought about the implications of how scenes play together. Witness, for instance, the character of Penelope, the 19-year-old girlfriend of Mildred’s ex-husband Charlie. In her every scene, Penelope is played for laughs; she’s sweet, naïve, a little bit stupid, but in her few scenes the character is genuinely likeable and I cared about her. But she is also in a relationship with a man who is seriously abusive – in his first scene Charlie literally grabs Mildred by the throat – and after that moment it’s hard to be comfortable with the film treating Penelope as light comic relief; I might find it easier to laugh at her naiveté if I wasn’t thinking about how that naiveté had led her into a life-threatening position. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or there’s the fact that everyone seems to simply indulge characters for their actions, with little thought to the real-life consequences for such action. Mildred goes around assaulting people, whether it’s violently kicking teenagers between their legs or drilling holes in people’s fingernails, and yet seems to only attract a minor telling off, as though “We know you’re going through something, so we’ll just look the other way as you work through it by attacking anyone you want.” And by the end someone is literally thrown through a first-floor window to fall several metres onto the concrete below, while someone else throws Molotov cocktails into a building causing horrific burns to the person in that building, and yet the worst consequence faced by anyone for these crimes seems to be, not that they go to prison, but that someone loses their job. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then there’s just something about the story structure that didn’t work for me. In particular, there’s a weird lag in the third act that completely threw me. The Molotov cocktail scene felt to me like the film had reached its climax, and it was now nearing its end. Except that the film just carried on and on after it. Some of that material was necessary for the place that the film ultimately arrived at (you need a lot of Sam Rockwell’s scenes, for instance, for the character’s development), but a lot of it also felt largely unnecessary. There’s an entire subplot of Mildred reluctantly going on a date with Peter Dinklage that is introduced very late and that feels as though it contributes very little; I’m a fan of Dinklage, but he does deserve better than this. (I’m also uncomfortable to have Mildred be so openly disdainful of Dinklage, who has never been anything less than sweet and kind; the fact that he’s a little person adds an extra dimension to their relationship, and I’m not sure if we’re supposed to believe that is a factor in her attitude or not.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The frustrating thing is that there is so much more to say about the film. I have so many problems with the film that I haven’t had a chance to express yet. And yet it’s a genuinely enjoyable film. The experience of watching the film is great; I laughed big belly laughs throughout the film, and was fully entertained throughout. There are wonderful performances; I don’t begrudge any of the awards given to the actors. But the issues with the film, the things that continue to nag and bother me about the film, come down to a script that seems more focused on finding the funniest line of dialogue than in the actual structure of the story and that only ever half-heartedly engages with the ideas McDonagh wanted to discuss. The problem is that <i>Three Billboards</i> feels as though it has a chance of winning Best Picture, and I hope it doesn’t. The film is too proud of itself while taking too many shortcuts to really justify that type of acclaim.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuR3aQSpNDB0-OBE0mOiiW1KvHaJ-pBEYby2Q6ZiPluEA4zdt5l4jYsHrnNji9q9z2_C68RRuUv2EtDbAeDKtO-TZYaUBmbWH2IhiZL_ak4EYl3_7VLj7yy6NOCKTLJ2pE7b0jL9MOHSD6/s1600/post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuR3aQSpNDB0-OBE0mOiiW1KvHaJ-pBEYby2Q6ZiPluEA4zdt5l4jYsHrnNji9q9z2_C68RRuUv2EtDbAeDKtO-TZYaUBmbWH2IhiZL_ak4EYl3_7VLj7yy6NOCKTLJ2pE7b0jL9MOHSD6/s320/post.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
There was a joke in this year’s Golden Globes where host Seth Myers mentioned the film <i>The Post</i>, and someone with a handful of awards immediately came running in and had to be sent off being told it was “too early for that”. Indeed it was much too early for that — <i>The Post</i> won no Golden Globes at all — and having seen the film, the joke seems rather baffling; the notion that this is some kind of presumptive winner that would sweep all categories makes very little sense to me. Don’t get me wrong, the film is a likeable and solid piece of cinema, but it’s little more than that, and for me it hasn’t had the lingering impact that many of the other nominees have had.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film looks at the decision of the Washington Post, especially paper owner Katharine Graham and editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee, to publish the Pentagon Papers exposing government deception over Vietnam in the aftermath of legal action taken against the New York Times for publishing the same material.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film inevitably needs to be compared to <i>Spotlight</i>, the Oscar-winning film about the Boston Globe’s investigation into abuse in the Catholic Church. (It’s a comparison that is particularly relevant when you realise Josh Singer co-wrote both films.) And it’s a comparison where <i>The Post</i> falls short. <i>Spotlight</i> did a phenomenal job in making the actual work of reporting feel vital and exciting, most notably in a brilliant montage of people circling names in directories or rummaging through old newspaper reports to piece together information; in other words, the film used cinematic techniques to communicate the experience and excitement of making these discoveries. <i>The Post</i> doesn’t really succeed in the same way; it’s all scenes of lots of poorly-defined people in the one room reading, occasionally reading out some sentence or asking “Has anyone got the second page of this document?” We can see how excited the reporters are, but it didn’t have that same sense of communicating what this experience is like.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Possibly part of the problem is that, even as I was watching the film, I found myself wondering “Why are you telling THIS story?” I had initially assumed it would have been the Post that broke the story of the Pentagon Papers, and was shocked when the New York Times started publishing the material. The first part of the film has Bradlee and his team far behind the story, trying to catch up to where the Times is already at. In the end, they really only become important because they make the decision to pick things up when the Times is legally barred from printing any more of the documents. Which was a good and important decision on the part of the Post, but I still wonder “Why this story?” Sure, there’s some drama in presenting the decision to publish as one that could bring down the paper, but it doesn’t feel that big a decision; by the time they did that, it was already clearly a story of huge public interest. Much more dramatic, I thought, would be a film about the New York Times being confronted with this mass of material, not knowing what they had, not even knowing if they can rely on their source, and discovering this massive story and having to debate in a vacuum whether or not it’s even in the public interest to release this information; that would certainly be a more dramatic film. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The thing is, it’s well known that the film has really only come together this year. Spielberg apparently read the script about a week after Trump’s inauguration, when everyone was debating “fake news”, and the film is very clearly a response to current events; you have the news media publishing stories the president doesn’t like, so the president uses every mechanism at his disposal to silence the story, whether by using legal means in the case of Nixon, or by just trying to discredit them in Trump’s case. And if you view it from that point of view, the decision to focus on the Post makes more sense; the team at the Times were all men, but the Post had Katherine Graham as a key figure and, especially given the current climate and the allegations that were made about Trump during the election, making a film centred on a woman becomes a political decision. But that decision means you risk telling the least dramatic version of this story, sacrificing the long-term life of the film for a short-term purpose. It also hampers the film because Graham is largely irrelevant through much of the film; her plotline tends to be more focused on her social events and her company’s IPO than the actual news story her paper is trying to publish. But they needed to keep Graham around in the story because (a) she’s played by Meryl Streep, so she needs things to do, and (b) she needs to be an ongoing presence in the film so that she doesn’t feel like she came out of nowhere when she says “Print the story.” (It also doesn’t help that I didn’t really care for Streep here; in a film filled with excellent performances, I felt I could see her thinking through her acting choices at every moment of the story.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I really enjoyed the way the film looked at the conflicted relationships that can develop between politicians and the media. In one scene, former Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara tells his long-time friend Katherine Graham about the Times’ upcoming coverage while he’s a guest at a dinner party held by her. In another moment, Ben Bradlee remembers his friendship with JFK, and discusses how he met with Jackie Kennedy so soon after the assassination that she was literally still wearing the blood-stained dress. The media is supposed to hold the government to account for its actions, and yet the people who make the decisions about what is and is not news are so entwined in their personal relationships with the people they should be covering that they’re in effect compromised and don’t have the distance needed to effectively scrutinise these people.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I loved the way the film delighted in the physical process of printing the paper in the days before computers. You watch them preparing the articles one letter at a time, checking it, there’s melted metal and massive machines, it feels hot and grimy and exhausting, and as you watch it you realise how insane it is that they went through all this entire process from scratch every single day to produce something that would be thrown away at the end of the day. It’s an incredible process to watch; while it must be so much easier to put together a paper today in the age of computers, it feels less wonderful, less miraculous somehow. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I liked the way they dealt with Nixon. He’s obviously an essential figure hovering over the entire story, but he’s not an active participant in the actual events portrayed, and movie attempts to incorporate such a recognisable and larger-than-life figure can often feel distracting and distancing. The film’s solution – to only ever view the man from a distance while hearing the actual tapes that Nixon made of his conversations – is rather elegant, and reminded me of the way the film <i>Good Night And Good Luck</i> only used the actual interview footage of McCarthy. Less successful was the way the film tried to bring the Nixon downfall into the film. After a perfect ending to this story, with Bradlee and Graham walking through the room of printing press, the film cut to the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, then cut to credits. It just felt clumsy; yes, the Post was central to breaking the Watergate story – Woodward and Bernstein were Post reporters, and Bradlee himself was a major character in <i>All the President’s Men</i> – but the break-in was a year later, and really had nothing to do with the story being told in this film. It’s just an awkward way of introducing the material. If you’re watching the film and don’t have the background knowledge of how Nixon’s presidency came to an end, the scene is meaningless to you because there’s no context to explain what this break-in means. And if you do know how Nixon’s career came to an end, his recurring appearances throughout the film and the constant discussions about cover-ups are enough to remind you of that fact; you don’t need to see torches in the Watergate Hotel to remember that Nixon’s career ended in scandal. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ultimately, it’s not a bad film; it’s Spielberg, and as long as he has decent material he will deliver a strong entertaining film. It’s just kind of forgettable.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUvD9c47mo6SVU8DiMh8WYex22munt1DWQ_yjqlgHXKnIVTev9a6R-9o9Fg0VKllsuF4iQqJG-CJq11zMcScWPbqtERE1AVSqL2o563k54Z0ZeN06seX4RnVpfFSwG68Viv3wKDq1J3JB7/s1600/call_me_by_your_name.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUvD9c47mo6SVU8DiMh8WYex22munt1DWQ_yjqlgHXKnIVTev9a6R-9o9Fg0VKllsuF4iQqJG-CJq11zMcScWPbqtERE1AVSqL2o563k54Z0ZeN06seX4RnVpfFSwG68Viv3wKDq1J3JB7/s320/call_me_by_your_name.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
Perhaps it was all the build-up to <i>Call Me By Your Name</i> that meant the film didn’t work for me. People had been raving about the film ever since Sundance in January 2017, so by the time I got around to watching it in early 2018, I’d heard a year of constant praise for this film. And the resulting film was… okay, fine, pleasant, but not anything that stayed with me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film focuses on Elio, the 17-year-old son of an American academic living in the Italian countryside. Elio has a sweet Italian girlfriend who he doesn’t seem especially passionate about, largely because he’s slowly becoming attracted to Oliver, the 24-year-old graduate student assisting his father. Over the summer the relationship between the two young men develops from being somewhat antagonistic into a tentative but reluctant affection and ultimately into an intensely romantic one. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film put me off right from the start, with the credits playing over <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwJQKcRffEA">a John Adams piece</a> that I just could not stand and just found intrusive. The film doesn’t have an original score, instead making use of existing music, but they use several John Adams pieces throughout the film until it feels as though those pieces become the film’s most overriding musical identity, and it set me on edge every time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But beyond that musical choice, I didn’t really find much to react to at all. It was pleasant to watch, it had solid performances and some nicely played scenes (there was one particularly enjoyable playful moment where Elio teases Oliver by making changes to a piece of Bach that Oliver wants to hear, and Michael Stuhlbarg steals the film with a spectacular late scene where he talks with Elio about the relationship), but it never engaged me. Based on its reputation I was expecting some great work of cinema, but instead it felt good but slight. This extends to the film’s best known scenes: I’d heard so many people talking about the “Love My Way” dance scene that it was disappointing to finally see it and find myself asking “Is that it?” The scene that gives the film its title feels contrived and written, and I wasn’t sure if it was intended to be quite as narcissistic as it came across. The film’s other most famous scene, the peach scene, at least doesn’t have that effect (I can at least understand people talking about that moment), and it has a distinctively gooey tactile element to the moment that is quite effective, but at the same time it’s hard to take the scene too seriously when it’s really little more than a slightly less absurd version of <i>American Pie</i>’s pie scene. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If there’s anything that I did find myself thinking about with the film, it’s the cinematography, which is just beautiful. It helps that Sayombhu Mukdeeprom is shooting some absolutely stunning scenery, but the rich lush tones he achieves gives the film a sense of a warm and sweet nostalgia. It doesn’t feel as though we’re watching the film’s events as they happened, but that we’re watching the idealised remembrances of Elio looking back at a time and place where everything was perfect and wonderful and carefree. The look of the movie is perfectly evocative, and is probably the part of the film that comes to mind when I’m reminded of the film.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But ultimately, it didn’t really do much for me. I watched the film only a few weeks ago, but it’s already largely gone from my thoughts; the only reason I’m still thinking about it is because I’m trying (and failing) to think of things to say about it for this post.</div>
Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-60316136015012872062017-07-06T21:15:00.000+12:002018-07-05T23:56:29.318+12:00The matryoshka doll and suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings... mainly happy endingsSo here's the thing,<br />
<br />
Film Festival tickets went on sale today, so picture me in front of my computer waiting for tickets to become available. Promising start: I was able to get from my wishlist through to the ticket select screen. But after selecting my tickets, I was confronted with a blank screen. And then when I reloaded, I found I had apparently been fully logged out of the website, and my wishlist was now 0. I tried repeatedly to log in, but it seemed to time out every time. Occasionally it would briefly appear on one screen as though I had been logged back in, but when I clicked through, I had been logged out again.<br />
<br />
Eventually I was able to get through to my wishlist and then through the ticket select screen, at which point I encountered serious problems with the seat selection. After I’d selected seats for a few movies I would suddenly be confronted with a second pop-up inside the seat selection pop-up, like a Russian nesting doll of pop-ups, with no way to close it. In desperation I just tried waiting a few minutes, hoping that the pop-up would close when the five minute countdown ended, but instead the pop-up instead reverted back to the homepage. And so, as there was no obvious way to close the pop-up, I was forced to close the window and lose my already-booked seats, even though I could still see them on the screen underneath the pop-up. And this happened to me several times. On one occasion, the pop-up window reverted back to the screen that listed all of my films but that still gave me the option to change my seats. I found myself trying to select seats from a pop-up within a pop-up, hoping against hope that this would all work out. However, it eventually reverted back to the festival home page, and I had to start all over again. Frustratingly, a couple of time I encountered these problems as I reached close to the end of my ticket buying process, so there was a lot of effort wasted where I had to start again. (I may have yelled and jumped up and down in frustration at one point, disturbing my work colleagues.) There was also one point, after close to 2 hours, where I actually completed the seat selection process, entered my contact details, clicked to go to the payment page, and then the site timed out on me and pushed me back to the main page. And so I had to start again.<br />
<br />
In the end, I was able to get my tickets after 2½ hours. I decided to split my order in two, on the basis that if I encountered problems with my order I’d only wasted half the amount of time. Also, given the issues I had with seat selection, I eventually just tried to change my seats if I felt I really needed to find a different seat, and I was terrified every time I clicked “Change Seats”.<br />
<br />
End lesson: next year, try to book my tickets in smaller batches, rather than getting all my films at once, simply to minimise the wasted effort if I encounter a problem later in the process.<br />
<br />
Anyway, the films I'm seeing this year are:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbeyV-Fsz-VOAk0ULPAhv_BJzilad71rinXmdBdprvOo6vepuMr2_KQdHgiTnfqM8EZAUA4oNmOupQGUwyOgnCu9QJ6VMLskTwQySRNrp2S5NkGq2DZerfNk8BzG4fSuFQ5vF3MoNVWMpM/s1600/NZFF17+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1548" data-original-width="1093" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbeyV-Fsz-VOAk0ULPAhv_BJzilad71rinXmdBdprvOo6vepuMr2_KQdHgiTnfqM8EZAUA4oNmOupQGUwyOgnCu9QJ6VMLskTwQySRNrp2S5NkGq2DZerfNk8BzG4fSuFQ5vF3MoNVWMpM/s640/NZFF17+poster.jpg" width="449" /></a></div>
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/the-party/" target="_blank"><i>The Party</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/the-square/" target="_blank"><i>The Square</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/top-of-the-lake-china-girl/" target="_blank"><i>Top of the Lake: China Girl</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/blade-of-the-immortal/" target="_blank"><i>Blade of the Immortal</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/the-farthest/" target="_blank"><i>The Farthest</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/belle-de-jour/" target="_blank"><i>Belle de Jour</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/thats-not-me/" target="_blank"><i>That’s Not Me</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/super-dark-times/" target="_blank"><i>Super Dark Times</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/menashe/" target="_blank"><i>Menashe</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/i-am-not-your-negro/" target="_blank"><i>I Am Not Your Negro</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/in-times-of-fading-light/" target="_blank"><i>In Times of Fading Light</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/a-ghost-story/" target="_blank"><i>A Ghost Story</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/my-life-as-a-courgette/" target="_blank"><i>My Life As a Courgette</i></a><br />
- <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/wind-river/" target="_blank"><i>Wind River</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/lady-macbeth/" target="_blank"><i>Lady Macbeth</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/hostages/" target="_blank"><i>Hostages</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/on-body-and-soul/"><i>On Body and Soul</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/stalker/"><i>Stalker</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/berlin-syndrome/"><i>Berlin Syndrome</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/20th-century-women/"><i>20th Century Women</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/jasper-jones/"><i>Jasper Jones</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/the-merciless/"><i>The Merciless</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/abacus-small-enough-to-jail/"><i>Abacus: Small Enough to Jail</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/it-comes-at-night/"><i>It Comes at Night</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/hounds-of-love/"><i>Hounds of Love</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/6-days/"><i>6 Days</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/dealt/"><i>Dealt</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/the-killing-of-a-sacred-deer/"><i>The Killing of a Sacred Deer</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/bad-genius/"><i>Bad Genius</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/summer-1993/"><i>Summer 1993</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/a-monster-calls/"><i>A Monster Calls</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/happy-end/"><i>Happy End</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/the-beguiled/"><i>The Beguiled</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/loveless/"><i>Loveless</i></a><br />
- <a href="https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/good-time/"><i>Good Time</i></a><br />
<br />
If you'd asked me about my thoughts on this year's festival, just from the programme, I'd have said that it felt like a lesser year, although I'm not sure why. And then I look at my initial long list of films I was interested in and realised that list had 55 films on it, and after cutting out all of the films where screenings clashed I still wind up with 35 films, just one short of my record from last year (and since one of these films is a six-hour screening, that’s the equivalent of three films, so endurance-wise it’s as though I’m seeing 37 films). So hopefully it's a stronger programme than I'd realised.<br />
<br />
A big disappointment in the programme is the general lack of classic films. There's no Live Cinema event this year (it appears the only city getting such an event is Christchurch, with a screening of Buster Keaton's <i>Our Hospitality</i>). And in the entire festival there are only two classic movies screening - one is Buñuel's <i>Belle de Jour</i>, which is a film I'm really not that interested in, but at the same time, Buñuel is a major film figure that I have no experience with, so I'll give that a go. The other classic screening is Tarkovsky's <i>Stalker</i>, which I have even less interest in: earlier in the year I watched <i>Ivan's Childhood</i>, <i>Solaris</i>, and <i>The Mirror</i>, and didn't connect with any of them; that said, Tarkovsky feels like a director who probably plays better on the big screen, allowing the viewer to get caught in the imagery without the easy distractions that come with watching a film at home. So I'm giving them a shot, but at the moment I'm not really looking forward to either of them.<br />
<br />
The major event of the festival is the screening of the entirety of <i>Top of the Lake: China Girl</i>, the second season of the Jane Campion TV series. I was a bit uncertain whether I should go; with intermissions it's a seven-hour commitment, and that's a lot of time I could spend watching films that I might not be able to watch on TV in a month or two. But in the end thee were really only two films screening that day that I was particularly interested in and, as those screenings clashed with each other, skipping <i>Top of the Lake</i> would only allow me to add one extra film to my list. So I decided to just go for the event. The first season really was beautiful, and I expect the second season should be incredible on the big screen.<br />
<br />
There are some films that I've heard good things about: I've been waiting to see <i>A Monster Calls</i> for six months; I've heard that <i>A Ghost Story</i> is beautiful and meditative; I've read a number of articles praising both <i>It Comes at Night</i> and <i>Hounds of Love</i> as really interesting horror films; <i>Lady Macbeth</i> and <i>20th Century Women</i> have excellent reputations; I've wanted to see <i>Berlin Syndrome</i> ever since it was highly praised at Sundance; and I'm always excited by a new Sofia Coppola film, and her remake of <i>The Beguiled</i> is supposed to be pretty special. It will be interesting to see what first-time director Taylor Sheridan does with <i>Wind River</i>, having done such great work writing <i>Sicario</i> and <i>Hell Or High Water</i>. I’ve been wanting to see the stop-motion animated <i>My Life As A Courgette</i> for a while, although I am disappointed that scheduling clashes mean I can only see the dubbed version. <i>I Am Not Your Negro</i> is supposed to be a fascinating documentary about the history of the civil right movement as seen through one observer. And I remember hearing one critic I follow really praising the (clumsily titled) <i>Abacus: Small Enough to Jail</i>.<br />
<br />
There are some films I’m seeing based solely of the people behind them. I adored <i>Force Majeure</i>, so am definitely interested to see what Ruben Östlund does in <i>The Square</i>. The reaction to <i>Happy End</i> thus far has been mixed, and while I don’t always love Michael Haneke’s work (in fact some of his films I actively hate), I’m certainly always interested to see what he does and am open to being challenged by his films. I had problems with Yorgos Lanthimos’ previous film <i>The Lobster</i>, but he does create a unique cinematic world, so I’m looking forward to seeing <i>The Killing of a Sacred Deer</i>. And I was impressed by Andrey Zvyagintsev’s <i>Leviathan</i>, and his new film <i>Loveless</i> has similarly developed an excellent reputation.<br />
<br />
And then there are just films that sound interesting. A documentary about a blind man who is one of the world’s top card magicians (<i>Dealt</i>). A Thai thriller about teens cheating in exams that becomes an elaborate heist film (<i>Bad Genius</i>). I’ve generally stayed away from Takashi Miike, having only seen his <i>13 Assassins</i>, but his 100th film, <i>Blade of the Immortal</i>, a story about an immortal swordsman, sounds fun. There are some interesting sounding thrillers - <i>Super Dark Times</i>, a film that mixes coming-of-age and dark thriller; <i>Hostages</i>, about a plane hijacking; and <i>6 Days</i>, about a hostage incident at the Iranian embassy in the 1980s. And <i>The Farthest</i>, about the Voyager programme, promises some incredible imagery of the deepest parts of our solar system.<br />
<br />
There are a few titles I was hoping would be screening but are not, but all in all, thinking about it, it seems like a pretty good selection. Hoping for a good festival.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-77747153220443086862017-06-09T23:51:00.000+12:002018-07-18T20:11:31.660+12:00Victory ReduxSo here's the thing,<br />
<br />
We're less than two months from the start of the 2017 film festival, so it's about time I get around to posting my comments on the 2016 films. As usual, these were posts that I wrote on Facebook very shortly after seeing the films, and never more than a day or two after the screenings, so my responses are still very fresh and in some cases still unformed. They're mostly just about trying to capture my immediate response to these films.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlttPjn7F-Ph1GwSkPjv0nS3X_flBXcZpYnAfXlYWh0ztU_DHrQ3oy-eM9xZk7qfVQ3BjTWr4P3hYEb4auth8CePh1hNAsaAbkoF9Fa2afngLxZNwIT6yzkuELx5Em30hrQ-SSzc17jW8X/s1600/weiner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlttPjn7F-Ph1GwSkPjv0nS3X_flBXcZpYnAfXlYWh0ztU_DHrQ3oy-eM9xZk7qfVQ3BjTWr4P3hYEb4auth8CePh1hNAsaAbkoF9Fa2afngLxZNwIT6yzkuELx5Em30hrQ-SSzc17jW8X/s320/weiner.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Weiner</i></b><br />
First film of the festival was a brilliantly entertaining documentary portrait of Anthony Weiner, the well-regarded New York congressman who resigned from Congress in 2011 after it was revealed that he had been sending sexual pictures of himself to a number of women. Two years later, things having died down, Weiner tried to restart his political career by running for New York mayor. And his campaign was working quite well; he managed to overcome his damaged reputation to become the frontrunner in the Democratic primary. And then it was discovered that he was still sending even-more-explicit photos of himself to women, this time under the hilarious pseudonym of Carlos Danger. His reputation was well and truly savaged at this point, the campaign collapsed into a fiasco as the media focused on his indiscretions, and while he remained in the campaign it quickly became clear he was going to fall far short of his goal.<br />
But it seems that, long before the scandal broke, Weiner had actually allowed a couple of documentary-makers to follow him during his mayoral campaign, presumably hoping at first that the resulting documentary might help salvage his reputation. The film doesn't say this but, based on interviews I've heard with the filmmakers, one of them had previously worked for Weiner (I believe as his chief of staff), which explains how the filmmakers were able to get surprisingly close to the politician. The film had a clear affection for the man, who does come across as very charismatic and likeable, and which makes the sense of hurt and betrayal at his actions quite palpable. But it's also quite honest about his failings (behind the obvious) in the way that those are closest to us also know our every bad point. The early firebrand figure yelling with righteous anger at the underhanded dealings of his rivals may be impressive, but when he turns that same fury into indignation during a television interview about his mistakes he comes across extraordinarily badly. (Indeed it's surprising when in the following scene we find him watching the interview taking pride in how well he destroyed the interviewer, suggesting a level of narcissism that made him blind to how he was presenting himself.) He may take pride in being a New Yorker, and New Yorkers don't quit, but there comes a point where it's clear that Weiner has destroyed all of his capital as a political figure, and his sheer unwillingness to step back (whether it off pride, blindness, or sheer bloody-mindedness) winds up damaging him completely. By the end of the film, he's being chased through a McDonald's on his way to his election night party, a figure of absolute absurdity.<br />
There’s also a clear sense that what destroyed him may not have been the actual scandal, but the fact that he lied about it. There’s a brilliant moment in the film where one of his aides, trying to get in front of the problem, asks how many women there that could come forward, just so that she can prepare a plan for how best to handle the situation, and he’s just lying and obfuscating; he’s trying to justify why we could argue that this person is already covered by that confession, he’s refusing to say anything other than “there may be more than one”, because if he gives an actual number and it’s too low then he can be caught out in a lie, but if he gives the true number then it’s embarrassing and he looks bad. So he gives vague answers but it’s obvious that he’s trying to give vague answers, and so the media starts to hound him trying to get a straight truthful answer, until the whole thing spirals out of control. You get a real sense that if he had just told the truth, it would have been humiliating and might have cost him the election, but voters might also have respected him for telling the embarrassing truth, it would definitely have taken the wind out of the media’s sails, and he could get back to campaigning on the issues. But because he never gives an answer to the question, it becomes the only question he’s ever asked. And his compulsion to lie is completely understandable; we all have things we would hate for people to learn about us, and to have those secrets exposed in front of the world media is just awful. But what happened to Anthony Weiner is a clear example of how lying does not solve anything.<br />
The star of the film has to be Weiner's wife Huma. Her early scenes with her husband are a lot of fun, and they do seem like a couple who have been through a lot and come out much stronger. And then the revelations come out, and it’s awful for her (the long silence between Weiner and Huma in their first meeting after the news breaks is one of the most uncomfortable scenes I've seen in a while), and she finds herself drawn into this mess, with the media surprisingly brutal towards her, and it just hurts to see the betrayal and hurt and frustration on her face. She's often a silent figure in much of the film, but it feels as though words would lessen what she says with her face.<br />
At the end of the film, the filmmaker asks Weiner why he let them film all of this. And it's a good question. All you can think is that Weiner thought this would all blow over, that he would get past all of this fiasco, that this film could still become the story of redemption he probably imagined it being. And perhaps it says something about our leaders, that the compulsion and confidence that leads someone to say "I am the one person who can change this city", knowing that a million obstacles will be put in their way, can make them blind to the realities of the obstacles put in front of us. Or maybe that’s just Weiner’s personality, another one of his failings. In any case, it’s an engaging, at times uncomfortable and painful, but never less than entertaining film.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJPO8R8l2FFFqcI55DqJnhdtbE4r90inzihfT1lpM28roc59z0Zf-fWOWjZGvQ8Apk-znnt2aykiU35DU8Z7FgWJlsnMqqnW1Um7WkxyrVZHfDd90rVIamLzjXaeMYtjtUKjVZzHMRBED0/s1600/music_of_strangers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJPO8R8l2FFFqcI55DqJnhdtbE4r90inzihfT1lpM28roc59z0Zf-fWOWjZGvQ8Apk-znnt2aykiU35DU8Z7FgWJlsnMqqnW1Um7WkxyrVZHfDd90rVIamLzjXaeMYtjtUKjVZzHMRBED0/s320/music_of_strangers.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble</i></b><br />
In 2000, acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma brought together a collection of top musicians from a variety of musical traditions, some from the European classical world, others expert in traditional musical forms and instruments from Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere, looking to merge their ideas together in the quest for something new musically, a search for a kind of musical universal language. In the wake of 9/11, the need for this connection seemed particularly pressing, and so the group continues to this day.<br />
<i>The Music of Strangers</i> is an interesting, genial, feel-good documentary about the ensemble that is never less than enjoyable, but that suffers from a distinct lack of focus. Early on in the film, it's suggested that the Silk Road Ensemble might have been Ma's attempt to find new inspiration and passion in an art that he has long mastered; an interesting idea that is never mentioned again until the final scene of the film. In the meantime, we get a brief history of the group, we watch its early experiments, we spend a lot of time just listening to its music and seeing how these traditions are brought together, and we spend a lot of time with four particular members of the ensemble, getting to know them well. And the film raises lots of interesting issues: where is the line between cultural inspiration and cultural appropriation, what happens when art and culture conflict with politics, what is the value and role of music in a world where people are suffering and dying in war zones right now, can culture and traditions survive in a modern world. And there's a lot of interesting characters, whether it be the Iranian kamancheh player living effectively in exile away from his wife or the Spanish bagpiper who seemingly was rather well-known in her teenage years as a kind of punk bagpiper.<br />
The problem is that because all of these elements are in a film running less than 100 minutes, there's simply not the time to develop any of them. Instead, it instead becomes a rambling collection of thoughts raised by the ensemble, without any follow-through because we've always got to move on to the next thing. The whole thing feels utterly formless. A sequence towards the end of the film where the Syrian clarinettist travels to a refugee camp to teach music to the children could form an entire film by itself, but here it's dispensed with in about five minutes, and it feels like a distraction, included because it's interesting and we have the footage. When the film ends, it feels less like it has finished saying what it wanted to say, and more that they had reached their contacted length so just had to end. This would have worked much better as a multi-part TV documentary series, where there was time to explore what it was saying, but as it is, it felt incredibly surface-level.<br />
But the music; oh the music. There were points where I realised I was just holding my breath, literally breathtaken at the incredible music. I am definitely seeking out some of the group's albums. If for nothing else, it was worth seeing for that.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC4FN_WX_LvLrGzzV-MoTxNohH9MeG4lwWYcAjBhSYLogIfDaikR_p0M83Sj_UerDv4yMLPFkLDr5EyayXW6f44hHsq3QFSQS-XnXWJ6XE02QYQQ6WXvTX8m3NnHA6cukwEjHwqPsXJQHX/s1600/after_the_storm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC4FN_WX_LvLrGzzV-MoTxNohH9MeG4lwWYcAjBhSYLogIfDaikR_p0M83Sj_UerDv4yMLPFkLDr5EyayXW6f44hHsq3QFSQS-XnXWJ6XE02QYQQ6WXvTX8m3NnHA6cukwEjHwqPsXJQHX/s320/after_the_storm.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>After the Storm</i></b><br />
My first disappointment of the festival. Which is not to say it's a bad film; it's definitely not. But I remember walking out of <i>Our Little Sister</i>, the previous film from Kore-eda Hirokazu, completely charmed by this simple story, feeling that I just wanted to spend more time with those characters; I would have been happy watching an entire movie of them just preserving plums. <i>After the Storm</i> did not have that effect on me.<br />
A large part of that is possibly that I just couldn't connect to its main character Ryoto. Abe Hiroshi plays the role well and brings a great deal of charm, but he felt like a stereotypical deadbeat divorced dad; supposedly a talented novelist, he instead spends his time working as a private investigator, occasionally following his ex-wife and her new boyfriend, raiding his mother's house looking for his late father's possessions to pawn, and gambling away any money he gets while he falls further behind in his child support.<br />
And the film keeps promising the titular storm, the 23rd typhoon of the year we're told. But it just felt like it was never getting there. By the time it finally did arrive, trapping Ryoto at his mother's house with his ex-wife and their son, I genuinely felt sorry for the ex-wife and child for having to deal with this guy, while the best I felt I could hope for in this story was for him to realise he needed to stop being such an asshole.<br />
I don't want to misrepresent the film; it is a good film. Kore-eda is a skilled observer of human behaviour and family relationships, both functional and dysfunctional, and I loved watching how these different family members engage with Ryoto. His relationship with his sister was particularly enjoyable, especially in the way she responded to seeing the worst aspects of their father in him. It was fascinating watching Kore-eda capture very real human impulses, like the way parents will do things with their kids to give them the same experiences that they had with their parents. And it is a consistently laugh-out-loud funny film, not in a sitcom-joke-delivery way, but in a more natural honest way, the way people sometimes just can be funny. I love the little realistic domestic touches Kore-eda brings; the way the mother's home is so small and cramped that the sister sitting at the table has to lean forward to avoid being hit every time the fridge is opened, or the iced dessert treat that's frozen solid and freezer-burnt. It feels like a genuine portrayal of these characters in these circumstances.<br />
So it's worth seeing, and I'm glad to have spent the time watching it. But I can't help comparing it to <i>Our Little Sister</i>, which had a delicate beauty to it, and just the memory of that film had brought me so much joy over the past year. I don't think this will have that kind of lingering effect on me, and sadly that makes it a disappointment.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-67Egq3ppOSYN-YaXl-RtngXwPDjDc-mXI8JtwsU-6vYGjYPS3QveqRTOX9oKn2arLJOIstfLLT8cLyznN55LfzcR55IS7gJjCHbaxGvCquxif8w6N5fhuVIvsk2hJfjKREf_ZOScAnZO/s1600/under-sun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="668" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-67Egq3ppOSYN-YaXl-RtngXwPDjDc-mXI8JtwsU-6vYGjYPS3QveqRTOX9oKn2arLJOIstfLLT8cLyznN55LfzcR55IS7gJjCHbaxGvCquxif8w6N5fhuVIvsk2hJfjKREf_ZOScAnZO/s320/under-sun.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<i><b>Under the Sun</b></i><br />
A fascinating documentary about the life of a young schoolgirl named Zin-Mi, an example of a perfectly normal everyday child living in North Korea, who is about to become a citizen by joining the Children’s Union. And the state is very helpful to the filmmakers; indeed, they are even so generous as to provide an adviser for the film, just to make sure that no mistakes are made in accurately presenting the truth of life for an average young girl growing up in the best country in the world. All of which means this manages to also be one of the most horrifying films I’ve seen in a while.<br />
The influence of the propaganda machine is fascinating to watch. Because the filmmaker kept the cameras filming while the state’s advisers are coaching the subjects on the exact things to say, we get see people awkwardly and repeatedly congratulating Zin-Mi or her parents on her becoming a citizen, or parroting lines about the miraculous powers of kimchi (which is able to stop cancer and aging). Just a scene of our people eating dinner scene is itself astonishing; Zin-Mi and her parents, all three of them, sit at a table covered in more food than ten people could hope to eat, while the advisers correct the way people are sitting, how they’re positioned around the table, trying to get everything they can think of absolutely perfect; meanwhile the house has so little sense of personal touch it’s weirdly almost as if these people don’t actually live there.<br />
In one of the most astonishing scenes of the film, we learn that the state has decided Zin-Mi’s father’s work as a journalist isn’t good for the film, as they think it’s important the film explore the importance of manufacturing, so suddenly he’s an engineer at a garment factory. This leads to a scene where he has to ask a couple of workers to explain what different types of detail may be added to a garment, before confidently announcing that their detailing work is okay but he can make a change to the machines that..., oh I’m sorry, their work is excellent but he can make it even better with a change to the machines. In the next scene we learn that the factory production was so good that they exceeded their targets by 150 percent; the oldest factory worker was a vital contributor to this and is given flowers, but she doesn’t feel she deserves them and gives them instead to the factory engineer since he was so essential in making the change to the machine and showing her how to use the machine to allow them to improve their production, and also his daughter just joined the Children’s Union. But it’s necessary to reshoot the scene, and in the second take the factory somehow has managed to improve production even more; it now produced at 200 percent of target. Wow! Good work everyone!<br />
The filmmakers are invisible in the movie, only inserting themselves through on-screen captions, occasionally ironically parroting the ra-ra propaganda line, but often just barely containing their anger at the events they see. There’s one moment that sent an audible chill through the audience, where we learn that during filming the only time they ever saw children entering or leaving school was when the script called for it, suggesting that (despite the happy home life we’re shown) the parents probably live in barracks at their workplace, while the children board at school to more effectively spend time on their studies. And what excellent studies they’re given. We sit in a classroom where the teacher gives her children a history lesson about the time that the Great Leader and Generalissimo Kim Il-Sung became so angry at the Japanese oppressors and the traitorous landowners that he picked up and hurled a boulder at their boats, scaring them away; the teacher being very careful to repeatedly ensure the children know the exact words the Great Leader and Generalissimo Kim Il-Sung used to describe the landowners.<br />
Yet peeking through the heavy control of the state propaganda figures, you get glimpses of these children naturally being children that are absolutely delightful. During a scene where an elderly general (whose jacket is hilariously covered in so many oversized medals that he jingles when he moves) comes to visit the school and tell a lengthy story about how the Great Leader and Generalissimo Kim Il-Sung taught them to shoot down planes with a machine gun, we see an exhausted Zin-Mi struggling and completely failing to keep her eyes open. In one scene Zin-Mi’s school friend (who has supposedly injured her ankle) is visited at a world-class hospital by Zin-Mi, her teacher, and friends; as they’re being directed how to play the news of her “miraculous recovery thanks to the skilled doctors”, we can’t help noticing the schoolgirls eagerly eating and enjoying an orange before being told off. But it’s surprising how sparse these moments of genuine humanity are under complete control of the state.<br />
The most disturbing moment comes at the very end of the film, where Zin-Mi starts crying and cannot stop; eventually to cheer her up she’s asked if there’s a happy piece of poetry that she enjoys and could recite. Immediately and instinctively, she knows what she has to say; she starts reciting the oath of dedication to Kim Jong-Il she had to deliver when she joined the Children’s Union. No nursery rhymes, no silly songs, just a pledge to dedicate her life to her leader, so completely has the influence of this totalitarian regime been driven into her. And then the film ends, because after that there is nothing more to say.<br />
As the film finishes there was one thought that was running through my mind; “I hope all those people are all okay.” I really liked Zin-Mi, and her parents, and her teacher, and I hope they’re not under any punishment because of their (no doubt compulsory) participation in a film that makes the North Korean Government look bad. And I wasn’t the only person thinking that; as we left the cinema I heard the woman in the row behind me express the exact same concern. It’s easy to watch a film like this; you can’t help but laugh at the absurd lines the propaganda machine is trying to force into the film. But we’re laughing from a place of security and safety, while these people have to spend the rest of their lives living under this regime, and that is genuinely upsetting.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj43bOT5f5r4nezeK-H4QXFrBnfb7KpM_MaynNWe2ptwwk8OB4z6Z4WvrCucV0R4dc-xdm0W1JtoyDACE9bjGrmMv9MqYKdWZdeZ1UamBtfrbalDMRqesFo4wG1Yxaz0o0frYc7RcvBHmW2/s1600/touch_of_zen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="566" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj43bOT5f5r4nezeK-H4QXFrBnfb7KpM_MaynNWe2ptwwk8OB4z6Z4WvrCucV0R4dc-xdm0W1JtoyDACE9bjGrmMv9MqYKdWZdeZ1UamBtfrbalDMRqesFo4wG1Yxaz0o0frYc7RcvBHmW2/s320/touch_of_zen.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
<b><i>A Touch of Zen</i></b><br />
I will confess to having never heard of this Taiwanese wuxia film, although it is evidentially well regarded; it was a prize winner at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, and has clearly had an unmistakable influence on films I have seen. So I thought seeing this new restoration of the film should be fun. And it was, on the whole.<br />
Ku, a somewhat aimless painter, is living a quiet life in a tiny village in the far end of the kingdom. His mother is always criticising him trying to pressure him to improve his life; he’s over 30, he should take the officials exam, get a better paid job, and find himself a wife. Then one day he discovers a young woman named Yang living in the abandoned fort by his house. Eventually he learns that Yang is a princess on the run; her father had tried to warn the Emperor about a corrupt adviser, an action that led to her father and family being executed. Now people have found her and are coming to take her back to be killed. Fortunately she has previously spent a couple of years living in a monastery with Zen Buddhist monks, and they taught her all the martial arts skills she needs to survive.<br />
The thing is, the film is long. Over three hours long. And it’s slow; there are a few fight scenes early on, but for the most part we’re probably into the second half of the movie before the big set-piece action sequences take place. But I didn’t mind, because I enjoyed the film. I loved Ku, and found his constant conflict with his mother to be a reliable source of comedy; there was a great sense of location around the village, with the (supposedly haunted) abandoned fort always creepy to explore; and I enjoyed the mystery around this young woman and these other strangers who have suddenly arrived with a particular interest in the fort. So I didn’t really notice how long the film was running. And then the fights started, and the fights were phenomenal. If you think of the fights in <i>Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon</i>, and how those elegant aerial moves were achieved through wires; they achieve a similar effect here through the use of trampolines, and often it’s really rather effective. There’s a great physicality to the fights, and some nice long lingering shots allowing you to enjoy the artistry in the performers’ movements as the conflicts continue. It all culminates in a massive fight at the abandoned fort against overwhelming numbers, and it’s a brilliant end to the film.<br />
Except the film goes on, at a guess I’d say for half an hour after that ending. And that was the point where the film lost me. It’s not that nothing happens in these scenes; there are a couple more massive action setpieces that are genuinely entertaining and thrilling (including one scene in a bamboo forest that clearly inspired <i>Crouching Tiger</i>). But I found myself distracted because I didn’t understand why this film was still playing. And then Ku, our main character and our entry point into the world, literally runs away and out of the film with maybe 20 minutes to go; after that point he only appears in one single dialogue-free shot at the very end. Instead we’re focused entirely on Yang and (more significantly) a monk who had only been a minor character until that point. And I didn’t understand what they were trying to achieve. There is clearly something in that final sequence that has some kind of connection to Zen Buddhism; the presence of the monk, the role he takes in the fight, and the way he’s presented at the end makes it impossible not to see. But because I don’t have some deep understanding about that philosophy, I therefore felt that I didn’t know what they could be trying to say. And so, after really enjoying the film for much of its running time, I found myself disconnecting from it at the end, which was a shame. And maybe that’s on me; that’s my shortcomings revealing themselves in my response to the film. But when the last thing the film leaves you with is a tone that really does not work for you, it unfortunately colours how you view the entire film. And that’s where I am.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjalDKqB749iOUblU7AokiQ2Yq1bljAI9jB_PXxVFZmVYT6vCRwuZSNIlX6eW4WeUPlDEVlWXeCj1MER5pXoImLsy3qoiq4Ga7QIjHcBuGvgLAFZ6I1_qELvbxgVJfXihHypkRBfzHhFBIy/s1600/lo_and_behold_reveries_of_the_connected_world.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjalDKqB749iOUblU7AokiQ2Yq1bljAI9jB_PXxVFZmVYT6vCRwuZSNIlX6eW4WeUPlDEVlWXeCj1MER5pXoImLsy3qoiq4Ga7QIjHcBuGvgLAFZ6I1_qELvbxgVJfXihHypkRBfzHhFBIy/s320/lo_and_behold_reveries_of_the_connected_world.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
<b><i>Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World</i></b><br />
This is a documentary film about the internet directed by Werner Herzog. If you know who Werner Herzog is, then you know exactly what this film is. If you don’t know who Herzog is, just reflect on the fact that this is a film about the internet called <i>Lo and Behold: Reveries of a Connected World</i>, and I think you can probably figure out what the film is.<br />
It’s less a single unified documentary, more a collection of ten short pieces musing on aspects of the internet and ideas about how we engage with it. The film starts with the birth of the internet in 1969, when the first message sent online, “LOG”, was interrupted by a crashed computer after only two characters were set (the resulting message, “LO”, inspired the film’s title). From there we travel all around the internet, its past, its present, and its future. You get incredible stories of humanity at their greatest; the scientists trying to understand how molecules fold themselves up who create an online game that allows ordinary people without any scientific knowledge to solve a problem that stumped supercomputers. You get the evil of humanity; the horrifying story of a family whose daughter died in a car crash, and how people would anonymously email to her father accident scene photos of her decapitated body. We travel to resorts in the middle of nowhere for people with electromagnetic sensitivity or for people dealing with internet addictions. There are stories about how we got the internet; how when the internet was first developed everyone knew who everyone on the internet was (there was literally a printed directory with everyone’s email and home address), so there was never seen to be any need for people to prove who they are. We could have had a 100 percent identity-verified internet, but that would be a gift to totalitarian governments; instead we have a completely free unrestricted internet, which would be great were it not for the way it empowers our most vile behaviours without consequence. There are stories of hackers and stories of agents trying to stop hackers. There’s an interview with Elon Musk discussing his plans to build a colony on Mars, discussing how we would maintain a flow of communication between the planets, and a competing view from one person who quite reasonably asks how we can be so certain that Mars will be the salvation of humanity when we can’t help ourselves from destroying a planet that’s perfectly suited to our needs. There’s even a scene of robots playing football that is just brilliant, and when one of the engineers admits that he loves Robot #8 you completely understand.<br />
And as always with a Herzog documentary, you get Herzog’s narration. I’ve only watched a small number of Herzog’s films, but every time I do see his documentary work in particular I’m reminded how much I enjoy what he does; the weird way he mixes gleeful humour and love of life with oblique philosophising works in a way I don’t understand. So the film ends with his narration posing a question of whether the internet can dream (a question his interview subjects struggle to answer). But at other times he’s just having fun; at one point he volunteers with complete and seemingly genuine excitement for a one-way trip to Mars, while at another point he’s very clear and firm in his position that any film made by a movie-making robot would never be as good as any of his films. The fascinating thing about Herzog is that his work always feels personal. In the end this isn’t a documentary about the internet; it’s a glimpse into the mind of Werner Herzog and an insight into the way he thinks about the internet. It’s fun and fascinating, horrible and hopeful, and above all, it’s a very intimate human work. And I loved it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp4zSb3XxApZnFmQspg1vOlyZLors9XAhy94qrV8IW0mw_zik5mnpfeYSox2A8h6qqIgp4rJHZaVmvrjppPpLpowUkX1Wbe1YlYLdQhUkYz4v9TVW2vQbc9hUAaQs9E2USWiUDm-dHDCaJ/s1600/a_war.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp4zSb3XxApZnFmQspg1vOlyZLors9XAhy94qrV8IW0mw_zik5mnpfeYSox2A8h6qqIgp4rJHZaVmvrjppPpLpowUkX1Wbe1YlYLdQhUkYz4v9TVW2vQbc9hUAaQs9E2USWiUDm-dHDCaJ/s320/a_war.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>A War</i></b><br />
An engaging Danish war drama, A War focuses on Claus, a sympathetic military commander in Afghanistan who is acutely aware of the burden he carries in the lives of his men. He’s clearly well-respected by his men, and he’s someone they see going out onto the battlefield rather than choosing to remain behind in safety. Already unsettled by having lost one of his men to a landmine, he makes a decision that leads an Afghan family to be murdered by the Taliban, and then finds himself trapped with his men under heavy enemy fire. With another man severely injured, and wanting to avoid yet another death on his conscience, he makes the desperate decision to call in an attack on the compound he thinks is firing on them, lying that he knows definitively who is in the location. This leads him to return to Denmark to face trial for the murder of the innocent civilians that were inside the compound.<br />
The thing that really leapt out to me was the way the film captured the sense of what it must be like to be an active soldier, and particularly as someone in command. It manages to effectively communicate the sense of boredom and everyday routine, coupled with a constant tension that things can transform themselves in an instant and the need to be alert to all threats from every side. I had been concerned that the film could become a judgemental all-soldiers-are-war-criminals story, but it remained completely sympathetic to Claus, even as it is unambiguous in recognising that what he did was wrong. It’s a tough task to show someone making one wrong decision after another, have it very clearly be the wrong decision, and yet the audience genuinely feel that we would make the same call in those circumstances, and I was impressed with the way the film managed to expertly achieve that balance.<br />
Possibly less effective were the moments where we cut back to Claus’ wife in Denmark. I like the idea of exploring what life is like for the spouses of soldiers: the problem of never knowing what’s happening in the war zone; the fear that comes when the phone call home is late; the struggles of taking care of a family without the support of the other person. I do think there’s a good film in that issue. But I did feel like those scenes were a distraction, a way of taking up time until the film’s key conflict comes forward. And in some ways the intercutting of the stories distracted from what those scenes could have achieved; a film focused on the wife left at home could be very effective in watching her wait for a phone call that’s hours late, her imagination going wild with what might have happened to her loved one, but because we’re intercutting with what’s going on in Afghanistan it separates us from her emotion, because we understand why he’s late in calling, and so we become less invested in her emotions. It changed for me as the film went on; when Claus returned home, I found I was glad the film had put the effort into spending time with the wife, as it really added to the intensity of the emotions between the characters, but it’s a shame the film wasn’t able to find a way to give those scenes urgency at the time they were playing out.<br />
The other issue was that the climactic trial of Claus felt very surface-level. It really was the bare minimum needed to get across the sense of any trial taking place; a couple of short snippets of testimony, a motion or two that gets dismissed, before the final witness steps forward to give the testimony that decisively sets the verdict in place. I understand that this is not a legal drama, but the court case felt only slightly less perfunctory than the trial in an average episode of <i>Law & Order</i>. To me it felt as if the film needed to be longer, to allow time to really wrangle with the moral and legal complexities of warfare in a way that it just doesn’t have time for at the moment.<br />
Still, I was glad to watch a film that was trying to offer a nuanced, sympathetic view of the men who fight our wars in the modern era, exploring how even the best of intentions can create human catastrophes. It’s by no means a perfect film, but it is a solid piece of filmmaking.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3O48Pq8eL39oZc2P4bLlPWgKpJY62TpTiSjlxAWm6pCHJ9O0_A6KskL4xbnqtZ9d5V8MCAupXGAS4f7SEQXrBPw97mzHKg0gMzDknCTt88Y_MdN1Nu6ueTbjEj3FuIQOQCIR-wX9tUejq/s1600/beware_the_slenderman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3O48Pq8eL39oZc2P4bLlPWgKpJY62TpTiSjlxAWm6pCHJ9O0_A6KskL4xbnqtZ9d5V8MCAupXGAS4f7SEQXrBPw97mzHKg0gMzDknCTt88Y_MdN1Nu6ueTbjEj3FuIQOQCIR-wX9tUejq/s320/beware_the_slenderman.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Beware the Slenderman</i></b><br />
I had never heard of the Slenderman until earlier this year, when I was listening to a podcast where the origins of this creature was discussed. A long thin suited figure with pale white skin, no face, and tentacles, the creature was first created as part of a Photoshop contest in 2009, and quickly grew to have his own mythology as different people would contribute their own ideas to the characters. He is, in effect, the first internet-era boogeyman, and an interesting example of how rapidly these stories can grow in an era where everyone can connect and contribute; rather than having urban legends grow over decades of retellings around the camp fire, instead we have this legend that exploded as the mythology was in effect crowdsourced, with lots of people taking inspiration from the ideas of everyone else to feed in their own thoughts. And in some ways he grew to become, not this ominous threatening figure, but a weirdly comforting, protective figure for children who might feel bullied or excluded.<br />
In 2014 two 12-year-old girls, Morgan and Anissa, both fans of the Slenderman stories, decided to kill a friend of theirs in an attempt to become proxies or servants of the creature and prove its existence. They went to the woods, supposedly as part of a game of hide-and-seek, and stabbed their victim 19 times before leaving to walk to the Slenderman’s mansion in a nearby national park. (Miraculously and fortunately the victim survived.) And this provides the framework on which the film hangs; as the court hears arguments over whether these children should be tried as adults or sent to the youth court, the film tries to explain what led to this horrific crime, and why someone would try to murder her best friend for years to appease some fictional creation.<br />
It’s a solid, astonishing, disturbing piece of documentary filmmaking that fascinated me. But unfortunately there’s a fundamental problem in the film that I don’t think the filmmaker managed to overcome. On the one hand you’ve got this story of this intensely creepy figure that left me feeling like I might have nightmares after the film. There are points in the film that are genuinely scary. And the film amplifies that impact, with over-the-top horror film editing and effects. There were points where I was reminded of Rodney Ascher’s film The Nightmare, an excellent documentary about sleep paralysis that presents the stories it’s telling as a horror film; Beware the Slenderman is not as good as The Nightmare, but in its sequences telling the story of the Slenderman it’s working in a comparable spectrum. The problem is that it’s also telling this story about young girls attempting to commit murder, and you can’t treat that with the same degree of horror effect; it’s one thing to throw a staticky screen in when you’re talking about some fictional monster, and another to do it in the middle of a shot of a mother crying over her daughter’s evil actions. So much of the film is very staid, very traditionally edited, ujntiol we geyt gto thwe SlenDrerman roriginss and then aiTs aal ACR5AZTY CRAZXY CRAXzY, and we’re back with the family and it’s quiet and sympathetic. The problem is that you can’t tell the story of this case without telling the story of the Slenderman, but the ways the film tries to tell these two stories fundamentally conflict with each other. And so every time it cuts from the murder story to the actual legend it feels like we’ve been thrown from one film to a completely different film and it was not comfortable to watch. Ideally they probably should have adopted a less-stylised approach to the Slenderman mythology, adopting a more academic and thoughtful, less emotional, presentation of how the character came to have such an impact. If they had done that, the film might have held together as a whole better.<br />
Because the material with the families really is incredibly effective. The film was shot reasonably close in time to the crime – the court case presented in the film isn’t even the actual trial, just a pre-trial decision – and there’s a clear sense of these families still just trying to process and understand what’s happening, and what they could have done to stop it from happening. And the story brings in all kinds of issues, asking how those of us who grew up in a pre-internet environment can protect the next generation when we genuinely can’t imagine what it’s like to be a child in an internet world. One of the mothers talks about having heard her daughter discussing the Slenderman and thinking there wasn’t much difference between the stories of the creature and her own enjoyment of Stephen King novels at her age, never considering the difference between a clearly fictional story and something where much of the power of the character comes from a community that seeks to insist on his reality. In one of the film’s most effective moments, after one of the girls is diagnosed with schizophrenia, her father describes his experiences with his own schizophrenia, having taught himself that the giant demon he sees everywhere isn’t real. There's the pain of having passed his illness onto his daughter, and the growing realisation he could maybe have helped her had he known what she was dealing with. It's also a stunning insight into both how he sees the world, and how his daughter's actions may have been influenced by how she sees things.<br />
Ultimately I liked the film. It really was a fascinating insight into an aspect of internet life that I had no idea about. (The final shots of the film, showing fan art pieces presenting Morgan and Anissa as the Slenderman’s proxies that they wanted to be, was a shocking reinforcement of the utterly incomprehensible nature of some in this culture.) Unfortunately the film is derailed by editing choices that conflict too heavily with each other, but still, a very interesting movie.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1-hG9y2ZUr1peNFm5e_DTq6CaOm980XMBEGlCHxuAdI9VbaGtogZIpBAG-deltrw8re2RWuO6gwyUl-X_d_jQzIPsJluTu-CX1_2iVXQQwr-4KY5NLxWSk_xngNuKFgN9A2v94FzbByxB/s1600/family_film.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="556" data-original-width="370" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1-hG9y2ZUr1peNFm5e_DTq6CaOm980XMBEGlCHxuAdI9VbaGtogZIpBAG-deltrw8re2RWuO6gwyUl-X_d_jQzIPsJluTu-CX1_2iVXQQwr-4KY5NLxWSk_xngNuKFgN9A2v94FzbByxB/s320/family_film.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<b><i>Family Film</i></b><br />
A middle-aged couple decide to spend a few months sailing, leaving their life behind, including their teenaged children who they're sure are able to take care of themselves. But then their younger son, freed of parental oversight, decides to start skipping school, which brings their uncle in to provide some adult influence. Then the parents just vanish one day, never responding to any efforts to contact them.<br />
Sometimes after a festival film I find myself rereading the programme, just to see what it was that interested me about the movie. The programme promised a bone-dry domestic drama laced with subtle irony and black humour that it compared to the brilliant Force Majeure. That sounds great; it's not the experience I had. The film seemed divorced from any kind of connection to, well, anything. There's no sense of narrative urgency; even when it seems like the parents might be dead I never felt anything more than mild concern from the characters. And there wasn't any real shape to the film. Characters are in the film, and then they're not, and often I'm not sure what purpose they really served in the film other than filling time. And while each scene flows logically to the next, reflecting on the film in hindsight makes it seem weirdly disjointed. So when I think about, say, the early scenes of the youths daring each other to ride the elevator naked, I don't have a clear picture of how those scenes exist in the same film as the organ transplant that drives the end-of-film conflict. Not that there's much of a sense of conflict in those scenes; even when the film introduces life-catastrophic events, the film just drifts along, barely aware of what's going on.<br />
Most egregious is what happens with the dog. We first learn that something happened to the parents when we see their dog swimming alone onto an island, and we occasionally briefly return to the dog trying to survive. Until we reach the end of the film and find ourselves watching this animal roaming the island for five, maybe even ten, minutes, in a sequence that just left me staggered. As the film cut from one scene of the dog to the next, it felt like a film trying to pad out its running length. When a film is barely over 90 minutes and has such potentially big dramatic material, they really shouldn't need to pad the film out. A definite disappointment.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg20wdgRM1382-ra8COg0Nch1wnyR8Jq_uEJGj9prPiZyyskLuknBt2V_ajzNjUwyu8pcWfgnJNRB7oo-Gr1NOOzyoHIaSdMHVo8jfhdgrFYhYmhaboRw2guCfiYL4hAuA5Q8fGJb3Dq9tL/s1600/mccabe_and_mrs_miller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="491" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg20wdgRM1382-ra8COg0Nch1wnyR8Jq_uEJGj9prPiZyyskLuknBt2V_ajzNjUwyu8pcWfgnJNRB7oo-Gr1NOOzyoHIaSdMHVo8jfhdgrFYhYmhaboRw2guCfiYL4hAuA5Q8fGJb3Dq9tL/s320/mccabe_and_mrs_miller.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
<b><i>McCabe and Mrs Miller</i></b><br />
In the early 20th century, a gambler and reputed gunslinger named McCabe arrives in a mining town named Presbyterian Church, and seeing an opportunity to make money decides to open a saloon/whorehouse. But then he’s visited by Mrs Miller, an experienced madam who points out the low quality of his current service and his lack of knowledge about how to run a whoring business (“the entire town’ll have the clap within a week, if they don’t already”), and who suggests they work together. And it all works well, until McCabe receives an offer to sell the business to someone with a reputation for killing people who decline his offers.<br />
I’ve been meaning to see McCabe and Mrs Miller for a few years now (it’s one of the big Robert Altman titles that I hadn’t seen), so I was thrilled to see it appearing in the festival schedule. And it absolutely lived up to my expectations. It’s not a film that I would necessarily recommend everyone see (it’s mostly a film of small moments, and it’s definitely focused subverting everything about the western genre that people like), but if you’re someone who connects with the way Altman works as a filmmaker, this is him working at the absolute peak of his skills.<br />
The key thing that’s fascinating about the film is this sense of realism that runs throughout the movie. Often objects or costumes can really feel like some designer put a lot of effort into getting every aspect of every object exactly right, but in this film it feels as though the entire town was put together by people focused on just putting things together as fast as possible. Nothing feels designed for look; it’s all solely functional. The bridge that crosses the frozen river is ugly, but it’s solid enough to function as a bridge and who cares about anything else. When he goes outside McCabe wears this comically massive fur coat that doubles his bulk; no-one designing clothes for a Warren Beatty character would ever have him wearing something like that, but a person like McCabe in this bitter cold would absolutely wear that coat to stay warm. There’s none of the glamour to the girls working in the whorehouse that you get in many western films, and there’s a brutal reality to the fact that if you’re a woman in this town and you don’t have a husband then there’s only one thing you can do to survive. Everywhere is dark and dingy and dirty; when McCabe first arrives in town and stops off in the town’s only drinking establishment he even has to pull out his own red tablecloth to provide a suitable surface for the gambling to take place. Often in westerns there can be a conflict between the good God-fearing folk in the town and those who’ll drink and whore and kill; here the town might be called Presbyterian Church but no-one has stepped foot in the church in many years. Our images of movie gunfights involve two men in the middle of a street in the desert in a fight with regulated rules; this film climaxes with our hero avoiding being shot by running and slipping and falling and hiding while in the middle of a snow-storm. Everything in the film is about demythologising the West, and it’s fascinating to watch.<br />
Altman added to the sense of reality to the film with his filming approach. During filming he deliberately exposed the film stock to the light, in effect damaging the stock to a degree to give the film a unique rough degraded visual sensibility. (As I remember the story it was an effect that could have been achieved in post-production, but Altman decided to do this to the actual negative to ensure the studio never had the option to release the film with a pristine image.) He also deliberately muddied the audio (a fact that festival staff felt the need to defensively warn us about before the film; “it’s not a problem with the cinema sound system, it’s supposed to sound that way”.) Couple that with Altman’s regular approach using overlapping dialogue, and the movie winds up looking and feeling messy. Which is exactly right for a film that’s trying to do a western in this way; even the very presentation of the film feels out of time, as though it’s an artefact of the era portrayed. Were it not for the fact that the film is in colour and has sound, you might think you were actually watching something that was shot in 1902.<br />
There are a lot of other things I could praise about the film, whether it be Warren Beatty doing career-best work, Julie Christie’s sharp wit and deep personal pain, or how utterly heartbreaking I found Shelley Duvall. I could talk about the many times I laughed at the film, or how perfectly I thought the Leonard Cohen songs that scored the film worked. I could talk about the moments of joy littered through the film, particularly the character dancing on the slippery ice. I could talk about the panic I felt when one character met a killer and they have a pleasant conversation where everyone knows how it would end. And I could talk about just how f***ing freezing cold this film is. But when I left the film my main reflection was just that I felt like Presbyterian Church was a real functional town; I could have visited there and seen everything exactly as it was. It’s a tricky thing to get to that sense of realism, and it was a real achievement that Altman reached it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglGTkuHF48SBgWnJxpFbyDAGcVKfHuQnUkv49rr9NtN4N54RrXI7m7pJqUZOkWKF_i5mi6-lPks_c1ijGVXLAKZZH92No9D0qDzk40zwSKl9ceqvzUnB0guH72h34BNwsrDeR4oK1bHSo3/s1600/life_animated.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="522" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglGTkuHF48SBgWnJxpFbyDAGcVKfHuQnUkv49rr9NtN4N54RrXI7m7pJqUZOkWKF_i5mi6-lPks_c1ijGVXLAKZZH92No9D0qDzk40zwSKl9ceqvzUnB0guH72h34BNwsrDeR4oK1bHSo3/s320/life_animated.jpg" width="221" /></a></div>
<b><i>Life, Animated</i></b><br />
A poignant and moving documentary telling the story of Owen Suskind, who at the age of 3 lost the ability to speak. He was diagnosed with autism, his mind had stopped making the connections between words, and for years it looked like that might never speak again. And all that time he would watch Disney movies. And then slowly he started to speak again, initially mimicking film dialogue, eventually finding ways to express complex ideas by relating them to situations in these films. He would have different films that he would watch to help him face this problem or deal with that emotion. And providing the structure for the film around which his story is told, we find Owen in his early 20s about to finish school, move out of his parents' home, and into an assisted living facility to live by himself for the first time.<br />
I realised the film was getting to me early on, when Owen's father Ron tells the story of the first time he had a conversation with his son, using a puppet of Iago the Parrot as a proxy to get his son to open up; I didn't cry (I want to be clear about that), but I wasn’t completely dry-eyed either. And this repeated itself through the film: a beautiful scene of Owen lying on his bed with Ron on moving day watching Dumbo, because that's what HE would watch when he faced a big challenge; or a powerful moment where his older brother Walt discusses his own feelings about his responsibility once their parents can't take care of Owen. There's one scene in particular when Owen goes through a significant life experience and we initially hear about it second-hand from Walt; when that happened an audible Oh No response went through the audience because we were all so connected to Owen and invested in his journey that the thought of what this experience would mean for him was instantly painful.<br />
Which is not to say that the film is some kind of tough emotional roller-coaster. Owen seems like a nice, naturally funny kid, and it’s a great joy spending time with him. At the same time, it’s instantly recognisable that Owen has issues, and it could have been easy for the film to just fall into making fun of him, especially in certain moments where the humour comes from the innocence of his reactions to things around him. But there is always a clear affection in the film and pride in his accomplishments that keeps the film well away from becoming mean.<br />
There are some fascinating insights in the film. We hear how animation made it easier for him to understand the emotional responses of the movie characters because the faces and the reactions were so large and expressive, as opposed to the subtlety that comes with actual people. There's also this nice idea I found laced through the film that this reflects how we all come to understand the world and see how it works. Stories help us to take the randomness of the world and our lives and give them meaning, give them a structure. It's something we’ve all gone through; maybe not quite as obviously as happened in Owen's case, but it is true for us all. At the same time, while these films have offered an incredible tool that allows Owen to function in the world, they can also lead to significant limitations for someone who needs to function in the world as an adult; one of the funniest moments comes when Walt muses how you can possibly explain sex to someone whose entire worldview is based on Disney films.<br />
This is not a world-changing or hard-hitting documentary; it really is just a feel-good story. But it is a remarkable celebration of humanity and the power of creativity to literally change a person’s life. I found myself think about the Nine Old Men, all of whom are long gone now, who effectively created and developed Disney animation in the 1930s, surely never imagining just what an effect their work would continue to have decades after they left us. Earlier in the festival I saw The Music of Strangers, in which one person expressed his feelings about being a musician, asking what value his art has in a world of suffering; this film answers that concern as clearly as you could ever hope for.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKXZKvAgA-CU8L8s5mbBbDIwB36PF0Y55zN3bbSt2wZKCpaFApc50J-r-3VZTI83avrpDy3StaCsZzQUZ5SniYFK1Y6v90iEXeMMvBLy8sG5h6IwCVBl81pVGmrtwiWP8URn-LsfzoDiic/s1600/highrise.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKXZKvAgA-CU8L8s5mbBbDIwB36PF0Y55zN3bbSt2wZKCpaFApc50J-r-3VZTI83avrpDy3StaCsZzQUZ5SniYFK1Y6v90iEXeMMvBLy8sG5h6IwCVBl81pVGmrtwiWP8URn-LsfzoDiic/s320/highrise.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>High-Rise</i></b><br />
In a retro-future world, Dr Robert Laing moves into a brand new high-rise tower with all of the facilities you can imagine; from pool and gymnasium to a school and supermarket. The only reason people ever need to leave the tower is to go to work; otherwise their every need can be met within the confines of the tower. A reasonably well-off single man, Laing lives on the 25th floor of the 40-storey tower, firmly wedged in the middle tier of the deeply-stratified tower, but he’s able to develop relationships throughout the building, particularly with both a lower-floor documentary maker and the top-floor architect who designed the building. Despite the apparent luxury of the tower, all is clearly not well; garbage chutes are blocked, while power and water cuts are common for those on the lower levels (although they never seem to affect those at the top of the building, who live their lives in utter indulgence). Then one day a children’s party goes out of control, and the entire society starts to collapse in a chaos of violence, destruction, sex, and murder.<br />
Firstly, I will say this: I liked the film, really liked it. I don’t know if I’d say I had fun in the film, but I didn’t not have fun. But I had some issues. Now, I’m not familiar with the original JG Ballard novel on which the film is based, and I’m more than happy to allow for the fact that the idea of using science fiction to present a microcosm of society as a vehicle for presenting class struggle may have been original back in the 1970s, but presenting this film in a more modern context does make its ideas feel very outdated. And to me the metaphor didn’t really work; yes, we do have the sense that for the residents the tower is their world, but the film establishes early on that there are other places people can live, so if people are so unhappy with where they’re living or can’t afford to live where they’re living, what is stopping them from leaving? We don’t have a choice whether or not to live in society, we just do, so any metaphor for society that doesn’t totally trap people inside the system is starting from a flawed position. (I had issues with the similar metaphor in the otherwise-wonderful Snowpiercer, but at least in that film everyone was trapped inside that train.) It’s also made more complicated by the fact that it’s not a full reflection of society. These people aren’t absolutely poverty-struck; the lowest of the film’s characters is a filmmaker for crying out loud! This is a film about the middle class being angry that it’s not upper class and burning the whole thing down as a result.<br />
The worst part of the film comes in the last minute of the film, where we hear a radio laying a Margaret Thatcher speech about capitalism. It’s an utterly unnecessary moment that in effect comes out and says “by the way, in case you missed it, this film is about the evils of capitalism.” I didn’t miss that, I completely understood what the film was saying, and I was trying to enjoy the film despite disagreeing with the entire premise of the film, but thank you for forcing me to leave the film thinking about how wrong-headed it was. Look, I recognise that capitalism is not a perfect system, and I firmly believe that it is necessary to put in place protections to prevent some of the horrific abuses of the system that have been able to take place. But it’s also a system that has allowed for massive improvement in our lifestyles, and the inequality that this film is railing against is absolutely inherent to the system; it’s a system that’s driven by the possibility that you can significantly improve your life. And really, having a movie in which a bunch of wealthy movie stars try to present the evils of inequality means that the movie winds up feeling like a meeting of the People’s Front of Judea asking what has capitalism ever done for us.<br />
And it’s a shame that the film annoyed me so much, because there was a lot to like about it. Firstly, the design was incredible; rather than updating the film to a more modern view of the future, the film retained a 70s aesthetic in the design of the film, reflecting the era that the novel worked in. I have heard this was a practical approach to avoid having to rework the story to reflect developments like the internet, but it also allows the film to look visually and feel utterly unique. I really liked the tone the film set, almost like a stark cross between Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, with the surreal nightmare of the latter escalated to a hysterical pitch. And I loved how the film reached a point where it just seemed to almost dispense with conventional narrative approaches and just became a disconnected orgy of chaos. Now, I don’t know how to what degree that’s deliberate – it could be an accurate reflection of what’s the book is like at that point, or it could be a conscious choice to make the film more impressionistic and less narrative-driven, or it could just as easily be an actual flaw in the storytelling where they just tried to keep too much of the book while trimming too much of the connective tissue – but the sense of having no clear idea how one moment connected to the next completely worked for me (although I can understand other people having issues with it). And the cast was great, with people like Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Elizabeth Moss, and Luke Evans all gleefully embracing the complete indulgence and utter insanity of the film. So I found it a funny, bonkers film that I totally enjoyed. It’s just a shame that that they felt the need to be so ham-fisted in making sure we’d all learned something at the end of it all.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtZqv74iqufyJ732aJuZlMepfDz7oFXO6ffm6hP9BJZT3BwnHW6ieiZScjByfStFvgE_Ii5thCDBZpyX_8t2yax8gc5j9daIKSwXWZCbDEoVU-7luDt6zzhhAm3o-Fv3XUMvjjGjCLba9N/s1600/green_room.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtZqv74iqufyJ732aJuZlMepfDz7oFXO6ffm6hP9BJZT3BwnHW6ieiZScjByfStFvgE_Ii5thCDBZpyX_8t2yax8gc5j9daIKSwXWZCbDEoVU-7luDt6zzhhAm3o-Fv3XUMvjjGjCLba9N/s320/green_room.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Green Room</i></b><br />
Easily my favourite film of the festival so far (indeed, probably of the year thus far), Green Room introduces us to a young punk band on tour. Finding their finances completely drained, they take a last-minute gig, only discovering when they arrive that they’re playing for a bunch of white supremacists. The performance itself goes pretty well (despite their decision to deliberately antagonise an audience they hate), but after the show they find themselves witnesses to a murder, and are forced to barricade themselves in the green room until they can find a way past the people outside who now want to kill them in order to cover the crime.<br />
I never saw Jeremy Saulnier’s earlier film Blue Ruin, although I’ve heard nothing but good reports about it as a real-world riff on the Death Wish movies. If it’s anywhere near as good as Green Room then I’m really regretting taking so long to see it, because Saulnier is clearly a master of genre filmmaking. Here he’s clearly taking inspiration from siege movies like Assault on Precinct 13, and it’s an incredible piece of work. After seeing the film I described the film as nasty, brutal, and stomach-churningly violent, and it is absolutely that. But it’s not excessively so. Instead Saulnier just builds the tension and builds the tension and builds the tension, and then he maintains the tension throughout the rest of film at a level where it feels like things could explode at any moment. And then when he throws in the violence it is shocking and graphic; limbs are mutilated, people are shot in the head, one person is even gutted. And Saulnier goes to great effort to make these events look real, which means they look gory. But he generally doesn’t linger on these events any longer than he needs to in order to establish what actually happened; we’re not supposed to be impressed by the gore on display, we’re supposed to be shocked and horrified, and when you’ve built the tension up to fever pitch you don’t need to show much for the film to have an impact. There’s really only three moments in the film where I felt it was lingering on a moment of violence or gore, and each of them was unusual and deliberate. One was the disembowelling I mentioned before, which is supposed to have a “What the?” effect on the audience; one is an act of indignity done to a long-dead corpse; and the most shocking moment comes, long after the actual violence, when the character tries to duct-tape up their wounds. For the most part the violence isn’t in there because on-screen violence is cool, it’s there because you can’t soften the violence without lessening the impact of the threat.<br />
What was really impressive was how realistic I found everyone’s behaviour. We’re all familiar with the idea of the film that only functions because everyone’s an idiot; the victim in the slasher film who runs upstairs when they should go out the front door. But here I found everyone’s reactions completely convincing. Much of the time I realised I would do the exact same thing if I was in those circumstances, and where I disagreed with their choices I think that was often out of the fact that I know the type of film I’m watching and therefore had more information than the characters. And they don’t make decisions impulsively. There are points in the film where people are faced with tough decisions to make and the film just lingers, watching these people as they try to size up the situation, try to figure out what the advantages and disadvantages of each possible choice are, and try to reason out how best to respond in that situation. Which ultimately means that it’s not their fault that they’re caught in this no-win situation. It’s nice to watch a film, feel that you’re watching smart people, and not think you would do better in those circumstances.<br />
The other thing I loved about the film was just how insanely good the performances were from everyone. I will admit that I feel bad that the three performances I particularly loved were those of the three most recognisable actors, because everyone in the film was operating at such a high level. But when you have Patrick Stewart playing a white supremacist leader, how can you not be completely focused on him? I particularly appreciated how small his acting choices are; it would be an easy temptation to go big in a role like that, but this was so understated. In essence he was giving a very similar performance to those he would give as Captain Picard or Professor X, and while it sounds odd to have such wildly different characters be so similar, it makes sense. His character of Darcy is someone who clearly has a lot of history, who has no doubt murdered many people in the past, and who is as a result feared and respected those in his community. And so he’s not someone who has to rant and rave like every stereotypical white supremacist; he’s someone who speaks with authority and people listen, much like a Starfleet captain or a superhero leader. And it also means he can seem entirely reasonable in his interactions with the band, which might allow them to trust him in a way that a vile hate-speech-spewing cliché wouldn’t. Instead of being a loud performance of villainy, it becomes a performance in the eyes, the flashes of rage that flash whenever things go badly for him being our mean indicator of just how evil this man is.<br />
And in the band, I had a great deal of fun seeing Alia Shawkat, best known as Maeby in Arrested Development. I loved the choice to make her a female and never once acknowledge it. But it’s not inconsequential that she’s female; she’s someone who’s very focussed on the way she presents herself, as though the fact that she’s a female has made her feel like she has to justify herself as having a place in a very-male-centric music style, so she’s pushed away everything that detracts from the punk aesthetic. Her entire performance feels like an act of bluster and fear of being found out, and it’s great.<br />
But the real heartbreak of the film was Anton Yelchin. I’d seen Yelchin in things other than the recent Star Trek films, but for me when he died recently the first thing I thought of was that he was Chekov, and while he’s a lot of fun in that role it’s definitely one of the more minor supporting performances in those films. But this really drove home what a talent we lost. As Pat, Yelchin is bold and confident when it comes to his music, but timid and indecisive otherwise, and he goes through this wonderful arc as the film progresses. I loved what he did here, and it makes me think that I need to go back and really look at his other work, because there’s definitely some greatness I’d previously not noticed.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1r5IRdBQnszazJrMQPMKDSbIESt3pvuR689iv1gKtOKoRdO9rs3715vVcCdVdanr7dJKr6h-wUq2LTJFt3ylidI2WhV1SujGuDKl9MNxFdaXPTFBovLxL3Ppc1E2b-ObxfuZrCTy5pzJV/s1600/sunset_song.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1r5IRdBQnszazJrMQPMKDSbIESt3pvuR689iv1gKtOKoRdO9rs3715vVcCdVdanr7dJKr6h-wUq2LTJFt3ylidI2WhV1SujGuDKl9MNxFdaXPTFBovLxL3Ppc1E2b-ObxfuZrCTy5pzJV/s320/sunset_song.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Sunset Song</i></b><br />
Based on a novel that is apparently much loved in Scotland, Sunset Song is the story of Chris, a young woman in the early part of the 20th century, who grows up working the family farm. The film takes her all the way from her early teen years through to her time as a wife and a mother. People are born, people die, people fall in love, people hate, people work and marry and are joyful and experience pain. It’s basically life.<br />
Introducing the film, director and screenwriter Terence Davies talked about how he discovered the novel when the BBC screened a six-part adaptation when he was young. And I can believe it. The problem I had with the film was that it felt like it needed more time (say, the amount of time involved in a six-part television adaptation) to tell the story. Two-and-a-bit hours was not enough for this story. It felt as though Davies couldn’t bring himself to lose any part of the story, and so he just squeezed and squeezed the story until he could force it into a movie running time. I seldom felt that the film was able to live in the moment, because they had to hit the key plot point of the scene and move on. There are devastating moments in the film, tragic events that occur, and the emotional ramifications of these events vanish from the film two minutes later. And in the rush from scene to scene I completely lost any sense of the passage of time; at one time I was shocked to realise that a good five years must have passed in the last few minutes because that child on screen is definitely significantly older than the baby we just saw being born.<br />
There are points where this quick movement from scene to scene really affected the film; for example, there’s one scene where I thought (and still think) that she loses her virginity (they show her stocking being removed and her bare leg being kissed, before cutting to a scene of her looking at her body in the mirror as though she’s seeing herself as a sexual being for the first time). But I’m not actually sure about what happened, because the scene is so elided that it’s never clear how far they went, and later scenes (in particular going to great pains to establish that she’s not going to sleep with the man who will become her husband until their wedding) made me think that it was possible it might not have happened. The scene is probably not cut short out of an sense of prudishness (several scenes, including the scene that immediately follows, establish that), so the only reason I can think of for only showing what they what they showed is out of a sense of “have to keep moving, have to keep moving, can’t stop, can’t stop”, and the leg-kissing is possibly the best-known part of the moment in the book. I completely expect to discover that there was some key point in that scene that I completely missed, but as it stands, if I’m watching a coming-of-age film, and I can’t be definitive about such a defining coming-of-age point, something has gone wrong.<br />
The other frustration for me was the film’s use of narration. There’s not a lot of narration in the film, but there’s a little bit of it. Occasionally it provided a bit of explanation that I found useful, but usually it was just a single line providing a particularly poetic way of describing something that was already very clear just in the performances and how it was shot. Much in the way that the film felt like it was trying to keep every moment from the book, this felt like the film trying to keep a particularly beloved or beautiful piece of prose that could otherwise not be included. And it almost always took me out of the film because it felt like it didn’t trust me to get the emotion of what is happening.<br />
But all of my criticism of the film is essentially with it as a screenplay; what was on the screen was stunning. The film was beautiful, lush, and atmospheric, and there was a wonderfully physical earthiness to the film that I did enjoy. Best of all, Agyness Deyn’s performance as Chris is just phenomenal. In a film like this, where many of what should be some of the hardest emotional beats in this film are passed over with scarcely an acknowledgement, it falls on Deyn to carry the weight of these moments, and I felt she was remarkable in shaping the growth of this woman and filling the gaps that the screenplay left. If there’s one thing I’ll take away from the film, it’s that hers is a name to look out for.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ178HlOk419hMu6wbgcJ4_CbiqKBwZpkevNtp1mYxbGKm9w9eeKB64neDZiiREx4q2sYQfiDqIATETioKZcdnddPNgFAdhj9MysVJ1NJRLE52JSI7WAJMW_RoLQ-hCoZ5oQUOsZPBijw9/s1600/suburra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="528" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ178HlOk419hMu6wbgcJ4_CbiqKBwZpkevNtp1mYxbGKm9w9eeKB64neDZiiREx4q2sYQfiDqIATETioKZcdnddPNgFAdhj9MysVJ1NJRLE52JSI7WAJMW_RoLQ-hCoZ5oQUOsZPBijw9/s320/suburra.jpg" width="223" /></a></div>
<b><i>Suburra</i></b><br />
Suburra opens with an on-screen card, “5 November 2011: 7 days until the Apocalypse”. Which is quite a dramatic way to open this Italian crime drama. From there we proceed to meet a high-profile politician who is in the middle of a prolonged session with two escorts when one of the girls dies of an overdose, a problem made even worse for the politician since the dead girl was underage. The other escort has a friend from a local crime family come to help dispose of the body, but that solves nothing since the next day the friend comes to the politician and blackmails him. The politician approaches someone he knows can help arrange for the friend to be taught a lesson, wanting him to be scared off; instead the friend gets murdered, which angers the head of the local crime family. Meanwhile, a different friend of the second escort is being pursued by the same crime lord after discovering his father (who just committed suicide) owed significant debts to the crime lord. The whole thing spirals out of control, especially as the perilous near-collapse state of the governing party is forcing everyone to hurriedly push through a major real estate development that will greatly benefit a different crime family, as well as the Vatican and anyone else who manages to get into the deal.<br />
I enjoyed Suburra. It had a phenomenal sense of kineticism running through the film, with some great action setpieces; one major shootout in a shopping mall in particular left me breathless. And I was liked with how carefully the film navigated the storylines; with so many pieces and characters coming into conflict, it was impressive how clear the film was in keeping everything in focus.<br />
Where I struggle with the film is its efforts to give the story a wider meaning. As the film progressed and I started to see where the film was going, I drew on my vague memory of world events and made a guess as to what had happened on 12 November 2011, the date of the apocalypse the opening card warned of. And I was right: that was the date that Berlusconi resigned after losing his parliamentary majority, which sets the entire political aspect of the film in a very real context. And that also provides an interesting colour to the film; Berlusconi is not in the film (and indeed his name is never even mentioned that I noticed), but the fact that the entire plot revolves around an underage escort and drugs means that the film has undertones of Berlusconi’s notorious “bunga bunga” parties. Which is interesting. And it’s also interesting watching the scenes of people realising that they’re likely to lose their positions of power once the government collapses, and trying while they can to put in place measures that will secure them a solid income from this real estate deal. But to me it felt contrived, as though the writers wanted to talk about the corruption of the political environment in Italy but were worried that it might bore people, so they grafted that aspect onto a more conventional crime thriller. And that can be done (look at something like The Wire for the absolute best example of something using a crime story to talk about wider societal issues), but it has to be done carefully in order for the scenes of people negotiating for a future board position to feel as vital as the scene of the junkie girlfriend hiding from the killers. It gets even more contrived when you get to the Vatican storyline, because it’s such a minor part of the storyline. Essentially the sole contribution of the Vatican scenes to me was to say “there’s corruption in the Vatican as well”.<br />
Yes, we know. Even the attempt to fold actual Vatican events into this story fails, largely because they tried to work in the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI , when even as a non-Catholic I knew off the top of my head that this was too early and that the resignation took place a year or two later. As a result all they could do was have a line of dialogue that he’s “thinking” about resigning (but presumably did nothing about it for 15 months).<br />
Still, it was very fun. According to the festival programme, there’s a television series version being made for Netflix, and I can see it working pretty well in that context.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0MQ6XzzBoognYPkiiFBZk7LzKyJ5CYtTLBfOFA59iUAU5OPArthYHa6eiZPCf2dCdkVvp1MxThWIPF054za96z4gflomNXAVqGv0c0hdvo4i2eyVP0rkLXpSCUWEOsk_k-gA0eiOdoNI2/s1600/swiss_army_man.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0MQ6XzzBoognYPkiiFBZk7LzKyJ5CYtTLBfOFA59iUAU5OPArthYHa6eiZPCf2dCdkVvp1MxThWIPF054za96z4gflomNXAVqGv0c0hdvo4i2eyVP0rkLXpSCUWEOsk_k-gA0eiOdoNI2/s320/swiss_army_man.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Swiss Army Man</i></b><br />
Well I certainly wasn't bored.<br />
I approached this film with definite wariness. Its screening at Sundance famously had a lot of walkouts, and the audience was completely polarised; many hating it and just as many living it. Judging by every description I’d read of the film, I suspected I wouldn't care for it, but since I had a space in my schedule, sure, I'll give it a chance.<br />
Paul Dano stars as Hank, a man trapped on a tiny rock in the middle of the ocean. Having given up hope, he's about to commit suicide when he finds a dead body washed up on the beach. The body, played by Daniel Radcliffe, is farting. A lot. So much so that the opening credits play over Hank riding the farting body like a jet ski to reach new land. Soon the body starts talking, although he's still dead. This is how we learn that the body is called Manny. We learn that it's not just his farts that have magical powers. He produces drinking water from his mouth; his fingers can spark a fire; his lungs allow him to be used as a compressed air gun; and his erection functions as a compass. And there are many other things this human Swiss Army Knife can do. And as they try to survive, they talk a lot, about life and love and friendship.<br />
So I'm really rather conflicted about the film. I hated and loved the film in equal measure. First to the hate: it will come as no surprise to anyone that knows me how much I hated the juvenile body humour with the film. There was So. Much. Farting. To the point where I was shocked that after 90 minutes the film was still finding it funny; I get that people find this stuff funny, but doesn’t the joke get old at some point? It was never-ending. I saw Radcliffe's butt pulled out of his pants (to increase the effectiveness of his gas) much more often than I really needed. And I've spent more time watching his crotch twitching than I would ever want to. And the juvenile approach eventually infects everything. By the time that Manny questions whether Hank is really his friend because how can you really know or trust someone who hides his farts, I had just had enough of all this. This is a film made by adults; it should not feel like it was written by 8-year-olds.<br />
And that's a shame, because when you look past all of that, there's a lot to really love in the film. For a start, Radcliffe's performance is one of the most extraordinary physical pieces of acting I have seen. He's playing a corpse, and no matter how much he talks or moves he's always convincingly dead. Sure, he's helped by makeup and effects, but he's always feels like a body without any control of his physical being. To be clear, this like isn't a zombie performance: as a performance, zombies are alive monsters that used to be dead humans. This is a performance as a dead person, and somehow no amount of increasingly eloquent speeches detract from that effect. It is remarkable work, and it's nice to see someone who could easily have rested after the Harry Potter films ended instead working to push himself and find new acting challenges.<br />
Paul Dano also does fine work; he's called on to carry a lot of weight in the film, figuratively and literally, and he's a fun comedic presence who at times is heartbreaking and desperate. To me the film was about the pain of loneliness and our need for connection, and that is something that oozed through every pore of the performance; there’s a desperation in the character for someone to be friends with and a joy that comes from their relationship. And there’s an aching regret in the character; one of the film’s best moments comes when Hank starts teaching Manny about love and in so doing he recreates moments from his memory, moments involving this one girl, with Hank playing the girl. And it’s weird to say, but there’s a scene in this film of Daniel Radcliffe as a corpse falling in love with a woman who is represented by Paul Dano in drag made from trash, and it’s one of the most beautifully romantic film moments I’ve seen in a while.<br />
The film is incredibly beautiful and striking. The film was written and directed by filmmaking duo Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (they’re credited on-screen as Daniels), and looking the two up I see that they’ve done a lot of work in music videos. And it shows; there’s a lushness to the film that is incredible. One of the film’s big locations is a trash heap piled up with the waste of human existence, and I never would have imagined a trash heap could look that amazing. But we’re seeing it through the eyes of Manny, for whom it’s like he’s seeing everything for the first time, and so everything just looks wonderful. I just wanted to sit and marvel at how stunning this movie was<br />
But every time I would start to get lost in the film, start to think “I’m really enjoying this”, the farting would start up again, and the film would lose me. And that was frustrating. Because I genuinely can’t say that I loved the film or I hated the film; I could take the average and say I liked the film, but that’s not true either. All I can say is that I saw the film, and my reaction was what it was.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm5NCavPfdQQFPO4mPKTsh2R_e0vRUd6cHCiewgv59NKpJNFZafT0uyWfu4wctljqnoWx3s-NRo1uFiBPg0uK9IRI75yfp-MAGzXgfsvpqFrM_y270LHEkBuasmGhIae9lEqjpmrrzb_f1/s1600/captain_fantastic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm5NCavPfdQQFPO4mPKTsh2R_e0vRUd6cHCiewgv59NKpJNFZafT0uyWfu4wctljqnoWx3s-NRo1uFiBPg0uK9IRI75yfp-MAGzXgfsvpqFrM_y270LHEkBuasmGhIae9lEqjpmrrzb_f1/s320/captain_fantastic.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Captain Fantastic</i></b><br />
Ben Cash, along with his wife and their six children, have been living off-the-grid in the middle of the forest for many, many years. The kids are home-schooled, proficient in everything from great literature to politics to quantum theory. They run miles every day, they’re skilled mountain-climbers, and every one of the children can kill and prepare their meat. When the capitalist society that this world relies on inevitably comes to an end these people will survive. But the mother has bipolar disorder, and when the film begins she’s been away seeking treatment for several months. And then they get the news that she’s committed suicide, her funeral is in five days, and her parents (which disapproved of her unconventional lifestyle and beliefs) insist that Ben cannot attend the funeral. So he piles the kids into the family bus for a road trip down south, to ensure her final wishes are honoured.<br />
So there’s this one point where Ben announces that today they’re celebrating Noam Chomsky Day! The kids all cheer, they all sing their Noam Chomsky song as Ben pulls out the Noam Chomsky picture, and then he hands out their Noam Chomsky Day gifts, mostly impressively brutal-looking knives. See, they don’t celebrate Christmas, because why celebrate the birth of an imaginary sky fairy; instead, they celebrate the birthday of a great living American thinker. This was the point where I felt “No more. I have had enough of this film.” To me it felt like it was a film that had no courage of its convictions, it wasn’t trying to be about anything other than a quirky crowd-pleasing comedy. It’s as though at every moment in the film, writer/director Matt Ross looked at the screenplay, threw out anything that remotely seemed conventional, and tried to think of the most out-there idea he could put into the film, because these characters march to the beat of their own block of wood that they hit rhythmically while sitting on it. So when we’re not watching them scale absurdly high cliff-faces, we’re watching them argue over the appropriate name for their particular form of communism, we’re discovering their apparent impulse towards casual nudity, we’re learning that they’ve actually had to implement a rule banning people from speaking Esperanto, and so on. It just felt like we reached a point where these were no living characters to me; they were just machines whose entire existence and behaviour is driven by the question of what the most absurd thing is they could be doing at that point in time. Now, my friend eT argues that this is deliberate, that Ross is being deliberately satirical in his portrayal of Cash and his family and their lifestyle. And that may be so; I didn’t see it, but it’s certainly possible. But to me that just shifts the problem, it doesn’t solve it. I was approaching the characters somewhat seriously because that seemed to me to be how the film wanted me to approach them in their more human moments. I enjoy a lot of satires; I struggle to think of one that was simultaneously satirical and demanded a genuine emotional reaction to the satirical figures. The entire climax of the film is built on the audience having a sincere emotional response to the events on screen. But if the defining character traits of these people are genuinely intended to be daft and wacky, then what are we holding on to when we’re supposed to take them seriously?<br />
And it’s a shame, because the acting is all very good. Viggo Mortensen is completely convincing as a character who is driven by the force of his convictions and who (for all his claims of a belief in complete freedom and in preparing his kids for the world) is blind to how restrictive he himself is to his family and how narrow-viewed he is. I was delighted to discover that the in-laws were played by Frank Langella and Ann Dowd; it was particularly fun watching Langella’s complete contempt for Ben while simultaneously experiencing the joy of reconnecting with grandchildren he hasn’t seen in years. And the children are all impressive; the nature of their roles (basically, being children who have been given an education well beyond their years) means that they’re given some complicated material, and I found them all quite convincing. (Although the film did rely far, far too much on the joke of having the six-year-old girl saying cute things indicative either of youthful innocence or excessive knowledge, depending on the particular joke being made at the time.)<br />
It was a shame I had such a negative reaction. I like Matt Ross, at least as a comedic actor (his work in Silicon Valley is one of my favourite parts of an excellent show), so I was certainly open to like the film. And everyone else really enjoyed the film; there was a lot of laughter in the cinema, and walking out I heard two different sets of people enthusing “That was great.” But to me this felt like paint-by-numbers crowd-pleasing indie film; it felt generic and strained, and it did not work for me. Most people will probably love it; hell, I might have loved it had I watched it at any other time of the year. But I watched it during the festival, in the context of seeing a lot of films, many of which are aiming much higher than this film. And in that light, it just felt ordinary.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGXGEl711vAprNQTowkqDrQWJZeVXzTSq7zly-4-cRwhKXt8x5oBG_16iHFb9eZfAClgvKbmVSCXOeHYgoBKXL3Y_1AC3yAihp8Xvl7Ik7vquFcs-1dNv-4l6E3NF_ivFuwEOFjlL8XYfR/s1600/graduation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGXGEl711vAprNQTowkqDrQWJZeVXzTSq7zly-4-cRwhKXt8x5oBG_16iHFb9eZfAClgvKbmVSCXOeHYgoBKXL3Y_1AC3yAihp8Xvl7Ik7vquFcs-1dNv-4l6E3NF_ivFuwEOFjlL8XYfR/s320/graduation.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Graduation</i></b><br />
One of my favourite experiences during the film festival is when I find myself watching a film with no idea what I’m about to see. These are the films where I just read the description in the festival programme, thought it sounded interesting, added it to my schedule, and now a month has passed and I find myself walking into a film called Graduation with no idea what it even is. Sometimes the films don’t work for you, and that’s a shame. But sometimes the films just wow you.<br />
One morning a young Romanian woman, in her final year before college, is assaulted. The experience affects her, and the next day when she sits one of her big end-of-year exams she doesn’t perform as well as usual. The problem is, she’s a talented student with a scholarship to travel to England and study at Cambridge, but that is dependent on her maintaining her exam average, and with her performance that day she needs essentially perfect marks for the two remaining exams. Her father, a doctor, has attached a great deal of significance to this scholarship, seeing it as his daughter’s opportunity to leave Romania for a better life elsewhere. So he approaches a patient and promises him an organ transplant if he can just do what he can to ensure that she gets the perfect mark she needs.<br />
This was a fascinating exploration of the casual way corruption seeps its way into everyday life. After all, the father’s actions are entirely understandable. His daughter has the knowledge and ability, and she would have achieved the result she needed without any assistance at all were it not for her assault, and that wasn’t her fault. This isn’t giving a C student an A mark; this is ensuring an A student doesn’t get a B. So he’s not doing anything “wrong”, he’s just undoing the effect of something that should never have happened. And it’s not even for himself; he’s trying to make things right for his daughter. And the Romania portrayed in the film is an awful place - our main character is a doctor, presumably well-off, but his neighbourhood is run-down and dangerous, somewhere I would never want to live - so of course he wants his daughter to leave. What could be more natural than that?<br />
There’s almost an assumption that corruption is part of this world, and everyone just accepts it. In one scene our main character is meeting with someone at their opulent house, and the person reflexively has to make clear that he earned his money honestly, not through bribery. (Of course, he says this in the context of explaining why he’s comfortable helping this person cheat in this one case.) But there are always reasons why we can justify doing the wrong thing, be it cheating in an exam, or cheating on our wife, or looking the other way when someone is attacked; if we couldn’t justify our actions, at least to ourselves, then no-one would ever do anything wrong. The thing is, yes, it’s terrible and wrong that this attack happened and that this poor girl may lose her scholarship as a result, but what of the person should have received an organ transplant but doesn’t because the organ is given to the person who is most useful to the doctor? It’s easy to justify these actions as being victimless as long as you focus entirely on the narrow and specific events being addressed without considering the wider ramifications. And I found the exploration of that issue extremely entertaining and suspenseful. I really need to dig out some of the earlier works of director Cristian Mungiu; I’ve heard very good things about those other films, and if they’re anything like Graduation then I will feel my time will be well spent.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2I_0ZbNjVPR3sV8n9AY7_nUO1o9YV1yWIWwQqc5ouVzrEwmCTFwlkUx-Gb4lllbFkZhGone71RLKpB3Nx93xMSrFMjsGsATGrl2WOmRNBRix6q4gpxg_QYNEQnrohLgqd2Wgh5g2v-IQ/s1600/tokyo_story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="528" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2I_0ZbNjVPR3sV8n9AY7_nUO1o9YV1yWIWwQqc5ouVzrEwmCTFwlkUx-Gb4lllbFkZhGone71RLKpB3Nx93xMSrFMjsGsATGrl2WOmRNBRix6q4gpxg_QYNEQnrohLgqd2Wgh5g2v-IQ/s320/tokyo_story.jpg" width="223" /></a></div>
<b><i>Tokyo Story</i></b><br />
I was so excited to see Tokyo Story listed in the programme. I’d never seen any films by Yasujiro Ozu, which I realise is a big cinematic blindspot to have, and Tokyo Story in particular is often cited as one of the greatest films ever made. When you hear something like that you set your expectations impossibly high, and it’s remarkable when a film still manages to far exceed what you thought.<br />
The plot, such as it is, is very simple: an elderly couple living in a small town in the south of Japan travel up to Tokyo and Osaka to visit their children. But the children are busy people, and the visit really is an inconvenience for them; they’re not able to find the time to show them around. They even try booking the parents into a seaside resort, just to get them out of the way for a few days. It’s not out of a sense of nastiness or resentment; they’re just busy people with commitments that get in the way. The one person who is able to spend time with them is their daughter-in-law whose husband (the couple’s son) died years earlier in the war. And for the most part, that’s about it.<br />
And it was wonderful. What I loved about the film was just how beautifully understated it is. There are joyful moments, but those are tinged with sorrow. There are moments of sadness and regret, but there’s never a sense of pain. There’s a resignation to it, a sense that this is the way of the world and we need to accept it. Even during some of the third act developments, where other films might have broken into more histrionic reactions, this just remains simple, certainly sad, but never over the top. The relationships between the characters feel very honest and real. I particularly enjoyed spending time with the mother and the widowed daughter-in-law; there was a genuine sense of love between these two women, and one of my favourite moments came when the mother was expressing her concern that the daughter-in-law was holding on too much to the memory of her late husband and needed to be moving on in her life. This was a powerful scene between a mother who had welcomed this woman into the family, who sincerely loved her, and who needs her to understand that she wants her to live a happy life, and a woman who is so grateful for that love and who feels shame at the fact that she’s not grieving every day over her husband. It was a beautiful, powerful moment.<br />
There’s a lot of thematic richness to the film; quiet meditations on the passage of time, on the way the world changes. A big theme to me was the impact that the war had on Japan. The film was made eight years after the end of the war, and the film carries those scars, not in a heavy-handed way, but just in acknowledging the ongoing damage that the experience had. (This theme was highlighted even more when I discovered the town the parents live in, Onomichi, is actually in the Hiroshima Prefecture. It’s never acknowledged in the film, but at the time it probably didn’t need to be; it’s entirely possible that Japanese audiences would have been very aware of just how close that town was to the location of the atomic bombing, and what it meant for the film to put the parents there.) And above all it’s a heartbreaking reflection on family, on the way that relationships between parents and children grow and change, and how you can make a choice to be a family or not. It was devastating, and I found myself walking away reflecting on what type of son I would be. I would hope I would be willing to do whatever I can to help and support my parents; I fear that I would be the son who’ll put up with them to the degree that it’s convenient. And that troubles me.<br />
I’m frustrated that I don’t have much else to say. Ozu’s film is utterly unique, I cannot think of another film that works quite like it, it affected me profoundly and I don’t know how to express it. I feel like I need more time to process it, I need more viewings of the film, I need to spend time watching other Ozu’s films and just living in his filmmaking, I need to read some of the wealth of analysis written by people much more knowledgeable that I ever could be, and then maybe I’ll develop the tools to express what I feel as I reflect on the film. “Awesome” is not a word I ever use; its meaning has been too debased by popular usage, and it’s now miles away from the concept of being something that genuinely inspires an overwhelming sense of wonder. But that’s the only word I can think of to describe this film. Tokyo Story is awesome.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjSHn39yq8vtclxeOSBPvVlbjtReLm48myyy3ywtLGHYCWwskQDuww4yDh49dnqA40PVYDEaPS-zN2CdvN4jGVUcjsH1NQdTESiRwUm_7kaO74Cup4Jy0nHFmXmoerKYzGD4km-rPwq0Lb/s1600/red_turtle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="399" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjSHn39yq8vtclxeOSBPvVlbjtReLm48myyy3ywtLGHYCWwskQDuww4yDh49dnqA40PVYDEaPS-zN2CdvN4jGVUcjsH1NQdTESiRwUm_7kaO74Cup4Jy0nHFmXmoerKYzGD4km-rPwq0Lb/s320/red_turtle.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Red Turtle</i></b><br />
It was a surprise to see a new Studio Ghibli film in the festival, since there had been so many reports that the great Japanese animation studio was effectively closing down following the retirement of legendary co-founder Miyazaki. It turns out that this is actually a coproduction between Ghibli and several European studios, and the director himself is Dutch; the studio's other co-founder, the great Isao Takahata, is credited as artistic producer. The result is a film that looks completely different to every other Ghibli, but that in theme and worldview suits perfectly with their work.<br />
A man is shipwrecked and washes up on an isolated island. Twice he builds a raft, only to have it destroyed by some unseen creature underneath. Finally, when his third raft is destroyed, he sees the thing preventing him from leaving; a massive red turtle. Returning to the shore, he sees the turtle crawling up the beach. Enraged at this creature for preventing him from escaping, he runs up, beats it with a stick, flips it onto its back, jumps up and down on its underside, and then leaves the turtle to die. Which it does. And then... I'm reluctant to say too much more for fear of spoiling the delights of this remarkable film.<br />
The film is this beautiful tale of love, forgiveness, loss, and learning to find joy in your circumstances. It's not surprising that Studio Ghibli were involved in the film, as it is a film that is deeply magical and deeply fascinated with nature, two elements common to many of the great Ghibli movies. There's a careful observation to the animation of the island wildlife, with the appearances of the crabs in particular proving utterly doubtful. And the animation is phenomenal; there's a granularity to the image that I've never seen in animation before and which I found quite striking.<br />
One of the most impressive creative decisions was the choice to have the film being entirely wordless; the closest thing to dialogue in the film was an occasional exclamation of "Hey!" or "Aargh!". There's a careful discipline in the approach; it never feels like a gimmick, and instead it becomes invisible, an organic part of the world.<br />
The Red Turtle was a wonderful, joyous movie. Not something I would recommend for young children - the death of the turtle in particular was tough even for me to watch - but for older audiences it really works. If this points to a new direction for Ghibli, I'm excited; it promises an opportunity to hear from new voices while infused with the quality the studio promises.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQevF7asIfgNFsmBQr9b43HCP6f8mpGqdrkC-q3piCK3y2BXF_747_C-0xCKP_-a8rm35m34oyP2p-NKXnb6S6V6TKD5ClWmqnW8kXCKU_CZiV0VwMnfueVWzyL93NCBldyN-pB1vrjWLd/s1600/truman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="520" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQevF7asIfgNFsmBQr9b43HCP6f8mpGqdrkC-q3piCK3y2BXF_747_C-0xCKP_-a8rm35m34oyP2p-NKXnb6S6V6TKD5ClWmqnW8kXCKU_CZiV0VwMnfueVWzyL93NCBldyN-pB1vrjWLd/s320/truman.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>
<i><b>Truman</b></i><br />
A great little drama, Truman opens with a middle-aged man, Tomas, flying from Canada to Spain to reconnect with his close friend Julian, who has terminal cancer and has decided to end treatment. Tomas is intending to try to talk Julian out of his decision, but when it becomes clear that won’t change, they just spend the next four days together. Much of the time is spent trying to make arrangements for Julian’s dog, the titular Truman, once he passes on.<br />
So I loved almost everything about the film. It’s a wonderful portrait of male friendships, and the way we relate to each other. Everything is unspoken, because at those times when they might actually be honest with each other about how deeply they feel for each other it’s too uncomfortable to let those words out. So they cover over the discomfort with jokes and bravado, and try to move on as fast as possible. The one point in the film where they really are honest with each other comes late at night; Tomas is in his hotel room asleep when he gets a cellphone call from Julian, who can’t sleep. And the conversation they have is genuine and emotional, because as men it’s easier for them to be honest with each other if you don’t have to look the other person in the eyes.<br />
It’s also a wonderful portrait of the way we approach our impending death. Julian is someone who has lived life with vigour and joy, and now he knows that’s coming to an end and that scares him. But again, it’s too much for him to admit his thought and his fears about dying, and so he offloads them onto his dog Truman. It’s not just whether he’ll find someone who’s willing to take care of Truman once he dies (although that’s a major issue of focus for him); early on in the film he goes to Truman’s vet to ask about what the grieving process is like for Truman, and later on he going to a bookstore looking for books on animal psychology trying to understand what Truman will go through once he dies. Julian doesn’t really have family; he has an ex-wife who he’s on good terms with, a son who lives in Amsterdam and who he barely speaks to, and the person he’s probably closest to is his cousin Paula. He has friends, but his closest friends are people like Tomas who have moved away and are no longer around. So for Julian, Truman is the living being he’s closest to, and so he needs to believe that it will matter to Truman when he goes.<br />
There’s also some nice consideration given to the way we all respond to people who are dying. This is most prominent in a pair of scenes where the two men are sitting in restaurants when they see people who are friends with Julian. In the one case, the friends pretend to not see Julian, because it’s just easier to not have to interact with him when you don’t know how to react, and we see how Julian is used to that reaction, how it’s something he’s dealt with a lot, and how it hurts him every time to be treated as invisible by people you care about. Then there’s the other friend, who Julian initially tries to hide from because it’s someone who he had betrayed in the past, and when that person actually comes up and expresses his sorrow at the news, Julian is extremely grateful that the friend was able to overcome their past bad blood and treat him as a human being. And there are all the little interactions we have that are coloured by this issue: there’s the local neighbourhood dope dealer who noticed that she hadn’t seen Julian for a few days and is therefore concerned when she saw someone else walking Truman, or there’s the people they meet about taking Truman who Julian has to lie to about his reason for needing to get rid of the dog in order to avoid uncomfortable conversations with people he doesn’t know.<br />
One thing I did find frustrating, given how smart and honest the film had been about the relationships that form between males, was that it couldn’t be the same in its portrayal of male/female friendships. We learn early on that Tomas is also friends with Paula, and she spends several evenings out with the two. And then, on his last night, Paula and Tomas just decide to sleep together, seemingly just for the sake of it, which I found incredibly frustrating. Now, perhaps it’s just that I assumed there was nothing between the characters because Tomas was so firmly established as being married and I’m always going to be in favour of people not cheating, but I never saw any indication of any attraction between the two in the rest of the film; they really did just appear to be good friends. So in doing so, it felt like the film was just adopting a position that men and women cannot simply be friends. Which is an assumption I think many movies make, and which is patently wrong, and so it’s disappointing to see a film that had been so smart in looking at male friendship being so stupid about the other main relationship in the film.<br />
Still, that was a minor flaw in an otherwise engaging and emotionally honest film.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2JIv5v7a1d-GF7biedtQ7ntD_tgBp2LSLTQZa20OMl6kzEaTtUKPdUldabrscTxDmt9NaWkbGOGwngKNdk5gTE9VWU47Vp_uygSvNTkwVrSZAr9cGZhuCGzaBinWBsvRP1wYBGUxJPg-L/s1600/toni_erdmann.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="556" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2JIv5v7a1d-GF7biedtQ7ntD_tgBp2LSLTQZa20OMl6kzEaTtUKPdUldabrscTxDmt9NaWkbGOGwngKNdk5gTE9VWU47Vp_uygSvNTkwVrSZAr9cGZhuCGzaBinWBsvRP1wYBGUxJPg-L/s320/toni_erdmann.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>
<b><i>Toni Erdmann</i></b><br />
Winfried, a music teacher for whom all life is one big comedy routine, is fond of jokes, silly characters, and especially his gag false teeth. When his daughter Ines, a corporate consultant working in Romania, comes for a brief visit he's concerned by how stressed she appears to be. So he impulsively decides to visit her for a few days, right at the worst possible time given her work for a big contract. Even worse, he finds his way into every event in her calendar posting as Toni Erdmann, a man with a ghastly wig and horrific teeth. He seems to hope this will cheer her up. It does not.<br />
Here's the thing: Toni Erdmann is a funny 2 hour movie; unfortunately it's 2 hours 42 minutes long, and that's just too long for a comedy. For comparison, it’s the same length as the regular cut of It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, which is also a film that is too long, and that film had every comedy star in Hollywood doing every joke they could think of. Toni Erdmann is 2:42 of variations on the theme of “guy walks around in bad disguise being annoying”. I’m impressed with the amount of humour they got from such a basic premise (certainly early on whenever he would appear out of nowhere it was a reliable laugh) and there were some very smart scripting choices that I enjoyed (early in the film Ines refers to Winfried using a whoopee cushion, but he indignantly insists he doesn’t have one; in his next appearance he’s acquired a whoopie cushion and is clearly delighted by it) but it did not justify that running time.<br />
Part of the frustrating thing is that it felt like the core conflict could have been resolved so easily. He must be incredibly annoying to have as a father, but he’s genuine in his concern for his daughter, and I’m sure that had she ever stopped to explain clearly and bluntly to him “I need you to not do this for these reasons” he would understand. She never does that. Instead, she actually plays along, repeatedly introducing him as a life coach that the company is working with, in a way that just makes her look bad. Even after he accidentally handcuffs himself to her shortly before a pivotal site visit he doesn’t seem to learn anything. It wound up being a situation where, as frustrating as I found Winfried/Toni, I was more annoyed with Ines for taking no steps to remedy this. But that’s ultimately a problem with the fact that the film just does a really poor job explaining the motivations that drive the characters’ actions.<br />
My frustration with the film is best exemplified by one of its big climactic moments, where Ines is holding a birthday celebration with her work colleagues. Just before they arrive, she has some problem with her shoe; I’m not sure what. But for some reason this shoe problem necessitates her removing her dress; I don’t know why, and neither did a friend who also saw the film. So she’s removing her dress when the zipper gets stuck, and right then the doorbell rings; Oh No! She just pulls the dress off, checks the peephole, it’s a female colleague, so she opens the door even though she’s half naked. She then wanders around being a host to this clearly uncomfortable woman, even reacting with confusion when her colleague suggests she might want to get dressed. Instead, when the next doorbell rings, she pulls off her underwear and answers it, announcing that it’s now a naked party and if you’re not willing to join in then you can just leave. Why is she behaving like this? In what possible way does this make sense? I genuinely do not understand what was going on through the character’s mind. Now, I’m not saying it’s not funny – every time someone turns up having embraced the new party theme, it got a laugh – but the humour in it was cheap and was entirely founded on false and unrealistic behaviour, and that made the scene impossible to enjoy. (And that’s before we get to Winfried’s bizarre costume that he wears to the party, or the weird over-long sequence where the camera just follows him after the party with no payoff that I could see.) And there are so many scenes like that, where people behave ways less motivated by coherent behaviour and more by “that’s what the script says”, that it detracted from the film.<br />
In the end, the film just feels indulgent. It’s as though the filmmaker loves these characters and assumes we’ll love them as much as she did. But I couldn’t, because she didn’t allow me to get to know the characters well enough to love them. And so as the film just dragged on and on with no sign the film was building to any kind of resolution, I just lost patience with the film. It was a shame, because I really did like the film for much of its running time, but had completely turned against it by its conclusion.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0JKJb3FId-3Cx7RthovYW-kqNHyv2HGqEDv7l1beyUiPc67wc-mCmL6A7qu6PT113gpekYTNqdM1YdS6lX8mBC5tv-EkT-f65oFO9SUF1qj4YeZgWpqJ4JNNMyXpnIczb1tUdjjeKHEt4/s1600/one_eyed_jacks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="475" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0JKJb3FId-3Cx7RthovYW-kqNHyv2HGqEDv7l1beyUiPc67wc-mCmL6A7qu6PT113gpekYTNqdM1YdS6lX8mBC5tv-EkT-f65oFO9SUF1qj4YeZgWpqJ4JNNMyXpnIczb1tUdjjeKHEt4/s320/one_eyed_jacks.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<b><i>One-Eyed Jacks</i></b><br />
A western directed by and starring Marlon Brando, One-Eyed Jacks focuses on Rio, a bank robber who is abandoned and left for capture by his friend Dad Longworth. Five years later, Rio escapes from his Mexican prison and crosses the border into the States, where he learns that Longworth (played by Karl Malden) is now the respected sheriff in a small town. He meets up with Longworth and starts a relationship with Longworth’s stepdaughter Louisa, all the while planning to rob the town’s bank and kill his former friend.<br />
Firstly, I should admit that I’m not a western fan. There are westerns that I do enjoy (a good film is a good film, even if it’s a genre I don’t ordinarily connect with), but it’s never been a type of film that I’ve ever held any great interest in. So that could have coloured my response to the film. But I really did not like the movie.<br />
The problem to me was that, while Brando is a great actor, I did not feel him to be particularly strong as a storyteller. There were numerous points where I wasn’t clear on exactly who this character is or how they’re connected to the person they’re with; in some cases it was eventually clarified, but in other cases I still don’t know who that character was or how they came to be with that person. There were point where people seemed to forget information that they knew; in one scene Rio is telling Louisa that he works for the railways, then after they sleep together he reveals that “actually I’m a bank robber” and she’s horrified to learn this, which makes no sense since she was at the dinner when the fact that Rio is a bank robber was discussed. Someone with a stronger focus on storytelling could have fixed this; Brando does not.<br />
There were also parts where I wondered whether Brando needed the distance of having someone else assess his performance, because at times his character’s motivation in particular was not clear to me. A key example: early on in the film, Rio and Dad are under attack and need to decide who will remain and who will ride off to get new horses. (It’s this moment that allows the betrayal that the entire film rests on.) They decide to use “guess the hand the bullet is in” to decide who will go, but Rio surreptitiously puts bullets in both hands, in effect guaranteeing that Dad will leave with all of the gold that they have just stolen and apparently just trusting Dad to return. But I don’t understand why Rio rigged the result in favour of Dad. Why didn’t they just have it be a fair game that Dad won by chance, since the betrayal is just as great either way? I have no doubt that Brando has some reason for why Rio made that choice, and when he watched the film he saw that motivation in his performance, but a different director might have been able to see that it wasn’t clear and have made changes to clarify that.<br />
In fact, there are plenty of points where characters’ actions are driven by the needs of the plot, rather than logical behaviour. For instance, when Rio is first approached about this bank robbery, he questions why he’s needed, since they already have two people and that’s all you really need. The answer he’s given is that it’s the bank in the town where Dad is sheriff, which is a great motivation for revenge-seeking Rio to get involved, but still doesn’t explain why the people putting the bank job together feel the need to include Rio. And then, having put the robbery together, they’re prepared to delay for literally months waiting until Rio can be involved, even though we’re told in the film itself that he’s not actually needed. Why is everyone so prepared to give up all of their plans to allow Rio to seek his revenge, other than “because the film requires it”?<br />
If the film is worth watching, it’s for the performances. Brando is generally solid, but then he’s been better, and in much better films. Karl Malden is great, easily the highlight of the film, but again he was also great working with Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront. I enjoyed Katy Jurado and Pina Pellicer as Longworth’s wife and stepdaughter respectively; Pellicer in particular was a real delight. And Slim Pickens, as a sinister deputy sheriff, was decidedly fun. So I did find a lot to enjoy in the film, but I generally want more from a film than just good acting.<br />
So I really didn’t care for the film. The problem was that when the film ended, the credits for the film’s restoration effort came on-screen, and Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg were expressly thanked for their contributions. This gave me pause. Scorsese and Spielberg know more about cinema than I could even imagine knowing, and if they saw this film, out of all the hundreds of thousands of movies ever made, as being specifically worthy of restoration then I feel that there must be something to it that I’m not seeing. I do not know what, but I do feel that my response to the film is probably less a reflection on the film and more a reflection on me.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Djz33k1CW8SNfUibOs86p9eWuJhjBBIkcf2ctaJ6yX0DRASpm-ourHqaDsM-njfTl7zWNP625mYL4SEImhS3ExGe3ssYs9ltlIGdCcpoiYNogUjYf6ExE1En8msqqqOSCOyzf7LqtMDN/s1600/daughter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="529" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Djz33k1CW8SNfUibOs86p9eWuJhjBBIkcf2ctaJ6yX0DRASpm-ourHqaDsM-njfTl7zWNP625mYL4SEImhS3ExGe3ssYs9ltlIGdCcpoiYNogUjYf6ExE1En8msqqqOSCOyzf7LqtMDN/s320/daughter.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Daughter</i></b><br />
A small Australian town is hit by the news that the local mill, the town’s major employer, is closing down. In the midst of the turmoil in the community the mill owner is preparing to marry his young thirty-something housekeeper. The mill owner’s son Christian, having lived overseas since before his mother committed suicide, returns to town for the wedding, and in reconnecting with his old friend Oliver meets his wife Charlotte and their gifted daughter Hedvig. But Christian knows a lot of secrets, and in the middle of the wedding party those secrets are revealed to the devastation of everyone involved.<br />
The film is inspired by an Ibsen play called The Wild Duck, although it has been radically reworked in order to cast it in the modern Australian setting. I’m not familiar with the play, so one of the first things I did after getting home was to look up the play itself. And it appears to have largely held close to the play, at times even taking aspects that I have difficulty imagining working on the stage and changing the location to give it the space that the events need. The core of the story is changed from a dinner party to a wedding, but that change feels natural and otherwise that story is pretty much the same; the mill closure appears to be new, but adds a sense of depression and loss to the film that works well with the material. The key thing is that, if you didn’t know that this was inspired by a 19th century play, I doubt you would know until the end credit appears; it feels like a modern story that speaks to the place that Australia is right now.<br />
And the drama is utterly gripping. It’s not that there are big twist reveals; the film does take its time sharing out the core secrets (whereas the play seems to largely reveal the key secret in its opening scene), but it didn’t matter that we all could guess what the big revelation would be because the story was being driven by the question of what the consequences of the revelation would be. So the film could afford to build to the reveals naturally because it would strengthen the impact on the characters.<br />
It’s not perfect. Thinking about the film afterwards, I found myself realising that the timeframe of the film doesn’t really make much sense; the wedding storyline seems to only cover a week or two, but the decline in the town as everyone leaves must surely cover a few months. (It makes sense to discover that the mill closure was not part of the original play.) But the important thing is, I was realised that after the film; as the film was playing it never occurred to me. More distracting is the decision to have the titular daughter retain the name of the character in the play, Hedvig. Given how firmly the film is located in Australia, giving the one character a noticeably Norwegian name would pull me out of the film at times, reminding me that this is based on earlier material, and at times causing me to wonder about how the film and the play correlate when I should have been caught up in the film.<br />
The film ends on an unresolved note, and there’s always a degree of frustration that runs through the audience when that happens. I personally was fine with it. The issue is, if you were to have a definitive ending with this story, it would either have to be the happy ending or the sad ending. I wanted the happy ending, but that would have been too optimistic and would not have fit with the film tonally; I definitely did not want the sad ending, but if I was honest that would probably have been the right ending (indeed the play itself is definitive in having the sad ending). But to me the unresolved ending felt right. By the end of the film lives have been destroyed, relationships may be broken, things have been said that cannot be unsaid, and to then end on that sad note would have been brutal. But that lack of resolution leaves us with hope that things might be fixed, that they might be remedied, that maybe things could in time get better. It’s like how the mill closing seems like a devastating, our-lives-have-ended experience to the people who have lost their work, but it can also be the vehicle for a better life elsewhere. Who knows if the characters will make it past the end of the film, but if they can avoid the finality of an ending there is the hope for a better, stronger relationship together. I was really impressed with The Daughter; it’s a film that I’ve found myself mulling over quite a bit over the past day since I saw it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcUk4jBb035Bq5r1l7ckFVSx0tWso6YkRdybjU4sUGfGqPgSxKW9VxyUSWrNL3j8JtFx4-p7MrYULaX2ZdEg8BVqYi0KDfWjQZVCZEQSfOT8XZ-WYaBSTk_fs9Qyh71uUHDzgYDl1Bu9L_/s1600/le_ride.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="735" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcUk4jBb035Bq5r1l7ckFVSx0tWso6YkRdybjU4sUGfGqPgSxKW9VxyUSWrNL3j8JtFx4-p7MrYULaX2ZdEg8BVqYi0KDfWjQZVCZEQSfOT8XZ-WYaBSTk_fs9Qyh71uUHDzgYDl1Bu9L_/s320/le_ride.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
<b><i>Le Ride</i></b><br />
I really like Phil Keoghan. I remember watching him at the start of his career on children’s television, Spot On or 3:45 Live. I remember when he started hosting The Amazing Race, and being surprised to realise this unmistakably Kiwi presenter was the host of a major American show. And I’m a fan of the Race; the show may have declined in amazingness of late, but still I have watched every episode of the show. So I wanted Le Ride, his documentary tribute to Kiwi cyclist Harry Watson to be good. Unfortunately, eh, it’s fine.<br />
Harry Watson is a largely forgotten cyclist from Canterbury who in 1928 teamed up with three Australians to ride the 3000 mile Tour de France. At the time, the race was very different, less a race and more a question of endurance, with three-quarters of the people in the race dropping out before the final leg. Competing against much larger teams, terribly disadvantaged, and largely dismissed, they ultimately held out against much stronger racers, with three in the team managing to complete the race.<br />
Keoghan was apparently amazed to read about Watson, who he had never heard about, and he wanted to share his story and what a major figure in New Zealand sporting history this man was. And so he decided to make this movie to tell the story. Here’s the problem he encountered: everyone involved in the story is long passed away, so there’s no-one to interview, nor are there any existing interviews; apparently there isn’t any film footage of Watson, just some still photographs; and the amount of material about the actual race from the perspective of the Australasian team is pretty sparse, limited to a newspaper’s reporting and one team member’s diary. And that’s not enough material to base an entire film around.<br />
So he found a unique solution. He found some authentic racing bikes from the era, mapped out as close as possible the route the race took, and along with his friend Ben they set out to ride the 1928 Tour de France, following the same race schedule, as a way of trying to illustrate the ordeals that Watson and the team went through. Now, I have absolutely no doubt that his heart was in the right place. He had to do something to get enough material to make a feature film, and this was interesting and different. But unfortunately it made the film less about Watson, and more about Keoghan, to the degree that the moments where they do talk about the 1928 race start to feel like a distraction, and that’s not what I think he intended. To what degree does watching his team trying to navigate their way around a radically different Paris or inadvertently getting on the freeway actually reflect the experience of Watson? And Keoghan is incredibly fit, but he is also twice as old as Watson and he’s not a professional cyclist, so his experience of the race will probably be a lot harder than Watson found it. There’s one day where he has to ride for 23 hours to complete a 200 mile mountain leg. That’s a brutal experience, harrowing to watch, and when at the end of the day he’s literally unable to speak comprehensibly you feel sympathy for him; it’s also not what Watson went through.<br />
But there is some interesting material in the film. It’s fascinating to see just how primitive the cycle technology was in that era. The cycles weighed twice as much as a modern bike (largely due to the steel frame), the braking mechanism was seemingly barely functional, and the only way to shift gears was to get off your bike and manually shift the chain from one gear to the next. So these were nasty machines to have to ride on, and it was genuinely fascinating to see. (That said, in an attempt to find anything to talk about from day to day of the ride, they did keep reminding us how heavy these authentic 1928 steel-framed bikes were, and it did get tiring to hear.) There’s some beautiful scenery in the film; there are moments in the film where I found myself looking at some image on the screen thinking I had never seen any environment that looked like that, and the film was almost worth seeing just for that. I also enjoyed some of the reflections on how much France had changed over the last 90 years, how tiny villages had become major cities, seeing how landmarks change or remain the same over time. The prevalence of war memorials in the country provokes some nice reflections, and particularly the story of a town liberated by New Zealand soldiers in WWI, although again this feels like a distraction to pad time, given that the Great War was a decade before the race the film is ostensibly about.<br />
It also, I think, suffers a bit from Keoghan’s experience on reality TV. I love reality TV, particularly the competitive shows like The Amazing Race or Survivor. The thing is, those shows look like they owe a lot to documentary, but they are their own thing, and the way the film is edited often feels very much like the editing on reality TV. It’s particularly noticeable in the use of talking-head interviews; in a movie documentary talking-head interviews will often play out as the person tells a story or develops a point, whereas on reality TV they don’t have time for that so they tend to rely on the pithy one-line summary comment. That’s how the editing on this film feels, and it took me out of the film whenever it happened because that’s not film editing, that’s TV editing.<br />
So the film is very seriously flawed. But it also has Phil Keoghan, and he’s such a likable, enthusiastic on-screen presence that he alone almost manages to carry the film through its flaws. I can throw out a million criticisms of the film; I would also happily watch it tomorrow given the chance.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW878S9CGK-tI2jcaUEPxEuuJth_9rD20V9VrczpzrcZLqTqi5EDyWc7hFwmFB_AFCPVwv9f2j0HmrK0QS8tkLBQ7j45ORN43oI3C3IBnx0YLpDumLLlF5zQqTVbPQxoD_L7DWUg5lTHx7/s1600/personal_shopper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="555" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW878S9CGK-tI2jcaUEPxEuuJth_9rD20V9VrczpzrcZLqTqi5EDyWc7hFwmFB_AFCPVwv9f2j0HmrK0QS8tkLBQ7j45ORN43oI3C3IBnx0YLpDumLLlF5zQqTVbPQxoD_L7DWUg5lTHx7/s320/personal_shopper.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>
<b><i>Personal Shopper</i></b><br />
I genuinely do not know what they were going for with this. Kristen Stewart stars as Maureen, a young American working in Paris as a personal shopper buying clothing and jewellery for a major celebrity. She’s also dealing with the recent death of her twin brother, spending a lot of time at his house trying to connect with a spirit that definitely resides at that property in the hope that it’s her brother. And then she starts getting weird, vaguely menacing txt messages from an unknown number that seems to know all about her and wants to goad her into doing things she knows she shouldn’t do.<br />
So when the film started, I was rather enjoying it. The haunting scenes were enjoyably subtle and spooky, and while there’s a noticeable tonal shift between those scenes and her scenes at work, I thought thematically they worked quite well. As a personal shopper she’s someone who is very comfortable walking around high-end stores, just telling people “I want this and that”, spending incredible amounts of money, but it’s not for herself; she leaves work and going to her tiny cramped apartment. It’s like she constantly has this window into this world of wealth that she wants to live in but she can only ever glimpse. Similarly the ghost sequences hint at her having an ability to get glimpses of an afterlife that she’s desperately trying to reach, but again they’re glimpses of a world that she does not live in. So I found that pairing, as tonally awkward as they might seem, quite effective thematically.<br />
But then the txt messages came, and the film started to lose all effectiveness. It can be hard to maintain any sense of spookiness when you’re just looking at an iPhone screen for a prolonged time. And those txt sequences are LOOOONG, and they’re trying to make them creepy and ominous, but I just disengaged. What those scenes do do is point the story in very interesting potential directions; the txt message winds up goading Maureen into doing incredibly stupid things, going to hotel rooms in an attempt to meet this mysterious person, sleeping at her employer’s house, even taking clothes from her employer and taking photographs of herself wearing them knowing this would get her fired, just because this anonymous person is telling her to do so. There were so many points in the film where I wanted to yell at her “Don’t do this!” because it was so obviously a bad idea, would so obviously come back to damage her. And then it looks like it really will come back on her, when she becomes the chief suspect in a crime that was committed right at the time when she was behaving strangely. Except after a couple of scenes we’re basically told that the police had now determined that she was innocent and that the criminal was that person there and we’re now not interested in looking into anything else despite her unusual behaviour making her look highly suspicious and worthy of further consideration. Which means that there is no follow-through with many of these big plot elements that could really escalated the story.<br />
But through all of this, the ghost sequences remain incredibly effective. Even after I’d long lost patience in the film, there’s a scene towards the end where you can actually see the brother’s ghost, far in the background when the camera focused completely on Stewart’s face, and I found myself holding my breath completely overwhelmed in anticipation of whatever was going to happen. The final scene in the film is absolutely unbearable, so strong is the tension built up. And one thing I really liked was that there was a degree of suspicion in the film towards the spirits; there are times in films involving ghosts where it’s as though people are overly credulous and willing to just believe anything the spirit might say, so I was pleased to see her trying to grapple with questions of how much she could rely on this thing she’s speaking to.<br />
My big problem is that I don’t know what the answer to many of the film’s questions are. Who was the ghost? Were there multiple ghosts? Who was the mysterious txter? What were they trying to achieve? How did the bags get into her apartment? Now, often that’s fine – I’m okay if a film sets up lots of mysteries and never answers them (I mean, David Lynch built his entire career on making films like that) – but you need to feel that the filmmakers have some answer or idea in their mind to what is going on, even if they never share them. And I walked out of the film without any confidence that this was the case; it felt as though they had thrown in every creepy idea they had without considering how they fit together. And that makes the film particularly dissatisfying.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib5HJJeygo6BZr6Z7sp4rlzv2ncg-nqmWOD6MAQ67zIQWdVDihk_aT_Oqk7iGmlJtFCWVp0Ue-X-nR3P7mcDTnatQd0rx4NWlm1fLg0Tu1jlNgDwHxuTi4iryo7RSQqxrxYv7Ay5ndeZJf/s1600/innocents.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib5HJJeygo6BZr6Z7sp4rlzv2ncg-nqmWOD6MAQ67zIQWdVDihk_aT_Oqk7iGmlJtFCWVp0Ue-X-nR3P7mcDTnatQd0rx4NWlm1fLg0Tu1jlNgDwHxuTi4iryo7RSQqxrxYv7Ay5ndeZJf/s320/innocents.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Innocents</i></b><br />
“Faith is 24 hours of doubt and one moment of hope” comments one of the nuns at the centre of The Innocents, a fantastic film that that is easily my favourite new film of the festival. Based on a true story, the film focuses on a nurse working with the French Red Cross in Poland in the months immediately after WWII. One day she’s approached in secret by a nun who asks her to come to the convent; there she discovers that the liberating Soviet forces invaded the convent several months, raped the nuns, and now there are seven nuns close to giving birth. The Abbess is desperately trying to keep the news of this scandal secret, believing that if word gets out the church will close the convent and the nuns will be thrown out to fend for themselves, but reluctantly agrees to allow this nurse to help them.<br />
There are so many things you could talk about with the film. The festival programme talks about the film as exploring “women’s experiences of war”, how it upholds “the common humanity of those who foster renewal”. And that’s all true. I think this is a film that would have a powerful impact regardless of the personal religious conviction of the viewer. Before I write what I will write next I want to be really clear that this is not a Christian film; I mean, the hero of the story is an atheist communist for crying out loud.<br />
But for me personally I found myself responding to the film not as a film viewer but as a Christian. I’m not Catholic, I don’t hold to much of their particular dogma, but I really connected to the story of these nuns struggling to deal with their faith, whose belief in a good and almighty God has been shaken by their experiences and who are trying to find what their beliefs are in their new reality. Some people are completely thrown and are looking for a way to leave. Some find themselves drawing deeper into their dedication to their religion to block out the realities of the world; in one of the film’s more incredible sequences some of the nuns cling even tighter to their vows, refusing to be examined or even touched by this female nurse out of a fear of damnation because they worry about breaking their vow of chastity. And some develop a deeper faith, understanding that we cannot hope to understand all, and trying to understand God’s love in the midst of this pain.<br />
Probably my only disappointment with the film was the way it portrayed the Soviet soldiers. We never see the initial incident that sparked the story, since the film takes place months later, but the story does feature the Soviets on two occasions, both times in the context of new rape attempts. For a film that was otherwise so subtle and soft, it seemed a very one-dimensional way to present these figures. I’m not saying the film had to make us feel sorry for the poor rapists, but if they were just going to be portrayed as animals I felt it would have been better to just exclude them altogether. The treatment of the Soviets feels very much out of place, particularly when you compare it to the way another character who also commits terrible acts during the course of the film is treated. There’s this beautiful scene at the end, really little more than a moment, where this character is approached by one of the nuns. There’s nothing significant to the scene; all she’s doing is giving that person food. And the scene is nearly wordless; from memory there’s maybe a couple of words but no more. But the way this person is approached, after everything that has happened, is one of astonishing forgiveness. One of the core tenets of Christianity is the concept of forgiveness of sins and that because of that forgiveness we are supposed to show that forgiveness to others; “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” And that’s what I saw in that moment. But at the same time there’s this principle that forgiveness needs to be accepted; when I look at that character I see someone who can’t accept the forgiveness that they’re shown, who cannot allow themselves to be forgiven because in their mind they deserve punishment. I found myself wanting to yell at the screen at this character to turn around, to take the food, to allow the solace the solace of being comforted. Which is an astonishing reaction for me to have given all that came before, but it’s a clear indication of just how powerful and perfectly the film dealt with this issue that I felt genuine sympathy for this person.<br />
One of the common challenges that people use when they question the existence of God is the question of why God allows evil to exist. And frankly the answers to this question (of which there are many) can seem glib and utterly unsatisfying, particularly to people when they’re going through horrific circumstances. And then I watch a film like this, and I feel like this film answers that question in a genuine and powerful way. There is undeniable evil taking place in this film; unspeakable atrocities are committed. And it is painful to watch. And yet you get to the end of the story, and there is no evil that remains. These characters have taken a painful circumstance and have redeemed it; in trying to find a way to address this problem they manage to bring an actual positive change, not just to their own circumstances but to the world around. Before these events happened there was a lot of good in the convent, a lot of very sincere people serving Christ, and the impression you get is that there was very little that changed around them; terrible evil and horrific atrocities may have caused unspeakable suffering but the world is a better, more joyful place as a result.<br />
I’ve found it really hard to write my response to the film. I’m been writing and struggling to find the words to say because I feel like my expression needs to be perfect and nothing is coming. All I can say is that the film is completely devastating. I will somewhat defensively make clear that I did not cry during the film, definitely did not cry, but my eyes were certainly tearing up, and I did need the entirety of the end credits before I was sufficiently composed to think about facing the world. And speaking as someone who does not respond emotionally to movies; this destroyed me. It was frustrating to me that I had another film that night; twenty minutes after the film ended I was watching a different film and I simply wasn’t ready for it, I needed more time to mull over this film, to process everything I was dealing with. I found The Innocents to be a beautiful, powerful, challenging movie, and I loved it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQruLo-f4X7p2fnC5Iw1bcM-N-LwPl9hyp6LIwrK5UY4e5fHkvpl-VtpSFPjHjb6n_KcCX8DqFpY-phdQzGvQd-mvpWiR0od6OPd75i4EjZmQEby_tEqUQk5d64ZpA8VW_kMQo-DbHOP9o/s1600/certain_women.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQruLo-f4X7p2fnC5Iw1bcM-N-LwPl9hyp6LIwrK5UY4e5fHkvpl-VtpSFPjHjb6n_KcCX8DqFpY-phdQzGvQd-mvpWiR0od6OPd75i4EjZmQEby_tEqUQk5d64ZpA8VW_kMQo-DbHOP9o/s320/certain_women.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Certain Women</i></b><br />
Certain Women takes three short stories by author Maile Meloy and draws them together into a single film. Laura Dern plays a lawyer representing a man who was seriously injured at work and who cannot accept that he has no legal options remaining. Michelle Williams plays a woman who wants the house her husband is building for her to be made from local sandstone, and so approaches an old man to buy the pile of stone from the old school that sits on his property. Lily Gladstone plays a horse handler who one night wanders into a random adult education class, forms a friendship with the out-of-her-element teacher (Kristen Stewart), then realises that she has deeper feelings for the teacher. Each story is told straight through; other than the end of film epilogues, we’re essentially watching three short films, and while it’s established that the stories all take place in the same world the stories never actually mix.<br />
I’m not really sure that I have a clear idea what these three stories have that made Kelly Reichardt decide to connect them together in this film. Obviously they’re all stories that are strongly focused on females, but every time I find myself developing a possible connecting theme I wind up coming up against one of the stories that doesn’t fit. Are they stories about women who are not respected by men because they’re women? Perhaps, but the horse handler’s story doesn’t fit. That story also doesn’t fit with an exploration of the ways we hurt people in our attempts to do the right thing. You could maybe stretch the second and third stories into an examination of the pains of being in love and realising you don’t know what the other person wants, but the lawyer’s story doesn’t easily go into that. The closest I can come to a connection is the fact that all three stories end with their main character looking sadly at another person through a window feeling as though they’ve done something to hurt that person, but I don’t know that I can find anything deeper than that. In the end I’m forced to land on the possibility that maybe there is no big overarching theme, that maybe Reichardt just connected with these particular stories, wanted to tell them, and decided to bring them together in order to form a movie.<br />
What I loved about the movie is how understated it is. Even the first story, which culminates in the lawyer’s client taking a security guard hostage in an attempt to force the situation, feels weirdly unthreatening. There are no big dramatic moments in this film, just people trying to live their lives and navigate the pains that come. And the big emotional connection that we find with the characters all comes through the subtleties of the performances. Michelle Williams has done great work with Reichardt in the past, and the two seem to work exceptionally well together; her story is probably the slightest of the three, but when she gives her sad little wave at the end it just killed me. I enjoyed Laura Dern’s mix of exasperation, regret, and affection; she clearly cares for her client and desperately wishes she could help him, but she has also reached a point of utter frustration in her dealings with him. And Kristen Stewart is weirdly charming as the exhausted teacher so caught up in her own challenges that she’s oblivious to the impact that she has on people. But the performance I really took away was Lily Gladstone. Looking at her IMDB page, it looks like she only has a small number of supporting performances to her name; this is certainly her first time as a co-lead, and she is phenomenal. It’s a quiet, uncomfortable performance; she’s someone who isn’t comfortable around people (this may be why she’s chosen to work with horses), but who does yearn to connect with people, and the way she communicates her experience of falling in love and coming to terms with what that means was incredibly moving.<br />
This really is a wonderful subtle film. It’s not something I’d necessarily recommend to people (it’s not a film of big drama, but rather of small melancholic observations), but I really appreciated it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtDnFXo2nkccoVQB1HJ2bor6Rf54xfZV6zfjRTFYn8sg1v6AezVADOHsn3UFRn6vyJjbwlVZR_jfdz2jJ6zYqE6SGWnx1YE1YhINE278zVCzBKuP6CvxtGeieWTIDZIyXh6avpL-zsgJ-E/s1600/paterson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="506" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtDnFXo2nkccoVQB1HJ2bor6Rf54xfZV6zfjRTFYn8sg1v6AezVADOHsn3UFRn6vyJjbwlVZR_jfdz2jJ6zYqE6SGWnx1YE1YhINE278zVCzBKuP6CvxtGeieWTIDZIyXh6avpL-zsgJ-E/s320/paterson.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
<b><i>Paterson</i></b><br />
Of my three films on the final Friday of the festival, two of them featured Adam Driver. In the first film, Driver stars as Paterson, a bus driver in the city of Paterson, New Jersey. Every day he drives his bus around the same route, his black-and-white-obsessed artist girlfriend stays home finding new ways to express herself, he comes home and fixes the lop-sided mailbox, he spends time with his girlfriend, he walks their dog down to his local bar where he has a few drinks and spends time with his friends. In the weekend he’ll travel around his city looking for inspiration. And in whatever moments he can grab he’ll pull out his secret notebook and write poetry; a love poem inspired by a box of matches, or a reflection about the nature of existence and coming to understand the concept of dimensions beyond what we can see and feel.<br />
It’s difficult to describe the delights of Paterson (the film, as opposed to the man or the city). The strong repetition to each of his days gives a comforting reliable structure to the film on which its small-scale drama can play out. Many films have portrayed a life like this, following the same pattern of existence day after day, as dull and repetitive, but Jarmusch find real joy in the moment. The overheard conversations between the people on the bus; the ever-present complaints from his supervisor; the domestic dramas of his fellow bar regulars; the teasing affection between Paterson and his girlfriend; all small moments, easily overlooked, but that come together to form the picture of this man’s life. There are no big life-changing moments (even the one moment that initially seems like it could turn into a big life-changing incident is quickly diffused and becomes a joke), just life carrying on.<br />
I hadn’t realised how effective the film had been until a point in the film where something significant happened; again, it was nothing terribly big or dramatic in the usual sense, but it was something we knew would be deeply upsetting to Paterson. The film gave a very clear indication what would happen well in advance, and as the scenes that followed took place I found myself wanting to will the characters to stop what they were doing and go to stop this thing from happening. Then I found myself trying to rationalise; it’s probably too late to stop from happening, but maybe the problem can be fixed, maybe it’s not too bad. And then comes the point where the characters learn what has happened, and it’s so much worse than I had expected, and at that moment there was an audible reaction of shock and horror that came from the audience. And I’m honestly surprised at having that reaction; if you had told me twenty minutes into the film that I would be responding like this to that incident it would seem absurd, but the film and the characters really affected me.<br />
The one real problem that I have with the film comes towards the end. Earlier on Paterson meets a young girl waiting for her mother, and talking to her he discovers that she too has a passion for poetry. She even shows him her book for writing poems, which she also calls her “secret notebook”. And that exchange seemed a bit coincidental, but that’s fine; we do sometimes randomly meet people who share our passions, and given how personal poetry can be I can understand that different people might land on the idea of the “secret notebook”. So I could accept that. But at the end of the film, Paterson is approached by a Japanese man reading a book of poems by his favourite poet, who then starts a conversation with him about poetry even though there’s seemingly no reason for the man to believe that this random person sitting on a bench would have any interest in poetry. And the scene culminates in the man giving Paterson a gift, which happens to be the perfect gift for Paterson to receive right at this very moment. That was the one moment where I felt the hand of the scriptwriter forcing the story to go in a particular direction, and it was disappointing, especially because it seemed to me that there was a much easier and more natural way for that conversation to have taken place.<br />
But that’s really just a minor quibble in a film that offers many, many surprising delights. A wonderful film.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisUXwaVdaxgpyz84qFDBz3sler3_1mSPwcie6DAWaof1f_kF6fDCaU80YXENQrOEjRdGEL4uAxEBLZW2FtX8Cv2DhdWYT8dVieQe6q-35ZcD4H-ZJt3ZoKrNQvpqmzGTjjNChvUUW2Al28/s1600/forushande.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="566" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisUXwaVdaxgpyz84qFDBz3sler3_1mSPwcie6DAWaof1f_kF6fDCaU80YXENQrOEjRdGEL4uAxEBLZW2FtX8Cv2DhdWYT8dVieQe6q-35ZcD4H-ZJt3ZoKrNQvpqmzGTjjNChvUUW2Al28/s320/forushande.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Salesman</i></b><br />
Firstly, at the risk of seeming petty, my viewing of The Salesman was not ideal. About halfway through the film I was completely caught up in the film’s spell, and all of a sudden a woman at the back of the cinema started screaming “AAAAHHH!!! GET OFF! GET OFF!” Then there was the sound of a glass smashing, general commotion, people yelling for the house lights, someone call an ambulance, is there a doctor. So the film was paused and every head was turned to the back. I don’t know exactly what was happening, but it was pretty scary; from what I could hear there were one or two points where people seemed genuinely concerned that someone might actually have died. But apparently not; eventually the person recovered, and was helped down the stairs and out of the cinema, where he no doubt received the care he needed and hopefully was okay. After that happened the film restarted, but inevitably after an event like that you’re shaken, your mind is wandering, and you’re completely pulled out of the enveloping atmosphere of the film, and it took me a long time to get back into the headspace to enjoy the film. But I did eventually, and by the end was really enjoying the film, right until the climax where one of the characters collapses and has a major health scare. Which obviously led my mind back to the person who had had the incident earlier, oh gosh I hope he’s okay, and that again pulled me from the film right at the point where I should have been most caught up in it. I’m not complaining; this is just an acknowledgement about how the particular circumstances of the screening affected my experience of the film. Because I was really looking forward to the film; Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation and The Past were highlights of previous festivals, and I was eagerly anticipating his new film. And the film is very good, but it didn’t quite have the same gut impact that those earlier films had. That reaction may possibly be because the film is not quite as good, but I know how well the film had been working for me, so I think it’s likely that my muted reaction is mostly due to the events around the screening.<br />
Emad is a literature teacher in Tehran, who at night acts in the lead role in a production of Death of a Salesman alongside his wife Rana. Forced to hurriedly move from their collapsing building, they find a new apartment with a mysterious former tenant who has left her possessions in a locked room. One day Rana is in the shower when someone calls to come up; assuming it’s her husband she buzzes him up and leaves the front door open. Sometime later, the husband returns home to find bloodied footprints on the stairs, bloodstains in the bathroom, and his wife in the hospital, her head cut up and her face bruised. It’s then that they learn that the previous tenant was notorious in the building for being promiscuous, probably a prostitute, and perhaps the perpetrator of this crime was one of her “visitors”. Filled with fury at what happened to his wife, Emad becomes determined to discover for himself who the criminal was.<br />
One of Farhadi’s smartest moves in the film is to keep the exact nature of the events unclear. I don’t believe we ever learn what actually happened; we get to hear Rana’s memories of the events, but there are also prominent moments where it appears that she remembers things that she chooses not to tell us. That ambiguity drives the film; because Emad feels that he doesn’t know what really happened, the events then become the worst thing he came possibly imagine, fuelling his anger. At the same time, there’s a real suspicion and possessiveness that’s also in control of him; why did she allow a strange man into the building and leave the door open? She says she thought he was her husband, but really, can we believe that? This all boils up to a point where it seems that Emad is angrier than Rana is, as though he as her husband is as much a victim as his wife, because the person may have taken what was his and so he wants to destroy that man. What’s particularly surprising is how likeable and charming Emad is through much of the film. We often imagine the possessive husband as being someone abusive and obviously evil, but Farhadi seems to be suggesting that there is something of that inclination potentially within all of us that could come out under the right circumstances.<br />
As with almost any art from modern Iran, there’s always going to be some expressions of outrage against the governing machine that aims to control its population. It’s not so prominent in this film (which does have other things on its mind), but there is a definite protest here against government control over the arts: we learn that the play, which has already been subject to censorship, is likely to have more passages cut from the text; the play features the character of a prostitute, who in one scene is supposed to be naked except for her coat, but in a deeply Islamic country she’s noticeably wearing a lot more; and in another moment we learn that the box of books provided as a gift to the school library by Emad (who is after all a literature teacher) is being rejected because the books are deemed injurious to the well-being of the youths who would read them.<br />
I really did enjoy the film a lot. In an ideal circumstance I think I would have felt about it the same way I felt about A Separation or The Past. Farhadi is a master at constructing his dramas, slowly putting each piece together until the tension reaches breaking point, and I could feel that happening here. This is one film I’ll be very interested to revisit.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUQ4CtMMj788Z83hsurBE-nyHfKbD8We4N8IW8goUGjNOXf1G1tqbkYNSlHeAfsPsFVgM7ykIhP_u1w2XziTNrlM_2iONLOelH3cIDHtu2ikBuM4Z1lvCqanSf_bXOBvojUHzhZ6u3NQD5/s1600/midnight_special.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUQ4CtMMj788Z83hsurBE-nyHfKbD8We4N8IW8goUGjNOXf1G1tqbkYNSlHeAfsPsFVgM7ykIhP_u1w2XziTNrlM_2iONLOelH3cIDHtu2ikBuM4Z1lvCqanSf_bXOBvojUHzhZ6u3NQD5/s320/midnight_special.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Midnight Special</i></b><br />
Michael Shannon stars as Roy, a man on the run with his best friend after seemingly kidnapping a young boy, Alton. It is quickly revealed that Roy is Alton’s birth father, and that Alton has some unique powers, including the ability to receive encrypted messages from government satellites. The messages Alton has been receiving has been interpreted by his adoptive father, the leader of a doomsday cult, as indications of the imminent end of the world. So when Roy takes his son to bring him to a place where he can discover his destiny, he’s pursued by several members of the cult, as well as the full power of the US Government leg by security agent Adam Driver (who wants to understand how a young boy could access this secret information).<br />
I’ve admired Jeff Nichols’ work in the past; both Take Shelter and Mud was fascinating, intimate character portraits. I was therefore curious about Midnight Special, because the idea of him making a science fiction road trip movie sounded to me like a significant step away from his past work. The result is a film that I liked overall, but that is wildly flawed in a way that his smaller works aren’t.<br />
One thing I did appreciate was the tone. We live in a time where 70s/80s nostalgia is predominant, and Midnight Special definitely feeds into that pattern. The film at points is noticeably influenced by the early works of Spielberg (most unmistakably Close Encounters and ET) and other key 80s genre filmmakers (the ending felt very reminiscent of The Abyss to me), but fed through Nichols’ own sensibility to create something that feels like a film from the 80s but that isn’t beholden to those films. My friend eT made the obvious comparison to Super 8, which is definitely a fair comparison as a film influenced by the classic Amblin works, but where he felt Super 8 to be the more better film, I preferred Midnight Special. I like Super 8, and it was more successful at what it was trying to do, but all it was really trying to do was just to be a Spielberg clone; Midnight Special falls short of its aim, but it was also a much more ambitious project that to me is more interesting in its failure than Super 8 was in its success.<br />
The problem with Midnight Special is that it’s just too damned busy. It’s really the third act of this massive story, as though it’s the final few episodes in a season-long TV show. There are all sorts of competing sides each out to find and capture Alton, and while we get enough backstory to more-or-less piece together what is going on in the story, it leaves the audience feeling on the back foot and trying to catch up for the entire film. I walked out of the film with a million questions about what happened where and when and how. When I commented on the film Personal Shopper, I observed that I was okay if a film sets up lots of mysteries and never answers them as long as I feel the filmmaker has some idea what is going on. I think Midnight Special proved me wrong. I have no doubt at all that Nichols can tell me exactly what happened before the film, exactly what was going on during the film, what happened afterwards, what was motivating everyone’s actions. The problem was, there was just too much going on, and so the storytelling had to be cut down to the bare minimum to drive the narrative. (This is most egregious in one scene where Adam Driver, looking at a whiteboard covered in numbers delivered by Alton, starts circling some random numbers, and then just announces I’ve cracked the code; in the next scene they’re travelling to the location indicated by the numbers without ever trying to explain to us what “the code” was, without ever giving us a chance to see how smart the character is.) I found myself thinking they needed to cut the film down somehow, pick one element to remove from the film, and use that time to more clearly develop the other plot threads. (Personally, I think there’s probably a way to remove the entire cult subplot that would streamline the entire story without detracting from what Nichols is trying to say with the film.)<br />
Because the film is most effective, not in its narrative, but in its thematic exploration. When we first meet Roy, he’s already on the run, branded a wanted criminal. (Indeed the character’s first appearance onscreen is as a photograph on the television during an Amber Alert warning.) And through everything that happens, there’s only one thing driving him: he has to get his son to where he needs to be in order to achieve whatever purpose he has. He may not know what will happen once they get there, but this is the single most important thing to him; he is literally willing to give his life in order to protect his son and get where he wants to go. And thematically it could not be any clearer in what it is saying. The entire film is talking about the experience of parenthood, talking about the way that once you become a parent everything revolves around your child, how there is nothing more important than them, and how parents are often willing to sacrifice everything in order to ensure that their child can grow to achieve great things and live a happy fulfilled life. And then the reward for your years of sacrificing everything is that the child grows up and leaves you, and you just have to hope that what you’ve given up for your child was worth it. That’s what the film is about. I’m not a parent, so I couldn’t really connect with Michael Shannon on that thematic level; instead I found myself thinking about the film through the view of the young boy Alton, thinking about everything my parents gave to me, gave up for me, things that I never really appreciated at the time because the nature of childhood is that you don’t really appreciate your parents, things that I regret not understanding. It’s a massively flawed film, but it’s also a film that left me much more contemplative than many “better” films. I don’t promise that you’d have a great time at the time watching Midnight Special, it is horribly messy, but I found it a rich and entertaining film.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguxpvhl4N7FUBGPgMSHCH1xg-nQbrIyKwtpH9NCNjDFNY_k92kKnmNL3trPapTvjuqFdab5uEtoPM5PsXEeDs7fdMdVzgthHuTZeqVeaXSrG0mXp9Fw5mO4Z0W02GKZRBPFEJoT83E8iPY/s1600/chimes_at_midnight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1186" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguxpvhl4N7FUBGPgMSHCH1xg-nQbrIyKwtpH9NCNjDFNY_k92kKnmNL3trPapTvjuqFdab5uEtoPM5PsXEeDs7fdMdVzgthHuTZeqVeaXSrG0mXp9Fw5mO4Z0W02GKZRBPFEJoT83E8iPY/s320/chimes_at_midnight.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Chimes at Midnight</i></b><br />
It was a nice surprise to see Orson Welles’ Shakespearean film Chimes at Midnight listed in the festival programme. I’ve been meaning to see the film for years, and to have my first viewing be a new restoration of the film screening at the Embassy was a delight. Welles plays Sir John Falstaff, an obese cowardly knight who spends his life at the Boar's Head Tavern, drinking, whoring, and occasionally robbing passing travellers. His closest friend is Prince Hal (destined to one day become King Henry V), who joins him in his revelries. But when Hotspur leads a rebellion against King Henry IV, Hal must command the King’s forces, and Falstaff reluctantly finds himself drawn into the battle.<br />
The thing that’s particularly notable about the film is that it’s a Shakespeare film based on a play that doesn’t exist. Instead, it’s an adaptation primarily of the two Henry IV plays, but also drawing from three other plays, to construct a narrative that centres on the character of Falstaff, a supporting character in the Henry IV plays. I can’t speak to the film as a piece of adaptation (of the five plays used in constructing the script, I’ve only ever seen Henry V, which takes place after Falstaff’s death), but as a narrative I thought it was quite exceptional. In particular, I was surprised by how seamless the work felt; the film only ever felt cobbled together at the couple of moments where they needed narration to clarify plotting. Otherwise the movement between the different plays is completely invisible and there’s a clear and focused narrative that works completely in and of itself.<br />
Welles’ performance as Falstaff is an absolute delight. He’s wonderfully pathetic, he’s utterly amoral, and his role in the battle scenes is laugh-out-loud funny. And yet Welles clearly has a lot of sympathy for the character, bringing a surprising amount of pride to the usually comic role. In an early scene, the drunken Falstaff describes being robbed by mysterious assailants, and the number of people involved in the incident increases with literally each sentence spoken by the character; the way Welles plays it it’s clear that the man is lying because he feels that he should have been able to stand up to the people who robbed him and so he has to make the forces against him overwhelming for his own sense of self-worth. At the end of the battle, when Falstaff foolishly decides to claim credit for killing someone he did not, it feels an action borne out of shame at his cowardice on the battlefield (the man spends the entire battle trying to find any place to hide, and even playing dead at points) and out of a desire to convince others of his value. And when the film reaches its culmination, Welles plays every note of his hurt and sense of betrayal perfectly.<br />
One thing that I was not expecting was just how big the film was. Watching the film I was surprised how the film didn’t seem to have been hampered by budgetary restrictions in the way that many of Welles’ other works were. (Reading about the project afterwards, it seems that there were some budgetary issues that led to a two-month delay mid-filming, but for the most part it doesn’t seem to have had the years-long problems of other Welles projects.) Now, admittedly it doesn’t feel like it had a massive budget (it’s certainly not working on a Lawrence of Arabia scale) but it felt big in a way I wasn’t expecting. The battle scenes must have had fifty horses, a hundred men or more; perhaps not on the scale of a film like Braveheart, but enough that I was impressed by the ambition of those scenes. They also had the use of some spectacular locations to provide the king’s castle setting, and a remarkable tavern set filled with a wealth of nooks and crannies that the camera loved exploring. Couple all this with Welles’ talent for inventive visual storytelling and some excellent performances and it becomes an impressive film where any challenges in making the work are hidden from the audience. The only flaw that I could point to in the entire movie is the soundtrack; the audio was clearly dubbed in later, and the obvious disparity between the sound we were hearing and the words we seeing being formed could at times be distracting. But other than that, it was just a remarkable film, and a delight to have finally seen.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-F_5-Xwejw9V-nH37-zqOmIxQc75SJHVRtpie-ajT2sZ8A3Gn7dzp-TVnL0bRW2O5p8_nOJ5TDAH3lvVAN6_8IahpqBOR1gx3Igpi0znlCJENsDTMMhTxT9M9H_kzAa3eie3wJSq9BN5-/s1600/johnny_guitar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="913" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-F_5-Xwejw9V-nH37-zqOmIxQc75SJHVRtpie-ajT2sZ8A3Gn7dzp-TVnL0bRW2O5p8_nOJ5TDAH3lvVAN6_8IahpqBOR1gx3Igpi0znlCJENsDTMMhTxT9M9H_kzAa3eie3wJSq9BN5-/s320/johnny_guitar.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
<b><i>Johnny Guitar</i></b><br />
The third of the Westerns in the “classic” section of this year’s festival was a film I had previously never heard of. Joan Crawford plays Vienna, a no-nonsense bar owner who built her bar in the middle of nowhere knowing she’ll make a lot of money when the railroad comes through. Local woman Emma Small views Vienna as a rival, and so leads the McIvers (a local family that owns much of the land in the area and that wants to take the profit from the railroad) to war with Vienna, falsely accusing her and a gang that frequents her business of being involved in a hold-up that led to the death of Emma’s brother. Fortunately Vienna has hired her ex-lover and retired gunfighter Johnny Guitar (played by Sterling Hayden) to work as protection for her.<br />
As I have mentioned before, I’ve generally never really connected with western films, and this does have much of the genre trappings that for whatever reason instinctively take me out of such movies. But there is some interesting work being done that distances the film from most westerns. In particular, there’s an interesting tone of melodrama running through the film that I’ve never seen in a western and that was quite effective. (My friend eT perceptively compared the film to the works of Douglas Sirk.) One of the big reasons for that difference in tone is the fact that the film’s hero and villain are both women. And they’re not your typical female film characters, all meek and mild and constantly needing rescue; in the west, for a woman to survive and thrive by herself she had to be tough, smart, and ruthless, and so that’s who these characters are. Crawford in particular has an icy glare that is terrifying to see, although when necessary the charm come through and you can understand why she’s the object of desire for so many men. In one of her best scenes she confronts a mob wearing a pretty dress and playing the piano, and the way she manipulates the emotions in the rabble to defuse the situation was a delight to watch. Similarly Mercedes McCambridge (who I previously knew only as the voice of the demon in The Exorcist) is great as a hardened cynical woman who makes a conscious choice to use everything she can, up to and including the death of her own brother, to destroy her enemy. It’s a wonderful pairing that works exceptionally well.<br />
Meanwhile the men in the film are on the whole complete rubbish, just filled with machismo and aggression that expresses itself at the worst time and in the worst way. Even the titular Johnny Guitar, while helpful at times, is largely irrelevant and is frequently chided for his instinctive need to solve his problems with a gun. There was a point early in the film where Sterling Hayden was in a brawl with Ernest Borgnine and I couldn’t for the life of me tell you why they were even fighting. And that was the point; I don’t think the characters could have really articulated why they were so angry with a person they had literally just met. That’s just the way they live: if you don’t like someone, you try to kill them. And so all this misplaced aggression pours out in rash decisions or in impulsive reactions, which constantly results in making the situation worse.<br />
In the end, it is a western, and I don’t really like westerns. But this was a pretty good one, and had some interesting aspects to the film that kept me engaged in a way that other such films might have lost my interest. Definitely worth seeking out.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghVkQOB0geUU4l5cbmadiRDsBgYnWRFsM5pTMv6ruPuvU_M064NFK5YYl37-XfckV7ZIeIcDEOHWlDlK6Hcm5WLsB9dR-Hlvv0O438jrD9H-6pBLy5btPIHjPVroJFVMVhhaqU94zIG2Ed/s1600/variety.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="667" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghVkQOB0geUU4l5cbmadiRDsBgYnWRFsM5pTMv6ruPuvU_M064NFK5YYl37-XfckV7ZIeIcDEOHWlDlK6Hcm5WLsB9dR-Hlvv0O438jrD9H-6pBLy5btPIHjPVroJFVMVhhaqU94zIG2Ed/s320/variety.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<b><i>Variety</i></b><br />
One of the highlights of the festival is always the Live Cinema screening, where a silent film is screened with a live musical accompaniment. This year's selection was Variety, a German film that I had never previously heard of, with a new chamber orchestra score by New Zealand composer Johannes Contag. I was particularly looking forward to this one because one of my coworkers was one of the ensemble musicians, and he was very excited about the work. And he was right to be.<br />
The film itself is an entertaining little melodrama centred on the character of Boss, a former trapeze artist who now hosts a fairground sideshow of exotic dancers. He falls in love with his newest dancer, the mysterious Berta-Marie, and abandons his wife and child to live a happy life with his new lover. Several years later they're working together as fairground trapeze artists when an opportunity to perform with the famous Artinelli troupe is offered to him. But then Artinelli starts to fall in love with Berta-Marie, and things go badly wrong.<br />
The film itself is not subtle, in the way that silent films often are not, but it is brilliantly entertaining. The trapeze scenes in particular, seemingly performed high above a crowd and without a net, are intense and thrilling; some 90 years after they were shot, I'm sitting in the screening holding my breath in anticipation and fear.<br />
I was rather impressed with the direction by E A Dupont, who I'm unfamiliar with. People often talk about how the introduction of sound set cinema back twenty years, as creative camerawork was replaced by simple shots driven primarily by the needs of the technology to capture sound. This film is a perfect example. The camerawork is pleasingly inventive and impressionistic, again particularly in capturing the dizzying experience of being on the trapeze. I was also rather surprised by how well the film portrayed the exotic allure of Berta-Marie in her early scenes; glimpses of a bare leg or bared back seem quaint for a modern audience, but it was still extremely effective in communicating the erotic allure the woman had over Boss.<br />
The only point where I found myself taken out of the film was the initial seduction of Berta-Marie by Artinelli. At least, I think it was intended to be a seduction scene; it was shot in an extremely predatory way that left me convinced it was rape until the later scenes revealed Berta-Marie now deeply in love with Artinelli. I always try to approach a film bearing in mind the context of the original era and allowing for the fact that things that might have been okay at the time may hold different meaning today, but nevertheless, ooph, that was a tough scene to watch, and extremely troubling as the start of a love story.<br />
As for the score, I found it extremely effective, increasing the thrill of the trapeze act, embracing the lush romanticism, and amplifying the tension as everything moves towards the inevitable tragic ending. One of the fun things about live accompaniment is that it feels as much like a high-wire act as that of the people on screen. Not only is there the tension of needing to perfectly time the music to match the action, there's also the experience of being able to hear instantly if the music doesn't work. (I have seen live performances that didn't work and detracted from the movie they were accompanying.) Thankfully all was perfectly matched here. An excellent experience.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlr6pBB2h8kewkc-pw6gF6uQHspws6MQhTm7wdhi2f21RWIQpAVBHi_VHoI-IVFiTlUYHG6LKqFWevvIop5NI6CrgHWiM90a1v0YeCRlc36ajB7MSYAZhwbJqKL4Hr8asKWrpJahBRZd6b/s1600/perfect_strangers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="828" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlr6pBB2h8kewkc-pw6gF6uQHspws6MQhTm7wdhi2f21RWIQpAVBHi_VHoI-IVFiTlUYHG6LKqFWevvIop5NI6CrgHWiM90a1v0YeCRlc36ajB7MSYAZhwbJqKL4Hr8asKWrpJahBRZd6b/s320/perfect_strangers.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>
<i><b>Perfect Strangers</b></i><br />
An enjoyable Italian comedy, Perfect Strangers takes place at a dinner party where seven good friends (three married couples and an unmarried friend) start discussing the way our entire lives are governed by our cellphones. Eventually they wind up goading each other into agreeing to put their phones on the table: every txt message received is read aloud, every phone call is taken on speakerphone. And of course everyone agrees, because if you don’t agree that means you have something to hide. And since this is a movie, it is inevitable that the rest of the evening becomes one long stream of messages and phone calls that expose every deep dark secret.<br />
It’s a great premise for a film: it’s nice and clear, with instantly recognisable opportunities for chaos to occur. And they did well in finding a decent variation in secrets for the characters to be hiding; inevitably the most damaging secrets are around various infidelities, but there are also problems arising from surgery plans, arrangements to put people in rest homes, and even exposing different approaches to parenting. It also gets a great deal of entertainment from people employing various efforts to be seen to be playing the game while protecting themselves; one of the funniest plot threads comes from one person trying to swap their phone with another’s and the chaos that occurs when the other’s secrets are unexpectedly revealed and forced onto the wrong person. So it is an extremely entertaining film, and one that is talking about something really rather interesting: not just the way our lives are effectively controlled by these tools, but also how exposed our lives would become if the contents of our phone were ever exposed to public view.<br />
But the other thing I found really interesting was in the way it looks at how close friends relate. I think about my close friends, and how often much of that interaction can be rather cruel. We will pounce on any opportunity to mock or belittle each other. And it is all done with genuine affection and a great degree of humour. But at the same time, at one point one person’s deepest secret is revealed, and the level of cruelty that is thrown around as a result of the revelation feels genuinely nasty. We often feel that we know every detail of our closest friends’ lives, but it’s always possible that someone might be dealing with a situation that no-one knows about, and we never really know what effect our actions and our words might have on them.<br />
The film’s real problem was that they didn’t know how to end it. Everything builds up and escalates until a point where multiple marriages seem on the verge of collapse, people are storming out of the apartment and then… we see one of the couples walking out of the building holding hands. They apparently resolved a seriously damaged relationship and completely made up in the time it took to walk from the apartment to the building’s exit, as apparently did the other couples. Everyone seemed to be behaving as though the revelations of the day never took place. It was so disorienting that I started to wonder whether this was some kind of flashback to the last time these friends gathered, except that the film seems to go out of its way to definitively establish that this was the same day. Perhaps I missed something, but it felt to me that ending the film with everyone’s marriage in crisis was too gloomy an ending for a film that’s supposed to be a comedy. So they just gave it a happy ending that just did not make sense to me given the previous 90 minutes, and that potentially leaves them doomed in an unhappy situation. Hell, one of the characters is even revealed to be gay, yet the ending very pointedly pushes that person into the closet in a way that made no sense to me. It’s a bizarre, utterly unsatisfying ending to an otherwise engaging and entertaining movie.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghawuIrr95iK3Z64nxRCNpRLuOFLdpUCCZfo2Ve85pGNLAuisbTuK8XNMExgpxJHS3IyHGgC0Jk2FyjgcfRDeIerhEOfb8KXRxEGr7KEX205IvnjSNPNsvlTgz29QnN6enGsUFEAipjd60/s1600/elle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="555" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghawuIrr95iK3Z64nxRCNpRLuOFLdpUCCZfo2Ve85pGNLAuisbTuK8XNMExgpxJHS3IyHGgC0Jk2FyjgcfRDeIerhEOfb8KXRxEGr7KEX205IvnjSNPNsvlTgz29QnN6enGsUFEAipjd60/s320/elle.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>
<b><i>Elle</i></b><br />
The festival’s official closing night film was the new film from Paul Verhoeven. I have never really cared for Verhoeven in the small number of his films that I’ve seen; even Robocop (which most people love) never connected for me. So I would normally never have seen the film, and the write-up in the programme didn’t really appeal, but I decided that if the festival organisers felt it worthy of closing out the festival then I should give it a go. And what I found was a film that troubles me.<br />
The film opens with our lead character Michele (played by Isabelle Huppert) being violently, brutally raped by a masked man. She’s reluctant to report the crime, largely due to an experience she had with the police as a child, so instead she tries to distract herself with every other part of her life. She pours herself into her work running a videogame company; she continues her affair with her best friend’s husband; she fantasises over her neighbour; she worries about her son, whose insane girlfriend is close to giving birth; she’s frustrated about her mother, who has taken on a new much-younger lover; she very carefully has nothing to do with her imprisoned father; and she meets her ex-husband’s hot young yoga-instructor girlfriend. But through all this her rapist seems to be taunting her: she receives txt messages indicating he’s watching her; a video is circulated repurposing a fantasy-rape scene from her company’s videogame with her as the victim; he leaves messages inside her house; and then he attacks her again.<br />
Yes, yes; it’s very well-made, excellent acting, well-directed, extremely tense, yet often laugh-out-loud funny. But here the thing: I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to make of this film. I don’t know how I’m supposed to react. I don’t understand what Verhoeven is trying to say here. The film is kind of a weird mess; it’s a melange of scenes all thrown together until I felt that I didn’t have a clear picture of what the story of the film is. The film even seems at times to forget about the crime that is supposed to be driving the story. It’s just: she lives her life, and occasionally she gets raped. But the film really started to trouble me about halfway through, when Michele discovers who her rapist is. And he knows that she knows who he is. And her reactions to this character don’t seem to change at all. In fact, if anything she starts actively increasing her interactions with him, openly flirting with him in scenes that are shot with pure eroticism, even (and this is where I want to be clear that I describing what the film itself seems to be doing here) even implying that the rapes are welcomed and actively putting herself in positions where she knows what will happen as though she is inviting them. At one point she’s at the rapist’s house with her son, and when her son falls asleep she asks to go to the basement with the rapist because she wants to see the underfloor heating system he has set up. And the rapist makes clear that “it will be how it was previously”, and she continues. And then she is raped, and the rape is violent and brutal - at one point her head is bashed against a brick wall multiple times. And then she gets up, wakes her son, and thanks her attacker for a wonderful evening. I’m not saying that she consented to what’s happening (I will point out I’ve repeatedly used the word “rape” for that reason), but she’s also playing a game with the rapist where it’s hard to say that she didn’t consent. And not only is that weird and twisted; I also don’t understand why she’s reacting like this. Now, I could buy her behaviour if it had any suggestion of “I’m planning to lure you so that I can take some revenge”, but that never feels like what she’s doing. The closest I’ve come to finding a possible explanation is that she’s openly inviting herself to be punished because of her guilt over certain things that happened when she was a child. But I don’t find that explanation satisfactory (if only because I feel that it would require there to be more to the story of her childhood than we are ever given), and if that is the explanation I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.<br />
And here’s the most troubling thing. The film is very well-made. It has excellent acting. It is very well-directed. It’s extremely tense, yet it often manages to be laugh-out-loud funny. I do not care for much of what actually happens in the film, but it is a brilliantly well-made film in which these horribly things happen. And as when I find myself pondering about my reaction to the film, all I can say is, I didn’t not like the film. That doesn’t mean I liked the film, because I don’t know that I did. But what I do know is that I would find it harder to say that I didn’t like the film than that I did like the film. And I don’t like that.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-72116199430227682142017-02-26T21:27:00.001+13:002017-02-28T07:40:04.024+13:001117 minutesSo here’s the thing, <br />
<br />
There was a lot of hand-wringing halfway through last year about the low quality of 2016’s movies. In hindsight, much of that commentary was coming out right in the middle of summer blockbuster season, and those films had an absolutely brutal year. After 2015, which at least offered a few summer films that aspired to be something more (the most obvious being <i>Mad Max: Fury Road</i>), it was depressing to see Hollywood revert back to its usual lazy blockbuster filmmaking; hell, even the new <i>Jason Bourne</i> film let us down, and that film should have been as close to a quality guarantee as you could get. And then we get to the end of the year, and we clear out all the noise of all the junk food movies, and stop and consider the quality of all the other movies that were released this year, you begin to realise that this was actually a pretty great movie year. That’s true particularly of this year’s Oscar picks. While none of them are perfect, they’re all really wonderful, engaging, interesting films. And there’s a significant number of also-ran films that I adored that were never nominated but could easily stand next to these titles; I’m happy to be writing about these films, but I also wish I could be writing about <i>Silence</i>, <i>Jackie</i>, <i>Moana</i>, <i>Paterson</i>, <i>Nocturnal Animals</i>, <i>Love and Friendship</i>, or <i>Certain Women</i>. And that’s before we get to the films that were great but would never be nominated, like <i>The Neon Demon</i>, <i>The Nice Guys</i>, <i>Don’t Breathe</i>, <i>Green Room</i>, or <i>10 Cloverfield Lane</i>. Hell, even some of the late-year-release blockbusters like <i>Doctor Strange</i> or <i>Rogue One</i> were wonderful, showing the spark and inventiveness that the summer films lacked. Basically, there were a lot of genuinely great films this year that I was delighted to see. Of which these films are nine. <br />
<br />
<i> [Comments after the jump on </i>La La Land<i>, </i>Moonlight<i>, </i>Manchester by the Sea<i>, </i>Arrival<i>, </i>Hacksaw Ridge<i>, </i>Fences<i>, </i>Hell or High Water<i>, </i>Lion<i>, and </i>Hidden Figures<i>]</i> <br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYth59kd2OU-QnRyX6w49OwEhSvHJbTj2yFN9MspXz_DR94a4BMO63HsLn2uAkHdukaQhKC0wWHsFHke1xFiKfGWpffSnBKG2WNInoSDWvD7pEOs7tjIv0Bi1psb5WU4LLheiUl41D3zX_/s1600/la_la_land.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYth59kd2OU-QnRyX6w49OwEhSvHJbTj2yFN9MspXz_DR94a4BMO63HsLn2uAkHdukaQhKC0wWHsFHke1xFiKfGWpffSnBKG2WNInoSDWvD7pEOs7tjIv0Bi1psb5WU4LLheiUl41D3zX_/s400/la_la_land.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
So at this point everyone is basically just sitting around waiting for the inevitable <i><b>La La Land</b></i> victory. There has been incredible buzz around the film for months, and while there was a brief moment where people were speculating it may have peaked too soon, at this point people just accept that this is the year of <i>La La Land</i>. Certainly when I saw the film, about a month before the nominations were announced, I went with the expectation that I was going to see the movie that would win Best Picture. Which I’m very happy with, because I really did love the movie. <br />
<br />
I fell for the film right from the start, when it opened with an incredible, beautiful sequence making a big, bold declaration that this is taking inspiration from the classic musicals. The movie is presented in the ultra-wide Cinemascope ratio used in a number of 1950s musicals, and it was shot on film with deep, rich, bold colours that have the distinctive Technicolor look; the one thing that marked it as a more modern work was that the sequence was set among cars stuck in a traffic jam on a freeway off-ramp, with the camera weaving its way through all the stopped vehicles as it observed a massive cast of extras dancing and singing. It was an utterly delightful sequence, and I could feel myself falling in love with the world. From there we meet our two protagonists, an aspiring actress played by Emma Stone and a jazz pianist played by Ryan Gosling, as the two repeatedly cross each other’s paths until they inevitably come together, struggling to hold onto each other as their career highs and lows strain the relationship. <br />
<br />
One of the fascinating things about <i>La La Land</i> is that it has some significant flaws that everyone acknowledges; the main point of difference seems to be whether those problems are significant enough to detract from embracing the film, or whether the film as a whole just works despite those issues. One of the main problems people will point to with the film is the fact that Gosling and Stone don’t have the voices for this type of film; they have very nice, pleasant voices (they’re not Russell Crowe by any means), but they don’t have the singing power that would have been required in a 1950s musical. Fair point, but I genuinely never noticed until people talk about it. The problem is that when I think about what a more traditional singing voice would do to the film, I don’t like the thought of it. We don’t live in an era where a musical could realistically use a Marni Nixon to provide a better voice for the actors, so you would to cast someone different in the role, someone cast primarily for their singing, and I simply cannot think of anyone whose singing would overcome the loss of these specific performances. Emma Stone’s voice may be a little thin, but there’s a wealth of passion and emotion and vulnerability underlying the performance that comes out in her singing. “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” is a wonderful song and an incredible sequence, and it was all because of the connection between the performance and the performer. Similarly Gosling’s voice is not overly emotional, but that slight flatness works for a character who is supposed to be closed off and distant and often actively unsympathetic. To damn the film for not having Gene Kelly or Julie Andrews ignores just how wonderful these performers really are and how they function in the film as a whole. <br />
<br />
Another significant criticism of the film is the fact that, for a supposed musical, there’s really not all that many songs. And again, that’s a valid point; by my count there are only five big songs (not counting the one jazz-fusion number that is actually being performed in the world of the film), of which four appear in the first half of the film. How can this be a musical if it only has one song in the second half? But here’s the thing: I think Damien Chazelle is being very deliberate in his song use. The very first song is about people who came to LA with hopes and dreams of greatness and who are holding onto those dreams through the problems of being one person in a big city. And that sets the context for the role the songs play in the film; the songs are used to highlight the highs and the dreams of the characters – maybe someone will be at that party to discover me; maybe I’ll fall in love with this person. And so the heady thrill of the early story is punctuated by some really wonderful songs, until the dream ends and reality sets in and the characters realise their careers aren’t going where they want and they’re in a relationship together and it’s tough and hard work. The musical really only returns at the end of the film, with one song and one dance sequence, at a point where the fantasy really returns to the story, but at that point it’s changed, because the fantasy carries the consequences and emotional weight of everything that came in the middle. <br />
<br />
One of my favourite moments in the film came at the very end [and I’ll avoid plot spoilers on this, because I want to preserve the delight of the sequence]. One thing that Gene Kelly in particular liked to do was have a big ending impressionistic dance sequence, just a massive piece of spectacle that doesn’t drive the plot and that just exists for the sake of existing. Think of the Broadway Melody at the end of <i>Singin’ in the Rain</i> (which presents an unrelated sequence being described to a movie studio executive), or the ending of <i>An American in Paris</i> (where the dance sequence is an extended daydream danced to the titular Gershwin piece). And in and of themselves, they’re very good pieces; brilliantly performed, wonderful music, visually interesting. But they’re my least favourite parts of these films, because right when the film reaches its emotional peak, they take away from the focus of the film and force us to watch a technically impressive but emotionally irrelevant sequence. So what surprised me was that <i>La La Land</i>, clearly inspired by those films, did that exact thing; at a key point, it halted the actual story for an extended epilogue sequence, maybe over five minutes long, that held no connection to the actual events of the film at that time. But it absolutely worked for me, because it was exploring an emotional space that the film needed to exist in, revisiting scenes from earlier in the film, and using the sequence as a way of exploring the differences between what is and what might have been. The end result was a sequence that just utterly enthralled me; in fact, it was possibly my favourite part of the film, which is odd, given how little I care for the sequences that inspired it. <br />
<br />
<i>[EDIT: Well, I really got the next paragraph wrong. I was so certain, and I still think my logic is solid. (Sigh.) I hate being wrong.]</i><br />
The most surprising thing about these Oscars, given that <i>La La Land</i> is largely expected to clean up most of the awards it’s eligible for, is that the movie is unlikely to win the Best Song award despite being a musical made up of original songs. I really like “City of Stars”, and I love “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)”, but realistically any votes for <i>La La Land</i> to win in the category will be split. And they’re already facing a major barrier in “How Far I’ll Go”, a very strong song from <i>Moana</i> that was co-written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. And, given how popular Miranda is in the wake of <i>Hamilton</i>, it’s almost certain that the Academy will look to complete his EGOT. Fortunately, <i>La La Land</i> has a strong chance to winning the Original Score category, so at least it should win something musically; for it to fall short in both categories might be a bit embarrassing. <br />
<br />
I know a lot of people who didn’t like <i>La La Land</i>. I simply can’t understand that. The film made me feel giddy and joyous and excited. I love the singing, I love the dancing, I love how they presented so many of the musical numbers as a single shot to highlight the performances. It’s energetic and fun, and even when things are tough it’s still thrilling and moving. It completely transported me. Is it the best film of the year? No; <i>Manchester by the Sea</i> is. But as a piece of pure celebratory cinema, I have difficulty thinking of anything I enjoyed more this year. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha2TpjwKeLxJei_nEHr5KBP88jqWjyQO0eyiHVzQvlL9RhCsiTC5OC1cLfiiPjPu7XGQEdQyN5tdefdULP4WK4e6ZO1cpq1LgICiELvOG6FKgHgCJ7AVyEHHRNtnBW0-2DjsrX4JFWEAa0/s1600/moonlight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha2TpjwKeLxJei_nEHr5KBP88jqWjyQO0eyiHVzQvlL9RhCsiTC5OC1cLfiiPjPu7XGQEdQyN5tdefdULP4WK4e6ZO1cpq1LgICiELvOG6FKgHgCJ7AVyEHHRNtnBW0-2DjsrX4JFWEAa0/s400/moonlight.jpg" width="276" /></a></div>
If there’s a film that might possibly beat <i>La La Land</i>, it’s generally recognised to be <i><b>Moonlight</b></i>, which is a surprise because, while it’s great, it also quiet and contemplative in a way that would not ordinarily get Oscar notice. The film focuses on Chiron, a young African-American who we meet as an 8-year-old boy hiding from bullies when he’s rescued by local drug dealer Juan. Chiron begins to look to Juan as a father figure, and Juan’s girlfriend Teresa as a second mother able to support him when his drug-addicted mother cannot. The film then jumps 10 years, to a teenaged Chiron trying to come to terms with the fact that he’s gay and with his affections towards his friend Kevin. And then it jumps ahead another 10 years to show a hardened Chiron who is affected when he receives a phone call from Kevin and finds himself considering where his life could be. <br />
<br />
There is a lot to really like about the movie. The performances in the film are incredible. Everyone has been talking about Mahershala Ali as an inevitable Supporting Actor winner, and with good reason. He’s an actor I’ve admired for over ten years at this point, and it’s exciting to see him in the past few years finally getting some of the recognition he deserves. His performance as Juan is beautiful; we can see the traces of determination and toughness that he has to maintain his drug-dealing career, but the character is nevertheless soft and sympathetic and loving towards this youth who needs support. (He also gets the best scene in the movie, a beautiful sequence where he takes Chiron to the ocean and teaches him how to swim.) It’s such a strong performance that the character feels ever-present in the movie; even when he’s not on-screen you feel the impact that the character has had running through the film. But much of the impact of the Juan character is also due to the performance of Janelle Monae as Juan’s girlfriend Teresa. I’d never heard of her until a couple of weeks earlier, when she was my favourite part of <i>Hidden Figures</i>, and so I was excited when she appeared on-screen here. There’s a lived-in comfort between the two that felt real and natural that I loved watching. In one scene Chiron asks Juan what a particularly challenging word means, and Juan starts to give a hesitant, careful explanation as he’s trying to work out how to answer the question, and Teresa manages to stop Juan from going in a particular direction just with the smallest look that clearly expresses so much. It gave a sense of a real relationship, where the two just know each other so well that they can communicate wordlessly between themselves. <br />
<br />
The other acting Oscar nomination for the film is for Naomie Harris, playing Chiron’s mother. And that I find a bit more frustrating. Look, it is an excellent performance, and she does strong work taking the character through the course of her drug addiction. (It’s especially impressive since she filmed the role in three days while on a promotional junket for another film.) But it is the part of the film that felt most like a cliché – we’ve all seen the drug-addicted mother unable to function or take care of their child before. I recognise that it is a cliché because there is truth in it (Harris apparently had to be talked into the role by learning how the character was based on the actual mothers of both the original writer and the director). And she does great, nuanced work charting the development of her character, but when I left the film it did bother me because that was the one part that I felt wasn’t new, the one part that I felt I had seen. <br />
<br />
Acknowledgement also has to be given to Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes, who all play the character of Chiron through each segment of the film, and who manage to bring their performances together so that you can see the earlier person in the later performances. What’s particularly interesting about the film is that ordinarily an actor is able to engage with the material and create the character that they see (albeit always in collaboration with the director to ensure that their version of the character is consistent with the film’s vision). But it must have been hard for the actors here to really do that; for instance, while Trevante Rhodes no doubt had the script and understood what the experiences were that the earlier Chirons had gone through, he didn’t necessarily know how the other actors were playing the role, making it challenging to really incorporate the performances of Hibbert and Sanders into his work. Which means that a lot of credit for the performances probably goes to director and screenwriter Barry Jenkins; by necessity he becomes the one who has the oversight over the character and his arc, and he’s the one who has to shape their performances into a consistent person on a journey. This is only Jenkins’ second film, and he displays incredible confidence and talent in his direction, but I do think his most impressive achievement is in seamlessly crafting these performances together into his lead character. <br />
<br />
One of the things I loved about the film was how much was left unsaid. This is a film that finds beauty in small subtleties of glances and in the depths of unspoken expression. Two scenes in particular come to mind. I’ve already cited one: the way a wordless glance between Teresa and Juan steers the direction of a conversation. But more significantly, the entire climax of the film plays on these subtleties [and this is something of a SPOILER]; the adult Chiron meets up with Kevin, and it’s a long scene between the two. Chiron is trying to play it cool, trying not to show his feelings for this man, but you can read his hopes, his nervousness, his searching for some kind of signal that might let him know that it’s okay for him unburden himself. This man is carrying a lifetime of never being honest, and he just wants to know if he can do that here. It’s a remarkable performance, by an actor who doesn’t immediately read as vulnerable until you see the effect Kevin has on him. What’s particularly surprising is that the film’s entire resolution rests on a character wordlessly expressing his emotional journey while waiting to discover if he can actually express that journey out loud. And it seems that there’s a realistic possibility the film might leave this journey unspoken, in which case the only emotional resolution is written on Chiron’s face. It’s a brave choice to rest the film’s entire resolution on a character who might never say aloud what we may want him to say; that it works so well is incredible and a testament to the quality of the work being done in the film. <br />
<br />
I liked the film, appreciated it, but I didn’t really love it at first. I completely understood why people were having this strong response to the film, but it didn’t initially connect to me. But <i>Moonlight</i> is a film that has lingered in my mind in a way that few films do, creating a sense of emotional connection to the material that I didn’t necessarily feel at the time. The more I think about it, the more I want to think about it, and the more I find to love in it. It is an incredible, glorious piece of filmmaking, and I couldn’t be happier to see it get the recognition it deserves. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif8LFTd6jKXiMeVKEhoXDP5Zv70atllOOVfEQ6WgmWnHDv0_Y71lJRLnbS44DNCi3qYwnjPg69SO7v3dJlaOG4TzDFuwBE-iXl_LdYcaEL1UevjJNR4oOLKqFYZBZ7tVI7ZnGzuJu8Flxl/s1600/manchester_by_the_sea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif8LFTd6jKXiMeVKEhoXDP5Zv70atllOOVfEQ6WgmWnHDv0_Y71lJRLnbS44DNCi3qYwnjPg69SO7v3dJlaOG4TzDFuwBE-iXl_LdYcaEL1UevjJNR4oOLKqFYZBZ7tVI7ZnGzuJu8Flxl/s400/manchester_by_the_sea.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
When I first heard about <i><b>Manchester by the Sea</b></i>, the third film from playwright-turned-director Kenneth Lonergan, I was really excited for an excellent film – I’d adored Lonergan’s previous film, the flawed but still remarkable <i>Margaret</i>, and the reviews for <i>Manchester</i> had been incredible. On the other hand, they all talked about how emotionally raw and tough an experience it was. So when I went to see the film, I went in prepared for an absolutely brutal experience. Which I think is why, when I saw the film, I was surprised by how much the film wasn’t that. Don’t get me wrong; it’s frequently tough, and hits moments of intense emotional pain. But it’s not the two-hours-of-grief-porn I was expecting to have to wallow in; thankfully it’s much more subtle and emotionally honest than that. It’s not the most entertaining movie on the list, but it’s easily my favourite. <br />
<br />
Casey Affleck plays Lee, a building custodian who returns to his hometown after his brother dies of a heart condition. Once there, he learns that his brother has appointed him as guardian to his teenage nephew Patrick, a responsibility which he has no interest in taking on. And that we cut between the past and the present, watching Lee’s relationship with his now-dead brother, watching his marriage with his now-ex wife and their young children, learning why he left town, while in the present Lee stubbornly fights to stay detached from his nephew and from this new role he’s been forced into, trying to deal with this grief brought on by his brother’s passing, and being confronted by the consequences of his past that he had tried to avoid. <br />
<br />
It’s a film of big emotions and big traumas, and yet I really appreciated the subtle touch evident throughout. Lonergan recognises when the emotion needs to be driven home and when he needs to step back. For instance, there is a set of framed photos that are particularly significant. There’s a lot of emotion tied up in these images, and at various points in the film we have scenes of people looking at the photos and reacting. Yet at no point are we ever shown the photos, and in fact, I don’t think we’re even explicitly told who the photos are of; we’re just left to rely on context and the performances of the actors as they react to the photos to interpret them. But it’s not as if the film is playing the photos as a puzzle (we’re never in any doubt who they are of); it’s just that Lonergan clearly recognised that to actually show the photos would risk forcing emotions out of the audience, so where other films might have exploited the photos at the right time for maximum emotional impact, Lonergan keeps the specifics of the photos private to the characters while letting us examine the impact they have on the people. <br />
<br />
Which is not to say that the movie doesn’t drive home the emotional impact of the work, just that it knows to only do so when it absolutely has to. There’s one extended sequence that is one of the most devastating pieces of cinema I think I’ve ever seen. It’s the one big moment where the film feels like it drops all pretence of subtlety and just plays it as big and as raw as it can – and it’s the right choice, because at that moment the characters are unprepared for what is happening, are just trying to process the impossibility of everything, and are just reacting on impulse. It’s an incredible sequence, and a marvellous display of cinematic storytelling. (It’s just unfortunate that they decided to pair it with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-r98bITu_A" target="_blank">Albinoni’s Adagio</a>; it’s a wonderful piece of music that works perfectly in context, but it’s also too well-known a piece of music, and using it puts its thumb on the emotional scales in a way a lesser-known piece would not have.) <br />
<br />
I also loved how the film explored, not just the emotional consequences of the passing of a loved one, but also the practical impact that this happens. Part of that is inevitable, certainly – the film’s entire plot is driven by a practical consideration over who will be the guardian of this kid. But it really is surprisingly focused on the practical issues – what are the funeral arrangements going to be? what does our life look like without this person? is it better to try and keep this boat running or should we just sell it? There’s the frustration that comes with the discovery that it’s too cold to hold the funeral, as the ground is too frozen to dig the grave. There’s even a wonderfully real scene where Lee and Patrick go coffin-shopping, and get so caught up in an argument that they completely forget where they’ve parked. It’s all about the way, at the most devastating moments of our lives, we become consumed by this and that and how all this minutiae makes it possible for us to function at a time when it seems like functioning should be impossible. <br />
<br />
Affleck’s performance is positively revelatory; his character has spent years punishing himself for his failings, and trying to push away his self-crimination; as a result he feels like someone who was incredibly tightly wound, as though he could have exploded at any time, until he learned to just sever all connections and forcibly empty himself as a way of avoiding hurting others. One of the most impressive things to me was how carefully modulated the performance was; the flashbacks in particular often move around through different time periods with little or no signposts to where we are in the timeline, and when this happened often I often looked to Affleck and his emotional state for indicators as to where we were in the story. That degree of observed precision in the performance, without ever feeling anything less than real and honest, is just staggering. <br />
<br />
But then everyone in the film is doing remarkable work; there’s a reason why the film has had three acting nominations. Lucas Hedges’ work as the nephew is a real surprise; he’s frequently an asshole, and the film doesn’t let him off the hook because he’s dealing with grief over his father’s death, it’s clearly just who he is. It’s a surprisingly alienating and off-putting character, who I felt with a different performance might easily lose the audience’s goodwill, yet Hedges lets a strain of decency and likability appear through his performance, enough that we wanted him to become the person we felt that he could be. It’s a wonderfully subtle balancing act he achieves, and hopefully bodes well for his future career. <br />
<br />
And then there’s Michelle Williams, as Affleck’s ex-wife. I’m always excited to see Williams, one of the most reliably great actresses working today, and her prominence on the poster had me expecting her to have a significant part to play in the film. Unfortunately she inhabits just one small corner of the film, appearing in only a few scenes, but when she’s on-screen she is magnificent. But as good as her work throughout the film is, there’s no doubt that her nomination was the result of one tough, tough scene where she exposes feelings she’s never been able to admit to herself, and it comes pouring out in a stream of emotions, and I feel like I could cry just thinking about it. This is Williams’ fourth Oscar nomination, and she’s not going to win this one either, but if she continues to work at this level then an eventual win seems like an inevitability. <br />
<br />
There was really only one frustration I felt with the film, one thing that pulled it away from being pretty damned perfect. There is one character, played by a recognisable name actor. He only appears on-screen in one scene, and we hear his voice in a second scene, so he’s not in the film very much. And the character is a Christian. We know he’s a Christian because he dresses almost like Ned Flanders, he has a bland niceness to him, he has a massive picture of Jesus on the wall, and the characters say grace before eating. The character is so Christian that when asked what the guy is like, someone actually describes him as “He’s very Christian.” The thing I loved about the movie was its specificity – its characters felt real and whole – but this Christian character was the only person in the film who didn’t feel real. I recognise that the character isn’t in the film all that much, and I’m not expecting a fully developed character in a few minutes of screentime, but this felt like Lonergan decided “This guy’s a Christian, it’s his most important characteristic, and we don’t have much time so we need to make sure people recognise that.” With every other character it seemed as though Lonergan was taking people he actually knew and writing them into the film, but with this person I almost wondered if he just doesn’t know any Christians he could look to. And in a film that is otherwise so subtle and careful in its characterisations, to be so stereotypical with this one person was distracting. <br />
<br />
But it would be churlish to hold a single misstep against a film that is otherwise a carefully observed and loving portrait of a world and characters searching for ways to deal with the unimaginable. Lonergan’s filmmaking career could have been over after <i>Margaret </i>– that film was caught up in editing dramas for half a decade, and while the eventual film was wonderful and profound, neither the theatrical cut nor Lonergan’s extended cut feels like they quite found the right shape for the material. So it was a surprise to see a new film from him just a few years later, and even more so to find it to be such a wonderful work. <i>Manchester by the Sea</i> is a masterpiece, and I can only hope for many more films for Lonergan. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho5xJswu89tGIVnwbKfcGKNtG3QhJogOli14XGP1_u7dI10TU3ndMJ-rCm3OX-paXH1RNXNRqJSeFJZB_1SAFgSg8jF_-7JKDHDE5KEFcH3bvuyxGbdwAo2wdMi9PRTB6wwEecFOkcxYzm/s1600/arrival.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho5xJswu89tGIVnwbKfcGKNtG3QhJogOli14XGP1_u7dI10TU3ndMJ-rCm3OX-paXH1RNXNRqJSeFJZB_1SAFgSg8jF_-7JKDHDE5KEFcH3bvuyxGbdwAo2wdMi9PRTB6wwEecFOkcxYzm/s400/arrival.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>
It has been a few months since <i><b>Arrival </b></i> came out, and it achieved a sufficiently high profile that you’re probably familiar with the premise. One day a dozen alien spaceships arrive, distributing themselves around the Earth, and then they just hover over the land. Amy Adams starts as a linguist who is hired by the military to help them communicate with the aliens. And all seems to go well until they start to translate the aliens’ messages, which may indicate that the aliens may have a more threatening purpose than it initially appears, in turn inciting countries to react out of desperation and force the situation into a global crisis. <br />
<br />
The thing is, I was somewhat wary approaching the film. I hadn’t seen any of Denis Villeneuve’s early work, but of his more recent work since he came to prominence, I’ve found him to be an engaging visual director but his work just lacked something. I generally liked the experience of watching all of his films, but <i>Prisoners</i> and <i>Enemy</i> in particular just faded away, while <i>Sicario</i> has basically stayed with me mainly because of the quality of its action scenes and little else. <br />
<br />
And then I saw it, and I loved it. What I found particularly thrilling was that this was a big-budget Hollywood science fiction film that was about language. I’m not saying that it’s the smartest or most incisive exploration of the concept there is, but this was a thrilling film that was ultimately and unmistakably about exploring ideas, about language, about the idea that language isn’t just a tool for communication, and about how different approaches to communication can express different worldviews. Nothing ground-breaking, and it’s the type of issue that science-fiction has often explored in other forms, but cinematic science-fiction tends to focus on spectacle at the expense of substance, so for a film like this that’s targeting a popular public response to be dedicated to talking about these concepts felt almost positively revolutionary. Sure, it was severely simplified/dumbed down (I was amused by the way they essentially skipped over the whole “learning the language” thing; one second they can’t communicate at all, then they jump ahead a few weeks and they conveniently have a more or less complete understanding of the aliens’ language), but it’s a delight to see a major blockbuster film that has the ambition to actually be about something in the way that this was. And they’re dedicated to digging into every corner of the subject and finding everything it can comment on. In one of my favourite scenes, there’s a moment where Adams learns that the Chinese has been teaching the aliens to communicate through playing Mah Jong. Leaving aside the handwaving over whether you actually could use a game like that to talk to someone else (I don’t know Mah Jong, but that really doesn’t seem possible), it prompts an interesting suggestion that, if their means of expression is based on a game, then that would become a barrier between the species because the means of communication introduces a competitiveness between the parties, changing the entire nature of the conversation and negatively affecting any understanding that might develop. Regardless of the realism of talking through Mah Jong, that manages to take a potentially complicated idea and present it to a mainstream audience in a way that they can engage with. And that’s exciting. <br />
<br />
I appreciated the clear coherent vision that flowed through the film. You can see it right from the design of the spacecraft, which is bizarre and fascinating and manages to be utterly unique while evoking <i>2001</i>, a clear declaration of ambition that it lived up to. And once the film ends and you can look back over it, you can see how carefully constructed the film is in heading towards that ending – the design of the alien language looks the way it does because that’s the only way it really can look, the aliens’ purpose for coming to Earth makes no sense until we know what’s happening, even the big glaring questions the movie leaves unanswered are unanswered not because they’re setting up a sequel but because they simply cannot be answered given what we learn. The film proves to be this carefully built structure, where every piece fits perfectly, where every piece supports and is supported by every other piece. It’s a surprisingly elegant piece of filmmaking, and I really appreciated it. <br />
<br />
As I was watching the film, there was really only one thing that I didn’t like about it; in fact, something I kinda hated. In the middle of this film that was so efficient and careful, there was one plot element that frankly aggravating to me; it was a cliché, it wasn’t doing anything new or interesting, why is this even in this film wasting my time. But then as the film progressed, it started to become clear exactly what purpose this plot thread was serving in the film, and the second I recognised what was happening this storyline went from being the one thing I hated about the film to my favourite part of the film. What I particularly loved was that the film didn’t treat this development as a big reveal (which lesser films might have). Instead it was a gradual unfolding; I suspect throughout the film there were different points where different members of the audience came to recognise the significance of this plot element (certainly I understood it from about halfway through the film). And often that can be frustrating, when you feel as though you’re ahead of the film. But because the film couched this element so strongly in the character’s development and her understanding of her experiences, it because less about the film trying to surprise us, and more about us becoming the supportive observer who can see what’s happening to someone else but who needs to allow them to come to their own realisation. It’s a delicate balancing act the film has to achieve, and it does so admirably. And the best part was that understanding gave this whole plot element extra weight emotionally; by the time the film reached its ending and this plot thread was reaching its resolution I was really surprised by how much emotional burden I felt for those characters, and how engaged I felt by the choices they’re confronted with. <br />
<br />
Next week the film society starts up again, with the first movie being Villeneuve’s breakthrough film <i><a href="http://www.filmsocietywellington.net.nz/db/screeningdetail.php?id=776&sy=2017" target="_blank">Incendies</a></i>; I’ve heard good things about the film, and I’m excited for that screening (showing in 35mm!). But more surprisingly, after seeing <i>Arrival</i>, I’m actually anticipating Villeneuve’s new film, <i>Blade Runner 2049</i>. I didn’t think I wanted a new <i>Blade Runner</i> – I couldn’t see what benefit there would be in making a sequel, and it would seem to inevitably have to answer questions I don’t want answers to (if only because I disagree with the filmmakers about the answer to those questions). Some of my hesitation does still remain. But if we are going to have a new <i>Blade Runner</i>, I’m really glad he’s going to be making it. Not only does he have a great visual sense, <i>Arrival</i> gave me the confidence to believe that he understands the deliberate pacing needed to make that film work, and the ambition to make a film as smart as the original film. (My optimism seems to have been borne out by the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haXvp8M9Cog" target="_blank">teaser trailer</a>, which does look phenomenal.) All of a sudden, I find I’m excited by Villeneuve, and that’s a testament to how well <i>Arrival</i> works.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNcEYrQELNzwfPcvYXU3s-KREldihmQI7gzYaw3D_6S4XuSqHQShHwxEPONASxaYj01Fxbxu_sqBxalEBn7DAYGwMcf_hs842TwPkuO3axV2gTceCUvC8Q0JSByqqrNDtcweXsXZuQ7O1a/s1600/hacksaw_ridge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNcEYrQELNzwfPcvYXU3s-KREldihmQI7gzYaw3D_6S4XuSqHQShHwxEPONASxaYj01Fxbxu_sqBxalEBn7DAYGwMcf_hs842TwPkuO3axV2gTceCUvC8Q0JSByqqrNDtcweXsXZuQ7O1a/s400/hacksaw_ridge.jpg" width="260" /></a></div>
One of the most interesting, perhaps even surprising, aspect of this year's nominations was the love for <i><b>Hacksaw Ridge</b></i>. The film has received six nominations, including Best Actor for Andrew Garfield, Best Picture, and most notably Best Director for Mel Gibson. Gibson has made a lot of mistakes in his life, has said and done a lot of terrible things, and he’s been largely rejected by Hollywood over the last decade as a result. But I do believe in the importance of forgiveness and giving people second chances, and as Gibson has been slowly returning to the screen he does seem to have recognised his failings. One hopes that he has learned and grown and become a better person through the experience. <br />
<br />
The good thing is that Gibson’s nomination may indicate that his directing career can get back on track, and as a film fan that is rather exciting. Gibson as a director has a lot of flaws, but I always admire his ambition and vision for his work. This was the man who decided to make a bloody, violent movie about the death of Jesus and shoot it entirely in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin (his original vision for that film even involved the movie being presented without subtitles!), and then followed that film with another action film entirely in the Mayan language. This is not a man who tries to make easy films. I also find his sense of action and violence fascinating; he has a masterful grasp on how to present action with grace and clarity, which is a relief in an era of often over-edited incoherent action sequences. But he also has an almost fetishized view of violence, finding a weird beauty in viscera and almost eagerly focused on the destruction that can be inflicted on the human body. <br />
<br />
All of which make his decision to make this film, based on the true story of pacific war medic Desmond Doss, rather fascinating. Many people have observed that this is possibly the most violent movie about a man opposed to violence that has ever been made. And one has to wonder what Doss would have thought of his story being told in this manner. A sincere Seventh-Day Adventist, Doss took the commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill to heart; when World War Two broke out, Doss enlisted as a medic but refused to carry or even touch a gun, even during his boot camp training, which led to him being subject to a great deal of hostility from his fellow recruits. Eventually his unit is sent to fight in the Battle of Okinawa, at a perilous clifftop location known as Hacksaw Ridge; the battle is a bloodbath and the unit retreats, but Doss remains, eventually saving 76 people, and later receiving the Medal of Honour in recognition of the feat. It’s a remarkable story, and I was glad to learn about it. <br />
<br />
And at times it is an incredible piece of filmmaking. But I had several problems with the film. For a start, it just has a weird structure that seemed to work against it. The first half of the film is spent introducing us to Doss, then meeting his eventual wife and starting a relationship with her (which is fine, if a little clichéd and uninvolving) and then following him to boot camp. It was in boot camp that the film lost me quite a bit. The main problem is that we live in a world where <i>Full Metal Jacket</i> exists, and so we have seen the greatest cinematic portrayal of boot camp that has ever and will ever be shown. Inevitably any movie that spends any time in boot camp is going to come up short in that comparison, and unfortunately <i>Hacksaw Ridge</i> failed to do anything notable to distinguish itself in that area. It’s really not helped by the casting of Vince Vaughan as Sergeant Howell – Vaughan can be good in the right roles, but he’s no R Lee Ermy, and just makes the role feel like a very safe family-friendly version. I can understand the choice to go in that direction – as the story of a man who held firm to his faith and his principles, this is a film that I could see having a strong appeal to a more conservative Christian audience that might be offended by someone yelling “I will gouge out your eyeballs and skull-fuck you!”. (Hell, my parents have watched <i>Hacksaw Ridge</i>, and there’s no way they would make it through even the opening scene of <i>FMJ</i>.) But given the graphic realism of the later battle sequence, it feels as though the film is backing away from a more honest portrayal in these scenes. <br />
<br />
Eventually we get to the battle, and that’s the point where Mel Gibson feels at home. The battle sequence is rough and bloody and violent and horrific and easily the equal of any battle sequence I’ve ever seen. As a piece of pure action cinema, it is truly remarkable, and the point where the film really came to life for me. It's big, it's chaotic, it's literally and figuratively visceral, and it's absolutely masterful filmmaking. The problem is that Doss doesn’t really have all that much to do during that initial battle sequence; aside from the occasional cutaway to Doss running around the battlefield there’s a good 15, 20 minutes where the film effectively forgets about our main character and instead roams around visiting all the other thinly-developed supporting characters, watching them be blown apart, brutally shot, left for dead, trying desperately to survive, and eventually retreating if they’re able to. But I remember in the cinema thinking “what happened to Doss?” Part of the problem was that during the early boot camp scenes the film had been so focused on Doss that these other characters hadn’t really been developed enough to elicit the emotional response it seemed to be aiming for when they experienced the war. For the most part, they were just bodies to be mangled. <br />
<br />
And then the troops retreat back down the cliff, and finally the film comes together. That climactic sequence was one of the best things I saw in cinema all of last year. We find Doss abandoned and alone, unarmed and defenceless at the top of a cliff, with enemy soldiers prowling around looking for survivors to kill. And he makes the choice not to retreat; he chooses to remain at the top, looking for survivors, looking for people he can save, never caring whether they’re allied or enemy soldiers, dragging them across the battlefield and lowering them down the cliff for assistance before returning to look for other survivors. And you’re just watching this man who had been dismissed as a coward for standing by his conviction, and he’s achieving incredible things that I cannot imagine doing. It genuinely is an incredibly powerful piece of cinema; not just harrowing and thrilling, but it also spoke to me as a moving and challenging reflection on the nature of courage and what it means to live a life of faith in impossible circumstances. I may have real problems with the rest of the film, but dammit, at that moment I did not care. It was a thrill to see a filmmaker like Gibson working again, and a wonder to see him working at the height of his powers, and I hope for more from him. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz_aakGlGadQi9rcnPLvmPAW0hwt1PqaM3C2sKNAV4X6ESpiF_UJIyI5p0VZxun4mVaXYKha9qOtt2gmNhs-fEoeAKCiZBJtg7BTfXlR4Onb844y8HnErl_iFrpSb7bomfKfvekruWRupX/s1600/fences.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz_aakGlGadQi9rcnPLvmPAW0hwt1PqaM3C2sKNAV4X6ESpiF_UJIyI5p0VZxun4mVaXYKha9qOtt2gmNhs-fEoeAKCiZBJtg7BTfXlR4Onb844y8HnErl_iFrpSb7bomfKfvekruWRupX/s400/fences.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>
One of the more frustrating nominees was <i><b>Fences</b></i>, the adaptation of an apparently well-regarded play (that I admit I have never heard of) by August Wilson. It focuses on a black family in Pittsburgh in the mid-50s, headed by Troy Maxson, a garbage collector who feels he would have been a star baseball player if he hadn’t been black, and his wife Rose. It’s a tricky film to say much more than that about, because there’s not really one big key incident that sparks the rest of the drama. While there are a lot of things going on in the film – one son has a chance to become the kind of sports star his father aspired to, another son wants to be a musician and is avoiding “real work” to pursue the dream, Troy’s brother is suffering from mental damage following the war, Troy has an opportunity for career advancement, and is forced to reveal a secret – it’s a film where the focus is never plot-driven; it always remains on the characters and how they will respond to the situations that they are confronted with. <br />
<br />
Now, I really liked the film. It’s rather remarkable material, angry and passionate and frustrated. And it feels real, as though Wilson had just taken people he knew and presented them as they are. The performances are great; Denzel Washington and Viola Davis in particular both played their roles in a revival of the play, and there’s a lived-in understanding of the characters that comes with portraying these people every night for months. When Washington delivers his old stories about his ball-playing days, they flow from his mouth like practiced anecdotes he’s been telling people for twenty years; when he rants about how his entire life he’s been kept away from opportunities because of the colour of his skin, it feels like he’s giving voice to thoughts he’s been harbouring longer than he can remember; and his explosions of anger feel inevitable with the careful build-up of frustrations and resentment. But it’s Viola Davis who really astonished me. There has been a lot of debate about categorising her character; she won the Tony for Lead Actress in the role, but here has been nominated for the Supporting Actress Oscar. And for much of the film I felt that the Oscars had it right; it’s a great role and great performance, but it’s clearly a supporting role. And then the final scene happened, and it became clear just how central she is to the narrative. As she discusses the life she built with Troy, her eyes spark as she remembers the man she fell in love with, and she angrily defends remaining with her husband as a choice that she made because it was the best that life offered her. It’s an incredible moment that reframes the entire film as being, not just about Troy and his frustrated ego lashing out at those who would deny him his right, but also about the woman who made a choice to be with this man throughout everything. <br />
<br />
I also rather appreciated the direction of the film. This was the third film that Denzel Washington has directed, but the first I’ve seen, and I was rather impressed with his work. He’s not a particularly visual director, he's clearly better working with his actors, but he does clearly have a vision for what he wants the film to be, and coupled with his honed understanding of the play, he’s able to communicate its strength without getting in the way of the material. One thing I particularly appreciated was how classical his shooting actually was. If you pay attention to modern film shooting and editing these days, dialogue scenes are usually intercut in something of a choppy manner, cutting from close-up to close-up as each person ends their line of dialogue and the next person speaks, in a filmmaking approach I’ve heard referred to as “<a href="http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2007/05/27/intensified-continuity-revisited/" target="_blank">intensified continuity</a>”. But Washington has a tendency to step back, to not just focus in close on the person currently talking; instead there’s a surprising number of wide-shots that allow us to see, not only the actor’s entire physical performance, but also the character around responding to their words. Part of that creative choice may have been forced on him by the inherent nature of the material (a close-up is fine for a single line of dialogue, but would quickly become uncomfortable where someone is delivering several pages of monologue), or perhaps it better reflects the way the audience would view the material on stage (where all the actors remain visible no matter who’s speaking). Or perhaps that’s just the approach Washington felt worked best with the material. Regardless, I really loved watching the film play out in this way, because it allows you to really watch everyone acting and reacting together, playing out their character regardless of whether they’re the focal point of the scene. <br />
<br />
So there’s a lot to really like about the film. But here’s the problem with the film. I acknowledge that I knew coming into the film that it was a play, but if I had not, I suspect I would have realised its stage origins within the first five minutes. Movies are a fundamentally different art form to a play, and this felt like a play. It was largely limited in location (much of the film took place in the backyard of the Maxson house, with the film only occasionally going inside the house, and rarely onto the street or into a bar) which makes the film feel rather constrained and limited in a way that I don’t think anyone ever really intended. A play is limited by the constraints of the performance space, so a practical choice might be made to have the entire play take part in one location. But when a film takes place in one location, it starts to feel as though the world of the film is incredibly limited and claustrophobic. Which is fine if that’s what you’re trying to communicate, but I didn’t get the sense that that was the intention. It’s also filled with a lot of great, rich, strong monologues; Washington gets to deliver wonderful diatribes about how he’s been wronged, and Davis delivers heartbreaking descriptions of all she has lived with over the years. They’re brilliantly performed and wonderful to listen to. But again, it feels like these people are just holding court, delivering speeches while people stand around listening, waiting for their cue to speak. It doesn’t feel natural. The thing is, there’s a degree of artifice and contrivance in a play that we all accept; we can see that this isn’t a real backyard, and so right from the start we just accept that the entire world of a play is fake, and we then allow for people to behave in ways they wouldn’t, delivering eloquent and grand speeches. But in a film, the backyard looks like a real backyard, and suddenly we’re watching real people in a real location speechifying in a way that these people never would in reality, and it feels false. And I think that’s what we mean when we say that a film feels like a play and why that’s a problem; they may seem like closely related artforms, but the context of each is so different that what works in one feels off in the other. August Wilson (who died in 2005) apparently wrote the screenplay before his death, and he’s been nominated for Adapted Screenplay, but the truth is it feels as though he has been nominated for the quality of the play he wrote in the 1980s, not for the screenplay he wrote 20 years later. Don’t get me wrong; it’s well worth seeing, but looking at it as a piece of cinema, it’s not as effective as it might have been. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRFefWO0xH6GqciVyNRXp4gR783p_4wimOTkhyphenhyphenBEhjEUx4qV-H_pdrm29VjoKBr0hvH5TMrsLgMpfAxxtKML9FxzxQM38iotwWatKTNTxtBWJzSE14xpytgQTC16YmFsddRwidOXbk3KK6/s1600/hell_or_high_water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRFefWO0xH6GqciVyNRXp4gR783p_4wimOTkhyphenhyphenBEhjEUx4qV-H_pdrm29VjoKBr0hvH5TMrsLgMpfAxxtKML9FxzxQM38iotwWatKTNTxtBWJzSE14xpytgQTC16YmFsddRwidOXbk3KK6/s400/hell_or_high_water.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
Possibly the most purely entertaining nominated film is <i><b>Hell or High Water</b></i>, a brilliant modern-day western about previously law-abiding father Toby and his hot-headed impulsive ex-convict brother Tanner going on a bank-robbing spree across Texas. This eventually attracts the attention of Marcus Hamilton, a retiring Texas Ranger who becomes focused on catching the two as a way of staving off his reluctant retirement. <br />
<br />
The performances in the film are universally great. I’ve liked Chris Pine playing Kirk in the Star Trek films, but here he’s doing work as the sensible brother Toby that I never would have imagined; his character is fuelled by a justified anger and regret over the actions that he’s forced to take. One of the best scenes in the film involves Pine sitting with his son, realising seemingly for the first time that his son will learn about his involvement with these robberies, and trying to reconcile what he needs to do to be a good father for his son with this path that he’s now trapped on. I would have loved to see Ben Foster receive a nomination, as he has been a reliable on-screen presence for years, and his charismatic impulsiveness as Tanner is absolutely thrilling to watch; he feels genuinely dangerous to be with while still engendering a surprising amount of sympathy. The person who has been nominated is Jeff Bridges, which is frustrating; I like Jeff Bridges, everybody likes Jeff Bridges, and I really liked his performance as Texas Ranger Hamilton, but it’s essentially a more-coherent version of his work as Rooster Cogburn. What I did find really interesting was how much the role relied on Bridges’ likability; without that natural good-naturedness the character (who, in addition to standing in opposition to our sympathetic lead characters, is also prone to obliviously throwing racial slurs at his Native American partner) might be actively off-putting. As it is, thanks to Bridges’ charisma and the wonderful relationship between Hamilton and his partner Alberto (wonderfully played by Gil Birmingham), the audience is left seriously with our sympathies seriously conflicted between the law and the criminals. Which means that, whoever wins this conflict, the outcome will inevitably hurt. <br />
<br />
The best thing about the film is that there is incredible affection given to every character; no matter how minor, everyone feels as though they had an existence before the film. The care taken with these characters is shown by the fact that, four months after seeing it, there are two different “waitress” characters that instantly come to mind when I think about the movie. In most films, that’s the kind of forgettable role that gets thrown in just because if a scene is set in a diner you need to have a waitress. But here the characters felt real, they have a spark, I can remember lines each one said. And that’s true of everyone in the film; the guys in the diner, the bank customers, the hotel clerk – all of these throwaway roles felt like they all inhabited this world and had their own place in it. When you see major movies that completely fail to develop even their main characters, it’s a delight to see a film that gives such attention to every person that appears on-screen. <br />
<br />
There’s also a nice piece of commentary running through the film that is absolutely unmistakable. The decision of the brothers to start robbing these banks in particular is driven as a response to an action of the bank’s that they quite understandably feel to be immoral and exploitative. And this negative attitude to the banks runs through most of the characters; in one memorable moment, one minor character observes that he saw someone robbing “the same bank that's been robbing me for 30 years”. And you can see the consequences of the economic downturn crated by the 2008 financial crisis everywhere in the film, in the closed-down businesses, in the boarded-up buildings, in the town centres that seem like ghost towns. The film offers screenwriter Taylor Sheridan a chance to argue that the banking institutions have essentially ceased to serve the communities; instead they have exploited their positions to prey on the public, and rather than being chastened by having created the financial crisis, they instead almost seem to have been emboldened by the lack of accountability imposed on them for disastrously affecting the economy. The thing that I was really impressed with by the film was the fact that it managed to make its argument, and was absolutely unambiguous about what it was saying, yet never one did I feel like I was watching a sermon or sitting through a diatribe. The film works because Sheridan works incredibly hard to ensure that every time he presents his argument, it’s based strongly in the characters and in their actions; no-one’s ever delivering a speech that would make no sense for them to be delivering in reality. <br />
<br />
The other idea that the film is exploring is illuminated particularly through the character of Hamilton’s partner Alberto. The film is unmistakably a modern day western, and the decision to place the film in that genre very pointedly ties the events of this film to the founding of the country, something that was mythologised in the western and the old idea of “cowboys and Indians”. So when people talk about these big impassive bodies that seek to exploit the disadvantaged and disempowered for their own benefit, it’s no accident that the film has a Native American character who can speak to the fact that such exploitation was the basis for the creation of the nation in the first place; similarly it’s clearly a deliberate choice that a pivotal plot point involves the use of an Indian casino, using one of the few and most-obvious points of Native American economic power as part of the brother’s fight against the banks. <br />
<br />
<i>Hell or High Water</i> is a remarkably strong piece of work. Where films are made as a vehicle for exploring an issue they can often become frustrating and airless, consumed by their need to communicate their message at the expense of the story being told. But <i>Hell or High Water</i> demonstrates how such material should be approached; it constantly sparks with energy, with entertaining characters and a thrilling, compelling story that keeps the audience engaged as it turns its attention to what it has to say, never insisting that you listen to its message. First and foremost, it’s just a bloody fun film. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkHgV_yRiBTKNY7QWezdrP4N8FY_Jy0fmtaviS49i6_YA5iWd0gmwXbdSUpq3-oK8_3skBjJ23CMfi0GnIPekf-X33nTnnWqu9myio2tRMVAjwrUEHX0tpKAmv4JxbM5N6IgI-QrZL7Rhd/s1600/lion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkHgV_yRiBTKNY7QWezdrP4N8FY_Jy0fmtaviS49i6_YA5iWd0gmwXbdSUpq3-oK8_3skBjJ23CMfi0GnIPekf-X33nTnnWqu9myio2tRMVAjwrUEHX0tpKAmv4JxbM5N6IgI-QrZL7Rhd/s400/lion.jpg" width="278" /></a></div>
I went in to see <b><i>Lion</i> </b>with a degree of reluctance. The story (about a young Indian child, Saroo, who fell asleep on a train and woke to find himself 1500km from home, completely lost without even knowing the name of his village, and how twenty years after being adopted by an Australian couple he found his way home through Google Earth) seemed like a very typical heartwarming true story that didn’t really hold any interest for me. I felt like the trailer had played in front of every movie I had seen for months, and it never once inspired any desire to see the film. In fact I was surprised when I first heard it mentioned as a possible Oscar contender, and even more so when I saw it was actually nominated. But I decided to give it a chance. And dammit, if the film didn’t work for me. <br />
<br />
The first thing that surprised me was how patient it was with its story. I was expecting something that would rush through Saroo getting lost in twenty minutes, and that would focus its attention on the story of adult Saroo, since that’s the part of the story that has recognisable stars and doesn’t rely on an child non-actor to carry the story. But instead it seemed like there was a fairly even split in the film. And even more surprisingly, it was absolutely the first half of the film that really grabbed me. That first half is an absolute gut punch: Sunny Pawar, just 7 years old at the time, is an appealing presence as the young Saroo, and the pain and horror when he winds up separated from his brother is genuinely shocking. The film navigates a delicate balance in the scenes of Saroo lost – he finds himself in some terrible situations with people who might look to exploit a young child without connections – and I was trying to grapple with whether the film was trying to soften some of those events just to avoid affecting the feel-good nature of the story, but I don’t think it is. The film is extremely effective at putting us in the mindset of this young child, so while we as adult viewers can recognise what’s happening, we’re seeing the events through someone who only knows “something bad is happening”. Once we move into the second half, the film changes quite significantly. Rightly recognising that you can’t build too much of a story out of someone looking at Google Maps for years, the film avoids spending too much time on the actual search that it’s ostensibly about. Instead it adopts a much more emotional focus – there’s a massive hole in Saroo, because he doesn’t have any resolution over what happened to his birth family and he knows that they’re also suffering in having lost him without even understanding why, but at the same time he has this other family who raised him and who loved him and who he’s afraid will be hurt by his efforts to find his birth parents. And so that second half becomes more insular in a way that is really interesting, but less immediately engaging than the more dynamic first half, Fortunately the strength of the acting talent is incredibly strong; both Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman are understandably nominated for their performances that ache with pain and pride and regret and joy, and they're able to carry the film through to its emotional conclusion.<br />
<br />
One of the things I really liked about the film was that it felt, for want of a better term, real. There’s no real sheen or polish to the film. There’s a rough messiness to the film, that seems less about composing the film for maximum impact, and just about being truthful to the events being portrayed. One of the best examples of the film’s messiness comes after Saroo has been adopted; the film cuts to a scene one year later where the family welcomes a second adopted child named Mantosh, a child who is clearly troubled. And then, after maybe a minute of this scene, the film jumps forward twenty years to tell the rest of the story. Mantosh remains a small presence in the film, and we learn that he continues to be troubled as an adult, but for the most part he’s not really a big part of the film’s focus. I found myself reflecting on how other movies might have dealt with the figure of Mantosh. Perhaps it would be tidier to just omit the character altogether, since he’s really not relevant to the film’s story. Or perhaps they could adopt the two children together, which would at least remove the need for the random “one year later” time jump. Or perhaps keep Mantosh in the film as he is, but more explicitly draw connections between the brothers; say, as Saroo begins to withdraw from everyone due to his search his parent might worry about whether what happened to Mantosh is happening to Saroo. All of these things are decisions I could see other filmmakers making, just to make the film a little tidier. But I love the fact that <i>Lion</i> doesn’t do any of these things. Instead, it seems to very consciously just try to reflect what really happened, and who cares if the story’s not as perfectly constructed or fits neatly into a conventional structure. It’s messy, but in a way that genuinely allowed me to get lost, made me forget that I was watching a movie and feel as though I was watching real events. <br />
<br />
But the frustrating thing about the film is that, for all the faith shown in the audience’s willingness to engage with an unconventionally messy narrative, there seemed to occasionally be a fear that the audience might not be able to keep up with the film, which leads to some very small but annoying choices in the second half. This first revealed itself in a moment where Saroo is at a dinner where the menu is Indian food; he finds himself looking at and tasting a brightly-coloured sweet named jalebi, which immediately reminds him of a moment from his youth when he asked his brother to buy some jalebi. The instant we see the distinctively bright colours of the food, we’re reminded of that wonderful little scene and completely understand the distant look on his face. Which was why it was so insulting that we’re then actually given a brief flashback to that scene. I’m not sure whether it shows a lack of confidence in the audience’s ability to follow the story, or a lack of confidence in the film’s ability to tell the story, but whatever it was, it was a clumsy effort to make sure we all followed something I’m pretty sure no-one was having any difficulty with. But if that was just a one-off moment it would be one thing; instead the bizarre unnecessary flashback inserts got worse. One of the distinctive features of the train station Saroo is looking for was a water tower; we know this because we saw the water tower when he was at the station, and he later refers to it being something he remembers. So why is it that, every time he’s looking at a station on Google Maps and he sees a water tower, the film feels the need to throw in a quick insert shot of the water tower from the night he was lost? It didn’t seem as though any new information was being communicated – he didn’t seem to be remembering any detail that would allow him to dismiss any of the stations – it was seemingly just “well, I guess it could be that one.” But the film felt the need to give us these weird flashback inserts three or four times, and at those moments it felt like the film was talking down to me, thinking I wouldn’t remember why the water tower mattered. And since I loved the film so much because it was trying to be messy and avoid meeting the audience’s expectations, those moments bothered me more than in another film because they almost changed the film back into one where it thought the audience needed to be talked down to, and that’s not what this film was. <br />
<br />
But it has to be said: given I walked into the movie reluctantly and with no expectation of enjoying it, the fact that my only real criticism revolves around a half-dozen shots, not even 30 seconds of screen time, in a film I otherwise raved about really does indicate how strong the film was. It is a wonderful film, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjniMZWRvHxtrB0uTLOO0EQWt-BrcdWH3B9yibsCzitUlLoGnXsCoO4BY6MeQbFBh1N0AHCsAK4ge2HhMGjDOen_z6hhSL38gdUD2OcmpQRIZSbJNlcNJljsp990g7WrEjREMHZhzCXVoSB/s1600/hidden_figures.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjniMZWRvHxtrB0uTLOO0EQWt-BrcdWH3B9yibsCzitUlLoGnXsCoO4BY6MeQbFBh1N0AHCsAK4ge2HhMGjDOen_z6hhSL38gdUD2OcmpQRIZSbJNlcNJljsp990g7WrEjREMHZhzCXVoSB/s400/hidden_figures.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
About 30 minutes after seeing <i>Lion</i>, I went to see <i><b>Hidden Figures</b></i>. The film tells the true story of three black women – Katherine Goble, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan – working in the “coloured computer” section of NASA during the early 1960s, undertaking complicated calculations and computations by hand, and how each of these women played a vital role in space exploration, in technological advancement, and in fighting for the rights and place of black people in the organisation and the country. <br />
<br />
I need to emphasise that I really enjoyed the film – it’s a genuinely fascinating and entertaining film telling a story that is worth learning about – but seeing the film so soon after <i>Lion</i> really did make <i>Hidden Figures</i> feel like a movie. You could feel the shift between the films right from the start; there was a gloss and vibrancy to the image in <i>Hidden Figures</i> that felt artificial compared to the slight gloom of the image in <i>Lion</i>. All the way through the film, I found myself aware of the screenwriters (Theodore Melfi and Allison Schroeder) constructing every scene. Every line of dialogue seems heightened, every character delivers the exact perfect remark at the right time, and every behaviour seems escalated to make a point, to a degree where actions simply stopped feeling natural. It’s not that I think the movie actively misrepresents the real events; just that it covers the entire story in a film of artifice to heighten the drama in a way that meant I never believed what I was watching to be an accurate presentation of what happened. It’s the type of film where a department head personally starts attacking a sign, bashing it and prying it with a crowbar, in order to make his point about removing the sign in the most dramatic way possible. It’s the type of film where a woman can walk through a test chamber, getting her high-heels caught in a grate, literally seconds before an explosive test is conducted. It’s the type of film where one of the characters meets and falls in love and it all plays out in the most surface level clichéd storybook manner. The artifice of the film reaches its low point with the installation of the first IBM Computing Machine – in one scene the technicians are puzzled by why the machine wasn’t work, while as an audience member I could see this one big conspicuous cable and immediately recognise “That’s probably connected to the wrong thing”; sure enough when our hero Dorothy Vaughan (having previously only read a book about computer programming that she had to steal from the library since it wasn’t in the “coloured” section) sneaks into the room without authorisation wanting to learn how to operate the machine, she sees it’s not working, can immediately identify by sight where the cable should lead to, and fixes the machine. <br />
<br />
And to be clear – it’s not that I’m saying that a film needs to be strictly accurate to the true events in order for me to enjoy it. But if I’m watching John Glenn standing on the launchpad refusing to take off unless the machine’s calculations are confirmed by one of the characters and it takes me out of the film because I think “that can’t have happened like that”, that’s an issue. It’s not as bad as <i>Argo</i> with its last-minute chase down the airport runway (it is at least true that he requested the calculations be confirmed, even if the timing of the request was made at a less-dramatic moment several days earlier), but it’s still unfortunate that I was taken out of the film so much. <br />
<br />
I find myself wondering what I really wanted from the film. And if I’m honest, what I want can’t be achieved in a narrative film. Ideally, I personally would love to see a well-made documentary film telling the story of these women, removed from the need for big dramatic moments and just offering honest reflections on who these people were, what they had to go through, and what their greater impact was. The thing is, I might love that, but the audience for that film would be very small. The great thing about <i>Hidden Figures</i> is that the film is doing well; it has taken this story and presented it in an accessible way; it means that there are people learning about these women, it’s allowing people to see black women in a context where they probably previously just imagine a lot of white men, and there is real value in doing that. Certainly the movie made me sufficiently interested in the story that I decided to pick up the source book; I’ve only just started reading it in the last couple of days, but this is a story I would never have heard of, and now I’m looking forward to learning about who these women really were, and that’s something of real value that happened only because of the movie.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-28565815939827146942016-07-04T00:23:00.001+12:002016-07-04T19:49:43.286+12:00Victory of suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings... mainly happy endingsSo here’s the thing,<br />
<br />
If you were driving by the Paramount Cinema early Thursday morning, you would have seen a small group of people queuing. And for about a decade, I’ve always been one of them; every year I’ve queued on the day that film festival tickets went on sale to buy my tickets in person. The only time I didn’t queue was in the year where I was out of the country on the day; otherwise, I was always out there before 6am, wrapped up warmly, waiting for that moment where, joy of joys, tickets would become available.<br />
<br />
This year, I broke with tradition. A couple of years ago, the festival went with a new ticket provider that allowed you to select your seats when buying online. (Seat selection was always my main reason for wanting to buy tickets in person.) Unfortunately the ticketing that first year was a complete mess; the second year was also challenging (particularly when the system completely collapsed when I only had a couple of films left to book and I had to start from scratch), but still it showed real signs of improvement. So this year I decided to try to book online, in the hope that the ticket provider will have taken lessons from the first two years, and this year the system would work well.<br />
<br />
So that didn’t work out.<br />
<br />
Tickets went on sale at 10am (for some reason an hour later than in past years). I went to my pre-made wishlist, clicked Select All, then went through the tedious process of selecting the required number of tickets for each film, one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one. Went to purchase, wait a couple of minutes, not so silently willing the site to work come on come on come on come on please please please work come on work work work I was pacing around my desk as it tried to process my purchase and then – timed out. I tried again; no luck. I tried placing smaller orders, halving my number of tickets, then halving it again; no luck. And every time I had to select my ticket numbers one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one-by-one. I must have gone through that process close to 20 times before it finally let me proceed, some 70 minutes after tickets went on sale. By the time I had made my seat selections (and I really cannot understand the computer’s logic with some of its automatic assessments of “best available seat”) and made my purchase, it was 11:29am, and 89 minutes had passed. Which is why I decided that next year I’m just going to have to go back to queuing.<br />
.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTTJA9C1wRH5ryovk_mVlhZ6QLm7vEaMaKiaev9KAtTnuSoh3l-ohwZSusUZj2rjfbArtZhP80NZ6URQmEiTfqdgfFXG9I7oggKhq4R4n-QhTWodQ_OURtlvP_fa9XRRtzDbzdhtYcerRT/s1600/NZFF16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTTJA9C1wRH5ryovk_mVlhZ6QLm7vEaMaKiaev9KAtTnuSoh3l-ohwZSusUZj2rjfbArtZhP80NZ6URQmEiTfqdgfFXG9I7oggKhq4R4n-QhTWodQ_OURtlvP_fa9XRRtzDbzdhtYcerRT/s640/NZFF16.jpg" width="448" /></a></div>
So these are the films I’ll be seeing this year:<br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/weiner/">Weiner</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/the-music-of-strangers-yo-yo-ma-and-the-silk-road-ensemble/">The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/after-the-storm/">After the Storm</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/under-the-sun/">Under the Sun</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/a-touch-of-zen/">A Touch of Zen</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/lo-and-behold-reveries-of-the-connected-world/">Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/a-war/">A War</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/beware-the-slenderman/">Beware the Slenderman</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/family-film/">Family Film</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/mccabe-mrs-miller/">McCabe and Mrs Miller</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/life-animated/">Life, Animated</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/high-rise/">High-Rise</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/green-room/">Green Room</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/sunset-song/">Sunset Song</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/suburra/">Suburra</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/swiss-army-man/">Swiss Army Man</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/captain-fantastic/">Captain Fantastic</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/graduation/">Graduation</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/tokyo-story/">Tokyo Story</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/the-red-turtle/">The Red Turtle</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/truman/">Truman</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/toni-erdmann/">Toni Erdmann</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/one-eyed-jacks/">One-Eyed Jacks</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/the-daughter/">The Daughter</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/le-ride/">Le Ride</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/personal-shopper/">Personal Shopper</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/the-innocents/">The Innocents</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/certain-women/">Certain Women</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/paterson/">Paterson</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/the-salesman/">The Salesman</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/midnight-special/">Midnight Special</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/chimes-at-midnight/">Chimes at Midnight</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/johnny-guitar/">Johnny Guitar</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/variety/">Variety</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/perfect-strangers/">Perfect Strangers</a></i><br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/wellington/elle/">Elle</a></i>
<br />
<br />
I was genuinely impressed with the selection this year, as you can tell by the number of films I’m attending (my most films in a single festival).I’m particularly excited about the selection of classic films this year, especially as they’re all films I’ve never seen. I’m most looking forward to <i>Chimes at Midnight</i>, the Orson Welles film where all of the scenes featuring the character of Falstaff from five different Shakespeare plays are compiled into a Falstaff-centric narrative; it’s supposed to be Welles’ favourite of his films. I’m also excited to see Robert Altman’s anti-western <i>McCabe and Mrs Miller</i>, as well as my first film from Yasujiro Ozu, the famed <i>Tokyo Story</i>. I don’t know much about Marlon Brando’s sole directorial effort <i>One-Eyed Jacks</i>, and I’ve never even heard of either wuxia film <i>A Touch of Zen</i> or Nicholas Ray’s <i>Johnny Guitar</i>, but they all look fun.<br />
<br />
There’s a really promising list of documentaries this year. I start the festival with <i>Weiner</i>, supposedly a fascinating inside look at Anthony Weiner’s campaign for New York mayor which was derailed by the second of his sexting scandals. I’ve heard good things about <i>Life, Animated</i>, the film about a young man with autism who learned to communicate and engage with the world through Disney movies. There’s an interesting-sounding documentary called <i>Under the Sun</i>, in which the filmmaker captures the efforts of the North Korean propaganda machine trying to manipulate his documentary about a young girl in the country. <i>Beware the Slenderman</i> also sounds intriguing, about two girls who murder their friend and then blame it on the Slenderman, a recent urban legend whose creation took place entirely on the internet. And there’s a fun-seeming Werner Herzog documentary, <i>Lo and Behold</i>, about the development and potential of the internet. In an effort to reduce the burden of all my films I very seriously considered cutting <i>The Music of Strangers</i> (a documentary about an ensemble of international musicians brought together by acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma), but I just couldn’t bring myself to miss a film that just looks joyous.<br />
<br />
Last year I finally saw my first Hirokazu Kore-eda film, <i>Our Little Sister</i>, and was just utterly charmed by its simple beauty; I’ve since seen his earlier film <i>I Wish</i>, which was just as great as I had been led to believe. At least on the basis of those two films, he seems to have a real talent for carefully observed family drama, where the joy of his work is in just spending time with his characters. So I’m excited about his new film, <i>After the Storm</i>, about a divorced father trying to connect with his ex-wife and son. I’m also thrilled to see <i>The Salesman</i>, the new film from Ashgar Farhadi. <i>A Separation</i> was my favourite film from that year, while <i>The Past</i> was similarly a powerful experience, and I can’t wait to see what emotional knots he ties me in this time.<br />
<br />
I’m a bit uncertain about going to see <i>Swiss Army Man</i>, as the film really does not appeal to me. As with most film fans I first heard of the film when people reporting from Sundance described it as the “film where Daniel Radcliffe plays a talking, farting corpse”; I simply cannot imagine enjoying a film about a corpse with so much flatulence that it apparently allows him to be used as a jet-ski. But while many people seem to really hate the film, many other people seem to really be passionate about the film, and feel that there’s a lot more depth to the film. That kind of divisiveness of response can often be a sign of a film that’s doing something interesting. So I’ve decided to be open to the experience, and we’ll see how I feel coming out of the film.<br />
<br />
I’m excited about the Live Cinema event this year, a German film about trapeze artists called <i>Variety</i>. I'd never even heard of the film, but these events are always a highlight of the yea. In addition, a work colleague is one of the musicians providing the accompaniment to the silent film, and he really enjoyed the film; apparently the trapeze sequences are particularly intense. So that should be fun.<br />
<br />
And there are three films that I’ve been waiting for for quite a while, hoping for a festival screening. I’ve enjoyed several of Jeff Nichols’ films in the past; <i>Take Shelter</i> and <i>Mud</i> were both beautiful intimate character films, and so while I never would have picked him to make a science-fiction chase film like <i>Midnight Special</i>, he’s a strong director and I’m interested to see what he can do with the genre. On the other hand, I’ve never seen any previous works by Jeremy Saulnier (although I really want to see <i>Blue Ruin</i>), but I’ve heard so much great word about <i>Green Room</i> (about a punk band under siege from neo-nazis) that I feel I need to see the film. I’ve also never seen any of Ben Wheatley’s films, and his new film <i>High-Rise</i> seems to be incredibly divisive (indeed my friend eT saw the film and did not seem particularly enthused), but the positive reviews I have seen make the film sound rather fascinating; it should be fun to see how I respond to the film.<br />
<br />
Adding it all up, this is the first year where my schedule involves me seeing an average of over two films a day. That makes me quite scared; five years ago I tried to do 34 films (which is an average of two films a day), and it damn near killed me; by the end I was not enjoying myself and wanted the festival to just be over. And this year I’m going to try and squeeze a few more films into my schedule. But I’ve thought this through, and am taking a couple of days off work at the end of the festival; not to fit in extra film screenings, just to sleep, and rest, and relax, and try to prepare for the final festival push without completely exhausting myself. Hopefully that will allow me to make it to the end of the festival. But for now, I’m just waiting for the festival to start. Waiting..., waiting..., waiting..., waiting..., waiting...,Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-81027786900085824642016-06-19T23:04:00.000+12:002017-07-02T09:50:46.949+12:00Power ReduxSo here's the thing,<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once again, during the most recent film festival I wrote a bunch of comments on Facebook about each film as I saw them. These are not reviews; they're more an attempt to try to capture my thoughts and my immediate response to each film. There are things that I wrote below that I don't necessarily agree with now, where I've let a film sit in my mind and my thoughts have developed and changed. But this post isn't about how do I feel about these films now; it's just about what I thought shortly after seeing them. And other than fixing a few typos, I haven't really reworked my comments, and they were all written in a rush, so the writing is a little rough. That said, here are my comments about the films I saw in the 2015 film festival.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWfd0dQviX5Q1iawO8Pe1f82r1_8r5nxZL1rKw0BnJ0qHKT5tvlb7vebXtZfnFvz001Li6f6HTw02KKFp7tynskyyjXmozDrqIK5Tha_qSH6PIxRGDYb0O_l3f6RnIHFhrbQszxcL2fR0s/s1600/lobster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWfd0dQviX5Q1iawO8Pe1f82r1_8r5nxZL1rKw0BnJ0qHKT5tvlb7vebXtZfnFvz001Li6f6HTw02KKFp7tynskyyjXmozDrqIK5Tha_qSH6PIxRGDYb0O_l3f6RnIHFhrbQszxcL2fR0s/s320/lobster.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i>The Lobster</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where to begin? The new film by Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, <i>The Lobster</i> opens with Colin Farrell (playing David, the only character with an actual name) checking into a hotel. The film takes place in a weird society where everyone has to be in a couple; if at any point you find yourself suddenly single, you must check into this hotel, where you have 45 days to become part of a couple, or else you’re turned into the animal of your choice (Farrell chooses a lobster, hence the title). There are weird awkward dances and social events; there are points where the singles must watch demonstrations of the advantages of being in a couple (you’ve got someone to help you when you’re choking to death! women are less likely to be raped if they’re walking with a man!). Couples form. If two singles form a couple (which are based on a single superficial connection, like both people having nice hair, or both being prone to nosebleeds), they’re put into the couples’ area, where the progress of the relationship is intensely monitored; if a couple starts to seem in trouble, they’re given a child to raise, since having children solves all the problems in a relationship; and if they survive a month as a couple, they return to live in the city. Singles may only have 45 days before being changed, but they can earn more days by catching the Loners that hide out in a nearby forest; the Loners, incidentally, are led by a woman who inflicts severe punishments on anyone in the group who develops affection for another person.<br />
I’d rather enjoyed Lanthimos’ earlier film <i>Dogtooth</i>, a blackly comic film about a couple who raise their children in a compound completely isolated from the rest of the world, and about the problems that arise when their teenaged children start to discover their sexuality. That film had quite an outlandish premise, but once you get past the premise, I felt like the actual characters and world made sense to me. But this film? Nothing worked. The whole turning into an animal idea is never really explained or explored; it’s a backdrop that the film mostly seems to forget about. There are whole subplots that it does nothing with; there’s one sequence where the Loners spend a lot of time preparing for a raid where they break into the homes of couples and force one of the partners to shoot the other, but after that sequence is over it’s never referenced again. There’s a deliberate halting awkwardness to every single person in the film that makes no-one feel natural, as though everyone is trying to think very slowly of the most blandly neutral thing they could say. Seriously, nothing makes sense.<br />
It’s almost as though Lanthimos came up with this world of forced couplehood as a general metaphor for various types of relationships, but then he just kept piling on new wrinkles, new elements, new ideas that would apply to the world of the film, but that illuminated nothing about what the film is trying to say. I can think of a dozen different themes the film could be exploring, but those ideas are buried so deep down inside the film that it’s impossible to find what it’s saying. There are aspects of the film that I should have very easily related to right at this very moment, but I didn’t because nothing felt real and therefore nothing felt like it could connect to my own life. It’s fine to have a wacky “people are turned into animals” setup, as long as you then take the rest of the film seriously and explore the premise honestly. How would a person react in a world with these rules? But if the people don’t feel real, and the place seems unreal, and the actions seem absurd, then you lose a grasp on the film.<br />
The ending also really bothered me. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but Colin Farrell has to make a decision on whether to undertake a certain action. It’s an unpleasant action; in fact, it touched on one of my few points of sensitivity, leaving me seriously fighting with myself over whether to watch or not (I was closing my eyes and opening them, blocking my eyes with my hands, I felt squeamish; it was horrible). And then the film ended without ever revealing if he did this thing. Now, let’s leave aside the big problem that I didn’t buy him undertaking this action; he’s doing it solely because of the nature of the world created by the film, rather than being anything any actual person would do. The main problem was that the lack of resolution was totally unmotivated. This is not me being annoyed because I wanted to know how it ends; there are many, many films that I love that end on a cliffhanger or unresolved ending. But where that happens, it’s usually because the ending speaks to the wider point or the themes of the film. (Indeed, <i>Dogtooth </i>has a brilliant ending that worked and that left us in suspension.) But this just felt like Lanthimos had written himself into a corner; he didn’t know how to end the film given the direction the story had taken, and rather than backtracking into the script and trying to undo some of the knots he’d tied for himself, he just ended the film rather than deal with the outcome of his setup.<br />
The thing I found astonishing was the incredible cast Lanthimos gathered together and then seemed to not know what to do with. Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C Reilly, Léa Seydoux, Olivia Colman, Ashley Jensen, Michael Smiley, Ben Whishaw: these are all people I really like and enjoy, and I was happy to see them all in the film. But the parts are mostly minor, and the performances are so intrusively artificial that there was nothing to enjoy about watching them.<br />
I will admit, the film was funny, or at least funnyish. Mark Kermode talks about the “six-laugh test” for a comedy, and the film probably passed that test, but only barely, and what laughs it did elicit were closer to small amused chuckles. But ultimately, I genuinely do not know what the point of the film was. Why does this film exist? And that is not a satisfying response to a film. I’m hoping for a great film festival, but this was not a great start.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8iXLR7UikKdZzsXlqfMj1Os8TNxIzKm7hTdrz2df0pBHtS1WJnqcIqrzZ9NWIdhqldwwFdOje3QiLZujGgjYqh9WXrPw5LEx6ZT6ta9IAR8g9pLPVPGurNOO70dWlpgQeYbYkiZ7l2SxU/s1600/seymour_an_introduction.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8iXLR7UikKdZzsXlqfMj1Os8TNxIzKm7hTdrz2df0pBHtS1WJnqcIqrzZ9NWIdhqldwwFdOje3QiLZujGgjYqh9WXrPw5LEx6ZT6ta9IAR8g9pLPVPGurNOO70dWlpgQeYbYkiZ7l2SxU/s320/seymour_an_introduction.jpg" width="215" /></a><i><b>Seymour: An Introduction </b></i><br />
Early in the documentary film <i>Seymour: An Introduction</i>, Ethan Hawke talks about going to dinner with some friends, finding he was seated next to an elderly Seymour Bernstein, and how there was something about Bernstein that immediately made him feel safe. It’s a nice moment to hear about, and by the end of the film we completely understand what that moment was like.<br />
Seymour Bernstein was an acclaimed concert pianist and occasional composer who never felt fully comfortable on stage; he was always dealing with stage fright and other such issues. So one day, he decided to secretly retire as a concert pianist (no-one knew his final concert would be his final concert), and instead turn to teaching, which he has been doing for nearly forty years. And the film just follows him, watching him teach, watching him meet up with friends and former students, living his life in the same one-room apartment he’s lived in for fifty years.<br />
It’s an impossible film to explain. The entirety of the film is just wrapped up in watching and listening to this man, and there’s an incredible degree of affection for Bernstein expressed throughout the film. He’s soft-spoken and thoughtful, and he has a true talent for expressing why music has the effect that it has. When I think about the film, I think about the way he would encourage his students to read between the lines in their musical expression, rather than simply holding overly closely to the musical notation. I think about the discussion of the cult of the prodigy, and the inability of people to comprehend the amount of work that goes into practicing and perfecting your art. I think about the way the film opens, with Bernstein practicing a difficult piece, experimenting with different approaches until he finds the way to play the piece perfectly. I think about the haunted look on his face when he thinks about the body bags he saw during the Korean War.<br />
But above all, I think about the music. Music that has stayed with me for the rest of the day. Some pieces I know well; others I’ve never heard before. But even with those pieces where we know every note, I felt like I was hearing these pieces for the first time. The music left the entire audience transfixed; I think this may have been the first screening I ever attended where no-one left during the closing credits, just because we were loving hearing Bernstein play, and didn’t want to miss a second of it.<br />
This is not a film that will break new ground, that will challenge notions of cinema. It’s just a nice, crowd-pleasing heart-warming portrait of a man who I was glad to have been introduced to.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL3xXsFI0QyzW6MYrkLa9rU9zZZtnh9qocZPEVGdjYuyYvHkuCplkQ1MsyzdQrguYr23a8qmDjcYyN1ZVHo8TfEz4CKYTz5fD5EwM3fgZjZTJpIVsKEhzufXBnLJ1jaBM8eCKMcr79ilm-/s1600/hill_of_freedom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1121" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL3xXsFI0QyzW6MYrkLa9rU9zZZtnh9qocZPEVGdjYuyYvHkuCplkQ1MsyzdQrguYr23a8qmDjcYyN1ZVHo8TfEz4CKYTz5fD5EwM3fgZjZTJpIVsKEhzufXBnLJ1jaBM8eCKMcr79ilm-/s320/hill_of_freedom.jpg" width="224" /></a><i><b>Hill of Freedom</b></i><br />
After <i>Hill of Freedom</i> finished, I went and grabbed the first festival programme I could find to see if I could work out why I decided to see it. The film promised by <a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/hill-of-freedom/" target="_blank">the writeup</a> sounded light and interesting; the film delivered was leaden and just dull. Even at a very short running time of 66 minutes, I found myself sitting there from very early in the screening just desperate for it to end.<br />
The movie took place in Korea, with a woman called Kwon who had been away for some time undergoing medical treatment returning home to a package of letters; it seems a Japanese guy called Mori who she once had a relationship with had returned to Korea to try to reconnect with her, and these letters told of his experiences while he was looking for her. But Kwon dropped the letters down the stairs, and they all got out of order. So the conceit of the film is that, because she's reading the letters all out of order, the story is all out of order. And it's made more complicated as the story is intermingled with her own memories of their connection.<br />
There was something weird going on with the film that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Firstly, the acting was terrible; all stiff and uncomfortable. Watching the film, I was convinced the entire film was populated by non-actors, so stilted were the performances, but I’ve looked them up and it seems the cast was quite experienced. Admittedly, the film does have this idea that Mori doesn’t speak Korean, and no-one around speaks Japanese, so they all speak textbook English as a default way of communicating. And it’s possible that this could be the reason for this issue; perhaps the acting was distracting because the actors weren’t comfortable acting in English, or maybe they were stiff and awkward because the types of conversations you learn from a textbook aren’t natural and make people feel like they’re stiff and unnatural. But whatever the reason for that, it just did not work for me at all. But the performances also feel highly improvised, with scenes that go nowhere and moments that play it as though the actors are just grasping for things to say. ("Have some watermelon; it's sweet." "Yes, that is certainly sweet.") It's astonishing how much padding and time wasting they put into a film that barely reaches the one-hour mark.<br />
And the problem is that, because I found myself alienated by the performances, I was unable to accept the characters, which meant that I really didn’t care about the central thrust of the film. Because I was constantly being thrown out of the film, I realised I just lacked any motivation to try to engage with the film. The entire thing was a puzzle, where we’re supposed to try to piece together the story and work out when this scene happened or that moment took place. But I didn’t really care about solving this mystery, because I wasn’t engaged with the characters.<br />
Perhaps the film was better than I thought; I do know that a quick Google search of the film has thrown up some wildly praising reviews from reputable sources. All I know is that I found so much more entertainment in the 20 minute short film (<i>Oh, Lucy!</i>, about an older Japanese woman going to English language class) that preceded <i>Hill</i> than I did in the main feature. And that is not what you want.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj428wHaYrMsSYpO3M0riaRbt7EsGoY995XzC8T8Ch8pZJQD-Yn-BEqKn9z9eWiLwj-b-zfRxXYguz1hQHke-Zoc_gTn4dY7Bqu6gyJknLEyUrMvnabqQUIO9dpJq6kH7Pjk4n5i3EwEkfg/s1600/experimenter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj428wHaYrMsSYpO3M0riaRbt7EsGoY995XzC8T8Ch8pZJQD-Yn-BEqKn9z9eWiLwj-b-zfRxXYguz1hQHke-Zoc_gTn4dY7Bqu6gyJknLEyUrMvnabqQUIO9dpJq6kH7Pjk4n5i3EwEkfg/s320/experimenter.jpg" width="215" /></a><b><i>Experimenter</i></b><br />
You probably don’t know the name Stanley Milgram, but you’ll have heard of his work. He’s best known for experiments he undertook in the early 1960s looking at the way people respond to authority by having people believe they were delivering potentially fatal electric shocks to another person under the direction of an authority figure. While he also undertook a number of other experiments, including one that lead to the development of the idea of “six degrees of separation”, it was his work to understand how people respond to instructions from people in authority that would prove to be his most celebrated, important, and controversial research.<br />
The film manages to pack a lot into a short 90 minute running time, giving a good introduction into Milgram’s life, his work, his family, and his influence in popular culture (there’s even an appearance by an actor playing the most unconvincing William Shatner ever). And it’s never less than fascinating. Peter Sarsgaard, as Milgram, is an engaging presence (even if he has an awful fake-beard in later scenes), and he brings a fascinated passion to his work. And I enjoyed how playful the film was at times; there were points where it would elicit actual laughter out of the audience, with genuine set-up/punchline jokes laughing at human behaviour. Most filmmakers would approach this subject with a degree of solemnity and seriousness, but that would overburden the film; Almereyda treats Milgram's work itself with utmost seriousness, but knows how to use humour and a lightness of touch to prevent the film from self-seriousness and to keep the audience engaged with the material.<br />
But despite my highly positive response to the film (which I really did love), I walked out of it with some definite issues. I was certainly troubled that the film was too much on his side; while ethical questions about his work are mentioned several times, the film is so certain that Milgram was right that the ethical issues are effectively dismissed without ever really engaging with them. And it’s not that I disagree with the film; I think the work he did is genuinely important and gives us a vital understanding of who we are as humans and how we behave. It gives us real insight into the “I was just following orders” mindset, and showed us that this is something within most of us. But I can see the view of those who opposed the experiment; I can recognise that causing someone to believe that they killed someone would inflict a terrible toll on that person, and even if they learn that the other person was unharmed they still need to live with the knowledge that they have it in them to let someone die. That is a terrible burden to have to live with, and I think it raised issues that the film was reluctant to genuinely engage with. Now, it could be that the film was just in the mindset of Milgram, and he was just utterly convinced of his rightness. But it did feel dishonest to the discussions that were taking place at the time.<br />
There are also some weird stylistic approaches taken in the film. Early on in the film, Milgram turns to the audience and addresses us, explaining his work, and that’s a device the film returns to repeatedly. And it works; the breaking the fourth wall approach is used effectively to efficiently give us insight and understanding into his work. But early in the film Milgram is walking down the hallway discussing his work, when an elephant walks around the corner and starts walking behind Milgram. It’s incredibly distracting, and it takes you out of the film right at this key point where he’s explaining that he was inspired to do his work because he wanted to understand how the Holocaust happened. (In case you missed the symbolism, it’s spelled out by the end credits that refer to Minnie the elephant as the “elephant in the room”.) There are also moments where they adopt a deliberately artificial use of rear projection for no obvious reason. We first encounter this in a scene where Milgram and his wife are driving to visit a professor he once worked with; the driving scene looks utterly unconvincing, largely because our characters are in colour and the rear-projected images are in black and white. (This colour foreground/black-and-white backdrop continues through the visit with the professor.) And there are a number of other scenes that are presented using patently artificial rear projection approach for no obvious reason that I could see. So I have no doubt that it was a deliberate choice. And it’s possible that this artificiality is intended to be another element the playfulness of the film that I really loved. But at those moments, I just wasn’t in the film. It would be one thing if this approach were taken throughout the film; if this was just how the film told its story. But because these artificial moments are uncommon in the film, and just seem to appear randomly at odd moments (at times even just being a single insert shot before returning to “reality”), it wound up feeling out of place and every time violently pulled me out of the movie. And that was frustrating, because I was otherwise so connected to what the film was doing that it affected my enjoyment to be taken out of the film.<br />
But I want to be clear: I have criticisms of this film, but I really loved it. It is engaging, it is funny, it is fascinating and thought-provoking and educational and just so much fun. Indeed, the reasons why I find the flaws in the movie to be so frustrating is because I did connect so much with the film. It’s worth seeking out.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy5qjaFqanXFJPZTNHo203G7p0EmjvND8kJfkmBAV5HPMpCeZw6-gHiyhfNd2KxAOnZTy0sY_XstIKDB0v0ls6QPSs38z3-Unhc1R58EKuJhvezsbUQp4bGtrhSjXLF2LdlVFrcqY_RTqC/s1600/when_marnie_was_there.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1096" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy5qjaFqanXFJPZTNHo203G7p0EmjvND8kJfkmBAV5HPMpCeZw6-gHiyhfNd2KxAOnZTy0sY_XstIKDB0v0ls6QPSs38z3-Unhc1R58EKuJhvezsbUQp4bGtrhSjXLF2LdlVFrcqY_RTqC/s320/when_marnie_was_there.jpg" width="219" /></a><b><i>When Marnie Was There</i></b><br />
I adore the work of Studio Ghibli, the famed Japanese animation studio that was the home of legendary animators Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. Sadly, following the retirement of Miyazaki, it was announced that the studio was halting production; whether the studio will ever reopen is uncertain at the moment. For all we know, <i>When Marnie Was There</i> could be the final Ghibli movie ever to be made. And while <i>Marnie</i> is not on the level of the studio’s greatest achievements (<i>My Neighbour Totoro</i>, <i>Spirited Away</i>, or <i>Grave of the Fireflies</i>), watching the film was a reminder just how much we will be losing if Ghibli stops working.<br />
Anna, a 12-year-old girl, is sent to a seaside town for the summer after suffering a serious asthma attack. While exploring the area, she finds an abandoned and run-down mansion on the other end of the marsh. Except that sometimes the mansion is in perfect condition, and there seems to be a blonde girl named Marnie living in the mansion. The two girls form a strong bond, but there’s this question of who Marnie really is; when the run-down mansion is purchased by a family with a young daughter, a diary is found that begins to offer answers.<br />
One of the great joys of a Ghibli film is the fact that the studio is still so dedicated to traditional animation. I love Pixar films as much as the next person, but when I look at the current world of CG-animation, I miss that sense of someone just sitting down with a piece of paper and some ink and paint, and creating this incredible world. That’s what you get from even the lesser Ghibli movies; a tactile magic happening, of drawing and art coming alive. It’s impossible to describe how magical this all is; I know exactly how animated movies are made, and yet I’m struck with awe at even the smallest moments. I remember one moment where someone is preparing dinner and cuts a tomato into pieces, and I just watched that scene, a moment that would be utterly unmemorable in any other film, and I thought “I’m going to miss this.” I’m going to miss the perfectly created world; I’m going to miss the careful details in the way the characters move; I’m going to miss... this.<br />
One thing I really am going to miss is the genuine emotional sincerity of Ghibli films. I love the relationships in the film; the subtle strains in the relationship between Anna and her “Aunty”, the sense of the unbreakable bond formed between Anna and Marnie, the heartbreak that forms when Anna thinks she’s lost her friend. Modern animation is so often suffused with superiority or sarcasm or just a general sense of immaturity that it’s easy to lose emotion. So when I was watching Anna telling Marnie how much she loves her, and it felt real and honest, I was struck by how that was a scene you wouldn’t get in any other animated film. Not even Pixar (whose work can hit incredible emotional notes at time) ever quite manages to sustain that purity of emotion throughout their films.<br />
There’s really only one point where the film didn’t work for me. Towards the end of the film, we finally learn the truth about who Marnie is. We get her whole story, and in that instant, everything was explained, including the reason for Anna’s strong connection to Marnie. And I was completely satisfied, both by the reveal itself and by the way the reveal was made. And then five minutes later, another piece of information came in, and Anna suddenly realised why she had this connection with Marnie. And I was surprised, because I genuinely thought the film had established all of this, but it was being played as a big reveal. Now, I realise that as an adult I might be able to put together the pieces faster than younger audience members, and I can understand them feeling the need to spell it all out, but it was so obvious that I had no idea I was ahead of the film. In fact, I’m surprised they flubbed the reveal so much; if they were going to spell out the reveal, that’s fine, but it really needed to happen at the same time as the key information was given, rather than five minutes later. And what I understood to be the reveal was so obvious that I cannot imagine them not realising that a large proportion of the audience will figure it out at that point. I can think of several ways the film could have been tweaked with a very minor rewrite that would keep the entire audience together with the film. But this did not work.<br />
But ultimately, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that, if this is the final film to bear the name of Studio Ghibli, it is a film that absolutely lives up to the quality that the name has come to mean. I don’t want it to end here, I want to be able to carry on seeing that blue screen with an image of Totoro for many years to come, but if this is it, it’s a good end point.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaFnALy1kNvpUitAI6czGE7EPa2dwFx6Mwxr9aS4Cu5qOKfq-hHwHf5U01RPueehBm5G4o6ia8bxrh5UvvBZKazVxCxbPhbybxCGbLP2J1gY1H3_8zyVN4I3o2l1rzJzoJAoT0A_5W2ApU/s1600/wolfpack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaFnALy1kNvpUitAI6czGE7EPa2dwFx6Mwxr9aS4Cu5qOKfq-hHwHf5U01RPueehBm5G4o6ia8bxrh5UvvBZKazVxCxbPhbybxCGbLP2J1gY1H3_8zyVN4I3o2l1rzJzoJAoT0A_5W2ApU/s320/wolfpack.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<i><b>The Wolfpack</b></i><br />
A fascinating documentary offering an insight into the bizarre life of a New York family. Oscar and Susanne Angulo live with their six teenage sons and one daughter In a 16th-floor apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Oscar has the only key to the apartment, and has forbidden the rest of the family from leaving. (The only real justification given for this is that it’s a dangerous neighbourhood.) So the children have literally not left the apartment in years. The only real interaction the children have ever had with the outside world is through movies, which they are obsessed with. So obsessed, in fact, that they film their own elaborate remakes of their favourite films (<i>Reservoir Dogs</i>, <i>The Dark Knight</i>, and so on) in their apartment. Then one day, the oldest brother manages to sneak out into the real world, and this experience begins to form cracks that open the children up to real world experiences for the first time.<br />
The thing that’s surprising about the film is just how not-depressing it is. A real-life story about a group of kids who have spent their entire life within the walls of a four-room apartment should be brutal, but instead it’s genuinely enjoyable. Part of that is due to the brothers, who on the whole come across as inventive, thoughtful, and likeable presences. It’s genuinely surprising how well-adjusted these kids actually seem to be. While there are moments where you can see signs of the limited life experiences they’ve had, moments where they perhaps aren’t as good at reading social cues as one might hope, for the most part they seem like people who you could never recognise as having had this bizarre upbringing.<br />
It’s also fortunate that, by the time the film was made, the brothers were already being exposed to the wider world. (I realise it’s also inevitable; if the kids hadn’t been going outside, the filmmaker would never have encountered them, and never would have known there was a story to tell.) This allows the film to avoid a gloomy tone, because when they started telling the story it was already a story that had a perspective of “there is hope; these kids are not just trapped in this apartment forever”.<br />
And for a film festival, it’s always nice to watch a film where people are celebrating their love of films. We see a large number of clips from the remake films, and it’s genuinely impressive to watch just how inventive they are in recreating these famous movie scenes. Whether it be the hand-held chases down corridors, the Halloween party with surprisingly good Michael Myers and Freddy Kruger masks made from paper and tape, or the amusement of watching them restage the bank robbery sequence from the start of <i>The Dark Knight</i> in a tiny bedroom, I never failed to be impressed by their work. They have a full Batman suit made out of old mats and cardboard boxes, and while it may not look like the real thing, I wouldn’t know where to begin in making these things.<br />
One of the things I love about the film festival is the opportunity it offers to get an insight into worlds and stories you might never imagine existing. This story is bizarre and surreal; the fact that it’s all real is genuinely depressing; and yet the way it ends with a real sense of this entire family coming to terms with the reality of the outside world gives the film a joy I never would have anticipated.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF5dW2toem4LrjjNpMQDqug4IMzx4yK69w3VYEVmea1TbB5CNMLFZDlZy_1V-q_LMNTagUApbXUgGgQnVFBHVp9MXHW6TuvBnw1WRGS8XZJsjA7p6mQ8vaPUwf17BwcRDG7nNFYSaYXwuQ/s1600/a_most_violent_year.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="483" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF5dW2toem4LrjjNpMQDqug4IMzx4yK69w3VYEVmea1TbB5CNMLFZDlZy_1V-q_LMNTagUApbXUgGgQnVFBHVp9MXHW6TuvBnw1WRGS8XZJsjA7p6mQ8vaPUwf17BwcRDG7nNFYSaYXwuQ/s320/a_most_violent_year.jpg" width="204" /></a></div>
<i><b>A Most Violent Year</b></i><br />
Seriously, can someone tell me where on earth Oscar Isaac came from? Looking at his filmography, it seems that he’s been around, doing mostly small roles for the past decade, but no-one really knew who he was. Then, less than two years ago, he blew everyone away in the lead role of <i>Inside Llewyn Davis</i>; since then I’ve loved him in <i>The Two Faces of January</i>, and now <i>A Most Violent Year</i>, I’m looking forward to seeing him in <i>Ex Machina</i> later in the festival, he’s the lead in an upcoming mini-series from David Simon (creator of <i>The Wire</i>), and then at the end of the year he has a main role in <i>Star Wars: Episode VII</i>. All of a sudden, the guy is everywhere, he’s doing great work, and here he’s paired with Jessica Chastain, who similarly seemed to appear out of nowhere a couple of years earlier.<br />
Isaac stars as Abel Morales, the owner of a small-but-growing heating oil company. There’s a lot of corruption and illegal practices in the industry, and Abel isn’t exactly pure, but he’s proud of having built the company honestly. When the film starts, he’s making a major investment, putting a 40 percent deposit on the purchase of a storage facility that will allow his company to grow exponentially. He has 30 days to secure the rest of the financing, or else he loses the property and his deposit. However, his trucks keep being hijacked, the head of the teamsters union wants the truck drivers to be armed, law enforcement are investigating him for various illegal practices, and he’s being subjected to intimidation by his competitors.<br />
I was particularly excited to see this film, having previously been impressed at JC Chandor’s careful control over the difficult thriller <i>All Is Lost</i>. I was not disappointed. <i>A Most Violent Year</i> is an expertly executed thriller; it adopts a strong focus on character, fully aware that the stakes of a thriller don’t matter to an audience if they’re not engaged with the people involved. This means that for much of the film it just takes its time, building tension, escalating frustration, adding pressure, until everything erupts. And there are a number of great action scenes (I loved the bridge hijacking of the truck that turns into a footchase; I was on the edge of my seat as Morales drove blindly down a disused railway tunnel), and Chandor knows exactly how to use those scenes to release the tension he’s been building.<br />
But as brilliant as those action sequences were, when I think about the film, I think about how invested I was in Abel’s desperation and the machinations he had to go through to secure financing; I think of the training scene where he taught his salespeople how to land a sale; I think about the police raid during the birthday party; I think of Abel walking through his darkened home at night looking for an intruder. And I particularly think of the pride that Abel takes in building his business legitimately and doing things the right way, and how this bring him into conflict with everyone, particularly his wife. Oscar Isaac is so strong, so clear in his portrayal of this character, that he just draws the audience in; we can’t help but like this guy. But I also adored every second Jessica Chastain was on screen as Abel’s wife. Her character is the daughter of a gangster, and she gives the character a nice edge; there’s a single-focus determination to do what needs to be done to protect her family, a frustration with her husband for choosing to hold back, and a level of moral flexibility, but she’s never allowed to go into full Lady Macbeth-mode. It’s a very sympathetic performance of a role that many films would have had go over-the-top.<br />
This film really has been one of the highlights of the festival so far. It caught me in its opening sequence, and fully held me until its devastating but inevitable finale. I loved this film.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLwgLMmB0_NlKwW1yTK2jKfOQGVINYyg4EQTxjbD-tbUxo0tqqlqtjH_5jt7M56mdJRh7qp-XiRwBHPUq075EuWHNZIxHSvqlmSOJI5kyxd2HPQBYdu-V6DLQFH5M670p6E53Ba9rRuI-k/s1600/girlhood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLwgLMmB0_NlKwW1yTK2jKfOQGVINYyg4EQTxjbD-tbUxo0tqqlqtjH_5jt7M56mdJRh7qp-XiRwBHPUq075EuWHNZIxHSvqlmSOJI5kyxd2HPQBYdu-V6DLQFH5M670p6E53Ba9rRuI-k/s320/girlhood.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Girlhood</i></b><br />
Last year, one of the highlights of the festival was <i>Boyhood</i>, a brilliant film that told the story of a young boy growing up. One of the hallmarks of the film was its fundamental optimism; things might be tough for the young lead of the film, but there was always a clear sense that it would all work out and he would be okay. <i>Girlhood</i> adopts a very different tone for its storytelling.<br />
A young 16-year-old black French teenager named Marieme, with a mother who’s always at work and a drug-dealing abusive older brother, is disheartened when she learns she’s failed to pass her year at school again, and is being pushed off into vocational training. Instead, she decides to leave education altogether, and starts hanging out as the fourth member in a girl gang. It starts off with thefts and organised fights against girls from other gangs, and she is drawn inevitably into deeper and darker problems.<br />
It’s not a fun film; it’s frustrating and a little bit depressing to watch. But it’s also fascinating to watch. We’ve seen plenty of films about dispossessed and disadvantaged young men entering gangs and the criminal life, but seeing that story told from the point of view of women felt unusual; adding the element of this events taking place in a foreign country with their own traditions made the film feel utterly unique.<br />
Coming away from the film, the main impression it made on me was how impressed I was with Karidja Touré in the lead role. It’s a difficult role, in which she has to fluctuate between vulnerable out-of-her-depth youth and in-control determined master-of-all-she-surveys, and she’s able to navigate the emotional flows of the film expertly. It’s a moving, strong, and sympathetic performance, and I would like to see more from her in future.<br />
There’s one scene that I feel deserves particular mention. Early on in the film, the gang hire a hotel room overnight to party together. They dress up, have some alcohol, and just want to party. And then the Rihanna song “Diamonds” starts, for several minutes, we’re just sitting watching these girls singing and dancing; meanwhile Marieme is sitting back, still new to the group and not quite feeling in place, until she can’t help herself, she gets up and starts dancing. It’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3lDo0v96D8" target="_blank">a brilliant sequence</a>, perfectly communicating the bonding and connection she finds in the gang. I’d been watching the film with a degree of scepticism up to that point, wondering what Marieme was finding as part of the gang, but that one joyous moment completely sold me on her integration into the gang; without it, I’m honestly not sure whether the rest of the film would have worked for me.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrPojinvKVI8ULSb0svJ0iun98ZNHxT1QlPGRYVormkHAZQuQMUE3xpw865u88ocgm6DOPhiOfcK4muTm8Gyq3OPSMhGM9GcZNIok9PQ_WK-9TCFXZCYdNYsOeDw9up7vKriTF2UqgeAjd/s1600/a_girl_walks_home_alone_at_night.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="529" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrPojinvKVI8ULSb0svJ0iun98ZNHxT1QlPGRYVormkHAZQuQMUE3xpw865u88ocgm6DOPhiOfcK4muTm8Gyq3OPSMhGM9GcZNIok9PQ_WK-9TCFXZCYdNYsOeDw9up7vKriTF2UqgeAjd/s320/a_girl_walks_home_alone_at_night.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>
<b><i>A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night</i></b><br />
Walking out of the film, I discovered I’d received a message from a friend. So I messaged him back, explaining that I’d been in a movie, seeing “an American-made black-and-white Iranian vampire film”; he messaged me back to say that the description had made both him and his wife laugh out loud. Afterwards I found myself reflecting that I really hadn’t adequately described the film; it’s really more of an American-made black-and-white Iranian feminist vampire film with a strong modern-day western tone.<br />
Set in an anonymous Iranian ghost town, seemingly known as Bad City, it’s clear something is wrong in this world right from the opening sequence. We watch someone crossing a bridge over a ditch into which some 30 or 40 bodies have been dumped. It’s an eerie image for the audience, even as it’s so commonplace for the on-screen character that he doesn’t even notice the piles of corpses he walks past. We’re introduced into this world through Arash, a young man wanting to leave the city, but held back by his drug-addicted father. Meanwhile, a young woman wanders the streets in the dark, following and observing people, her traditional hajib hiding the modern youth beneath. And when she finds someone that warrants it, the teeth come out and the vampire attacks. One night the vampire meets Arash, at the time high on ecstasy and dressed for a costume party, and a rather sweet, if ominous, love story develops between the two.<br />
There are a lot of very smart decisions made in the film. Firstly there’s the decision to shoot the film with a high-contrast black and white, where the blacks are dark and ominous and the white nearly blinds with the glare. It gives the film a beautiful stark look that emphasises the bleak empty feel of the world. And then they put the vampire into a long flowing hajib, which (a) gives her something that at times can function similarly to the traditional cape of classic vampires, but more importantly (b) turn her into this ominous black shape on-screen, particularly when seen from behind.<br />
And the idea of putting the girl in a hajib is fascinating, because that choice makes a significant political point given the historical place of the vampire. There’s always been a strongly sexual component to the vampire as a monster, which is about giving in to desire, whereas (to my understanding) the hajib and other similar clothing is about preserving a woman’s modesty. The city where the film takes place seems to be strongly Westernised; other than the vampire, the other women wear clothing that would look entirely normal to our eyes. And even the vampire is very westernised; we first see her applying make-up to look her best before dancing in her room, Madonna posters on the wall, and then she hides all of this beneath the hajib. So putting this creature that is the very definition of lust and desire (and the film is definitely playing with eroticism in her portrayal) into clothing that is supposed to hide her away from such attention is to my mind making a very clear statement about a culture that tries to suppress the place of women and hide them away.<br />
And yet, while there’s a real terrifying ferocity to the creature, and her first attack was particularly upsetting, there’s a genuine sweetness to the girl. As much as we may fear for Arash when he first meets the girl, we quickly come to recognise that this is not a relationship between a predator and prey; there’s a honest affection (and more) between the two that humanises the girl; so much so that, at points where it seems like the relationship could be at real risk, we’re in genuine fear for what will happen to the girl if this all comes to an end. We figure Arash could move on and live a perfectly happy life, but this is her one chance for a normal life, and we’re eager for her to have this.<br />
And yet, for all the film is creepy and disturbing and thought-provoking, it’s also playful and genuinely funny, particularly with the cliches of the genre. We’ve all seen movies where the vampire glides effortlessly, barely moving a muscle; this film creates that moment by having the vampire rising down the street on a skateboard, her hajib flowing behind her like the wings of a bat. The scene where the vampire first meets Arash hits multiple laugh-points in a couple of minutes.<br />
I strongly recommend people seek this film out.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi70BZf4cUhntGlZCRCUaIvYGMWXPiD0WdS1jecegwvg3Fge_Z3MY5jF8oMAlhknLuudM7TODSCdBoOsaFGhw3BX7TCUpiEkxQ7R5Q5rAdCa1komJ4MR5OS8x9TMjmqg6cUq03Db4owLb_H/s1600/phoenix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="533" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi70BZf4cUhntGlZCRCUaIvYGMWXPiD0WdS1jecegwvg3Fge_Z3MY5jF8oMAlhknLuudM7TODSCdBoOsaFGhw3BX7TCUpiEkxQ7R5Q5rAdCa1komJ4MR5OS8x9TMjmqg6cUq03Db4owLb_H/s320/phoenix.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
<i><b>Phoenix</b></i><br />
It’s a bit difficult to discuss my views of <i>Phoenix</i>, because I feel like my viewpoint may have been heavily influenced by others. I was interested in the film after reading the writeup in the festival programme, which read “[Nina] Hoss plays Nelly, a jazz singer, injured while escaping from a concentration camp. Successful reconstructive surgery has rendered her barely recognisable to her few surviving acquaintances. Despite their warnings, she searches the blitzed city hoping to confront the missing husband who may have betrayed her to the Nazis in the first place. When he fails to recognise her, a bizarre new courtship ensues.” To me, that sounds like an interesting premise for a film, and I was excited to see how it would play out. Having seen the film, the programme’s description of her being “barely recognisable” is definitely overstating it; Nelly doesn’t seem to look completely different to how she originally appeared, so while the husband doesn’t recognise her as being his wife, he does see her as someone who looks a lot like her, and enlists her help to pose as his wife to secure some money that was in her estate, and Nelly decides to play along.<br />
But the thing is, a couple of weeks ago I was listening to my favourite podcast, Battleship Pretension, and one of the hosts of the show (David Bax) <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/bp-movie-journal-71715/" target="_blank">discussed seeing <i>Phoenix</i></a> and had criticisms of the movie that gave me pause at the time. He observed that the film turned on a moment where (a) the husband didn’t recognise his wife, and (b) the wife didn’t say “It’s me!”. Then, for the rest of the film the husband was essentially living with “Nelly”, and suggested that the husband must have eventually realised this woman really was his wife. The entire film therefore seemed to hinge on several instances of wildly unbelievable human behaviour. I was a bit disappointed by these comments, as I find my tastes tend to correlate closely with those of the show’s hosts, but I was still hopeful about enjoying the film.<br />
And then, the other night I ran into my friend Catherine and we discussed our films so far. And she discussed her disappointment with <i>Phoenix</i>, talking about how the film hinged on some people not recognising the woman and other people recognising her, and that contrivances like that don’t usually work in any film outside of a farce. That really worried me; the term “farcical” is seldom used as a positive description.<br />
And then I saw the film, and sure it was well-made technically, and the acting was good, and cinematography was beautiful, and I enjoyed the idea of watching this world trying to get back onto its feet after the destruction of the war. But those criticisms lingered in my mind, and as I pondered them, I started being bothered by other things myself. Why is he not suspicious of this complete stranger, who seemed to know his name before they met? Why does he not question the fact that she can effortlessly and instantly demonstrate a perfect imitation of her handwriting? And seriously, just how good was reconstructive surgery 70 years ago? As David suggested on the podcast, the allegory of his inability to recognise his wife (of a society trying to be wilfully blind to its past actions) may be sound, but that doesn’t matter if the actual plot of the film hasn’t convinced me.<br />
All of which meant, despite the solid filmmaking on the screen, I realised I was just disengaged from the film. Perhaps this is unfair; who knows how I would have felt about the film had my views not been influenced in advance. But that’s what my experience was like, and that’s how I responded.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVfI4zjsyhOBbDZF-3tTgkejmPJp_ZnHC8poykeFPOjQTEjG8s3BCESR2mro2I3Pezqkm3QBTezYzsIPdPzYVKRfjpZnzGYBfzq8FM8wcNtzztdAiQxJjo8flJgeBZ9hNI4Cj5-AJ6HhFq/s1600/victoria.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="534" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVfI4zjsyhOBbDZF-3tTgkejmPJp_ZnHC8poykeFPOjQTEjG8s3BCESR2mro2I3Pezqkm3QBTezYzsIPdPzYVKRfjpZnzGYBfzq8FM8wcNtzztdAiQxJjo8flJgeBZ9hNI4Cj5-AJ6HhFq/s320/victoria.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
<i><b>Victoria</b></i><br />
I walked out of <i>Victoria</i> on such a high. I was exhausted and emotionally drained, sure, but I was also thrilled, excited, in awe of the incredible experience I had just had. I’d been anticipating the film since I’d heard about it, but words cannot contain just how much the film lived up to what I had been expecting. This is an incredible thriller. I’ve really loved a number of films at this festival so far, but this was truly special.<br />
Leaving a Berlin nightclub early in the morning, the titular Victoria meets a charming and cute guy named Sonne, and decides to tag along with him and his friends. They spend the next while wandering the streets, messing around, talking. Eventually Victoria has to leave; she has to work in a couple of hours, and she needs to try and get a bit of rest. But then Sonne nervously approaches her with a request: one of his friends owes a debt to a gangster, now the gangster is demanding he undertake a bank robbery to repay the debt, and Sonne and the other guys are helping, but the getaway driver is too drunk, so is there any chance Victoria could help out as the driver? Victoria is intrigued by the idea; it seems like a bit of excitement for a girl working in a café in a foreign city. And so she does.<br />
Now, the first part of the film, I will confess to being thrown by the film. Because for the first hour or so, it’s just these people walking and talking. And I was thoroughly enjoying it; it was a fun experience wandering the streets of Berlin with these people. But there was a part of my mind that was thinking “did I misunderstand what the film was? I thought this was supposed to be a thriller.” With hindsight, I appreciate that opening act so much more. We’re so used to films that will skip over the getting-to-know-you scenes to get to the good stuff. But a film like this has such an outlandish premise to begin with (what ordinary person would decide to help someone they’ve known for literally one hour to rob a bank?) that it becomes vital to invest the time into the relationship so that we can accept the eventual decision to help these guys out.<br />
The other reason why that slower opening of the film is so essential is because it’s just fun. It’s a lark, it’s all going to be fine. The heist is no more serious than the time they nicked a few bottles of alcohol from the bottle store with the sleeping shop owner. That easy-going tone is vital so that holy shit that guy has a gun we’re fucked how the hell are we going to get out of this? Without that first hour, we might get to the action sooner, but it feels like some of the key impact moments, that sense of a situation suddenly spiralling out of control, would be lost.<br />
This is a brilliant thriller, one that I would happily, eagerly, joyously encourage anyone to see. But there’s something unusual about the film that pushes it from just being one-of-the-best-thrillers-of-the-year to being a film that may possibly have a genuine claim to greatness. Because the key thing about the film is that it is shot in one single take, with no fakery, no disguised cuts. Just one camera that started recording, and was finally turned off 135 minutes later. It’s a real achievement, both on the part of the camera operator (there’s a reason why “Kamera” is the first on-screen credit at the end of the film), and logistically. This is a major exercise; there are hundreds of extras, a dozen different locations (some real, some constructed for the film) all across the city, action sequences and gunfights. This is a big film, and the sheer high-wire act involved in trying to execute it all seamlessly just seems genuinely impossible. And yet it all works out perfectly.<br />
But what struck me watching the film is that there’s something much more impressive about making a film like this in a single take than just the sheer logistical exercise involved. A thriller in particular really depends on its sense of pacing; it can seriously damage a film if a scene, which probably read perfectly on the page, proves in execution to throw off the pacing of the film. In an ordinary film, that’s not a problem; a bit of editing or a minor reshoot can work wonders for a film. But shooting in one take denies the filmmaker the ability to implement any tweaks, to cut a line and tighten up the pacing. The film basically has to be fully and perfectly edited in the filmmaker’s mind long before filming begins. Which it apparently was, because from the time it hits you just how bad this situation has become until the film ends, it always feels like perfectly paced.<br />
And the really great thing is that there are legitimate creative reasons for the one-take approach; it’s not just about showing off. By filming the entire thing in one take, it prevents the film from ever releasing you. Editing is the one element that is entirely unique to cinema; and that moment when they cut from one shot to another becomes something of a release; as an audience we’re unconsciously waiting for the next cut. But what if the cut never comes; what if the shot just goes on and on and you think that there must surely have been a cut somewhere because we were in an underground nightclub and then we were climbing those impossibly narrow stairs to the roof and no-one could walk up those stairs while carrying a camera and then somehow we were in a car driving across Berlin and now we’re running around an apartment block with guns firing and your mind starts to play tricks on you and tell you that there was a cut because you need it to have been there because otherwise it’s just this neverending experience and how uncomfortable is that for the audience to feel like you’re being pulled along in the way that Victoria was caught up in the excitement of going on this adventure and never having the chance to stop and pause and think about it and now the world is falling down on her and who can believe how much her life has changed in what we definitely know to have been just a couple of hours because there hasn’t been a single damned cut in this entire bloody movie and I just want people to have the chance to see and appreciate the greatness of this incredible movie.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH2gsUgsIR3QfLoIimuKra28yn_N2IG7FmzsZ4LdSbasw-NkpxYqXOOExiYGonOTCoCdMeHSZwF3z5GlON74usddSfNA7-Mtxp7MdEWmM0VpyDIOfLtV6PcRmdIcZWqUsF-GAQVETlot1g/s1600/while_were_young.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="482" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH2gsUgsIR3QfLoIimuKra28yn_N2IG7FmzsZ4LdSbasw-NkpxYqXOOExiYGonOTCoCdMeHSZwF3z5GlON74usddSfNA7-Mtxp7MdEWmM0VpyDIOfLtV6PcRmdIcZWqUsF-GAQVETlot1g/s320/while_were_young.jpg" width="204" /></a></div>
<b><i>While We're Young</i></b><br />
Nope.<br />
I think I first realised that the film probably wasn’t going to work for me during the black screen that opened the film. It’s a common thing for a movie to open with a cultural quote that is relevant to the themes of the film. Here, it’s a quote from Ibsen’s <i>The Master Builder</i>; a dialogue, in fact, between two characters about how one has become afraid of the younger generation.<br />
And then the screen goes black, and then the next lines of dialogue between the two appear on screen.<br />
And then the screen goes black, and then the next lines of dialogue between the two appear on screen.<br />
And then the screen goes black, and then the next lines of dialogue between the two appear on screen.<br />
And then the screen goes black, and then the next lines of dialogue between the two appear on screen.<br />
That is a thematic introductory quote that requires five different screens to get the point across. I’m fine with movies quoting Ibsen, but this just felt pretentious, and it irritated me so much.<br />
Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play a middle-aged couple with no kids; she’s had miscarriages, and at this point they don’t want to go through that. So they just live their life together, happy knowing that they’re not tied down and that at any time they could just move to Paris if they wanted (even though they never do). Then one day, they meet a younger 20-something couple, played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried, and become inseparable friends. Driver’s character admires Stiller’s work as a documentary filmmaker, and they decide to work together on a project, but the more Stiller sees of Driver the more he comes to dislike what he sees.<br />
Firstly, it’s not a good thing if, by the end of literally the first scene of the movie, I’ve already identified the lead characters’ problem and asked myself why they follow the most obvious solution to that problem. And we go through the entire film, and then end with the characters reaching the exact same conclusion that I reached after two minutes. That’s not a promising start for your film.<br />
Secondly, the younger couple (particularly Driver) were so intolerable that I simply did not understand why the older couple were so keen to spend time with them. These were not just hipsters; these were people who had given in to every hipster pretension imaginable, up to and including a prized collection of VHS tapes! Sure, it’s partly a desire on the part of the middle-aged couple to cling onto their youth, and the fact that Driver has this admiration of Stiller probably helps (because it feels good to be around someone who admires your work), but still, they were so awful to be around that I had lost any belief in the reality of the relationship long before they attended the ceremony where they drank the juice of a South American root and then had a shaman chant over them while they throw up.<br />
And the film seems to want to be about a million different subjects at the one time, without ever actually exploring them. So it’s about the desire to hold on to your youth as you get older, and it’s about being the only people without kids in your circle of friends. But it’s also about a superficial inter-generational cultural appropriation, it’s about an increasingly media-savvy culture that feels the need to record every moment rather than living and that is acutely aware of how it is presenting itself, it’s about documentary ethics and a world with no interest in actual truth. But it never seems to actually have anything to say, which is highlighted by a climactic moment where Ben Stiller has to deliver a big long badly written monologue that baldly states the themes of the film, and he comes across like a madman jumping around from idea or idea without ever reaching a point of coherence because the film doesn’t know what it’s saying.<br />
It’s frustrating. I like all of the performers (including Charles Grodin, who I was surprised to see turn up, since I thought he had retired nearly 20 years ago), and they are excellent here. And the film did make me laugh at times. But most of the comedy is broad and ridiculous, to the point that it undid what little realism the film created. Add to that the confusion of see-what-sticks ideas the film keeps throwing out, and it just ended up as a mess. I walked out of the cinema at the end amazed at how much I had hated the experience. I have a lot that I could write about the film, but just sitting here thinking about it is making me angry, and I’m not enjoying it. So I’m just going to finish this sentence, and then be done with this movie.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd6CphmBPJpIKQIATAAKl7pUoj4-RrlPV-qwLJtyfLdL8npVVc3d6bcrKZS5cb4zjQO1f7SAcM5r9hYdCbT4hO1oBDWtMeOb74TXRSmIMvobQinpw_rUV0w_0EJXITXnS2s7zIAegC9m4N/s1600/misfits.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="496" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd6CphmBPJpIKQIATAAKl7pUoj4-RrlPV-qwLJtyfLdL8npVVc3d6bcrKZS5cb4zjQO1f7SAcM5r9hYdCbT4hO1oBDWtMeOb74TXRSmIMvobQinpw_rUV0w_0EJXITXnS2s7zIAegC9m4N/s320/misfits.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Misfits</i></b><br />
One thing I love about the festival is that it will often offer me the opportunity to watch a classic movie that I’ve never seen before, and to be able to enjoy it on the big screen. This was my first time seeing <i>The Misfits</i>, which has the final performances of two screen legends, Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, and also has some greatly entertaining turns from Thelma Ritter and Eli Wallach.<br />
Out one night at a bar to mark her divorce, Monroe and her friend Ritter meet an older cowboy, played by Gable, as well as a local mechanic, Wallach. Wallach has a half-built house in the country, and they decide to go out there to get away from it all. Eventually Monroe and Gable move in together into the house and start to work on it. They enjoy their life of isolation together, the wide expanse of outdoors and all that it offers. But the relationship is tested when Wallach comes bearing news of a group of mustangs roaming nearby, and Monroe is horrified to learn that they’re catching the horses to sell for pet food.<br />
The performances by Monroe and Gable are good; both are playing parts that fit their typical onscreen characters, and they play them well. But the real highlight of the film were the supporting performances. I always enjoy it when I see Thelma Ritter; she can always be relied on for a nice acidic comedic performance, and here she was a true delight as a woman who got divorced years ago, hasn’t looked back, and now takes positive delight in helping others through their divorces. Her dialogue is sharp and quick and funny, and it’s a disappointment when she just leaves the film halfway through. Fortunately, Eli Wallach remains throughout the film. Wallach plays a guy who lost his wife in childbirth and has felt adrift ever since, and his hopes for a relationship with Monroe are dashed when she is drawn towards his older friend. I just enjoyed watching Wallach, his friendly genial presence constantly hopeful for a split between the two for him to take advantage of.<br />
One thing I particularly enjoyed was the film’s exploration of a culture that romanticises the old west, of living outdoors on the land, but that refuses to acknowledge the harsh realities of the lifestyle. It may be nice to go horse-back riding across the plains, or to go swimming in a lake that’s miles away from anywhere else, but sometimes you have to be willing to kill a rabbit if you want to stop it from eating your garden. And it goes further than that, discussing how the passage of time can render people obsolete; Gable delivers a great speech early in the third act where he defends catching the mustangs for food, pointing out that he’s just doing what he always did to allow him to live the life he wants, and how the horses were once caught for riding, and he’s not responsible for a culture that treats these animals as dog food.<br />
I really enjoyed this. It’s not a perfect film – the third act in particular could have been tightened up a bit, as the mustang rustling, while fascinating to watch and see how they would catch these horses, did go on a little long – but it was a genuine delight to see.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHQnI23YvW4GYcwncWNxmgqs48mVFs1yiHq3f6JSXw5JGDAPhblFS5POpohwEZ-mVFOp3er0JvmCEypNpZE6OCXkQsH-V-e8gtgI62K2oP60ByfwvDibxZHVCw6kzDW4Pw5ME8PHYgph1f/s1600/assassin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="553" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHQnI23YvW4GYcwncWNxmgqs48mVFs1yiHq3f6JSXw5JGDAPhblFS5POpohwEZ-mVFOp3er0JvmCEypNpZE6OCXkQsH-V-e8gtgI62K2oP60ByfwvDibxZHVCw6kzDW4Pw5ME8PHYgph1f/s320/assassin.jpg" width="234" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Assassin</i></b><br />
I ran into a friend after the screening of <i>The Assassin</i>, and I mentioned that I had just seen the film. “Oh,” she said. “Everyone I know who saw that said it was shit.” And oh, the relief, to know I wasn’t the only one.<br />
During the 9th century, China is divided up into a number of different provinces, the largest of which is Weibo. There’s unease between Weibo and the Imperial Court, and a female assassin has been sent to kill the governor of Weibo. Unfortunately, the assassin happens to be the governor’s cousin, and someone who was once been promised in marriage to him.<br />
You’d think that a film about a 9th century assassin would be exciting, full of action setpieces. This film has maybe five or six action scenes, which would be a reasonable number were it not for the fact that by my reckoning only one of those scenes lasts for more than 30 seconds. The action when it comes is definitely fun, sure, but it’s almost always over so fast that you don’t get a chance to enjoy it. In fact there are points where the film almost takes a perverse delight in not showing us the action. In one scene, the assassin finds someone who has been attacked by someone else; the guards find her and attack, thinking she is the culprit; we get a few seconds of the fight, then cut to a prolonged shot of the recovering victim being comforted by someone else with the sound of an off-screen fight going on; when we finally do get to see the end of that fight, it’s over in a matter of 10 seconds.<br />
The rest of the film is just slow. So slow. So many shots of people sitting still, of people having pins put in their hair, of people just walking. There are points where I’m sure the film goes a good five minutes without a single character actually speaking. At one point, I’d become so used to just watching the screen that I actually missed a short scene of dialogue because I’d forgotten that I needed to read the subtitles. That is not an exaggeration; that literally happened. The film seems to confuse a lack of events for a contemplative tone, and slow pacing for profundity. It’s not; all it did was cause me to completely disengage from the movie. To be clear, it’s not that I object to slow films. Slow films can be fascinating and enthralling. Hell, my favourite film has a 20 minute dialogue-free sequence of the main character driving around following another person. You just need to feel that the film is going somewhere with its leisurely pace, that there’s a purpose in the storytelling. And I do not think that was happening with <i>The Assassin</i>.<br />
I’ll be generous here, and complement the film on one point: it has great cinematography. Whether we’re watching someone having their hair arranged, or just watching one of the many, many shots of empty nature, it’s never less than beautiful. And there are moments that did actually stick with me; there’s one shot of a lake with the mists circling around the waters that I actually loved. But I need more than that. I need characters, I need story, I need a sense that people are engaged with the life-and-death situation they find themselves in. I did not get that with this film.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihoH8EfnxBc9V1dfRSqJKxMNjyaQQAVcJfz_eOFVmSxOv6P9FgfdZrW5kRbvwaanwKieQnLY4RBUKpqxVwZkIQQ8XVn0wNoA0OIxuCiiu1RwgKSnkhegue4LfgVtTA8NrfAyyupzidTPYU/s1600/ex_machina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihoH8EfnxBc9V1dfRSqJKxMNjyaQQAVcJfz_eOFVmSxOv6P9FgfdZrW5kRbvwaanwKieQnLY4RBUKpqxVwZkIQQ8XVn0wNoA0OIxuCiiu1RwgKSnkhegue4LfgVtTA8NrfAyyupzidTPYU/s320/ex_machina.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Ex Machina</i></b><br />
The great thing about the film festival is the fact that, if you do see a film that you hate, there’s another film coming soon after that you might like more. So after the depression and frustration of enduring <i>The Assassin</i>, I was glad to see and engage with a film as good as <i>Ex Machina</i>.<br />
Domhnall Gleeson plays a computer programmer who is given the opportunity to work with one of the world’s top technology figures on a secret project at a secure and isolated research facility. It turns out that this genius (played by Oscar Isaac) has developed an artificial intelligence, and he wants Gleeson to test the intelligence. He wants to know whether this AI he’s developed is so good that Gleeson can forget that he’s dealing with a computer. And so Gleeson sits down and starts his sessions with Ava (played incredibly by Alicia Vikander), and there’s flirtation and a definite sexual tension in their relationship, but things start to go wrong when Ava tells Gleeson that Isaac cannot be trusted.<br />
The film is essentially a three-header between Gleeson, Isaac, and Vikander, and all are doing remarkable work. Isaac is smug and proud; his character was a young genius, he’s been a billionaire since a teenager, and he has an arrogance to him that is been untempered by interactions with other people. It’s there in the way he can just casually reference and joke about the colossal intrusions on privacy that he’s implemented in pursuit of his goals. He’s someone who is superficially charming and friendly, but there are clear indications from early on just how much of an effort these interactions are; there’s a really possibility that he’s been driven mad by his isolation. Meanwhile, Gleeson gives a vulnerable, pained performance; as someone who has been alone for much of his life, he’s likable but distant, carrying an intense pain that translates into the way he treats others.<br />
But the film’s true star is Alicia Vikander. Her performance of the AI Ava is a true marvel, and genuinely unsettling. She fully convinces as someone who is right at the midpoint of convincing real emotions and completely alien precision. You’re probably familiar with the concept of the uncanny valley, where the closer something artificial comes to looking like a real human the more uncomfortable it becomes, because we’re increasingly aware of all the micro-differences that evidence their artifice. The closest I can come to describing her performance is to say that Vikander manages to sit in the middle of an emotional uncanny valley. And it works, exceptionally well.<br />
Perhaps inevitably, given the fact that the entire premise of the film is focused on the humanity or otherwise of a character, it’s a strongly character-based thriller. And while the film takes a huge number of twists and turns throughout its story, it never really shocked me. And that’s a good thing. Often the word “predictable” is thrown around as a criticism, as though every twist and turn of the tale should leave us stunned and reeling. But that predictability was something I actually appreciated about the film; it was a mark of how well constructed the film actually was. There was never any contrivance in the plotting. Where I predicted particular plot developments, it’s because the film actually set up those developments and establishes clear motivation in the characters that inevitably leads to that action. And even where the film did surprise me with a sudden reveal or moment that I didn’t expect, I always found it satisfying because “of course that person would do that”.<br />
And the film uses its setup and premise for some interesting questions. There’s obviously the obvious issues about what makes us human, how our behaviour is influenced by our own programming, there’s a lot of stuff about our willingness to be surveilled without even thinking about it. It’s all in there, and it’s all really interesting. But the a lot of that is stuff I’ve seen elsewhere. The thing I found really interesting, and that I found myself reflecting on after the movie, is, how to put it... As a culture, I think we’ve just accepted that, when we do eventually get fully humanoid robots, we’re going to have sex with them; that’s just a given, because with all new technology the first thing that happens is that someone find a way to use it to enjoy themselves. We’ve all heard the term sexbots, and we’ve all seen them portrayed in movies, be it the pleasure model Pris in <i>Blade Runner</i>, Gigolo Joe in <i>AI</i>, or even the machine that relieves Robert Duvall in <i>THX-1138</i>. It’s just a thing that will happen. The film is certainly aware of Ava as a sexually-alluring being, despite the fact that the only actual “flesh” she has is on her face and her hands. (Just look at <a href="http://www.impawards.com/2015/ex_machina_ver5.html" target="_blank">the poster</a> to see how sexualised the character really is.) And yet I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a film that ever grapples with the reality of that, and that taps into our own attitudes to technology. It asks questions about consent and free will; if we did have a machine that has full consciousness, awareness, and emotional complexity, but that can be manipulated by programming into “choosing” to do or accept something, is that okay? Are we just comfortable with it because “it’s not really human”. Which is not to say that this is a “let’s watch him getting it on with a robot!” film. It’s not. But it’s a definite element in the film, whether in the discussion where Gleeson asks Isaac why he gave a Ava a gender, or it’s in the way Ava tries to hide her robotic elements to make herself prettier for Gleeson, or the way that Ava appears to be attracted to Gleeson, and definitely recognises Gleeson’s attraction to her.<br />
All I can say is, <i>Ex Machina</i> just blew me away. It’s beautiful, it’s intense, it’s exciting, it’s interesting and thoughtful, and it has one hell of an ending. I loved it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFQpDGL2-6-FW8bXrt5tYjnJGvMk_lMy9eF_lkK7mQZY5K-i11vY5KMCq4MRL7ItCEwkdsA53SJ_dQ2kWCCww5mzcP8J8RfHxzsjUyLM3DgobZhQmFN-r5vWdFluyhX6zl4NyVD49ivbQJ/s1600/end_of_the_tour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFQpDGL2-6-FW8bXrt5tYjnJGvMk_lMy9eF_lkK7mQZY5K-i11vY5KMCq4MRL7ItCEwkdsA53SJ_dQ2kWCCww5mzcP8J8RfHxzsjUyLM3DgobZhQmFN-r5vWdFluyhX6zl4NyVD49ivbQJ/s320/end_of_the_tour.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>The End of the Tour</i></b><br />
The real test of a film about a real person is whether someone could approach the film without any knowledge of the key figure, and walk away with an appreciation of the person, or at the very least an understanding of why the film needed to be made. I've never read any of David Foster Wallace 's work, but after the film, I'm seriously considering digging into his work. (Although I might start with something lighter than his 1000-page landmark work <i>Infinite Jest</i>.)<br />
Following the publication of <i>Infinite Jest</i> and the rapturous critical praise it attracted, author David Lipsky convinced Rolling Stone Magazine to let him write a portrait of Wallace. This leads him to go with Wallace on the last leg of his promotional book tour, spending five days with the author.<br />
There's no big overarching plot to the film, no great mystery to the film. It's basically two people talking for nearly two hours. My assumption is that the dialogue is mostly taken from the transcripts of the actual conversations (at least, I hope it is). Which means that the people talking are smart and thoughtful and engaged, and fascinating to listen to. They discuss life, love, their insecurities, passions, and fears. They discuss creativity, sex, and what it's like to be a rock-star author. They discuss Wallace's depression, alcoholism, and addiction to television. They watch dumb movies and classic movies, eat bad food, and get so angry they can barely look at each other. And all through it, the film is just this great story of guys bonding. For all that the cinematic and cultural landscape is filed with "white guy stories", it's rare to get a story like this, where guys just sit and talk honestly with each other and come out with a genuine love for each other. And it was a true joy to watch.<br />
Jesse Eisenberg, as Lipsky, is enjoyable to watch, but Jason Segal’s performance as David Foster Wallace is a career-making turn. I’ve admired Segal ever since he starred on <i>Freaks and Geeks</i> over 15 years ago (and it was nice when the film had a short reunion of Segal with fellow <i>F&G</i> alumni Becky Ann Baker), and he’s always been an actor with exceptional comic ability and a fearless willingness to go where a performance needs to go. But I never expected this from him. Wallace was certainly a very funny person (at least, that’s my understanding of his work), and Segal knows how to do funny. But he’s also called on to be vulnerable, to be pained and hurt and angry, combative and insecure. And the fact of Wallace’s depression and suicide hangs over the film; the movie opens with Lipsky hearing the news, and from there flashes back to the events of the interview, so every moment where the film delves into this area becomes a moment of bleakness. And Segal knows how to play it; the film takes place in a period where Wallace seems to have been in a good space, but when the topic comes up Segal manages to play the defensiveness , his pain at the knowledge of his weakness, and his fear at this blackness that he knows could come on him at any moment. It’s an extremely sympathetic and real performance, and I’m hopeful that this film will open Segal’s career up to new and wider types of characters.<br />
<i>The End of the Tour</i> is a small, intimate film, and one that could easily go overlooked. Don’t let it. It’s a very human film, honest and moving. Wonderful.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-7lEgNSeVvDItuRKt06RjJNZUvcSz1k2QKI35DzM-yoBjCSh8nVq9cFx1aogBwVJEl3rk1SiM_tzVZUBecOeAuix2osyZMfEkV4Ld2982my-fGYdcR2aQCcTcFVpqLkxJz7RzSOcqEROb/s1600/kiss-me-kate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="869" data-original-width="580" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-7lEgNSeVvDItuRKt06RjJNZUvcSz1k2QKI35DzM-yoBjCSh8nVq9cFx1aogBwVJEl3rk1SiM_tzVZUBecOeAuix2osyZMfEkV4Ld2982my-fGYdcR2aQCcTcFVpqLkxJz7RzSOcqEROb/s320/kiss-me-kate.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<b><i>Kiss Me Kate</i></b><br />
In 1948 Cole Porter premiered his new stage musical, a comedy based on Shakespeare’s <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i>. The show was a massive success, and won a Tony award for Best Musical. In an era of major movie musicals, it was inevitable that a big-screen adaptation would arrive five years later.<br />
The plot: Fred Graham (played by Howard Keel) has been cast in the role of Petruchio on Cole Porter’s new musical adaptation of <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i>. Fred thinks his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi (Kathryn Grayson) would be perfect for the role of Katherine, and he invites her to meet Cole Porter (played by someone who isn’t Cole Porter) and to hear the songs to try to convince her to play the part. The evening does not go well, especially when the young, attractive, and exuberant Lois Lane (Ann Miller), who has been cast as Bianca and who Fred has been pursuing, turns up. Nevertheless, Lilli takes on the role. Events on the opening night of the show turn farcical when a misdirected bunch of flowers causes Lilli to believe Fred is still in love with her, and a couple of gangsters turn up to muscle Fred mistakenly believing him to owe the local mob boss a lot of money.<br />
Firstly, it has to be mentioned: you’ll be shocked to hear that a 1950s movie inspired by <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> has gender politics that are questionable in today’s world. I tend to try to be accommodating to films in such areas, recognising that a film is a product of its time and can offer value even if certain elements are dated; in fact it annoys me whenever I’m watching a classic film and people are offended by or laugh at a film simply because it portrays attitudes that are no longer prevalent. Even so, I was extremely uncomfortable by parts of this movie. There is a scene in the film where Fred grabs Lilli, puts this grown woman over his knee, and spanks her, angrily, repeatedly, and hard. So hard, in fact, that it’s a running joke throughout the rest of the film that Lilli cannot sit down because she’s in such pain. And the whole thing is played for laughs; indeed, the spanking is even used as the main image for <a href="http://www.cinema52.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Kiss-Me-Kate-Poster.jpg" target="_blank">the movie’s poster</a>, as an example of the fun hijinks in the film. I hate to be that guy, but even for the era, wow.<br />
Beyond that, the film is fine. It’s a fairly typical example of the big-budget stage-to-screen musical spectaculars of the era, and while it’s not bad, it’s also not a particularly memorable instance of that type of film. The interworking of the backstage drama and the onstage production was something I did not expect to see in a film of this era, but I don’t know that they quite managed to make the two mesh terribly well; some early sequences where we just watch the show play out didn’t work for me because it felt too disengaged from the back-stage drama we were invested in. The performers are strong; Ann Miller in particular is spectacular, bringing a shameless energy and verve to her performance that constantly drew the attention. The dancing is good, and the songs (save one) are good but nothing memorable. The one exception is the song “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”, which is a genuinely brilliant and entertaining comedic song (and worth seeking out). But even there, something seemed odd about the song; it’s sung by the two gangsters for no real reason as they leave the film. It made so much more sense when I read that in the original version it’s performed when the gangsters accidentally end up on stage.<br />
What really makes the film distinctive is the fact that it was shot in 3D. The film is very aware of this fact, and seems to take great delight in throwing things at the screen. (Indeed, in her first song, Ann Miller arrives seemingly overburdened with excess scarves, gloves, and jewellery for the sole purpose of having things to throw at the camera during the performance.) But that show-off element is always the least interesting part about the use of 3D. The real advantage of 3D in a film like this is that it gives a real sense of space. Dancing isn’t just about fancy footwork; it’s about the way the body moves and interact with the space around. And that worked so, so well, and it gives the songs and dances in the film a particular edge and advantage that most other musicals of the era don’t have.<br />
The final moment of the film is also fascinating to watch, to be reminded of how primitive the 3D technology really was in that era, and how poorly implemented 3D can actually hurt to look at. 3D is certainly a challenge to work with, even today, but at least if you’re filming something in reality, you should be able to get something that vaguely approximates the necessary 3D effect; you shouldn’t have any objects dimensionally out-of-place. But the final moment of the film is a shot from the back of the full theatre applauding the performers at the end of the <i>Shrew</i> musical, and it’s done as a trick shot, taking a shot of the stage set and laying it over the top of a shot of a full theatre. It’s a basic effect shot that had been done thousands of times by this point in time, but clearly not a shot that had been perfected in 3D. The end result is a shot where the stage seems to float, literally in mid-air, unconnected to anything that surrounded it. It’s a deeply unsettling experience, since it’s an image that the brain simply cannot process or make sense of. (In the end, I had to close one eye for the final seconds of the shot, just to turn it into a tolerable 2D image that I could stand to look at.)<br />
Despite that unfortunate last moment, if you can get a chance to see the film in 3D, do so; it really is worth seeing in the format. If you can only see it in 2D, then it really depends on how you feel about 1950s movie musicals. It’s by no means essential, but there is definite entertainment to be found.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyMgvFn6cX2Avz2W5hdlVBln10W8EPGMUAz__54_fqPqu2lFAjBUa5mMVV8cK4SncjhTPaw1S_zwaSSI6JDSZ_2lTIcpsqE6oUvYIoV1htrHHR4U1iixMPOATbSd43eKVKIER2G8hT2l6O/s1600/inherent_vice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyMgvFn6cX2Avz2W5hdlVBln10W8EPGMUAz__54_fqPqu2lFAjBUa5mMVV8cK4SncjhTPaw1S_zwaSSI6JDSZ_2lTIcpsqE6oUvYIoV1htrHHR4U1iixMPOATbSd43eKVKIER2G8hT2l6O/s320/inherent_vice.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Inherent Vice</i></b><br />
<i>Inherent Vice</i> was easily my most anticipated movie of the festival. Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most important filmmakers working today, and it was a bitter disappointment to me when it became clear earlier in the year that his newest film was not going to get a cinema release. I was therefore thrilled when it was announced as part of the festival schedule, and it did not disappoint. I am aware that the film is very divisive; some people really connect to it, while others cannot bear it. But for me, it was a real joy.<br />
Joaquin Pheonix stars as “Doc”, a dopehead private investigator working out of an LA medical centre in 1970. One night he’s approached by his ex-girlfriend, who tells him that she’s been having an affair with a married property developer, and that she has been approached by the property developer’s wife and her lover to help the two of them get the developer into the looney bin. Doc is then given a second case, to find a member of the Aryan Brotherhood who’s now working as a bodyguard for the developer, but during his investigations he’s knocked unconscious and awakes to find himself surrounded by police and lying next to the dead bodyguard. He then learns that his ex has gone missing, as has the developer. Meanwhile he’s also hired to try and find a dead saxophonist who may not be dead. And his investigations also bring him into contact with an organisation that is either an international drug smuggling organisation or an investment fund for dentists. And all through this, he’s continually dealing with, and being beaten up by, a detective who takes pride in civil rights violations and who hates hippies but plays one in television adverts for the developer’s properties. Also, all of this setup takes place in the first half-hour of a 2½ hour movie.<br />
Everyone talks about how confusing the film is. And so I sat down, determined to understand the film. I will know what’s going on! I think I made it about an hour into the film before surrendering and just going with the movie. This is not a film that cares about plot. It actively disregards plot. Major mysteries are resolved with barely a shrug, with no explanation. There’s very little connective tissue here. Doc just goes where he will and is often surprised to realise he’s stumbled over something or someone of relevance to his investigation. The film is much, much more interested in its characters, its setting, and its comedy, than its plotting. I’ll be interested in rewatching and rewatching the film on Blu-ray, and trying to piece everything together for myself, but for a first viewing, it’s much better to let the experience wash over you. And frankly, that’s the way it should be. After all, this is essentially a take on the noir genre; the detective drawn by a dame he can’t resist into a puzzle of corruption and greed. And those stories always had an absurdly complex plot (rather famously, <i>The Big Sleep</i> has one murder where even the story’s author Raymond Chandler didn’t know who the killer was), so why should this be any different?<br />
What is different is the wildly varying tone of this film. There are moments of incredible drama, where you’re completely swept up in the pain and the brokenness of these characters and their lives, but for the most part it’s a comedy. And what a comedy. There’s the knockabout slapstick; there’s sharp and witty wordplay; there’s rich character-based comedy; and there’s a schoolboy’s giggling immature amusement at innuendo. Basically, think of a style of comedy, and it’s probably been mashed into the film. This film includes scenes as moving and mournful as anything I’ve seen, and it also includes one of the most absurd and insane performances imaginable. It’s like the entire tone of the film is a high-wire act where the wire itself is swinging back and forth, and Anderson does not fall off. It’s a positive miracle to watch.<br />
For most of the cast (with one significant exception), he makes a fascinating choice, putting the big comedic roles in the hands of serious actors, and putting talented comedians in small serious roles. And one of the reasons why the film does work is the commitment of the actors to the film and a complete willingness to go along with whatever was needed for the film. We already knew Joaquin Phoenix will do whatever Anderson asks of him; he already proved that in his work on <i>The Master</i>. But still, his work here is so good, playing every ounce of confusion, desperation, excitement, and what-the-f bewilderment at every development. (It’s also an amusing performance to put in the lead of a complicated thriller, since the character is naturally a very low-key mumbler, which means that all of the significant information is put in the mouth of a man who’s only coherent about a third of the time.) Or you get Josh Bolin being consistently and utterly hilarious as this abusive police detective who’s extremely proud of his record, but who really just wants to be an actor. And he’s brilliant; there’s a scene where he’s eating a frozen banana and he starts gagging as he absent-mindedly deep-throats the thing; it’s the most immature, dumbest joke in the entire film, and it’s also one of the funniest jokes because Brolin sells the joke perfectly. Meanwhile you look at the pure comedians he casts (people like Maya Rudolph or Timothy Simons), they’re either in very straight roles or very small, nothing roles; he knows he doesn’t need to waste them on the big comedy roles, since he can use them to punch up the humour in scenes and characters that would otherwise go unnoticed.<br />
Now, there is an exception to Anderson’s against-type casting approach. There’s one character in particular, a dentist, who is played by a very significant recognisable comedic figure. When he appears on-screen, there was a laugh of recognition from my audience, clearly wondering where this would go. And it was fascinating, because having made the choice to tamp down the performances of all of the other comedians, he then gives the biggest most insane role to the biggest most insane performer you can imagine, and then gets that performer to go as big and as insane as possible. This film should not work with this performance; instead that character’s scenes prove to be one of the highlights of the movie.<br />
The one area where there really isn’t much comedy is in anything surrounding the character of the ex-girlfriend Shasta. And that makes sense; there’s a real sense that Shasta is the only person Doc really cares about, and so she’s the only person the film is unwilling to ridicule. Katherine Waterson is enchanting in the role, and I’m excited to see where she goes next. She’s playing the closest thing in the film to the classic femme fatale character that’s in every noir, but it’s a fascinating take on it; the traditional femme fatale is confident and in control, but her performance as Shasta is much sadder, mournful, and broken, and while she’s aware of her effect on Doc and she takes advantage of that, there’s no enjoyment in it. She also has the best scene in the film, and when I think about that scene I feel haunted just by the tone of her voice as she delivers that monologue.<br />
My friend Ethan compared the film to <i>The Big Lebowski</i>, and that’s not a bad comparison. Myself, I’d compare it to Robert Altman’s work on <i>The Long Goodbye</i> (and we all know what an admirer of Altman’s work Anderson is) if Elliot Gould weren’t playing such a square. But regardless of your cultural touchstone for this type of work, it is a type of film that does not get made these days. I won’t promise that you’ll like it; many, many people don’t. But I will promise that the film is special.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwD_43_w0WzMHpTAZst1tMgfrv_nZfLf9jyaugFkPqH3RSE7lPrpn86p5NXBh85AYJwOTyB_kvDjeN3WqAI84Pq-FVbIRwujtVfv0I2GnPq4lXGFBmWoXXvS2Lf8RvyfM_6Yn7xeonEQVo/s1600/alice_cares.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="735" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwD_43_w0WzMHpTAZst1tMgfrv_nZfLf9jyaugFkPqH3RSE7lPrpn86p5NXBh85AYJwOTyB_kvDjeN3WqAI84Pq-FVbIRwujtVfv0I2GnPq4lXGFBmWoXXvS2Lf8RvyfM_6Yn7xeonEQVo/s320/alice_cares.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
<b><i>Alice Cares</i></b><br />
An extremely crowd-pleasing documentary. Researchers in the Netherlands are running a pilot programme involving Alice, a 60 cm tall care robot with a human-style face and a robotic body, which is given to three different women in their 80s. The robot can’t really do anything for the women; indeed, there’s no evidence that its arms and legs serve any practical function. It’s also too small to do anything, but that’s a conscious choice, since a full human-sized robot might seem threatening, whereas Alice in both her size and her facial features seems more like a child. But when we meet each of the women, they discuss their loneliness, how they seldom have visitors, how they can go long stretches without speaking to anyone. And that’s the main function Alice serves: to just be company for these women.<br />
It’s quite fascinating to watch these women develop their relationships with their Alice. My favourite story followed one woman who started out saying that she didn’t really want to interact with a robot, preferring to talk to a real person, but who slowly seemed to become quite fond of Alice, even taking the robot out for coffee. Another woman seems to throw herself wholeheartedly into the relationship with the robot, who helps her keep track of her exercises and who will watch football with her. The third woman starts off quite positively at first, but seems to quickly become disillusioned by the technology and frustrated with its faults, the way it can sometimes be slow to respond; it’s only at the end when Alice suggests that she could sing for the woman (and by singing, I mean that she plays pre-existing recordings from various artists, both male and female) that any sign of connection or affection is shown.<br />
Much of the film’s enjoyment comes from the women and their fascination with Alice. There’s never-ending amusement at the fact that Alice cannot eat cookies or drink coffee, and there’s genuine delight whenever Alice makes comments that seem like an actual joke. The film’s best moment comes when Alice asks if one woman wants to watch football with her. When we next see the two together, they’re watching the game; Alice with a garland of orange flowers in her hair to match the team’s colours, dispassionately saying “Go, Holland, go”, and observing “2-2” when a goal is scored. In some ways, it’s an absurd image, and yet there’s a real affection evident in the way the woman and her robot interact.<br />
The surprising thing to me was how much I came to care about the Alices. I genuinely wanted them to engage with the women, and found myself frustrated when an Alice would take too long to respond, or when the women would just lose interest or become frustrated with the experience. It’s surprising how well the technology works and how effective the Alice robot is, even though it’s all still very primitive. And when the pilot ended, and they came to collect the Alices, I was surprised at how sad the women seemed to be to be saying Goodbye, and how poignant those moments seemed to be. All in all, it offers some fascinating glimpses into what may become commonplace reality for us all in the future. I don’t imagine the documentary will be easy to access outside of the festival, but if you do ever have a chance to see it, it’s definitely worth your 80 minutes.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaHtQgKJn67_JX6AQ5U_W9RgHHTqqZAtD5rCpzlWe8fVslHrg0L3mW47M1EG0Qa1_iCOcNjKCrRn-CprzU7lNGzYyE-el0xezlL0PqI0ezqJFsFeJpscKJZh5qB1CsRzBoX95UFwtGzewO/s1600/a_pigeon_sat_on_a_branch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaHtQgKJn67_JX6AQ5U_W9RgHHTqqZAtD5rCpzlWe8fVslHrg0L3mW47M1EG0Qa1_iCOcNjKCrRn-CprzU7lNGzYyE-el0xezlL0PqI0ezqJFsFeJpscKJZh5qB1CsRzBoX95UFwtGzewO/s320/a_pigeon_sat_on_a_branch.jpg" width="215" /></a><b><i></i></b></div>
<b><i>A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence</i></b><br />
The opening screen in this marvellously-titled movie tells us this is the final part in a trilogy of human existence. I’ve not seen the first film, <i>Songs from the Second Floor</i>, but I had seen <i>You, the Living</i> back in 2009. I barely remembered any details about it, merely a few vague images and the fact that it was basically just a bunch of small vignettes, small scenes simply staged to great comedic effect. After watching <i>Pigeon</i>, I’ve decided I really need to seek out the earliest film, and revisit the follow-up.<br />
The film opens with a title card promising three scenes of people meeting death. Even that is a lie, since only two of the scenes actually feature death, and only in one do we see the person meeting death. First we watch someone struggle to open a bottle of wine until his heart gives out and he dies while his wife works in the kitchen unaware of what has happened; next we watch as a son comes into the hospital room of his near-dead (but still-alive) mother and begins fighting with her to take her handbag that contains all of her jewellery; finally, we find a scene in a ship’s cafeteria, the captain looking down at the already-dead body trying to decide what to do with the meal the dead man has already paid for. And I laughed. I laughed so, so much.<br />
Following these introductory scenes, we move onto the substance of the film. Taking place in a washed-out grey-brown coloured world, filled with people that look like cadavers, we watch as each individual scene plays out. Some scenes feature recurring characters; others feature people who just appear once (like the girl who tells the poem that gives the film its title). Slowly we come to realise that our main characters are two salesmen down on their luck. They sell entertainment, novelty toys, because they want to make people happy. Specifically, they sell vampire teeth, with extra-long fangs; they sell a bag of laughter, with a tinny-sounding speaker making an awful laughter sound; they sell something they’re quite optimistic about, a mask called Uncle One-Tooth, which is the most nightmarish image you can imagine (one woman screams and runs out of the room when she see it). They are the two most miserable people you can imagine. And they become our guides through this world.<br />
There are small scenes that play out and then leave. There are unexpected flashbacks to 70 years earlier. There are recurring jokes, like the repeated demonstrations of the salesmen’s wares, or the reminders to be quiet because people have to work early, or how the Battle Hymn of the Republic becomes the basic tune for most songs in this world. Occasionally there will be laughs of recognition; the man who is surprised to discover it’s Wednesday because it felt like a Thursday, only to be told off because you can’t tell feel what day it is, you need to keep track of that. But mostly the film is outside of our common experience, even though it all feels recognisably human. There’s weird absurdist sketches; the film may take place in a modern world, but suddenly Charles XII will ride into a bar on a horse on his way to war with Russia, demanding the women all leave and ordering another patron to be whipped, before trying to pick up the bartender, while literally hundreds of troops march past the window.<br />
I cannot articulate why any of this is funny. I genuinely do not know how it works. There’s seldom anything obviously comedic about anything going on; if anything, it’s usually rather melancholic and depressing. And yet this film hit such a perfect note of hilarity that there were times where I became light-headed from laughing too much.<br />
One thing I do appreciate is the precision Andersson brings to his staging. His style is to never move the camera, not one inch, in a scene. So every shot is set up precisely to give you all of the information you need. So when you’re watching the man make a call to check if he had the wrong date for the dinner appointment, we’re also supposed to be watching through the windows into the restaurant where a silent drama is playing out between the love-struck dance instructor and the object of her affections. You wind up searching the image, looking for every detail in the image, hoping to not overlook some great drama or some weird joke. But it also has the effect of distancing the audience; we’re not able to be part of the dramas playing out in front on us, we’re just observers of humanity.<br />
In the last half hour, the tone changes; it becomes noticeably less funny, sadder, more contemplative. This film that for the first hour had more laughs than any other comedy this decade was suddenly sombre, mournful. It culminated in a scene (that I don’t want to spoil) where horrific things are happening and we know what they are, and they’re actually happening within the framing of the image, but we can’t see them because the image and the sounds are being blocked by an object that fills the screen. It turns out this scene was probably/possibly a dream by one character, and he’s incredibly burdened by the image. The film seems to be speaking to a kind of psychic pain, perhaps that we all as humanity are weighed down by our knowledge of the cruelty that humans have shown to other humans. And then, having raised that matter, it’s time for a few more quick jokes to end on a high note, and the movie’s over. I can’t speak to how this type of ending fits in with the other films in the trilogy, although I do seem to remember that <i>You, the Living</i> had a much more optimistic and hopeful ending. But that makes sense. If this is the end of a trilogy about living, and the film starts with death, it has to end with the pain of mortality and the burdens of our shared humanity.<br />
I know this probably doesn’t sound appealing. It certainly doesn’t sound fun, especially when I say that the film makes me think about man’s inhumanity to man. All I can say is, this is a funny film; maybe not towards the end, but for most of its runtime, it’s constantly and consistently laugh-out-loud hilarious. This is absurd, surreal, mad comedy that made me laugh more than anything else I’ve seen in years. It is a unique experience, and one that I treasured having.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitWoc8R1okcFhVHmkDQY4ciW5y9fA91aTbZ8deuds4sJbBMHZgtzSd9aMqU0dcuHgLYFrQq3ZE1ttbJ-17YLBaRkR2TbCXISyVYAVhQjkkzTvECeMKvCagW7odfC3FC-3syrQCO2VGDAfw/s1600/tribe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="518" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitWoc8R1okcFhVHmkDQY4ciW5y9fA91aTbZ8deuds4sJbBMHZgtzSd9aMqU0dcuHgLYFrQq3ZE1ttbJ-17YLBaRkR2TbCXISyVYAVhQjkkzTvECeMKvCagW7odfC3FC-3syrQCO2VGDAfw/s320/tribe.jpg" width="219" /></a><b><i></i></b></div>
<i><b>The Tribe</b></i><br />
Back when Mel Gibson was making <i>The Passion of the Christ</i>, it was revealed that he did not intend for that film (which had its entire dialogue in ancient Aramaic and Latin) to have subtitles. He was trying to make the film work without the need to know exactly what was being said. In the end, that didn’t eventuate; the film was released subtitled, and while I could always turn the subtitle track off at home, I’ve never quite been able to bring myself to revisit the move. But it was for that reason that I was curious about <i>The Tribe</i>, an entire film told in Ukrainian Sign Language and where the director has insisted that the film not be subtitled. Just how easy would it be to follow the film where you have literally no way to comprehend what is being said?<br />
The film focuses on Serhiy (or so the end credits tell me), a young man who at the start of the film is arriving at his new school, a boarding school for the deaf. Initially he’s tormented by the school’s main gang, but he quickly gains their respect, going out with them at night to commit assaults and robberies. Eventually he even takes over responsibilities for taking a couple of girls down to the local truck stop to turn tricks. But problems emerge when he starts to fall in love with one of the girls.<br />
It’s an interesting experience watching a film where you have no idea what’s being communicated. You become intensely focused, searching every action, hunting for every clue to follow what’s going on. In fact, it really wasn’t that difficult. There were a couple of conversations where I wasn’t certain what was being said, but between the specific sign language, as well as expressions, posture, behaviour, and just general context information, I was usually able to figure out exactly what was happening; where I wasn’t sure, later scenes would usually provide an explanation. For example, there’s a fascinating scene where two characters have a major argument, hands flying as though screaming as loud as possible. I realised I completely understood what they were arguing about, but there were multiple positions each character could have adopted, and I was only guessing what positions they were taking. But then I was able to use later scenes and actions of the characters to determine whether I had been accurate in my assumptions.<br />
It’s an incredibly brutal film at times. There’s a nighttime death scene where I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anyone die quite in that way, and it’s shocking and horrifying and for the second time this festival I found myself half-shielding my eyes from what was on-screen. There’s also one scene involving one of the girls being restrained and tied up that is just a horrible, horrible scene, involving images that I do not want in my head. And it’s made even worse by the fact that this winds up being the first time in the entire film that we hear anyone’s voice, and it’s while she’s crying out in pain and agony.<br />
The film does have a problem, in that it doesn’t always know how to deal with such troubling scenes. In particular, the scene that immediately follows after the latter scene features that same girl who we literally just crying her heart out, and now she’s all happy and excited. And it doesn’t track; the jump is too much too quick. I’m not saying that people in traumatic experiences can’t move on and be happy, but I do think it would have been wiser to put an extra scene into the film to create some small separation between the two moments for the character. Indeed, a later scene involving the exact same character repeats the mistake, cutting from a distressed young woman to the same girl being all cheerful. In moments like this, it seems clear that the editor wasn’t quite sure how to cut the movie.<br />
I found it an interesting idea to make this specific film in this type of context. It seemed to me to be a very specific declaration about the way people with disabilities are portrayed in the media. They’re often seen as candidates for sainthood, long-suffering but brave, and able to overcome every obstacle that confronts them. And that may be true of many people with disabilities. But some people are assholes, some people are bullies, some people are violent and angry, and just because someone has to deal with disabilities doesn’t mean that they stop being the person they would otherwise be.<br />
But here’s the thing. It’s a brilliantly made film. It’s exciting, interesting, and it really provokes a reaction. But the question I keep coming back to is: just how good a film is it? Yes, it’s an impressive feat to make a film where literally no-one in the audience understands the dialogue, and yet to make that accessible and understandable. That’s really well-done. But if this film were in English, or subtitled, would we feel the same way? I don’t know that we would. There are incredible moments of great power in the film, to be sure, but I suspect the decision to keep the film unsubtitled forced the director into a position where he had to paint the story with broad strokes, because he couldn’t rely on dialogue to tell the story with fine details. He got to make the film he wanted to make, and good for him. Well done, and good job. But could the film have been better, might the ending have come less out-of-nowhere, if he had made use of tools such as subtitles to actually communicate who these characters are through dialogue? I think it might very well have been. But that leads to a separate question: is it right to judge a film based not on what it is, but what it could have been. And I don’t know the answer to that.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheFRgz4THBZU4lsYBxAQzA33pBi8RQ3b2rqibxpbfn0H4P-Xorym5FR4bgJ-UNXqVRN5J6XObKG4qhmADjIpubVzjueNGQKG3YHpazGcCyrEGAKfhq6NKC-SiaFqnZHElKCdkXiKRaelGD/s1600/taxi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="555" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheFRgz4THBZU4lsYBxAQzA33pBi8RQ3b2rqibxpbfn0H4P-Xorym5FR4bgJ-UNXqVRN5J6XObKG4qhmADjIpubVzjueNGQKG3YHpazGcCyrEGAKfhq6NKC-SiaFqnZHElKCdkXiKRaelGD/s320/taxi.jpg" width="235" /></a><b><i></i></b></div>
<b><i>Tehran Taxi</i></b><br />
In 2010, Jafar Panahi, one of the most significant figures in modern Iranian cinema, was arrested for allegedly trying to make a documentary about the unrest that arose following the reelection of Ahmadinejad. Eventually he was found guilty; one of his punishments was a 20-year ban on making movies. <i>Tehran Taxi</i> is the third movie Panahi has made since he was banned from making movies. The film finds Panahi working as a cab driver, driving around the city of Tehran picking up and dropping off passengers. Cameras mounted all throughout the cab capture every incident, every conversation that takes place.<br />
I wasn’t initially sold on the film. In fact, when sound issues affected the screening half an hour in, requiring the projector server to be rebooted and causing the already late-running screening to run an extra 15 minutes late, I seriously considered just leaving out of fear that I might be late for my next screening, and because that was of more concern to me than a movie that I was not connecting with. In the end I remained (and still made my next film with seconds to spare), and was so glad to have done so, because it was really only in the second half that I came to understand exactly what the film was.<br />
The thing is, the film is the happiest, friendliest, nicest “angry” film you’ll ever see. As the central figure in the film, Panahi is always smiling, cheerful, a good guy. And yet when you realise what the film is about, it’s clear that the film is Panahi trying to beat his fists against the establishment that are trying to prevent his self-expression.<br />
One of Panahi’s passengers turns out to be the guy who sells Panahi’s son pirated DVDs, including movies that haven’t yet been released, and movies that will never be released under this restrictive regime. Panahi comes across an accident and takes a seriously injured man for assistance; his wife also comes in the taxi, and is desperate for them to video the man declaring that he left his property to his wife (in defiance of Islamic tradition), because she needs proof of this. An old school friend meets up with Panahi, and has security video footage of people assaulting him. Panahi’s young niece comes for a ride, and talks about the “make a short film” contest at school, although she rejects all of the story suggestions from her filmmaker uncle. She videos a young boy stealing money from a bride and groom who are themselves having their celebrations videoed.<br />
The message is clear; you simply can’t suppress cinema and self-expression in today’s world, and to try to do so is absurd. It doesn’t matter if you ban a movie from paying in cinemas; it’s just going to sneak its way in and find its audience at home. We live in a world where we all have video cameras in our pockets, and the ability to play high-definition video on the go. There’s so much more content being generated than the authorities can deal with. And yet they try, they impose controls on anyone they see as subversive, anyone trying to use their art to say something important or to capture the realities of life.<br />
The full theme becomes clear with the appearance of Panahi’s young niece. Her interaction with her famous filmmaker uncle is sweet and playful and fun to watch (and the young girl strongly reminded me of the young girl who twenty years ago starred in Panahi’s first film, the incredible <i>The White Balloon</i>). The niece talks about having witnessed and videoed another family fighting over the race of the daughter’s fiancé. Panahi points out that that would make a great film for her short film, but she disagrees. The rules of the contest state that the film has to be “screenable”, which means it must comply with a collection of rules more restrictive than the Hayes Code was, covering everything from a need to comply with Islamic ideas to restrictions on the names of characters and on their clothing. When the niece meets Panahi’s old friend, the victim of a distressing crime, it’s observed that the friend could never be the hero in a “screenable” film, as he’s not named after an Islamic saint, he doesn’t have a beard, and he wears a tie; all three elements that would prevent him from being the “good guy”. For him to be a hero in a movie, he would have to be completely reinvented into something he’s not. The attitude is explicitly stated: films should be real, but avoid sordid realism; if reality is unpleasant or immoral or uncomfortable, don’t focus on that reality. So it is that, when the niece videos a street urchin stealing money, she insists that he go and return the money; not out of concern for the man who lost this money, but because a video of the young child stealing contravenes a requirement that cinema must always be moral, whereas a video of the money being returned is nice and pleasant and doesn’t contravene any rules, even if it’s all utterly unreal.<br />
<i>Tehran Taxi</i>, in its own small way, is the work of a man who is passionate about cinema as a way of exploring the realities of human existences, bristling against the restrictions his own country places on the art form in pursuit of expressing a lie, and a strong declaration that art cannot be suppressed.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoKxWnRxOcBoGJUMT4oTfkY_YTBMQS_b8eWlZL8kWS253CkkbiQ1UjvbrsSf9kDZCIeaJt6pSKsR1dvdAiFf62_9Ox1drjlk3l-1NDOXH75RQkyU1ZFO5NOJgqQrjESUExpPiz1fRsjo65/s1600/71.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoKxWnRxOcBoGJUMT4oTfkY_YTBMQS_b8eWlZL8kWS253CkkbiQ1UjvbrsSf9kDZCIeaJt6pSKsR1dvdAiFf62_9Ox1drjlk3l-1NDOXH75RQkyU1ZFO5NOJgqQrjESUExpPiz1fRsjo65/s320/71.jpg" width="215" /></a><b><i></i></b></div>
<i><b>’71</b></i><br />
So apparently Northern Ireland in 1971 was not a positive environment. Jack O'Connell plays a young inexperienced soldier in the British Army, going over to Northern Ireland for the first time. But his first operation goes disastrously wrong; after the squad finds itself poorly protected with a riot rapidly building up, it just turns around and escapes. Which left O’Connell, who had separated from his squad, alone and defenceless and at the front line of the conflict.<br />
The film has a lot to recommend it. I loved the way that it created a real sense of a place that is completely tearing itself apart, a place where there was just so much emotion and rage and anger boiling up that it felt unsafe to be out in the public. There’s a palpable sense of fear that completely inhabits the film.<br />
I also really enjoyed the nuances that the film found to explore in the premise. Going in, I had been expecting something a bit more black-and-white, where there are two sides to the conflict, and everything is clear and delineated. I appreciated the complicated setup, where each side had different factions that disagreed about the approaches to be taken to achieve the desired end, and how people often felt more comfortable with people from the other side of the conflict who at least agreed about how the war should be fought, than with people ostensibly on their own side who seemed either willing to go too far or unwilling to go far enough to achieve the desired end. And then you’ve got some genuinely sympathetic people who may want to stay out of the conflict and live their lives, but are forced to accept their involvement in the side that has been picked for them. The twisting loyalties of the characters, and the way they responded to the chaos and confusion that was building up, was wonderful, and really left the audience feeling like we were constantly on edge, unable to truly settle into the film.<br />
The film also made an incredibly smart decision around the way they treated the main character. By the time the main plot begins, he’s already defenceless; the only way he can survive is just by running. Soon after, he’s seriously injured. And so his ability to protect himself is very limited; while he’s able to take action at points where needed, for the most part, he’s extremely vulnerable, and reliant on the assistance of people where he doesn’t know if he can trust them. It might seem counter-intuitive to incapacitate the main character in an action thriller, but it worked, and if anything it built a greater connection between the audience and the lead.<br />
And I really loved the limited location around the second half of the film. From the moment we learn of the existence of the Divis Flats, an apartment block that was a republican stronghold, and we’re told to avoid there at all costs, it’s obvious that our hero will find himself trapped in these flats. There’s a brilliant, intense extended sequence where he’s trying to evade detection even while the exits are blocked off and a level-by-level hunt. The film made great use of this complicated maze, the audience caught up as he hunts through every inch of the block trying to find somewhere, anywhere, that he can escape to.<br />
The only real problem is that I saw it at the film festival. If I had seen it at any other time, I probably would have loved it, would have been raving about it for weeks, urging everyone to see it. But the problem is, I’ve seen so many great films this past two weeks that very good just becomes unmemorable. The weird thing is, this is better than 90 percent of the films you will see this year; it’s more thrilling, more interesting, more challenging, more surprising. And yet I’m struggling to work up any enthusiasm for it. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQLOPhUrEUrBvSutxfqwHyb7s6w1l76WiHM5SQk-Rw1-GthdbG8g1T_kzmni6iabDM_DrI2BRNqkMvfj8gx_SwLlbHZc6_G7uDoFY1seulThSnwVNtXmpZFR-EKUC6phyHTZSnB7kWX6bi/s1600/look_of_silence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="532" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQLOPhUrEUrBvSutxfqwHyb7s6w1l76WiHM5SQk-Rw1-GthdbG8g1T_kzmni6iabDM_DrI2BRNqkMvfj8gx_SwLlbHZc6_G7uDoFY1seulThSnwVNtXmpZFR-EKUC6phyHTZSnB7kWX6bi/s320/look_of_silence.jpg" width="225" /></a><b><i></i></b></div>
<i><b>The Look of Silence</b></i><br />
If you have never seen Joshua Oppenheimer’s first film, <i>The Act of Killing</i>, I would urge you to rectify that immediately. One of the most powerful and important documentaries I have ever seen, that film takes a look at the Indonesian massacre that took place in 1965, where the military took control of the government and murdered one million “communists”, and because the government that authorised these killings is still in place, the killers have never faced justice for their actions. The film took an unusual approach to the subject; rather than being a general overview of the events, it focused very specifically on the murderers, allowing them to tell their stories. It’s truly shocking; they boast and laugh as they remember these murders, they demonstrate their murder techniques, and in the most disturbing scenes in the film they recreate their crimes as though they were scenes from a movie, casting themselves as the hero in a western or a gangster movie, freeing the country from the evil “communist”. It has been two years since I saw <i>The Act of Killing</i>, and there are moments that film left in me that still haunt me.<br />
It’s impossible to discuss <i>The Look of Silence</i> without discussing <i>The Act of Killing</i>, as the two are basically a pair. Each one definitely stands alone, and you don’t need to have seen the one to see the other, but together they form a more full picture about the continuing impact these events are having on the country fifty years after they occurred. Where the earlier film looked at the perpetrators of the atrocities, this film looks at the victims. It focuses on Adi, a man whose oldest brother was brutally, horrifically murdered. He never knew his brother, as he was born after the killings took place. Adi and his elderly parents live in a small village, where everyone knows who everyone is, including who the local leaders of the death squads were. Which means that at any time they could be walking down the streets and see the man who killed their son, their brother standing there, enjoying his life. And so, Adi talks to the perpetrators of these murders. He talks to those higher up the food chain, who ordered the killings and who disclaim responsibility because they weren’t holding the knife. He talks to the prison guard who handed the brother over to be killed, and who had a personal connection to the family that should have caused him to act differently. He talks to other killers, and to the families of other killers. And he talks to the man who held the knife and murdered his brother.<br />
The thing that I really admire about Oppenheimer’s work is how genuinely human it is. Yes, he’s making a film about this massacre, and yes, he’s exposing the truth of this incident to a world that doesn’t really know that it ever occurred, and to a country that has chosen to forget that it happened. But I feel that ir would be easy to just leave it there, happy to have told this story that needs to be told, whereas Oppenheimer is interested in exploring these incidents as a way of trying to uncover broader truths about humanity. The filmmaker was at the screening, and when he introduced the films, he talked about how <i>The Act of Killing</i> was about the lies and stories that the perpetrators of these atrocities tell themselves to deal with the things they have done and the impact on a society that has come to believe those lies, while <i>The Look of Silence</i> is about the effects on a person of having to live in fear for fifty years. Yes, these films are specifically about the incidents in Indonesia, but their interest and focus is so much wider.<br />
<i>The Look of Silence</i> is not as flashy as the earlier film. That film reflected the boastful show-off airs of people who have never faced any consequences for their actions. This film carries all of the pain and suffering of people who have been living with the consequences of those actions for half a century. As with the first film, there are moments that I feel will haunt me. The sight of Adi’s father, blind and disoriented, having forgotten who his family is or where he was, crawling around on the ground in complete fear because that’s what he’s become used to, even though he doesn’t understand why he’s so afraid. The moment where one killer discusses drinking the blood of his victims as a way of warding off the insanity that comes with his actions, and his daughter hears him say this for the first time, and you can see her realising that her father is completely different to the man she’s always admired.<br />
Above all, I think I’ll remember Adi. I can’t begin to imagine how impossible it must have seemed to sit and talk to your brother’s murderer about what he did. Yet what you see when you look at Adi is an incredible amount of restraint. He’s testing the people, sure, trying to get them to acknowledge and accept what they did was wrong, and at times he pushes them in ways that they don’t like. But he’s not confrontational or angry; in fact it seems less like he wants them to accept their crimes for himself, and more because it would be better for them that they recognise what they did. It’s an incredible demonstration of forgiveness, like few I’ve ever seen before.<br />
At the Q&A after the film, Oppenheimer talked about the response to the film in Indonesia. I’d remembered hearing how <i>The Act of Killing</i> would never have been released in the country, so it was made available for free on the internet (in unsubtitled form) so that the people in Indonesia who needed to see this story would be able to. It was a great relief to learn that the films have apparently had a great impact, creating a space for the first time for a national discussion about those events. Apparently even the government has acknowledged the need to try to address what happened, and has at least accepted that the events of 1965 were wrong. Where <i>The Act of Killing</i> was distributed in secret, the follow-up film has played to full cinemas. There’s still a long way to go (the school curriculum still includes propaganda that holds up the death squad leaders as heroes protecting the country), but the tone of the Q&A was hopeful for the possibility of change and healing in the country. I hope it comes to pass.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaQVEEhHrsPC3qnz9AGIqyuehngP_Lsf74mEqqfqC9Yq0c0XLsa6cqkL8BRqWeuG7mmKUibBblc0fLR7C0f9ladJrbJmBc04O14o033EuXtTzSussjLH_l8V6UFQ5cKhPMXLBAVsR3Bsdv/s1600/99_homes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaQVEEhHrsPC3qnz9AGIqyuehngP_Lsf74mEqqfqC9Yq0c0XLsa6cqkL8BRqWeuG7mmKUibBblc0fLR7C0f9ladJrbJmBc04O14o033EuXtTzSussjLH_l8V6UFQ5cKhPMXLBAVsR3Bsdv/s320/99_homes.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
<i><b>99 Homes</b></i><br />
Homes are a funny thing. There's a weird amount of emotion that we have caught up in these four walls. When my parents recently told me that they were putting their house on the market, I was surprised how upset I was at the prospect. I've never actually lived in that house, since I had moved out of home before they bought it, but still there were so many rich memories and intense feelings about that place that it just seems wrong for someone else to be living there. And these connections seem to live on long after they should have been severed. I remember one afternoon, years and years ago, driving with my parents up to see the homes where they grew up, and just how upset it made them when they realised the houses had been demolished, even though it had been a number of decades some they lived there.<br />
<i>99 Homes</i> is a film that really manages to tap into those emotions that we have for these places. Andrew Garfield stars as Dennis Nash, a single father raising his son in a home he shares with his mother. But after the economic downturn hits and construction work dries up, he's evicted from his foreclosed home, moving into a rundown motel mostly populated by others who also were foreclosed on and who have been trapped here for years. Through a somewhat contrived situation, Garfield winds up working for Rick Carver, the realtor who was involved in his home’s foreclosure, and after he impresses Carver with his initiative, the two develop into a mentor/mentee relationship.<br />
I primarily wanted to see the film for the cast. Garfield does a nice conflicted line; his character starts the film in complete desperation, just wanting, needing things to go right for him. The highpoint of the film for me was the way he plays his eviction scene, where his desperation mixed in with a heartbreaking humiliation and a willing delusion and hope that this could all just go away. There’s a genuine sense of internal conflict as we see him start to work with Carver; he’s reluctant to work with the man who he views as having destroyed his life, but he needs work, and there’s substantial amounts of money being offered to him, and he needs to get his family home back; that emotional connection he feels to his family home becomes his primary motivation. I also particularly enjoyed the scene where he has to evict his first family, the waves of self-loathing and grief overcoming him as he struggles to fight down his own sympathy for this family where he knows exactly what they’re going through.<br />
I also greatly enjoyed Michael Shannon as Carver. Shannon is always a highlight in any film, and here he holds down his usual rage for something more akin to a steeled determination. He delivers a great speech at one point where he discusses how he got into realty to help get people into a home, not to throw people out, that seems genuine and heartfelt, and yet there's a clear glee, not at destroying the dreams of other people per se, but certainly at the opportunity that these events have brought for him to make money. There's a cold and brutal focus to his performance that is fascinating to watch.<br />
The main problem with the film really comes when writer/director Ramin Bahrani has to find a resolution to his story. With Nash having been completely seduced into this lifestyle, the film introduces a major investment deal for Carver and Nash to take on, one that will net them huge amounts of money. The problem is that the entire process becomes one entire corrupt practice after another. While some of their actions so far were definitely been criminal, there was a degree to which Nash could justify his actions by pretending they were victimless, just creating a situation where they were able to take advantage of a loophole and get some extra government money. But the situation in the final act is unambiguously wrong. There’s theft, there’s forgery and perjury, they literally steal the home from one guy, until the whole thing culminates in an armed showdown. The film just felt like it was suddenly hitting this over-the-top histrionic line for the sole purpose of creating a simplistic moral conflict that didn’t need to be there, and frankly the film would have been better had it followed through with the story it had been telling. It all just meant that this film I had been genuinely enjoying wound up leaving me frustrated and dissatisfied. And that's always disappointing.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC63xxU3QJoxw26y168XzaA4fGZQFCmCO4aZekYSxu7BdDBsMX-lXP0KUejYRKe5-YtirqBGvNxFZ19T2Ar3VAxcKEXrCcmIwR3OYXaV3qjoJDmSBGGvSfYcQ_mIHPlPtBZN9u5FOkuMCS/s1600/dreamcatcher.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="935" data-original-width="632" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC63xxU3QJoxw26y168XzaA4fGZQFCmCO4aZekYSxu7BdDBsMX-lXP0KUejYRKe5-YtirqBGvNxFZ19T2Ar3VAxcKEXrCcmIwR3OYXaV3qjoJDmSBGGvSfYcQ_mIHPlPtBZN9u5FOkuMCS/s320/dreamcatcher.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
<b><i>Dreamcatcher</i></b><br />
I found <i>Dreamcatcher</i> to be a frustratingly ordinary documentary. The film introduces us to Brenda Myers-Powell, a woman who became a prostitute while just a young girl, at an age where she really didn't understand what she was even doing, and who stayed in the lifestyle for 25 years before leaving. Now she works for the prison service helping convicted prostitutes in prison, she runs an after-school club for at-risk girls, and she runs a foundation to help sex workers, whether it be to just provide condoms to the girls or helping them to go to rehab and find a way off the street.<br />
Myers-Powell comes across very well here. She's an extremely charismatic and likeable woman with boundless energy and determination. It's extraordinary to hear her as she tells these stories about her experiences, about the times she was stabbed, or the time she was dragged behind a car until her face was completely destroyed, because there's no sign of bitterness there. There's genuine love, compassion, and (especially) patience in everything she does, in her interactions with girls on the street, in her friendship with a former pimp, and in her constant frustrating work to keep troubled teens from destroying their lives.<br />
Much of the film's power and impact comes from the horrific stories we hear. There's one scene where we watch the after-school club that Brenda organises for young at-risk girls, and they all have horrifying stories about being raped at 11, or letting themselves be molested at 9 to protect their younger sister. There's the pregnant drug-using prostitute who started out being employed at the age of 9 by pimps to collect the money from clients. There's a million different stories we hear during the film, to the point that it almost becomes sickening, a horrific insight into the depths of depravity that humanity is capable of.<br />
The problem with the film is just that I don't know how well formed it really is. The film has a great amount of power and impact, but it all comes from the horrific and harrowing stories we hear. As a piece of filmmaking, I don't know that it really holds up all that well. It feels aimless, unstructured, as though they just started filming one day, filmed for a few weeks, and then stuck it all together, without trying to make the pieces work. There were points where I thought that if this scene were paired with that scene, then the film could begin to express some interesting points, but because the film was all unconnected moments without a clear through-line, it just became disjointed. Occasionally it might hint towards a bigger theme (there was one point, for instance, where for a minute it was raising the impact that criminalisation of prostitution has in turning victims into criminals, which I was finding to be a fascinating and challenging issue) but it would quickly lose interest in any substantive discussion of some big issues. The end result was a film that was interesting, but where you walked out thinking more about the woman at the centre of the film than the issues she's devoted her life to fighting. And that is problematic.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Xeu913s-205T21Jh_lcKUXoCPRsPCYYAsDh6FSYvhLo0Baj2VI90frGnLemzKHNUt1FZObRFAuIBmGQLT4tL4XCej9n54Eq2QSV4C41VYgOhHco7dFT-h0XDhHFZul_juKPgbBRfvmKU/s1600/coming_home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="566" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Xeu913s-205T21Jh_lcKUXoCPRsPCYYAsDh6FSYvhLo0Baj2VI90frGnLemzKHNUt1FZObRFAuIBmGQLT4tL4XCej9n54Eq2QSV4C41VYgOhHco7dFT-h0XDhHFZul_juKPgbBRfvmKU/s320/coming_home.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
<b><i>Coming Home</i></b><br />
This broke my heart. A still, quiet, and beautiful drama from Zhang Yimou taking place during and after the Cultural Revolution in China, the film focuses on a family where the father, Lu, has been sent to labour camp for "rightist thinking". One night he escapes and returns home, but is betrayed by his teenage daughter Dandan, who wants to prove her loyalty to the party as a way of removing the stigma of having an imprisoned father (and therefore of advancing her ballet career). Three years later, Lu is released legitimately and returns home to find that his wife Wanyu suffering from a form of amnesia. She's unable to recognise her husband and, even worse, occasionally mistakes him for someone who severely mistreated and traumatised her. So he tries to find a way to help his wife recognise who he is, and to try and bring healing to the relationship between mother and daughter.<br />
There’s really very little to the film. Other than the early sequence where Lu is betrayed, there’s not really a lot happening, and at times the film is almost wordless for long stretches. But there was a richness and depth of emotion underpinning every on-screen action. We watch as Lu tries desperately to make Wanyu recognise him, and struggles with the notion that she might never know who he is, that he’ll never be able to be her husband in any real sense, and how can he react to that? There was genuine pain and grief and frustration and sadness, and it really just attacked me, hurt me, in the best possible way. It was just this beautiful, not a love story, but a story of love.<br />
I’ve only seen a small number of Yimou films (basically just <i>Hero</i> and the other wuxia films that immediately followed it) (and yes, I know that I really need to see more of his work), but based on the films I have seen, in my mind Yimou is a fantastic visual stylist, creating these big bright beautiful canvases on which he can paint. <i>Coming Home</i> has moments of that, particularly early on with some short ballet sequences, but once we get into the substance of the story, the film becomes very drab, almost monochrome. It would not make sense for there to be a lot of brightness and colour in this film, because the world of the film is so tied up in this aching sadness. And yet Yimou finds incredible beauty in the browns and the greys, the shadows and the gloom of this world.<br />
The cast of the film is just a joy to watch work. Gong Li is a legend of Chinese cinema, and there's something about her performance, sitting halfway between heartbroken and ever-hopeful, that was just fascinating to watch. Zhang Huiwen, in her first role, shows remarkable promise as someone carrying an impossible burden of guilt, and relying on delusions to try to justify her actions to herself. But the real star is Chen Daoming as Lu. He's restrained, haunted, hopeful, weary, loving, and because the setup of the film means the character can never be honest, Daoming has to carry huge weights of acting in his eyes. And he never once rang false. When the film broke my heart, it was because of Daoming's performance.<br />
A beautiful, intensely moving film. I can imagine a lot of audiences might not care for the film, feeling that there's no story to it, but if it connects with you, it truly is devastating.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMCldPhDtZs3MmmhElqvFDWvFlBdQ2GBgXoATMRpA-TUaU3b1M5ZKk1NsjqV9e21LJfrnx4qdyeszVVl2CAOW3hZxleOuQPH_n30l-lQau4KQv6LBU6QwRhqtZZQmxsTBjEyLx585b2wYo/s1600/dope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMCldPhDtZs3MmmhElqvFDWvFlBdQ2GBgXoATMRpA-TUaU3b1M5ZKk1NsjqV9e21LJfrnx4qdyeszVVl2CAOW3hZxleOuQPH_n30l-lQau4KQv6LBU6QwRhqtZZQmxsTBjEyLx585b2wYo/s320/dope.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Dope</i></b><br />
The frustrating thing about <i>Dop</i>e is the fact that there's so much in the film that I genuinely liked that it's disappointing that the film didn't work for me. The film focuses on three black geeks in their final year of high school. Through a long and convoluted series of events, their leader Malcolm accidentally finds himself in possession of a large quantity of a popular synthetic drug. He makes several unsuccessful efforts to pass the drugs on to their rightful owner, but is eventually put in a position where he is forced to sell the drugs himself. Which is how the three friends turn the high school into the centre of a drug operation.<br />
The problems with the film, to me, start with the main characters. Now, I loved the main characters. I loved that they were people we don't really see on-screen; sadly we get so used to having one type of black character that the idea of a movie about a black geek seems positively revolutionary. (The film also features plenty of the usual types of black characters as well, so it’s not quite a full blow against stereotypes.) And I found the lead actors to be appealing and fun to spend time with. But they make this weird choice to have these kids be such fans of 90s hip-hop that they look to the era for their style tips. (Seriously, I was so convinced it was a 90s period piece for the first couple of minutes that my brain nearly broke when they suddenly referenced Bitcoin.) It feels weird, so out of place, as though these kids are actively trying to make themselves stand out even though they’re teenagers, and are at an age when conformity is of paramount importance and where such difference will inevitably attract bullies and tormentors. I genuinely lost almost any belief in these characters as actual people. In fact, the costumes seemed like such a weird creative choice that I wondered if the characters could be based on the director/screenwriter during his adolescence, and the story just contrived an excuse to put these 90s escapees into a modern era.<br />
The other reason why I thought the film might be inspired by the director’s own life was because of the way the film treated women. There are really only three women of any substance in the film: one is a lesbian, but the other two women (both older women in their twenties) are irresistibly attracted to Malcolm, this geeky weird teenage virgin; one seems to genuinely fall in love with him at first sight, while the other is introduced to us in a near-naked state and only becomes more lust-filled the more we know her. The whole thing feels less like genuine character behaviour, and more like the creation of a writer who didn't have much luck with women in high school and wants his alter ego to do better than him. I’m not saying that’s the case, but the character seems so unbelievably attractive to all women (seriously, he’s approaching James Bond-level of success with women) that I found myself trying to find an explanation for why it would be written like that.<br />
And the whole film seems terribly contrived; it was clear that the entire film was driving towards them selling these drugs, but it takes so much effort to get these characters into a position where they have to sell these drugs that you almost wonder whether it’s worth it. Now, I don’t have a problem with a film taking its time to develop towards the main plot thread of the film; after all, my favourite film doesn’t become about what it’s actually about until the two-thirds mark in the film. But if you’re going to adopt a frantic hyperactive style, you might want to avoid throwing a ton of extra complications into the story that just delay the inevitable.<br />
And there’s lots of weird loose threads and slack scriptwriting throughout the film. There are characters who appear to be significant but then disappear; there’s one guy who I was convinced would prove to be the main antagonist in the entire film, and then as soon as the plot gets started he gets written out of the story in a single scene. There are mysteries that I don’t think ever get answered. In the most annoying instance, the one girl who falls in love with Malcolm is in a couple of early scenes and then vanishes, is nowhere to be seen, for an entire hour; when she does reappear, we’re supposed to just accept this big great passion that we had forgotten was a thing because it hadn’t been mentioned for literally half the movie.<br />
And then there was the climax of the film, where Malcolm writes a college application letter that just turns into a straw man diatribe that seems to condemn the audience for holding attitudes against this kid when we’re on his side. It was weird. We’ve reached a point where I wonder whether films should just abandon the college application essay as a plot element, since I can’t think of any instances of the essay being well used, whereas with some recent films like <i>Dope</i> or <i>The Spectacular Now</i> the application essay scenes were my least favourite part of the films.<br />
The thing is: I liked the film in the moment. I didn’t find it as funny as much of the audience seemed to, but I did laugh reasonably often. It’s a likeable film, with fun characters, and real energy. And it’s doing some good things: centring the film around these non-stereotypical characters is a great choice. But the film falls apart the moment you give it any thought, and that is disappointing.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicMx6E803_Ni78cfhYp5Zt8L3s4jbbkpjqUbNsHT3PE03cX3KN8wt0e844RWFSmh85Wa920b0YR3sR3QWvS2TXiitxc5Rhnel7mBc1sGpC33qM84jY9NqQGOphGXldNKoip3NmCafmYUpK/s1600/best_of_enemies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicMx6E803_Ni78cfhYp5Zt8L3s4jbbkpjqUbNsHT3PE03cX3KN8wt0e844RWFSmh85Wa920b0YR3sR3QWvS2TXiitxc5Rhnel7mBc1sGpC33qM84jY9NqQGOphGXldNKoip3NmCafmYUpK/s320/best_of_enemies.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Best of Enemies</i></b><br />
In 1968, ABC was in last place among American TV broadcasters. Things were so bad that, when the other two networks broadcast wall-to-wall coverage of the Republican and Democratic Party Conventions in that year, ABC only had the resources to broadcast a short highlights package. So they decided to supplement this by having leading conservative figure William F. Buckley Jr and prominent liberal Gore Vidal debate the issues. The consequences of the debates would be carried on for years afterwards, with long-running legal disputes resulting from events in the debates. But most importantly, it was a series of ten debates that changed the way media approach discussion of politics, for good and (mostly) for ill.<br />
<i>Best of Enemies</i> is an extremely entertaining documentary about these debates, and packs an incredible amount into the short running time. The film gives us plenty of context, whether it be of the place America was at the time, the political environment in place, or the specific circumstances around the broadcast, it gives us a good introduction to the key figures, how the debates came together, we get a lot of footage from each of the debates (which were always thoroughly entertaining to watch), and the chaotic aftermath that resulted. There’s a great deal of art and construction in the film, in the way this idea interacts with that moment, in the way it builds tensions between the two lead figures until a explosion proves inevitable. And I appreciated the fact that the film seemed to be about something: it wasn’t just “Here’s an interesting story”; the film had a much wider focus in explaining why this story needed to be told, using this as a vehicle for discussing the emergence of identity politics, or particularly looking at how the state of modern political discourse and punditry, with increasing antagonism between the sides, can be traced back to the Buckley/Vidal debates.<br />
At the centre of the film are these two figures, Buckley and Vidal. And these two people are just so wonderful to spend time with. Intelligent, thoughtful, and sharp, it’s fun to watch these two trying to dismantle the other with quick wits and carful arguments. These were two people who despised each other, hated each other, viewed each other as being genuinely dangerous for the state of the country. And it’s fascinating to watch these two just try to destroy each other, prove themselves right, and justify the contempt each has for the other.<br />
One thing I appreciated is that the filmmakers seemed to take great care to be even-handed in their treatment of the two. One can probably guess where their political allegiances lie, but for much of the film I genuinely wasn’t sure which side they personally agreed with. It really wasn’t until late into the film, when they seemed to focus on a particular outburst by Buckley, and only briefly acknowledging the provocative comment by Vidal that prompted it. There are reasons for that choice; that outburst was genuinely terrible, it is apparently what the debates are best remembered for, and the ramifications of that outburst ran for years, even decades after. But I did wonder whether the filmmakers were possibly a little biased and let Vidal off a bit for his actions in provoking that response. (That said, we later see a clip from <i>Sunset Blvd</i> as Vidal is compared to Norma Desmond, so it’s not like Vidal gets away untarnished.) But on the whole it is fair and even-handed, approaching the characters with sympathy and sincerity, without the type of polemic that passes for political discussion today.<br />
I particularly liked how the film gives time to reflect on the impact these debates had on society today. Across the entire spectrum of media, political discussion today is often abrasive, confrontation, and shrieking. When we look at Buckley and Vidal, we see two intelligent erudite men, fascinating and entertaining to listen to, who are certainly able to and excited about throwing out cutting remarks and insults, sure, but they’re also able to provide reasoned discussion on points, refute arguments. It’s quite a change from today’s media landscape, where political debate has turned into people just yelling at each other, and where posturing has replaced reasoned argument. When I listened to Vidal and Buckley talking, I heard two intelligent and thoughtful men, and I was interested to hear what they had to say because I like having my thinking challenged and learning things from people smarter than me. If I watch the news these days, most of the time I feel like the pundits are no smarter than myself, and I have no interest in hearing from them because I know how stupid I am. It’s depressing just how lowest-common-denominator much of television news has turned into, and it’s astonishing because, as much as the Buckley-Vidal debates created the modern world of punditry, you get a strong sense that nether of them would be happy to see how far the modern television world has fallen.<br />
<i>Best of Enemies</i> is a carefully constructed, highly entertaining film, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, that fascinates and challenges you, and also leaves you depressed as you reflect on the state of intelligent discourse in the world we live in today. It really is a fantastic film.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbBab_EtD5Da4ZtZwEiShqSvK2FuWa96Hde2qFcyJmmHphpZf9jA89nyCStu6s6a1hIhHvbuvIaUwS0im28xPt34JBzmVLOkJ61Wv0WbPhWe8hpOuHH2XE344LVCLFhins8h508UDEUEV5/s1600/lonesome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="754" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbBab_EtD5Da4ZtZwEiShqSvK2FuWa96Hde2qFcyJmmHphpZf9jA89nyCStu6s6a1hIhHvbuvIaUwS0im28xPt34JBzmVLOkJ61Wv0WbPhWe8hpOuHH2XE344LVCLFhins8h508UDEUEV5/s320/lonesome.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<i><b>Lonesome</b></i><br />
I always look forward to the Live Cinema events, where a silent film is screened with live accompaniment. The musical performances always bring a particular amount of energy and excitement to the films, and while Wellington for some reason always seems to miss out on the big recognisable films (as well as <i>Lonesome</i>, this year both Auckland and Christchurch had screenings of Chaplin’s <i>The Kid)</i>, I always find that the lesser-known films we get here always prove to be genuine gems that might otherwise have slipped past me unseen.<br />
<i>Lonesome</i> is a sweet little film with a very simple plot. Jim and Mary are two completely isolated singles living a busy and hectic life in New York City. One Fourth of July weekend, sweltering under the heat of a hot summer day with no air conditioning, they both decide to travel to the beach at Coney Island, where they meet, and instantly fall in love. Most of the film consists of their courtship, as they wander the attractions, talking, playing, getting to know each other, as day turns into night, until a major climactic moment that sees the two of them separated. Oh no! They don’t even know each other’s surnames! How ever will they be reunited?<br />
Introducing the film, festival director Bill Gosden promised us a technically inventive film, with every technique known at the time. And he wasn’t lying. There’s some real ambition in the way the movie was shot and edited together. There’s a boldness and energy of movement in the opening scenes, reflecting the hustle and bustle of city life, the constant hurry of a job that never stops. And then, the two of them fall in love, and the film adopts this dreamy excitement, where we get the elation of being in love combined with a sense of time standing still and passing too quickly simultaneously. There’s real invention in the transitions, in the way scenes are overlaid over each other, in the way one scene interplays with another. There’s a roller coaster scene that is genuinely thrilling in a way that I’ve never seen a roller-coaster scene before. There’s also some of the most inventive use of colour tinting that I’ve ever seen. It was quite common for black-and-white films to be dyed in certain scenes to create an effect (say, dark blue for night scenes), and I feel like I’ve even seen the rare film with two different colours on-screen, but there are points where I’m positive there are three or more colours painted onto the film. These days it’s nothing impressive to see a film in colour, but when you’ve been watching a black and white film it’s genuinely striking to see Coney Island completely lit up looking bright and colourful, or see the scene completed washed through with a nighttime blue, except for the merest hint of light from the sliver of an almost-new-moon above. I really did look at the screen at those moments and just thought “wow”.<br />
It’s often been said that the invention of sound set the movies back decades. The idea is that movies towards the end of the silent era were bold and inventive, as directors found new and exciting ways to use the camera to tell the story. But sound came along, and suddenly you couldn’t move the camera and you couldn’t move the characters, or else the sound technology wouldn’t work. This was particularly noticeable in <i>Lonesome</i>. The film was entirely made as a silent film, but since sound came along before it was released, there were three scenes restaged and refilmed with sound technology. And it’s really noticeable how different the film feels in the scenes with sound. This film that was free and exciting and impressionistic suddenly is completely locked off and tied up. Fortunately these scenes were short, and generally sufficiently funny that we could enjoy them until the film got back to its silent greatness.<br />
And yet, for all this inventiveness with the form, director Paul Fejös never loses track of the fact that we’re watching a love story. The two stars are people who never really made it in Hollywood, but they are so sweet and tender and fun that I really did fall in love with the two of them. This is important, because literally half the film is occupied with these two falling in love, and if we don’t buy it, the film doesn’t work. Instead, we get so invested in this love story that I was genuinely frustrated when the two of them are separated, silently yelling at Jim to do this and don’t do that in order to keep with Mary. It just works.<br />
The one disappointment about the film, to be honest, was the live music. Now, I’m not familiar with Lawrence Arabia, which composed and performed a new score for the film. And the music itself was a lot of fun; I would quite happily listen to a recording of that music without hesitation. But there was something about it that didn’t sit quite right for me. Perhaps it was that the music, generally not period-appropriate, jarred a bit too much with the film. Perhaps it was that it was just too damned loud, demanding my attention when I wanted to get lost in the film. Perhaps it was that I could see the performers, particularly the two right in front of the screen obscuring the lower quarter of the image like some musical <i>MST3K</i> show. All I know is that I enjoy watching silent films with live musical accompaniment, but what I really love is when I forget about the live musicians and just get caught up in the film. And I never felt like I could do that here.<br />
Still, it was a delight and a real excitement to be introduced to this wonderful film.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMwGsX4SjrsPRTSWwNiwRw9X_nDYGXyX4EodoUdPy87f15nYtrdC8aeskttg-NmGSUhBfrYMRlX7m3WPk2qFG3HKaej55ck2HBxt7kAiVrLCaxzWezKtZq4ECA9qDP1jyINhYqQJ_aPYsi/s1600/our_little_sister.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1040" data-original-width="736" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMwGsX4SjrsPRTSWwNiwRw9X_nDYGXyX4EodoUdPy87f15nYtrdC8aeskttg-NmGSUhBfrYMRlX7m3WPk2qFG3HKaej55ck2HBxt7kAiVrLCaxzWezKtZq4ECA9qDP1jyINhYqQJ_aPYsi/s320/our_little_sister.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
<b><i>Our Little Sister</i></b><br />
A few years ago, one of the biggest films from the festival was <i>I Wish</i>, about a couple of young brothers separated by divorce. I wanted to see the film, but sadly was unable to fit it in during the festival, and never quite got around to catching it later. When Koreeda Hirokazu’s follow-up <i>Like Father, Like Son</i> (about a swapped-at-birth situation) was in the festival, again I was unable to find a screening that I could catch, and was frustrated to hear from friends how much they enjoyed it. So this year I was determined to see Hirokazu’s newest film, <i>Our Little Sister</i>, even if it did mean I had just a five minute window between films to get to the screening. Having seen the film, I am genuinely annoyed at myself for not prioritising the earlier films more, because this was an exceptional film.<br />
Three sisters in their twenties, living together in their family home, receive the news that their father has died. They hadn’t seen him in fifteen years, ever since he left their mother for another woman. Attending the funeral, they meet their half-sister, a teenage schoolgirl who really has no-one with the passing of her father. Instantly liking this young girl, the sisters invite her to come and live with them. And that’s about it, I guess.<br />
What I really appreciated about the film was just the richness of characters and of the relationships between the two. Admittedly, the characters comply with a very strong and broad type; of the three sisters, we’ve got the uptight oldest sister, the fun-loving middle sister, and the weird kooky youngest sister. But within those broad types, a lot of nice rich shading is employed that helps these people feel real. Certainly the relationships between the sisters feel genuine and lived in, with clarity in the way each character relates with each of the other two. And then into this perfectly drawn family comes this new girl, and it’s just a delight watching as she tries to find her place, and tries to navigate the collective experiences that make them a family.<br />
The fact is, I just loved this film so, so much, solely because of the sisters. It’s a very simple film; there are a few points where different characters need to make choices or where tensions arise, but it feels like it all comes second to just spending time with these women as they talk and laugh, decorate and repair the house, or make plum wine. And everything just worked. I loved watching the little rituals that the family had, I loved watching everyone coming together to help someone with a problem they were dealing with, I loved watching how they would tease each other, I just loved watching them. It reached a point where it would annoy me when it would occasionally move to a subplot centred on a non-sister character, simply because it felt like it was taking time away from these wonderful moments of sisterly bonding.<br />
There are other things to praise about the film, but I feel that those are things that are common to most excellent films. The thing that made the film unique, the thing that made the film special, the thing that moves me whenever I think about this film, is the honest love and affection it has for this family, and how clearly this affection was communicated. Hirakazu’s career seems to have been defined by movies that explore various family dynamics, and if this is any indication of his work then I’m thrilled to finally be prompted to start exploring his world.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzx46YFgklh1trmOL356z61bFCwqYYKY7nLVy8OtEwt-7ght0g0aF7c8zvWXWuAYxn6IkK6hWEZZwX3LspE_ftwCzHH8wsLP-fsm21CBiGZO2dCob_okWM4PJYkpTw6oow2LBMAc0fk7t_/s1600/tale_of_tales.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="557" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzx46YFgklh1trmOL356z61bFCwqYYKY7nLVy8OtEwt-7ght0g0aF7c8zvWXWuAYxn6IkK6hWEZZwX3LspE_ftwCzHH8wsLP-fsm21CBiGZO2dCob_okWM4PJYkpTw6oow2LBMAc0fk7t_/s320/tale_of_tales.jpg" width="236" /></a></div>
<b><i>Tale of Tales</i></b><br />
My final film of this year’s festival. I was a bit nervous going into this, as my experience with the other two “big night” films this year, <i>The Lobster</i> and <i>The Assassin</i>, had been so negative. Fortunately I found <i>Tale of Tales</i> to be thoroughly entertaining, and a satisfying end to the festival. I may not quite be certain what exactly the film adds up to, but the experience of watching the film was so much fun.<br />
In a fairy tale kingdom, one king and queen are having difficulty conceiving an heir, until a sinister magician advises them of a piece of magic that will allow the queen to give birth; 16 years later, the resulting albino prince has an unbreakable bond with an identical albino born the same night to a lowly servant. In a neighbouring kingdom, the king adopts a pet flea that grows to an incredible size, and inadvertently pledges his daughter’s hand in marriage to an ogre. And in a third kingdom, a lecherous king falls in lust with a local woman after only hearing her singing, unaware that this divine voice belongs to an aged crone; when he does discover the truth, things go badly.<br />
I’m really trying to resist making the obvious comparison, but it's umavoidable: <i>Tale of Tales</i> is like an episode of <i>Game of Thrones</i>, if <i>GoT </i>took place in a fairy tale world rather than a medieval fantasy one. It’s utterly gleeful in its enjoyment of its excesses, be they gory (an early scene features a character gnawing at a massive heart, blood covering their face), violent (one climactic moment features a bloodstained character revealing a severed head), or sexual (basically, if Vincent Cassel is on-screen, there’s definitely a naked woman nearby). The meshing of this strongly content within a dreamlike fairy tale context feels like it shouldn’t work, but then you remember how fairy tales were originally intended just as much for adults as children, and how (for example) in the original Cinderella story the sisters were cutting off their toes to try to squeeze into the shoe, and the entire thing just makes a lot more sense. The film is definitely stripping out the Disneyfication of these types of stories and returning to their origins.<br />
I’m always a sucker for a beautiful looking film, and this may be one of the best of the festival. It seemed as though every shot was an incredible mix of production design, costuming, effects, and exquisite cinematography. Whether it be the insane black figure in the white room with a massive stain of red in the middle of the image, the eerie underwater mists that revealed the sea monster, the weird tableaux of indulgence and licentiousness, the mother chasing her son through the disorienting maze early in the film (and the way it echoes in the resolution of a completely different story), the strikingly beautiful red-clad figure in a verdant forest, or the beautiful final shot looking out over this beautiful land, every moment seemed to want to force itself to imprint on my brain.<br />
The weird thing is, if I sit and analyse the component parts of the film, I feel like I should feel more dissatisfied than I do. The story of the albino prince is easily the least successful of the three tales; I found myself completely uninvolved in the story of the twins, the film set up various elements that I don’t think ever got resolved, and indeed I don’t know that the actual story ever got a real ending worth mentioning. Much more satisfying was the tale of the king and the crone, which was wonderfully entertaining right until the point where it suddenly had a major plot development that completely changed the story ending in about ten second flat, and then tried desperately to end the film as fast as possible. The best story was the story of the flea and the ogre; it was certainly my favourite part of the film. But even there, it’s not without faults; that plotline just completely changes the story its telling halfway through. All of which brings me to a point of saying: I feel like I should have been bothered by the film, between the story I didn’t care for at all, the story that ended badly, and the story that’s two stories glued together, and yet there’s something about the way these three came together that just brilliant, that just worked, and elevated the material, until it became greater than the sum of its parts.<br />
I also don’t know that I’ve got a very clear view of exactly what the film was trying to achieve, what it was trying to say. Was there a reason why it was telling these particular stories? Is there any thematic connection that ties the film together. There’s possibly a female-empowerment connection, but since each of the main females has a degree of insanity or imbalance to them, I don’t know what it could be trying to say about that. But then, I don’t know that I care. After 32 films, I was just exhausted. I just wanted to watch something and be entertained. And I enjoyed this. What else could I want?</div>
Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-14746385162421830142016-02-28T20:50:00.002+13:002016-03-01T01:30:56.360+13:001,047 minutes<div class="MsoNormal">
So here’s the thing,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was a little startled late last week to realise that the
Oscars were coming up this Monday. Time had completely slipped by me, and I had
barely written any of my usual post commenting on the Best Picture nominees. I’d
given a decent first-draft write-up on a couple of films, but for most of them
all I had were a few scraps and the odd half-formed paragraph here and there.
(This was particularly annoying, since I had seen all of the films a couple of
weeks ago so, unlike most years where there’s usually a film released just
before the ceremony, I really have had plenty of time to prepare my post.) So,
after a lot of effort, here is my last-minute post on this year’s eight
nominees. I feel less satisfied than usual with this post, with many films I
feel there is a lot more that I could have said but didn’t have the time to
articulate my thoughts, and I certainly feel that my transitions between ideas
could use a lot more work, but sadly I don’t have time for it. Nevertheless,
here it is.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>[After the jump, comments on </i>The
Revenant<i>, </i>Spotlight<i>, </i>Mad Max: Fury
Road<i>, </i>Room<i>, </i>The Big Short<i>,
</i>Brooklyn<i>, </i>The Martian<i>, and
</i>Bridge of Spies<i>.]</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf19oK0ZJrRai125SQ7izAfFILvPO6vXIQibeQygTd1R0kodus4zCk_FbpSf64cnrvc9pDmO9WRpENmYwVxlfeHuzpeokI24n-hw0bsNkoK_AQSSqBM0NfTojgSK3AX8j9xeDqNeI8NEhj/s1600/revenant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf19oK0ZJrRai125SQ7izAfFILvPO6vXIQibeQygTd1R0kodus4zCk_FbpSf64cnrvc9pDmO9WRpENmYwVxlfeHuzpeokI24n-hw0bsNkoK_AQSSqBM0NfTojgSK3AX8j9xeDqNeI8NEhj/s320/revenant.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a year where the big award is fairly up in the air;
no-one is really sure what will win on the night. That said, the film that has
the biggest buzz around it is probably <i>The Revenant</i>.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a hunter and guide on an expedition with a
group of fur trappers who is brutally mauled by a grizzly bear. Glass is close
to death and too difficult to carry, so the expedition leaves Glass in the
hands of an old hand hunter called Fitzgerald, as well as Glass’s son and
another young man called Bridger. The three are tasked with waiting until Glass
dies, and then giving him a decent burial before returning. But Fitzgerald is
impatient and understandably concerned about danger to their own lives, so he
tries to hurry along Glass’s death; Glass’s son intervenes to stop the murder
and is himself killed; Fitzgerald then convinces Bridger that the son has
vanished, that there are Native Americans nearby, and they need to abandon
Glass. But Glass doesn’t die, and over the film we see him recover, survive,
and make his way to civilisation, motivated by his need for revenge against
Fitzgerald for the death of his son.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Much of the attention around the film has been on the
suffering around the making of the film; indeed, I’ve heard the film shoot
compared to the legendarily nightmarish shoot on Werner Herzog’s film <i>Fitzcarraldo</i>.
It was filmed in areas so remote that half-a-day was lost just in travelling,
in freezing locations where hypothermia was a constant risk. And meanwhile DiCaprio had to plunge into freezing cold water, eat an actual raw bison liver or
an actual (possibly still living) fish, or crawl naked into an animal carcass
in a snow-covered environment. And understandably the extreme nature of the
shoot has been the focus of the much of the media around the film. But I am
bothered by it. DiCaprio has basically been anointed as the inevitable winner
of the Best Actor award, and, fine; he’s an excellent actor, it seems wrong
that he hasn’t already got an Oscar, and this is a good performance from him.
But this is absolutely a make-good award, trying to apologise for never having
acknowledged him previously. Giving the Oscar to him for this film is just the
most extreme version of awarding people who punish themselves for their art,
just like those awards given to actors where the most significant part of their
performance is the amount of weight they gained or lost for the role; it’s
awarding the physical efforts of the actor prior to or in making without ever
considering whether what the actor did with that efforts is truly award-worthy.
Leonardo is good in this film, he’s not necessarily undeserving, but it does
always bother me when outside factors are taken into account when choosing the
winners, rather than simply considering the work on the screen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film was directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, who
won the Best Director last year for <i>Birdman</i>, which I really liked.
<i>Birdman</i> had an underlying premise of presenting the entire
story as though it were filmed as one single shot, and I thought that had been
a brilliant idea, giving the film a disorienting drifting dream-like feel that
was perfect for that film in communicating the depression that our lead
character is dealing with. <i>The Revenant</i> is not a single shot
film, but it does embrace the idea of using a large number of long takes, with
the camera observing as the action plays out over several minutes. And on the
whole, it’s generally well-done, but it does feel terribly show-offy in a way
that often didn’t work for me. I found myself very aware of the filmmaking,
even distracted by it. Compare it to a film like <i>Creed</i>,
which had a boxing match that was all shot as a single take, and I didn’t
notice the fact until I read about it afterwards, because I was so caught up in
the moment that the filmmaking became almost invisible. Here, not only was I
frequently aware of the filmmaking, but there were times when I was bothered by
filmmaking choices. For instance, look at the bear mauling, which plays out as almost
one long take. We watch Glass walking around the forest, come across the bear,
it brutally attacks him for a while, then wanders off some distance, allowing
Glass to get his gun and shoot the bear when it returns, but that just makes
the bear angrier and maul him some more, until eventually it walks off, and we
end on DiCaprio’s face. Cut to a shot of the bear, which then runs up, grabs
Glass, and drags him off the edge of a small cliff, where the bear dies and
Glass lies barely alive. Now, as I was watching the film, I found myself
distracted by that choice; why present almost all of the mauling as a single
shot (a choice which was very effective in making the audience feel trapped in
the middle of this attack), but then cut to a second shot for the last 15
seconds of the attack. I don’t imagine there is any technical reason why they
couldn’t have finished out the scene in the same shot, but I have no idea what
creative reasons lie behind the decision. And these are the thoughts I had as I
was watching the film. There is a problem if I’m watching a scene as impressive
as that mauling scene but find myself thinking about the editing of the film.
And there were multiple times where this happened, where I realised I didn’t
understand why Iñárritu cut at that moment when a better cut could have been 10
seconds earlier or 15 seconds later.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the poster proudly proclaims, the film is based on a true
story; Hugh Glass was a real person who really was mauled by a bear and left
for dead by a real Fitzgerald, and he really did manage to make his way across
incredible distances to his outpost. I’ve read a couple of short articles about
the incident <i>[EDIT: There's a really interesting article comparing the movie and reality <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/real-story-revenant-is-far-867620">here</a>.]</i>, and it seems like it’s truly an incredible story. But the problem
is that the filmmakers didn’t seem to have any faith in the story, and seemed
to feel the need to amplify the story. So it’s not enough that he overcame
these incredible obstacles to survive, it’s not enough that this be a tale of
the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to survive; no, they need to add
to his achievements, until the entire thing feels fake. So at one point he
literally rides his horse off a massive cliff, but manages to survive because
he is lucky enough to choose the exact point where there is a similarly-massive
tree right by the cliff, allowing him to crash through the branches, slowing his
fall, and ensuring his survival. He didn’t know the tree was there, to me it
looked like it would not be visible from where he was, but yet he managed to luck
his way to the one place that would allow him to survive this impossible fall.
And then he’s able to cut open his dead horse and survive a cold night inside
its body, tauntaun-style. And that annoys me. When a film is being sold as a
true story, it’s a problem if the film adds so much to the story that is stops
being believable.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or here’s another thing I’m bothered by: in reality, Fitzgerald
never killed Glass’s son, because Glass didn’t have a son. The only thing
Fitzgerald did was abandon Glass. I know that it’s common for “true story”
films to invent and change things around, but it still does bother me when they
go as extreme as making an actual person into a murderer in order to “tell a
good story”. Indeed, this feeds into another big problem I have with the
entirety of the film’s final act <i>[spoilers follow in the rest of this
paragraph]</i>. The film had been going for about two hours when Glass finally
arrived back at his home outpost. Fitzgerald, knowing that his crimes are about
to be revealed, flees, so Glass teams up with the outpost’s captain to track
down Fitzgerald, a sequence that drags out the film length by an extra
half-hour or so. And as I was watching this, I realised this wasn’t the film
that I had been watching. This felt very much like a sequence tagged onto the
end of the film to give it a more-action-packed ending. And apparently it was;
brief research reveals that the real Glass had forgiven Fitzgerald for
abandoning him (although there may have been factors motivating that decision).
So this entire climax was exactly as much of a contrivance as I had thought it
was at the time I saw the film. The film could have, should have, ended with
Glass returning to civilisation; that would have been a satisfying and triumphant
ending to the story. But because they had had Fitzgerald go so far as to murder
Glass’s son, having Glass just instantly forgive Fitzgerald was now impossible,
so they had to add this entire extended fourth act that didn’t work. Then, at
the very end, the film cheats completely; it allows Glass to decide not to kill
Fitzgerald, to choose the “better path” over taking revenge, while putting him
in a place where he makes that choice with an almost absolute certainty that
Fitzgerald will die within a minute in any case. It’s much easier to decide not
to seek revenge if you know the guy’s going to be killed any second now anyway.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And ultimately, it just bothers me that the film has been so
praised. I really don’t think it deserves the plaudits that it has been
receiving. It’s a good film, better than most films in any year, but it’s not the
great transcendent piece of cinema people are talking about. My big fear is, if
<i>The Revenant</i> wins Best Picture, then Iñárritu is likely to
win Best Director. <strike>To my knowledge, no person has won the directing Oscar two
years in a row. </strike>The notion that the first person <u>in 65 years</u> to take back-to-back directing
Oscars might be Iñárritu, admittedly a skilled director but a man who does make
seriously flawed films, troubles me. <i>[EDIT: So it turns out my source for that information was incorrect. Two people have won back-to-back directing Oscars; John Ford and Joseph Mankiewicz. It has, however, been 65 years since it last happened.]</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpdbaILhJbetHBgZZW6e1DqVnGKTIR-_mnLBIQ1UkGveUR1ZSU08-ueEbMZJBRgd6Yb-01-ZmNLOyniZ50FdK6JCEhYYaNo6zj9-78BkDd-sDH6mERq-q_bKSi3Z4AdieksxEqe5OcwMXP/s1600/spotlight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpdbaILhJbetHBgZZW6e1DqVnGKTIR-_mnLBIQ1UkGveUR1ZSU08-ueEbMZJBRgd6Yb-01-ZmNLOyniZ50FdK6JCEhYYaNo6zj9-78BkDd-sDH6mERq-q_bKSi3Z4AdieksxEqe5OcwMXP/s320/spotlight.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
Far and away the best of the nominated films would have to
be <i>Spotlight</i>, the Tom McCarthy film about the small group of
investigative reporters at the Boston Globe who in 2002 wrote a series of stories
exposing a practice of systemic cover-up of child sexual abuse by Roman
Catholic priests in the Boston area.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m a big admirer of McCarthy. His first three films – <i>The
Station Agent</i>, <i>The Visitor</i>, and <i>Win
Win</i> – were each great little character dramas. I was a bit
disconcerted when he went to make a movie with Adam Sandler, but I was hoping
that film would be good; after all, Sandler has done some great work when he’s
worked with established directors outside of his usual indulgent bubble. Unfortunately
the general reception of <i>The Cobbler</i>, particularly from
people I trust who admired McCarthy’s earlier work, was so bad and so
bewildered that someone like McCarthy would make the film that I couldn’t bring
myself to watch it. Fortunately, it seems that film was a minor diversion
before he produced his best work in <i>Spotlight</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the things that I really appreciated about the film
was that McCarthy had a very clear, straight line of focus in making the film. It
could have been easy to focus too much on the actual abuse, something that
would very quickly have made the story overly sensational, utterly unbearable,
or both. Instead, McCarthy keeps us at a distance from the events being
reported; we’re with the reporters as they conduct their research and the story
develops. And in that context, scenes of people studying old paper clippings,
drawing red circles around names in directories, become surprisingly gripping, and
we’re shocked as every new detail is uncovered. It’s a film that is fascinated
with the process of investigative journalism, with how you go about preparing a
story of this type. And as more details of the story are revealed , it brings
out great conflicts in the reporters about how and when to report this story,
and the ethical implications of that choice. In one of my favourite sequences
in the film one of the reporters discovers information about a neighbouring
house being used by the church as a place to keep paedophile priests, and
suddenly the importance of this story is all too personal. But what is the
ethical response to that information as a reporter? Do you alert the neighbours
to the risk posed by the people in that house, and in so doing damage your
chances of fully revealing the true story, or do you focus on the need to fully
report the story and expose those people who should have stopped abuse from
occurring but risk your kids and your neighbours’ kids becoming victims
themselves in the meantime? It’s a situation where there is no good solution,
and I loved that the film took the time to explore that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One thing I was quite surprised by was how light-handed
McCarthy was in discussing the decline of the newspaper industry. After all, as
an actor McCarthy famously played Scott Templeton, the primary harbinger of
doom for the newspaper industry in season 5 of <i>The Wire</i>, and
I think I was half-expecting that to carry into this film. And the film
certainly touches on the decline of the industry and its causes (an early scene
has Michael Keaton, as the head of the Spotlight team, meeting with the new
editor, and it does seem entirely possible that in a time of the internet and tightening
budgets for media the team might be seen as being too expensive given the small
number of stories they write). But the film avoided explicitly commenting on
how far newspapers have fallen, instead telling this story as a celebration of
what newspapers could be. We live in an era of quickly written, poorly
researched, mistake-filled articles thrown onto the internet as quickly as
possible, often filled with comments from random people on Twitter as a way of
quickly adding to the article word count, so it was nice to see this as a
reminder of how important the work of the media really could be. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was also impressed with how careful the film was in
avoiding becoming a typical diatribe about how awful the Catholic church is for
allowing these things to happen. Yes, it was terrible, awful that the church
knew about these events and covered them over, but it’s also clear that there’s
plenty of guilt to go around. The film almost suggests that the entire culture
in Boston is responsible for allowing the abuse to happen in that city, even if
only by inaction. The police let priests walk out without charge, while the
justice system is used to reach settlements that keep information about the
abuse out of the public eye. Even the news media is indicted; the Spotlight
team may be the heroes of the film for doing the hard work to expose this
story, but one of our main characters is revealed to have been given
information about abuses half a decade earlier but chose not to follow it up,
while when the idea of covering this story is first raised, this team of
investigative reporters actually dismisses the idea because you just don’t go
after the church. It’s only because of the insistence of the new editor, who
has new to Boston and who is not so ingrained in the culture of the city, that
the team even considers looking into the story; previously it would never have even
occurred to them to report this story. The message is clear: whether by action
or inaction, everyone was responsible for creating an environment where this
abuse was able to happen, which then raises the obvious question: what sins,
what evils, what abuses are there that we the audience have allowed ourselves
to not see?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film also adopts an interesting view of the effects of
this cover-up on its victims. Obviously the children are the primary victims.
Fortunately the film keeps us away from much of the initial aftermath of the
abuse; that would be too tough. The voices of the victims are represented
instead by adult survivors who are able to show us how years, decades after
these crimes these people are struggling to rebuild their lives and come to
terms with what happened. But much as the film suggests that everyone bears
some responsibility for allowing an environment where these abuses can occur,
it also suggests that we’re all victims. Whether it be the devout Catholic
whose faith is damaged by the realisation of the horrors the church allowed, or
the people who have to deal with their own guilt in not taking action to stop
the abuses when they could have, there’s a degree to which we have all been made
victims by these institutions. (Wow, this really does sound like <i>The
Wire</i>.) Even the priests who committed these crimes are victims of the
cover-up. We only get one scene with a priest who is guilty of abuse, and
there’s an interesting choice made to not present him as a villain or some
hateful figure; instead he’s sad, confused, and we’re left dumbstruck at how he
explains his actions. It’s clear that by trying to keep this scandal under the
carpet the church prevented these people from coming to an understanding of
what they actually did, to the point where they weirdly become victims of the system.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also appreciated how understated the performances are. This is a film where people do their work quietly, behind the scenes, where their key interactions are conversations held in confidence, creating a comforting environment where people can tell their stories. So even though the film is filled with great stars and much-admired character actors (people like Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Jamey Sheridan, Billy Crudup, even Richard Jenkins in a pivotal but uncredited voice role) giving incredible performances, there’s almost an anonymity to their performances. I loved everything that Schreiber, Tucci, or Crudup did in the film, but it’s easy to understand why they have been largely overlooked. Mark Ruffalo is the one person in the film that gets more of the traditional big moments that tend to be recognised as “great acting”; he tends to be the person running to the courthouse to get last minute information. And indeed, he’s at the centre of the film’s one moment of heightened conflict, where he is given the type of angry monologue that is sure to be played during the Oscar ceremony. But it’s a moment that comes naturally, arising out of a moment of genuine frustration and fundamental differences; both people want the exact same thing, they want to expose this terrible scandal, but do they have enough material to report the story now, or do they take another few months investigate the story fully but risk further abuse in the meantime? It’s a horrible position for the characters to be in, and the heightened conflict in that moment is completely natural. That said, it is also a big obvious acting moment which, as soon as you see it, you know will play as Ruffalo’s acting clip in the Oscar ceremony. To me, the best moment of acting in the film was by Rachel McAdams, yet I was surprised when she was given a nomination, since as great as she is, the role doesn’t offer the kind of flash that the Academy normally responds to. Instead McAdams’ highlight scene is a beautiful, small, subtle moment; it literally involves watching her sit wordlessly while someone else silently reads. It’s a scene and a powerful performance that has stayed with me for the past few weeks, but it’s a surprise that the Academy would acknowledge it over other bigger performances.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Historically, there has tended to be a strong correlation
between the film that wins Best Picture and Best Director. Now, in this case, <i>Spotlight</i>
may be the film that should win Best Picture, but I don’t know that it should
get Best Director. Tom McCarthy is a talented director, and someone whose work
I admire, but to me the directing in <i>Spotlight</i> was deliberately
invisible. He told the story, he told the story well, but it seemed to me that
he tried to make his directorial voice as invisible as possible to allow the
story to take prominence. To the degree that McCarthy deserves praise for the
film (and he does), it’s for his work as screenwriter in shaping the material,
not necessarily his directorial efforts.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0WJkqWMQOvV2J6sGIwFed1aupvuKk2XgVmbZM27pyYGyaTxolGWpVh7r9lI80uscdRzt5Ajhqh7bPAmDpiLvZfxAq1WiIrlBwVRDsZLP9gcLr2k8FaTTSgeysmBd6ya20swxt5tn3K8EH/s1600/mad_max_fury_road.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0WJkqWMQOvV2J6sGIwFed1aupvuKk2XgVmbZM27pyYGyaTxolGWpVh7r9lI80uscdRzt5Ajhqh7bPAmDpiLvZfxAq1WiIrlBwVRDsZLP9gcLr2k8FaTTSgeysmBd6ya20swxt5tn3K8EH/s320/mad_max_fury_road.jpg" width="219" /></a></div>
To me, the best directed film of the year has to be <i>Mad
Max: Fury Road</i>, the most improbable film to be nominated for the Best
Picture Oscar this year (hell, possibly the most improbable film to get a
Picture nomination in the history of the Oscars). To see how insane it is that
this film has been nominated, just consider the premise: in a post-apocalyptic
desert wasteland, a one-armed female warrior helps a group of sex slaves escape
from a boil-covered warlord cult-leader, who sends an army of white-painted
followers in high-powered cars and monster trucks after the escapees; one of
the followers takes the titular Max along with him as a living blood bag so he
can receive a blood transfusion while on the chase.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a film that is nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here’s how insane the film is: there’s a character in the
film called the People Eater. He has a metal false nose, his feet are so
swollen by gout as to be unrecognisable as limbs, and he has cut two holes in
his suit so he can string a chain between his nipple clamps. And I had
completely forgotten this person even existed in the film until I rewatched it
recently. In any other film, the
audience would be fascinated by this bizarre character; here, he just blends
into the scenery, just one of the multitude of freaks on display; instead everyone
just wants to talk about the Doof Warrior, a blind albino mutant who wears a
leathered human face as a mask and who plays a flame-throwing electric guitar
while riding a colossal vehicle carrying four people playing massive war drums.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I repeat, this is a film that the Academy thought was one of
the best of the year. Now to be clear, I do not say that to criticise. They’re
right; the film is absolutely incredible, positively experimental in its
exploration of the potential of the action genre. But I’m genuinely surprised
(and pleased) to find that the Academy, a notoriously conservative critical
body, can recognise the quality of this bizarre piece of art.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So why do I think George Miller, returning to the world of <i>Mad
Max</i> 30 years after the last film, deserves the Best Director Oscar?
Quite simply, I don’t think there has been another film this year that has been
more the voice of the director than this one. There’s an <a href="https://vimeo.com/129314425">interesting video</a> where the
director of photography discusses shooting the film and explains that George
Miller was very clear in wanting the key piece of information in any frame to
sit in the very centre of the image. Centre-framing an image breaks the <a href="http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/rule-of-thirds.htm">rule of thirds</a>,
one of the most fundamental rules of image composition. Normally you would only
centre-frame the image where the symmetry of the image was the specific point
of the framing (see for instance <a href="https://vimeo.com/89302848">every Wes Anderson film</a>). That’s not
the case here. Instead, during shooting Miller had a very clear vision for
exactly what the film would look like in its final form, not just visually but
in how it would be edited, and how the audience would react to the filmmaking.
This meant that he knew that the on-screen image had to be centred, not for any
image-composition reason, but because with his editing style and the insanely
busy images in the film a conventional compositional style would leave the
audience searching to figure out what to look at after every cut. Shooting with
the key focus in the centre of the image allows the audience to know to zero in
on one point on the screen and stay there for the entire film. In other words,
when making the movie, the entire shooting style was set by the anticipated eye
movement of the eventual audience. I genuinely find it fascinating that Miller
had such a clear vision for the film that he had thought through and understood
how every element of the film would affect the audience, and let that guide his
filming style. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And there’s an incredible amount of inventive action in this
film, moments where Miller will show us things that we’ve never seen. And it’s not just about some new spectacular
stunt or action beat, this isn’t some <i>Fast and Furious</i> film
where the focus is just on achieving something never before done. Miller’s
focus always seems to be on ensuring that the images we’re watching aren’t only
interesting on a “how did they do that” level, but that they need to have a
beauty and an interest as images in their own right. It doesn’t matter whether
we’re looking at the face of a beautiful woman, a vast desert canyon, or a car
exploding into shards of metal, Miller finds beauty in every element of the
film. For instance, the climax of the film features characters on long poles
swinging between vehicles, and it’s a genuinely original stunt sequence that I
don’t think I’ve ever seen. And Miller uses it in inventive ways; it’s not just
a cool way for people to move between vehicles, it’s a way to heighten the
tension because there’s always a possibility that people could swoop in out of
nowhere and grab our heroes, and there’s even a great moment where we find
ourselves on top of the pole swaying from side to side. But because Miller’s
eye is always primarily focused how this will look on screen, there’s a
constant visual splendour to the image. There are moments where we’re watching
these figures swinging, and there’s a grace and a beauty to the way the poles
flex and bend as the people move from vehicle to vehicle. It’s like watching a
great acrobat performing; we’re not just impressed by the technical achievement
that we’re watching, but we’re in awe at how effortless it all appears and how magnificent
it looks.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The other thing that is surprising about <i>Fury
Road</i> is how, for all its excesses and over-the-top vision, the film
is incredibly stripped down. In the entire film, there are maybe 20 minutes of
non-action sequences, moments where the film actually stops to allow people to
just talk. The whole film is effectively one big extended action sequence,
where the story is told entirely through action. It almost becomes
experimental, as though Miller is trying to find a new way to use action beats
as a storytelling medium. And it works. Admittedly,
it’s helped by the stripped-down nature of the story; for all the bizarre grotesqueries
on display, the actual story is very basic: woman rescues girls, villain wants
girls back, chase ensues. But within that framework, Miller uses the action in
the film to discuss its core themes and to explore its characters, its world.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For example, one of my favourite scenes in the film is a
moment where Furiosa needs to shoot an approaching vehicle, but she only has
one bullet. She grabs Max, tells him to stand absolutely still, rests the end
of the gun on his shoulder, and uses his body to keep the gun steady as she
aims and fires. Watching the film, I reflected how many other films would have
a line of dialogue about how she needs Max’s help since she only has one arm
and cannot use her other arm to hold the weapon steady. But the film never does
that, because Furiosa would never acknowledge weakness; instead the film relies
on the audience having been engaged by the film and therefore understanding why
she needs to use Max’s shoulder. And the scene becomes a great character
moment; it’s nearly wordless, but in this brief moment you see these
characters, who had previously been distrusting of each other, soften and
realise they can rely on each other. It therefore becomes this pivotal moment
where the character dynamics credibly and understandably shift, but it takes
place in the context of a big suspenseful action sequence that features barely
any dialogue. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s the reason why I’m actually a little worried by the
potential influence that <i>Fury Road</i> might have on action
cinema. I have horrible visions of films inspired by <i>Fury
Road</i> trying to adopt the same constant-action-sequence approach
without recognising that it only works here because the movie plotting was
stripped to its basics and the focus was placed on building the characters.
Many action movies these days seem to abandon strong character focus in favour
of tedious plotting where we have to do this before doing that in order to find
the AllSpark which will allow us to stop them, and it just would not work with
a <i>Fury Road</i> film style. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that we
may be in for a period of incoherent non-stop action spectaculars that fail to
understand how <i>Fury Road</i> worked (much in the same way that
the Bourne films led to a decade of shakycam films that didn’t work nearly as
well). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd0lP1ZKt5VDvTx-bu511EHgsLiVviYAP0r2yW1WYZxEM71l0Kx5vwHy2c_f10lc9Y0A3JzXDzIHKqJrDH0oDCvSHeLZqwXVNnRCPxn0tPoYTI01MBNU3FTAc5bFZS1vRaFEG2MP25oue9/s1600/room.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd0lP1ZKt5VDvTx-bu511EHgsLiVviYAP0r2yW1WYZxEM71l0Kx5vwHy2c_f10lc9Y0A3JzXDzIHKqJrDH0oDCvSHeLZqwXVNnRCPxn0tPoYTI01MBNU3FTAc5bFZS1vRaFEG2MP25oue9/s320/room.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
I am reluctant to say too much about <i>Room</i>,
the most subtle and devastating of the nominated movies. The film opens on the
fifth birthday of Jack, a young boy with boundless energy and excitement for
the world of Room that he knows every inch of. And then his mother decides that
he’s now old enough to understand the truth about their world: that she was
kidnapped as a teenager and has been held captive for seven years, that outside
Room is not Outer Space but a world filled with people just like the ones he
sees on TV, and that Old Nick who brings their food is a bad man. And that’s
really all there is to say. The film certainly develops from there, going in
directions both expected and surprising (occasionally at the same time), but to
elaborate on how it develops would affect the impact of this compelling
character study.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I genuinely do not understand how you begin to make this
film. The entire film is told from the point of view of a five-year-old child
trying to deal with the discovery that his entire understanding of the world
has been utterly false, trying to grasp the fact that he is a prisoner who has
never known anything outside of his prison, unable to comprehend even the
fundamental fact that the whole world is bigger than a few metres large. I
don’t know how you even begin preparing for this film knowing that you are so
reliant on a young child to make the movie work. How do you find a child able to communicate
the weight of all this? How do you get a child to work with this material
without severely harming him? Is the child actually a good actor? Or is it just
a feat of remarkable direction and editing that they were able to bring
together the pieces and construct an incredible performance? Whatever it was
that put this on screen, the fact is that this film contains one of the most
impressive child performances ever; I struggle to think of a performance this
good from a child this young. Whether trying to comprehend the
incomprehensible, or being a typical child complaining that he can’t have what
he wants and not understanding why that’s impossible, or finding the strength
to help his mother when she is completely beaten down, eight year old Jacob
Tremblay just anchors the film with a convincing and honest performance. It’s
extraordinary to watch.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Equally great is Brie Larsen. One of the things I loved
about her character is that there’s a fundamental contradiction to her: because
she had to raise and protect her son she’s become much more mature than most
people her age, yet at the same time because she was taken as a teenager and
has been completely isolated ever since she’s emotionally still a teenager. It
gives her a huge range to play with the character, and she seems to really
relish the layers she gets to work with. Her need to protect her son paired
with the necessity to put her son at risk, the conflict that comes from having
learned to suppress her natural fury at the monster that has her, the
desperation of needing to do something, anything to escape coupled with the
knowledge that the wrong thing could get her and her son killed. She has this
incredible moment late in the film where she starts to question herself, ask
herself whether there were things that she could have done for her son to
protect him, whether her efforts to raise and protect her son were actually
selfish, and there’s genuine pain and heartbreak in the performance, held down
because she cannot risk breaking down at that moment. It’s possibly the most brutal,
emotionally devastating film moment I saw all year, played out over Larsen’s
face. It’s a smart, thoughtful,
compelling performance, and if the predictions hold true and she wins the Best
Actress award, it will be well deserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lenny Abramson was nominated for Best Director, and he
absolutely deserves it. The challenge of making the film is that it’s told from
the point of view of this young child, and it’s almost impossible for us as
people who exist and live in the world to comprehend how it would feel to live
in this tiny constrained place. So Abrahamson has to help us see the world, see
the room, as Jack sees it. It’s remarkable how he does it. The entire room was
built as a 10 foot by 10 foot practical set, with removable wall panels so that
the camera could look into the enclosed space. (Apparently they had a rule
that, while the bulk of the camera might be situated outside the set, the
camera lens that determines what we see would always be within the actual
living space, preventing the film from cheating the size of the room.) Having
constructed this set, he then shoots it, not as though it’s a single location,
but as though it’s half a dozen locations. He shoots the kitchen as though it were
different to the wardrobe; the bathroom as separate from the bedroom. As a
result you ever quite get the sense of how the room is actually laid out, how
the different pieces relate. Which means that it feels as though there could be
some vast expanse between this area and that area. Of course, we know
intellectually how confined the characters are; the film never hides that from
us, including in one scene where Jack is exercising, running from wall to wall,
a distance that he can cover in a few steps. But it never feels confined to the
audience, which is as it should be. Because Jack doesn’t know how tiny his
world is, Abrahamson keeps us away from understanding just how small their
living area actually is. I suspect many directors would give too much weight to
the constraints that come with this living condition, reminding us how tiny the
room is, but Abrahamson’s approach shows a clear understanding of the material
and how to make it work cinematically. It’s impressive work from a director
I’ve been meaning to look into for some time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Ema4Fk1GpLhhKwjrYW6xt9YMTfCswaiqblmURQ3k3sUnswZWjxLOvMCldnn6_xLvgeeH3Wnfh25A4kJCdlgrFRtE0G_6qb5C_VSkp8KDbGQ4q7xPl_dx-1w3tKMpdLZzhswPztAubT3F/s1600/big_short.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Ema4Fk1GpLhhKwjrYW6xt9YMTfCswaiqblmURQ3k3sUnswZWjxLOvMCldnn6_xLvgeeH3Wnfh25A4kJCdlgrFRtE0G_6qb5C_VSkp8KDbGQ4q7xPl_dx-1w3tKMpdLZzhswPztAubT3F/s320/big_short.jpg" width="204" /></a></div>
When making <i>The Big Short</i>, co-writer and
director Adam McKay set himself a big challenge. The film is about a group of
people in the mid-2000s who realised that there was a massive housing bubble,
that a number of financial instruments created by the major banking
institutions had both amplified that bubble and fixed a date where it would
inevitably burst, and that this would lead to the worst financial crisis since
the Great Depression. And so, at a point where no-one else can see the problem,
these people started putting in place investments that would allow them to make
money out of the crisis, in effect betting against the US economy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So there’s the challenge. This is a film that looks at a big
important issue, one with effects that still echo today, but to grasp what’s
going on you need an understanding of boring-sounding financial instruments so
complicated that even the people who created them may not have fully understood
what they were doing. You’ve got to understand how all of these different
elements and instruments interacted with each other. And you’ve got to communicate this
information in a way that is interesting and engaging to the general audience.
And even if you do that, there’s an issue of moral complexity to the story; the
entire world economy tanked, millions of people lost their homes, their jobs,
and this is the story of the people who were able to take advantage of this and
who made lots of money out of this event, so can you or should you avoid making
heroes out of these people?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In approaching this film and facing these challenges, McKay
had a big advantage: he has a solid comedy background. I think this allowed him to be very sensitive
to the response of the audience and how to focus on entertaining the audience.
I’ve seen people call it a comedy; I don’t think it really is (it’s not as
funny as that term would suggest, although it is amusing). But at every point
in the film, McKay makes the choice that will be most interesting to the
audience. As a result, a film that could be dry and complicated and lecturey
instead becomes light-hearted and enjoyable. He adopts a self-aware shooting
style, where characters break the fourth wall and address the audience to
provide key information, or where the film cuts away to different celebrities
outside of the film to provide a plain English explanation. The big advantage
of this approach was that it allowed the film to avoid common movie clichés,
which in turn strengthened the film. Often movies will resort to having
incredibly smart characters ask for something to be explained to them as though
they’re five years old, even though they should already understand that thing,
in order that the audience can hear the explanation. But that always undercuts
the characters, because suddenly that person seems incompetent or stupid. However, in this film the characters always
understand what’s happening or what they’re talking about (unless their lack of
understanding is the point of the scene), and instead we get cutaways to
Anthony Bourdain making a stew or Selena Gomez playing blackjack while
explaining how these activities are analogous to what we’re watching. Suddenly,
we the audience clearly understand what’s happening, and the film’s characters
still appear smart, because they’ve always known what we’ve just been told.
(Admittedly, not all of those cutaways work. The first time the device is used,
we find Margot Robbie in a bubble bath; her being in the bath bears no relation
to sub-prime mortgages, so that moment begins feeling rather leery in a way
that was uncomfortable. But for the most part, it works.) <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another thing I was impressed by was one early moment where
a contrived situation occurred to give characters information, and they stop
the film to explain “that’s not what actually happened, here’s what actually
happened, but it’s longer and more complicated and boring than what we’re
showing you.” It was open about moments where the film simplified and
fictionalised the true events for narrative convenience. That smart thing about
this is that it wins a lot of trust in the audience; unlike <i>The Revenant</i>,
which seemed to fictionalise the true story to such a degree that I questioned
the truth of almost everything that happened in the film, the fact that this
film was so open when it fudged the true events bought itself a lot of capital.
Suddenly we believe the film will be honest with us, so later on in the film
when an improbable over-the-top movie scene takes place, they have the ability
to tell us “this actually did happen” and we can trust them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
McKay’s other strength in making the film is the fact that
he is ANGRY at the fact that the financial crisis occurred, and he doesn’t
attempt to hide it. This means that, even though some of the characters are somewhat
sympathetic, McKay is able to keep the audience at a distance from them. We’re
always aware of the level of damage being inflicted on the world, and while the
film’s main characters may not have been responsible for causing the crisis,
these are people who made millions of dollars from the devastation that would
follow. As a result, whenever the characters begin to forget the reality of
what is about to come they are harshly and forcefully reminded what is actually
happening. McKay’s anger at the situation really only becomes intrusive at the
end, in an annoying postscript where we’re all told how all the people who were
responsible for the collapse were arrested and sent to jail, before McKay stops
and tells us that no, actually the people who caused it all to happen are still
in their same positions, are still making millions of dollars for themselves,
and, oh, are beginning to offer “new” financial instruments that look an awful
lot like the instruments that led to the crisis in the first place. I don’t
disagree with McKay’s anger over this matter, but it’s the one point where his
anger got in the way of entertainment; the bitter sarcastic tone of the
postscript never quite fits with the rest of the film. Still it’s a minor
blemish on an otherwise solid film. There are probably better films that could
have been nominated but weren’t, but I really did appreciate <i>The Big
Short</i>’s inventiveness in finding a way to make a truly entertaining
film revolving around collateralised debt obligations, so I’m pleased with its
nomination.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8dzqCWS9oQoe2xNTgxKcdeTFN3Lv8Y9wkY3k1QDYCEsHyKBRNwqbjPp9h95Cji2Vui7Vv6NfZMXV5a0oMGw0cVgxgx4pxyGIn5CeziKUPlYHp4f78ABAPkidZvh1h7z2T4eIQCkr4wyRY/s1600/brooklyn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8dzqCWS9oQoe2xNTgxKcdeTFN3Lv8Y9wkY3k1QDYCEsHyKBRNwqbjPp9h95Cji2Vui7Vv6NfZMXV5a0oMGw0cVgxgx4pxyGIn5CeziKUPlYHp4f78ABAPkidZvh1h7z2T4eIQCkr4wyRY/s320/brooklyn.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
I was probably not in a good place when I went to see <i>Brooklyn</i>.
I’d rather ambitiously decided to walk down to a newly opened cinema to see the
film, which was a mistake; the walk itself (about 4km) was the length of my
regular walk, so should have been quite achievable, were it not for the fact
that it was the middle of the day on one of the hottest days of the summer. I
arrived at the cinema ten minutes before the screening, absolutely exhausted,
boiling like you wouldn’t believe, feet in pain from shoes that were not up to
a walk of that distance, and with the dawning realisation that I was going to
have to walk all the way home again in a couple of hours. All of which meant I
walked into <i>Brooklyn</i> focused on a million things other than
the film was about to see.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then <i>Brooklyn</i> started, and I fell in
love with the film. Saoirse Ronan is just wonderful as Eilis, a young woman who
sees no opportunity or future in her small home town in Ireland, so jumps when
offered the chance to move to New York. And that’s basically the film; this
woman discovering a world she never dreamed of seeing, building her life,
finding opportunities to pursue her dreams, develop her career, and fall in
love. But primarily what I found myself caring most about was this story of a
young woman trying to find her identity; is she an Irish woman living in New
York, or a New Yorker who came from Ireland? And it’s that constant pull that
gives much of the film its power.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To me, the thing that I found particularly special about <i>Brooklyn</i>
was that it was fascinated by the immigrant experience, and how much the world
has changed in such a short time. Whether you live in the United States like Eilis,
or in New Zealand as I do, the fact is that these are countries that were founded
by immigrants; people who put aside their entire existence to move vast
distances to build a new life. And sure, we know that centuries ago travel between
countries would take weeks and months, but I loved the reminder that as
recently as 60 years ago the distances between countries were still massive
barriers. You might move to a new country, and build your life, fall in love,
get married, have children, and your family and friends, the people who are
closest to you, might never get to see your new life, might never get to meet
your new family and friends. To them, these people might simply a name in a
letter or a voice on the phone. People always talk about how the world has
changed, and it certainly has, but in an era of cheap air travel, social media,
and Skype, it’s remarkable to see how truly isolating it could be to move to
another country, even as recently as for people in my grandparent’s generation.
Early in the film, it’s commented that of course Eilis is going to live in
Brooklyn, since that’s where all the Irish immigrants go to live. And so we
understand how these strong cultural communities can build up in large cities,
because when you are so isolated from everything you’ve ever known there’s a
strong draw to anything that feels familiar. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So much of what I loved about <i>Brooklyn</i> is
just in the sheer power of its beauty. I can honestly say that I did not see a
more beautiful film than <i>Brooklyn</i> in the last 12 months. Indeed,
I was surprised to realise that the film didn’t even have a nomination for its
cinematography; there’s a richness to the film that I just found myself
constantly in awe of. And the costumes; <a href="http://www.instyle.com/reviews-coverage/movies/7-gorgeous-50s-outfits-look-when-you-watch-movie-brooklyn">ah, the costumes</a>.
To be honest, I most likely might never have noticed the costumes were it not
for the fact that while walking to the cinema I was listening to a podcast
where one of the hosts referred to having seen the film and praising its use of
costumes. In particular, she had noted the unusual decision to reuse the
clothing; it’s normal in most films for characters to seemingly have a
limitless wardrobe, able to supply the perfect clothing for every scene, but
here a point is made that Eilis has limited clothing and has to rewear
everything. Having heard that comment, I did pay attention to the costumes, and
was struck by just how stunning the 50’s-style clothing truly was. I developed
a weird affection for her clothing choices; I like this outfit, that outfit
doesn’t quite work for me. There was even a point where she was making a decision
that I was disappointed by, and one of the things that I was particularly
bothered by was the fact that she was doing this while wearing this clothing
that had certain associations and memories attached to it that made her choice
feel particularly like a betrayal.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But for all its visual beauty, the film’s most powerful and
beautiful moment is found in a scene in a grey room with grey people, where
Eilis is simply an observer who gets forgotten about. The thing about Eilis is
that her story is a success story; we finish the film with a clear
understanding that Eilis has come through this crisis of identity, knows who
she is, and is in a place where we can be sure she’s going to be okay.
Obviously that wasn’t the case for all immigrants. Which is why the best scene
in the film takes place at a soup kitchen, where a group of men, no doubt all
of them having left Ireland filled with hope for a better life but whose dreams
were never realised, mournfully sing a traditional Irish song. And the film
just pauses to take in the scene. We’re told that these are the men who built
New York City, and we find ourselves reflecting on how much of our world today
may have been built on the efforts of people who might have been effectively
abandoned and forgotten. I appreciated the film pausing to give those
characters their moment of expression, longing for a home that they miss and
will never see again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There has been an announcement that work is underway on a TV
spin-off starring Julie Walters reprising her role as Mrs Kehoe, the deeply
conservative owner of the boarding house where Eilis lives, and I find that
decision quite interesting. To be honest, I liked, but didn’t love, Walters’
performance. By itself it was a lot of fun, but her scenes were broader and had
a more specifically comedic tone than the gentle tone of much of the film,
which for me kept her scenes from feeling fully integrated into the film. But I
like the idea of doing a series with Walters, where Mrs Kehoe can set the tone
of the piece rather than having her seem at odds with the whole.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmzSR_w4FQ3rOXsnCB_nRau7YiroDZ2y_MloE7EVc6Q-tFDBpq-MLt1hfrkTkMmY225QT60MQqGj0pANfA3NG8OvCI_A522bS1ncQSUeGV_HnMhgD3DqYf3RZcxLwk1kF7s50UhjheB0z8/s1600/martian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmzSR_w4FQ3rOXsnCB_nRau7YiroDZ2y_MloE7EVc6Q-tFDBpq-MLt1hfrkTkMmY225QT60MQqGj0pANfA3NG8OvCI_A522bS1ncQSUeGV_HnMhgD3DqYf3RZcxLwk1kF7s50UhjheB0z8/s320/martian.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
I think I’ll keep my comments on <i>The
Martian</i> fairly brief, since there’s a good likelihood that you’ll
have already seen, or at least familiar with, the film about an abandoned astronaut
trying to survive for years on Mars. (The film is, after all, the most
successful of this year’s nominees, was released several months ago, and was a
genuine blockbuster hit.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The thing I really appreciated was that the film was smart,
and that it treated the audience as though they were smart. The original book
was known for exploring the actual science that would underlie a person’s
efforts to survive in those circumstances, and the film does a great job in
doing so as well. But it does so with careful consideration, understanding that
the audience watching the film is likely to have some basic knowledge of the
world. This meant that, in one moment when Mark Watney has to use hexadecimal
numbers to communicate they could rely on the audience understanding (or at
least figuring out) what was happening without explanation, and instead they
could focus their exposition on explaining the science behind making water on a
planet where there is none. There are a few moments where it does feel a little
too expository (one moment, where Watney holds a document that he wrote up to
the camera to prove that he’s a botanist, seems a little silly when you
remember that in the world of the film the only people who could ever see the video
will already know his background), but for the most part, the film approaches its
storytelling with care and thought. This
meant that I watched an entire film about a guy who survives for years on a
desolate planet, and the only time that I ever questioned the believability of
his survival was literally in the final few seconds before his rescue, when I
felt they pushed one step too far. But for the most part, this film seemed like
a genuine exploration of what it would take to survive in an alien environment,
and a celebration of the knowledge and understanding that could allow this to
be achieved. And it was so satisfying to watch a well-made intelligent blockbuster
approach its audience as thinking adults. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ridley Scott is a great visual director, who has given us
some of the most distinctive filmic visions in cinema history. Here he’s doing
some strong work, and seems to really be enjoying playing with the idea of one
man set against the vastness of an entire planet. I managed to see the film in
3D, and while I doubt it would be anywhere near as effective on most home
setups, in cinema the use of 3D was truly impressive, emphasising the sense of
a planet that could go on forever, that is vast and threatening, that seems
impossible to traverse or to escape. It’s a fine reminder of just how strong Scott
can be, and some of his best work since 2000.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unfortunately Scott can be a director whose ability to pick
projects that allow him to live up to his talent is not always strong. (Which
is how we get <i>Robin Hood</i> and <i>Exodus: Gods and
Kings</i>.) Fortunately, in <i>The Martian</i>, he had a
script by Drew Goddard. Goddard started his career writing episodes in the
final seasons of both <i>Angel</i> and <i>Buffy</i>, and
he later co-wrote the brilliant <i>The Cabin In The Woods</i> with <i>Buffy</i>
creator Joss Whedon (a film Goddard also directed). The world of vampire slayers
and zombie killers might seem miles away from a hard-science-based adventure, but
I do feel that Goddard’s work in the Whedonverse allowed Goddard to develop the
strengths he would need to write <i>The Martian</i>. After all, one
of the most distinctive marks of Whedon’s work is the careful balancing of
genuine humour to lighten the tone without ever undercutting the drama, and (as
the Golden Globes reminded us when they categorised the film incorrectly as a
comedy), <i>The Martian</i> has a strong sense of humour running
through the film that keeps the film light and fun and entertaining. Without
that tone, the film would have turn into simply a punishing survival story; it
would in effect have been <i>The Revenant</i> on Mars, and no one wants
that. Instead the film becomes a piece of pure entertainment, a thrilling film
where we’re not worried about whether or not Watney is going to die, but rather
we’re excited to see what he’s going to do to survive. It’s surprising how much
a few dumb jokes can change the entire tone of a film, but they really can.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicy_fnUWkBkJ9L5GTEr65sjN6iydgW4BprdjhZYVYpI_rFzISXW9YKeQXT4h9j1SODDlYo6yl3de7Drbd6ylU1Nt3BWC8Da8x1cl6pcfzhPHMfnmbGhdCIV9Us5FZqFcngsQRMvPGjEx0s/s1600/bridge_of_spies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicy_fnUWkBkJ9L5GTEr65sjN6iydgW4BprdjhZYVYpI_rFzISXW9YKeQXT4h9j1SODDlYo6yl3de7Drbd6ylU1Nt3BWC8Da8x1cl6pcfzhPHMfnmbGhdCIV9Us5FZqFcngsQRMvPGjEx0s/s320/bridge_of_spies.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
The film I’m most surprised to see in the list of nominees
would have to be <i>Bridge of Spies</i>. Which is not to say that
it’s a bad film; it’s a solid, well-made, entertaining example of
based-on-a-true-story cinema. I enjoyed the film, and if you’re interested in
the film it is worth seeing. But it’s by
no means “one of the best movies of the year”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Based on a true story, Tom Hanks stars as lawyer James
Donovan, who is tasked with trying to defend Rudolf Abel, an older man charged
with having worked as a Soviet spy for decades. Donovan does his best to defend
Abel, and in so doing becomes one of the most hated people in America, but
ultimately is only able to save the man from execution. But not long after the
trial an American spy plane is lost and the pilot captured by the Soviets, and
Donovan finds himself travelling to East Germany to negotiate an exchange of
Abel for the pilot.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And in that summary, you can see a bit of the problem in the
film. There are really two stories in the film: the story of a lawyer whose
conscience forces him to provide the best defence possible for his client,
despite great pressure from people who want him to put in a token effort; and the
story of an ordinary man who find s himself inadvertently thrust into
international politics, trying to negotiate a settlement between two superpower
nations. Both of those are interesting stories. The problem is that the film is
clearly more interested in the second story, and treats the trial story as a
necessary evil, needed to establish why Donovan is even involved, but otherwise
something to be rushed through. And while I enjoyed that second half, I also
found the first half fascinating. There’s an inherent conflict in that story:
Donovan is specifically hired because it will look like they’re giving Abel the
best defence, but everyone is very clear that they don’t really want him to try
too hard, and the fact that he actually does try to win the case winds up
alienating him from his friends, his colleagues, and the general public. I
suspect one reason why the film rushes over that part of the story may be
because there’s not that much suspense in it; there’s never any doubt that Abel
will be found guilty, given that the entire premise of the film revolves around
a prisoner exchange. But stories can work even where the outcome is inevitable,
and the time spent with Hanks’ character, fighting with people who outwardly
present themselves as being concerned about the constitution but who privately
would look to dismiss it out of convenience, is genuinely gripping. So I can’t
help feeling disappointed that the film treated those early trial scenes merely
as a necessary setup for the film. It would have been better had they evenly
split the film, with the first half being the trial story where we get to know
the characters, and then leading into the more suspenseful second half story.
It might not have fit within a conventional three-act structure, but at least
it would not have felt like the film was skipping over some of the most
interesting material in the story.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The big mystery about the film is the involvement of the
Coen brothers. The film was originally pitched and written by Matt Charman,
with Joel and Ethan Coen coming in to work on later drafts, and I do not really
understand why. The Coens are some of our most distinctive filmmakers working
today, and it’s weird to see them working on a film that seems so unmemorable.
Other than the script possibly being slightly funnier than a film of this type
would normally be, there’s nothing to really distinguish this script as coming
from the Coens. It feels weirdly anonymous, and I do not understand why they
would want to do something so invisible.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Much of the attention around the film has been focussed on
Mark Rylance, playing the Russian spy Abel. And I can’t help feeling that the
praise has been a little overblown. It’s a good performance, enjoyable to
watch, and he does make the character genuinely likable, so that the formation
of the friendship between Abel and Donovan convinces, but it’s very restrained,
almost too much so. Abel never seems bothered by anything. He seems overly resigned to his fate, to the
point where he seems completely detached from the consequences of everything
that happens. He’ll discuss his own likely death with a shrug. And the film
makes a little running joke of his detachment; whenever someone suggests that
Abel should be worried about something or reacting differently to a
development, he always replies “Would it help?” Which is funny, although the
joke does get overplayed by the end. But
it reached a point where it stopped feeling like Abel was an actual person, and
he just became this cypher who seemed so disconnected from the film that it was
like his character had almost been pasted on top of the movie. Rylance was
certainly memorable and likable, but never really convinced me as a person who
existed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was, however, impressed with Tom Hanks. It’s not a
particularly revelatory performance, this isn’t <i>Captain Phillips</i>
or anything of that level, but I really enjoyed everything he brought to the
film. The film throws a massive barrier in our way when we first meet Donovan;
he’s working as an insurance lawyer, and we’re introduced to him arguing that
his client, an insurance company, shouldn’t have to make full payment on a claim
where the insured party hit five people with his car, on the basis that there
was only one accident involving five victims, rather than five separate
claimable incidents. And he makes the argument very well. There’s a degree to
which that choice risks alienating us from our hero right from the start;
there’s something fundamentally uncomfortable about being asked to side with
someone making that type of argument, and probably the only reason we still
kind of like Donovan at the end of the scene is because he’s Tom Hanks and
everyone loves Tom Hanks. But as the film goes on, it becomes clear why we were
given such an uncomfortable introduction to the character; it’s a defining
characteristic of the man that he will fight to his utmost ability to offer the
strongest argument he can find to achieve the best outcome for his clients,
regardless of our moral feelings about the clients, because that is his job and
he fundamentally believes in the right for everyone to have the best legal
counsel they can get. It’s demonstrated by his arguments during Abel’s trial
and sentencing, and crucially it’s demonstrated during the tense negotiations
in East Berlin, where Donovan finds himself playing off tensions between the
Soviets and the East Germans in order to improve the outcome for the US. I was
genuinely impressed with the way the film managed to take a man trying to help
an insurance company avoid paying its obligations and turned that behaviour
into a characteristic that deserved to be celebrated.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the big joys of the film was the sense of location,
the way the film takes you back to the early days after the building of the
Berlin wall. There’s a moment early on where one character just crosses from
West to East Germany while the wall is being built, jumping over the blocks
that mark the first level of the wall. It’s fascinating to see, to get the
sense that people didn’t really understand what was even happening. East and
West Germany had been divided for over a decade before the wall was
constructed, and so it’s interesting to watch and ponder how people would have
reacted. In an era where the two countries had been theoretically divided for
years without any practical separation, it must have been difficult to truly
understand the effect that building the wall would have had on the Soviet side,
and (from memory) most people in the film didn’t seem too bothered by the need
to leave before they became trapped. It’s really only once that country is
completely isolated that it becomes clear just how terrible the country would
become under isolation, and I was fascinated by this sense of oppression and
weariness in the country.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So it’s a fun film, with a lot of good points. But the simple
fact is, this film would probably have been forgotten had Spielberg not
directed the film. Now, Spielberg is a great director, but this is decidedly
average work from him, and while that still keeps it as one of the better films
of the year, it’s just not one of the best. And there are other films that
should have been nominated in its place. I haven’t yet seen <i>Carol</i>,
which was widely expected to be nominated, so I cannot comment in its
exclusion, but I do know that that I had been convinced that <i>Inside
Out</i> (possibly the best film ever made by Pixar) or <i>Creed</i>
(which managed to revive the <i>Rocky</i> franchise, make it
relevant, and return it to the emotionally honest heights of the first film)
would be nominated. I would also have loved to see <i>The Hateful Eight</i>
earn a nomination; I know a lot of people dislike that movie, but I thought it
was fascinating, both as an exploration of how much tension can build in a film
before release, and thematically in its examination of how we allow the stories
we believe to govern our behaviour. All
of these films could have deservedly been proclaimed one of the best movies of
the year, and it’s just a shame that they were overlooked in favour of a solid,
but generally unremarkable, film from a filmmaker who has done much better work.<o:p></o:p></div>
Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-23705345076706305502015-07-23T22:26:00.002+12:002023-03-15T23:36:03.242+13:00Dawn ReduxSo here's the thing,<br />
<br />
This year's film festival starts tomorrow, so I really should get around to posting my comments on the films I saw during the 2014 film festival. These comments were all originally posted on Facebook within a couple of days of seeing each film, so they reflect my initial thoughts and responses while each film was still fresh in my mind. They were also all written in something of a rush, so are not the most eloquent pieces of writing. Looking at the list of films, it's astonishing how so many of these screenings feel like they took place just a couple of months ago, while there are other films that feel like they occurred years and years ago.<br />
<br />
<i>[Comments on 29 films follow after the jump] </i><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCXmOHbmZtxF-WHYnlQ-qQpAlaV6cllSzAf4bQNzHW0yWdF8ww6b9JBXTZu45rwk0k6Uv1vczTCKmMm_uXSj3wJ2qmdqK0bYku9xFATZT3Zb_jNkdtnnyiRWj11t4GbkUluv2-2X5l9b89/s1600/skeleton_twins.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCXmOHbmZtxF-WHYnlQ-qQpAlaV6cllSzAf4bQNzHW0yWdF8ww6b9JBXTZu45rwk0k6Uv1vczTCKmMm_uXSj3wJ2qmdqK0bYku9xFATZT3Zb_jNkdtnnyiRWj11t4GbkUluv2-2X5l9b89/s320/skeleton_twins.jpg" width="207" /></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i>The Skeleton Twins</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First film of
the festival was a good, if somewhat generic, example of the typical indie
comedy-drama. The film stars Kristen Wiig as a woman about to commit suicide
when she hears that her gay brother, played by Bill Hader, has just tried to
kill himself. So she decides to invite him to stay with her and her husband,
even though the two siblings haven’t spoken in ten years. So it’s a standard indie
setup – two troubled people are forced together and wind up helping each other
through their problems. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What makes the film worth watching are the lead performances
by Hader and Wiig. The two of them started on <i>Saturday Night Live</i> at the same
time in 2005, and worked together on that show for seven years, and that
long-term connection aids the film because they’re able to bring these years of
real-world relationship to the characters. They feel like they have gone
through things, like they have their own way of speaking to each other and
making each other laugh, and like they know how to push each other’s buttons
when they’re angry at each other. If anything, they’re possibly too close – I
started to wonder why they hadn’t spoken to each other for ten years, and while
the eventual explanation made complete sense, it then made me wonder whether
the two had fallen too easily into that comfortable relationship and whether
there should have been more tension in the earlier scenes. But is that a fault of the acting, or are the actors just doing what's on the page and the fault is with the writing or directing? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the performances are on the whole very strong. There’s a
basic principle that a serious actor will often struggle to be funny, but if
you’re able to achieve as a comedic actor, you’ve generally got the ability to
do great dramatic work, and both Wiig and Hader demonstrate the truth of that
principle. While they are often very funny in the film (the film bought a lot
of goodwill early in the film with a realistic but laugh-out-loud exchange
about the ending of <i>Marley and Me</i>), there are points in the film where they
reach a level of emotional rawness that I was impressed with. I was similarly
impressed by Luke Wilson, as Wiig’s husband –the role calls for a
realistically-likably-goofy performance, and Wilson throws himself into the
role with an enthusiasm that I’ve seldom seen from him. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally, while the script was somewhat generic, I did like
that it treated us like adults able to work out what was happening. It didn’t
feel the need to give us every detail of the backstory, leaving large parts
only barely sketched in, and even where the film does provide its audience with
key information (such as the reason for the estrangement), it knows to hold on
to that information until it can achieve the most emotional impact. It may seem
like a strange thing to praise, but in the modern cinematic world so many
movies seem to feel the need to explain every single piece of character
information as soon as possible for fear of losing the audience, so it was nice
to be at a film where the filmmaker’s approach was to tell us what we need to
know and then leave us to figure out the rest.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the whole, an enjoyable film experience, but I am hoping
for much more from the festival.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaD4bCm1r3kUdChavMcKEzk6tGfRnmi1_58TqEgNEAbXSgbYRsRKIuiPuW9ULQ54G9SLOgltllg4t-jqP0qmZ5WmLNGsJWoh2tXbrvyr5zi2IgzzjJIGMksf-GkvBPLE1Ynz71lyGn6uA5/s1600/kingdom-of-dreams-and-madness.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaD4bCm1r3kUdChavMcKEzk6tGfRnmi1_58TqEgNEAbXSgbYRsRKIuiPuW9ULQ54G9SLOgltllg4t-jqP0qmZ5WmLNGsJWoh2tXbrvyr5zi2IgzzjJIGMksf-GkvBPLE1Ynz71lyGn6uA5/s320/kingdom-of-dreams-and-madness.jpg" width="218" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I
went into the film expecting a documentary about Studio Ghibli, the Japanese
animation studio behind films like <i>My Neighbour Totoro</i>, <i>Spirited Away</i>, and
<i>Grave of the Fireflies</i>. In reality, it’s more of a documentary about Hayao
Miyazaki. And that’s entirely understandable – Miyazaki is a great artist, and
arguably one of the most important figures in Japanese animation. But it feels
like it’s just leaving too much unsaid or out of the film. Isao Takahata, who
co-founded Ghibli with Miyazaki, is barely in the film, although he’s talked
about quite a lot, usually in the context of how his newest film is once again
running over time and over budget – Miyazaki often says that he thinks Takahata doesn’t want to finish his films (it’s worth noting that Takahata’s film, <i>The Tale
of Princess Kaguya</i>, has actually been finished and also screened at the
festival). Takahata’s absence is possibly understandable (he does work at an
entirely different campus from Miyazaki), but it would have been nice to get
more insight into his working process, and his view of the evidently troubled
relationship between the studio’s two key figures. Instead, the film is focused
on the process of making Miyazaki’s final film, the flawed <i>The Wind Rises</i>,
ending with the announcement of Miyazaki’s retirement.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film often feels like a hagiography of Miyazaki. (There’s
even a moment where they go to some convention, and find someone cosplaying as
Miyazaki – he’s that much of a public hero.) And I’m not wanting to get some
hard-hitting expose of the man, but it does feel somewhat whitewashed. There’s
a moment in the film that hints at something more uncomfortable – one artist
comments that if you’ve got anything in yourself that you want to protect,
working for Ghibli may not be for you – but that’s quickly put aside. It’s as
though the filmmaker didn’t want to follow any threads that are left for her.
There’s even a comment that Miyazaki makes where he notes that his retirement
announcement started with the words “I intend to work for another ten years”
which, given that <i>The Wind Rises</i> is supposed to be his last film, left me
wanting more explanation, but none is given. It’s just another thread left
unexplored.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was a good film. The insights into all stages of the
animation process were enjoyable, and as a celebration of animation as an art,
it’s genuine in its enthusiasm – there’s a wonderful moment towards the end
where Miyazaki looks out the window and describes how animation can find wonder
and amazement in even the most humdrum of worlds. But it felt very much like a
corporate PR exercise, and I would have liked something a bit more substantial.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYkj5WXeFqs2LS-HUhVNXGGifd59ZfjfvCsWZE_fqjQRLayA2Q0De8xX1xHDZE7hZ73nsFboiXoFPwD1E0SjRo1Ew_1l2YF1HI1vgdGNZraZkw08rBuYkLMs5tGivQaVXYFMq0szIcuxu_/s1600/jodorowskys_dune.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYkj5WXeFqs2LS-HUhVNXGGifd59ZfjfvCsWZE_fqjQRLayA2Q0De8xX1xHDZE7hZ73nsFboiXoFPwD1E0SjRo1Ew_1l2YF1HI1vgdGNZraZkw08rBuYkLMs5tGivQaVXYFMq0szIcuxu_/s320/jodorowskys_dune.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Jodorowsky's Dune</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t really
know a lot about <i>Dune</i>. I’ve never read the book, and I only ever saw the film
once, which was awful, and incomprehensible in a different way to the way most
David Lynch films are incomprehensible. But there is this one legendary film
version of <i>Dune</i>, a version that was never made but that arguably has influenced
popular culture immeasurably. In the mid-1970s, avant-garde Chilean filmmaker Alejandro
Jodorowsky wanted to make an incredible film, an important film, a sacred film,
a consciousness-altering film, a film that would change the minds of all the
youth of the world. His cast would have included Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, and
Salvador Dali. He would have had different bands, bands like Pink Floyd,
provide the music for different worlds. Major figures in science fiction design
(including HR Giger, who later designed the Xenomorph for <i>Alien</i>) did some
incredible production design work. It would have been a massive spectacle like
I don’t think we’ve seen, even these days. Realistically it probably could
never have been achieved in the 70s. But still, what a film it might have been.
All of the art work and the storyboards for the entire film were bound together,
and then Jodorowsky tried to convince a movie studio to fund the project.
No-one did. And like that, Jodorowsky’s <i>Dune</i> was never made.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The documentary is an intriguing look at this project,
simultaneously telling the story of the process of putting the project together
and trying to capture what the eventual film might have been. It glories in the
what-if, tries to visualise and capture what some sequences might have looked
like, marvels at the incredible artwork produced for the film. It’s not a
telling of the film – I have no idea how all the pieces we’re shown would have
fit together – but it’s a glimpse into this project. And at the centre of the
film is Jodorowsky, this insane figure whose enthusiasm and excitement for what
might have been is infectious and exciting. And they trace a clear and
convincing line from Jodorowsky’s project through to modern-day science fiction
– the would-be special effects artist on <i>Dune</i> went on to write <i>Alien</i> and brought many of
the key personnel onto that film; without <i>Alien</i>, you don’t get <i>Blade Runner</i>,
and from there it’s a straight line to <i>The Matrix</i> and modern science fiction.
The film possibly stretches a little too much when it reaches for connections
between <i>Dune</i> and moments in other films (how likely is it that Spielberg was
referencing the <i>Dune</i> storyboards when he shot the wrath of God climax of
<i>Raiders</i>?), but it’s interesting to ponder how different the cinematic world
might have been without this one project.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t know whether Jodorowsky’s <i>Dune</i> would have actually
been a good film – it just seems too bonkers. I certainly doubt that, had it
been made, it would have replaced <i>Star Wars</i> as the biggest science fiction film
ever (as someone suggests) – I don’t think a film like the one Jodorowsky was
making would have had the same mass appeal as <i>Star Wars</i>. But it could have been
one of the great cult movies of all time, and I want to have seen it. Towards
the end, Jodorowsky himself notes that it could be made today, that modern-day
animation could be perfect for making the film, and he would be happy for
someone to make it. Please, someone, make that happen. Make that happen now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKqG2IcHL4X3YvnmNRKqzn_5-BSLpYN5eoWQiDvaxjWI3UYOFTL6dU2JQJaugbd8pLPt0BDNWkRGlb8MKGNFDcuxg0RGWp7WfzKfvoucPDBTnS1rWOoCWczgj3N6Z_0mlssqkUJnJUv1Xu/s1600/under_the_skin.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKqG2IcHL4X3YvnmNRKqzn_5-BSLpYN5eoWQiDvaxjWI3UYOFTL6dU2JQJaugbd8pLPt0BDNWkRGlb8MKGNFDcuxg0RGWp7WfzKfvoucPDBTnS1rWOoCWczgj3N6Z_0mlssqkUJnJUv1Xu/s320/under_the_skin.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Under the Skin</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My first great film
of this year’s festival. Scarlett Johansson stars as an alien who drives around
Scotland in a van. She picks up young men, brings them back to her house, where
they remove their clothes, and then… well, it’s hard to describe, but there’s
blackness, and a void, and the ground turns to liquid, and a red light in the
distance, and bodies of skin with no innards, and what the hell is this? The
film is based on a novel, and my guess is that the novel actually has a plot
and actually explains what’s going on. The film certainly doesn’t; it’s
deliberately and wilfully oblique, as though the director took the events or
general storyline of the novel, but stripped it of all detail, of all
explanation. There’s never any infodump moment, never any moment where we’re
forced to focus on the plot mechanics (in fact, I’m not entirely sure whether
the film even establishes that she is an alien before the final scene, or
whether I just understood that to be the case because I knew the premise of the movie going
in). We can interpret answers to some questions – I have my ideas of what they
do with the men, or who the motorcyclists are – but there are a lot of
questions I don’t begin to have an answer to, and even where I have my own
answer to a question, I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in the audience has a
different interpretation. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The thing is, without those plot details, we’re left with something
that almost a tone poem, just a series of scenes with nothing to focus on
but the emotional journey of the character. Which is remarkable. Johansson is
the film, and it’s a brutally-raw performance. In the first half, the character
is a shell of a person, becoming who she needs to be to achieve the ends
necessary, and then the film pivots, and we start to glimpse the real
character. It’s quite clearly exploring the idea of female exploitation – she
is a character whose looks as an attractive woman exist not as part of her, but
for the purpose of bringing pleasure to men around her, so that she can lure
them back in order to further the goals of the other aliens, the only
representative of which is a male. When the film turns and we start to see who
she is outside of this role that is imposed on her, it becomes this
heartbreaking character piece of this person trying to find a place in a world
from which she is entirely separated.<o:p></o:p><br />
I feel like I need to acknowledge the music in the film,
which is incredible, although not something I would ever want to listen to
again. It’s deliberately designed to set the viewer on edge, it feels alien and
threatening. There’s this one piece that sounds like it is played with violin
harmonics that accompanies some of the more predatory sequences that just preys
on the viewer’s emotions – by the end, it almost felt like I had been through
the Ludovico technique, and the merest sound of that theme creates an
instinctive recoil. (Indeed, I went to look at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S1yhSp5jaI" target="_blank">movie’s trailer</a>, and when that particular piece of music plays over the film title, it
seriously made me feel sick, such was the strength of the association I had
with that music.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I feel like I’ve got a lot to say about the film, but I
either don’t know what to say or how to say it – and I know there’s a lot in
the film that I haven’t yet worked out are in there. I feel like this is a film
that is just going to sit with me, that I’ll think about over the coming weeks
and months. Walking out of the film, I wasn’t even sure if I liked it, but
mulling it over overnight, I think I love it, and I expect my response to it
may grow even stronger over time. I’m excited to revisit the film outside of
the context of the festival, where I can have time to reflect on it without the
pressure of moving on to the next film. It’s not a film for most people, but I
really feel like I connected to it. And that’s what you want in a great film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-TE8rotEgCRgHsH5UT5WEzhQT6v3Tap06j6CJqFwm7yj6Hj-g3t9Su6CbJazPWSfIf8XJFy1u_g82WUJ1X_VLgp470e92wErViLspM6CKAaKbF0zIbDTltrzK1qnLhAhIdQb9lgmLkFrS/s1600/in-order-of-disappearance.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-TE8rotEgCRgHsH5UT5WEzhQT6v3Tap06j6CJqFwm7yj6Hj-g3t9Su6CbJazPWSfIf8XJFy1u_g82WUJ1X_VLgp470e92wErViLspM6CKAaKbF0zIbDTltrzK1qnLhAhIdQb9lgmLkFrS/s320/in-order-of-disappearance.jpg" width="223" /></a></div>
<o:p><b><i>In Order of Disappearance </i></b></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An
entertaining black-comedy thriller from Norway, the film was certainly a lot of
fun, but it sadly undercut itself a bit too much,. The film revolves around
pillar of the community Stellan Skarsgard, whose son dies one night, seemingly of
an overdose. But Skarsgard insists his son was not a drug addict, and when he
discovers that his son was murdered, he starts hunting down the people who
killed his son, killing them, and working its way up the chain. But his actions
are misinterpreted as being the first shots in a turf war between rival drug
organisations, and pretty soon the bodies are piling up faster than they can be
tracked.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Skarsgard’s performance is excellent, as one might expect.
He’s called on to do a lot, as what emotional weight the film has is carried by
him. He’s the embarrassed citizen of the year, the grieving father, the pained
husband, the man with a gun in his mouth, the figure of vengeance, even the
compassionate kidnapper. The problem is that the film around him doesn’t quite
work tonally. It’s very funny, frequently laugh-out-loud, but there’s something
about the way it moves between the tones that doesn’t quite work. Perhaps it’s
in the way the main bad guy is presented to the audience. It’s hard to take a
bakery magnate seriously as a villain, especially when we’re constantly seeing him
belittled by his ex-wife and when even the furniture in his house is so absurd
that it elicits laughter on first sight. After we’ve laughed at his chairs
moulded into the shape of a face, or at his responding to his ex-wife accusing
him of letting his son eat Froot Loops with the cry “But I’m vegan!”, it’s hard
to be threatened by the man no matter how many people he kills. The festival
programme compares the film to <i>Fargo</i>, but while <i>Fargo</i> was a very funny film, it
never allowed that humour to undercut the genuine threat that the villains
presented. Here, almost everyone who isn’t Skarsgard is a figure of fun to some
degree or other, and that removes much of the thrill from this supposed
thriller. Add to that the absurd ease with which Skarsgard turns from everyman into
a skilled killer, and it becomes impossible to take the film seriously.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy the film. It was a fun
experience, but that’s about all. Walking away from the film, the main thing I
remember is how every time someone died a black screen would appear with the name
of the dead person (along with a symbol reflecting the person’s religious
background), and how every time one of these screen would appear, the audience
would laugh, and I would laugh with them, although I cannot articulate exactly
why it was so funny. Maybe it was funny because of the way the accelerating
frequency of these screens highlighted the mounting body toll. Whatever the
reason, making a joke about the number of bodies being left in your wake may
work in a comedy, but it’s not the way to make a successful thriller. Worth
seeing for a laugh, but not a film that will stay with you.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCgoDEswF0Grr9iDxXFnFef2aHrAjz-hwuMCW6Ps2HNjLX-nI2WTiz3BKZS-5rnhnoY3tSzbdmZpWxMWJghMTQU1mtUO1xe3idHlmqtXnNwGqxFHIbhMxRhcobO_7lPEJP07iMerzXiaO6/s1600/black-coal-thin-ice.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCgoDEswF0Grr9iDxXFnFef2aHrAjz-hwuMCW6Ps2HNjLX-nI2WTiz3BKZS-5rnhnoY3tSzbdmZpWxMWJghMTQU1mtUO1xe3idHlmqtXnNwGqxFHIbhMxRhcobO_7lPEJP07iMerzXiaO6/s320/black-coal-thin-ice.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>
<b><i>Black Coal, Thin Ice</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My two films
on Sunday made an interesting comparison. Both films, <i>In Order of Disappearance</i>
and <i>Black Coal, Thin Ice</i> were thrillers taking place in a frozen location. But
where <i>In Order of Disappearance</i> lessened the impact of its thriller elements
through black comedy, <i>Black Coal, Thin Ice</i> played absolutely straight with the material.
And was a lot more successful for it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In 1999, a dozen different body parts are found in coal
plants spread across the Heilongjiang province in China. They identify the
victim, and discover the only people who could have distributed the body across
such a wide area so quickly. But when the police come to arrest the killers, a
chaotic shoot-out occurs that leaves nearly everyone dead. Five years later,
the lead detective (who was the one person to survive the shoot-out) is
disgraced, a drunk working as a security guard. But when another body is found
divided in coal plants across the province, he decides to begin investigating –
especially when he realises the wife of the first victim was seeing the new
victim, and that a third person connected with her has also died under
mysterious circumstances.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a really impressive film. Writer/director Diao Yinan
has a strong grasp on the material, with careful plotting that twists and turns
before arriving at an end position of logical simplicity, and complex
characters who challenge our sympathies. The investigator who is attracted to
the main suspect is absurdly clichéd at this point, but such care is taken in
constructing the situation that the development makes sense and doesn’t damage
the picture. And the director accumulates a strong cast to support the
material. Liao Fan, as the central hero, is at times utterly unlikable, but never
loses relatability. Meanwhile, Gwei Lun Mei, as the chief suspect, is hardly
the prototypical femme fatale – she seems constantly on the verge of tears,
barely able to cope with the events that have captured her. But the story takes
her in wildly varying directions, and she always navigates those developments
as a consistent character.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also quite liked the ordinariness of the environment. It
can be very easy for thrillers to be isolated from the world that we live in –
perhaps all the characters are low-level street thugs, or (as with a film like
<i>In Order of Disappearance</i>) perhaps they’re all major business-leaders and recognised
public figures, or there’s something else that separates the audience from the
world of the film. But here the characters are all coal workers, security
guards, drycleaners, people who we would know, who we would interact with every
day. And I liked the everyday mundane world that this film existed in. The
corner drycleaners were tiny and cramped, with every inch of space utilised;
the houses are basic and poky (a climactic scene sees a team of about five
people trying to squeeze their way into a kitchen barely able to accommodate
them). There’s a sense that this story takes place somewhere that I can
recognise with people who I could see around me, and in some ways the film
becomes more suspenseful as a result.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s not perfect – while there’s nothing of significance
left unresolved, the film does end in the middle of a moment of chaos that
doesn’t appear to be connected to anything, except perhaps by coincidence. I’m
not quite sure I get what the purpose of that ending was (and judging by the
conversations of those around me such uncertainty seemed widespread). But
that’s a minor issue, and a choice that might make more sense on reflection.
Regardless, a thoroughly enjoyable film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwFbduFUsEm5BZgkInn2oz8EcdXSpW2PDT7WgjdJ7Tjj5auNjaR7tMupceEwajKhkHlsR1K9BqMFvmjOngYADBiWUrrNbnU-XUPPOYRIqoo3q6hI2bKFN_DyPvOiRtsdBenabdUO8o-mc6/s1600/locke.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwFbduFUsEm5BZgkInn2oz8EcdXSpW2PDT7WgjdJ7Tjj5auNjaR7tMupceEwajKhkHlsR1K9BqMFvmjOngYADBiWUrrNbnU-XUPPOYRIqoo3q6hI2bKFN_DyPvOiRtsdBenabdUO8o-mc6/s320/locke.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Locke</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This will be one of the
highlights of the festival for me. The film itself couldn’t be more basic – at
the start of the film, we see Tom Hardy, as the titular Ivan Locke, get into
his car and starts driving. Locke is a rare type of movie character – someone
who is very straight-up, someone who always does the right thing, and who takes
pride in being a good man. A while ago, he made a mistake, and now he’s driving
to London to try to fix that mistake and do the right thing. The problem is,
doing “the right thing” means taking the day off work on the only day where he
cannot be away, and doing “the right thing” also means breaking a promise to
his family. So he starts making calls, trying to keep on top of the work
situation and making sure that everything goes well tomorrow, trying to smooth
things out with his family, trying to manage the mistake, all the while trying
to prove to his father (who he keeps imagining in the back seat) that he’s a
better man than the father ever was.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am not exaggerating when I say that, beyond a few workmen
that the car drives past, Tom Hardy is the only human being seen in the film.
The camera stays with him inside the car for the entire film. Every interaction
with anyone else is by telephone. Which imposes an almost impossible acting
burden on the man, especially when you remember that he’s also spending the
entire movie driving, which restricts the performance even more. Fortunately
Tom Hardy, who has emerged as one of the most impressive acting talents of
recent years, is up to the task. His every acting choice clearly communicates
who this man is. He’s someone who is passionate and who cares about getting
every detail right, and it’s clear very early on just how uncharacteristic it
is for him to have allowed this situation to have even occurred. And what’s
great about this performance is the fact that as every aspect of his life is
collapsing around him, we see who the man is through the way he responds and
addresses these crises, the way he’s constantly trying to suppress his natural
responses and just focus on fighting the fires as they emerge, one after
another. It’s a remarkable performance, and Hardy seems to relish the acting
challenge. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I particularly liked the way they presented his job. I have
a job that I love, where I could sit and talk with excitement for hours about
every detail of the situations I’ve dealt with. To most people, there would be
few things less interesting than hearing me discuss my job; most people drift
off when I begin to explain what my job even is. In the film, Locke works in
construction, and is responsible for preparing the pouring of concrete for the
foundation. And he talks about his job with a passion that I responded to. I
may not understand what the difference between C6 and C5 concrete is, I don’t
know what a rebar is or why they needed to fix them at the last moment, but
because of the way he talked about those things, I cared. When he tried to
articulate the importance of “the pour” by describing the spectacular 55 storey
building that will be built on this foundation, and how you need to get the
pouring of the concrete right in order for the building to stand, I understood
and believed his passion for the job. There were points where he tries to get a
co-worker to do something by appealing “Do it for the concrete”. Outside of the
film, that would seem an absurd line, but it works because we understand how
passionate he is for the work he does, indeed how passionate he is about
concrete, and how much importance he places on the job being done well.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film is well-made by writer-director Steven Knight. It’s
a phenomenal screenplay, and in many ways as director he set himself just as challenging
a task as he did for Tom Hardy. And he does a good job trying to find every
variation of a “man driving a car” shot that he could. (He particularly seems
to enjoy playing with light reflections.) And he accumulates an impressive cast
for the people on the other end of the phone – I recognised the voice of the
wonderful Olivia Colman (who it seems is near-unavoidable these days), and was
surprised to realise the voice cast also featured people like Andrew Scott and
Ruth Wilson, putting in good work. But the film comes down to one brilliant
performance by Tom Hardy. And because of
the strength of that performance, the film succeeds better than anyone could
have anticipated.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsNMAyLGHkAvsBtMD5vR-w4UJTT8rKppk0yS_otpQVGbVsjfT3c_GXyPs6iJSKpfqHroiXyqIELhhonFo1gShwu_pIRIZR4ybqairqfq0IvqvCsCGfZj6Da6LkZXIJ0vmEoOJ6kpTILsgW/s1600/rover.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsNMAyLGHkAvsBtMD5vR-w4UJTT8rKppk0yS_otpQVGbVsjfT3c_GXyPs6iJSKpfqHroiXyqIELhhonFo1gShwu_pIRIZR4ybqairqfq0IvqvCsCGfZj6Da6LkZXIJ0vmEoOJ6kpTILsgW/s320/rover.jpg" width="223" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Rover</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was looking forward to
<i>The Rover</i>. I’d really liked David Michod’s previous film, <i>Animal Kingdom</i>, and
was interested to see what he would do next. Sadly, I really did not care for
this film. Rather strangely, the criticisms I would level at <i>The Rover</i> are
mostly elements I’ve praised about an earlier film in the festival, the
brilliant <i>Under the Skin</i>. It’s a good reminder that movies are a kind of
alchemy – you get the right elements and it works perfectly, but very similar
elements in the wrong context can be dire.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The Rover</i> takes place in Australia, “ten years after the
collapse”, as an opening title card tells us. In a post-apocalyptic world, Guy
Pierce is a man with a car. But then that car is stolen, and he wants that car
back. So he takes a truck and pursues them, eventually coming across Robert
Pattinson, playing a possibly-mentally-challenged young man who is the brother
of one of the people who stole the car. So they go on a long road trip, killing
a lot of people (almost always with a quick loud shot to the head), all in
pursuit of the car. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This sets up a number of questions. Most significantly, what
was “the collapse”? I do not know – the film doesn’t really provide a lot of
detail about it. Was the collapse isolated or worldwide? I’m unsure – there’s
a big point made that Australian currency isn’t accepted and only US Dollars
will do, which at least suggests a local collapse with a still-functioning US
economy (since without that any currency is just paper); but if it is just a
local event, I’m unsure why the American characters would have chosen to go to
a collapsed Australia. What did bring those Americans to Australia? No idea.
There are armed forces who drive around but don’t seem to keep the peace in any
way, except when they suddenly do arrest people and send them off to Sydney to
justify being paid. Who are they? Who is paying them? What is their role? No
idea. Here’s the thing – <i>Under the Skin</i> left a lot of questions unanswered, but
I felt like had enough pieces to develop my own understanding of the important
plot points, and where we had no information, the question wasn’t essential to
understanding the world. Here, the answers to my questions were required to
comprehend how this particular world functioned and why things were how they
were. That is a key difference. I also felt that the director of <i>Under the Skin</i>
had a clear vision and a knowledge of what he was trying to say with the film,
even if it wasn’t always fully explained. By contrast, I felt that Michod’s
vision for the film was “<i>Mad Max</i> was cool. Let’s do that.” That’s not a strong
basis for a film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And there’s the characters. The central character in <i>Under
the Skin</i> was an alien being whose entire purpose was to exist as a cypher, but
over the film she grew and changed, so I felt like I came to understand her and
have sympathy for her. The lead character in <i>The Rover</i> exists to be a void – he
never grows or changes, and other than delivering a brief monologue at one
point about the death of his wife (which if anything alienates him from the
audience even more), we know nothing about him until the final scene (which
provides a laughable explanation for why it’s so important to him to get that
particular car), by which point we don’t care about the character at all. The
other characters weren’t much better – Robert Pattinson’s character is just
wearying to spend time with, and everyone else was just a bland stereotype. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the problem with a film that lacks interesting
characters is that, if you just sit and watch those characters, it fails to
have any weight. <i>Under the Skin</i> would have these long shots that would play out
as we would sit with the alien waiting, and it was interesting because the film
had established a great deal of suspense in its setup and we were interested in
how this character would react. But in <i>The Rover</i>, because the characters are
completely empty, when Michod would sit with the shot and watch the characters
for long periods of time, there’s no suspense of “what is this person
thinking?” or “what will happen next?” I just wanted to yell “GET ON WITH IT!”
Michod also seems to really love the slow-scene-followed-by-sudden-violence
trick, and so tries to use his long quiet shots to lead up to one of these
sudden shocking moments. And the first time he has a scene play out slowly and
in near silence, interrupted by an explosive gunshot to the head, it’s rather
startling and effective. But he must pull that trick a dozen times, to
increasingly diminishing returns. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even the music was annoying. <i>Under the Skin</i>’s music was
often atonal and unpleasant to listen to, but it set a very specific tone that
was incredibly effective and that elicited a strong reaction in the audience.
The music of <i>The Rover</i> jumped wildly in styles, almost as though the film were
being scored by five different people with drastically varying approaches, at
times wildly unstructured percussion, at other times minimalist atonal music,
or maybe even rather melodic themes at some points, without an obvious logic
for the scoring approach changing within the film. It was just annoying and
bothersome without achieving anything in the approach.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The simple fact is, the film annoyed me. It started annoying
me very early on, and it never stopped annoying me. Which, for a film I was
looking forward to and a filmmaker who had shown promise in the past, is
disappointing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXMIN3AWnmyC7guKJ2dT6XUuj-kjyxBAffdZXCULzfqd6qfH6iCrv4z9kkYLXruwNJUUrjaA5ECESnCU-Fgj07gvG6-rOJKvPyop25_Tb7d74Hl_tH9S_JwEpsH3eidw86eWjomFWh-JoH/s1600/jimmys-hall.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXMIN3AWnmyC7guKJ2dT6XUuj-kjyxBAffdZXCULzfqd6qfH6iCrv4z9kkYLXruwNJUUrjaA5ECESnCU-Fgj07gvG6-rOJKvPyop25_Tb7d74Hl_tH9S_JwEpsH3eidw86eWjomFWh-JoH/s320/jimmys-hall.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
<i><b>Jimmy's Hall</b></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was a bit unsure of
my reaction to this film, which I didn’t really care too much for. The thing
is, I personally tend towards the right half of the political spectrum, and so
wasn’t sure whether my response to the film was a genuine response to the film
in front of me, or whether I was just irritated at the way Ken Loach (who is,
admittedly, famously left-wing) was holding up an avowed communist as a hero of
freedom of all things. Fortunately I talked to a friend after the film, someone
who tends more to the left side, and while he liked the film slightly more than
me, we completely agreed about the problems with the film. So it’s not just me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film tells the true story of James Gralton, who came
under attack from the religious and political authorities in Ireland in the
1930s after opening a small-town hall where people could come to dance, learn,
and hold discussions. And it’s a potentially interesting story – certainly I
was surprised how significant the story of this one rural hall seemed to become
in the country – but the story as it was scripted seemed somewhat dull and
clichéd. There are numerous scenes that just play out like any other scenes
we’ve seen a million times. There’s the early scene, just after Jimmy returns
from the US, where they run across the youths of the village who just start
pleading with Jimmy to open his long-closed hall. There’s the priest, ranting
and railing against the sins of the flesh that are being indulged at the hall.
There’s the person whose arrival at the hall causes everyone to go silent long
before they really know that there’s anything about that person to justify
going silent. There’s the awful final scene that I swear I thought would end
with cries of “Oh Captain, my Captain”, and that does ends with a black-and-white
freeze-frame of all the youths affected by Jimmy’s hall. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Characters are also annoying thin. There’s one young priest,
played by Andrew Scott, who appears in only a couple of scenes, who is interesting
– he’s someone who is devout and devoted to the church, but who also feels
conflicted because he sees that they’re doing more harm than good in attacking
the hall. He’s probably the only three-dimensional character in the film.
Everyone else is either a good guy, and thus angelic and pure of motive, or
they’re an antagonist and someone who wants to suppress and control people’s
freedom. Most annoyingly, they treated the head priest, the main opponent to
the hall’s operation, as a completely one-dimensional ranting and raving villain.
What’s disappointing is that you could easily tweak the character’s motivations
so that the character is understandable and sympathetic, even while the
character’s actions are completely unchanged. But that would lead to a level of
moral complexity that this film is not interested in. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But then, perhaps it’s a good thing that the characters are
so thin, since most of the people on-screen (with the exception of the few main
characters) seemed to be non-actors, incapable of delivering a line without it
seeming like them parroting something someone else told them to say. For me,
the worst offender was the woman who played the mother, seeming distractingly
blank-faced and surprisingly emotionless for someone who hasn’t seen her son in
ten years. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s not all bad. The scenes of the characters dancing, be
it a folk-dance or moving to the latest jazz record, were fun and joyful. And
the cinematography beautifully captured this simple rural setting. But for the
most part, I just was not able to engage with the film. And if you don’t care
about the film, that’s not a good sign.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-3wYC_69xC8qWoa1RdG7WEZgjxhPzEQ98HahnF1gZ6LhyphenhyphenbBGkTK_CdJ0sah3xDwHeAEkrI2S-_I0N5O6WKtbGmyTvcDPPfEOeaFsGYWL0DHU8KZ3_UjZlu5AenNON3daEcxbFWiKD4Nr_/s1600/kumiko_the_treasure_hunter.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-3wYC_69xC8qWoa1RdG7WEZgjxhPzEQ98HahnF1gZ6LhyphenhyphenbBGkTK_CdJ0sah3xDwHeAEkrI2S-_I0N5O6WKtbGmyTvcDPPfEOeaFsGYWL0DHU8KZ3_UjZlu5AenNON3daEcxbFWiKD4Nr_/s320/kumiko_the_treasure_hunter.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
<b><i>Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You may
have heard the story of the Japanese girl who froze to death in Minnesota a
dozen years ago, all because she believed the film <i>Fargo</i> was true and she’d
wanted to find the case of money that is lost at the end of the film. It was
widely reported at the time. It seems it’s not a true story – there was a
Japanese girl, but she had deliberately decided to commit suicide after a
relationship with a man from the area ended, and the <i>Fargo</i> connection was a
misunderstanding from people trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t
speak English. The intriguing thing about <i>Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter</i> is that
it’s not based on the actual story; it’s based on the legend. What if it were
true? Who, then, would this character be? (In a nice touch, the film opens with
a worn VHS tape image of the opening “This is a true story” claim from <i>Fargo</i>,
particularly since this film is exactly as true a story as <i>Fargo</i> was.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kumiko is not a happy person. She’s 29, and still working in
a job that most women leave by the age of 25 to get married. She’s unhappy,
evades her mother’s calls, and tries to avoid any social interaction at all (at
one point literally running away from meeting someone over coffee). The one
thing she has is her VHS tape of <i>Fargo</i>, worn to the point of being unwatchable,
which she scours for clues in the certainty that she can figure out where the
case of money is hidden. Then she has an opportunity handed over to her to
travel to the States. Finally, this is her chance to find this money.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s an incredibly moving film (even my eyes were starting
to mist by the end) that was an interesting portrait of – is mental illness too
strong? Maybe it is, but there’s definitely something not right about her, if only because
she can’t or won’t understand that <i>Fargo</i> is a fictional film, and that even if it were based on a true story, the film itself is unlikely to offer any clues to finding any money. Rinko Kikuchi
gives a very sympathetic performance, as a character who never really feels
like she has a place. The society around her is very regimented and very clear
about the roles that people must undertake, and so there’s a real sense that
Kumiko, as someone who (whether due to mental illness, her own choices, or
something else) doesn’t fit with society’s expectations, and is therefore
increasingly pushed outside, into a place where she has nowhere to go but into
this fantasy. And once she finds herself in Minnesota, with barely any ability
to communicate, she’s even more isolated (despite the number of people willing
to help her out) and is forced to withdraw into her fantasy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was rather worried the closer
the film gets to its end point. This is, after all, a film about someone
freezing to death, and by the end I cared so much for Kumiko that I don’t know
if I could bear the emotional weight that comes with watching this character
die. And then the end came, and it was great. It was perfect. It hit the key
emotional points, and was certainly heartbreaking, but it also managed to cap
this story as the satisfying end of a journey. I don’t know how to put into
words how much I loved the final scene. But the power of that final scene only
works because of the extraordinary film that came before it. A wonderful film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I skipped my film on day 7 – while
I was interested in seeing <i>The Green Prince</i>, I was feeling decidedly unwell as
I was waiting for the film to start, so decided to leave and go home. I see the film has now been released on DVD, so I must seek it out.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI0-cP6lY0J-RWFwta_VHTV2afKIIOOPzmz5428yziLS39byzTX9xJxmpZ5uhzQTqxXD6jGg8G58oq4ssi4OdhjbzrQAydj_Q1w5u_KfclGKe6zYVT5Qkv9kmKWPHmn6zKlz8dM6qrQ81w/s1600/Diplomacy.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI0-cP6lY0J-RWFwta_VHTV2afKIIOOPzmz5428yziLS39byzTX9xJxmpZ5uhzQTqxXD6jGg8G58oq4ssi4OdhjbzrQAydj_Q1w5u_KfclGKe6zYVT5Qkv9kmKWPHmn6zKlz8dM6qrQ81w/s320/Diplomacy.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
<b><i>Diplomacy</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My knowledge of World War Two history is fairly limited, and most of my
knowledge has been acquired through movies. So for instance, I didn’t know that
in the last days of the German occupation of France Hitler had planned to have
France destroyed, blowing a number of bridges, using the rubble to completely
flood the city, and then exploding a number of landmarks for good measure.
<i>Diplomacy</i> tells the story of how Paris wasn’t destroyed. Holed up in a hotel
room in Paris, General von Choltitz discusses the destruction plan with his
underlings and sends them off to prepare. But then the Swedish consul Raoul
Nordling comes to visit, and appeal for von Choltitz to ignore Hitler’s orders,
and leave this great city standing. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film is based on a play, which
is completely evident in the film. A token effort is made to open the film up,
with the odd cutaway to the location where the preparations or the bombing are
being made, but a good 80 percent of the film focuses on the two lead actors in
a room, having a passionate discussion, trying to win each other over. And the
two leads are very good. As Nordling, Andre Dussollier exudes a passion for the
world that he is trying to save, and while we as the audience can see his desperation,
knowing the consequences should he fail to make his case, he hides that behind
a soft and unthreatening demeanour. But it’s Niels Arestrup as von Choltitz who
completely won me over. He’s a man who is utterly broken, who knows the end is
coming, who wants to do the right thing and not destroy the city, but who feels
trapped and in a position where he has no choice but to do this terrible thing,
and who as a result finds himself looking to Nordling to offer a way out of
this intractable position. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Obviously there’s very little
suspense to the film, since we all know the outcome, so the key thing about the
film’s success was how enjoyable it was watching the ebb and flow of the
argument. I don’t know how much of the film is accurate to the actual talks
held between the two in actuality and how much is speculation, but it’s certainly
engaging drama. Admittedly, there was one point about midway through the film
where I felt they were running out of steam, and were just hitting points that
had already been hit several times already, but the filmmakers were evidently
also aware of this, since within a few minutes of my thinking that, they
started to progress the film and move it towards its very satisfying
resolution. Not one of the absolute best of the festival, but it’s good, and a
fine example of the type of film I go to the festival hoping for.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiK2Bi9B8NVptfYWn_uNMtW6RYs2mOdsL4ZWTGLFJLC3eimwP_cY6ad4MsMp0aDXWDX0DcZmH91Uacw_jUeiQXA7mmIvB1tnybGtSeWojiCLKM59SwIUAc43vXwSmAvJX2lecwF64dzRSk/s1600/double.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiK2Bi9B8NVptfYWn_uNMtW6RYs2mOdsL4ZWTGLFJLC3eimwP_cY6ad4MsMp0aDXWDX0DcZmH91Uacw_jUeiQXA7mmIvB1tnybGtSeWojiCLKM59SwIUAc43vXwSmAvJX2lecwF64dzRSk/s320/double.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Double</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A comedy based on the novel by Dostoyevsky, <i>The Double</i> takes place in a
nightmarish dystopia. A timid young man named Simon, who works in data analysis
and who pines in silence for the copier girl, finds that his new co-worker is
his cocky and confident doppelganger. The double very quickly starts to take
over Simon’s life, which causes him to have a nervous breakdown as he tries to
reclaim his life.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Talking to a friend after the
film, I was trying to articulate exactly why, even though I completely enjoyed
the film, there was something in it that didn’t quite work for me. Eventually,
my friend interrupted me and said the word I’d been reluctant to say:
“Gilliam.” I’d been resistant to making that comparison because I’d heard that
director Richard Ayoade had expressed displeasure when people made that
reference, perhaps feeling that people were accusing him of ripping off Terry Gilliam.
But the thing is, the comparison to <i>Brazil</i>, one of my favourite movies, is
utterly unavoidable. Now, I don’t think Ayoade is consciously stealing from
Gilliam, but the world of <i>The Double</i> is basically the world of Brazil but
without ducts. It’s all poky corners, cramped multi-storey apartment blocks, offices
that consist of long thin corridors, people walking while talking very quickly,
computers with weird old-timey screens, weird retro TV shows and adverts,
washed over with a grey colour scheme. Ayoade’s problem is that he’s making a
low-budget movie that takes place in a dystopic nightmare world, and Gilliam’s
work has become such a touchstone for what the world is like that anything even
remotely close to that environment will feel like an exercise in making a
Gilliam-esque film. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, that said, it’s not a bad
film. I’ve loved his work as an actor on <i>The IT Crowd</i>, and he’s a fine comedic
actor with a sharp sense of comic timing. And he brings that timing to this
film. It’s genuinely frequently laugh-out-loud funny. I was utterly entertained
by the movie. And Ayoade has assembled a strong cast. Following his work on <i>The
Social Network</i>, we’ve lost track of how genuinely funny Eisenberg was in
earlier films like <i>Zombieland</i>, and in this film he does a good job delineating
the two characters, even when they’re identical down to the clothes they wear,
and both characters elicit strong laughs. It was also a nice surprise to see
the great Wallace Shawn with a substantial and very funny role as Simon’s
increasingly irritable manager, who is completely blind to the machinations of
the double. I was disappointed to find that the wonderful Mia Wasikowska was
given a nothing role –while she brings a lot of charm to the role, she exists
primarily to be the object of the lead’s affection, and Wasikowska is a much
better actress than that role allows her to be.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But as entertaining as the film
is, the problem is, when I think of <i>The Double</i>, I immediately start thinking of
<i>Brazil</i>. And <i>Brazil</i> is a great movie, and so this movie can’t help but be
diminished by the inevitable comparison. I was still entertained by the film, it’s
definitely worth watching, and I’m still looking forward to see Ayoade’s next
film. But it was a minor disappointment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmyVYNWyfMjPcQpi-wmApnf2-m4xLoprd8udeMyxibrNHJfQ5tWzFdeAfeV6LZ4NpXrL46MdArt9CwxydA3ZtcR9oZs37JBJ6lvgfPeu42N0aJ40m040h0KOa7zf8TRH_GIwVTwUb8d9K_/s1600/galapagos_affair_satan_came_to_eden.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmyVYNWyfMjPcQpi-wmApnf2-m4xLoprd8udeMyxibrNHJfQ5tWzFdeAfeV6LZ4NpXrL46MdArt9CwxydA3ZtcR9oZs37JBJ6lvgfPeu42N0aJ40m040h0KOa7zf8TRH_GIwVTwUb8d9K_/s320/galapagos_affair_satan_came_to_eden.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In 1929, a German doctor and his lover
left civilisation for an uninhabited island in the Galapagos, looking for peace
and solitude and somewhere to develop their philosophical opinions. Shortly
after, another family also turned up to the island. And then a French Baroness
of all people moved to the island, with her two lovers in tow, taking
possession of everything on the island, and discussing her plans to build an
exotic hotel resort. Meanwhile, a research vessel regularly visited the island,
and the captain wanted to make a movie starring the Baroness as a piratess. Within
the space of about five years this island that was once intended to be a haven and
escape from society winds up being consumed by jealousy, anger, resentment,
sex, murder – but all between the dozen or so people on the island.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a fascinating story, and a
great example of the opportunity that the documentary form offers to find
interesting stories that may have been forgotten, and then present it to the
audience in (what is hopefully) as truthful a form as possible. One of the key
elements of this story is that there are certain vital plotpoints (particularly
whenever anyone dies) where there is serious ambiguity over what did or did not
happen, and the documentary format offers an ideal means for presenting the
varying views of the characters. Unless you take the <i>Rashomon</i> approach, a
narrative film would need to take a firm position, for instance, on whether
such and such a person’s death was murder, and that position would inevitably
reflect the viewpoint of the filmmaker; but by presenting this story through
the words of the various participants, the filmmakers are better able to
separate their viewpoint from the film and more easily reflect the ambiguities
and mysteries that surround the story.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the challenges with making
a documentary that takes place in an earlier era is that there’s usually little
visual material (other than photographs) to put on screen, and the key players
are seldom alive to tell their story. However, the filmmakers, Dayna Goldfine
and Dan Geller, were extremely fortunate in making the film, because there’s a
surprising amount of home movies from the time, and a massive amount of written
material from the participants about the events (including multiple books), as
well as the children of many of the key players who are also able to offer
their own memories and the stories as they were passed down to them. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ultimately, a film of this type
comes down to the quality of the story. This is a fascinating and exciting
story, with unexpected twists and turns; it’s filled with a cast of weird
eccentric characters, since those are the type of people who would leave
society to live on a rock; and the filmmakers do a fine job in telling the
story, capturing a sense of this calm and peaceful world slowly being invaded, communicating
how this situation spiralled out of control. A thoroughly entertaining film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH3YgAIGQAyuftmBuJMeqGcETDLzfVby2fAXrSQK1TqPmVQATvJXjgz82sv04Ok1qnSODo-CxWi3LD03f1KUuVjigedO2GbcT0zZm_H6bl-dzK4xVvWM6MprgeQt5hyphenhyphenda3N1WUYiuKxp-x/s1600/tale-of-princess-kaguya.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH3YgAIGQAyuftmBuJMeqGcETDLzfVby2fAXrSQK1TqPmVQATvJXjgz82sv04Ok1qnSODo-CxWi3LD03f1KUuVjigedO2GbcT0zZm_H6bl-dzK4xVvWM6MprgeQt5hyphenhyphenda3N1WUYiuKxp-x/s320/tale-of-princess-kaguya.jpg" width="218" /></a></div>
<o:p><b><i>The Tale of Princess Kaguya</i></b></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Earlier this
year, I saw <i>The Wind Rises</i>, the final film from Hayao Miyazaki, and I found
that film to be good but flawed; a film that has gained greater weight than it
perhaps deserves because of Miyazaki’s announced retirement than because of the
merits of the film. <i>Princess Kaguya</i> is the new film from Studio Ghibli’s
co-founder Isao Takahata, and while he hasn’t announced his retirement, it’s
impossible to not speculate that this could be his final film, given Takahata’s
age and the fact that this is his first film in 15 years and. And if this is Takahata’s
final movie, he’s going out on a stronger note than Miyazaki.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film is based on a traditional
Japanese legend. A bamboo cutter finds a miraculously growing bamboo shoot;
inside that shoot he finds a tiny child, who he and his wife raise as their daughter,
albeit a daughter who grows up at a supernatural rate. Finding other bamboo
trees containing a wealth of gold and fine clothes, the cutter takes this as a
signal to move his family to the capital and introduce the girl to society as a
princess. But she rebels against the expectations placed upon her, and in her
rebellion may be drawn back to the place that she came from.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film is very sweet and
charming, with wonderful characters. Being a Ghibli film, it’s unsurprising
that it contains a noticeable environmental element, but its primary focus is
in exploring the place of women in Japanese society. A significant amount of
time is spent on training Kaguya to be a princess and to comply with the
cultural view of beauty (including blackened teeth); and it looks at the way
that women were often treated as a status symbol (there’s a great scene
involving a long line of suitors coming to take her hand for no reason than
because they’ve heard of her beauty). Even her father, who on the whole is a
sympathetic and loving figure, is clearly overjoyed when he realises his
daughter could be his way out of the forest and into high society, and doesn’t
seem to understand or recognise his daughter’s reluctance.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the main reason for seeing
this film is because of the animation. Studio Ghibli has gained a reputation
over the years for producing some of the most beautiful and striking examples
of animation ever made. <i>Princess Kaguya</i> stands as another fine example of this,
but at the same time it’s entirely different to anything I’ve ever seen. Most
of Ghibli’s success comes because they really focus on fine and
precisely-observed details, giving the animation an air of reality even in
fantasy settings. <i>Kaguya</i> goes the other way, looking as though it’s a
lightly-painted charcoal sketch on a scroll, a thousand-year old artwork come
to life. It looks utterly striking – primitive, to be sure, but deliberately
primitive. Takahata’s experience in animation has given him the ability to know
what details and elements to strip out of the artwork without losing what works
about the art. And the style also shifts with the content of the film – there
are several scenes where Kaguya finds herself in emotional turmoil where the
artwork style becomes possibly turbulent, a mess of lines frantically scrawled
across the screen, as though the animator were trying desperately to keep up
with a racing Kaguya. The result is a basic, impressionistic piece of
animation, but one that in the hands of a talented director has a powerful
impact.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Kvx-vYx9I7F4oOIQVFOFuZmb5SZRP4_iViEShZhZHZ6ZnbtewUFy1WNd_e2_rwhm9IurG3vM-X8K3IE79hwzZCk63UHxmFsRd09JU41pWk-K3D142UolnUGNvkbkONmTLPpjIKCCxfRM/s1600/housebound.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Kvx-vYx9I7F4oOIQVFOFuZmb5SZRP4_iViEShZhZHZ6ZnbtewUFy1WNd_e2_rwhm9IurG3vM-X8K3IE79hwzZCk63UHxmFsRd09JU41pWk-K3D142UolnUGNvkbkONmTLPpjIKCCxfRM/s320/housebound.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
<b><i>Housebound</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The writer/director of the film, Gerard Johnstone, completely won me over
when he introduced his film by apologising for making a New Zealand film that
wasn’t about his childhood or about our cultural identity. Johnstone’s film is,
instead, a wonderfully entertaining comedy-horror about a young woman sentenced
to spend eight months on house arrest at her mother’s house. The problem is,
the mother is convinced that the house is haunted, and when the daughter begins
to hear weird creaking noises and electronic games that activate on their own
accord, she discovers that the house has a much more shocking history than she
was aware of.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I really enjoyed this film. It was
fun, I was constantly laughing, and there are some nice suspense moments. I
would note, however (and this is a minor quibble about a film I loved a lot),
it wasn’t all that scary. I don’t often watch horror films, I certainly would
not consider myself to be especially jaded or unresponsive to scary movies, but
I can’t think of any moments where I was genuinely scared. The reason, I think,
is the comedy. Humour is an important element of horror, certainly – it acts as
a release valve to let go of some of the emotional tension that may have built
up. But if you have too much comedy, it’s as though there’s no opportunity for
the tension to build to a point where you’re genuinely scared. Which is not to
say I wasn’t engaged by the film. There are many, many genuinely suspenseful
sequences, where I was thrilled and excited by what was going on onscreen. What
I didn’t have was that moment of utter terror. After all, the director himself,
in the post-film Q&A, described the film as “<i>Scooby-Doo</i> for adults”;
<i>Scooby-Doo</i> may be many things, but it’s not scary.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the same Q&A, Johnstone
talked about how they shot the entire film, decided that most of the film
didn’t work, but that they had a great final confrontation scene and a very
good early dinner scene, so decided to rework and reshoot almost the entire
scene to connect the two scenes they did have. I don’t know if that’s true, or just
exaggeration, but if it’s the former then it must have been an impressive
effort to get all the pieces together. While there are a couple of plot
contrivances covering some minor plot points, for the most part the film is
well-plotted, with a number of significant plot twists and revelations that
make sense, or at the very least don’t defy the logic of the film world. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The director may have been joking when he made his opening
comment, but there’s a lot of truth behind it. I have a tendency to often avoid
New Zealand films, unless there’s such a popular groundswell that you feel
compelled to see them, simply because New Zealand films often feel weighed down
with the burden of Making A Statement About Society. It was therefore wonderful
to just see a film that had a sole focus on being an effective piece of
entertainment. And it achieves that brilliantly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv6waghBMkGP2u7JxN2l0Pwqw1GzQWnJRadO-Hk6bLgoO8QRBOj3pmxIiX3Jh_eKZK1rpjgHOcX5R8jCSm7myzChIe-twteF7g-VKmwyGmY4JN07D4-BneJSBv-HpPaXDXdNMhVwcgxXg8/s1600/boyhood.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv6waghBMkGP2u7JxN2l0Pwqw1GzQWnJRadO-Hk6bLgoO8QRBOj3pmxIiX3Jh_eKZK1rpjgHOcX5R8jCSm7myzChIe-twteF7g-VKmwyGmY4JN07D4-BneJSBv-HpPaXDXdNMhVwcgxXg8/s320/boyhood.jpg" width="221" /></a></div>
<i><b>Boyhood</b></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the most impressive achievements in filmmaking I think you’ll ever see,
used to tell a simple and universal story. When the film begins, we meet a
6-year-old boy named Mason. He has an annoying sister who’s a year older than
him, he lives with his mother, and spends the occasional weekend with his
father. And over the course of the film we watch Mason grow up, discover the
person he will become, work his way through the awkward teenage years, until
finally he’s ready to move to college. The thing that’s remarkable about the
film is that there are no tricks here – they started making the film in 2001
with a six-year-old boy, and then shot every year for twelve years, calling
back cast members as required, until you’re left with a powerful and beautiful
whole that really tells the story of a life.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People have commented that there’s
not really anything unusual about the idea of making films that capture the way
people change both physically and emotionally over time. Many people have
pointed to the <i>Harry Potter</i> films, where we see an entire cast of children grow
up, or Truffaut’s films about Antoine Doinel (of which, admittedly, I’ve only seen
the first film, <i>The 400 Blows</i>), or the <i>Up</i> documentary series. Even Linklater’s
<i>Before</i> films have become an unexpected contemplation of the way adults do and
don’t change as they grow older. And it’s something that is inherent in ongoing
television series – just look at how we’ve watched Kiernan Shipka grow up and
change on <i>Mad Men</i>. But to me those are very different instances. Those other
examples gain their power through looking at those projects as a collected
whole; a single <i>Harry Potter</i> or <i>Before</i> film doesn’t have the same impact as
they all do together. (And indeed, some of these examples seem to have happened
accidentally). Whereas this is a single film that exists for the express
purpose of exploring how a child grows to be an adult. So you get the child at
6, and he’s basically a blank slate. You get to watch as he discovers and
develops his passions, as he learns how he will react to this situation or
that, as he basically figures out what type of person he wants to be, until you
reach the end of the film, and you can see how that young child has turned into
this man in front of us. (And those of us who are older can look at this man,
and think “he’s so young, he’s got so much more to learn”).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what’s great about the film is
that it’s not just about him. It’s about his sister, figuring out how to become
a woman. It’s about the mother, who’s always aiming for the perfect life with a
house and a husband, but who keeps falling into the same problems over and over
again. It’s about the father, who realises how much he messed up as a young
man, and who is trying to become the father to his kids that he never was when
he was with their mother. This isn’t the story of one life journey. It’s the
story of four interconnected journeys.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Linklater assembles a very good
cast. Eller Coltrane, who has the lead role of Mason, does as good a job as
could be expected. He doesn’t seem to have acted that much outside of this
film, and his acting ability undergoes an interesting arc – as a child, he’s
utterly natural, but as he becomes a teenager he seems less comfortable and
becomes more awkward on screen (which actually works well, since it correlates
with the point where all teens become uncomfortable in their skin), before he
matures, eases back into the role, and gains the confidence to carry the film
to its emotional conclusion. For the sister, Linklater cast his daughter
Lorelai, and while she apparently did not enjoy the experience (supposedly she
would try to quit the film every year), I’m glad that he was able to keep her
in the film, because her performance and her relationship with Mason is so fun
and filled with sibling conflict that the film would be lessened without her.
As the adults, we have Patricia Arquette, who is given the bulk of the
emotional weight and pain and bears it so well, as well as occasional
appearance by Linklater regular Ethan Hawke, who the director knows how to use
in a way that no one else seems to.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One thing I loved about the film
was the way it played with the sense of memory. It’s never explicitly stated,
or even implied, but the film has the sense of being the memories of
18-year-old Mason reflecting back on his life. This means that it’s not about
the key landmark moments in his life (although some of those are certainly in
it); it’s more about the small moments – the time he went camping with his
father and they talked about <i>Star Wars</i>, for instance – that made an impact
emotionally on the person and that can feel more important than the big
moments. And it also does well in capturing the way you can have people who can
be such an important part of your life, and then they leave and you never see
them again. At times, that’s a frustrating thing for the audience – there were
two young children in the film who are a big part of the kids’ lives early on,
and then in an instant they’re gone, and as a viewer I wanted closure, I wanted
to know what happened to those children. And we never got it, because Mason
would never have a chance to have closure with them. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the most impressive thing about
this film is that, as incredible a filmmaking feat as this film is, it feels
effortless. After you adjust to the time jumps, they’re often barely
noticeable. It doesn’t want to draw attention to them; it just wants you to
feel like time passing by unnoticed. The film is nearly three hours long, and
it earns that length. At the start of a film, three hours can seem to stretch
on forever, but time flies by, and at the end of the film your natural reaction
is surprise – it seems like it was only a few minutes ago that he was a young
kid. <i>Boyhood</i> certainly has its harrowing moments, particularly early on, but it
ultimately is a genuinely uplifting and joyful film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-JAR3z_1uMhLBhIuU6vnptoHQM24lv7FD4Z5T2iALXQarojGE3RyLhYRv93N7O__dm3zZWITuMAPeR7DIPwr2_XYJ8GxV-tHABZOXQ9WR0od0e88ra-ordaTWSFu6QjtIl2NMTgGtSaRY/s1600/wonders.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-JAR3z_1uMhLBhIuU6vnptoHQM24lv7FD4Z5T2iALXQarojGE3RyLhYRv93N7O__dm3zZWITuMAPeR7DIPwr2_XYJ8GxV-tHABZOXQ9WR0od0e88ra-ordaTWSFu6QjtIl2NMTgGtSaRY/s320/wonders.jpg" width="223" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Wonders</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I found myself at this screening sitting between two people who knew
each other, and so they spoke across me while waiting for the film to start.
When the film finished, the woman turned and asked the man, “Did you understand
that?” The man responded, “No idea.” And I completely understood where they
were coming from. Now, that’s not to say that <i>The Wonders</i> is an utterly
incomprehensible film – it has a logical and linear story, with reasonably
clear characters, so it’s not a David Lynch-type of confusion. Instead, it’s a
more uncertain, “what was the point of that?” level of confusion.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The (somehow) winner of the Grand
Prix award at Cannes, <i>The Wonders</i> tells the story of a beekeeping family in
some isolated area of Italy. One day they learn that a television crew is
making a weird Etruscan-themed TV show (complete with contestants wearing togas
and a host wearing an absurd headdress) to find the most authentic food
producers in the area. The father is resistant to entering the contest, but one
of the children enters the family in the show anyway.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The problem with the film was that
I couldn’t work out why I should care about the film, since I didn’t get the
sense that anyone else cared about anything. The film just felt aimless. It
constantly set up potential points of conflict or tension, and then does
nothing with any of it. The film opens with hunters driving onto a neighbouring
property in the middle of the night and shooting, causing the father to run and
yell at the hunters. And that’s it for that plot. There’s a scene where they
discuss all the new standards being imposed on honey production, and how the
family’s facilities are below standard, but the father just says that the
region is too far out and inspectors will never come out here; other than a
brief question by the TV show’s producer on the matter, the issue doesn’t
appear again. The father says he’s going to buy the kids a camel, the kids
point out that owning camels is illegal, the father says no-one’s going to
enforce that rule out here; he buys a camel, and that’s the end of that
plotline. Even the TV show, which could bring a bit of structure and suspense,
fails to bring any focus to the film – instead, the show is occasionally
mentioned, but then seems to be forgotten about for long stretches, so that
you’re surprised to be reminded that it’s a part of the film; when the
characters do find themselves appearing on the show, there’s no tension to the
outcome of that show because it was absurdly clear who will win the contest
from long before the main characters even enter. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s one moment where the film
seems to actually be aiming for some tension – the kids have to go to the
hospital unexpectedly after someone cuts their hand, and when they return they
find the bucket that collected the honey had overflowed, covering almost the
entire floor of the of the production room. Since we’ve seen the father get
angry over a tiny bit of spilled honey, imagine how much trouble they’ll be in
if he learns about this mess. And what’s this? The representative of the TV
show is here to have a look at the production room? What will happen? ... So
what happens is that they manage to stall the TV person while they clean up, he
doesn’t notice the slightly-sticky floor, and the father never notices the
lowered honey production for the day. That’s it. Once the scene is over, it
never gets mentioned again. Nothing of any consequence ever happens in the
film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film even looks bored, with a
camera that often just aimlessly drifts away from the scene, almost as though
it’s looking for something more interesting to look at; when it fails to do
that, it either comes back to the events it was previously looking at, or else
it just cuts to the next scene. The film even looked dull, with a soft and cold
look that completely failed to capture what was probably a beautiful area of
the world. It’s not that I need every film to look bright, bold, and beautiful,
but if you’re going to make a film that lacks anything dramatically, the least
you could do is make a film that looks pretty so I don’t feel like I’ve wasted
my entire time watching it. Instead, I walked away feeling like I’d just
watched a nothing film. I’d almost have preferred it if I had hated the film;
that at least would have been a response. To spend nearly two hours watching a
film and have no response at all is a real disappointment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOHBdzgLYDCIDQ6HWWiVo8l718isg4iw3TWcKZG2RABqQ8oguulwsgQJCNUbI4Boqx4kQhqfaTkmDz2pAy_6rZ7Pp8kGcKHNGzVGHj3j8g1QIc_sNcCG2aMONNOflKk86WCPl3oFkO8jYx/s1600/lady_from_shanghai.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOHBdzgLYDCIDQ6HWWiVo8l718isg4iw3TWcKZG2RABqQ8oguulwsgQJCNUbI4Boqx4kQhqfaTkmDz2pAy_6rZ7Pp8kGcKHNGzVGHj3j8g1QIc_sNcCG2aMONNOflKk86WCPl3oFkO8jYx/s320/lady_from_shanghai.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Lady From Shanghai</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Orson Welles directed several of the greatest movies ever made.
<i>The Lady From Shanghai</i> is not one of them. It’s a film that I watched with
utter bafflement, unable to work out what Welles was actually going for.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Welles stars as Michael O’Hara, an
unemployed seaman who rescues a beautiful woman from a gang of thugs, and
flirts with her until he discovers she’s married. She offers him a job on her
husband’s boat; he declines. The next day the husband, a crippled criminal
lawyer, visits the employment office and offers O’Hara a job on the wife’s
recommendation; he declines, then he accepts. They sail on the boat; the wife
openly flirts with O’Hara in front of the husband; the husband doesn’t notice; O’Hara
constantly talks about quitting but never does. The husband’s business partner
wants O’Hara to help the partner fake his own death; all he needs is for O’Hara
to confess to murdering the business partner; he won’t be convicted because you
need a body to be convicted of murder, even where there is a confession; but
the confession will be enough for the insurance to pay out and for the partner
to escape into a life of anonymity. Oh, and the husband keeps reminding O’Hara “if
you ever need a good criminal lawyer...”. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The festival programme suggested
that the film was stylish and beautiful, but that it was also the victim of
studio interference, rendering the plot “borderline incomprehensible”. I don’t
have a problem with that; many of the great film noir movies revolve around
plots that are utterly incoherent. But they at least tend to have the
characters behave in ways that feel like they make sense. But with this film,
the actual plotting made sense, I followed everything that was happening; I just
didn’t understand why any person would ever do what O’Hara does in this film.
Seriously, if a person who you don’t like or trust asks you to help him fake a
murder, up to and including signing a confession to having committed a murder
that you didn’t commit, surely no-one would ever agree to that, no matter how
much money they offered you. It’s just too obvious that something else is going
on, and that something else will certainly end with you having confessed to a
murder. And since O’Hara is stupid enough to fall for that plot, I
automatically lose any respect for the character, and any investment in their
outcome. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If the absurd behaviour of the
lead character wasn’t enough, the performances are bizarre, as though he’s
trying to populate the film with a collection of grotesqueries. As the crippled
husband, Everett Sloane has this tone in his voice that hit a nerve; I swear, I
will be haunted until the day I die by his incessant use of the word “Lover”.
As the husband’s partner and victim of the alleged murder, Glenn Anders
constantly seems like he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown, making O’Hara’s
trust of the man even more absurd. Even Orson Welles, usually such a reliable
actor, doesn’t work; there are points in the film where he’s fine, but that’s
usually because at those points he’s forgotten that he’s supposed to be putting
on the worst Irish accent ever heard. Rita Hayworth is the only person giving
anything approaching a normal performance, although I didn’t feel the push-pull
tension that many of the great femme fatale figures have.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The finale takes place in an
abandoned fun park, in a hall of mirrors, and while it’s a commonly-seen scene
today, at the time this would have been an exciting place to stage the climax.
And on the whole, it’s a very effective scene.
But even here, the film fails itself. There’s no earlier setup for the
amusement park, no suggestion that that’s a location that exists in the world
of the film. We just get a voiceover by Welles saying “And then we went to an
abandoned amusement park, because one of the bad guys had access to it.” It
couldn’t be more blatant in trying to justify as quickly as possible being at
that location if Welles had just said “And then we went to the amusement park,
because the script said a hall of mirrors would be a fun location for a final
confrontation.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Perhaps the festival programme was
right; perhaps the film would work better had it not been for the studio
interference. Perhaps the amusement park was set up earlier, and the scene was
cut by the studio; maybe O’Hara’s actions make more sense in the context of the
film that Welles originally made. Who knows? We can only judge based on the
film that we have. The problem is, the film that we do have has two of the most
annoying performances by major characters that I’ve ever seen, plus the most
misjudged Irish accent I may have ever heard in a lead character. And I simply don’t trust the judgement of the
person behind those awful performances. I was eagerly looking forward to this
film – it is Welles, after all – but all that anticipation just made the
experience worse. I’d be shocked if this doesn’t prove to be my biggest
disappointment of the festival.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdz_LW9i0NQ75gUADZ9Ec8xXMrLbmD-KNWNV8WmOwk0aDeg74_VWdeziIpMkiMmTZLjkMovI6YM9-T86CSpk-YEao29ALN_7TxjDMNYCGs4BDo_6cVErvVnI_TiNghy2cMG9OcXiP98Ctx/s1600/joe.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdz_LW9i0NQ75gUADZ9Ec8xXMrLbmD-KNWNV8WmOwk0aDeg74_VWdeziIpMkiMmTZLjkMovI6YM9-T86CSpk-YEao29ALN_7TxjDMNYCGs4BDo_6cVErvVnI_TiNghy2cMG9OcXiP98Ctx/s320/joe.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Joe</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I
like Nicholas Cage. When he’s actually trying to do interesting work, he’s a
talented and compelling actor, (albeit one with a somewhat goofy tendency).
Unfortunately recently he seems to have been caught up in a cycle of just
making any film that comes across his desk, which has meant that we’ve had a
long line of terrible movies with terrible Nicholas Cage performances. Cage
seems to have realised the rut he was in, and to pull himself out, he teamed up
with David Gordon Green, who himself had established himself as an interesting
director of low-budget character-driven films before his career was sidetracked
into a run of dope comedies (the lowpoint of which was <i>Your Highness</i>) before
pulling out the well-receive <i>Prince Avalanche</i> (which I need to see) last year.
I can only assume Nicholas Cage was hoping for a project like <i>Joe</i> to give his
career a renewed spark of credibility, and I can only hope that it worked.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The titular Joe is a complicated
man. He’s someone who is friendly and likable, always willing to help those in
need, fiercely loyal to those who deserve it; everyone talks about what a good
man he is. And yet there’s always barely-contained violence and rage in him –
he’s in an increasingly violent feud with a local thug, he’s constantly
antagonising the police as though begging to be arrested or worse, and he might
decide to get his dog to tear your dog apart. One day, he’s approached by Gary,
a 15-year-old kid looking for a job; Joe reluctantly agrees and sets him to
work with his team of guys poisoning a forest of trees in preparation for new
plantings. It turns out Gary is basically the sole income source for his
family, including his violent alcoholic father, and Gary gravitates to Joe as
the father figure that he needs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cage plays Joe with a level of
pain and regret, devoid of the note of swagger that we’ve seen him hit for the
last few years. The performance clearly sketches out the character’s painful
history long before we get the scene spelling it all out. It’s a difficult
performance to balance – Joe needs to be someone we have ongoing sympathy for and
believe to be a fundamentally “good man” despite the (at times) terrible things
he does – but Cage manages to wring pathos and sympathy out of scenes where
none should exist. Tye Sheridan, who plays the young kid Gary, is similarly
great. I remembered Sheridan from the excellent <i>Mud</i> (which starred Matthew
McConaughey early in his own career resurgence after years of being a Hollywood
joke), and Sheridan’s ability to hold the screen while working with actors like
Cage or McConaughey at the height of their powers suggests that Sheridan could
have a successful career ahead of him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The rest of the cast, it seems, is
entirely populated by non-actors – usually a bad sign – but their performances
are almost to a person so strong so I had no idea of that fact until I looked
up the cast. I really have to single out Gary Poulter, as Gary’s father, whose
utterly terrifying performance is probably the thing that will remain with me
from the film. Barely coherent, but with a wiry cunning, surprising
physicality, and completely amoral, willing to do the most horrific deeds if
that’s what it takes to get a drink; he’s central to two of the most horrifying
moments in the film. Sadly, it seems Poulter was a homeless alcoholic when he
was cast in the film, and he died shortly before the film came out. The close
connection between the character and the man that Poulter no doubt was lent realism
to the performance, but regardless he was captivating in the role, and I was
saddened to learn of his passing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One thing I was impressed by was
how the film achieves a tone that’s inconsistent, but in a way that makes
complete sense. It has a deliberate messiness that feels very much like life.
The film was would have these very nice, sweet scenes of Joe and Gary bonding,
and then we’d see a scene of some horrific moment of violence, before returning
to the sweetness of that friendship, and it never felt awkward. You could watch
those scenes in isolation from the rest of the film and think they came from
two completely different films, but the way the movie establishes the world of
the film makes that contrasting tone feel natural, even necessary. It’s as
though the film’s tones are at war in exactly the same way that Joe’s different
impulses are in conflict with each other. There was a clear vision for why the
disparate tones would need to exist in the film, and as a result the film works
in a way that other tonally-inconsistent films don’t.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPW8FvzEyJkAH7_gr0bLJWwhMlP3_7pNGZZAoud2oZap4b5OWC3EJxAv6X1q4vsiApI6Xx2Yn2AnboMbu-MmuVpAq9WUk9jV2TAjlNLcp6ZowSeRJ1s2kDabduf9QTezXACSrZ7e30DmKP/s1600/when-animals-dream.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPW8FvzEyJkAH7_gr0bLJWwhMlP3_7pNGZZAoud2oZap4b5OWC3EJxAv6X1q4vsiApI6Xx2Yn2AnboMbu-MmuVpAq9WUk9jV2TAjlNLcp6ZowSeRJ1s2kDabduf9QTezXACSrZ7e30DmKP/s320/when-animals-dream.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>When Animals Dream</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was interested in this film due to the programme’s comparisons
to <i>Let The Right One In</i>, the remarkable and disturbing Swedish film about a
12-year-old vampire. While I can understand the comparison – both are
Scandinavian horror films centred on teenagers (or near-teens) who are
monsters, and both maintain a chilly aloof tone – it’s not a comparison that
favours <i>When Animals Dream</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film focuses on a 16-year-old
girl, Marie, with an over-protective father and a non-responsible
wheelchair-bound mother, who discovers a rash on her body that seems to be
growing hair; the first clue that leads her to discover that both she and her
mother are werewolves. And that’s an interesting premise. My main problem was
that Marie’s process of discovering her identity as a werewolf was obviously
intended as a (oh so clunky) metaphor for her discovering her sexual identity;
there’s a recurring element of threatened sexual assault throughout the movie
that bring out elements the wolf in response, and there are figures in the film
who try to control her werewolf identity (almost all of whom are men) who are
clearly supposed to be the authority figures trying to repress female
sexuality. (Let’s leave aside the fact that it makes sense to try to control
someone who is a literal monster capable of ripping out peoples’ throats.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The other problem is that, even
with an interesting premise and a short running time (it’s less than 90 minutes
long), director Jonas Alexander Arnby seems to struggle with maintaining a
sense of tension throughout the film. There were entire stretches of the film
where I would forget that I was supposed to be filled with suspense or dread;
instead I was just watching a girl in Denmark living her life, to the point
where I would occasionally be surprised when the werewolf element would appear
again. Admittedly the last half of the film, once the transformation had fully
set in, was generally very effective. There were some genuinely creepy scenes –
one scene, involving Marie pouring cups of coffee, was unbearably
uncomfortable, even sickening, while the climax, where the werewolf is let
loose in a confined area, was genuinely startling and suspenseful. But for the
most part, I just found the film forgettable. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixs16_upaUysZZaxOCjIX7w94SqwuUb3LXIs1eyPmXxkZcoV8VnHfl3XZ3JYmZ6oRaY5kZOYuwSYZ2_N9Am7uOAoUTJa-Vned6DSRXWR1PQ_kv3dYullO2sdKJmBVyryRlUOmNKCHLvmyq/s1600/force-majeure.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixs16_upaUysZZaxOCjIX7w94SqwuUb3LXIs1eyPmXxkZcoV8VnHfl3XZ3JYmZ6oRaY5kZOYuwSYZ2_N9Am7uOAoUTJa-Vned6DSRXWR1PQ_kv3dYullO2sdKJmBVyryRlUOmNKCHLvmyq/s320/force-majeure.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Force Majeure</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When the film begins, we meet a perfect family on holiday at a
beautiful ski resort. One morning, the family are at breakfast outdoors when
they see a controlled avalanche quickly get out of control and threaten to consume
the restaurant. The mother tries to get the kids to safety but, unable to do so,
uses her body to shield them; the husband grabs his gloves and his phone and
runs away, even pushing people to get past them. Fortunately, everyone is fine;
the restaurant was just consumed by a cloud of snow that quickly died down. But
the fact that the husband’s initial impulse was to abandon his family does not
go unnoticed. This then leads predictably to tensions in the marriage, as the
couple consider what their instinctive response says about who they are and who
their spouse really is, and how these compare to the people they imagine
themselves to be. These doubts even spread, as the story is told to others who
begin to ponder how they or their partners would respond.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The surprising thing about the
film, given how much of it is centred around people arguing, is how
consistently laugh-out-loud funny it is. It’s not that there’s necessarily
anything comedic in what’s being said, but the film is performed and edited with
a sense of comic timing. It’s as though the audience finds it so uncomfortable
to watch this couple arguing that we need the release of laughter to ease the
tension; the director knows we’ll have that tension, and manages to elicit the
laughter without ever undercutting the drama, using the absurd justifications
that are put forward to try to explain behaviour, or the perfectly timed side
comment that sparks up an argument that seemed to have died down, or the
perfect cut from a brief unthinking comment to a moment of uncomfortable
silence. There’s a sharp line of black character-based humour running through
the film that I found incredibly appealing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also loved the way the film was
shot, with many of the key sequences playing out in long static takes. The
camera is planted in a single spot, usually with the characters visible in long
shot, and then we just watch the interactions. (It’s reminiscent of the way
Michael Haneke works, although it doesn’t quite have the perfect shot
composition or the patience of Haneke’s work.) These days, most films are
edited to the bare limits of comprehensibility – an average shot length of two
seconds is not uncommon, is perhaps even the norm. And while that intensified
approach is often effective and brings the audience into the action, there’s
something wonderful about just sitting and watching the events play out as
though a dispassionate observer. It allows our responses to be elicited, not
because the film is forcing us to see things a certain way, but because the way
each audience member responds is inherent to who that person is, what their
worldview is, and how that affects the way you see the events of the film. It
also shows a refreshing faith in the quality of the material; the director
knows that the audience attention will be gripped by the drama, and so doesn’t
need to rely on cute camera tricks or heightened editing to make the film work.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In fact that static shot approach
can even heighten the tension – for instance, the inciting avalanche itself is
presented in one such locked-off shot; watching from several metres away, we
hear the family conversing, we see the avalanche in the distance, we hear the
family discussing the avalanche, it seems to be getting out of control, it’s
getting nearer, CHAOS PANIC, then the restaurant and the screen is consumed in
white, and we sit and wait, straining to see anything, until it slowly clears,
people start to collect themselves again, and the family come together and
discuss the experience they’ve just been through. It’s an intense and
suspenseful scene that works because it relies on the audience to observe the
world and notice the threat, rather than just throwing in cutaway ominous shots
to the avalanche to signal to the audience what they should be thinking.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally, it's worth noting that it’s also a striking looking
film. It’s not just that it was shot in the French Alps, an inherently
beautiful area; it’s shot with a slightly unreal tone, as though this world was
somehow off from reality. There’s one shot in particular, from the top of the
mountain peak, looking down at the low-level cloud covering the mountain below,
with foggy flashes of light from the explosions setting off the controlled
avalanches below, that I think may be the best single shot I’ve seen all year.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioD_8K3RWSCjPgpOrAeH7JwPKWc5xsK-56PbKnYAwUyCrEqAdt8XWfOTOtI2BGJtorWVIebRNt8xvAqx5xgS8t4_5KgMW2eCyCFbaP3LGhk-4lIFGLi2VxMdT8IeZuO6mOJr0d3uvb4hzI/s1600/enemy.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioD_8K3RWSCjPgpOrAeH7JwPKWc5xsK-56PbKnYAwUyCrEqAdt8XWfOTOtI2BGJtorWVIebRNt8xvAqx5xgS8t4_5KgMW2eCyCFbaP3LGhk-4lIFGLi2VxMdT8IeZuO6mOJr0d3uvb4hzI/s320/enemy.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
<b><i>Enemy</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The second of the two doppelganger films in this festival is a weird and eerie
low-budget affair. Jake Gyllenhall stars as Adam, a depressed history lecturer
whose seems to do nothing with his life except lecture about totalitarian
states (we hear him deliver the exact same lecture twice) and have weird creepy
sex that satisfies neither him nor his girlfriend. One day, he learns of the
existence of an actor who look and sounds exactly like him. Intrigued by the
discovery, he seeks out the actor, a man named Anthony. And bad stuff happens.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There seemed to be quite a high
level of dissatisfaction in the audience with the film, at least judging by the
way every few minutes someone would rather loudly walk down the stairs behind
me and out of the cinema. Which I could understand – there’s not a lot of
forward-momentum on the plot – but I found that disappointing. While there’s
not a narrative urgency, there’s a powerful focus on tone that fully engaged
and enthralled me. There’s an
oppressive, almost fatalistic gloom that infects the film. The comparison to
the festival’s other doppelganger film – Richard Ayoade’s <i>The Double</i> – is
interesting. Ayoade’s film is a comedy that took place in a nightmare world; by
contrast, <i>Enemy</i> simply was a nightmare. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And in that nightmare context,
there is some weird spider imagery sprinkled through the film that I don’t know
that I quite get. (I’m not even certain whether any of these moments are
supposed to be taken as literally true in the world of the film, or whether
they are simply symbolic nightmares within the film’s nightmare world.) The
film began with Anthony attending a weird sex show where naked women wearing
high heels would stand on tarantulas; there’s one single cityscape shot that
appeared to show a giant spider crawling over the buildings (although we never
see that giant spider in any other cityscape shots); and the final moment of
the movie involves a character looking at a spider. I don’t know what it’s all
supposed to mean, which I find frustrating because that final shot in
particular say to me that understanding that spider imagery is key to the
entire film. I’m decidedly curious about seeing the film again, if only to see
whether knowledge of that final moment illuminates anything else about the film
and helps me to better grasp what’s going on in the film. Until I work that
out, I don’t know that I have a lot else to say about the film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhykz0wFa1hyphenhyphen4xUe0qx_DSH9a5B_NHyEPDoityO5ecSllJ5d0g3kjCed65_9zydko3kpPkl6cq-Zgmb_jwdLNfD9WGFVnLE5BZnqpiMWWJXxXvglSIufno5Z3eJ8Kyz0534ZmOCn1AIivpB/s1600/babadook.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhykz0wFa1hyphenhyphen4xUe0qx_DSH9a5B_NHyEPDoityO5ecSllJ5d0g3kjCed65_9zydko3kpPkl6cq-Zgmb_jwdLNfD9WGFVnLE5BZnqpiMWWJXxXvglSIufno5Z3eJ8Kyz0534ZmOCn1AIivpB/s320/babadook.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
<b><i>The Babadook</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A supremely creepy Australian horror film focused on a widow trying
to raise a hyperactive son obsessed with protecting her from “the monsters”.
One night she starts to read a bedtime story called Mister Babadook; within a
few pages she decides the story (which just describes a monster that will haunt
you and make you wish you were dead) is too scary for her child and stops
reading, but that’s enough. Rather predictably, it quickly becomes clear that
the Babadook may be real, and is coming for her and her child.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film is really about exploring
the emotional difficulties of being a parent, those moments where your kids are
causing problems, are hassling you, won’t leave you alone, and you just feel
like having kids was the biggest mistake that you ever made, and about someone
trying to come to terms with the fact that they do have that response in them,
and that that doesn’t make you a bad parent. It’s a theme with which I don’t
really connect (I don’t have kids, so while I’ve had plenty of times where kids
have been annoying me and have wished their parents had never had them, I
realise that’s not the same thing), but it’s wrapped up in such a genuinely
entertaining and intense horror film that my lack of connection to what the
film was saying really didn’t matter. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the lead role of Amelia, Essie
Davis is extraordinary. A bundle of frayed nerves and tension, unresolved
grief, frustration, love and barely-suppressed anger, Davis gives the mother an
extremely sympathetic performance that feels natural, while at the same time
effectively positioning her as someone who could easily be going insane, which
allows the heightened tone of the climax to flow and work. During that climax
she’s called on to give a very physical performance, with subtle shifts in
stature, in look, in tone, and her performance feels like someone who is at war
with her own impulses. The film is deliberately set up to have an uncertainty
over whether there really is a monster, or whether the mother is just going
insane; either would have been an entirely satisfying outcome, and that’s
entirely due to the strength of this central performance. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have to mention the brilliance
of the Mister Babadook book itself. The book’s design by Alex Juhasz is simply
beautiful, simple, hand-crafted, painted in a stunning black-and-white style; at
first glance it looks like it could pass for a children’s book, but it never
has the safety or comfort of a children’s book. It’s an impressive piece of design
work, made even better by the smart decision to make it a pop-up book. That
interaction between the reader and the book brings a hint of playfulness that
makes the threat of the creature even more scary, as though it’s not just
saying, “I’m coming to kill you”, but
also “I’m going to have fun killing you.” Apparently the book was one of the
first elements of the film to be created, and you can tell that the film’s
entire production design and cinematography was inspired by the book. Writer-director
Jennifer Kent is clearly inspired by German expressionism, with Kent and
cinematographer Radek Ladczuk playing with different angles and various shadow
effects to create a darkly atmospheric world. They also almost completely wash
out the colour in the image, so that we’re left with a film that is as near to
black-and-white as you can get. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m going to try to be vague about
this, but I do have to acknowledge the very smart choice made around the film’s
ending. One of the problems with making a film where the villain is symbolic of
something emotional in the lead characters is that it can often make it seem
too easy to resolve those inherent issues – as though since the hero has fought
off the attacking evil, they’ll never again have to deal with, say, depression.
What I loved about the way this film ended was that it was a definitive ending,
it was completely satisfying, and yet it never turned the resolution of the
story into some magic way to fix the mother’s problems; she still has these
problems and emotions to grapple with, but now she has the tools and the
ability to deal with them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A very smart and funny film. I
would have overlooked the movie were it not for hearing festival director Bill
Gosden praising the film on Radio New Zealand, and I’m so glad I listened to
that show. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDWgolDW7fQ77t-Yn-D7LRQ-kLOyIflSt9mwP_ysxXJQjxrg3RqRloX9cPf4_1DMcrvsCEcLHtPC1RhdRu-45ksnhsZEVs9cqJszji5EuaL8XY9a1d2UYYtRbwoSofGxO3ACvLMqtiipNV/s1600/two-days-one-night-poster.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDWgolDW7fQ77t-Yn-D7LRQ-kLOyIflSt9mwP_ysxXJQjxrg3RqRloX9cPf4_1DMcrvsCEcLHtPC1RhdRu-45ksnhsZEVs9cqJszji5EuaL8XY9a1d2UYYtRbwoSofGxO3ACvLMqtiipNV/s320/two-days-one-night-poster.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>
<o:p><b><i>Two Days, One Night </i></b></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve only ever seen one film from the Dardenne brothers, the fine
<i>Lorna’s Silence</i>. But I enjoyed that, and the brothers do have a great
reputation for making brilliant films, so I decided to see their new film. The
movie begins on Friday afternoon, when Sandra learns that she has been fired. She
manages to convince her boss to hold a ballot at her workplace on Monday
morning – if her co-workers agree to sacrifice their bonuses for the year, the
boss will agree to let Sandra stay on. Which means that Sandra has the weekend
to meet with her co-workers, one by one, to try to convince them to agree to
sacrifice significant amounts of money in order for her to continue with her
job.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a potentially interesting
setup, and Marion Cotillard plays the role very well. Playing someone who has
only just come out of a period of severe depression and who must now literally
beg for her job, Cotillard rides the mix of desperation and humiliation well;
her need to protect her livelihood for her family contrasted with her awareness
that she is asking her co-workers to sacrifice their own provision for their
families to help her. There’s also the awareness and guilt that she is doing
all of this to her co-workers during the weekend, during their time where they
want to not think about work and instead spend with their families. And
lingering through this is just a general depressive impulse to just step back,
go to bed, and sleep until all of this is over. And Cotillard does a great job
in playing all of these tones.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the problem with the film was
that it very quickly became repetitive. Usually the people she wants to see
aren’t in, so she needs to be given directions to the soccer field or the café
or wherever they are. Once they meet, Sandra’s lines never change; she’s always
making the same points. And there’s generally very little variation in the way
the co-workers respond; either they say “I feel bad for you and will vote for
you to stay”, or they say “I’m sorry, we need the money to pay bills, pay for
our child’s education, build a patio…” And the scenes where they did try to
create ways for the scenes to play out differently feel contrived (one scene in
particular, where two co-workers come to blows over whether or not to vote for
her, just felt like it came out of nowhere and was completely absurd. And it
also lacked the conviction to follow through on some particularly significant
developments; the third act begins with a highly-dramatic scene that ended with
Sandra in the hospital, but after one scene she’s discharged and off back on
her mission, the incident never referenced in the remaining movie.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the problem is that this lack
of follow-through undercuts what little drama there is in the film. The end
result is that, even though I found Cotillard’s performance appealing, I wasn’t
engaged in her plight. I was surprised how little I cared whether she would get
to keep her job or not. When the climactic scene presented a moral quandary for
Sandra herself to grapple with, I wasn’t responding to the emotional gutpunch
that had just been delivered; I was thinking “That’s a logical way for this
situation and these elements to resolve themselves.” And that’s certainly not
the reaction the Dardenne brothers were going for. It looks like the film has
been generally fairly well received, and I’m glad if people are able to find
things to connect to, but sadly, the film was a definite failure for me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5zVievuMA0mr69XNMZd4W892_x98lHDByql9RxOF-OX8dEFkejSasewtb-n6biz5fHvPTDFESEfKIJsRKMFZrH2CzjU7PLPdW3Uok52Qa9WfrMHqs0za5Kxm-r5RbYuTaznTDWoYNS_FK/s1600/snowpiercer.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5zVievuMA0mr69XNMZd4W892_x98lHDByql9RxOF-OX8dEFkejSasewtb-n6biz5fHvPTDFESEfKIJsRKMFZrH2CzjU7PLPdW3Uok52Qa9WfrMHqs0za5Kxm-r5RbYuTaznTDWoYNS_FK/s320/snowpiercer.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Snowpiercer</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was easily the film I was most anticipating about the
festival. I’m a huge fan of Bong Joon-Ho, one of the most interesting Korean
filmmakers currently working. So I have been looking forward to <i>Snowpiercer</i>,
his first English-language film, for a couple of years (although I have had
some trepidation, since the list of great foreign directors who failed when
making English languages movies is rather long). Thankfully, the film was close
to a complete success.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the near future, after an
attempt to fix global warming goes disastrously wrong, the entire world is
completely frozen and incapable of supporting human life. The few remnants of
the human population survive on a unique train running on a loop that
circumnavigates the globe once every year. Up the front of the train, those who
were able to buy a first class ticket live in absolute luxury; down the back
it’s all drab and dull, with the dregs of humanity travelling like cattle and
the only food source being a gelatinous protein substance. Seventeen years
after the train started, Chris Evans becomes the reluctant leader of a
rebellion from the back section to take over the train.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So let’s leave aside the obvious
absurdity about the actual plot, the daftly impractical construction of the
train, and so on, because this is patently not a film intended to be taken
literally. It is clear that this film is supposed to be allegory. And as
allegory, it is thin and handy-handed, and really not that convincing in its
arguments. But I did not care in the slightest. Because this film is flat out
bonkers, in a brilliant way. There are massive and inventive action showpieces;
there are scenes of absurd comedy; there are moments where you find yourself
sitting in the audience amazed that something as completely crazy as this movie
exists. And the problem is, I can’t really explain why any of the sequences are
so great because it would spoil the surprise of the film. Suffice it to say,
the action was fast, it was intense, it was much more violent than I was
expecting, and it was frequently surprisingly witty. And the scene where two
people in different carriages look at each other from across a bend in the
track will be one of my favourite scenes of the year. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the cast! Chris Evans spends
much of the film being the calm rock at the centre of an insane storm; it’s a
performance that could easily be overshadowed by some of the more flamboyant
roles, but once we discover his backstory (in a moment that is, admittedly,
somewhat overblown in the writing), it becomes clear just how solid his
character work has been. I’m unsure whether the character named Gilliam is a
deliberate reference to Terry Gilliam (there are certainly elements of the film
that I could easily see in one of his films), but John Hurt delivers a pained
performance as the wise man advising the uprising. Song Kang-Ho (on his third
film working with Bong Joon-Ho) is appropriately spacey as the drug-addled
security expert helping the uprising get into each of the carriages. Alison
Pill gives a deranged performance as a pregnant schoolteacher whose lessons
about the architect who created the train feel like exercises in North Korean
propaganda. Everyone has been talking about Tilda Swinton, and rightly so; Swinton
has never been a restrained actor, but her performance as the Minister and lead
representative of the front of the train is a thing to behold – completely
unrecognisable, with an air of arrogance and complete certainty in her own
superiority. The climax of the film also features a nice surprise appearance
from a significant actor; that person is given the task of delivering a great
deal of explanation through one massive infodump, but it’s a scene that works
and that grips the audience due to the air of loneliness and pained regret that
the actor infuses into the moment. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also loved how much effort went
into the design of the train. The first half seem very drab and uninteresting,
atypical post-apocalyptic setting. But then comes the moment where they first
enter the first class part of the train, and my gosh! the world that was
visualised was bright and shining . Every time the characters would reach a
door to enter a new carriage I found myself eagerly anticipating the next
scene, wondering what new wonders would be behind the door (and what major
action setpiece our heroes would be entering into). As I said, the train makes
no sense if you try to view it as something that could exist in our world. But
as a feat of production design and sheer spectacle, the train is an artistic
achievement on its own level.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For a long time there was a real
risk that this film might not be released at all, or only released in an edited
form thanks to The Weinstein Company, which (as is its wont) wanted to have
twenty minutes cut from an already tight film. Many directors have caved in
under that pressure (just last year, Wong Kar Wai reedited his brilliant biopic
<i>The Grandmaster</i> for the US release; the end result was by all accounts a
travesty), so I was glad that Bong Joon-Ho took that fight on and won. Because
I love this film. I love every insane minute of it. I love that it presents has
the gall to present a bleak and depressing ending as joyous and heartwarming.
But primarily I love that, five years after his last film, <i>Mother</i>, it means
that Bong Joon-Ho is back. And more people will have the chance to be exposed
to his goofy sensibilities and his sheer joy in filmmaking.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhewFAhKgLCaWhHQuPFFX47pE9GpSffRyN_sQg-Dz2Mdun-zjKnFW1LpiVHeFpQktobHr4-k79HjRMhXSQPdI_UWt5NY2kZ_vgoJ2w0_R0WjAewgAwhss01R04t4Duf2WO5RsLWnxipHvMD/s1600/young-prodigious-t-s-spivet.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhewFAhKgLCaWhHQuPFFX47pE9GpSffRyN_sQg-Dz2Mdun-zjKnFW1LpiVHeFpQktobHr4-k79HjRMhXSQPdI_UWt5NY2kZ_vgoJ2w0_R0WjAewgAwhss01R04t4Duf2WO5RsLWnxipHvMD/s320/young-prodigious-t-s-spivet.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<o:p><b><i>The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet</i></b></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
T.S. Spivet is a genius inventor. T.S. Spivet has
just invented a perpetual motion machine. T.S. Spivet has won an award from the
Smithsonian Institute. T.S. Spivet therefore has to run away from his home in
Montana, riding a freight train to Washington DC to accept his award, because
T.S. Spivet is 10 years old</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I used to really love the work of
Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Watching his first film <i>Delicatessen</i> felt like an awesome
discovery; <i>The City of Lost Children</i> was a marvel of invention; and even the
otherwise-awful <i>Alien Resurrection</i> was at least a visual delight. That said, I
haven’t felt any pressing need to go back and revisit his films for years. But
when I saw his new film listed, and noticed that the film was in 3D, I felt
that this film would be an essential part of my festival programme. For me the
main delight in Jeunet’s work is in the way his films look, and I was excited
to see how he would play with the toy of 3D. It did not disappoint. Every shot
seems composed in a way that heightens the 3D effect, not in a standard
coming-out-of-the-screen way, but in a real-world way – even landscape shots
seem composed with something in the foreground to ensure that the 3D can
communicate the sense of this expanse of country being travelled. Sketches and
drawings are overlaid over the image, but distanced from the main image.
Threatening characters appear to loom in an impactful way. Even the title cards
that delineate chapters in the story are presented through amusing pop-up-book
images, replicating what is for most of us our first non-reality experience of
3D. There’s a playfulness to the way 3D is used in the film that is an utter
delight.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also loved the story. It is,
admittedly, very episodic – once T.S. is on the train, the film is basically a
collection of individual incidents and character moments until we finally reach
Washington and the story can begin again. But Jeunet makes great use of that
time to develop the character. The thing is, T.S. could easily be an annoying
character to put at the centre of the film, but his early inventiveness and
cunning, coupled with the careful way Jeunet builds sympathy for the character
during the middle of the film, gives the character real appeal. Indeed, his
young age is central to the character working – there’s a sad incident in his
backstory that informs his every action; it leads to T.S. having an
understandable sense of isolation from his family, that informs his need to try
to prove himself, and I can’t help feeling that an older character, even an
older youth, might very well have responded differently to the situation. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the best things about the
film was how much work clearly went making each scene spark. This was really
driven when the end credits started, and we saw the names of the cast paired
with the image of their character. Obviously the key actors playing the Spivet
family or the head of the Smithsonian had a lot to do, but I was surprised how
the images of even all the one-scene characters who appeared – the woman who
sold hot dogs, the cop who chased T.S. along the river, the professor who
inspired T.S. to invent the machine – sparked a degree of affection in me.
There are so many wonderful characters in the film that were a delight to spend
time with. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have one disappointment with the
film. This is a hugely entertaining film, and one that would be a great family
film, were it not for the fact that at its climax, one character says “Fuck”
twice, as well as a “Mother-Fucker”, within the space of about two minutes.
Now, as someone who has no issues with profanity in movies, I personally had no
issues with that language appearing in the film. The language used was
believable given the context, and created some genuinely funny moments. That
said, I was thinking that I would recommend the film to my brothers as a good
and inventive film for them to show to my nieces and nephews – a bit dark at
moments, but nothing they shouldn’t be able to handle. But I would be seriously
uncomfortable recommending this given the use of this particular language. It’s
not that I believe films should be censored – if the filmmaker felt that the
story needed that language, so be it; I don’t want a toned-down version of this
film – but every decision the filmmaker makes affects the audience that might
see this film, and in this case this one decision did, I think, reduce the
audience for this movie. That said, I really did enjoy this film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh16cZZQmpFemfSV206vLuTpETqwnbvL45QM1Ne_WVUS_eXl7bJSLBOqQ_3LLuZXgRoBQFxeCLchWfydZHOQ06qmEoNA5Vk_P9UsMNemmyoFEqu_K5O6VL-5VXFpSJf8QZcXsZHzK9WgKcO/s1600/beauty-and-the-beast.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh16cZZQmpFemfSV206vLuTpETqwnbvL45QM1Ne_WVUS_eXl7bJSLBOqQ_3LLuZXgRoBQFxeCLchWfydZHOQ06qmEoNA5Vk_P9UsMNemmyoFEqu_K5O6VL-5VXFpSJf8QZcXsZHzK9WgKcO/s320/beauty-and-the-beast.jpg" width="243" /></a></div>
<b><i>Beauty and the Beast (1946)</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I unreservedly love the Disney <i>Beauty and the Beast</i> – I’m a
complete sucker for great animation, and I think that film may be some of the
best work Disney ever made. But rewatching Jean Cocteau’s adaptation of the
same tale reminded me just how child-friendly and safe Disney films are, and
how much that contrasts with the frequently-much-darker original stories. So in
the case of the animated <i>Beauty and the Beast</i>, the design of the Beast doesn’t
really look all that scary, he’s almost comforting instead, and it’s easy to forget
that he is supposed to be a beast; whereas the Cocteau Beast looks utterly
terrifying (or at least as terrifying as they could realistically have made
someone appear in 1946), and never becomes something the audience is entirely
comfortable with, even while Jean Marais is giving an incredibly sympathetic
performance. The Disney version very quickly makes the castle look bright and
comforting, while Cocteau seemed aware that the castle is in effect a prison
for Belle, and ensures it never loses its chilly, oppressive, and expressive
gloom (admittedly, this is one area where Cocteau may have been helped by the
fact that he was never able to shoot in colour as he had wanted; I’m sure the
sets were beautiful and would have looked great in colour, but the black-and-white
photography really creates the perfect atmosphere). And singing candlesticks
and teapots are fun, but nowhere near as ominous or creepy as the figures
trapped as statues or the faces trapped by the fireplace (who rather
brilliantly actually breathe smoke), their eyes following you wherever you go.
(It’s a touch of genius that we never get an explanation for these eerie faces,
or the disembodied arms that hold the candlesticks.) But biggest of all, the
Disney version is a G-rated love story, and that’s really about it; Cocteau’s
film is wild and filled with passion, and an honest exploration of the idea
that compassion and forgiveness can bring genuine change to the world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Watching the film again, I was
reminded of just how remarkable the effects are. Candles spontaneously bursting
into light; a chain of burnt flowers that instantly turns to pearls; an incredible
moment where Belle is magically transported to her father and arrives through
the wall; or the stunning climax where Belle and the Beast take off and start
flying, her dress swirling around them. Sure, with modern eyes we can often see
how the shots were achieved (although there were one or two shots that did
still leave me perplexed), but regardless, these are effect sequences that are
just breathtaking and remarkably effective.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The only point where I have any
issues with the film come right at the end, where Cocteau makes a number of
choices at the same instant that I dislike. Avenant, the would-be suitor of
Belle, is climbing into the Beast’s garden pavilion, believing this to be
filled with wealth, when he’s shot with an arrow. He instantly turns into a
beast and falls to his death. At that instant the Beast (who had just died in
Belle’s arms) springs up, and he’s a handsome prince. I wasn’t convinced by
Avenant’s transformation into a beast – while I get that it’s thematically
significant (making the physical appearance look like the greedy grasping inner
person), I don’t believe that the explanation we’re given for why the Prince was
turned into the Beast (which is, admittedly, barely an explanation at all)
explains why Avenant turns into a beast. I also felt like the transformation
scene was lacking; it’s literally done in one second (in fact I had a
prolonged-blink-of-the-tired at that moment, and really did think I’d briefly
fallen asleep and missed it; I had to go back and watch the scene on YouTube to
confirm that it really was as fast as it seemed). I was also bewildered by the
decision to make the Prince look like Avenant, which doesn’t really make any
sense, although they try to give it a cursory thematic explanation – that
decision feels less like a creative choice, and more like Jean Marais just
objected to only being recognisable in the last minute, so they contrived a justification
for Marais to play Avenant as well.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But that’s a minor quibble with an
otherwise striking film. I think my feeling about the film is best summarised
by the fact that, when I arrived home, I immediately started researching
options for buying this film on Blu-Ray. I feel like I need to have this film,
and I need to have it in the best quality possible so that I can really bask in
every detail of this gorgeous film. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfExyi40oUhzGJmUYY4fgipujb36n6nf8g0YTK0Xmky6BRsq1FzGc3uDaq42n8L3q0gDyDyM2bZOMtDvfvUV3Avymbo35E3QL3HFAI9QSwQiDEtN7aY2mPZmUzXP5hZljFDM6u38u3gr6E/s1600/show-people.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfExyi40oUhzGJmUYY4fgipujb36n6nf8g0YTK0Xmky6BRsq1FzGc3uDaq42n8L3q0gDyDyM2bZOMtDvfvUV3Avymbo35E3QL3HFAI9QSwQiDEtN7aY2mPZmUzXP5hZljFDM6u38u3gr6E/s320/show-people.jpg" width="222" /></a></div>
<o:p><b><i>Show People</i></b></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the highlights of the final day of the festival is the regular
Live Cinema event, a screening of a silent movie with live accompaniment, this
year by a four piece group. The film was a show business satire starring Marion
Davies, who is an actress I’ve never seen, but have been curious about for
yours because of her (inadvertent) place in cinema history. (She was famously
the mistress of William Randolph Hearst, who was the inspiration for <i>Citizen
Kane</i>; according to legend, Hearst’s pet name for part of her anatomy was the
original source of the mysterious word “Rosebud”.) And having seen the film, I have
to say that I think Welles was unfair on Davies in <i>Kane</i>. The untalented second
wife whose career is advanced because of her relationship with Kane was
reportedly inspired by Davies, but (at least based on the evidence of one film)
it seemed to me that she was absolutely talented enough to sustain her career
all by herself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Davies stars as Peggy Pepper, a
girl driven up from Georgia to Hollywood by her father, who is convinced that
she’ll got the talent to be a big star. A chance meeting with an actor gets her
an unwitting role in a slapstick comedy, getting water sprayed at her and pies
in the face. This leads to her becoming a big star, with all the negative
trappings that that entails, up to and including a new pretentious screen name,
a phony Hollywood marriage and a conviction that she should be doing proper
important drama rather than these silly comedies.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Marion Davies gives a great
comedic performance here - sharp, perfectly timed, and delightfully funny. It’s
not subtle (but that's not unusual for silent films), but that lack of subtlety works, since much of
the humour seemed to be based on the lack of subtlety of silent film acting –
there’s a brilliant early scene where she demonstrates her ability to act by pulling
a collection of increasingly absurd faces according to the mood she’s
portraying; there’s a hysterical scene where Peggy tries everything to cry on
cue (up to and including having a musician play Hearts and Flowers, a song
you’d recognise as the cliché of melodramatic “sad music”); there’s the
over-the-top slapstick comedy performances which include characters literally
slapping their knees in laughter. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It should be noted that (as always
happens in show business satires) there is a wealth of cameos by celebrities of
the era, usually playing themselves. One of the most interesting appearances
was by Charlie Chaplin playing himself, in an amusing little scene that plays
with the fact that Chaplin is near-unrecognisable outside of the Little Tramp
costume. In fact, the film recognises that it needs to start the scene with
someone referring to him as Mr Chaplin, just to ensure the audience can
understand the joke. (Rather bizarrely, some 20 seconds after the film told you
who this person was, I heard the man behind me tell the person next to him
“That’s Charlie Chaplin.” Because it’s not like the film didn’t literally stop
the action to have a card appear on screen identifying this person.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The film screened on a 35mm print,
and it was a reminder of everything we’ve lost, and everything we’ve gained,
with the move to digital projection. The problem that I have with digital
projection, as good as it looks, is that there is something noticeably
artificial about the way it looks, whereas film projection, where an actual
light shines through a physical piece of film to show the image printed on that
film, has warmth and a substantial feel to it. And for the most part, the film
looked utterly beautiful, and I found myself thinking how much I missed this.
The problem was that there were some reels of the film that showed occasional
but substantial damage – the first time it happened, I honestly thought the
film was about to catch on fire - that
meant every now and then we’d find ourselves looking at ten seconds of
unintelligible mess until the image resolved itself. And that’s one advantages
of digital projection; it does protect the audience from beaten and damaged
film prints. At the same time, 98 percent of this film print was still pristine
and able to be watched, decades and decades after the print was made; digital storage of films does increase the risk of
films being lost, not due to physical damage, but due to shifting file formats
over time rendering films unable to be played. I really am of two minds on the
issue of digital projection, but I was amused that this one screening
demonstrated both the highs and the lows of classic film presentation. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hollywood is very fond of making
movies about show business, and while some are genuinely good films, they have a tendency to be terribly self-satisfied and smug in a “oh
look, I’m making fun of myself” way. There are points in <i>Show People</i> where the
film skated close to that line (one moment where Peggy sees Marion Davies and
doesn’t like what she sees felt far too self-aware), but it tended to stay on
the right side of that line, and as a result remained an enjoyable experience.
Plus it’s just fun to see a film with live music. It’s not a film I was
particularly anticipating – I’d never even heard of <i>Show People</i> until the
festival programme – but it was a smart crowd-pleasing selection by the
festival programmers and I’m glad I saw it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrPpmmA4_dOICQnlarFItD252Z-sDF-HiPfYVkV85tHWOdC_IlxvSpA5CnVSJVZmJ60iQ_yWcqsomVMFemK9NvvBvdoU1xK18NvcILYi-LJNq756FIxHV_uOGKmsoeVFNV-1ukHCwiMNhr/s1600/wild-tales.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrPpmmA4_dOICQnlarFItD252Z-sDF-HiPfYVkV85tHWOdC_IlxvSpA5CnVSJVZmJ60iQ_yWcqsomVMFemK9NvvBvdoU1xK18NvcILYi-LJNq756FIxHV_uOGKmsoeVFNV-1ukHCwiMNhr/s320/wild-tales.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<b><i>Wild Tales</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A group of passengers on a flight slowly come to realise that they have all,
at some point in their lives, insulted, hurt, or wronged one particular person.
A waitress at a diner is pressured by a co-worker to put rat poison in the food
of the man who destroyed her family. One man driving his car in the middle of
nowhere yells abuse at the man who tried to block him from overtaking; the
other man does not respond well. A workaholic gets annoyed at constantly having
his car unjustly towed. A wealthy man trying to cover up for his son’s
hit-and-run decides to pay someone else to take the fall for the crime. A bride
on her wedding day discovers her new husband has been cheating on her with a
work colleague.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My final movie of the festival,
Wild Tales is less a film; more of a collection of unconnected short films
exploring a unified theme. In each story, we find people tempted to indulge in
their worst animal instincts and take revenge for perceived or actual wrongs.
For the most part, they indulge in these temptations. It never works out well.
The film is clearly rooted in the “dig two graves” view of revenge – sometimes
those graves are literal, sometimes figurative, and something just desirable.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The problem with the film is that
it’s difficult to really talk about. I can’t talk about each of the individual tales
for fear of revealing spoilers about how each story develops. Nor is it easy to
discuss the film as a whole entity, since the only thing that ties the film
together is a consistency of theme and tone. Suffice it to say, this is the
blackest of black comedies, a dark and cynical view of the world and humanity’s
natural impulses. It’s also utterly absurd; while each of these situations may
be sparked by an incident that is entirely believable, the way each situation
escalates to an (often bloody) climax is just insane. (A friend of mine, who
seemed one of the few who didn’t enjoy the film, described the film as being
about idiots behaving like morons; it’s an understandable description for how
each of these situations spirals out of control, but I think it’s more accurate
to just say that these people simply allow their emotions to govern over their
intellect.) And writer/director Damian Szifron brings an impressive amount of
variety to the stories – despite the fact that all six films are saying very
similar things, there’s never a sense of familiarity that develops, because
each story is wholly surprising and unique in its approach to the theme.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One thing I was impressed with is
that Szifron clearly has a strong understanding of the relative strengths and
weaknesses of the stories in his film, and has structured his film very
carefully around the varying merits of the stories. The first story, which
appears pre-credits, could only have gone at the front, as it perfectly points
to the core theme of the film, but also relies on a punchline that only works
because we’re approaching that scene fresh (the audience would reach the
punchline a lot sooner if we’d already seen several of the other stories).
Post-credits, we get what is, admittedly, the most forgettable story in the
film, followed by the story that was to me the most distasteful (although even
that story was slightly redeemed by a killer ending). After that, the film gets
better and better with each story, until it ends with far and away the best and
funniest story in the film. The story of the wedding is a thing of comic
genius, with the wronged bride taking a sadistic joy in her revenge that is
truly terrifying, to the point where the audience’s sympathies are with the
cheating husband. Again, while the middle stories could in theory be presented
in an interchangeable order, the wedding story could only the final story – not
only is it the natural highpoint of the film, the tale’s ending is the film’s
clearest expression of its central thesis about the destructive effects of
being governed by your wild nature.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Last year, I decided I wasn’t
interested in seeing <i>The Great Beauty</i>, the official closing night film, because
it didn’t appeal to me. When I did eventually see that film, I instantly
regretted missing the chance to see it at the Embassy, and decided not to make
that mistake again this year, and to pay closer attention to the officially-designated "big night" films. Were it not for that experience I probably would
have skipped <i>Wild Tales</i> – the write-up in the programme does not do the film
justice – so I really am glad that I made that decision. An audience filled
with people laughing hysterically was the perfect way to end the festival on a
high note. <o:p></o:p></div>
Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576632801504816149.post-6477574939914598262015-07-05T17:43:00.002+12:002015-07-05T17:43:18.639+12:00Power of suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings... mainly happy endingsSo here's the thing,<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you had gone past the Paramount Cinema at 5.30 on
Wednesday morning, you would have seen a solitary figure standing outside in
the cold. After the disaster that the film festival online ticket bookings had
been last year, I was concerned that a lot of people might revert back to
booking in person, just in case, and I was determined to get in front. I
needn’t have worried. It was over an hour before a second person turned up, and
another 30 minutes before the next person arrived. Eventually, we were let in at 9am and tickets went on sale.
And things seemed to go well with the system. Until...</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We were booking my last day of films, just four films remaining to
process. And suddenly the ticket agent’s screen froze. And remained frozen. I
had to wait 15 or 20 minutes until the system reconnected, at which point my
entire order had been lost. So we had to start again from scratch. It was now
9.40am. Unfortunately, for a few of the busiest screenings, I’d lost the very good
seats I’d initially secured, but I still don’t have any bad seats by any means.
On the whole, it worked.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I’m thinking about taking a chance with not queueing next
year. While they still seem to have some issues with the booking system not
coping with the demand, it seems that things are much improved from last year,
and (one would hope) should be even better next year. And now that the online
system allows the user to make seat selections, that’s the last advantage of
in-person booking gone. And so much of the in-person booking time was occupied
with searching for the films I’d selected, before we even got to picking seats,
that it would have been faster had I been able to just use my pre-compiled
wishlist of film; I could have just selected them all and been choosing my
seats within a minute. I might have been able to complete the transaction before the system went down. (And not having to get up at 4.30 in the morning would be nice.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I return to my car to drive to work. Except that there’s
a car parked next to me. The problem is that the space next to me is nowhere
near wide enough to fit a car; it’s usually used by motorcycles. So, in order
for this car to squeeze into the park, they had left about 20cm space between
their passenger side and my driver’s side. Obviously there’s no possible way
anyone, no matter how small, could get into my car. After a moment of panic, I
realise my church is just down the road. So I wander down to the office to ask
whether anyone there can help me; I was imagining us trying to push the car
into the road so that I could get in. Fortunately one of the people who came to
help realised that he could climb into the driver’s seat from the passenger
side, and was therefore able to drive it out.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnw5LmyfvYbxvNhyphenhyphenoGV1_mXvGRhYQibRRPuDvIMwCxz0E_uoUZZLKZH7gkVkIp1R7GkGX3yJ5fYztb8oE54PEz4VRsbnPX6JJIGiqcDQw9qcbYNQrEefv6_n9aDJnJIo1tFmFRN2sszDbj/s1600/NZFF2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnw5LmyfvYbxvNhyphenhyphenoGV1_mXvGRhYQibRRPuDvIMwCxz0E_uoUZZLKZH7gkVkIp1R7GkGX3yJ5fYztb8oE54PEz4VRsbnPX6JJIGiqcDQw9qcbYNQrEefv6_n9aDJnJIo1tFmFRN2sszDbj/s640/NZFF2015.jpg" width="451" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So here are the films I’m seeing this year:<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/the-lobster/" target="_blank">The Lobster</a></i>
<br />
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/seymour-an-introduction/" target="_blank">Seymour: An Introduction</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/hill-of-freedom/" target="_blank">Hill of Freedom</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/experimenter/" target="_blank">Experimenter</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/when-marnie-was-there-subtitled/" target="_blank">When Marnie Was There</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/the-wolfpack/" target="_blank">The Wolfpack</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/a-most-violent-year/" target="_blank">A Most Violent Year</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/girlhood/" target="_blank">Girlhood</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/a-girl-walks-home-alone-at-night/" target="_blank">A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/phoenix/" target="_blank">Phoenix</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/victoria/" target="_blank">Victoria</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/while-were-young/" target="_blank">While We’re Young</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/the-misfits/" target="_blank">The Misfits</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/the-assassin/" target="_blank">The Assassin</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/ex-machina/" target="_blank">Ex Machina</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/the-end-of-the-tour/" target="_blank">The End of the Tour</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/kiss-me-kate-3d/" target="_blank">Kiss Me Kate (3D)</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/inherent-vice/" target="_blank">Inherent Vice</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/alice-cares/" target="_blank">Alice Cares</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/a-pigeon-sat-on-a-branch-reflecting-on-existence/" target="_blank">A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/the-tribe/" target="_blank">The Tribe</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/tehran-taxi/" target="_blank">Tehran Taxi</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/71/" target="_blank">'71</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/very-semi-serious/" target="_blank">Very Semi-Serious</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/the-look-of-silence/" target="_blank">The Look of Silence</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/99-homes/" target="_blank">99 Homes</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/dreamcatcher/" target="_blank">Dreamcatcher</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/coming-home/" target="_blank">Coming Home</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/dope/" target="_blank">Dope</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/best-of-enemies/" target="_blank">Best of Enemies</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/lonesome/" target="_blank">Lonesome</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/our-little-sister/" target="_blank">Our Little Sister</a></i></div>
<div>
* <i><a href="http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/wellington/tale-of-tales/" target="_blank">Tale of Tales</a></i></div>
<div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m most excited about <i>Inherent Vice</i>. I’ve loved Paul Thomas
Anderson’s films ever since I saw <i>Magnolia</i> at the 2000 film festival, and was
bitterly disappointed when the release of his new film was cancelled two weeks
before its scheduled release date. I know that the Paramount had tried to
negotiate with the distributor for a limited release to that cinema, but that
also fell through. Fortunately, the festival will offer an opportunity to see
the film, and at the Embassy, which is a great relief. Everything I'd seen of the film looked remarkable and visually distinctive, so I was not looking
forward to only ever experiencing the film on my TV screen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve heard excellent things about the shot-in-California Iranian
black-and-white vampire film <i>A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night</i>, and while it has
been sitting in my Netflix streaming queue for a couple of months, I’m held off
on watching it in the hope it would get a festival screening. So I’m excited to
see that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m also really looking forward to <i>Victoria</i>, which is
supposed to be great. A crime thriller about a girl who falls in with some guys
planning to rob a bank, it’s apparently an intense and thrilling experience,
and that’s before you take into account the technical feat of filming the
entire 140 minute movie as a genuine single take. (None of the <i>Birdman</i>-style
fakery piecing separate takes together to create the illusion of a single take;
they apparently really did shoot it with one camera over a 2 hour 20 time
period.) Consider <i>Russian Ark</i>, which is probably the most famous single-take
film. That film was a brilliant film and technically an impressive achievement,
but it took place in a single (admittedly
large) location that could be controlled, and while it was enjoyable and had
memorable sequences, it was also a bit impregnable if you don’t have a strong
grasp on Russian history (which I don’t). By contrast, <i>Victoria</i> takes place
over 22 separate locations, wandering the streets between each location, plus
it’s almost twice as long as <i>Russian Ark</i>, and it should have the easy audience accessibility
and pure entertainment value that comes with working in the defined crime genre.
If they really have managed to pull this off, the film could be something quite
special.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s a small selection of classic films this year. I saw
<i>The Colour of Pomegranates</i> at the film society a few years ago, and did not
care for it, so I’m not seeing that. However, I’ve never seen either of the
other classic films; <i>The Misfits</i> (the final film of both Marilyn Monroe and
Clark Gable), or <i>Kiss Me Kate</i> (a musical adaptation of <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i>,
in Technicolor 3D). Both of those should be fun.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s one film I’m seeing about which I’m deliberately
trying to stay ignorant. I heard the festival director, Bill Gosden, on Radio
NZ’s “At the Movies” show mention <i>The Tribe</i>, a film apparently about a gang of
teenage delinquents. What Gosden said was that the characters are all hearing-impaired,
the dialogue is therefore all in Ukrainian Sign Language, and that the director
believes that the sign language is so expressive that you don't need subtitles.
So there are no subtitles in the film. Frankly, that intrigues me as an
experience and an experiment; can I follow the film if I have no idea what
anyone is saying? So I’ve decided to not know anything else about the film
until I sit down in the cinema, and try to experience the film in as pure a way
as possible.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s also a couple of documentaries that I fully expect
to be difficult and challenging to watch, but that are also supposed to be
excellent. The first, <i>The Look of Silence</i>, is a companion piece to <i>The Act of
Killing</i>, an incredible and disturbing documentary that I saw in the 2013
festival. That film looked at the Indonesian killings in the mid-60s, when a
million alleged-communists were murdered, and was strongly focused on the
killers, showing them recreating the techniques they would use to murder their
victims. The new film is apparently more focussed on the victims, with the
central character being an optomistrist offering free eye checks to members of
these death squads as an opening to discuss their crimes, including the murder
of his own brother. There’s also a film called <i>Dreamcatcher</i> about a woman called
Brenda Myers-Powell, who spent 25 years as a prostitute (starting when she was
just 14), but who is now working to help sex workers leave the life. (There’s a
really interesting (albeit disturbing) interview with Myers-Powell <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33113238" target="_blank">here</a>)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve decided to trust the decisions of the festival
programmers where it comes to the “big night” films. I’ve had too many times
where I’ve decided not to see an opening night, centerpiece, or closing night
film because it didn’t interest me, only to discover later on that I really
loved those films. So even though they don’t immediately interest me, I’m still
going to see <i>The Lobster</i> (about a society where people who are turned into
animals if they remain single for too long?) or <i>Tale of Tales</i> (about, umm, I
genuinely don’t know) just because. (On the other hand, the centrepiece film, a
Taiwanese movie called <i>The Assassin</i>, actually does seem pretty interesting.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A couple of years ago, the festival show the Koreeda
Hirokazu film <i>I Wish</i>, about two brothers wanting to be reunited, which everyone
I heard from really loved. Unfortunately it just kept clashing for me with
other priorities, so I never got to see it. (And still haven’t.) Then there was
the swapped-at-birth film <i>Like Father, Like Son</i>. Which I also wanted to see,
but which kept clashing. So this year, I decided to make his new film, <i>Our
Little Sister</i> (about girls meeting their half-sister) an absolute priority. And
I’ve managed to fit it in; I am risking a rather short turn-around between two
films and different cinemas, but it should be achievable.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One thing I always find a little disappointing is the way
Wellington has often been shortchanged with the Live Cinema events, where
classic silent films are accompanied by live musical performances. Auckland
always seems to get the big films, while we get the lesser-known films. So this
year, both Auckland and Wellington are getting a film I’ve never heard of
called <i>Lonesome</i>. I’m sure it’s a great film, and it’s nice to be able to see a
film I might otherwise never get to see, and the music will be great. But then
I look at my wall, and see the big picture of Charlie Chaplin with “the kid”, and
I realise that Auckland is also getting a Live Cinema screening of <i>The Kid</i>, and
I wind up feeling like I’m missing out. And that’s disappointing. Sure, it’s
not exactly hard for me to find a copy of <i>The Kid</i> to watch at home, but it
still feels like a lost opportunity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s a ton of films I’ve just heard good things about and
am excited to see – <i>Ex Machina</i>, <i>While We’re Young</i>, <i>Dope</i>, <i>Girlhood</i>, <i>The End of
the Tour</i>, or <i>The Wolfpack</i>. As an animation fan, it will be sad to see <i>When
Marnie Was There</i>, which (following the retirement of Miyazaki and the likely
retirement of Takahata) could very well be the final film of the great Japanese
animation Studio Ghibli. And the rest of the films I’m seeing are just movies
that leapt out at me for one reason or another, and often I don’t really even
know why I feel compelled to see some of these films. But I’m optimistic; there
could be some real gems in there.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’re now less than three weeks from the start of the
festival, and I find myself getting impatient, looking over the programme again
and again, wanting the festival to have started already. And in five weeks’ time, it will all be over
for another year. And so to next year...<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08196372589248892579noreply@blogger.com0