Dustbustering at the Olympics

So here's the thing.

It turns out that it's really hard to write a blog during the Olympics, because you generally end up spending all of your time watching the Olympics, hour upom hour upon hour.

The Olympics gets so completely ingrained into your life at this time, you even find yourself dreaming about the Olympics. For example, last night, I had a dream where there was this really weird nonsensical cycling event. There were maybe 25 or 30 people in this race, cycling around the track where they stage the pursuit events. It was a long race, about 160 laps, and people didn't win by having the fastest time, or being the first to complete all the laps. They won by accumulating points, somehow. They could collect something like 20 points for lapping the field, or they could get points by coming 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th in the sprint events. The sprint events seemed to happen every 10 or so laps, although who really knew, and I think a sprint may have involved only one lap of the track, but I'm not really sure. Most times it wasn't even clear that there was a sprint until it had finished and they were telling us who had won, nor was it clear what it was that triggered the sprint. It certainly wasn't the person who was in the lead, since there were people winning the sprints who hadn't yet lapped the field although there were others who had, so the person who won certainly wasn't "in the lead" to the degree that having the lead in this race meant anything (which it didn't seem to). It was also possible somehow to lose points - I remember that one guy in my dream was on -20 points, although what he did to lose points was unclear (did he lose points for having been lapped? for going too slowly? for making obscene gestures? what?). Also, it was an individual game but people were in a strange way working at teams, even though they were from different countries, although quite why they were doing this or how these teams were forming and disbanding was not immediately evident. The whole event just seemed like one great big game of Calvinball on bicycles.

Still, that's the good thing about dreams. They don't have to make sense. And it's not like they'll ever include anything that insane and incomprehensible in the real Olympics.

On the other hand, I would never have dreamed that anything as cool as the white water canoe/kayak slalom event could even exist, let alone be in the Olympics. How is it possible that this event has been at every Olympics since 1992 and I've never heard of it? Am I the only person that didn't know about it? Absolutely gripping event, with people going down man-made rapids, fighting against the current to the next gate, rowing around the next post sometimes millimetres away from the post, all the time fighting a torrent of water. Or they'll suddely surge forward, using the phenomenal flow of water to power their incredible speed. Or there will be points in the track where competing currents mean the contestant is literally held in place and must fight for a good few seconds just to break free and move ahead. It's an incredible event, and it was sad to see on the television coverage last night that all the whitewater events have finished and the track has now been drained. Which means I'll have to wait another four years until I can watch it again. I can't wait.

zzzzzzzzzzz

So here's the thing.

Every Olympics, I watch the opening ceremony live. And every Olympics, I forget just how extraordinarily long the entry of the athletes is. It's phenomenal. I'm watching, having had nearly 1 1/2 hours pass since the athlete entry started, thinking that we must be getting close to the end - and then the commentators reveal that we've just hit the halfway mark. At 2.30 in the morning, it's enough to cause you to lose your will to live.

The problem is that there is nothing inherently interesting about watching people walk around a stadium. The first hour is so spectacular, and then the show stops dead. After 30 minutes of the entry, you've had enough. After 3 hours, even non-Chinese viewers like myself were cheering like madmen at the arrival of the Chinese athletes - less out of excitement to see these people, more out of joy that this bloody ordeal is finally over and there's a promise of going to sleep in the near future.

Still, it was a phenomenal ceremony, some incredible images on display, and an impressive achievement. I always enjoy the spectacle, the general show-off-ness of the opening ceremony, and that was all on display last night. You'll have already seen the pictures or the videos, and will have formed your own opinion, so there's not really much point in saying anything.

But, there was one particular comment by the New Zealand commentators that I found interesting. And it will probably prompt me, in my next film festival post, to again skip ahead a few films, and talk about a film that's particularly relevant. So that's coming up, just as soon as I get some more sleep.

Good night.

He gave us eyes to see them

So here's the thing.

I always meant to watch that BBC "Planet Earth" documentary series that aired a couple of years ago, but I just never remembered that it was on. (I'll probably watch it once I get an HDTV, because watching the show on Blu-Ray should be astonishing.)

In the meantime, I had a bit of a taste of the show with the documentary film Earth (see the trailer here), which was made up of footage from the series edited into a film. The film charts a year in the life of the planet, starting up at the Arctic Circle and travelling down to the South Pole, observing the different animals that inhabit it. It's rather fascinating to watch, if only because it really binds different areas of the planet together - often nature films and documentaries may present locations so different from each other that they seem like completely unrelated worlds. But by presenting the gradual changes in environment, it does a good job in actually presenting the planet as a unified whole, not just a variety of alien environments. And, while the film very deliberately focused its attention on three specific animal species - the (non-tropical-island species of) polar bear, the African elephant, and the humpback whale, they do a really good job in offering glimpses at the wide variety of wildlife on the planet.

I don't really know that I have much to say about the film. It's a fascinating film, and beautiful to watch on the big screen, but the need to cover the entire planet in only 90-odd minutes means it does feel like they've only just started talking about one location when they're suddenly off somewhere else. Still, it's worth seeing, and there are definitely some things I've never seen before (even if only because I never saw the TV series).

It's Alive! IT'S ALIVE!

So here's the thing.

I've never seen The Red Balloon (see the trailer here) before. Obviously I'd heard of the film, it's generally acknowledged as a classic, but I'd managed to somehow never see it. It seems like an inprobable concept to structure a film around - a boy finds a balloon - and yet it works.

What I was surprised to discover was that, in some ill-defined way, the balloon was alive. This isn't immediately obvious - we only learn this after the boy's mother throws the balloon outside (cue audible gasp from the audience, including myself), the balloon starts to float away, then returns to hover outside the window until the boy retrieves it. And it's at that moment that the film becomes extraordinary. Balloons always seem alive, dancing around seemingly of their own accord in the wind, and this film merely takes that idea one step further. The balloon comes at the boy's call, follows the boy, ducks and dodges out of the grasp of other people. The boy and balloon become friends, and the film manages to make this seem, if not believable, at least plausible. There's an innocence and playfulness to the film that is quite charming. At the same time, the film manages to capture the joys of childhood without either being overly (and cloyingly) sentimental, or holding an adult's cynicism. It's quite extraordinary.

(Brief sidenote: There's a film on at the festival, that I never saw, called Flight of the Red Balloon (see the trailer here), that seems to revolve in part around a (fictional) remake of The Red Balloon, and I think that in itself speaks to the influence and impact that The Red Balloon has had. And it's easy to see why the film has had that effect.)

The Red Balloon is a short film - under 40 minutes - so the film was paired with an earlier film from the same director. White Mane tells the story of a wild white horse that roams the plains, escaping from the clutches of all who try to catch and tame it, whether the evil ranchers or a young boy. But, eventually, the horse grows to trust and respect the boy, and a friendship grows between the two.

To be honest, the main problem that White Mane has is that it's not The Red Balloon. Viewed by itself, it's probably reasonably watchable, and it's certainly not a bad film. But when paired with The Red Balloon, comparisons between the two films are always going to be made, and the film does not come out at all well in the comparison. White Mane just seems more pedestrian, something we've all seen before in films like The Black Stallion or National Velvet. And for all its fantastic and unbelievable elements, The Red Balloon is just easier to relate to, tied in its roots to a common childhood experience. We've all had balloons that seemed almost alive, not all of us have ever dreamed of riding a wild horse around the open plains. And this may be part of the reason why White Mane simply didn't engage me - I didn't dislike the film, I just wasn't caught up in its world or its story. In the end, both films seem very similar, but where White Mane is tied down by literalism (they even have to rely on constant narration to tell us what's going on in White Mane's mind), The Red Balloon comes across as imaginative and a more genuine representation of the childhood experience. The endings of the two are surprisingly similar in a lot of ways, but when the narrator in White Mane comments how the two swim to an island "where horses and children can be friends forever", it just feels like a clunky effort to force some kind of deeper meaning into a story that doesn't support it, whereas the ending of The Red Balloon is much more poetic and beautiful.

Fortunately, The Red Balloon is so wonderful that, even at its short running time, the cost of the film ticket is more than justified by that film alone. Any enjoyment you can get from White Mane (and there is enjoyment there) is just an extra, a bonus.

Juju-flop, Swut, and Turlingdrome

So here's the thing.

For me, with one day and two films left to go in the film festival, In Bruges (see the trailer here) has possibly been the most enjoyable film of the festival. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star as a couple of hitmen who, having just completed a job, are instructed to get the hell out of the UK, go to Bruges, do a bit of sightseeing, and wait for further instructions. This obviously raises one important question:

"Where the f*ck is Bruges?"

So they go, and they sightsee. Gleeson is completely entraced by this gorgeous city, but Farrell is less impressed. He grew up in Dublin, he's not going to be impressed by Bruges. So basically, it's a nice sightseeing film with an odd couple at the centre. And then, once the call with further instructions comes in, it gets violent, lots of running around in the street shooting people and the like. In other words, as a film about sightseeing hitmen, plotwise there's not much about the film that will surprise you. No developments to cause you to say "I didn't see that coming". The film is exactly what you expect.

Except funny. I can see this becoming one of those films, like The Big Lebowski, that acquires a huge and dedicated cult following. And that is largely because of the script, sharply written with a keen ear for hilarious and quotable dialogue, and a wry awareness of the absurdity of your typical action film (one character, trying to get a gun, is offered an Uzi, and has to point out that he's not from Los Angeles and doesn't really need a machine gun). But, in addition to being achingly funny, the script is incredibly tight. It's rare to find a film that is this well scripted. There are no convenient outs, seemingly unimportant throwaway lines ultimately prove essential in unexpected ways, and almost every character in the film plays an essential role in moving the film to its conclusion.

But a tight, well-written script like this doesn't work if you don't have the cast to make it work. Colin Farrell is a revelation here - we knew he was a talented actor, but I don't think we've ever seen him be this funny before. With the wrong actor, the role wouldn't work at all well - he's supposed to be the sympathetic core of the film, yet he's a professional killer who alternates between being deliberately offensive and behaving like a petulant child on a family holiday. But with an actor of Colin Farrell's natural charisma, the audience genuinely loves him despite his many flaws and minimal merits. Farrell works well with Brendan Gleeson, an actor who doesn't get enough respect. Gleeson is the straight-man in this comedy duo, constantly enraptured by this incredible city and frustrated by Farrell's inability to appreciate anything around him. He's also tasked with providing the moral centre of the film, making a number of extremely difficult choices throughout the film, and Gleeson nicely underplays those situations.

The third character in the film is the city. And you've got to respect any film that would decide to set itself in Bruges. It's hardly a well-known city - I expect a huge proportion of the audience would be asking along with Colin Farrell just where the city is (indeed, one of the posters for the film actually included a note in parentheses explaining where Bruges was). But the decision to set it in a relatively unknown city pays off, as we're confronted with images I've never seen on screen before. And Bruges is a beautiful city - they describe it in the film as being like something out of a fairy tale, which it is, but there's a nicely dark gothic feel that seems to run through the place as well. You'll find yourself wanting to jump on a plane and fly straight there, just to see it for yourself. Certainly I would have been quite happy if the entire film had just involved travelling around seeing the sights with these two characters.

So when the ending came, and it was the typical ending to a hitman movie - people running around shooting at each other, albeit in Bruges this time - it was almost disappointing, almost like it had come out of a different film. It wasn't a bad ending, in fact, in a lot of ways it was actually a perfect ending. It's just that tonally it felt a little over-the-top compared to the rest of the film. But that's really just quibbling, since the whole hitman element was pretty integral to the film right from the start.

The truth is, it's a really well-made, funny, intelligent film, exploring a beautiful city with a couple of characters you can't help liking. I look forward to revisiting the film, again and again and again.

The importance of entertainment

So here's the thing.

I was planning to write about the festival films I see in viewing order, but I've decided to skip ahead for this one film. That way, I'm done with it and I never need think about it ever again.

I've previously written about seeing the original German-language version of Funny Games, and a couple of nights ago, I saw the English language remake (see the trailer here). And now that it's done, I'm just glad it's over, I can move on, and need never see that film again.

I was already not looking forward to the film. Before I even bought the tickets, I was debating with myself whether I should go. Having seen the original, I knew I would hate the experience, and yet in an act of extreme masochism I bought the ticket. My curiosity about the whole shot-by-shot-remake idea won out over my preference to actually find pleasure in watching movies.

When it came to the day, I was not able to cope with it at all. Just the thought of sitting through that experience again honestly made me feel ill. I don't know how many times I decided not to go. Even sitting in the cinema waiting for the film to start was a great internal struggle. But that was nothing compared to the fight once the film started. What made sitting through the film even harder was the fact that I could have left at any time and not inconvenienced anyone. For some reason, there was not one single person sitting in any of the right-side seats in my row - I could have left without pushing past anyone. I don't know how that happened - perhaps there was supposed to be a group in those seats and they wisely decided not to go, or perhaps it was God trying to give me an easy way to walk out of the film and I didn't take it. All I know is that I spent the entire film desperate for the film to end. And when it did, I didn't stay to the end of the credits (as I normally try to do). Instead I was out of the cinema, literally running, the second the credits started to roll. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.

I guess the moral of the story is: watching Funny Games the second time is even worse than watching it the first time. Knowing what is coming does not make it any easier. It doesn't prepare you for the experience. If anything, it makes it worse. You know what's coming up, and every moment, you can see exactly where it's heading to, and it just makes you sick.

It was interesting watching the film on the big screen, because I watched the original at home on my not-as-big-as-I-would-like-it TV. And as harsh and as confrontational as that experience was, watching it on the big screen was a lot worse, because the big screen is ... well, big. There's no way to escape from the image, so it's that much harder to watch. And the sound, oh, the sound.

I went to the film curious about how small differences might affect a shot-by-shot remake. And in the case of Funny Games, not much at all. The experience would be much the same whichever version you watch. But what I found interesting was the way I started looking for differences between the films almost as a coping mechanism. If I can focus on looking for how the films vary, I don't have to think about what's actuall happening on screen. And there weren't many differences between the two. There were the odd shots (literally single shots) that seemed unfamiliar to me - and while I certainly don't expect to every shot after one viewing of the original, so much of the remake did feel so familiar that those occasions where I found myself thinking "was that shot in the original?" I don't know - they probably were in the original, but it was strange that they would seem so completely unfamiliar when I remembered pretty much every other shot. So perhaps they may have been a change, or perhaps not.

Some of these other changes I am more certain about. In the Hot/Cold scene, I'm pretty sure the car was originally head-on to the camera, because the passenger door had to be opened to find what was inside. This time, the car is actually side-on, allowing them to find the thing inside the car boot (a change that makes it easier - and more unpleasant - to see what falls out. That was a logical change). I'm also pretty certain that in the original the husband can't get the police on the phone but manages to call a friend, although he can't make himself heard. In the remake, he actually manages to get hold of the police, but he still can't be heard. If I'm correct about that change, one wonders why Haneke decided to make that change.

The most interesting change came after the "cat in the bag" scene. As with the original, there is no Naomi Watts nudity in the scene (or anywhere in the film, for that matter), but rather interestingly, where in the original the wife gets fully dressed again afterwards, in the remake Naomi Watts is only in her underwear when events progress. She then remains in her underwear for a long time - until the point where she gets dressed to go running down the road. And while I fully appreciate the enjoyment that one can ordinarily get from seeing Naomi Watts in her underwear, in this case it felt unnecessarily exploitative, even for this film - and frankly, if Michael Haneke is going to try to take the moral high ground with this film, I don't know that a change like that is actually going to help his case much.

(And incidentally, when she goes running down the road, she does wear that same weird poncho-jersey thing that was in the original film. Couldn't they have changed that at least? It looks just as awful on Naomi Watts.)

Anyway, I want to get this over and done with. Funny Games - a horrible horrible film by an extremely talented director. I honestly can't believe that I voluntarily sat through the film once, let alone (in effect) twice. I wish I could go back and stop myself, tell myself that it's not worth it. All I can hope is that, if anyone reads this, you will take what I have to say into account. Don't watch this film, in either version. If you do, you'll regret it. Much as I do.

Next post, we'll go back to the film festival screening order. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson go sightseeing In Bruges. There's a dwarf. And people die. It's very funny, and very violent. Michael Haneke would hate it.

In spring, one plants alone

So here's the thing.

I had this foolish idea of trying to keep up with writing posts about each of the festival films I see. But really, when you see 8 films in the opening weekend, and then see another film most following days, I was always going to be behind. And on those odd nights when I'm not at a film, I'm trying to catch up on other stuff I haven't had time for - I spend enough time in front of a computer at work, I don't want to sit in front of my computer at home as well. So what I'm saying is, I'll try to carry on with these posts, but I'll basically just be really behind my actual screenings (for the record - festival films seen so far, 12; films written about, 3 including this post). And when I do manage to write something, my posts may not be quite as detailed as I would normally write.

Anyway, to the subject at hand.

In 1978, 21-year-old New Zealand director Vincent Ward travelled up to Tuhoe country looking to make a short documentary about Maori still living in a traditional manner. He found the subject of his film in an 80-year-old woman named Puhi, a woman who still took care of her now adult son, who suffered from mental illness. Puhi died a couple of years later, and her son died some time later. But the memory of Puhi really seems to have stuck with Ward, and so 30 years later he returned to make Rain of the Children (see the trailer here), in an attempt to try and fully tell the story of Puhi's life and discover who she really was.

There's a haunting image early in the film, documentary footage from Ward's first filming, of Puhi travelling into town in Ward's van. She apparently insisted in sitting in the back of the van, even though there were no seats, and as she sat on the floor of the van she prayed, non-stop, for the entire trip. It's a fascinating, somehow troubling image that gains great importance as we discover just why she prays so much.

The film is essentially an extremely personal documentary by Ward. He is the first person we see in the film, telling us about his earlier film, and he provides the narration throughout the entire film. The rest of the film consists of numerous talking heads, footage from the earlier documentary, and reenactments of scenes dating back over a hundred years. And it was those earliest scenes that for me weren't terribly interesting - hearing about how the tribe moved from this location to that, or about the rise of a local prophet honestly just didn't engage me. There was just something a little abstract about the events. While Puhi, as the central character of the film, may have been present, she was a child and wasn't really involved. It wasn't until Puhi became a teenager, married and pregnant at the age of 14, that I found the film start to get its focus, which it held for the rest of the film.

Ultimately, the film becomes something of a tragedy, as Puhi loses husband after husband, and child after child after child, until she starts to see herself as cursed. It becomes clear that by the time Vincent Ward first met Puhi, her life had been completely subsumed into her son's life, desperately trying to protect him from the curse waiting to take him if she ever let her guard down. And it is heartbreaking as we see the consequences of this on her son, left after her death in a world he was completely unprepared for.

I've sadly only seen a couple of Vincent Ward films, but what I do know is that Ward, as a filmaker, has an extraordinary visual sense, presenting images that remain in the mind years later. And Rain of the Children is no exception , with images of pure beauty, of sheer terror, of haunting power. In some ways, I wish the entire film had been a complete dramatisation, rather than a documentary/dramatisation mix, because as fascinating as the documentary elements were, the restaged moments were so beautiful and powerful (in a way that talking heads or footage shot in the moment cannot be) that it almost seemed a shame to leave the recreations.

Anyway, fascinating, powerful, and moving movie. There's no doubt that it will make its way back to the cinemas, so keep an eye out for it.

It's funny what we do for love

So here's the thing.

I never notice when there's a filmmaker attending a film festival screening. So it was a surprise when the screening of Married Life started with someone introducing Ira Sachs, the co-writer and director of the film. I always feel a little uncomfortable when a filmmaker is present, largely because I worry "what if the film isn't good? How horrible will that be for the filmmaker?" Thankfully, it's not a problem we needed to worry about with Married Life (see the trailer here), which right from the opening title sequence (constructed out of images that could have been cut from a 1940s magazine) was clearly going to be a wonderful entertainment.

I'd not heard of the film before, nor the director, and solely went because of it had an interesting and talented cast (Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Pierce Brosnan, and Rachel McAdams) and the write-up in the festival programme sounded interesting. Chris Cooper, who is always worth watching, stars as a married man who starts an affair with a girl nearly half his age (McAdams, who is usually terribly beautiful, but is quite stunning in 1940s styles). Cooper does still care about his wife (Clarkson), so decides that leaving her will be too cruel. The only choice he has left is to find a painless way to kill her. Meanwhile, Cooper's best friend (Pierce Brosnan, playing a womaniser in a real stretch from his previous roles) tries to seduce the young McAdams.

It's a nice concept for a movie, with a strong film noir storyline combined with a fascinating domestic drama. Plus, Ira Sachs is clearly aware of the humour in the whole "husband tries to murder his wife to avoid hurting her" storyline, playing the laughs while managing to never actually go into black comedy. It's well-written, with some beautiful dialogue, a storyline that is genuinely suspenseful and, while plot developments are never really surprising, every time I thought I knew what would happen next I was wrong. Add to that the great design (the 1940s period is a visually rich period), and the film just comes alive.

(My only real problem with the film initially was with the casting of Rachel McAdams, an actress who I like and who absolutely looks perfect for the 1940s, and who does play the role extremely well, but who frankly seems a little too young for the role of a woman who married ten years and who was widowed by the war. Imagine my shock when I check the IMDb and discover McAdams was born in 1976. She's older than me! Which means she's pretty much the right age for the role. That's the problem with Hollywood getting people in their mid-20s to play high school students in films like Mean Girls - when you try to get them to actually play their age, they just seem too young.)

Anyway, I'd never heard of Ira Sachs before, but based on the strength of this film, I'm interesting in seeking out his earlier films. In the meantime, it seems the film is coming out next month. It's a wonderfully-crafted film, and well worth your time and money.

Hold me closer tightrope dancer

So here's the thing.

I started my 2008 Film Festival with Man On Wire (see the trailer here), a really enjoyable documentary.

A French tightrope-walker named Philippe Petit had seen an artist's impression of the World Trade Centre in a newspaper article in the early 1960s, when construction was just commencing, and apparently immediately had a dream of one day crossing between the twin towers. In the years since seeing that picture, he's tightrope-walked between the spires of Notre Dame, and between the pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And then one night in 1974 his plan came together. The structure of the World Trade Centre was finished, the roof was on, the bottom 80-odd floors were occupied and functioning while the top 20-or-so floors had final construction work to be completed. A small group of people stole into the building, went to the roof, erected a wire between the two buildings, and then the next morning, Philippe walked out and spent 45 minutes crossing between the two buildings eight times.

It was a really enjoyable film. The documentary presents the events of his stunt, nicely interwoven with the larger story of Philippe's decade-long preparation for the event. Philippe has extraordinary charisma - it becomes clear how he was able to gather together a group of people to in effect break the law. He recreates moments from the events of that Above all, Philippe is an incredible performer. He doesn't just walk across, he kneels, he even lies down on this thin wire 400 metres above the ground. One of the cops on the roof trying to bring him down actually called him a tightrope dancer, since what he was doing certainly wasn't walking. I've always viewed tightrope walking as a stunt, but Philippe's performance definitely supports his view of it as an artform.

In a surprising (at least to me) way, the film turns out to be a bit of a heist film. Philippe watches gangster films constantly, imagining the preparation for the event as a bank robbery requiring careful planning, and in a funny way, he's right. After all, they're not allowed up there, so the exploit requires two groups of people in the two towers, fake IDs and disguises. And, as in any good heist film, problems arise (Philippe and another guy get trapped under a tarp for three hours, and in another moment play hide-and-seek with a guard checking the roof).

There are two things I'm disappointed by with the film. No film was apparently taken of the actual stunt from the roof-level, so we have to make do with (admittedly spectacular) photographs and footage from his earlier performances at Nortre Dame and the Harbour Bridge. But that couldn't be helped. The other disappointment was just that I would have liked to get to know a bit more about Philippe - how he actually got into tightrope walking would be a fascinating story.

But still it's a well-made documentary, nicely combining talking heads, footage from the time, recreations, and even Philippe enacting moments in his own house. Plus, it (thankfully) managed to avoid any mention of the towers' ultimate fate (which I was a bit worried about). It's just an enjoyable entertaining film, laugh-out-loud funny, and well worth trying to take the time to see.

Here we go

So here's the thing.

24 hours to go.

Tomorrow is the first day of the Wellington Film Festival, and at 7pm I will be sitting down in seat K26 of the Embassy, ready to enjoy Man On Wire, a documentary about a man tightrope-walking between the Twin Towers back in 1974.

Over the following 16 days, I'll have a further 20 festival films to attend (and, as if that weren't enough, a Saturday afternoon screening of The Dark Knight).

It's going to be an intense and exhausting two weeks, but it should also be a lot of fun. I'm excited.