Had a great time at my fourth experience of MIFF full-time. Two weeks off work and sixty films. Organizationally proficient as usual thanks to all those volunteers. Low seats and sticky floors at Greater Union remain something to be endured and the catering in all venues is a rip off, but convenient. The atmosphere at the Forum is grungy and cinematic at the same time. The MIFF trailer was bearable – these are the things that matter after sixty sessions.
Hard to say whether it was the best year for films. Responses are such a personal thing and we now have access to so many films all year round, it’s no longer a luxury to see the foreign language releases. Balance between mainstream and art-house is an ongoing issue. More art-house for me please – but there are so many films on offer you could choose all of one or the other if you wanted. A festival this size gives everyone plenty to choose from. For the first time I saw at least one from every category on offer. I usually leave out the retrospective and the Night Shift, but got to both this year. There was no single stand out as there was for me last year with Melancholia, but that may be because there were more stand outs rather than none. There were certainly lots of wonderful films and here are the ones I recommend you catch if they come to a cinema near you.
First AMOUR. Mesmerizing performances from two leads confined in a claustrophobic world from which there is only one way out and which we are shown right at the start. So, destination never in doubt, we watch, spell bound, this difficult journey. Two people seeing their lives together ebbing away. Going to concerts, taking walks, sharing opinions about the latest books, reading out bits of the daily paper. And then, suddenly they can’t do that any more. One has to care. One has to endure. She resents being less than what she was. He sees this, understands it, can’t do anything about it. As he says, quite kindly to his daughter, there is no way out, this is how it is. Their world gradually becomes more confined – kitchen, living room, bedroom. We go backwards and forwards. They lose track of days. Beautifully done, unbearably painful to watch at times. Whole worlds and emotions conveyed in a single glance, a single gesture. Confronting theme, beautifully explored.
Then, for something completely different try MOONRISE KINGDOM. A boys/girls own adventure story straight out of the classic children’s adventure stories that our young heroine is immersed in. A case full of books and a record player are unlikely essentials for fleeing the family home. But Suzy needs to read, to herself and then to an eager audience. First to orphaned Sam who has rescued her from the misery of home (shades of Wendy and Peter Pan). Later she reads to the whole troop of scouts (the Lost Boys). All the while she and orphaned Sam are acting out just such an adventure – trekking across fields, up rocky outcrops, crossing streams before setting up camp beside Moonrise Kingdom. Local adults set off in search of the pair, confronting their own trials and imperfections as they do so. Eventually joining together to prevent evil welfare placing Sam in an orphanage. Pitch perfect performances from a great cast. Whimsy, slapstick, pathos and surrealism. A shot of Bruce Willis, man of action rescuing the two escapees, don’t let go, as the they dangle precariously in the middle of a storm. Beautiful use of colour. Great music. Great entertainment.
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD was something else again. A richly portrayed otherworld of hard drinking, hard fighting adults wrestling a living from an abundant natural world that could just as easily sweep them all away. A land at the frontiers of ecological change where mythical beasts foretell future doom. An exceptional performance from the six year old who played the lead character Hushpuppythrows you into another world. An exuberant, visceral place, where land and sea merge and humans construct what they need to live out of what’s available. Where adults and children run wild. Scenes in a hurricane refuge show the conformity the Bathtub community are resisting. They are their own people, living the lives they want to live. They don’t want to be rescued. People band together to blow up the levee and drain their land, to rebuild and replant, care for animals, go in search of mothers in a floating bar far out at sea, deal with death in their own way, finally marching together along the causeway that separates their place from the civilized world. Strangely uplifting.
BEYOND THE HILLS for which the two leads deservedly shared the Best Actress award at Cannes was a quietly intense battle of wills about how to escape a life of poverty. Security through submission to religion or take your chance as an immigrant in a hostile, modern world? Friends have taken separate paths since leaving (suggestion is they have been pushed out of) harsh early years in an orphanage where they were inseparable – protector and protected. One has made a life in Germany the other has taken refuge in a local monastery. Alina has come to take Voichita back to the modern world, though we are never clear about what sort of life she has as an immigrant worker in a foreign place. Voichita doesn’t want to leave the sanctuary offered by ‘Papa’ (head priest) and ‘Mama’ (head nun). Plentiful food, the rhythm of household chores, a room of one’s own – the attractions of this community are evident. Voichita’s choice seems reasonable. Papa and Mama might be deluded, but they are not presented as harsh or authoritarian. No-one is being kept by force, in fact people are trying to get in. Life in the monastery is a refuge from poverty. It co-exists happily with modern life, bartering food for services and offering spiritual comfort to the outside world. Alina is a disruptive force and we are left wondering what effect she has on both Voichita and the monastery itself.
A RESPECTABLE FAMILY was an interesting and unexpected take on the experience of an expatriate Iranian returning home after years away. He has been enticed back to teach at a university in honour of his brother, martyred in the ten year war against Iraq. The film slowly draws you into a web of family alliances. Flashbacks provide the back story, explaining why characters are as they are, and the roles they have played in the family. Tension builds as our urbane professor seeks to deal with Iranian bureaucracy. He hands over papers, signs documents and is lead around government offices and family homes by his nephew. His, and our, assumptions are tested and the refrain you think we have no laws here takes on a special significance, assisting those who wish the professor harm. We are as anxious as he that he recover his passport and leave this treacherous place. Modern Iran has more in common with the West than we know – modern company structures, development scams, capitalist greed driving people to nefarious deeds. Alongside young idealists striving for political and social change, an end to the sort of corruption that allows this commercial world to flourish. The film takes us to a surprising conclusion that felt just right.
11 FLOWERS Beautiful performances by four small boys make this an engaging story set in a Chinese village toward the end of the cultural revolution. We follow the boys as they play, squabble and watch the world around them and wonder. A lovely humane film. Interested in exploring how ordinary people manage – their own integrity, their relationships with spouses, children, neighbours – under the watchful eye of the state. Families are split up. The main boy’s father is required to spend the week working elsewhere. Every Monday he sets off on his bike giving the boy a ride to school. On week-ends he is teaching the boy to paint that way you can be independent, hence the title. The boy doesn’t show much aptitude. The story revolves around a new shirt – it’s importance to the boy, the sacrifice of a years clothing coupons to get it, it’s loss and replacement. Such a simple thing – but so much turns on it. The adults in the village allow themselves small bits of defiance – refusing to voice political bits of songs, showing support to a family in trouble, intervening to stop a beating, but at great risk. But in the end all are forced to conform, even our boy’s family. Sympathy can only go so far. Beautiful scenery reminiscent of classical Chinese paintings.
BARBARA shows how tough life could be in East Germany when they knew you wanted to get out. It seems incredible now that people weren’t allowed to leave a place, if and when they wanted to – subject to visas etc. But Barbara was in just that position, and sent to the provinces for her trouble. Where she meets an attractive doctor. But is he who and what he says he is? She, and we, are left wondering. Barbara is subjected to random house (and body searches) overseen by an unpleasant, ugly man. We later see him in different circumstances. Barbara complains that when she asked to leave she was told to think of the farmers and shop keepers who had paid for her to study to become a doctor. A reasonable argument says our nice doctor. Faithful recreation of the period. Dour living quarters, poor facilities at the hospital, a single pair of shoes for Barbara.
Facing North – Swedish Cinema In Focus was a theme at the Festival and there were lots of really good Swedish films. One of the best was EASY MONEY, a compelling drama that sweeps you along. An innocent abroad is aspiring to the high life. A business studies student he is carefully copying the clothes and mannerisms of the upper class. To earn money he is driving a taxi, which is how he is drawn into the world of drug gangs in Sweden. The question is, who can he trust? Spaniards, Albanians or Serbs? Answer is of course – none of the above. Nice touch to show the bankers are eager to take their cut of ill-gotten gains. Really about identity, whether you can create a new one or are whether you are confined to your own tribe for life. Great performances from our student, nick-named ‘Mr Brains’ and his mate Jorge. Great use of light with a washed out look suffusing the screen at different times. The upper classes to which our hero aspires are not a pleasant lot. We leave him in a very different position – one to which he was destined all along.
CERTAIN PEOPLE. A deceptively simple birthday lunch between six old friends, interrupted by the unreliable brother of birthday girl accompanied by his recently acquired girlfriend. The film shows the unravelling of relationships over the course of the day and their restoration by morning. Idyllic setting on the Swedish Island of Gotland and a stunningly attractive lead actress help things along. But it is the authentic way that these people, old friends who know each other well, a bit put out by the brother and the newcomer, relate to each other that sets it apart. Shifting allegiances, spiteful comments, withdrawals, apologies, confessions, insults, compliments, requests, denials – the stuff of all our relationships. Very satisfying.
MERCY was set in Hammerfest in far North Norway where there is six months of light and six months of dark. And an enormous gas processing plant. So the location was an interesting element in the story. Which was about ordinary people tempted to do bad things. The effect on a wobbly marriage when one partner needs help. Not particularly appealing people, but you felt for them in the end. Redemption of sorts. What is the proper response when people confess to doing you harm. The ending was realistic – accommodation of sorts. We saw the passage of the seasons, deep snow and darkness followed by midsummer and all that light. Great choral singing, I suspect of the refrain Mercy was a bonus.
Innovative interpretations of the classics always get me in. There was a great film about a staged performance of The Brothers Kazaramov in a disused Polish steel factory at MIFF some years ago. This year there were three. FAUST was like being immersed in a painting by an old Master – soft browns, yellows, greys, interspersed with amazing use of light – completely washed out, pale faces, a surreal golden glow around Margarete. There is a fantastic, visceral feel to this film right from its starting point midway through a very basic autopsy. Bit gruesome, I closed my eyes which made reading the subtitles difficult! But one got the gist. This Faust is a man of science, seeking to understand what makes the body work, so that he can treat people effectively. Unlike his father, a charlatan doctor – stretching people on the rack to improve their back aches and worse. The period is faithfully recreated. Living quarters, taverns, public wash house, pawn-broker, church. You could almost feel the roughness of the fabric of the clothes; feel Faust’s hunger, his desperation for something better. Gloomy, spartan interiors. Soft leafy exteriors, dusty streets. The devil, a perfect portrayal, perfectly plausible as he slowly reels Faust in. It seems inevitable that he will miss the warning signs and finally sign away his soul in exchange for just one night with the lovely Margarete. She was amazing; ethereal one moment, flirtatious the next and on occasion an amazing malevolent look. Perfect ending in a barren landscape.
CAESAR MUST DIE. A production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Rome’s maximum security gaol. Actors all inmates – many for Mafia related crimes. Mostly in black and white, includes back stories, auditions, rehearsals and then performances in different parts of the prison. A notable one in the courtyard with prisoners in cells on all four sides representing the Roman citizens listening first to Brutus and then Mark Antony’s famous speeches, Friends, Romans, countrymen… . It concludes as it started, in colour, with the final staged performance in the prison theatre before an audience of friends and family. Poignant end-notes told of some of the performers post-performance experiences.
STUDENT Raskolnikov’s inner turmoil nicely captured as he morosely meanders around Al Maty – a mixture of modern freeways and buildings and dusty back streets. The moral issues from the novel neatly explored via different lecturers at the university neatly including references to Kazahkstan’s communist history and hostile natural environment. The smart female lecturer declaims confidently to her surly class:We’ve had experience of the collective, you get no-where as a herd. Whereas the rumpled male teacher sitting at his desk proffers a different view: We can’t afford an ‘every man for himself’ mentality here on the steppes. Great performances and a terrific location. Some flash backs reinforcing the central theme – individual responsibility versus the collective good. A mis-step in choice of one of two victims I think. Lovely portrayal of the young woman who prompts his re-think. The right conclusion. All good.
I was a bit wary about my pick from the Night Shift – not keen on blood and gore – but I loved GOD BLESS AMERICA. An enraged dissection of contemporary American culture. Skewering horrible reality tv contestants, television shock jocks spreading fear and a sense of entitlement, reality tv show judges heaping humiliation on contestants for cheap laughs, ordinary people being rude and belligerant as a matter of course. Don’t use your mobile phone in the cinema folks! Sad sack hero, an anti-hero to the character played by Michael Douglas in Falling Down– goes on a shooting spree killing these targets, and verbally skewering others – Woody Allen, makers of the film Juno – along the way. The blood and gore had a cartoonish quality so that was not a problem. Our hero had a young female accomplice. Our modern day Bonnie and Clyde engage in witty repartee about serious issues as they speed around middle America. Subtlety of a sledgehammer in the message and denouement never in doubt, but great fun.
Other films highly recommended for being inventive, entertaining and having something to say (and which I may write about in more detail in another post – or not!) are (in no particular order): ROBOT AND FRANK, FACING MIRRORS, YOUR SISTER’S SISTER, THE SESSIONS, LIBERAL ARTS, MISS BALA, MONSIEUR LAZHAR, JAYNE MANSFIELD’S CAR, PURE, BEYOND, THE INTOUCHABLES.
Four great documentaries. MARINA ABRAMOVIC. A performance artist about whom I had only the vaguest knowledge. An overview of her early work – very extreme, cutting, flogging herself (ugh) then with her partner Ulay exploring male – female relationships – slapping, running at, staring at each other. Then more austere slow pieces – hanging naked on a wall, lying naked under a skeleton. The nakedness seems a constant! The film centres on a retrospective of her work held at MOMA entitled The Artist Is Present where, clothed now, she sits and looks at people over the course of a day – every day for three months! Amazing. People take it in turns, having queued up overnight, to sit in a chair opposite her, initially separated by a table but she takes that away after two months, then it is just in a chair opposite and she lifts her head to each new person and stares at them and often they cry! Amazing. All very affecting. Incredible endurance on her part.
AI WEIWEI: NEVER SAY SORRY Fly on the wall portrait of a fascinating character, embarked on a crusade to make authorities in China accountable and to make everyone aware they have the freedom and a responsibility to insist upon it. Leading by example. Choosing projects with deep moral meaning but which involve both personal and collective action. One example – to have the students who died in the Sichuan earthquake individually remembered is fantastic, inventive and moving – a collage of school bags, a list of names, the recording of names. Artistic endeavors that illustrate his political points. A moral person, an honest account of his personal life – complicated and no, his wife is not happy. Charismatic, attracting volunteers and supporters. Realistic about the dangers of what he is doing, but prepared for consequences. It is a shock to see him after his arrest – a real sense of the danger he faces, the courage required. Epitome of the old feminist adage the personal is political. A committed user of social media to expose and to join up – follow him (in English) on @aiwwenglish And go and see this film!
INTO THE ABYSS. The lovely Werner Herzog has a beautiful voice and lovely gentle interviewing style that elicits remarkable candor from people. This film goes beyond the stereotypes to reveal the real people living on both sides of the American Dream. Amazing place – divided nation. People in the same town – some living in car boots, others in mansions in gated communities. Stupid crimes, senseless deaths seem inevitable. Werner explores in detail the murder of three people – murdered for a sporty red car that now languishes, rusting in a police compound. We see the whole thing, police video of the murder scene, the mechanics of the death chamber, barely legible statements of witnesses. Interviews with arresting officers, perpetrators – one in for life, the other on death row who has been put to death. Werner’s voice gently probing: what did you do next … what did you feel … how did you do that … what is your exact role. Tears come to the Death House chaplain when he talks about squirrels on the golf course. A tattooed youth pauses to spit from time to time as he tells of taking joy rides in the red cars and gradually realising the crime that has been committed, proudly showing calloused hands that show he is now working, can now read and write having learned in prison; you have to be smarter if you can’t read says the wonderful Warner. We see the continuing pain felt by the woman who has lost mother and brother as she talks about the importance to her of seeing the perpetrator die – not in a vengeful way. The interview with the boy who is about to die is probably the most difficult – not to watch, but to process. Most moving interview is with a death row warder who chucked it in and is now opposed to the death penalty. A film beautifully shot film – long slow takes that let the pictures reinforce this story which has no victors.
PATIENCE (AFTER SEBALD) About a book The Rings Of Saturn by WS Sebald. Inventively presented, beautiful evocation, worthy tribute to a poet. A mix of straight to camera interviews with articulate, erudite contributors. Interspersed with interesting camera work and still photography taking you on the journey described in the book. Including photos of the written page – in close up so you could see the texture of the paper, the imprint of the type-face. Also photographs on the pages of the book then panning back to a photograph of the thing itself – building, field, path. Filmed feet taking footsteps along the same paths, in the same weather as the author. Sparing use of colour. Imaginative and stimulating. Now keen to read the book.
Other very good documentaries to look out for, I hope they end up on SBS, are: STEP UP TO THE PLATE, JOURNAL DE FRANCE, IN THE COMPANY OF ERIC ROHMER, SIDE BY SIDE, CRAZY HORSE.
And I saw a rather wonderful animation, ALOIS NEBEL. A striking black and white animation suited to a dark tale of betrayal and revenge. Great use of light to convey mood and emotion. Personal corruption and State control in Communist Czechoslovakia – powerfully conveyed.
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