Posted by J. Robert Parks
Another gorgeous day in Toronto. It's so nice to take the subway down to Queen Street and then find a little market. I grabbed a banana, a piece of pound cake, and a bottle of orange juice. Now that's a festival breakfast! Just as I finish eating, Darren and Girish stroll up to the ticket holders' line. The whole clan is getting together for early-morning Sokurov, though some of us are nervous that Doug Cummings -- who has to get his jet-lagged self out of bed, pick up his packet of tickets at the box office, and then make it to the Paramount -- might not arrive on time. But Doug puts our doubts to rest when he walks in with 10 minutes to spare.
I love the Paramount theater. Stadium seating, lots of leg room, floor-to-ceiling screen. The lobby area is garish, and this morning the volunteers pull a Keystone Kops routine as they try to get the patrons lined up. But the theaters are so nice I wouldn't mind if I saw every movie there.
The Sun is the third in Sokurov's series of films on the 20th-century's famous tyrants. I haven't caught his earlier tomes on Lenin and Hitler, but I want to after seeing this one on Emperor Hirohito. Issey Ogata, whom I know best for his turn in Yi Yi, is fantastic as the emperor in the last days of World War II. The emperor knows that his country is headed to humiliating defeat, and yet he has to follow the traditions of decorum. Sokurov is keenly interested in those traditions, as the film opens with Hirohito eating and then getting dressed. Despite the movie's glacial pace, those scenes are engrossing because of the tension between the power inherent in Hirohito's position and the limitations that position imposes. When his manservant dictates the day's schedule (1000 hours: meeting with cabinet and military chiefs, 1200 marine biology research, 1400 lunch, 1500 nap, 1600 private time for thought and writing, including urgent reply to eldest son's letter), you can sense that Hirohito's prison started well before the Americans invaded. It goes without saying that the Sokurov's cinematography is spectacular. I can only describe the low-level lighting as muffled, and the almost black-and-white compositions are exquisitely beautiful. One sequence of Hirohito preparing the ink and then writing a poem is awesomely mesmerizing. The later scenes with an American general aren't quite as strong, though Ogata's brilliant portrayal and Sokurov's images carry the day. four stars, out of five
Gilaneh is a film by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, who directed one of my favorite Iranian movies of the last several years, Under the Skin of the City. So I had high hopes for this one. It starts well, as we're introduced to a village family. A daughter is worried about her husband, who's back in Tehran where bombs are falling (it?s near the end of the Iran-Iraq war). Her mother is worried about her son, who's heading off to fight the next day. The relationships are vividly drawn, and Bani-Etemad's emphasis on strong female roles looked to repeat itself in the character of the mother. Add in the Iranian predilection to gorgeous landscape shots, and I was ready for another masterpiece. Unfortunately, the story loses steam when the mother and daughter head off to Tehran. Some of their encounters--a displaced wedding, for example -- are interesting, but there's also some irritating expository dialogue and some wooden references to war. That last issue is particularly surprising given how strongly Under the Skin of the City integrated the social and political into its family drama. Then, when the film skips ahead 15 years, it loses all appeal and becomes a strident, one-note story of the travails of motherhood in a time of war. I've always resented Roger Ebert's tagging Iranian cinema as "miserablist," but it's probably appropriate here. Furthermore, any compelling dynamics from the first two acts are completely ignored. The lead actress, Fatemeh Motamed Arya, is great, but the rest of the film lets her down. two, out of five
Unfortunately, Battle of Heaven, my third film of the day, is even worse. It too has an interesting start, as director Carlos Reygadas uses an aggressive style to keep us on our toes. By "aggressive," I'm not necessarily referring to the sex, though the movie does open with a scene of oral sex. Rather, it's Reygadas's sound design that sets the tone: weirdly lush music in one scene, irritating sounds and baby's cries in another, clashing classical and parade music in yet another. Reygadas also keeps the audience off balance through striking point-of-view shots as the protagonist snakes through a hallway or drives on the city streets. And just when you think you've worked things out, a conversation you thought was taking place between two people turns out to be on a cell phone, which is then interrupted by an absurdly antagonistic passing driver. I wish I could say that all of this adds up to something, but it becomes clear as the movie goes on that Reygadas doesn't have anything important to say. So shock tactics like close-ups of genitalia, a man peeing on himself, and a murder that comes out of nowhere have to stand in for anything of substance. My friend Garth disagreed strongly and tried to argue that it's instead a subjective film (ala Claire Denis), largely based on the protagonist's fantasies, but that argument doesn't hold up, given the naturalistic style of many of the supposed fantasy sequences or the plot-driven climax. Besides, given the flatness of the acting and the general lack of interest in the protagonist, I don't see how that interpretation improves things at all. And when the movie ends with a long scene of the raising of Mexico's flag (oh, the film's an indictment of the political system--who knew?!), I packed my bag to go. But wait, there's one last blowjob scene. Even Garth had to admit that was retarded. one 1/2, out of five
Film four of the day was quite a bit better. Coming in at just over an hour, Through the Forest is a marvelous little mood piece. It focuses on Armelle who, we find out in the second scene (of ten), is still mourning the death of her boyfriend. She even thinks the dreams she's been having (the first scene is one of those, we later discover) are visits from beyond the grave. Her two sisters are offering clanging advice -- one cynically demands that Armelle get over it, while the other encourages her to embrace these supposed contacts. But to be honest, that's more plot description than the film deserves, as tone supercedes story at almost every turn. Fortunately, director Jean Paul Civeyrac and cinematographer Celine Bozon do a fabulous job. By shooting in mostly medium and tight close ups, they create a claustrophobic, immaterial world that's especially effective. They also add evocative lighting and use long takes to marvelous effect. Camille Berthomier as the lead actress is quite good, and the final shot is simply perfect. I don't want to over-sell the movie, as there's not much else besides mood (anyone expecting character development or narrative drive will be disappointed) and I can't imagine it working at much longer than its 65 minutes. But as the cinematic equivalent of a tone poem, it's wonderful. four, out of five
The final screening of the day was my annual Wavelengths program. Readers who can remember that far will recall that last year's Wavelengths provided me with two of my favorite films of the year: Peter Huttons's Skagfjordur and the installation Line Describing a Cone. This year's didn't have that one-two punch, but it did provide another classic. Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine came with tremendous Internet buzz, and it did not disappoint. Director Peter Tscherssky has taken footage from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and manipulated it in amazing ways. Besides bleaching out the color, he plays with the film stock itself to create spectacular effects. He then adds incredibly rhythmic editing, multiple exposures, and one of the most brilliant soundtracks I'll hear all year. It's eye-popping cinema and breathtakingly audacious. Awesome.
I wish they had ended the program with Instructions instead of opening with it, as nothing could compare to that. Still, I liked several other of the experimental shorts. Close Quarters is a lovely black-and-white portrait of a room, focusing especially on the natural light coming in through a window. The editing seemed haphazard, but the cinematography was great. I also liked the second of Lynn Marie Kirby's test exposures, this one entitled Black Belt. Other works of hers I've seen haven't done much for me, but this came closer to abstract expressionist painting, which I like a great deal. Olivo Barbieri?s site specific_ROMA 04 uses a particularly great effect with focus (or lack thereof) to turn the city of Rome into a child's toy set. By shooting from a helicopter but somehow keeping only a small part of what he's filming in focus, Barbieri plays with our expectations of depth of field. It appears that his camera must be incredibly close to the buildings and landscape; otherwise, everything would be in focus, not just one particular building. But the only way he could be as close as he appears is if he was filming a constructed set instead of a real city. The effect is both disorienting and hypnotically beautiful. I'm not sure it's much more than a cool effect, but it is very cool. Finally, the program ended with an old film: Manoel de Oliveira's 1931 city symphony Douro, Faina Fluvial. No surprise that de Oliveira's images are gorgeous, and he captures the river and surrounding commercial area with grace and style. I wish contemporary directors would take up the city symphony form. It makes for a lovely short in the right hands. For the third year in a row, Wavelengths offered a wonderful set of films.
Tomorrow is another five-movie day, and it kicks off with the class of the festival.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
« Home