Film Junkie Reports: Checking Out the Award Winners

Without even changing seats I was able to see two prize-winning films today: the world narrative competition winner Let the Right One In, from Sweden, and The Caller, winner of the Made in NY narrative category. The former is the coming-of-age story of a pale misfit boy at the dawn of adolescence and the latter is about the final days of a powerful New York businessman, who manipulates his acquaintances as easily as the data for which he is employed. Rather divergent, then, but for what it’s worth the common link between the two pictures came early in the second film, when a minor character watches Nosferatu. That’s because Let the Right One In is not just a coming-of-age story, and it’s not just a first romance: It’s also a rather graphic vampire/horror film. The object of young Oscar’s affections is his new next-door neighbor, a cute prepubescent girl who also happens to be ripping the throats out of all the locals. When he finally figures this out, Oscar is not too dismayed, and neither was the audience. Much of the most graphic violence actually elicited guffaws from the crowd—and I don’t think this was unintentional on the filmmakers’ part. They must be as aware as anyone that the juxtaposition of the tentative and the over-the-top produces some rather outlandish effects, and the film functions perfectly fine as a result.

The Caller keeps its genre straight—it’s a quiet thriller, with Elliott Gould playing a detective hired by Frank Langella to investigate. . .  who else but Frank Langella. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film so brazen in pointing out how boring its protagonist is, but the suspense is maintained nonetheless, with constant, gnawing questions of who Langella really is and how he plans to deal with the mobsters on his trail. Given the category in which the film won, the city is put to good effect, with a majority of scenes occurring in exteriors. Given that the Tribeca Film Festival was founded to reinvigorate the culture and economy of New York, The Caller is a good example of filmmaking in the city put to good work.

Speaking of film in New York, throughout the past two weeks I’ve seen a lot of things I haven’t been able to write about, with many, many more titles screened that I never even got to view. There are more good films out there than you could ever get to in a lifetime, and being able to attend so much of this festival really, ironically, drove that point home. Don’t let this deter you from trying, however; I encourage everyone to come see as much as possible in 2009. If you must partake of only a drop within the enormous bucket of world cinema, then Tribeca is a very good place to start.

Film Junkie Reports: Meerkat Manor Good Intro to Festival for Kids

Since I was able to take my wife to the festival Friday night, Saturday morning I followed this up by taking my daughter back to the same theater (different film). She has recently been quite enthralled by Wonder Pets, Go Diego Go, the American Museum of Natural History, and basically anything dealing with exotic animals. So we finally bit the bullet and got a yearlong New York City zoo pass, but I also thought it’d be much easier to take her to a screening of Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins.

She was extremely excited and brought her three plastic African animal figurines (a zebra, rhinoceros, and lioness) along so they could learn more about where they live. Wearing a festival pass was fun and perhaps the best part was the décor of the theater at the Village East Cinemas—chandelier, themed art, balcony-esque seating; she’d never watched a film in any place like that before. She’s only four and pretty lightweight, so the large seat did tend to spring up and squish her, but we dealt with that easily enough.

Nature documentaries have come a long way in the last half-century, with work by the BBC Natural History Unit, American cable television sponsors (Animal Planet was responsible for this film, for instance), and a host of independent feature films—some of my favorites of recent years include Atlantis, Anima Mundi, Microcosmos, Winged Migration, and so on. In their way, these films have succeeded in creating a new genre of narrator-less nature films, with the focus squarely on the cinematography (and perhaps music). Add March of the Penguins and you’ve got a thriving nature documentary scene, with new festivals sprouting up (I got a flier for the Jackson Hole Film Festival at a screening the other night) and increased interest across the globe. 

Meerkat Manor is designed to fit into that field and is therefore an interesting but effective mix of styles. On the one hand it definitely has a strong interest in stunning cinematography, from the extreme clos-ups of yawning meerkats to sprawling helicopter shots of the African desert and savannah. The attempt to fully document the habitat of one single species, as with March of the Penguins, was clearly evident. On the other hand, the narration, spoken by Whoopi Goldberg, harkened back to Walt Disney’s True Life Adventure films of the 1950s (Seal Island, Bear Country, etc.), at least as I remember them, in anthropomorphizing the animals—giving them names, human motivations and emotions, comic situations, etc. Strict naturalists have problems with such editorializing, but it made the film good fun for the kids, and we now know a lot more about meerkats than we would have otherwise, even with the fictive elements. There were definitely some parts too scary for a four-year-old, but for ages six and up this was a great and original film. Top it off with a candied apple from the 3rd Avenue street fair, and it was a great child’s introduction of what a film festival can be all about.

Film Junkie Reports: Under Our Skin the Perfect Date Movie

So it was Friday night and I had two passes for any screening at the festival, and I made the right choice: I let my wife pick. And she, being a hopeless romantic, chose what else but a documentary about Lyme disease. It was a busy night at the Village East Cinemas, on Second Avenue and 12th Street, with a lot of high quality shows playing—it was even reported that Michael Moore was somewhere in the building—so I was duly impressed that so many attendees chose to kick off their weekend by coming to see Under Our Skin, by director Andy Abrahams Wilson. The house was nearly full, and emotions ran high even before the film began—obviously many in the group were there because of personal connections with Lyme. One girl sitting next to us kept nodding enthusiastically and even raising her hand when some conditions, such as entire families getting infected, were mentioned. She and many others sat, teary-eyed, as the credits rolled.

Neither my wife nor I know anyone with Lyme, though we’d read a little about the epidemiology and the controversy over treatment methods. And though the film tends more to the emotional than the intellectual side of the story, it was informative, touching, and even occasionally mushy enough for a good old-fashioned date. To summarize, Lyme disease has so many myriad manifestations that it can go undiagnosed for years, and once diagnosed two factions in the medical community differ so vehemently on how it should be treated (as a short-term or chronic condition) that it can be very difficult for patients to obtain good care.

Michael Moore’s aura, if not his body, was present, as throughout the film I kept thinking of H.R. 676 and how dismantling private insurance would eliminate the incentives that the filmmakers alleged were restricting Lyme treatment under the current system. Under Our Skin touched on universal health care in passing but kept its focus more on individual stories: doctors getting their licenses revoked, patients finding relief through “unproven” methods, etc. Still, a political agenda was clear, and the filmmakers enhanced this by having two pamphlets distributed (a good example of Third Cinema right here in New York), urging public participation in pushing for legislation on Lyme disease. (I don’t think they’ll mind me saying that information on a rally in New Jersey this Wednesday is available at Lyme Rights, and check out information on the NYC Lyme Disease Support Group and HR 741, the Lyme and Tick-Borne Disease Prevention, Education, and Research Act.)

I love good escapist, even silly fare as much as the next film junkie, and I plan to see some such pics through the rest of the weekend, but I also quite like it when a film has an agenda and fits within a greater social cause. Each viewer must decide on the validity of claims made by propaganda, of course, but there is nothing undeserving about making films with agendas in the first place. So I’m glad the Tribeca Film Festival saw fit to include this film in their lineup, and my wife saw fit to use our sole date night in a long while to come see it.

Film Junkie Reports: Katyn Stays with Auds Long After Credits Roll

For me the most anticipated event of the entire Tribeca Film Festival was last night’s New York City premiere of Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn. The film has generated a tremendous amount of interest since its European release beginning in Warsaw last September 17, the anniversary of the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, but it has not yet entered general release in the United States. Thanks, then, to the festival programmers for bringing it here; it was a thrill to be able to watch, and it is showing again Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.

The film revolves around the story of the Katyn Forest massacre, which took place in western Russia in late 1940. All officers of the Polish army, as well as virtually all university graduates and intelligentsia, had been taken prisoner by the Russians soon after the invasion. Stalin himself gave the order for their mass execution, which took place over many days and involved a thorough and systematic operation to execute. After the Germans occupied the forest in 1943, they revealed the tragedy to the world, exploiting it for their own anti-Soviet propaganda. When the Russians returned after the end of the war, they pinned the blame back on the Nazis, saying the crime took place in 1943 rather than 1940; this was the only acceptable doctrine in communist Poland until 1989. Katyn the film is therefore equally interested in the massacre itself and in the subsequent cover up: how it simultaneously divided and cohered Polish society, how it affected the widows, the mothers, the daughters, the survivors, and indeed the entire nation.

To do this the film doesn’t follow any single protagonist exclusively, but jumps between many characters who each embody different aspects of Polish society. Among these there are some who are reminiscent of Wajda’s earlier films, specifically a young prospective art student who is killed in the streets for resisting the Soviet version of the story, as in Ashes and Diamonds (this parallel was also noticed by Anne Applebaum in her excellent Feb. 14 New York Review of Books article). There is even a retelling of Sophocles’ Antigone, complete with a placard for the original play on display, as one sister is imprisoned in a dungeon for attempting to place an accurate tombstone for her brother while another is spared by choosing to promote the official party line.

Wajda was 14 years old when Poland fell, and his father, a cavalry officer, was among the murdered. Katyn has therefore been with him all his life, and this shows in the film, particularly in its harrowing final minutes. The credits roll without music, and there was only a smattering of applause in the theater as many viewers were unwilling to break the silence. With no post-screening discussion, we filed out quietly, pondering what we had seen. Back in the lobby, the concessions stand and the oversized placards for Hollywood’s upcoming summer fare reminded us of the current state of popular cinema, but even as we go and enjoy these pictures, Katyn will stay with us and remind us what cinema can be.

Film Junkie Reports: Something Old, Something New

The hot ticket on Sunday was for the 40th anniversary screening of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, held at Pace University by City Hall. This was a must-see for me because while I’ve seen the film three or four times, it has always been on video, never on film, and for people who care about the difference between emulsion and pixels, seeing a movie like this on celluloid can make all the difference. And it did. The print was in extremely good condition given its age, and Pace University’s auditorium was more than adequate to display the widescreen aspect ratio. The biggest surprise was in the soundtrack, as the simple fact of being surrounded by speakers brought out the aural genius of a film famous for its lack of dialogue. I was specially pleased early in the film by the stereo work done with the grunts and growls of primitive man, giving me new appreciation for Kubrick’s use of sound design (his work with Jack Foley himself on Spartacus has achieved something of the status of legend). After the screening, Ira Flatow moderated a panel discussion on the film, artificial intelligence, extraterrestrial life, and other related topics with Buzz Aldrin and other luminaries. It was a wonderful event and wonderful tribute to a film that remains gripping seven years after the year of its title.

With that said about 2001, which remains one of the great films in the history of cinema, it was the film I saw just before that that truly engaged me today. Going on 13 is a new vérité documentary (observational footage with a great deal of interview material) co-directed by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Dawn Valadez. It is a longitudinal record of four girls—two Hispanic, one African American, and one Indian—in the Oakland area, following them from age nine to 13, the transition from childhood to adolescence. The girls’ lives bring up issues of race, economics, family and parenting, sexual education and identity, and the quality of American public education, usually accompanied by a good dollop of humor and requisite silliness. Three hundred hours of footage were culled down to the 86-minute result (for those keeping track, that’s a 209:1 shooting ratio), and while I’m sure this process was quite judicious, it felt like the film could have stood being slightly longer—at least the material was engaging enough to merit it, if the filmmakers had so desired (which is meant as a compliment, not a detraction).

I greatly appreciated the longitudinal aspect of the film. Long-range productions are some of the most difficult to achieve but yield the greatest dividends; I truly believe that duration (as opposed to concision) is one of the founding principles of documentary—letting us see the process unfold in all its unedited complexity—and longitudinal studies are arguably the best way to achieve that, particularly in coming-of-age stories. Think of Going on 13 as the girls’ response to Hoop Dreams: an important piece of entertainment and a potent sociological study at the same time. Hopefully the evolving digitization of our media culture will allow ever more venues for this film and others like it in our homes, our theaters, and our schools.

Film Junkie Reports: Short Films

There’s something immediate and visceral about short films that you often don’t get with features—perhaps it’s the budget, perhaps the lack of a commercial market for shorts. By and large, they are created out of a need, an urgency to simply make cinema for cinema’s own sake. So I was pleased, among other screenings, to be able to attend one of the festival’s short film programs on Saturday. I am a great fan of short films and generally feel that they constitute the lifeblood of a well-programmed film festival.

This session was entitled “Eye Opener” and included seven films totaling 109 minutes. They were from Canada, France, Egypt, Slovenia, Mexico, and the United States; members of the Canadian and two American crews (Song of Slomon, Have You Ever Heard About Vukovar, and Kid) were present and took audience questions after the screening.

The festival’s short film curators—who said over 2,500 shorts were entered for consideration—have grouped films together thematically. In this case these pictures could be linked by a number of factors. Perhaps the most obvious, stemming from the large number of international submissions, is the way in which many of the films explored issues of nationality and ethnicity.

Song of Slomon opened in this vein with a lighthearted look at the role of faith and secularism in the life of a young Hassidic rabbi in Toronto. If you’ve ever wondered what Saturday Night Fever would have looked like if it had starred a diminutive bearded Jew, then this is the film for you. But it also sets up a space for Jewish-Catholic interrelations through the simple act of having the rabbi discuss his problems with his friend a priest in a confessional booth.

Have You Ever Heard About Vukovar, set in Los Angeles, also explores liminal spaces by showing the commonality of the Iraq War and the Croatian War of Independence. Similarly, Kid is about a traditional Mexican rite of passage set in the border area of south Texas, and Feathers to the Sky, Made in Slovenia, and At Day’s End each are infused with the details of their respective cultures.

Even more striking than this, however, was how many of the films used children and explored the relationships between them and their parents or grandparents. At Day’s End is about an aging Egyptian man’s attempts to come to grips with his own health and mortality, but the engine that drives this process is his strained interaction with his adult son and young grandson. The Second Life of the Sugar Bowl uses a basic set up-pay off structure to demonstrate the bond between a dedicated grandfather and a blind granddaughter. The uplifting Feathers to the Sky is quite similar, except here the grandfather is stricter and more hardened, though his eventual connection to his granddaughter is just as complete. For me, though, the best (and, ironically, at times most disturbing) film of the entire day was Made in Slovenia, a film in which a struggling middleclass Slovenian family must choose between their financial security and their familial unity.

Film Junkie Reports: Errol Morris, Abu Ghraib, and Werner Herzog's shoe

My first thought at the Tribeca Film Festival was that the world has been blessed by the loss of Werner Herzog’s shoe. The story, by now, has been passed down enough to virtually become a myth, but it goes that the famous German director came in contact with a brash young fellow by the name of Errol Morris who was so brazen in his boasts of his filmmaking prowess that Herzog, the elder and wiser man, vowed to eat his shoe if Morris ever actually got off his duff and made a movie. This had the right effect, and the result was Morris’s masterfully bizarre Gates of Heaven (1978), a documentary investigating a California pet cemetery, and a short little piece in which Herzog does, indeed, eat his shoe.

 
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