Friday, October 21, 2011

Bernard Hermann: Trivia for A Century Old Music Master

Bernard Hermann with Alfred Hitchcock
          Today launches the Bernard Herrmann centennial at Film Forum in New York City, a retrospective of the famed composer. Herrmann’s influence on film score is undoubtedly obvious. Before him, the idea of music was to never be more memorable than the film itself. Now just listening to his music conjures up the images of the films he composed for. And the list of auteurs he worked with: Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Robert Wise, Brian De Palma, is like looking at a timeline of American cinema. 

            Of course, none was greater than his collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock. Instead of going on and on about the greatness of this collaboration, which has been written by others with a lot of zest and enthusiasm, I’m instead going to share a really cool bit of trivia I learned. All credit for this connection goes to David Sterritt, Chairman for the National Society of Film Critics, author of numerous publications on cinema, and my former thesis advisor.

            This relates to one of Hermann’s most famous scores, Psycho. Now when we think of Psycho and the music, we of course think about the shrieking violins that accompany the shower sequence, or the opening titles score that creates fear through such an innocent set of instruments that are known for their beauty (this is where the film academic points to the obvious connection).

Martha Marcy May Marlene: Terror of a Fragmented Mind

Martha Marcy May Marlene
Written and Directed By: Sean Durkin
Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy, Brady Corbet, Julia Garner, and Louisa Krause.
Director of Photography: Jody Lee Lipes, Editor: Zachary Stuart-Pontier, Production Designer: Chad Keith, Original Music: Daniel Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans
Rated: R for things rather not spoiled.

            If you go see the independent thriller, Martha Marcy May Marlene, which you most definitely should, I want you to sit as close to the screen as possible. Not because I want you to hurt your neck (in that case, go a few rows back), but I want you to be engulfed by the film's intense close-ups, which will put you in the most psychologically uncomfortable position possible. I want you to really feel each loud sound that disrupts this film full of silences. I want you to feel as paranoid as its main character, feeling that any moment of calm can be instantly destroyed by unknown forces creeping just outside the frame.

            Martha Marcy May Marlene is the latest in a series of independent features from the United States that appear to be ushering in a new wave of smartly composed films that reject the DIY mumblecore genre in favor of a cinema of haunting compositions and dynamic narratives. Although the film is directed by newcomer Sean Durkin, some of the other names in the credits show the evolving filmmaking collective: a producer of the film is Antonio Campos, who shot the haunting surveillance thriller Afterschool, and that film’s director of photography Jody Lee Lipes also create haunting shadow filled frames here. But here it is Mr. Durkin, as well as his impressive cast led by Elizabeth Olsen, that leads what is an intensely intimate character study in the guise of a mystery that does less conventional scares and more spine-tingling chills.

Le Havre: Magic By the Seaside


Le Havre
Written and Directed By: Aki Kaurismäki
Starring:   Andre Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Blondin Miguel, Roberto Piazza, and Laika.
Director of Photography: Timo Salminen, Editor: Timo Linnasalo, Production Designer: Wouter Zoon
Rated: Unrated, but truly a film for the whole family.

A correction to the location of the town "Le Havre" has been made. The town is located in France, not Finland, though the film and its director are Finnish.

            Le Havre, a very witty and adorable comedy from French director Aki Kaurismäki, is best watched with a nice cappuccino, as the sweetness of the characters and world reverberates through every frame. You might not think it if you read the film’s synopsis, which concerns an old poor man, his terminally ill wife, and the smuggling of an illegal immigrant to London. But in Mr. Kaurismäki’s world, none of that is really too stern, who instead paints a world of nostalgic delight on a costal town in France. It’s the type of place you may have thought went extinct decades ago, and perhaps that is true, except Mr. Kaurismäki wants us to believe in fairy tales nonetheless.

            The action begins with a scene of absurd comedy as Marcel Marx stands in a train station, waiting for the next customer at his shoeshine. A man sits down, but is cautiously watched by a couple of men in dark coats. When the man leaves, he runs and is shot down. “Luckily he had time to pay me,” Marcel smugly remarks before leaving himself. We soon learn Marcel lives a simple though not unrewarding life: nights at the local bar, friends at the bakery, and an adoring wife who truly loves him, taking care of his every needs. But she suddenly becomes ill with cancer, leaving Marcel alone.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

New York Film Festival: The (Unofficial) Awards!


With tonight’s screening of The Descendants, the New York Film Festival wraps up its 49th year, and one of its most ambitious years in terms of its expanded programming and excellent selection. Of course, NYFF now turns toward the future, with a year-long retrospective of works from the previous years in gearing up for the golden anniversary, including screenings of works by Marco Bellocchio and Carlos Saura in the coming weeks.

But one thing that the Film Society at Lincoln Center never does are awards. The 27 Main Selection films are all worth your time equally. Of course, this is America, and there are winners and losers.  Since people can only spend so much time at the movies this fall, one would like to know what is for sure worth checking out. So here are my awards. The top prize, “The Golden Bull,” named after our now infamous Wall Street symbol in the city.

The Golden Bull: A Separation, a film by Asghar Farhadi
The Silver Bull: Martha Marcy May Marlene, a film by Sean Durkin
Best Director: Bela Tarr, The Turin Horse
Best Actor: Michael Fassbender, Shame
Best Supporting Actor: Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Le Havre
Best Actress: Kirstin Dunst, Melancholia
Best Supporting Actress: Berenice Bejo, The Artist
Best Screenplay: Le Havre
Best Cinematography: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

New York Film Festival: Alexander Payne's The Descendants (Closing Night Selection)


The Descendants (Closing Night Selection)
A Film By Alexander Payne
United States

            Clouds always seem to hang over the sky in The Descendants, the first feature length film from Alexander Payne since his wine-country comedy Sideways. The film, set in Hawaii, is full of gorgeous sun-soaked beaches and tropical landscapes, but those clouds always seem to hang a shadow in the land. It seems apt then that our protagonist, Matt King, calls out the absurdity of the island as a place only of happiness. “Paradise can go fuck itself,” he exclaims in a voiceover.

           The Descendants is a reserved and fascinating maturation for the director of usually much more bizarre comedies like About Schmidt and Election. The film, which stars George Clooney among a cast of character actors and breakout unknowns, is a much more nuanced work with melancholic tones as a man has to come to terms with his identity as a father and a husband. On the surface, and through the way that Mr. Payne adapts the narrative from the novel by Kuai Hart Hemmings, it feels like Mr. Payne is treading on easy territory. But the film is all in the details, and especially Mr. Payne’s direction of the film, as it presents a slow transition of forgiveness through a portrait of an American family, coming to learn what that word really means.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

New York Film Festival: Michel Hazanvicius's The Artist


The Artist
A Film By Michel Hazanavicius
France

            The opening scene of The Artist, a mainstream delight shot in a very classical matter, is one of the film’s many in-jokes, as we see a handsome man being electrocuted in a chair. “Talk” scream the men torturing him. Well, they don’t scream it—a title card tells us that’s what they are shouting as their mouths open but we here only the chimes and whistles of Ludovic Bource’s score. Soon enough, the film cuts out to a full-house theater watching the silent flick, but the illusion doesn’t stop, when the audience screams, the only sound is violins, and when the applause comes at the end, we hear only the joy of silence.

            The Artist is an homage to the good ol’ era of silent filmmaking made in the style: black and white, 4:3 aspect ratio, title cards for dialogue, and (save for two smartly used sequences) only music to take us through the narrative. It is of course also an extremely self-aware film, following two movie stars at transitional periods of their lives in the heyday of Hollywood. The director behind this project, however, is a Frenchman named Michel Hazanavicius, and the two stars, Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, are French as well. But just because they don’t come from the US of A doesn’t mean they can’t appreciate the day when words meant nothing and gestures and expressions were at the heart of Hollywood.

Friday, October 14, 2011

The Skin I Live In: A Frankenstein of Sexy and Bizarre Order


The Skin I Live In 
Directed By: Pedro Almodóvar
Written By: Pedro Almodóvar, based on the novel Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes, Blanca Suarez, Jan Cornet, and Roberto Alamo.
Director of Photography: Jose Luis Alcaine, Editor: Jose Salcedo, Production Designer: Antxon Gomez, Original Music: Alberto Iglesias
Rated: R for the stuff you go to see Almodóvar for, and then some.
       
        The colors of the world have never felt deader than in Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In, a bizarre and kinky melodrama from the Spanish director. Although the home of doctor Robert Ledgard is full of excessive paintings and bright colors, it has an all-too orderly feeling about. And of course below the home is the lab, a sterile world of metallic shades and vials of dark red blood. Something has horribly gone wrong in the usually magical world that has defined Spain’s national cinematic treasure, where what once was so comforting now creates fear.

            It’s also what makes The Skin I Live In one of Mr. Almodóvar’s most pleasurable works in some time. While it is certainly in the director’s wheel house, it has the excitement of a young filmmaker throwing every trick he has in the book on the screen. 2008’s Broken Embraces, while meticulously crafted and gorgeously shot, had the feeling of déjà vu for Mr. Almodóvar, retreading on the same thematic and emotional ground covered in his masterful works since the 1980s. But reuniting with Antonio Banderas and bringing in newcomer Elena Anaya, Mr. Almodóvar has made a truly insane film about gender, control, and yes cinema.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Margaret: Now No Matter Child, The Name, Sorrow's Springs Are The Same

Margaret
Written and Directed By: Kenneth Lonergan
Starring: Anna Paquin, J. Smith-Cameron, Jeannie Berlin, Jean Reno, Allison Janey, Kieran Culkin, Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, John Gallagher Jr., Rosemarie DeWitt, Matthew Broderick, Hina Abdullah, Kenneth Lonergan, Michael Ealy, and Krystin Ritter.
Director of Photography: Ryszard Lenczewski, Editor: Anne McCabe, Production Designer: Dan Leigh, Original Music: Nico Muhly
Rated: R for language, sex, drugs, and a bit of violence.

            The key scene in Margaret, an epic yet personal drama of trauma and grief in New York City, involves a class discussion of a poignant line from Shakespeare’s King Lear. The teacher (Matthew Broderick) asks for an interpretation of the line “As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods.” A couple of students give the usual interpretation: our lives might seem important to us, but perhaps in a greater scheme of things, we are nothing. But one student disagrees. If we are nothing to the gods, then why do they give us so much attention? Perhaps we are more, he demands. But the teacher won’t have it, “A number of scholars,” he decrees, “Have confirmed this interpretation.” “But why?” the student fights back, as if he’s fighting for his life. Why must our lives be so small and so feeble in the large scheme of things?

            It’s one of a dozen bravura scenes in the second feature by Kenneth Lonergan, who made a splash in 2000 with his drama You Can Count On Me. You may note the 11 year gap, and if you see Margaret (which Fox Searchlight has quietly shoved into theaters as quickly and quietly as possible), you may notice how young stars like Anna Paquin and Matt Damon look. Mr. Lonergan shot this messy drama back in 2005, with a contractual obligation to bring the film in at two and a half hours. For years, he struggled to find the right cut, and things got messy with two lawsuits, and even Martin Scorsese coming in to help him find that perfect cut. After years of battle, Mr. Lonergan has finally, unsatisfactory, found a cut that runs in the legal running time, though perhaps not his final vision. And it’s a shame, because as messy and disjointed as Margaret is, it’s a fascinating deeply confused film about the loss of innocence and the transformation of guilt.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

New York Film Festival: Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene

Martha Marcy May Marlene
A Film By Sean Durkin
USA

            If you go see the independent thriller, Martha Marcy May Marlene, which you most definitely should, I want you to sit as close to the screen as possible. Not because I want you to hurt your neck (in that case, go a few rows back), but I want you to be engulfed by this film full of intense close-ups that will put you in the most uncomfortable position possible. I want you to really feel each loud sound that disrupts this  film full of silences. I want you to feel as paranoid as its main character, feeling that any moment of calm can be instantly destroyed by unknown forces creeping just outside the frame.

            Martha Marcy May Marlene is the latest in a series of independent features from the United States that appear to be ushering in a new wave of smartly composed films that reject the DIY mumblecore genre in favor of a cinema of haunting compositions and dynamic narratives, but still at the independent level. Although the film is directed by newcomer Sean Durkin, some of the other names in the credits show the evolving filmmaking collective: a producer of the film is Antonio Campos, who shot the haunting surveillance thriller Afterschool, and that film’s director of photography Jody Lee Lipes also create haunting work here (as well as in the coming-of-age comedy Tiny Furniture). But here it is Mr. Durkin, as well as his impressive cast led by Elizabeth Olsen, that leads what is an intensely intimate character study in the guise of a mystery that does less conventional scares and more spine-tingling chills.

New York Film Festival: Jafar Panahi's This Is Not A Film

This Is Not A Film
An Experiment by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb
Iran

            When the 2009 protests across Tehran failed to overthrow the political dictatorship that had dominated Iran for over 40 years, there were of course repercussions to be made, especially in the liberal filmmaking community. Abbas Kiarostami has all but fled his native country, now making films outside of his state. Mohsen Makhmalbaf abandoned filmmaking to become a full time revolutionary. And Jafar Panahi, perhaps the most political filmmaker of the country, was banned from being a filmmaker for 20 years.

            And thus, Mr. Panahi, along with a conspirator, the documentarian Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, have made a fascinating experiment in what they consider non-cinema. Or is it? That’s the point of This Is Not A Film, a direct allegory of cinema as political statement. Its mere existence might lead to Mr. Panahi’s immediate arrest, but it is a bold work that questions not only the absurdity of the politics of Iran, but the nature of what defines film.

New York Film Festival: Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In (Gala Selection)

The Skin I Live In (Gala Selection)
A Film By Pedro Almodóvar
Spain

            The colors of the world have never felt deader than in Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In, a bizarre and kinky melodrama from the Spanish director. Although the home of doctor Robert Ledgard is full of excessive paintings and bright colors, it has an all-too orderly feeling about. And of course below the home is the lab, a sterile world of metallic shades and vials of dark red blood. Something has horribly gone wrong in the usually magical world that has defined Spain’s national cinematic treasure, where what once was so comforting now creates fear.

            It’s also what makes The Skin I Live In one of Mr. Almodóvar’s most pleasurable works in some time. While it is certainly in the director’s wheel house, it has the excitement of a young filmmaker throwing every trick he has in the book on the screen. 2008’s Broken Embraces, while meticulously crafted and gorgeously shot, had the feeling of déjà vu for Mr. Almodóvar, retreading on the same thematic and emotional ground covered in his masterful works since the 1980s. But reuniting with Antonio Banderas and bringing in newcomer Elena Anaya, Mr. Almodóvar has made a truly insane film about gender, control, and yes cinema.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

New York Film Festival: Steve McQueen's Shame


Shame
A Film By Steve McQueen
United Kingdom/United States

            Shame, the second feature from British artist Steve McQueen, opens on a shot from top down on its main character, Brandon, sprawled along his bed. But he only takes up half the frame, the other half highlighting his empty grayish blue sheets. The painterly quality of this image is of course no surprise to those who know Mr. McQueen, a conceptual artists that has only recently moved into filmmaking. But it also highlights the emptiness that surrounds Brandon, who, in a world where he can have anything, still finds himself longing for something, anything, to fill the void of his life.

            Mr. McQueen’s first film, Hunger, was an audaciously bold and formalistically polarizing debut that followed the British IRA hunger strikes in the late 1970s. Mr. McQueen, uninterested in politics, focused on the control and degradation of the body, and the mental power to command such an organism. It was also the first film to introduce us to Michael Fassbender, who went on to starring roles in Fish Tank, Jane Eyre, and A Dangerous Method, who plays Brandon in Shame. And if Hunger was about the complete control of the body, Shame is about a body that constantly feeds in order to keep the mental state from absolute disaster.

New York Film Festival: Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse


The Turin Horse
A Film By Béla Tarr
Hungary

            When the “plebeians” below us think about art cinema, they may imagine long tracking shots where nothing happens, filmed in black and white without dialogue, on subjects that seem moronic and too mundane to ever demand the attention of cameras. Of course, those men and women are certainly entitled to their opinion (as well as their Transformers), but they may be missing out on something that even most filmmakers would refuse to do: stare into the abyss of life with much disdain and fear as it stares back into us.

            And thus comes the final film from Béla Tarr, The Turin Horse, a two and a half hour masterpiece that is brutal truth at 24 frames per second. This deeply disturbing work borderlines on parody of art cinema, mainly because Mr. Tarr is a relentless filmmaker who never compromises in his portraiture of a life void of hope and the impossibility to fight against the idea of a progressive world. I had somehow missed Mr. Tarr’s previous features—most notably the 450 minute Sátántangó—but knew to be prepared. A mutual friend of mine and Mr. Tarr’s suggested to let the film “wash over me.” And bathe in despair I did.

Monday, October 10, 2011

New York Film Festival: Simon Curtis's My Week With Marilyn (Centerpiece Selection)


My Week With Marilyn (Centerpiece Selection)
A Film By Simon Curtis
United Kingdom

            My Week With Marilyn, a messy comedy of sorts that’s more enamored at its star than it needs to be, opens with a recreation of a song and dance number from There’s No Business Like Show Business. There’s Marilyn Monroe, all jazzed up, singing “Heat Wave.” We then break out of it and into the cinema onto the face of the young Colin Clark. He looks up in awe in the way that us plebeians always glorify our stars, and if you don’t understand his love, then you can’t understand Ms. Monroe.

            That’s not to put down the great star who made splashes whether on screen or off, becoming one of the most recognizable names and faces of her era. Like Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles, My Week With Marilyn attempts to view a giant star through the eyes of a small man who can only see the genius. The similarities end there, despite a tonal disposition to direct everything with a light foot and a skip in the wind. Some of this comes from issues with the script by Adrian Hodges, based on a pair of memoirs by Mr. Clark (yes two whole memoirs for one summer with a star!) and director Simon Curtis, who isn’t exactly sure how to handle the more serious moments. But much of the issue is the perspective of the film itself, which tries to throw Ms. Monroe from such a limited point of view, instead of giving us real access to the person behind the face.

New York Film Festival: Nuri Bile Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia


Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
A Film By Nuri Bile Ceylan
Turkey

            As the title might suggest, landscape may be the most crucial character in the dark and elliptical Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. As the men we follow progress through the night, the clear plains and trees seem to carry on into the distance without end. These men are lost in a world where not much exists beyond the trees and the slowly fading sun. Like the opening shots of Abbas Kiaraostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, they are dwarfed among the plains in their small cars, which become their only source of light as their search continues into the long night.

            Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is the latest work from Turkish director Nuri Bile Ceylan, best known for his 2006 film Climates. Mr. Ceylan’s latest feature is both an epic  as well as an intimate and minimalist portrayal of daily life. Shot gorgeously along the Anatolian plains, this occasionally frustrating work attempts to explore a lot of different themes and ideas, as well as characters, but through a small prism of access in which we our limited by the realism of how people truly act. But as it slowly treks toward some sort of conclusion, this police procedural is a unique and assuredly bold attempt to explore a number of notions about the existence of human life, or at least something of that matter.

The Ides of March: A Primary Fable


The Ides of March
Directed By: George Clooney
Written By: George Clooney, Grant Heslov, and Beau Willmon, based on the play “Farragut North” by Willmon
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, George Clooney, Evan Rachel Wood, Marissa Tomei, Jeffery Wright, Max Minghella, and Jennifer Ehle.
Director of Photography: Phedon Papmichael, Editor: Stephen Mirrione, Production Designer: Sharon Seymour, Original Music: Alexandre Desplat
Rated: R for the things politicians say off camera

            You can tell a lot about the different tone being set by The Ides of March from the play that inspired it, Farragut North, by just examining the titles. The original play, a sparse Mametesque back room politics piece, has a title that refers to the subway stop in Washington DC where all the big lobbyist and consulting firms have their offices on K Street, which is where politicians go to die when they never make it to Capital Hill. But in George Clooney’s take on the material, we instead have a more metaphorical title, one that dates back multiple millennia in politics. We essentially have a fable.

            And it is this sort of morality tale that Mr. Clooney, not only playing an Obama-esque politician (one that remained off stage in the play) but also writing and directing, wishes to tell. Mr. Clooney may be one of the biggest actors still today, but his craft as a director of cinema has become more refined with each film. He seems to dig into these old genres and stories that cold have easily been made in eras previous, doing little to update them, but make the movies he wants to see. Thus, The Ides of March is an often gorgeously crafted examination of the dirty little schemes that hide under the skin of every politician. 

The Wire - Hot Shots: An Unfamiliar Land

The Wire: Hot Shots
Season 2, Episode 3
Written By: David Simon, from a story by Simon and Ed Burns
Directed By: Elodie Keene

            One of the most difficult adjustments that David Simon had to make when writing and producing the second season of The Wire was to let go of almost every one of his original locations. In many great television series, there are locations and sets that become a character themselves—the main deck of the Battlestar Galatica, the Bluth model home, or Counter Terrorist Offices of Jack Bauer. But in this second season, we’ve abandoned almost every location save for the homicide offices. Gone is the low rises and Orlando’s strip club and instead we get the shipping docks and the church. It’s a bold move that changes a lot of the ways we view how location creates character, though the cinematography of Uta Briesweitz (who I still argue is the visual auteur of the show) keeps us in the same leveled realism with a shade of dark gray morality.

            As you might tell, there’s not so much heavy in theme for this episode, entitled “Hot Shots,” or at least the narratives being spun together have little in common with each other. Each is great in its own right, though not as much stands out visually. We've also got the return of Omar, which will be fun to watch. 

Thursday, October 06, 2011

The Wire - Collateral Damage: Erasing The Other

The Wire: Collateral Damage
Season Two, Episode Two
Written By: David Simon, from a story by Simon and Ed Burns
Directed By: Ed Bianchi

Read out “The Wire” Project here. Read about the previous episode here, or click here to read the coverage of the series so far. Assume spoilers for the episode.
            One of the major themes in the first season of The Wire was that from a top down perspective, the status quo was always much more important to continue than any social change. This often came with how Lieutenant Daniels was told to handle his detail: “Dope on the table.” Minor arrests at best. The detail was never formed to take down the Barksdale operation, just show the appearance that something was being done to fight the war on drugs without really any fight. Appearances are always better to keep.

            In “Collateral Damage,” the plot heavy second episode that sets into motion a number of major through lines for the season, we really get that theme racing back. It begins right from our opening scene, as Officer Russell works with a group of detectives on the 13 Jane Does found in the cargo. When a forensics officer discovers they suffocated to death, everyone assumes it was an accidental, leaving Russell to herself. No murder, no problem.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

New York Film Festival: David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method


A Dangerous Method (Gala Presentation)
A Film By David Cronenberg
United Kingdom/Canada/Germany

            Cinema and psychoanalysis have a long history together, as the new technology and the striking new school of thought both began and evolved during the turn of the 20th century. And since the 1970s, psychoanalysis has been used in film theory to explore films in new light, where characters once thought to be crazy are instead explored within their Freudian terms of wanting to return the womb or whatnot (Classic Hollywood seems ripe with metaphors for sex looking back).

            So what psychoanalysis can we read on the makers of psychoanalysis? That certainly sounds like an interesting question for David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, a stately and occasionally involving piece on the history of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, as well as the woman that changed everything. On first appearances, Mr. Cronenberg, known for his more graphically violent films from Videodrome, to Crash, to A History of Violence, might seem like the wrong choice for this stately work from screenwriter Christopher Hampton (adapting his own play The Talking Cure, that adapted from the book A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr). But thematically, this is a work through and through by Mr. Cronenberg, exploring how an idea can transform, disfigure, and infect the body.

New York Film Festival: Asghar Farhadi's A Separation


A Separation
Directed By Asghar Farhadi
Iran

            The political state of Iran might feel like the elephant in the room in Asghar Farhadi’s masterful A Separation, but the film wants to remove such greater implications as early as the opening scene. We watch from the point of view of a judge as a man and woman come for a divorce. Simin (Leila Hatami) wants to leave the state and because her husband Naader (Peyman Moaadi) won’t join her, she wants a divorce. She tells the judge she doesn’t want to raise her daughter in such a state. When the judge asks her to describe what is wrong with the state of Iran, she acts ambivalently toward the question. The truth, we later learn, is that she has no intention of leaving; it might just be a ploy to get her husband to show her respect.

            And that’s the crux of why Mr. Farhadi’s film is a much more human drama than anything else. Obviously in the United States, it is difficult to watch a film like A Separation without commenting on the social politics that might be lingering just below the surface. But perhaps let’s consider the narrative and style on the terms the film wants to subscribe. What we thus find in A Separation is a wondrously observed legal drama that provides endless complexity and moral quandaries that offer no easy answers.

New York Film Festival: Gerardo Naranjo's Miss Bala


Miss Bala
A Film By Gerardo Naranjo
Mexico

            The clash of situations is at the heart of Miss Bala, a Mexican crime saga from director Gerardo Naranjo. Laura, a young woman who has been forced to help a powerful drug lord, watches as a DEA agent is run over, dragged through the street, and hung over a highway. The drug lords then take her to a fixed beauty pageant, where the bright lights practically blind her and the atmosphere promises youth, beauty, and love, which couldn’t clash more with the men controlling her lives.

            But clash is also one of the fatal flaws of this gorgeously shot but somewhat hollow film. Mr. Naranjo made a huge splash at the New York Film Festival in 2008 with I’m Gonna Explode, a unique exploration of youth and class with the powerful energy adapted from Godard’s Pierret Le Fou. Here, Mr. Naranjo is in somewhat stripping down the crime thriller to its essentials—another NYFF hit, Gomorrah, might be this film’s distant cousin—though it indulges through its camera. The outcome is a somewhat mixed result that may interest audiences with its bizarre but true story of a beauty queen involved in the drug war, but rarely finds a uniquely statement on the terrible situation.

Monday, October 03, 2011

Take Shelter: A Coming Storm From Within the American Psyche


Take Shelter
Written and Directed By: Jeff Nichols
Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, and Tova Stewart
Director of Photography: Adam Stone, Editor: Parke Gregg, Production Designer: Chad Keith, Original Music: David Wingo
Rated: R for some foul language

            The wind blows in a strong direction across the plains of Ohio in Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter. Set among the ominous clouds, the landscapes of Mr. Nichols’s film seem to recall both the lost past of an untamed era, but also the possible future of a return to a land of restless violence. It only makes sense that the protagonist of Take Shelter, the good natured but easily corrupted Curtis, sees the visions of the end not in terms of fire and brimstone, but a storm of incontrollable magnitude. The past of both his own life, as well as that of the world he knows, is seemingly crawling back into his skin.

            And thus sets the stage for another great American drama with an independent and unique vision. I missed Mr. Nichols’s first film, Shotgun Stories, which also starred Michael Shannon, but it’s an immediate catch for me now, as Take Shelter gives us an intimate look at one man’s battle with his own personal demons in a setting of Americana. Bathed with gorgeous visuals on this harsh plain, and supported by electrifying performances, Mr. Nichols had made a film that speaks volumes about our American psyche but through a truly personal story.

50/50: Laughing Through the Pain


50/50
Directed By: Jonathan Levine
Written By: Will Reiser
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston, Philip Baker Hall, and Matthew Frewer
Director of Photography: Terry Stacey, Editor: Zene Baker, Production Designer: Annie Spitz, Original Music: Michael Giacchino
Rated: R for naughty language and situations.

            There’s no way around it: cancer sucks. No one likes cancer, cause no one likes dying, or losing their hair, or feeling like you need to vomit all the time. It’s an easy enemy for the cinematic machine that characters must fight through and come together to beat. But what if we had a laugh along the way as well?

            That’s the new angle in the new comedic drama, 50/50, about a young man who finds out he has a rare and ugly type of cancer. The film is written by Will Reiser, who wrote this screenplay on his own experiences with battling cancer (sorry, I may have just gave away the ending) at a young age and the comic absurdities he went through. Mr. Reiser, an alum of Da Ali G Show, would often joke during his time about writing a comedy about the tragic disease with his then roommate Seth Rogen. As it turns out, 50/50 is a little more serious than bizarre, anchored through both its antics and pathos by a standout Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

New York Film Festival: Lars Von Trier's Melancholia


Melancholia
Directed By Lars Von Trier
Denmark

When describing the filmmaking qualities or narrative strategies of Lars Von Trier, one word shows up again and again: provocateur. The Danish director wants to get inside our skin, distort our comforts, and make us shout at his vision of the world as false. This applies not only to his films like Dogville or Antichrist, but also to his personality off the screen. At the premiere of Antichrist at Cannes, he claimed that God had declared him the greatest director in the world. And this year, at the premiere of his latest film Melancholia, Mr. Von Trier went on a rant that ended with him claiming himself a Nazi. Give it, the director was only joking, knowing the Cannes press core would eat such comments up (it did; the jury declared Mr. Von Trier persona non grata). But Mr. Von Trier was really loves watching those reactions nonetheless. This is a director who loves fucking with you.

And thus comes Melancholia, Mr. Von Trier’s latest, and surprisingly restrained examination once again of depression, except this time with a bang. The apocalyptic imagery that surrounds Melancholia not only makes for some moments of truly shock, but there is certainly much more under this surface as well. Mr. Von Trier suffered from a severe depression in 2006 and has been slowly rebuilding himself as a person, including the blunt instrument that was Antichrist in 2009. But now with some distance, and a real provocation out of the way, Mr. Von Trier has created a more thoughtful and shocking approach to not only examining his own depression, but how to fuck with us as well.

Sunday, October 02, 2011

New York Film Festival: Nicholas Ray's We Can't Go Home Again


We Can’t Go Home Again (1972/2011)
A Film By Nicholas Ray
United States

            If you know Nicholas Ray, it’s probably because you’ve viewed his quintessential teen angst film, Rebel Without a Cause. Perhaps if you’re a cinephile, you’ve dug into In a Lonely Place or They Live By Night, noirs that helped define the genre. You might know Mr. Ray as a director of men that fall against inescapable forces, anguished by their own destinies that trap them. But what happened to Mr. Ray? Where exactly does a man with such sound and fury disappear?

            The answer, finally after forty years, is We Can’t Go Home Again, an experimental feature from 1972 that was Mr. Ray’s last narrative film. Thanks to his wife Susan Ray, We Can’t Go Home Again has been vividly brought to life in all, well, its mystique and confusion. Shot with students in Binghamton’s Harper College in upstate New York, We Can’t Go Home Again premiered to middling reviews and not much buzz in Cannes in 1973. Mr. Ray kept shooting footage and editing it until his death in 1979, and thanks to Mrs. Ray, we now can explore a filmmaker who instead of continued the traditions that defined his career, ended with something quite different.

Saturday, October 01, 2011

New York Film Festival: Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre


Le Havre
A Film by Aki Kaurismäki
Finland/France

            Le Havre, a very witty and adorable comedy from French director Aki Kaurismäki, is best watched with a nice cappuccino, as it is truly one of the sweetest films ever conceived. You might not think it if you read the film’s synopsis, which concerns an old man, his terminally ill wife, and the smuggling of an illegal immigrant to London. But in Mr. Kaurismäki’s world, none of that is really too stern, who instead paints a world of nostalgic delight on a costal town in Finland. It’s the type of place you may have thought died out decades ago, and perhaps that is true, except Mr. Kaurismäki wants us to believe in fairy tales nonetheless.

            The action begins with a scene of absurd comedy as Marcel Marx stands in a train station, waiting for the next customer at his shoeshine. A man sits down, but is cautiously watched by a couple of men in dark coats. When the man leaves, he runs and is shot down. “Luckily he had time to pay me,” Marcel remarks before leaving himself. We soon learn Marcel lives a simple though not unrewarding life: nights at the local bar, friends at the bakery, and an adoring wife who truly loves him, taking care of his every needs. But she suddenly becomes ill with cancer, leaving Marcel alone.

The Wire - Ebb Tide: All Aboard


The Wire: Ebb Tide – All Aboard
Season Two, Episode One
Directed By: Ed Bianchi
Written By: David Simon, from a story by Simon and Ed Burns

Read out “The Wire” Project here. Read about the previous episode here, or click here to see the total coverage. Assume spoilers for the episode.

            Despite being considered by a number of television critics as the best show of the decade, The Wire was an infamous no show at the Emmys, especially considering it aired on HBO, which has won a ridiculous number of statuettes since the network started airing original programming. If David Simon’s epic look at Baltimore crime began airing now, in the spirit of morally complex shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Dexter, it would sure be a lock for many nominations. But what I worry about what would still be lost on the great black actor (Before anyone begins to yell at me for using “black,” Idris Elba is British). The Wire’s first season had a number of black actors performing at levels that rival some of the best film performances of all time. Andre Royo played the crack addict Bubbles with such convincing humility it was sometimes tough to watch because of the authenticity. Mr. Elba, who you wouldn’t know was British unless you’ve seen him in the BBC miniseries Luther, played a reserved and calm leader of a network with quiet understand and fierce will. Larry Gilliard Jr. constantly bended between moral lines by convincing us of his own lack of conviction, and his final sequence in the season one finale broke my heart. Why don’t these performances win Emmys? To get on a high horse for a minute, it’s cause when a voter sees a black man playing a drug dealer or addict, they don’t think it’s a stretch. When a white actor does it for a film, it’s a stretch beyond their ordinary life. Frankly, it’s all bullshit.

            So why have I started my discussion of season two with my praise for black actors? Part is this is it’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while and wanted to write on for a few episodes. But also, “Ebb Tide,” the season two opener, clearly takes us out of the world of the drug business and launches us not only into a different type of crime but a different world: the working white class. These guys are a different breed of criminal, though the same qualities we learned from the Barksdale gang—loyalty, family, organization—still apply.