WFF Montreal ’12: Calm at Sea

It is just about unifying Europe—or at least a handful of refined National Socialist officers would like to believe.  Of course, it is hard for them to kid themselves when Berlin is ordering mass reprisal executions.  Based in part of the diaries of the old line German war hero-novelist Ernst Jünger’s diaries, Volker Schlöndorff dramatizes a notorious episode of Vichy-era French history in Calm at Sea, which screens as part of the 2012 World Film Festival of Montreal.

On the orders of the Communist French resistance faction, two high-ranking German officers are to be assassinated.  They realize the occupying Germans will likely retaliate.  In fact, that is part of the point.  It will help radicalize the general populace.  Unfortunately, one of the shoddy guns supplied to the triggermen jams, leaving a target alive.  While the actual gunmen escape, the occupying power intends to set an example.  If the partisans in question are not turned over to the authorities, one hundred “hostages” will be executed.

The figure of one hundred was the result of a bit of diplomatic negotiating on the part of Jünger and his superior officer, cutting down the literal death list from one hundred fifty.  These are not randomly selected names—they are political prisoners, roughly divided between Gaullists and Communists, like the seventeen year-old Guy Môquet, who would become a martyr figure for French leftists.

Surely, that should not be a spoiler to anyone.  Indeed, Sea becomes something like the Môquet passion play in its slow, overwrought third act.  That is a bit of a shame, because the second act offers a surprisingly insightful and intriguing perspective on some pretty familiar cinematic terrain.  In addition to clearly suggesting the mass executions were exactly what the Communist leadership had in mind (except more so), several of their imprisoned partisan openly question whether allying themselves with the National Socialists during the Hitler-Stalin alliance was possibly a mistake in retrospect.  You think maybe?  Likewise, Jünger pointedly asks if mass executions will prove to be counter-effective as they try to win French hearts and mind.  Hmm, perhaps.  Yet, the disdainful Jünger’s reluctance to stick his neck out is in turn challenged by the sophisticated French woman he is pursuing—the only sort of conquest that interests him.

A French-German television co-production, Sea is still relatively cinematic and boasts a big screen cast.  As the reluctant Nazi Jünger (officially rehabilitated in the 1950’s), Ulrich Matthes is smart, cool, and riveting in every second of his screen time.  Veteran French character actor Jean-Pierre Darroussin (the hardware merchant in The Well-Digger’s Daughter) also elevates the otherwise disappointing endgame, appearing as an anti-Vichy Catholic priest, who compassionately ministers to the doomed men, by not ministering, per se.  Indeed, his work is welcome and notable as a sympathetic depiction of a man of the cloth.  Unfortunately, the prison ensemble is stuck portraying symbols rather than characters.

At its best, Sea is a fascinating film, critically exploring the murky psyches of conflicted Germans like Jünger and the collaborating gendarmerie France is still apologizing for.  However, it can also be as blatantly manipulative as a made-for-TV movie, which in fact, it is.  Though not nearly as powerful as Schlöndorff’s underappreciated Polish Solidarity docudrama Strike, Calm at Sea is an interesting little film with somewhat more on the merit side.  Worth considering, it screens Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (8/28-8/30) during this year’s World Film Festival in Montreal.

WFF Montreal ’12: Where Once We Walked

Finland is a small country, with some big history.  During WWII, they forcibly ejected both the Soviets and the National Socialists from their territory, only give birth to the term Finlandization in the post-war years.  An interconnected circle of friends and rivals will witness the tumultuous decades leading up to the Winter War in Peter Lindholm’s Where Once We Walked (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2012 World Film Festival of Montreal.

The Lilliehjelms have money.  The Kajanders have not—and they will never let the Lilliehjelms forget it.  Eventually red diaper baby Allu Kajander will embark on an ambiguously passionate relationship with Lucie Lilliehjelm, the rebellious daughter of the imperious patriarch who once summarily dismissed his mother.  However, in the years of the Russian Revolutions and the Finnish Civil War, Ms. Lucie has several suitors more befitting her class, even including her brother Cedi’s morose best friend Eric “Eccu” Winding.

Always a bit of an outsider, Winding willing enlists with the White faction after witnessing the destruction wrought by the empowered Reds.  Yet, it is the score-settling he soon watches first-hand after the White victory that sends him into a psychological tailspin.  While his pained conscience poisons his friendship with Cedi, his continuing attraction to his flapper sister (and their periodic assignations) undermines his marriage.  Of course, all Finns will have much more pressing concerns arriving from the east in 1939.

Edited from a six part Finnish mini-series (which in turn adapted Kjell Westö’s door-stopper novel), the feature-length WOWW (handled internationally by The Yellow Affair) dispenses with entire narrative tributaries for the sake of compactness.  As a result, some periods, like the Red interregnum, are given short shrift, whereas the White purges become the film version’s dramatic hinge.  Perhaps most disappointingly for admirers of Finland, the movie version of WOWW practically concludes just as the Winter War (the country’s darkest yet arguably finest hour) begins.  In fact, it might as well end with “to be continued” spelled out in ten feet tall letters.

WOWW is not even remotely in Doctor Zhivago’s league, but it is intriguing to see roughly the same period of history from the Finnish perspective.  The weather is certainly similar.  In fact, it is pretty cinematic to see resolute Finns cross-country skiing off to join the White resistance.  WOWW is also a nicely crafted period production, but still there are times when it looks very TV in a TV kind of way.  (The opening credit sequence showing leaves falling into a river really needed sprucing up.)  The racially integrated American jazz band is also something of an anachronism for 1928, but to be fair, if you are assembling a New Orleans style hot jazz band in Finland, you probably have to take who you can get.

Though not exactly a classic beauty, Jessica Grabowsky plays sister Lilliehjelm with flirtatious verve.  Stiff and dour in comparison, Jakob Öhrman and Oskar Pöysti at least prove they can either brood or seethe on cue, as lover Winding and Brother Cedi, respectively.  Charles Salter also has a nifty near cameo as bandleader Robert W. “Jonesy” Jones, leading viewers to hope and suspect there is more of him either to come or available for Finish television viewing.

WOWW covers some fascinating history while treating viewers to some lovely sets and costumes.  It just feels so incomplete and unbalanced, though.  Nonetheless, Montreal residents and visitors interested in these oft overlooked historical episodes may not have a lot of other opportunities to see early Twentieth Century Finnish history dramatized on-screen and might therefore consider catching the imperfect Where Once We Walked anyway when it screens this coming Wednesday (8/28) and Saturday (9/1) during this year’s World Film Festival up north.

WFF Montreal ’12: Manhunt

Corporal Wydra is the designated executioner in his Polish resistance unit.  He is a sensitive soul, yet very good at his job.  This is the contradictory nature of war and it will only get more treacherous for the soldier in Marcin Krzyształowicz’s Manhunt, which screens tomorrow as part of the 2012 World Film Festival of Montreal.

Captured National Socialists are lucky if Wydra is the man taking them out.  He is not a sadist or a vengeance taker.  He is a freedom fighter with a grim task to complete.  We get a good feel for the complicated man at work as the film opens.  His next assignment though, will be considerably thornier.  He is to go into town and bring back a prominent businessman turned informant, the hard way or the easy way, for trial and presumed execution.  However, Wydra has some decidedly personal history with the thoroughly compromised Henryk Kondolewicz.

Meanwhile, a member of the unit has betrayed Wydra’s comrades, funneling information through the very snitch he has been dispatched to deal with.  The Corporal will be too late to help his fallen brothers-in-arms, but he will be able to put together the pieces and possibly dispense some retribution.

In fact, Manhunt is a bit of a narrative jigsaw puzzle, constantly flashing backwards and forwards, providing more context with each successive time shift.  Actually the crosses and double-crosses are relatively straight forward, but the existential depth of Wydra’s character really distinguishes Manhunt from thematically related WWII dramas.

While not completely dissimilar to the grizzled Home Army veteran he played in Wojtek Smarzowski’s Rose, Marcin Dorociński is riveting nonetheless as the massively brooding Wydra.  Chillingly convincing when getting down to business, he also quite compellingly hints at the pain eating his Wydra’s soul.  He dominates the film and that’s fine.

In the tradition of Melville’s Army of Shadows, Krzyształowicz’s screenplay explores the moral ambiguity and constant uncertainty of the resistance milieu.  Like Melville, he understands and even pardons his characters’ betrayals.  Aptly suiting the tense vibe, cinematographer Arkadiusz Tomiak’s dark, musty look vividly suggests the sense of trooping through a dank forest.  This is definitely war cinema, gritty and unromanticized.  It is also a very good film, well worth seeing when it screens tomorrow (8/24) and Saturday (8/25) during the World Film Festival in Montreal.