NYMF: The ToyMaker

Though occupied by the National Socialists, the Czechs still put up a spirited resistance, for which they paid dearly. In retribution for the death of regional SS strongman Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazis massacred the inhabitants of Lidice, a Christian village in Moravia. Out of those dark days of death, one man would leave behind a legacy of life in Brian Putnam’s The ToyMaker, now running as part of the 2009 New York Musical Theatre Festival at the Theatre at St. Clement’s.

Thanks to the internet, Sarah Meeks has spent thousands of dollars for two wooden toys handcrafted by a mysterious Czech artisan. It is difficult for her to explain her compulsion, since a series of miscarriages have rendered her childless. Something about the work of the obscure Petr Klimes speaks to her on a deeper fundamental level. Leaving behind her increasingly distant husband Jason, Meeks travels to the Czech Republic, hoping to find Klimes’s rumored final extant creation.

In ToyMaker’s split narrative, we also see Klimes and his wife Anna struggling to endure the Nazi occupation of Lidice in the fateful days leading up to the town’s destruction. Like the Meeks, the Klimeses have had similar difficulties carrying children to term, but the caring Czechs essentially serve as surrogate parents for Capek, the village orphan.

Thanks to the help of Doby, a slick street kid, Meeks is able to follow a trail of clues from Lidice to Germany and back to Lidice, as she seeks both the whereabouts of Petr’s last toy, as well as an understanding of its full significance. Concurrently, we watch as the Klimeses are caught up in the horrific events of 1942.

Clearly, ToyMaker is not a light and frothy musical comedy. Yet, the numbers are tastefully integrated into the show, and Putnam’s music and lyrics are quite strong, particularly Petr and Capek’s “Thy Might,” a stirring ode to the creative impulse. Also notable is the big sound musical director-conductor-pianist Kenneth W. Gartman gets out of the relatively small ensemble of two reeds, two keyboards, and three strings, effectively serving both the vocalists and the score.

The featured cast of ToyMaker is uniformly appealing and their voices are mostly strong and expressive. As Petr and Anna Klimes, Rob Richardson and Jessica Burrows are especially impressive. Ultimately, the fine ensemble work leads to a real emotional payoff that should forcefully hit anyone who does not have a heart completely made of stone. The only trouble with ToyMaker is that the parallels drawn between Sarah Meeks and the Klimeses—their shared pain from losing babies and the motherless young boys they take under their wings—inadvertently suggest a correspondence between lives that simply cannot be compared.

ToyMaker is a very strong work of musical theater with some real emotional heft. Well staged and performed, it also dramatizes the historic tragedies of the Czech occupation, made possible by ill-conceived policies of appeasement. It runs at St. Clement’s through October 18th.

Fordham Law Film Fest ‘09: Anatomy of a Murder

Who better to play a small town underdog defense attorney than James Stewart? His Paul Biegler is indeed one of the classic screen lawyers, but he is not without flaws. However, his taste in music certainly is not one of them. Many reviewers considered Duke Ellington’s soundtrack an awkward fit for Otto Preminger’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (trailer here), but it arguably compliments Stewart’s character rather well, and it definitely swings. Viewers will have a chance to judge for themselves when Preminger’s classic film plays this Saturday at the Fordham Law Film Festival, with a post-screening discussion with director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich to follow.

Biegler is the former district attorney of Iron City, a small upper peninsular Michigan town, recently defeated in his bid for re-election. We quickly learn Biegler, in a departure from Robert Travers’s source novel, is also a jazz enthusiast, whose records collection goes “from Brubeck to Dixieland.”

Biegler accepts a difficult client in Lt. Manion, a hard case Army officer with anger management issues, accused of murdering the man who raped his flirtatious wife. His investigation takes him to an Upper Michigan roadhouse, where Duke Ellington appears as the bandleader Pie Eye. Biegler even sits in for some four-handed piano, clearly proving he is indeed a jazz kind of guy. Anatomy is a film that deftly handles some very delicate subject matter, with the help of powerful performances from Stewart, Ben Gazzara as Manion, and Lee Remick as his wife, Laura.

The majestic blues of Ellington’s soundtrack are completely at odds with our impressions of small town white America, but it is precisely this dissociative effect which serves the film so well. Viewers first meet Biegler driving home through his familiar town, returning late at night from a long fishing trip, as the Ellington Orchestra swings hard in the background. In effect, it sets Biegler apart from his community—an alienation any former DA reduced to scuffling for divorce cases is likely to share.

James Stewart is perfectly cast in a role that capitalizes on his everyman image, but gives it a twist. Though a decent person and an underdog, Biegler is no saint. We see him subtly lead Manion into adopting an insanity defense and watch as he navigates the grey areas of his legal defense. When his associate asks about the case, he frankly replies: “I’m making a lot of noise and Dancer [the prosecution] is racking all the points.’

After a grueling trial, we hear Biegler teasing out some blues on the piano as he waits for the jury to come in, courtesy of the off-screen Billy Strayhorn, Ellington’s writing and arranging partner. According to Chris Fujiwara’s The World and It’s Double: the Life and Films of Otto Preminger Strayhorn made a characteristic effort to fit the music to Stewart’s personality. Fujiwara reports:

“‘He asked me to play something I liked,’ said Stewart, who had studied piano and played with a jazz band as an undergraduate at Princeton. ‘What I think he did, you see, was write something for me that I would have played myself.’” (p. 242)

The soundtrack for Anatomy is an enduring classic of Ellingtonia. Whether it is Johnny Hodges’ sweet alto on the suggestive “Flirtbird” or Cat Anderson’s high notes on “Upper and Outest” heard over the film’s ironic closing scene, Ellington demonstrates his inspired ability to compose for particular sidemen that marked his remarkable career. Anatomy is recognized one the finest jazz soundtracks ever, and the rest of the film is also quite good. Bogdanovich may have some fine insights Saturday night (10/17), but simply by itself, Anatomy remains a thoroughly entertaining legal drama.

Royal Flush ’09: Pig Hunt

Northern California can be a dangerous place. There are a lot of things to worry about in those great woods, including pot growers, violent hillbillies, freaky hippies, and wild boar. They all turn into a perfect storm for John and his loser buddies in Jim Isaac’s Pig Hunt (trailer here), which screens during the upcoming Royal Flush Festival.

It has been a longtime since John returned to his backwoods home and it’s not hard to see why he stayed away. Originally conceived as a weekend hunting trip with the guys, his girlfriend Brooks convinces him to let her tag along. Again, it is not hard to see why he agreed. Not only is she beautiful, she can shoot straight and is the only character on the excursion worth talking to.

Arriving at his late uncle’s cabin, they discover it has been defaced with weird, menacing graffiti. Also adding to their anxiety is the sudden arrival of two of John’s former hick friends, who seem to harbor a lingering resentment against him. Still, they seem to have a knack for finding game, so everyone heads out into the woods together. After all, what could go wrong? Besides encountering the legendary Ripper, a three-thousand pound wild pig they were warned about in town, that is.

It is not giving away much to reveal the Ripper turns out to be quite real and very much worthy of his name. Needless to say things get very bad, very fast. Isaac builds the tension quite effectively, leaving unsettling clues that there may well be more threats out there than just the killer hog. As is usually the case in horror films, the less the audience actually sees of the Ripper, the scarier he is. Unfortunately, the periodic attempts to draw an analogy between the hunt for the Ripper and the War in Iraq are clumsy, ill-conceived distractions from the gory business at hand.

In general, Pig Hunt’s cast is at least adequate to the genre. However, Tina Huang is a charismatic standout as Brooks. Whether firing off rounds or needling John’s idiot friends, she is just what the doctor ordered for a bloody horror-actioner. She completely outshines the rest of the cast, including the bland Travis Aaron Wade as the characterless John. Also noteworthy is a small but memorable cameo by blues mouth-harpist Charlie Musselwhite as the general store owner who issues the fateful warning about the big pig in the woods.

Happily we also get to hear Musselwhite perform the all too brief “Booneville Crossroads.” The balance of Pig Hunt’s soundtrack, largely composed by Les Claypool of Primus (who also appears as Preacher, the head of the redneck clan and a dead-ringer for Richard Petty), featuring additional percussion by jazz drummer Eric Harland, really brings a down-home vitality to the picture.

For audiences receptive to the exploitation-horror genre, Pig Hunt is good, clean fun, with some cool sounds and a really appealing action performance by Huang. It is the sort of vigorously blood-splattered picture that would have been a good fit for the late lamented Two Boots Theater. It screens Saturday at Anthology Film Archives as part of the Royal Flush Festival.

Kazan at Film Forum: Man on a Tightrope

By the time Elia Kazan testified before the HUAC Committee, the gist of the Great Purge and Stalin’s forced collectivization policies had been reported in the west. Yet for many in Hollywood, Kazan remains the villain for trying to expose the activities of the Moscow-controlled CPUSA in his chosen field. As a result, despite directing some of the greatest masterpieces of American cinema, Kazan was treated like a pariah in the industry he sought to save. As the first film Kazan helmed after testifying, the lesser known Man on a Tightrope takes on tremendous personal and political significance given the context of his tumultuous history. Rarely seen in repertory, it screens once next Tuesday as part of the Film Forum’s welcomed Elia Kazan retrospective.

Karel Cernik is not a great clown, but he understands comedy better than the Party bosses who now regulate the circus still bearing his name. Of course, “the people” now own it, but Cernik is allowed to stay on as the manager. However, he chafes under the edicts of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.

Cernik has other problems too. His wife Zama openly carries on with Rudolph, the Robert Goulet-looking lion-tamer, while his daughter Tereza is making eyes at Vosdek, the suspicious drifter who recently signed on as a handyman. Most pressing is the revelation of a spy in their midst, who has fed incriminating information to the local authorities. Though they know he has listened to forbidden western radio broadcasts, they do not seem to suspect the full extent of Cernik’s plans. He intends to make a mad dash for the border, with the elephants and the rest of the circus animals in tow.

It is hard not to draw parallels between Kazan and Cernik, two men appalled by the politicizing of their art. Indeed, Cernik is the heart and soul of the film. Used to playing a supporting role in his own circus while others enjoy the spotlight, he is a man who silently suffers the indignities of life. Yet, he is capable of great courage and sacrifice for the sake of those he loves—his immediate family and the extended family of the circus.

Frederic March gives one of the great unsung screen performances as Cernik. His circus everyman is heroic, even noble, but not saintly. This is fully developed character, warts and all. Unfortunately, the supporting cast largely falls below his considerably high standard. Adolphe Menjou (also a HUAC witness) is perfectly cast as Fesker, Cernik’s moustache-twisting tormentor, but Cameron Mitchell seems to be doing a subpar Brando impersonation as Vosdek.

Shot on location in Europe with the participation of the real-life Brumbach Circus, Tightrope looks convincingly authentic. Kazan elicits a truly remarkable performance from March, and nicely stages Cernik’s unlikely act of desperation. Together with On the Waterfront, a story of another everyman who dared to confront corruption, Tightrope offers a clear rejoinder to those who vilified his “naming names.” Described by Kazan as his “ode to individualism” Tightrope is an above average Hollywood studio film that has clearly has a wider historical import. It screens next Tuesday night (10/20) at Film Forum.

Karaindrou Scores Angelopoulos: Dust of Time

Dust of Time: Music for the Film by Theo Angelopoulos
By Eleni Karaindrou
ECM New Series 2070

You haven’t seen the film, now buy the soundtrack. Relatively few people have had the chance to screen Theo Angelopoulos’s Dust of Time at European film festivals, but international cineastes will already be well aware of the new film from the Cannes award winning director. Many will also be familiar with the music of Eleni Karaindrou, who since 1983 has scored Angelopoulos’s films, as has been documented on six previous CDs of film music released on the ECM label. Thanks to label founder Manfred Eicher’s commitment to Karaindrou’s music and his confidence in the enduring value of the finest film scores, Karaindrou’s music from Dust of Time is now available in America, well ahead of the film itself.

Though jazz was an early influence on Karaindrou, her collaborations with Angelopoulos have largely been contemporary classical music, at times seasoned with traditional Greek folk music. Such is the case again with Dust (starring Willem Dafoe, Irene Jacob, and Michel Piccoli), which intertwines a filmmaker’s search for his missing daughter with his memories of his own parents, cruelly separated by the Second World War and its aftermath.

Since the prodigal father character is a pianist, the piano logically has a significant role in Karaindrou’s score, but violin, cello, and harp are in fact the dominant voices of Dust. Indeed, Sergiu Nastasa’s violin sets the elegiac tone right from the beginning, while Maria Bildea’s harp adds a nostalgic once-upon-a-time ambiance to “Les Temps Perdu.” Like many of Angelopoulos’s films, Dust is, by most reports, more concerned with plumbing the mysteries of the past (both the intimately personal and the grandly historical) than observing orderly narrative structures. Clearly, Karaindrou’s chamber-like themes are perfectly suited to such a memory play.

Several motifs repeat throughout Karaindrou’s score, perhaps the most critical being the “Dance Theme,” which is used in Dust for the soundtrack recording session of the protagonist’s film-within-the-film. Both variations (the CD release actually programs the second before the first), employ cello, strings, bassoon, oboe, and accordion to create darkly hued musical vignettes. However, the fully orchestrated, symphonic rendition of “Dance” is a sweepingly passionate piece, featuring Natalia Michailidou’s delicate piano interpretation of Karaindrou’s stirring theme.

Inherently part of a greater whole, the themes from Dust are most rewarding when heard in their full context, but there are several tracks that would stand alone quite well, including the symphonic “Dance.” Likewise, Dinos Hadjiiordanou’s accordion gives “Waltz By the River” a sadly romantic old world feeling that holds up nicely as a self contained composition. Yet, perhaps the most dramatic, emotionally unified excerpt from Karaindrou’s score is “Memories from Siberia,” featuring Renato Ripo’s achingly mournful cello introduction.

Despite the fragmentary nature of film scores in general, Karaindrou’s music from Dust is surprisingly effective independent of Angelopoulos’s film. Her themes and motifs fit seamlessly together in a gorgeously rendered set of ruminative music.

NYFF ’09: Broken Embraces

It seems a renaissance of sorts is underway for Pedro Almodóvar’s breakout film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Rumor has it a book musical adaptation is on the fast-track to Broadway. Almodóvar also resurrects Verge as the recognizable film within his new film, the noirish drama Broken Embraces (trailer here), which closes the 2009 New York Film Festival tomorrow night.

Harry Caine could easily be a character in a Cornell Woolrich novel. That is because Harry Caine does not really exist. He was once the famous director Mateo Blanco, who wrote scripts under the Caine pseudonym. When a traumatic accident led to his blindness, Blanco the director essentially died, with Caine the screenwriter assuming his place.

Caine might be blind, but he still has an eye for women and though he can no longer direct, he still has an appreciation for cinema, frequently listening to art-house classics with Diego, the son of his agent Judit Garcia. Not one to dwell on the past, Caine rebuffs the interview requests of Ray X, an aspiring documentarian and the son of an old acquaintance. However, as Caine finds himself nursing Diego back to health following an incident with a laced drink, he starts to open up to younger man, telling his story in flashback form.

Mateo Blanco was the writer and director of Girls and Suitcases. It starred Lena Rivero, the mistress of industrialist Ernesto Martel, who financed the picture. Garcia, who had once had a fling with Blanco, was his trusted production manager. Basically, it was a classic film noir situation, virtually guaranteed to breed jealousy and betrayal.

Not coincidentally, Suitcases bears a strong resemblance to Verge, except it is awful, deliberately assembled with Blanco’s worst takes by a vengeful Martel. It is an oddly amusing exercise in self-referential gamesmanship, but only one of many cinematic pastiches in Broken. Rodrigo Prieto’s ominously gauzy cinematography is arguably more reminiscent of Hitchcock’s color films of the 1950’s and 1960’s then 1940’s noir.

Almodóvar also frequently nods to the post-war Italian neo-realists, like Rossellini, whose Viaggio in Italia moves the furtive lovers to tears as they watch it in each others arms. In fact, Broken’s key art appears to be modeled after the classic posters of post-war Italian cinema.

Though Broken often has a noir vibe, whenever the film approaches genuine film noir territory, Almodóvar deliberately pulls back, undercutting the thriller aspects. Aside from a few key scenes, the violence of Broken is emotional rather than physical in nature. Yet, it is suffused with a strange romanticism for cinema. Indeed, the moving image, be it classic films or videotape of his fateful accident, may well be more powerful than real life for Caine—a constant and enduring force inexorably shaping his life.

Unlike the dramatically extroverted Verge, Broken is a more self-consciously intellectual film. Yet, Lluis Homar is quite riveting as Caine/Blanco, finding intriguing nuances throughout each stage of his character’s development. In a sense, Penelope Cruz is also perfectly cast as Lena, an austere beauty who remains something of a cipher throughout the film.

Broken is a dark, lush love-letter to cinema. While it might come across as a bit cold in comparison to some of Almodóvar’s more hot-blooded films, it is ultimately a very satisfying twist on the portrait-of-the-filmmaker-as-a-suffering-artist subgenre of art film. It closes this year’s NYFF on Sunday (10/11).

The School for Scandal: St. Trinian’s

Think of it as the Adams Family in an all-girls’ prep school. Ronald Searle’s macabre cartoons depicting life at St. Trinian’s inspired the hit-or-miss British film franchise that once starred Alastair Sim in drag. The recent reboot of St. Trinian’s has been proclaimed the United Kingdom’s third highest grossing independent film (which must be humiliating for indie film #4). Despite its very British lineage, anglophiles looking for a witty Noel Coward-style comedy will be decidedly disappointed in Oliver Parker and Barnaby Thompson’s St. Trinian’s (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Carmilla Fritton is not what you would call a stern disciplinarian. Her only entrance requirement as St. Trinian’s headmistress is a signed check. After some negotiating, she gets one out of her brother Carnaby, in exchange for taking his boring daughter Annabelle off his hands. Of course, the young Fritton initially struggles to fit in with the various Trinian clicks, including hot upper-class “Posh Totties,” the goth “Emos” and the inevitable “geeks” (no explanation needed).

Very little resembling academic studying happens at St. Trinian’s, which is how the girls like it. They are much too busy distilling home brew and carrying-on over the internet. So when the future of the school is threatened by meddling government bureaucrats and a past due mortgage, the girls spring into action, logically hatching a plan to steal Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Following in the St. Trinian’s tradition, Camilla and Barnaby Fritton are both played by Rupert Everett. Unfortunately, the filmmakers evidently thought the mere sight of Everett in drag would induce such hilarity they would not have to bother writing any real jokes. That proves to be incorrect. While Trinian frequently hints at the risqué, the only naughty bits involve the compromising positions poor Colin Firth finds himself in as Geoffrey Thwaites, the minister of education and former lover of Camilla.

While Firth looks justifiably embarrassed in all of his scenes, the rest of Trinian’s cast fares little better. Alleged comedian Russell Brand falls pancake flat as Flash Harry, the St. Trinian girls’ underworld gofer. An attractive actress, Lena Heady is oddly frumped down to play Miss Dickinson, St. Trinian’s English teacher, but has surprisingly little screen time. Most of the girls themselves are undistinguished stock characters, but at least Gemma Arterton shows real poise and screen presence as head girl Kelly Jones. She seems to have a young Joanna Lumley vibe going on, which is not a bad thing. The only real laughs though come from Stephen Fry, playing an increasingly drunk version of himself hosting an academic quiz show.

Maybe something in Trinian got lost in customs. Despite the presence of some quite talented and appealing actors, like Firth, Heady, Fry, and Arterton, Trinian just isn’t that funny. It opens today at the AMC 19th Street and Empire 25.

An Education

Class-conscious British society has long held a strange contempt for middle class ambitions of upward mobility. (After all, how often was Margaret Thatcher derided as a green-grocer’s daughter?) Still, Jack and Marjorie have that very American dream of a better life for their soon-to-be seventeen year-old daughter Jenny, but their hopes depend entirely on her acceptance to Oxford. However, there will be a slight detour on Jenny’s drive to the university in Danish director Lone Scherig’s very British coming-of-age story, An Education (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Jenny is a bright, likable kid who excels in all subjects except Latin. Her passion is the cello, her one parentally designated extracurricular activity. It is that cello that catches the eye of the devil-may-care David during a torrential rainfall. What starts as an innocent lift home quickly escalates into a steady thing. Suddenly, Jenny finds herself in with the smart-set, thanks to her thirty-something romantic interest.

Jack might push his daughter hard, but at heart he seems like a well meaning parent. That is why it is hard to believe he does not call a Bobby as soon as he meets the roguish David. It might be the swinging sixties (just barely), but Jack and Marjorie come across as distinctly 1950’s parents. Yet, they are both thoroughly charmed by Jenny’s much older suitor, even letting him take her on supposedly chaperoned overnight trips.

As David sweeps Jenny off her feet, she ignores several warning signs that should have given her pause—besides the obvious fact that he is in his thirties. Particularly troubling are his business dealings, which seem to involve dodgy real estate transactions and nicking antiques from unsuspecting senior citizens. Unfortunately, Jenny is so enamored with the sophisticated world he represents she glosses over these considerable issues of concern.

Carey Mulligan is already being hyped as a potential best actress nominee for her star-making turn as Jenny. Indeed, she has a winning screen presence, coming across as a refreshingly charming and intelligent kid. The fact that she shows some serious errors in judgment is not so hard to believe in the context of the film. After all, making mistakes is something smart people do all the time. The gullibility of her allegedly overprotective lower middle class parents is much more difficult to accept. To be fair, Alfred Molina has some genuinely touching scenes as Jack, but too often he brings to mind the kind of clueless parents seen in John Hughes movies.

A highly polished period production, Education evokes a strong sense of time and place: 1961 suburban London. The jazzy vocal stylings of Beth Rowley also nicely heighten the film’s nostalgic romanticism. Novelist Nick Hornby, best known for High Fidelity, adapted Lynn Barber’s memoir with surprising sensitivity, showing a real affinity for the sixteen year-old voice of the protagonist. However, his breezy screenplay and Mulligan’s appealing performance cannot fully paper over the creepiness of the mismatched lovers’ relationship.

An Education features a remarkably self-assured lead performance from the young Mulligan (as well as the brief but touching supporting work of Olivia Williams as her teacher Miss Stubbs). Ultimately though, the nature of its romance proves distractingly problematic in Scherfig’s ironically titled film, regardless of whatever the letter of British law stated in 1961. It opens tomorrow (10/9) at the Lincoln Plaza and Regal Union Square 14 Theaters.

Six Shooter: Bronson

Michael Peterson is an inconvenient man. A cause célèbre for many, he has spent most of the last thirty-four years behind bars, largely in solitary confinement, despite having been originally arrested for relatively minor crimes. However, he is also an exceptionally violent person, who after adopting the “Charles Bronson” persona inspired by the Death Wish movie-star, seems to prefer the brutality of prison life in Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s highly idiosyncratic Bronson (trailer here), the first installment of Magnet’s second Six-Shooter series of international genre films, which opens in New York tomorrow.

Peterson/Bronson was originally sentenced to seven years for an armed robbery that yielded just over twenty-seven pounds. Once in prison though, he discovered he was in his element. During a brief period of liberty, he fought in the underground boxing circuit, where even his unsavory manager found him a little off. While incarcerated, “Bronson” became a published poet and artist, leading many to call for his release, even though the notorious inmate once held his liberal do-gooder art teacher hostage for nearly two full days. After all, he never actually hurt the man they hasten to point out.

Bronson’s outsider art might be oddly compelling, but in Refn’s film, prison is his real canvas, where he stages elaborate acts of violence as if they were performance art. These always seem to culminate with Bronson stripping down to his altogether and tooling on the skulls of the sad sack prison guards sent to subdue him. Though certified legally sane, it frankly seems like the state had the right idea when they stashed Bronson in a loony bin, zonked out on tranks.

Refn and co-writer Brock Norman Brock do not supply any easy explanations for Bronson’s anti-social behavior. His parents seem relatively unremarkable, yet even as a child Bronson was spoiling for a fight. Granted, a girlfriend’s rejection spurs the crime that led to his second extended stretch in prison, but it really just seems to underscore how ill-suited Bronson is for life in the outside world.

Those expecting Bronson to be a grittily realistic prison drama will be a bit surprised by Refn’s highly-stylized approach, featuring surreal vaudeville-like interludes accompanied by voice-overs written by Bronson himself. However, Tom Hardy creates a singularly fascinating screen character in Bronson, combining the calculating savagery of Hannibal Lector with the showmanship of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury (whom the mustachioed Hardy somewhat resembles here).

Bronson is a violent, frequently disorienting film, but it is never dull. Ironically, though Hardy’s remarkable portrayal endows Bronson with a certain snake-like charm, it may well convince viewers he should be looked away for life, perhaps in contradiction of the filmmakers’ original intentions. It opens tomorrow (10/9) at the Angelika.

Coming Soon in NJ: The Cartel

You might expect an independent film about the state of public education in New Jersey which won both the Audience Award at the Hoboken International Film Festival and the Jury Award for Best Feature Documentary at the Jersey Shore Film Festival would have the enthusiastic support of the Garden State’s educational establishment. If by establishment you mean the state’s teacher’s union and the bureaucrats in the state’s 611 school districts, think again. That is because filmmaker Bob Bowdon exposes pervasive graft and outright collusion between the New Jersey educational bureaucracy and the NJEA, the state teachers’ union, in his devastating documentary The Cartel (trailer here), which starts its theatrical run appropriately in New Jersey this Friday.

Even though Jersey is the number one state in America for school funding, the current governor has proposed further increases. Yet as Bowdon documents, precious little of that money will actually reach students, or even teachers in the classroom. After all, New Jersey is not called the Soprano State for nothing. Still, the corruption in the New Jersey school system is absolutely staggering. In addition to the scandal of the disappearing SCC funds, a KMPG audit of the so-called Abbott districts (economic depressed school districts which receive massive amounts of state aid) revealed twenty-nine percent of expenditures were suspiciously excessive or insufficiently documented.

As scandalous as such potentially criminal financial shenanigans are, the abuse of power at the local level is arguably worse. Bowdon’s interview subjects have plenty of horror stories, like the principal who was unable to fire teachers for watching porn while on duty, because they were politically connected (perversely, he would be the one let go). For fun, Bowdon counts the number of luxury cars in the Jersey City Board of Ed parking lot. (Rather than spoil it, let’s just say the sequence takes a full thirty seconds, which is a considerable amount of screen time.)

There is no question beleaguered Jersey taxpayers are taking it in the wallet and shins, but Bowdon always makes it clear the biggest victims of such institutionalized dysfunction are the students themselves. The bottom-line is far too many public school students cannot read at grade-level or perform basic arithmetic, leaving them ill-equipped for the future job market. His touchstone image for the film comes from the annual lottery for a prized place in one of Jersey’s few charter schools. For those kids and their parents, getting out of their “zip-code” school is considered their only chance for a future. Those who win a spot are truly overjoyed, while those who do not literally cry tears of sorrow.

Bowdon is an experienced journalist, who worked as an on-air correspondent and producer for recognizable Tri-State outlets like WB11. While he conducts several on-camera interviews with union and school board bureaucrats, he is always fair, resisting the temptation of cheap gotcha tactics. In truth, he hardly needs such theatrics, given the strength of the scrupulously reasoned case he presents. Unfortunately, some viewers might dismiss his arguments on behalf of school vouchers as too “ideological,” even though he presents his case with unassailable logic. Yet, in doing so, he offers legitimate solutions instead of merely bemoaning the horrendous state of New Jersey schools.

Bowdon repeatedly makes the point that the distressing trends detailed in the film apply nationwide. While that is no doubt correct, the abuses are particularly egregious in the Soprano State. One might anticipate disturbing anecdotes in a documentary about the public school system, but The Cartel surpasses all expectations. It is an important documentary and a valuable alarm bell that both parents and taxpayers need to heed. It opens theatrically this Friday at the AMC Loews in Menlo Park, Cherry Hill, and Jersey Gardens (Elizabeth, NJ), as well as the Showroom in Asbury Park.

Agony of Defeat: The Damned United

Imagine Billy Martin managing the Boston Red Sox and you will have an idea how shocking it was when fiery football (soccer) coach Brian Clough was hired by his former foes Leeds United. Clough clashed with both his players and management, resulting in a brief but humiliating tenure. Yet throughout it all, Clough always has a sound-bite ready in Tom Hooper’s The Damn United (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

A former player whose career was cut short by injury, Clough has very definite ideas about how the game should be played. His preference for finesse over thuggery was not shared by his Leeds predecessor and archrival, Don Revie. Clough must face a mutinous team still loyal to Revie, without his trusted assistant coach Peter Taylor, who United clearly suggests was the real football brains behind Clough telegenic smile.

United is an oddity among sports films because it hardly shows any sports, aside from a few disastrous practice scrimmages. For Clough, the battle is joined not on the playing field but in television studios and in newspaper headlines—and he’s got game.

Written by Peter Morgan of The Queen and Frost/Nixon fame, United is a very shrewd depiction of the tabloid-oriented sports media and ruthless front office politics. However, the constant flashbacks to Clough’s early days building Derby County into a contender (while stoking his resentment of the arrogant Revie) could lead to whiplash for the audience.

Frequent Morgan collaborator David Sheen, whose past roles include Tony Blair and David Frost, again plays a public figure that lives and dies by the media. He delivers Clough’s signature self-aggrandizing quips (“I certainly wouldn’t say I’m the best manager in the business, but I’m in the top one”) with cheeky charm without sounding irredeemably egotistical. Timothy Spall, a familiar face from many Mike Leigh films, nicely counterbalances him as the salt-of-the-Earth Taylor. However, the balance of the supporting cast comes across as relatively undistinguished sporting film stock figures.

United perfectly recreates the drabness and peculiarly 1970’s ugliness of depressed industrial Britain—exactly the sort of environment that often relies on the local sports club for vicarious fulfillment. However, perhaps due to its divided narrative or its deliberate decision to focus on one episode of futility from Clough’s otherwise storied career, United runs out of steam before delivering the promised knock-out punch. Sheen’s Clough is definitely an entertaining figure to spend time with, but Morgan’s screenplay does not have as much zip as his previous work. It opens Friday (10/9) at the Regal Union Square 14.

NY Roma-Gypsy Film Fest ’09: Gypsy Caravan

Life on the road is a fact of life for musicians of all genres, not just Roma artists. Yet, when the World Music Institute put together the Gypsy Caravan Tour of “five bands from four countries speaking nine languages” it posed some obvious logistical challenges. However, as documented in Jasmine Dellal’s documentary, Gypsy Caravan: When the Road Bends (trailer here), the resulting headaches apparently were confined to the producers and promoters, with a spirit of camaraderie prevailing among the musicians, which makes it a fitting film to close the NY Roma-Gypsy Film Festival on Friday evening.

Over the course of their American tour, the Caravan ensembles learned to mix their diverse styles from three European countries and the original Roma homeland, India, into a new fusion of Roma music. Having been officially awarded the title: “Queen of Gypsy Music,” Macedonian Esma Redzepova was arguably the senior member of the tour. She was joined by the Romanian groups, Fanfare Ciocarlia, a brass band with a hint of klezmer, and Taraf de Haïdouks (Band of Brigands), a somewhat jazz-influenced string and accordion band, led at the time by the distinguished violinist Nicolae Neascu. Antonio El Pipa’s Ensemble also added to the tour’s diversity representing Roma-rooted flamenco music, eventually collaborating with the Indian company Maharaja for some quite distinctive Spanish-Indian flamenco—world music indeed.

If there was any backstage drama, Dellal declined to show it. Instead, she focuses on the music, which is what the tour was all about anyway. There are some great musical sequences, including vintage groovy 1960’s television footage of Redzepova. Sadly, the charming Neascu, who seemed to greatly enjoy his late-in-life popularity, passed away shortly after returning from the Caravan tour. As a result, probably the most emotional scenes in Caravan come as his fellow musicians pay their respects during his memorial.

In filming Caravan, Dellal attained the services of both an aspiring documentarian and an acclaimed master. George Eli whose debut film Searching for the 4th Nail again previews at this year’s NY Roma-Gypsy FF on Wednesday, provided translation services and on-screen commentary. Remarkably, Dellal’s primary cinematographer was the celebrated Albert Maysles of Grey Gardens and Gimme Shelter fame.

Caravan does indeed look and sound great. It is a spirited film that has become a closing night tradition for the festival. It wraps up the NY Roma-Gypsy Film Fest this Friday (10/9) at Mehanata Bulgarian Bar, concluding a full week of screenings.

On-Stage: All Through the Night

Nobody exists in a moral vacuum, especially not the German citizens living under the Third Reich. Though not technically on the frontlines, several German Gentile women confront very difficult moral choices that may well take them into harm’s way in the Red Fern Theatre Company’s production of Shirley Lauro’s All Through the Night, which opened last night at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater.

Following the National Socialist rise to power, the Germany educational system has become a willing instrument of Nazi indoctrination. Two girls were skeptical of the force-fed propaganda, while a third embraced it wholeheartedly. With the help of Ludmilla, the matronly neighborhood baker, the three women, now grown adults, relive their experiences coming of age while the atrocities of the Holocaust unfolded around them.

As a young woman, Angelika is not overtly political, but when her baby son is vaguely diagnosed as either physically or mentally handicapped, she receives harsh lesson in the nature of the regime. Friederike harbors few illusions about National Socialism, having married a Roma man. Now she must bribe the camp guards to allow her furtive visits. By contrast, Gretchen is a blind follower, enthusiastically working on behalf of Fuhrer and Fatherland in the Nazi Women’s Auxiliary. As for our narrator, though Ludmilla does small acts of mercy for the emaciated prisoners she sees marching through the streets, she pines for victory so her husband can finally return to her.

Lauro’s fundamental point comes through loud and clear. While all four protagonists are unexceptional middle or working class women, they still know more than enough to fully comprehend what was happening. They are not allowed the excuse of ignorance. ATTN is also notable for addressing some lesser known horrors of the National Socialist era, including their ideological contempt for disability and aggressive “euthanasia” policies. Unfortunately, Lauro’s text can be a bit awkward at times, requiring actors to speak a fair amount of set description, literally telling the audience: “I see . . .” Still, there are some passages of sharp insight, as when observing how quiet the American soldiers are compared to the boot-clicking Germans.

Ultimately, ATTN’s strong (all women) cast overcomes the play’s occasional wordiness. Andrea Sooch strikingly projects the smugness of evil in the play’s collected authority figures, including Gretchen’s commanding officer (and sexual harasser) in the Nazi Women’s Corp. Michelle Lookadoo brings a fair amount of nuance to the resistance-minded Friederike, while also courageously playing a truly disturbing scene of abusive humiliation at the hands of the Nazis. Yet it is Hana Kalinski who really delivers the dramatic goods as Angelika, the heartbroken mother.

Combining elements of the memory play with the multi-character drama, ATTN is a thoughtful examination of the moral dilemmas and very real consequences faced by averages women during a period of national insanity. Effectively directed by Melanie Moyer Williams, it features some very fine stage performances by its small ensemble cast. Now officially open, ATTN is a worthy night of theater that runs through October 25th at the Marjorie Deane in the Westside Y.

(Photo credit: Nathan Johnson)

NYFF ’09: White Ribbon

It is 1914 and Archduke Franz Ferdinand is still alive. Yet these cannot be described as days of innocence for one rural town in northern Germany. A rash of disturbing incidents will mar the community’s deceptive tranquility, well before the intervention of great historical events. Of course, far worse atrocities will be committed in Germany in the years to come when the pre-WWI-era children begin to assert themselves in German society. Austrian director Michael Haneke submits that generation of Germans to a rough session of forensic psychoanalysis in his Palme D’Or winning film The White Ribbon (trailer here), which screens this Wednesday at the 2009 New York Film Festival.

The kids are most definitely not alright in Ribbon, but their parents and authority figures are little better. Random acts of cruelty, often targeting children, have been committed by a person or persons unknown. First, the town doctor is seriously injured when his horse stumbles on a trip-wire, leaving the hamlet without his services for succeeding tragedies. Next, a woman dies in the Baron’s barn, perhaps as a result of mere negligence. Then the Baron’s son is briefly abducted and severely beaten. Yet the townspeople will soon see even worse crimes.

The local schoolteacher starts to form certain suspicions about the culprits, which Haneke unsubtly foreshadows throughout the film. However, Ribbon is less concerned with legalistic questions of guilt than the shocking lack of empathy of the villagers, both young and old, creating the environment that gave rise to the strange crimes.

Naturally, Haneke fingers the usually suspects, like the village pastor’s distinctly Calvinistic version of Christianity and Germany’s severely regimented approach to education. However, there are also elements of class resentment at work, as well. The Baron is deeply unpopular within the village and his son, a true child of privilege, is an early victim. It seems like the final remnants of feudalism are breaking down in Ribbon, leaving a vacuum of authority, which of course will eventually be filled by the National Socialists.

Haneke, the director of Funny Games, hardly set out to make another horror film. Still, the gothic atmosphere created by Christian Berger’s black-and-white cinematography is quite eerie. In fact, Ribbon is far creepier than The Village, M. Night Shyamalan’s tiresome tale of township suspense. However, the most unsettling aspect of Ribbon is the casual cruelty it depicts through some truly cutting dialogue.

Ribbon is more of a work of directorial bravura than an actors’ showcase. Still, Christian Friedel and Leonie Benesch bring welcome sensitivity to the film as the well-intentioned but ineffectual schoolteacher and his innocent young romantic interest, respectively.

Haneke takes a grim, unforgiving look at human nature, finding it distinctly brutal and malevolent in Ribbon. While he would likely argue his vision of humanity applies universally, Ribbon is seems particularly Teutonic in its austerity and chilly reserve. In spite of its predictably caricatured portrayal of religion, it is a well executed film that successfully provokes uneasy questions about man’s fundamental nature. It screens this Wednesday (10/7) and Thursday (10/8) as an official selection of the 2009 NYFF.

Benacerraf’s Araya

Once a vital outpost of the Spanish Empire, Venezuela’s Araya peninsula was a rugged, forbidding locale, whose residents struggled daily to eke out a subsistence living. Apparently unchanged for centuries, modernization was finally reaching this remote land in the late 1950’s, when the Parisian educated Venezuelan filmmaker Margot Benacerraf documented their hard way of life in her difficult to classify “tone poem,” Araya (trailer here), which finally receives its inaugural New York theatrical run this Wednesday, five decades after sharing the Fiprisci Critics’ Award with Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival.

The Araya region was defined by a relationship to the sea that brings to mind Coleridge’s verse. The villagers’ livelihood, hardscrabble as it might have been, derived entirely from the water—specifically through fishing and harvesting the salt marshes. Indeed, it was their plentiful supply of formerly precious salt that made Araya such a valuable colonial property centuries ago. Yet the plumbing-less Araya residents were dependent on the tanker truck that regularly supplied their only potable water.

Though Benacerraf faithfully records the harsh realities of life on the peninsula, it is debatable whether Araya can rightly be classified a documentary. While everyone in the film was indeed an actual Araya resident, she carefully casted villagers for their specific “roles” within her story of a day-in-the-life of the region.

The nature of the salt marsh work immortalized through Benacerraf’s lens was clearly laborious, even toxic, but the mood of Araya is generally languid. Guy Bernard’s romantic score never sounds a discordant note until late in the film, when trucks and machinery suddenly invade Araya, threatening the traditional methods of salt harvesting.

If there was ever a region desperately in need of modernization, Araya seemed to be it. Yet throughout the film, Benacerraf essentially fetishizes her subjects’ extreme poverty and constant toil. With cinematographer Giusseppe Nisoli, she creates some striking black-and-white imagery, but her lovingly framed shots of shirtless workers feel more akin to contemporary fashion commercials than socially minded filmmaking.

Araya is undeniably a beautifully crafted film, but the extent to which Benacerraf objectifies her subjects is ultimately quite problematic. Despite its initial acclaim at Cannes, Araya was never well distributed in any market. Periodically, fate would rescue the film from oblivion, only to consign it back into obscurity just as quickly. It is certainly a film of legitimate historical significance (particularly to students of Latin American cinema), but most contemporary audiences will simply regard it as a curiosity. It opens Wednesday (10/7) at the IFC Film Center.

The Stressful Festival Adventures of Boxhead & Roundhead

They are not very talkative, but they’ve made quite an impression on the film festival circuit. If you’re not sure which is Boxhead and which is Roundhead, I can’t help you. If you are looking for the latest installment of their Stressful Adventures (trailer here), check the lineup of the nearest upcoming film fest. There is a good chance the spherical and cube headed ones will be playing.

The creations of Elliot Cowan, an Australian animator now residing in New York, Boxhead and Roundhead may also be familiar to fans of They Might Be Giants and Migrating Birds, having appeared in music videos produced by the bands. They were clearly the most visually distinctive entry in the recently completed New York Television Festival. Still, it was not completely scandalous that they did not win in NYTF’s animated category, because Boxhead and Roundhead are not an easy fit for the festival’s “pilot” format. Indeed, Cowan seems to be more of a festival star in the making. In the future, festival patrons, particularly at shows catering to animation, may well feel ripped-off if there is not a Stressful Adventure on the program.

For home viewing, the collected Stressful Adventures of Boxhead & Roundhead (so far) is also available on DVD through Cowan’s website. Mostly black-and-white with the odd splash of color, Boxhead and Roundhead live in a surreally menacing world populated with monsters in the woods, infernal machines, and avalanches of boulders falling from the sky. Cowan’s inventive style often mixes in elements of black-and-white photography, giving the films an intriguing textured quality.

While most Adventures clock in around three minutes, the allegorical Brothers in Arms breaks the four minute mark, as a war unexpectedly breaks out around the Heads’ cottage. Yet the longest Adventure is the best conceived: The Thing in the Distance, a smartly executed little paranoid gem that would be an excellent palate cleanser at horror film fests and before midnight screenings.

The Heads often endure truly macabre misfortunes, but most of the Stressful Adventures feature soundtracks composed and performed by Matt Saxton that effectively lighten the mood while propelling the breakneck action unfolding on-screen—a particularly notably example being the manic one-darned-thing-after-another On the Run, a real Stressful highlight. The only selection not featuring Saxton’s compelling musical contributions is Crumb Factory, a breezy short built around TMBG’s song “Employee of the Month.”

The Stressful Adventures of Boxhead & Roundhead are thoroughly entertaining animated films, coming as especially welcome diversions if seen during film festival programming blocks. Look for them next month at the Starz Denver Film Festival and the River’s Edge Film Festival in Kentucky.

(All images and characters copyright of Elliot Cowan.)

NY Roma-Gypsy Film Fest ’09: Holocaust documentaries

Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List was undeniably a landmark film, but it was predated by several other significant films primarily documenting the Jewish Holocaust experience, like Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog, Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, and NBC’s Holocaust miniseries. However, films examining the Sinti-Roma Holocaust experience have yet to penetrate the public’s consciousness to a comparable degree, which is why the NY Roma-Gypsy Film Festival always dedicates a significant portion of their programming to this important subject.

Produced in 1989 for the BBC’s Inside Report, George Case’s The Forgotten Holocaust (which screened last night) still holds up remarkably well, despite the Communist era travel restrictions and resulting access limitations faced by the filmmakers. Its early narration reaffirms the extraordinarily unique nature of the Jewish Holocaust, asserting that also observing the Roma experience does not diminish the former. Rather, it only compounds the guilt of the National Socialists.

Forgotten remains an important film document thanks to the testimony it recorded from survivors, many of whom are most likely no longer with us. Particularly memorable are the experiences of two assimilated Sinti brothers who were summarily discharged from the German military and shipped directly to Auschwitz. Forgotten’s historical consultant Prof. Michael Stewart also gave an informative address following the screening, sharing further stories of Sinti survivors.

Screening Tuesday (10/6), Alexandra Isles’s Porraimos takes its name from the Romany word for “devouring,” which some have adopted as an equivalent term for “Shoah.” It also provides an informative overview of the 1938-1945 period, during which time at least 600,000 Roma and Sinti individuals were murdered by the National Socialists. Isles emphasizes the twisted interest in eugenics shared by Menegele and his protégés that motivated scores of senselessly cruel experiments. The evil doctor evidently had a particular obsession with the Romany people, despite as Isles points out, his own dark, somewhat Roma looking features.

Like Hilary Helstein’s recent As Seen Through These Eyes, Porraimos interviews two significant artist-survivors. Karl Stojka, born into a Roman Catholic Roma family, survived Auschwitz to record his experiences on his canvass. Dina Gottliebova Babbit, later a Hollywood animator, speaks of surviving through her artistic skills, painting Roma portraits as part of Mengele’s bizarre research.

Far more specific in scope, Michelle Kelso’s Hidden Sorrows (screening tonight, 10/3) concentrates on the Romanian Roma, giving special attention the survivors’ current living conditions. With little fanfare, the German government and a Swiss banking consortium announced a narrow window for Romanian Roma survivors to claim, not reparations, but humanitarian assistance. Director Kelso documents her efforts to find survivors and help them prove their eligibility for the paltry funds. The figures involved were $770 from the Swiss and $500 from the Germans for years of slave labor in the Transistria concentration camps.

It is disturbing how many wish to minimize, obscure, or even outright deny the events that took place in Transistria and the rest of Nazi-dominated Europe during the Holocaust. One hopes more festivals will program these documentaries championed by the NY Roma Gypsy Film Festival, which continues through Friday (10/9) at the Mehanata Bulgarian Bar.

NY Roma Gypsy FF ‘09: Guca & Maya

As dazzling as Django Reinhardt truly was there is more to the Roma-Sinti musical tradition than just Hot Club-style jazz. Indeed, Roma music is remarkably diverse, varying significantly by region, which is effectively illustrated in several films screening at the 2009 New York Roma Gypsy Film Festival, a refreshingly relaxed fest now in its third year.

Last night, the festival kicked-off with an unscheduled profile of the great flamenco dancer and choreographer Mario Maya. Though often mislabeled Spanish, flamenco is actually an Andalusian music developed by the Spanish Roma “Gitano” population. The innovative Maya integrated aspects of modern dance with the traditional flamenco forms dating back to the 1800’s, resulting in some spectacular performances, including the dramatic “Martinette” produced for Carlos Saura’s Flamenco.

While Maya’s Granada flamenco scene looks like a tightly-knit cooperative community, the Serbian Guča trumpet festival is most definitely a cutting contest. Once a year, the country’s top trumpeters join in serious battle, as captured in Milivoj Ilic’s documentary, Guča: the Serbian Woodstock., an Untold Story (trailer here), which makes a return engagement at the festival this coming Thursday.

The Guča festival showcases the traditional brass band music of western Serbia and the more Roma influenced Sevdah music from the Southern and Eastern provinces (as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina). Since Sevdah music is considered freer and more spontaneous than the western Serbian style, one of member of the festival jury likens the differences between the two forms to the distinction between Dixieland and genuine New Orleans style jazz.

Though not at all jazz, the music of Guča should be readily accessible to jazz ears, particularly those who follow the New Orleans brass band scene or frequently hear Slavic Soul Party at Barbès. Again like jazz, there seem to be definite notions of authenticity regarding the music. An ethnomusicologist who serves as the film’s expert commentator clearly favors the more traditional bands, offering criticism of past champion Boban Marković for diluting his music with commercial elements.

Sports comparisons are particularly apt for Guča because this is certainly not just an exhibition. The Golden Trumpet audience award, the festival jury’s First Trumpet award, and several other prizes are at stake. As documented by Ilic, it seems the bands of the 2005 festival are nearly evenly matched, making it difficult to forecast a winner. As one Guča fan puts it: “Music and sport make a nation.” Indeed, those who excel in each are uniquely capable of making emotional connections with scores of people they will never know. In Ilic’s film, all kinds of connections are apparently made at Guča.

More than anything, Guča looks like a heck of a party. The usually sleepy rural Serbian town attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors (including Miles Davis one year) to dig those crazy sidewise looking Dragačevo trumpets. Ilic nicely conveys that festival spirit, filming revelers passed out on park benches and the hoods of cars. Clearly, the music and carnival atmosphere has had a restorative effect for the troubled country and makes for an enjoyable music documentary. It screens this coming Thursday (10/8), as the NY Roma Gypsy Film Fest continues at Mehanata Bulgarian Bar in Manhattan’s Lower Eastside.

The French at War: Intimate Enemies

There is never much suspense in French war films, because we know the Gauls always lose. In this case, it is the 1954-1962 Algerian War. Yet, the grizzled veterans and idealistic recruits fight doggedly to protect France, which for most of them (and for many Algerians) very definitely includes Algeria in Florent Emilio Siri’s Intimate Enemies (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Lt. Terrien is a well-educated family man. Though he is not unsympathetic to the claims of the Algerians, he volunteered to serve in the North African conflict. Unfortunately, he starts his tour of duty under the worst possible circumstances, replacing an officer killed by friendly fire just days before he was due to ship home. Terrien is indeed in for a trial by fire, as he learns first-hand the terrorist tactics employed by the FLN (National Liberation Front).

The upright Terrien finds himself navigating a murky world, commanding a French unit that includes Muslim Algerian WWII veterans. Initially, he chafes at French interrogation practices, but the grisly remains of an FLN village massacre shakes him to his core. Though he clings to his convictions, his jaded Sgt. Dougnac and the mysterious Captain Berthaut of military intelligence try to convince him of the necessity of their aggressive measures.

As it turns out, Dougnac and Bertaut are old comrades from Indochina. Indeed, this seems like part of a deliberate strategy to draw parallels between Algeria and Viet Nam, and by extension Iraq, since the two countries are nearly synonymous to the contemporary left. However, Intimate’s on-the-ground war scenes are so compellingly realistic the contemporary political metaphors are largely lost in the “fog of war.”

Best known as the director of the Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell video game, Siri has a real talent for stage managing close quarter combat sequences. Giovanni Fiore Coltellacci’s cinematography also nicely captures the rugged beauty of the Algerian landscape, as well as the grungy day-to-day realities of war.

Audiences should intuitively know not to get too attached to any characters in films like Intimate that deliberately eschew traditional notions of heroism. Still, its ensemble cast is fairly strong, even if the individual characters mostly conform to predictable types. Benoît Magimel is quite credible as the conscience-stricken Terrien. Perhaps the most intriguing performance though, comes from Marc Barbé as the morally complex, but not necessarily amoral Captain Berthaut.

Clearly, Intimate wants to be considered relevant in light of current events. Of course, it never mentions what lies in store for Algeria following independence from France: two dictatorships and an extended civil war. Fortunately the political analogies are effectively subservient to a surprisingly well executed depiction of men at war. While far from perfect, Intimate has its gritty moments. It opens tomorrow (10/2) at the AMC Village 7.

Kobayashi’s The Human Condition

The Human Condition
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
Criterion Collection 4-DVD set

The history of the Twentieth Century was marked by the horrors of National Socialism and Fascism, followed by bitter disillusionment with the Soviet system. In a few short but epic years, one Japanese idealist experiences both firsthand as the anguished protagonist of Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition (trailer here), a closely linked cinematic trilogy now available on DVD from the Criterion Collection.

Kaji, a humanist intellectual of vaguely leftwing convictions, seems determined to martyr himself. As No Greater Love (part I) opens, he tries in vain to reject his beautiful girlfriend Michiko, but their love is too strong. However, Kaji’s fear that marrying him will only bring her painful tribulations proves all too prescient over the course of the roughly nine and a half hours that follow.

Given his pacifist inclinations, Kaji wants to avoid military service, but he is not one to do things the easy way. He accepts a promotion to manage an important provincial mine (and the military deferment that goes with it) in order to implement his enlightened theories of labor management. However, he soon finds himself undermined by openly insubordinate overseers and a thoroughly corrupt boss. He is also surprised to discover the camp’s contingent of “comfort women” also come under his management purview. Despite his co-workers’ obstructions, Kaji makes some initial progress, only to see it collapse with the arrival of six-hundred Chinese POWs delivered by the Japanese military, precipitating the first of Kaji’s many crises of conscience.

In Road to Eternity (part II), Kaji has lost his military deferment and must endure the brutal basic training regimen "under suspicion." Yet his hard-headed nature and physical strength make him decent soldier material. Unfortunately, the cruelty meted out on weaker conscripts only confirms his antipathy for the military. Kaji still does his duty as a soldier, but it comes as a futile display of honor as the Soviets quickly overwhelm his company.

Kaji had been preoccupied with the question of how to be humane in an inhuman system, but throughout A Soldier’s Prayer (part III) his only concern is simple survival. As Japanese soldiers become lowly bandits (and worse), Kaji watches in horror. Still, his greatest disillusionment will come in a Soviet POW camp, where “good intentions are suppressed and evil is tolerated.” To some extent a former fellow traveler, enduring the same brutality from the Soviets that he had witnessed from the Imperial Japanese may well be the death knell of Kaji’s idealism. As he bitterly complains to a leftist comrade-in-arms: “They can send us to Siberia and work us to death. But take down the ‘peace’ and ‘liberation’ signs.”

Condition is a true cinematic masterpiece—and that word is not used lightly. It is not merely an indictment of the Imperial Japanese war machine, though it most assuredly acts as such. Condition in its totality, is a complete rejection of the ideologies (of all stripes), which ravaged the last century. Yet for all its clashing historical dialectics, Condition is fundamentally a Zhivago-esque love story of a man and a woman cruelly separated by fate.

Tatsuya Nakadai gives a fully realized performance as Kaji, brilliantly evolving from an inflexible moralizer to a literal shell of a man. The luminous Michiyo Aratama is also quite remarkable, expressing the naiveté and surprising strength of the loyal Michiko. Condition also boasts a host of accomplished actors in supporting roles, including Hideko Takamine (who appeared with Nakadai in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs) as a desperate refugee seeking Kaji’s protection.

Though Condition played in its entirety on the big screen at New York’s Film Forum (even making a brief return engagement), Kobayashi’s monumental film cycle requires a time commitment most viewers can only muster for home viewing. Fortunately, Criterion beautifully renders Yoshio Miyajima’s glorious black-and-white cinematography and Kobayashi’s long tracking shots of sweeping vistas (that often reduces Kaji and his companions to tiny dehumanized figures along the expansive horizon) in their deluxe letterbox edition, making it a very cinematic DVD experience.

Condition is a truly great film (or film trilogy if you prefer). It is an angry but compassionate examination of what it was like to be human during some of the darkest hours of the past century. Viewers should not be intimated by the running time or the subtitles. It is a film about big picture themes everyone can relate to—love war, and basic human decency—brilliantly crafted by a master filmmaker, finally available in a worthy DVD package.