DOC NYC ’13: Inside the Mind of Leonardo 3D

Probably the best established fact of Leonardo da Vinci’s mysterious life is his brilliance.  It is hardly surprising he has inspired quite a few speculative novels, films, and television shows from the likes of Dan Brown, Ron Howard, Roberto Benigni, and David Goyer.  His art is instantly recognizable, but there are plenty of holes in the historical record, where stuff can be safely made up.  Of course, that just won’t do for DOC NYC or the History Channel.  Scrupulously adapted from da Vinci’s notebooks, Julian Jones gives viewers an impressionistic, 3D portrait of the great Renaissance artist in Inside the Mind of Leonardo, which screened on the final night of this year’s DOC NYC.

Raised by his single servant girl mother, Leonardo had little formal education, but maybe that was just as well, sparing him the burden of a lot of false preconceptions.  Verrocchio certainly recognized his young apprentice’s talents.  However, he was not nearly as prolific a painter as one might assume (or hope).  His journals are another matter.  The extensive da Vinci notebooks offered Jones and his co-screenwriter Nick Dear a treasure trove of material.  With Oxford Professor Martin Kemp vetting for accuracy, they give viewers a good nutshell overview of the original Renaissance man’s life and abiding ambitions.

Forgoing familiar imagery, like Vitruvian Man, Jones and the animation team render da Vinci’s muscular sketches of birds in flight and humans in motion in evocative 3D, while Peter Capaldi performs extracts from the various codexes in the manner of a one-man stage play.  Periodically, Jones also indulges in slow panning shots of modern day Florence and Milan, presumably to anchor the film in its specific locales.  Unfortunately, these often feel like travelogue interludes that get a little snoozy at times.

On the plus side of the ledger, Capaldi is perfectly cast as da Vinci.  He has always been a reliably intelligent presence, but here he vividly projects both the polymath’s arrogance and his melancholy world-weariness.  When watching him in Inside, it is easy to see why he was selected to be the next Doctor Who.  Once he has finished his run as the timelord, he should be able to take a da Vinci show on the road, much like Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain.

Eschewing jerkins, Capaldi’s modern dress actually heightens the film’s intimacy.  (He rather looks like he might be in his Doctor Who wardrobe, complete with a stylish scarf, but not the full Tom Baker, mind you).  Inside works quite well when it really does go inside—either into da Vinci’s chambers or into the pages of his notebooks.  When it goes outside, soaking up Tuscan landscapes and bustling Florentine street scenes, it waters down its atmosphere and character.  Still, it is an interesting docu-hybrid and an unconventional (but sometimes effective) use of 3D.  Recommended for art and history buffs, Inside the Mind of Leonardo is destined to have a limited theatrical release and an eventual airdate on the History Channel, following its premiere at DOC NYC 2013.

DOC NYC ’13: Harlem Street Singer

Reverend Gary Davis was a man of God, but his finger-picking attack sure was fierce.  Eventually embraced by the Blues Revival, the Reverend Davis had spent years performing on the streets of Harlem.  He also took on students, including future neo-roots artists like David Bromberg and Stefan Grossman.  Davis’s loyal students and admirers piece together his story and trace his elusive influence in Trevor Laurence & Simeon Hutner’s Harlem Street Singer (trailer here), which screens during this year’s DOC NYC.

Davis was a real deal bluesman from North Carolina, who recorded some real deal blues sides, before dedicating himself to songs of praise and worship.  They were still drenched in the blues, making him rather tricky to classify.  A modest man with an idiosyncratic teaching style, Davis accepted any student bold enough to sign-up with him.  In addition to Bromberg and Grossman (who discuss their teacher throughout HSS), Davis also provided musical instruction to Roy Book Binder, Dave Van Ronk, and Woody Mann, who also serves as the film’s musical director and co-producer.

Davis was legally blind since birth, grew-up in the Jim Crow-era south, and lived most of his life in poverty, yet HSS is a defiantly upbeat movie.  According to those who knew him, Davis just played his music and preached the Word (indeed, the two were always closely related), regardless of his circumstances.  Of course, there is a lot of music in the film and it is consistently great.  Laurence & Hutner scored a coup with the inclusion of previously unseen footage of Davis laying it down at the Newport Folk Festival and they do not keep viewers waiting for it, using it to kick off the film with a big statement. 

Keeping the apostolic flame burning, Mann leads a tribute ensemble that periodically plays some dynamite Davis covers.  Mann and Bill Sims, Jr. have the unenviable role of handling the guitar and vocal duties respectively, but they both sound fantastic, getting first rate support from Dave Keyes on piano and Brian Glassman on bass.  It is a killer quartet that ought to get a ton of gigs together if HSS receives the attention it deserves.

Few docs are as wildly entertaining as HSS, but it still does justice to the seriousness of Davis’s life and times.  Hopefully, someone from PBS has it on their radar, because it is as good as anything that has been on American Masters since Cachao: Uno Mas and is considerably better than most.  Highly recommended to general audiences beyond established blues fans, Harlem Street Singer screens again as part of DOC NYC this Thursday morning (11/21) at the IFC Center, so consider calling in sick for it.

DOC NYC ’13: The Road to Fame & China in Three Words

In years past, if you had to describe China in one word, it would not be “fame.” State ideology demanded the individual merge into the collective.  Only high ranking Party leaders were to be venerated above the masses.  However, the culture is changing in China, even if the Party is not.  In a groundbreaking collaboration with Broadway, Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama stages the stage musical Fame as an ambitious senior project. Hao Wu follows the production from rehearsals to the closing curtain and beyond in The Road to Fame (trailer here), which screened during the 2013 DOC NYC.

Everything bad about show business in America applies in China as well, except maybe more so.  Cronyism is rampant in the entertainment industry, so a potential showcase like the Fame show can make the difference between a going career and graduating into has-been status.  The first cut will be brutal, when the faculty determines the “A” and “B” casts.  Naturally, the students desperately want to make the former rather than the latter.  Beyond the obvious stigma, it has yet to be announced how many performances the “B” cast will be allowed, but assumptions are pessimistic.

Much to viewers’ surprise, the clear can’t-miss-born-to-be-a-star prospective Carmen Diaz finds herself assigned to the “B” cast.  Likewise, the front-running Tyrone Jackson is edged out by a more self-effacing schoolmate.  As representatives of the Nederlander organization take charge of the production, the disparity between the A’s and B’s becomes a sore issue.

On the surface, Road is a Fame-like documentary about the mounting of a Fame production, but it reflects some deep cultural currents.  As astute viewers would expect, all of the POV students are only children.  The one-child law was still in full effect at the time. As a result, every student is highly conscious of their status as the sole repository of their parents’ hopes, dreams, and retirement plans.  Likewise, the corrupt intersection between public and private sectors has led to widespread disillusionment amongst their generation. Frankly, the level of irony in a film ostensibly about young people pursuing their dreams speaks volumes.

Hao Wu is rather circumspect in addressing specific political and economic controversies, but Vanessa Hope’s short documentary, China in Three Words (which preceded Road, trailer here) is brimming dysfunctional case studies.  Based on Yu Hua’s book China in Ten Words, Hope examines contemporary China through the writer’s framework.  Yu (whose novel To Live was adapted for film by Zhang Yimou) explains the word “leader” was once solely reserved for Mao, but has now become ubiquitous.  “Revolution” has a heavy history that hardly needs explaining, while “disparity” is the country’s new fact of life.  As a bonus, Yu offers “bamboozle” as a fourth word, but it arguably relates to all three that came before.

Despite its brevity, Three Words is brimming with material that deserves the full feature doc treatment.  Hope’s expose of how corruption and ideology caused the Wenzhou bullet train collision is grimly fascinating and her footage of Gov. Jon Huntsman returning to China with his adopted daughter Gracie Mei to revisit her former orphanage is unexpectedly touching.  It is rather amazing how much Hope crammed into fifteen minutes.  In fact, the films relate to each other quite directly, with Words providing much useful context for Road.

It is a shame Road and Words only had one screening at this year’s DOC NYC, because both have a lot to say and together they played to a sold-out house. Hao Wu’s feature is an intriguing generational study that captures some very personal drama, while Words helps explain the macro circumstances making it all so acute.  Both are highly recommended as the make their way on the festival circuit, while DOC NYC continues through the 21^st at the IFC Center and the SVA Theatre.

DOC NYC ’13: The Sarnos

The late Joseph W. Sarno was never accused of being a ruthless businessman.  The soft-core sexploitation director is considered an auteur by many, but he rarely had an ownership stake in the films he made.  As a result, the Sarno family finances are a bit precarious, making it a challenge to secure financing for a new film.  Wiktor Ericsson follows Sarno and his wife Peggy Steffans Sarno as they take their bows on the international film festival circuit and plug away on his comeback attempt in The Sarnos: A Life in Dirty Movies (trailer here), which screens tomorrow during DOC NYC 2013.

Films like Inga and Sin in the Suburbs made a ton of money for somebody, playing to packed old school Times Square grindhouse theaters.  Sarno just got to make the next one.  At least, he met his future wife when she accepted a part in one of his films.  Like many of his regulars, she was a legit stage thesp, who brought real acting chops to his films.  Frankly, opinions vary regarding the acting you will find in Sarno’s cinematic statements, but let’s just assume the best for now.  Likewise, not everyone buys into Sarno’s press as the “Ingmar Bergman of Sexploitation,” but enough do for us to take it seriously.

Indeed, Ericsson records for posterity the Sarnos enjoying their overdue ovations at a BFI retrospective, which is about as real as it gets.  Not surprisingly, John Waters (the Martin Scorsese of grindhouse docs) is on hand to put Sarno’s career in perspective.  A Sarno film definitely explores sexual subjects, but it is uncharacteristically concerned with female fulfillment.  They are also dark, psychologically complex, and often kind of weird.  Waters suggests they probably were not all that satisfying for 42^nd Street patrons looking to take care of business—and he would know from firsthand experience.

Unfortunately, time passed by Sarno’s slightly scandalous oeuvre.  Reluctantly, he accepted some pseudonymous hardcore work, but that was not his thing.  As the product of their circumstances, Ericcson’s Life in Dirty Movies is surprisingly wistful, especially by provocative doc standards.  Ironically, it is a rather nostalgic, almost conservative film, focusing on the Sarnos’ enduring love.

Frankly, the film’s niceness to naughtiness ratio might not go over so well with its target audience.  Dirty is real and honest, but the course of human events would deny it a big finish. Despite the pleasantness of the Sarnos, the doc is rather small in scope, feeling better suited to television than the big screen.  Norwegian jazz musician Bugge Wesseltoft’s upbeat score helps enhance its cinematic quality, but there is no getting around Dirty’s talky intimacy.

Nevertheless, Sarno has a fascinating career that reflects wider cultural trends in unexpected ways.  It is also well worth meeting Steffans on-screen.  Still quite a striking woman with a razor-sharp sense of humor, who helps keep the very personal film moving along.  If Sarno was the Bergman of Sexploitation, than she is the Helen Mirren.  Unlikely to convert new fans wholesale, The Sarnos: A Life in Dirty Movies is mostly recommended for Sarno’s pre-existing admirers and grindhouse connoisseurs when it screens tomorrow (11/16) and Monday (11/18) at the IFC Center as part of this year’s DOC NYC.