NYFF ’11: The Artist

Talking pictures were a truly Schumpeterian phenomenon for Hollywood. As any film lover knows from Singin' in the Rain, some silent movie stars could weather the creative destruction wrought by the transition to sound, whereas some could not. Matinee idol George Valentin was one of those who could not “talk.” Fittingly, his story is a told silently (or nearly so) in The Artist (trailer here), Michel Hazanavicius’s glorious black-and-white homage to the golden age of Hollywood, which screens tonight at the 49th New York Film Festival.

It is 1927. George Valentin is at the height of his popularity as a Douglas Fairbanks style swashbuckler. He has just fought the red menace as an agent of free Georgia in The Russian Affair. However, studio mogul Al Zimmer has something disturbing to show him: synchronized sound. Dismissing the future, Valentin returns to work on his next picture, which will be remembered as the brief screen debut of future superstar Peppy Miller. Obviously thrilled to have any screen time, Miller is particularly excited to share a scene with her favorite star, George Valentin.

When talkies become the standard, Miller’s career takes off like a rocket with frothy romantic comedies. Meanwhile, Valentin’s attempt to finance his own silent comeback vehicle proves disastrous. Yet, Miller’s feelings for yesterday’s leading man remain unchanged.

Hazanavicius consciously draws from dozens of classic films (both pre- and post-Jazz Singer), as well as numerous real larger-than-life Hollywood figures. What follows incorporates elements of A Star is Born, Sunset Boulevard, and Greta Garbo’s relationship with John Gilbert. (Sadly, many modern movie-goers will miss the allusions, but perhaps the notion of a film without diegetic sound might be a brand new novelty item for them.)

The work of many artists, the film is a visual splendor, beginning with Guillaume Schiffman’s lush and moody black-and-white cinematography, which makes the elegant sets and costumes softly glow like a Cecil Beaton portrait. Still, it is the depth of Hazanavicius’s screenplay that really distinguishes The Artist.

Not merely a series of winks at TCM watchers, the film is quite a touching love story, completely free of irony. On the two occasions he breaks format, sound is used in creative ways that cleverly advance the film. Periodically, Hazanavicius also appears to indulge in a witty in-joke, yet in each case, their dramatic logic quickly catches us by surprise. Likewise, while his intertitles have a simplicity befitting the period, they convey a surprising richness of meaning.

Familiar to American audiences from the French OSS spy spoofs, Jean Dujardin gives another very physical performance here, but the complexity and pathos of his Valentin is in a whole different league. Indeed, it is a tricky proposition to play a mugging actor without ever mugging for the camera, yet he is never overly broad or over the top, keeping the faded movie star acutely human throughout. He also develops some endearing romantic chemistry with Bérénice Bejo as Miller.

Frankly, the Argentine-French Bejo is about the only person working in film today who can approximate the glamorous look of Hollywood in its heyday (yes, this definitely includes Michelle Williams). Exquisite and vulnerable, she deserves a bit of award attention along with Dujardin, the best actor winner at this year’s Cannes. In contrast, the American supporting cast does not have much to do, but John Goodman’s cigar-chomping shtick works perfectly for Zimmer, even without sound.

Right now, the Oscar prognosticators are focusing on Dujardin for best actor, but with a shrewd campaign behind it, The Artist might have a puncher’s chance at the top prize. It is a beautifully rendered valentine to movie-making, featuring two wildly charismatic romantic leads. Highly recommended, The Artist was one of the highlights of a very strong slate at this year’s NYFF. It screens again this afternoon (10/16) at Alice Tully Hall on the final day of the festival.

NYFF ’11: My Bow Breathing & The Bird Spider shorts

Archery is a handy sport to take up if you want a valid excuse to carry about a potentially lethal weapon. As it happens, a young Italian woman has a strong motivation to become an archer in E.M. Artale’s My Bow Breathing (trailer here), one of two shorts with both genuine art film polish and genre movie appeal screening at the 49th New York Film Festival.

She has not been training long, but her coach recognizes her natural talent. However, the woman has weightier matters on her mind than merely winning competitions. She is out for revenge and she will have it. Played with slow burning intensity by Giulia Bertinelli, “The Archer” holds her own with “The Bride” from Kill Bill, delivering more retribution on a per frame basis than the original Death Wish. Like Chaimae Ben Acha in Sean Gullette’s Traitors, Bertinelli has real movie-star potential, but a lot of people will miss their work at NYFF because of a prejudice against shorts. Do not mistake this mistake.

Stylishly helmed by Artale, Bow looks nothing like a standard vigilante-payback film, but it can easily be enjoyed on such terms by those so inclined. Likewise, Jaime Dezcallar’s The Bird Spider is far more psychologically complex than a mere killer spider movie, but there is no denying the presence of the deadly eight-legged crawler.

If arrows are a somewhat unusual weapon for vengeance-seeking, a poisonous spider represents a downright bizarre method of suicide. Yet, a depressed man is not simply out to take his own life, but to burn away the pain of his recent break-up by enduring his worst childhood phobia, until it kills him. Buying a poisonous spider from a pet store (exotic pet regulations must be lax in Spain), he turns it loose in his apartment. Conscious the spider could strike at any moment, he willingly plunges himself into a Kafkaesque nightmare.

Bird Spider has a similar vibe as many of the recent bumper crop of creepy Spanish horror movies, but offers more than just a few good jolts (which it definitely has). The claustrophobic setting and unsettling premise really get under your skin, while Raffel Plana Honorato’s score also nicely helps build the suspense as well as a sense of melancholia.

Highly recommended, Bow and Bird are excellent short films that should satisfy snobby cineastes and genre diehards in equal measure. Unfortunately, they are not in the same programming blocks. Bow screens this afternoon (10/15) with Traitors in Shorts Program #2 at the Francesca Beale Theater, while Bird Spider screens earlier in the day as part of Shorts Program #1, as the 2011 NYFF approaches the homestretch.

NYFF ’11: Corman’s World

Roger Corman is the Elvis Presley of genre pictures. Before anyone did anything, he did everything—and he did it cheaper. Tribute is paid to the original independent filmmaker in Alex Stapleton’s affectionately uproarious Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (trailer here), which screens this Sunday at the 49th New York Film Festival.

Corman has made hundreds of films, anticipating major shifts in the cultural zeitgeist with atomic powered creature features, rebellious teenager melodramas, biker movies, and blaxploitation cult classics. He always brought his films in on-time and under-budget. The one exception came in 1962 with The Intruder, a moody issue-driven drama about school integration and white supremacy filmed on-location in the Deep South. Now hailed as a milestone of independent filmmaking (by those hip enough to hail), Intruder was Corman’s only film to lose money. Appropriately, a special screening of a young intense Bill Shatner’s debut feature will follow Exploits.

However, after the experience of Intruder, Corman resolved to return to his low budget genre roots, subtly insinuating his political statements into his films, rather than trumpet them from the get go. Corman always was a trailblazer for the rest of Hollywood.

Corman has appeared in several documentaries in recent years, including Mark Hartley’s Machete Maidens Unleashed!, which documented Corman’s love affair with the authentic locations and bargain basement production costs offered by the Philippines in the 1970’s. Yet, there is very little overlap between the films. Indeed, with literally hundreds of outrageous movies to chose from, Corman documentarians need not fight over material.

Frankly, Stapleton probably could have made a film three times as long and the time would still fly by. Combining the joyous gusto of Corman’s films with top-shelf access to Corman and his celebrated alumni is tough to beat for sheer entertainment value. Easily the feel good film of the festival, Exploits screens with The Intruder this Sunday (10/16) as a very special event of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’11: Traitors (short)

They are like the Runaways of Tangier, except a Moroccan all-women punk group really is rather rebellious, just in its very existence. Yet, family issues will preoccupy their fiery lead singer over the course of a typically eventful day for the band in Sean Gullette’s Traitors, which screens this Saturday as part of the 49th New York Film Festival’s Shorts Program #2.

Best known as the ragged mathematician in Darren Aronofsky’s Pi, Gullette makes his directorial debut with Traitors (that is with an anarchy sign for the “a”), named after the band fronted by Malika. The camera truly loves hitherto unknown Chaimae Ben Acha as the lead singer, even the handheld digitals used by Gullette’s cinematographers Benoït Peverilli and Niko Tavernise. If there is one future international star represented at this year’s festival, it must be Acha.

For one thing, she can really belt it out Joan Jett style. We first encounter Traitors rehearsing a song that tells us all we need know about their opinion of Morocco’s cops and politicians. Not much. In need of cash for an upcoming gig, Malika naturally plans to “borrow” some from her elegant professional-class mother. However, in the process of rifling through her parents’ room she learns an upsetting secret.

As Malika and her bandmates careen through the night, we get a visceral sense of the Tangier underground youth culture. When the cops show up, they do their best to live up to Traitors’ cynical assessment. Yet, aside from petty public corruption, Gullette’s film avoids the larger potential macro conflicts. Just what the local religious authorities would think of the band is left to viewers’ imagination. Still, crude sexism and unwelcomed lechery seem to be fairly widespread among the Moroccan men Malika encounters.

Acha gives a knockout performance, but she is not carrying the film alone. Firouz Rahal Bouzid and Abdesslam Bounouacha also contribute wonderfully human supporting turns as Malika’s parents. Running just over half an hour, Traitors is no mere sketch. By any standards of dramatic cinema, it is a wholly satisfying, self-contained film. A real discovery, Traitors screens this Saturday (10/15), as a selection of Shorts Program #2 at the 2011 NYFF.

NYFF ’11: My Week with Marilyn

Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe were about to achieve career highpoints in John Osborne’s The Entertainer and Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot, respectively. However, the chemistry was somewhat lacking in their one and only film together, The Prince and the Showgirl, tepidly received by critics and audiences alike in 1957. The behind-the-scenes story of their rocky shoot is told from the perspective of a smitten production assistant in Simon Curtis’s My Week with Marilyn (trailer here), the centerpiece selection of the 49th New York Film Festival.

Though to-the-manor-born, young Colin Clark wants to make his own way in the world working in motion pictures. Refusing to take no for an answer, Clark parlays a dubious introduction into a gofer job with Olivier’s production company. Recently knighted, the great actor is planning to direct the American bombshell in a light comedic role his wife, Vivien Leigh, originated on-stage. Unfortunately, when Monroe shows up with full entourage in tow, it is quickly apparent she deeply enthralled by the method school of acting, dubious claptrap Sir Laurence has little patience for.

Despite beginning a healthy romance with Lucy, a wardrobe assistant arguably as attractive as the childlike and frequently doped-up Monroe, Clark falls hard for the famous sex symbol. While not exactly mutual, Monroe starts to rely on the solicitous young man’s emotional support. It all leads to much gossip and quite a bit of ill will on the set.

If Marilyn Monroe truly was a ragingly insecure woman who lived in a pronounced state of arrested development, then Michelle Williams plays her quite well indeed. Though she is already being positioned as an Oscar contender, her Monroe seems to be a blank slate on which the other characters project their desires. Was that all there really was to her? If so, how very sad.

In welcomed contrast, the British ensemble cast, including the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Michael “Foyle” Kitchen, and Julia Ormand (as Leigh, no small part to step into either), plays it to the hilt, bandying about witticisms as if they are in The Bad and the Beautiful, as rewritten by Noel Coward.

Yet, the casting of Kenneth Branagh as Olivier is particularly inspired. Not only does Branagh have the right “classically trained” presence and flair for razor-sharp dialogue, one can see parallels of his own career in that of Sir Laurence. Earning acclaim and the not infrequent comparison to Olivier with his early Shakespearean films, Branagh’s recent career had been somewhat checkered (including a critically drubbed remake of the Olivier vehicle, Sleuth), until scoring an unlikely comeback with Thor. Regardless, he plays the iconic thespian with genuine depth and charisma.

Granted, Week is based on his memoir, but the amount of screen time devoted to Eddie Redmayne’s Clark seems wildly misappropriated, considering the far more interesting actors and great larger than life figures of cinema history that are also assembled in the film. Frankly, his sad eyed, love-struck act quickly gets rather dull. Fortunately, the seasoned veterans like Branagh, Dench, and Sir Derek Jacobi can be relied upon to supply Week periodic jolts of energy.

Curtis certainly keeps the film breezing along nicely, capturing a nice sense of the era along the way. Always pleasant viewing, Week features some wonderfully tasty supporting performances. It just seems to consistently focus on the two dullest people at a banquet of greatness. A case of a film whose sum of its parts is probably greater than its whole, Week screens again tomorrow night (11/12) at the Walter Reade Theater as the Centerpiece of the 2011 NYFF. However, only standby tickets are available, so good luck.

NYFF ’11: This is Not a Film

Jafar Panahi will not be appearing at the 49th New York Film Festival. He was never expected. However, it was hoped Mojtaba Mirtahmasb would be able to promote his recent collaboration with Panahi on the international festival circuit. Ominously though, Mirtahmasb’s passport was confiscated just as he was leaving to attend Toronto and he was subsequently arrested, along with five other Iranian filmmakers. At least Mirtahmasb will have a good idea what to expect. With Panahi, he co-directed This is Not a Film (trailer here), a documentary record of a day in life of the award winning filmmaker chafing under house arrest and a prospective twenty year ban on movie-making, which screens at this year’s NYFF.

For those unfamiliar with his story, Panahi and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof were sentenced to six years in Iranian prison (a.k.a. Hell on Earth) and prohibited from practicing their art for two decades. With his appeal pending, Panahi is confined to his relatively upscale but not all that spacious Tehran flat on the eve of Persian New Year. Since he cannot make a film, he makes This is Not a Film, with the furtive assistance of Mirtahmasb, a digital video camera, and the odd handheld device.

Considering we are simply watching a man putter about his apartment (with Igi, the scene stealing pet iguana), Not a Film is surprisingly engaging. Even under extreme stress, Panahi is clearly a man of considerable wit and charm. We watch as he blocks out a film that might never be produced and listen as he cryptically discusses projects with Mirtahmasb in an effort to shield him from presumed eavesdroppers. These are the small grimly fascinating day-to-day realities of artistic repression in Iran. Just in case any of the significance is lost on viewers, the blank closing credits ought to bring it all home.

Not a Film is a quiet film that resolutely avoids anything that might be deemed provocation. Frankly, the circumstances that gave rise to the not film should never have happened. Yet, since it is here, in its way, Not a Film is an inspiring example of the creative impulse as it flows like water through the cracks of an oppressive state. Indeed, it is already renowned as the film that was smuggled out of Iran in a cake.

To give credit where it is due, the international film festival network has done good work keeping attention focused on Panahi’s plight. The 2010 Cannes Film Festival pointedly reserved an empty chair for the filmmaker when he was not allowed to attend, even though he was chosen to serve on the jury. Earlier this year in New York, the Asia Society hosted a Panahi retrospective to further publicize his case. However, it is important to remember Rasoulof and now Mirtahmasb as well, who are also prisoners of artistic conscience, but might not have the same name recognition on the world stage. Highly recommended, Not a Film screens this Thursday (10/13) at Alice Tully Hall, as a Main Slate selection of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’11: The Skin I Live In

Call it facial determinism. In Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Face of Another, a new “life-mask” countenance fundamentally alters the personality of a scarred businessman. With his latest film, Pedro Almodóvar addresses similar themes of appearance and identity, but dramatically raises the stakes for his experimental subject in The Skin I Live In (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, following Wednesday ‘s gala screening at the 49th New York Film Festival.

Dr. Robert Ledgard gave his mysterious “patient” Vera the face of his late wife, who was severely burned and disfigured in a fateful car crash. As a result, Marilia, his motherly housekeeper, worries the plastic surgeon is developing an unhealthy emotional attachment to his unwilling test-case. As flashbacks explain the chain of events that brought Vera to his isolated villa, we learn just how twisted their potential relationship would be.

Though billed as Almodóvar’s horror movie, Skin really constitutes a continuation of his noir-esque period begun with his previous film, the underappreciated Broken Embraces. Indeed, it is structured around a big twist, which makes it challenging to discuss its themes and motifs without getting spoilery. Frankly, just a few details are probably sufficient to give the game away. However, it is probably safe to say Ledgard nurses some serious grievances, while initial appearances are deliberately deceptive.

Though also undeniably restrained compared to the films that made Almodóvar’s reputation, Broken Embraces had a slow-burning undercurrent of dark passion. By contrast, Skin is a decidedly chilly film. Overtly voyeuristic, Almodóvar avoids delving beneath the surface of his characters, consciously concentrating his focus on the surface level instead. Still, he adeptly uses the Hitchcockian cinematic vocabulary as well as the claustrophobic setting to create a fairly creepy genre film.

Although he never truly unleashes his inner mad doctor, Antonio Banderas is certainly a severe presence as Dr. Ledgard. However, Elena Anaya is quite remarkable as the suicidal Vera, convincingly handling her character revelations, which are considerable. A tricky role to approach, she fully commits to it, providing the film’s only emotional center.

Skin is an intriguing film, but were it not for the vulnerability and immediacy of Anaya’s work, we would simply feel as though we were being played, rather than pulled inexorably into a dark morality drama. While the implications of Almodóvar’s screenplay (adapted from Thierry Jonquet’s novel Mygale), will stay with viewers, his execution will most likely leave them cold. A mixed bag, Skin is largely distinguished by Anaya’s performance. For Almodóvar fans, it screens twice this Wednesday (10/12) as a gala selection of the 2011 NYFF. Though only standby tickets are still available, it also opens theatrically this Friday (10/14) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.

NYFF ’11: Sodankyla Forever

A film festival must be pretty secure in itself to program a four and a half hour documentary tribute to another festival. Such is the case with the 49th New York Film Festival. Though not exactly an international launching pad, like Toronto or Cannes, the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Sodankylä, Finland has drawn some of the most admired names in the history of cinema. Festival director Peter von Bagh interviewed many of them on-stage, eventually editing some of their most provocative recollections and insights into the four part documentary, Sodankylä Forever, which has a special two-night screening at this year’s NYFF.

Held in June when the Midsummer sun never sets, the festival might be patrons only opportunity for a brief respite of darkness. However, each day’s line-up begins with an in-depth discussion with a prominent filmmaker. In a way, von Bagh’s Sodankylä is particularly timely and appropriate for this year’s NYFF, because it includes several excerpts of interviews with Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who obviously will not have the opportunity to participate in Q&A sessions after the screening of his latest film, This Is Not a Film.

Indeed, many world class auteurs sat down with von Bagh, including Wim Wenders and Roger Corman, who are also represented at NYFF, as filmmaker and subject, respectively. Yet, for pure movie fans, the highlight of Sodankylä will be hearing Empire Strikes Back director Irving Kershner discus his initial reaction to a sneak peak at Star Wars (or A New Hope as we are now supposed to call it).

Arguably though, the best material comes from filmmakers who labored under the yoke of Communism. Most notably, Krzysztof Zanussi pointedly criticizes the festival’s special screening of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, explaining how the ideology it sought to promote caused such profound pain for his country. By the same token, von Bagh deserves credit for putting his comments into the film.

Although an entire segment is essentially devoted to picking desert island films, most of Sodankylä proceeds in a rather idiosyncratic fashion. Von Bagh frequently uses something an interview subject said (or almost nearly said) as a transitional hook into the next auteur, like a game of free association featuring the likes of Sam Fuller, Miloš Forman, Abbas Kiarostami, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Demy, Andrei Konchalovsky, Jerzy Skolimoski (who probably has the best one-liner), and John Boorman (who probably offers the funniest anecdotes).

It is important audiences understand Sodankylä is not That’s Entertainment. Throughout the film, the only film clips von Bagh shows are part of wider audience shots. However, (aside from some rather superficial axe-grinding from John Sayles) the collected reminiscences and commentary are all quite perceptive and engaging. One of the more ambitious screening events at the 49th New York Film Festival, Sodankylä is respectfully recommended for earnest students of cinema. It screens in two installments this coming Tuesday (10/11) and Wednesday (10/12) at the Francesca Beale Theater.

NYFF ’11: A Dangerous Method

Jungians consider Freud to be unnaturally sex-obsessed. Conversely, Freudians argue Jung debased the science with his superstitious mumbo-jumbo. Probably they are both more right than wrong. The birth of this great and enduring rivalry is dramatized in David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method (trailer here), which screens tonight as a gala selection of the 49th New York Film Festival.

Carl Jung married well and lives an upright life. A leading practitioner in a controversial new field of study, he is eager to apply the methods of psychoanalysis advocated by Sigmund Freud. Sabina Spielrein represents the perfect opportunity. Though possessing a rather sharp intellect, she is so profoundly disturbed she cannot function in society. Yet, when Jung gets her talking, the roots of her mental torment become clear. While the word “cured” might be too strong a term, she is able study medicine, with the intent of becoming of psychiatrist herself. Everything might have ended happily at this point, were it not for the libido’s self-destructive drive.

After giving into temptation once or a couple dozen times, the guilt wracked Jung breaks things off with his sort-of former patient rather precipitously. This drives the newly agitated Spielrein to seek the treatment of Jung’s new mentor, Dr. Sigmund Freud. As a result, Freud becomes somewhat disappointed in his younger colleague, while Spielrein increasingly aligns herself with the Freudian in her academic writings. Not surprisingly, this exacerbates the philosophical division between Freud and Jung.

Though clearly not nearly as renowned as her male colleagues, Spielrein arguably led the more cinematic life. A Russian Jew who tragically returned to her Soviet era homeland, much of Spielrein’s family perished during Stalin’s reign of terror, while she was eventually killed by the National Socialists. Not just a beautiful woman, her scholarship is thought to have possibly influenced both Jung and Freud. (Jung also spanks her quite a bit in Method, if that happens to be your thing.)

Kiera Knightley really goes for broke as Spielrein, laying on the accent a tad thick, but bringing a remarkable physicality to the role. She makes neurotic twitchiness rather hot, essentially usurping the film. Still, despite having the screen time of a supporting player instead of a lead, Viggo Mortensen is convincingly smart and compulsively watchable as Freud, avoiding all the shticky goatee-stroking clichés associated with the iconic figure, whereas the always forceful Michael Fassbender is appropriately tightly wound depicting Jung’s deeply rooted tension-and-release behavioral patterns.

Adapted by Christopher Hampton from his stage play, which in turn was adapted from John Kerr’s book, Method’s greatest problem is its flattening narrative arc. Had it followed Spielrein through her demise in WWII it would have ended on a more significant, if tragic note. As it stands though, Method just appears to run out of story.

Throughout Method, Cronenberg adroitly handles both the rigorous intellectual debates and the provocative sexuality, largely rendering the latter with wise restraint. Probably more highbrow than old school Cronenberg fans might expect, he and Hampton clearly seem to want to present this critical period in the development of psychological study for its own sake rather than as a vehicle for lurid melodrama. It just lacks that epiphany moment. Frequently fascinating nonetheless, the overall engaging Method screens twice tonight (10/5) at Alice Tully Hall as part of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’11: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

If Beckett and Mamet collaborated on a Turkish police procedural, it might have been similar in tone to Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest festival favorite. Yet, the lush pastoral imagery is a distinct hallmark of the Turkish auteur’s style. Do not expect to be spoon fed a conventional action-driven narrative. Ceylan makes viewers work for it in his obliquely focused Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (trailer here), which screens during the 49th New York Film Festival.

As the film opens, Kenan is trying to show Police Chief Naci and three carloads of officers where he buried the body of his former friend Yasar. Unfortunately he was drunk at the time and cannot remember the exact location. This will take a while—all night in fact. While they blunder across the deserted Anatolian steppe, Chief Naci, Dr. Cemal, and Prosecutor Nusret, banter about this and that, which might later prove to be more revealing than viewers first realize.

Eventually, Kenan finally finds the body, at which point Ceylan throws his first curve ball, taking the film on a detour into absurdist black comedy. Indeed, the film almost plays like a spoof of long slow pretentious art films, though one has to have a lot of long slow pretentious art films under their belt to really appreciate it as such.

Finally, the keystone kops get the body back to the station, where Ceylan shifts gears once again. We start to pick up clues the nature of the crime is not precisely what we were led to believe. We also learn (with as much certainty as Ceylan ever allows) about one character’s very painful private life.

Throughout Anatolia, truth is decidedly slippery. Ceylan provides clues to raise suspicions, but never enough to form rock-solid conclusions. It is hard to say what over two and a half hours of this elusiveness adds up to, but at least the audience has had a lovely driving tour of the Turkish countryside.

Mostly shot in long takes, framing the characters as tiny figures set against the verdant landscape, Anatolia is a film that really has to be broken down into manageable parts. The three leads who emerge from the ensemble all excellent, each looking appropriately haggard and weathered. Yilmaz Erdoğan seems to be the standard issue tough cop, yet he hints at something unexpectedly compassionate in Naci. Conversely, Muhammet Uzuner’s Cemal seems like a reassuringly earnest provincial doctor, but he performs the film’s only true interrogation, so riveting viewers do not realize it is happening until it is already over. However, it is Taner Birsel who really takes his character to unexpected places, exposing the torment beneath the prosecutor’s bluff and polish.

All three actors have some really fine moments in Anatolia, but you have to drive a long way to get to each one. Yet, compared to the three hour forced march of Cristi Puiu’s Aurora, which played at last year’s NYFF, Anatolia is a walk in the park that offers the additional added attraction of actually getting somewhere in the end. It is a hard film to fully wrap one’s head around, but it stays with you (particularly Birsel’s final scene), which certainly proves it works on some level. Often arresting to look at (through cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki’s artful lens) and occasionally wickedly droll, is recommended for highest of high-end cineastes. It screens this Saturday (10/8) at the Alice Tully Hall as a Main Slate selection of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’11: You Are Not I

A substance called kif represented a potentially unusual challenge for film restorers. It is a mixture of pot and tobacco that American expatriate novelist Paul Bowles smoked an awful lot of. Yet providentially, a copy of Sara Driver’s presumed lost short film You Are Not I (trailer here) safely resided in his stuffy, kif-infused Tangier flat for years. Driver’s newly restored adaptation of Bowles’ short story of the same title screens this Thursday as a Masterworks selection of the 49th New York Film Festival.

Ethel is mentally unsound. Institutionalized by her family, she literally walks away from her sanitarium amid the confusion of a tragic accident (originally a train derailment in the Bowles story, but down-graded to a highway pile-up due to Driver’s budget constraints). Mistaking her catatonia for shock, two rescue workers drive the eerie woman back to her family home, which agitates her sister no end. As delusional thoughts race through Ethel’s mind, YANI takes a weird turn at the expense of objective notions of reality.

Frankly, the circumstances surrounding YANI are more intriguing than the film itself. Considered irretrievably lost after Driver’s negatives and prints were destroyed in a warehouse fire, a courtesy print sent to Bowles was unearthed amongst his long undisturbed effects in 2008. Indeed, the image of a film canister hiding with the Beat relics of the author’s exotic chambers gives YANI a greater mystique than is probably warranted.

Driver became something of a phantom herself after the release of her 1993 ghost movie, When Pigs Fly. However, her co-writer and cinematographer Jim Jarmusch became one the biggest, if not the only, pseudo-mainstream crossover success of the so-called No Wave East Village-based filmmaking scene. Yet, YANI is not a truly representative film of the movement, because it is never obscene and provides a readily identifiable narrative thread, regardless of the cosmic twist.

The cast, including Luc Sante as one of the relief workers, definitely come across as an unprofessional lower Manhattan ensemble. However, Driver handles the tricky conclusion quite deftly, suggesting it is really real, despite the hallucinatory vibe. It definitely reaches an unsettling place, even if the early scenes keep viewers at arm’s length.

Given its fascinating history, cineastes will certainly welcome the opportunity to finally see YANI. Though quite accessible by the standards of experimental filmmaking, it will still bewilder the less adventurous. Interesting but perhaps not a “masterwork” per se, YANI screens this Thursday (10/6) at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’11: George Harrison Living in the Material World

He was frequently dubbed “the Quiet Beatle,” but George Harrison could also be called the cineaste Beatle. One of his first solo projects was the original soundtrack for Joe Massot’s psychedelic Wonderwall, completed while the Fab Four were still together. After the band broke up, he eventually founded Handmade Films, providing a jolt of capitol for independent British filmmakers. Harrison himself gets a full 208 minutes of screen-time in Martin Scorsese’s definitive documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World (trailer here), which screens this Tuesday at the 49th New York Film Festival, just ahead of its HBO premiere.

Yes, George Harrison was a lad from Liverpool. The youngest Beatle, he was initially recruited because he could actually play. The general gist of the Beatles story will be generally familiar to just about everybody: initially, Lennon and McCartney were front-and-center, carrying the songwriting load, but slowly Harrison asserted himself, introducing the sitars and tablas into their later, trippier recordings. Since Yoko Ono consented to an on-camera interview, their eventual break-up is presented solely in terms of the stress of working so closely together for such a long time. Still, it is hard not to get sucked into Scorsese’s Harrison-centric retelling of the Beatles mythos.

However, it is something of a surprise how eventful Harrison’s post-Beatle years were, despite his often deliberately low profile (essentially constituting the second half of Material). Of course, his spiritual quest continued, which is a major focus for his widow, co-producer Olivia Harrison. Those who saw the IFC Channel’s behind-the-scenes history of Monty Python will already be well aware of Harrison’s close personal relationship to the comedy troupe, but who knew he was a Formula One Racing fan? In fact, one of the most touching interview segments features his friend Jackie Stewart, the “Flying Scotsman.”

If Ono gets a pass, at least Eric Clapton is forthright enough to address on-camera the whole business of how he romanced Harrison’s first wife while they were still married, albeit rather gingerly. Yet, for personal drama, the events surrounding the violent home invasion Harrison survived late in life, effectively serves as a rather stark climax.

Harrison’s friends and family make a compelling case he just might have been the most interesting Beatle. Scorsese calls in some major star power, including both surviving Beatles as well as fellow Traveling Wilbury Tom Petty. It is also a pleasure to see Jane Birkin (from Wonderwall) on-screen in any context, but it is just plain creepy when his one-time producer Phil Spector shows up.

Material is a very good rock doc, but the nearly three and a half hour running time is pushing the limit. According to IMDB, it is almost half an hour longer than Ken Burns’ Thomas Jefferson—and Jefferson was the first to do just about everything. Nonetheless, it is consistently more engaging than the Lennon documentary that screened at last year’s NYFF. As a further point in Material’s favor, Scorsese, Olivia Harrison, and their collaborators almost entirely avoid politics, focusing squarely on the musical, spiritual, and personal aspects of his life, essentially in that order of concentration. Informative and entertaining, Material screens this Tuesday (10/4) at Alice Tully Hall as a Main Slate selection of the 2011 New York Film Festival and airs on HBO in two parts this Wednesday and Thursday (10/5 & 10/6).

NYFF ’11: Mud and Soldiers (Nikkatsu Centennial)

It is sort of like being immersed in the flipside of Saving Private Ryan. You might feel like invading Manchuria after watching Tomotaka Tasaka’s 1939 Mud and Soldiers, because that is exactly what it was designed to do. Though the Nikkatsu studio is best known for its classic yakuza films, it clearly took a sojourn through militarism in the 1930’s. In celebration of Nikkatsu’s centennial, the 49th New York Film Festival has programmed a wildly diverse 37 film retrospective, including Tasaka’s wartime propaganda picture.

If nothing else, Mud constitutes truth in titling. It is not called “Romance and Comic Relief” for a very good reason. Rather, the film documents a successful incursion into China, made possible by the selfless dedication of the Imperial Army’s rank-and-file. By design, there is virtually no character development, because Mud explicitly extols the virtue of soldiers submerging their individuality into the collective core. Granted, all military forces depend on their soldiers acting as a cohesive unit, but Mud’s esprit de corps is almost Borg like in its relentlessness. Even the practice of censoring their letters home is presented as an act of team-building.

Throughout Mud, there is a surfeit of marching and warfighting in the muck. It is so realistic, it even features a fair amount of the hurry-up-and-waiting that every veteran remembers with frustration. In fact, Mud was such an accurate depiction of the combat experience, the U.S. military reportedly re-cut a confiscated print to use as a training film, in effect censoring a film glorifying censorship. As befits the Imperial Army, none of the cast stands out, but to a man, they all blend into frontline milieu.

To give due credit, Mud is well made, blowing up stuff nicely and portraying a private’s perspective on warfare with scrupulous honesty, including the frequent boredom. However, the agenda behind it is transparently obvious. Naturally, there is absolutely no hint of the Japanese atrocities committed in China, which makes programming Mud without a counterbalancing selection a bit of a tricky proposition. Still, at least in America, the Imperial Army’s conduct in places like Nanjing is a settled question.

Though one can take issue with Mud on a host of aesthetic and ideological grounds, it is unlikely New Yorkers will have an opportunity to see it on the big screen anytime soon beyond the Nikkatsu sidebar. A historically important but highly problematic film, Mud screens Tuesday and Wednesday (10/4 & 10/5) at the Howard Gillman Theater as part of the Velvet Bullets and Steel Kisses Masterworks retrospective celebrating Japan’s oldest movie studio at the 2011 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’11: Carnage

For obvious reasons, Roman Polanski did not appear at a festival press conference, nor will he be participating in post-screening Q&A’s. However, Carnage (trailer here), the 49th New York Film Festival’s opening night film, is still one of the most eagerly anticipated selections for New York cineastes, who have been packing to capacity the recently concluded Polanski retrospective at the MoMA. A nearly instant sell-out, patrons will have to decide whether they want to try their luck with stand-by tickets tonight, or wait for the film’s scheduled theatrical opening on December 16th, via Sony Pictures Classics.

Penelope and Michael Longstreet are liberals, or at least she is. Alan and Nancy Cowan are conservative, or at least he is. There is no question who wears the pants in each family, but that does not mean Michael and Nancy do not resent their subordinate positions. They have gathered in the Longstreets’ remarkably spacious and stylish Manhattan apartment to address a violent quarrel between their young sons. The Cowan boy (or thug as his father calls him) picked up a handy stick and knocked Master Longstreet alongside the head.

Both sets of parents want to resolve the incident, but clearly differ in their approaches. The Longstreets, meaning Penelope, want to bring the kids together for a healing moment, whereas the Cowans (both of them really) are more down-to-business and practical. At first, everyone wants to show how civilized and rational they can be, but the longer the Cowan’s reluctantly tarry in that apartment, the more nerves are frayed and simmering hostilities are bluntly expressed.

Cleaving first along family lines and then turning on each other, Carnage spares nobody. Yet arguably the PC hypocrisy of the Longstreets takes it harder on the chin than Alan Cowan’s self aware social Darwinism. Indeed, the whole premise of the film largely validates his world view.

Adapting Yasmina Reza’s hit Broadway play God of Carnage for the screen, Polanski embraces the staginess of the one-set four character verbal battle royale. Indeed, it is easy to see why it was such a successful star vehicle on stage. All four cast members get a chance to behave badly in the spotlight and chew on some scathing dialogue. Once again, Christopher Waltz does Oscar caliber work as Cowan, making condescending arrogance enormously entertaining. Since John C. Reilly still does not have his own little gold statue though, he might be the focus of the film’s Academy campaign, even though it is the least showy performance. As for their better halves, Jodie Foster loses her cool outrageously as Penelope-not-Pen, while Kate Winslet is a bit more grounded, slowly breaking through Nancy Cowan’s icy reserve, eventually reaching a virtuoso state of manic aggravation.

In many ways, Polanski is undeniably an appalling human being. In a more just world, he would be sharing a cell with O.J. Simpson in California’s skuzziest prison. Those who want nothing to do with his films have every right to their contempt. However, they will miss a really darn funny film in Carnage. Though smaller in scope and talkier than most of his films, it is pointedly witty, performed with considerable flair by its all-star cast. There are four sold-out screenings tonight, divided between the Walter Reade and Alice Tully Hall. Good luck getting in.

NYFF ’11: Miss Bala

Drug cartels are worse than the most controlling stage mothers. One long-shot Mexican beauty pageant contestant learns this the hard way when an embattled kingpin champions her cause in Gerardo Naranjo’s Miss Bala (trailer here), which screens this weekend at the 49th New York Film Festival.

There are few opportunities for young people in the city of Baja, even if they are attractive like Laura Guerrero and her friend “Suzu.” That is why they want to take a shot at the upcoming Miss Baja California contest. Looking to pull a few strings with the judges, Suzu drags Guerrero to a sketchy club to party with some crooked DEA agents she knows. Unfortunately, Lino Valdez and his crew arrive to make a bloody statement. Though Guerrero escapes with her life, Valdez comes looking for her when she starts asking questions about Suzu.

Rather than killing her, Valdez decides to take Guerrero for himself, using her as a mule and clearly signaling what other services she will be expected to perform. He also puts in the fix with the Miss Baja contest, while engaging in open warfare with the police.

Bala (as in bullet) is the sort of film that viewers would need a clicker to keep track of the body count. Yet, Naranjo shows very little violence directly on-screen. Instead, it mostly plays out just beyond Guerrero’s POV, as she cowers under beds and in dark corners, listening to the barrage of gunshots and blood curdling shrieks. Still, there is never any question as to the horrific nature of the carnage unfolding around her.

As in many contemporary Mexican films, it is not worth bothering to distinguish the police and government officials from the gangsters like Valdez. It also portrays the local media in rather cynical terms, while depicting U.S. border security as what might charitably be termed porous. In short, it is a work of unremitting realism, but Guerrero’s inspired-by-a-true-story misadventure gives the film the feeling of an urban legend.

As Guerrero, Stephanie Sigman (who has been doing media to promote Bala at NYFF) is on course for international stardom. Watching her sinking deeper into the moral anarchy of Baja is absolutely exhausting, but completely riveting. Noe Hernandez is also pretty scarily convincing as Valdez, projecting all kinds of menace, but romanticizing nothing about his thuggish existence. Though little more than a cameo, American actor James Russo (the ill-fated Mikey Tandino in Beverly Hills Cop) also makes a strong impression as Jimmy, Valdez’s DEA agent on the take.

Bala is an intense film, but not really a thriller per se. Nor is it an effective PR film for the Baja Chamber of Commerce, yet it has been selected as Mexico’s official submission for the best foreign language Academy Award. Rather, it is a bold, gritty look at the narcoterrorism enveloping Mexico and periodically spilling across our border. Recommended for those who take their cinema black, without a chaser, Bala screens this Saturday (10/2) and Sunday (10/3) at Alice Tully Hall, as a Main Slate selection of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’11: Melancholia

It is the end of the world or the end of Lars von Trier’s career. Whichever it is, it will finish with a bang. After this year’s Cannes, Melancholia is probably carrying more baggage as well as more laurels than a porter in the Roman Senate. Yet, it is worth considering von Trier’s Melancholia (trailer here) separate and apart from extraneous controversies when it screens during the 49th New York Film Festival.

Frankly, Justine would probably welcome the apocalypse on her wedding day. Hours late to her own reception, family tensions are already boiling over. Her hotelier brother-in-law John resents footing the bill for the lavish shindig when she does not even appear to take it seriously. Her very divorced parents are eager to start clawing at each other again, while her crude boss chooses the ostensibly happy occasion to play a weird round of mind games with his newly promoted employee. Claire, her slightly less highly strung sister, tries to hold the night together, but chaos is inevitable.

As Melancholia’s second part opens, Justine is now a basket case, having driven the adoring Michael away. Through Claire’s insistence, she is staying her sister’s family, acting weird and getting on John’s nerves. In addition to her family drama, Claire is increasingly anxious over doomsday scenarios regarding Melancholia, a hitherto unknown planet projected to cross quite close to the Earth. As an amateur astronomer, John assures her she should not pay attention to such media claptrap, but it is clear viewers should give her concerns credence.

Melancholia has been dubbed Another Earth’s evil doppelganger. To an extent, this is a valid analogy, particularly in the manner both films use science fiction concepts in what are otherwise very personal and intense human dramas. Yet, the comparatively free-wheeling first half of Melancholia feels more closely akin to fellow Dogma 95 filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration. Indeed, it is a joy (though perhaps a slightly sadistic one) to watch Melancholia’s top shelf cast tear into each other.

The Best Actress winner at Cannes, Kristin Dunst really is quite unsettling as Justine. The term hot mess could have been coined with her in mind, yet she is never excessively showy in the role. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Kiefer Sutherland might sound like the most unlikely of couples, but they are quite convincing together as Claire and John (though at times we would not mind watching him open up a can of Jack Bauer on sundry family members).

Not surprisingly, the old pros Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt nearly upstage everyone as the bickering exes, luxuriating in their tart sarcastic zingers. They also look perfectly cast as Gainsbourg’s parents (though maybe not so much for Dunst). Yet, the biggest laughs (and they are considerable) come from von Trier regular Udo Kier as the snippy wedding planner.

In the moodier, more impressionistic second part, Gainsbourg and Sutherland largely shoulder the dramatic burden, which they handle quite adroitly. In fact, Sutherland’s nuanced work might be the biggest surprise of the film. The notorious von Trier also stages the end of the world quite inventively, employing a simple but cinematic device to depict the rogue planet’s advancing approach.

Though accessible for general audiences, Melancholia is not the sort of film one can give a pat nutshell response to. Rather, it is the sort of film one studies and revisits over a period of years. A fascinating example of big picture movie-making on an intimate scale, Melancholia is the cineaste event-film of the year. Highly recommended, it screens this coming Monday (10/3) and Thursday (10/6) at Alice Tully Hall as a Main Slate selection of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’11: Le Havre

As the home of smugglers and cutthroats, ports are always the perfect setting for hardboiled crime drama. However, not Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre. It is nothing like the French film noir of Henri-Georges Clouzot, perhaps because Kaurismäki is Finnish. Instead, the marginalized roughnecks inhabit a quietly whimsical and deeply humanistic community in Kaurismäki’s Le Havre (trailer here), which screens during the 49th New York Film Festival.

Marcel Marx works the streets as a shoe-shiner in the tradition of Jacques Tati. He never had much money nor any worries before his beloved wife Arletty is hospitalized. Shielded from her fatal prognosis, he is at loose ends puttering about the waterfront, until he chances across Idrissa, a young illegal African immigrant hoping to be reunited with his parents in England.

Initially, he merely leaves some food for the boy. Then he opens his home to the sad-eyed Idrissa. Before long, Marx (hmm, heavy name, that) and his salt of the earth comrades are working in concert to help their furtive guest elude Monet, the dour flatfoot.

Granted, a thumbnail description of Le Havre probably sounds unappetizingly didactic. However, Kaurismäki astutely employs a light touch with the material, emphasizing the inherent innocence and charm of Marx and Idrissa. Unlike far too many filmmakers, he seems to understand the old adage about catching more flies with honey. He also recognizes and capitalizes on the considerable charisma of his proletarian leads.

The twinkle in André Wilms’ eyes could light up a city block, yet he still invests Marx with a wonderful sense of dignity and a genuine élan. In contrast, Jean-Pierre Darroussin is his near total inverse as Monet, projecting an exquisitely French fatalism. As a bonus, cinematic Francophiles should keep their eyes peeled for Truffaut and Godard regular Jean-Pierre Léaud in a brief but fittingly idiosyncratic cameo.

Yet, it is the look and feel of the city itself that will dominate viewers’ impressions of the film. Cinematographer Timo Salminen gives Le Havre a warm glow that is inviting and nostalgic, while the back alleys rendered by Wouter Zoon’s design team look ideally suited for dancing in the rain.

Though never tackily melodramatic or cloyingly quirky, Le Havre has to be one of the most heartfelt, unabashedly old-fashioned films to carry major festival laurels this year. Regardless of politics, it is hard not to be swept along by its effervescent spirit. Definitely recommended, it screens Sunday (10/2), Monday (10/3), and Wednesday (10/5) as a Main Slate selection of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’11: Patience (After Sebald)

W.G. Sebald rose to prominence late in life, but due to his accidental death at a relatively young age, he is probably already due for a critical rediscovery. Yet, for a brief period, he was considered one of the leading candidates for the Nobel Prize in literature and influenced many artists working in diverse disciplines. Rock music documentarian Grant Gee radically shifts gears, using Sebald’s fictionalized travelogue-essay The Rings of Saturn as a jumping off point for his meditative documentary, Patience (After Sebald), which screens Sunday during the 49th New York Film Festival.

Though keenly aware of the pitfalls of such an approach, Patience largely retraces the steps of the fictional narrator Sebald’s walking tour of the picturesque but lonely Suffolk landscape in the German expatriate’s acknowledged masterwork. Yet, it quickly becomes clear Sebald the author is a subject who resists biographers’ conventional strategies.

Instead, Sebald is often presented as a series of paradoxes. The German-born English professor wrote all his significant books in his original tongue, requiring their translation in to English. Several commentators note that it is really the Michael Hulse translation of Saturn on which his reputation really rests. His work was deeply informed by the Holocaust, but is not easily aligned with any subsequent ideology. Indeed, despite increasing invitations to serve as a public intellectual, Sebald remained a private, almost inscrutable individual.

For practical purposes, this leaves Gee with Sebald’s text and some striking East Anglia scenery, beautiful in a grey Wuthering Heights kind of way. Sounding like the essence of erudition, Jonathan Pryce’s voice-overs perfectly suit the former, while the mostly black-and-white photography of the latter evokes a mood of quiet introspection. However, Gee’s reliance on an academic researcher’s online map of Sebald’s sojourn, though impressive scholarship, consistently undermines the film’s visual style.

In a case of truth in titling, Patience is not exactly a breakneck film. However, it treats the written word with admirable reverence. In many ways as much a work of literary criticism (rather more insightful than the current academic standard) than a documentary profile, Patience is recommended for select genuinely literate audiences. It screens this coming Sunday (10/2) at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’11: A Separation

As a well educated, comparatively liberal Iranian woman, Simin wants to live abroad, not so much for herself, but for her daughter Termeh. Unfortunately, her travel visa will soon expire and her husband Nader refuses to leave. It causes what westerners would call irreconcilable differences for the couple. It also sets in motion a tragic chain of events that will jeopardize their way of life in Asghar Farhadi’s Golden Bear winning A Separation (trailer here), which screens during the 49th New York Film Festival.

Nader is not exactly a fundamentalist either, but he is stubborn. He also must care for his Alzheimer’s stricken father, though Simin considers this a questionable excuse. Since divorce is not an easy no-fault proposition in Iran, she moves back in with her parents as their case drags on. Requiring help with his father, Nader hires Razieh as an in-house aide. She is poor, uneducated, extremely religious, and married to the abusive Houjat.

She only accepts the position in place of Houjat when the deadbeat is thrown in jail for his debts. Yet, as soon as she appears to settle into the routine of the household, a moment of chaos turns their world upside down. Suddenly, Nader is on trial for causing the death of Razieh’s unborn child while the thuggish Houjat harasses his family.

Granted, A Separation’s portrayal of Iranian jurisprudence does not inspire a lot of confidence, but it is almost the least of Nader’s problems. Instead, he becomes his worst enemy, responding to Razieh and Houjat in the worst possible way at every juncture. Yet explaining his decisions to his acutely sensitive daughter is often his greatest challenge.

Much like Farhadi’s Tribeca award winning About Elly, Separation vividly depicts how one tragic mistake compounds over and over again. It is an intense film, almost to the brink of exhaustion. Like many of the persecuted Jafar Panahi’s films, it shines on searing spotlight on the divisions of Iranian society, largely cleaving along professional and secular-as-they-dare versus poor and fundamentalist lines. Ostensibly, Nader and Simin should have the upper hand, but this is Iran.

Separation is also smart and scrupulously realistic on the micro level as well. The relationship dynamic between Simin and Nader is particularly insightful, rendered with great sensitivity by leads Leila Hatami and Peyman Moaadi. We clearly understand this is a couple with a lot of history together who do not hate each other. They are unable to make it work, but they cannot stop trying. Likewise, teenaged Sarina Farhadi (the director’s daughter) gives remarkably finely-calibrated performance as the insecure Termeh.

Separation and Elly before it are like Iranian Cassavetes films, uncomfortably intimate and direct, but undeniably visceral in their impact. Their place within the contemporary Iranian cinema establishment is a little trickier to pin down. Separation had to be produced outside the official film system without government support after Farhadi cautiously spoke out on behalf of the imprisoned Panahi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Reportedly though, he has since walked back those comments and Separation was subsequently chosen as Iran’s official submission for best foreign language Academy Award consideration. It is hard to judge an Iranian artist for whatever survival strategies they might employ. Regardless, Separation is an unusually powerful film. Highly recommended, it is easily one of the best of the festival. It screens this Saturday and Sunday (10/1 and 10/2) at Alice Tully Hall as a Main Slate selection of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’11: Andrew Bird: Fever Year

When a musician breaks out after years of scuffling, they should strike while the iron is hot. Andrew Bird understands this. When his tricky to categorize hybrid of string band and jam band alternative music caught on, he spent nearly an entire year on the road headlining concerts at up-scale theaters. It took a toll physically, as viewers witness in Xan Aranda’s behind-the-scenes concert documentary, Andrew Bird: Fever Year, which screens during the 49th New York Film Festival.

Bird is definitely a live act. A musician with a jazz background who spent years gigging as a solo, the multi-string instrumentalist and vocalist incorporates a great deal of improvisation into his shows. His current band was specifically chosen for their ability to react and play-off his in the moment decisions. In fact, bassist and reed player Michael Lewis also has a jazz background, as befitting the son of a jazz musician.

Through much of the tour, Bird suffers from the titular low-grade fever. Yet, this almost seems to be something the musician masochistically needs to struggle against in order to maintain each show’s freshness. Indeed, he explicitly demands their concerts be spontaneous and never feel scripted, well aware this sometimes involves falling without a net.

Wisely, Bird and Aranda focus almost entirely on the subject of music. We learn next to nothing about his private life and glean no idea about his political views (not that we care, anyway). Frankly, it is refreshing to listen to a musician discuss the performance process with such insight. Hearing Bird breakdown his thought process during one the live numbers captured in the film should be fascinating for his established fans and create a few new converts as well. Though equally interesting material, his Zen-like composing methods are so idiosyncratic, they are unlikely to be applied by other musicians. Mind-boggling, he uses no notation, simply molding each song from memory day after day. Still, it has produced a considerable body of work, so more power to him.

Aranda deserves a great deal of credit for the integrity of her approach, displaying confidence the audience will be interested in Bird’s creative process and the music itself, rather than the usual extraneous rubbish. The resulting Fever definitely proves Bird is a technically accomplished musician, a fleet improviser, and an eloquent interview subject. She also ends it on the perfect note: Bird’s encore number and only cover we hear from the concert. Recommended for Bird fans and first-time listeners alike, Fever screens this Saturday (10/1) and Sunday (10/2) as part of the 2011 New York Film Festival.