NYFF ’12: The Dead Man and Being Happy

Actuarially speaking, Santos is a marvel.  Despite his dangerous line of work, it will be the sicknesses of old age that kill him.  This will be a dubious blessing for the hitman.  Both his ravaged body and troubled conscience will torment him in Javier Rebello’s The Dead Man and Being Happy (trailer here), which screens tomorrow as a main slate selection of the 50^th New York Film Festival.

The expatriate Spaniard had a long career.  He killed many people, but he cannot remember his first.  This bothers him.  Packing up the vintage Ford Falcon with a cooler full of morphine, Santos will run through the list obsessively as he embarks on a road trip into the countryside.  He has blown off his final assignment, perhaps as a form of indirect suicide.  Nonetheless, he panics every time he thinks he sees “the large man with thick glasses and tiny eyes” who commissioned the job Santos walked away from.

Eventually, Santos picks up Erika, who will start off as a traveling companion and become a nurse, among other ambiguous roles.  He is lucky to have her.  When the drugs run out, it is not a pretty sight.  Nor is José Sacristán’s naked body, which viewers have two opportunities to see in all its splotchiness this weekend, between Dead Man and David Trueba’s Madrid, 1987, which just opened at the Quad, finally finding its way to New York from this year’s Sundance.  Frankly, that might be more than weaker eyes can stand.

Nonetheless, he is quite good as Santos, tapping into deep wells of world weary regret.  Sacristán also seems to be making of habit of playing nude scenes with much younger actresses, so hats off to him.  Roxana Blanco might not be riveting, but she projects a suitably warm, compassionate presence as Erika.  Jorge Jellinek, the Uruguayan film critic who was so pitch-perfect in Federico Veiroj’s A Useful Life, hardly has much opportunity to stretch his acting chops here, but he always looks interesting as the big man with small eyes.

Yet, regardless of his cast’s merits, it is Rebello who truly dominates the film through his constant use two ironic narrators.  There is not much need to emote when the audience is told before each scene exactly what the characters will feel.  While it is often clever in individual instances, the cumulative effect is rather exhausting.  It is the sort of self-conscious stylization that quickly displays diminishing marginal returns.

Sacristán and Rebello have a keen sense of how much they should each respectively reveal of Santos and how much they should also keep veiled.  However, the forced eccentricity of the stops along the way will drive many viewers to distraction.  A mixed bag, but an impressive showcase for its lead, the awkwardly titled The Man and Being Happy screens again tomorrow (10/14) at Alice Tully Hall, as the 2012 NYFF enters its concluding weekend.

NYFF ’12: Our Children

An unlikely character to build a film around, she is based on Belgium’s Susan Smith.  Following the story of a woman who killed her children in the press, director-co-writer Joachim Lafosse was disturbed by the way she was inevitably demonized.  In response, the filmmaker finds sympathy for the desperate housewife in his fictionalized Our Children (trailer here), Belgium’s official submission for best foreign language Oscar consideration, which screens during the 50^th New York Film Festival.

Mounir’s relationship with Dr. André Pinget is hard to define.  His boss and surrogate father technically really is his father, by marriage.  Years ago, Pinget married Mounir’s mother for immigration purposes, but she subsequently moved back to Morocco.  Pinget kept Mounir, as a son/sidekick.  When Mounir marries the Belgian Murielle against his advice, he welcomes her into the “family” and his home, but maintains his influence over Mounir.

For a while everything is great, especially with the doctor paying all the bills.  However, the combination of several young children in short succession and Mounir’s traditional notions of gender roles around the house (not exactly discouraged by Pinget) take a frightful toll on the woman.  Reduced to a pill-popping wreck, suddenly everything is her fault.

Lafosse succeeds in humanizing Murielle despite tip-toeing around the elephant in the room, Mounir’s Muslim perspective on home and hearth.  Strangely, she rather idealizes life in Morocco, prompting rebukes from both her husband and Pinget.  That would be no life for your daughters they warn her.  In effect, Lafosse presents her completely stressed-out without the benefit of adequate emotional support, rather than suggest she were the victim of a clash of cultures in her own family.

That gives Émilie Dequenne a steeper hill to climb, yet she still portrays Murielle’s slide into madness with remarkable power. The degree to which she physically manifests her mental disintegration is downright harrowing.  Even though the audience knows full well what unspeakable acts she will commit (eventually handled quite chillingly by Lafosse), one cannot help feel some measure of sympathy for her.

The film would not click together nearly so well without Niels Arestrup’s work as Pinget either.  Warm and jowly on the outside, he clearly projects something rather more unsettling underneath.  Many have likening his paternalism to colonialism and perhaps there is a kernel of truth to that, but he is also very much the controlling social worker or manipulative mother, who is always quick to bemoan “this is how you repay me after everything I’ve done for you” at the first sign of independent decision-making.  Yet, it is often hard to fathom the mindset of Tahar Rahim’s Mounir during all this, beyond his conspicuous self-centeredness.

Our Children is obviously a tough film to watch, but Lafosse keeps viewers locked in, masterfully using classical music and pop tunes to heighten the emotional angst.   While declining to address certain issues head-on, it is quite a showcase for Dequenne and Arestrup’s chops.  Recommended for those who appreciate challenging drama, Our Children screens this Friday (10/12) and Saturday (10/13) as a main slate selection of the 2012 NYFF.

NYFF ’12: Outrage Beyond

The Sanno Yakuza clan has practically become Japan Inc through the shrewd investment strategies of turncoat underboss Ishihara.  His rise to power was ruthless, as the scars of a handful of surviving foes attest.  Lead actor-director Takeshi Kitano (a.k.a. Beat Takeshi) gives a grateful world another dose of Yakuza badassery with Outrage Beyond (trailer here), the more restrained sequel to last year’s Outrage, which screens as a midnight selection of the 50th New York Film Festival.

If they know what’s good for them, viewers will be fully aware the last time we saw Kitano’s ultra-hardboiled Otomo, he was on the business end of a rather fatal looking prison attack.  However, it will take more than a shiv in the yard to dispatch a hardnose like Otomo.  Things are looking up as OB opens.  Otomo is about to get an early parole thanks to the scheming of the contemptible Det. Kataoka.  By kicking Otomo loose, the crooked cop hopes the gangster will do what he does best.  If nothing else, it is sure to alarm Ishihara.

Not proud of the things he was ordered to do in Outrage 1, Otomo is reluctant to get back in the game.  Yet, he is convinced by an unlikely new ally, Kimura, the man on the other end of the shiv.  Frankly, Otomo does not blame him.  He was the one who permanently scarred his former rival’s face.  Rather put out by the way their former bosses manipulated them, Otomo and Kimura agree to Kataoka’s dodgy plan to wage war against the Sanno, with the suspect backing of the Hanabishi clan.  Of course, it gets way more complicated than that.

Kitano is still the Miles Davis of Yakuza movies.  Nobody else is so rivetingly stone cold cool, while saying so little.  Once again, his shark-like relentlessness and knowing resignation are wholly sufficient to carry the film on his shoulders.  OB is far less action-driven than its predecessor, but it nicely matches the world-weariness of its protagonists.  Still, the opening act is a bit talky and heavy on the exposition.  Nonetheless, the intriguing relationship between Kitano’s Otomo and Hideo Nakano’s Kimura, putting the honor back into the underworld, elevates the second Outrage above the Yakuza field.

While Kitano is the definitive star of the film and possibly the entire genre, he has some colorful support from the overwhelmingly male dominated cast.  As Kataoka, Fumiyo Kohinata is still a hissably audience-pleasing sleazebag.  Coming more to the fore in OB, Ryo Kase also takes a heck of a villainous turn as the oily, borderline psychotic Ishihara.

Like the previous film, Kitano presents the Yakuza world as a chilly, severe environment, dominated by ritual and rich but Spartan decors.  Fans will be happy to hear it is also rather violent.  Though it might not be as slam-bang as they would prefer, it payoffs in a big way.  Although not quite as inspired as its predecessor, Outrage Beyond is a cerebral excursion into gangsterism from a master of the genre, making it a fitting choice for NYFF’s inaugural Midnight section.  It screens this Friday (10/12) and Saturday (10/13) at the Walter Reade and Francesca Beale Theaters, respectively.

NYFF ’12: Lines of Wellington

Torres Vedras was not exactly Waterloo, but don’t tell the Portuguese that.  It was there Gen. Wellington and the combined British and Portuguese troops he commanded defeated Napoleon’s invading army behind secretly commissioned fortifications.  An epic campaign that still resonates on the Iberian Peninsula, Wellington’s military sojourn in Portugal was perfect fodder for a grandly sweeping Raúl Ruiz film, but it was not to be.  Passing away during a stage of either late development or early pre-production, Ruiz’s widow Valeria Sarmiento stepped into the master’s shoes, helming Lines of Wellington (trailer here), which screens during the 50^th New York Film Festival.

Wellington has just shocked the French with tide turning victory at Buçaco, yet he is retreating anyway.  Despite the demoralized state of the Bonaparte forces, they simply have an overwhelming numerical advantage.  The British and their Portuguese allies will dig in behind the Torres Vedras ramparts, letting time fight the battle for them.

This is classic Nineteenth Century warfare, attracting spectators and hanger-ons.  For British evacuee Clarissa Warren, it is the perfect opportunity to find an officer-grade husband.  The distinguished Major Jonathan Foster looks like a good candidate, but he is not necessarily in the market for a trophy wife.  Wounded soldiers will recuperate, romances will blossom, combatants will ravage the local populace, and spies will be dealt with.  Yet, the real story for LOW’s domestic audience is scorched earth damaged wrought by the French and British on their native land.

Condensed from a longer Portuguese miniseries for the international festival circuit, a la Ruiz’s brilliant Mysteries of Lisbon, LOW is a rangy narrative, featuring scores of prestigious cast members, entering and exiting in maddeningly quick succession.  Unlike Mysteries, viewers will definitely feel like there are holes in LOW, at least in its current festival edit.  There are numerous promising subplots here, including Foster’s relationship with the rather forward Warren.  Yet, after being introduced early on, they disappear from film until the closing scenes.  Likewise, when Chiara Mastroianni appears as Hussar, sort of a Bonapartist Emma Peel, it looks like a promising development, but her mere seconds of screen time do not appreciably advance the story.

The only characters getting a puncher’s chance at development are the General himself and Francisco Xavier, a dispossessed farmer now serving as a Sergeant in Wellington’s Portuguese auxiliary and as the film’s primary POV character.  Fortunately, Nuno Lopes has the right rugged, world-weary presence as the disillusion soldier, while John Malkovich chews the scenery like an old pro as the British commander.

LOW definitely has its moments, including a genuinely moving conclusion.  Not intended as an action movie, it powerfully recreates the aftermath of battle, rather than the actual warfighting.  Yet, one wishes it had delved more deeply into the strategic chess game in play, particularly Wellington’s penchant for strategic retreats, which suggest he might have learned something from a certain General Washington.

Even at one hundred fifty-one minutes, there still seems to be something missing from LOW.  It has plenty of the elements to satisfy fans of historical costume drama, but the Around the World in Eighty Days style cameos from the likes of Michel Piccoli, Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve, and Mathieu Almaric are more frustrating than satisfying.  Laudably ambitious, Lines of Wellington is ultimately more notable for what it represents than as a self-contained film.  Nonetheless, interested viewers ought to satisfy their curiosity, because they may not have many opportunities to see LOW in any form.  It sceens this Monday (10/8) and Tuesday (10/9) as a main slate selection of the 2012 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’12: Memories Look At Me

It turns out you can go home again, but you’re likely to get antsy after awhile.  A grown daughter and her aging but still vital parents gently reminisce in Song Fang’s Memories Look at Me, produced by trailblazing independent Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke, which screens tomorrow as a main slate selection of the 50th New York Film Festival.

Song Fang plays herself, as do her parents, Song Di-jin and Ye Yu-zhu, as well as her brother, Yuan.  Since they are really related, the on-screen relationships are all quite believable.  Yet, there is hardly a hint of family dysfunction here.  Visiting from Beijing, Song stays in her parents’ Nanjing flat, which looks quite livable.  Her brother drops by as does her bright young niece.  Frankly, her parents appear to be the model of middle class respectability and their granddaughter should have a promising future ahead of her.  Song though, is less sure of her place in the world.

Memories is like a Digital Generation attempt at an Ozu movie.  That is all very nice, but it leaves the audience with a raft of questions.  First and foremost, how did her borderline bourgeoisie parents survive the Cultural Revolution, which they were surely old enough to witness first hand?  Yes, they share memories of hard times, including hunger and hospitals, but are these oblique references to Maoist persecution or merely the experiences of those who have lived through an era of sharp economic contraction?   As a close second, the thirty-ish Song’s status as one of three siblings in One Child China begs for further explanation as well.

Nonetheless, Song presents an intriguingly oblique view of the new China, through discussions of the relative merit of different forms of insurance (isn’t the Party insurance enough for everyone?) and the hectic on-the-go lifestyle of Beijingers.  Memories also subtly reminds audiences of the importance of family, in an almost Confucian sense, without ever remotely approaching didacticism.

Of the many hats writer-director-editor-co-producer Song wears, her lead performance as her pseudo-self is easily the most impressive.  She has moments of simple, straight forward regret that are truly honest and powerful.  However, her sense of pacing is a bit sluggish, making some of her mentor Jia’s more deliberate films seem almost break-neck by comparison.  The DIY dGenerate digital cinematography is what it is.  Those who have seen a number of Chinese art films will know what to expect.  Well acted but a tough go for most viewers, Memories Look at Me is best saved for die-hard China-watchers and Sinophiles when it screens tomorrow afternoon (10/7) at Alice Tully Hall, as part of the 2012 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’12: Night Across the Street

Don Celso Barra is one of those film noir paper-pushers.  Waxing nostalgic, he is fully aware of his approaching retirement, in every sense, including the most permanent one.  Language and narrative will be twisted like pretzels in Raúl Ruiz’s final film, Night Across the Street (trailer here), which screens as a main slate selection of the 50th New York Film Festival.

Don Celso studies poetry with French expat Jean Giono (who seems to bear little resemblance to his Horseman on the Roof novelist namesake), with whom he has struck up a friendship of outsiders.  Over coffee, Barra tells the poet stories of his childhood, featuring characters (including Long John Silver) who inject themselves into the ostensive reality. 

Barra lives in a colorful boarding house worthy of a Chilean Tennessee Williams and works in a soul deadening office.  At least he still has his health, but not for long.  Barra has foretold his own death at the hands of an assassin acting out of passion rather than for mercenary reasons.  Is it a delusion, a foreshadowing of things to come, both, or neither?  It will be dashed hard to say with certainty, as Ruiz and Barra play their games with the viewers.

Indeed, it is tempting to conflate the auteur and his final protagonist.  Though Ruiz began development on Lines of Wellington (also screening at this year’s NYFF), it was his widow Valeria Sarmiento who ultimately helmed the film after his passing.  As a result, when Barra foretells his own death, it takes on obvious additional resonance.  Still, it is impossible to invest too much biographical significance in Street, given the eccentricity of Barra’s story.  With its Séances, the ghosts of Beethoven, and an excursion into the afterlife, it kind of has it all, but not necessarily in logical order.

The late great filmmaker leaves us with some amazing parting images, but viewers might want to leave a trail of breadcrumbs.  It is easy to get lost in Street, especially since Ruiz’s leisurely pace does not exactly propel you along.  Still, Sergio Hernández projects the morose elegance perfectly befitting the unprepossessing Don Celso.

Sad yet playful, Street is like Inception for the art-house crowd.  While Ruiz over emphasizes the childhood flashbacks at the expense of the noir elements, his control of mood and atmosphere are always masterful.  Recommended for Borges readers (but not what you might call general audiences), Night Across the Street screens tomorrow (10/7) at Alice Tully Hall as part of the 2012 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’12: Like Someone in Love

Japan is a part of Asia, an obvious but convenient fact for Abbas Kiarostami.  After the elegant Tuscan setting of Certified Copy, it seemed advisable to avoid the evil “West” for his next project filmed outside his native Iran.  It was probably fortuitous, considering the official Iranian film establishment is indulging in a paroxysm of insanity, withdrawing its official foreign language Academy Award submission in protest of a youtube video only a handful of people saw, the very year after the breakout victory of Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation.  Yet, like Copy, there is still plenty of narrative gamesmanship afoot in Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love (trailer here), which screens during the 50^th New York Film Festival.

Akiko does not appear to be inclined towards emotional involvement, so her escorting gig is probably a reasonable option to cover her college tuition.  Putting off her boyfriend and blowing off her visiting grandmother, she is about to meet a new client.  However, retired professor Takashi is only interested in the sort of chaste intimacy she constantly rejects.  Nonetheless, she lets her guard down with the old man, falling asleep in his flat.  The next morning he drives her to class, where their paths cross that of her boyfriend and complications ensue.

Kiarostami clearly has an affinity for Japanese cinema, having paid tribute to Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu with his cinematic-essay Five Dedicated to Ozu.  While there is definitely a kernel of the great master’s work in the way Prof. Takashi relates to Akiko, Someone is a distinctly colder fish.  In fact, it presents a rather pessimistic view of humanity, compared to Ozu’s forgiving humanism.

For an apparently simple story, Someone guards its secrets vigilantly, which gets frustrating after time.  Nonetheless, Kiarostami still coaxed some excellent performances from his small ensemble, despite the language barrier.  Rin Takanashi (also excellent in the disturbing Isn’t Anyone Alive) takes a star-making turn, so vulnerable yet such a passive aggressive presence as the brittle Akiko.  Conversely, Tadashi Okuno nearly approaches the pathos of Ozu’s aging protagonists as the lonely professor.

Stylishly lensed by Katsumi Yanagijima and featuring a soundtrack of moody jazz classics (the most apt being Ellington’s “In My Solitude” rather than Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of the song lending its title to the film), Someone looks and sounds great, almost lulling the audience into a hypnotic trance.  Yet, even with the fine work from Takanashi and Okuno, Kiarostami is just too demur and elliptical in his narrative approach to fully engage viewers.  Accomplished in many ways, but certainly not a masterwork, Like Someone in Love is recommended mainly for the filmmaker’s dedicated admirers when it screens again this coming Monday (10/8) as a main slate selection of the 2012 NYFF.

NYFF ’12: The Paperboy

In the Deep South, there is not much to do except have graphic sex and commit senseless acts of violence.  At least, that is the portrait Lee Daniels chooses to paint in The Paperboy (trailer here).  However, the biggest mystery of his adaptation of Pete Dexter’s 1995 crime novel is why anyone would screen it as part of a gala tribute to co-star Nicole Kidman.  Yet, that is what happened last night at the 50^th New York Film Festival.

It is the late 1960’s or so in Florida’s swamp country.  Tarty death row groupie Charlotte Bless has convinced a pair of Miami newspapermen to look into her “boyfriend” Hillary Van Wetter’s case.  Ward Jansen is actually coming home to the town where his father W.W. publishes the local birdcage liner and his younger brother Jack does not really do anything at all.  Of course, the junior Jansen will fall head over heels for sleazy femme fatale as he shuttles her, his brother, and Ward’s African American colleague Yardley Acheman about town.

There is a crusading journalist-legal thriller in Paperboy somewhere, but it often gets lost in Daniel’s heavy-handed but discursive narrative, told in flashback by the Jansen’s family maid, Anita Chester, who is never in any position to witness the events she relates.  Instead, we see Bless going number one on young Jansen’s jellyfish stings and sit through several scenes of autoerotica.  Eventually showing the audience Matthew McConaughey’s elder Ward Brother naked on the porcelain throne, Daniels will clearly spare us nothing.

This is bad movie, but Daniels does his best to dress up his lurid material with some visual flare and a soulful R&B soundtrack.  It helps, but only so much.  Too preoccupied with sex and race, Daniels often lets the crime story founder, distracted by his characters’ hang-ups.

Frankly, it is rather baffling why Kidman would accept the role of Bless.  Regardless of her box office track record, she is one of the few actresses in Hollywood who can play it smart and classy, as well as sexy.  However, the lingering aftertaste of Paperboy could damage that image.  In truth, she is not bad revisiting To Die For terrain, provided viewers are okay with the obscure motivations and rash decision-making endemic to all the film’s characters.

Zac Efron is also adequate enough as young Jansen, largely reprising his bid for respectability in Me and Orson Welles, but with more sex and less earnestness.  As the supposedly mercurial Van Wetter, John Cusack just looks like a sad Muppet.   Deep dark secrets notwithstanding, McConaughey does his regular Lincoln Lawyer thing as Brother Ward.  Most frustratingly, the great Scott Glenn is criminally wasted as old man Jansen.

Just a big humid mess, viewers will want to shower after seeing The Paperboy.  Yet, it is hard to turn away from it, like the sight of a wrecking ball demolishing a building.  Call it a career-wreck.  Not recommended, The Paperboy opens tomorrow (10/5) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine and AMC Loews Lincoln Square, following its gala screening at the 2012 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’12: Deceptive Practice—the Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay

Centuries ago, magicians tactfully called themselves jugglers.  Both talents require dexterity, but the latter was less likely to get practitioners burned at the stake, or what have you.  Just ask Ricky Jay.  The illusionist and Mamet film regular is an expert in the history of his craft, as viewers quickly learn straight from the source in Molly Bernstein & Alan Edelstein’s documentary profile, Deceptive Practice: the Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, which screens as part of the 50^th New York Film Festival’s On the Arts sidebar.

Ricky Jay can make a deck of cards sing and dance.  He is also an old hand with the cup and balls.  Magic effects with gambling implications are clearly his specialty, but he is well grounded in the entire tradition of illusionism.  He had some talented teachers, beginning with his grandfather, an amateur magician who counted many professionals amongst his closest friends.  It was from such storied figures as Al Flosso (the Coney Island Fakir) and Dai Vernon that Ricky Jay really learned the secrets of his craft.

While Ricky Jay is certainly seen doing plenty of effects (to use the preferred terminology), Deceptive is more about his work as a historian of magic and his relationships with his mentors and colleagues.  Fortunately, the professional performer definitely knows how to tell a story.  For the uninitiated, it also offers an intriguing peak into an exclusive but collegial world, where headliners and hobbyists rub shoulders and forge friendships based on their mutual passion for magic.

Deceptive has its serious moments, gingerly probing its subject’s strained relationship with his parents, but mostly it is just fun stuff.  Featuring vintage clips of Ricky Jay performing on the Dinah Shore Show as well as interviews with the likes of Mamet, Steve Martin, and other admirers of the magician, it is an entertaining introduction the nimble-fingered card specialist.  Recommended for his fans as well as those fascinated by colorful subcultures, Deceptive Practices screens this Thursday (10/4) as part of the 2012 New York Film Festival, with Ricky Jay himself  scheduled to appear in person.

NYFF ’12: Room 237

The demarcation between unconventional online commentary and outright crackpottery is thin and porous.  Five enthusiastic experts on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining swerve back and forth over that line like a politician at a sobriety check in a documentary examination of the film and those who over-analyze it.  People truly say the darnedest things about the 1980 horror classic in Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 (trailer here), which screens as part of the 50^th New York Film Festival’s Cinema Reflected sidebar.

We never see Ascher’s five experts, but seriously, that is probably just as well.  Several claimed to have been initially underwhelmed by the film on their first viewing, but started teasing out strange hidden meanings in the years that followed.  Yes, Kubrick was known for his painstaking attention to detail, but some of Room’s disembodied voices often seem to be obsessing over continuity errors healthy viewers would never notice.  At one point, Ascher holds a freeze frame, double-dog daring viewers to see the subliminal portrait of Kubrick the auteur supposedly imbedded in the opening credit sequence.

Some commentators are truly masters of the logical quantum leap, arguing amongst other things, The Shining is an allegory for the Native American genocide due to the presence of Calumet baking soda.  Yes, the Overlook Hotel is well appointed with Native American themed paintings and such, but that is not unusual for a mountain lodge in Colorado.  Indeed, we know full well it was built atop a Native burial ground, generating all kinds of bad karma, in a manner predating Poltergeist.  Nonetheless, perhaps Occam’s razor suggests the spirits are just restless.

Still, some of the mysterious analysts make some intriguing points.  Most notably, Juli Kearns mapped out every shot, proving the physical impossibility of the Overlook as the audience sees it.  In effect, the hotel is just as much a labyrinth as the notorious shrubbery outside, but a malevolent, ever shifting one.

Room 237 is an amusing but affectionate tribute to cult film geekery.  Ascher’s approach is simultaneously subversive and nostalgic, similar in tone to The S from Hell, his short film homage to Screen Gems’ hideous logo.  His strategy to eschew talking heads also works rather well, relying instead on the visuals of The Shining, as well as other related films, such as the master’s Eyes Wide Shut.

One would not exactly call Room 237 convincing per se, but it is quite provocative and engaging, in a scruffily eccentric kind of way.  Somewhat tricky to classify, it debuted at Sundance as part of their vaguely experimental New Frontiers track, was acquired by IFC for its Midnight line, but quite logically screens during NYFF as part of the Cinema Reflected sidebar.  Recommended for all serious cult film fans, it plays this Thursday (10/4) and next Monday (10/8) as the 50^th New York Film Festival continues.

NYFF ’12: Celluloid Man

Here in America, we have the Library of Congress, MoMA, and Martin Scorsese, amongst others, all working on behalf of film preservation.  In India, they had P.K. Nair.  Now retired, Nair was an institution unto himself.  Shivendra Singh Dungarpur profiles the curator, while bemoaning the current state of the archive his subject tirelessly assembled in Celluloid Man, which screens as part of the Cinema Reflected sidebar during the 50^th New York Film Festival.

Accepting a research position at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Nair initially harbored his own filmmaking ambitions.  However, with the formation of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), Nair found his destiny as a archivist.  For over a quarter of a century, he played a central role acquiring prints of historically significant Indian films, representing all of the country’s regional and linguistic traditions, as well as prints of important works from around the world, for FTII students and faculty to analyze and devour. 

Following lead after lead, Nair tracked down many of the only surviving prints, or in some cases mere fragments, of what were popular and critical successes of their day, but are now largely lost.  Of an estimated 1,700 films produced during India’s silent era, only nine have been saved for posterity—entirely through Nair’s efforts.

Indeed, Celluloid is pointedly critical of the lack of attention and resources devoted to the preservation and restoration of classic cinema in contemporary India, which is something of a shock given Bollywood’s economic vitality and its attendant publicity machine.  Yet, according to Celluloid’s interview subjects, after Nair’s retirement, the NFAI has fallen into a dreadful state of neglect and Nair himself has essentially been declared persona non grata, for internal political reasons.

That is a reasonably intriguing story, particularly for those well versed with classic Indian cinema traditions.  The problem with Celluloid is its unwieldy one hundred sixty-four minute running time.  Time after time, talking heads echo each other, almost verbatim, to emphasize points under discussion.  It is a quality cast of commentators, including Krzysztof Zanussi, Naseeruddin Shah, and Shyam Benegal, we just get it already.

An active supporter of the BFI’s restoration efforts, Dungarpur obviously takes this subject to heart.  He also incorporates some interesting film clips into Celluloid, even for viewers not so deeply steeped in Indian film history.  While some disciplined pruning would have tightened and strengthened the overall package, it is nonetheless a worthy cinematic tribute.  Superior to These Amazing Shadows, the documentary tribute to the work of National Film Registry, but lacking the dramatic heft of Golden Slumbers, Davy Chou’s moving elegy for the Cambodian film industry destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, Celluloid Man fits quite nicely into this year’s Cinema Reflected sidebar.  It screens this Thursday (10/4) at the Francesca Beale Theater as part of the 2012 NYFF.

NYFF ’12: Life of Pi

In 3D, New Age platitudes look like they are coming straight at you.  At least Taiwanese auteur Ang Lee makes them stunning to behold.  The tiger does not hurt either.  Generating significant buzz, Lee’s they-said-it-couldn’t-be-done adaptation of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (trailer here) officially opened the 50^th New York Film Festival, now underway at several Lincoln Center venues.

Growing up in India’s French quarter, Pi Patel was named for a Parisian swimming pool, but embraced mathematics as a means of truncating the embarrassing Piscine.  As a boy, religion was his hobby, practicing Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam Furr’s Cafeteria style (but no love for Buddhism, evidently).  He also picks up a few animal training pointers from his zookeeper father, which will stand him in good stead.

Much to Patel’s chagrin, his father decides to immigrate to Canada, where he and his brother will enjoy better future opportunities.  Tragically, their ship sinks en-route, which is how, through an unlikely set of circumstances, Patel finds himself sharing a life boat with the family’s ferocious Bengal tiger, Richard Parker.

Pi is not exactly a story of a boy and his tiger.  Despite the character’s avowed spirituality, he never hopes to change the tiger’s nature.  Richard Parker begins and ends the film as a wild beast.  However, Patel will attempt to train him with the techniques he learned from his father, in order to survive.  They will not cohabitate though.  Patel will spend most of his time in a makeshift raft lashed to the lifeboat, ceding the larger vessel to Richard Parker.

For those who were wondering where Ang Lee has been, he has spent the last four years or so in a wave tank in Taiwan.  Not surprisingly, the man who helmed Crouching Tiger has a keen sense of how to incorporate 3D to best serve the on-screen action.  As dramatic as the tiger sequences are, it is the way he realizes depth and scope that are particularly arresting.  He and his team create a spectacular fantasy world in the middle of the ocean.

Unfortunately, the narrative settles into a second act doldrums, largely repeating its Robinson Crusoe-Grizzly Adams motifs in what seems like an endless loop.  Yet, in contrast to the film’s frequent heavy-handedness, Lee’s payoff hits the mark, precisely because of his tasteful understatement.

Indeed, there are many elements that work quite well in Pi, particularly its nostalgic portrayal of French India.  For many viewers conditioned by Jewel in the Crown to think of pre-1949 India solely in terms of the British Raj, this is fertile ground, worth exploring in further films.  Lee also nicely establishes the Patel family history, especially the role played by his dashing honorary uncle, Mamaji (played by the distinctive Elie Alouf).  The wrap-around framing device is also quite effective, featuring a relatively brief but moving performance from Irffan Khan as the adult Patel, relating his story to a Martel-like novelist.  For hardcore film geeks, Pi even features an unusual aspect ratio shift.

Pi has its merits, but it also illustrates the perils inherent in films confined to lifeboats.  Visually, it is quite the triumph, but Lee’s young cast-members are not all some more enthusiastic critics are billing them to be.  Ultimately, much of Pi is like a 3D painting—dazzling to soak in, but rather static.  Better filmmaking than story-telling, Life of Pi certainly deserves technical consideration during awards season.  Recommended for those interested in 3D as legitimate creative medium, Life of Pi launched this year’s NYFF on Friday, with a theatrical opening already scheduled for November 21.

NYFF ’12: Beyond the Hills

Alina is either tragically codependent or possessed by the Devil.  Radically different measures would be required depending on the diagnosis, but either way, she will visit a host of trials upon her girlfriend Voichita and her fellow Orthodox convent residents in Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills (trailer here), Romania’s latest official best foreign language Oscar submission, which screens as part of the main slate of the 50^th New York Film Festival.

Meek and pious, Voichita appears perfectly suited to a cloistered life.  Alina is a different story.  However, since her former friend has no real family, Voichita arranges for her to stay temporarily in her quarters.  Yet, as soon as she arrives, Alina starts badgering her former friend to leave with her.  Gently rebuffing her, Voichita watches in alarm as her visitor’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic and disruptive, evetually manifesting in several public meltdowns.  The priest and the nuns do not want to abandon a soul in need, but after the medical establishment washes their hands of Aline, there seems to be only one remaining course of action: exorcism.

Mungiu implies a great deal in Hills, very definitely including the nature of Aline and Voichita’s relationship, while leaving just as much open to interpretation.  It would also have been very easy to portray the priest and good sisters as stereotypical zealots dangerously convinced of their own infallibility.  However, Hills constantly reasserts the messy humanity of each character.  In fact, the ambiguity of the “possession” gives the film quite a distinctive flavor.  Frankly, after about two hours of Aline acting out, most viewers will be ready to throw their lot in with the nuns, holding down the devil-woman as the priest reads the purification scriptures over her.

With a running time of 150 minutes, Hills often feels like what it is, a product of the Romanian New Wave of independent filmmaking.  It probably would not have killed anyone had Mungiu shaved off twenty minutes or so.  Nonetheless, he elicits several riveting performances, the most notable being Cosmina Stratan as Voichita, the confused innocent.  As Alina, Cristina Flutur is also scarily convincing engaging in all manner of aggressive, self-destructive behavior.  Yet, it is Valeriu Andriută’s work as the priest, simultaneously severe and sympathetic, that really forestalls snap audience judgments.

Based on a novelized account of a real life incident in Moldova, Hills is not a kneejerk attack on Eastern Orthodoxy.  Nonetheless, as the Russian Orthodox Church hemorrhages international credibility due to its perceived alliance with the Putin regime, it is hard not to invest Hills with an additional layer of meaning, whether or not Mungiu intended it.  Given its ambiguous but evocative treatment monastic life and supernatural possession, Beyond the Hills would be a fascinating film to see in conjunction with Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Mother Joan of the Angels.  Challenging in multiple ways, Beyond the Hills is recommended for hardy cineastes with at least a couple of Romanian New Wave films already under their belts when it screens tomorrow (10/1), next Sunday (10/7), and the following Thursday 10/11), as part of the 2012 NYFF.

NYFF ’12: The Satin Slipper

America represents the land of opportunity, but the Islamic world remains a very real danger.  It is the late Sixteenth Century or perhaps the early Seventeenth.  French playwright Paul Claudel might have taken a few liberties with his historical timeline, but that is almost to be expected of an epic spanning three continents and bridging Heaven and Earth.  Adapting Claudel’s Satin Slipper is a daunting proposition, but Portuguese centenarian auteur Manoel de Oliveira took up the challenge at the youthful age of 77.  Originally a selection of the 1985 New York Film Festival (in a drastically edited form), Oliveira’s full 410 minute Slipper makes a return appearance tomorrow as part of the Masterworks section of the 50th New York Film Festival, now officially underway.

The Old World has discovered the New World and Spain rules the seas.  However, her grip might be loosening somewhat.  For Don Pelagio, it is a dubious honor to have the King’s confidence at such a time.  He is being dispatched to shore up Spain’s African holdings at a time when his marriage is being sorely tested.  The much younger Doña Prouheze has attracted the unwelcomed attention of Don Camillo as well as the reciprocated affection of Don Rodrigo. 

Due to the political maneuvering of the King and her husband, Prouheze reluctantly accepts command of the Spanish outpost at Mogador, forcing her into the clutches of Camillo and forever separating her from Rodrigo.  However, she eventually entrusts her daughter to the thwarted lover who could never have conceived her, yet to whom she bears an eerie resemblance.

Slipper is talky, rangy, and top heavy with exposition.  It is also a masterpiece of world drama, but an absolute beast to stage.  While full productions generally clock in around the seven hour mark, the Dominican Black Friars Repertory mounted a svelte but worthy three hour abridged Slipper as part of their Claudel Project in early 2010.  Oliveira deliberately emphasizes the dramatic source material, using an apparent proscenium stage production as a framing device and using highly stylized theatrical sets throughout the film. 

This is a strategy that becomes considerably more efficacious as the film progresses.  In fact, the scenes involving the celestial angels are far better served by his contra-realist visuals than they could have been rendered with mid 1980’s special effects.  Unfortunately, Oliveira’s transition away from the ostensive stage undercuts the powerful opening, in which a Jesuit Father lashed to the mast of sinking ship prays directly to God for the redemption of his impetuous younger brother, Don Rodrigo.  It is a rather profound scene that essentially encapsulates the themes of redemption and sacrifice Claudel will explore in the hours to come, in mere minutes.

Despite its lack of verisimilitude and Oliveira’s occasional postmodern flourishes, his cast connects with the deep yearning of Claudel’s characters.  Luís Miguel Cintra conveys both Rodrigo’s recklessness dash and his severe brooding quite well.  As Prouheze, Patricia Barzyk (Miss France 1980) has to be one of the fiercest tragic screen heroines ever.  Probably the most recognizable face in Oliveira’s Slipper is French actress Anne Consigny, who also has some fine moments with Cintra, serving as her adoptive father’s conscience.

Most viewers will need time to acclimate to Slipper’s look and language, just as the ensemble visibly seems to get their sea legs as the film picks up steam.  While periodic scenes of Shakespearean bumpkins offering their rustic commentary could have been excised without causing any grievous bodily harm, the totality of Oliveira’s production is undeniably impressive.

NYFF deserves all kinds of credit for programming Satin Slipper.  At a whisker under seven hours, it presents certain scheduling challenges (note: there will be a half hour intermission).  Yet, it dovetails rather nicely with other selections at this year’s fest.  Oliveira admirers can also watch the master at work helming The Strange Case ofAngelica in Luis Miñarro’s documentary short 101 (Oliveira’s age at the time), which proceeds Francesco Patierno’s War of the Volcanoes tonight (9/29) and this coming Wednesday (10/3). 

Although it is predominantly about Spanish characters, written by a French playwright, Slipper also incorporates a fair bit of Portuguese historical geopolitics, making it an interesting companion film to see in dialogue with Valeria Sarmiento’s Lines of Wellington (originally developed by the late Raul Ruiz), screening October 9^th and 10^th.  Regardless, Oliveira’s Slipper is an ambitious attraction in its own right—one festival patrons will not have many other opportunities to see on the big screen in all its seven hour glory.  Recommended for the literate and adventurous, Satin Slipper screens this Sunday afternoon (9/30) at the Walter Reade Theater.

NYFF ’12: Liv & Ingmar

They collaborated on some of the least romantic films ever (see Hour of the Wolf, for instance).  Yet, Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann became the first couple of international art cinema.  The Swedish auteur’s romance with his Norwegian muse would not last, but their relationship continued to evolve and endure.  Ullmann reflects on each stage of her career-defining association with Bergman in Dheeraj Akolkar’s Liv & Ingmar (trailer here), which screens as part of the 50^th New York Film Festival’s Cinema Reflected sidebar.

What a difference a few years and a more northern latitude make.  Whereas Ingrid Bergman was pilloried for leaving her husband to take up with Roberto Rossellini, Ullmann essentially did the same thing with Bergman, but with no attendant outrage from the world press.  As she tells it, she was widely encouraged by friends to do so.  Indeed, the film is entirely presented from Ullmann’s perspective, relying almost entirely on her narration and extended interview sequences to tell their story.

Nevertheless, there is no score settling in L&I.  Even after the dissolution of their intimate cohabitation, the legends of Scandinavian cinema remained on good terms, eventually becoming the closest of friends.  There is definitely a lesson in that, especially if you think documentary crews will one day be interviewing your former lovers.  However, it might not make the most compelling viewing. 

Ullmann still offers some insight into the dark places manifested in Bergman’s films, but that is about as far as the film goes.  As a result, L&I is permeated with a fatal sense of respectability.  Granted, nobody wants or needs to see a great filmmaker like Bergman trashed by an ex.  The fact that he and Ullmann continued to mean so much to each other is quite touching and nearly the extent of the film’s takeaway.

Scenes of Ullmann revisiting Bergman’s Fårö Island home give the documentary a vivid sense of place and there are plenty of tellingly illustrative clips from their films.  L&I is quite a heartfelt tribute, but as a work of cinema in its own right it is hardly essential (though it is an interesting film to see in conjunction with Francesco Patierno’s thematically related War of the Volcanoes, also screening during this year’s NYFF).  Mostly recommended for dedicated Bergman and Ullmann admirers, Liv & Ingmar screens this coming Monday (10/1) and Tuesday the 10^th during the 2012 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’12: Barbara

Intimacy is based on trust, so is it ever really possible in police state like Soviet-era East Germany?  Obviously, that is not the Stasi’s problem.  They are out to do everything possible to isolate and demoralize a dissident doctor.  Yet, in spite of her better judgment, she will develop ambiguously complicated feelings for her minder in Christian Petzold’s Barbara (trailer here), Germany’s official best foreign language Academy Award submission, which screens during the 50^th New York Film Festival.

As soon as Dr. Barbara Wolff applied for an exit visa, her brilliant career was effectively over.  Transferred from a prestigious East Berlin hospital to a provincial backwater, Dr. Wolff is all too aware of the eyes on her.  The most obvious set belongs to Andre, Barbara’s ostensive supervisor, whose role as the designated Stasi snitch is an open secret.  He has a surprisingly convincing good guy act though and he definitely seems to care about their patients, particularly Mario, a young man suffering from a mysterious head trauma that defies diagnosis.  Yet, the case that resonates deepest with Dr. Wolff is that of Stella, a recaptured prison camp escapee suffering from meningitis.

Wolff is not inclined to meekly submit to the Stasi’s mounting harassment.  Having hatched an escape plan with her West German lover, she believes her time in East Germany is limited, which is why she is so surprised by her growing attraction to Andre and her emotional investment in their patients.

Barbara has been described as Petzold’s response to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s brilliant The Lives of Others.  That is true to an extent, but not in a polemical sense.  There is no nostalgia here for the Honecker regime, let alone a defense.  Petzold’s parents made the flight to freedom Dr. Wolff is anticipating, so he is understandably sensitive to the everyday tribulations endured by East Germans.  Indeed, the film is best at conveying the guarded nature required for even the most prosaic of conversations and the jarring sound of that dreaded knock in the night.

Barbara Wolff easily represents Nina Hoss’s best performance to reach our shores.  Outwardly diffident but profoundly uneasy beneath her facade, the good doctor might be the best woman’s lead role of the year (and most years prior).  It is a tricky proposition to convey her character’s roiling inner turmoil as well as her concerted efforts masking it from the world, but Hoss pulls it off remarkably.  Former East German Ronald Zehrfield also helps complicate audiences’ emotional responses as the flawed but perhaps still idealistic Andre, who might also be a victim himself, in that manner unique to captive citizens of police states.

Exercising a masterful control of mood and ambient sound, Petzold vividly recreates a sense of life in the GDR, in all its oppressive austerity.  It is a lean, tense narrative, yet Petzold derives much of the suspense from within his characters rather than through external cloak-and-daggering.  A very accomplished film featuring Oscar-worthy work from Hoss, Barbara is very highly recommended when it screens this coming Monday (10/1), next Saturday (10/6), and the following Tuesday (10/9) as a main slate selection of the 2012 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’12: Final Cut—Ladies & Gentlemen

It is the classic Hollywood story.  Everyman meets everywoman, with everycomplication ensuing.  One-upping Chuck Workman, György Pálfi aggregates clips from some of the greatest milestones of international cinema, as well as two of his own previous films, into the loose narrative form that is Final Cut—Ladies & Gentleman (trailer here), which screens as part of the Cinema Reflected sidebar at the 50th New York Film Festival.

As Charlie Chaplin, the protagonist wakes up and stretches.  As Gene Hackman he shaves and knots his tie as Leonardo DiCaprio, amongst others.  A chance encounter on the street will lead him to pursue a mystery woman, who turns out to be a nightclub singer, played by the likes of Liza Minelli and Jessica Rabbit.  Despite the efforts of a jealous ex-boyfriend(s), they fall in love and marry.  Yet, domestic life presents its own challenges.

Final Cut is light years removed from the kind of unpleasant Taxidermy, Pálfi’s last film to have an American theatrical release—and a good thing that is.  What started as a creative response to the Hungarian film industry’s economic doldrums became the 2012 Cannes Classic’s closer.  However, his love letter to cinema is not likely to ink a distribution deal anytime soon, since Pálfi was never bourgeoisie enough to actually seek permission to use his constituent snippets.  Considering Walt Disney and Lucas Films are well represented in the mix, one would not be shocked if there are a few cease & desist letters in its future.

Make no mistake, we all recognize intellectual property rights here, but it is sort of shame a home DVD release is not likely for Final Cut.  It could be quite the party game for movie buffs, looking for bragging rights for how many more films they can recognize than their friends.  While many of us will recognize the Kurosawa and Godard excerpts, some of the Eastern European selections might be a little tricky.  The idiosyncrasies of Pálfi’s editorial sensibility are also sometimes surprising (Angel Heart, again?).  For those wondering, Hitchcock’s Vertigo did indeed make the cut, at the risk of drawing another eyebrow-raising statement from Kim Novak, a la The Artist.

Granted, Final Cut is hardly groundbreaking.  There are several short films floating around the internet based around similar concepts, but Pálfi takes it further, even tossing in the occasional full frontal for comedic effect.  If nothing else, it brings back a flood of movie memories and should spur wide ranging post-screening did-you-ever-see discussions.  Not particularly deep or perhaps even legally defensible, Final Cut—Ladies & Gentleman is still a fair amount of film geek fun.  It screens this coming Monday (10/1) at the Francesca Beale Theater during the 2012 NYFF.