SFIFF ’12: Policeman

As if “Palestinian” terrorism were not enough to worry about, Israel also must contend with old fashioned violent leftist extremism.  Fortunately, the anti-terror cops are confident they can handle any threat in Nadav Lapid’s anti-procedural Policeman (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival.

Yaron is your basic red-blooded Israeli man with a very pregnant wife.  He is the leader of his squad not necessarily by rank, but by force of personality.  Regrettably, a rather messy mission has created lingering legal problems for his unit.  However, Yaron should be able to fix it, if he can convince a colleague with a convenient but all too real brain tumor to take the heat for them.

About halfway through the film, Lapid switches gears, introducing viewers to the next crisis the SWAT cops will face.  The charismatic Shira and the manipulative Natanel lead an extreme leftwing terror cell planning to crash a billionaire’s wedding.  Their manifesto states: “it is time for the poor to get rich and the rich to start dying,” which ultimately would not leave anyone left alive.  At least total equality would be achieved.  The jig is nearly up when the father of Shira’s newest dupe discovers their plan.  Yet, rather than save his son by informing, the old school radical invites himself along to serve as his protector.  Before long, Yaron and his comrades reappear with an obvious job to do.

Policeman is an unusually detached film, highly charged politically, yet scrupulously avoiding the central issue of Israeli life.  In fact, Natanel vetoes every reference to the so-called “Palestinian” issue in Shira’s proclamation, lest it muddy the waters.  What emerges is a portrait of extremes.  On one hand, we see the hyper-masculinity of Yaron and his colleagues.  Lapid repeatedly shows viewers the back-slapping and chest-bumping rituals they go through every time they greet each other.  On the flip side, Shira and her co-conspirators are an emotionless lot, who are all more than willing to kill and die as part of the violent—all except Natanel that is.  He seems to prefer someone else stand in the line of fire.

Lapid’s clinical tone is not that far removed from Olivier Assayas’s Carlos, but it is even less judgmental.  Whereas many people will be horrified the actions of Shira and company during the final act, it is quite possible some immature viewers might be stirred up by it all.  Granted, that ambiguity is largely the point, but it leaves the film in a precariously half-pregnant state.

Whether it was her intention or not, Yaara Pelzig’s performance as Shira is absolutely terrifying.  Like a cobra, she expresses the hypnotic power extremists hold over their followers.  Frankly, the lack of a correspondingly compelling character among the police, good or bad, somewhat unbalances the film.

Lapid’s distinctly bifurcated narrative structure leads to a conspicuous stop-and-start-over effect that is arguably not in the film’s best interests.  Still, it quickly builds up more steam in the second part than first segment ever had.  Indeed, Policeman lays claim to one of the more intense and disturbing hostage stand-offs dramatized on film in recent years.  Wildly uneven but powerful down the stretch, Policeman should intrigue and scare viewers.  It screens tomorrow (5/2) and Thursday (5/3) as part of the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival.

SFIFF ’12: Land of Oblivion

On April 25^th, 1986, Pripyat was known as a model “Atomic City.”  Two days later, it was well on its way to being a radioactive ghost town.  The resulting physical and emotional damage done to the local Ukrainian populace is starkly dramatized in Michale Boganim’s Land of Oblivion (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival.

It rained on that fateful April 26^th, fixing the radiation in the area surrounding the nuclear power plant.  That was bad news for Pripyat, the bustling Ukrainian town built accommodate Chernobyl workers, but good for the rest of the world. 

Making a bad situation worse, many Ukrainians would needlessly perish because of the Soviets’ reluctance to admit the severity of the crisis.  One of them will be Anya’s new husband Pyotr, a fireman pulled away from their wedding reception for lethal duty at Chernobyl.  The disaster will also rob young Valery of his father Alexei, a safety engineer expressly forbidden from warning Pripyat residents of the deadly reality he understood only too well.  In contradiction of Soviet policy, he sends Valery and his mother away on the first train out of town.  Faced with the guilt and futility of the situation, Alexei rooms the streets of Pripyat, handing out umbrellas as certain death rains from the sky.

Ten years later, Anya has not moved on with her life.  She works as a guide, taking curious French tourists and grieving survivors on tours of the no man’s land that was once her home.  One of her groups includes Alexei’s widow and Valery, who has become an angry teenager greatly desiring some closure.

Shot on-location in the forbidden zone, Oblivion looks downright spooky.  It clearly suggests the upcoming Oren Peli produced Chernobyl horror movie should be scary as all get-out, even they do an only halfway decent job of it.  Frankly, watching Anya lead her busloads of gawkers is rather jarring.  Obviously, this job is profoundly unhealthy for her, but she remains psychologically tethered to the ghost town.

While Oblivion abstains from graphic depictions of the radiation sickness, it presents an unambiguous indictment of the Soviet authorities’ rampant CYA-ing and callous indifference to Ukrainian suffering.  Like the character of Anya, it somewhat loses its way during the early scenes of the 1996 winter story arc, but when Boganim starts following the wayward Valery through Pripyat’s desolate streets and abandoned buildings, the film achieves an air of surreal high tragedy.

Admirably understated, former Bond-girl Olga Kurylenko’s work as Anya, in her native Ukrainian, is remarkably assured and shrewdly modulated.  As Alexei, Polish actor Andrzej Chyra is also quite restrained, yet touching.

In her first dramatic feature, Israeli-born French documentarian Boganim balances the intimate and the ominous fairly dexterously.  Oblivion also boasts a distinctive soundtrack from Polish jazz musician Leszek Możdżer.  Refraining from his experimentations with “treated” pianos, his themes are surprisingly upbeat and swinging, but they help propel the audience through much of the on-screen grimness.  Often visually arresting, Land of Oblivion is a well produced film, definitely recommended, particularly for those fascinated by the Chernobyl disaster and the Soviet era in general, when it screens again this Friday (4/27) and Sunday (4/29) during this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.

Blond Noir: Headhunters

Right now, Norway’s economy is a lot like our own.  There are way more job-seekers than open positions to fill.  At such times, if a recruiter sends you on an interview, you go, even though you might be leaving a few stray valuable objects d’art lying about your home unguarded.  That is Roger Brown’s racket, but it turns unexpectedly deadly in Morten Tyldum’s Headhunters (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York and also screens this afternoon as part of the 2012 San FranciscoInternational Film Festival.

Brown is a man slight of stature, married to his bombshell wife, Diana.  Suffering from a king-sized inferiority complex, he has allowed them to live beyond their means by burglarizing the homes of his executive search clients.  With his house of cards on the brink of collapse, Brown’s prayers appear to be answered in the person of Claes Greve.  Not only is the former tech CEO the perfect candidate for a plum position Brown must fill, he also owns a genuine Rubens painting of rather dodgy providence.  Win-win, right? 

However, when Brown starts to suspect the younger man and his wife are carrying-on an affair behind his back, he sabotages Greve’s campaign for the position.  At this point, Greve reacts more forcefully than Brown anticipates.  Mouse, meet cat.

Headhunters is quite a nifty one-darned-thing-after-another thriller.  Tyldum has a good handle on the material, constantly ratcheting-up the tension, but periodically using black comedy to release some steam.  In his hands, the frequent twists are entertaining rather than forced or exhausting. 

Tyldum also has a nice looking cast to focus on.  Especially bankable is the presence of Game of Thrones alumnus Nikolaj Coster-Wladau, now world famous for playing Lena Headey’s brother (and other things), Ser Jaime Lannister, here perfectly cast as Greve.  As Diana Brown, former model Synnøve Macody Lund certainly looks the part, but she also has some kind of nice dramatic moments as well.  In the lead, Aksell Hennie’s Brown holds the film together while coming to grief quite effectively.

Based on Norwegian mystery writer Jo Nesbø’s first book outside his bread-and-butter series, Headhunters engages in some of the same far-fetched anti-corporate humbug undermining so many recent domestic crime dramas.  However, Tyldum keeps the roller-coaster loop-de-looping at such breakneck speed, it is not so distracting.  Definitely a dark but thoroughly enjoyable exercise in skullduggery, Headhunters is easily recommended when it screens today as part of this year’s SFIFF and opens theatrically this Friday (4/27) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.

SFIFF ’12: The Double Steps

Francois Augiéras definitely painted for posterity.  After vandals destroyed a set of his desert bunker murals, he painted another, deliberately burying all signs of it in the sand.  The European expatriate painter would only trust future generations to respect his work.  Both a fictional Malawian and Spain’s leading contemporary artist Miguel Barceló search for those lost murals in Isaki Lacuesta’s odd hybrid The Double Steps (trailer here, which screens during the San Francisco Film Society’s 2012 San Francisco International Film Society.

Augiéras does not appear directly in Steps, but his spirit appears to inhabit Abdallah Chambaa, a former soldier, mustered out of service by his commanding officer uncle, with whom he was involved in an incestuous relationship.  Chambaa soon becomes as bandit, as former soldier often do, but he also has a compulsion to paint.  Periodically, Steps also follows Barceló in real life Mali, producing new work inspired by Augiéras and searching for the legendary murals.

Frankly, Steps is probably more interesting to read and write about than to watch.  In no way should it be thought of as Raiders of the Lost murals.  Feverish in tone, it has a loose narrative, featuring frequent shifts in time that are sudden, yet ill-defined.  Lacuesta also simultaneously shot a documentary about Barceló that probably offers more of the historical and artist context many viewers might be wondering about.

Lacuesta’s hazy style keeps his cast at an emotional arm’s length from the audience.  At least Diego Dussuel’s breath-taking cinematography somewhat pulls them back in, capturing the rugged beauty of Mali’s landscape, especially the cliffs Barceló explores looking either for Augiéras’ murals or his own inspiration.  Steps is a film anyone seriously dealing with art cinema will eventually have to take into account, making it a completely appropriate, even valuable, programming selection for the festival.  However, those looking for an unpretentious film to get caught up in should probably look elsewhere. 

 

In fact, there are some great films to choose from at this year’s SFIFF, including the inspiring and infuriating Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Hong Sang-soo’s characteristically clever The Day HeArrives, the intriguing interconnected German trilogy Dreileben, the outstanding documentary-lament for Cambodian cinema Golden Slumbers, Mohammad Rasoulof’s timely but intimate Goodbye, the surprisingly effective true story of French injustice Guilty, the breezy profile of the festival’s honored guest Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema, the cerebral science fiction fable Target, Andrea Arnold’s challenging adaptation of WutheringHeights, and Carol Reed’s always classic The Third Man.  Undoubtedly an interesting work best appreciated self-selecting cineastes, The Double Steps also screens again tonight (4/24) as part of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.

SFIFF ’12: Golden Slumbers

Martin Scorsese needs to dispatch an emergency film preservation team to Cambodia.  From 1960 to 1975 about 450 films were produced in the Southeast Asian country.  However, only about thirty films survived the Khmer Rouge.  The Chinese-backed Communists considered cinema just another form of capitalist decadence (which is sort of true when it is really good).  Davy Chou surveys what was lost with the handful of surviving film industry veterans in his outstanding documentary Golden Slumbers (trailer here), which screens at the San Francisco Film Society’s 2012 San Francisco International FilmFestival.

Despite being the grandson of the once prominent Cambodian director Vann Chan, many of the filmmakers who were able to escape execution (most of whom endured harsh transit conditions to seek refuge in France) were initially reluctant to talk to Chou.  However, Yvon Hem eventually relents, taking Chou on a tour of his long abandoned Bird of Paradise studio (named for the Marcel Camus film that launched many film careers in the country, including his own).  Less reticent is Dy Saveth, the former Elizabeth Taylor of Cambodian film, now working as a dance instructor.  To this day, the hill where she once filmed a climactic scene still bears her name.

Obviously the genocidal murders and forced labor camps are the greater crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime.  Yet, the devastation of the nation’s cinema is not merely a footnote to the wider tragedy—it is a tragedy onto itself.  Listening to the movie patrons and movie-makers discussing their beloved films, now presumably lost forever, is deeply moving.  Clearly, lives and livelihoods were lost, but average Cambodian’s treasured memories and cultural heritage have also been destroyed by an ideology of death.  Watching Slumbers stirs the same emotions as the sight of a charred family photo album at a fire scene.

Slumbers also bear an unexpected but apt comparison to Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film, featuring many directors and actors forced to relate their films like oral history.  Yet Chou is able to convey a sense of them through movies posters, radio commercials, and soundtrack records (many of which remain widely popular).  He also stages his talking head interviews in ways that are often quite visually stylish.

For any movie lover, the loss of any nation’s cinematic legacy is truly lamentable, but it is particularly so in this case.  From the tantalizing descriptions heard throughout Slumbers, many of the popular Cambodian films of the pre-Khmer Rouge era sound like high-end Bollywood, but incorporating darker supernatural and mythological elements.  Though it is impossible to know with certainty, if you are reading this review, there is indeed a strong likelihood these films would have been your cup of tea.

 

One can only hope Chou’s documentary leads to the discovery of some of these lost treasures in forsaken film vaults someplace.  Nonetheless, as a film in its own right, Slumbers is quite accomplished.  It is an intelligently constructed and elegantly executed cinematic elegy that absolutely puts to shame the vacuous tributes to Hollywood glamour that aired during the recent Academy Awards.  Profoundly moving, Slumbers is one of the best documentaries selected for a major festival this year.  It screens this coming Saturday (4/28) and the following Tuesday (5/1) and Thursday (5/3) during the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival.