Tribeca ’19: See You Yesterday

The space-time continuum is so un-woke. After inventing time travel for her high school science project, Claudette “CJ” Walker keeps popping back in time, in order to save her older brother from a problematic police shooting. Unfortunately, each trip seems to make things worse. You might think a teen whiz kid would have read enough science fiction to know bad things happen when you try to alter the past. Yet, she persists anyway in Stefon Bristol’s Netflix-produced See You Yesterday, which premiered during the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.

Initially, Walker and her platonic bestie Sebastian Thomas were only thinking about scholarships. Unfortunately, she soon realizes it has very practical and personal applications when her big brother Calvin is fatally shot. Obviously, this is brand new technology, so there are limits on how far back and how often they can jump. They will devise some work arounds, but the unforgiving nature of the space-time continuum remains a cold, hard fact.

The police shooting is about as potentially divisive catalyst as you can imagine, but Bristol depicts it in less abrasive and polarizing terms than viewers will probably expect. Nevertheless, the police in Yesterday are still basically clichés, with no real individuality. Frankly, the film would have been more compelling if the cops in question were also shown to be more-or-less decent, but were driven by misunderstandings and circumstance to commit a fatal mistake, making it a tragedy all the way around.

Nonetheless, Yesterday has a surprise cameo that will win over any fan of time travel science fiction, even if they are card-carrying members of Patrolmen’s Benevolent. More importantly, the two young stars, Eden Duncan-Smith and Dante Crichlow are an extraordinarily winning and charismatic on-screen duo. Honestly, Crichlow’s agents should be pitching him to be the live action Miles Morales (from Spider-Verse), because he can totally combine teen angst and science nerd cred. The same is true for Jonathan Nieves, who steals a few scenes as their classmate with a talent for circuitry, who makes no secret of his crush on Walker.

There is indeed a lot of logic-defying scientific double-talk in Yesterday, but Duncan-Smith and Crichlow pull it off like champs. Bristol also keeps raising the stakes and widening the scope of the temporal disruptions in ways that have a potent sense of tragic inevitability. Nacho Vigalondo’s Timecrimes is still the gold standard of time-looping head trips, but Yesterday can claim some of the sharpest written time travel business in several years.

It is refreshing to see a film in which teens are smart rather than stupid. It is also nice to see teens who really look like teens. In terms of the depiction of cops in Yesterday, it might be productive to view it in conjunction with the DC Noir pilot, based on the short fiction of George Pelecanos, which also screened at Tribeca. Ever-reliable character actor Jay O. Sanders portrays a veteran patrol officer, who personally knows the residents on his beat and probably understands the dynamics of the urban neighborhood better than the young man who raises the ire of a local drug dealer. Is it fair to expect perfection from peace officers every second of every night, year after year, regardless of the stress and dangers they encounter?

So, watch both films and get two perspectives. See You Yesterday will be easier to find in the short term. It releases May 17^th on Netflix, following its screenings at this year’s Tribeca.

Tribeca: Man on Wire

Before September 11th, the most vivid memory many New Yorker had of the World Trade Center was Frenchman Philippe Petit’s 1974 death-defying high-wire walk between the Twin Towers. Taking its title from the incident’s police report, the new documentary, Man on Wire, tells the story not just of Petit’s walk, but the painstaking planning and blind luck which made it possible. Directed by James Marsh, it screens at Tribeca this week, with a theatrical release scheduled for August.

Petit is something of a Captain Kirk character, always looking to go where no man has gone before. He had performed previous unsanctioned “clandestine” walks at Notre Dame and the Sydney Opera House, but his imagination had been captured by a 1968 article about the WTC construction, ultimately setting in motion the arguable stunt of the century.

Wire often seems more like a caper movie than a documentary, relishing the Mission Impossible style preparations. You didn’t just show up at the Towers and toss a line across (it involved a bow and arrow, believe it or not). Aerial photography, scale models, reconnaissance, forging documents, and recruiting an inside man, all figured into Petit’s so-called “coup” and we see all these steps lovingly explicated.

The animated Petit was probably difficult to sit down for his interviews and impossible to shut up, once they had started. While his segments are quite entertaining, the interviews with his unindicted (but in some cases deported) co-conspirators carry surprising emotional weight. For his then girl-friend and close colleagues, the WTC walk would be a culminating moment in their relationships. Even thirty some years removed from the experience, it still clearly holds great meaning for them.

While never disrespectful in any way, Marsh made the conscious decision to avoid references to September 11th, focusing exclusively on the events leading up to that one moment of time in 1974. It is hard to say if that works though, because the weight of that tragedy hangs over the film at all times. When a police officer tells reporters at the time that he knew he was seeing something he would never see again in his lifetime, it takes on obvious added layers of meaning. However, Wire does perfectly capture its own historical moment, during New York’s grungy period. In yet another quirk of fate, Petit made his walk the day before Pres. Nixon’s resignation, giving the film a recurring Watergate motif.

Director Marsh and cinematography Igor Martinovic tell much of the story through highly stylized re-enactments that suggest Errol Morris on steroids. The film also relies on video shot by Petit’s crew during the coup itself, which dramatically illustrates the enormity of the Towers and the unbelievable nature of their mission. Nicely complemented by Michael Nyman’s pseudo-classical score, Wire is compulsively watchable.

Petit did indeed go where nobody will ever go again—1,360 feet in the air, between the Twin Towers. Years later his walk continues to hold a peculiar fascination for New Yorkers. Everyone I have mentioned Wire to have responded with enthusiasm, suggesting it might be a sleeper hit when it is released in August. They will enjoy it. It also screens again at Tribeca on Sunday.

Tribeca has CHOPS

One of the refreshing things about attending IAJE conferences is seeing and hearing high school students who have a passion for jazz. Those are the sort of young musicians who are performing in Jazz @ Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington competition this weekend and are featured in Bruce Broder’s documentary CHOPS, screening at the Tribeca Film Festival.

CHOPS started as a film about Broder’s son Owen, an alto and clarinet player, and his jazz band mates from Douglas Anderson School for the Arts, in Jacksonville, FL (DA). What started as an examination of their dedication to jazz grew in scope when their school’s band was accepted by Jazz @ Lincoln Center for Essentially Ellington, dubbed “the Super Bowl” of school jazz band competitions at one point in the film.

The DA jazz band had competed in Essentially Ellington once before, but they were clearly considered underdogs. Eventually, CHOPS introduces viewers to two bands from Seattle, who are perennial rivals in EE, sort of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox of high school jazz bands. However, the DA musicians are the focus of the film, with Broder, drummer Jamison Ross, trombonist T.J. Norris, and trumpeter Jeron “Recio” Fruge taking most of the interview solos. On camera, these young musicians are poised, articulate, witty, and very serious about their music.

Every year J@LC sends out new Ellington transcriptions to high school bands. Those who chose to compete, record three of them, with hopes of performing their selections in New York. Each year, one tune seems to be picked by nearly every band. In 2006 “Idiom 59, Part 2” (part of a suite originally composed for Newport) was the song of the year, seen performed by a string of bands in a montage. Conversely, we only see one rendition of “Rocks in My Bed,” but Isabella DuGraf, the vocalist from Seattle’s Roosevelt High, seems to make quite an impression on the young men from DA.

Anytime a film comes out with a predominantly Ellington soundtrack, its worth seeing. However, CHOPS really captures the passion these students have for the music, which only grows as they go work their way towards New York. There is no question you develop a rooting interest in the DA band as you follow them from band auditions, through their preparations for the competition, to the main event. Watching it makes one optimistic about the future of jazz. All sorts of marketing comparisons could be made for the film: a musical Rocky, Hoop Dreams with a rhythm section, etc.

In fact, the sports comparison is apt. Its producers have a background in sports films, and it has been entered in the Tribeca Film Festival’s sports film division. Certainly, the DA band members practice, travel, and play together like a sports team does. What they do demands mental and physical discipline, and the competition they face is just as serious.

CHOPS has one more screening in conjunction with Tribeca, at 10:30 tomorrow morning, in the Kips Bay AMC. Hopefully, as it makes the festival circuit, CHOPS will land a nice distribution deal, because it really deserves it.