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.

Listening to Fire: Incendiary

Fire is a truly medieval form of execution. To employ it as a means of killing children is absolutely unthinkable, so it is not surprising when a Texas court sentenced Cameron Todd Willingham to death after he was convicted of killing his three small daughters with a crude arson fire. Had he been tried in Maine they might have reinstated the death penalty for him, despite having abolished it in 1887. Yet, capital punishment is often considered a distraction in the Willingham case. Instead, it is dubious fire investigation techniques that fall first and foremost into the crosshairs of Steve Mims & Joe Bailey Jr.’s muckraking doc, Incendiary: the Willingham Case (trailer here), which opens this Friday at the IFC Center.

By general consensus, Willingham was a reasonably loving parent, but an abusive husband and a thoroughly unlikable human being. According to Texas Fire Marshals Manny Vasquez and Doug Fogg, the fire that killed his daughters bore all the classic hallmarks of arson—and Willingham seemed to be the only one around to set it.

Unfortunately, the fire investigators were employing a folksy science roughly on par with the Farmer’s Almanac to make their determinations. In the years following, investigators would be required to follow more scientifically sound investigation criteria, but for Willingham the die was cast. Tried, convicted, and executed, his can only be a case of posthumous exoneration.

As fate would have, Rick Perry was governor at the time of Willingham’s execution, so Incendiary frequently expresses consternation that he did not leap to join the defense team’s efforts. However, when you have two state fire investigators and the trial defense’s own expert witness agreeing it was arson, it is not exactly scandalous that he let Willingham’s execution proceed unimpeded.

The real issue of Incendiary ought to be the way “folklore” used to dominate arson investigations. Evidently, Vasquez and Fogg talked up a lot of old school hocus-pocus on the stand about “listening to the fire” and the like. However, despite formally adopting more rational standards and practices, their fire investigators union still stands by their work in the Willingham case. One really wants to hear them attempt to defend their investigation, so their absence from the film is vexing.

Frankly, Incendiary does not definitively establish Willingham’s innocence, even (to its credit) including some rather nagging reasonable doubts about its reasonable doubts. Sometimes, its expert witnesses can be their own worst enemies as well, as when O.J. Simpson dream team alumnus Barry Scheck totally loses it in front of a suspiciously bureaucratic forensic oversight board. Likewise, it does not help his credibility when incendiary science expert Gerald Hurst goes off on a rant against America’s alleged contempt for anything intellectual.

There is an awful lot of Rick Perry in Incendiary. He is definitely the sizzle to sell the steak. The real arsenic though is found in the state’s traditional arson investigation methodologies and the response to their subsequent evolution. Interesting but distractingly politicized, Incendiary opens this Friday (10/7) in New York at the IFC Center.

The Help in France: The Women on the 6th Floor

It was a huge French box-office hit, portraying domestic servants in the 1960’s. It could be called France’s The Help, though it was released there well before the reigning American sleeper hit. In this case, the maids are Spanish and they are also great fun to be around. A middle-aged stockbroker learns this first-hand in Philippe Le Guay’s The Women on the 6th Floor (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Jean-Louis Joubert has lived his entire life in his family’s stately Parisian home, but the sixth floor might as well be another country—a distant province of Spain. It is there that his maid and the other neighborhood domestics rent single-occupancy rooms. Frankly, the conditions are pretty ugly up there, but Joubert would not know. His building manager handles all the upstairs details.

However, when the family’s longtime Breton maid up and quits, her Spanish replacement makes quite an impression on him. Pretty in a warm, earthy way rather than vacuously beautiful, María Gonzalez is just about everything his onetime trophy wife (or potiche) Suzanne is not. Suddenly, he is fixing the sixth floor plumbing and finding jobs for Gonzalez’s friends, all of which Joubert’s family finds a little strange.

Floor obviously addresses issues of upstairs-downstairs class distinctions, immigrant living standards, and even human rights under Franco (who was not dead yet at this time), but its politics are muted enough they can be easily ignored by those so inclined. More than anything, it is a film about a man learning to finally be comfortable in his own skin.

Fabrice Luchini is absolutely perfect as Joubert. Though it might sound thematically similar to his role in François Ozon’s Potiche, there is nothing shticky about his work here. Warm and winning, it is a refreshingly sympathetic portrait of a late middle-aged bourgeoisie man, quite a rarity in contemporary cinema. Likewise, Natalia Verbeke is equally charming (a word quickly at risk of gross overuse when discussing Floor) as the heartsick but still spirited Gonzalez. In contrast, there is no need to look up charming in a thesaurus for Sandrine Kiberlain’s Suzanne Joubert, but she is appropriately icy and brittle as the suspicious pampered wife.

Granted, Floor’s story arc holds no real surprises, but frankly, shocking revelations are not particularly welcome in romantic comedies. Still, Le Guay employs a remarkably light touch in the home stretch, steering the film away safely away from overly cloying sentimentalism.

Gentle and engaging, Floor is exactly the sort of foreign film that can breakout into the relative mainstream. Luchini’s crowd-pleasing work should also considerably boost his standing here in America. Recommended for general audiences (particularly those who really have to be cajoled into seeing a subtitled film), Floor opens this Friday (10/7) in New York at the Paris Theatre. It also launches the Fall 2011 season of the newly renamed Gold Coast International Film Festival’s Furman Film Series this Thursday (10/6) in Great Neck.

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.

Blackthorn: Butch Cassidy Rides Again

George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ended with what might be the most dramatic freeze frame in cinema history. While it clearly implies the two protagonists die in a hail of bullets, it never shows the evidence. Of course, legendary outlaws are tough to kill, leading many to hope and speculate there might be a bit more life left in the characters after all. Though not an official sequel, Open Your Eyes screenwriter Mateo Gil’s take on the western genre unofficially serves in that capacity. An older, wearier Cassidy rides again in Blackthorn (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

James Blackthorn quietly raises horses on his Bolivian ranch. He used to rob banks with his pal, Harry Longabaugh, a.k.a. the Sundance Kid. After years of lying low, Blackthorn is preparing to return to America to settle some personal business involving the son of Etta Place, Sundance’s companion, with whom he also shared an ambiguous but significant emotional connection. We can assume he still has a strong memory of those raindrops falling on his head.

His plans are decidedly complicated by a desperate Spanish bandit, who tries to horse-jack him on his way home. Of course the reckless Eduardo Apodaca is no match for Blackthorn/Cassidy, even if the crafty old-timer looks like he is well into his seventies. Much to his chagrin though, Blackthorn’s horse is spooked, running off with his life savings. In no mood to negotiate, he reluctantly agrees to a deal: keep Apodaca alive and split his hidden loot.

Weathered-faced Sam Shepard has the perfect look and an established western credibility to carry-off the iconic role, in effect stepping into Paul Newman’s boots. The cast playing Cassidy and Sundance in flashbacks have a tougher go of it though, but Nicolak Coster-Waldau (Lena Headey’s brother in Game of Thrones) has his moments as young Cassidy. Stephen Rea also makes the most of his screen time as Mackinlay, Cassidy and Sundance’s former Pinkerton nemesis turned expat drunkard (presumably inspired by the boater-wearing Joe Lefors always seen in the far distance throughout Hill’s classic). His scenes with Shepard have a poetic resignation that really cuts to the heart of the film.

Unfortunately, there is a pronounced element of class warfare that weighs down the film like a pair of saddlebags filled with lead. We repeatedly hear the big Spanish mining companies were the real crooks rather than Cassidy and Sundance. (Of course, what the country really needs are more employers and stable financial institutions.) Since Blackthorn was shot on location in Bolivia, one wonders if Evo Morales or his master in Venezuela had input on the shooting script.

Despite an unsatisfying wrap-up, Blackthorn is a fittingly tragic coda to Cassidy’s saga. Frankly, it is a little strange that it is playing the art-house circuit, because it is a very commercial film, quite appropriate for the Wal-Mart demographic, many of whom (fortunately) still buy western novels. Indeed, Gil has a nice sense of the genre’s dust and desolation, affectionately paying tribute to the original Newman and Redford film. A nicely elegiac western overall, Blackthorn opens this Friday (10/7) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.

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.

Ken Burns Goes Original Gangster: Prohibition

They thought if Prohibition could make it here in New York, it could make it anywhere. Well, it didn’t. The combination of some of the hottest night life, wettest politicians, a large immigrant population, and close proximity to the Canadian border and Long Island Sound made enforcement more or less impossible. Ken Burns and his filmmaking partner Lynn Novick bring their flair for assembling archival material to bear on America’s misadventure with temperance in Prohibition (promo here), which airs three consecutive nights on PBS, beginning this coming Sunday.

Perhaps the best installment of Prohibition is the first, A Nation of Drunkards, in which a number of preconceptions about the prohibition movement are challenged. In the years leading up to the 19th Amendment, consumption of hard liquor was far greater in America than it is now. Evidently, public drunkenness was a genuine social problem that attracted the notice of the reform movement. Indeed, more than a religious phenomenon, prohibition was initially aligned with progressives and the suffragette women’s movement.

Perhaps most tragically, “dry” activists provided decisive support for the 16th Amendment establishing the federal income tax. Until then, the U.S. government had been overwhelmingly dependent on liquor taxes to fund its operations. Unfortunately, it would not be repealed by the 21st Amendment, along with the notorious 19th it helped bring about.

Burns and Novick’s Prohibition is also quite adept at capturing the colorful character of several notorious bootleggers, who sprang up in the tradition of old western gun-slingers. Though Al Capone got the most ink (which was always how he wanted it), the example of former Seattle copper turned gangster Roy Olmstead might arguably be more significant. Eventually taken down through wiretaps, his case launched a branch of Constitutional law still debated to this day.

Unfortunately, the talking head segments are a tad weak this time around for Burns and Novick. Should you have a drink every time the audience is told we cannot legislate morality, you would be very wet indeed. Presumably, this means they also advocate repealing every morally motivated reform from the Progressive Era, perhaps starting with child labor laws.

Commentators who suggest there are often unintended consequences to government regulation are rather more on target. Yet, there do seem to be concrete lessons to be learned from the Dry interregnum that Prohibition the film prefers not to belabor. For instance, we learn the brewers tried to throw the distillers under the bus rather stand united against the increasingly militant temperance movement. For their efforts, they got the absolutist Volstead Act, putting everyone out of business, at least temporarily.

Once again, Wynton Marsalis provides an original era-appropriate jazz score that evokes the free-wheeling spirit of the speakeasy milieu. However, the rich voice of Keith David, the narrator of Jazz and Unforgivable Blackness, is definitely missed in Prohibition. Frankly, lead narrator Peter Coyote sounds rather dry (so to speak), by comparison.

Combining striking images, good history, entertaining music, and so-so social commentary, Prohibition is PBS’s marquee event of the season. A finely crafted production, it is definitely well worth watching (though perhaps with a bit of Tivo fast-forwarding). It airs back-to-back-to-back this Sunday through Tuesday (10/2-10/4) on just about every PBS outlet nationwide.

(Photo ©Scherl/Sueddeutsche Zeitung/The Image Works)

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, Christoph 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.

Loznitsa’s My Joy

Like anyplace, Russia has its share of urban legends, but theirs seem to carry the oppressive weight of the country’s tragic history. At least, such seems to be the case with the stories that inspired documentarian Sergei Loznitsa’s narrative feature debut, My Joy (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Having spent considerable time on the road, truck driver Georgy is no babe in the woods. He is hardly shocked by the venal cops who hassle him or the teenaged (if that) prostitute hustling business when a major accident closes the highway. Still, he tries to help her, but like contemporary Russia, she will have none of it. However, his trip goes seriously awry when he tries to take a detour around the backed-up traffic.

Though not overtly supernatural, the fateful back road takes the driver into a very malevolent place, somewhat in the spirit of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Like a horror film written by Beckett, Georgy is sucked into an absurdist village, where predatory behavior is the norm. Time becomes indeterminate in this twilight world, with the tragic past echoing strongly in the corrupt present day.

This is particularly true of an old hitchhiker’s story, easily the film’s strongest mini-arc. According to the mysterious stranger, he had been a heroic Lieutenant during WWII, but when a crooked local Commander robbed and humiliated him, his response permanently relegated the man to the nameless margins of Russian society. One of many discursive interludes, the Lieutenant’s flashback is rather bold because it directly challenges the great patriotic mythos built around the Soviet war years, as do the mutterings of a quite possibly mad veteran, apparently boasting of a Katyn Forest style massacre, heard later in the film.

Loznitsa presents a vision of a country sick in psyche, where those who have served it best are victimized the worst. He does not exactly tell this story in a straight line, bouncing off characters and subplots like a pinball. Frankly, Joy can be a little tricky to follow, but the heavy parts are hard to miss.

Though a Russian narrative, Joy was filmed in Ukraine working with a Romanian cinematographer, Oleg Mutu, who lensed acclaimed films like Tales From the Golden Age and 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days. He vividly conveys a sense of the harshness of a Russian winter and the dreariness of Georgy’s village with no exit.

As befits the material, Loznitsa’s cast is appropriately dour and weathered looking. If not exactly charismatic, Viktor Nemets is rather scarily effective as the protagonist, losing all sense of persona in the madness enveloping him. Again, perhaps the strongest turn comes from Alexey Vertkov, who is viscerally intense as the Lieutenant whose story might be “fake but true” as the old media likes to say.

With its sometimes murky connections and several subplots that sputter out as soon as they are introduced, Joy is undeniably messy. Yet, things tie together in intriguing ways, perhaps requiring repeated viewing to fully pick up on. It also holds an unflattering mirror up to Mother Russia, both present and past. Indeed, when it works, it is viscerally powerful stuff. Recommended for those well versed in the thematically and stylistically similar films of the Romanian New Wave, Joy opens today (9/30) in New York at the Cinema Village.

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.

Dark Sin City of the Future: Bunraku

In the future, gangsters will respect the global gun ban, despite their willingness to murder, maim, white slave, and cheat at cards. This might seem to contradict the experience of thousands of years of human history, but it is really just an excuse to combine swords and cars in Guy Moshe’s Bunraku (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Our Easternized cyberpunky story takes place in a post-apocalypse not-Japan, where Eastern Europeans rule the underworld, and everything else by extension. Nicola the Woodcutter is the shadowy #1, who only leaves his hideout for his weekly poker game and the occasional meal at his favorite sushi restaurant. A nameless drifter wants in on that game. He seems to have a score to settle with the kingpin, but he lacks the funds to buy in.

Another mysterious stranger also wandered into town with a purpose. A master of a Zen-focused martial arts discipline, Yoshi has been charged with recovering his family’s heirloom medallion from Nicola. He happens to be traveling with a considerable roll. Yoshi and the Drifter ought to join forces, but perhaps they should first beat the snot out of each other for the sake of appearances.

Bunraku is one of the most frustrating action films of the year. Technically, it is consistently inventive, incorporating some hyper stylized animation inspired by the titular traditional form of Japanese puppetry. It also boasts some wickedly sardonic narration (by Mike Patton) and a funky score penned by jazz musician and film composer Terence Blanchard, who also added a brief but tasty trumpet solo to the opening sequence. It mashes up the imagery of retro-action and cyber-punk films quite effectively and features some very funny fight sequences clearly modeled after video games.

As an action protagonist though, Josh Hartnett simply does not have it. His Drifter is lethargic rather than quietly intense and that mustache just looks ridiculous on him. Japanese pop-star Gackt is not bad as Yoshi, but it is rather insulting to watch his character struggle to scratch out a draw against the Drifter. You probably already guessed Ron Perlman plays Nicola. It is his usual shtick, but it still works within the context of a self-aware B-movie. Arguably Woody Harrelson best acquits himself as The Bartender with no name, who guides Yoshi and the Drifter into an alliance, while seeming to be above it all in an amused kind of way.

Fifteen years ago or so, it would be hard to believe Harrelson and his Indecent Proposal co-star Demi Moore could reunite in a film with relatively little fanfare, but here it is. Echoes of that previous film can even be read into their characters’ relationship here. Moore is not bad either, but playing Nicola’s kept woman (to put it euphemistically) cannot be the most rewarding of gigs.

Yet, probably most distracting is Bunraku’s highly problematic use of Communist iconography and terminology. Eventually, the boys align themselves with the “Freedom” army of the “Proletariat,” who train under vaguely Cyrillic red letters decked out in Mao caps. Tragically though, the Red Cadres whom they evoke had nothing to do with freedom whatsoever, prosecuting the reign of terror known as the Cultural Revolution with wanton disregard for human life and dignity. Such sloppy symbolism in Bunraku is frankly rather shameful.

It is hard to think of a film so inspired in many respects that also got so much so far wrong. Credit cannot go to one man alone, it was a team effort. Though often cool looking, those hoping for a martial arts fix should wait for a future release from China Lion or Well-Go/Variance Film. Not recommended, Bunraku opens this Friday (9/30) in New York at the AMC Empire

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.

T & D vs. E

It is like the polar-opposite of Kevin Smith’s Red State. In this horror movie mash-up, it is the snobby elites who are out to get the innocent red necks. Still, there is enough grisly slapstick humor to keep the studio-bashing director entertained. Indeed, the killer hillbilly movie gets a subversive twist in Eli Craig’s Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Dale is the shy one and Tucker is the more outgoing one. Neither is what you might call well educated or snappy dressers. They mean well though. On their way to Tucker’s vacation cabin (newly purchased at a bargain price because of its notorious history) the innocent bumpkins cross paths with a group of snotty college students. Mistaking the overall-clad lads’ leering in awe for leering with intent, the kids become easy prey for the anti-hillbilly venom of the Mephistophelean Chad, who carries a deep seated hatred of all backwoods residents.

Whipping his friends into a paranoid frenzy, Chad convinces his companions to attack first. However, it does not work out well for the preppy predators, who inadvertently maim and kill themselves in a series of gruesome encounters that combine Harold Lloyd with Final Destination. There is one exception though, the lovely and empathic Allison, who is majoring in conflict resolution studies.

T & D vs. E is definitely a meathead movie that delights in devising new and outrageous ways for college kids to die. Yes, there is a wood-chipper to be found at Tucker’s cabin. Indeed, you have to admire its plucky determination to keep one-upping itself, without breaking the Rube Goldbergian format. Still, the reversal of the well established Deliverance formula is quite refreshing, particularly after Rod Lurie’s Straw Dogs remake shamelessly trafficked in such red state vs. blue state stereotypes. As a bonus, the media takes a few hits as well in the wrap-around framing device.

Alan Tudyk & Tyler Labine share a likable, easy-going chemistry as T & D, respectively. It is strange to think, but there are few recent movies that have depicted male friendship in similar unconditional terms, free of any psychological baggage. While obviously blessed with physical beauty, Katrina Bowden also shows a nice sense of comedic timing as Allison. Indeed, her character’s attempt to apply her conflict resolution training is a real riot. Who would have ever thought a 30 Rock cast-member could actually be funny?

Obviously, T & D vs. E is all about gory laughs rather than social commentary. Still, the extent to which it humanizes hill-and-holler dwellers, while casting big city elites as the villains is somewhat notable. It also has chainsaws and other assorted power tools. Recommended with affection for those who enjoy their comedy with a body count and a spatter pattern, T & D vs. E opens this Friday (9/30) in New York at the Village East.

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.

NYFF ’11: Dreileben

There is a fugitive in the woods. He might be an innocent man or a dangerous psychopath. Determining the truth is a tricky proposition in Dreileben, a trilogy of interlocking films produced for German television in the tradition of Red Riding, which screens in its entirety this coming Saturday as part of the 49th New York Film Festival.

Christian Petzold’s Beats Being Dead, begins the cycle, but keeps most of the crime drama off-screen. While visiting his dying mother in hospital, the convicted murderer Molesch essentially walks away from his police guard. A manhunt ensues. To shield him from inquiries, Dr. Drier gives some time off to Johannes, the nursing intern on duty that fateful night. It allows the pre-med student time to pursue a passionate in-the-moment romance with the tempestuous Ana, a Bosnian refugee working as a maid in the hotel that will eventually factor into the police investigation. He might even forget Sarah Drier, the head doctor’s daughter, who dumped Johannes in no uncertain terms.

Petzold’s Dead and Dominik Graf’s subsequent Don’t Follow Me Around are like some of Claude Chabrol’s craftier late films, presenting the nefarious business obliquely, while ostensibly focusing on the workaday lives of those seemingly on its margins. Yet, Petzold creates a palpable undercurrent of menace that carries over for his filmmaker colleagues. He also presents an unusually dark and intense vision of young love (or lust) that sometimes borders on the unsettling.

Luna Mijovic burns up the screen as Ana, viscerally projecting her raw self-destructive impulses and insecurities. Jacob Matschenz is also quite effective keeping the audience off-balance as the everyman Johannes, while Vijessna Ferkic is appropriately hot and shallow as Sarah Drier. Indeed, not only is Dead the strongest film of the trilogy, it also (quite conveniently) stands alone better than its companion films.

Still, for those willing to buy into Dreileben, Graf’s Follow is also quite clever, nicely explaining a few of the confusing moments in Dead. Johanna is a single-mother police psychologist in the tradition of the old Profiler show, sent to help the corrupt and incompetent local constabulary capture Molesch. Yet, she is considerably more interested in revisiting some important episodes from her past with her old friend Vera, with whom she is staying. We also briefly meet Marcus Kreil, the one competent copper who will be featured prominently in the final film.

While Graf shows bits and pieces of the investigative process, he keeps the mood lighter, centering his film on themes of friendship and family more often encountered in women’s fiction than police procedurals. Though the tonal ringer of the trilogy, it still keeps viewers intrigued in the macro story.

Though arguably the most visually stylish of the three, Christoph Hochhäusler’s One Minute of Darkness unfortunately fails to tie everything together, leaving a rat’s nest of loose ends unresolved, even adding several of its own. Molesch finally comes front-and-center, but in a way this is a mistake. Granted, it is something of a pay-off to finally understand his escape and strange sojourn through Ana’s hotel. Yet, as evidently something of a man-child, Molesch is better represented as the wolf in the woods than a figure we come to know on intimate terms. To be fair though, Stefan Kurt nicely conveys the ambiguity of his character keeping open the possibility Molesch may either be a naïf or a maniac.

Darkness works best when focusing on Kreil, played with haggard gravitas by Eberhard Kirchberg. In addition to juggling family issues (like Johanna), the honest copper is responsible for some of Dreileben’s smartest police work, more of which would have strengthened Darkness.

Like Red Riding, Carlos, Mesrine, and Mysteries of Lisbon, Dreileben is the sort of sprawling canvas worth spending time with, just to appreciate its ambition. Naturally somewhat uneven as the product of three directors, Dreileben also peaks with its first film. Yet, there is something insidiously compelling about this shared world, like a more grounded German Twin Peaks, that holds true for all three installments.

If festival patrons only see one part of Dreileben, it should be Petzold’s film. If time and interest allow for two, Follow is readily recommended as well. Though the concluding Darkness is a bit of a letdown, it is ultimately worth seeing for Kirchberg’s work and the partial closure it provides. Altogether, it is a genuine screening event and one of the highlights of the 2011 New York Film Festival. The full trilogy screens this coming Saturday (10/1) at the Walter Reade Theater, while the constituent parts screen on successive nights the following Tuesday through Thursday (10/4/10/6) at the Francesca Beale Theater.

Stormy in the Heartland: Take Shelter

Better safe than sorry was the principle guiding our mayor in the days leading up to Hurricane Irene’s fly-by. Curtis LaForche would not necessarily agree with him. Nevertheless, he is compelled to act on his visions of apocalyptic storms in Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

LaForche is a hard-working family man, completely dedicated to his wife Samantha and their daughter Hannah. He has a steady job with good benefits, but times are still difficult, especially since Hannah lost her hearing. The last thing he needs is the end of the world, but he cannot shake the increasingly horrific dreams plaguing his sleep. Despite his better judgment, LaForche begins upgrading his old tornado shelter in anticipation of a Biblical-level storm.

Contrary to viewer expectations, LaForche is not portrayed as a Fundamentalist lunatic. In fact, his lack of church attendance is a point of contention with his in-laws. Rather, as the son of a mother living under permanent supervision, LaForche is only too aware mental illness runs in his family. Responsibly, he seeks professional help, but the dreams persist.

Shelter is unusually sensitive in its depiction of a Middle American family under stress. The LaForches’ experience grappling with Hannah’s deafness could have easily been a movie unto itself rather than just a sizable subplot. Still, the second act is a bit sluggish, continually repeating the cycle of increasingly creepy visions, followed by LaForche’s subsequent erratic behavior. However, the gritty honest performances from the central players should keep audiences invested throughout the lulls.

Perfectly cast as LaForche, Michael Shannon has the right rough-hewn look, while expressing a host of inner conflicts with delicate nuance. He creates a fully dimensional, legitimately engaging character. It is hard to imagine any other actor in the part. The suddenly hyper-busy Jessica Chastain is also totally convincing as the more practical, down-home Samantha, sort of playing a more accessible variation on her break-through role in Tree of Life.

Throughout Shelter, Nichols never looks down on his Red State, God-fearing characters, treating their dramas with the seriousness they deserve. Indeed, it has no snark and no irony. Rather, Shelter challenges viewers to put themselves in LaForche’s place. An unexpectedly humane film featuring a lead performance worthy of an Oscar nomination, Shelter is definitely recommended (ironically more for audiences in the heartland than typical patrons of the art-houses it will most likely play). It opens this Friday (9/30) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.