Month: September 2011

By Joe Bendel. 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 her adoring new husband 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.

Posted on September 29th, 2011 at 1:14pm.

By Joe Bendel. As the home of smugglers and cutthroats, ports are always the perfect setting for hardboiled crime drama – not, however, Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre. It’s nothing like the French film noir cities of Henri-Georges Clouzot, perhaps because Kaurismäki is Finnish. Instead, these marginalized roughnecks of Le Havre 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.

Posted on September 29th, 2011 at 1:11pm.

By Joe Bendel. 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, 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 own 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 a 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, teenage Sarina Farhadi (the director’s daughter) gives a 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.

Posted on September 28th, 2011 at 11:54am.

By Joe Bendel. 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 into English. Several commentators note that it is really the Michael Hulse translation of Rings 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.

Posted on September 28th, 2011 at 11:52am.