Day: October 3, 2013

LFM Reviews Measuring the World @ The Goethe Institut’s German Currents Fest in LA

By Joe Bendel. You know Gauss’s bell curve and you know Humboldt’s monkey. They were two of the most celebrated intellects of the Nineteenth Century German states. In addition to a common patron, Austrian Daniel Kehlmann’s fictionalized dual-biography suggests they also perhaps shared an intertwined fate. Adapted for a big, big screen by the novelist himself, Detlev Buck’s Measuring the World, has its American premiere this Friday as the opening night film of German Currents 2013 in Los Angeles.

Carl Friedrich Gauss was born into desperate poverty, but the boy’s stern schoolmaster recognized his remarkable gift for mathematical analysis. With a name like Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt, the future Prussian naturalist-explorer was clearly a child of privilege. However, the Duke of Brunswick supported both lads’ education at an early age.

After Gauss and Humboldt meet by chance as children, Measuring splits into two wildly divergent narratives. A mathematician in the purest form, Gauss will spend his life within the German states. He is difficult by nature, yet somehow the uneducated but supportive Johanna consents to marry him. Meanwhile, Humboldt embarks on a Latin American expedition that will make his name. His most significant companion will be his colleague and uneasy friend, Aimé Bonpland, the French botanist. As the title suggests, both men will take vastly different approaches to quantifying our earthly bounds through their work. Eventually, Humboldt and Gauss will meet again in their twilight years, carrying the baggage of two eventful lives.

From "Measuring the World."

For a prestige period production, Measuring has a surprisingly idiosyncratic sensibility. With its archly ironic narration and fits of absurdist humor, the film often feels like a distant cousin of Gilliam’s Munchausen. Visually, it is often quite inventive and the sheer scope of its wanderings is rather impressive. Yet, there are some nice, quiet moments shared between Florian David Fitz and Vicky Krieps, as the Gausses. At times, Albrecht Abraham Schuch risks veering into Fraser Crane territory as the adult Humboldt, but Jérémy Kapone’s earthier Bonpland helps compensate for and undercut his mannered fastidiousness.

Ironically, one of the most recognizable faces in Measuring for American audiences will be Karl Markovics (lead actor in Stefan Ruzowitzky’s The Counterfeiters), who is quite good in the very supporting role of young Gauss’ teacher, Büttner. Cineastes will also be intrigued to hear that the film was lensed by Krzysztof Kieslowski’s longtime cinematographer Sławomir Idziak. Measuring does not look like a Kieslowski, but it has a distinctive sheen nonetheless.

With Idziak and his talented crew, Buck immerses viewers in an era Americans do not often have the opportunity see on screen. Granted, Measuring is somewhat inconsistent in patches, but when it works, it works on a very high level. Recommended for fans of cerebral historicals, like Longitude and Pillars of the Earth, Measuring the Earth screens this Friday (10/4), kicking off this year’s German Currents at Egyptian Theatre. It should also be noted in closing: Measuring is one of three Match Factory films screening as part of the celebration of German cinema, along with Gold and Layla Fourie.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 3rd, 2013 at 5:16pm.

LFM Reviews AKA Doc Pomus

By Joe Bendel. Doc Pomus was one of the first legit white blues singers and he had some legitimate blues. However, he would make his lasting mark on the music business as a songwriter. The man who brought soul to the Brill Building is affectionately profiled in Peter Miller & Will Hechter’s A.K.A. Doc Pomus, which opens this Friday in New York.

The man born Jerome Solon Felder might not sound like much of a blues or R&B vocalist, but soulful African American music just spoke to the young Jewish boy stricken with polio. After serendipitously discovering his talent, Felder redubbed himself “Doc Pomus,” embracing music as a calling he could still pursue. Unfortunately, he was not exactly the major labels’ idea of a front man, but he could write a tune.

You will know his songs, even if you don’t know his name. Without Pomus, the world would not have “Lonely Avenue,” “Viva Las Vegas,” “This Magic Moment,” “There Must Be a Better World,” or “Save the Last Dance For Me,” the Ben E. King hit that serves as the film’s touchstone song.

Conceived and co-produced by Pomus’s daughter, Sharyn Felder, AKA is an unusually revealing look inside the creative psyche. Incorporating Pomus’s uncomfortably candid journals (read by Lou Reed), Miller and Hechter create an unflinching portrait of an artist prone to severe bouts of depression. The Felder family participated in force, with Pomus’s daughter Sharyn, his Broadway actress ex-wife, and his brother Raoul Felder, the celebrity lawyer, all discussing their relationships with the larger than life songwriter. Plenty of his musical colleagues and admirers also duly pay their respects, including Ben E. King, Dion, and Jimmy Scott, whose career Pomus posthumously rejuvenated. Nearly forgotten by the industry, Scott was signed by Sire Records after his moving performance at Pomus’s memorial.

AKA is often a deeply personal film, but its musical analysis is still pretty on target, especially the defense of the soulfulness of Pomus’s “Sweets for My Sweet,” as performed by the Drifters (James Moody also recorded a wonderfully funky instrumental version with Gil Fuller’s big band). Well assembled and surprisingly frank, it is a good cut above most installments of American Masters. Recommended for fans of the blues and American pop music, A.K.A. Doc Pomus opens this Friday (10/4) in New York at the Village East.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 3rd, 2013 at 5:11pm.

LFM Reviews Butter Lamp @ The New York Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. He is like an Old West daguerrotypist capturing the faces of the vanishing frontier, except this barnstorming photographer travels through Tibet. Viewers will watch him work in Hu Wei’s Butter Lamp, which screens during Shorts Program 2 at the 51st New York Film Festival.

At first it looks rather surreal. A quick succession of Tibetan nomads assembles for family photos shot in front of the photographer’s wildly anachronistic fake backdrops, such as Disneyland and the Great Wall of China. Every time the shutter clicks Hu skips ahead to the next family. The older nomads still don traditional formal dress and wield their prayer wheels, but in each subsequent photo sessions, the younger, impatient generation more frequently wears blue jeans and western sportswear.

While the format is simple, Butter offers a shrewd commentary on globalization and the deliberate marginalization of Tibetan culture. While an elderly woman will prostrate herself before the image of Potala Palace, most of the photographer’s customers chose something reflecting a more consumerist lifestyle. Yet, some customs are still observed.

Straddling the boundaries between dramatic narratives, documentaries, and cinematic essays, Butter Lamp is visually inventive and decidedly zeitgeisty (particularly at a time when the Tibetan language is struggling for survival, per government policy). Patrons on a New York budget may not feel Hu’s fifteen minute film alone justifies the price of a ticket, but it is an accomplished production, well worth acknowledging. It screens this Sunday (10/6) and next Thursday (10/10) as part of the 2013 NYFF’s Shorts Program 2.

Posted on October 3rd, 2013 at 5:06pm.