Author: Joe Bendel

London River & The Legacy of Terrorism

By Joe Bendel. Nothing brings back the terrible memories of 9/11 like the sight of home-made missing person posters. Evidently they were a common sight in London as well during the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings of 2005. One desperate mother hopes against hope that they will help her find her missing daughter in Rachid Bouchareb’s London River, which screens currently as part of the 2010 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.

Elisabeth Sommers lives a quiet life tending her farm on the island of Guernsey. Estranged from his family in Africa, Monsieur Ousmane works as a forester in France. She is a Protestant, while he is a Muslim, but they soon discover they are linked by the 7/7 bombing. Neither her daughter Jamie nor his son Ali has been heard from since that tragic day. Much to their surprise, it turns out their missing adult children were involved in a serious relationship. They were even learning Arabic together—a revelation Sommers has difficulty processing.

Eventually, the nervous Sommers and the stoic Ousmane form an uneasy truce that slowly evolves into something like friendship. Yet the nagging uncertainty of their children’s fate looms over their time spent together.

River is a quiet film about every mother and father’s greatest nightmare. Bouchareb largely eschews the political in favor of the starkly intimate. Still, some realities are impossible to avoid. Does it give pause to any of River’s many Muslim characters that their co-religionists just murdered 52 innocent people? Perhaps the ever taciturn Ousmane hints at such misgivings when he confides in Sommers his own failings as a father. It is hardly a transcendent epiphany, but it is an honest, sensitively turned scene.

While River boasts a large cast, it is essentially a two-hander for two vastly different parents. The Oscar-worthy Brenda Blethyn is agonizingly convincing as the distraught Sommers, perfectly counterbalanced by the deliberate Sotigui Kouyaté as Ousmane. Chronically ill during the shoot, Kouyaté passed away earlier this year, but his Silver Bear at the 2009 for River was well-deserved. Though quiet and reserved, he brings Ousmane to life – not merely as a stereotypical symbol of non-western wisdom. Instead, he is a flawed individual, whose character arc is just as heavy as that of Sommers.

Though often a political filmmaker, the French-Algerian Bouchareb’s greater loyalties clearly lie with his story and characters. That is why his most recent film, Outside the Law, is such an interesting take on the Algerian independence movement, in which it is devilishly difficult to differentiate the rebels from the gangsters. With River, he focuses like a laser on the pain and fear of his primary leads. Bouchareb also gets a nice assist from composer Armand Amar, whose jazz-inflected score adds a wistful air to proceedings. A simple, moving film that deftly sidesteps polemics, River is a good way to start the 2010 ADIFF.  It screens this Sunday (12/5) at Symphony Space’s Thalia Theater.

Posted on December 3rd, 2010 at 10:00am.

Truth and Consequences of Communism’s Past: Kawasaki’s Rose

By Joe Bendel. Everybody despises collaborators and informers, but what of the secret policemen who press them into betrayal? That is just one of the difficult questions raised by Petr Jarchovsky’s Kawasaki’s Rose, the Czech Republic’s official submission for best foreign language Oscar consideration, which opened Friday in New York at Film Forum.

Pavel Josek was a signatory to Charter 77. A critic of the Communist government’s perversion of psychiatric medicine (his chosen profession), Josek’s dissident credentials are unimpeachable. As a result, he is seen as a logical choice to receive the annual “Memory of the Nation” award for demonstrating moral integrity during the oppressive Communist regime. However, while working on a television documentary on Josek, his estranged son-in-law Ludek (a child of Communist apparachiks) starts to unearth troubling questions about the great man’s early years.

Josek’s wife Jana had once been the lover of Borek, an artist too idiosyncratic and honest to prosper under the Communist system. It begins to look like Josek might have played a small part in the campaign against the sculptor that culminated in his banishment to Sweden.

Whatever Josek did, it was relatively limited and his motives were complicated. He was not, for example, the state security officer stubbing out cigarettes on Borek’s hand. This fellow, known as “Kafka,” apparently pays no price for his crimes, as he smugly dissembles for Radka, Ludek’s television reporter lover. Conversely, Josek starts to slowly twist in the wind.

Martin Huba perfectly captures Josek’s complexity and contradictions in one of the year’s best screen performances. He has scenes discussing the perils of guilt with his mildly delinquent granddaughter that would be fraught with peril for lesser actors. Yet Huba sells them perfectly with his understated world-weariness.

The past haunting the present in "Kawasaki's Rose."

The weak link of the film is unquestionably the marital strife engulfing Ludek and Josek’s daughter, Lucie. Frankly, the confrontation between husband, wife, and mistress makes no sense whatsoever, merely distracting from the more significant drama at hand. Indeed, there is a measure of closure to be found in Rose when the audience finally meets Borek. Spiritually reborn during his time in Sweden, he has befriended Mr. Kawasaki, a Japanese artist who chose a life of self-imposed exile after his entire family was murdered during the 1995 sarin gas terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway.

Though long out of power, the Communist regime continues to cause suffering throughout Rose. Rose is a deeply humane film, but not a completely forgiving one, as evidenced by the bitter irony of its coda. Thoughtful and challenging, Rose is most likely a long shot for Oscar recognition, but it is one of the better films of this award season, well worth seeing at New York’s Film Forum.

Posted on December 1st, 2010 at 1:01pm.

Labored Film: Made in Dagenham

By Joe Bendel. In the late 1960’s United Kingdom, trade unions dominated industrial policy, but did chauvinism trump class warfare? 187 women find out when their strike brings the mighty Ford plant to a standstill in Nigel Cole’s Made in Dagenham, which opened Friday in select theaters nationwide.

In one of the all time penny-wise-pound-foolish decisions, Ford reclassified the seamstresses working at their plant in the London suburb of Dagenham as “unskilled” rather than “semi-skilled” workers. This naturally resulted in a corresponding pay cut for the women. Encouraged by Albert, the factory’s union rep, they vote to authorize a work stoppage if their semi-skilled status is not reinstated. Though not previously active in the union or politics of any sort, Rita O’Grady is selected to attend the negotiations between Ford and their union. She is supposed to sit quietly in the corner, but when Monty Taylor, the feather-bedding head of their Local tries to sell out the Dagenham women, O’Grady gives them a case of what’s what.

Jaime Winstone disrobes for social justice.

Suddenly, the strike is on. However, the parameters have widened. With the encouragement of Albert, a former military officer raised by his single working mother, the Dagenham women are insisting equal pay for equal work. With 55,000 men now out of work, the union leadership is decidedly unenthusiastic. Ford is not too thrilled either. However, Barbara Castle, Harold Wilson’s minister for labor relations is quite impressed by the Dagenham women, while her boss is rather befuddled by it all.

Dagenham is a mostly harmless, Swinging Sixties Norma Rae, yet it veers awfully close to the patronizing attitudes it takes pains to skewer. We are clearly meant to cheer when O’Grady asserts herself with the sexist old boys around the negotiating table, but why shouldn’t she? William Ivory’s screenplay never actually uses the term “plucky gals,” but one can feel it floating in the air.

While Dagenham frames the issues surrounding the strike in simplistic terms, at least it earns credit for its pointed portrayal of the union leadership – a venal, Marx-quoting lot of chauvinist pigs. Of course, the overall membership is the salt of the earth, who eventually rally to the Dagenham women’s cause. Yet wisely, the film resists the dour naturalism of most union movies. Instead, it gives us Jaime Winstone in a mini-skirt.

Do not get the wrong impression though, Winstone (daughter of Ray) is mere window dressing. Dagenham is clearly intended as a star turn for Sally Hawkins – and certainly she is ‘likable’ enough. Everyone in the film is likable, unless they are management, in which case they are despicable. However, Hawkins’ soft-spoken, twitchy performance makes it hard to understand how she becomes such as a galvanizing force.

Granted Bob Hoskins’ big speech is ridiculously manipulative, but he still sells it, supplying the film’s most heartfelt moments. Though Wilson incisively contrasted himself with his Conservative opponent’s aristocratic background during the 1964 campaign, John Sessions plays him like an upper-class twit, emasculated by a look from Miranda Richardson as Castle – but at least they also supply some dramatic flair.

It might be faint praise, but Dagenham could have been far worse. When in doubt, Cole clearly opted to keep the tone light, which makes the film watchable – even if it is predictable and stilted.  It opened Friday in New York, Los Angeles and in select theaters elsewhere.

Posted on November 24th, 2010 at 12:31pm.

The Somewhat Skeptical Environmentalist: Cool It

By Joe Bendel. When did skepticism become a term of derision in the scientific community? In truth, Bjørn Lomborg is not a so-called global warming “denier.” He agrees the Earth’s overall temperature is rising, but he takes issue with some of the more inflated estimates. It seems Lomborg’s primary sin though, is his application of rigorous risk assessments and cost-benefit analysis to the global warming debate. Having been likened to Adolf Hitler (yes, seriously) by Dr. Rajendra Pachuari of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Lomborg gets a chance to speak for what he considers the maligned middle ground of the warming debate in Ondi Timoner’s new documentary, Cool It, which opened this past Friday in select theaters nationwide.

The Danish Lomborg always considered himself “lefter than left,” but when he chanced across an article by the late iconoclastic economist Julian Simon, his apostasy began. Simon argued, contrary to popular belief, that the state of the Earth was actually improving – in large measure due to the benefits of capitalist prosperity. Professor Lomborg took up the refutation of Simon’s book as a long-term class project, but his class found itself confirming far more than they contradicted. When he published their findings in his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg’s name quickly became anathema to many of his academic colleagues.

Indeed, the extent to which Lomborg has been vilified, even persecuted, for deviating from politically correct orthodoxy is simply scandalous. Yet the Dane appears to be a happy warrior, embracing the warming debate as the next great fight. In conceding the general warming premise, he glosses over many legitimate questions about the integrity of the data often sited. Yet, he still gives warming partisans fits. For instance, Lomborg is tacky enough to actually run the numbers on the Kyoto Protocols, finding that at a projected cost of $250 billion in lost GDP annually, the EU’s plan to cut emissions 20% below 1990 levels will only cool the planet a negligible 0.1 degrees F. That is an inconvenient truth.

Indeed, the Al Gore documentary takes it in the shines and the credibility throughout Cool. Not simply held up as an example of reckless scare-mongering, Lomborg eviscerates several of Gore’s claims that gained particular traction in the public consciousness, including the Hurricane Katrina canard. Perhaps the best example of Lomborg’s rigorous methodology comes courtesy of the poor polar bears supposedly jeopardized by global warming. According to Lomborg, at the cost of $250 billion annually, implementing Kyoto might save one single polar bear a year (whose population has been steadily increasing over the past several years). In contrast, he suggests those truly concerned about polar bears work to crack down on poachers who kill 250 to 300 each year. Continue reading The Somewhat Skeptical Environmentalist: Cool It

LFM Review: Shake Hands with Devil and Genocide in Our Times

By Joe Bendel. Kofi Annan has blood on his hands. He might not have personally fired a shot in Rwanda, but his actions ensured the violent Hutu extremists remained heavily armed. So claims Lietenant-General Roméo Dallaire, the French-Canadian military commander of the UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda. Based on Dallaire’s memoir, Roger Spottiswoode’s Shake Hands with the Devil, opening today, is an incisive indictment of the UN’s willful negligence during the 1994 mass killings.

Dallaire is a haunted man, haunted by the ghosts of 800,000 Rwandans who were murdered while he stood idly by, handcuffed by the UN’s restrictive rules of engagement and a lack of supplies. It need not have been so. As he first arrives at his post, the situation appears promising. All sides profess to want peace and are actively engaged in UN sponsored negotiations. Yet there are troubling signs, like the growing presence of informal Hutu militias strutting through the streets.

Initially, the UN Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) seems to get a lucky break when a well-placed source steps forward with information about huge weapons stockpiles in the ruling Hutu party headquarters. However, before Dallaire can launch his planned operation to seize the arms, the UN peacekeeping command orders him to stand down. Instead of confiscating the arms, he is to inform the hard-line Hutu president of what they know, and he is forbidden to offer asylum to his informer. At this point, the die is cast. Annan and the UN might as well have issued a proclamation declaring genocide season officially open.

A strong likeness of the real Dallaire, Roy Dupuis (who could also pass for Bruce Campbell’s older brother) gives a depressingly good performance, vividly showing the General’s military bearing cracking under the weight of the horror and futility of his position. Indeed, Shake is a rare film that genuinely respects military figures, like Belgian Colonel Luc Marchal – portrayed with genuine humanity by Québécois actor Michel Mongeau. Continue reading LFM Review: Shake Hands with Devil and Genocide in Our Times

On-Tour in Iraq: Striking a Chord

By Joe Bendel. With the success of The Surge, the nature of military service in the Iraqi theater is much safer and more predictable. Of course, that is a blessing – but it also means American military personnel have more time to get bored and dwell on their separation from loved ones. However, nothing works like music to console the weary soul. Even though they might not be household names, the military brings in a number of entertainers to play for the troops like singer-songwriter Nell Bryden, whose second tour military tour of Iraq and Kuwait provides the structure of Susan Cohn Rockefeller’s Striking a Chord, a documentary short (see the trailer above) now playing the festival circuit.

The USO books the big name stars. The Multinational Corps handles the professional gigging artists without the fame or the egos. One such musician is Brooklyn-born Nell Bryden, the first entertainer recruited by Lt. Col. Scott Rainey, the chief of programming for the Corps. A blues-and-roots influenced pop vocalist, Bryden is a charismatic performer and a good sport. She does not simply chopper in and out for her gigs. Rockefeller shows her visiting hospitals and touring bases, talking to anyone looking for a sympathetic ear. Indeed, the rapport she quickly establishes with soldiers appears deep and genuine.

It helps when you check your politics at the airport. Several of her band members agree, noting the deep personal connections they have been able to make once they jettisoned their own political baggage. Likewise, Rockefeller tries to play it straight and avoid partisanship, largely succeeding. While bookending the film with grim expert commentary on post-traumatic stress syndrome arguably has certain implications, she also gives voice to soldiers’ frustrations that none of the good news they see unfolding in Iraq is ever reported in the western media. Continue reading On-Tour in Iraq: Striking a Chord