Category: 4. Joe Bendel

By Joe Bendel. Elena could have been an old world Russian babushka. She even still wears the traditional head scarves. Yet, she has married into the world of oligarchic privilege. It is a pleasant if loveless marriage, but fundamental disagreements with her wealthy husband will take a dark turn in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Elena, which begins a special two week engagement at New York’s Film Forum this Wednesday.

The working class Elena met the sophisticated Vladimir while working as a nurse during his convalescence two years ago. They have little in common except their dismal records as parents. His grown daughter Katerina is an entitled party girl emblematic of New Russia’s excesses. Elena’s slobby, unemployed son Sergey is only fit for queuing in lines and getting drunk. That might have been perfectly fine during the Soviet era, but it does not cut the mustard any more. While Vladimir readily underwrites Katerina’s high-flying lifestyle, he begrudges any support Elena offers her deadbeat family.

If anything, Elena’s thuggish grandson Sasha is even less accomplished than his father. In order to forestall his military service, Sergey will have to bribe Sasha’s way into college, but Vladimir is not having any of it. After collapsing in the gym, issues of inheritance come to the fore, provoking Elena to action for the sake of her proletariat family.

Such “action” is a relative term in Zvyagintsev’s deliberately paced film. He is much more interested contrasting the dramatic class distinctions of contemporary Russian than engaging in Double Indemnity style suspense. Frankly, viewers need to pay attention throughout Elena, because it is easy to miss the crossing of the Rubicon.

In contrast, it is impossible to not notice the differences between the two Russias. One is a world of glass and steel luxury (perfectly underscored by sparing excerpts from Philip Glass’s 1995 Symphony No. 3), whereas the other is a grubby suburb of Brutalistic socialist era architecture dominated by noxious looking nuclear containment domes. There is also a pronounced psychological difference, as well. Vladimir harshly dismisses Sergey as a lazy drunken slacker, but he is not exactly wrong.

Indeed, a mother’s love may oftentimes be blind (it might have been clever to have opened Elena over the weekend, but it is hard to imagine any son taking mom to see it) and Elena is arguably indulgent to a fault. However, it is her relationship with Vladimir that is most intriguing. Nadezhda Markina palpably conveys a complicated lifetime of struggle as the title protagonist, while developing some ambiguous yet very real chemistry with actor-director Andrey Smirnov’s Vladimir. The precise nature of their union remains hard to pigeonhole, with several scenes supporting disparate interpretations.

Elena certainly shines a spotlight on the inequalities of Putin’s Russian – still a playground for compliant oligarchs. Yet, as a film it is really a showcase for Markina’s remarkable, unadorned performance. Though the tempo is undeniably leisurely, there is a real point to it all, as it heads towards a very specific destination. Recommended for viewers with adult attention spans, Elena opens this Wednesday (5/16) at Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on May 15th, 2012 at 3:57pm.

By Joe Bendel. As cute as he is, Quill is a dog with a role in life. By virtue of his intelligence and empathetic intuition, the golden retriever will become a guide dog for the blind. His eventful dog’s life is lovingly depicted in Yoichi Sai’s Quill: the Life of a Guide Dog, which opens this Friday in New York.

Out of a litter of five pups, Quill is the shrewdest. His owner wanted them all to become guide dogs, but only Quill makes the grade. As a result, he will experience his first parting, leaving his puppy home to live with the Isamu and Mitsuko Nii, a couple who care for prospective guide dogs until they reach the age training commences. Considering how the Niis dote on him, Satoru Tawada’s training kennel requires quite an adjustment, but again Quill adapts.

Tawada has Quill in mind for Watanabe, the irascible chairman of a local nonprofit support organization, but the middle-aged man is resistant. Of course, Quill wins him over, but Watanabe’s health problems will complicate their time together.

Sai once served as an assistant director to Nagisa Ôshima on In the Realm of the Senses, a film about as dissimilar to Quill as one can possibly imagine. Not afraid of a little manipulative sentiment, Shoichi Maruyama and Yoshihiro Nakamura’s screenplay hits all the dog-lover bases good and hard. However, Quill’s adorableness at all ages is an undeniable ace in the hole. By the time the aged Quill comes full circle back to the Niis, even the brawniest of men will find themselves getting choked up.

No question, the canine cast is truly endearing, with the film’s trainer Tadami Miya maximizing their cinematic charm. The human ensemble is also rather pleasing, including Teruyuki Kagawa (recognizable from far darker Japanese imports, like Tokyo Sonata and the 20th Century Boys trilogy) and Shinobu Terajima (unforgettable in Wakamatsu’s disturbing Caterpillar), who are genuinely touching as the Niis.

Featuring a sensitive soundtrack by the Kuricorder Quartet, Quill has a gentle, humane vibe not unlike the work of Kore-eda. Though Sai’s film has been kicking around the festival circuit since 2004, its belated American release coincides with the dramatic increase in the social and commercial organization of U.S. dog lovers. Frankly, post-Marley and Me, it has enormous crossover potential. Recommended for canine fanciers and Japanese cinephiles, Quill opens this Friday (5/18) in New York at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on May 15th, 2012 at 3:55pm.

By Joe Bendel. It is a familiar horror movie convention—one wrong turn can lead to a grisly death, so get yourself some GPS and join triple A. Alas, the misdirected teens who wander onto this stretch of pavement will become permanently lost in Yam Laranas’ Filipino horror film The Road, which opens this Friday in New York.

This has been going on for a while. In 1998, two sisters vanished without a trace on the road to nowhere. Ten years later, their grieving mother approaches a decorated rookie officer specializing in making everyone else look bad, convincing him to re-investigate the case. Yet, it quickly becomes apparent that the circumstances of their disappearance parallel an active, high priority investigation involving two cousins and their slacker guy friend.

As if two time frames were not sufficient, Laranas then flashes even further back, showing the audience how the tragic childhood of the thus far unseen psychopath destroyed his innocence and set in motion a chain reaction of bad karma. It turns out his father’s hyper-Christianity was a contributing factor. To be fair, dear old dad is really not a bad guy at heart, but the future killer’s shrewish mother enthusiastically adopted his strict rules governing the boy, simply out of meanness.

Laranas actually sets the creepy scene quite well, hinting at the supernatural, but never quite delivering on it. Still, he palpably evokes the ominous dread of grudge-like remnants haunting the proceedings. His big twist also comes as something of a surprise, if only because it creates huge logical problems for the film in retrospect.

More fundamentally, it is just not a lot of fun to see the Roadie tormenting the young girls who fall into his web. These are not E.C. Comics characters that more or less have it coming. Frankly, horror movies like The Road would be much more entertaining if Laranas and his colleagues would pick on people more their size.

As the cop with chain-of-command issues, TJ Trinidad is an intense screen presence who sells the third act bedlam rather well. Unfortunately, the onerously slow pace becomes downright mind-numbing over time. Serving as his own cinematographer, Lanaras gives the film an interesting look and the dramatic work of his ensemble cast is considerably better than the genre standard, but that is about as far as The Road goes. A joyless and exhausting film, The Road is not recommended for horror movie fans. For those intrigued nonetheless, it opens today (5/11) in New York at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: D+

Posted on May 11th, 2012 at 2:09pm.

By Joe Bendel. During Poland’s Communist era, there was no quicker way to an industrial minister’s heart than a spot of deforestation. Slavishly ambitious Michal Toporny learns this lesson as he rises through the bureaucratic ranks, jettisoning such trivialities as his family and his soul along the way. Not exactly a fable or a morality tale, Grzegorz Królikiewicz’s The Dancing Hawk is more like a visual barrage. It would not be the same film without Zbigniew Rybczyński’s inventive work behind the camera, making it the perfect companion to Gerald Kargl’s Angst during Shot by Rybczyński, the Spectacle Theater’s two-film tribute to the future Oscar winner’s cinematography starting this Thursday.

Hawk’s first twenty minutes or so are like the best cinematic adaptation of James Joyce never filmed. Toporny enters the cold, snowy world during a time of war. He comes from hardscrabble peasant stock, but evidently they were also minor property “holders,” an inconvenient fact that requires Toporny to be more Communist than thou in order to get ahead. He certainly has the necessary moral flexibility, throwing one wife overboard in favor of his politically connected classmate.

This opportunistic pattern of behavior will repeat throughout Hawk. In fact, there are repetitive loops throughout the film, intended to emphasize the Kafkaesque absurdity of the bureaucracy, or perhaps just to make the Communist censors’ heads explode. Frankly, it is rather staggering this one slipped past the state film authorities. Like matter and anti-matter, it seems impossible for Hawk and Socialist Realism to coexist in the same world.

Indeed, as feverish and bizarrely expressionistic as Rybczyński’s cinematography undeniably is, Królikiewicz’s critiques of the Socialist state remain impossible to miss. Central state planning takes it in the shins throughout the film, perhaps even harder than in Frank Beyer’s East German classic Trace of Stones. The Communist Youth of Toporny’s college years are also depicted as foaming-at-the-mouth bullies, who duly grow up to be vicious, petty, in-fighting apparatchiks.

As Toporny, Franciszek Trzeciak is surely small and banal, but he still finds a sad clown pathos within the character, even performing a surreal variation on the old Harpo Marx mirror gag. Toporny’s eventual realization that he has spent his entire life serving a cold and capricious master (much like the protagonist of Andrzej’s Wajda’s Without Anesthesia) is palpably heavy stuff, even with all the madness swirling around him.

Hawk represents incredibly bold filmmaking, in both stylistic and political terms. Defying conventional description, Rybczyński’s cinematography gives the loose narrative a hallucinatory shimmer with an appropriately drab socialist color scheme. A masterwork of protest cinema, The Dancing Hawk is a viscerally defiant product of its time: late 1970’s Poland, an era that would culminate with the imposition of Martial Law. Highly recommended, it screens this Thursday (5/10), Sunday (5/13), and Friday (5/25) as part of Shot by Rybczyński at the Spectacle Theater in the County of Kings.

Posted on May 8th, 2012 at 12:29pm.

By Joe Bendel. Never dismiss the characters of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest film just because they are elementary school children. Unlike the parade of hipster man-children audiences see in indie after indie, many of these youngsters will amount to something in life. They are also facing some very real drama at a relatively early age in Kore-eda’s unusually wise and gentle I Wish, which opens this Friday in New York.

When their parents split up, Koichi decided to go with his mother to live with his grandparents in Southern Kyushu. His younger brother Ryunosuke opted to stay with their irresponsible garage-rocker father in the north. Always close, it is a difficult separation for the brothers, but they think their respective parents need them more. Still, it seems to weigh more heavily on Koichi, troubled to find himself not regularly fulfilling his duties as a big brother.

Koichi sees potential deliverance in the imminent opening of the new bullet train linking north and south Kyushu (completed in a mere fraction of the time needed for the still unfinished Second Avenue subway). Word has it that anyone standing on the exact spot where the maiden north and south bound trains cross will have their wish granted. Koichi convinces Ryunosuke to meet him there so they can both wish for their family to be reunited. (Finally, a real world application for those “two trains” math problems.) Of course, it is easier said than done. Arranging train tickets and school absences without the knowledge or consent of their parents will require caper-like planning.

As a result, both brothers bring along their co-conspirator friends, each of whom has a wish of their own. The way Kore-eda draws out their distinct personalities and captures their subtle interaction is a joy to behold. Likening Kore-eda to Ozu is a danger critics often succumb to, but I Wish particularly lends itself to such comparisons. He coaxes some remarkably rich and grounded performances from his youthful cast, placing them in situations of conflict with one another, but harboring malice for none.

Real life brother-performers Koki and Ohshiro Maeda clearly had an intuitive sense of how to distill the essence of their own fraternal relationship and infuse it into their on-screen roles. They are smart, resourceful, and sensitive, but never in an overly cloying way. Frankly, I Wish has a wealth of talented young actors, including the particularly noteworthy Kyara Uchida as Megumi, one of the older girls Ryunosuke befriends (remember, his dad is in a band). If, like her character, her driving ambition is to become an actress, she should be well on her way to a brilliant career.

As with Still Walking, Kore-eda’s last film to have significant American distribution, I Wish depicts serious family issues with a remarkably light touch, but it is the spirit of forgiveness and the acceptance of fate that make the films so special. Yet, the earnest young cast represents a potentially far greater crossover appeal for I Wish. Highly recommended, it opens this Friday (5/11) in New York at the Lincoln Plaza and Angelika Film Center.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on May 8th, 2012 at 12:27pm.