Category: Documentary

By Joe Bendel. It is sort of like watching Hell’s production of A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters, because its correspondents have certainly earned damnation. Utilizing a cache of previously unseen letters and documents written by Heinrich Himmler and his family, documentarian Vanessa Lapa paints an uncomfortably intimate portrait of the Holocaust architect. Himmler proves just how banal evil can be in Lapa’s The Decent One, which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

The U.S. servicemen dispatched to retrieve whatever documents remained in the Himmler family safe kept them as souvenirs instead. Through some circuitous route, they eventually came into Lapa’s possession. For a historian, they represent a wealth of primary sources, but they should not stoke revisionist fears. Despite Himmler’s conscientious concern for their young daughter Gudrun, Himmler’s letters to wife Margarete never ameliorate his guilt.

There are moments when their domestic business is interrupted by shockingly off-hand anti-Semitic pronouncements (often on Margarete’s part), but the first half of the film largely consists of maddeningly prosaic correspondence and journal entries. Still, when Himmler suggests he and Margarete should number their letters, it arguably foreshadows his sinister efficiency (but it must have been a great help to Lapa and her research team).

Not to be spoilery, but Lapa eventually uses Himmler’s own words to establish his knowledge and culpability with respects to the Holocaust. Of course, all reasonable people of good conscience understand that already. She also exposes the hypocrisy of his outward righteousness through letters to his longtime mistress, but those are the least of his sins.

Frankly the tangential approach of documentaries like Decent One risk losing sight of the big picture’s enormity. Perhaps this generation really needs a documentary that launches a frontal assault, overpowering the viewers with the scale and severity of suffering caused by the National Socialists, especially considering the rise of anti-Semitism in Western Europe and the Middle East.

Lapa’s film is skillfully constructed and undeniably well intentioned, but it is unlikely to inspire many epiphanies. It is good that greater historical background and context is now easily available, but it probably should not be the first or last film students see on National Socialist crimes against humanity. Respectfully recommended for viewers who already have a strong grounding in Holocaust history, The Decent One opens this Wednesday (10/1) at New York’s Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on October 1st, 2014 at 12:31pm.

By Joe Bendel. When celebrated actor Kakhi Kavsadze states he came of age in a country that no longer exists, he perhaps should not speak so soon. Putin clearly has designs to reassert the USSR’s old spheres of domination and Kavsadze’s native Georgia was one of the first nations he trained his military crosshairs on. Yet, current events make Kavsadze’s reminiscences of the Stalin era even more poignant in Nana Janelidze’s documentary, Will There Be a Theatre Up There?!, which screens during MoMA’s new film series, Discovering Georgian Cinema, Part 1: A Family Affair.

Kavsadze came from a long line of well respected traditional Georgian singers, as Stalin himself would attest. A letter from the dictator to his revered grandfather has a special place of irony in his family’s history. Kavsadze’s father was also an accomplished vocalist and choir-master, but WWII was not kind to him, or Kavsadze’s family by extension. The senior Kavsadze managed to save scores of Georgian POWs by organizing a camp choir, but such benign survival strategies would earn him the label: “enemy of the people.”

Through his words and occasional songs, Kavsadze revisits his early childhood years, paying tribute to his parents for enduring their endless tribulations. Technically, it all takes place in one location, but the hanger-like industrial building re-purposed as a film studio is remarkably versatile. Janelidze will often stage dramatic tableaux to illustrate Kavsadze’s recollections, which frequently seem to stir legitimate emotions deep within the grand thespian.

Kavsadze’s stories are about as personal as they get, yet they offer tremendous insight into the nature of the Communist system. Perhaps most telling is the episode in which a pair of KGB agents came to the Kavsadze home looking for an incriminating document, but tried to carry off their dinner table instead (fun fact: Putin was a veteran KGB agent).

Kavsadze is a forceful presence who truly commands the viewer’s attention. Likewise, Janelidze’s sparse but elegant approach gives rise to some striking images that often bring to mind Eastern European cinematic classics, like Wajda’s Everything for Sale. Despite its relatively short running time (fifty-five minutes), Theatre offers viewers quite a bit to take in. It is especially fitting that it had a special screening during this summer’s Odessa International Film Festival, since Georgia has been informally advising Ukraine how to respond when Russia invades their sovereign territory. Very highly recommended, Will There Be a Theatre Up There?! screens this Thursday (9/25) and Sunday (10/5) as part of MoMA’s upcoming Georgian film series.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on September 24th, 2014 at 4:05pm.

By Joe Bendel. As the reigning Poet Lauriat of hard rock, Nick Cave was the perfect voice to narrate Eddie White & Ari Gibson’s animated noir fable, The Cat Piano. He is also a screenwriter of some note, whose credits include John Hillcoat’s Lawless. The standard talking head and archival footage approach simply would not suffice for Cave, given his cinematic presence and relentlessly idiosyncratic aesthetic sensibilities. However, Ian Forsyth & Jane Pollard (with the knowing collusion of their subject) took an entirely different tact in 20,000 Days on Earth, which opened today at Film Forum.

Ostensibly, the filmmakers will follow Cave throughout what will be his 20,000th day of terrestrial life, but they are not slavishly attached to the conceit. Instead, they are content to follow Cave as he develops the next Bad Seeds album and confronts some of the ghosts from his past in eccentrically stylized dramatic interludes. Former Bad Seed Blixa Bargeld will reveal why he really left the band, which would be a bit of a dramatic letdown, if it did not segue into Cave’s somewhat neurotic theory of songwriting.

In these sequences, 20K is more like performance art than a documentary, providing a platform for Cave’s acting chops when he essentially plays himself. Kylie Minogue also gets into the spirit of things when her reminisces of their unlikely collaboration segue into a meditation on mortality (from the back-seat of Cave’s car, bringing to mind her strange appearance in Holy Motors). It is also appealing to watch the musical camaraderie shared by Cave and Warren Ellis, who clearly emerges as first among Bad Seeds not named Nick Cave.

It is hard to say whether 20K is better appreciated by Cave fanatics or newcomers arriving with a blank slate. This is absolutely not a greatest hits package, somewhat focusing on the creation of the Push the Sky Away album, but mainly just giving Cave a venue for his insights into the music-making process. Those who are interested in questions of method will find many of the sequences fascinating. It should also bolster the reputation of strict Freudian Damian Leader, who is not really Cave’s analyst, but elicits some vivid memories of the singer’s late father.

20K is about as multi-hyphenated as a hybrid documentary can get, but it keeps the stream of interesting stories flowing unabated. Ironically, Ellis probably has the most telling anecdote, suggesting the often violent spectacles that used to accompany Bad Seeds gigs were nothing compared to the force that was Nina Simone (just try to top her).

Yet, it must be granted Cave is enormously compelling appearing as himself, playing himself, or something like that. Fittingly, he now lives in Brighton, where he could pass for a gangster from Brighton Rock with dark suits and menacing swagger. It still seems to kill on stage and it works on camera surprisingly well. Highly recommended for those who appreciate meta-documentaries, 20,000 Days on Earth opened today (9/17) at New York’s Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 17th, 2014 at 11:02pm.

By Joe Bendel. Like most writers, Romanian novelist Norman Manea’s fiction is often highly autobiographical. Considering he survived both the Holocaust and the Ceauşescu regime’s persecution, how could it not be? Since 1986, Manea has lived in a state of sort of, but not really, self-imposed exile, teaching at Bard College, but still writing in his native Romanian. René Frölke employs Manea’s own words to tell his life story, in a distinctively elliptical and suggestive fashion, throughout Le beau danger, which screened during the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

It might seem strange that a film about Manea takes its title from a brief essay by Michel Foucault, but it is worth remembering in the 1980s the French post-structuralist theorist became a fairly consistent critic of Soviet Communism and a supporter of Solidarity. Regardless, his argument that language serves as a movable refuge is certainly apt in Manea’s case. Rather than a traditional parade of dates and archival photos, viewers will read significant extracts of his work (in English translation) that give a vivid feeling for his early years. The selections from his story “We Might Have Been Four” are particularly evocative—pastoral in tone and setting, but marked by an ominous atmosphere and mounting sense of alienation.

In many ways, LBD is a study in contrasts, starting with Manea himself. Unlike Kosinski and Nabokov, Manea never ceased writing in Romanian, despite his residency in the bucolic Hudson River region. Given his age and accomplishments, he could easily get away with playing the curmudgeon card, yet Manea appears to be quite a gracious good sport when Frölke follows him at European book festivals and at various media appearances and master classes.

Frölke has a keen eye for intriguing visuals, often using grainy 16mm for eerie effect. The use of simple ambient sound is also quite canny. At times, he might linger on some pedestrian imagery a bit too long, but many scenes are tightly packed with power and meaning—especially a sequence in a Romanian Jewish cemetery. Although no words are spoken, the significance of the 1942 and 1943 dates of death are inescapable.

LBD is an elegantly crafted film, but there is a reason why TIFF programmed it as a Wavelength selection. Essentially, that is the track for films that might confuse people. However, those who have sufficient patience will take a great deal from Manea’s words and his pessimistically humanistic outlook. It would be nice to see this film get a theatrical run at Anthology Film Archives and aesthetically similar theaters. It will only appeal to select audience, but they ought to have a chance to see it. Recommended for highly literate viewers, Le beau danger screened on Sunday as part of this year’s TIFF.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 17th, 2014 at 10:59pm.

By Joe Bendel. First Morgan Spurlock signs on for the One Direction back-stagey doc and now Lixin Fan, the director of the gritty, class conscious Last Train Home, turns his lens on the Chinese reality show Super Boy. In truth, they are really not the same kind of project. Granted, anyone with a smidge of familiarity with sing-offs like Idol will immediately get Super Boy, but the Chinese show is a bit more exploitative than its Western cousins (shocker, right?). Fan captures of a season’s worth of drama fly-on-the-wall style in I Am Here (a.k.a. No Zuo No Die), which screens during the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

Right from the start, Fan counts down the days until the Super Boy finale. The principle is basically the same as any other talent show, but some rounds feature contestants challenging each other in head to head duels. Yet, none of the Super Boys has much taste for going mano a mano. Since they live together sequestered from the outside world in the Super Boy training complex, the impressionable youths form strong bonds over time. As a result, they seem more likely to sacrifice themselves than administer the coup de grace to a friend and competitor.

Arguably, the neurotic nature of the Super Boys might be part of the draw. They sound okay in performance (at least from what we hear), but the coaches are often frustrated when viewer popularity trumps a superior performance. Yes, life is not fair in reality television.

It is difficult to make hard and fast judgments about the adult supervision on Super Boy. Sometimes the coaches act like martinets and the judges can be bizarrely unprofessional. Frankly, breakout Super Girl contestant Zeng Yike comes across as a much more intriguing figure during her brief screen time than any of the Super Boys Fan follows. At one point, a judge summarily quit on-air when she passed through to the next round. Since then, she has generated considerable media attention for her striking but somewhat androgynous style.

In fact, despite all the behind-the-scenes time the audience gets with the current crop of Super Boys, Fan never really establishes their discrete personalities to any meaningful degree. Considering how many of them wear similarly twee Harry Potter spectacles and hipster couture, it is easy to mix them up.

True, the Super Boy franchise frequently resembles a factory, but not one as soulless as those the subjects of Last Train Home toil in. Perhaps a decade ago, the extent to which the Super Boys live in a web-streamed fishbowl might have been shocking, but now it is sort of business as usual.

Indeed, the entire documentary might be old news for Super Boy fans by now. For Americans, it offers an intriguing look at Chinese media, but Fan’s approach is rather betwixt-and-between. At times, he captures some warts-and-all reality show reality, but there are also many fannish Hard Day’s Night interludes. Still, he certainly has an eye for visuals. Interesting but uneven, I Am Here is mostly recommended for hardcore China watchers and potential expats looking for some pop culture background when it screens again this Thursday (9/11) and Sunday (9/14) as part of this year’s TIFF.

LFM GRADE: B-/C+

Posted on September 10th, 2014 at 10:13pm.

By Joe Bendel. According to international law, the use of human shields constitutes war crimes, making Hamas the only war criminals in the latest round of Gaza fighting. Mosab Hassan Yousef probably was not shocked to see the terrorist organization sacrificing women and children. After all, it was not his Israeli handler who turned him into an extraordinarily well placed source, but the brutality of Hamas that he witnessed with his own eyes. Yousef and his Shin Bet contact Gonen Ben Yitzhak tell their unlikely story of espionage and ultimately friendship in Nadav Schirman’s The Green Prince, which opens this Friday in New York.

As the son of a top-ranking Hamas cleric, Yousef was practically born into terrorism. Taught anti-Semitic hatred from an early age, Yousef rashly embarked on his own terrorist operation as payback for one of his father’s many arrests. Fortunately, the Shin Bet saw him coming and they knew who he was.

It was Yitzhak’s job to recruit Yousef, not to befriend him. Initially, Yousef pretended to go along with the plan, hoping to murder his handler at a later date. However, his cover-establishing time in prison changed everything. There he heard the shrieks as his Hamas comrades tortured and executed fellow terrorists falsely accused of working with the Israelis. Upon his release, the widespread suicide bombings sponsored by Hamas also deeply troubled his conscience. Before long, Yousef was working with Yitzhak in great earnest, at enormous personal risk.

Based on Yousef’s expose-memoir Son of Hamas, Schirman’s documentary is far more even-handed and level-headed than you might expect. Yousef’s testimony leaves little doubt regarding the violent extremism of Hamas’s ideology and methods. He also personally witnessed Arafat, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, secretly coordinating the Second Intifada with his father.

However, Prince is obviously not intended as pro-Israeli propaganda. Yousef explicitly blames everyone at the Shin Bet except Yitzhak for the difficult straights he eventually landed in as a U.S. asylum seeker facing certain deportation and certain assassination. Of course, he would hardly be the first intelligence asset cut loose by his spymasters, whereas every suicide bomber recruited by Hamas is fatally used and discarded.

There are scenes in Prince of Hamas at work that are genuinely scary. Without question, the stakes Yousef faced were as real as it gets. While it would be difficult to miss the drama of Yousef’s chronicle, both he and Yitzhak also happen to be compelling story tellers, as well as sympathetic figures that are sure to challenge audience preconceptions. Schirman bolsters the suspense and intrigue with moody noir lighting for his two talking heads and some PBS-quality re-enactments. Their techniques can be a little hokey, but their effectiveness must be conceded nonetheless.

There are more than a few jaw-dropping moments in Prince and the revealing look it offers inside the inner workings of Hamas is only too tragically timely. At times, Yousef and Schirman seem to be struggling to find less than edifying Israeli anecdotes to balance the ledger (“welcome to the slaughterhouse” a prison guard once said to him). Yet, the film and its participants strive to end on a hopeful note, emphasizing the unlikely bond forged between Yousef and Yitzhak. Again, it might be manipulative, but it works. In fact, the film is consistently engrossing and eye-opening. Recommended to a surprising extent, The Green Prince opens this Friday (9/12) in New York at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 10th, 2014 at 6:25pm.