LFM Reviews Son of Saul

By Joe Bendel. In National Socialist concentration camps, Jews who served as “Sonderkommando” were afforded modest privileges and allowed comparatively free movement within the confining walls. Yet, it was undeniably hellish duty. Charged with escorting prisoners into the gas chambers and cleaning up after the mass executions, their first order of business was often to dispatch their predecessors. The new Sonderkommando’s families frequently followed soon thereafter. Consequently, they had no illusions about their ultimate fate. It is rather understandable why the most significant uprising at Auschwitz-Birkenau was planned by the Sonderkommando. Saul Ausländer is part of the rebellion’s inner circle, but he will be distracted by an even more profound crisis in László Nemes’ Son of Saul, Hungary’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which opens this Friday at Film Forum.

Frankly, Son of Saul might be most effective if viewers are not fully briefed on what to expect. It is safe to confirm, this is indeed a Holocaust story, incorporating a very real event, executed with unusually personal immediacy. The resulting viewing experience is not merely bracing. It is sort of like being Tasered. However, judging from some colleagues’ reactions, it may well be that the more forewarned you are, the less potent Nemes’ approach will be, so proceed with caution.

It starts as just another day in the National Socialist death factory for Ausländer, until he sees a body that cracks his defensive shell. Like Ausländer, we see him only after his death. While not strictly adhering to Ausländer’s as-seen-through-his-eyes POV, Nemes largely limits his shots to what would easily be within his field of vision. As an experienced Sonderkommando, he is somewhat desensitized to the horrors that would have been horrific centerpieces of other Holocaust films. Instead, we get a sense of the kinetic maelstrom of death he must navigate.

To further emphasize its restrictive scope, Son of Saul was composed expressly for the pre-widescreen Academy aspect ratio. The audience is immediately aware just how much they are not seeing, necessarily feeling disoriented as a result. Nemes forces the audience to figure out Ausländer’s relationships to other Sonderkommando through the dramatic context of what follows. This is a remarkably physical film that is just as choreographed as any musical or martial arts extravaganza.

Evidently, Ausländer reluctantly agreed to help scrounge supplies for the revolt, because he understood how little he had to lose. However, when he thinks he recognizes the body in question, he starts recklessly improvising a scheme to prevent the requisite autopsy and find a Rabbi to say Kaddish. He will knowingly jeopardize the imminent uprising, but his mission is equally defiant in its way.

From "Son of Saul."
From “Son of Saul.”

For most of the cast, simply surviving the non-stop bedlam constitutes quite a performance. However, Géza Röhrig is quietly devastating as Ausländer. Essentially, he shows us the stirrings of a long dormant soul struggling to assert itself. It is a painfully honest, desperately lean performance that will shame this year’s histrionically indulgent award-seeking performances (we’re looking at you, Carol).

Son of Saul is not exactly immersive, but it gives the audience a visceral sense of the confusion and dehumanization necessary to make the gas chambers run. This is an exhausting film, but also a uniquely powerful one, unlike almost any other well-meaning holocaust narrative. Highly recommended, it opens this Friday (12/18) in New York at Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on December 16th, 2015 at 7:02pm.

LFM Reviews Dreams Rewired

By Joe Bendel. If Guy Maddin set out to adapt a ten year-old Wired magazine article, the result would probably look a lot like this, but the resulting film would not be so smugly assured of its insightfulness. That must be the difference between the Canadian and Austrian temperaments. Martin Reinhart, Thomas Tode, and Manu Luksch suggest our current digital era is only one of many successive information revolutions that constantly recalibrated the speed of Twentieth Century life. They will illustrate their point through the collage of rarely seen but suitably ironic early cinema clips that constitutes Dreams Rewired, opening this Wednesday at Film Forum.

So perhaps the more things change, the more they stay the same—or rather maybe the only constant is change? One of those is the general gist of Rewired. The trio of co-directors plus their fourth co-screenwriter Mukul Patel somewhat convincingly suggest the magnitude of innovation wrought by the internet and wireless communication is not so very different than societal transformation brought about by the telegraph, telephone, radio (the original wireless), and forms of moving pictures.

They probably have a point there, but they never really take it to a deeper level. Instead, the film is really more about the cascading images of retro-futurism and technological anxiety culled from the films of Thomas Edison, Alice Guy, Dziga Vertov, Carl Dreyer, Rene Clair, and Louis Feuillade. Both Chaplin and Keaton make cameo appearances, but probably the most readily identifiable clips come from Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, which turned out not to reflect the future after all.

From "Dreams Rewired."
From “Dreams Rewired.”

Throughout Rewired, the audience waits for Reinhart, Tode, Luksch, and Patel to step up their analysis, but it stays at the level of “look at how impressed people were with their televisions and switch boards.” As a result, the real reason for watching the docu-essay is the wild imagery they have assembled. If you want to see Teutonic men in tights and space helmets, this is film you have been waiting for. A game Tilda Swinton also plays along, narrating the repetitive thesis and sometimes providing archly anachronistic contemporary dialogue for some of the scenes the filmmakers incorporate.

If you enjoy retro-futuristic space opera, there are amusing bits and pieces in Rewired, but you are probably better off revisiting episodes of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet or classic films like Metropolis and Destination Moon (neither of which suited the purposes of Reinhart, etc., etc.). It sounds like brainy fun, but it really plays like an internet supercut. Problematically lightweight, Dreams Rewired is bound to leave viewers wanting more (of something, anything) when it opens this Wednesday (12/16) in New York, at Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on December 16th, 2015 at 7:02pm.

LFM Reviews An Enchantress

EnchantressBy Joe Bendel. It is a system of magic economists will appreciate. When a sorcerer magically gives in one place, the mystical checks and balances will take from someplace else. It is hard to predict how the accounts will be evened, even for an experienced magician like Merlin. No, he is most likely not that Merlin. However, he has professional reasons for keeping people wondering in director-screenwriter Ian Lewis’s An Enchantress, which releases today on DVD from MVD.

If the Arthurian Merlin were alive and well, living in provincial England, he might also make ends meet by staging magic shows at the local theater. This Merlin is (probably) not that Merlin, but his magic is real. He supplements his income by performing real magic for paying customers, but he tries to limit the impact of his spells and ensure they are cast for a worthy cause. Helping the venal Strumble ascend to the local planning council was a mistake in retrospect.

The resulting corruption will have ripple effects that will ensnare Merlin and his wife Gail. However, in the short-term they will be distracted grieving for his step-son Gary. The circumstances of his backpacking death remain murky, despite the return of his committed girlfriend Viviane. She makes Merlin a bit nervous. In addition to her unhealthy obsession with magic and her uncomfortable flirtatiousness, there is the matter of her name. After all, it was Nimueh (a.k.a. Viviane) who seduced Merlin and entrapped him in the Crystal Cave.

If you can get past the low budget aesthetic, An Enchantress is a super little British genre sleeper. Lewis uses magic in intriguing ways, while playing clever games with the Arthurian source material. He also sets a weirdly ambiguous tone for the village, where belief and skepticism for Merlin’s powers go hand-in-hand. Nevertheless, magic is very real in this world, as is government corruption.

From "An Enchantress."
From “An Enchantress.”

Veteran British television character actor Nicholas Ball is terrific as Merlin. He has both the old school presence and the mischievousness you would expect from a powerful sorcerer. He also develops some attractively realistic chemistry with Johanne Murdock’s very down-to-earth Gail. Olivia Llewelyn projects a sense of danger and sexual unease while guarding Viviane’s secrets. Abigail McKern (Rumpole’s daughter) also leads the film some classical gravitas as Merlin’s mystical counselor.

There is considerably more scope to An Enchantress than you initially expect, but Lewis peels back the onion so smoothly, it all makes narrative sense. Granted, you have to just accept the quality of the special effects, but if you grew up with shows like the original Doctor Who and Blake’s 7, then they will have nostalgic appeal. Frankly, it feels like a cult favorite 1970s BBC television film that has only now been discovered, in the best way imaginable. Highly recommended for dark fantasy fans, An Enchantress is now available on DVD from MVD.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on December 16th, 2015 at 7:01pm.

LFM Reviews Liza the Fox-Fairy @ The AFI’s 2015 EU Film Showcase

LizatheFoxFairyBy Joe Bendel. Japan is the land of the kaidan and the grudge. Nobody does ghosts better. Even in a whimsical retro-1970s capitalist Hungary, you will find Japanese ghosts tormenting the living. The spirit of 1960s crooner Tomi Tani might look benign, but he will cause all sorts of problems for a naïve private nurse in Károly Ujj Mészáros’s Liza, the Fox-Fairy, which screens as part of the AFI’s 2015 EU Film Showcase.

For years, Liza has dutifully cared for Marta, the Hungarian widow of the former Japanese ambassador. Through her employer, Liza has absorbed a love of Japanese history and culture, including Tani’s sugary grooves. For years, the singer has inexplicably haunted Marta’s flat, but only Liza is able to see him, assuming he is a benevolent spirit. Tani has fallen in love with her, but that is a bad thing, especially when the lonely-hearted Liza finally starts to get proactive about romance.

When everyone who gets close to her starts to die, including Marta, Liza figures out she has been cursed to become a mythological Fox-Fairy. All men who love her are doomed to such a fate. Naturally, the police start to suspect her of multiple murders, especially since she inherited her employer’s flat, over the objections of Marta’s greedy relatives. The only exception is the pure-hearted but dangerously clumsy Sgt. Zoltan, an ardent fan of Finnish country music, who becomes Liza’s other unlikely flat-mate.

Fox-Fairy looks like a Wes Anderson film on twee steroids, but it has a surprising edge to it. Arguably, it is more kaidan than quirk-fest, which is cool. However, Liza and Zoltan are also refreshingly gentle souls, whom even the most jaded viewers will root for. Evidently, Mészáros and Bálint Hegedűs adapted a stage play by Zsolt Pozsgai for the big screen, but it is hard to imagine how all their visual mischief-making could be rendered for live theater. Still, it would be worth watching Broadway take a shot at it, even if the production fell on its face. Frankly, the film has way more special effects than you would imagine, but it would be either spoilery or utterly baffling to try to explain their context. Yet, Mészáros always maintains a very personal vibe throughout the film.

From "Liza the Fox-Fairy."
From “Liza the Fox-Fairy.”

Mónika Balsai and Szabolcs Bede-Fazekas are terrific as Liza and Zoltan, respectively. They are both endearing in a puppy dog kind of way and achingly earnest, without ever getting cloying. Likewise, the Danish-Japanese David Sakurai is gleefully evil and impressively suave as Tani. As if he were not entertainingly villainous enough, Zoltán Schmied truly personifies oily sleaze as Henrik, Marta’s playboy nephew, whom Liza mistakenly falls for.

Somehow, Liza manages to be both cute and dark, which is quite a feat of filmmaking on Mészáros’s part. It is a wildly inventive film, but the style never overwhelms the characters or narrative. Very highly recommended, Liza, the Fox-Fairy screens this coming Thursday (12/17) as part of the AFI’s EU Film Showcase.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on December 16th, 2015 at 7:01pm.

LFM Reviews Tale of Tales @ The AFI’s 2015 EU Film Showcase

tale-of-tales-posterBy Joe Bendel. Neapolitan poet Giambattista Basile’s fairy tale collection predated Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, but despite their subtitle, “Entertainment for Little Ones,” they are considered idiosyncratically macabre and even a little NSFW. Of course, those are both rather cinematic qualities. Matteo Garrone duly emphasizes the strange and baroque in Tale of Tales, his English language adaptation of a trio of intertwined Basile fables, which screens as part of the AFI’s 2015 EU Film Showcase.

Three neighboring kingdoms largely coexist quite peacefully, because their respective monarchs are so self-absorbed with their own issues. Thanks to the help of a necromancer, the Queen of Longtrellis magically conceives the son she always desired, at the mere cost of her indulgent husband (and basically her soul). However, Prince Elias never adequately returns her codependent love. Instead, he prefers to spend time with the commoner Jonah, who is his exact spitting image.

The King of Highmountain is equally problematic in the completely opposite way. He ignores his antsy-to-be-married daughter, Princess Violet, preferring to obsess over his abnormally large trained flea. When he finally makes a show of arranging a contest for her hand, he inadvertently grants her hand to an ogre.

Meanwhile, the horndog King of Strongcliff has fallen in lust with the voice of the peasant Dora. However, he does not realize she is one of two old crone sisters living hand-to-mouth in a cottage on his estate. Feigning coyness, Dora manages to hold off the King until she can come to him under the dark of night. Complications ensue.

If you haven’t realized yet, there is sex in these fairy tales. There are also flashes of violence that are shocking in the moment, but not at all gratuitous. Be that as it may, it is easy to see why the archetypal source material has been largely passed over by animators and children’s publishers. Tale of Tales still seems likely an unlikely direction for an ultra-realist like Garrone, but he reportedly claims all his films have a kinship with fairy tales. You can sort of see that in a morality tale like Reality, but it is less apparent in the thinly fictionalized social expose, Gomorrah.

From "Tale of Tales."
From “Tale of Tales.”

Regardless, there is a lot of cool stuff in Tale, including Toby Jones talking to a giant flea and Salma Hayek eating a dragon’s heart. There are also tightrope walkers, damsels in distress, damsels causing distress, shapeshifters, and Shakespearean confusion with twins. Garrone and editor Marco Spoletini shrewdly time the shifts between narrative strands, maintaining a nice up-tempo pace. Alexandre Desplat also contributes a very Desplat-sounding score (classy, but not particularly distinctive). However, production designer Dimitri Capuani and the battery of art directors creates a richly detailed fantasy world that is both lovely and sinister.

Tale of Tales could be considered The Princess Bride’s evil twin, making it exactly the sort of fairy tale movie we have needed. It is much more fun than Catherine Breillart’s fairy tale films and more subversive than Snow White and the Huntsman. Recommended for fans of dark fantasy, Tale of Tales screens this Saturday (12/12) as part of the AFI’s EU Film Showcase.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on December 10th, 2015 at 1:00pm.

LFM Reviews The Magic Mountain @ The AFI’s 2015 EU Film Showcase

By Joe Bendel. Where could a mountaineering Polish dissident go to most effectively fight communism in the 1980s? Obviously Afghanistan. Of course, getting there was no easy feat and staying alive once he arrived was even trickier. However, the late Adam Jacek Winker was not easily dissuaded. Anca Damian tells his extraordinary story in the animated documentary The Magic Mountain, which screens as part of the AFI’s 2015 EU Film Showcase.

For Winker, opposing the spread of communism was a decidedly personal matter. His cousin and uncle were among those murdered by the Soviets at Katyn. He was able to get out of Poland while the getting was relatively good, but he also felt guilty about abandoning his homeland in a time of prolonged suffering. As a result, he was always looking for a way to take the fight back to the Soviets. While living in Paris, he was a bit of a gadfly, providing unwanted reality checks for the French communists’ Labor Day festivities, but he was truly called to Afghanistan.

Since Winker only had a French “refugee” passport, getting to Afghanistan, by way of Pakistan, was a complicated process. However, once there, Winker fell in with the mujahedeen relatively quickly. He had the extreme good fortune to join up with Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the “Lion of Panjshir,” an ardent foe of communism, who later rejected the Taliban’s oppressive fundamentalism just as vigorously. Alas, Mountain also serves as an elegy to the assassinated Massoud, as well as his somewhat eccentric Polish friend and comrade.

From "The Magic Mountain."
From “The Magic Mountain.”

Indeed, some the most poignant moments of Mountain focus on Winker’s efforts to promote and then memorialize the fallen Afghan hero. Yet, with respects to her central figure, Damian never descends into blinkered hagiography. Winker’s fault are readily identified, making him the stuff of classical tragedy, but viewers will understand where his zeal came from, and admire him for harnessing it.

Mountain incorporates archival photos of Winker and Massoud into the distinctive and diverse work of its team of animators and artists, including Theodore Ushev, Tomek Ducki, Matei Focsa Neagoe, Dan Panaitescu, and Raluca Popa. Frankly, a few sequences are almost excessively stylized to the point of self-defeating abstraction, but other visuals are absolutely arresting. Regardless, the film is always powered along by its sweepingly dramatic narrative.

Winker really was a character—a heroic character. He was also a principled individualist, who did not let his experiences in Afghanistan blind him to the dangers of Islamist ideology in his final years. Basically, he stayed on the right side of history, every step of the way, making his life story quite fascinating and instructive. Very highly recommended for fans of animation and biographical documentaries, The Magic Mountain screens this Saturday (12/12) as part of the AFI’s EU Film Showcase.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on December 10th, 2015 at 1:00pm.