LFM Review: The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu

By Joe Bendel. There was a time when Nicolae Ceaușescu got all the Iron Curtain’s favorable press. Many in the foreign policy establishment considered him reasonable, even reform-minded based on some shrewd public relations moves, like his measured criticism of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. However, the 1989 Revolution ripped down the façade, revealing to the world the monster that had long oppressed Romania. Of course, every dictator sees himself as an enlightened Caesar – and has the state-produced propaganda to prove it.  Culling 180 minutes from over 1,000 hours of archival footage, Romanian director Andrei Ujică assembled a video-collage of Ceaușescu’s life as it was perceived by the dictator and recorded by his state cameras in The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu (trailer above), which screens this Saturday during the 2010 New York Film Festival.

Defiant to the end, Nicolae Ceaușescu refuses to cooperate in the hastily assembled trial following the Revolution (he would say coup) that removed him from office. Indeed, his has been a life of destiny as we watch his storied career in flashbacks, courtesy of the state propaganda ministry.

From his meteoric rise following the death of his Stalinist mentor Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceaușescu might have displayed a bit of independence in foreign policy – but aside from his support for Prague Spring, this usually manifested itself in uncharacteristically warm relations with the Warsaw Pact’s Eastern rivals, the Chinese and Vietnamese (here was a man who could appreciate a personality cult). Still, he certainly seemed to enjoy entertaining western heads of state, including President Nixon (who also appears to relish his photo ops with one of the few world leaders he physically towered over). We watch as Ceaușescu celebrates birthdays, receives dignitaries, and opens party conferences. He briefly condemns a spot of hooliganism in Timişoara and then suddenly he is facing an ad-hoc inquest. Of course, the real story is much more dramatic and far bloodier.

More or less billed as an object lesson in film as a propaganda tool, Ujică did not set out to create a revisionist history or to humanize the permanently deposed dictator. However, the film might have that unintended effect on audiences not privy to Ujică’s underlying concept or his past work documenting the 1989 uprising in Videograms of a Revolution. This is a particular risk here in New York, where art-house patrons consider themselves politically sophisticated but are easily manipulated by propagandistic images exactly like those in Autobiography.

Running a full three hours, Autobiography is a hugely ambitious work, but frankly it is a grueling viewing experience. One scene of Ceaușescu fondling the bread of a well-stocked Potemkin market during a photo op makes the point. The second constitutes overkill. In fact, there is constant and deliberate repetition throughout Ujică’s film, as each Party conference and state visit blends into the next. Perhaps this is a deliberate strategy to convey the rigidly homogenous nature of Ceaușescu’s artificially constructed reality, but it is wearying for viewers looking for a lifeline to grasp unto.

As the highly problematic Autobiography currently stands, there is no footage that even mildly criticizes Ceaușescu’s twenty-five year misrule. How could there be? Any employees of the propaganda ministry not properly lionizing their master would have faced severe (probably fatal) reprisals. As a result, the entire film is much like Kim Il-sung’s massive welcoming ceremony, a hyper-real but static spectacle, ironic in its conspicuous lack of irony. Ujică proves himself a daring filmmaker, but to what end? Autobiography is ultimately a film for those who have an affinity the vintage aesthetics of the Soviet era, regardless of the messy history involved, essentially unreconstructed leftists and ironic hipsters. Not recommended, it nonetheless screens this Saturday (10/9) at the Walter Reade Theater as a special presentation of the 48th NYFF.

Posted on October 4th, 2010 at 9:13am.

Anna Karina, Godard’s Irony & Declining European Birthrates

By David Ross. In preparation for my film course (see here), I watched Godard’s A Woman is a Woman (1961) for the first time in years. [See the first 10 minutes of the film above.] I remembered the film as a wearisome deconstructive exercise brought to life only by Anna Karina in the lead role. The film was as tedious as ever, and La Karina as irresistibly kittenish. She poses, pouts, and purrs, in what may be the single greatest act of seduction – seduction of the camera, seduction of the audience – ever filmed. Of course, Karina manages to seduce none of the characters onscreen despite dogged effort. This is Godard’s little joke, or maybe part of his point.

Anna Karina.

What a cold and aloof ass Godard must have been to persist in his ironic games instead of allowing himself to be seduced, as Degas allowed himself to be seduced over and over again. Godard’s camera is busy making political and aesthetic points when it should be, as it were, making love. Karina and Godard married during the shooting of A Woman is a Woman. I suppose a man can be excused a certain sobriety with respect to the woman he sleeps with every night, but he cannot be excused an imperturbable irony. Godard’s clinical distance is an embarrassment to the male imagination and a travesty of what’s owed to a woman on her honeymoon. What a shame that at the height of her beauty and charm Karina wound up in a string of pretentious, sporadically brilliant Godard films and not in a string of delightful romantic comedies directed by someone like George Cukor or Billy Wilder. She might have been another Audrey Hepburn.

Oddly enough, A Woman is a Woman put me in mind of Mark Steyn. Karina’s character Angela desperately wants a baby, but she can find nobody willing to impregnate her. I couldn’t help construing or misconstruing this as an allegory of Europe’s plunging birthrates and demographic death spiral, of which Steyn is the poet laureate. Here’s a typical exchange between Angela and Émile Récamier as Brialy:

Angela: I want a baby
Brialy: You’re being unreasonable.
Angela: I want a baby
Brialy: Stop this madness
Angela: You’re being mean.
Brialy: I don’t like that tartan skirt on you.
Angela: Good. I’m not trying to please anybody. I want a baby.
Brialy: Stop this madness.
Angela: I’m going to the Zodiac [a strip club]
Brialy: Go and strip then. You disgust me.
Angela: Jerk. We can’t live off your lousy income. You’re such a coward.
Brialy: I’d rather be a coward than fool
Angela [sadly]: Why am I a fool for wanting a baby?
Brialy: Shut up or I’ll leave.
Angela: Where would you go?
Brialy: I don’t know. Mexico.
Angela: You’re crazy,
Brialy: No, you’re crazy.
Angela: I want a baby.

The camera then cuts to a Paris boulevard, where a man-in-the-street reporter type accosts a young man:

Reporter: Excuse me, could you sleep with this young lady so she can have a baby?
Pedestrian: It’s not a good time. I’m a bit busy today.

Procreation, as Steyn argues constantly, is an affirmation of continuity with both the past and the future (see here for a typical riff). It is a matter of believing in a narrative of history and choosing to participate. Modern Europe – where the non-immigrant birthrate is far below replacement level – seems to construe the future as somebody else’s problem, as something for state bureaucrats to work out while one holidays in Ibiza. Does Godard’s comedy pick up on something then latent – now patent – in the European zeitgeist? Perhaps not – perhaps so.

Posted on October 3rd, 2010 at 12:28pm.

Instead of The Social Network, Libertas Presents: The Video Website

By Jason Apuzzo. I saw The Social Network yesterday – and found it for the most part uninteresting. Despite some stand-out performances by Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield the film failed to really grab me emotionally in any way. Part of the problem is that there doesn’t seem to have been anything particularly dramatic behind the rise of Facebook as a corporation. You could basically make the same movie about the rise of, say, Dunkin’ Donuts, to about the same effect.

[I hear Dunkin’ Donuts does over $5 billion in business per year, by the way. So don’t laugh.]

And so in lieu of spending hours writing a review about a film that didn’t grab me, on any level, I thought I’d post this video above that illustrates how David Fincher’s directorial style could quickly and efficiently be brought to bear in depicting the rise of other famous Silicon Valley ventures. Judge for yourself.

By the way, my understanding is that Mark Zuckerberg won’t be suing Sony, or any of the other people behind the making of The Social Network. They’re lucky, frankly. The people making the Google movie might not have the same good fortune.

Posted on October 2nd, 2010 at 10:53am.

LFM Review: Carlos

By Joe Bendel. Ilich Ramírez Sánchez killed on behalf of just about every violent extremist movement of the twentieth century. Sheltered by the East German Stasi, he was most closely aligned with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). An ardent Marxist and notorious terrorist, Ramírez Sánchez is best known as the infamous “Carlos the Jackal” (though he preferred just plain “Carlos”). French director Olivier Assayas dramatizes his infamous crimes (and there are a lot of them) in his grandly ambitious five-hour, thinly fictionalized historical thriller Carlos, which screens in its entirety during this year’s New York Film Festival.

Soviet educated, the Venezuelan Ramírez Sánchez views the world through a radicalized prism. He is convinced “direct action” (meaning terrorism) is necessary to bring about supposedly progressive change. A promising volunteer for the PFLP terrorist network, Carlos steadily establishes a reputation for ruthlessness with a number of grenade attacks on cafes and an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Edward Sieff, president of Marks & Spencer and a prominent member of the British Jewish community.

Carlos forged alliances with the Japanese Red Army and extremist German Baader Meinhof/RAF splinter groups, acting more or less in concert. While he was not directly involved in the murder of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics or the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 (freed by the IDF’s famous Entebbe operation), he was personally charged with subsequent reprisal attacks. However, his greatest international infamy probably arose from his attack on the 1975 OPEC meeting, taking the cartel’s delegates hostage.

Ramírez Sánchez is an anti-Semitic mass murderer. His crimes have no justification. Wisely, Assayas does not really go down that road. While his Carlos has a certain animal magnetism and a voracious sexual appetite, the film never makes a martyr of him, unlike the terrorist agit-prop of Uli Edel’s Baader Meinhof Complex. Essentially Assayas shows Ramírez Sánchez going about his destructive business rather matter-of-factly, only occasionally paying lip service to some leftist cause, such as Allende in Chile. Yet, there are a handful of truly telling scenes, as when a former RAF accomplice remarks to Carlos how sick it is for Germans like himself to be killing Jews.

The five plus hours of Carlos are packed to the gills with violent intrigue. Yet, it’s all pretty well grounded in historical fact.  Indeed, it is quite in synch with the facts established in Barbet Schroeder’s Terror’s Advocate, a documentary profile of Jacques Vergés, the attorney for Ramírez Sánchez, the PFLP, and just about every other terrorist of the twentieth century (who also briefly appears as a character in Carlos). Frankly, it would make a much better double feature with Assayas’s film than Edel’s love-letter to terror.

Edgar Ramírez is appropriately both charismatic and creepy as Ramírez Sánchez, nicely capturing the ferocity of extremism. There are also scores of effective supporting performances from its large but completely credible ensemble cast. Yet Carlos is much more a director’s film than an actor’s, seamlessly recreating complicated historical events around the globe and staging gritty action sequences with tick-tock precision.

Originally broadcast on French television, Carlos might be divided into three parts, but it truly is one unified film, entirely helmed by Assayas (unlike the three interlocking films of Red Riding). Truthfully, the 319 minutes is a long haul. As fascinating and absorbing as it is, most viewers will be desperately hoping for his capture by the final half hour. For those with short attention spans, there will be a two and half hour cut that will eventually screen at the Lincoln Plaza. However, if you are going to see a big epic film like Carlos, you should do it right and get the full experience. The full unvarnished and uncut Carlos screens this Saturday morning (10/2) during the 2010 NYFF.

Posted on October 1st, 2010 at 5:17pm.

More Aliens Declare War! + Islamic Radicals Attack Gay/Lesbian FilmFest & The Weekend Hollywood Round-up, 10/1

From the new "Skyline" trailer.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Members of an Islamic radical group called the ‘Islam Defenders Front’ staged rallies in Jakarta, Indonesia on Tuesday, demanding the termination there of the gay/lesbian Q! Film Festival – indeed, demanding that the festival be shut down within 24 hours. The group has apparently threatened several venues in Jakarta associated with the festival, including the Goethe Institute, Erasmus Huis Dutch Cultural Center, Centre Culturel Francais Jakarta and the Japan Foundation – thereby effectively making this an international incident. This is one of those ugly little episodes that should remind everybody of who really persecutes gays and lesbians nowadays – namely, thuggish Islamic theocrats, not middle American Christians. [I’ll be waiting for Hollywood’s ‘tolerant’ liberals to make a movie about this story, by the way. Wachowski brothers, are you listening? Or Kevin Smith?] Let’s see how many film sites outside of Libertas pick up this story.

• On a more positive note, MTV is debuting the new poster for The Taqwacores (see left). We’ve been talking about this film for months, because of the hopeful tendencies it portends among today’s Islamic youth, and we’re very excited about its debut. The film opens in New York and LA on October 22nd.

• Everybody’s buzzing about Titanic 3D and Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3D opening within 2 weeks of each other in 2012. Frankly, I think this is great – I plan on seeing both. Both films have their strengths and weaknesses, and both have earned spots in pop culture lore for having pushed the boundaries of cinema spectacle – while also telling compelling stories. Of course, who am I rooting for in the box office race? Do you need to ask? I’ll be jogging later today in a Darth Maul T-shirt.

• Incredibly, there’s even more news on the Alien Invasion Front – some of it big. Apparently Sam Raimi is prepping a new film called Earth Defense Force, that involves America skirmishing with the communist Chinese … as a prelude to a far larger and more lethal invasion from visitors from outer space. So this film will combine two recent cinema trends of: anti-communism and alien invasion. Nice. Getting kind of crowded in those skies now, though! At a certain point, some of these alien invaders are probably going to start fighting each other. Why? Because rumors are now circulating about the possibility of two sequels to Roland Emmerich’s original Independence Day, although Emmerich had better hurry up with those because some of these other films will be stealing his thunder. One such film is Skyline, which we’ve previously registered some reservations about here, but which just debuted a fantastic new trailer. Bear in mind that this film was made for under $10 million. Phenomenal. And, ironically enough today: Ridley Scott apparently wants a $250 million budget for his Alien prequel, and he wants the film to have a ‘hard-R’ rating. Fox, obviously, is balking on both counts. Honestly, Sir Ridley may want to consider retiring. He’s been blowing an enormous amount of other peoples’ money for years on films that are underperforming at the box office, and if these demands are true as reported he must be living in a Matrix-style dream state. He should see the Skyline trailer and see what can be done for pennies nowadays. In other alien invasion news: Emma Thompson is apparently circling Men in Black 3D; Rihanna is getting rave reviews from her fellow Battleship cast members; some intriguing set photos have leaked from the J.J. Abrams/Steven Spielberg Super 8; Comic-con will be staying in San Diego for the next 5 years; Tom Hanks is debuting a futuristic new web series called Electric City; and MTV is running a great list of The 10 Scenes from The Star Wars Saga We Can’t Wait to See in 3D – but for some reason they forgot the Death Star trench scene! No Death Star?!

Mia Maestro of "Twilight: Breaking Dawn."

• A new poster has debuted for the Jolie/Depp/von Donnersmarck The Tourist. I like it – especially the tag line.

• Did you know that in 2012 we’re likely to have the ‘whitest’ Oscar season in years, due to the fact that so few minority actors are getting any award-season buzz? How is this happening? I thought our Betters in Hollywood were equitably distributing roles! I don’t understand this at all … except as the flower of hypocrisy.

• Here are details of the Tony Curtis tribute on Turner Classic Movies. That will be a bittersweet day. His daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, talks today about what a mensch her Dad was. Prepare a funeral for a Viking.

• On the Chicks with Fangs front, MyAnna Buring, Casey LaBow and Maggie Grace have been cast as “a trio of Russian vampire sisters” in the next Twilight film! Perfect! When you hear the phrase “trio of Russian vampire sisters,” you can rest assured that Apuzzo will be there. Pretty newcommer Mia Maestro has also been cast in that film. Also: Guillermo del Toro and NBC are apparently thinking of reviving The Munsters. It’s being pitched as “Modern Family meets True Blood.” I couldn’t make that up if I tried. And finally: don’t forget to watch Christopher Lee and a bevy of gorgeous Hammer women in Turner Classic Movies’ Dracula-fest tonight.

• In Wall Street 2 news, Oliver Stone now says he was only able to afford his rather sumptuous, lavish film by way of product placements. Hilarious. Special public memo to Ducati, by the way: I’m happy to put your motorcycles in any film I make. Really. Even if it’s set during the Roman Empire. [We’ll make it work.] There was also an interesting article in the New York Times yesterday on the artwork on display in Stone’s film – Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Children was especially pivotal in the film, by the way. I should’ve mentioned that in my review. There’s also this warm and very candid interview with Michael Douglas in the New York Post right now. You get the sense from this interview that both he and Stone really respect the Wall Street guys, and were definitely not out to do a hit job on them. Douglas himself apparently grew up with a lot of guys who are now ruling The Street.

Kelly Brook of "Piranha 3D."

• Here’s a great clip of Francis Coppola interviewing John Milius about the writing of Apocalpyse Now, taken from a larger, brand new interview that will be appearing on the Apocalypse Now Blu-ray. It’s wonderful to see these two guys getting together again, and this new Blu-ray set looks absolutely phenomenal.

• Did you know that John Hughes was a conservative? If not, read this piece out from yesterday in which the New York Post’s Kyle Smith talks to P.J. O’Rourke about Hughes’ films and P.J.’s days with Hughes back at MAD Magazine.

• Other random news and notes: some set photos have leaked of Tom Cruise shooting Mission: Impossible 4 in the Czech Republic; the great Christopher Plummer has joined the cast of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (still processing my thoughts on that project); Whit Stillman is apparently gearing up for a new project (thanks to Jennifer Baldwin for alerting me to that) and we want to wish him the very best on that new film; Fox and Walden Media are worrying about whether audiences will show up for the next Narnia film (a reasonable concern); and more babes are being considered for the role of Spider-Man’s love interest in the Sony reboot, with the list now including Dianna Agron and Georgina Haig.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Piranha 3D’s Kelly Brook does a fashion shoot this week for The Guardian … and she certainly does look tasty, even if I’m not a fish.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.

Posted on October 1st, 2010 at 10:51am.

Mad Men Season Four, Episode 10: “Hands and Knees”

By Jennifer Baldwin. Mad Men is not what one would call a “plot heavy” show. It’s more like a series of character studies — an exercise in atmosphere and style — and less a wham-bang, action-packed thrill ride. But every few episodes a season, Mad Men lets loose and the stuff really hits the fan. Secrets are revealed! Violence breaks out! Babies are born! Geopolitical events cause everyone to freak out!

Episode 10, “Hand and Knees,” is one of those “plot heavy” episodes. And yet, while everything seemed to go down in this one, nothing really came of it in the end (or at least, nothing yet…).

Lane got whacked with a cane by his stern father, so he’s going back to England. But the ramifications of this are still unclear. Joan, presumably, had Roger’s baby aborted (though there was debate at my viewing party over whether she went through with the procedure or not). But on the surface, Joan seems to have gone back to status quo.

Roger and Lee.

In probably the biggest plot development of the episode, Lee Garner Jr. told Roger that Lucky Strike is moving to a new agency, but again the effects of this shake-up are yet to be felt, since Roger hides the news from the other SCDP partners.

Even Don’s storyline, in the end, amounted to nothing (for now).

Everyone was on their hands and knees — some literally, like Don vomiting in his bathroom or Lane after the cane-thwacking, while others only figuratively, like Roger, pleading with Lee to give SCDP one last chance with Lucky Strike — but everywhere, these characters were falling down, weakened, reduced to the level of servants and criminals. And yet, all of these “hands and knees” moments happened in private — in those secret, almost clandestine moments between intimates that no outsider is privileged to see. I think this calls back to the theme in Episode 7 — that issue of intimacy, of and what it means to know another person — only this time we’re seeing the truly dark side of things, those relationships and aspects of the characters that are too horrible to let escape beyond the confines of an apartment living room or a private booth in a restaurant.

Joan and Roger.

Lane’s cruel humiliation at the hands of his father; Don’s complete breakdown at the thought of being arrested by the feds; Roger’s final failure as a business man with Lee Jr.; Joan’s face-saving lie in the abortion doctor’s office — all of these moments of humiliation are kept secret by the characters involved, none of them willing to let others know the depths of their shame and failure. In fact, when Lane reveals the secret of his relationship with Toni to his father, he’s “rewarded” with violence. By the end, in that last scene with the partners, Lane has learned to hold his tongue and keep his private vulnerabilities to himself.

Even Don is still burdened by secrets, still wearing the mask. He tells Faye the truth about his identity — she’s been granted special intimacy — but Don’s not ready to reveal himself to the world. He was on his hands and knees for most of the episode, but he’s not ready to stay there.

The theme of the episode couldn’t have been more obvious thanks to the music selection over the closing credits: an instrumental version of Lennon and McCartney’s “Do You Want to Know a Secret.” Everyone’s got secrets; everyone’s hoping they won’t get found out. But the meaning doesn’t stop there. A closer look at the lyrics reveals a more sinister tone:

Listen. Do you want to know a secret?
I promise not to tell.

There’s a slyness to this lyric, an implication that secrets will be told, it’s only a matter of time. The promise not to tell is empty. Who will be betrayed?

Closer. Let me whisper in your ear.
Say the words you long to hear.

Pete.

This suggests that the words the characters long to hear are not the words they need to hear. Don hears Faye say everything will be alright, he gets reassurances from Pete that everything’s been taken care of at the Department of Defense, but are these just empty words? Can the secret go away this easily?

The episode ends with a whimper and not a bang; most secrets stay hidden. But I have a feeling these secrets won’t last more than a week or two. Nobody knows much for now, but I get the feeling things are about to explode, much like the crowds at Shea Stadium when the Beatles took the stage. After all, there are only three episodes left.

Posted on September 30th, 2010 at 6:10pm.