NYFF 2012: Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha

My first, and due to scheduling conflicts and travel costs, possibly my only visit to this year's New York Film Festival, was an afternoon press screening of of Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha.  A film that has annoyed as many people as it has impressed.  Here is my take on the whole thing.

Noah Baumbach, the Brooklyn-born writer/director of such arthouse hits as Kicking and Screaming, Margot at the Wedding and The Squid and the Whale, is at it again.  This time around he is joined by muse/girlfriend Greta Gerwig (last seen, Baumbach-wise, in the director's last effort, Greenberg) as co-screenwriter and star.  The film, done in crisp black and white (actually shot in colour and, in the most anti-Ted Turner style, transferred into monochrome) and shot on a minimal budget in and around Brooklyn, is the story of a twentysomething New York dancer - or perhaps we should say, wannabe dancer - who is semi-abandoned by her BFF when a better apartment in Tribeca comes up.  The film follows the intrepid Frances, as played quite instinctively by Ms. Gerwig (she did create the character after all), as she hops from apartment to apartment, straining to move on from her slackeresque past and into an uncertain future.  Both whimsical and jaded, and at times quite brilliant, Frances Ha is the kind of arthouse film that many would, and many indeed have, called pretentious.

Now the term pretentious has been used to describe Baumbach and his work since pretty much the beginning, but such a term is merely an angry tool used by those critics, and so-called average filmgoers, who do not fully understand what the writer and/or director were going for.  Much like how the Republicans have turned the word Liberal into a dirty word, critics with little to no knowledge of what cinema is all about, have taken the term pretentious - which granted does not shine the greatest of lights on its intended subject to begin with - and used it to describe anything that potentially goes over their head - anything that is too arty for their sensibilities.  In other words, the cinema of, among others, Noah Baumbach.  Now I realize Frances Ha, with its lackadaisical take on being young in the big city (damn hipster whipper-snappers I can hear them yelping now) or its monochromatic artistic affectations (too, and I hate hate hate this term, artsy-fartsy they complain), or its constant allusions to the French New Wave, is not a film for everyone (but then what film is) and one could easily, and bluntly describe it as Woody Allen makes a Mumblecore homage to François Truffaut, which of course would throw off most of these aforementioned shoot-from-the-hip critics, as well as most of your multiplex denizens, but those who toss the film off as mere pretentious arthouse gobbely-gook, are missing out on what is, for all intents and purposes, a rather brilliantly quaint film.

My second favourite Baumbach, following just The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha can be seen as the most Trauffaut influenced film yet by the director who has already been influenced by Truffaut more than any other American director working today.  Aside from the occasional Truffaut poster popping up in the background, or namedropping someone like Jean-Pierre Léaud (as well as Proust for the true Francophile), the film just feels like something the Nouvelle auteur would have made in his hey day.  One can also see allusions to Truffaut's comrade-in-cinematic-arms Godard as well - from strategically-placed fedoras and purposely-placed shots where one is surprised to not see the film's characters break into a spontaneous rendition of the Madison, all the way to Gerwig playing Anna Karina to Baumbach's Godard - but the film, no matter how many so-called homage moments spring up (post-new waver Leos Carax is referenced as well), is pure Baumbach - but here it is a less bitter Baumbach that we saw in films like Squid and Margot.  This kindler, gentler - but still quite acerbic when need be - Baumbach is most likely due to the influence of Gerwig, an actress who, when asked at the post screening Q&A why she acts the way she acts, referenced Johnny Cash on when he said he plays guitar "this way" because he knows no other.  Perhaps this is the reason Baumbach makes films in the way he does - he knows no other way.

IFC has picked Frances Ha up for US distribution and has set a rather non-committal 2013 release date for the film.  My best guess would be sometime in early Spring.  Whatever the case, a review proper will be coming around whatever that eventual US release date may be.

NYFF 2011: Aki Kaurismaki's Le Havre

Slight and non-threatening, just like Kaurismäki typically is (and that is not meant as an insult), this sixteenth feature from the Finnish director (his second film in French), with his dead-pan style (both photographically and in line readings) and the breezy way he can tackle a serious topic (in this case, the problems of refugees and immigration), is a thing of casual beauty.  Bopping along almost as if it is a 93 minute musical number, seamlessly going back and forth between the filmmaker's deftly comic tones and a more morose, occasional backbeat (all put onto film - and not any other media boldy exclaims the filmmaker - by Kaurismäki’s long-time cinematographer, Timo Salminen), Le Havre can stand with, or at least close to, the best of Kaurismäki's cinema.

This is also probably the director's most historically influenced film to date - or at least the most noticeably so.  With obvious nods to Marcel Carne, Rene Clair, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jacques Becker and Francois Truffaut (not to leave out, French actress, singer and all-around icon, Arletty), and without beating us over the head with his evocations like other directors (for better or for worse) have done, Kaurismäki shows his love for cinema, especially French cinema, with the most tender and compassionate of cinematic homages.  Even the strangely ubiquitous Jean-Pierre Léaud shows up in an antagonistic role that, as they say, only he could play.  As we already know of several Kaurismäkiinfluenced directors working today (Jim Jarmusch, Tsai Ming-liang, The Coen Brothers), we now find out (hinted at then, blatantly told here) just which past directors are hidden inside the mind of Aki Kaurismäki.

The film, of course, stars several of Kaurismäki's stable of regulars.  The Bohemian lead character of Marcel Marx (obvious cinematically and politically influenced) is played by French actor André Wilms, who can be seen in the Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses as well as the director's only previous French film, La Vie de Bohème.  Also in the film are Finnish actresses Elina Salo and Kati Outinen - the latter of which, having appeared in almost every one of the director's films, is often seen as Kaurismäki's muse.  Even the director's family dog, Laika makes yet another appearance in one of his master's films.  Incidentally winning a special Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival from the Palm Dog jury (and yes, you read that right - since 2001, a special canine equivalent to the Palme d'Or has been awarded in Cannes - and Laika won the award in 2002 for the Kaurismaki film, Man Without A Past - you can read about the award here).

Anyway, to get off the subject of dogs, and back onto the film in question, Le Havre, with its socially relevant refugee topic (a subject that never goes for the cheap shot theatrics one would sadly expect to see in a mainstream American film of the same story) and its Kaurismäkian bent, will be making its US theatrical debut (via Janus Films, who already have the Criterion Bluray ready for release after its initial run) on October 21, 2011.  It will receive a limited release in NY and LA (Lincoln Plaza Cinema in NY) before, hopefully, getting a wider run shortly thereafter.  A full review of Le Havre will also be making its debut over at The Cinematheque, around this same date. 

NYFF 2011: Abel Ferrara's 4:44 Last Day on Earth

There sure do seem to be quite a few films about the end of the world at this year's New York Film Festival.  Whether it be literal (Melancholia, 4:44 Last Day on Earth) or metaphorical (The Turin Horse, and I guess in a way, The Loneliest Planet) the world sure is getting the brunt of it at this year's fest.  

Abel Ferrara's latest (one of the aforementioned literal ones) is the story of the last few hours before the Earth is destroyed by the inevitable collapse of the Ozone Layer (a newscaster in the film even utters the soon-to-be-classic line "Al Gore was right" before signing off forever).  I can honestly say that 4:44 was not what I was expecting.  That declaration is not necessarily a good thing nor a bad thing - and the same can be said of the film itself.  Part experimental improv-like character piece, part religio-political diatribe on ethics and faith, 4:44 is one of those films that I am not sure I liked or not.  Different parts of me want to go in both directions - sometimes simultaneously.  And that can be quite maddening you know.

Shot on video (and not in any redeeming cinematic way), Ferrara's movie is full of inconsistencies and doubts.  Why, if the world is about to end, and everyone knows it, are there cabs and buses and delivery trucks still buzzing about on the streets of New York in all the exterior shots?  Why do we only see a handful of people who are upset by what is going on?  Has everyone made piece with their so-called maker as Ferrara's pseudo Eastern pop spirituality would have us believe?  Perhaps these are just minor things, since in essence the film is about the inter-workings of a couple, an ex-junkie and his just past teenage bride, played by Willem Dafoe and Ferrara's real-life main squeeze, Shanyn Leigh respectively, and they are really the only ones that matter here.  As far as they go, Dafoe hands in a rather good performance overall, (given the room to rant and rave and gnarl and gnash, the actor is in his sacred ground) but there are moments in said performance that are enough to make a person cringe with embarrassment for the actor.  As for costar Leigh, those cringes of embarrassment are more often and more intense. That can't be good, now can it?

I suppose, in the end, there are moments in the film, er, movie, that are interesting, (visually there are a few wow moments actually) but in sum, it is rather a large-sized let down.  Respecting him, but never being that big a fan of Ferrara's work (liked some, disliked some, others are flawed but still interesting) I suppose my disappointment shouldn't be that great (I truly only loved two of the director's works - I will leave you alone to figure out which two) and I suppose it isn't really.  Merely a meh movie, and not really worth the time to be pro or con for or against, nothing else need be said.  Well, except for this - the film, picked up by IFC, will make its US theatrical debut probably sometime in early 2012 - and a full review will be coming at that time.

NYFF 2011: Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse

If one were to come up to a person, and describe a film they have just seen as being typically Bela Tarr-like, such a description would mean very different things to very different people. First of all, one must have knowledge of who the hell Bela Tarr even is in the first place, which I suppose narrows down our focus group pretty damn drastically. But for those few who do know the Hungarian filmmaker, and more importantly, know his films, to describe something as being typically Bela Tarr-like could either mean the film in question is a brilliantly methodical, sparsely actioned, black and white, fascinating work of cinematic art, or it is a pretentiously methodical, sparsely actioned, black and white, tiresome work of cinematic arrogance. Six of one, half a dozen of another I suppose. 

Now the film in question here is more than just Bela Tarr-like, it is actually the Magyar maestro himself. With the director's latest (and if one were to believe the man's own hype, his final film), a work called The Turin Horse (actually co-directed by long time collaborator, film editor Agnes Hranitzky), one can easily see the filmmaker is back in the brilliantly subversive mad genius mode that gave the world Damnation in 1988, Satantango in 1994 and Werckmeister Harmonies in 2000, before faltering a step or two with the good, but certainly not great Man From London in 2007. A mode that has influenced many a modernist filmmaker (or should I say remodernist filmmaker, after the movement indirectly started by the works of Tarr) and made Gus Van Sant go from Good Will Hunting to Gerry and Last Days. If this is the director's final film, it is a shame really, because he has just managed to prove that indeed, he does still got it.

But then, as more than alluded to up front, Mr. Tarr is definitely not everyone's cup of tea. In fact he probably isn't even everyone's cup of anything. The auteur is know for having an oeuvre of long (some could say excruciatingly long in a few cases - especially in one case in particular), very methodical, oft-times meandering along at the breakneck pace of an especially melancholy sloth, works that derive the same type of socio-religious pleasure as Dreyer, Bresson and Tarkovsky all rolled into one great big beautiful three-headed, six-armed, six-eyed apocalyptically-minded cinematic beast from the very bowels of Hades. Hyperbole aside, the basic gist of all that was to state the obvious fact (for those that know the man and his films) that to see a Bela Tarr film is to see either a great great thing or a bad bad thing - but a thing nonetheless.

With a running time of 146 minutes (which, with the exception of the 450 minute long Satantango, is a pretty standard Tarrian running time) there was seat shuffling a-plenty, as well as much sighing and some rather strangely placed chuckles (and yes, there is some humour, but no so much as to elicit the laughter interspersed throughout the almost full cinema) at the noon press screening at Walter Reade. And of course, there were a few walkouts, which is usually kept at a minimum at a press screening, no matter how excruciating one finds the film or films in question. When the film ended (finally ended some may say) there was no applause - just silence, followed by a quick mass exodus once the credits ended and the lights came up. Hell, even Mr. Divisive himself, Lars von Trier received a round of applause after his Melancholia screened here last week.

There were, I am sure, varying degrees of enjoyability for those other members of the intrepid press corps that filled the Walter Reade on Monday - though I would go out on that ole proverbial limb and say the consensus was not an overall thumbs up (please do not sue me for that last comment oh great and powerful Mr. Ebert). I did happen to overhear one critical compatriot say, "I wasn't bored", almost as if one would expect him to be. Bully for him I say, bully for him. I happen to be (as I am sure you have already surmised from that " brilliantly subversive mad genius mode" comment a few paragraphs back) on the side that was not only mesmerized by the film, which incidentally is based on the harsh life of the horse that was the supposed breaking point for Nietzsche’s impending madness (I kid you not), but maybe even, as the kids are saying these days, blown away

When the film will see the inside of a US cinema is still up in the air. With American theatrical rights now owned by Cinema Guild, my best bet would be sometime in the first quarter of 2012. Whatever the case may be, a full review of the film will be forthcoming on or around that eventual release date. 

NYFF 2011: Wim Wenders' Pina

Pina, Wim Wenders' new dance movie-cum-documentary on choreography legend Pina Bausch, begs the question, has 3D taken over so greatly that now even European art films are getting the extra-dimensional treatment? Actually, unlike in most mainstream Hollywood fare, the technology of 3D actually accentuates Wenders' film and makes Bausch's unique dance numbers visually pop like nobody's business. Much like in fellow German Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, it seems as if 3D has found a happy home in these European art films-cum-daring documentaries.

Originally begun in collaboration with Ms. Bausch, and turned into a labour of love of sorts after the avant-garde choreographer's untimely 2009 death, Wenders' film is quite the remarkable looking piece of work indeed. From the Brechtian set designs of Bausch's dance machinations (a roomful of empty chairs, a man-made waterfall, an empty glass house) to the smoothly played beauty of the dancers' agile, almost inhuman like bodies to the strangely alluring oddities that are interspersed throughout the film, Pina, in all its three dimensional grandeur and beautiful musicality, is an awe-inspiring work of both cinematic and choreographed art.

Now of course no image displayed here can capture the 3D look that is captured on screen (and looked upon at the NYFF screening using $100 a pair, state-of-the-art microchipped 3D glasses - and glasses that were not nearly as annoying as the typical kind are to we already bespectacled viewers), nor can it show the inherent beauty of the dance that is made to look so effortless up on the screen, but I will leave you with one anyway. As for a release date, Sundance Selects has selected a December 21st New York opening date, followed by a national rollout in January.  A full review of the film will be forthcoming right around that 12/21 release date. 

NYFF 2011: Lars von Trier's Melancholia

For years now, all those Lars von Trier haters out there have been saying, or at least implying, by all their critical caterwauling, that the audacious auteur would some day destroy the world. Well guess what? The melancholy Dane has done just that in his new, aptly titled work, Melancholia. Take that! In fact, just to stick it a little bit to those LvT haters, as soon as the NYFF press screening was over and I found my way back out to 65th and Broadway, I called the film a Goddamned Masterpiece on Facebook - and I stand by that even on second and third thoughts. Take that too!! 

 

LvT is certainly what most would call a divisive filmmaker. You either love the guy and his baroque, operatic style (which is highly evident in Melancholia) or you hate him for his arrogance and vulgar pretensions (which also is quite evident in Melancholia) - and to the nth degree in whichever direction you happen to choose. I happen to choose (if there is actually a conscious choice - perhaps, like being gay or straight, one is born a von Trier lover or hater) to be on the love side of that fence (from the director's eleven theatrically released features, only the quite disappointing Manderlay is held in low esteem) and my reasons for picking that particular side probably have quite the overlap with the reasons so many hold for hating the man, and his films, so greatly. Take that as well!

Meanwhile, Melancholia, a film about how an incredibly dysfunctional family copes with love, loss, depression and the literal end of the world, is certainly a force to be reckoned with - even amongst LvT's already demanding oeuvre. The film is split, much like his last film, Antichrist (the nadir of the aforementioned haters existence), into a stunningly shot, and quite cinematic opening and closing, replete with ominously beautiful classical music and utter despair and destruction, bookending an ultra-realistic centerpiece of hand-held cameras and improvised words and actions. Unlike that film though, which many called misogynistic and sadist (and in a way, the film is both things - so much so that a misogyny consultant was amongst the closing credits...and yes, it was a woman), Melancholia has no real controversial aspect to speak of. Yeah, the guy destroys all life as we know it - and in the first two minutes at that - but he doesn't have paramour Charlotte Gainsbourg doing anything with power tools this time. That's something, right?

Actually Melancholia is probably the director's best chance for mainstream accessibility (due more to name stars like Cannes Best Actress Kirsten Dunst and Kiefer Sutherland, who gives an astonishingly brilliant performance as a rather cocksure jerk, than typical mainstream storytelling, but such a thing did not help Dogville at the box office - and that had Nichole Kidman AND Lauren fucking Bacall!).  The film's accessibility will come to possible fruition when it is released (by Magnolia) to a somewhat unsuspecting US audience on November 11th of this year.  Okay, I'm not a mindless dreamer - I know a box office draw is not about to happen (especially for a film that depicts the destruction of Earth as both existential metaphor and pretentious reality), but at the same time I do not foresee the rabid antagonistic rhetoric from LvT haters that Antichrist's Grand Guignol artifice had elicited upon its release. Again, that's something, right?

A full review of Lars von Trier's Melancholia will be coming a few days prior to its 11/11 release date.

In Giddy Anticipation of von Trier's Melancholia (and the NYFF)

Well here we are again at that special time of year.  No, not football season, and not back to school time either.  Something greater than both of those things (if you consider either of those things to be great that is).  As the temperature drops and those proverbial dog days of Summer quickly (and finally dammit!) fade away, we are given not only the new season (and a grand old season it is too) but also the greatly-anticipated New York Film Festival.  Press screenings begin this week, and though I will sadly not make all of them (or even close to all of them) I will be traveling to a few days of said screenings, and Lars von Trier's infamous Cannes winner (Best Actress for Kirsten Dunst) Melancholia will be first and foremost on that list.

Seeing the von Trier film on Thursday at 10 am (after a four hour train ride leaving Harrisburg at 5 am - ugh, I hate mornings) at Walter Reade, it will be my third such catching of von Trier at the NYFF.  The first was back in 2005 when me and the missus traveled to the city to catch Manderlay (this was before I held a press pass).  After a trip to New York filled with my near non-stop anticipation of the film, combined with my incessant talk of how much I had adored Dogville (a film which my wife had yet to see at this point in the story), my better half was thinking to herself "what the Hell does he see in this von Trier guy anyway!?"  Granted, she had seen (and loved) Dancer in the Dark, but her rather lackluster response to Manderlay (a film that still stands as the only disappointment this critic can find in LvT's quite divisive oeuvre) was enough to make her ask me why I was so excited to see this 'film'.  Since the film could not live up to my expectations, I of course had no respectable answer for her and kept my mouth unusually shut.

My second encounter with the audacious Dane was in 2009 when the festival screened Antichrist.  This time I was a full-fledged member of the press and therefore watched the film with my fellow critics (most of whom I knew from afar but would never approach out of fear of seeming a cinematic rube in comparison) at Walter Reade.  A screening that was followed by a von Trier Q&A via Skype on the big screen.  I quite liked the film - one could even make a claim for my loving it - and it would eventually (after its late October release) make my Top 10 list for the year (number two behind only QT's Inglourious Basterds).  Not so incidentally, my lovely wife ended up walking out when I screened it for her a few months later.  Still only Dancer in the Dark and (now that she has finally seen it) Dogville will she admit a fondness for - otherwise LvT is about as persona non grata in her personal opinion as the director is at Cannes after his quite irreverent remarks back in May.

Now we cut to Sept. 22nd, 2011 and the screening of the man's Melancholia.  To say I am excited is to say the least - the very least.  Looking to be the director's most accessible film yet (with the help of Dunst and Sutherland, the film is a bit more mainstreamy than typical LvT), Melancholia, which will get a proper US release on Nov. 11th.  Now I don't really see any Oscar nominations in its future (its closer to mainstream acceptance than anything else the man has done, but let's face it, even sight still unseen, this is a Lars von Trier film still) but a semi-wide release is not out of the picture.  I am not going to get into any of the tabloid talk of Lvt and his Cannes remarks (other than to say, though seemingly offensive, they were probably not meant as anything other than a rambling joke getting out of control) but these unfortunate remarks could keep his film from even getting that aforementioned semi-wide release.  Nevertheless, I will be seeing it in a few days, and that is all I care about right now.

I suppose there are some other films playing at this year's festival, and I suppose even this von Trier head should make mention of them.  There are a slew I will unfortunately not get to see (ah, to be a New Yorker) and these include Steve McQueen's Shame, Julia Loktev's The Loneliest Planet, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon A Time in Anatolia, Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene, Mia Hansen-Love's Goodbye First Love, Michael Hazanavicius' silent film The Artist and the Brothers Dardenne with The Kid With the Bike.  But enough of the negative (I will eventually see all of these films) let's accentuate the positive, shall we.  I will be catching Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method, as well as Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse and Abel Ferrara's 4:44 Last Day on Earth.  Sadly three trips are the best this wayward traveler can do this year, but I will try to make them count as I will catch non-NYFF films now playing in NYC after the festival screenings and before my train ride home.

I will post pieces on each of these films as I see them, followed by full reviews as each one is eventually released in theaters.  As for now, I'll get back to my giddy (rather school girl crush) anticipation of LvT's Melancholia (gee I hope there is another Skype Q&A).

NYFF 2010: Certified Copy

To one-off Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy as a mere riff (w/ a twist) on either Viaggio in Italia and/or Before Sunset (which I heard several of my fellow critics spout out after the press screening of the film at Walter Reade) is to sell this brilliantly subversive film way way way short.  Granted, one of course can see the similarities to both films - the ever-lurking camera winding through cobbled streets following an awkward couple, the idea of a possibly failing marriage and a certain desperation written on their faces - but what Kiarostami does here is take these same desperate couples (real or imagined as they may be) and places them inside - smack dab in the proverbial middle - of an elaborately manipulative puzzle.  A puzzle that we never find out the solution to, but a puzzle that we do not need a solution to - possibly a puzzle there is no solution to.  In other words, Kiarostami is taking us for another ride - and what a ride it is.
 

Juliette Binoche, in the press notes, talks about going to visit the director to find out about the film he wanted to make with her.  She explains how she listened to this 45 minute story from Kiarostami about a series of events which happened to him, essentially, the story of Certified Copy.  When it was all over, he asked her if she believed him.  She said yes.  Kiarostami admitted to it all being a lie and Binoche burst out in laughter.  This is just the kind of twisted fairytale we get in Certified Copy.  Much like the elaborate tomfoolery in the Iranian auteur's 1990 film, Close-Up, the story here is a garbled melange of truth and falsity.  

A sort of meta-manipulation (and these are the best kinds - Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck pull off something along those lines in the recently released I'm Still Here, though on a much simpler, and less artistic scale) Certified Copy follows Elle (Binoche, as sublime as ever) and James (Opera singer William Shimmel making his surprisingly in depth acting debut) through a Tuscan village as the play an intricately manicured game of emotional cat and mouse with each other.  Mistaken by a local cafe owner as a married couple, Elle and James (supposedly meeting for the first time) begin to act out the parts they are mistakenly given.  As the game goes further and further, the mind games get sharper and deeper until we no longer know what is real and what is make-believe.  Elle and James perhaps no longer know either.

What exactly is going on here?  Are these just two strangers playing head games with each other?  Are they a real couple, playing games from the very start?  Does any answer really matter?  Is it not all about the game?  It is not the solution (remember, there may not be one) but the puzzle that matters and the way the director and his two actors play around with such a thing.  What they are playing around with is the idea of reality - what is the original, what is a copy, does it even matter which is which (as long as you believe the copy is the original, does it make it any less real?).  Like I said, Kiarostami is messing with our heads again.  It's great to have him back.

Finally making his way back to narrative filmmaking (after a decade experimenting in DV projects of varying degrees of success - one of these, Ten, is actually one of the director's greatest works) Kiarostami could not have asked for a more triumphant manner of return.  Fellow compatriot Glenn Kenny, over at his illustrious blog Some Came Running, said this as he closed out his piece on Certified Copy: "Seeing this and Uncle Boonmee the same afternoon put me, and a bunch of my fellow NYFF press screening attendees, into a cinephilic swoon we'll be luxuriating in for some time."  As one of those fellow NYFF press screening attendees, I must wholeheartedly agree.  And swoon I did.
 

note: IFC has purchased the US rights to Certified Copy and will release the film via both on demand and in theaters.  The tentative date for such a release (if one is to believe IMDb) is March 2011 (a surefire contender for my Best of 2011 list - how's that for planning ahead!?).  At that time I will post a full review of the film.  Or perhaps I will just copy and paste this same one (after all, a copy is as good as the original, right?). 

NYFF 2010: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

The proof in the pudding, so to speak, of the mystical quality of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's cinema, is when you can introduce a talking catfish into the middle of your story (in a seemingly unrelated episode to the rest of the film) and have him "pleasure" a young melancholy princess beneath a beautiful waterfall, and never once does it seem out of place or extraordinary.  Merely a natural extension of the director's already mythmaking style of filmmaking.  When Von Trier had his ravenous fox growl out "chaos reigns" in Antichrist, it was meant to be as antagonistic as the filmmaker himself.  In Uncle Boonmee, Apichatpong...er, I mean Joe (as he likes to be called) it seems like just a natural thing that happens all the time.  A talking catfish who goes down on a princess?  Sure, why the Hell not.
 

Seriously though, Uncle Boonmee is a revelatory piece of cinema - especially considering my sordid past with the films of Joe's strange little oeuvre (and I don't mean that as condescendingly as it may sound).  More oft than not I have had rather tepid reactions to the works of Weerasethakul.  Blissfully Yours and Mysterious Object at Noon were interesting experimentations but held no real lasting flavour.  Meanwhile Syndromes and a Century (first seen at this very festival four years back), though praised to the high heavens by just about every self-respecting critic out there, and though quite charming throughout, fell rather flat in this particular critic's esteem.  Only Tropical Malady (first seen at this very festival six years back) made a lasting impression on me (enough of one to make my top 10 that year).  That is, until now, and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

Fascinating from absolute beginning to absolute end, Uncle Boonmee is the Thai auteur's best film yet (as well as winner of this year's Palme d'Or at Cannes!), with its weaving intricate tales of the strange and unusual within the mundane and ordinary (read: Apichatpong's unnatural natural filmmaking signature) and his ideas of duality and alternate existences.  Basically the story of the titular uncle who finds himself dying and invites his sister-in-law and nephew to spend his final days together on his jungle farm.  Shortly thereafter, the ghost of Boonmee's dead wife shows up to help him get through his illness.  Shortly after that Boonmee's long lost son returns, but in some sort of bigfootian non-human form.  In fact the first appearance of the ominous-seeming monkey ghosts (see picture below) was what sealed the proverbial deal for this critic.  
 

Meanwhile, after the aforementioned randy catfish, we join Boonmee in what may be his final moments (or may not) deep inside a cave that seems to be the darkened womb of Weerasethakul's storytelling.  A definite mythmaker, Apichatpong has managed to deepen my love for his work - something that probably should have been done a while ago (perhaps Syndromes and a Century deserves a much needed second look).  Stunningly photographed in such a way as to make the already unnatural naturalness of the film seem even more mystical (Joe, in the after film Q&A, spoke of his intent on an artificiality of scenery) Uncle Boonmee is what one would call haunting - if one wished to use such a cliche'd term as haunting.  But really, it is quite haunting.  Quite haunting indeed.  All that and a talking, seductive catfish.  Why the Hell not.

note: Strand Releasing has purchased US rights to the film and will eventually release it theatrically here in the states.  When that eventuality is, I cannot yet say, but I would guess at an early 2011 time table.  At such time I will post a full review of the film.

NYFF 2010: Pale Flower

As I have noticed a good many of my critical compatriots do recently, I too must preface this look at the 1964 film Pale Flower, with the (quite sad) admission that I am woefully lacking in my knowledge of the films of Masahiro Shinoda.  Actually I am woefully lacking in my knowledge of most things under the banner of what one might call the Japanese New Wave (a handful of Imamura and Oshima aside, but only a handful).

That being said, my introduction to Shinoda came just yesterday with the press screening of Pale Flower (one of twelve Shinoda films playing in this year's New York Film Festival's Masterworks Series) at Walter Reade, and I must say, I was more than a little impressed.  To answer (and paraphrase a bit) John Lennon's rather absurdist question, yes Shinoda-san, you passed the audition.

Pale Flower is one of those stunning discoveries one makes that, much like Burnett's Killer of Sheep three years ago, only makes one angry that it took this long to finally discover it.  The story of Muraki, a Yakuza killer who returns to his old turf after a stint in prison, to find things pretty much the same as they ever were.  Well, everything except for Saeko, a beautiful young woman who is now a regular at one of the requisite seedy gambling dens run by the local Yakuza boss.  As reckless as she is stunning, Saeko (Mariko Kaga) quickly becomes the pivotal point in the life of Muraki and of course, as always does the femme fatale, his demise (or at least his entrapment back in the same problems as before).

Considered one of the high points of the Japanese New Wave (though still with remnants of Ozu in it) Shinoda, just like his French compatriots, took the notions and ideas of film noir and planted them inside Pale Flower.  Obviously (or at least it should be obvious) influenced by what Godard and Truffaut were doing in the West the years just prior and combined with what his own contemporaries were doing right out his own front door (Oshima, Imamura, Seijun Suzuki), the film is layered in such a way that one must assume it had some sort of rather strong influence on both Martin Scorsese, and later on, Quentin Tarantino.  Of course what filmmakers did not influence Scorsese and QT?

Now at the time, since the French and Japanese New Wave's were coming together pretty much simultaneously, one's influence on the other is just guess work (did these directors even see each other's works during this period?) but one must figure there was some sort of cross-cultural influence here, or at the very least, influences from the same places as each other.  While the French New Wave got off the ground with the determination of a bunch of upstart film critics who wanted to change the world, the Japanese New Wave was born from the studio system (which may explain the influence of Ozu hidden away in Shinoda's camera work at times) and therefore perhaps not as entrenched in film culture as their European counterparts.  Yet, there must have been some influence (that's all I'm sayin').

Enough speculating, the film stands on its own (influence-free) merits and damn well should.  My favourite scene (among many!) is Saeko's insanely giddy impromptu late night car race through the strangely deserted streets of Tokyo with a seeming stranger and the even stranger aftermath.  Cross-cultural influence or not, this is so Godard it ain't funny.  Stark and harrowing, irreverent yet stoical, Shinoda is a surprise well worth the wait - although I am still angry it took this damned long to discover him.  Now I must go out and gobble up all available DVD's of Shinoda's work.  These include the Criterion editions of Samurai Spy (65) and Double Suicide (69); the Masters of Cinema editions of Assassination (64) and Silence (71); as well as Punishment Island/Captive's Island (66) and (of course) Pale Flower.  There are also some Japanese editions, but these are probably sans English subtitles (though the visual beauty of Shinoda makes up for lack of words).

The 48th Annual NYFF

For those of you out there who care about such things (and really, that should be all of you) over the next few weeks I will be posting about the New York Film Festival (or NYFF as it will be called from here on out). Press screenings just got under way and yours truly shall be reporting from some of these screenings.  I will only be able to make it up to a few screenings though (due to financial and practical reasons both - a dilemna  anyone  who writes about cinema but is not making a living at it can surely understand!),but what I do see, you will surely read about right here in these so-called pages.  There will be reports on new films from such auteurs as Abbas Kiarostami, Kelly Reichardt, Mike Leigh, Masahiro Shinoda and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.  My first post (hopefully tomorrow or the next day coming) will be on the 1964 Japanese New Wave film Pale Flower, from Masahiro Shinoda (part of NYFF's Masterworks Series).  Until then.....
 

NYFF 2009: Chadi Abdel Salam's Al Mummia

Now I know that when it comes to cinema there is more (much much more) that I have NOT seen than I have.  Glaring omissions in my film history knowledge.  Filmmakers such as De Sica (Bicycle Thief, one of my favourite films, aside), early Ozu and Douglas Sirk immediately come to mind.  So much to see and only a finite space to do so, but I am trying my damnest to catch up.  There are those filmmakers I know a lot about - Godard, Fellini, Nick Ray, Chaplin - and others I could write a book on - like my upcoming book on the cinema of William Wellman (would be publishers please take note) - but still the inevitable gaps are still there.  Recently discovering Dorothy Arzner and Glauber Rocha, and about to go round the bend on Guru Dutt, I am filling these gaps nicely.

Yet even knowing my shortcomings, and knowing there are films I must still see and study, sometimes, and quite unexpectedly, comes along a film discovery that blows one's proverbial mind.  A couple years ago it was Charles Burnett's sublime neorealist urban tragedy Killer of Sheep.  Today it is Chadi Abdel Salam's Al Mummia (The Night of Counting the Years, aka The Mummy).   The film, made in 1969, is considered one of the greatest Egyptian films ever made.  Another notable gap in my personal film history knowledge is Egyptian Cinema by the way.  The film was recently beautifully restored by the Cineteca di Bologna in conjunction with Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation, and made its (re)debut at this year's Cannes Film Festival.  Richard Pena's praising piece in Film Comment over the Summer made it an almost sure thing that it would put in an appearance at this year's NYFF - and here it is, in all its glory.

Telling the story of a tribe living in the shadow of Egypt's past and the waning days of antiquity the film is a marvel to experience.  The movie follows two brothers, members of the Hurabat tribe and would be heirs to the tribe's throne.  After their father's death they find out that the tribe has been surviving by secretly selling antiquities from desecrated Pharaonic tombs. This arrogant piracy by the elders of the tribe shames the brothers, and they refuse to take part, putting their lives in dire jeopardy from the elders of the tribe.  

Filmed primarily at either dawn or dusk, Salam's film takes on an almost ethereal quality.  The photography, with its stunning heightened colouring and muted palette, along with the subtle editing and meandering, yet quickened pace gives the film a visual mythology all its own.  Blending the past with the present (at least the present of the film's 1890's setting), Al Mummia is like an ancient artifact unearthed from its own long buried tomb and given its day in the light only to have its public mystified by its almost unearthly strangeness.

One can only hope that the film will see more light of the day - or dark of the theatre I suppose - when it gets a release later this year or next.  Hope hope hoping.

NYFF 2009: Corneliu Porumboiu's Police, Adjective

Although the expected screening of Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers was canceled on Wednesday, I was able to attend the (surprise) screening of the latest from the (supposed) Romanian New Wave - or Black Wave if you will - Corneliu Porumboiu's Police, Adjective.  While Korine's latest was promising to be more than aptly titled (more shock than cinema, much like the arrogantly negative Gummo which acts as precursor of sorts) Porumboiu promised something much much more.  At least that was the idea - and the idea was right on the mark.

Akin to the Eastern European school of cinema (perhaps it should have been Porumboiu who dedicated to Tarkovsky and not von Trier?), Police, Adjective (a title that doesn't become apparent until the penultimate scene) is a film done in long takes and meandering shots and often wordless introspection via methodical, monotonous police procedural.  All this is a good thing by the way.

Porumboiu's second feature, after the hilariously moribund 12:08 East of Bucharest, Police, Adjective turns on its proverbial head the idea of police drama.  In an age of Law & Order, The Shield, The Wire, Police, Adjective goes the other way (at least by westernized genre action standards) showing the more mundane aspects of police work (much of the film involves the main detective standing around waiting for someone to do something - to do anything.  Again, this is all good with me.  

The film is getting a US release in December, though I do not see a large audience for the film.   The film is packed with too much procedure and not enough punctuation so to speak.  Though never as powerful as fellow Romanian films of late (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days) it is definitely worthy of a strong audience.   Yet, much like David Fincher's somewhat maligned (or more aptly, overlooked) Zodiac, Porumboiu's film is most likely to go nowhere when it comes to critical standing.  A few top ten list twinklings come year's end, but probably not much more.  I could be wrong though, so in case that happens, allow me now to quote the late great Miss Emily Litella, by closing with "never mind".

NYFF 2009: Samuel Maoz's Lebanon

To call Samuel Maoz's Lebanon an Israeli Hurt Locker is selling both films far too short.  Yet here I am saying just that.  Actually the films are only comparable on the surface - an intense movie about a 3-man bomb disposal unit in the Middle East vs. an intense movie about a 4-man tank squad in the Middle East - and Lebanon never quite reaches the lyrical qualities that make up Kathryn Bigelow's film, nor the emotional resonance of the situations, but the comparison hath been made.  Perhaps it is merely the timing of the two films being out relatively contemporarily.  Whatever the case, as I watched Lebanon I was reminded of The Hurt Locker on several occasions.  I was also reminded of another film - the massive Das Boot.

Filmed almost entirely inside the tank (or rather Maoz's recreation of said tank) and with exterior shots made only through the tank's gun sights, Lebanon is a claustrophobic film - much like Das Boot and that film's enclosed submarine reality - and in being so, creates its own filmic space in which to reside (something The Hurt Locker does but on a much less gutty level) - and again, like Das Boot, its own form of reality.  This tightness - this I-can't-breathe-get-me-the-hell-outta-here headspace - makes for a raised level of intensity (much like The Hurt Locker's tantalizing bomb defusing set pieces did) and when the men in that tank are screaming and reacting (or in one case, not reacting) we too can become lost in their reality.

As I already stated, Lebanon never reaches the lyricism of The Hurt Locker (where Bigelow's film is cerebral, Maoz's is guttural) nor would we expect it to, and my comparison is probably unfair to both films (why did I not call The Hurt Locker the American Lebanon?) but as a film on its own - without the comparisons made inevitable by the lore of film history (and T.S. Eliot's quote about comparing the living artist with those gone before him) - Lebanon is a remarkably engulfing, agonizing, if not cinematically poetic, look at those first days of the Lebanon War (all of which is based on director Maoz's real-life encounter in said war).  It must have hit some nerves (and how could it not really?) since the screening was stone quiet as the film ended and we critics wandered out into the lobby of Walter Reade.

It was announced a few days ago that Lebanon was picked up by Sony Classics so it will get a US release (after winning the Golden Lion at Venice and getting 10 nominations for the Israeli Academy Awards, a US deal was certainly inevitable) but no firm date has been set yet.  My best guess is late December followed by an early 2010 rollout.  Whatever the case, I will have a review coming at that time.  Up next in my NYFF 2009 ongoing reports will be Corneliu Porumboiu's Police, Adjective.  (ed. note: the film will be released in the US on 08/06/2010)

NYFF 2009: Lars von Trier's Antichrist

Perhaps this post should be subtitled, "In Defense of" or possibly even "in RABID Defense of".  Nonetheless, here it is.

Okay, let me begin by saying that yesterday's NYFF press screening for Lars von Trier's Antichrist waas met by giggles, guffaws and a general malaise of what the!? get-this-over-with shuffling about in the seats.   The film even received a bevy of cat calls when everyone saw the film was dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky.  Okay, the Tarkovsky thing was a bit out-of-the-blue but as far as everything else goes and/or went, I must say - with more than a great deal of arrogant pride for some reason - that for better of for worse I liked the damned thing.  In fact I think I could even go a stretch further and say I loved the damned thing - genital-mutilation and all!

So what I am saying here is, send me off to cinephilia purgatory if you want, I don't give a damn.  I (arrogantly again?) pronounce LvT's Antichrist as the second best film of 2009 (second only to another ballyhooed mixed mataphor movie, QT's both beloved and bemoaned Basterds).  Well at least in my opinion it is, as for everyone else - not so much.  So no matter how many belittle the film (the impression I got after overhearing post-coital, er I mean post-screening comments at Walter Reade yeasterday) or just plain were not happy with what the director was doing with it (though others did like it for what it was) while at the same time being bothered by it still (and isn't this merely falling into the provocateur's grubby little Danish hands?) and no matter how many people begin to uncontrollably snicker and chuckle when the blood-drenched fox tells Willem Dafoe that chaos reigns (perhaps instead of Tarkovsky, LvT should have dedicated his film to Chris Noonan and/or George Miller!?) and no matter how many claim all von Trier is doing is satiating his own misogynistic wet dreams, I stand by this film with a furious dedication to defending its rather precarious (if it has any at all) honour.

Simply put, I loved this big steaming pile of pretentious cinematic garbage for whatever it is worth.  And by "steaming pile of pretentious cinematic garbage" I mean to compliment the film in not only the best way I can think of but also in the most apprpriate way to praise a film made by a director who when informed (via his Skype Q&A after yesterday's screening) that no one had walked out of the screening, replied with a wink-and-a-nod "then I have failed".  A sidenote: one critic sitting in the back (did not see who it was) was heard saying that he had wanted to walk out.  Too bad von Trier didn't hear him, it may have made the bastard's day.

Oh yeah, with all this defending of the film's character (or lack thereof) from those I perceived to be my enemies due to their obvious distaste for what is certainly a distasteful movie I forgot to talk about the actual film.  That is a wink-and-a-nod comment too by the way - I am sure no one even cares that I loved a film that they hated, but its kinda fun to provoke (oh now I get it).

The film itself starts off with a title card which reads (in scribbled crayon-coloured handwriting) - no make that boasts the director's name.  This was the moment the snickers first began.   Aside from obviously finally letting go of at least some of his dogme hang-ups, all this boast does is let us know who made the damned film.  Would these snickers have met Capra when his name-before-the-title movies played?  Perhaps he should have dedicated the film to Capra then.  But I digress.

Antichrist opens with a silky black and white slo-mo (for slo-mo's sake perhaps?) of He and She (Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as the unnamed but for He and She couple) doing the proverbial nasty from shower to sink to bedroom, all the while, their toddler toddling his way from crib to open window to snowy ground several floors down (teddy bear in tow).  Is this prologue pretentious?  Hells yea, but who would have expected any less - von Trier is no less pretentious than say, Welles or Kubrick or Bergman or Antonioni or Lynch or Tarantino or Godard (I can go on ya know).  I think this is actually the very reason I like the filmmaker so much - his proud pretentiousness in the face of cinematic art.

Anyway, to go on with the film, after this the movie turns to colour (and I think even its many detractors cannot say much against the gorgeous cinematography throught) and the therapist He decides to take the fractured, grief-striken She to their cabin in the woods.  Did I mention the aforementioned cabin in the woods is called Eden?  So yes, after the fall the couple goes back to Eden.  Maybe instead of Antichrist, LvT could have called his film Eden II: The Revenge of the Serpant (or talking fox). 

Yeah yeah, I know.  The whole thing reeks of a wild abandon of indulgence.  But in the strangest of ways (similar to QT's Basterds and just about every goddamned JLG film!) this is what makes the film work for me.  Its self-arrogance.  Its buzzing hindrance.  Its ugly, nasty self-indulgent nature.  Its Strindbergian theory if you will.  And I haven't even mentioned the parts where He ejaculates blood and She takes a pair of scissors to her, well let's just leave it at that.  She did win Best Actress at Cannes for this, so what does that say about Cannes?  It says a lot I think, but as I said, lets leave it at that.  The fox, the scissors, the Omen-esque overtones, the Lynchian white noise, the Tarkovsky rhetoric, the scissors, the snicker-inducing arrogance, the closing credit that reads "Misogyny Researcher" (and yes, it is a woman), the scissors.  The film is nowhere shy of batshitcrazy and I suppose I like that in my cinema, which definitely explains by fist-in-the-air defense of LvT's latest provocacation.  Anyway, I said I would leave it at that so leave it at that I will - for now.

I will be posting a full length review on the film (over at The Cinematheque) closer to the release date of the film (which is Oct. 23 at IFC Center in NYC to start).  As for now, I'm going to leave it at this.  Did I mention the scissors?

NYFF 2009.....

In just a day's time, I will be heading to the New York Film Festival.  It will be my sixth visit to the festival and my fourth as part of the press corps.  Unfortunately, like year's past, I will not be able to attend the entire fest.  Due to having to hold down a regular job (regular so to speak, I run, with my lovely wife, Midtown Cinema, a 3-screen arthouse here in Harrisburg PA) and not being overly wealthy (each trip costs about $90 when adding in gas, parking and tolls), I must satisfy myself with a mere two (measly) visits to this year's NYFF.

My itinerary does consist of as many films as I can humanly squeeze in.  The films I will be catching and thus reviewing here are von Trier's Antichrist, Haneke's White Ribbon, Maoz's Lebanon, Korine's Trash Humpers, Almadovar's Broken Embraces, The Red Riding Trilogy and a doc look at Henri-Georges Clouzot's L'enfer.  

Several anticipated films will be missed.  They include films from Breillat, Denis, Solondz, Rivette and Costa.   My most glaring miss will be Resnais' Wild Grass. Alas, what is a boy to do?  At least I will (hopefully) see some of my online critic buds at some of the screenings I do make it to.

As far as posting festival updates and reviews, in the past I have posted my festival reports at my main site, The Cinematheque, but this year my fest reports will appear here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.  Full reviews of the films (once they open - Antichrist coming first on 10/23) will still be appearing at The Cinematheque.