The Week in Review (x2) - 19/10/08

Oh, life is bigger
It's bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no I've said too much
I set it up
- REM, Losing My Religion

This used to be my favourite song. It was important to me at an important turning point in my life, when I lost religion (even though that's not what the song is about). It's also a song that pops into my head when life is full, too full, when it's big, bigger than you. And you are not me. Get the drift?

Well, it's been two weeks. Life has been so full, and I still scarcely have time to post my weekly summary. But I want to do it, for myself at least. I can't do credit for many of these films, but here goes.

• Del rosa al amarillo (From Pink… to Yellow, Manuel Summers, Spain, 1963)
• Ta'm-e gilas (The Taste of Cherry, Abbas Kiarostami, Iran/France, 1997)
• Waitress (Adrienne Shelly, USA, 2006)
• Zert (The Joke, Jaromil Jires, Czechoslovakia, 1969)
• Kladivo na carodejnice (Witches' Hammer, Otakar Vávra, Czechoslovakia, 1969)
• Wake in Fright (Ted Kotcheff, Australia, 1971)
• Burn After Reading (Joel & Ethan Coen, USA, 2008)
• Towelhead (Alan Ball, USA, 2008)
  

From Pink… to Yellow
Screening as part of the ACMI Focus on Víctor Erice & Abbas Kiarostami, I suppose this film by Manuel Summers sneaks in as Erice has only made three films. It fits in thematically, with its depiction of life from a child's perspective. I can't say it overly grabbed me and when the narrative shifted to an elderly couple, I dozed off.

The Taste of Cherry
I loved this film, which reminded me of Kiarostami's later film, 10. Shot mostly from within a car, a guy drives around town looking for someone to assist him in his mission to take his own life. The story is elusive (we never find out his exact reasons) and it has a controversial and ambiguous ending. The story is somewhat episodic as different people find themselves in the car with our 'hero'. The different characters and their respective responses to our hero are convincing and compelling. The final character's role is just fantastic, as he shares a story with our hero. I really related to it, as he describes how he also, some decades earlier had contemplated suicide, and what got him through. It reminded me of the adolescent neighbour in American Beauty, how he saw beauty everywhere, even in a plastic shopping bag blowing in the wind, or the way light reflected in the still warm blood of his neighbour. Very moving.

Waitress
The missus was watching this on DVD and it had lost none of the sparkle that did it for me the first time on the big screen. One of the best romantic comedies of all time, not that it follows any romantic comedy conventions. For the record, my other favourites are Truly, Madly, Deeply and Like Water for Chocoloate.

The Joke
Wow, this Czech New Wave is seriously good stuff. No wonder the commies didn't let this film see the light of day for twenty years. A guy is cynical, unhappy and unable to form meaningful relationships. When he revisits his hometown, old memories flood his mind, and we learn how he got to be the person he is. Fundamentalism, in all its guises, stinks.

Witches' Hammer
Attacking exactly the same themes as The Joke, this story of medieval witch hunting is just as overt a criticism of communism, in spite of its use of metaphors. It also didn't see the light of day until 1989, when the iron curtain came down. I hadn't realised how widespread the hysteria over witchcraft was in Europe, and explains why many fled to the US (where a different form of hysteria-fundamentalism has arisen).

Wake in Fright
I was initially put off when I realised this MUFF screening was from a DVD. But once I got into it after a couple of minutes, it didn't really matter. The story is that good, and the visuals were quite OK. Now I know why this film has such a strong reputation; it is a genuine compelling film.

Burn After Reading
I found Burn After Reading absolutely entertaining. I didn't have high expectations as I think the Coen brothers get mixed results when they do comedy. The humour in this film is full of deadpan irony, greatly understated at times, farcical at others, but always unpredictable yet believable.

While it is in no way an explicit commentary on The War On Iraq, clearly that's the subtext. I'd say it's the first successful film to tackle the issue of homeland security in the US, post 9-11, simply because it doesn't reference it at all. Like most Coen films, people motivated by greed have a plan, and things don't go to plan. There's blood and a reasonable body count. As in all matters concerning national security, it doesn't matter who gets hurt, innocent or not. What's important is that leadership is decisive, bodies are disposed of and people are seen to be doing their jobs. Right?

The lineup of actors looks awesome on paper, and they don't disappoint. Most of them play against type. The film is very original, very exciting and very contemporary. Well-worth seeing.

Towelhead
With all the hysteria over Bill Henson and his photography of naked or semi-naked children, it's amazing that Towelhead has been released with scarcely a whimper of complaint.

This is quite a gutsy film, tackling taboo subjects head-on and pulling few punches. This is intelligently written. It looks like what I call a quirky-indie comedy but isn't. There's so much truthful depictions that reflect the complexity of real-life issues such as racism, teenage sex and paedophilia. Like American Beauty, there are generally no good or bad guys, but both good and bad exist in most characters.

I liked the way Towelhead doesn't force a message down your throat. You don't necessarily know Ball's stance on an issue, such as teenage sex. He just depicts it a certain way, and you make up your own mind.

Toni Collette plays a fairly typical-looking role to what she generally does in US films, but her role is better written than most (like Little Miss Sunshine et al). The visuals of the film were a little distracting for me, such as the over-use of golden-sunset hues and over-contrast, something that has been done to death on US network TV shows. Most won't have the same problem with it as I (my missus didn't even notice). There are a couple of minor scenes that slightly lacked plausibility, but for the most part, the film successfully pulled off some pretty major risks. Big kudos for that.

The Week in Review

Last week's screenings were dominated by the last of the season of Czech New Wave at Melbourne Cinémathèque, some truly rare and exception cinema. All these Czech films screened in this season were Australian premieres and all were excellent prints. The other highlight was Haneke's Funny Games, which I watched on DVD. I purchased it after seeing Time of the Wolf as part of the Focus on Isabelle Huppert at ACMI.

I had purchased a ticket to see Destricted at ACMI, but didn't get to see. I've heard that there's only a couple of segments of this omnibus film worth seeing, most notably Larry Clark's, so hopefully I'll get to see it on DVD some day (or maybe ACMI will re-screen it).

FILMS:

• Angel (François Ozon, UK/Belgium/France, 2007)
• The Nanny Diaries (Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini, USA, 2007)
• Prípad pro zacínajícího kata (A Case for a Young Hangman, Pavel Jurácek, Czechoslovakia, 1969)
• Konec srpna v Hotelu Ozon (Late August at the Hotel Ozone, Jan Schmidt, Czechoslovakia, 1967)
• Hairspray (Adam Shankman, USA, 2007)
  

SHORT FILMS:

• Postava k podpírání (Josef Kilián, Pavel Jurácek & Jan Schmidt, 38 mins, Czechoslovakia, 1963)
  

DVD:

• Funny Games (Michael Haneke, Austria, 1997)

Angel
François Ozon is one of my favourite French directors, who produces films of many genres. I'm really looking forward to the ACMI retrospective of his work starting later this week. Ozon makes subtle and understated yet compelling social dramas like Sous le sable (Under the Sand, 2000) and Le temps qui reste (Time to Leave, 2005) that are reflections of mortality that really resonate with me.

Swimming Pool (2003) is a more conventional thriller with a twist that shares some themes with Ozon's latest effort, but is of a completely different genre. Both films explore the life of a writer, but while Swimming Pool is a contemporary story somewhat grounded in reality, Angel is a melodramatic fantasy set 100 years ago. It's also Ozon's first English language film - quite a daunting challenge.

Angel Deverell comes from a lower middle class family but is passionately ambitious to succeed as a writer of melodramatic novels. The film takes on the mood of one of her novels - the melodrama is evident from the opening scene with the choice of music. While the press notes for the film give no hint that the director's intent of fantasy, I can't take it any other way. Angel succeeds at a very young age, beyond her wildest dreams. The narrative is almost dream-like. I have no experience of Douglas Sirk's films, but from what I've read, the film appears to be a homage to his work.

The production of the film is lush and the film looks beautiful. The period reproduction is very competent, but the genre of film won't appeal to everyone. Ozon clearly has an interest in women's stories and these often have appeal regardless of gender. I suspect the melodrama of Angel is likely to appeal more to women than men, and to lovers of English period dramas.

The Nanny Diaries
The husband and wife team that brought us the innovative American Splendour (2003) has worked together again for a more conventional comedy with The Nanny Diaries. The film satirises a tendency among some of the extremely wealthy of Manhattan's Upper East Side who, courtesy of their husband's huge income, can afford to both not work and pay others to raise their children.

Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney play Mr. & Mrs. X, Scarlett Johansson plays Annie the Nanny and Nicholas Art plays Grayer, the X's young son. The performances are acceptable enough, and there is some genuine humour, but the writing felt clumsy to me, and fell into stereotypical cliché. Johnasson has potential with comedy, but while the clumsiness of her role in Woody Allen's Scoop melded reasonably with the narrative and style of the film, it doesn't quite gel in this film. Maybe that's a weakness in the direction or editing - I couldn't really tell. It just didn't quite work for me.

There wasn't enough material to engage an audience for over 90 minutes and the film would have benefited by having some 15 minutes cut to bring it to this length. The film basically is a single joke that gets too repetitious as time wears on. The aspect that bothered me the most was a convenient and emotionally tidy ending. This may not concern a more conventional audience, which should find this enjoyable enough. Good for a bit of light but forgettable entertainment.

A Case for a Young Hangman
Virtually all of the Czech New Wave films screening at the recent Melbourne Cinémathèque season seem to have a fixation on indirect criticism of the totalitarian regime of the day. A Case for a Young Hangman is based on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and uses heavy satire and surrealism that also borrows heavily from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, particularly the appearance of a clothed rabbit replete with pocket-watch.

The film also recalls Orson Welle's The Trial (1962), reflecting a frustration with government incompetence, but takes absurdism and symbolism to a more extreme level. The film is structured like a dream, removing the need for narrative coherence and allowing the story to jump from one scene to another seemingly at the director's whim. Combined with visual inventiveness and restrained humour, this sucks the audience down a rabbit hole and is thoroughly engaging.

These devices are effective in conveying the frustration of living in a madly bureaucratic state. Krzysztof Kieslowski ran foul of the authorities by his direct and realist approach to criticism of the authorities in his native Poland, so the indirect methods employed by some of the Czechs (as in A Case for a Young Hangman) are quite novel.

Josef Kilián
This short film made an excellent companion piece to A Case for a Young Hangman. It also employs absurdism, but to a lesser extent than A Case for a Young Hangman. It is also highly satirical and uses irony to humiliate the craziness of bureaucracy.

Our hero stumbles across a cat rental store and on a whim hires. Having recently seen the realist depictions of communist life in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, the director's mocking of bureaucracy is evident. A disinterested shop-girl asks for ID, takes the money and warns there's a steep penalty for late returns. The cat is mangy, nothing like the one asked for, and our hero - resigned to the uselessness of complaint - takes it for a day. He returns the next day but the shop is empty and no-one knows anything about it. The film then follows our hero as he desperately seeks the shop.

Late August at the Hotel Ozone
One of the finest post-apocalyptic films I have seen, that possibly inspired Haneke's Time of the Wolf. It has little of the humour of the previous Czech films. There is little dialogue and the story takes a while to unfold. We follow a troupe of young women being led by another old enough to be their mother. None of their identities is evident. Gradually we learn that they are some of the last remaining people on Earth (or at least, in the country). The older woman leads them across the country in search of other people, and particularly men.

Like Haneke's film, there is some fairly graphic violence, which works effectively in the context of the film. It also recalls Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies. The ending is full of irony and tragedy, but handled with subtlety. Great stuff.

Funny Games
Michael Haneke is one of my favourite directors. He uses bleak social realism to convey horror stories of sorts - thrillers, emotional dramas, post-apocalyptic stories and so on. Funny Games predates by several years Haneke's earlier efforts, Time of the Wolf (2003) and Hidden (2005), but explores common themes. Like Time of the Wolf, there is a holidaying family in crisis and like Hidden, there is an examination of the nature of reality and manipulation through the medium of film. Funny Games is particularly audacious in its cheeky self-reference, in which one of the antagonists directly addresses the audience.

It was interesting to see the recently departed Ulrich Mühe (from The Lives of Others). Apparently filming on an American remake (with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth as leads) directed by Haneke itself has recently completed and is due for release next year. It will be interesting to compare versions.

In the DVD extras, Haneke says this film is the only one in which he deliberately provokes the audience. It is indeed a chilling story, and not for the faint at heart - my partner was scared shitless! I have yet to see a Haneke film that I have found less than excellent.

Hairspray
This films has wide distribution and much has been written about it. I went with the family, who enjoyed it less than I. Three words sum it up: lots of fun. The film is full of light uplifting energy, and it would have benefited by cutting 15 - 30 minutes to keep up the initial momentum.

Michelle Pfeiffer is looking painfully and excruciatingly thin and appears to be deforming herself with cosmetic surgery. John Travolta has a clumsy but effective role, John Waters has a hilarious cameo and Nikki Blonsky largely carries the film's success on her effervescent performance. The rest of the cast were good, especially Jerry Stiller (George Constanza's father in Seinfeld), Amanda Bynes and James Marsden, though I found Queen Latifah as Motormouth Maybelle a bit flat. Good clean entertainment, with some nice choreography (by the director!). I'd like to see the John Waters original.

The Week in Review

This Week in Review is not for this week, it's for last week. I started writing this post as usual, but circumstances prevented me from completing it. I usually post my weekly review on a Sunday evening, for everything I've seen from Monday to Sunday. Alas, it's now Saturday evening so I'm nearly a week late. C'est la vie.

The high point of this week was 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which I intend seeing again before I post a review. I saw the first screening of a brand new print that had arrived the previous day. All I will say for now is it is excellent, social realist film-making that has much in common with the Dardenne brothers' L'enfant or even Tsilimidos' Em 4 Jay. It is a worthy winner of this year's Palme d'Or at Cannes that just has to be seen by serious cinephiles.

FILMS:

• Sedmikrásky (Daisies, Vera Chytilová, Czechoslovakia, 1966)
• Valerie a týden divů (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Jaromil Jires, Czechoslovakia, 1970)
• A Nocturne (Bill Masoulis, Australia, 2007)
• 4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Cristian Mungiu, Romania, 2007)
• Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, USA, 1973)
  

SHORT FILMS:

• Otrantský zámek (Castle of Ostranto, Jan Svankmajer, Czechoslovakia, 1977)
• Zánik domu Usheru (The Fall of the House of Usher, Jan Svankmajer, Czechoslovakia, 1981)
• Kyvadlo, jáma a nadeje (The Pit, the Pendulum and Hope, Jan Svankmajer, Czechoslovakia, 1983)

Daisies
I really like this unusual Czech New Wave film, though I know some of my fellow Melbourne Cinémathèque members thought less of it. It's experimental nature demonstrates some of the psychedelic devices of the period, and contextually I had no problems with it, though it has dated. It was banned by the Czechoslovakian authorities for a time, largely (if not entirely) out of ignorance. They feared the avant garde.

Daisies is about two young women (both named Marie), self-indulgent to the extreme. I call this type 'Princess Bitches' and was recently amused to find a book by Melbourne child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg about the same condition (and it's called The Princess Bitchface Syndrome). I have a daughter around this age who, it must be said, has caused much grief, and Daisies satirises the mayhem such girls can cause by pushing it to the max.

The film is an anti-war statement, a connection made clear at the start with imagery of destruction wrought by bombing. The director's intent is to show how obnoxious behaviour manifested on an individual level correlates to obnoxious behaviour on an international level. The two Maries plot to hoodwink older men to pay for their meals and other favours, in exchange for pleasure which is never delivered. What I find particularly fascinating is how such behaviour has proliferated especially in contemporary times.

The film comes to a climax when these two terrors discover an unattended banquet in a hall. There was a terrific long take capturing the carefree destruction by the girls. Once again, thanks to the Czech embassy, we had excellent prints on the night. Check out this site for more info, including links to Deputy Pruzinec's speech to the Czech National Assembly condemning Daisies and director Vera Chytilova's letter to President Gustav Husak, pleading to be allowed to resume work with film.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
This was a fantasy/horror film, the least engaging of all the Czech season. It's a fairly camp vampire story which tries to tantalise with a little nudity and hints of incestuous relationships. While it has some beautiful imagery, the plot was fairly puerile.

Other than as a curio, the film did little for me. As it's been over a week since I saw it, I find I have nothing more to say about it, though Chris Hyde has written an interesting piece.


A Nocturne
I struggled with this film, partly due to sleep-deprivation, partly due to the quality of the screening (at Toff of the Town, a non-cinema venue with a small poor quality screen) and partly due to the content. It's a vampire flick set in Melbourne, made by local film-maker Bill Masoulis. This was the opening night film for MUFF 2007, and as the festival finishes tonight, it will be the only film I got to see at the festival. It's just not humanly possible to fit everything in.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
I'm not a big fan of the Western genre and consequently have had little exposure to Sam Peckinpah. Maybe it's the "over-abundance" of manliness (as it's referred to in Sunshine) that doesn't appeal. Or maybe it's the guns and violence. So this film, while it has some redeeming features (like James Coburn's depiction of Pat Garrett), this film also did little for me. The director assumes the audience has knowledge of the characters. It was only by reading about the film afterwards that I learnt what was the significance of the opening scene (repeated at the end).

Kris Kristofferson's role as Billy the Kid was reasonable but somewhat tame, and Bob Dylan's cameo was amusing, entertaining if not gratuitous. He provided the music to the film, which worked quite well. Like most westerns, the role of women was relegated to mostly window dressing. Perhaps that's another reasons why I don't generally like the genre - there's no balance of the real-life day-to-day, the drama of real people interacting.

I find it fascinating that the film depicts events that are scarcely more than a century ago - times that can surely be considered modern. Yet, the 'wild-west' nature of the times, with the proliferation of firearms and cavalier manner in which they were used (at least as depicted in the film) surely gives some hint as to why the US has so many problems connected to violence and firearms to this day.

Short Films by Jan Svankmajer
I presume this name means something to those a bit more educated in Eastern European cinema than myself. I found each of these films of little interest and didn't engage me at all.

Czech Cinema at Cteq

I was anticipating this week's screenings at Melbourne Cinémathèque, the first week in the season of Czech New Wave cinema titled East of Eden: The Imaginary in Czech Cinema 1964 – 1983. The first week's screenings were top class selections, both from excellent prints, specially imported for the season with the assistance of the Embassy of the Czech Republic. Karel Pazourek, the Czech ambassador personally flew in from Canberra to introduce the season, and his love of cinema was evident. He spoke passionately about Czech cinema for over ten minutes, giving some historical, political and other context, and it was very inspiring.

Another Melbourne Cinémathèque committee member and I spoke with him after the screenings, and his knowledge of world cinema (including Australian cinema) was also evident. He even invited us to go somewhere for a drink, but we both had to decline with work the next day.

Ucho (The Ear, Karel Kachyňa, 1970)
With its overt Orwellian political themes, this film reminded me of both Krzysztof Kieslowki's Przypadek (Blind Chance, 1981) and Orson Welles' Le procès (The Trial, 1961). With the noose of Soviet censorship tightening around the time of the film's completion, it never saw the light of day for twenty years, and debuted at Cannes in 1990.

Taking place over one night, it depicts a government minister and his wife, Ludvík and Anna (played by Radoslav Brzobohatý and Jirina Bohdalová), as they stumble home in the dark from an official function. Things are not quite right - keys are missing, doors unlocked, things have been moved. The house is the only one in the street without electricity and the phone is also disconnected. Maybe the state is listening, hence the title.

We see various flashbacks to the function as Ludvík recalls conversations he had that make him suspect that arrest by the state may be imminent. A slowly growing and claustrophobic sense of paranoia builds up to a crescendo, climaxing to an ending I found both effective and unexpected.

The film had elements of drama, melodrama, film noir and political thriller, all effectively interwoven to provide a compelling and suspenseful story which draws to a powerful and unexpected climax. The story unfolds using the device of the bickering couple. He - level headed but impatient, her - alcoholic and demanding. The film is basically a two-hander, and could work well as a stage play. It was interesting to see how the volatility of the couple's relationship developed as the sense of menace gradually increased.

Spalovač mrtvol (The Cremator, Juraj Herz, 1968)
This highly satirical comedy is slightly reminiscent of Luis García Berlanga's El verdugo (The Executioner, 1963), with its humour, preoccupation with death and political undertones. The subtle political critique in The Cremator seems to be directed at Nazism, so I was surprised to learn that the film was also banned by the Soviets. I learnt afterwards from the Czech ambassador that this was not because of the film's content, but because the director had been black-listed. Ah, Big Brother and censorship, where would we be without them?

The film's mood is set with the bizarre opening credits, a little in the style of Monty Python. Cross-cutting is used to show parallels between the animal kingdom and humans. The title character, Kopfrkingl (Rudolf Hrusínský), is a repugnant man who presents himself as a cultured and respectable member of society but whose manipulative manner is evident as he leads people around like animals (prey).

The film is set in the 1930's as Hitler's power spreads to Czechoslovakia. Always an opportunist, Kopfrkingl sees new possibilities with the demand for cremation (an indirect reference to the horrors of the Holocaust). The film becomes a horror narrative of sorts as Kopfrkingl's behaviour gradually descends into acts of psychopathic violence against those around him. The film seems to be making the point that totalitarianism is obnoxious and collaborators are, despite appearances, uncultured and no better than animals.



As pointed out by the Czech ambassador, these Melbourne Cinémathèque screenings comprise the first season of Czech films to be screened in Australia in over thirty years. This is a rare opportunity to see some of the finest of European cinema of the period, and all films in the season are Australian premieres. I highly recommend the remaining two weeks of the season (Wednesday evenings, 7pm at ACMI).