I know you fervent readers have been wondering where the tally for September was. Or you know the exact opposite of that. Well another month down and I saw a sufficient amount of movies to not feel worried about the goal. And the best part about it all was that most of the films I saw were free. Of course I've lacked any real inspiration as far as writing some reviews up but hopefully that changes soon for my own sake. So I added seven more to the tally this month. The end is in sight.
Redacted - It tries hard to be cutting edge and largely fails.
Angelus - Wonderfully shot and picturesque and quite amusing tale.
Clando - A convoluted mess of a film.
Edge of Heaven - well conceived and well acted film about Turkish men and women.
Wojaczek - Well done biopic.
Transsiberian - a mess of a thriller which didn't even make good use of its one compelling aspect (it takes place on a train in Siberia with no where to go)
Standard Operating Procedure (review forthcoming) - Wonderful documentary (this has been quite the year for me seeing documentaries).
I'm tempted to declare this the year of documentaries for me. Granted not all the documentaries I saw were releases of this year but still what I've seen in documentaries has been quite brilliant.
And now what you've all come to see, meaningless statistics.
Films Remaining: 21
Days Remaining (As of October 1): 92
Average Number of Films per Day to achieve goal: 0.23
Average Number of Films per Week to Achieve Goal: 1.50
We went seeking greatness in movies, and were most often disappointed. We waited for a movie like the one we wanted to make, and secretly wanted to live. -Roger Ebert paraphrasing a quote from Masculin Feminin
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Wojaczek
I never quite realized how amazingly hard it is to write objectively about a film when the director is in attendance and afterwards takes questions. His or her answers will inevitably skew what you just saw. This conflicts me for two reasons. One, I desire at least one day to think about a movie before I talk about it. This often leads to frustrating questions from others mere minutes after the movie is over of "how was it?" or what'd you think?" This is a most frustrating question when one hasn't decided what one thinks. Or if I have decided but am not quite sure of why or wants to further reflect on it.
The second reason is that inevitably I will only be able to think about the film after the fact on the terms defined by the auteur. On one level I crave that sort of insider information which was going through the head of the director or writer. This is particularly fabulous when I see an image and say "wow" and then hear the film maker state the importance of that image. But at the same time I lose the ability to truly look past his intent and find something else.
Lech Majewski, who directed the wonderfully visual and entertaining story of Angelus was present at the viewing of his biopic about a Polish poet named Wojaczek. He is as you might expect of an artist at times charming, refreshing in his straight forwardness and with just a hint of the underlying temperamental nature (i.e. you have sense he can be a real asshole if he wants to be). He took a handful of generic questions formulated by film theorists more than film lovers and turned them into interesting answers about the nature of getting independent films made.
He talked of the power and beauty of paintings and how each viewing of a brilliant painting rewards countless new things. And it is clearly with this view that he approaches film making. In that regard he is amazing for trying experimental things and succeeding. He may not feel that the film is as amazing a medium as painting but I do. In fact I would take his view of paintings that each viewing reveals something new and argue that a truly great film can do the same thing. Granted a film takes more commitment and there are so many things to balance that more often than not a great film is not achieved.
But that isn't to say certain films do not achieve it. Some films are groundbreaking because they travel new paths, some are amazing because they do ever thing they are supposed to do to perfection. Some films I watch 25 times and find something new and fascinating in them ever time. Thin Red Line in my opinion is such a film as is Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light and I could name others. Regardless of that it was quite refreshing to hear Majewski speak about art and film and if for no other reason his films are worth watching because they don't just adhere to a formula and they aren't mindless popcorn drivel. They are trying to be art.
Majewski noted that Wojaczek was a mythic figure in his youth and that his poetry in Polish is so beautiful and almost entirely untranslatable. In a nice summation of the film, Majewski himself on the night I viewed the film said (and I'm paraphrasing): "I couldn't make his poetry a film, so I tried to make the film a poem."
Wojaczek was a bright young poet with some serious manic depressive symptoms. Fearless in life in a era and location that was practically immobilized by fear. The film follows him in his last days as he interacts with friends and strangers and leads a ultimately destructive lifestyle. Opening with startling imagery and affecting a mythic stature the film follows Wojaczek and often pauses for beautiful imagery.
In terms of its impression on me, I found Angelus a far more beautiful film with its explicit attempts to recreate painting in staged film settings. But that is not fair to the film at hand, since its objectives are clearly different. In as much as its stated goal was to create a mythic narrative, I think it succeeds (another viewer held a different opinion). Admittedly the translation was not great, nor were the subtitles always legible and I found this distracted me most often.
I guess in the end I'm mostly positive about the film although I didn't enjoy it as much as his other film. And as this wordy post suggests I was more struck by the nature of the director than the film. But I must admit the imagery of the final scene was as powerful as anything I've seen in a while.
The second reason is that inevitably I will only be able to think about the film after the fact on the terms defined by the auteur. On one level I crave that sort of insider information which was going through the head of the director or writer. This is particularly fabulous when I see an image and say "wow" and then hear the film maker state the importance of that image. But at the same time I lose the ability to truly look past his intent and find something else.
Lech Majewski, who directed the wonderfully visual and entertaining story of Angelus was present at the viewing of his biopic about a Polish poet named Wojaczek. He is as you might expect of an artist at times charming, refreshing in his straight forwardness and with just a hint of the underlying temperamental nature (i.e. you have sense he can be a real asshole if he wants to be). He took a handful of generic questions formulated by film theorists more than film lovers and turned them into interesting answers about the nature of getting independent films made.
He talked of the power and beauty of paintings and how each viewing of a brilliant painting rewards countless new things. And it is clearly with this view that he approaches film making. In that regard he is amazing for trying experimental things and succeeding. He may not feel that the film is as amazing a medium as painting but I do. In fact I would take his view of paintings that each viewing reveals something new and argue that a truly great film can do the same thing. Granted a film takes more commitment and there are so many things to balance that more often than not a great film is not achieved.
But that isn't to say certain films do not achieve it. Some films are groundbreaking because they travel new paths, some are amazing because they do ever thing they are supposed to do to perfection. Some films I watch 25 times and find something new and fascinating in them ever time. Thin Red Line in my opinion is such a film as is Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light and I could name others. Regardless of that it was quite refreshing to hear Majewski speak about art and film and if for no other reason his films are worth watching because they don't just adhere to a formula and they aren't mindless popcorn drivel. They are trying to be art.
Majewski noted that Wojaczek was a mythic figure in his youth and that his poetry in Polish is so beautiful and almost entirely untranslatable. In a nice summation of the film, Majewski himself on the night I viewed the film said (and I'm paraphrasing): "I couldn't make his poetry a film, so I tried to make the film a poem."
Wojaczek was a bright young poet with some serious manic depressive symptoms. Fearless in life in a era and location that was practically immobilized by fear. The film follows him in his last days as he interacts with friends and strangers and leads a ultimately destructive lifestyle. Opening with startling imagery and affecting a mythic stature the film follows Wojaczek and often pauses for beautiful imagery.
In terms of its impression on me, I found Angelus a far more beautiful film with its explicit attempts to recreate painting in staged film settings. But that is not fair to the film at hand, since its objectives are clearly different. In as much as its stated goal was to create a mythic narrative, I think it succeeds (another viewer held a different opinion). Admittedly the translation was not great, nor were the subtitles always legible and I found this distracted me most often.
I guess in the end I'm mostly positive about the film although I didn't enjoy it as much as his other film. And as this wordy post suggests I was more struck by the nature of the director than the film. But I must admit the imagery of the final scene was as powerful as anything I've seen in a while.
Transsiberian
Brad Anderson directed a surprisingly good horror film a couple of years back called Session 9, a film I thank Wretched Genius for recommending. Its a real shame because Transsiberian is not a surprisingly good thriller. Its a bland, uninteresting work with little going for it other than its setting and it circles down to absurdity very quickly.
Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer) are Christian missionaries who have just finished work in China and are taking the train across Siberia to Moscow before taking a plane back to the States. They meet and befriend another couple Abby (Kate Mara) and Carlos (Eduardo Noriega). Soon it is realized that Carlos and Abby might be drug smugglers and things become interesting when Ben Kingsley's Russian detective appears on the train.
Problem one is up front right away. Not one of the actors (some of them fairly reliable) seems appropriately cast. Kingsley has a bizarre accent and seems out of place. Mortimer's Jessie doesn't act at all like a reformed bad girl for most of the movie. Only Harrelson comes even close to pulling off his limited dimension character and he still misses.
Second is the increasingly stupid plot which relies on thinly veiled attempts to trick the audience for no real reason. And then on occasion random chance that prevents characters from discovering important evidence. All this rounding out to a out right silly ending that made me glad someone else paid for my ticket to the theater.
Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer) are Christian missionaries who have just finished work in China and are taking the train across Siberia to Moscow before taking a plane back to the States. They meet and befriend another couple Abby (Kate Mara) and Carlos (Eduardo Noriega). Soon it is realized that Carlos and Abby might be drug smugglers and things become interesting when Ben Kingsley's Russian detective appears on the train.
Problem one is up front right away. Not one of the actors (some of them fairly reliable) seems appropriately cast. Kingsley has a bizarre accent and seems out of place. Mortimer's Jessie doesn't act at all like a reformed bad girl for most of the movie. Only Harrelson comes even close to pulling off his limited dimension character and he still misses.
Second is the increasingly stupid plot which relies on thinly veiled attempts to trick the audience for no real reason. And then on occasion random chance that prevents characters from discovering important evidence. All this rounding out to a out right silly ending that made me glad someone else paid for my ticket to the theater.
The Edge of Heaven
Faith Akin's film on Turkish Muslims living in Germany and in Turkey is engaging and interesting from its opening to its close. It follows a popular trend of films of hypothesizing a world that is smaller than we think. The stories being told here are about people who are connected even when they don't know it. This is much in the style of Alejandro González Iñárritu and others with their connected narratives. As a general rule I find this sort of narrative annoying but Akin thankfully steers clear of many of the realizations of its a small world after all. In fact many moments in the film stress how simple actions keep two connected people from ever meeting.
The film starts with Yeter, Nejat and his father Ali. Yeter is a prostitute, who is preferred by Ali. A pair of fundamentalist Muslims note that she is living in sin one day and offer her the opportunity to repent. She quickly takes up an offer to live as a concubine of sorts with Ali. She meets Nejat and they get along well. An unfortunate accident sends Nejat on a quest to find Yeter's daughter Ayten. Ayten has had here own story as a radical protester of the Turkish government, she flees to Germany to find her mother. There she meets and falls in love with Lotte who helps her with her case for asylum.
Its hard to say more without revealing significant plot points. Suffice to say that overall the story telling is very effective, moving and engaging. There are occasional overdone moments such as "near miss" moments of two story lines that are kind of annoying. These are usually made up by deeply intimate moments of character development. The most moving of which acts like a security camera capturing the grief of a mother from a fixed overhead shot.
The film is wonderfully developed in terms of character and beautifully shot. It tackles interesting topics including forgiveness. It feels like a real world both the Turkish community in Germany and Turkey itself.
The film starts with Yeter, Nejat and his father Ali. Yeter is a prostitute, who is preferred by Ali. A pair of fundamentalist Muslims note that she is living in sin one day and offer her the opportunity to repent. She quickly takes up an offer to live as a concubine of sorts with Ali. She meets Nejat and they get along well. An unfortunate accident sends Nejat on a quest to find Yeter's daughter Ayten. Ayten has had here own story as a radical protester of the Turkish government, she flees to Germany to find her mother. There she meets and falls in love with Lotte who helps her with her case for asylum.
Its hard to say more without revealing significant plot points. Suffice to say that overall the story telling is very effective, moving and engaging. There are occasional overdone moments such as "near miss" moments of two story lines that are kind of annoying. These are usually made up by deeply intimate moments of character development. The most moving of which acts like a security camera capturing the grief of a mother from a fixed overhead shot.
The film is wonderfully developed in terms of character and beautifully shot. It tackles interesting topics including forgiveness. It feels like a real world both the Turkish community in Germany and Turkey itself.
Clando
Clando starts in Cameroon. Serious economic problems in the country have led many to find work by being non authorized taxi drivers called "Clandos". Anatole the main character starts as a clando but is soon asked to go to Germany by a wealthy man to find his son. Anatole goes to Germany where he gets involved with an activist white woman and locates the wealthy man's son.
If my description is foggy and confusing its partly because it has been almost a month since I saw it and am only now writing about it. It is partly because the narrative of the film is such a mess that I found it almost entirely impossible to follow. It jumps back and forth in time and into dream sequences (I think they are dream sequences) so often that only the most dedicated even bothers to try to keep up.
IT offers some interesting looks into Cameroonian culture but these are infrequent and much of the film takes place in Germany rather than Cameroon. It asks broadly but offers no satisfying answers to questions of how to protest government: by violence or otherwise. This confusion of how to act seems to transfer to the confusion of the film making and narrative.
If my description is foggy and confusing its partly because it has been almost a month since I saw it and am only now writing about it. It is partly because the narrative of the film is such a mess that I found it almost entirely impossible to follow. It jumps back and forth in time and into dream sequences (I think they are dream sequences) so often that only the most dedicated even bothers to try to keep up.
IT offers some interesting looks into Cameroonian culture but these are infrequent and much of the film takes place in Germany rather than Cameroon. It asks broadly but offers no satisfying answers to questions of how to protest government: by violence or otherwise. This confusion of how to act seems to transfer to the confusion of the film making and narrative.