LAUNCH OF DELTA SIERRA ARTS - THE REVIEW SITE

I thought it would be better to have a space to keep blogging about film and music and arts, instead of only posting reviews related to the films in the Singapore International Film Festival. So Delta Sierra Arts now contains a collation of all my film reviews, including the ones that were posted here, as well as reviews of music and other arts. Enjoy!

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Posted 9:08 PM by Daryl

OVERALL IMPRESSION OF SIFF 2004

Last year I parked myself at Shaw Tower and gorged on lovely films. This year, unfortunately, I actually had to work and couldn't spend my days in a cycle of films and The Sopranos. Still, I've decided to post my thoughts on the few films I caught at this year's Film Festival here on this blog.

The 'big names' this year, or at least the film-festival favourites, were Osama, Capturing the Friedmans, and that awesome Sunday Apr 18 triple-bill, Barbarian Invasions-Fog of War-Uzak. A group of mostly sombre movies, reflecting what seemed like a very depressing slate of films overall - the schedule had documentaries on Tibet, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Bali, and Vietnam. Not that I need every film to be filled with shiny happy people, of course, but it's no shame to have joyful movies. Of course, as I said, I did hit very few films this year, so who am I to judge?

What else would I have loved to see in the programme? Off the top of my head, American Splendor and the Station Agent. Yeah, yeah, I'm a sucker for American indie movies.


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Posted 2:04 AM by Daryl

Twentynine Palms
Dir. Bruno Dumont

The last road movie I watched at a film festival was Y Tu Mama Tambien, a joyous celebration of life, vigour, and sexual vitality amidst the spectre of death. This could be the anti-Mama, with the lead couple, David and Katia driving through Joshua Tree National Park, a landscape where life has been baked out. David and Katia are embarking on a trip ostensibly to look for scouting locations, but ultimately they're cruising down a lost highway, plunging further downward into the loss of language and ultimately the loss of sanity1.

When does language collapse? At some point - sex, extreme violence - instincts take over, Dumont seems to be saying, and we are reduced to animalistic grunting. The only intelligible speech is blurred into the background, and in any case are the rants of police officers on petty quarrels and talk show guests. Conversations between David, who's American, and Katia, his French girlfriend, are necessarily tangential, the former primarily speaking English and the latter primarily French. And without any communication, everything looks loveless in this movie: the sex is acrobatic but holds the hint of menace, with the wild screams remniscent of animals in heat rather than partners in love.

That combination of menace and emptiness is echoed everywhere. The sex scenes in the swimming pool reminded one of the use of pools as a visual metaphor for death or emptiness: Dustin Hoffman's swim in The Graduate, the 'murder mystery' in Swimming Pool, David Hockney paintings. In the one part of the movie I found truly compelling, the couple fights on the street and in back alleys, amid a dense atmosphere of dim lighting and heavy breathing.

So Dumont takes the link between sex and death (la petit mort) and inverts it, subjecting us to a view of sex in the harshest light and landscape possible, giving us a climax of irrational, insane violence (a friend I bumped into, Mark, reminded me how much this ending was like the ending to Fat Girl, which ends in a random act of atrocity). But I left the theatre underwhelmed: ultimately, Twentynine Palms comes across a sort of set-piece, with the elements seemingly arranged just for the sake of demonstrating inhumanity. It's a blistering assault on one's senses, but at no time did I feel it pierced through into my sensibility.23

1How in the world did they manage to drive so far in the gas-guzzling Hummer?

2As in other festivals, lots of people walked out on Twentynine Palms here, leaving the theatre about half-full.

3Also, I bumped into an acquaintance of mine before this movie, who noted that this year's Film Festival had a lower attendance than last year's. 50%, vs 60%, or something like that. Given that the spectre of SARS loomed over everyone last year - I remember having allergies, sneezing throughout Russian Ark, and getting more than a few dire looks - this isn't a good figure. For some reason I personally found it very hard to get excited over the films this year.

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Posted 8:51 PM by Daryl

Young Adam
Dir. David Mackenzie

Was feeling bored on Saturday, so I went to catch Young Adam at the Singapore Film Festival. I briefly scanned the synopsis before getting the ticket, and was completely unprepared for Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, and Emily Mortimer1 appearing onscreen. The tone of Scottish desolation, with a blanket of fog-grey that seemed to rest upon the movie, seemed an appropriate reflection of 1950s Glasgow, and of my mood - after all, I was watching a movie alone on a Saturday night. There was a strong suggestion of an utter lack of options in that life, what with the claustrophobia of the boat and the desperation and despair in the sex scenes between Joe and Ella (McGregor and Swinton)2. The movie meanders near the end though - the tortured Joe-Ella affair and its parallel with the Joe-Cathy relationship is spoilt, one thinks, by the sexual omnivorousness of Joe, who can't seem to bump into a married woman without taking his pants off. But then I suppose one could argue that the cold sexual interactions just illustrate Joe's general callousness. There's an unfeeling, unforgiving, hard quality to the landscape, and it seems to be breathed into the fibre of Joe's being. It seems as though the director (David Mackenize) wants us to feel that this alienation is part of the human condition. At the end of the movie, I'm still not completely convinced that this is true, instead of the alienation just being part of Joe's character, but the film's stark, spare style did leave an imprint.

1I spent the whole movie trying to remember the last movie I saw Mortimer in - it was The 51st State.

2As is his wont when he appears in an indie film, Ewan McGregor shows off his light sabre in the movie. I was just surprised that in a film that had so much sex in it, it took one hour before there was a full frontal of him...

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Posted 1:08 AM by Daryl

Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion
Dir. Tom Peosay

The Singapore Film Festival is on again. Unfortunately, while last year I could blog about the Festival to my heart's content, this year I have to work. So far, I've only caught Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion, an extremely moving documentary on the plight of the Tibetan people. Makes one really sad. I liked that they showed the supporters of Tibet to be a wide, varied group, including many Asians, not just the stereotype of New Age hippies. Indeed, the most embarrassing moment would be the scenes of the mosh pit in the Free Tibet concert; but somehow, I've never heard a more affecting singing of "Losing My Religion", if only because in the context of the film the lyrics take on both the original, metaphorical, end-of-one's-rope sense and the literal. To see the grief in the monks and nuns, to hear their descriptions of the tortures endured, and to see their determination to remain non-violent despite it all... all very moving. Makes me wonder whether those Tibetans who ran the now-defunct Rising Moon restaurant in Harvard Square had stories to tell.

Next film: twentyninepalms...

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Posted 11:39 PM by Daryl

THOUGHTS ON THE SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2003

Kudos is due to the organisers for the very solid programming of this year's festival. Scheduling and budget mean it is not possible for me to catch every single film, or even a significant portion, but I'll do my best to report on the ones I've seen.

Someone asked me what movies I was hoping would have also been part of the festival's programming. Here's my list: Standing in the Shadows of Motown, Morvern Callar, Roger Dodger, What Time is it Over There?, Real Women Have Curves, Raising Victor Vargas, Fellini: I'm a Born Liar, Personal Velocity, Igby Goes Down, and, while we're making wish lists, retrospectives of Ealing comedies, 60s Michael Caine movies, and the Carry On films. (Okay okay, I'm a sucker for British movies, so I guess I'll throw in Withnail and I into that list.) But then, that's just shooting the moon. And sometimes good moments have come from films which I didn't have any expectations for, like A Tale of a Naughty Girl or the Pier Paolo Pasolini retrospective. You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get what you need.

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Posted 2:06 AM by Daryl

24 Hour Party People
Dir. Michael Winterbottom

There's no way to review this one fully objectively. For one, I've actually already seen it before, so this was a second impression. Next, I'm a club kid at heart, and I really do love the history of club culture, of which the Hacienda is a big part. And so, when I was writing about Britain for Let's Go, I actually requested to cover Manchester so that I could go to the site of the Hacienda (which had shut down the year before) to pay homage. I suppose it means something that a few of my friends from America e-mailed me just to say "I saw 24 Hour Party People and it reminded me of you". And lastly, after two films in a row about different forms of evil, I really needed a break, and this was just perfect.

So of course I loved it. I'll admit my top two films of this festival remain The Man Without a Past and City of God, but this was entertainingly irreverent, as any film featuring Bez and Shaun Ryder ought to be. Steve Coogan is great as the shameless self-promoter Tony Wilson, proving that just because you blow your own trumpet doesn't mean you don't have talent. Coogan acts the "clever and in love with himself" part enough to make the self-referential parts where he speaks to camera feel appropriate, where in other hands they could very well look like trying too hard to be clever. Rock and dance movies are a tough genre, so it's always good when they fall into place, and the shout-out to the moment where they honour the DJ is major bonus points in my book. I wish they had a bigger part for the other members of New Order, and it doesn't fully explain the importance of the Happy Mondays to people who don't know their place in the British music scene. But these are quibbles, trifles. The movie doesn't take itself too seriously, and I'll honour its tone.

As the movie makes abundantly clear, the Hacienda (catalogue number: Fac 51), and indeed the whole of Factory Records, was run on dreams and no business sense. So you know the end is inevitable, but the moments up till the end are glorious - which is much like a great club night, and which is why the legacy of Factory remains forever. Image is everything: the Sex Pistols, whose Manchester concert is one of the first things we see, were, after all, clothes and an attitude before they were ever a band."Print the legend", says Tony at one point, but at this point, the legend is the truth.

Notes: Why in the world did we get a print with French subtitles?... A pity the pre-show music was Gipsy Kings, they could've played something from Factory Records' great past... I love that they quote The Consolation of Philosophy, which I admit I've left languishing on my shelf after reading it once... Pigeons ARE rats with wings... A Roger Ebert review of this film reveals that Ebert was the unlikely screenwriter of a Sex Pistols screenplay... I recognised more than a few people I've seen at clubs... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 7/16.

Posted 3:07 AM by Daryl

Blind Spot - Hitler's Secretary (Im Toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin)
Dirs. André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer

Was sollen wir sich bei einer, der Sünde nicht sehen können, fühlen? Okay, it's been a while since I learnt German, but the question remains: what should we feel about one who could not see sin - especially a sin as grievous as Nazism? The camera in the documentary Blind Spot spends almost all 90+ minutes on Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary, and it's a testament to how compelling her story is that Heller and Schmiderer never need to show anything else to keep you watching. There's so much to hear in her story: the idea of the banality of Hitler's evil; Junge's guilt over naïete; and her blow-by-blow recollection of the final days. That recollection accelerates the film's pace in the final half hour, and since I've never heard much about Hitler's bunker before I found it utterly fascinating. (Incidentally, given that 30 Apr was the actual day of Hitler's suicide, perhaps this should have been shown the day before?) The part where Junge describes Hitler calmly testing cyanide pills on his dog Blondie, a dog he loved, because he was suspicious of Himmler (who had given him the pills) at that point really captures the mix of banal evil and hysterical paranoia in the Führer.

The idea that the Führer's speeches were pure performance has been seen in this film festival in Max and The Tramp and the Dictator, but it never fails to chill. By contrast, Junge's words struck me as true. You never feel like Junge is inventing a sanitised version of the past to assuage her guilt, as so many Nazis did (hey, I've read many of the Nuremberg trial documents, I'm not blind to when people are excusing themselves). It does seem entirely plausible that she didn't fully know what was going on. Is she representative of how the whole of Germany held Hitler in its blind spot or "dead angle" (the literal translation of the German title)? Or of how it's hard to see evil in someone you know well? The answer, I think, is that it's both.

What is it they teach you about blind spots in driving? Always look over your shoulder. And I think what finally separates this film from an exercise in self-justification is that Junge is willing to look back critically, and in so doing recognises that not realising the truth makes her in part complicit to the acts: in her current moral view, her naïvete and inability to see was a crime in itself. Socrates once claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living, a statement that places a moral value on self-examination: in that context, Frau Junge's unflinching look at her past is both tribute to and condemnation of herself.

Notes: That look on Frau Junge's face as she watches her own self was fascinating: she kept mouthing her own words... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 6/15.

Posted 2:31 AM by Daryl

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini

There were moans in the theatre during the torture scenes; there were gasps during the raised-fist scene; there was a stunned silence at the end. All the sounds seemed entirely appropriate: how else to respond to Pasolini's dramatisation of the Nazi-Fascist regime that ruled in Saò in 1944-45? The film reminded me of Lord Acton's dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And if you didn't flinch at the last scenes, I worry for your sanity...

The film's attitude to sex, where it functions basically as an instrument of degradation, stands in sharp contrast to most other Pasolini works. As I've noted below, Pasolini's films often have moments of sexual joy; this film plays out in grimly joyless manner. (In Sight and Sound's 2002 poll of Top Ten movies, Catherine Breillat voted for Salò given the anti-eroticism of the sex in her films, this is hardly surprising.) For that matter, it even stands in contrast to the original Sade text - it seemed that the four leaders in the film were more focused on power dynamics than using power as a means to sexual pleasure. (This isn't an original argument with regards to Salò, but it bears repeating.) All this despite the fact that the text and acts from Sade weren't altered: testament to the power a director has in affecting the meaning of words. I thought the fact that the last torture depicted was the branding of nipples was a sign of the importance of the concept of ownership and domination in this interpretation of the text.

How can one convey the full horror of fascism? (In the 18 months of Mussolini's reign in Salò, 72,000 people were killed.) I don't know the answer, but Pasolini certainly brought us closer to a sense of the atrocities perpetuated at the tail end of the Second World War. Yet throughout the film we are powerless to do anything and we continue watching - has Pasolini made us all guilty of being mere spectators to atrocities? If the need arises, who among us will raise a fist?

Notes: Speaking of Sight and Sound, check out their comprehensive feature on Salò... I'm trying to think of films I've seen with shit-eating, and John Waters' Pink Flamingos is the only one I can think of - two films with very different sensibilities!... I'm stunned that anyone would come to Salò as part of a couple - the most anti-date movie I can think of... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 6/14.

Posted 1:32 AM by Daryl

Russian Ark (Russkij kovcheg)
Dir. Aleksandr Sokurov

Ah, these Russians and their long, occasionally ponderous, often visually stunning films! (See: Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris.) A visual and technical tour de force, with all 96 minutes shot in one take (the third take of the day's shoot, I've read), Russian Ark was oddly spellbinding. It's not like there's much of a plot, but the visuals are sumptuous - especially the Great Royal Ball of 1913, which has great music too - and it certainly held me in my seat. Was there a meaning to it all? I guess if you must find one it's that the Hermitage in itself contains not only great art, but the whole of Russian history, from the time of the Tsars to the present day. But since feeling is first we forget the lack of narrative and focus on the pure aesthetic beauty of some of the shots. On the way back, I had the happy coincidence of reading a Richard Schickel interview where he said while critics tend to think verbally, some of the greatest films are imagistic and don't lend themselves nicely to verbalisation. He was talking about Kubrick movies, but I think it applies to Russian Ark too.

And such deft handling of the anachronistic time jumps! It seemed to me that the narrator could only speak to people in the present time, while the Marquis could only interact with people from his time. I admit to only knowing a rough outline of Russian historym and still, it made me sad to see Nicholas III's family so happy. I think that's where the film's feeling of melancholy comes in, from our ironic knowledge of the history. The mazurka dancers at the ball in that virtuoso finale are ecstatic, and only the audience knows they are dancing the dances of an era soon to be bygone. A bittersweet symphony, this life.

Random Notes: The film spooler jumped twice during the movie, spoiling the continuous take marvel somewhat... Apologies to anyone near me who had to endure my sneezing. It may reassure you somewhat to learn that it's not Sars, just allergic rhinitis caused probably by a reaction to someone's perfume... I was surprised to see Tilman Büttner's name on the D.P. credits, given the frenetic pace and constant cuts of Run Lola Run... I wish I could've seen the elation of the cast and crew when shooting was finished, they must have been ecstatic... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 5/13.


Posted 1:52 AM by Daryl

City of God (Cidade de Deus)
Dirs. Kátia Lund and Fernando Meirelles

Definitely one of the two best things I've seen so far at this film fest (The Man Without a Past being the other), and the first show so far to get a round of applause. City of God, as the Cannes-following masses know, is a cinematic examination on life in the favelas of Rio - that was basically all I knew about it, since I was trying to avoid reading about the movie before watching it, and I was surprised and impressed that the movie comes across as vital rather than nihilistic. It's easier, in a way, to give up on an utterly hopeless world (Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate); this film alternates between tender moments that reel you in and then casual violence, which I think is what rends your heart.

City of God starts at a climactic point, then pulls into flashback, but even the flashbacks have flashbacks as, like a shot being adjusted through a lens, the life stories of people - Goose, Benny, Knockout Ned - go in and out of focus all held together by the loose thread of Rocket. The technique isn't new (see Richard Linklater's Slacker or Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction for variations on the method) but the execution is generally excellent, and each person I think is genuinely riveting. (Inevitably, some stories fall by the wayside - I would've liked to know what happened to Angelica.) I felt real fear for Rocket's safety near the end, and it's been a while since a thriller made me care. But then City of God made me care for the chicken in the chase scene.

As perhaps suggested by how this particular review is jumping scattershot among various topics, I found City of God frenetic, breathtaking, and compelling. It's a real-life Lord of the Flies, with children and men hardly out of their childhoods running the favelas, feeding cycles of violence. The stories of Rocket the photographer and Li'l Ze the gang leader are the obvious opposition here, showing how different the lives of two men from the City of God turned out, and again I'm glad the film avoids setting up any too-obvious parallels between the two, and just tells their stories. Jump cuts, freeze frames, whip pans - the movie is chock-a-bloc with technical devices, which I'm normally wary about, but in this case I think it adds to the kinetic feel of the film, suggesting that there are a million stories to be told about the favelas. It just about overwhelms you, as though the film itself was on speed or coke, and by suggesting the humanity of the numerous inhabitants of Rio's slums, it brings you to a point of full comprehension of the horror of favela life.

Random thoughts: Alice Braga as Angelica - phwoarr... and Benny did indeed come across as cool as shit... who else thought the guy playing Carrot looked like Quentin Tarantino?... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 5/12. Although I suspect Salo will push the ratio closer back to the .500 line.


Posted 3:48 AM by Daryl

The Tramp and the Dictator
Dirs. Kevin Brownlow and Michael Kloft

About the courage necessary to make a political film: Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. The film was one of Chaplin's best pieces (not as good as Modern Times, but still great), but the documentary had the Turner Classic Movies sheen on it. The efforts to show the corollaries (and differences) between Chaplin and Hitler struck me as laboured - being born within the same week shouldn't mean anything beyond being a coincidence. I found myself agreeing with its premise, that sometimes you have to deal with horror through humour, but not necessarily with its claims about the power of film. ("Here was this huge artist standing up against this gargantuan monster" says a critic - I think Stanley Kauffman - at one point.) Which is the point where I randomly quote one of the great funny movie lines, "Don't be stupid be a smarty come and join the Nazi Party!" from The Producers. Back to the movie - there's a lot of questions raised about appeasement versus the necessity of making waves sometimes, and we're reminded of the old saw that Hollywood as a business is really very conservative, in the sense of trying not to upset anyone. The clips from The Great Dictator itself are great, but then why wouldn't they be?

Does anyone know why Ray Bradbury got so much time on screen? I'm still not sure of his relation to the film; everyone else speaking was either involved, or a film critic, or a historian... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 5/11. Although, really, documentaries shouldn't count.

Posted 9:29 PM by Daryl

Strange Fruit
Dir. Joel Katz

The first half of an interesting documentary double-bill, both exploring the background behind an art work, in this case, the song "Strange Fruit". I remember the first time I heard "Strange Fruit". It was the Billie Holiday version - her voice on the tip of heartbreak; the stark, specific images; that beautiful, spare piano. I've since heard many of the other versions cited by this documentary, but it's the Holiday version that's seered into my mind. It wouldn't be my song of the millennium (as Time magazine called it) but it's close. Lynching - how could anyone be so inhumane? I remember seeing the photos from the "Without Sanctuary" exhibition - they just break your heart.

The revelation that Abel Meeropol adopted the Rosenberg children after their parents were executed really surprised me: showed the levels of connection within the Progressive movement, I think... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 5/10. Ah, the bawdiness is down.

Posted 1:28 AM by Daryl

Six Ways to Sunday

No reviews till Sunday - taking a film breather, letting my butt get some exercise, that sort of thing. (By the way, thanks to the people who realised that us poor folk need to take public transport home, and scheduled the late films so that they would end in time for viewers to catch the last train.) Anyway, a thought struck me: wouldn't it be great if the cinema organisations in Singapore donated 10min. or so before each movie to show Singaporean short films? That way at least films here get some audience.

Posted 1:28 PM by Daryl

The Man Without a Past (Mies Vailla Menneisyyttä)
Dir. Aki Karurismäki

The best thing I've seen so far in this film fest, managing to be simultaneously laconic and warm. Quick plot summary: "M" (as he is referred to in the credits; played by Markku Peltola) gets beaten up and loses his identity; he then finds a community among the poor of Helsinki. Amnesia is a favourite device of storytellers (see Memento, for instance), of course, so much of the philosophical grounds trodden here have been explored. But whereas in most works amnesia is a cause for agita, this film seems to be a cinematic "oh well". You can almost feel M shrug and proceed on with life. Today is the beginning of the rest of your life? For M, it really is.

For a film that remains so deliberately detached, The Man Without a Past is actually quite attached to the idea of a certain form of impulse. Not the passionate form of impulse we associate with movie romances (the first kiss between M and Irma, his girlfriend, is a very chaste stolen kiss on the cheek), but the kind of impulse that is almost rote, circumventing rather than overwhelming thoughts of motivations. In the movie, people do things and things happen, and life moves on. Kaurismäki never feels the need to justify his characters' words and actions, and rightly so - the deadpan humour and non-sequiturs all depend on a certain clinical approach. So no one really has a past in the movie: Irma has never fallen in love before; the Salvation Army band has (improbably, one feels) never heard "rhythm music" before. When the past intrudes (when the bank robber talks about his troubles with the bank; when the existence of a wife is revealed), its consequences are quickly dispatched with. It's almost as though each moment is a discrete moment of experience, not necessarily connected to anything that came previously.

Having said that, I can't get the nagging question out of my head - why does M not go straight to a hospital or the authorities with the problem of his missing identity? Sure, once the authorities do appear they're not particularly pleasant but that in large part is because he's ambling around during the most dispassionate bank robbery ever depicted on film. I suppose it's part of the world-view of the film: the loss of the past is just another one of those events that occur, and we continue our lives from there. And if time isn't a big worry to you - at one point, M sits in jail for two days, a fact which never perturbs him and which we don't even notice until it's mentioned - then the past probably doesn't matter.

One of the best parts of Leningrad Cowboys Go America, apart from the title, was that in that movie Kaurismäki never condescended to his characters there. Here it's no different - no one is mocked, and I felt a surprising warmth toward these very coolly played characters. Take the Salvation Army band, for instance. They still retain some of their geekiness even after discovering the saving power of "rhythm music", but you never feel anything but warmth for their attempts at rocking out. And Tahti as Hannibal the dog gives easily one of the best canine performances I've ever seen on film. Roll over Beethoven.

Random notes: Time really did stop for me at this film - for once I crossed the hour mark without looking at my watch (watch-watching isn't the greatest habit, but it does give me an idea of how writers and directors are pacing their films)... Certainly this was a very different view of Finland compared to the yuppie Lovers and Leavers - even the lighting felt different. Lovers and Leavers seemed to be shot in the cool summer light, while The Man Without a Past seems to catch that brief winter light - the former seems rosy, the latter clinical. Of course, my impressions of when the films were made may not actually be the truth... The bureaucratic showdown at the police station, with subsection topping subsection; and the attempts of Anttila (Sakari Kuosmanen) to sic Hannibal on M are two of the funniest filmic moments I've seen all year... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 5/9.

[Addendum: it struck me today (Apr 25) that the name that was at the tip of my tongue was that of David Hume, who asked how we can know things when really everything is experienced only for one particular moment, and the connection between the past and future is just flow in a "stream of impressions". Stands very much in line with the concept of each moment in time being a discrete moment, although I'm not articulating this idea particularly well...

Posted 10:04 PM by Daryl

Japón
Dir. Carlos Reygadas

First things first: why is it that Mexican films seem to have the unique ability, alone among non-English-language films, to have their titles referred to in the original (Spanish) language? I cite Japón, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and Amores Perros as examples. Even films from Spain don't get that treatment (cf Almodovar's Talk to Her). Not that knowing what Japón means would make any difference to your understanding of the film anyway - I presume naming a film after Japan when it has absolutely nothing to do with Japan is a reference to Terry Gilliam's Brazil...

So on to the actual film. I read nothing but raves of Japón from when it played at Cannes, but I do think you have to be in a certain mood to see it. Today I was extremely antsy (watch-watch? 20 minutes), and I'm already predisposed toward frenetic movies, and so what I appreciate intellectually is probably actually well-paced langour struck me as ponderous. I'll try to be fair. Reygadas does great things with light here - as I've said in other places, tropical light has a squint-inducing, almost obliterating, quality to it, and in Japon the light is so bright it practically bleaches the dust and sand white, creating some sort of quasi-mythical landscape. Which contrasts quite starkly, I thought, with Y Tu Mama Tambien, my favourite film of Film Fest 2002, which is very much grounded in the particulars of rural Mexico. Here, if it weren't for the giant Corona logo, the barren land could be anywhere in tropical Central or South America I thought. (Actually, I don't really know - maybe Corona is everywhere in Latin America and so even that isn't Mexico-specific?) It's like we're in some moonscape, some sort of frozen time moment. I found it fascinating that Alejandro Ferretis (the lead - I'm naming the actor, since I don't think he was named anywhere in the film) was edging toward death, which is a condition with a time component implied (you have to be alive at one point to be dead, i.e. there are two separate times needed to generate death), in what seemed like a time-stopped world.

The part near the end, where Ferretis is sleeping on the bed in a Jesus Christ pose (Soundgarden reference!) while Ascen (Magdalena Flores) is in church looking at a Catholic crucifix is spectacular: in her smile we suddenly see the alignment of sex and redemption. The way Japón explores the closeness of sex and death - two different forms of annihilation - made me think, actually, of mediaeval literature (Pasolini's films reignited my memory of mediaeval texts, I suppose) and how mediaeval writers (Chaucer et al) often used death as a metaphor for sex. The affinity of sex and death, seeming opposites: wasn't that theme in Y Tu Mama Tambien too? Maybe, out in nowhere, without the detritus of cities and civilisation, we are reduced to the essential human questions - and what are more essential to the human condition than sex and death?

Random thoughts: I distinctly remember A.O. Scott calling this Y Tu Grandmama Tambien
in the New York Times, which I thought was a funny line... the scene where the worker sings tunelessly reminded me of the worst singer I've ever encountered in my life, a panhandler in Harvard Square who would try to sing along to whatever was on the radio. So you'd get "I Want It That Way" as spoken-word poetry... I don't fully know the technicalities of projection technologies: why does Prince 1 have a curved screen?... I had the misfortune of being behind a tall person in a subtitled movie... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 5/8. But add one to the horse-sex scene count!

Posted 4:04 AM by Daryl

Max
Dir. Menno Meyjes

Aka the Hitler-as-starving-artist movie. I was afraid that Max would postulate a simplistic spurned-artist-turns-evil point of view, but it turned out to be more complex than that. Hitler (Noah Taylor) is shown as always possessing the evil ideas that he later channeled into murder - his idea of blood purity is chilling with or without the dramatic irony of knowing what happened next. This film was tied up in controversy because of the fact that it dares to show human aspects of Hitler, but I think that's what makes Hitler's evil even scarier.

"Politics is the new art", Hitler says at one point, and the question of the link between art and politics is particularly interesting here because the whole combination of Hitler and art makes me think of the aesthetic-but-evil films of Leni Riefenstahl, and indeed, of Riefenstahl's categoric refusal to acknowledge any wrong doing. Max, with the artist's eye, sees the kitsch in Hitler's attempts at art (we are shown a terribly kitschy drawing, of a dog), and the art in his plans for Germany - the autobahns, swastika, eagle motif all are Futurism by way of retreat into Teutonic symbols. It struck me that the film suggests quite a non-Enlightenment view of the world, in suggesting that some ideas are best left unvoiced: Max (John Cusack) the aesthete asks Hitler to search for an "authentic voice", but that search turns out to uncover - or unleash - the evil within the Austrian corporal. (This whole non-Enlightenment thing is perhaps fitting, since the Second World War probably marked the death of a belief in the inherent goodness of progress.) The chilling part about Max I feel is that it shows Hitler as being willing to turn on and off his rhetoric - that to him his speeches are purely aesthetic, words in the ether, even though, as the film shows, his incitements to hate have a very real physical result. Hannah Arendt's quote on the "banality of evil" comes to mind here.... John Cusack, as always, is superb. Top on my list of Hollywood actors I would most want to be. Hmm. Being John Cusack. I always thought it would be interesting if the sequel to Being John Malkovich was Being John Cusack, and then Part III would be Being Whoever-Was-the-Lead-in-Part-II. And so on and so forth.... It seems wrong to put the usual closing here, but I've been doing it so far, so here goes: Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 5/7.

Posted 1:41 AM by Daryl

Lovers and Leavers (Kuutamolla)
Dir. Aku Louhimies

Probably the most Hollywood-like of all the films I've seen so far. In part this is because the film itself is about Iiris (Minna Haapkylä), a film buff whose references are all to English-language films (Taxi Driver, Gilda, Star Wars, Bridget Jones' Diary, etc.); in part because, really, other than the Finnish language, this is standard, albeit well-executed, romantic comedy fare. (Let's see - perfectly handsome suave boyfriend with whom it just doesn't click? See Sweet Home Alabama, among others - and yes, I know Lovers and Leavers probably precedes the Reese Witherspoon vehicle; the point is that this doesn't add much to the formula. Crazy embarrassing mother? See Bridget Jones' Diary, among others.) This movie really depends on the audience's own knowledge of films: we understand the characters' actions only because of the film's references to so many film conventions. Let's put it this way: on the way back home I bumped into my brother and he asked me about the film, and the first adjective that came to mind was "pleasant".

The movie teems with Scandinavian cool - Iiris' amazing apartment, all clean minimalism, just about trumps the good-looking cast as the prime object of my lust - and the cool is both visually interesting and potentially emotionally distancing. I was thinking about the movie's greenhouse analogy, about the dangers of being trapped in perfection - do we understand it only because we ourselves know it's cinematic shorthand, because we've seen so many films that are about being trapped in perfect situations? Do we quote movies and music as a refuge for actually feeling emotion? (Ooh, very High Fidelity. Oh, dang, I did the movie-referencing thing!) And is the movie itself a bit too clean, too trapped in its own gloss?... There are moments without gloss, of course - Louhimies uses lots of nervous flickers of jump cuts which create an odd staccato effect. I couldn't decide if this was a technical flaw in the print, or a way of signalling the unease within the relationship. Which I suppose means, if the quick jump cuts were intentional, that they weren't a very effective device.

Still, I do love a decent rom-com (it's a genre for which I have a high tolerance), and Haapkylä has charm to burn, so overall the movie was enjoyable and warm even if it didn't reach greatness. Nice scene where Iiris and Marko (Peter Franzén) fight with light sabers. Plus points awarded because the film, like all good romantic comedies (Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, His Girl Friday - pick your era), actually notices that the hard part of a relationship is the staying together, not the initial meeting. (Rant: I blame Nora Ephron. I blame Sleepless in Seattle. What is with those 90s romantic comedies where the leads never interact until near the end of the movie? That's supposed to be the starting point of a relationship, not the ending).... Extra plus points awarded for soundtrack's selection, especially use of Patsy Cline, Portishead, and Curtis Mayfield.... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 5/6 - the pissing's back!

Posted 1:05 AM by Daryl

Derrida
Dir. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman

I bought a ticket to Derrida because the premise sounded great: is there any way to do a documentary on a major deconstructionist without him inevitably deconstructing the process of filmmaking as it's going on? And, just as I expected, there were a lot of moments where Derrida commented on the whole oddness of the filming process. Which, of course, led to a lot of meta-filming, with a camera filming the filmmaker filming Derrida. (Actually, at one point we see a shot of the camera following Derrida, then we pull back to get a shot of that second cameraman, so there's a camera filming a camera filming the filmmaker filming Derrida.) Derrida says sometime in the documentary that the process of winnowing down hours of footage into an hour-long (actually, 90min.) documentary means the documentarians are in a sense being autobiographical - they reveal themselves in the footage they choose to include. Which made me think of the idea that each text - this documentary, in this case - contains its own means of deconstruction, which led to me thinking about things in which each fragment contains a picture of the whole. What is the word for the latter phenomenon? Another question that springs to mind: I think it's useful to remember that all documentaries are artificial settings, of course (I suppose that's the quest of Nick Bloomfield et al when they insert themselves into their documentaries), but is there a modern audience that doesn't recognise the artifice of the situations, and the impossibility of removing the documentarian's own biases, even in supposedly objective texts? Don't we recognise this as we read, say, the columns of William Safire in the New York Times? (This should not in no way be taken as approbation of Safire, who as an editorial columnist often displays the lovely ability to blithely ignore facts.) It's not like the deconstruction is complete - nowhere in the film is it mentioned that Kofman was Derrida's student. Anyway, back to the documentary: my watch-watch test (i.e. how long it takes before I check my watch to see how much time has passed, which I tend to do when I'm bored) clocked in at about 45 minutes, which is pretty damn good for a documentary.

Great laugh-out-loud moment when a radio interviewer tried to ask Derrida a question about Seinfeld and was forced to explain the premise of Seinfeld. Also a great moment when Derrida pulls down books from his shelf, and he holds two Anne Rice books in his hand.... Man, I got so used to normal film 16:9 aspect ratios it was jarring to see something in 4:3 (at least, that's what this felt like).... Ryuichi Sakamoto's music is really jarring - it made the transitions sound really portentous, which didn't fit the mood at all, given that Derrida came across as actually rather endearing and endearingly normal at that. And Kofman's reading of Derrida's texts also suffers I think from a too-serious tone. Actually, I didn't feel I got any deeper insight into Derrida's thought from this documentary, but I think that's the filmmakers' point, to make him seem accessible. He really isn't a poseur or pretentious (unlike many of the grad students that worship him? heh). Still, it would've been nice if Derrida had been made to answer criticisms of deconstruction.... It was cute that Derrida's wife calls him Jackie... It's showing at the Brattle on Jun 3, you Harvard folks... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 4/5 - Woo! Finally! A film without a pissing scene! Which is good, since I'm not sure I want to see Derrida deconstruction going to the loo.

Posted 4:53 AM by Daryl

The Canterbury Tales (I Racconti di Canterbury)
Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini

All in all, a bit disappointing coming off The Decameron, which I really enjoyed. Both the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron I think occupy a similar spot in their respective country's literary history, and indeed share a similar format, with people in differing occupations tell tales. And logically Pasolini works in a similar way here as in The Decameron (which he had made a year earlier), letting each story just pick up when the previous one ends. But something seems lost in the pacing, and in the end it seemed some tales came across better than others. Perhaps as an Italian, Pasolini was more familiar with Boccaccio than Chaucer? The framing device here is Chaucer sitting around his desk, looking busy, which seemed quite weak. Chaucer is played, of course, by Pasolini, and I suppose I prefer the gung-ho painter of The Decameron to non-participant of The Canterbury Tales. And the bad dubbing of the Italian actors detracted further from the enjoyment of the film.

Still, the source material is good stuff, so the film remains entertaining. Most of the major tales get a look in:
Wife of Bath's Prologue (eh... the lusty Wife is always entertaining, of course, but this could've been funnier. And Tom Baker makes for an awful Jenkins - wasn't he supposed to be some sort of stunning stud? Try saying that quickly five times! Or maybe I just can't get the idea of Dr Who as Jenkins out of my head!)
Merchant's (boo, but I dislike the tale anyway; I wonder why I keep thinking this is the Knight's Tale - that's another one I dislike, incidentally)
Reeve's (ha!)
Miller's (ha!)
Cook's (eh... the physical comedy was funny I suppose - was that a Chaplin homage?)
Friar's (eh...)
Summoner's (eh... I wished Pasolini had somehow dramatised the whole dividing-the-fart debate that the Lord and his squire suggest)
Pardoner's (eh...)

There's a lot of the bawdiness and sex from the original Tales, but I didn't feel that the dramatisation enhanced any of the texts, unlike in The Decameron - no insightful changes to the original texts. Oh, and the back-and-forth of the travellers telling tales that undermined each other's professions is lost in this version (the Summoner vs Friar thing I only find funny when they are sniping at each other's occupation, the stories are quite ordinary). I do love the idea that they built a set just for the scene of Satan farting out friars. Whenever Pasolini showed romping in the open fields (the Wife of Bath and Jenkins, the Cambridge students from the Summoner's Tale, the fields of Hell) the film seemed to have more life... Randomly, I thought the geese that were frequently shown wandering around were really cute... This is a review that has the completely opposite reaction to the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales - it thinks the Canterbury Tales is more judgemental and overt about hypocrisy, and it thinks the Canterbury Tales is funnier. I think it's wrong, of course... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 4/4

Posted 4:06 AM by Daryl

The Decameron (Il Decameron)
Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini

Ah, I think the whole idea of a Pasolini retrospective is great, even if the Powers That Be insisted on cuts that meant one of the films (The Arabian Nights) had to be cancelled. On to Pasolini's version of the Boccaccio classic. I didn't really like the Ciappelletto story that is one of the two framing stories: yes, I understand, in Pasolini's version Ciappelletto (Franco Citti) makes the sacrifice that allows the northern usurers and the Church to glorify him and thus prolong their control over the masses. But the Marxism seems a bit overt, and I don't like being beaten in my head with overt politics (this, incidentally, is my objection to most Michael Moore films - I think he ends up only preaching to the converted). Certainly I thought the class criticism was subtler - and thus better - in the two consecutive stories of Caterina, whose lover, the rich Ricciardo, is merely forced to marry her when they're caught having sex, and Elisabetta, whose lover is killed by her brothers because the lover is a poor labourer. And of course any sprawling text like the Decameron allows for a wide treatment of various subjects, which Pasolini does very well, full of warmth for the characters - the story of the nuns taking turns screwing the gardener could be read as Pasolini's take on church hypocrisy, but then the subject of oversexed nuns has been popular since mediaeval times, and it could also just be seen as a really funny story. Actually, the bawdy sex bits in the film were all great, with a sense of play that I thought felt true to the spirit of Boccaccio's text and to the spirit of mediaeval literature.

I thought it was interesting that lots of the characters had that harsh Sicilian accent (okay, I'm guessing Sicilian because I spent a day or two walking around London with these two Sicilian women who spoke almost no English, and so that's my impression of what the accent sounds like) - southern Italy gets featured so rarely in films. I guess I'm interested in periphery-core relations within nation-states, or just seeing versions of views of a country that I haven't seen much before... Incidentally, Pasolini as the painter looked really buff on film... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 3/3

Posted 12:13 AM by Daryl

A Tale of a Naughty Girl (Manda Meyer Upakhyan)
Dir. Buddhadeb Dasgupta

About Lati, a prostitute's daughter who wants to be a student but whose mother wants to marry her off. I thought it was interesting to watch an arthouse Indian film that was set in a small village rather than a bustling city. I must say the film festival booklet's description made me expect a much more depressing film than it turned out to be - was expecting one of those 'life is awful for women' pictures. Dasgupta does a good job of balancing the terrible nature of life for the women in the brothel - there's a nice scene near the end where silently the camera just goes room to room and we see the sleeping awful customers and then the saddened prostitutes - with the idea that life isn't completely hopeless... Trouble occurred when something happened with the film reel near the end of the show, which meant the organisers had to summon someone to fix the problem. I was sitting near the door to the projection booth, and I was kind of disappointed that it had to be unlocked i.e. there wasn't a projectionist inside. I know, I know, there aren't necessarily always projectionists inside anymore, but I like to make believe, Cinema Paradiso style, that we all live in a world of old-school cinemas. Of course, Singapore has no single-screen cinemas anymore so even a dual-screen cinema like Jade is old-school here... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 2/2

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Posted 3:02 AM by Daryl

All the Love You Cannes
Dir. Lloyd Kaufman

A documentary about Troma Entertainment's means and attempts to sell their films in Cannes. I love the schlocky nature of their films (The Toxic Avenger, Cannibal! The Musical, Tromeo and Juliet etc.), which is why I went to watch in the first place. Quite revealing about how hard it is for independents to sell at Cannes, and the enthusiasm of Lloyd Kaufman - the founder of Troma - and the Troma Team is infectious. Self-promotion at its best. I loved the moment where Quentin Tarantino says hi to Lloyd - shows Tarantino's video-geek origins. Doug (who plays Sgt. Kabukiman in the films) really does come across as super-obnoxious - I kind of understand Scott McKinlay's rage at him. And I know it's supposed to be part of the cheap feel about the film but I wish they didn't keep making jokes about Lloyd turning off the camera at important moments, and actually let the camera run... Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 1/1.

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Posted 3:01 AM by Daryl