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Here we are again - at the New York Film Festival (my second such outing) - and this year I have a slightly fuller schedule than the measly five films I saw at last year's fest - a whole six (still pathetic huh?). Although still unable to attend the entire festival, I did make sure to see as many as humanly possible, considering my financial state (everything comes out of my pocket and not some faceless editor...not yet, at least).
LAST YEAR'S FESTIVAL REPORT
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Manderlay
(Lars Von Trier, Denmark)
[59 out of 100]
Manderlay, part two of Lars von Trier's "America" trilogy, is stacked sky high with all the same holier-than-thou pretensions and art-for-art's-sake bravado that overflowed throughout the trilogy's opening salvo, Dogville, and made that film the ofttimes reviled, yet sublimely poetic masterpiece that it is, but here, von Trier's film falls as flat and as hollow as its minimalistic set pieces. Maybe it's the replacement of the angelically viperous Nicole Kidman with the barely adequate, in-way-over-her-head daughter of Ritchie Cunningham, Bryce Dallas Howard (the erupting unction of Grace does not play well inside the bland facade of Howard). Maybe it's how truncated, deficient and dull this film feels when compared to the epic poetry of its predecessor (40 minutes shorter yet it seems an hour longer). Maybe it's due to the fact that pretty much everything that can be said, has been said on the subject of racism and how unfair and stupid it is (only an unthinking dunderhead redneck would not know that racism is wrong). Maybe it is the problem of turning the neo-Brechtian ambiance of Dogville, a fable of biblical proportions, into something that actually works in this much less allegorical story of a southern plantation who still holds slaves in 1930 (the semi-bare stage and chalked outlines, which dazzled in Dogville, merely seem like an encumberance here). Maybe it is because the ignorance of racism that von Trier is trying to showcase comes across as semi-ridiculous once you take in the actions of some of its characters (Grace, of course, falls for the hunkiest of the big black bucks she has before her). Maybe it is all these things combined, or perhaps it is that von Trier said all he had to say with Dogville and has nowhere else to go. Perhaps, also, I am being too hard on the melancholy Dane, but he is, in my opinion, the most provocative and challenging Director out there right now, so my disappointment may mearly be strengthened due to that fact, since my aspirations were set so ungodly - and stupidly mind you - high. A fallen hero, so to speak. Sure, it was a valiant effort and yes racism is a topic of great import and much needed debate (a sad fact indeed), and yes, he probably did it better than most could have, but to do it in such a cliche'd and pedestrian manner, even with the artsy staging and creative camerawork that is involved - and a few good performances, Ms. Howard notwithstanding - is far below the level usually attained by the Auteur of intoxication that gave us some of the most brilliantly captivating works of the past two decades (Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, The Kingdom, Zentropa, the aforementioned Dogville and his Dreyer-scripted Medea).
* no US release date at press time, but will most likely be in early 2006
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Neco jako stestí (Something Like Happiness)
(Bohdan Sláma, Czech Republic)
[45 out of 100]
With the gloomy, yet much less spiritual (and quality-wise, much less artistic), attitude of a Tarkovsky or a Dreyer, Czech filmmaker, Bohdan Sláma, gives us the portrait of several intertwining lives in a sad - almost pathetic - little Bohemian town in the outskirts of the old Soviet Empire. Grey, drab and squat, like something from Huxley's Brave New World or the epic cinema of Béla Tarr, only here, the substance that fills those comparisons is let go, for a more superficial feeling of societal dread. The buildings and cars and people are squat and grey - even those that pose as sophisticates - but the inner workings of their troubled - dare I say - souls, are merely just surface-thin. Enjoyable for the most part - both humourous and tragic - but, unlike those films of Tarkovsky, Dreyer and Tarr, much less sublime and much more still-born.
* no US release date at press time
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Keuk jang jeon (Tale of Cinema)
(Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
[61 out of 100]
I can't explain why, but I have never been able to joyfully leap upon the Hong Sang-soo bandwagon that so many critics have attached themselves to. It's not because Hong has no talent. He certainly does, but for some unknown reason, his films just do not enrapture me the way they have done to others. Artistiacally and technically sound, as are his previous films such as Turning Gate and last year's Woman is the Future of Man, but still, there is no rise from me. Better than most filmmakers - although the comparisons to the much greater Hou Hsiao-hsien are a bit stretchful - Hong's films, this one dutifully included, just don't amount to anything close to what all the hoopla is about. Sound and sleek, Hong does show signs of one day, becoming the great Auteur everyone is yelping about, but for now, I can only cast him in the "someday" file. I must admit though, A Tale of Cinema is one of the very few films that have managed to actually surprise me - but due to spoilage, we won't reveal that surprise here.
* no US release date at press time
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Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
(Michael Winterbottom, UK)
[79 out of 100]
Part way through Michael Winterbottom's adaptation of Laurence Sternes' The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - a novel many have called unadaptable - the hilariously morose Steve Coogan says this of the book: "Postmodern before there was ever any modern to be post about.". What Winterbottom has actually created here, maybe out of the spare parts of other films (evident from the homagical music choices in the film, especially the melodic carnivalesque score from Fellini's 8½), is a film inside a film, perhaps inside yet another film. Coogan plays both Tristam Shandy and his father Walter, as well as portraying Steve Coogan. More than a mere Mockumentary, Winterbottom's very postmodern film elicits both thoughts and images of Fellini's dreamlike aforementioned film. And to watch Coogan and Rob Brydon ad-lib and intellectually spar their way through their scenes together is a delight in its own right.
* opens on January 6, 2006 in New York
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The Squid and the Whale
(Noah Baumbach, USA)
[73 out of 100]
Baumbach's semi-autobiographical look at his childhood in the mid eighties was my one impulse buy at this year's festival. A last minute addition to my screening schedule, there wasn't much of an expectation going in. I figured it may succeed in playing as a quiet little piece of pseudo-arthouse fare, but probably would not go any further than that. Boy was I wrong. The Squid and the Whale is a smartly written, acerbically acted, playfully photographed realization of Cinema, pulled off in a freshly painted and jocose manner that reminds one of J.D. Salinger.
Jeff Daniels, who I have never really looked at very deeply before, gives a performance that may very well qualify as his own chef-d'oeuvre. Biting and wry with a beardfull of pretentiousness, Daniels' Bernard comes off as both a righteously cuckolded husband and a sadly crestfallen father. Laura Linney as his wife Joan, although in a role rather below her talents, still brings forth everything she can and Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline (son of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates) as the divorce-broken children are all well worth the price of admission.
* opens on October 5, 2005 in New York
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Solntse (The Sun)
(Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia)
[77 out of 100]
Aleksandr Sokurov, partial heir apperent to Russian Poet-Auteur Andrei Tarkovsky, and the cinematic begetter of such masterpieces as Mother and Son, Moloch and Russian Ark, brings us yet another masterful tale of Gods gone wrong. The third in a series of despot-themed films (Hitler and Lenin were the first two and, oddly enough, Faust will be the fourth), The Sun is the story of Emperor Hirohito, just after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some may call Sokurov's style tedious - and some did as they were leaving Alice Tully Hall - but what i see in Sokurov is not the ordinary but the extraordinariness behind the ordinary. Just like Tarkovsky and the Hungarian Bela Tarr, Sokurov finds in stasis and slow-tracking, the beauty of the mundane mixed with the aether of God.
* no US release date at press time
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Gabrielle
(Patrice Chéreau, France)
[90 out of 100]
Freely adapted from Joseph Conrad's short story, The Return, Chéreau has delivered a veritable sounding board of emotional heft, and has shown us one of the most honest, yet artistically nuanced portrayals of the breakdown of a marriage. Pascal Greggory plays a husband who recieves a dear John letter from his wife, played by the penetrating and beautiful Isabelle Huppert. The problem though, doesn't lie in the fact that she has left, but in the fact that she has returned, begging to be taken back. What follows is a sometimes Godardian, sometimes Chekovian battle of wits, emotions, lust and anger. As a sidenote, Conrad's story was originally solely from the husband's point of view - the wife not only never spoke (except through her letter), but didn't even have a name. With the casting addition of an actress as powerful and efficacious as Ms. Huppert, Chéreau had no other choice than to change what was essentially a monologue of despair into a dialogue of hurtful barbs and painful digressions. Full of a quasi-postmodern stage presence, Gabrielle is a remarkable dissertation on relationships and the lies we hide inside of them.
* no US release date at press time
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Breakfast on Pluto
(Neil Jordan, Ireland)
[44 out of 100]
Cillian Murphy, like other under-appreciated actors such as Ryan Gosling and Gary Oldman, can physically transform himself into just about any form of human being out there. This time, the Irish star of the frenetic 28 Days Later and the recently released thriller, Red Eye, metomorphoses into another gender all together. Not man, not woman, but something inbetween. It is this unsure sexuality - by the end, for all intents and purposes, Cillian's Patrick 'Kitty' Braden has become a woman - and the Irish political strife, that will lead to the inevitable comparisons to Jordan's earlier The Crying Game. That film was a much darker, more sinister film than this film is. Pluto, although full of many dark spots, is a much lighter film - but not necessarily any less artful. I've never been a big fan of Jordan's - I can take or leave him - but there is something about this film that catches your eye and ear and pulls you along. Not as powerful as the aforementioned Crying Game or the other Jordan collaboration with novelist Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy (probably Jordan's one truly great film), but still a fun ride, thanks to Cillian Murphy's grandiose performance.
* opens on November 18, 2005 in New York
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Good Night, and Good Luck
(George Clooney, USA)
[68 out of 100]
Although I have never bee overly impressed with the cinematic skills of George Clooney, I have the utmost respect for him as an artist. Yes, I said artist. Clooney has managed, over the past decade or so, to successfully intertwine his big budget Hollywood career, such as the Danny Ocean films, with his less lucrative but much more heartfelt smaller projects, such as his fairly independant collaborations with partner Steven Soderbergh, mixing Paparazzi-frenzied mega-productions, like Ocean's Eleven and Batman & Robin with smaller, more personal projects like Solaris, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Thin Red Line and the upcoming Soderbergh directed, A Scanner Darkly. It is this successful cinematic amalgamation that brings Clooney to his latest film, Good Night, and Good Luck - his second film as helmsman. Good Night, shot in the most elegant black and white, starts out looking like some unknown from-the-vaults restored masterpiece of about 1950 or so. In fact, until we spy the familiar face of Patricia Clarkson in the opening sea of extras, Good Night could very well have been that lost masterpiece.
With the story of news icon Edward R. Murrow, played both brilliantly and subtilely by the often sadly overlooked character actor David Strathairn, and his fight against Commie-Hunting Senator, Joseph McCarthy, Clooney (who also co-stars as news producer Fred Friendly) has created both a beautifully filmed visual-homage to old Hollywood and a wonderfully Liberal take on the powers-that-be. And as for Strathairn, who should be one of the major players come Oscar time this year, this is his movie - from beginning to end. The aforementioned Clarkson and Clooney, as well as Robert Downey Jr., Frank Langella, Tate Donovan, Jeff Daniels and a powerfully laconic Ray Wise all give their best here - some unfortunately in roles that never give the chance to showcase their talents (Clarkson and Downey deserve much better) - but it is David Strathairn, easily one of the best actors working today that nobody has ever heard of, that owns this picture. From his finespun smile and illusive eye movements to his stalwart presence in front of the camera (including his contemporaneous on-air smoking, which looks so out-of-place in our modern sensibilities), Strathairn offers us a classic portrayal of a classic icon.
Although, storywise, rather by-the-book, Good Night can still be a lovely little picture at times with its crisply shot photography, historical splendor, Jazz interludes, progressive attitudes and current political allegories. Clooney may not yet be a great Auteur, but one can surely see the possibilities of what he may one day become.
* opens on October 7, 2005 in New York
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