the directorspective: joseph strick
2012
You'd think with all those insights into human nature tumbling, cajoling or glacially infiltrating us from all those zillions of films and works of art and culture that surely the world is exponentially becoming a better place. If not now, when? What is a God telling me? What am I telling myself? "I've tried to be a serious man. I've tried to do right," laments physics lecturer Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) in the latest Coen brothers flic A Serious Man. Ethan Coen recounted in an interview how "Bob Hope said to Charlton Heston after he met him on the lot, and [Heston] was bitching about how he'd spend three hours in makeup to be Moses, “Yeah, it’s tough being a Jew.” Director Wim Wenders defended Israeli films this week in the wake of Ken Loach's comments earlier this summer that, in light of Gaza, a rise in anti-Semitism is "understandable".
Now Loach is one of the very few English Left left that one could even consider trusting. And his comments beg the question of his film The Wind that Shakes the Barley and the rise of socio-political struggle up the ladder as to whether there ever really is another upward rung worth the sacrifice of those allies whose beliefs now are divergent.
The Jerusalem Post: Asked about a line in his latest film, Palermo Shooting, in which a character says you should take the world seriously, but shouldn't take yourself too seriously, Wenders said, "That's good advice. Directors often have very inflated egos - it's a dangerous job, but somebody has to do it."
Jackie Mason's The Ultimate Jew still available on Arrow DVD
Stephen Poliakoff, in his first full-length feature film in 10 years Glorious 39, considers how tough it is simply (or complexly) to be human. A teenage descendant wends his way through the muse alleyways of contemporary London and into the capacious flat of a couple of aged gentlemen in a quest for family history. He is warned that ‘it’s not always a good place to go, Michael, the past.’ But Poliakoff is always going there. Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian) on Shooting the Past: "He is fascinated by history and memory and where the two meet, never more intensely than in a family. A single image triggers a hunt for another and then another, until a sequence of pictures combine to exhume a piece of vanished history - or a long-buried family secret." Glorious 39 explores a rather frightening strategic cultural essentialism, ever present today, as the machinations of certain members of the English elite conspire with Chamberlain's government in appeasing Hitler, prevent Churchill's iron will approach, and maintain a very British Garden of Eden.
The Stephen Poliakoff Box Set (Collections 1 and 2) available on BBC Worldwide DVD.
Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
As the 1967 Minneapolis suburbanite Larry Gopnik (A Serious Man) grapples with social constructivism desperately clinging to an objective scientific reality while the subjective winds threaten to scatter him thither, elsewhere and meanwhile in another tiny Minnesota town of the future called Devil's Kettle, Jennifer's Body is being satanically sacrificed by the upwardly mobile downbeats of the band Low Shoulder. Alas, she wasn't the virgin they hoped for. Thence, Jennifer (Megan Fox) seduces and reduces boys to "lasagna with teeth". This is a Diablo Cody (Juno) script tossing upon high seas with Karyn Kusama (Girlfight) reeling at the helm. Barnacles are lasered from their reality masthead "Hell is a teenage girl," existentially snorts Jennifer's best buddy Needy -short for Anita- (Amanda Seyfried who seduces in the forthcoming Chloe from Atom Egoyan). Cody: "This movie is a commentary on girl-on-girl hatred, sexuality, the death of innocence, and also politics in the way the town responds to tragedies. Any person who dares respond in an unconventional way is branded a traitor. It's also just about fun- I wanted to write a really entertaining popcorn movie."
Far less cynical of humanity is The Twilight Saga: New Moon - the second cine installment of Stephenie Meyer's best-selling books that reduce and induce teenage girls to scream raucously even as the screen titles unfurl. For the uninitiated this film may feel a rather elongated 130 min, more naively soul searching than the bursting energies of the initial film. Teenagers feel that their emotional outpourings are worthy to be considered adulthood and indeed the predicament of Meyer's characters is just that. Director Chris Weitz: "As Bella [the mortal] says, she's not afraid of Edward because he's a vampire, she's afraid because she's so in love with him." By deliberately and literally endangering herself (her passion for motorbikes) in that moment of fear she's able to conjure the image of her departed Edward.
And in a way there's a parallel to Poliakoff's Glorious 39. Actor Robert Pattinson refers to his character of Edward as a "reluctant vampire". Whereas the Brit establishment of 1939 wanted the status quo maintained at any cost to the point of cold blooded murdering a loved one, the ruling class of vampires the Volturi (led by Michael Sheen) never forget that once they were human (will that power ever go to their necks) and that "when they see a human [Bella] who says she loves Edward, they want to believe that can happen, and that's essentially what saves him." On the periphery of the last film, the hunky werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) is leader and defender of the Quileute tribe against the vampires. There are now debates on the internet between Team Jacob versus and Team Edward - those who fall in love instantly and those who begin with requited friendship. Bella is the lynchpin in the eternal triangle. Stephen Poliakoff's Glorious 39 angers provoking screams at the screen. But whatever side of the political fence Poliakoff's on, if indeed there is any fence at all, the film gnaws away with unpredictability and impermanence: "what would you have done in that situation?" is how you feel -and how the director has guided one to feel. That love is never simply saying that you're sorry and that true love and reconciliation will only blossom in the glimpses and glances of death. And preferably we live to stare them in the face.
Harry Brown (Michael Caine) lives another day whether we the audience like it or not. Filmed in London, "one of the biggest problems we have," says Caine "and I am not just saying it because I am making this film, is the rise of violence and drug-related crime in this country. It's a huge problem. Let's all pretend that the biggest problems we have now are banks. That is just bullshit." People who've experienced the social problems faced by Caine's 76 year-old council estate vigilante will empathize yet also be deeply perturbed by Harry's actions. Martin Ruhe's (the stunning B/W Control) widescreen cinematography abstracts these urban environments in contrast to the 'reality' script as part of the film's dialectic on violence. The beauty of this urban landscape is an optical illusion. Harry's gun is emblematic of an empiric estate's new flag, lauded for clothing the bodies politic and as naked as the gung ho violence of the police crack down. The trouble with a film like this is that many will see only their reflection in that high street window. Absolution where it could never exist. Art house cinema only a suburb or two away. Those who consider, caught in the crossfire.
For those who cross that river, some may find salvation and a healthier relationship in the automobile. "Cars are living entities you can develop a relationship with, that's what non-car people just don't get," says an interviewee in Love The Beast (Tribeca Fest 09 and Metrodome in the UK). "The unnerving certainly of machines...mistakes make it human," says BBC Top Gear car TV guru Jeremy Clarkson who ministers about mechanics like a medical doctor to Eric Bana after his crash. "A spiritual enjoyment...a betrayal if you [just] put the parts in a box," says US life guru Dr Phil. For a non-car human this self-directed doco on movie star Bana's nutritional 30-year hobby and the 5-day Targa Tasmania Rally proves oddly fascinating - 'the beast' being his 1974 Ford XB Falcon Couple. The yin of that yang may be found in J.G Ballard's novel Crash.
Ray K. Metzker: AutoMagic
Theories have abounded over the decades around the 1937 disappearance of Amelia Earhart's plane in the Pacific. But the pivot of Mira Nair's biopic is the extraordinary actress Hilary Swank. In spite of a rather mediocre film, she is like a sculpture whose organic futuristic engine one keeps circling in awe. Curtain up - "I had to fly," we see her flying with glee (DP Stuart Dryburgh magnificent as always) and in sweeps the John Williams-esque score of Gabriel Yared. Never a dull composer, what the film longs for is a main theme for Amelia or rather Hilary Swank playing Amelia. For the spirit of her is the film. Her neck juts out both defiantly and apologetically; Her butterfly smile expands and contracts. Revealed shoulder bones in her gala black dress hover like compressed angel wings. We see in Swank's eyes the dark compassion for the alcoholism of Amelia's father and that of her navigator, Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston). We don't see but sense in Swank Amelia's time in hospital, her acute sinusitis, an iron will to triumph over what others saw as debilitating inevitable. Great chemistry with Richard Gere.
Emily Jacir: dispatch and the short film Lydda Airport
My Suicide (3 years in the assemblage) at this year's Raindance Film Festival in many ways spoke more directly to a young audience about perceiving the precipice of death than recent release Afterschool (Network in the UK and IFC in the States). While the latter was fascinating, arty, solipsistic, My Suicide was funny, rambunctious, and more obviously 'out there' in pushing away the politically correct boundaries while revealing a deep-seated concern for its subject.
The 16 going on 17 Raindance was more than ready for prom night escorting this year's audience into the plush ambience of the Apollo Cinema proving it could never be seen as a festival from the wrong side of the tracks in opposition to this year's The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival (LFF for short). Erstwhile festival director Elliot Grove, the kinda guy who might try to get away with selling you last year's T-shirt as an antique, said box office had doubled from last year. And that certainly seemed true most nights. Moreover, no horrible messy queues or wrong format projections as happened last year. Fantastic resolution on the Apollo screens- everything befitting the high aspirations of festival filmmakers. Even the Raindance cafe (in the basement of The Vinyl Factory) was spacious, cool and groovy with the festival (more sensibly and flexibly) in charge of both the bar and space. Alternatively, passes could be used at the private members Phoenix Artist Club
As in previous Raindance years, you'd hope many of the fascinating documentaries wouldn't have to beg to see the light of a screen again. The Narcotic Farm is the untold story of how the CIA from the 1940s to 70s tested drugs on the prisoners who were doing cold-turkey time- the first US prison for addicts. Hundreds signed up to voluntarily participate (including many jazz musicians) and were rewarded with heroine at 'The Bank' "doin' time and stay loaded". LSD was tested for 2 decades at The Farm hoping that the CIA could use it as a truth serum.
Breaking Rocks follows Billy Bragg's initiative providing guitars for prisoners while in the LFF; Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo accessed Oklahoma State Penitentiary (one of the highest female incarceration rates in the US) and preparations for the annual rodeo (since 1940).
Similar dangerous doco ground with Until the Light Takes Us digging into the roots of Black Metal - the Californian filmmakers trekked all the way to Norway spending 2 years getting close to their subjects (initially 350 hours of footage), the post-modern idea of simulcrum/simulcra embodied in Black Metal music as the doco's impetus. And a somewhat controversial ending that sparked a little debate after the screening. Harmony Korine (with the fascinating or loathsome Trash Humpers in the LFF) is a huge black metal fan.
I Need That Record! charted the collapse of vinyl shops in the US and two very different LFF music docos, Julien Temple's Oil City Confidential (hopefully released next year) while Trimpin: The Sound of Invention is soon available on DVD and a must-see.
Llik Your Idols (a riff on Sonic Youth's Kill Your Idols) again explores a relatively undocumented slice of 80s downtown New York art. The Cinema of Transgression and No Wave music. Filmmaker Richard Kern speaks slightly melancholically about his current work being less provocative and his original ideas now dry-cleaned and co-opted by the mainstream, Here are the precursors of photographer Nan Goldin et al. - though the likes of Lynda Benglis and Dorothy Iannone (their recent New York shows mentioned a few posts ago) were pushing limits a decade or more earlier.
Hauser & Wirth show
The Raindance winners were:
very soon some more to ponder.....
The Informant!
The White Ribbon
Taking Woodstock
Starsuckers
Film Ist
An Organisation of Dreams
The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life (Le premier jour du reste de ta vie)
Simple Things and Elevator
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