VIFF: Day 9

Good Morning to the World (2010)
Hirohara Saturo
Japan

The young age of this first time director (23-years-old) is just one thing that makes Good Morning to the World impressive. Although Hirohara Saturo is obviously using a level of production available to him, he is nonetheless able to tap out a unique form to a familiar story. Takahashi is a teenager who is at the age where he would be rebelling against his parents. That is, if his parents were around. Takahashi lives with his mother, but her presence is minimal. He seem not only apathetic about the situation, but also quite comfortable. His curiosity about the world, however, is a task that he takes on himself with a naive voyeurism. When he finds some clues about a dead homeless man, he decides to blindly investigate. What he discovers on his journey is his own limitations and failings, both mentally and emotionally. Takahashi is played by actor Koizumi Yoichiro and portrayed by director Hirohara with nary a sign of self-consciousness or ironic cynicism. The honesty and confidence of this first feature caught the eye of the Dragons & Tigers jury and was given the Award for Young Cinema for this year's festival. Good Morning to the World has technical limitations but is an incredible creative achievement for the young crew.


Surviving Life (2010)
Jan Svankmajer
Czech Republic

I've been a Svankmajer fan since I saw Alice in 1989 at the Tivoli Theater in Kansas City. My dedication was sealed with Little Otik, but recent years with Svankmajer have been rough going. His 2005 Lunacy was a painful study in cynicism and misanthropy that couldn't even be saved by his imaginative animation. Surviving Life doesn't fair too much better. Full of academic nods and winks, the film follows Eugene down an Oedopal spiral of addictive dreams and suppressed memories. It is tedious, to say the least. Unfortunately, it is made worse by Svankmajer's own preamble in the film: an apology (also full of nods and winks) that the lack of a budget requires animating photographs rather than hiring actors. I love the look of the film, full of Svankmajer's trademark weirdness and animation, and regret that the filmmaker finds it necessary to make excuses for it.


The Strange Case of Angelica (2010)
Manoel de Oliveira
Portugal/Spain/France/Brazil

It feels unfair to write about a filmmaker with such a wide oeuvre without having much grounding in it, but that's the way it goes.The first thing to reconcile with the fastidiously shot The Strange Case of Angelica is that director, Manoel de Oliveira, will soon turn 102. The second is the film's unnerving and timeless beauty that feels almost fragile. Isaac (played by de Oliveira's grandson Ricardo Trepa) is a young photographer who is urgently called to a wealthy estate to take one last photograph of the recently passed young Angelica. Angelica and the image she renders in the camera haunt Isaac into insomnia and obsession. The Strange Case of Angelica is an homage to the art of the photograph. Entirely made up of still camera work, it explores classic composition with unsettling elegance. A touch of the supernatural comes off a little sophomoric, but it is minor compared to the exquisite bulk of this film.


L.A. Zombie (2010)
Bruce LaBruce
Germany/USA

Let me just say it: L.A. Zombie, infamously banned and ostracized, is getting way too much attention. Without a doubt, it has been the worst 63 minutes of the Festival and I really can't imagine why this is getting programmed around the globe. It's only as subversive or interesting as seeing a porn at a major film festival. We watch a hulked up zombie man walk around L.A. sticking his Zombie stuff into dead people's newly formed holes. This magical experience resurrects the corpse every time and then zombie man moves on and does it again. Overly conscious of its poor craft, L.A. Zombie is a ridiculous exercise of genre bending and an even more ridiculous exercise for the audience. Midnight movie experience over.

MSPIFF 2010: Day 5

I'm a little behind on my film festival intake, but it has been so fruitful, I am going to do my best to catch up.

Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess (2008) Felix Moeller - Recommended
Director Felix Moeller tackles the lesser known, but more successful, film director of Goebbels' propaganda machine. Veit Harlan was the director of the anti-Semitic film used to propagate the Nazi's agenda, Jew Süss (1940). Unlike Riefenstahl's Triumph of Will, it is obvious that the vicious nature of Jew Süss has kept it in the closet regardless of any artistic merits. Although notorious, especially in Europe, Jew Süss hardly gets mentioned outside academic and historical circles. Instead of doing a straightforward historical narrative of Harlan's life, Moeller spends his time interviewing the living members of Harlan's family. The children, grandchildren and nieces and nephews all give a very personal take on Veit, his film and the after effects on the family. It's a very colorful mix of philosophy, bitterness, and distanced rational. In an irony of irony, it turns out that Stanley Kubrick's last wife, Christiane, was Veit Harlan's niece. The fact is tossed out so quickly and quietly, that I had to do a double take to confirm what I just heard. Christiane noted a meeting between Veit and Stanley with humor, and mentioned that he always wanted to do a film about the era. Some of the relatives feel criminalized by their notorious relative and the film almost feels like an act of catharsis. Veit's first son, who was his most ardent critic while Veit was alive, comes off as the family member most at peace. Veit Harlan died in 1964, and although he was acquitted of war crimes, his career languished under the burden of the War and Jew Süss.
(You have another chance to see Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess on Wednesday, April 28 at 4:15pm. It will probably not return theatrically to the Twin Cities.)


Mid August Lunch (2008) Gianni Di Gregorio - Recommended
When I first saw the trailer for Mid August Lunch, it offered the tag "Ffrom the creator of Gamorrah." It was pretty obvious that this was no Gamorrah, but I'm not marketer. The relation between the films is that the writer, Gianni Di Gregorio, responsible for the masterful adaptation of Roberto Saviano's book is the director and lead actor in Mid August Lunch. I would see Mid August Lunch as a film meant to wash the bad taste of the Camorra from his palate. In his directorial debut, Di Gregorio creates a charming romp that is more entertaining than it is slight. An aging bachelor, Gianni, acting as a caretaker for his mother, finds himself saddled with three other older women during Ferrogosto, one of the most important holidays in Italy where everything closes down. He takes in the the troublesome trio under coercion: the mother and aunt of the condo administrator to whom his mother is indebted, and the mother of a doctor willing to do a house visit on short notice. Under the dread of obligation to make these three women happy, along with his very opinionated mother, he must prepare a lunch appropriate for Ferrogosto. Di Gregorio does a fantastic job of taking the reigns of the lead character contending with responsibility with resignation that we can all relate to. There is a hilarious moment when a man comes to the door to visit Gianni and they go into his bedroom and shut the door. As the visiting man puts his hand down Gianni's pants, I heard a woman behind me indignantly say "Oh my goodness." The next second, however, the visiting man says, "Cough." He is, of course, a doctor, but that is not revealed until after the film confronts the audience's notions that a single man living with his mother must be gay. At 75 minutes, Mid August Lunch is short but very sweet.
(Mid August Lunch is currently in limited release and is scheduled to open at the Edina Cinema on May 7.)

MSPIFF: Day 9

Moving on to Saturday. I spent the majority of the day focusing on projects I needed to finish and didn't get to a film until 4:30. I had Saturday earmarked for a while because of Three Monkeys and Jerichow. I picked The Kautokeino Rebellion to precede only because it was in the same theater as the other two (so if the schedule was off, it was off for all the films I planned to see) and that theater happened to be Theater 1 (the 35mm theater.)

The Kautokeino Rebellion (2007)directed by Nils Gaup

Okay, let me paint the picture for you: late 1800s in the far north of Norway, where the men can gut a reindeer fast than you can say "hvor er toalettet" and the women can ski a mean mile, especially if they have the Good Book in hand. How can you not enjoy a little reindeer herding and a little folkish uprising in the name of righteousness? The Kautokeino Rebellion tells the story of the oppression of the reindeer herding Sami people by the eager merchants and pious preachers. An absolute crowd pleaser for the Minnesotans. Gaup, who hails from Kautokeino, was supposed to be at the screening, but his flight was late. Only my humble opinion, but Take It or Leave It.

Three Monkeys (2008) Nuri Bilge Ceylan

I had been looking forward to Three Monkeys ever since the MSPIFF schedule had been posted. I am a fan of Ceylan's films, and his panache for disassembling time through clever framing and editing grows with each film. Three Monkeys is a dark and serious film that barely gives you room to breath under the weight that the characters hold. The main thread of the story involves a husband and wife and their adult son, who might be the three monkeys, but I'm not so sure. The film has a stunning opening that is surreal and eerie. It brilliantly sets the tone, not the story. I can't really do the film justice in the time and space I am giving myself. It is a visual treat. Three Monkeys is playing again right now as I type, so you've probably missed it. I don't think a one of Ceylan's films has had a run here in the Twin Cities, and I doubt that Three Monkeys will be any different. Expect it on DVD someday. Highly Recommended.

Jerichow (2008) directed by Christian Petzold

Somewhere buried in a stack of magazines is a Cinema Scope article on Petzold that I put off reading until after I saw Jerichow. Petzold also directed Yella (cough, cough, have yet to see) which played at the Fest last year. The setup is a triangle between a married couple and a studly stranger (who I think is Jason Stathams German brother.) The stranger takes a job helping Ali and is instantly attracted to his wife Laura. These three people are a jumble of unexplained impulses and emotions that I struggled to reconcile. Maybe that's the point, I'm not sure. It certainly lent a certain amount of uneasy about what would happen next. Although the finale is unexpected, the trumped up circumstances is a little hard to take. Jerichow might come back to town or it might not. Recomended.