SLIFF 2014: The Overnighters

Title: The Overnighters

Country: US

Rating: 9.5

                The best documentary I saw at the festival, or anywhere else this year, comes from a rather unlikely place: Williston, North Dakota. There thousands of diverse, desperate, often brave and frequently troubled men have descended from all over the world to make their fortunes, and very often risk their lives, in the booming gas and oil extraction industry.  But the small rather rigidly conservative community isn’t exactly pleased with the inbound hoards, an iterant population whose legacy is environmental degradation, escalating crime rates and an insuperable housing crisis.

                But local pastor Jay Reinke takes pity on these strangers, inviting them to sleep in his church, eat at his table and find consolation in his ministry. He calls them the overnighters. So many flock to his building that they have to sleep in their cars in the parking lot. His church’s regular members are, unsurprisingly, overwhelming against his Christian charity and want nothing to do with these men, who they regard as trash at best and criminals at worst. In truth, many of them do have police records, but Reinke believes in giving them a second chance and points out that sinners are those who need saving most. When he finds out that an unregistered sex offender is staying in the church he realizes that he could lose his job, and makes the tough call to move the man into his own home (after a family meeting with his wife and daughters), rather than risk the bad press rebounding on the church itself.

                The film also follows several of the men. Reinke’s ex-convict right-hand man who finds new purpose in administering the overnighters program. A young guy, the first to leave his home town, who is rapidly promoted to supervisor because of his hard work and reliability. A man who leave his wife and kid in Kentucky and builds his own house from scratch in preparation for their reunion. And many of the overnighters who, after years of neglect, suspicion and rejection, find comfort and understanding.

                But it all crumbles to dust. There are few happy endings in Williston. This is a heartbreaking film, where you see the incredible possibilities of providing hope but also the rarely shown pain of taking it away. Reinke, reflecting in hindsight on his personal and vocational failings, ends by dubbing his overnighters ‘broken men’ and considering himself the most broken of all. I have rarely been so devastated as I was watching his good works come undone.

                I will mention that I have a fleeting connection to Williston. I few years back I lived in Rock Springs, WY, for reasons associated with the natural gas boom, and pretty much hated my life. When the vagaries of the industry took me to Williston, I remember thinking that this was a place even worse off, and that’s saying something. Watching The Overnighters made me ashamed that my reaction to the misery and exploitation (both human and environmental) that I saw was so self-interested; I just wanted to leave, to get away. A man like Jay Reinke, even with all his not-inconsiderable flaws, tried to do a whole lot more.

SLIFF 2014: Elegy to Connie

Title: Elegy to Connie

Country: US

Score: 6.5

                In February of 2008 Charles Lee Thorton walked into Kirkwood City Hall and killed six people, including council member Connie Karr. Elegy to Connie is a grassroots, experimental animated documentary about the neighborhood, the shooter and most importantly, Connie, a hardworking down-to-earth public servant who brought people together and improved the city she loved.

                Elegy to Connie is up front about being an elegy, or even more accurately a tribute, which is both good and bad. It is filled with a genuine sense of love and loss for Connie (who ironically had many of Thorton’s issues at heart), a local crusader of the type that rarely gets the recognition they deserve. It also means that this is not an intimate character study or nuanced profile, but a reverential treatment of a private and public figure whose untimely death was a tragedy to friends, family and community.

                I couldn’t help wanting this film to be more though. It is so formally artistically bold (more on that in a second), and yet structurally and politically shy. The information on Kirkwood’s history is a good start, but feels light. The sections on Thorton and the shooting spree didn’t tell me any more than my memories of the news coverage. At a time when St. Louis is dealing with the Michael Brown shooting and having some hard-hitting debates on race, poverty, crime, zoning, city planning and corruption, it might be time for the kid gloves to come off. And yet, this film is likely in keeping with Connie Karr’s own style: a light touch backed by sincerity and conviction; an understanding instead of inflammatory approach.

                And now to the animation! This is where the film blew my mind. Director Sarah Paulsen, working with a very small team of assistants, has managed to present a sort of crash course of animation styles that writhes with creative energy and visual originality. Paper cutouts, photos, puzzle pieces, mosaics, stop-motion, traditional hand-drawn, wet paint on glass, etc., etc. This film literally brimming over with techniques, and fresh ways of seeing and yet they are blended together and united in tone such that the film never feels incoherent or disjointed. This is animation that is honestly more interesting than 90% of the multimillion dollar productions that come of big name studios and I hope Paulsen goes on to create much more of it!

SLIFF 2004: #ChicagoGirl: The Social Networks Take on a Dictator

Title: #ChicagoGirl: The Social Network Takes on a Dictator

Country: US/Syria

Score: 7

                19-year-old Ala’a Basatneh, a Chicago resident and college freshman, says she used to spend her time at the mall hanging out with friends. Now she runs a revolution in Syria from her computer. She still has friends, but now they are a network of activists, protestors and journalists ‘on the ground’ in a country she hasn’t been to since she was 6.

                Her contacts send her news, photos and videos from the inside and she posts these on internet outlets that many of her contacts don’t have anonymous access to and tries to get them enough exposure to be covered by the mainstream international media. She plans protest marches with built-in escape routes. She runs campaigns to spread awareness in the US. She brokers between various anti Bashar al-Assad groups that don’t necessarily know about or trust each other. In the course of the documentary she deals with the death of two physically distant but very close friends. She sees others give up on peace and resort to violence. Even on US soil, she receives death threats from the foreign regime. This is not an ordinary gal.

                For me the moment that really drove home ChicagoGirl’s shocking discipline and responsibility occurs while she is trying to balance her college attendance with her activist duties. She gets a text that a friend has been captured alive. Her job is to drop whatever she is doing, even an ‘important’ exam, and log onto their social media accounts (they trust her with their passwords), deactivating them before their login credentials are tortured out of them and their networks compromised.

                #ChicagoGirl as a documentary is interesting for two reasons: 1) because Ala’a Basatneh herself is so interesting and the disjunction between her and American teens as we typically think of them never gets old and 2) because of what this particular example of online activism implies in a broader sense about social media, nonviolent resistance, mass communication and political evolution. If the film doesn’t quite break through into brilliance it is because it tries to tackle both the personal story and the wider scope at the same time, but can’t quite capture the latter. 

Film Atlas (Venezuela): Araya

Country: Venezuela

Title: Araya (1959)

For 400 years Araya has been the site of one of the world’s largest salt mines. A small Venezuelan town sits on tip of the Araya peninsula overlooking a vast stretch of sand, salt flats and lagoons where no trees or crops can grow. The community survives on fish and the meager income from their endless toil harvesting, transporting and washing salt. 

Araya the documentary begins in the small hours of the morning and follows a handful of families through their harsh, thankless daily routines. One family sifts, dries, carts, carries and bags the salt leaving it in 40 foot high pyramids that line the coast and await boats to ship it around the world. They walk barefoot and develop ulcers on their feet. The sun beats down on them and by midday they must take the long trek home for the only sleep they’ll get. In the night, they will begin again. Throughout the day the camera leaves them to follow a father and son harvesting chunks of salt from a lagoon, a group of fishers drawing in nets full of sea creatures and the women’s labor selling fish, collecting kindling and cooking.

Margot Benacerraf’s film is a major work, transcending the confines of the ethnographic documentary through its poetic sensibility. The lives of the people of Araya are intrinsically fascinating in themselves, and the task of mining salt, too, is interesting stuff, thoroughly explored by the film. Benacerraf ‘single-day’ structure not only clearly lays out all the steps in the process but gives us an insight into the mind-numbing repetition and taxing difficulty of labor. But the film itself is never mind-numbing or taxing, because Benacerraf’s graceful cinematography captures the alien beauty of the region while her editing gives us a holistic view of the community’s bare subsistence. 

She allows her camera to wander; to take breaks from its implicit ‘job’ to follow tiny but unforgettable details like a child collecting seashells for a graveside bouquet. The narration attempts neither scientific detachment nor angry condemnation (but make no mistake, these salt mines are exploitation at its most soul-crushing), and instead adopts a compassionate, lyrical approach towards understanding a voiceless corner of the world.

My Favorites:

Araya

The Smoking Fish / El Pez que Fuma

Oriana

Major Directors:

Roman Chalbaud

Film Atlas (Mongolia): The Story of the Weeping Camel

Country: Mongolia

Title: The Story of the Weeping Camel / Ingen Nulims (2003)

The lives of shepherds in the Gobi desert follow a steady rhythm, with the skills necessary for survival (sheering camel hair and braiding it into rope, milking goats and boiling it into a cream, recognizing sandstorm weather and battening down tents) executed with such precision and calm that even such a hard life can be peaceful and content. The story focuses on the birth and first weeks of the season’s last camel foal, a rare albino colt rejected by its mother after a long and difficult delivery. Since the mother will not let it suckle, the extended family of herders try a variety of measures to re-establish a parental bond before the baby starves, including binding the mother’s legs, milking the mother and transferring the liquid to the baby using a horn and having a group of lamas pray over the pair. Nothing works. Eventually the two oldest sons, though still children, are sent to the nearest town to secure the services of a violinist so that a spiritual ritual can be performed to musically awaken the camel’s maternal instincts.

As strange as it is touching, The Story of the Weeping Camel is definitely not an obvious dramatic vehicle, and yet the mending of a mother-child relationship between these hairy humpbacked beasts is, at its best, both mesmerizing and emotional. There is a great deal of subtle craft and subdued controversy in director Byambasuren Davaa’s approach, which looks and feels like a documentary, but is actually a carefully arranged synthesis of live footage, re-enactments and scripted sequences. Her results are so natural and unforced that the film’s essential honesty and compassion come through, although the viewer often lacks a translator to help explain what is going on and why; a decision that I both liked and disliked. The upside is that one is rarely, if ever, distracted by the telltales of film production, allowing us to become deeply invested in such a distant and remote problem, the nursing of a baby camel somewhere in Mongolia’s vast wasteland, to an extent unlikely in either traditional documentary or fictional treatments. The downside is that Weeping Camel puts a great deal of emphasis on the slowness and simplicity of life on the steppe, qualities that are necessary to capture the pace of nomadic life, but which will likely stretch the attention span of even sympathetic viewers.   

Major Directors:

Byambasuren Davaa

Film Atlas (Israel): Waltz with Bashir

Country: Israel

Film: Waltz with Bashir (2008)

The opening credits of Waltz with Bashir accompany a pack of slavering murderous mongrels galloping across a city to the beat of throbbing rock music. We're in media res. We're in a dream sequence. We're in a flashback. It's jarring and random, but it quickly coheres. A friend of director Ari Folman is sitting with him at a bar, recounting a nightmare. As a young soldier in the 1982 Lebanon War he was ordered to shoot 26 dogs so that their barks couldn't alert PLO agents to Israeli raids, and twenty years later his loathing of the canine slaughter remains undiminished. Folman is sympathetic, but when asked what he remembers of the war, he can't recall a thing; it's all blocked out. He goes home disconcerted, and that night a single fragment surfaces: he is bathing on the Beirut coast by the light of military flares on the evening of the nearby Sabra and Shatila civilian massacre. Determined to reconstruct his missing memories and bring the truth to light, Folman talks to his psychiatrist and tracks down a friend in Holland, fellow war buddies and a news reporter who covered the events. Along the way we see their stories and Ari Folman's depicted in animated flashbacks that capture the exhilaration, devastation, terror, strangeness, confusion and numbness of war.

The first thing that strikes one about Waltz with Bashir is the animation, the first of many stylistic risks that Ari Folman takes in his highly personal autobiographical documentary. Animation, still often unfairly associated with family films and comedic cartoons, isn't exactly the obvious choice for a non-fiction work covering not just harrowing eye-witness accounts of the Lebanon War, but a genocide of Shiites that took place almost literally under the narrator's nose. The film's various flashbacks offer a multifaceted emotionally-exhausting look at the incongruity of civilian life with combat experience; of young men who, days before, were primarily concerned with keeping up their grades and getting laid, who are now asked to load tanks up with corpses or stalk through orchards gunning down children armed with RPGs. As these events are told to us the camera frequently cuts back to the present, where Folman sits with a friend or colleague and discusses their memories of the past. These conversations are often brutally and even uncomfortably honest, confessions from out of the shadowy, ignoble chaos of war. Folman discovers that he is not alone in feeling the corrosive undercurrent of repressed guilt and a desire both to flee from and face the acts of inhumanity that surrounded the massacre, but ultimately he is left to judge his level of involvement and culpability alone (although in creating this documentary, beyond the merely therapeutic value he early-on suggests, there is also a sense that he is inviting us to judge him too). Lingering in the psychological background is the legacy of the Holocaust, which Folman's parent's survived, and the chilling dread of finding yourself on the other end of a war crime.

For all its thematic heaviness, Waltz with Bashir's storytelling is brisk and invigorating. The animation style, which looks like a dramatically more palatable update to the poorly-received rotoscoping of yesteryear, uses clean bold lines and high-contrast colors, frequently in monochromes typified by the black and gold of Folman's flare-lit Beirut nightscapes. Many of the vignettes have a heart-pounding music-video sensibility, boldly mixing period 80s synth-pop and post-punk like OMD's "Enola Gay" and PiL's "This Is Not a Love Song" with arrangements of classical music. Folman doesn't waste the unique freedom of the animation medium, and while respecting the sensitive and serious nature of his material, explores the slippery flexibility of memory, the moody heightened-reality of dreams and the surreal beauty of war (notably in the titular 'waltz with Bashir' in which a soldier seems to dance amid hissing streaks of enemy gunfire and posters of the recently-assassinated politician).

My Favorites:

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
Waltz with Bashir

Footnote

Late Marriage
Zero Motivation

Beaufort

Ajami
The Kindergarten Teacher
A Woman's Case (1970)

The Policeman (1971)

Major Directors:
Joseph Cedar, Amos Gitai

Film Atlas (Canada): My Winnipeg

Country: Canada

Title: My Winnipeg (2008)

Director Guy Maddin tries to escape his beloved and behated hometown of Winnipeg and, thereby, his past, by riding an impossible somnambulistic night train in this largely-fictional, highly-fantastical “documentary.” Trapped in quasi-nostalgic reveries full of mixed emotions he tries to “film his way out” by reenacting the mildly traumatic minutia of his childhood using his mother (actually actress Ann Savage in her final role) and a crew of hired actors to play his siblings and pets. His dead father, deemed unnecessary to the experiment, is exhumed and placed under the living room rug.

This loosely anchors Maddin’s guided tour through Winnipeg’s local history which encompasses events both real and surreal, drawing as much from dreams and distorted memories as from newsreels and history books. Highlights include visions of sleep-walking strollers jingling the keys (which they are legally allowed to keep) of their former residences, the Winnipeg General strike, corrupt ‘man pageants’, a three-story pool, a romantic stroll past horrifically frozen horses, the failed amusement park Happyland, a strange compromise between rival taxi companies, the television show ‘LedgeMan’ about a suicidal jumper getting talked back to safety week after week and much more.

Maddin’s fervent imagination never fails to surprise but two things remain consistent in his work: his obsessive and stormy relationship with Winnipeg and his adherence to archaic silent-era film styles. My Winnipeg is his tribute to the ‘city symphony’ genre although there are sequences in the style of German expressionism, gothic surrealism and silhouette animation. Yet sharing Maddin’s encyclopedic knowledge of historical film techniques isn’t necessary to appreciating his unique sense of humor which plumbs the absurdity of our desire to mythologize our personal and communal pasts.

Maddin’s tongue-in-cheek revelations about the city’s supposed supernatural affinity (municipal séances, the ghosts of hockey players, his oft-repeated incantation of “the forks, the lap, the fur… the forks beneath the forks!”) is his desperate escape pod from the banality of documentary truth. He’s equally fast and loose with biographical honesty in his overtly-Freudian dissection of his relationship with his mother, comically failing to disguise a fairly conventional middle-class upbringing while highlighting the suspect quotidian details that shaped him. Most successful of all is the blend of sincerity and satire, reverence and ridiculousness in his treatment of Winnipeg; lavishing it with the kind of monumental cinematic treatment usually reserved for the likes of New York City or Paris. The result is both a heartbreakingly touching love letter and a hilariously vibrant send-up unlike any other film.

Sharing a language with their conspicuous neighbor has been a mixed blessing for Canadian cinema, providing it a readymade audience but also making it highly susceptible to cultural imperialism. Perhaps that’s why Canada has so often distinguished itself by fostering oddball auteurs. In addition to Guy Maddin’s docufantasia, my Canadian shortlist included films by body-horror maven David Cronenberg, challenging provocateur Atom Egoyan, prolific animation pioneer Norman McLaren and structuralist experimenter Michael Snow. I'd also recommend the sociologically and emotionally confrontational documentaries of Allan King, like A Married Couple, which similarly deconstructs family life, and, more recently, Sarah Polley's very different but equally original take on the autobiographical investigation of family called Stories We Tell.

My Favorites:

The Sweet Hereafter

The Saddest Music in the World

Possible Worlds

My Winnipeg

Jesus of Montreal

Stories We Tell

Videodrome

Thirty-Two Short Films about Glenn Gould
Good Riddance

Dead Ringers

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance

Away from Her

Careful

The Adjuster

The Central Region

The Decline of the American Empire

A Married Couple

Goin' Down the Road

The Silent Partner

Exotica

The Red Violin

Incendies

Cube

Family Viewing

Atlantic City

The Brood

Major Directors:

Denys Arcand, David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Claude Jutra, Allan King, Zacharias Kunuk, Sarah Polley

Film Atlas (Antarctica): Crossing the Ice

Country: Antarctica

Title: Crossing the Ice (2012)

Australian endurance explorers James Castrission (“Cas”) and Justin Jones (“Jonesy”) first garnered international attention in 2008 for “Crossing the Ditch.” The phrase refers to kayaking across the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand, a 2-month, 3318-kilometer, never-before-completed journey. Flushed with success, they looked about for another challenge and hit upon Antarctica. Though there had been several attempts to walk from the coast to the pole and back (2200+ kilometers), unsupported by dogs, wind sails, motors, etc., none had ever made it. Cas and Jonesy decided to give it a shot… but first they must learn how to ski. The documentary Crossing the Ice covers their preparation and journey, filming themselves as they drag sleds loaded down with food, supplies, camera equipment and a tent across endless vistas of frozen emptiness.

The duo set out almost exactly 100 years after the famous race to South Pole between British explorer Robert F. Scott and Norwegian Roald Amundsen. That one ended badly. Scott lost to Amundsen and his entire team died on the return trip. As Cas and Jonesy approach their starting point they learn that, as though history is ominously repeating itself, a better-trained lone Norwegian, Aleks Gamme, has already set out ahead of them. Cas and Jonesy immediately run into trouble. They are delayed for weeks by a raging gale-force white-out. They suffer doubt, sickness, frostbite and a festering rash from the laborious and repetitive motion. But they push on and eventually encounter Gamme already on his return trip. He is the first human they have seen in months and their highly anticipated meet-up is the film’s most hilarious moment and one of its most terrifying. They finally make it to South Pole Station weeks behind schedule and must face the temptation of quitting (hot showers, fresh food, rest!), but they stoically circle the pole and trudge onward, now severely rationing and dangerously losing weight. They can only accept that Gamme will handily secure the historical honor of being first and, much worse, they must face the prospect of death as they search unsuccessfully for waypoints (now obscured by snow) where they buried food for the return trip.

Crossing the Ice is a short, truly heart-pounding adventure documentary that would be interesting enough for its footage of such a desolate corner of the globe, but it’s made compulsively watchable through our instant sympathy with its real-life protagonists. You can’t help cheering on the good-humored, risk-taking best friends and their thoroughly insane scheme, yet the even crazier Aleks (who it turns out is also documenting the trip, too, along with a ‘friend’) steals several unforgettable scenes. He’s also responsible for the story’s most emotional twist, which actually left me teary-eyed! 

To get the footage Cas and Jonesy desired they often had to set up the camera, backtrack, and then pass in front of it, slowing themselves down and increasing their travel distance in the name of pioneering filmmaking. Their discerning editing has a thriller sensibility; rapidly paced yet keeping the viewer in constant suspense. We feel the danger, the tension, the psychological strain. We shiver in reaction to their cold. And we realize that we can only just barely fathom the loneliness, monotony and marathon endurance involved. Crossing the Ice ultimately invokes two forms of awe: one for the inhuman indifference of nature so vividly manifest on Antarctica’s inhospitable surface and one for the inspirational power of human endeavor and the untapped potential that lies within us.

My Favorites:

The Great White Silence
Crossing the Ice
Encounters at the End of the World

Review of Koalageddon 2

The past decade has seen a steady stream of environmental issue documentaries, of highly varying quality, doubtlessly leveraging popular interest in climate change and the plunging financial barriers to distributing independent shot-on-digital productions. Nowadays I tend to catch an uneven smattering of these films (grassroot documentaries being the type of thing I feel more obligated than excited to see), but several years ago when the concept was fresher and my motivation higher, I really kept up with them. It was around this time that I remember hearing about Koalageddon, a zero-budget documentary about the threat of deforestation (and formerly hunting) to the survival of Adelaidian koalas in Australia.

I didn’t catch the film when it played at the 2005 Saint Louis International Film Festival (it was the first I attended and I failed to schedule my time well), but I did Netflix it when it became widely available on DVD about a year later. It struck me as honestly pretty mediocre. Clearly a lot of passion had gone into the subject matter, but ultimately it came off as shrill and obsessive, with long unbroken shots of koalas set to narration that was more poetic than informative. A lot of the statistics sounded wrong or irrelevant, like comparing the U.S. expenditure on the Iraq War to the Australian Fund for the Protection of Endangered Species. Sure the latter is a paltry sum by comparison to the American defense budget, but I’m not sure the infographic vaguely equating tanks to koalas made any actual sense.

Worse still, director Liu Xiaojun (who intrudes into his subject matter with Michael Moore-like persistence) and several of his interview subjects are clearly describing pandas on several occasions. Most of the interviews are conducted in Mandarin, which starts feeling suspicious about fifteen minutes in, and though the subtitles are meticulous about displaying “koala” you can clearly hear the director and interviewees saying “xiongmao” (panda). I read later that Xiaojun had wanted to make a documentary about endangered pandas, but was pressured (some say violently) to change his topic by Chinese censors over fears that it would appear critical of their already-beleaguered environmental policies. The result may be one of the first documentaries whose subject is a metaphor for a wholly different subject. While this adds a touch of comedic surrealism to the film, Koalageddon was just too scattershot and unprofessional to make a big impression on me. I sent the DVD back to Netflex and forgot the whole thing. I figured I would never hear of Liu Xiaojun again.

And then the rumors began.

It all started here, in a 2009 article about Liu Xiaojun receiving a $2.25 million Australian Film Society grant to establish a permanent Adelaidian koala shelter and film a documentary on the process. It was to function as a sort sequel in which the ‘Koalageddon’ would be averted and was intended to be broadcast as a three part TV special. But in a massively embarrassing oversight, the last Adelaidian koala had already died in captivity four months earlier leading Xiaojun to call Peter Garrett, the Australian Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts a “murderous hyena” and his grant “like putting a Band-Aid on a rotting corpse.” The rumors continued to heat up after Xiaojun refused to return the money and purportedly swore a blood oath to avenge the koalas during an interview with the Brisbane Daily Post. He promptly dropped off the public radar for more than a year.

If you’re reading this review you already know how the story ends: Xiaojun reemerged in August with “Koalageddon 2: Eucalyptus Now” a controversial action/horror film featuring zombie koalas, copious violence and one of the strangest sex scenes in recent memory. That would be odd enough as it is, but even more surprising is that the film is actually getting really good reviews. I had a chance to see it at this year’s festival and I have to admit Liu Xiaojun has made a masterpiece of sorts, hampered as it is by last-minute subtitling. He is poised to become an international star, but it looks unlikely that he plans to continue as a filmmaker.

Koalageddon 2 opens in a small park in Adelaide. A young girl reads the plaque under a stone monument memorializing the extinct species of local koala. A storm kicks up and the girl runs off to join her mother under an umbrella. The park is left empty as drops begin to fall. In next to no time a lightning bolt strikes the statue, bringing to life five adorable koalas whose eyes flash ominously crimson. The subtitled narration is especially unclear about how this metamorphosis works but it involves “Mother Dirt’s lust for revengement [sic]” and “the Lords of Blood and Milk.”

The koalas, listed as Nergal, Hannibal, Monstro, Ned and Deathweaver in the credits but never named in the course of movie, quickly split up to search for Eucalyptus leaves but become distracted from their mission by various modern conveniences and societal pitfalls. For nearly half the movie, which might be anywhere from a week to several decades within the movie’s universe (Xiaojun plays with chronology in a way that defies clear sequencing and demands multiple viewings), we watch the koalas adapting to contemporary culture. Nergal becomes addicted to comic books, internet porn and dope. Monstro binges on fast food and takes out his frustration at failing to emotionally connect with his middle-class coworkers by moonlighting as a graffiti artist and notorious vandal. Hannibal turns to prostitution, gets talked into a botched back-alley abortion, spins into a manic-depressive cycle fueled by regret and self-loathing and is ultimately drawn into the underground fetish club scene from which he never returns. Ned talks on a cell phone all day (we never find out to whom and it’s implied that there might not be anyone on the other end) while taking endless walks (filmed in staggeringly well-choreographed long takes) through Adelaide’s economically-booming but spiritually-bankrupt suburbs.

Only Deathweaver comes within reach of happiness after being rescued from mobsters by free-wheeling, debonair hobo Maverick ‘Coolpop’ Christman (played by Liu Xiaojun himself). The two promptly fall in love while outwitting various greedy businessmen, hypocritical priests, conservative politicians and even a snotty film critic.

In each of these scenarios the human characters never find the presence of talking koalas strange.

It isn’t until the last half-hour that the movie falls into the usual action and horror movie clichés. The koalas find their appetite for eucalyptus impossible to appease productively (though they hardly seem to try and only intermittent reference is made to a “global leaf shortage”) and begin to sate themselves on human flesh. This is ambiguously tied in with their bodies beginning to rot, presumably because they are zombies of some sort? Or is an allegory for their corrupted purity and innocence? Xiaojun’s screenplay is just trying to tackle too much, and I think he may have written himself into a corner. Still, the ensuing bloodbath is, from a purely aesthetic point of view, a really impressive piece of filmmaking. Several other extinct animals such as the thylacine, desert bandicoot and hopping mouse make cameos as they join in the carnage.

Coolpop Christman delivers several pace-destroying impassioned speeches pleading for both sides to stop fighting, live in harmony and practice a vegan diet. Nobody listens.

Even Deathweaver gradually succumbs to the craving for human meat, but his struggle to resist is especially bittersweet. In the film’s most touching moment, set against a blazing sunset backdrop and an elegiac symphony score, Maverick Christman takes his own life so that his friend and lover may safely feed for another week. The gesture, however, is ultimately useless. Deathweaver must eventually venture out into the streets for sustenance and is gunned down in a slow-motion hail of bullets.

At this point the little girl from the opening scene (the one seen reading the plaque) reappears in the audience of onlookers to deliver the film’s now-iconic final line: “Don’t you see? We are all koalas and oil is our eucalyptus!” While regarded as ham-fisted by some, it has become something of an environmentalist anthem in Asia and Australia and its penetration into the region's popular culture is already to the point where Thai cosmetics giant SenHyg has adopted “Oil is our eucalyptus” as the tagline for their latest eucalyptus oil hand cream.

The ending credits roll over a series of seemingly unrelated images from around Adelaide, absent of any of the characters we’ve been introduced to. It’s a little reminiscent of Antonioni’s ending in Eclipse. However, on closer inspection each frame has a disturbing reminder of the toll consumerism has taken on koalas: the teenage girl singing karaoke sports a jaunty koala-fur hat, the father figure grilling burgers in his backyard is using ground koala meat, the old man teaching chess to his grandson is playing with pieces carved from koala ivory (I suspect this last is Xiaojun’s artistic license and not a literal product). It’s all surprisingly moving.

Though Koalageddon 2: Eucalyptus Now is already establishing itself as a cult film, it’s not surprising that Australia is distancing itself from the work it inadvertently funded and China has banned it outright, not for the violence and nudity, but because of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot in which Monstro morphs into a panda, grows 100 feet tall and crushes Zhongnanhai.

I don’t know whether we’ll see more by Xiaojun in the future or if, instead, his name will remain forever tied to these two idiosyncratic films, but I wish we had more like him. His combination of a heartfelt documentary core souped up with stylish genre fixings will likely serve as a formula for many movies to come.

Walrus Rating: 7.5

Sundance 2010

Sine I've not posted this year, I've let slip the chance to have topical discussions about the 2009 year-in-review, various Oscar-related issues and my experience at Sundance. But to assuage my guilty conscience I will briefly summarize the latter.

Katie and I stayed in the mountains next to Salt Lake City with our good friend Exactly Why at her gorgeous home and got to try a lot of local cuisine. We made it to 6 movies, already ably reviewed over at Exactly Why's blog. I'll give a quick rundown in my own words:

The Red Chapel - A subversive documentary about a 'spastic' Danish comedy team that travels to North Korea for a tense and awkward cultural exchange. The film says as much about the ethics of the comedians and film crew as it does about the country and ultimately runs the gamut from outrageous to depressing. Wry and thought-provoking, I can't fault Sundance for awarding this their International Documentary award.

Obselidia - A gentle road-movie romance about a reclusive collector of obsolete things and a woman who runs a silent movie theater. While it was thankfully not overly-precious (like too many of the recent rash of 'quirky' indie hits), it can be a bit on the preachy side, though I felt its heart was largely in the right place. Great acting, a comfortable script and an assured pacing made this a very charming and worthwhile little film.

Enter the Void - Gaspar Noe (Irreversible) brings his latest experiment to its third audience (after controversial Cannes and Toronto screenings) and it is both his most abrasive and most visually daring yet. Enter the Void is told primarily from the drifting perspective of a drug dealer's disembodied soul seeking reincarnation as he shifts in and out of his past and the grim present of his sister's deteriorating life as a stripper in neon-lit eye-searing Tokyo. Noe's trademark whirling camera antics are impressive, and yet unpleasantly dizzying and ultimately tedious. Working with an interesting concept and no shortage of auteur flare, the film struggles to find somewhere to end and, after 155 minutes and half a dozen opportunities to walk away with a dignified finish, bellyflops into an audacious, ill-adviced and hilarious finale (think orgasms, CG and a verrry intimate POV). Noe came out afterwards and confessed that we weren't supposed to laugh. For all that, I kind of admire the film, in that no-holds noble failure type of way.

Incidentally, when asked during the Q&A about his next project, Noe shyly admitted it would be an out-and-out porno. He didn't sound like he was kidding. With Lars von Trier (Pink Prison), Steven Soderbergh (The Girlfriend Experiment), Crispin Glover (It Is Fine. Everything Is Fine), and Kevin Smith to name a few, there seems to be more of an uptick in serious artists interested in the subject matter than I can remember since P. T. Anderson's Boogie Nights .

Tucker & Dale vs Evil - A spot-on horror comedy that presents a common film scenario (teens on a campy trip beset by villainous locals) from the sympathetic side of the rednecks. Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk (Firefly) are perfectly cast as two lovable hillbillies who rescue (not kidnap) a beautiful psych student and befriend her while her former pals get themselves killed with such persistence that Tucker and Dale believe them to be a violent suicide cult. The semi-gimmicky plot actually manages to sustain itself pretty well and the film earned constant laughs from me, my friends and the entire audience. It is actually more entertaining than most of the films it riffs on, such as Friday the 13th, The Hills Have Eyes, Wrong Turn and even Deliverance.

Buried - Ryan Reynolds wakes up in a coffin and soon receives a cell phone call that if he can't arrange for a million dollar ransom, he will be left to suffocate. The camera never cuts outside of his tiny confines, creating an incredibly tense and utterly claustrophobic nightmare scenario that manages to stay exciting during every minute of depleting oxygen. The films even manages a good deal of creative visual variety through changes in angle and light source; the yellow of a lighter's flame, the faded red of a flashlight, the cold blue of the cell phone, the eerie green of chemical glow sticks and the amble use of pitch black create a balance of mood and practicality. Though contrived, it is easy to overlook the weaker plot points. The film easily earns a spot amongst the great low budget horror films of the digital era.

Splice - Speaking of which, Vincenzo Natali, the Canadian wunderkind behind low-budget high-concept horror classic Cube, unleashes his new genetics-experiment-gone-wrong thriller. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley play a pair of married researchers whose gene-spliced anti-body incubator becomes a beloved pet and eventually a surrogate child. The film plays like an even-more-allegorical modern-day Frankenstein where far more than just medical ethics gets ludicrously violated. The acting and effects are top-notch, but the script may be an acquired taste. Fans of early Cronenberg or anyone willing to mix parenting woes and childrearing psychology with science-fiction and horror conventions will certainly enjoy.

Overall Sundance was a wondeful experience and I felt like all the films we saw were either highly entertaining or at least very interesting. I hope to go again next year. Katie has recently moved out to Vernal, Utah (where there's a good chance I'll one day join her) so we may be "right next door" in the midwestern 3-4 hour sense.

SLIFF 2009 Coverage Part 3

Title: 24 City

Director: Jia Zhangke

Country: China

Score: 7.0

Review:

Zhangke’s “24 City” is a provocative mix of documentary and fiction, concerned with the relocation of a large Chinese industrial factory to make room for a luxury apartment complex. The details of the factory itself, such as what product it actually makes, is not the director’s interest, but rather the role it has played in the surrounding community and in the lives of enormous workforce. The film consists of a series of interviews with these men and women, about half of which are fake. The tone and craftsmanship are so strong even in the acted segments that viewers will be unlikely to distinguish them, and may not even realize that some parts were fictional. And yet Zhangke doesn’t play the postmodern trickster so much as delve into an impartial emotional truth that lurks behind both documentary and performance.

The Chinese Sixth Generation has been one of my weak spots in exploring Asian film, and so I eagerly embraced a chance to see my first film by the well-regarded Jia Zhangke. He’s a director I clearly need to get in better touch with, as his film evinces such a penetrating curiosity about what makes his country and his countrymen tick. “24 City” is at ease in a sea of rocky history, ugly architecture and disparate national priorities, watching with a misleading detachment the changes in generations, philosophies, personalities, economies and so on. His film can be almost unbearably glacial, but it has wisdom and even wit, notably demonstrated in an interview where a beautiful factory girl (played by Joan Chen of “Little Flower” and “Twin Peaks”) recalls being nicknamed “Little Flower” by her admirers because she looked like Joan Chen. This film has only grown on me upon reflection.

Title: Yella

Director: Christian Petzold

Country: Germany

Score: 7.0

Review:

Nina Hoss turns in an award-winning performance as a capable accountant trying to climb her way out of financial straits and an abusive relationship. She accidentally runs into and takes up with an unethical loan assessor and finds herself really enjoying her role as sharp-eyed sidekick. Yet as she extorts money from both shady and relatively honest entrepreneurs alike she’s plagued by something more than a guilty conscious and her violent stalker boyfriend: strange auditory hallucinations with ominous implications.

“Yella” is actually a really well-crafted film if you can ignore the obvious and intrusive ending twist. Why Petzold telegraphs it so openly, or even why he bothers to include it, is a more ponderous mystery than the mystery itself. But that aside, “Yella” manages to be a rare corporate thriller where the characters are worth caring about, especially the rather reserved lead, who manages to blend courage and cynicism into a decidedly complicated and not necessarily sympathetic role. Her conflicted desires to adopt a cold hard exterior while needing an emotional anchor neatly inverses the crisscrossed atmospheres of cold interiors and sun-dappled exteriors.

Title: We Live in Public

Director: Ondi Timoner

Country: USA

Score: 9.0

Review:

Timoner ("Dig!") continues her triumphant documentary career with this biopic about Josh Harris, a virtual personification of the information age and our internet culture. In 1993, Harris founded Pseudo.com, the first internet television station, whose channel hosts he recruited by staging massive decadent parties reminiscent of interactive art installations. After alienating his own company by adopting a disturbing baby-talking clown persona called ‘Luvvy,' Harris was forced out of his own company. He proceeded to take his millions and build “We Live in Public,” an underground kingdom beneath New York City where he housed more than a hundred experimental subjects with free food, music and living quarters, but under the condition that everyone was subject to humiliating interrogations and constant surveillance (made accessible to all via TVs in each sleeping pod). After the police, thinking they were busting a Y2K doomsday cult, broke in on what had degenerated into a fatigued orgy, Harris abandoned the idea to embark on his next work. This time he wires cameras to cover every inch of his flat and lives with his girlfriend in a 24-7 live internet show with a chatroom for people to comment on his life. The results were unsurprisingly detrimental to everyone involved.

Harris is an undeniably fascinating character to study, a prescient mad-genius type that embodies not just our society’s obsession with technology and exhibitionism, but our increasing immaturity and cult of youth and novelty. Timoner is not quite trusting enough to let her audience ingest the self-evident warnings about our culture that her footage contains and is a little too ready to interpret it for us, but she’s deftly aware of the potential in her subject and handles the stages of his blazing ups and downs with the skill of a consummate storyteller. While “We Live in Public” is by no means scholarly enough to make us feel we are getting the whole story, it captures the zeitgeist of the online boom where the internet was treated like a wild lawless frontier and poorly-adjusted nerds became multi-millionaire celebrities overnight.

Review of Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance

On our plane ride into Heathrow, Katie sat next to a small, unassuming lady in her late seventies. As they did a little talking, it turned out that she was Alanis Obomsawin, a well-regarded aboriginal American filmmaker from Canada (neither of us had heard of her, but I probably should have) on her way to London to introduce one of her documentaries at the British Museum. On our final day in London, we made an effort to visit the museum and check out the film. It surpassed my every expectation.

“Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance” covers the Oka Crisis, a confrontation between Mohawk Indians living on a reserve near Oka (not far from Montreal) and the Canadian military. A local land development interest gained government approval to expand a 9-hole members-only golf course onto a burial ground and sacred pine grove belonging to the Mohawk nation, reigniting a 270 year battle to officially regain their territory.

The Mohawks blocked incoming construction equipment and Quebec Security was called in. After shots were exchanged, a police emergency response team bungled the situation, firing tear gas that the wind swept back into their own position, forcing a retreat. In the chaos, the Mohawks seized an abandoned bulldozer and used it to crush police cars and push them into a barricade. Other Canadian first nations pledged support and the nearby Kahnawake reserve captured a major highway bridge. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and eventually the Canadian military took over, leading to a 78-day high-tension standoff.

Alanis Obomsawin arrived early in the debacle and was one of the few filmmakers or journalists to evade the military-enforced media blackout, chronicling the incident from within the heavily-patrolled, razor-wire perimeter. While Obomsawin covers the history and context behind the incident, the power of her documentary comes from her extensive firsthand footage.

Obomsawin rarely appears in front of the camera and her interview style is minimalist and encouraging, allowing her subjects to open up and express themselves. Although the scarcity of leading questions might have threatened to make the film lose focus, the editing keeps things tight and smartly relevant. Her unobtrusive use of irony and humor points out the absurdity and hypocrisy of the Canadian government’s reaction (like running razor-wire underwater) without trivializing the complexity of the situation and the emotions involves.

One of the most thought-provoking aspects of the film is the way it captures the clash between colorful individuals standing up for their modest rights and large institutions, especially the Canadian military. The individual soldiers hide behind the usual unthinking platitudes like “I’m just obeying orders” and “I have a mission to accomplish” instead of relying on their own moral compasses. The result is that their behaviors are akin to mental illness symptoms, including denying verifiable facts, showing indifference towards the suffering in front of them and adopting self-induced stone-faced autism as a way of avoiding questions, confrontations and emotional involvement.

The military is seen using fear and intimidation tactics, suppressing press coverage and frequently breaking promises. And yet hardly any soldier openly expresses dissatisfaction with their vocation or the institute they serve, and certainly none try to redress the wrongs. While this isn’t surprisingly to anyone familiar with military psychology or history, it’s disturbing to see it occur in modern society and within the armed forces of well-regarded democratic country. One has to wonder whether the military can be too effective, especially when it removes the ability for self-analysis and self-correction through the use of individual consciences and becomes merely a tool in the hands of political and commercial powers.

But I’m getting into the dangerous territory of mixing my own interpretation with the film’s less-pointed, less-systematic approach. In truth, while the directing and editing take a very sympathetic viewpoint, the film is not overly wrapped up in a private agenda and truly seems committed to honesty. Obomsawin covers the death of a police officer by the Mohawks and shows occasionally unflattering footage of individual Mohawks who, at times, lack maturity, temperance or eloquence. She depicts their internal struggle with balancing self-respect with survival, the fractured opinions on how to handle the situation and the difficultly in controlling feelings of anger and vengeance.

Obomsawin is of Indian heritage herself (albeit a different tribe), but her own vested interest is really much wider than purely first nation issues and concerns the larger scope of human rights for voiceless minorities everywhere. I hadn’t even heard of the Oka Crisis prior to seeing the film, but she draws us into the fate of Kanehsatake Mohawks in a way that is quick and natural despite the fact that many viewers will have little in common with the tribe. My own circumstances are much closer to the non-Mohawk suburban community of Oka, who are seen in the documentary reacting with outrage, apathy, paranoia, racism and even violence primarily over the mere inconvenience of traffic jams caused by the barricade. It’s a bit sobering to reflect on how I might have reacted had I been in their shoes.

On a less serious level, the movie is action-packed and well-crafted, making for a riveting two hours that doesn’t suffer from the “talking head” and “clipart” syndromes that drag down many otherwise noble documentaries. The film isn’t susceptible to the self-indulgence and cult-of-personality accusations that plague Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock and its sincerity is refreshing without being cloying. It’s informed, impassioned, judiciously paced and just about everything else a documentary should be.

In retrospect, I wished I’d spent my plane ride interviewing Alanis Obomsawin about her work, goals and future plans rather than watching “Twilight” (2008) as an in-flight movie. Damn my social awkwardness and vulnerability for vampire drivel.

Walrus Rating: 9.0

You can watch the entire film here.

SLIFF 2008 Coverage Part 6

Title: The Pope’s Toilet
Director: Cesar Chalone and Enrique Fernandez
Country: Uruguay
Score: 6.0
Review:
Beto is a smalltime border smuggler just this side of Uruguay from Brazil. His “work” consists of heart-pounding 60 mile bicycle trips across the open countryside with the risk of raids and financial ruin on any voyage. He lives in a small shack with his devout wife and unhappy daughter, who longs to become a reporter. When news comes out that the Pope will be stopping in their remote village to give a speech, everyone in town plans to pull themselves out of poverty by selling food to the tens of thousands of projected visitors. Beto plans to capitalize on the situation from the opposite end: by charging for use of a homemade restroom.

The simple setup allows plenty of time to get to know the family and to witness the humor and pain they cause each other. The film’s greatest success is its honest, unsentimental portrayal of poverty, where limited resources cause harsh competition and families are so desperate to escape their conditions that they will risk everything on inflated hopes. The casting of non-actors works beautifully and each of the central three characters gives fresh, realistic performances.

However, I was annoyed at the directors’ decisions in how they portrayed this based-on-a-real-life story. Whether it’s intentional dramatic irony or not, I never for a moment believed that a happy ending was possible. The tension and buildup for the inevitable disappointment felt hallow and manipulative to me. Ill-advised music rubs the disaster in our face. I found that I was holding myself back from emotionally connecting with the characters because I was conscious of the directors’ intentions from very early on.


Title: Stranded: I Have Come From a Plane that Crashed in the Mountains
Director: Gonzalo Arijon
Country: Uruguay
Score: 5.0
Review:
Arijon’s much-hailed documentary revisits a headline that captured international attention in 1972. A rugby team from Uruguay crash-landed on a snow-covered Andean mountain and survived for 72 days before they were able to contact civilization. Untreated injuries, starvation, extreme-cold and depression plague the stranded boys. Two-thirds of the passengers die and the remainder resorted to cannibalism to survive.

I’m occasionally accused of being too tough on documentaries, and I’m likely to draw that complaint once again. Let me first say, though, that the story of these survivors is absolutely captivating and inspiring. When I rate a documentary, however, only a small amount of the score is based on the topic chosen while the primary thing I try to judge is the presentation of the subject. For that reason, I was not much impressed by “Stranded,” which looks and feels like a routine television special.

Arijon’s re-enactments are particularly uninspired. He uses vague, shaky clips where you can’t really see any details and grainy filters try to convince us the footage is old or damaged. This material doesn’t capture anything of the reality, not even the atmosphere or terror, and serves very little purpose except as filler. I’m sure the idea was to temper the talking heads syndrome that is brought on by trying to tell the story through interviews decades after the fact. The most interesting visual moments, notably, are the authentic photographs and the news footage near the end.

I think a full-scale paid-actor/set-recreation treatment would have been worthwhile and compelling. In fact, I’d have probably liked a film adaptation more than any documentary version, but that’s purely personal taste. As a documentary, I felt it relied too heavily on the emotional emphasis and didn’t give enough facts to really appreciate the situation. Despite the film’s totally unnecessary 126 minute run-time, I was left still fairly clueless and curious at the end:

How cold did it get at night? How much battery power was in the radio? Did they build snow-shoes or sleds to travel over the snow drifts? Were they able to build fires? How did they decide which direction to head off in? What was the decision hierarchy like? Did they converse or invent games to pass the time or sit in silence? How far away were they from the nearest village? Do they keep in touch today? Etc, etc, etc.

Review of Incredible Cat Tricks

With its professional camera use, multiple takes to optimize performances and inclusion of sets, “Air Bud” (1997) was every inch the Hollywood blockbuster. It turned Buddy, a talented sporty Golden Retriever, into an international celebrity and launched a series of spinoffs that capitalized on (some would say exploited) his success. It was a triumph of advertising and passable technical competence that will remain a marginal part of America’s long and prestigious tradition of gimmickry.

But the same year that “Air Bud’s” became a slam dunk success, a scrappy independent animal flick was struggling for survival. With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that “Incredible Cat Tricks” is the superior film, a showcase of staggering brilliance that has been labeled by some critics as the Citizen Kane of cat trick movies.

“Incredible Cat Tricks” (1997) stars Princess Kitty, known the world over as “the world’s smartest cat” (actual ranking unknown given the variability in standardized testing) in her film debut. Often dismissed as merely well-groomed, Princess Kitty gives the performance of a lifetime as herself, a pampered grouchy cat forced to do degrading parlor tricks by a megalomaniac owner (Karen Payne, also playing herself) with too much time on her hands.

The subtlety of Princess Kitty’s role is admirable, presenting the hard-bitten world-weary lethargy of a cynical showcat sick of the spotlight’s soulless warmth and desperate to curl up in the shadows of a broken career. Her frustrated growls and attempts to bite her owner reveal the fissures in a fraught relationship with a naturalism that borders on complete inattention. Meanwhile, Payne is spot on as the slightly insane, totally clueless self-promoter who lapses into eccentric monologues about her pet’s past incarnations as an Egyptian empress.

The comparisons to Citizen Kane are particularly apropos, given its structure as a biographical roman à clef centered on the cat trick industry titan, Princess Kitty, and told through a complicated web of interviews and flashbacks that operate without ever really accessing the subject herself. Instead, her tale is told through a humane society worker, a Telemundo gameshow host and the woman who knew her best, but who ultimately never really knew her at all: Karen Payne. Their testimony builds a patchwork of personality, a network of contradictions that denies the easy answers and slick simplicity of “Air Bud.”

While critics might have accepted a tragicomic anti-heroic feline biopic, they weren’t in the least prepared to respond to the bold technical experiments that place “Incredible Cat Tricks” at the frontlines of the avant-garde. The free-style, nearly satiric appropriation of neorealist and dogme 95 methodology to give the film a look of unrehearsed immediacy is both refreshing and shockingly against the grain of Hollywood wisdom. “Incredible Cat Tricks” doesn’t just shun the obsessive drive for perfectionism that shooting multiple takes entails; it embraces mistakes as happy accidents. The director goes even further towards naked honesty, exposing the very artifice of the medium by dipping the mic boom into the frame.

Partial blame for the relatively obscurity and general critical dismissal of “Incredible Cat Tricks” is the fault of a mismanaged distribution and marketing campaign. Only available for $25 on VHS from http://www.princesskitty.com/ (the Film Walrus found a copy gathering dust at his local library) the box art promises 60 minutes of amazing cat tricks. It’s a promise the film just can’t keep, and perhaps no 52 minute movie could.

Still, after the half an hour of Princess Kitty biography and promotional material, the 20 minute cat trick performance sequence is a marvel of minimalist virtuosity that more than makes up for the blatant misadvertising. Shot with a straight-on monotone framing against a featureless blue background, the trick sequence forces our attention to focus only on Mrs. Payne and her star performer. The owner’s Princess Kitty T-shirt is the only item of expressive detail, a daring statement on celebrity narcissism. It creates an eerie photographic doppelganger that shares the stage with its 3D counterpart, silently commenting on the psychologically irreconcilability of the actor/role double-life.

How incredible are the cat tricks themselves? After the hype drummed up throughout the preceding promotional half hour, the spectator is confronted with a shocking emptiness. Art is pulled through time towards its primal state. The theater collapses. The circus collapses. The street-side organ grinder collapses. All that is left is performance reduced to its most essential state: a cat batting at chimes. It may not create music, but it signals something a great deal more profound.

Whether you accept “Incredible Cat Tricks” as a documentary, vaudville spectacle, unintentional comedy or metaphorical critique of the Hollywood fame factory, Princess Kitty has a little something for everyone. Though films like “Best in Show” and “Gates of Heaven” have mined the pet-owner relationship for semi-documentary pathos before, “Incredible Cat Tricks” may come closest to the real thing.

Walrus Rating: 1.5

*This review was written in consultation with the Film Walrus’s in-house animal film expert, Klaws Kinski. Prof. Kinski sits on the National Board of Disdainful Cinematic Snobbery and on my window sill.

SLIFF 2007 Coverage Part 1

I finally have a break in my SLIFF schedule (morning of Day 4) long enough to right up some coverage. So far the 2007 St. Louis Film Festival has been a great time and I’ve been particularly impressed by the number of directors, actors and documentary subjects in attendance. I’ll be giving short reviews of the films I’ve seen including shorts and also voicing my reactions to the various Q&A sessions.


Title: Honeydripper
Director: John Sayles
Country: USA
Score: 7.5
Review:
John Sayles is not only a well-recognized director, but he’s also a safe bet year-after-year and so I think he was a fine choice to open the festival on Thursday. If you are at all familiar with his prolific output, you’ll know exactly what to expect from this one: superb ensemble cast, small-town regional feel, regular people who talk in with a layback ease, class and race issues, etc.

“Honeydripper” is about an African America family trying to keep their Alabama bar (a rundown live-music venue called The Honeydripper) above water despite a failure to tap into youth culture or wealth. A bit predictably, they stage an all-out concert with a famous musician, Guitar Sam, to raise enough dough. The twist comes when he fails to show up and drifter with a new-fangled electric guitar gismo steps in to fill his gig.

While this film is on par with Sayles consistent seal of quality, it never rises into greatness. The acting and dialogue are strong (as usual), but the familiarity of the script and the obvious trajectory of the plot arc don’t generate much excitement. There is a half-hearted attempt at magical realism that I wish would have been more pervasive, because in its current state it lies awkwardly on a single character: merely a clichéd combination of Tiresias and “the spirit of rock and roll.” The issues of class and race aren’t interrogated in much earnest, but they make up in sincerity what they lack in originality.

QA:
It was great to see Sayles in person and he had quite a cadre of cast members along with him. Sadly, the audience got off to a bad start with a barrage of awful questions. The most interesting parts of this session were stories from Sayles life and career, which revealed a man who has waged a grassroots war for funding and cultural diversity over a lifetime of shoestring classics. My least favorite answer was his closing comment, wherein he blamed the gluttony of wannabe indie filmmakers for the difficulty of getting financial backing. It seemed pretty sour, especially since I’ve always believed more new voices, ideas and artists can only be a positive development. As an admitted outsider, the problem in my eyes seems to be that studios don’t want to take a risk on anything new or different.


Title: The Collector
Director: Feliks Falk
Country: Poland
Score: 7.0
Review:
Lucek is a debt collector who takes far too much pleasure from his job. When we first meet him, he’s trying to seize medical equipment from a failing hospital while the machines are still hooked up to critical patients. Lucek has no friends or family, but subsists on his smugness, power lust and a loveless affair. He’s so effective at his job that even his coworkers are jealous and the police find him despicable. Surprisingly, Falk and actor Andrzej Chyra succeed in making him almost likable, since his petty need for success and societal revenge are so terribly human.

Unfortunately, the film is a bit facile in its narrative and thematic preoccupations. It doesn’t take much experience with previous variations on the plot to know that a run-in with an old flame and a nearby suicide with shake him to his foundation and cause him to rethink his deeds. What is interesting is that his redemption has its cuteness tempered by outside corruption. It soon becomes obvious that his victims are not as innocent and honest as they seemed and that his attempts to right his wrongs will not be met with gratitude. I like this type of mixed salvation more than wholesale fantasy.

Andrzej Chyra is good in the lead and the supporting cast does well in their own right although they work best as sounding boards and points of comparison for Lucek’s selfishness and single-mindedness. The film’s transitions are set to hip, dance music while Polish architecture flows past Lucek’s car. It’s a concession to style that is not so overt in the rest of the film, and shows an admirable effort to keep the pacing quick (mostly this works) in a story arc that is usually stretched into false epicness.


Title: Darius Goes West
Director: Logan Smalley
Country: USA
Score: 9.0
Review:
“Darius Goes West” is a documentary road movie that is deservedly swooping up every award it has competed for (15 at the current count). It tells the tale of Darius Weems, a teenage wheelchair-bound victim of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy who takes a trailer from Athens, Georgia to California in the hopes that MTV will custom mod his chair as part of their show, “Pimp My Ride.” Having never left his home county before, Darius and his roadcrew friends visit national landmarks and two oceans, testing the wheelchair accessibility of the country along the way.

Darius is a genuine and compelling young man, with a lot of drive, humor and intelligence. He composes raps on his trip as part of his correspondence with MTV and shows an enthusiasm for everything he encounters that seems more active and cheerful than most people who can walk and expect to live past 30. One doesn’t feel pity for Darius (he wouldn’t want you to), one feels admiration. He’s the type of guy you’d want to hang out with because he feels good about himself and makes everyone around him feel good, too.

These days, “inspirational” is almost a dirty word for me. It’s been co-opted by Hollywood, the AFI and every indie filmmaker who knows that emotions sell more tickets than talent. However, “Darius Goes West,” is inspirational in the most real and honest ways and though the camera is out of focus occasionally and the recap ending is a mess of editing, the film more than makes up for it with it with insightful inadvertent character studies, corporate indictment (without any trace or sarcasm or bitterness) and kinetic, welcoming realism.

The audience had an especially audible reaction to a segment where Darius laments that the only really dispiriting moments on the trip were when places weren’t wheelchair accessible that really should have been. Right after he speaks the line, the camera cuts to the St. Louis arches. Ouch! There really is no excuse. I think I’ll actually write an email to them and suggest they get a ramp installed.

I was amused that Darius frequently comments that no one knows who Jerry Lewis is (the leading television advocate for awareness about DMD), but that every teen watched “Pimp My Ride.” I’ve seen Jerry Lewis in several films without ever having seen or heard of the MTV show Darius loves. It sort of made me feel like a crotchety elder (at 22).


Title: The Memory Thief
Director: Gil Kaufman
Country: USA
Score: 9.0
Review:
So far this has been my favorite of the festival. Kaufman’s debut film stars Mark Webber (“Storytelling,” “Dear Wendy”) as Lukas, an aimless, overly-sensitive tollbooth operator. He starts to read “Mein Kampf” when a neo-Nazi throws it at him and later gets yelled at by a Holocaust survivor (Allan Rich) who sees the book. This starts a chain-reaction that draws Lukas into a fascination with Holocaust survivors and their testimonies. He takes a part-time job at a Holocaust archive transcribing tapes and observing interviews. Far from a healthy attempt to acknowledge, explore and understand the past, Lukas is in a freefall of pathological obsession and over-identification.

Comparisons to “Taxi Driver” are inevitable with this claustrophobic character study. The gradual curvature of Lukas’s descent into madness is perfect and provides handholds for dozens of tough themes and deep debates to grapple. His friendship with Mira, the attractive daughter of a Holocaust survivor he longs to interview, provides a level-headed alternative to Lukas, but the director is smart enough to give them both lines that sound morally and ethically correct (and natural) so our loyalties bounce around constantly. Lukas’s motivations and intentions are beautifully blurred into a complicated complex of victim, survivor, violator and savior all without having lived through the historical events or even being Jewish.

Gil Kaufman has discovered a cavern dark with moral grays and he intelligently shines a flashlight on endless miles of controversial catacombs. Though he doesn’t illuminate a way out, the mental spelunking should be required exercise for anyone interested in fictional treatments of global tragedy.

QA:
I was truly surprised that Gil Kaufman was actually there for a Q&A after the film, because it must take a lot of bravery to deal with the possible negative reactions. Indeed, one Holocaust survivor in the audience had issues with a thinly-disguised surrogate for Steven Spielberg (not very sympathetically portrayed) and even I’m not sure how I feel about the director using actual interview footage (conducted by himself with full permission). I look forward to seeing more from Kaufman in the future.


Title: Hear and Now
Director: Irene Taylor Brodsky
Country: USA
Score: 6.5
Review:
Irene Brodsky grew up with parents who were born deaf. At the age of approximately 65, they both decided to get cochlear implants. Brodsky films their decision, the surgery and the aftermath.

The compelling human interesting story packed a fairly full auditorium despite two screenings (most of the films only have one). I had to admit that I was curious how the couple would react to their first sounds and how it would change their lives. It is enormously endearing to see their first experiments: listening to footsteps and flushing toilets, going through the carwash twice in one day just to hear the sounds and noting that geese make the most annoying of all noises.

This is story about Brodsky’s parents, and she admitted this right away in the following QA. Considering that her parents are fascinating, creative, witty and loving, they certainly make a watchable pair that won instant audience sympathy. Sadly, the film fails to do anything more than simply present these two likable senior citizens, although early in the film there are some windows into the life of a deaf family. The audience doesn’t really gain any insight into the surgery, the debate in the deaf community, the effort and progress of mastering hearing or the perspectives of others who have undergone the surgery in different circumstances.

QA:
The questions from the audience were perhaps more revealing than the film itself and helped to voice some of my problems with the film and the events themselves. One hearing-impaired audience member was rightly outraged that the film was not fully subtitled meaning that he did not understand quite a bit of it. As a big proponent of subtitling all films, I had to agree with his shock and wondered why Brodsky insisted that it was an “artistic decision” to release an untitled version.

More disturbing, was the lack of post-operative surgery and speech-recognition training that was brought up by several questioners. How could an informed director who has made four films on deafness, not provide her parents with the care and aid universally acknowledged as requisite by medical professionals? I also felt uncomfortable with Brodsky parading her parents onstage “for questions” (mediated through a sign-language translator) and then misinterpreting every question as being directed at her own life and her career.


Title: Crossroads (1928)
Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa
Country: Japan
Score: 5.5
Review:
Kinugasa’s restored 1928 film, is one of the first great works out of Japan. It tells of a dirt poor brother and sister who live in the pleasure district slums of Tokyo. The brother falls helplessly in love with a snide geisha who disdains him, shrugging him off for more amusing company and driving him to duel a rival lover far above his skill level. Blinded by ashes in his eyes, not to mention jealous rage, the young ronin attacks the rival and thinks he kills him, driving him to fear and guilt that are actually unfounded. He flees to the protection of his sister, a diligent seamstress who would do anything to protect him. While her brother moans in pain and loss (not realizing his blindness is temporary), the unfortunate girl fends off a fake police constable, eventually agreeing to sleep with him if he agrees not to arrest her brother. The decision ends in a real murder, completing the tragic inevitability of their sorry lot.

Kinugasa masterfully assays the possibility of pain, suffering and sadness in the Japanese lower class. His visuals are a hallucinogenic nightmare of spinning, whirling carnival games that create a macabre gaiety upon which to foreground the misery of poverty, yearning, rejection and fear. Yet the film never gets deep inside the heads of its characters and one feels like they exist simply to have fate and society conspire against them. The imagery becomes quickly repetitious and film mires after only half an hour with camera positions revisited too often and the story held back for the big dramatic finale.

Musical Accompaniment:
Live music was provided by a team of avant-garde players that mixed classical Japanese instruments and modern polyrhythmic dissonance. Not really my type of thing, but it did fit the onscreen action and gave the whole film a somewhat ghostly, unnatural resonance.


Title: Water-Themed Shorts
Directors: Various
Country: USA
Score: 3.0
Review:
Before “Crossroads” a series of seven locally-made water-themed shorts were shown:

Electric Water – A quick formalist experiment with high-contrast close-ups of ripples. Super-imposing these almost made it interesting, but mostly this was boring and not nearly structured or selective enough to be mesmerizing, which was clearly the goal.

Two Rivers – Water on statues. 50/50 documentary/meditation. Worked for about a quarter of its running time.

Meditations on Maya – Somewhat interesting formalist investigation of waterfalls and other natural phenomena mirrored into unusual, dynamic symmetries.

The Source – Water as texture and visual pattern. Great theme for an elegant quickie, but botched by lack of material and inexperienced framing.

Suds – A camera pointed out of the front window of an auto as it goes through the car wash. It says something really bad that this was my second favorite of the entire batch.

Rolling Shoals: Skipping Rocks – A handful of the shots of rocks being skipped on water. The last one was played slower than the rest. The examples chosen were not particularly impressive and the editing was awful. I think this could have worked if it had been a single shot of an amazing rock-skip played in extreme slow motion.

Touch – Easily the best. Reverse-silhouettes of a man and women reveal videos of waves and other water movements. The effect makes the water look like it is the skin and substance of the actors. Careful timing and camera movement over the naked close-ups caused various effects and interpretations of the liquid. This film actually succeeding at being fresh, thought-provoking, beautiful and even sexy. The other filmmakers could learn a lot.

Musical Accompaniment:
The shorts were all silent, with music inflicted by an avant-gardist who was allowed to design his own “water-based instruments.” I was so excited for this to be cool, but it was embarrassingly bad and only marred the films.


Title: Jamie Travis Shorts
Directors: Jamie Travis (duh)
Country: Canada
Score: 8.5
Review:
This was a “retrospective” of shorts by 28-year-old Canadian Jamie Travis. His darkly surreal films are moody celebrations of graphic design, kitschy formalism and retro revisionism. I found all of them to be funny, delightful and, above-all, aesthetically astute. They have the dour suburban malaise of a Wes Anderson film with the unpredictable visual quirkiness of Lynch.

Patterns Trilogy – These were three films about a young couple that live in the same apartment building. The first two parts take the perspective of the girl and boy respectively and the final part brings them together in climactic musical sequence. The focus is often on visual patterns, but the motif is extended into the habits of daily life, the clichés of romance and the cycle of emotional reactions. The use of color, texture, pattern, design, framing and split-screen was fairly brilliant, creating a satisfying whole that wallows in everything from glossy 60’s interior design to the fatalistic rollercoaster of puppy love.

The Saddest Boy in the World – From the same country that brought you “The Saddest Music in the World” comes this miniature biography of a green-eyed tyke in an all-green world. The boy is a stirring, endearing sad-sack who quietly drowns in a pool of his own neglected tears. In the opening shots he prepares to hang himself, while flashbacks inform us of his depressing life. He is friendless and the victim of endless misfortunes (including being kidnapped and returned after no money was paid), filmed with irresistible deadpan humor and the warped perspective of youth. The combination of comedy, craft and bizarreness made this an easy pick for my favorite short in the festival so far.

Why the Anderson Children Didn’t Come to Dinner – Three small children and a mother form the core of the most dysfunctional family of all time. They are all reserved, compulsive eccentrics who can eek no joy from their sterile lives. The mother cooks psychotic quantities of unappetizing food and reacts violently to the presence of brown eggs in her cartons of whites. The children carry out unusual behavioral disorders that are finally revealed as odd escape routes into a realm of fantasy further removed from reality than even their current circumstances.