You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Film Festival 2009: Day 17

I enjoyed Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman -- in fact, I often enjoy architecture documentaries. I wonder why there seem to be so many of them, compared to other professions? While there are a couple of fashion designer docos in this festival, where are the documentaries on Aunt Daisy, or Allison Holst? I could imagine an interesting documentary about the changing faces of cooking shows in NZ, interviewing the people who are still around. Or... I don't know, a Perl documentary about Larry Wall and Randal Schwartz, or about whats-his-face who designed C++, Knuth?

There are one or two choices that the film-maker made that were a little frustrating -- the font used for the titles of the photos was sometimes too small, and the pictures often flashed by so fast that we didn't have time to really admire them... maybe that was to encourage you to buy the Taschen book that they mentioned in the documentary?

Nevertheless, they were very successful at communicating the man's contribution to Modernism through his photography, and the power of his personality and humour. It was interesting how very focused they were on his professional life, with only intriguing hints about the man he might have been in person. Oh, and there's the awesome buildings themselves.

There was also the memorable quote, "Postmodernism is to architecture as female impersonators are to femininity." Once the Postmodernism movement hit, he retired, and only really started working again with the recent resurgence of Modernism.

I enjoyed this. I'd recommend it to Ellen, especially on DVD (where you can pause).

* * *

Land of the Long White Cloud was an odd one. Cruising up and down 90 Mile Beach during a five-day fishing competition, the film-maker talks to the participants and the locals about what they'd do with the money if they won, whether they think there's an afterlife, the nature of love, and if they remember where they were when Princess Diana died. (Answer to the last one -- no, no-one cares. Everyone has memories about 9-11, though.)

One of the interesting things was how much people were willing to open up and talk to the camera. I guess that when you're standing on a beach surf-fishing all day, talking about the big questions to a guy with a camera is as good a way to pass the time as any.

Not a movie I'd seek out again, but I might watch it if it turned up on TV.

* * *

Valentino: The Last Emperor was actually quite a touching movie about two guys -- one with artistic talent and a passionate vision, and one with organisational skills and faith in the artist. It was also a peek into quite an odd world, where you hire a woman to stand around in her briefs and have fabric draped over her while Valentino shows how he wants the dress put together, or walk back and forth in the dress to see how it shifts. (I found the "people as furniture" thing a bit creepy -- but I guess that's the point of models; they're just meant to be a pleasant setting for the clothes.)

It was interesting to see some of the same characters from The September Issue turn up, but I think that this was the right way around to see them, since September was more a slice of life, whereas Valentino was a story -- or at least, the tail end of a story.

I don't think I would want to have to be trapped on a desert island with Valentino; but I enjoyed watching this documentary. And I got to watch it with Kate, which was a bonus. :)

* * *

The Cat and the Canary was awesome, and not just because they had a therimin. The story was billed as a horror/comedy, which is fair -- they did a good job of throwing suspicion on many of the characters, particularly "Ma Pleasant", the gaunt and spooky housekeeper.

The characterisation was not particularly deep, the acting was melodramatic, and people seemed very trusting of random alleged guards from insane asylums, who appear telling of homicidal maniacs who they've tracked to your house, telling you that no-one may leave.

But I was surprised by some things -- they were careful to show some of the mechanics of the house, to make the hidden doors and panels make sense. And the amount of playfulness they showed with the title cards -- making the word "GHOSTS!" huge and shivering, for example.

The music was so good that often you didn't notice it, and the audience was responsive and there to have a good time. I'm not sure that it would have been as enjoyable watching it on DVD at home; but I think it would still be pretty good. C really liked it as well.

* * *

And then we met up with Jenni and Lee, and went to The Sky Crawlers, an anime movie about immortal children forced to endlessly battle in gun-based aerial dogfights as part of a highly ritualized wargame to settle corporate disputes.

It was a lot less exciting than it sounds.

So much so, that C was quite grumpy about it afterwards -- she said that she would have walked out if we hadn't been there. It was very slow, quiet, and inconclusive, drawing out its reveal of the world over more than an hour. And it was much more a exploration of the colour of the world, rather than a narrative set in the world -- I can see how you could have compressed the whole movie into the first half-hour of a much more action-oriented movie, which I think that many of the people in the audience would have preferred.

Having said that, I think that the Festival had conditioned me to be able to handle contemplative movies much better than I would have at the beginning of the Festival. I actually found the movie pretty effective in evoking the bleak and hopeless mood of the situation, and the way that they played with the convention that something is going to happen if you aren't cutting away from the scene worked well for me; I actually found the ending that happened after the credits to be moderately hopeful, even if it wasn't triumphant.

However, it apparently put Stacey off anime altogether, and C was demanding those hours of her life back, so I would definitely say it wasn't for everyone.

* * *

And thus ends my (belated) round-up of the festival.

I've seen a few movies since then; if you're unlucky, I might write those up too. :)

Film Festival 2009: Day 16

Animation For Kids had plenty of cute films -- which is why I went -- but nothing outstanding that made me go, "Whoa." A couple of good music videos, one by They Might Be Giants about not going to work (apparently part of a podcast? need to investigate), and one called "Hello Antenna" that was hoping that the music and video would be a good enough present; a cute penguin one that managed a good fake-out; and an okay Fatcat & Fishface music video (let down by muddy lyrics).

Oh, and a fun story of a friendship between a snowman and a snowboarding rabbit. I admired that the film-makers just decided to let the whale chase them on land, for some reason. And a good story about two kids accidentally sucking all the colour out of the world, and having to send their pet chicken to collect some more colour from a rainbow so they could put it back before their parents got home. But there were some where you could feel the audience becoming restless.

* * *

Mid-August Lunch made me really hungry, but part of that will be because I hadn't had lunch yet. Basically, a middle-aged bachelor who looks after his elderly mother (and is unemployed) gets convinced to look after some other elderly women in order to settle some debts. The women a bit wary of each other initially, but eventually bond; and while the son can be a little frustrated, it's obvious that he cares about these ladies above and beyond the money.

It wasn't a big story, or super-fast, but it didn't need to be -- it told the story it was trying to to well, with little details (the elderly not needing to sleep, or the reason the building supervisor wanted someone to take care of his mother) well done. I liked it.

* * *

I then voluntarily submitted to several shapes-painted-on-film-to-music shorts with Len Lye - Discoveries and Rarities. The initial documentary was interesting, and I liked looking at the sculptures; and even many of the painted films were quite interesting, possibly because they were among the first times they were done, and also because they retained their sponsor's messages advertising cigarettes and cheap parcel post. It was weird having you eyes suggest that there are frames of pictures in the smears of paint, obscured by being drawn over, but kind of cool.

Another interesting thing was seeing the stuff he did to make money: a Busby-Berkley style dance number with a rocket ship, tap-dancing on a moon-shaped stage, a Saturn that transformed into a bar (the top lifted up, and the ring was a seat), and a horde of women with star-shaped ruffs. Or a "Time Marches On" short about atomic weapons, and how the US offered to destroy their cache of weapons if the Security Council would give up their right for any single member to veto resolutions, with re-enactments by some of the officials, soldiers and scientists. (This must have been soon enough after the war that the dislike of their work hadn't set in.)

Despite my reluctance to see Animation Now because of the very type of films that made up a chunk of this, I enjoyed it. I wouldn't have minded a bit more context, but then we would have been there a lot longer.

* * *

I saw The Artist's Life with Jenni; I believe that it was billed as a comedy, yet again illustrating that I might not have the same sense of humour as the French (or possibly, the Festival programme writers). There were moments that were mildly amusing, and one or two that made me go "hah!", but that's true of Departures and Thirst, too, neither of which I'd call comedies. I'd classify it more as a drama with some humour -- the main point of the movie seemed to be to examine different situations a creative person can be in with humour, rather than to create humour with creative people's lives as a context.

That said, I enjoyed it -- it followed three artists in different fields who were at different stages of their careers, had the problems associated with those different stages, and each came to different resolutions -- all of them satisfying, in their own way. The singer starting out, the novelist facing his second novel after a mixed reception, and the actor who has fallen into anime voice-overs for a while and is having trouble getting work where the audience can see her; we follow each of them, and they meet only tangentially, but each of them comes to a satisfying end point. And it features the redemptive power of fan conventions, which was a nice touch.

It's a scary thought, though -- what do you do if you want to be a creative success, but you simply don't have what it takes? I was reminded of one of the actors in Every Little Step, who declared that she didn't have a fall-back plan, because she believed that it would mean that she'd fall back... what if she falls? And the woman who acted as the mother in Troll 2, that we saw in Best Worst Movie, although that was a clearer case of ambition outstripping talent.

But what about the cases where you're good enough to recognise talent (in yourself and others), and have the desire, but also can see you're not good enough to be good? Part of the problem, I suspect, is that the media leads people to think that they should be able to do things right away -- because it's sexier to show the performance than the practice, and plenty of artists feel that exposing the process is a bad idea (e.g. Meryl Streep saying that finding the character looks like bad acting in Theater of War). This builds unrealistic expectations, which people respond to unrealistically (in either direction). At least with programming, you can set up benchmarks, and tell whether you're doing okay.

But back to the movie... I enjoyed it, though I don't think I'll need to see it again for a while.

* * *

And finally, I'm not sure that I have very much to say about Broken Embraces. After about the first ten or twenty minutes, you could see the outline of pretty much everything that was going to happen -- I mean, not that the jealous boyfriend would hire a lip-reader to translate those private moments his gay son managed to capture on film under the pretext of making a documentary, but the general shape of the story.

That's not to say that it's a bad film -- I'd probably watch the director's cut of the film-within-a-film, Penelope Cruz is pretty and acts well, there's some funny dialogue about a terrible-sounding vampire movie that the young man who is helping the older writer comes up with. It's a good film... I just have nothing interesting to say about it.

Last day tomorrow.

Film Festival 2009: Day 15

There's a few more things to say about Dogtooth, I think. For example, the scenario seems unbelievable, but that kind of situation could just creep up. For example, if the father had some odd ideas about education and home-schooling; once he managed to convince the mother to stay at home, she'd no longer have any external feedback to tell her how weird the situation has become. And I was certainly reminded about the Austrian case (or cases?) where the father kept his daughter in a basement cell he built as a sex-slave -- I was grateful that nothing like that happened in the film.

I think that Steve would like the movie a lot.

* * *

It was interesting to see Eternal Moments the day after Picasso & Braque Go To The Movies, since I saw definite resonances. In this movie, a Swedish woman married to a philandering dock-worker takes a camera that she won just before her marriage to a photographer to sell; he convinces her to keep it, and start taking pictures, which she turns out to be very good at.

This is based on a true story, and one of the questions that is unanswered (and possibly can't be answered) is why she chooses to stay with her husband, even though he drinks, sleeps with other women, and threatens to kill her, when there's a lovely, caring and supportive man in her life. Her daughter, who is narrating the story; aks the same question... which might boil down to how much you're willing to forgive someone you love? Except... something in me says that if someone is violent towards you, maybe you have to walk away, even if you love them. Of course, it's easy for me to say that, being male, employed and having a supportive family.

Huh, I guess it shares a "controling fathers" theme with Dogtooth too, though in this case the father is only brutal physically, isn't as good at control, and eventually comes right.

But to get back to the resonance -- there's the idea of instantly capturing moments of time with photography, and being able to tell the story of a situation with a picture. There's one photo that they showed, with a drowned girl formally laid out for burial inside, while outside kids slightly scruffy in winter coats and hats peer in, misting the windows, while the light streams in behind them... maybe I'll have to see if I can find more of her photos online.

Some of the images in the film itself were simply beautiful, and kudos should go to the DoP -- in particular, one image of a couple, child and dog walking through the sunlit forest made me think of some of the Impressionist paintings that were recently exhibited at Te Papa, while the shot of the person cradling the horses head made me think of the paintings when they're just staring to experiment with shadow properly... I wish I knew more about painters, so I could describe this stuff.

I'm glad I went.

* * *

Just came from Rachel, a documentary about a US peace activist who died in Palestine, almost certainly because an Israeli armoured bulldozer ran her over. The documentary maker interviewed many people on both sides of the conflict (the Israeli coroner, the Palestinian doctor who treated her initially, the MP in charge of the investigation, the activists who were there, and the written testimony of the soldiers, as well as what was identified as some of the radio chatter from the unit at the time), but it was fairly clear where the film-maker's sympathies lay.

I think... that it's certainly true that she would be alive if she had stayed at home, barring accidents. But she'd also be pretty alive if someone hadn't driven a bulldozer over her. And I think that it's likely that the Israeli military lied about there being a 3m-high mound between the bulldozer and the activist, so that there was no way that the bulldozer could have seen her; but I'm not absolutely convinced that it wasn't a horrible accident caused by inattention, either.

That's not to say it definitely wasn't deliberate -- they interviewed a former tank soldier who talked about shooting buildings in order to clear them, and shooting water tanks at night because it looked awesome in the night-vision scope. And about how some of the more lenient commanders would let them shoot the guns for fun, instead of just on the hour; and that he knew that some of the people he killed were innocent, and that he saw no conflict at the time between his actions and his religion; and while he thought that what he did then was wrong now that he was a civilian, he didn't think that he could promise that he wouldn't do it again if put in the same position. People under pressure can do evil things, and when you're not sure whether you're doing the right thing, it can be easier to lash out at the people who are telling you off.

Unfortunately, it seems like this sort of situation (with foreigners protecting Palestinians with their bodies) means that some of those foreigners are eventually going to get killed -- the soldiers can't stop following their orders, the activists can't back down, and the people giving the orders don't see the activists directly, and have agendas that don't allow them to stop. And the international media don't care until someone pretty or sympathetic dies. But I don't know what a good answer might be.

I thought the documentary was pretty well done, although there was a white guy (one of the activists interviewed) rapping over the end credits about what happened, which occasionally worked, but was mostly cringe-worthy (just because it was so very white).

I don't think I need to watch it again.

* * *

Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl was quite interesting as a film experience, even if it didn't totally work for me as a film. They managed to make it feel very much like it was made in the seventies, with quite a warm yellow grading; and the most camera movement we got was a slow pan. Indeed, many of the shots had no camera movement at all: it was set in place to frame things very particularly, and the actors would walk into shot and come to rest, and most of the film was languid mid-shots. The acting, language and plot was even more mannered and old-fashioned -- which isn't surpising, since it's lifted directly from a 19th century short story. But the setting was obviously modern, with characters talking about prices in Euros, and the accountant working at a computer with an LCD monitor.

The story was fairly simple -- a young man is being set for a rest-cure by his uncle, and while on a train he pours out the story of why he needs to be sent to a stranger, a woman sitting next to him. (The shot just prior to this was really well done -- we see a man clipping the tickets, looking up the carriage. He does everyone (while credits show), and moves to the next cabin. The shots stays for a while, and without it being obvious, our eyes are drawn to the only people whose faces are fully visible, in the lower-left of the shot -- these turn out to be the people who will be our framing characters. I guess the director being 101 this year, he's learned a trick or two.)

The following paragraph is spoilerific; I'll try to hide it, but you should be able to see by selecting it. The young man falls in love with a girl he sees across the street; he is working for his uncle, and asks his uncle's permission to marry, but is abruptly refused without being given any reason. He leaves, and is unable to find work, until he's offered a dangerous job in Cape Verde by a man he met while getting to know the girl. He makes his fortune, returns to marry the girl; and then loses the money while acting as guarantor for the man who got him the Cape Verde job. He is offered a chance to go back to Cape Verde and make his fortune again, but his uncle takes him back in, allows him to marry, and all is well; except he finds out while buying an engagement ring (and pearl earrings) that his fiance is a kleptomaniac (as has been hinted throughout the film), and so he bitterly breaks it off with her; which brings us to the train and rest cure.

An interesting film to look at, and possible a good film to study; I wish it had been more gripping to watch.

* * *

I was in the Paramount for Goodbye Solo, in row L. This mean my knees were un-bruised, but I was very worried about wiggling my row or crunching the knees of the woman behind me -- this meant that my heels actually had pins and needles by the end of the film, and my back and bum are aching.

Physical complaints aside -- an enjoyable film. A Senegalese cab driver with dreams of becoming a flight attendant realises that his fare, an old man, is booking him a couple of weeks in advance to drive to a place where he'll commit suicide. The cab driver, a garralous and friendly man, does his best to draw the old man back into life, while also trying to convince his wife that it's a good idea that he pursue his dream (she wants him to continue to drive a cab, since that means he'll be there to support her, rather than away for days at a time).

His wife's daughter is very well written and well played, but the stars of the show are Solo and the old man, a convincingly grizzled and surly William. I found Solo's accent a little impenetrable at first, but I think it helps that he's so ebullient that he repeats himself two, sometimes three times.

A story with a bit of a sad ending, but I liked it.

Now, for some stretches to try and put stop my back aching.

* * *

OSS 117 - Lost in Rio was a fun spoof of cheesy French spy films, with Nazis hiding in Brazil, rubber crocodiles, vengeful Chinamen, and a borderline racist, reactionary, mildly misogenist but charmingly oblivious French spy.

As a tribute to the excellence with which they created the look of an old film, there is one sequence where I thought, "They didn't have the CGI to make it look that good when this film was made; they must have been doing it practically!" Of course, it was made last year; but that's how well they simulated the look for me.

I found it funny, even though I missed some of the French puns; but it is very much Airplane funny, rather than something more subtle. I might try and find a copy of the first one.