Andrew Niccol's In Time

In Time (2011, USA, Andrew Niccol)

Films based on Andrew Niccol's stories have always presented fascinating ideas in an accessible manner, thereby allowing audience to be exposed to engaging topics within the safe confines of a Hollywood framework. This has applied to his three directed films (Gattaca, S1m0ne, Lord of War) and those directed by others (The Truman Show and The Terminal). In Time continues this trend by packaging an intelligent idea in a multiplex friendly package. The story is set in a future where humans stop aging at 25 years of age and only have one more year to live after that unless they can buy, steal or inherit more time. This has the potential to allow some humans to be immortal and live as long as they can keep gaining more time, much like how video game characters continue to stay aline by gaining extra time. These time centric ideas kick the film off nicely but unfortunately the multiplex friendly side of the production steers the film into autopilot mode resulting in a run of the mill second half which does not utilize the promising setup. Still, the film contains many memorable scenarios and dialogues.

Time = Money

In the film, humans can transfer or gain time by grabbing each other’s hands which updates the time counter on their forearm. This exchange gives new meaning to the phrase “money changes hands”. When a person runs out of time, their counter resets to 00’s leading to their inevitable death.

Time is the only currency required for financial transactions which gives literal meaning to “Time is Money” and other associated phrases. The ability to pay for things with their time makes each human a walking ATM machine with no need for a wallet or a purse. So humans can use their time to pay for a restaurant meal or bus fare.

A wealthy person is clearly visible by the amount of time they have displayed on their forearm counter. So the phrase “You must come from time” describes those with ample time.

When a character gives Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) a century of his time, he leaves a simple message on the window:

“Don’t waste my time”

These words take on a much more positive meaning in the film's context.

And common everyday phrases such as the following take on a deadly meaning in the film:

“Give me some time”
“I am not giving you a second”
“Your time’s up”
“Out of time”
“By tomorrow, you won’t have time to stand around”

When someone gets a new lease of life thanks to borrowed time, the following words take on a richer meaning:

“I never got to properly thank you for your time”

Or the following perfectly describes a thief: “All the time he has taken”

A father upset at his daughter’s time wastage: “I am not about to see those years go to waste”

The famous deep throat phrase “Follow the money” also gets a new twist in the film. After Will Salas leaves town (“The Time left town”) with his new time gift, the law (appropriately named timekeepers) wonder what to do. The answer by their supervisor Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) is simple:

“What we always do. Follow the time”.

A city/state is divided into time zones so a border crossing into a wealthier time zone requires varying time deposits from a month to a year:

“Please deposit one month”

The timekeepers are able to track all the time counters in a zone. A poor time zone consists of people with hours/months to live so naturally if an influx of decades shows up on someone’s counter, then something is wrong.

The richest time zone suburb is appropriately called New Greenwich. While people struggle to survive on hours and days in the poor time zones, in New Greenwich the wealthy have so much time that they waste it away in a casino. With his new found wealth, Will decides to go gambling where he encounters Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser). The following words appropriately describe Will’s reckless wager on a game of cards:

“You could say I am gambling my inheritance”

Philippe is part of the evil corrupt rich who justifies his rich time lifestyle as “Darwinian capitalism”. The words “quality time” or “a man with a million years” easily apply to him as well.

Mother, Sister or Daughter

A direct consequence of stagnant aging process is that everyone looks 25 years old, which makes it difficult to recognize certain relationships. So when Salas eyes Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried), Philippe reads Will’s mind:

“Is she my mother, my sister or my daughter”?

And then at a party, Philippe introduces Will to his mother-in-law, mother and daughter (from left to right):

Of course, the most confusing aspect of this time relationship is watching Olivia Wilde play Will Salas’ mother.

Comments

Several scenarios and dialogues in the film are fascinating because of the literal meaning placed on time vs money phrases. That is why it is such a disappointment to see the film settle into a conventional good vs evil chase story and not fully explore the potential laid out by the setup. In this regard, the film is as disappointing as Pitch Black, another film with a great setup but an all too conventional second half.

We have to talk about Franklin, the hunting teacher

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011, UK/USA, Lynne Ramsay)

Early in We Need to Talk About Kevin we see a helpless Eva (Tilda Swinton) trying to calm her baby down. The baby, Kevin, keeps crying and despite Eva’s best efforts refuses to settle down.

Eva is exhausted and worn out by the time her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) returns home in the evening. Franklin does not understand or believe about Eva’s struggles with Kevin because Franklin only sees a quiet and content baby. Franklin goes on to lovingly cradle the baby and play with the child.

Such a scene is not fiction and takes place in virtually every household where there is one stay at home parent and one working parent. The stay at home parent spends an entire day looking after the baby with no time for playing and is exhausted by the time evening rolls around. So when the working parent returns home in the evening, they usually find a calm baby and freely go about playing with the child. As a result, the working parent is often the fun parent while the stay at home parent is the workhorse looking after every need of the baby. In most cases, the stay at home parent is the mother while the father gets to be the cool parent. In a sense, such roles have existed for centuries dating all the way back to prehistoric times. During the stone ages, cavemen were the hunters who spent all their time looking for prey while the women stayed in the cave taking care of the children and cooking the food. We Need to Talk About Kevin examines the continuation of these roles in modern times and highlights the similarity by depicting archery as Franklin’s main bonding activity with his son. Franklin is passing down the ancient art of hunting to his son so it really should not be a surprize when Kevin uses this training to go hunting for live prey.

Raising a child is a difficult task and that task is much more difficult if only one parent is left to do everything. Franklin is an absent parent and he is not shown to contribute in any raising of Kevin. He tries his best to be Kevin’s friend and leaves all the disciplining to Eva which is clearly a mistake as Eva cannot handle the child on her own. When Eva loses her temper and manages to break young Kevin’s arm, she alienates Kevin who grows up to resent her. Kevin’s hatred extends beyond his mother to his young sister who also gets mistreated by Kevin. Franklin never clues in and fails to ponder over any questionable actions. When Kevin orders a box of padlocks, Franklin believes Kevin’s statement that he intends to sell the locks to make a profit. Franklin even pats his son on the back and likens him to a young “Donald Trump”. However, Kevin’s words seem dubious as he has never exhibited any entrepreneurial ambition but Franklin would be the last person to notice that.

Kevin lives in a family where he is free to do whatever he pleases because neither parent comes in his way. Both Eva and Franklin have a hands off approach towards Kevin for different reasons. Eva cannot muster up the courage to say anything to Kevin because she is tired of getting insulted by him. Also any attempt by Eva to be friendly towards Kevin backfires as Kevin is never in any mood to spend “quality time” with his mother. So Eva keeps her distance and comforts herself with a bottle of wine. On the other hand, Franklin thinks he is Kevin’s buddy and tries to play it cool. But even Franklin is not spared as his friendly behavior leads him getting stabbed in the back. Eva and Franklin are not shown to be bad parents but instead they come off as parents who cannot cope with their child and as a result neglect him. Not all neglected children grow up and turn violent like Kevin but when parents neglect their child, they leave the door open for outside forces to influence and shape their child. The film does not show any of these outside influences and as rightly observed by Srikanth Srinivasan, the film is from the perspective of Eva, which means we never get to see the full picture of how Kevin is influenced. The film’s title and layers of symbolism in each frame highlights the guilt that Eva feels with regards to Kevin’s violent act. The repeated images of blood seen throughout the film clearly indicate that Eva feels responsible for the bloodshed. As a result, Eva sees blood on her house, car, face and hair. The strange looks the neighbours give Eva when she is sanding her house indicate that the neighbours don’t see the blood but only she does.

Interestingly, the film starts off with a scene where the color red represents freedom for Eva. A series of scenes from the Spanish festival of tomatina portray that red once symbolized a time when Eva had no worries or responsibilities.

However, that same red color ends up being a burden for Eva because it represents her guilt for Kevin’s act. Naturally, the images of blood are only wiped clean after Eva has found resolution and stopped blaming herself.

We Need to Talk About Kevin saves itself from heading down a slippery slope by not including any outside influences that helped shape Kevin’s motives. When Eva presses him for an answer about his violent act, Kevin replies "I used to think I knew. Now I'm not so sure." Usually, there is no quick answer that can suffice but instead the answer lies in years of neglect, anger and resentment that comes to a boil in a single moment. The film gives snippets of these resentful moments from Kevin’s childhood into his teenage years but only from Eva’s memories. Even if the film tried to incorporate Franklin into the perspective, it is hard to think any worthwhile memories would be generated from his vantage point. Franklin unknowingly supervised Kevin’s killer training yet Franklin is blood free for all but one scene. More importantly, Franklin fails to be there for Eva. Franklin never believes Eva when she tells him about Kevin’s negative actions nor does he observe his son’s rude behavior towards his mother or sister. As a result, Eva can never approach Franklin to get him to discipline Kevin. There is clearly a problem in Franklin and Eva’s marriage but since we never learn anything about Franklin, we can only assume he is not interested in any responsibility whatsoever. In the end, Eva is left to run the household and is forced to pick up the pieces after all the arrows have been fired. One day, perhaps we can talk about Franklin and what was so important that he completely ignored his family.

Note: the casting of Jasper Newell and Ezra Miller as the younger and older Kevin is certainly a great decision as both reflect each other nicely. On top of that, both nail their role perfectly and the older Kevin oozes hatred and evil when needed.

Putty Hill, The Arbor

Innovative Cinema

A character is busy doing something but suddenly the character stops what they are doing and looks towards the camera to answer questions by an unseen interviewer. Once the character has answered the questions, the camera steps back allowing the character to jump back into the fictional story that continues until the next stoppage to address the audience.

Such a unique and innovative approach in Matthew Porterfield’s Putty Hill manages to blur the line between documentary and fiction by incorporating interviews within the framework of scripted cinema.

This same technique of addressing the audience directly can also be found in Clio Barnard’s The Arbor where actors talk directly to the camera before the film continues.

However, there is a difference in the technique between Putty Hill and The Arbor. Porterfield’s film is fiction that uses mostly non-professional actors but The Arbor uses professional actors to lip-sync a true story. This technique is needed in The Arbor because this method is similar to the work of Andrea Dunbar on whose plays the film is based on. Clio Barnard describes this direct address technique in the film's DVD booklet:

Andrea’s fiction was based on what she observed around her. She reminded the audience they were watching a play by her use of direct address when The Girl in The Arbor introduced each scene.

I see the use of actors lip-synching as performing the same function, reminding the audience they are watching the retelling of a true story.

My work is concerned with the relationship between fiction film language and documentary. I often dislocate sound and image by constructing fictional images around verbatim audio. In this sense, my working methods have some similarity to the methods of verbatim theatre.

Verbatim theatre by its very nature (being performed in a theatre by actors) acknowledges that it is constructed. Housing estates and the people who live there are usually represented on film in the tradition of Social Realism, a working method that aims to deny construct, aiming for naturalistic performances, an invisible crew and camera, adopting the aesthetic of Direct Cinema (a documentary movement) as a short hand for authenticity. I wanted to confront expectations about how a particular group of people are represented by subverting the form.

I used the technique in which actors lip-sync to the voices of interviewees to draw attention to the fact that documentary narratives are as constructed as fictional ones. I want the audience to think about the fact that the film has been shaped and edited by the filmmakers.....

This verbatim theatre and direct audience technique results in a rich work that is a fascinating blend of improv theatre, scripted cinema and a documentary. Often, examples of all three methods take place in just one sequence.

For example, an actor describes the context of the scene the audience are about to observe.

The actor then jumps into character in a theatrical set constructed in the middle of the exact same living space the story is based on. So reality feeds into fiction which in turn reflects reality.

This direct address technique also gives the appearance of interactive cinema. In both Putty Hill and The Arbor, the camera pans across the screen before slowly stopping on a character who then addresses the audience. On first glance, this looks to have the same level of control as when a user clicks on an object of interest when scrolling across a user interface. However, this level of control is a bit misleading since it is not a two-way interaction because the audience does not have full control to listen from any character. Instead, the characters that speak up do so as per the film director’s discretion. The directors carefully adjust the audience attention on a particular character via the camera movement (pan combined with a slow focus) thereby arousing curiosity in the mind of viewers. As a result, when a character speaks up, it is not unexpected nor intrusive. In fact, the character’s words are welcome because it allows viewers to learn a bit more about events in the story.

The following example from The Arbor shows how such a one-way interactive moment takes place. This scene shows characters engaged in a heated debate which threatens to get out of hand.

A policeman leads one of the characters away.

The camera tracks the two characters and settles in on a face in the crowd

who then gives the addresses the audience directly.

Both films share a direct address technique although The Arbor has roots in Verbatim theatre while Putty Hill is a fluid blend of documentary with fiction. The two films are innovative works that break free from the conventional cinematic mould and are essential viewing.

Drive

Drive (2011, USA, Nicolas Winding Refn)
Book by James Sallis

I drive. That’s all I do.

True to his word, Driver (Ryan Gosling) does indeed drive, both for a living and for fun as well. He is a movie stunt driver by day and rent-for-hire driver by night. His conditions to prospective clients are simple and to the point:

Tell me where we start, where we're going and where we're going afterwards, I give you five minutes when you get there. Anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours, no matter what. Anything a minute either side of that and you're on your own. I don't sit in while you're running it down. I don't carry a gun. I drive.

Given that driving is his passion, it is not a surprize that when he wants to impress Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son Benicio (Kaden Leos), Driver takes them on a car ride by asking a simple question:

You Wanna See Something?

And when he is not behind the wheel of his car, he works in a garage fine tuning cars so that they can glide in blissful motion.

His entire existence is defined by his car’s movement but even when he is living outside of his car, his internal machine is ticking away, slowly counting down the time before life gives him the green signal to speed off in his car.

This harmony with his internal self means that he is always at peace when he has to wait at a red light as the waiting period until the light turns green is synchronized with his heartbeats. Evidence of this is provided early on in the film when in the initial car getaway sequence, Driver is able to calmly wait at a red light while facing a police car straight on.

Driver is not only calm but a man of few words. Yet his silence emits a strength and portrays a man with no emotional ties. However, as often seen in noir films, an emotionless man often falls for the wrong woman.

In Driver’s case, the woman in question Irene is a perfect girl next door but the problem arises from her husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) who has a lot of unpaid debt to clear up.

One day Driver comes across Standard lying bloodied in the parking lot while his 4 year old son Benicio is in a state of shock. Driver decides to fix things. Since the film does not give Driver’s backstory, one can assume his need to do good is out of his love for Irene. However, James Sallis’ book perfectly outlines two examples of why Driver needs to help Irene and Benicio. The following section explains how Driver lost his father and was placed in a foster home.

Once he’d got his growth, his father had little use for him. His father had had little use for his mother for a lot longer. So Driver wasn’t surprised when one night at the dinner table she went after his old man with butcher and bread knives, one in each fist like a ninja in a red-checked apron. She had one ear off and a wide red mouth drawn in his throat before he could set his coffee cup down. Driver watched, then went on eating his sandwich: Spam and mint jelly on toast. That was about the extent of his mother’s cooking.

He’d always marvelled at the force of this docile, silent woman’s attack -- as though her entire life had gathered toward that single, sudden bolt of action. She wasn’t good for much else afterwards..... -- Chapter three, pages 10-11.

In one swift move, Driver lost both his parents, one permanently and the other to prison. That meant Driver was forced to fend for himself and his entire life was a struggle. So he does not want Benicio to suffer that same fate. When he sees Standard lying with his face beaten up, Driver has a flashback to his childhood and sees his youth reflected in Benicio. At that moment, Driver decides to put his life on the line to ensure that Benicio will not grow up in a broken home.

Another segment from the book explains how Driver’s need to dish out justice arose in his youth.

Driver’s first and last fight at the new school happened when the local bully came up to him on the schoolyard and told Driver he shouldn’t he hanging around Jews. Driver had vaguely been aware that Herb was Jewish, but he was still more vague about why anyone would want to make something of that. This bully liked to flick people’s ears with his middle finger, shooting it off his thumb. When he tried it this time, Driver met his wrist halfway with one hand, stopping it cold. With the other hand he reached across and very carefully broke the boy’s thumb. -- Chapter Thirty, page 137.

The film gives a few examples that Driver is not afraid to take anyone on. When a former robber approaches him for another job in a diner, Driver dismisses the man with the following words:

How about this - shut your mouth or I'll kick your teeth down your throat and I'll shut it for you.

Essentially, Driver’s life is shaped by his childhood experience and just like his mother’s sudden act of violence, Driver is willing to jolt into sudden action to defend what he believes is right. The following words from the book could easily apply to Driver...

...as though her entire life had gathered toward that single, sudden bolt of action...

This sudden bolt of action comes when Driver ruthlessly beats up a thug in an elevator while Irene watches in fear. That burst of violence scares Irene and distances her from him but Driver was only acting out what he saw in his youth. The same bolt of action takes place in the motel when Driver has to defend himself when he is attacked by Nino’s (Ron Perlman) men.

The Latin Touch & the Exotic Life

The film changes the identity of Irene’s character slightly from the book. In the book, she is Latin.

He’d been coming up the stairs when the door next to his opened and a woman asked, in perfect English but with the unmistakable lilt of a native Spanish speaker, if he needed any help.

Seeing her, a Latina roughly his age, hair like a raven’s wing, eyes alight, he wished to hell he did need help. But what he had in his arms was about everything he owned. -- Chapter ten, pages 43-44

The words in the book give Irene an angelic appearance and this is something which the film manages to depict by having a halo like gentle light lit over her head in a few scenes, especially the elevator kiss. This lighting in the film manages to save needless dialogues and give audience an idea about how Driver perceives Irene.

In the book, Driver has no money so he is always looking for cheap places to eat or to drink. However, his world is not all about inexpensive things because he incorporates some ethnic flavor in his life by eating at Latin restaurants or drinking Pacifico beer.

He caught a double-header of Mexican movies out on Pico, downed a couple of slow beers at a bar nearby making polite conversation with the guy on the next stool, then had dinner at the Salvadoran restaurant up the street from his current crib, rice cooked with shrimp and chicken, fat tortillas with that great bean dip they do, sliced cucumbers, radish and tomatoes. -- Chapter seven, page 28

The film manages to pay a tribute to this Latin influence in a very subtle way. In the supermarket sequence, Driver’s back is framed against a beer cooler packed with Corona. This is not simple product placement but the inclusion of Corona serves a purpose. Corona’s marketing campaign plays up the exotic element of drinking this Mexican beer. However, once the marketing campaign and lime is taken away, Corona is exposed for what it is -- a cheap tasteless commercial beer. It gives the illusion of being something that it is not. In a sense, it is a perfect drink for Driver as it would satisfy his criteria for drinking cheap beer with a Latin twist.

James Hansen gives another example of Driver’s preference for the less flashier side of LA:

...Despite these apparent dangers, the Driver’s world is understated, simple, and perhaps second rate – he waits on the end of a Clippers game, not the Lakers.

The book flushes out this side of Driver’s world completely but it is quite commendable that the film also manages to portray these aspects in a few cuts.

Without too many words

It is essential for the book to provide Driver’s childhood via flashbacks so as to provide context for his current behavior. However, the film does not need to provide flashbacks or a backstory because the expressions of the characters combined with snippets of dialogue should be enough. This is where writer Hossein Amini and director Nicolas Winding Refn deserve a lot of credit because they have managed to precisely extract enough material from the book to depict the various characters with no flashbacks and very little dialogue. The actors then manage to put the finishing touches by providing depth to their characters. Ryan Gosling is perfect in his role but even Ron Perlman, Albert Brooks and Bryan Cranston do great justice to their parts by conveying the right tone. A few lines of dialogue emits Nino’s frustration with his life and why he tries to pull off a nonsensical robbery. A single scene and line of dialogue is all one needs to understand Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks). When Driver first meets Bernie, Driver does not extend his hand to Bernie.

Driver: my hands are a little dirty

To which Bernie replies: so are mine

Those three words sum up Bernie’s shady personality perfectly.

Style Upgrade

Nicolas Winding Refn sprinkles the film with 1980’s music which evokes the cinema of Michael Mann. Also, Refn adds a pinch of David Lynch and that comes out in the sequence when Driver takes takes Irene and Benicio for a fun ride. The background music during the car ride channels David Lynch’s Lost Highway road, albeit the scene in Drive takes place in broad daylight.

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Overall, Drive is perfect example of how to properly adapt a book and still give the film a unique identity with just a few modifications. Like Driver's car, the film is easily able to shift gears and speed up when needed and slow down in a few sequences. Easily one of the best films of the year!

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[Update]: News emerged today that James Sallis will write a sequel to Drive called Driven....

The Girl with Three Names

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011, USA, Sean Durkin)

Sean Durkin’s remarkable debut feature manages to mix beauty with a disturbing and haunting undertone. The style ensures that a viewer is never completely comfortable with the material even when things look normal. In fact, the film plays with the concept of normality as it invites viewers to drop their guard. The first few minutes of the film appear quite welcoming as the camera shows a peaceful paradise like countryside where men and women are leisurely at work. We then observe the men having their dinner while the women patiently wait outside the room for their turn to eat. This segregation of men and women at dinner does not appear to be sinister but instead seems to be a customary ritual in this paradise. We get a hint that things are not what they seem a few moments later when young Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) secretly tries to leave paradise. Martha walks quietly and clearly appears to be resisting the urge to bolt away from the house. Her body language indicates her nervousness but she tries to maintain a calm exterior. She increases her pace when she enters the forest just as a male voice calls out her name. The male eventually catches up with Martha at a nearby diner where the two appear to act normal. Yet, one can detect a hint of cold terror underneath. This invisible tension then haunts every single frame of the film from thereon and only manages to disappear for a few seconds near the end before reappearing just in time for the final fade to black.

The cold tension evokes the work of Michael Haneke yet Martha Marcy May Marlene manages to stay one step away from morphing into a full fledged Haneke feature. The many scenes of normality attempt to lull the viewer to believe that happiness is around the corner yet the film’s tone tries to psychologically prepare the viewer to anticipate violence. Interestingly, the film also splices the present with plenty of flashbacks to further blur matters as the violence is always shown in the past. So when the film switches to the present, one expects that the pattern of past violent acts will find their way into the present. Yet, no violence takes place in the present causing those past memories to unhinge Martha and making it impossible for her to relax in her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law Ted’s (Hugh Dancy) spacious vacation home. Martha’s inability to cope frustrates Lucy and Ted who cannot understand why Martha is acting the way she is. Martha does not discuss her past at the cult where she spent two years after she ran away from home nor does she speak about the sexual abuse inflicted on her by the cult leader Patrick (John Hawkes) as part of her initiation ritual at the cult.

The film’s title comes from the three identities that Martha has -- Martha is her birth name, Marcy May is her mother’s name which Patrick rechristened her with and Marlene is the name that every single woman uses to answer the phone at the cult home. The names represent the confusing identities that Martha has to live with at each step of her life. On one hand, she is trying to return to her pre-cult life but she can never escape her cult identity nor can she erase her “Marlene” tag which signifies a surrender of her individuality as part of the full fledged cult membership. By getting each woman to answer the phone with a single name, Patrick has erased individuality. He is the authority and everybody is supposed to live by his rules and speak his words. Martha tries to channel Patrick’s words constantly which leads to conflicts with Lucy and Ted. Ted is especially angered when Martha ignores his advice by calling herself a “teacher and a leader”, a title bestowed onto Martha by Patrick. These words further annoy Ted as he is no mood to be lectured by someone he considers to be an irresponsible woman. It is these conflicts that alienate Martha from her family. Martha grapples for help and in a moment of desperation makes the mistake of phoning the cult home. Even though Martha does not identify herself, the damage is done and Martha will never be able to go through life again without constantly looking over her shoulder. The open-ended nature of the film ensures that Martha will continue to struggle with her past and her identity for a lot longer but one hopes that she can return to her true home one day.

The Ides of March

The Ides of March (2011, USA, George Clooney)

"The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men." -- Plato

Once upon a time, a good man wanted to run in politics. He believed he could make a difference because he possessed intelligent ideas, great values and virtues. But once he entered politics, he found out how things truly worked. At first his fingers got dirty but slowly his soul and brain started getting coated with stains of mud. And before a year was over, he was throughly transformed into the very dirty person he had promised to free the country from.

It is an age old story applicable to every politician in every country around the world. The names and details change but the idea remains the same -- that power corrupts, directly or indirectly. Sometimes a politician feels they are still on the side of good even though they are cutting deals with those who break the law. Eventually, all those one time compromises, handshakes and promises erode away any remaining morality/credibility the politician may once have had.

The Ides of March depicts this well known story of how ideals and promises are crushed under the political reality machine. In this regard, the film is not showing anything new but what is refreshing is the focal point of the story. The film does not focus on governor Mike Morris (George Clooney) who is vying for a Democratic presidential ticket but instead fixes its attention on his young press secretary Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) and shows that ditching of ideals can start at a very early age. Meyers is flying high after his intelligence and hard work have put him on the road towards an apparent better future. However, all of that changes when he receives a phone call from the rival campaign manager, Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), for a quick meeting. Meyers accepts the meeting request because he fails to think a few steps ahead like Duffy. When Meyers finally realizes that he was just a pawn in a political chess match, he starts scrambling to save his career. First, he opts for revenge but when that leads to nothing, he resorts to blackmail. In both cases, he uses a potential scandal that he accidentally uncovers to turn things around for himself.

The film shows the transformation of Meyers from an idealistic person into a cold calculative person, perfectly conveyed by the film’s final moments when the camera stays fixed on Meyers’ emotionless face. One can also see the genesis of Morris via Meyers. Morris is shown to be an intelligent person who talks a lot about honesty and integrity. However, as the film shows, his integrity can still be negotiated with. One can easily imagine that a long time ago Morris started out as idealistic as Meyers but Morris probably ditched a few of his ideals for a slice of power. Morris still retained a sense of good values but he is willing to rinse those values occasionally with some grayish shades in order to move ahead.

The fact that The Ides of March focuses on people around a potential presidential candidate is a smart choice. As history has often shown, a president or a party head is just the front man (or woman) with little decision making power. It is often the people working in the shadows that shape the policies and decisions the president/party head speaks about in public. In the film, Morris finds himself in a situation where he loses his ability to exert any power thereby allowing himself to be tugged by another. The film’s title, which refers to the date of Julius Caesar’s assassination, is also highly appropriate. There is no assassination in The Ides of March but there is a death which is caused by betrayal, something which also played a part in Caesar’s slaying. In fact, almost every character in the film, including Morris, Meyers, Zara, Molly (Evan Rachel Wood) and even the journalist Ida (Marisa Tomei), are betrayed to some extent by those around them. Loyalty and trust are stabbed occasionally with no hint of remorse.

The sound and lighting are used to great effect in The Ides of March as are the close-ups. The camera focuses directly on a character and lingers there for a few extra seconds to give an idea of their thoughts while there is silence in the frame when needed. The film also leaves a little bit of doubt regarding not only the scandal but also the death in the movie. This doubt may seem like a loophole in the plot but it also leaves room to show that there is someone else, outside of the frame, that is pulling the shots thereby making every character in the film, from Meyers to Morris, just a pawn in the bigger picture. There are some excellent performances in the film, most notably by Ryan Gosling who is easily one of the best American actors working in the industry today. His great performance in Blue Valentine was ignored but he truly deserves a nod for 2011 after giving two top-notch performances in Drive along with The Ides of March.

Contagion

End of the World with a cough and a handshake

Contagion (2011, USA/UAE, Steven Soderbergh)

Day 2: A woman coughs on one side of the world and the planet starts moving towards a quick end.

In reality, the end of the world started on the night of Day 1 after the woman passed on her contracted virus to others in an invisible indirect manner when others touched any objects the woman held in her hands. Her cough on Day 2 is the first visible sign that something is wrong. However, there is not much time for anyone to be saved once they get the disease because the virus moves rapidly through the body causing instant death. Naturally, global panic results as more people start dying around the world.

As with most mass epidemic diseases, a few work hard to find a cure, some try to help as many people as possible, others spend their time spinning conspiracy theories or causing more panic while a few look to make money for themselves. In this regard, the movie gives an adequate time slice to an entire array of characters so as to paint a complete picture of what unfolds when a mass epidemic results. So there are characters who are shown to collect samples and analyze the virus, others try to grow the virus so a cure/anti-body can be found, government/health officials debate how to handle public safety, pharmaceutical companies try to sell vaccines, journalists cover the story while common folk are concerned for their loved ones and do whatever they can to save their families/friends.

Contagion shows that most humans are driven by fear or greed, regardless of their job title, so in a sense the film is short on selfless heroes. A single rebel doctor who grows the virus is probably the only hero in the film but the planet could have been truly saved if every human citizen had a hand sanitizer. Of course, if a hand sanitizer was readily available, then there would have been no spread of the virus on Day 1. The absence of a hand sanitizer to save the day means door knobs and hand railings in Contagion are made to look as dangerous as dark hallways do in horror/slasher films.

The film moves at a healthy pace, crisscrossing across various international cities, and keeps the viewer engaged by following a different character in each segment. Contagion shows that a good film can still be made within a predictable template that depicts expected behavior from most characters. However, the true power of Contagion is reserved for the film’s final segment which depicts how the disease came to be spread on Day 1. There are some clues given for the disease’s origin before the final segment that would allow people to piece things together. Still, the final segment is chillingly effective and manages to tie the whole film together nicely.

CIFF 2011 -- All about the Mavericks

Calgary International Film Festival 2011

Every year I joyfully look forward to the 10 day cinematic adventure that is the Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF). Normally, I have my festival specific routines and relish tweaking my schedule as the festival goes on, adding in extra films or altering my plan to get some rest. However, this year my schedule for the opening weekend was decided well in advance because I was invited to be on the three person jury to judge the Mavericks competition award. The Mavericks competition featured eight films from first time directors. The goal was to watch all eight films in the cinema along with the audience during the opening weekend and then deliberate to come up with the award. As per the film schedule, I had two options to see all eight films:

1) 2-3-3: Start off with two films on Friday and then take in three each on Saturday or Sunday.

2) 3-3-2: Three on the opening day and end the weekend with two.

I opted for the second option and added two more films for personal viewing, making the format a much more soccer friendly 4-4-2. This format also allowed me to give my full attention to the Mavericks films.

The eight Mavericks films seen in order of viewing:

Maria, my Love (2011, USA, Jasmine McGlade Chazelle)
Heat Wave (2011, France, Jean-Jacques Jauffret)
The Sacrament of Life (2008, USA, Joseph Sorrentino)
Flowers of Evil (2010, France, David Dusa)
Radio Free Albemuth (2010, USA, John Alan Simon)
Old Goats (2010, USA, Taylor Guterson)
The Whisperer in the Darkness (2011, USA, Sean Branney)
Sunflower Hour (2011, Canada, Aaron Houston)

All the eight films are quite wonderful and different from each other which made it fascinating to judge the competition. The eight films are also clearly a labor of love by the filmmakers and it was a great experience to hear the stories about how some of these films saw the light of day. I had the pleasure to listen to Jasmine McGlade Chazelle, Joseph Sorrentino, Sean Branney and John Alan Simon talk about their films and had a very nice chat with Joseph Sorrentino. These films highlight the importance of film festivals in helping to showcase talented filmmakers whose works would otherwise be lost in the overpowering Hollywood dominated North American cinemas. I relished viewing all these films and hope they get the larger audience they deserve.

In the end, we chose Flowers of Evil as the winner of the Mavericks award.

Here is our jury statement:

Flowers of Evil is a bold, innovative film brimming with fresh new ideas. David Dusa has crafted a unique film that smartly integrates social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube within the film’s visual language while maintaining the story’s flow. Dusa’s film contains living breathing three dimensional characters who draw the audience into their lives thereby creating an emotional connection with the characters lives in Paris and a revolution taking place in a far off land.

In addition, Flowers of Evil also features a grooving soundtrack and makes great use of Shantel’s Disko Boy song.

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The other two films that I saw on the opening weekend were Kill List and Alps.

Kill List (2011, UK, Ben Wheatley)

Ben Wheatley’s film packs quite a powerful punch and increases the tension and violence as it races along at a riveting pace. One remarkable aspect of the film is that it keeps certain elements off the screen thereby allowing the audience to fill in their own version of certain events related to the characters background story and even to the cult group. The violent scenes cause plenty of discomfort although the film’s most shocking scene won’t seem as a surprize to those who saw a certain 2010 film.

Alps (2011, Greece, Giorgos Lanthimos)

Lanthimos’ follow up to Dogtooth features far more deadpan humor and less of the strangeness that might have put some people off Dogtooth. That is not to say that ALPS is without its quirky dark humor but it is presented in a much more accessible manner than Dogtooth. The material that is presented in ALPS only seems much more darker and sinister when one walks away after seeing the film and thinks about the characters and their lives.

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Some quick comments on other films that showed at the festival:

Guilt (2011, Canada, Marc Bisaillon)

This excellent Canadian film is based on a true story and raises some worthy moral questions about guilt/punishment. There is some humor as well regarding how the champ jock is given preferential treatment but the humor is subtle and does not draw attention to itself.

In Heaven, Underground (2011, Germany, Britta Wauer)

The story about how the Weissensee Jewish cemetery survived the Nazi era and continued to operate for more than a century is certainly extraordinary. Surprisingly, this is a very light tender film about the heavy topic of death and features many poetic and contemplative moments.

Target (2011, Russia, Alexander Zeldovich)

Like all good sci-fi films Target uses a single topic, elixir of youth in the film’s case, to explore larger issues about human behavior and morality in society. Plus, the film uses current trends of China’s growth to extrapolate a future where the political power balance is altered. One forgets the sci-fi element 30 minutes into the film after which the story unfolds like an epic Russian novel, carefully highlighting the disintegration of the principal characters. The ending shot certainly evokes Tarkovskiy’s Solaris as do certain other aspects in the film.

Journey of a Dream (2011, Canada co-production, Shenpenn Khymsar)

This worthy documentary is a fascinating mix of a memoir, a road journey, a political film about Tibet's struggle of independence and a look at the underground music scene in Darjeeling. Each part contains many engaging aspects which are nicely tied together in the end when the filmmaker draws a line between his Buddhist beliefs and love of metal music.

Le Quattro Volte: I wrote about this film previously and it is still a front-runner for one of my favourite films of the year.

George the Hedgehog (2011, Poland, Wojtek Wawszczyk, Jakub Tarkowski, Tomasz Leśniak)

And now for something completely different...George the Hedgehog is a Polish animated film that is a blend of political and social satire packed with plenty of sexual innuendo and some nudity to boot. The film is surprizingly liberal with its sexual depiction and is not afraid to offend with its crudeness and racial jokes. George the Hedgehog also smartly includes the impact that online videos can have in swaying public opinion and starting a revolution of sorts.

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The ones that got away

The opening weekend certainly exhausted me and that meant I had to give away some of my film tickets over the next few days just to recover. So I missed seeing Take Shelter, Monsieur Lazhar, The Skin I Live In and The Bengali Detective. On top of that, family commitments meant that I missed the closing gala film Take That Waltz along with three of my must-see picks for the festival -- Le Havre, El Bulli and The Salt of Life. Still, CIFF 2011 was another great festival experience highlighted by the outstanding Mavericks competition.

Oh Canadian weather

CIFF has always taken place place in the final week of September and usually spilled over into the first few days of October. As a result, my memories of the fall season have always been associated with CIFF because my waiting in line for films has gone hand in hand with a chill tinged air. However, remarkably last year the weather during the first week of the festival was summer like thereby making the walks in between the cinemas pleasant and fun. Incredibly, this time around the first weekend of the festival (Sept 23 - 25) featured temperatures in the range of 29-30 deg C thereby meaning some of the warmest summer weather of the year took place in the fall. If this summer like weather occurs during the festival next year, then it will certainly be further proof of the changing weather pattern.

Terrence Malick Spotlight

I decided to catch up with Terrence Malick’s first two films and revisit his third and fourth features while waiting for the eventual release of The Tree of Life. So now that I have seen all five of Malick's features within a period of few months, it felt appropriate to finally write some notes.

Badlands (1973)
Days of Heaven (1978)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
The New World (2005)
The Tree of Life (2011)

Journey across America, in space and time

Malick starts off in 1950s America in Badlands but quickly travels across the country as the film progresses, continues traveling across the nation in Days of Heaven (albeit shot in beautiful Alberta, Canada),

hops across the Pacific Ocean in A Thin Red Line before washing up on the shores of America again in The New World but arriving a few centuries back in time. Tree of Life starts off in America in the same decade as Badlands but manages to travel all the way back in time to the origins of the universe and also travels further in time to a futuristic America. In a sense, all five of Malick’s films constitute a circular journey where the starting and ending point is America but his American journey manages to easily navigate across time and space as well.

Fiction or Reality

Badlands was inspired by the real life killing spree of Starkweather-Fugate, The New World had elements of Pocahontas while the The Thin Red Line was based on James Jones' novel set in the island of Guadalcanal during World War II. Given that there has been speculation that Tree of Life might have some autobiographical elements means that Days of Heaven might be the only inspiration free film. Of course, given that Malick manages to give each film such a distinctive touch, it does not matter where his source comes because he can elevate a story into a much more grander scale.

Love and Compassion vs Violence

A love story kicks off the journey in Badlands while love is also at the core of Days of Heaven and The New World. Tree of Life features the most pure form of love which is that between a parent and a child. The film also features many moments of compassion, none more so vivid than when the stronger dinosaur decides to spare the life of a fallen dinosaur. Even though The Thin Red Line features bloody killing and focuses on a war, which is something that signals a complete failure of love and humanity, Malick still manages to infuse the film with quite a few moments of compassion and concern for fellow man. James Caviezel's character is the film’s moral compass and the one character capable of showing love.

All the films also depict violence. The body count steadily increases as Badlands goes on while an accidentally killing at the start of Days of Heaven results in the main characters fleeing the city. There are plenty of violent moments in The Thin Red Line and The New World while The Tree of Life shows that violence is always just one push or leg stomp away.

By balancing the violence with moments of love and compassion, Malick is able to present balanced works that evoke larger questions about human nature in general.

Constant movement

The only film out of the five that does not have much flowing camera movement is Badlands which consists mainly of a static array of shots. That is not to stay that there is no movement shown in Badlands but the movement is signified by following the characters in a moving car or a pan across the landscape as the two characters are on their journey. While in the other films, the camera seems to have more freedom to explore and probe the surroundings around a character. The Tree of Life of course gives the camera the greatest degree of freedom to fly around the characters, hover over them, dive down low or zip to a corner in the room. The camera even moves back in time where it patiently captures the big bang. Such brilliant movements manage to elevate all of Malick’s films from a conventional story into a much more alive tale of love and suffering.

Narrator, guide

Young female characters narrate the first two Malick film while adult males provide the voice-over in the next three films. The New World features some narration by a female but it is Captain Smith’s (Colin Farrell) voice that dominates. The Tree of Life features a distinct male narration but a female voice-over can be heard as well. However, the five films differ in the type of narration. The narration in Badlands and Days of Heaven is mostly recounting of events mixed with some thoughts and observances. However, the narration in The Thin Red Line and The New World borders on the poetic and contains words that probe for a deeper meaning. The words in The Tree of Life are probably the most direct religious invocation.

Tree

"In the morning, we will chop down every tree within half a mile of the moorage, and use the straightest limbs to erect a line of watchtowers and to build our fort." Captain Newport, The New World

Nature plays a big part in all of Malick’s films and with the exception of Days of Heaven, it seems a tree is always present. There are plenty of trees to be found in The Thin Red Line and The New World with the river tributaries in the map of America in the opening credits of The New World looking like trees. A fallen tree is seen in Badlands

and a similar fallen tree immersed in water is visible in The New World as well. The final shot of The New World is that of a tree so maybe that provides a clue to Malick's next feature. Of course, a tree gets top billing in The Tree of Life and there are indeed some tree sightings in the film.

5 down, what’s next?

So what’s next for Malick? Will there be films released by him in 2012 and 2013? People can speculate as much as they want but as the case with The Tree of Life showed, Malick will only let the world see his new film when he is ready. There were quite a few people who dismissed Cannes in 2010 because they could not get past the idea that “the Malick film” was not there. So naturally these people assumed that Cannes had rejected his film. The next round of speculation arose that Malick’s film would show up either at Venice or Toronto 2010 and when that did not happen, the clock was set for Cannes 2011. And as soon as the film was announced for Cannes 2011, it was assumed it would win the top prize. The film did indeed win at Cannes and thankfully the film’s release date was already decided prior to Cannes. So that meant the film was quickly rolled out to theaters across North America in weeks following its Cannes premier meaning there was atleast one worthy film to watch in a multiplex in the summer time period. It would have been pure torture if Tree of Life was instead scheduled to hit North America screens in the fall of 2011.

Fantasia 2011

Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival is in a class of its own. It is one of the best genre film festivals in the world and as such entertains, thrills, chills and jolts its audience with fascinating films from all corners of the globe. The festival has gone from strength to strength in its 15 years of existence under the magnificent direction of Mitch Davis. Fantasia runs for a staggering 3.5 weeks (24 days) and is a film festival truly for the fans. When it comes to film festivals, one hardly talks about the atmosphere generated by film fans but in the case of Fantasia, for years I had heard about the rocking atmosphere that took place in the Concordia Hall theater when 700 fans brought the cinema down. Attending Fantasia was on my wish list for a long time so this year, in the 15th anniversary of the Festival, I decided to finally take the plunge.

8 in 3 days

I attended 8 films during my first trip to the Vancouver Film Festival in 2006, the same number as I did at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The common number was just a coincidence but in both cases this total allowed me to enjoy a decent selection of films, spend time with family/friends, get some rest while taking in some of the best the cities had to offer. So this time around, I decided to go with the number 8 again, but the overall breakdown ended up being different. In Vancouver, I had a 3-4-1 tally with 3 films on a Friday, 4 on a Saturday and a single film on sunday while in Toronto I registered 4-3-0-1 with 4 films on a Thursday and a single one again on the sunday. For Montreal, the number ended being 2-5-1, starting with 2 on a friday. I could have packed in more films at Fantasia but I also wanted to spend some time visiting the city’s numerous brewpubs and third-wave cafes.

So the lucky 8 films in order of viewing:

Blackthorn (2011, Spain/USA/Bolivia/France, Mateo Gil)
Beyond the Black Rainbow (2011, Canada, Panos Cosmatos)
Gantz (2010, Japan, Shinsuke Sato)
Gantz: Perfect Answer (2011, Japan, Shinsuke Sato)
Article 12 (2010, UK/Argentina, Juan Manuel Biaiñ)
Dharma Guns (2010, France/Portugal, F.J. Ossang)
Morituris (2011, Italy, Raffaele Picchio)
Redline (2009, Japan, Takeshi Koike)

I had planned my trip long before the final film schedule was released so it turned out many of the films from my wish list were not playing during my visit but I still had plenty of hope from my picks. On paper, Blackthorn appeared enticing. It marked the English language directional debut of Mateo Gil, a writer I held in high regard because of his excellent writing for Thesis, Open Your Eyes, The Sea Inside and The Method. The cast of Sam Shepard, Eduardo Noriega, Stephen Rea and Magaly Solier (she stole the show in both Claudia Llosa features Madeinusa and The Milk of Sorrow) was equally tantalizing. Plus, the fictional account of Butch Cassidy’s apparent survival and secret life in South America (Bolivia) had all the making of a cult film. Unfortunately, the film is a disappointment. Even though Blackthorn contains many memorable sequences, good acting and some picturesque shoot-outs, the good individual parts never add up to a complete whole. The film does contain some memorable lines especially regarding how three different characters curse Bolivia because they were ultimately defeated there. Interestingly, Che Guevera was also defeated in Bolivia, so there is certainly a cinematic possibility in exploring the political games played out in Bolivia.

Beyond the Black Rainbow had plenty of buzz around it and Todd Brown’s excellent write-up was certainly inviting:

Born of the pre-teen fantasies of writer-director Panos Cosmatos as he browsed the selection of early 1980s Canadian science fiction and horror VHS tapes that he would never be allowed to rent, BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW is a psychedelic head trip of the highest order. Cosmatos captures the aesthetics of an era effortlessly while fusing those influences into something bold and visionary and entirely his own. The accomplished music video director — he’s done work for the Handsome Furs, among others — plunges the audience into a sort of sensory overload as he fuses elements of Reagan-era paranoia, social engineering run amok and a drug-fuelled step up the evolutionary ladder to create a hypnotic experience that plays out like a Tarkovsky-style science fiction picture as filtered through the visual style of LOGAN’S RUN. Michael Rogers delivers a mesmerizing performance as Barry Nyle, his cold and clinical exterior concealing a layer of obsession and... something else. But as gripping as Rogers is, it’s the world that Cosmatos creates that is the real star, the visuals providing a truly immersive experience matched by the original score, composed by Black Mountain’s Jeremy Schmidt entirely on vintage analog synthesizers. Just let it all wash over you.

Panos Cosmatos has indeed done an excellent job in recreating the 1980’s feel and I felt I was watching a horror/thriller from that era on a VHS tape. On top of that, the film’s bright neon tinged palette leads viewers on a tipsy hallucinatory psychedelic ride. Unfortunately, when the stylistic layers are peeled off, there is very little depth in the film. There are plenty of references to conspiracy theories/experiments but those references appear to be elements inserted in the film to allow audience to draw their own interpretations and add more meaning to the film than there really is. For majority of the film, the style dominates but once the bright lights are turned out, the film comfortably settles into B-grade mode.

Gantz came in second place for the Audience Awards at the New York Asian Film Festival and was one of the films I was most looking forward to. So were about 699 other people. Only in Fantasia can 700 people be packed in a theater at 11:25 am on Saturday morning and be in amazing spirits. Each frame of the film was cheered on until the opening credits and after that, the film’s key scenes elicited huge roars of approval. Gantz has an incredible opening sequence, perfectly outlined by Rupert Bottenberg in the Fantasia film guide:

Two young men wait among the crowd on a subway platform, a flicker of recognition passing between them. Before they can speak, a man falls, helpless, on the tracks. One youth jumps down to save him. The other reaches down to help, and falls himself. The train is coming, fast, and they don’t have time to climb back up out of its way. The train slams into them — and they find themselves, from one split second to the next, in a clean yet unfurnished apartment overlooking Tokyo. In the room with them are several other men — a gangster, a slacker, a pair of nervous salarymen — who seem just as confused and disoriented as they are. Also in the room is a sphere. A large, smooth, hard black sphere, which quickly reveals itself to have strange and amazing powers. Text scrolls across the sphere, explaining that the old lives of all in the room are now over. Their new lives belong to the sphere. That’s when the weapons come out, and the players’ first target for extermination revealed.

The mysterious black orb is naturally Gantz and it controls all the players lives and wants them to fight aliens that are living among humans on Earth. It scores the players based on their performances in exterminating the aliens. If a player reaches 100 points then they can either use the points to return to their lives or use the points to resurrect another player but be stuck in the game themselves. The first Gantz film spends time developing the characters and lays the foundation for how the players learn to use their new found powers. The second film Gantz: Perfect Answer promises to answer everything but instead it creates more subplots and weaves an even bigger web of mystery around Gantz. The film introduces a palm sized black orb which is instructing a former Gantz player to kill other people to introduce them in the game. On one hand, Gantz is getting people killed and introduced in the game while on the other hand, players are on the verge of returning to their former lives. Eventually, the mystery around the two black orbs are tied and the film offers many answers but still many things are left untied, presumably for a future sequel or even a prequel. Put together the two films are very entertaining but each film contains many disposable sequences that simply draw out the plot longer than needed. The first film is a better overall work than the second film which spends a generous amount of time on players vs alien fight sequences. Still, Gantz is worth watching and will certainly create a huge fan base.

Article 12 explores how modern technology is reducing people’s right to privacy without people’s awareness. The film features prominent speakers, including Noam Chomsky, and echoes George Orwell in exploring the eroding private/public boundaries in modern Western society. However, the 75 minute film basically contains 10-15 minutes of interesting ideas and spends the rest of the time repeating the same messages over and over. As a result, the film easily wears
out its welcome and ends up being quite tiresome.

F.J Ossang’s Dharma Guns is a film with great potential and incredible style. The first image in the film is in color but the rest of the film is in black and white and features a possible end of the world scenario where a mysterious drug is turning people into zombies. The key to save the world lies in an unfinished script that Stan Van Der Decken cannot complete because of his memory loss. On top of that, he cannot get a hold of his mysterious agent and is hounded by an underground group called Dharma Guns. No zombie is ever shown on screen and that gives the film an air of mystery and doubt. Plus, there are many engaging ideas presented in Dharma Guns but unfortunately, the end result is a lackluster film that cannot thread all the elements together.

One of the things I was most looking forward to in Fantasia was seeing a midnight feature in the Hall theater. The opportunity to witness a packed audience elevate the thrills of a horror feature was one I did not want to miss. So I was surprized when the midnight feature Morituris was not even half full. The feature prior to Morituris was jam-packed and had an after-party around midnight so maybe that drew some people away. Or people were more interested in the International Fireworks competition taking place in Montreal that night. Whatever the reasons, it turned out the audience was smart enough in staying away. However, the lack of crowd did not deter director Raffaele Picchio who was in great spirits because this screening marked the international premier of his film. He told the audience that they would witness a "nasty" film and he was right. Although before the nastiness started, Morituris starts off in a flashback mode with found camera footage showing a family’s picnic going horribly wrong when the family is killed by a mysterious evil force from within the forest. The film then cuts to the present when a speeding car packed with five people, three men and two women, is en route to the same forest for a rave party. The conversations flow naturally among the five in the film’s best segment. However, once the five enter the forest, things go wrong as expected. In keeping with the horror film template, the nasty things happen to the women first. The suffering of the men is not far away but when the evil finds the men, it is in the form of men in body paint and gladiator attire, looking more comical than scary. There are some torture segments in the finale but the film ends up being an awful viewing, mostly due to uninspired direction in the final third. As an aside, one would think that in this day and age needless abuse of female characters in horror films would stop but directors keep thinking of new ways to inflict pain to female characters, all for the sake of shock.

Redline, the eight film, was pure fun. Once again, it was incredible to see a packed hall at 11 am on sunday morning, this time cheering on a Japanese anime. The story of the film features incredible car-racing sequences in a futuristic Japan where races take place on various planets between aliens and humans alike. The cars of Speed Racer have nothing on Redline which feature nitro-powered cars flying at unimaginable speeds. The high speeds led to the racers eyes on the verge of popping out and eventually result in complete breakdown of the cars. One incredible sequence in the film features a disintegration of a car but the human drivers fly across the track to still finish the race.

Ratings & Overall comments

A rough ratings of the films out of 10:

Blackthorn: 5.5
Beyond the Black Rainbow: 6.5
Gantz: 8
Gantz: Perfect Answer: 7
Article 12: 5
Dharma Guns: 6
Morituris: 2
Redline: 8

Unfortunately, my picks may not have resulted in too many stellar films but overall, Fantasia was the best film festival experience of my life. As diverse as the films were, they still demonstrated purposeful programming and each film fit perfectly within the festival’s desire to hunt the world for genre films which push the envelope and are not afraid to take risks. Plus, the framework around the festival ensures a great experience. The two main theaters, Hall (capacity 700) and J.A. De Seve Theater (capacity 173), are not only across the road from each other but are connected by an underground tunnel. The tunnel also leads to the Metro, the most efficient metro system in Canada, which ensures one can get to most spots around Montreal in minutes. Also, there is an excellent selection of restaurants, cafes and brewpubs around the two theaters which means a person is always well nourished in between the films.

The timing of the film festival in summer also means that one can enjoy the great weather of Montreal which makes for relaxing walks in-between destinations even late at night (say 2 am after a midnight feature) when downtown is still bursting with life. Given that that film festival lasts 24 days means a minimum of a one week trip is required to properly assess the films and soak in the best that Montreal has to offer.

Note: some of the brewpubs and cafes I sampled during Fantasia are listed in a separate post.

Around the world in 24 films

Just a brief mention of some worthy newer films from around the world. Some of these films will surely end up in my year end best list.

Note: films arranged as per country.

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El Camino du punto (2010, Argentina, Sebastián Díaz Morales)

The title's translation, The Way Between Two Points, perfectly sums the film which is about a character's journey from point A to point B. There are only a few minutes of dialog at the start and these dialogues are the weakest aspect of the film as the words needlessly try to give the story a higher worldly purpose. After the words are delivered, the film settles into a beautiful journey where we get both an overhead shot of the landscape that is to be covered and the ground level footage of the journey. The singular focus of the journey at all costs reminds a bit about The Limits of Control and Birdsong but El Camino du punto is free from any dramatic or religious baggage of those two other films.

Kill the Referee (2009, Belgium, Y.Hinant/E.Cardot/L.Delphine)

This Belgium soccer documentary does not have any narration or title cards to guide the audience but instead dives right into the action. Like the Zidane film, this documentary gives a completely different perspective to what one experiences when watching a soccer game. One gets to see the game from an on-field angle, but instead of a player's point of view, we see the game from a referee's angle.

This film is essential viewing for anyone who has ever seen a soccer game. And since the film is artistically shot and edited, it offers non-soccer fans plenty to chew on as well. The games shown in the film are from Euro 2008 and if a person is familiar with some of the players, then that enhances the experience. This film does an excellent job in showing us the human side of the refs and also some of the egos that operate in the game.

A Simple Rhythm (2010, Canada, Tess Girard)

A poetic and mesmerizing look at simple day to day rhythms that shape our lives. The film artfully layers images with sounds to create a calming and fascinating experiencing. In between the images are thoughtful interviews on a variety of subjects, ranging from music to mathematics.

Viva Riva! (2010, Congo co-production, Djo Munga)

In the TIFF write-up, Cameron Bailey noted:

Finally! An African feature film that merges the pleasures of Nollywood with sleek camerawork, satisfying genre thrills and a rare look inside the very heart of the continent. Viva Riva! is unprecedented: a story set in contemporary Democratic Republic of the Congo full of intrigue, music and a surprisingly frank approach to sex.

That is a perfect description as Viva Riva! molds elements of oil trafficking, corruption, violence and sex into an enjoyable film. In the fashion of Nollywood films, the villain is sinister and over the top while the hero, Riva, is a charming intelligent man who can have any woman he wants. Ofcourse, Riva falls for the one woman who will lead him into trouble but Nora is too seductive to resist. The camera ensures that Nora's beauty and Kinshasa's buzzing street life are captured nicely.

Valhalla Rising (2010, Denmark/UK, Nicolas Winding Refn)

The film starts off in an ancient time when men settled their disputes face to face in a bloody hand to hand combat. However, as the warrior crew enters a new land, the change in warfare tactics ensures that man will have to learn to adapt in order to survive. In the new land, arrows fired from unseen enemies lead to death meaning one could die at the hands of someone they do not even see.

A savage bloody film that is also one of the year's best.

Scheherazade Tell me a Story (2009, Egypt, Yousry Nasrallah)

The film uses a soap opera/talk show format to probe at deeper issues not only within Egyptian society but the rest of the Middle East especially regarding the treatment of women in households and at workplaces. It helps that the film is well acted and packed with more gorgeous women than one would find even in a Pedro Almodovar movie. Overall, a pleasurable film.

Steam of Life (2010, Finland, Joonas Berghäll/Mika Hotakainen)

A beautifully shot contemplative film that places the viewer in an awkward
position of a voyeur observing Finnish men pour their heart out while sitting in a variety of saunas. The film remarkably shows that any enclosed space can be transformed into a sauna, even a phone booth, and the calming effect of the steam is essential to allow men to tackle life's daily burdens.

Win/Win (2010, Holland, Jaap van Heusden)

This Dutch film about a stock exchange manages to find a calm balanced middle ground in between Ben Younger's Boiler Room and Aronofsky's Pi. In fact, the main character in Win/Win Ivan looks like a more laid back version of Max from Pi. Win/Win artfully shows that it is possible to find zen like moments even in a high octane stock market setting.

Gallants (2009, Hong Kong, Clement Sze-Kit Cheng/Chi-kin Kwok)

A homage to the 1970’s Shaw Brothers films, complete with amazing fight sequences, memorable characters and over the top hilarious situations. Even if one is not familiar with older kung-fu movies, this film stands on its own. Knowing about the Shaw Brothers films will just enhance the experience. There are some moments when the action stalls but the film has many high energy moments. The homage would have been perfect if the film title was something which captured the story’s spirit such as “Gates of Law” or if the title used a variation of the words “Dragon”, “Tiger” or “kick”.

Ocean of an Old Man (2008, India, Rajesh Shera)

Simple. Beautiful. Meditative. Haunting. Tragic.

The old man in the title is played by Tom Alter, easily recognizable to Bollywood fans because he always played an evil villain in Indian films, and was almost always an evil British general in period films. In Rajesh Shera's film, Alter's character plays a school teacher who is devastated by the loss of his wife and daughter in 2004's tsunami. Unfortunately, he can never forget his loss as he has to cross the same ocean everyday to teach his students. To make matters worse, he has to listen to the ocean waves crashing onto the shore and rocks every night while in the day, his students paintings and stories revolve only around the ocean.

There isn’t much dialogue in the film but that does not matter because the beautiful images and fascinating sounds convey the tragedy and gravity of the situation. Also, the sound track is smartly turned off when the sounds of the ocean fill the screen. The minimalist style might frustrate some viewers but patient viewers will be rewarded with an absolute gem of a film.

Peepli Live (2010, India, Anusha Rizvi)

A smart satire that uses the real life story about farmer suicides to poke fun at the mercenary Indian satellite tv channels preoccupied with ratings. However, Peepli Live does feel like two films in one. The film starts off in the village but then lets the media circus take things over. At times, the two stories (farmer suicide, tv ratings circus) compete with each other and eventually the farmer story is brushed aside. Also, there are some moments where the film un-necessarily goes over the top (such as the mention of Saif Ali Khan's grade 8 kiss) when a more subtle approach would have sufficed.

Overall, it does feel like a lost opportunity to make a truly great film. That being said, the ending is perfect when the camera shows us images without any words.

Gorbaciòf (2010, Italy, Stefano Incerti)

The sound of Gorbaciòf's proud walk on the streets and the sound of money stay long in the memory after the film ends. Many films show bundles of money but not many films actually let the sound of crisp notes being counted filter through to the audience. Gorbaciòf counts money everyday both in his day job and at night with his bribe money. The dangerous combination of taking bribes and gambling is never a safe bet for a trouble free life but Gorbaciòf's problems multiply when he falls for a Chinese woman who does not speak any Italian. Gorbaciòf wants to be the woman's knight in shining armour and in order to ensure a better life for her, he needs more money. That need leads him down a slippery yet predictable slope. The love angle is the film's weakest aspect and if it were not for the love story, Incerti's film would be one of the year's best films.

On another note: the male leads in The American, Gorbaciòf and The Robber are all related with their dangerous ways of life. It is not surprizing that the ending of all three films finds these three very different men (an American, Austrian and an Italian) in the exact same situation looking through the glass towards a better future.

The Tiger Factory (2010, Malaysia/Japan, Woo Ming Jin)

The film follows a young girl, Ping, in her attempt to gather money to illegally leave Malaysia for Japan. Ping's life is controlled by her aunt who witholds her passport and pays for men to get Ping pregnant so that the aunt can sell the baby. The story sounds bleak but thanks to the cinematography and lighting, the film does not feel gloomy and instead makes for a fascinating viewing. The style evokes the Dardennes, albeit with a bit of lightness.

Woman on Fire Looks for Water (2009, Malaysia/South Korea, Woo Ming Jin)

This is one of the most visually beautiful films of the year!! The film is about two love tales on opposite ends of the age spectrum. One story shows how a young boy is forced to take his family's fortune into account before deciding upon marriage while the other story shows if love is not truly acknowledged, then even at old age, it continues to torment and bite. In between these two stories, there are many remakarable shots which show the fishing business and every day life, plus there is plenty of humor shown in a subtle manner.

Kinatay (2009, Philippines, Brillante Mendoza)

The first 20-30 min of Kinatay perfectly capture the sights and sounds of the street life. After that, the camera moves inside a van and this is where the negative publicity regarding the film starts. Although it is hard to understand what all the fuss is about because there is nothing graphic or gory that is shown but instead we mostly listen to sounds of the horrible butchering and only see a tiny glimpse of the murder weapon. The briefly lit scenes allows viewers to fill in the horror themselves using the audio cues. Maybe in a theater, these audio cues are magnified thereby causing a claustorphobic effect.

Still, the film is powerful in how it goes about showing what it does and it is hard to be not shook up by the ending. I can see why Mendoza was awarded the best director for this film in Cannes 2009.

Lola (2009, Philippines, Brillante Mendoza)

Lola is a touching film regarding two grandmothers and how they go about dealing with their lives while finding themselves as opponents in a criminal case. One woman is seeking justice for her grandson’s murder, while the other is trying to save her grandson from going to jail for murdering the other woman’s grandson. The film switches perspective from one grandmother to the other and this method highlights many relevant points such as the true price of justice for people who are trying to make ends meet.

Manilla Skies (2009, Philippines/USA, Raymond Red)

The start gives a false impression of being another film depicting the frustration of being jobless in a major Asian city but the story then takes a dramatic turn towards a heist and an even more unexpected turn towards a plane hijacking. The cyclic nature of the ending, when one of the final scenes is neatly tied with the opening shot, depicts a beautiful pattern to the story. The lead performance is amazing and the film grows in strength as it moves along. Also, the dark/grayish visuals perfectly echo the gloomy mood of the character's situation. Amazingly, the film is inspired by a true story.

Essential Killing (2010, Poland co-production, Jerzy Skolimowski)

Like in Valhalla Rising, the male lead in Essential Killing never speaks a single word. Yet, Vincent Gallo's character does not need to talk as his expressions of pain and anguish perfectly convey his inner feelings. Gallo plays a taliban fighter who is captured in Afghanistan but finds himself on the run in a frozen European country side after a series of events lead to his escape. From then on, the film alternates between chase scenarios as the dogs/soldiers close down on Gallo's character and survival scenes where his character does anything just to survive in the brutal cold. It is understandable to see why Gallo won best actor in Venice for this film as his raw performance shows how much can be conveyed without needless dramatic dialogues.

Between Two Worlds (2009, Sri Lanka, Vimukthi Jayasundara)

This Sri Lankan film is a good example of what Bresson mentioned in his book, Notes on the Cinematographer, in the Sight and Hearing section:

”What is for the eye must not duplicate what is for the ear."

”If the eye is entirely won, give nothing or almost nothing to the ear. (And vice versa, if the ear is entirely won, give nothing to the eye.) One cannot be at the same time all eye and all ear.

”If a sound is the obligatory complement of an image, give preponderance either to the sound, or to the image. If equal, they damage or kill each other, as we say of colours.

Between Two Worlds has a beautiful visual and aural language while the story has a nice fable and mythical element to it. There are some scenes which fluidly mesh the imagined and real with a smooth easy manner. The only minor complaint is that some scenes appear staged, drawing attention to themselves and thereby weakening the dramatic effect of the situation. Two such examples are the youthful mob at the film's start and the dance by the river near the end.

Guest (2010, Spain, José Luis Guerín)

Guest is José Luis Guerín's travelogue of his year long film festival circuit tour from September 2007 till September 2008 with his film In the City of Sylvia. Even though Guest starts and ends at the Venice Film Festival, Guest is not a documentary about film festivals. Instead, it is a truly global film that gives a glimpse into everyday life in open public squares in various places such as Bolivia, Columbia, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba and Hong Kong. Places that do not have open squares are not covered by his film which naturally means that Canada and the US are not shown on the screen. For example, Guerín was in Vancouver in 2007 to premier In the City of Sylvia but Vancouver does not get a single shot in the film. Basically, any place that did not have adequate public space would not have allowed Guerín to interact with the locals and get their views. Guerín freely filmed everything around him and was not shy to keep his camera rolling. As a result, we get to witness some fascinating parallels regarding religion in diverse places such as Brazil and Hong Kong. Guest takes about 20 minutes to spring to life but once it awakens, it has plenty of interesting stories to share.

Woman without a Piano (2009, Spain, Javier Rebollo)

A sublime film that uses a low key treatment in depicting a single night's events. The camera quietly follows Carmen around and the events that unfold around her are hilarious and sad at the same time. The film is set in Madrid and in some alleys we see situations which Pedro Almovodar uses in his films but Woman without a Piano is an art film through and through, with a pinch of comedy.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010, Thailand co-production, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Joe's film is a visual treat like his previous works but instead of the two part structure found in Tropical Malady and Syndromes and a Century, Uncle Boonmee is a single flowing work that manages to blend the two worlds of humans and spirits. This is his most accessible work and also his most openly political. In Blissfully Yours one could faintly hear the tank fire going on in the distance but the soldiers were not shown. However, in Uncle Boonmee we get to see futuristic pictures (really the present) of army actions. As enchanting as the film is, it pales slightly to the hypnotic beauty of Tropical Malady and Syndromes... Still even a Joe lite work is better than most current world cinema.

Four Lions (2010, UK, Christopher Morris)

A well made and acted film from the two writers of the witty In the Loop. Four Lions tries to use the same humour style of In the Loop with mixed results. The humour style of In the Loop made sense because it dealt with the circus like world of politics where a single sentence can be endlessly interpreted and rehashed. However, that style is more difficult to pull off with a topic of terrorism and suicide bombers. In that regard, one can watch Four Lions in a state of shocked horror and find it entirely offensive. The film is also brave in its treatment of the subject, especially since neither of the writers or director is Muslim.

Spoiler note:*****

Credit must go to the film-makers for remarkably maintaining the same consistent tone throughout even after the characters start dying whereas it would have been easier for the film to have taken on a more serious tone after the first accidental death.

Monogamy (2010, USA, Dana Adam Shapiro)

A fascinating modern day treatment of Antonioni’s Blow Up. Blow Up was made during the free love decade where the main character had no problem getting any woman he wanted so solving the murder mystery became a more important challenge for him. But in modern times, free love isn’t that readily available. And the presence of email and text messaging has changed the nature of relationships by limiting face to face hook ups. As a result, Theo’s (Chris Messina) “free love” is reduced to a voyeuristic kick. Things are complicated by the fact that Theo is on the verge of getting married and already he feels the walls closing in on him.

The acting is stellar, especially in the scene where Theo’s fiancée catches him looking at pics of another girl. The ending is not as dramatic as we are led to believe. The true identity of Theo's subject is quite clear but maybe the ending was supposed to emphasize that Theo was so blinded by the little details in the photos he took that he missed the obvious bigger picture.

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Top 5 in order of preference:

1) Kill the Referee
2) Ocean of an Old Man
3) Woman on Fire Looks for Water
4) Valhalla Rising
5) Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

I cannot praise Kill the Referee enough. The fact that the film is about soccer is also its biggest handicap because that would mean limited release and certainly no press coverage in North America. I have read rumours that UEFA might have had the final say on what could make the final cut but regardless of the truth, what is presented on screen is fascinating enough. The footage allows the audience to identify some of the egos, heroes and villains that operate in the game.