History of Fear (Benjamin Naishtat, Argentina, 2014)
Argentina's has been booming as an artfilm nation so far this century. Lisandro Alonso, Celina Murga, Lucretia Martel. Last year Leonardo Brzezicki's Night was one of my favorites at the festival. This year, there were two Argentinian films at Berlin, Celina Murga's The Third Side of the River and this one. It's rare to have a debut-feature at one of the big festivals, so that made me give notice. But while the film is quite good, especially in the second half, it wouldn't be my favourite to win.
The film is pretty similar to Luton. Once again, we have snapshots from the lives of loosely connected people. This time it's centered on a large wealthy family, living in gated communities, and their servants and the boyfriend of one of the servants. The opening scene, filmed from a helicopter flying over makeshift shanties bordering the gates and calling for their eviction was pretty striking. But I preferred the aerial shots in Small Homeland. As a series of weird vignettes followed, I couldn't escape the feeling that something was missing. The film does not have the exhuberant filmic qualities of Luton. But I think the main problem is in the actors themselves. Or it might be in the staging of the actors. Either way, they did not give me what I needed. There is an early scene at a fastfood joint, where one of the customers all of a sudden starts bending down, and then twisting around in a sort of slow-motion dance. It could be really beautiful, poetic, or perhaps surreally weird. As it was, I didn't get what the point was. Perhaps the vagueness was intended, but when it happens over and over again, it's hard not to take it as a failure in the filmmaking.
The film was still pretty interesting, and I always love it when filmmakers try to make their point through filmmaking instead of plot or dialogue. But it still felt a bit below the bar set by so much of what I've seen at the festival. However, it nailed the ending, where so many other films have stumbled. Once Luton got to it's ending, it did sort of go for something a bit obvious, and it flailed a bit. History of Fear did something more interesting. It takes it's disparate plot-strands and plays them out over an extended sequence on New Years. Nearly all of the characters come together in a long sequence, which is striking without being melodramatic, and plays out the thematic in a non-obvious way. That isn't easy to do. But I'd still put the film in the second tier of competition, after Small Homeland, Luton and Blind.
Casa Grande or The Ballad of Poor Jean (Fellipe Barbosa, Brazil, 2014)
Casa Grande is sorta second tier as well. It's once again really self-assured filmmaking, but it's also a bit safe. Brazilian cinema might also be in a boom, or there might just be a concerted effort to push Brazilian culture in the year of the world-cup. The brilliant Brazilian film Neighbouring Sounds won the competition here two years ago, with a collection of themes quite similar to History of Fear and a bit like this one. That film is far superior to this one, though.
This film follows the downward spiral of a wealthy family, living in the titular big house. The film especially follows the young son, who in all this is also involved with his first girlfriend. It's all well and good, and very filmic. The titles play out over a long static shot of the father going from the jacuzzi up through the garden and into the house, shutting down the music - which thereby surprisingly turns out to have been diegetic - and thereafter turning down the lights in the house. That music is one of many fun details in the house, unceasing cello-music is heard everywhere through a smart stereo system. A repeated scene shows the downward spiral, from one maid picking up a driver and another maid, to the father himself having to pick up the one remaining maid. The film is full of visual flourishes like that, and as such I liked it. There is nothing wrong with this film. But there's just nothing especially good about it either.
I wish I could have stayed for the Q&A afterwards. The director seemed like the most sympathetic guy ever, as he told us he loved presenting this film in Denmark, as his first love and first kiss was with a Danish girl. And the film was so incredibly sympathetic to. All the characters were kinda nice, even the shortsighted boorish ones. The story of young love was cuddly and swooning. And sexy. But all this makes the film seem a bit insular. There is some bite in the discussions of a quota system for minorities, which comes to the fore as the son and daughter realize they might not be as privileged as they thought they were. But with stories to tell about all the inhabitants in the big house, and a love story as well, the film becomes crowded and fails to say much about broader issues. It becomes a pretty typical indie-film, and I was not surprised to see it having been involved with Sundance. Perhaps that style is just not to my taste. But I still thought it ended up being a bit toothless. Only in the final stretch, with a trip into the favela, do we get an understanding of just how Grande this Casa has been in relation to the rest of society. Those scenes were good. The whole film was very nice. Neighbouring Sounds is loads better, though, and I can't imagine the prize going to two Brazilian films in three years.
The Zero Theorem (Terry Gilliam, UK, 2013)
At times I feel like Denmark doesn't deserve CPHPIX, which sorta makes it one of the best film-festivals in the world. It consistently has the cream of the crop of modern film-art, offering the chance to see the best of Taiwan, Iran, Romania, all in two weeks. And many people, including many of the gate-keepers, treats it as a genre-festival, where William Friedkin is the most important director in the world. That just keeps people out of the theaters where the good films are showing, which I'm most of the time fine with, as it makes more room for me. But then I go to a completely packed screening of the latest from Terry Gilliam, in the huge room 3 at Grand, and I feel a bit alienated and slightly sad.
Terry Gilliam? Who in the world has cared about him for like, the last 20 years? Well, I sorta did, I saw The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, and liked it. And truth be told, this film is billed as the last in a trilogy of dystopies beginning with the two Gilliam-films most people prefer: Brazil and 12 Monkeys. Unfortunately, that just means that we've seen all of this before. This dystopia was just sad, a confused missive from an old man. It's a world where the tv-channel is called DuMBC (ba-dum-tjij) and the Big Brother-like corporation is called ManCom (get it? Otherwise, the strategically places logos on the life-size posters of Management will spell it out for you) It's also extremely inconsistent: The main dystopic thing about the world seems to be that commercials are allowed to speak to you, creating a hellish soundscape, and apparantly nobody has ever thought of inventing headphones. But then the main characters goes to a party, where the satire is that everyone is dancing to their own music on headphones. But there's still insanely loud dancemusic, because Gilliam has to have the mood seem hellish, and the creepy view of people dancing in silence apparantly would be too subtle. It's just sad, really.
And, oh yeah, the main character. This is the kind of film where the main character is named Qohen Leth, after the Hebrew word Qoheleth, meaning Gatherer, Teacher or Preacher (thanks wiki) Qohen is an 'entity cruncher', meaning that he solves mathematical problems through playing a 3D-simulation that looks like something from fifteen years ago. He is hired by 'Management' to solve the Zero Theorem, and I'm just going to spoil it to you: He's trying to prove that the universe will one day contract and end up in a spot with Zero width and breadth. Apparantly, if this theory - which I know of as the Big Crunch theory - is true, then life has no meaning. I fail to see why that is. As far as I know, the alternative to the Big Crunch is that the universe keeps on expanding, until every star goes out and all matter and energy is so far from each other that nothing ever happens anymore. That to me seems more depressing than the Big Crunch, which at least offers the possibility of rebirth. That might be completely off, but I like that theory. Also, the fact that the world will someday end, the Sun will go out, the Earth will become inhabitable, isn't that something that kids learn by a really young age? That isn't something that takes extremely complex calculations to figure out (the outcome of which anyhow depends on the gravitational pull of the mysterious Dark Matter and Energy, right? So wouldn't the way to go be to sponsor more cosmological research?)
Boy, I've drifted off course, but nonsense like this invites that. The good news is that Gilliam pretty much drifts away as well. The film drifts away from it's rubbish cod-metaphysical questions and into vignette-like stories about the supporting characters, including a virtual reality sex-worker and Managements unruly son. Also, a digital shrink, who's one of the most annoying characters I've ever seen. In the end, when the pieces of the puzzle should fall into place, we might be in Qohen's head and it might all be bullshit. Even Management asks 'Does it matter?' No, it does not. Nothing matters in this deeply stupid film. As such, I liked that the film ends with a focus on visuals. That is the only thing that sorta works. This is the worst thing I've seen at the festival, and though it's bad it wasn't even that bad. Didn't hate it, just felt tired. It's competent. There are a few funny moments and ideas. But only a few.
Heli (Amat Escalante, Mexico, 2013)
Mexican art-film is at this point probably mainly Carlos Reygadas, director of successes like Silent Light and Post Tenebras Lux. I'm ambivalent on Reygadas, but really liked PTL. Amat Escalante has been described as Reygadas' 'protegé', and there was suspicion that that was the main reason Heli was invited to Cannes, where it surprisingly won the Best Director Award. No need for conspiracy theories, though, this film is plenty strong on it's own.
It's more visually normal than Reygadas though. There's no denying that Reygadas has developed an unique sense of style and plot, which Heli doesn't quite have. The film considers the effects of the Drug Trade on Northern Mexico, and it has unflinching violence and an extreme sense of dread. The first shot starts on two bloodied bodies in the back of a pickup truck, and then slowly moves to look out the front window. It is beautiful but still dreadful. Also, Escalante might actually be a better director of actors than Reygadas is, there is never the sense of the actors being used as models, that I sometimes get from Reygadas. A short clips has a young boy going up behind the podium where an official held a pointless klichéfilled speech a while before, on the governments strong response to the Drug problem. The kid just acts goofy, grinning from ear to ear, without saying anything. And yet, the shot says so much about Mexico, its politicians and populace. This is the kind of shot that History of Fear needed more of.
Every write-up I've read on this film mentions a certain moment of chilling, avert-your-eyes, how-did-they-do-that-and-what-sick-mind-thought-that-up violence. And yeah, it's there, awful and gut-churning. But knowing that it was there, I was surprised at how early into the film it arrives. Knowing this is a film on Drug Violence, with hard-to-take scenes, I expected it to just be a downward spiral into more and more awful sadism. That isn't quite it, though. The latter half of the film is a powerful depiction of trauma and uncertainty, a feeling of loss after a catastrophy, and a constant fear that the bad things could pick up at any moment. Escalante never makes exactly clear the structures of crime in the area, so we never know what will trigger the next plunge into despair. As a result, I've rarely been wishing so strongly for a - good - film to end, as I did with this one. Oh, please, no more. Also, this restraint actually makes the film that much more awful. There is a twisted kind of mercy in the film. Even the ruthless, mercyless killers aren't completely sadistic. This makes it such a chilling statement on the Drug War, because it's not evil. It's not sadism. It's not even quite chaos or anarchy. It's logical. Cold, mercyless logic, carried to it's dehumanizing conclusion. Awful.
Ingen kommentarer:
Send en kommentar