Jauja (Lisandro Alonso, Argentina, 2014)
In discussion of film, as in so many
artforms, money is often the enemy. Boo on Hollywood, capitalist
purveyor of superficial entertainment. Yay on those artists on the
fringes, using small crews and cheap practices to make much more
daring, personal art. People like Lav Diaz, who can make eight hours
of black-and-white film in a year, or Pedro Costa, who portrayed the
poor people of Fontainhas with digital camera and a small crew. Or
like Lisandro Alonso from Argentina, who's film Los Muertos was just
a depiction of a man travelling from jail to where he used to live.
That one, the only Alonso I have seen, was great and beautiful, using
amateur actors, natural light, nature photography. This one is a bit
more professional, with Viggo Mortenson playing the main role, and
the film being a historical drama with costumes and guns and stuff.
It still retains a sense of the austere, of the amateurish, of the
personal and daring. I felt like it spoke to me very personally. Which, at least at times, was awful.
Mortensen portrays Dinesen, a Danish
soldier who is emigrating to Argentina with his teenage daughter.
Mortensen is a great actor, and carries himself with a natural
strenght that fits the role very well, but he's still awful: He
simply can't speak Danish. Almost every linereading of his is a pain
to get through. And Viillbjørk Malling Agger is pretty awful as his daughter,
Ingeborg, as well. She is supposed to be a young dreaming girl who
don't know what she's doing, but she always seems like a young
actress who don't know what she's doing. It's horrible. Here's the
thing though: I'm absolutely certain that they are in no way worse
than the Spanish-speaking actors in this film – or the amateaurs
filling the screen in films by Diaz or Costa – but it's just so
extremely clear to me when they speak Danish, how awful their linereadings
are. It's a really interesting experience, because people don't make
films like this in Danish, so I've never been subjected to it before.
And then there is the flipside. As with
so many of this kind of film, the story in Jauja is skeletal and
allusive. And many of these allusions point to Danish history and
culture. I don't want to spoil it, but connoisseurs of Danish literary
history will know about the famous nineteenth soldier Dinesen, and
who his daughter turned out to be. Not that the story matches up with
their lives. Ingeborg runs off with a young Argentinian soldier, and
Dinesen takes off after her. Into the wilderness everybody goes, the
young couple being followed by crazy deserter Zuluanga, Zuluanga in
turn followed by Dinesen, and Dinesen being shadowed by the
indigenuous people of the Patagonia. The only thing that doesn't move
into the wilderness is official Argentina itself, as they all have to
go to an official ball... All these elements are portrayed in the
most simple way, along with sealions, rocks and streams, ending up
like a poem or one of those famous paintings by Brueghel. Or, as I
think is the point of the film, like one of the short stories by the
famous Danish writer who's father was named Dinesen. In that way, the
film becomes about European culture contrasted with what lies
outside, the interactions between those places, in a way that is all
the more interesting for me as a Dane, knowing the life stories that
the film never includes. It was a singular experience, both awful and
intriguing at the same time.
Exit (Hsiang Chienn, Taiwan, 2014)
I watched this film because the program
claimed that it 'smelled like Tsai Ming-liang'. It made me wonder
what on earth that could mean. Because, in a way it's very true. A
Taiwanese film about lonely people trying to connect, delivered
without much language, and with a focus on the architecture they live
in, that seems very much like Tsai's films like The Hole or Vive
l'Amour. But the style wasn't Tsai'ian at all. Tsai films with a
steady camera, calmly observing. Almost every shot in this film was
handheld and slightly shaking, filled with closeups. Here's the
thing: Tsai's films are great because his chosen style is amazing to
transmit his chosen themes. So working through the same themes in a
different style? It means the film says kinda the same things, just
in a less effective way.
So the film removes the style from
Tsai, which is the most important part of Tsai, then substitutes it
with the style most common from American indie, a style that I really
don't like. The story for the film is also kinda seen before. A
middle aged woman, living alone in an appartment in Taipei, both her
husband and her daughter having moved elsewhere to make more money.
She dreams of dancing tango, and takes care of her ailing mother, who
is in the hospital. In the hospital, she notices a man in the bed
across her mother, who has clearly been in a horrible accident, and
now can no longer hear, and has bandages over his eyes. The tender
way she begins to take care of him is pretty sweet, but also nothing
out of the ordinary.
And yet. I didn't think much of the
narrative, and I dismissed the style. And yet I kinda like the film?
I guess I have to admit it does do something with style – since as
the film is pretty close to being plotless, that can't really be what
spoke to me. I have to admit, that a film with as little dialogue as
this, that manages to keep interest, is doing something right. The
architecture IS beautifully used. There is a dream sequence that is
beautifully done, perhaps even more effective for how much it stands
out from the rest of the film. The ending of the film includes some
shots held for a veeeeery long time, which I always like. And even if
'the lonely woman' is a trope in this kind of cinema of modern ennui,
I don't think I've ever seen this particular middleaged woman before.
This kind of film doesn't normally deal with menopause. And I can't
recall another film where maxipads played such a big symbolical
role...
Butter on
the Latch (Josephine Decker, USA, 2014)
Watch this trailer to the end!
Another Josephine Decker! Thou Wast Mild and Lovely was one of the biggest surprises from the festival, so I was quite excited to see this one, her debut feature. It's not quite as good. In a way, it's the same style, a mix of indie-tropes, visuel poesy, and glimpses of horror, but the indietrope drawn on at the start of Butter on the Latch is one of my most hated of all the tropes. I hate when a young debuting film director, wherever they come from, debuts with a story of how young smart creative people in their own town live. Some of it can be really good – Hi, Lena Dunham! - but no matter how great it is, it loses a couple of points in my book. This film begins in New York, with young smart New Yorkers, yapping and yapping about theater plays and nightlife. Mixed with glimpses of something better, but it still started the film at a disadvantage.
Then the film luckily moves to
somewhere more unique. A Balkan-music workshop in the Californian
woods. Now, I say that is unique, in a way it's as hipster as can be.
But it's still visually and aurally unique. At that point, the film
finds the same kind of poetry that it found on a farm in Kentucky in
...Lovely. I don't really like the improvised dialogue scenes,
they're good for what they are, they're just too indie once again.
And I'm not a big fan of horror-tropes either. But Decker simply has
a visual style, that is so extremely promising. She builds up a scary
scene with quick cutting and weird angles, and then at it's
conclusion switches to calm steady shot >< reverse shot, and
the effect is even more unnerving. There's an absolutely fabulous
sequence, set to Morton Feldman's Three Voices, of women dancing in
the woods, where at one point a woman does something with her eyes
which is one of the freakiest things I've ever seen. And again, I
like that there is a female perspective on everything, with the
relationship between friends Sarah and Isolde being the core of the
film.
If you have the time, check out at least the start of this beautiful piece of music. American film is way too bad at drawing on modern American classical composers like Feldman, or Steve Reich or John Adams. It's always Philip Glass.
Most of all: Even if this film is
weaker than the other, I'm just really really happy to have a
favorite new American filmmaker. I joked some time ago, that my
favorite American films of the last few years were Frozen and The
LEGO Movie, and even though that isn't entirely true – I like some
documentaries – it's not far off either. With American film, it's
hard to be neutral. Even among arthouse, the country is so
overrepresented in the cinemas and on critics list, that when the
country's output only make up like 10-20% of what I consider my
favorite films, it seems snobbish, perhaps even radical. I like
American film quite a bit. I'm okay with Linklater and Wes Andersson,
but I rarely adore what they do. Every now and then I like a weird
film like Shane Carruth's Upstream Color, or Andrew Bujalski's
Computer Chess. I like old masters like Terrance Malick or James
Benning. I don't need to pick favorites among my favorite French
films each year, if something great comes along, I take. it. But all
over the film-sphere, it's American this, American that. And I
frankly like that there is a new American voice, whom I'm invested
in, that I really want to see succeed, and is really excited about
following through further feature film escapades. Feels good. Firmly
on Team Decker.
