Oct 10, 2024

 BUSAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 KNOWING THE SCORE

Busan International Film Festival in South Korea is now almost 30 years old and now, past the hump of covid, it is back in action attracting filmmakers and film community largely from Asia but also internationally. Under new management and trying now to shed some of the politics and implosions that have hampered its development, BIFF continues to provide one hub for art house cinema. The new management under Chairman Park Kwangsu, one of the filmmakers of the Korean new wave in the 1980s/90s understands this point and promises some big changes for the next edition. We shall see.

In the meantime, some brief thoughts about some of the films on show by order of star ranking.

*****ABEL (Elzat Eskendir, Kazahkstan) - powerful, Rumanian inflected mise en scene (Elzat's favourite directors are Rumanian Christoph Mungiu, and Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni) of corruption and its devastating effect on ordinary herders (sheep, horses) during the dismantling of collectivization in 1993 soon after the fall of the Soviet Union.  Yerlan Toleutay is the old herder who is humiliated by greedy ex-party apparatchiks and turns in a masterful performance. He is also one of the scriptwriters. ABEL announces a new talent from an area where we have seen dribs and drabs of intriguing signs of emerging cinematic life. This film will not do it single handedly but has done a splendid job of announcing that talent in Central Asia is growing and will not be ignored.

****CLOUD (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan) - another poignant commentary on contemporary life by one of Japan's contemporary masters. A young man is ruthless in the on-line re-selling business (he buys cheap in person and sells for high profit on-line) but his sins eventually catch up on him as the sellers he has bought cheaply from, discover his identity and pursue him with the intention of killing him. Amidst all of this is the shifting loyalty (not love, one assumes) of his young girl friend. Kurosawa likes to insert episodes towards the end of his films that overturn expectations - that is a narrative driven by not so much a plot twist as an unexpected trope. It doesn't always work but in CLOUD he presents a magnificent "surprise" in the form of a very extended gun fight scene between the protagonist and his assistant, and the disgruntled seller who are after him. Together with the switched loyalties of one of his previous re-seller "mentors" and his girlfriend, the film is reminiscent of a Hollywood noir, a kind of review of the B-movie of the 1940s/50s when love was doomed by betrayal. Some of the framing and expression of the actors take on a kind of Walshian gravity, of gestures with consequence as in movies like WHITE HEAT. 

* DON'T CRY BUTTERFLY (Dương Diệu Linh, Vietnam) - there was some noise about South East Asian film really moving into its own this year and a number of selections from Vietnam, Indonesia and a closing film from Singapore (with French and Japanese actors) confirmed this phenomenon - at least in the numbers game. On the creative front, not so convincing. Exhibit A is this work from Vietnam about a wife who uses voodoo to try and get her philandering husband to love her again. Apart from the absurdity of the plot (why would the woman do that? Just be done with the husband and find yourself!), the film is badly directed by which I mean the filmmaker cannot decide or is too incompetent to navigate the contrasting modes of the film - from a badly shot, numbingly dull social realist kitchensink drama, to the visually pretty (in a biscuit tin way) visuals without meaning. This movie is all surface, and when it delves into family secrets etc it's done with such a plodding rhythm that you really ask yourself: who cares? Unfortunately this film won recognition in Venice Critics Week, was shown in Toronto, and heralded in Busan as part of the South East Asian film wave. If this is a shining example of the new South East Asian cinema then it is doomed.

DOCUMENTING - TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024

The Toronto International Film Festival 2024 edition had all the bells and whistles one would expect from North America’s largest and most important celebration of film. With world premieres (this year the festival opened with David Gordon Green’s family drama NUTCRACKERS) and North American premiers the festival is now an established venue for Oscar campaigns.

But it is away from all the glitz and glamor and obsession with awards and red carpets that one finds the real languages of cinema. This year in Toronto those tongues were found in the documentary sections, films that revive some hope for the future of cinema.

First, it has to be admitted that the future of cinema is a long game - in the literal sense of the term. The two exceptional documentaries this year were Wang Bing’s YOUTH (three parts including Spring, Hard Times, and Home Coming with a combined running time of about 10 hours) and EXERGUE - DOCUMENTA 14 (868 minutes structured into 14 chapters and shown in three parts of around four to five hours each in Toronto). The works were included in Berlinale 2024 but these screenings marked their North American premiere.

Wang Bing is an epic filmmaker of the intimate. From his debut nine hour opus WEST OF THE TRACKS some 20 years ago, he has developed into an astute and unassuming observer of human behavior in relation to surroundings. In YOUTH the surroundings are the textile industrial centers of Anhui province. It is very much of an armpit experience - sweaty, crowded, messy, discarded clothes and belongings all over the place. Crumbling edifices house both factories crowded with sewing machines, and workers’ dormitories where the young workers navigate an existence between instant noodles, total concentration on cell phones (and chargers), and trying to keep warm in what seem to be very well used comforters. If you want to know why circa 2016, Chinese goods were cheap, the deprivations of the workers and their environment provides at least a partial answer.

This is not to say that the workers are miserable. All aged around 16 to 24, they seem positively chirpy most of the time - maybe it’s the camaraderie, and being away from their equally crowded family abodes and situations that give them energy. It’s like leaving home for the first time and discovering a certain freedom despite the relentless drive for the machinists to make their quota of for example, sewing purple bow ties onto kids’ clothes. How long each worker’s long and hard work can last is anybody’s guess but it surely cannot be more than a few years.

But it’s not the living and working conditions that are central to YOUTH. One can always make observations from any point of view about the environment and still reach no real useful deduction. The core of YOUTH it seems to me is the future prospects for this generation, the first really industrialized youth of China. That there do not appear to be any prospects or discussions of ambition, goals and the future is as distressing as it is apparent. Even in HOMECOMING the third part of the trilogy, going home at Lunar New Year is to be looked forward to but it’s a short term goal whose main purpose is to eat and throw firecrackers around bleak fields. And while a wedding is conducted with the requisite ceremony, it seems almost like a dream in passing because soon after it’s back to work (but isn’t this the same around the world?) The fundamental question that Wang Bing seems to ask (and it has to be an assumption because nowhere does the filmmaker make any direct comment) is what does the future hold for this generation? 

Given that these films were made in the mid-2010s, enough time has passed now to see what has happened to all these people. Their youth may have passed and I hope Wang Bing will go back to find what has been lost. (Though he does not seem to have a habit of going back to the sites of his original films).

Thoughts about the future also underlie EXERGUE, a 14 and a half magnum opus which follows Adam Szymczyk the appointed artistic director for Documenta 14 (2017) and his team of curators as they seek out artists (though their minds seem to be quite well made up by the time we join them in early 2016), battle with the German bureaucracy which funds just over half of hit major art show (to the tune of around EUR 37 million), and grapple with holding the event (100 days exhibitions) in both Kassel (where the event was born in 1955) and Athens - a city chosen by Syzmczyk to pair with Kassel. 

Obviously (though not necessarily to everyone in the film), holding Documenta in a second city would require if not double the costs then a considerable increase in the current budget. Money looms as a factor throughout the documentary but one supposes due to confidentiality such budget meetings between the artistic director and his institutional and political bosses are noticeably absent.

Instead,  Dimitris Athridis, operating as a one man film crew and creative, focuses on the selection and preparation Szymczyk faces with his curatorial team that reflects some of the pressures on them from the bosses above. Athridis gets over the inability to film confidential closed door meetings by focusing much on Szymczyk who was the original inspiration for this film voyage. He is an interesting study, not only in the role of curator as protagonist - instead of artist as protagonist with curator as enabler - but also in his own self-regard and image. He looks - in partly gaunt, thin stature - like a mid-career David Bowie and has the body movements to reinforce it. When dancing in his staff parties, he flops his hair against its natural drape as he ripples fluidly on his own. When singing in band (where he also seems to play piano) he reminds not only of Bowie but also of the late Ian Curtis of Joy Division. Indeed both Bowie and Curtis point to a certain narcissism and self-image that Szymczyk sometimes evokes.

While much of the film follows quite compellingly the ins and outs of choosing works, handling artists, looking at venues, negotiating with the Athens museum, it is only in the last chapter that we see some of the pressures that Szymczyk has probably been dealing with throughout the curation tenure. He talks on the phone to someone (his wife? We only see her briefly) about how he has not been around, that their relationship is under stress, and how he is at a breaking point. This sequence is filmed mainly with the camera staring at the ground, Szymczyk's feet, or Szymczyk in the corner or edge of the frame as if the camera is too embarrassed to follow this intimate exchange or is following its subject surreptitiously afraid of getting caught. I think this sequence captures both the strengths and weaknesses of the film - we are looking a kind of notes of a curatorial process which is captured well because this is the work of the film and the exhibition, but less forceful when it comes to personal matters. Szymczyk dancing in the dark is an intimate moment but it hides as much as it reveals.

Which leads us to a philosophical point about the documentary as it is practised today. The documentary as exposition for the edification of man - the Grierson policy - is no longer applicable. Reality TV, portable cameras, digital technology, everyone cameras mixed with surveillance cameras, have all changed the nature of the form and seemingly expanded the content. EXERGUE is like a kite caught in the swirl of these forms. It is neither well laid out exposition like THE NEW RIJKSMUSEUM (2014) which is a biting example of internal conflict and external politics in the building of the iconic and venerable museum in Amsterdam, nor is it completely observational like Fred Wiseman's portrait of The National Gallery in London, or for that matter a silent companion to the young workers in Wang Bing's YOUTH. EXERGUE is somewhere in between, a navigation of both external reality and internal self regard. From this point of view it is one of the few dialectical works of the 21st century and is no less for it.

Aug 28, 2024

Deadpool and Wolverine - a crew of thousands


X marks the spot


The latest in the MCU saga, this movie about intercourse between parallel timelines with a procession of masked and costumed super heroes of American comic book lore is not so much a narrative as an echo chamber. 

Which is to say that it is an entity in dialogue with itself. It is chock full of in-jokes such as the film studio Fox being sold to Disney which has revived the saga (aka franchise). There are many other references lost on me because I am not a participant in the echo chamber - and probably in the movie going minority as this film is one of the top grossers of all time with box office success around the globe. A lot of folks like Deadpool and a lot of folks like Wolverine so on the basis that not all of them are the same, there is box office bonanza in combining the two.

The film however is not so much a movie as a report on the state of the super hero world circa now. How they feel, what they are up to, what happened to some of the others. People care about that sort of thing even if, or perhaps because it is, a fantasy which has little relationship to contemporary reality. That is one excuse to make this film which appears to have been written by four people one of whom is the film's star (there may have been more writers, given the development process in Hollywood, and especially if one studio is being absorbed into another which always leads to re-thinks, fall-outs etc). The net effect of all of this is a flat, uninspired, inward looking "narrative" which attempts coherence while indulging action effects. 

I have nothing against this and I am sure one can make psychoanalytical probes into the tests of muscularity, manliness, prowess without the usual macho posturing that underpin the film. And the mirroring of say Deadpool in a parade of timeline Deadpools (sorry you'd have to watch the film to understand this description) attempts a spaltung worthy of Freud. But all this is bye-the-bye because Deadpool and Wolverine at its core seems to lack some kind of organising principle beyond the need to demonstrate Dolby's rendition of its sound mix (which is quite good), and the insistence that thousands of eyes and hands are needed to create elaborate effects that blink past in a few seconds.

But maybe that is cinema - the product of a huge effort by a crew (not cast) of thousands in the service of a thought. Now that is a luxury product.

May 22, 2024

Cannes Takeaways 2024

 There's an article in showbiz trade magazine Variety that proposes the five main takeaways so far from Cannes. You can read it here.

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/cannes-takeaways-emilia-perez-apprentice-trump-1236011980/#recipient_hashed=fc18a256c1afca5010e9ab548484a787fb582c16df102cb779e99d5b01358617&recipient_salt=bd43e8c3a47ee8cabdef20bee5bb236764c5842a2f6ceb7f6650c68c093efa19&utm_medium=email&utm_source=exacttarget&utm_campaign=filmnews&utm_content=523889_05-21-2024&utm_term=303574

The title of each takeaway says it all, more or less:

Hollywood Movies Fail to Ignite

The main points: George Miller returned with “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” ... it didn’t electrify the Palais like “Mad Max: Fury Road” did when it debuted nine years ago. Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness” saw the auteur returning to his edgier early style, with diminishing returns. At nearly three hours, the anthology film was divisive: Some hailed its scabrous take on human nature as brilliant, and others derided it as bloated.

“Emilia Pérez” Hits All the Right Notes

"...a Spanish-language musical drama about a Mexican cartel leader who wants to undergo gender-affirming surgery — directed by gritty French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, who has no experience working in the song-and-dance genre..." Since the film is a novelty and Audiard is French and a veteran of the Croisette, it could actually win.

Politics Takes a Back Seat

Unlike some other festivals (notably Berlinale February 2024) there was very little reference - either for or against - the situation in Gaza. And Ukraine? Invisible.

#MeToo Hits Cannes

Pre-Cannes there were warnings of revelations about more celebrities' transgressions. But it's not happening. Shia LeBoeuf and James Franco who have both been accused of sexual misconduct had films doing business in the Market.

The Art of the Donald

In the absence of any real fireworks, the legal acrimony surrounding this film and the conflicts between financier, and the "garbage" appellation from its subject (who hasn't seen the film) has provided at least some life in a festival that usually sags in the second half. The brouhaha only proves the old adage that there is no bad publicity, just publicity and in an election year it takes on an over-sized dimension.

Those are the "takeaways" as seen from a trade magazine writer. But the actual takeaways can be summed up in a couple of bullets:

Bring your own money - we have seen major filmmaker/talents specifically Francis Coppola with "Megalopolis" and Kevin Costner with "Horizon: An American Saga" (two parts with a couple more on the way) financing their own films whether because they have been turned down by studios, or the studio demands are too restrictive, or in their older age these filmmakers have just had enough of being given notes by executives who are young enough to be their grand kids and therefore come from a completely different concept and experience of film. You have to admire Coppola and Costner who are prepared to put their money where their mouths are. This is one of the biggest takeaways of this year's Cannes festival.

Standing Ovations - each report on a film in the official competition includes a reference to the duration of the standing ovation at the end of each film. The duration is taken as a sign of quality whereas it is really only an indicator of relief. 

How so? Most of the audience have struggled to get to Cannes ( transport, accommodation, meals, accreditation all cost) and to get tickets to screenings which is like an on-line endurance test and exercise in frustration. Given that marathon, you are going to be enthusiastic about every film you see. And the longer standing ovation, the more value you seem to have squeezed out of some movie that may not see light of day in your home town. The big takeaway here is: "never mind the quality, feel the width."

There's a great piece on standing ovations in the Guardian from 2023:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/24/cannes-film-festival-standing-ovations

 



Feb 6, 2024

 THE BUBBLE (Barbie, Expats)

I watched about two-thirds of the first episode of the series EXPATS (dir Lulu Wang) before turning it off mainly out of indifference. The basic premise - based on viewing about 40 minutes of it - is the personal frictions, cheating marriages, and generally luxury living of a group of expatriates in Hong Kong. It's very much a "first world problem" event, and almost aggressively so. While they are a mix of white and non-white bourgeois, none of their problems seem unusual or exceptional to merit our attention to their dramas whatever they may be. Nicole Kidman struggles on like a real trouper in this dud of a series. I am not even a big fan of hers but there were times even in the space of 40 minutes that I felt sorry for her as an actress, not a character. One noticeable point is how unappealing the women are in this piece. Knowing that it is directed by a woman, I can only marvel (but won't waste time doing so) at the Freudian reasons an expatriate Chinese woman filmmaker living in American should adopt this approach. In particular, Kidman's mother-in-law, a Chinese who lives now in America, is a nasty and snobby piece of work - one feels that the director must have met many such types to exact such revenge through such a stereotype (mothers-in-law for example are always negatively portrayed in Hong Kong melodramas of the 1950s). And the relationship between Kidman and her neighbor, an Indian expat goes up and down with such abruptness that you wonder if they are both bi-polar. And even in the first 40 minutes you know the episode is running into trouble when Kidman and her neighbor end up dancing to Blondie's "Heart of Glass" in a noodle shop. OK the song's title may be a reference to the relationships being recounted but when a filmmaker extends the scene to some meaningless dance moves and poor Kidman struggles to adapt her voice to the key of the song in order to screech out a few singalong lines, we know we are facing a paucity of imagination, energy and sense of direction. But then that is life in the bubble is it not?

Something similar can be said for BARBIE which like EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE has bizarrely received acclaim for its pointlessness and inanity. If the Barbie doll did not exist then this film would not, but imagining that someone would make a film about a doll in her world, would this be an interesting film? I doubt it. The extra-diegetic aspect of Barbie (she is a doll in the real world bought by millions of people) is the only thing that keeps this film alive. Once again it is a world with first world problems whether it's Ken or Barbie. Fussing with looks, worried about objects of desire, not having to handle the real world - these would be first world problems that are generally meaningless to the rest of the world IF the Barbie doll did not exist.

The tragedy is that we elevate mediocrity to masterful or at the very least, interesting. That shows a definite perversion of values or maybe an elimination of values so that whatever happens, happens. In that, these two films point a way to the future which I hope will not happen.