12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST (A fost sau n-a fost?) (Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania, 2006, 89 m.). SPOILER ALERT! Here is political farce at its best. The film is set in a small Romanian city on December 22, 2005, the 16th anniversary of the downfall of the repressive communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, which technically occurred at 12:08, just after noon, on the same date in 1989. Virgil Jderescu (Teodor Corban), an entrepreneur who has prospered in the post-revolution free market era and now counts the local television channel among his assets, decides to devote his personal talk show today to commemorating the anniversary of the week-long revolution. His guests are an old, white maned and bearded, much beloved pensioner, Mr. Piscoci (Mircea Andreescu), known for his annual Santa Claus appearances over the years, and Professor Manescu (Ion Sapdaru), a seriously alcoholic local academic historian. Virgil poses the question for discussion: did the people of this city participate actively in the revolution or not? The answer turns on whether locals were agitating against Ceausescu by demonstrating in the town square before the announcement of his downfall, or, instead, whether people merely came out of the woodwork afterwards, when it was safe, to coattail on the revolutionary triumph courageously brought about by others, in Bucharest and elsewhere in the country.

The last hour of the film presents the talk show episode in real time, and it is as good as the very best of briefer political sketches in the salad years of Saturday Night Live. Virgil is the unctuous host, trying to satisfy his guests and the contentious viewers who phone in to criticize the discussants on live audio feed. Old Mr. Piscoci offhandedly, almost reluctantly, acknowledges that, yes, he was present on the scene in the square that morning, and no one challenges this. You get the sense that this fact, like everything in his life, is no big deal. In fact, he seems thoroughly bored with the proceedings and spends his time making paper boats and what look to me to be cootie catchers from notepaper on the table where the three principals sit.

Prof. Manescu on the other hand, nursing an especially foul hangover, asserts with all the pride he can muster under the circumstances that he certainly was present, calling for Ceausescu’s scalp, in the hours leading up to the moment of capitulation. A woman phones in to state point blank that Manescu’s lying, that she personally saw him drinking in a nearby tavern until well after the moment that C. stepped down. A male caller, whom Manescu had accused on the air by name of being a member of the Securitate - Ceausescu’s thug police - who hit him during a scuffle in the square, admits that while it's true that he was a Securitate agent at that time, and that he was on duty in the square, because of those very facts he can vouch for the previous woman's assertion that Manescu was nowhere to be seen until later in the day. Manescu responds by first defending himself, then trying to elope from the station during a commercial break. He’s brought back and spends the latter part of the show in a silent funk.

The TV station itself smacks of our familiar local cable access operations. A single staff person, an indifferent, skinny young man, runs the camera, mans the phones, helps Virgil chase after Manescu, and reaches his arm across the table at one point to sweep away Mr. Piscoci’s paper boats. The whole show is steeped in dark, understated humor, with, of course, serious subtexts about false claims of political glory and the larger issue of whether anything worthy of the term revolution really occurred in Romania, or at least in their town, i.e., whether most people in Romania are better off today or not. I’d love to give the film an “A” grade, but it is compromised by a creaking, protracted, confusing beginning: the first half hour is devoted to scenes in which each of the three principals, in their apartments, is awakening for the day. These scenes are shadowy; it's even hard to decipher who’s who for a while. However, these scenes do serve to establish the fact that life for the characters other than Virgil is not very good, perhaps little better than before the revolution, if that. This film won the Camera d'Or Award for best debut feature last year at Cannes. (In Romanian) Grade: B+ (2/07)

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile) (Cristian Mungiu, Romania, 2007, 113 m.). For roughly 24 hours, we share the tensions and uncertainty of two young women, students who are dorm roommates, as one of them, Gabita (Laura Vasilio), seeks an illicit abortion and the other, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca, in an award winning turn), tries to help her. Though much has been made of a subtle political trope in this film (it is set in 1987 in the waning years of the Ceausescu regime), I found this theme too understated to be noticeable. For me the film is primarily a study of character, of personality and adaptability, in the face of unaccustomed stress. Where Otilia is principled, dependable, resourceful and loyal, Gabita is self absorbed, deceitful, unreliable and dependent. Granted, Gabita is the one who is pregnant, but you’re struck by the sense that her helplessness cuts far deeper than her present exigency can explain. The other principals are also interesting studies: Viarel Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), the steely abortionist, and Adi Radu (Alexandru Potocean), Otilia’s nebbisher boyfriend.

The two women remind me of the pair in Erick Zonca’s 1998 film, The Dreamlife of Angels, also about an outgoing, caring young woman (played by Elodie Bouchez) and an apartment mate who is self centered, mercurial, even suicidal (Natacha Regnier). A life lesson in both stories is that you can knock yourself out for someone else without influencing them to change one whit for the better. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, of course. You do the right thing. It’s just that you have to accept the limits of your influence as well as the limits of the other person's capacities. Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes and awards for best film and best director at the European Film Awards. (In Romanian). Grade: B+ (02/15/08)

65 REVISITED (D.A. Pennebaker, US, 2007, 65 min.). Outtakes from Pennebaker’s classic documentary chronicling Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of Britain Don’t Look Back. Strength: songs are presented in their entirety, not cut short. Weakness: as one might expect employing outtake footage, this film seems choppy, lacking the coherence of the earlier film. B & W Grade: B (Seen in the NWFC "Reel Music" Series, 01/11/08)

ALEXANDRA (Aleksandra) (Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia/France, 2007, 95 m.). SPOILER ALERT! Aleksandr Sokurov, a veteran director now 56, has made 46 film and television productions to date. He has become increasingly daring in his recent projects. He made Russian Ark in 2002, noteworthy because the entire 99 minute movie is filmed in one continuous tracking shot. In 2005 he made The Sun, a remarkable character study of Japanese Emperor Hirohito in the final days of World War II, starring the prominent Japanese theater actor, Issei Ogata, and spoken entirely in Japanese (and a bit of English). Now Sokurov has cast 81 year old Galina Vishnevskaya, a former operatic diva and the spouse of Mstislav Rostropovich for 52 years until his death in April, 2007, in her first feature film role, as Alexandra, grandmother of a Russian officer deployed in the occupation of Chechnya, who comes to visit him at a hot, dusty, windswept forward base near Grozny, her journey accompanied by a pensive, elegiac musical score.

As Alexandra, Ms. Vishnevskaya is on camera in virtually every scene. Her character is a formidable, somewhat taciturn woman who is remarkably plucky and at ease in the unusual circumstances of riding in a boxcar with young soldiers on a military train, then in the top of a Russian troop carrier, finally arriving at her grandson Denis’s (Vasily Shevtsov) tent for a needed nap while he is out on a mission. After a warm reunion with Denis (they hadn’t seen one another in seven years), Alexandra stays on at the camp for a number of days until Denis is to be deployed for a long mission elsewhere. At one point she boldly walks out of the camp and strikes up conversations with Chechen women in a nearby town, and she returns with gifts for several soldiers in Denis’s company. What is both surprising yet entirely believable is the civilizing effect Alexandra’s presence has on the young soldiers. They respond to her as a maternal figure, treating her with a chivalrous degree of respect that is almost comical at times, though always touching and sincere. At the end, Alexandra must retrace her journey home, but not before stopping back in town to exchange hugs and addresses with several Chechen women she has befriended.

Sokurov has succeeded in making one of the most unusual anti-war movies I’ve seen. No political statements. No polemics. Just the actions of a matter-of-fact, good woman in bringing out the humane side of soldiers and bridging the gap with “the enemy.” Transcending perspectives of the Chechnian war itself, this film makes as good an attempt to humanize warriors as I’ve seen on screen. The film was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, 2007. (In Chechen & Russian) Grade: A- (02/01/08)

Add: It seems strange by the standards of our military protocol that a civilian relative could visit a base near the front. But this isn't the first time we've seen this sort of event in a Russian film. In Sergei Bodrov's 1996 masterpiece, Prisoner of the Mountains, based on a story by Tolstoy, a young Russian soldier captured by Chechen Muslim guerilla fighters bids his mother to come to the front, in the rugged, isolated Caucasus, to plead for his release. I don't know whether these filmic events are examples of a common practice in the contemporary Russian Army, or whether they simply represent the exercise of artistic license to tell a compelling story. After living in exile for many years with her family, Ms. Vishnevskaya these days directs an opera center in Moscow that is named for her; a soprano, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1961 as Aida, and her debut at La Scala in 1964 as Liù in Turandot.

ATONEMENT (Joe Wright, UK/France, 2007, 130 m.). SPOILER ALERT! I went into this film with no small degree of trepidation. To say the least, I’ve not been wildly enthusiastic about Keira Knightley’s acting talent. And to my mind, James McAvoy is a decent comedic actor (Rory in Rory O’Shea Was Here), but less than compelling in straight dramatic roies, after his lackluster performance in The Last King of Scotland (in which he was seriously miscast). Not only did both of these players perform well in Atonement, but so did the supporting cast, in a well directed production based on Ian McEwan’s best-selling 2002 novel of the same title.

Atonement is principally a love story, a story that spans several decades, beginning in 1935. Then 13-year old Briony Talis (Saoirse Ronan), a would-be writer with a protean imagination, lives a privileged life with her family in the English countryside. For some time, Robbie Turner (McAvoy), the educated son of the family’s housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn), has nurtured an undisclosed romantic interest in Briony’s willful older sister, Cecilia (Ms. Knightley). One hot summer day, Briony spies Robbie and Cecilia involved together in a moment of physical contact that makes it obvious to Robbie that Cecilia requites his feelings for her.

Briony, who has nurtured her own private crush on Robbie, is made jealous by what she sees and seeks revenge by telling a damaging lie, accusing Robbie of a crime he did not commit. He is arrested, convicted and imprisoned, after Cecilia declares her love and promises to wait for him until he is free. The lives of all three principals are changed forever by these events, and not in ways that are easily predictable. Briony lives to bitterly regret the damage wrought by her bearing false witness, and she is hounded down the years by guilt and the need for atonement for her misdeed.

Plot twists, especially near the end, are ingeniously concocted, and there are also scenes of encounters that we see recursively though from different vantage points. One of the most poignant scenes in the film is a long (several minute) pan of the staging area for the infamous evacuation of defeated British troops at Dunkirk. It is a heartbreaking, riveting reenactment of what was one of the most tragically epical events of WW II.

Joe Wright, the BAFTA Award-winning director of Pride & Prejudice, has reunited, for Atonement, with his filmmaking team and with Ms. Knightley and Ms. Blethyn from P & P. The screenplay was imaginatively adapted from McEwans’s novel by Christopher Hampton (who wrote screenplays for Dangerous Liaisons, Carrington and The Quiet American, among other film and television projects). Both Mr. McAvoy and Ms. Knightley "age" effectively as we follow them through the years. Not only are the three principal roles well played, but there are fine supporting turns by Romola Garai and Vanessa Redgrave, as Briony at 18 and in late middle age, respectively. Grade: B+ (01/10/08)

AUTISM: THE MUSICAL (Tricia Regan, US, 2007, 93 min.). At a private school for autistic children in Los Angeles, Elaine Hall, one of the mothers, undertakes the direction of a student musical production which she labels the “Miracle Project.” We follow five kids, who vary in age, speech, motor behavior and sociability, and their parents through several months of rehearsals and then see part of the actual show. The school scene is fairly chaotic. Some of the parents are pretty volatile as well. (Musician Stephen Stills is one of the fathers and is well behaved.) The chaos is accentuated by the style of the editing, which often features a barrage of very brief cuts among several scenes and camera angles. There’s a decent idea behind this frenetic film, i.e., to humanize autistic kids and their families, but it could have been better realized. (A grant will provide for another Miracle Project production at the school next year.) This film was made for HBO. Grade B (01/17/08)

AWAY FROM HER (Sarah Polley, Canada, 2006, 110 m.). SPOILER ALERT! Canadian actress Sarah Polley makes a feature writer-director debut of sorts here (she had previously created several shorts and one largely unnoticed feature), with a film about the adaptation of older adults to the development of dementia, based on a story by Alice Munro, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” The story involves two older couples, each with a demented spouse. The afflicted persons, Fiona (Julie Christie) and Aubrey (Michael Murphy) have taken up residence in the same assisted living facility and become deeply attached to one another. Their respective spouses, Grant (Gordon Pinsent) and Marian (Olympia Dukakis), both vexed and lonely, meet outside the facility and strike up an intimate relationship of mutual comfort and convenience.

The dramatic elements in the film derive from these simple facts: the tensions, denial, sadness and even jealousies that debilitate the spouses whose loved ones are ill; the coping efforts made by everyone to survive, to combat isolation, to somehow get through the pathetic, heart rending realities that dementia visits upon married couples and families, suffering that is unavoidable for those afflicted and non-afflicted alike.

From a clinical point of view, the film is a decidedly mixed bag: in several respects highly authentic and, in others, frustratingly inaccurate. Let’s start with the positives. All four principal actors are superb. Ms. Christie, a relatively “cool” actress emotionally, is quite able to represent the subdued affectivity often associated with early Alzheimers in a more authentic style than could more emotionally “warm” actors like Gena Rowlands in Notebook or Dame Judi Dench in Iris. Michael Murphy’s Aubrey is even better. Aubrey is supposed to be suffering from some sort of post infectious encephalopathy, but he comes across as a picture perfect example of more advanced Alzheimers dementia. He has a vacant stare most of the time, does not speak, tends toward immobility and, partly as a consequence, considerable motor stiffness. The picture is clinically perfect for the middle stage of this disease.

Mr. Pinsent and Ms. Dukakis portray differing yet entirely believable non-afflicted spouses. Pinsent’s Grant is by turns gravely worried about his wife, bereft and lonely when she is separated from him, and given to denial of her illness: all common responses of loved ones in the earlier stages. Ms. Dukakis is more the realist, accepting of the finality of the disease and the fact that Aubrey may never again be her husband in any real sense of that term. Perhaps she has logged more years of suffering, witnessing her husband’s decline, and this longer exposure almost inevitably leads the healthy spouse to abandon any illusions about the disease.

Some viewers might doubt the realism of Fiona’s immediate, affectionate and nearly total attachment to Aubrey in the care facility, but I can assure you that such attachments are quite common and often valuable, a coping strategy that can bring an immense sense of security to the afflicted “couple,” though not infrequently a cause of concern and conflict for family and staff alike. And when the nursing aid Kristy (Kristen Thomson) tells Grant that he should expect Fiona’s condition to vary a lot from day to day, she’s correct.

Then we get to the negatives. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that Fiona’s placement in residential care (assisted living) is justified. Fiona reads books about Alzheimers and takes the initiative to seek her own placement. Grant is opposed to this, wants her to remain at home. This is the inverse of by far the more common situation. Most people with early Alzheimers – even the brightest and most insightful, [and I’ve encountered university English professors, even Oxford dons, with the disorder] – don’t acknowledge that they are ill, have no interest in reading about Alzheimers, and are vehement in protesting their placement in residential care. Their healthy spouses feel the same way: the last thing they want is to give up care for their beloved partner. They do so typically only when their spouse’s abnormal behaviors exceed their capacity to cope, usually after a period of many months to years of struggling to manage things at home.

On the contrary, here we see Fiona generally behaving quite acceptably. Yes, she shows marked memory loss and spatial disorientation. She puts the washed frying pan in the refrigerator. She wanders away once and is unaccounted for for many hours. But she shows no signs of psychotic, aggressive, agitated or depressive behaviors, and doesn’t get into any truly dangerous scrapes. Her social skills remain more than adequate, typical in the first stages of the illness. Grant seems quite capable of managing things with Fiona at home and prefers this course to continue. Institutionalizing her at this point rings entirely false here.

It is also clinically wrong that, given her generally favorable level of functioning, Fiona should have so much difficulty recognizing Grant when he comes to visit after the first month she is in care. Even if she cannot recall his name, she should still easily be able to acknowledge that he is her spouse and react accordingly. For that matter, the policy of the assisted living facility (in this film) that prohibits any visitation by loved ones in the first month after placement is way off the mark. That’s SOP for residential addictions treatment, but everyone who knows anything about dementia acknowledges the importance of sustaining the familiar when a major move occurs: arranging for favorite articles of clothing, family photos, prints from home hung on the walls, other mementos, and, especially, visitation by loved ones, from the getgo, to provide continuity and ease the inevitable apprehension in circumstances of abrupt and highly discomfiting change for the afflicted individual.

I scrutinized the end credits in vain looking for a credit for any professional geriatric mental health or dementia consultant or agency. Regrettably, the lack of such input shows here. Of course filmmakers are under no obligation to make their productions clinically authentic. But there is no reason not to do so either. It’s rather like my partner’s pet peeve. She was a prodigious violist in adolescence, and she almost leaps screaming from her seat in films that show simulated and flagrantly unrealistic violin playing in a movie, when it would have been so easy to shoot and intercut a little close up footage of a real player. Oh, well. Dramatically, this film is moderately interesting, but clinically it falls far short of my gold standard, Bille August’s 2002 Swedish film, A Song for Martin, about a dementing symphony composer/conductor and his devoted spouse. Grade: B (1/31/07)

THE BAND’S VISIT (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret) (Eran Kolirin, Israel/France/US, 2007, 87 m.). Here’s a successful comedy from first time writer/director Eran Kolirin, an ebullient and funny young fellow who was present at this screening to discuss his film and generally horse around. This little story, which was made up by Mr. Kolirin, takes place over roughly 24 hours; it is a tale of cultural divide overcome by human connection. The band in question is Egyptian: an eight-member uniformed police band from Alexandria that has come to play at a small Israeli desert town as part of a cultural exchange celebration of a newly opened Arab Arts Center. The band is led by an older, taciturn fellow, Lt. Col. Tawfiq Zacharya (Sasson Gabai), who brooks not even a hint of insolence, a feverish affect that nearly boils over in one of the band’s newest members, the tall, seductive Khaled (Saleh Bakri). Left by the bus in the wrong place, Col. Zacharya’s little troupe benefit from the goodwill of a woman who runs an eatery, Dina (Ronit Elkabetz, who starred in Or [My Treasure]).

Fun in this movie comes in various forms. The awkward billeting of three bandsmen with a family headed by a gloomy fellow who turns out to be musical. A subtle little physical comedy sequence at a roller rink, when Khaled teaches a young local fellow by example how to hit on a young woman he pines for (a sequence that would win Buster Keaton's approval). Or the fey little wave that the Colonel gives to Dina as the troupe departs the next day for the right town. Dina, who seems to be an equal opportunity lover, aims her charms first at the Colonel, later at Khaled, with more success. The film not only works on a light comedic level, it also speaks volumes about the boredom and cultural isolation of rural Israelis, who seem entirely left behind from the “progress” in urban areas. This is one of those occasional films that you hope won't end, but alas it does, and in under 90 minutes at that. Sigh.

Mr. Kolirin, who was raised in Israel, remembers family visits to small, dusty, forsaken rural towns like this one. For political reasons, Egyptian actors could not be cast as his bandsmen. Thus three of the eight are Israeli Jews (including Sasson Gabai), and the others are Palestinians. Palestinians are OK, Egyptians not? Go figure. Also, the film has had only limited screenings in Israel and none in any Arab state. Nevertheless, Band's Visit received Israeli film academy awards for best director and best screenplay; the film also has won awards from such diverse venues as Cannes, the European Film Awards, and festivals in Montreal, Munich, Sarajevo, Tokyo, Warsaw and Zurich. (In Arabic, English & a small amount of Hebrew – too limited an amount for the film to qualify as Israel’s entry for a best foreign film Oscar.) Grade: A- (02/07/08)

BEAUFORT (Bufor) (Joseph Cedar, Israel, 2007, 125 m.). SPOILER ALERT! The massive Beaufort Fortress, high on a hill overlooking a vast plain in southern Lebanon, was built by Crusaders in the 12th Century. In 1982, in the Israeli incursion into that area, an IDF contingent seized the fort, at great cost in lives and injuries. The IDF occupied the fort for the next 18 years, evacuating only when Israel exited southern Lebanon altogether in 2000. The story of the last days of the occupation of the fort was told in a novel by Ron Leshem, who subsequently co-wrote, with director Joseph Cedar, the screenplay of that story for this docudrama. At the 2007 Berlin IFF, Cedar ( Campfire) won a Silver Bear Award for Best Director.

We meet Lieutenant Liraz (Oshri Cohen), a surly but resourceful maverick, ultraloyal to his men: Oshri (Eli Altonio), Koris (Itay Tiran), Shpitzer (Arthur Perzev) and Meir (Danny Zahavi), among others. (A significant problem for viewers of this film is the difficulty in sorting out and keeping straight just who is whom among the men, since they all wear hats and their faces are typically cast in shadows. I’m still not entirely sure of everyone’s identity.) Thingsget nasty right away when Ziv Faran (Ohad Knoller), a bomb specialist called in to neutralize a roadside IED, is killed while trying to defuse the bomb. It gets worse after that, as Hezbollah guerillas begin to use state-of-the-art Russian missiles (probably acquired through Syria, though we aren’t told this) against the IDF occupiers, so the rebels can claim responsibility for Israel’s withdrawal (which in fact was months in the planning and unrelated to any new Hezbollah offensive).

The story is a grim one of besieged soldiers whose common peril intensifies their intimacy. In that sense, the narrative is closely parallel to that in Clint Eastwood’s recent Letters From Iwo Jima, about the Japanese experience of the U.S. invasion of that infamous island stronghold. We learn that the bloody occupation of Beaufort in 1982 was a strategically unnecessary mission, one that in fact had been called off by IDF commanders at the last minute, though the message never got through to the front line troops (the “fog of war” revisited). In one of the more poignant scenes, we witness the battle hardened Lt. Liraz suddenly paralysed, overcome with terror and pain, as he watches one of his closest buddies wounded by shrapnel. In another, some of the soldiers are huddled around a large screen TV watching a news interview with Ziv Faran’s father, Amox (Ami Weinberg), a war hero himself. The elder Faran, grief stricken over his son’s death, speaks pensively of his regret that he did not better prepare his son for life. How? the interviewer asks. 'By teaching him more about the importance of fear,' Faran replies. (In Hebrew). Grade: B+ (02/16/08)

BLESSED BY FIRE (Iluminados por el fuego – Enlightened by Fire) (Tristán Bauer, Argentina/Spain, 2005, 100 m.). Incredibly powerful war story about Agentinian lives shattered in the long wake of the debacle known as the Falklands War (1982). Longer review to follow. (In Spanish & English) Grade: B+ (02/21/07)

BOB MARLEY & FRIENDS (Saul Swimmer, US, 2005, 94 m.). Biodoc in memory of Marley, on the 25 th anniversary of his untimely death in 1981, of malignant melanoma, at the age of 36. the film features long musical cuts, interspersed with archival footage and voiceover narration to fill in factual, autobiographical material as needed. The filmmakers succeed in achieving a proper balance between telling Marley’s story while at the same time honoring his music in the best possible way, which is by playing it, unlike so many other films of its ilk that are so crammed with talking heads that the music is crowded out (for example, another film in this year’s NWFC Reel Music series, on Harry Nilsson).

There is one performance sequence that is especially gorgeous visually. This segment was obviously made on a high quality sound recording studio set designed for filming purposes as well. It features several splendid musicians with Marley, has no audience, and photographs the musicians against backgrounds of subtly lit walls cast in earthy hues of the yellow-orange-rust-brown spectrum. This sequence is sublime, poetic in the best sense. Several other contemporary musicians also perform reggae numbers (Marley’s songs, others) under varying audiovisual circumstances. Most are fine, and one near the end, featuring Peter Tosh gyrating in flowing yellow-gold robes, is breathtakingly surreal.

Not every number succeeds like these. In mid-film, there is a long number by Ky-Mani Marley that should have been left on the cutting room floor. The film was made by the veteran music film director Saul Swimmer, who made the movie of the legendary Concert for Bangladesh in 1972. The “cast” of musicians includes, besides Marley himself, Tosh, Seal, Ky-Mani Marley, Stephen Marley, Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers, Wyclef Jean, Lauren Hill, Third World, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman (whose few moments singing “Redemption Songs,” with a group that includes Sting and Springsteen, are the brightest highlight next to numbers featureing Bob Marley himself), Cat Coore, and Dubmatique . One of the better biodocs of a popular musician I’ve seen. Grade: A- (Seen at the NWFC's Reel Music series, 01/06/07)

BORN IN THE USSR: 21 UP (Sergei Miroshnichenko, Russia, 2005, 90 m). This is the third in a Russian series, modeled after Michael Apted’s acclaimed British “Up Series,” tracking Soviet children from age 7 forward. I have not seen the first two films in this Russian series (titled 7 Up and 14 Up), though footage from both is intercut with new material filmed in 2003 for the present film, as in the Apted series. Mr. Miroshnichenko, who was present for this screening, told us that Apted has served as a consultant for his project, and that he has had financial backing from Granada TV, the British company that has backed Apted’s “Up Series” through the years.

Twenty 7-year old Soviet kids were originally selected for 7 up, shot in 1989. Since then the Soviet Union has broken up, of course, and these subjects now live in 8 different countries. Granada TV would only fund sufficient work to keep up with 10 of the 20 kids for a production of 21 Up that was broadcast on British TV in 2005. But in fairness to his subjects, Miroshnichenko made a 6 hour film for Russian TV that covered all 20 of them. For American audiences he has made two 90-minute films, each one covering 10 of the subjects. He screened the first part this evening, which marks the American premiere of his 21 Up.

Though it will take years - and a longer series of glimpses into the lives of these people as they mature - to judge the overall merit of this series, one can say that the filmcraft is arguably better in this movie than any of the Apted films. The latter generally are limited to rather static interviews, with minimal action, while Miroshnichenko brings a far more action-oriented approach, showing his subjects in longer segments in which they are vigorously engaged in activities that are authentic to them, e.g., boxing, working aboard ship or in a restaurant, studying with other students, working in a beauty salon, and the like. Sound quality is better as well. All this makes for a lively, highly watchable production. The editing is also superior to the early British “Up” films. Though not always consistent, Miroshnichenko tends to stick with one individual at a time, a more successful approach than the thematic one, in which each subject responds to a particular question, e.g., about marriage. (Apted has also come around to organizing his material by individual subject in his most recent production, 49 Up.)

It isn’t clear to me whether Miroshnichenko himself conducts all or even any of the interviews, as Apted has done through the years. Nor are all the questions given to us. The sampling is selective, and perhaps suffers further from subtitles. But with these limitations in mind, it is fair to say that the skill of the interviewer(s) in this film is superior to the “early Apted.” Apted himself has gotten better through the years, as he has increasingly appreciated that the important overarching themes of his subjects’ lives are psychological and interpersonal, not socioeconomic. More on this below.)

Most of the subjects depicted in this film are, at 21, concerned with gaining financial independence – making a living – though a few are pursuing higher education. There are, of course, no upper class kids to serve as counterparts for more privileged British youth, though one young Russian man has a grandmother whose status as a diplomat gives him privileges where he lives and studies in Strasbourg. He alone speaks of the poverty of most Russians, and his acute awareness of his more affluent status. One young woman has had an episode of what is vaguely referred to as “mental illness.” At 21 she’s a serious, well spoken young woman, the only one to talk with much introspective candor. Most of the young men are out for a good time and are far from settling down. Marriage seems quite a ways off for these young adults

Seeing evidence of materialistic preoccupations among several of the subjects (one young woman lusts after a pricey automobile as her chief goal in life), one might be tempted to compare these people to the subjects in the British series, who are for the most part rather modest in their materialistic pursuits, but that would be a mistake. The Brits not only come from a different culture but from an earlier generation as well. The acquisitiveness of these Russian young adults is not so very different from the preoccupations of Americans and Britons of their own, more recent, generation, most likely displaying what epidemiologists call cohort, or generational, effects.

Whereas Michael Apted has allowed his perspective to shift from socioeconomic and cultural themes to a more individualistic psychological point of reference since his 21 Up, Miroshnichenko says that his goal is to remain focused on cultural concerns, using his subjects to illustrate broader issues, i.e., events and forces that have occurred in the wake of the breakup of the USSR. (In Russian with English subtitles and narration) Grade: B+ (Seen at the Mellon Symposium on “Understanding Russian Culture Through Film,” Reed College, 03/30/07)

THE BOTHERSOME MAN (Den Brysomme mannen) (Jens Lien, Norway/Iceland, 2006, 95 m.). CONSUMER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! Trond Fausa Aurvaag stars as Andreas, a solitary 40 year old man, opens this film by leaping to his death under an oncoming subway train (we hear a gruesome crunch, not the last we’ll confront). We next find him, bearded and disheveled, arriving as the lone passenger on a bus that delivers him to a forlorn old gas station in the middle of a barren high plain reminiscent of the U.S. Great Basin country, though presumably it’s shot in Norway or Iceland. So, this is a flashback, right? Well, not so fast, there. Seems more like a flash forward the more we learn. Everyone’s expecting him: the old man who takes him from the desert to a posh contemporary apartment house in a city full of pale gray blue modern buildings, at its center, surrounded by older urban neighborhoods. In the closet of his apartment is a complete wardrobe of clothes that fit him. He asks what job he has been assigned and is told he will be an accountant in a large downtown firm. He cleans up, shaves and arrives for work, where he is warmly greeted by everyone, and starts to work as if he has all the requisite skills for the job.

He meets various people over the next weeks, takes a lover, relaxes. But there are unsettling aspects to his new life, for that is what it appears to be. Alcohol no longer makes him or anyone high. Food looks great but has little flavor. Even sex is bland though easily available. The women he takes up with seem more interested in the quarters they live in, and his ability to provide for them materially, than they are in him. Horrid events occur: he slices off his finger in a paper cutter. He sees a suicidal man, now dead, impaled on a sharp edged wrought iron fence. People seem to take such occurrences in stride, showing little or no affect. There are uniformed attendants in gray blue jumpsuits driving gray blue minivans, who calmly, mutely service people like these. When they take Andreas home and he unwraps the dressing from the stump of his finger he finds it (magically) whole again, without a trace of trauma. Hmmmmm.

Things go on like this. Andreas tries suicide again in the local subway but, while battered terribly (he’s hit and dragged by three different trains through the night), he is able to walk away. Bloodied and looking like a cadaver when he returns to his lover’s house, she merely smiles and mentions they have been invited to friends’ for dinner later in the week. Hmmmmm. Later he discovers an underground shaft that appears to lead to another world. He and an associate blast a tunnel ubt, just short of his goal of escape from this bizarre dystopia, the men in gray blue arrive, drag the two away, seal up the tunnel, but immediately release the men without incarceration, trial or any other punishment than enforcement of their unwanted stay in this odd paradise.

But Andreas continues to be bothersome. He acts unhappy, which turns out to be the worst offense here, one that in time leads him to be expelled from the community. He’s taken back to the desert, forced into the cargo bay of the bus, and driven away. At some point the bus stops, Andreas kicks the door open, and disappears into a white, featureless expanse marked by howling winds, like the middle of a blizzard. The bus pulls away, the screen fades to final darkness. There you have it. I strongly disliked the film, though it is well crafted, the story does hang together and its protagonist is a mildly interesting character. This film will certainly be a candidate for my annual Metaphysical Melange Award. What we seem to have here is purgatory, or hell, or heaven, a nether world where you go after death but where, unlike Sartre’s formulation, there is indeed an exit. (In Norwegian) Grade: C (02/2007)

BREACH (Billy Ray, US, 2007, 110 m.). Super taut, razor edged docudrama about Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), the FBI higher-up whose betrayals to the USSR represent the worst breach in the history of US national security, probably accounting for the deaths of at least 50 operatives worldwide, including several key Russian spies that had been “turned” by US agents. Cooper offers a bravura lead performance as the infinitely complex Hanssen, a devout Roman Catholic family man and seemingly squeaky clean senior agent whose scrupulosity was legendary. Last man in the agency you’d expect to be a traitor or a major dabbler in hard porn, for that matter. But there it is. Cooper solidifies his reputation here as one of our finest screen actors.

Ryan Phillippe surprises in his quiet, mannerly yet resourceful turn as Eric O’Neill, an agent assigned to gain Hanssen’s confidence and get the goods on him, hard evidence in the form of secret documents intended by Hanssen to go to his Soviet handlers. Though it is inaccurate that O’Neill was an agent – he was a factotum untrained in undercover work – Phillippe’s interpretation of a young man in over his head is authentic. Remarkable performance by Phillippe, even better than his excellent turn in Flags of Our Fathers. Cooper and Phillippe together conjure one degree of suspense upon another. It's a spellbinding game of cat and mouse. With a terrific supporting cast including Laura Linney, Kathleen Quinlan, Dennis Haysbert, Bruce Davison and Caroline Dhavernas. Billy Ray, primarily a screenwriter, wrote this story and directs here for only the second time. He’s a talent to watch. Grade: B+ (03/06/07)

CANVAS (Joseph Greco, US, 2006, 101 m.). SPOILER ALERT! This debut feature film by writer-director Joseph Greco dramatizes the impact of mental illness on the family. Mary Marino (Marcia Gay Harden) suffered the onset of a schizophrenic disorder in her early 40s, a couple years before the film’s story begins, and her illness has made life very difficult for her, her husband John (Joe Pantoliano), and their 10 year old son Chris (Devon Gearhart). Ms. Harden is quite convincing. She gets the furtive, doubting look of a distrustful, paranoid patient. She has emotional displays that are by turns inappropriately silly, sad or enraged. She is capable of socially disruptive, even dangerous, behavior. She makes shadowy references to outside forces that may have wired the house and are spying on everyone. She worries obsessively about her son’s safety. She hears voices that cause her acute psychic pain, voices she can ward off or at least dampen by painting or running a water tap. She’s ambivalent about treatment and often noncompliant with medications. A particularly disruptive episode, one that causes commotion in the neighborhood, brings the police and Mary’s readmission to the state mental hospital for extended care. John and Chris must carry on without her, and they do.

What’s special about this film is it’s central focus not on Mary and her illness but on the impact she has on her family. In fact, the camera in Canvas is directed more to John and Chris than to Mary. John is a good but simple man who works with his hands, a foreman for a house building crew employed by a developer. He tries to do right by Mary and Chris, but his coping skills are limited and often sorely tested, and he can react blindly at times out of his frustration. The role of John, wonderfully managed by Pantoliano, is reminiscent of Peter Falk’s character Nick, the frantic, bumbling yet obviously caring husband of a psychotic woman, in John Cassavetes’ film, A Woman Under the Influence. It’s good to see Pantoliano playing a sympathetic character for a change, not the usual nasty fellow we know from his Teddy in Memento or Ralphie Cifaretto in The Sopranos.

Ten year old Devon Gearhart is a delight. He is highly photogenic: he could be Uma Thurman’s kid brother. He not only has charm, but conveys a remarkably broad range of emotional responses – joy, wonder, embarrassment, anger, sadness – that seem entirely natural and authentic. We see and feel Chris’s extreme embarrassment when Mary rushes aboard a school bus to embrace him and reassure herself that he is safe. When Chris spends his birthday at an amusement park with friends, Mary arrives unannounced and uninvited with a birthday cake to crash the kids-only party. Chris takes abuse from his peers in the aftermath of such episodes: they taunt him about his crazy mother. He begins skipping classes as a result. Chris and John are both put to pain when Mary erupts in the waiting area of a restaurant, and on another occasion when she wildly dashes outdoors in a rainstorm and creates a flap.

There is a brief bedroom scene while Mary is home on pass from the hospital, when lovemaking is interrupted because Mary is frightened of her skin being exposed and must peek through the drapes to be sure no one outside is watching. It is subtly made clear that her preoccupations have stifled John’s arousal, and we can imagine this has happened before. We also share times of nostalgic reminiscence and bereavement, when Chris or John pauses, tearfully, to recall happier times with Mary, before her illness, and mourns the loss of the wife and mother they once knew.

Narrative films about persons suffering from severe mental illness tend to focus, more or less exclusively, on the dramatic conduct of the impaired individual. We see this in recent good movies about persons with schizophrenia, like Clean, Shaven and Spider. Even the popular movie, A Beautiful Mind, which does clearly present the subtext of John Nash’s wife’s travails in the wake of his schizophrenic illness, gives center stage to Nash and his symptoms, not his family. Benny and Joon, a fluffy romantic comedy about a psychotic woman, her caretaker brother, and an interloper who falls in love with Joon, does not deal honestly with the issue of mental illness, much less with the real toll the disorder so often takes on family members. Canvas does a better job of focusing on the family than any film I can recall since Cassavetes’ Woman Under, released over 30 years ago.

The ending is somewhat ambiguous. John and Chris have cemented a mutually supportive relationship, while Mary is away in the hospital, by building a sailboat together, in part because John hopes to recapture the life he and Mary knew when they were young, a life that revolved around sailing (the film is set in a seaside town, Hollywood, Florida, on the Atlantic Coast north of Miami). By the time the boat is finished, and the fellows invite Mary to join them on its maiden voyage, she is still in the hospital and quite symptomatic, hearing voices and experiencing difficult mood swings. Mary does, however, muster enough insight to realize that if she accepts the invitation, her behavior could deteriorate and spoil the day for her loved ones. So she declines to go along.

The voyage is a huge success: we can feel and see the bonding that occurs between father and son. Mary’s decision was a good one. The next scene at first glance seems to show Mary with John and Chris aboard the boat, perhaps on another outing soon after the first. Instead, in an inspired sight gag, the boat is revealed to be resting atop a trailer being pulled around the hospital parking lot. Mary is obviously contented, relaxed, at peace. Her husband and son are close by and also happy. It is the picture of a normal family at play, and these final images conjure the impression that Mary has turned a positive corner on the road toward health.

The fact that the film has a happy, hopeful ending does not trouble me. It is perfectly plausible for a person suffering from schizophrenia to make significant strides toward regaining normal emotional experience and behavioral self control, with effective treatment. A splendid example of such an outcome can be seen in Out of the Shadow, Susan Smiley’s recent documentary account of her schizophrenic mother’s odyssey. My concern is that viewers of Canvas who are uninformed about schizophrenia might leap to the conclusion that Mary has made great strides toward recovery in a very brief time, and attribute her improvement to the loving, inclusive attitudes of her family, rather than to proper psychiatric treatment. (On first viewing I myself had such a take; I had to see the film a second time to gain critical perspective.)

Of course we know that good professional care and positive family support are not mutually exclusive influences for the better: they serve synergistically to aid recovery. The ambiguity at the end notwithstanding, Canvas offers a uniquely insightful, compassionate perspective about mental illness within the context of the family. It deepens our appreciation for families who must carry on their own lives while enduring heartaches and a great sense of loss when their afflicted loved ones undergo radical disruptions of their psychological integrity and capacity to return their love. Grade: B+ (01/11 and 01/16/07).

CARAMEL (Sukkar banat) (Nadine Labaki, Lebanon/France, 2007, 95 m.). A delightful, if formulaic, romantic comedy. Four women who are close friends deal with life and love in their separate ways. Three of them work together in a Beirut beauty salon (called Si Belle, though the “B” on the sign out front has come loose and hangs upside down throughout the film, perhaps a hint of lingering disorder from recent conflicts in that beleaguered city). These three are: Layale (the stunningly gorgeous Nadine Labaki in her second feature film; she also makes her debut here as a director and co-writer), who easily attracts male attention; Nisrine (Yasmine Elmasri), who is about to be married; and Rima (Joanna Moukarzel), a lesbian who becomes enamored of a lovely, and willing, customer. The fourth chum is Jamale (Gisele Aouad), a fading actress who doesn’t get much work any more and spends a lot of her time in the beauty shop hoping to look younger.

Rounding out the excellent ensemble are Layale’s Aunt Rose (Sihame Hadad), who in early middle age still hopes for love, and her demented mother, Lili (Aziza Semaan). It is remarkable that Mss. Elmasri, Moukarzel, Aouad and Hadad are acting here for the first time in a feature film. Give Nadine Labaki great credit for evoking such strong, believable performances from these newcomers as well as the more experienced supporting cast.

It is easy enough to label this film a “chickflick” or to fault it for exploring familiar territory in a somewhat clichéd manner. However, according to Lebanese people who have reviewed the film on the IMDb, this movie represents a bold step forward in the quality of Lebanese cinema. Not only that: I think the characters are engaging, even endearing, for men as well as women viewers. Some have (justifiably in my view) likened Caramel to Almodóvar’s films that deal with female relationships, like All About My Mother and Volver. And, as in his films, Caramel is full of well-photographed, brightly colored sets and location shots. The production design is highly interesting: both the beauty shop andRose’s seamstress shop are furnished and decorated more like someone’s home than a commercial establishment. The film offers ample insouciant humor and a fast moving pace. The music, arranged by Khaled Mouzannar, who apparently is Ms. Labaki’s fiancé, is perfect: gentle, slow paced light melodic material that works well against the fast visual pace of the film. What’s not to like here? (In Arabic & French). Grade: B+ (01/29/08)

CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR (Mike Nichols, US, 2007, 97 m.). Superb docudrama about an American Congressman, Rep Charles Wilson (D-Texas), and his instrumental role in arranging U. S. appropriations (funds channeled clandestinely through the C.I.A.) for purchasing advanced weaponry to arm the warlords in northern Afghanistan, the mujahideen, and thus turn the tide of the Russian-Afghan War (1980-1989) in favor of the warlords, with a resulting exodus of the Russian Army. At the time many said that this was the “Soviet Union’s Vietnam.”

The script was adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin (writer of A Few Good Men, The American President, and the West Wing television series) from the best selling 2003 book (Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History) by the late George Crile. In a recent History Channel documentary (The True Story of Charlie Wilson, 12/22/07), Wilson himself, mujahideen leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and former commanders of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan were interviewed, and they all attest to the authenticity of this film.

Wilson (played in the film by Tom Hanks), a former Navy officer and state legislator, served in the House from 1973 to 1997. He was a notorious drinker and womanizer who nonetheless played the Congressional influence game very shrewdly, collecting numerous “IOUs,” i.e., by doing favors to help other Congressmen pass legislation they desired. By 1980 he held a key position on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, a small group which authorized funding of C.I.A. operations. At first all Wilson knew about the war was what he saw occasionally on television. Then one day a renegade, foul mouthed, loose cannon C.I.A. operative, Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), paid Wilson a visit to ask for his help in appropriating major new funding for the mujahideen, the only organized force in Afghanistan potentially capable of taking on the Russians.

Next, a wealthy and influential, politically active, right wing Christian fundamentalist socialite, Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), summoned Wilson home to Texas to work on him about Afghanistan. She herself by this point had already been an honorary consul to Pakistan and Morocco. Avrakotos arranged for Wilson and Herring to join him on a visit to displaced Afghan refugee camps, and, as a result of this experience, Wilson was moved to champion the Afghan cause. Between 1980 and 1984 he succeeded in arranging $500 million in appropriations for advanced weaponry, including ground-to-air heat seeking anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank weapons, for the Afghan militias. This sum was matched by Saudi Arabia. (The weapons had to be procured from non-U.S. sources to cover the covert nature of this aid.)

All of these events, from Wilson’s first awareness of the war while watching the TV news one evening in 1980, to the Russian retreat in 1989, are covered in the film, which is very fast-paced. The film has been faulted for portraying the turnabout in the war in an overly simplified, Hollywoodesque manner, the mujahideen seen to be shifting from badly beaten disarray to total dominance as if overnight. While this is a legitimate criticism, this issue bears little influence on the overall brilliance of the film’s story.

Nichols, known as an "actor's director," evokes uniformly good performances from everyone. Hanks, Roberts and Hoffman each perform very convincingly. (The always hard working Hoffman, who has been nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for his turn here, was very busy in 2007, also giving outstanding performances in The Savages and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.) Among other supporting players, Amy Adams (Junebug, Enchanted) as Wilson’s administrative assistant, Om Puri, as the tough president of Pakistan, and Ned Beatty, as the gruff Chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, stand out.

Add: Since 1997, Wilson, now 74, has been a busy fellow. He became a Washington lobbyist for Pakistan at a reported $30 thousand per month, replacing Jack Abramoff. In 1999 he was married, for the first time, to a former ballerina he had first met in 1980. In September, 2007, after two years on the waiting list, he received a heart transplant. (In Dari, Arabic, Russian & English) Grade: A- (01/22/08)

CHASIN’ GUS’ GHOST (Todd Kwait, US, 2007, 99 m.). In his debut as a film writer/director, Todd Kwait, a 48 year old lawyer by training, has created the definitive jug band music documentary! He has blended archival and contemporary performance footage, occasional amusing animated cartoon sequences, and an interesting variety of talking heads to tell the story of the history and present state of the art of jug band performance. He holds these bits and pieces together with a pleasant narrative voiceover in which he appears to be on a road trip seeking the roots of jug band music throughout Tennessee and Mississippi.

Through the comments of folks like John Sebastian, David Grisman, Geoff Muldauer, Bob Weir, Jim Kweskin, Maria Muldauer, Delmark Goldfarb, Samuel Charters, Eric Darling, Sule Greg Wilson, Charlie Musselwhite and the late Fritz Richmond, among others. Kwait traces the history of jug music back to its seminal performers: people like Yank Rashel, Sleepy John Estes, Noah Lewis, William Shade and, especially, Gus Cannon, who is considered the father of this musical genre and whose name is part of the film’s title.

Balanced next to this walk down memory lane, the contemporary jug music scene is also covered well. Sule Greg Wilson and his African American band, Sankofa Strings, seek to reintroduce the roots music of this genre. We travel with Kwait, Sebastian, Queskin and Geoff Muldauer to the 2006 Yokahama Jug Band Festival, and to a concert in Tokyo honoring Fritz Richmond, where we hear the popular Japanese groups, the Southern Chefs (dressed in white chefs’ attire) and Mad Words, and learn that the future of this music may rest with the Japanese more than with Americans.

As is the case for any music documentary, I think it is always desirable to include some fully performed songs. Most here are, regrettably, cut short. Adding another 10-15 minutes to the film’s length would have allowed sufficient time for a several more full numbers. Still, it’s hats off to Todd Kwait, who has turned in a highly respectable first effort in a film dedicated to Fritz Richmond, whose unique washtub bass now rests in the Smithsonian. Grade B+ (Seen in the NWFC "Reel Music" Series, 01/29/08)

CHICAGO 10 (Brett Morgen, US, 2007, 103 m.). Documentarist Brett Morgen (Ollie’s Army, On the Ropes, The Kid Stays In the Picture – the last two co-directed with Nanette Burstein) has written and directed a sensational new film that tells the story of the leaders of the Vietnam War protesters who demonstrated at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, in Chicago, and their subsequent trial. To create this vivid, stirring film, Morgen has combined a soundtrack of popular music of the times, archival footage of events in 1968, and ingeniously composed digital animated sequences of the trial of the protest leaders in 1969, in Federal District Court, in Chicago, using quotations from the trial transcript, spoken by the voices of several leading actors, representing the animated images of the defendants, their attorneys and government prosecutors, several witnesses, and the presiding Judge, Julius Hoffman. The film weaves back and forth between archival segments and animated trial segments in a lively, absorbing manner.

Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's response to the impending demonstrations was to call in the Illinois National Guard and train Chicago police officers in aggressive riot control techniques. As a result, news commentator Walter Cronkite said, just beforehand, that "the Democratic National Convention is beginning soon...in a police state." Although the film is decidedly sympathetic to the defendants and their cause, this slant on matters is entirely justified by the outcome of subsequent appeals that overturned every conviction arising from this trial, as well as Bobby Seale’s and the defense attorneys' trials. (For the record, the “Chicago Eight” were: Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Seale and Lee Weiner. Judge Hoffman ordered a separate trial for Seale, leaving the “Chicago Seven.” The other two individuals rounding out the “10” were the lead defense attorney, William Kunstler, and assistant attorney, Leonard Weinglass, both of whom were convicted by Judge Hoffman of contempt of court. For more, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Seven ). The animated trial sequences were prepared by Switch VFX and Yowza, both under the direction of Joao G. Amorim. Excellent editing was accomplished by Stuart Levy. Voices were those of Hank Azaria, Dylan Baker, Nick Nolte, Mark Ruffalo, Roy Scheider, Liev Schreiber, James Urbaniak and Jeffrey Wright, among others. Winner, Silver Hugo for Best Documentary, at the 2007 Chicago IFF. Grade: A- (02/04/08).

Add: Weiner and Froines were acquitted from conspiracy-to-start-riot charges, though they were convicted of making incendiary devices ("stink bombs”). Rubin became a successful businessman and investor. Abbie Hoffman continued his radical theatrical approach to social protestation. He died at age 52 in 1989, apparently from a suicidal drug overdose. He had been diagnosed as bipolar in 1980 and kept copious notes on his moods. Of the 7 surviving protest leaders at the time, only Rubin and Hayden attended Hoffman's funeral. Rubin himself died at age 56 in 1994 as the result of injuries sustained when, as a pedestrian, he was hit by a car. David Dellinger continued as a protester of war and free trade agreements, among other issues, until his death at 88 in 2004. William Kunstler died in 1995 at age 76; earlier that year he had spoken out against the death penalty. Except for Hoffman, Rubin, Kunstler and Dellinger, the other principals are still living. Davis is a venture capitalist and lectures on meditation and self-awareness. Hayden had a successful career as a California state senator; more recently he has taught college courses and serves on the advisory board of Progressive Democrats of America. Seale sponsors youth education projects and lectures together with his wife, also a former BPP member. Weiner continues to be an activist in various social causes. Froines became a professor of toxicology at UCLA. Leonard Weinglass most recently defended the "Cuban Five" and Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Add more: Not long ago, I revisited Haskell Wexler’s 1969 film, Medium Cool, which audaciously combines a narrative drama about the ethics of photojournalism with live action location shots in which the actors actually mixed in with protesters at the 1968 Democratic convention. Apart from Wexler’s daring conflation of fact and fiction, what impresses is that the film establishes the same sense of immediacy and relevance now that it did nearly 40 years ago.

CHRONICLE OF AN ESCAPE (Crónica de una fuga) (Adrián Caetano, Argentina, 2006, 103 m.). Overused as it may be, I can’t think of a better description of how I experienced this oppressive, taut docudrama than to say it was gut wrenching in the extreme. Uruguayan director Caetano (who made the excellent 2001 feature, Bolivia) tells the true story of the arrest, four month long detention and torture of four young members of the Argentinian resistance, captured in late 1977, as the Military junta regime was tightening its sadistic grip on the nation. Brilliant cast, led by Rodrigo De la Serna (Motorcycle Diaries). Viewers are spared direct witnessing of most of the torture, but nonetheless you are kept intensely involved in this ordeal. (In Spanish) Grade: A- (02/13/07)

THE CITRILLO’S TURNS (Las Vueltas del Citrillo) (Filipe Cazals, Mexico, 2006, 97 m.). SPOILER ALERT! This remarkable period film is gorgeously photographed and full of deeply etched characters and intimate conflicts, all set within a larger context of sociopolitical developments in pre-revolutionary Mexico. It is 1903, the 19 th year of the long, harshly repressive regime of Porfirio Diaz, who had through colossal will and terrible force staunched economic hemorrhaging and suppressed civil chaos that had ruined Mexico for decades beforehand. Diaz accomplished these things at a terrible cost in terms of slaughtering his opponents, making Mexico financially more dependent than ever upon U.S. capital, and engendering even greater poverty in a land already suffering from a gross imbalance in the distribution of wealth. Vuelta means ‘turn,’ which in this story means a visit to the local pulqueria to down a few pints of the peasants’ drink, pulque, a potent, milky brew fermented from the agave plant. But in a possibly intentional pun, vuelta, which also literally means ‘revolution’ (e.g., the revolutions of an electric fan), could refer to the fact that this film is about conditions that foreshadowed, indeed inspired, the Mexican Revolution that would begin 7 years later.

The story principally concerns three soldiers and two women, both prostitutes. We come to know each quite well, through good scripting, good acting and portrait-like camerawork that captures each character at close range throughout the movie. The pivotal character is the Sergeant, Sargento Collazo (Damián Alcázar). He has brought his unit to a particular town where he is to participate as the godfather in the baptism of an infant, Melba’s child. Melba (Vanessa Bauche), a fierce, self-possessed woman who is one of the prostitutes, is a long time friend of the Sergeant’s, and, we may assume, they were once either lovers or sexually paired at a brothel. The Sergeant’s two main aides are the hay fever consumed, sneezy Corporal Cabo Aboytes (Jorge Zárate), a classic ‘yes man’ gofer for the Sergeant, and a new recruit, Private José Isabel (José Maria Yazpik), who is Aboytes’s polar opposite. José is proud, arrogant, assertive to a point just short of insubordination, and a braggart to boot, boasting especially of his lover’s prowess, enhanced by his liberal use of weed. Rounding out the quintet of principals is Brigida (Giovanna Zacarias), the other prostitute, who is in several respects the polar opposite of Melba. Where Melba is generous, Brigida is selfish; where Melba has some sense of higher purpose, Brigida seems content to live from moment to moment in a drunken state of giddy intoxication.

Action in the film derives in part from the unfolding of current events among the five principals, and in equal measure from stories told during drinking “turns” in a tavern, stories we viewers experience as flashbacks, involving other colorful, often amusing characters. As in the stories of Garcia Marquez or Carlos Fuentes, the boundary between the living and the dead here is a porous one. A dead man from one of the barroom tales welcomes José after his execution by firing squad, and later the pair return to the present to mix it up with the living. Cazals creates a deliciously wry sight gag at the end by having the dead transported in classic form down a river, conveyed not in some conventional shadowy vessel, but in one of the gaudily festooned pleasure boats at Xochimilco. It’s name: “La Mala Vida.”

It was most fortunate – and in some respects indispensible – to have Mr. Cazals present for this screening. He was on hand to participate in “Cine-Lit VI,” an international conference on Hispanic film and literature, held during PIFF at Portland State University every three years. He made useful introductory remarks, gave a lengthy Q & A, and, afterward, I was able to have a brief conversation with him one-on-one. Cazals, a politically sophisticated intellectual, is one of the leading filmakers of his generation in Mexico (this is his 40 th film as director, and the 12 th that he has also written). He was born in 1937, in the Basque village of Guéthary, France, in the Pyrénnées, to Spanish parents who had fled from Franco during the early days of the Spanish Civil War. His family, like many thousands of Spanish Republicans and Communists, eventually immigrated to Mexico, where his childhood years were spent in Zapopan, a Guadalajaran suburb, and later in Mexico City.

Like a good university professor, Cazals makes demands upon his audiences. He expects the viewer to show up at the theater equipped with an understanding of the historical and political context of the times, and the ‘rules of the game’ for civil and military conduct during the Porfiriana (the name coined for Diaz’s 27 year-long second presidency). He assumes that you already know that in Mexico in that time, having enough food to stave off starvation was far more important than advancing some political ideology, a situation like that in southern Italy in the 1930s, described so well by Ignazio Silone in his classic 1937 novel, “Bread and Wine.”

The whole enterprise fairly oozes with Brechtian allegorical riffs. The name of the infant to be baptized is Doctrino, an allusion to the fact that as early as 1903 political awareness was barely nascent, just dawning among the peasantry, who by then were sure of only one thing: that their lives were miserable. Aboytes stands for the sort of underclass type that Porfirio Diaz would have wished to cultivate: men who are unthinking, loyal, reflexively obedient to the regime. The uppity José, on the other hand, delights in breaking the law (smoking marijuana), seducing every woman in sight, and flaunting authority. Brimming with youthful insouciance, full of himself, José is as indifferent to the suffering around him as he is to authority. His very nature makes him subversive to everybody, an enemy of both the state and the peasantry. Small wonder that the Sergeant, a richly complex fellow who at once represents Diaz’s insistence on law and order and compassion for the poor, is virtually compelled to exterminate the younger man. Never mind that this pair – José and the Sergeant – had opened the film in a sequence in which, side by side, they are robbing and killing unarmed but obviously prosperous citizens.

The Sergeant and Melba are far more convoluted characters than the others and perhaps embody Cazals’s sense of the contradictory qualities that made up successful Mexican revolutionaries: toughness and compassion; willingness to ruthlessly attack opponents while tenderly safeguarding loved ones and compatriots; a bent toward generously supporting the poor and murderously plundering the privileged. Melba, like the Sergeant, is capable of robbing and killing a “blind” merchant, a representative of the bourgeoisie that prospered during the Porfiriana, at the expense of the peasants. Melba’s feelings toward the Sergeant are sharply ambivalent. Standing for the soul of the common people, the interests of the motherland, she chooses this strong, proud man to be godfather to Doctrino. She resents his predatory overtures, his Porfirianistic sense of entitlement to her sexual favors, yet she is quite willing to share her charms if he will simply ask in a civil manner rather than make demands. She is appealing to the softer and more democratic side of this complicated man, this contradictory national peasant character.

Some aspects of the story remain puzzling. What does Brigida stand for? She seems to embody a particularly ineffectual response to underclass woes, the passivity of those who respond to their misery not by attempting to change conditions but by escaping from their pain by numbing it with alcohol, drugs and other addictive habits. (Marx’s famous statement that “religion is the opium of the people” comes to mind here.) The most significant conundrum is José’s unrepentant stance. Cazals sets up all the conditions one would expect for such a character to seek and gain redemption for his narcissistic, destructive behavior, even bringing José back from the grave for what I expected to be a clear shot at putting things right. No way, José. I asked Mr. Cazals about this failure of redemption, and he warmed to the task of setting me straight. “You see,” he said, “nothing is important, nothing, not even redemption, when a man is starving. The only thing that matters then is food.” I grasp his point, but this was not self evident watching the movie. Of course there may have been clues to this interpretation in the dialogue, signifiers that I missed because of not being able to follow along in Spanish.

This is a lyrical, visually grand, but highly challenging film. Cazals garnered Best Director Awards at the 2005 Havana Festival of New Latin American Cinema and The 2006 Ariels (Mexico’s Oscars). Variety’s Eddie Cockrell calls the film “a well made but nearly impenetrable drama.” Well, it’s true that you do need to know your stuff about Mexican history of the period, and few Americans qualify. One wonders what proportion even of Mexicans learn this history and thus would find this story comprehensible on all levels. Even then, without Cazals around as a guide, the richness of the characters and story might not come through as well. Citrillo is a good candidate for release in the U.S., not for theatrical screenings but as a DVD, with an introduction by Cazals and a follow-up interview with him, reproducing the conditions in which I was lucky enough to see this film. By the way, his last comment to me was that the story in this film is entirely relevant to conditions in Mexico today, where 45 million people (40% of the population) continue to live in severe poverty. (In Spanish) Grade: B+ (02/24/07)

A COMEDY OF POWER (L’Ivresse du pouvoir) (Claude Chabrol, France/Germany, 2006, 110 m.). Isabelle Huppert plays a hard boiled federal judge who is dead set on busting a sophisticated international ring of business and government officials that moves money around clandestinely to influence world geopolitics in the latest film by masterful auteur Chabrol. (In French) Grade: B+ (02/15/07)

CONTROL (Anton Corbijn, UK/US/others, 2007, 121 m.). SPOILER ALERT! An accomplished biopic about the short life and times of British rocker Ian Curtis, from Macclesfield, UK, a small city south of Manchester. Curtis came to fame as a co-founder (in 1977), vocalist and lyricist for the post-punk band, Joy Division (whose two albums, “Unknown Pleasures” and “Closer” were big hits). The band’s success followed their discovery by Manchester TV personality and pop music promoter, Tony Wilson. Curtis married Deborah while in his late teens, and the couple had a young daughter.

The rigors of touring and popularity took their toll on Curtis, who, like so many young musicians frequently on the road, gradually became estranged from Deborah and at the same time enamored with a reporter, Annik Honoré, with whom he struck up an affair. Meanwhile, following a grand mal seizure, he was diagnosed with epilepsy, which was only partially controlled by anticonvulsant medications that, in any case, he took sporadically. He continued to have seizures, even during musical performances. He was also prone to bouts of depression. In 1979, on the evening before the band’s scheduled departure for their first U.S. tour, Curtis hanged himself, at the age of 23. By then not only was his epilepsy out of control, but every other aspect of his life as well.

Shot in slightly grainy black & white, the film has the feel of an old music documentary, like D.A. Pennebaker's and Murray Lerner's films of the early Dylan. The film covers Curtis's life from high school days until his death. It is intelligently blended, moving between biographical events and performances. There are no talking heads. The screenplay was adapted by Matt Greenhalgh from Deborah Curtis’s biography of Ian, “Touching From a Distance.” Ms. Curtis also co-produced the film. Anton Corbijn is a veteran director of pop music documentaries, dating back to 1988 (featuring Depeche Mode, U2, Nirvana and Metallica, among others). The lead actors are uniformly good: Sam Riley as Ian, Samantha Morton as Deborah, Alexandra Maria Lara as Annik, Craig Parkinson as Tony Wilson, and Toby Kebbell as the band’s confrontative manager, Rob Gretton. I don't have a clue whether Riley's performance style was an emulation of Curtis's, but he certainly has a distinctive way of investing each of his songs with great emotional intensity and, between numbers, some unusual swinging arm movements as if he were speedwalking in place.

The film has won many awards, including several at the British Independent Film Awards (best film, best director, best supporting actor [Kebbell], and most promising newcomer [Sam Riley]). Also: several awards at Cannes; the Chicago IFF (best actor [Riley], best screenplay); the Edinburgh IFF (best British performance [Riley], best British first feature film); and the Hamburg Film Festival (best film). Grade B+ (01/24/08)

THE COUNTERFEITERS (Die Fälscher) (Stefan Ruzowitzky, Austria/Germany, 2007, 98 m.). True story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, “Operation Bernhard,” launched by the Nazis in 1936 to create pound notes and dollars in huge volumes, enough to potentially break the British and perhaps the U.S. economies were the bills to flood domestic markets. The central character is Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch (played by Karl Markovics), considered the best counterfeiter in Europe, who led the high life in Berlin until his arrest for counterfeiting in 1939. He is sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he survives by drawing heroic portraits of SS officers and their families. Then he is sent to the Sachsenhausen camp, where he is assigned to lead a team of counterfeiters to create the best possible British and U.S. notes.

The story, based on a book by one of the surviving members of the team, Adolf Burger, is presented with a high level of suspense. We share the prisoners’ apprehension, not knowing what fate lies in store for them from one day to the next. Markovics is outstanding as the lean, tough criminal whose sole motivation is survival, even if this means contributing to an effort that supports Nazi plans. Others, even the Nazi supervisor of the counterfeiting project, appear at times to be on higher moral ground than Sally. The photography, editing and production design are excellent. Austria’s entry in the best foreign film Oscar nominations. (In German) Grade: B+ (01/28/08).

Add: On February 24, this film won the 2008 Oscar for best foreign language film.

CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia) (Zhang Yimou, Hong Kong/China, 2006, 114 m.). Some time ago, acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou apparently became bored of making intimate films about relationships (e.g., The Red Lantern, To Live, The Road Home, Not One Less) and instead found himself drawn to the martial arts and, increasingly, Cecil B. DeMille-style spectacle. First came Hero (2002) with some splendid martial arts scenes amidst a relatively intimate (but not very engaging) narrative; then House of Flying Daggers (2004), with a better action tempo and a huge cast of extras a la DeMille. Now we get Curse, with even larger, more grandiose crowd scenes: literally hordes of combatants filling vast fields and courtyards, not to mention long lines and processions of comely young women with bosoms pushed high to reveal at times perilous degrees of all but naked breasts.

The plot is complicated, though its execution is at times plain silly. Set in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), this story of palace intrigue is colored by themes of clandestine love, murder, incest, sibling rivalry and shame. The grand battles, which break out at nearly every turn, are a ho-hum aspect of the film. Better than that are the all-too-infrequent martial arts sequences. Better than that is the gorgeous production design, with expansive rooms and long hallways decked out in profuse, arrestingly vivid colors. The cast, led by Gong Li as the Empress Phoenix, perform well enough. This is a decent film, but I miss Zhang’s more intimate dramas of years past. (In Mandarin) Grade: B- (01/21/08)

THE DARJEELING LIMITED (Wes Anderson, US, 2007, 91 m.). Three American brothers – the Whitmans: Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) - have not spoken to each other in a year. But they agree to Francis’s plan that they meet in India and journey across the country by train in search of their eccentric mother (Anjelica Huston), who has taken orders in a remote Catholic monastery. Along the way they revitalize their relations with each other and enjoy some entertaining adventures. However, their quest veers off course thanks to various unforeseen doings, involving such items as over-the-counter pain killers, Indian cough syrup, and pepper spray. At one point they find themselves stranded alone in the desert with eleven suitcases, a printer, and a laminating machine. Eventually the brothers do reach their mother, who is, as they had expected, ambivalent about their unannounced visit.

This movie is a splendid comedy that, unlike so many others, keeps being funny and surprising until the end. Wilson gives his best turn here since Shanghai Noon (2000). He performs as an over-the-top controlling obsessive, dictating decisions on behalf of his brothers, who in turn acquiesce pathetically every time, undoubtedly falling into the pattern of their childhood relationships. Turns out that Francis is a chip off the old block, for his mother is every bit as much the control freak. My only frustration with this movie is that we did not see nearly enough of Anjelica Huston, whose role is barely more than a cameo. Other cameos are provided by Bill Murray and Barbet Schroeder. More prominent support comes from three excellent players: Amara Kahn, Wallace Wolodarsky and Waris Ahluwalia. Grade: B+ (12/29/07)

DAYS OF GLORY ( Indigènes ) (Rachid Bouchareb, France/Morocco/Algeria/Belgium, 2006, 120 m.). This riveting, poignant, deeply ironic docudrama tells the story of the 7th Algerian Infantry Division, a battle unit composed of Arab Algerians, mobilized, trained and led by French officers, that took part in the invasion of Italy and southern France to liberate these territories from the Nazis in 1944-45. It is war writ small, up close and personal. The focus is relentlessly cast upon the fortunes of the men in a single squad. This movie is not so much about war as it is about soldiering. Noteworthy is the subtext of unequal, discriminatory treatment of the Algerians, compared to French soldiers (e.g., inferior food, no leave). In that regard, the film prefigures circumstances that led eventually to the Algerian war of independence from France years later.

The ensemble acting is nothing short of stupendous. Deeply etched character studies are offered by Jamel Debbouze (humble Saïd, the youngest, the man with the withered arm), Samy Naceri (Yassir, the protective big brother), Roschdy Zem (Messaoud, the marksman who falls in love with a French woman), Sami Bouajila (the ambitious natural leader, corporal Abdelkader) and Bernard Blancan (Sgt. Martinez, the French Algerian squad leader). This group jointly received the Best Actor award at Cannes last May. I think that Glory ranks with the very best 'intimate' war movies made in the modern era, right up there with films like Sam Fuller's The Big Red One, Oliver Stone’s Platoon, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, and Clint Eastwood’s recent Letters from Iwo Jima. I wouldn’t argue with anyone who claims that Glory is the best of the lot. (In French & Arabic) Grade: A- (01/29/07)

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY (Le Scaphandre et le papillon) (Julian Schnabel, France/US, 2007, 112 min). A biodoc based on the true story of Elle magazine’s then editor-in-chief, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a spontaneous cerebrovascular accident in 1995, at the age of 43, that left him a victim of a rare neurological disorder colloquially known as “Locked-In Syndrome.” All the voluntary muscles in his body were entirely paralyzed, except for the capacity to move his left eye and lower the left eyelid (i.e., he retained the ability to “”blink.”) At the same time, he (like others with this disorder) completely retained his mental faculties, e.g., the ability to think and reason, memory, and imagination, along with sight and hearing. After a valiant two year effort to make the most he could of his vastly narrowed life, Bauby died of complications of his disorder in 1997.

The ability to voluntarily blink his left eye became the basis (again, as for some others with this disorder) for Bauby to learn to communicate, i.e., blinking once for “yes” and twice for “no” in answer to any question put to him in proper form. Dictating in this manner (by blinking when another person pointed to or spoke the right letter of the alphabet), letter by letter he “wrote” a book about his experience, which was published just days before his death. The screenplay was adapted from this book by Ronald Harwood. The book is short, composed of many very brief chapters (most about two pages long), and is poetic, impressionistic and non-linear in structure.

This is one of the most astonishing, inventive, well crafted films I have seen in the past decade. Like the book, the film's narrative unfolds softly, lyrically, and is by turns genuinely suspenseful, very funny, intensely heartwarming and heartbreaking. The perspective in 90% of the scenes is from the viewpoint of Bauby (acted masterfully by Mathieu Amalric). We share his visual experience (looking out into his room and at the faces of people close up who attend and visit him), his thinking (though mute he forms “verbal” responses in his mind and we hear these uttered as if he could speak), and his fantasies (depicted as visuals). In flashbacks we learn about his life and, in time, the moment of his stroke. In the latter third of the film we do catch brief glimpses of Bauby from the external perspective of another person. The supporting cast are exquisitely and without exception effective. Emmanuelle Seigner is cast as Céline, Bauby’s former mistress and mother of his two children; French Canadian actress Marie-Josée Croze as Henriette, Bauby’s infinitely patient communications coach; and Max von Sydow as Bauby’s father. A host of other bit players are superb as well.

Julian Schnabel was a darling of the New York art world in the 1980s, when he was a leading light in the neo-expressionist movement. His giant collages, vividly bold paintings mixed with shards of pottery and the like, have not stood the test of time. But in the 1990s Schnabel set out to become a filmmaker, and in this endeavor I think he has found his true métier. Diving Bell is his third feature film. All three are biodocs. First there was Basquiat (1996), based on the short, mercurial life of the New York City graffiti artist and painter Jean Michel Basquiat, starring the fine actor Jeffrey Wright in the title role. Then in 2000 came Before Night Falls, the story of exiled Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas, with Spanish superstar Javier Bardem as Arenas. Both are splendid films, but Diving Bell is a quantum leap forward from them.

It is difficult to think of films that can be compared with Diving Bell, but two come to mind. One is The Sea Inside, another biodoc starring Javier Bardem, this time as the long-paralyzed Ramón Sampedro, whose unrelenting effortsto gain legal recognition of what he argued was his 'right to die' caused a great stir throughout Spain. Bauby had thoughts of wanting to die at first, but these faded rather rapidly in favor of an intense bent not only to live but to accomplish as much as possible, including not only preparation of his book but also rapproachment with several people in his life. The other is Almodóvar's masterful film, Talk to Her, which deals with the care of a chronically comatose patient from the viewpoint of the professional caregiver, a nurse, Benigno Martin, played with great sensitivity by Javier Cámara. Diving Bell earned Schnabel the Best Director Award at Cannes in 2007, where Janusz Kaminski, the ingenious cinematographer here, won the ‘Technical Grand Prize.’ The film itself was nominated for best film (the Palme d’Or) but was beaten by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s drama, 4 luni, 3 saptamini si 2 zile (“4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days”). (In French) Grade: A (01/03/08)

THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS (Jacques Rivette, France/Italy, 2007, 137 m.). SPOILER ALERT! CONSUMER ALERT! Approaching age 80, Jacques Rivette continues to make films. According to François Truffaut, Rivette was the father of the French “New Wave,” but Rivette has never been commercially successful. One huge reason is that he makes very long – sometimes extremely long - and, on the whole, boring movies. The last of his films that I suffered through was the 2001 talkathon, Va Savoir (Who Knows?), in which people blathered on for 2 hours and 35 minutes, and that, for unclear reasons, was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes that year. Duchess, at least, is slightly shorter and less gravid with talk. Based on a novel by Balzac, the story concerns an ill-fated romance between two members of Parisian nobility, set around 1820, starting around the time Napoleon I ended his reign as Emperor. The principals are Antoinette, the sparkling and ever so coquettish - never mind that she's way too old to be an ingénue - Duchess of Langeais (Jeanne Balibar, who also starred in Va Savoir), and Gen. Armand de Montriveau, a weary, humorless French army officer (Guillaume Depardieu, Gerard’s son, whose limp here is real: a chronic bone infection, the residuum of a motorbike accident, required amputation of his leg a few years ago). Both principals behave like idiots, and as a result, their love is never realized. According to a Parisian reviewer on the IMDb, the screenplay adheres closely to Balzac’s story. Too bad. Given the lack of appeal of these two characters, we might have disposed of their lunatic romance in at least an hour less time than Rivette takes here. Again for mysterious reasons, this film was nominated for a Golden Bear (Best Film) Award at the 2007 Berlin IFF. Sigh. With veterans Michel Piccoli, Bulle Ogier and Barbet Schroeder in support, among others. (In French) Grade: C (02/04/08)

EAGLE VS. SHARK (Taika [Cohen] Waititi, New Zealand, 2007, 93 m.). Among a fistful of first rate comedies at the Portland IInternational Film Festival this year, here’s the one that gets my vote for the best of the group. You won’t meet quirkier people or encounter goofier situations than you find in this wry, hilarious romantic farce. Jemaine Clement gets the Jon Heder Prize for oddball of the year starring as Jarrod, a solipsistic, brooding hulk of a fellow who, in his late twenties, is still mentally fighting private battles dating back to high school. For reasons that are not obvious, Jarrod is the object of total and unstinting affection from the smitten fast food worker Lily (Loren Horsley). This is not one of those web-of-coincidence flicks, but I will say that the characters in this divinely funny movie make Miranda July’s people in Me, You and Everyone We Know seem like drab poseurs in comparison. Lily is as endearing as she is loony, and it is her tender heartedness and pluck that hold the enterprise together. If you insist that all your favorite film characters be “normal,” you may find this one off-putting, but for me, this film is absolutely spot on, no holds barred fun. Grade: B+ (02/12/07)

EASTERN PROMISES (David Cronenberg, UK/Canada/US, 2007, 100 m.). Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, who delights in making macabre, violent movies (Rabid, Scanner, Videodrome, The Fly, Crash (1996), eXistenZ, Spider, A History of Violence), now gives us his bloody take on the machinations of a very nasty London crime family with Russian and Eastern European roots. Russian-born tough guy Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen in an Oscar-nominated performance) is a chauffeur for the family, which is headed by the charming but ruthless Semyon (the always interesting Armin Mueller-Stahl). Semyon’s mean spirited but error-prone son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), serves as a family enforcer. Rounding out the group of principals is Anna (Naomi Watts), a nurse-midwife who goes looking for the family of a girl she attended who died in childbirth. Using the girl’s diary, Anna stumbles onto incriminating information concerning the crime family, a dangerous discovery to say the least. Plot twists turn viewers around. But what sticks in the mind’s eye are the scenes of blood and gore and, in particular, a long fight sequence pitting two nude men against each other in the dressing room at a public steam bath. It’s a whale of a battle. Grade: B+ (11/07)

ELOQUENT NUDE: THE LOVE AND LEGACY OF EDWARD WESTON & CHARIS WILSON (Ian McCluskey, US, 2007, 60 m.). One of the most exquisitely crafted biodocs in memory enjoyed its world premiere at the NW Film Center tonight, attracting a turn away crowd of 1,200 that required simultaneous screenings in two halls at the Portland Art Museum. Not a soul was disappointed viewing this captivating gaze into the relationship of a world class artist, the photographer Edward Weston (1886-1958), and his muse, model, assistant and spouse, Charis Wilson. The film focuses on the years the couple were together; they were inseparable for about a decade, from about 1933 on. Wilson inspired Weston’s most sublime photographic studies of the nude female form and later assisted him in several other ventures during his Guggenheim-financed photographic explorations in the mid to late 1930s.

Ian McCluskey adapted Ms. Wilson’s memoir, “Through Another Lens,” co-written with Wendy Madar, and also was lead cameraman, director and editor of the film. With extraordinary skill, McCluskey has blended archival material, contemporary reenactments, stills of Weston’s work, and interview segments to create this masterpiece of economical, moving, aesthetically satisfying filmcraft. Not a second is wasted here. Nor is there a bad or even average scene or interlude.

Charis Wilson was 19 when she met Weston (who was then in his late 40s), and their years together were marked by her own formative development from devoted, love struck ingénue to independent, mature personality and gifted writer. Ms. Wilson is in fact the star of this film. Shot when she was 90, her interview segments are graced with the preternatural skill of a fine storyteller. It is her refreshing commentary that binds the other building blocks of this film into a seamless whole. She is candid, amusing, even droll at times. She has marvelous control, speaking without hesitation in well phrased, syntactically perfect sentences with no repetition, not a hint of slowed thinking, none of the pauses, “ums” or “ers” that so often mark the oral narratives of the elderly. She’s now 92 and wheelchair bound, but that did not stop her from making the 700 mile trip from her home in Santa Cruz, CA, to be present at this premiere, nor was she any less eloquent tonight in her post film remarks than on screen. A remarkable art flick, not to be missed. Grade: A+ (03/08/07)

FIDO (Andrew Currie, Canada, 2006, 91 m.). Set in a middle class neighborhood in the imaginary town of Willard in the 1950s, this dark comedy with a light touch toys with such American obsessions as gun mania and violence, materialism and keeping up with the Joneses, fear of others, slavery, golf, and the disposing of the dead. Yes, it all sounds a bit heavy, but trust me on this, it’s all done with a touch as light as a Swedish pancake. Zombies are featured prominently among the characters. Crucial questions arise, such as: who will become a zombie (90% of the Willard folks choose this final path, while only 10% prefer a traditional funeral)? Who owns how many Zombies to do their bidding like robots (they’ve become a mark of social status)? And, what is the range of possible relationships that can be worked out between the living and the sort of reincarnated dead?

Somehow, director Andrew Currie, who also co-wrote the screenplay, keeps this improbable material percolating along for an hour and a half without once faltering for want of a good laugh. A super cast helps: Carrie-Anne Moss, Billy Connolly, Dylan Baker, Henry Czerny, Tim Blake Nelson and Sonja Bennett are the principals, aided by young K’Sun Ray as Timmy, the innocent kid with a good heart who acts as fair witness to all the lunacy perpetrated by the grownups. The production design and music are exquisitely 50s, to a tee. Maybe this one isn’t for everybody. It surely will be a hard film to beat for my annual Bizarro Award. But more than that, for me anyway, Fido is a hoot! Grade: B+ (01/30/07)

FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan/France, 2007, 113 m.). To mark the 50th anniversary of the release of Albert Lamorisse’s immortal short film, The Red Balloon, Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien has prepared a feature-length homage film. In Red Balloon, which earned an Oscar for best original screenplay and a Palme d’Or at Cannes for best short (34 minute) film, a boy, played by Lamorisse’s son, makes friends with a red balloon which follows him around Paris, to his school, and so on. There is no dialogue. Hou’s film begins and ends with a similar theme: a boy and a red balloon in Paris, but mainly the balloon, which soars and dips, finds its way into a Metro tunnel and out again, and drifts up along the sides of buildings, casting its shadow lyrically.

Sandwiched between these red balloon bookends is a small domestic drama built of little events and encounters in the daily life of an actress, Suzanne, played by Juliette Binoche. The film centers on Suzanne, who always seems to be in a breathless dither about one thing or another, spreading chaos wherever she goes; her precocious grade school age son Simon (Simon Iteanu), whose days are buffeted by the ups and downs generated around him by his mother; and Simon’s cool new nanny, young Fang Song (same name as the actress who plays her), a film student just in from Beijing, who brings a bit of serenity and order into Simon’s life. The film is not at all plot driven: nothing much happens. Suzanne rehearses as the main voice for a puppet show. Suzanne has a row with her upstairs tenant, who never pays his rent. Simon’s piano teacher Anne comes in for his weekly lesson. And in one of the more moving sequences in the film, a blind piano tuner comes to call. There you have it. (In French). Grade: B (01/31/08)

GRBAVICA (Jasmila Žbanić, Bosnia, 2006, 91 m.). SPOILER ALERT! Intimate, soulful story of Esma (Mirjana Karanovic), a single mother, and her 12 year old daughter Sara (Luna Mijovic). Set in the present in the seedy Grbavica district of Sarajevo, this film explores the far reaches of trauma in the Bosnian war: how the psychic wounds inflicted in that terrible time remain open and unhealed to this day. The film opens with the camera panning a dark, rich kilim rug behind the front credits, sweeping next over the faces of women lying on the rug, finally to a special face, a sweet, sad woman’s face, her eyes staring painfully straight into our own. Thus, in an instant, before any dialogue begins, we are engaged with this woman, riveted by her, and she interests us deeply from this first moment.

This sense of intense engagement prevails throughout this well told, well photographed narrative.