THE MAINE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
2005 DIARY

By Laurie Meunier Graves

DAY 5

We are half way through MIFF, and there is a midfestival surge at Railroad Square Cinema. The lines are long, the theaters are full, and the popcorn machine can barely keep up with the demand. By gosh, it feels like a real festival, and although I experience some anxiety about getting the seat I like (on the aisle in front of the space reserved for wheelchairs), I also enjoy the bustle of the crowd. In the women’s room, there is a discussion about the French movie Nathalie. The general consensus is very similar to my take—people like the movie even though they don’t really understand the dynamics between the main characters. Finally, one woman shrugs and says, “It’s so French.”

I think about this for awhile. Even though I am a Franco-American and have some traits normally associated with the French, I am also an American, thoroughly immersed in the Yankee culture of Maine. I suppose that makes me a Yankee Franco, a hybrid of sorts. As a result, the manipulation and the resulting sexual high jinks of Nathalie leave me as baffled as anyone else. After all, it was a long, long time ago that my forebears emigrated from France.

What is particularly fascinating with Nathalie is that people really like it, even though they don’t understand what’s going on. On some level, it works, and this combination is no small feat. In general, people aren’t keen on movies they don’t understand, but Nathalie defies the conventional wisdom about what people like.

Tonight, we see A Sidewalk Astronomer and Le Goût des jeunes filles. In very different ways, both films are delightful, but Clif and I particularly like A Sidewalk Astronomer, a documentary about the “father” of amateur astronomy. On the way home, as if to go along with the movie, the nearly full moon shines overhead, and its dark craters are easy to see. Sheer black clouds pass before the glowing moon, and the sight is so lovely that I can’t look away. A perfect ending for the day.

A SIDEWALK ASTRONOMER
USA, 2005; 79 minutes; video; in English



Before I begin this review, I feel that, in all fairness, I should make a disclaimer. My knowledge and understanding of math and science are so slim that I’m not in any position to judge the veracity of the countertheories expressed by John Dobson, the subject of this engrossing and engaging documentary. However, this deficiency does not in the least interfere with my enjoyment of the movie, and I even come away thinking that perhaps I should do something about my ignorance of math and science. After all, as Sally Ride recently said on National Public Radio, science and technology affect us all, and we should have at least a basic understanding of them.

John Dobson has a similar message in A Sidewalk Astronomer. That is, we are part of a huge, grand, beautiful universe, strange and mysterious, yet most of us show little interest in it. Instead, we act as though we are stuck in the Middle Ages, where it was thought that the earth was the center of the universe. Well, it isn’t, and as John Dobson puts it, “We’re a long way from downtown.” He quite rightly believes that we should show some interest in what’s beyond this planet, even if it’s just to gaze in wonder at the moon through a powerful but handmade telescope. (Dobson invented the Dobson telescope mount, which makes it possible to create high-powered, handmade telescopes.)

Dobson, a “self-taught cosmologist and former monk,” literally takes his message and his handmade telescope to the streets of San Francisco, where he exhorts and entices people to come “look at the moon.” Many people pass right by him. They are afraid he’s a panhandler and will want them to pay for the view. However, some people do stop, and they are absolutely enchanted by what they see. As passersby look at the moon, Dobson, with his charming Irish accent, chatters nonstop, regaling them with moon facts and pithy sayings. For example: “The universe is made of hydrogen and ignorance.”

The ninety-year-old Dobson, with his beret, white ponytail, and angular face, couldn’t be a better subject for a film. He could talk the hind leg off a mule, as the saying goes, and talk he does, explaining the wonders of the universe, teaching students, and expounding on his theories of “Life, the universe, and everything else.” The film uses beautiful pictures of planets, galaxies, and stars to illustrate what he is saying. One of Dobson’s most challenging ideas is that the Big Bang Theory is completely wrong. He comes up with an alternative theory, but I must admit that I can’t follow it very well. However, when you’re with a hot ticket like John Dobson, it doesn’t really matter. To listen to him is an adventure as well as a much-needed reminder that we should pay more attention to what’s beyond our planet.

LE GOÛT DES JEUNES FILLES
Canada, 2004; 88 minutes; 35mm; in French with English subtitles

1/2

This coming-of-age story about a young Haitian boy named Fanfan manages to stay light, even though it’s set in Haiti during a turbulent, dangerous time. The dictator François Duvalier, “Papa Doc,” has just died, and armed men roam the streets on the lookout for insurgents. The men belong to the Tonton Macoutes, a militia group dedicated to protecting Papa Doc’s regime, which has been passed down to his son. This would be the perfect film to show to people who don’t believe in gun control. It would give them a sense of what life is like in country where most men carry guns and are all too ready to use them.

Fanfan is a quiet, studious fifteen-year-old who lives with his protective, doting mother. She brings him milk and worries about him and won’t let him go to the movies with his friend, a swaggering boy who smokes and drinks. Across the street from Fanfan live the objects of his desire, four beautiful prostitutes who burst into the movie like the Fanta Soda girls. Naturally, his mother disapproves of these women and doesn’t want her son to have anything to do with them. And, just as naturally, Fanfan would like nothing better than to be in their midst.

Fanfan, of course, gets his wish but not in a way he anticipates. One night, when Fanfan sneaks out with his friend, he runs afoul of one of the Tonton Macoutes. Fanfan’s friend, who boasts of having “cut off the man’s balls,” convinces Fanfan that he had better run because other Tonton Macoutes will be on the lookout for him. Not wanting to get his mother involved, Fanfan runs to the prostitutes’ house and is befriended by one of them. In the process, Fanfan learns to “be a man,” and even though there is a nice plot twist, this movie ends rather predictably.

Nevertheless, the movie maintains a nice tension between the larger events taking place in Haiti and Fanfan’s teenaged self-absorption. Narration and graphics, which could have killed the movie, somehow manage to be lively rather than annoying. And the young actor who plays Fanfan brings a graveness to his role that makes him both touching and endearing. When he professes to be obsessed with the poet Magloire Saint-Aude, Fanfan is completely believable as a budding young writer caught in a brutal society.

Day 6 -->

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