MIFF 2005 FILM FESTIVAL NOTEBOOK
By Joel Johnson
DAY 1
The Eighth Maine International Film
Festival got started with a bang. There was no veggie dip, crackers, and
wine foreplay for MIFF VIPs, the festival began with fullspeed wheelchair
collisions in Murderball.
Murderball.
This is a great documentary—actually, nonfiction—film. This is an
informative, entertaining, and inspiring film as it weaves a tapestry that
includes rival competitors, teammates, friends, family, and lovers around
the sport of wheelchair or quad rugby. Since the sport features all those
wheelchairs colliding fullspeed, the sport has been called Murderball.
The film covers a lot of territory in a breezy 85 minutes. It addresses the
various injuries and diseases that can result in decreased function in all
four extremities. It describes that initial dance of flirtation with the
opposite sex that leads up to discussing what the quad can do “down there”
and then goes on to provide additional details about how quads “do it.” This
may come under the heading of “Everything you always wanted to know about
quadriplegia, but were afraid to ask.” The film spends quite a bit of time
developing three parallel stories that have their own arcs: (1) American
star Steve Zupan rebonds with his old friend Chris Igoe who inadvertently
caused Steve’s quadriplegia; (2) Former American star and current Canadian
team coach Joe Soares deals with a health crisis and becomes a better
father; and (3) newly injured Keith Cavill going through rehab for his
quadriplegia. I strongly recommend Murderball. Perhaps
supplying an even stronger imprimatur were the glowing comments of two
members of the Casco Bay Navigators quad rugby team at the reception
following Murderball. We also spent a few minutes talking with film
director Rebecca Miller who was enjoying the opportunity to simply see the
opening night film at MIFF. Frequently, her ability to enjoy watching films
at festivals would be limited as the point person in working with the press
to help generate the right “buzz” that helps to determine the commercial
success or failure of a film.
Peace One
Day.
We
finished off the evening by seeing Jeremy Gilley’s
Peace One Day. Regrettably, the bulk of
the audience had gone to the reception and had not come back to the Opera
House to see this film. Gilley deserves high marks for embarking on the
seemingly quixotic mission of trying to get all the various and sundry
combatants in the world to stop killing each other for just one day. This is
a talky film with Gilley, an actor, providing a constant narrative. Gilley
travels around the world and has met several Nobel Peace laureates in
addition to dozens of heads of state, diplomats, and United Nations
functionaries. He just happened to be in New York City at the United Nations
at exactly the same time as the terrorists hit the Twin Towers on September
11th. The amazing thing is that Jeremy was successful in getting a
resolution passed at the United Nations. The resolution established
International Peace Day on September 21st annually instead on the often
ignored opening of the United Nations General Assembly. Everyone is for
world peace, but we just have trouble accepting that it is possible. It may
not be possible, but the despair that says we should not even be trying to
promote world peace creates an even more dismal world. The film closes with
a challenge to members of the audience: “What will you be doing on September
21st?
Additional Capsule Reviews of MIFF Films
Exils (Exiles)
This is another of Tony Gatlif’s films that
puts the foreign back in foreign film. While at first reading one may see
this as a negative, Tony shows us the cultures and contexts that do not look
or feel in any way like southern California. This is the creeping American
cultural imperialism that is endemic to nearly all of the developed world.
He revisits his favorite themes of one’s own personal cultural history and,
of course, music. Here he has two young Algerian expatriates (Romain Duris
and Lubna Azabal) in France deciding to go back to one’s roots in Algeria.
They are, of course, going against the overwhelming flow of immigrants
heading from Algeria and elsewhere in the Middle East to Europe. Gatlif
presents a scene that literally shows that and he also has the pilgrims
using many of the same nefarious means available to undocumented migrants.
Gatlif is very good at capturing interesting scenes, interesting music, and
interesting characters. Romain Duris, the “crazy stranger” from the
translated title of Gatlif’s earlier Gadjo Dilo, is Zano, a young man whose
family fled Algeria in the aftermath of the Algerian war against French
colonialism. He responds to Gatlif’s opening cacophony of sounds from
contemporary culture by announcing his plan to go to Algeria. He invites his
incredulous girlfriend, the sexy spitfire Naima, to come along with him.
More for Zano than for herself even though her father was an Algerian Arab,
she decides to go with him on the journey. Along the way, they meet a
variety of people who befriend them. One of the more interesting is the
placid Algerian beauty Leila (Leila Makhlouf) and her mate Habib (Habib
Cheik) who are heading to Paris or Amsterdam to find a better life. Gatlif
spends a certain amount of time focusing on skin. While that might seem to
simply refer to nudity and there is nudity, the characters spend time
noticing various scars on each other’s bodies. There is one about which
Naima tells Zano, “I can’t tell you about that.” Music, drinking, and sex
are recurring motifs and Gatlif’s camera takes it all in. Narrative cohesion
has never been a major concern for Gatlif and Exils is no different on that
score. The film singles out Naima as particularly estranged from her
family’s native culture—she does not know any Arabic—and has a long
10-minute scene that seemingly is supposed to imprint her culture onto her
soul. She dances more and more wildly to a crescendo of drums and chanting
that reaches a quasi-orgasmic climax. As this goes on and on, one will
either be completely intrigued by the exotic earthiness of the environment
into which Gatlif has immersed the audience or one will be checking out the
exits. I found myself intrigued for much of the film, but ultimately it goes
on far too long and its lack of narrative cohesion becomes frustrating.
The Barn
MIFF has always provided a showcase for films with Maine connections to be
seen. Maine native Jake Broder, actor and screenwriter, has traveled “across
the pond” to merry olde England to do The Barn. While there is
merriment on display, it is a humor that is dark and rude. The film’s set up
is that two wannabe tough Americans find themselves in a bad place (the
barn) on a bad deal with some London hard men. The London laddies make short
work of the two yanks. Then there is the rest of the story. It ends up as a
grotesquely absurdist comedy. It is just the sort of Beckettian filmmaking
that one would expect from theatre majors eager to make their mark. One’s
appreciation of the film will likely depend on how one likes to see films or
plays that vacillate between odd reality and odd fantasies. This is clearly
not a straight-forward film. The word “disturbing” comes to mind. The film
does demonstrate a fair amount of filmmaking savvy. There’s a lot of
technical panache on display in its choice of visuals and music. The acting
is solid throughout the small cast, however the outlandish storyline limits
the opportunities to identify with main characters. This is a good film for
cast and crew to use as a “calling card” to show the kind of work they can
do, but may have too cryptic a story to appeal to more than a narrow slice
of filmgoers.
Day 2 -->
