MIFF FILMS FROM THE IMAGINATION
By Joel Johnson
OK, this is not a formal section of the Maine
International Film Festival (MIFF), but it does encompass the fictional
films—not previously described—created completely from the imaginations of
directors, writers, actors, and all the other talented individuals who
participate in the creative process. These are the kind of films that we
have seen most frequently in theaters and on our home television sets all
our lives. These films might be about people who may seem real—but are
not—or the character may be a real person—but the film presents an actor’s
interpretation of the person’s personality and an impression of the events
of their lives. The film may be uplifting, thought-provoking, wildly funny,
sobering, or sad in the reaction or reactions evoked in the audience, but
the best films have the imagination of the filmmakers powerfully touching
the imagination of the audience.
New this year is a
centerpiece gala film. The film wearing this crown is
Little Miss Sunshine fresh from Sundance. Though
the title might suggest that the film belongs in the child-oriented
Fireflies section, this film about a dysfunctional family making a
cross-country trip in a VW bus to follow the dream of seven year-old Olive
(Abigail Breslin) to become the next Little Miss Sunshine carries an
R-rating. Of course, almost all families have at least a few R-rated
shenanigans. The point of the film is to celebrate families and the human
beings in those families for all their foibles that make them real, and very
often it is the R-rated things that we don’t self-censor that truly show us
being real. Of course, this is juxtaposed against the culture of a
children’s beauty pageant devoted to concealing flaws and enhancing
attractive features—a culture of artificiality. Having a message is all well
and good, but what a filmgoer wants to know is whether it’s entertaining.
Husband and wife codirectors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris have taken a
script by Michael Arndt and assembled a terrific ensemble (Greg Kinnear,
Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Alan Arkin, and Paul Dano) for their first
feature film after doing lots of commercials and music videos. When the film
premiered at Sundance, there was a strong favorable response from audiences,
critics, and film distributors (Fox Searchlight paying a record $10.5
million for the right to distribute the film). Sundance success doesn’t
always translate into success at the local movie theatre, but this has all
the earmarks of a crowd-pleaser.
One of the special
guests that will be at this year’s festival is film director Mary Harron. In
addition to her feature films, Mary has directed episodes of some of the
most highly regarded television shows of the last fifteen years (Homicide,
Oz, The L Word, Six Feet Under, and Big Love).
She has chosen and will present a special showing of
The Night of the Hunter (1955). This film is the sole
directorial effort by actor Charles Laughton and features Robert Mitchum as
a sinister preacher sporting LOVE and HATE tattooed on the knuckles of his
hands. Shelley Winters plays the single mom with a son (Billy Chapin) and
daughter (Sally Jane Bruce) that Mitchum targets. The Night of the Hunter
is a unique film that is by turns beautiful, lyrical, and terrifying. She
will also present her own recent film The Notorious Bettie Page.
Bettie Page was a statuesque, raven-haired beauty who became the racy pin-up
queen of the innocent 1950s. Gretchen Mol plays Bettie with supporting
performances from Lili Taylor (last year’s MIFF honoree), David Strathairn,
and Jared Harris. Harron will show us her take on Bettie’s salacious world
of forbidden sex. She will also travel to the Bangor Opera House to
introduce I Shot Andy Warhol. This film played at MIFF last year in
honor of star Lili Taylor who delivered a tour-de-force performance as the
unbalanced Valerie Jean Solanas.
MIFF will be
hosting actress Karen Young. She has worked steadily in film (Deep in the
Heart, Almost You, The Wife, Joe the King, and Factotum[also in
this year’s MIFF program]) and television (The Sopranos, Law &
Order, Third Watch, The Equalizer, and L.A. Law)
for many years, making her a face that is probably familiar even if you
can’t place her. She will be attending the festival to introduce three
films. She will introduce Laurent Cantet’s
Heading South (see Films That Put the I in MIFF), Maine
native Rocky Collins’ Pants on Fire,
and her own directorial effort, the short film A
Blink of Paradise. In Pants on Fire, Young is the
wronged wife when two married teachers (Christy Baron and Neil Maffin) form
an adulterous couple. Harry O’Reilly plays a cuckolded husband whose
ambitions for elective office complicate his personal life. This is
low-budget independent cinema that deals with a difficult subject with
shrewdness, compassion, and wit. If you haven’t seen this film before, this
is a great opportunity to see a hidden gem. Her 1992 short A Blink of
Paradise will be in the same screening with Pants on
Fire. In A Blink of Paradise Young directed in addition to
playing an adult woman seeking help from a psychiatrist to unravel her
earliest memories of her mother (Martha Plimpton).
Patrick Warburton
(TV’s Seinfeld and The Woman Chaser) has made a career out of
playing characters with a skewed, self-serving view of reality, however this
has never been exploited more effectively than in
The Civilization of Maxwell Bright. Not only does
Warburton’s Maxwell Bright come out of the shadows of supporting actors to
take center stage, but he does so in the service of spirituality. This is
not meant to imply that his character obviously comes to us with a higher
calling and is immediately lovable. The electronics salesman that we first
meet will likely be seen as jaw-droppingly hilarious and/or infuriating. A
mail-order bride (Marie Matiko) will seek to liberate his inner Buddha and
gradually begins an enlightenment process. The Civilization
of Maxwell Bright is another of the films appearing at MIFF as
part of the Sundance Arthouse Project.
Jay Craven is a
Vermont filmmaker who is making his third appearance at MIFF. After
venturing to Ohio to make The Year That Trembled
about the events leading up to the 1970 shootings at Kent State,
Craven is back on familiar ground.
Disappearances is set along the Vermont border with Québec
and is based on a book by Howard Frank Mosher, as were his Stranger in
the Kingdom and Where the Rivers Flow North. In
Disappearances Charlie McDermott plays young Wild Bill Bonhomme dragged
along by his father Quebec Bill (Kris Kristofferson) on a scheme to save the
family farm through whiskey-running during Prohibition. Craven has assembled
an outstanding cast (Geneviève Bujold, Lothaire Bluteau, Gary Farmer, Luis
Guzmán, and the Vermont-based Rusty De Wees) for this coming-of-age film
that encompasses an unforgettable four days “full of terror, full of
wonder.” I am very much looking forward to this film because Craven has been
making independent films that are imbued with a strong sense of place yet
have been able to attract topnotch talent. However, in the interest of full
disclosure, you should know that my wife and I have “adopted” this film as
part of our support for the festival.
Factotum is Norwegian director
Bent Hamer’s first American film. Hamer and Jim Stark have adapted Charles
Bukowski’s semi-autobiographical novel. Harry Chinaski (Matt Dillon) is a
man who does menial work to pay the rent so that he can pursue his deepest
passion—writing. He writes about the other major interests in his
life—women, booze, and gambling. This is a portrait of a man who lives on
the edge for his art. This film certainly could have been an appropriate
MIFF selection last year since MIFF honoree Lili Taylor has a prominent
supporting role as well as Fisher Stevens, Marisa Tomei, Adrienne Shelly,
and the aforementioned Karen Young.
The title
From Other Worlds suggests a serious
film—even a documentary—about extraterrestrial beings. Barry Strugatz’s film
is anything but completely serious. This independent film has its tongue
rather firmly lodged in its cheek. The filmgoer needs to be willing to go
with the absurdities surrounding a bored housewife (Cara Buono), an émigré
from the Ivory Coast (Isaach De Bankolé), and an alien from another world
(Joel de la Fuente) joining together to save our world. If you’re ready to
take a break from earnest documentaries and weighty dramas, this could be
the film for you.
The MIFF program
description of Azazel Jacob’s The Goodtimeskid
includes an extensive quotation from Robert Koehler’s review in
Variety. Certain words stand out: “minimalist,” “absurdist,” “nearly
wordless,” and finally “a droll meandering and defiantly uncommercial film”
that hits “an oddly right final note.” This is a unique film that clearly
has staked its appeal to an audience with little concern for the usual
conventions for appealing to a movie audience. This is clearly a film for
truly adventurous festivalgoers who have no confidence in the gatekeeping
decisions of film distributors in selecting films for the public. It does
have the potential to work for certain viewers, but the filmgoer needs to
understand his or her tolerance for odd behavior, stark sets, minimal
dialogue, and a slow pace.
On the other hand,
Ryan Fleck’s Half Nelson is
part of the Sundance Arthouse Project, has received a number of good
critical reviews, and is being distributed by ThinkFilms. These don’t
guarantee that the film will be a good choice for you to see, but they do
suggest a more mainstream approach to cinematic storytelling and that
certain gatekeepers believe the film has the potential to appeal to an
audience. This is not to say that this film fits into some cookie-cutter
mold for films set in schools. It deals with a relationship that many in the
audience might consider “suspicious.” A relationship between an adult male
teacher and a pubescent female student has the potential to produce some
very unhealthy sexual tension. Ryan Gosling and young Shareeka Epps
negotiate around that and develop a relationship that is unpredictable yet
emotionally moving.
Ramin Bahrani’s
Man Push Cart is an unusual film.
The main character is Ahmad, a real Pakistani immigrant, in New York City.
He has come to this country at a time when immigrants are not welcomed
warmly and particularly not when they are Muslim. Ahmad has forsaken his
life as a Pakistani rock musician to earn his living as one of the many
cart-based vendors around the city. We follow his experiences from well
before dawn to whenever he calls it a day. Bahrani has cast actors to play
Ahmad’s customers making this something of a docudrama—though an atypical
one. This is another film from the Sundance Arthouse Project.
Old Joy is a film that will
probably resonate with anyone who has mused about old friends and they way
things used to be. Kurt (Will Oldham) and Mark (Daniel London) are old
friends who haven’t been in touch for a while. Kurt is still fun loving and
irresponsible, which may explain his bedraggled appearance and his
homelessness. Mark now has a wife, and they are expecting a child. Kurt
invites Mark to go on a wilderness retreat in Oregon. Director Kelly
Reichardt and her coscreenwriter Jonathan Raymond’s film is a minimalist
slice of life as these two friends mix reminiscences, comedy, confessions,
and a growing realization that they no longer have anything in common. While
some viewers may have difficulty with the leisurely pace, the lack of a
plot, and subtext being more significant than what may be being said, I
think this will hit home with anyone who has ever had and then lost a
friend. This film is part of the Sundance Arthouse Program and was also
selected as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New
Films Festival.
Hilary Brougher
has come to MIFF several times. She came to MIFF in 1998 with her first
film, a lesbian sci-fi time travel film The Sticky Fingers of Time.
Stephanie Daley is just her
second film. It would appear that the themes of this film could have partly
emerged from what has transpired in her life since 1998—she has started a
family. Lydie Crane (Tilda Swinton) is a psychologist trying to unravel why
teenager Stephanie Daley (Amber Tamblyn) concealed her pregnancy and then
killed her baby. That Lydie is herself pregnant adds another dynamic. This
is a thought-provoking film that deftly integrates critical issues into the
drama, yet doesn’t let the issues overwhelm the story. She also doesn’t
provide easy answers. Brougher both wrote the script (winner of the Waldo
Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival) and directed the
film that is another from the Sundance Arthouse Program. Brougher has
attracted an outstanding cast that includes supporting players Timothy
Hutton, Denis O’Hare, and Melissa Leo. Stephanie Daley may not win
the audience favorite award, but it won’t hurt her film’s chances that she
has visited the festival even when she didn’t have a film.
The Visions
screening offers five short films. The longest is called
Bugcrush and is the creation of
Carter Smith, who was raised in Maine. Filmed in Topsham, this is about a
high school nerd following his alluring new friend into something very
sinister. A prize-winner and part of the Sundance Arthouse Program, this has
also been featured in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes.
The Haunted Camera is MIFF
regular Nancy Andrews’s homage to film noir with the final segment of her
Ima Plume trilogy, where Ima reports on her own death. In
lot 63, grave c Director Sam
Green (The Weather Underground) gives us a search for a certain
Meredith Hunter while also being an elegy to the 1960s. Joshua Goudreau
contributes a humorous three-minute history of the western genre with
A Stranger Came to Town, starring
a toy gunfighter figure. Emplosia
is a short film by William Shelby that chronicles a project devoted to
expanding humanity’s language systems. Short films clearly offer a mixed bag
of different experiences that may hit or miss with different audience
members. No film lasts more than thirty-six minutes, so a “miss” doesn’t
have to be endured for very long. Vision films can be quite experimental,
using the most imagination, so adventurous filmgoers wanted. These are the
wild cards of film festivals.
