2006
MIFF FILM REVIEWS: Part 1
By Joel
Johnson
ISLANDER—The coast of Maine is a
particular place, and efforts to make films that fit this place is
difficult. As a Mainer, I know where the places are, I know what it looks
like, and I know what a Down East accent is supposed to sound like. The
filmmakers have done an excellent job of capturing the sense of place. It is
so good you can almost smell the salt sea air and, less desirably, the fish
bait. Casting has been very effective in getting people that fit on
Vinalhaven, the Maine island where the film is set. While some of this works
because local people are in the cast, clearly this is not the case for many
of the larger roles filled by professional actors from outside Maine. It is,
no doubt, also helpful that the coscreenwriter and lead actor (Tom Hildreth)
is from the island. Having praised this film for getting accurate what so
many films that purport to be set in Maine get wrong, I must add that the
film is not without its flaws. The rivalry between Eben (Hildreth) and Jimmy
(Mark Kiely) could have been better developed, and the character flaws of
Jimmy could have been exposed sooner. We don’t get much of a backstory on
the relationship between Eben and his ex-wife Cheryl (Amy Jo Johnson) or
between Eben and his father (Larry Pine). For a while the film gives the
impression that Eben could be the villain returning to reclaim what he
considers his by any means necessary, and Jimmy could be the good guy.
However, the biggest flaw is the central premise that the tightly-knit
island community will almost uniformly reject Eben after he serves time for
a reckless act that results in a man’s death. There’s a lot of little
quibbles with reality that can be ignored in a film, but a central premise
in a straight drama that is not credible makes it really difficult to
suspend disbelief. Still, the film does manage to draw you into its story of
personal growth, perseverance, and acceptance.
1/2
WONDROUS OBLIVION—This is the “cricket
movie,” but no cricket knowledge is required. David Wiseman(Sam Smith) truly
loves cricket. Unfortunately, his passion for the game seems to dwarf his
ability. His failures on the cricket pitch definitely make the task of being
the Jewish kid trying to fit into the tony private school harder. Then a
Jamaican family, headed by Delroy Lindo’s Dennis, moves next door. The first
black family in the neighborhood brings out the worst in this 1960 white
London neighborhood. The Jewish family is under pressure to join the
neighborhood “cold shoulder” being given to them. But David discovers that
Dennis shares his passion for cricket, and then Dennis decides to help David
hone his cricket skills. There’s also Dennis’s daughter Judy (Leonie
Elliott), with whom David becomes friends. The film covers a lot of
territory with storylines for children and also for adults. David’s parents
Victor (Stanley Townsend) and Ruth (Emily Woof) seem to have lost whatever
joy they first felt about each other. Paul Morrison does a masterful job in
mostly keeping all the balls in the air and drawing the viewer into the
story, though the adult storyline does threaten to hijack the film right
away from the kids. It does help keep the action moving that the film
employs a soundtrack filled with period rock and reggae tunes. The most
noticeable flaw is that the script seems to pump the title phrase “wondrous
oblivion” for no better reason than if it is used in the film enough it will
make sense as the title. The film does opt for rather facile
resolutions—especially for the neighborhood’s racism—though one can forgive
it for providing the kind of answer most of us desire. The heart and soul of
the film is the relationship between the two families and especially how
David and Judy learn about each other’s worlds. This is an unpretentious
film that manages to be heartwarming, funny, and thought provoking.
THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE—This film set
in Franco’s Spain circa 1940 that incorporates James Whale’s Frankenstein
is beautiful, poetic, suspenseful, and haunting. What it isn’t is
straight-forward. There was a lively discussion as to exactly what was
happening in the film and what it all meant following the screening of
Victor Erice’s film. It clearly could be seen repeatedly with potentially
different facets discovered at each successive viewing. The film is well
acted, and the two girls playing the young sisters do an incredible job. It
is rare for a film that is basically intended for adults to rely so much on
child actors. While the film is constantly involving despite its deliberate
pacing, it is not the kind of film that gives warm and fuzzy feelings. This
is a film that is a little too cryptically challenging to be fully
embraceable.
1/2
THE BRIDESMAID—Claude Chabrol’s film
adaptation of Ruth Rendell’s novel of the same name is a bit disappointing.
The film gives us a main character Philippe Tardieu (Benoît Magimel), with
whom the audience may have difficulty connecting. He’s a rather colorless
eldest son with a widowed mother and two younger sisters. While it may have
worked in the book, Philippe’s attachment to a statue that he feels
resembles first his mother and then Senta makes him oddly, comically
pathetic. One of the sisters gets married, and about twenty minutes into the
film, Laura Smet’s Senta, the titular bridesmaid, appears, giving the film a
good punch on the accelerator. Senta is beautiful, sexy, wild, and almost
instantly in the throes of obsessive love. This is, of course, an
intoxicating mix for Philippe. Senta, a struggling actor, has stories that
Philippe finds difficult to unravel. Has Senta truly packed an awful lot of
living into her short life or is she simply teasing him with her flair for
the dramatic? She increasingly appears to be as dangerous as she is sexy.
Despite this intriguing set-up and a terrific performance by Smet as the
sexy femme fatale, the film has trouble sustaining its tension. While some
of it might be that Philippe, his family, and his work may just be so
prosaic as to blunt the story’s edge, one suspects that the music (by Claude
Chabrol’s son Matthieu) fails to do for this film what Bernard Herrmann did
for Hitchcock’s films—maximize the suspense.
FIRST IMPERSONATOR—This is a perfect
example of the evolutionary process in creating a film especially when
pursuing truth in making a documentary. Director Chad Freidrichs and his
coproducer Paul Fehler explained how the film was put together, noting that
their starting point was contemporary Presidential and would-be Presidential
look-alikes. The young filmmakers interviewed one look-alike who suggested
talking to a producer contact he had met who then led them to Vaughn Meader.
Meader was the first presidential impersonator and rode the wave of an
astonishing rise to success impersonating President Kennedy and an even more
abrupt career demise following his assassination. That Meader was famous for
just thirteen months is made even more tragic in that he didn’t just come
from and then fall back into obscurity. His prefame life was marked by
personal tragedy that he couldn’t control, and his postfame life was equally
scarred by personal tragedy that he himself had authored. It is this seminal
experience of the look-alike being tethered to the fortunes of the person
they look and/or sound like that continues to haunt this niche of
performers. Sadly, it was not until rather late in Meader’s life that the
filmmakers found the “spine” for their story about presidential look-alikes.
They were only able to interview Meader once, and most of what we learn
about him comes from his widow, his ex-wives, his friends, and business
associates. They give powerfully riveting testimony about a man who was
desperate to reestablish a performing career, found how difficult it was to
escape the shadow of his early success, and sabotaged nearly everything with
substance abuse. It is a disturbing and sad portrait. There is a melancholy
to the other material just because it shows the look-alike performers basing
their own life outcomes on someone else’s success. Like Meader, their
fortunes can go from being booked solid to being nearly forgotten with a
single event—most often an election. Much of the look-alikes’ footage is
filmed backstage in low light, giving it a haunting quality. The film also
allows one George W. Bush look-alike to unleash a full-throttle political
rant that is truly scary. It is scary enough just to have it come from the
mouth of anyone, let alone whether it is intended to represent the
opinions—accurately or tongue-in-cheek—of the President of the United
States. The film ultimately is a powerful piece of filmmaking that is laced
with lots of humor—mostly dark humor—but I found it quite depressing.
BALLOONHAT—A. G. Vermouth’s film had a
wonderfully delightful little premise and question: Do hats as well as
other works of art made from balloons have an appeal to people from all over
the world? In a world that seems ever closer to exploding into violence,
shouldn’t the things that touch human hearts and bring joy be celebrated,
shared, and preserved visually? Though the balloon artist Addi Somekh
can concoct amazingly beautiful creations, and the photographer Charlie
Eckert, in countless snapshots from everywhere, has captured the joy they
have inspired, the film doesn’t quite work. Neither Addi nor Charlie have
personalities that command attention. Addi is a bit sheepish that all this
fuss is being made about his hobby. The film covers the two men on their
travels, but it really doesn’t let us meet any of the people that they
encounter or even fully appreciate how they interact with strangers with
whom they may not share a common language. We don’t really know what these
people’s lives are like and don’t hear how they perceive the two Americans
with the balloons traveling through their land. The film also spends more
time with a series of talking heads than would seem necessary. All of this
conspires to sap the energy from the film for a late-evening audience that
may be working on its fourth film of the day (as I was). When you add in an
overlong eighty-eight-minute running time, liberal editing was clearly
indicated. Reworking the material could result in a delightful film, but as
is it is disappointing.
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contrast, the short Hop-A-Rama: Day of the Bunny
screening with Balloonhat clearly knew just how long to stay on
screen. The result is a technically crude but very funny piece that should
bring a smile to the faces of whoever sees this three-minute production.
BROTHERS OF THE HEAD—I was pretty sure I
didn’t like punk rock music, and now I am positive I don’t like it. There’s
not much else I can say I liked about Brothers of the Head.
Yes, I should say that the two young actors Harry and Luke Treadaway did do
a good job in portraying conjoined twins, and the film does capture the
intensity of this genre of rock. The film also provides us with an authentic
look of a documentary, and the rest of the cast seems credible as the
various friends, family, fellow performers, professionals, and hangers-on.
The story has all the usual trappings of rock success and outrageous
indulgence with the added complication of having a not-always-welcome
companion present for every activity. I did not find the story particularly
interesting, and I eventually found myself not caring at all about what was
happening to the two leads.
THE LONG RIDERS—This Walter Hill film
collapses the entire history of the James-Younger outlaw gang into one
ninety-minute movie. Mr. Hill himself acknowledged that the film was not
plot driven or character driven in the conventional uses of these terms. It
plays out as a series of vignettes from the lives of the gang members. While
the film portrays several real events from the gang’s career, it deviates
from historical record in a couple of ways. Jesse James was a Missouri
bushwhacker who developed a taste for killing during the awful fighting
there during the Civil War. He was an unreconstructed Confederate whose
train robberies and bank hold-ups were originally seen as blows for Southern
resistance against Northern aggressors. He was portrayed as a courtly Robin
Hood in the legends that emerged mostly from one influential pro-Southern
newspaper, but he was a vicious killer. Jesse James definitely loved the
notoriety associated with his legend and continued his criminal career after
most of his cohorts who weren’t dead or in jail had simply grown tired of
living on the lam. James Keach’s portrayal definitely leans toward the
legend but fails to capture his undoubted charisma regardless of whether one
opts for legend or historical accuracy. Zerelda Samuel, mother to Jesse and
Frank James, is given a more benign portrayal than usual since she may have
been the most virulently pro-Confederate and vicious member of the family.
Despite the weak performance from the actor portraying the gang’s most
prominent character and its episodic narrative, the film has fine
performances—particularly from David and Keith Carradine—and vivid
sequences. Some may complain that the film is too violent, but it is a story
about violent men, who, as Cole Younger (David Carradine), says at the end:
“We played a rough game…and we lost.”
INTERKOSMOS—This is a faux documentary
about the East German space program’s exploration and colonization plan for
the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. This is an odd little film that takes its
time to deliver the punch line for its jokes. This results is the deadest of
deadpanned comedy, but the laugh quotient may seem pretty meager in
comparison with the time invested to set it up. It seems to have a lot on
its mind, though many in the audience may not have the patience (or the
energy) to hang in there to figure it all out. This film forces me to
reassess the similar Russian film First on the Moon. Although that
film seemed to not know how long it should go on, it did have a better
handle on its mission to entertain the audience.
1/2
UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE by Jak Peters and
Paul Ezzy is a terrific short film screened with Interkosmos. It is a
pretty wild half-hour of quick skits and then some longer silent film
sequences that recall Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. There are lots of
laughs in this smorgasbord of a film.
LASSIE—The effort to provide films that
are suitable for and appeal to children has brought Lassie to MIFF.
This is Charles Sturridge’s glorious remake of Lassie Come Home, the
original Lassie film made in 1943. This film, like that one, sets the
events in the late 1930s as the shadow of war approaches. A superb cast has
been assembled, beginning with Peter O’Toole, Samantha Morton, John Lynch,
Jemma Redgrave, and Peter Dinklage. Relatively well-known actors Edward Fox,
Robert Hardy, and Kelly Macdonald appear in small roles. Sometimes a cast
full of stars can detract from the story as the audience becomes caught up
in stargazing, but here that did not seem to be a major problem. It is
probably because the true star of the film is the beautiful collie playing
Lassie, and no one steals scenes from Lassie. There is, of course, one other
star, and that is the beauty of Ireland, Scotland, England, and the Isle of
Man that served as the film locations. A lot of natural beauty was featured
in this movie, and that is a very good reason to try to see this film on the
big screen. There’s a Dickensian flavor to the story. Class differences with
great wealth juxtaposed against hardscrabble poverty play a role as do
well-meaning yet inept public servants, raffish characters, noble women,
admirable children, and truly despicable villains. The result is a
family-friendly film that while somewhat predictable still manages to pull
the heartstrings in all the right places.
1/2
THE WARRIORS—Walter Hill’s director’s
cut of The Warriors is an engaging youth gang cult classic. The film
was made in 1979 and is set in “the future,” but that future looks a lot
like our past. The film begins with an assembling of all the significant
gangs from throughout the five boroughs of New York City. This is sort of a
combination of the gathering of the “Five Families” of organized crime in
the Godfather and the display of Nazi military power in Leni
Riefenstahl’s Day of Freedom. Things seem to be going well, with a
charismatic black gangleader called Cyrus (Roger Hill) making a speech about
the gangs’ capability of owning the city if they worked together and stopped
trying to kill each other. Suddenly, a shot rings out, and Cyrus topples
over dead. In the ensuing commotion, someone cries out that the Warriors are
the ones responsible for the shooting. The truce between the gangs is over,
and the target of everyone’s wrath is the Warriors. They have a very
interesting night of adventures ahead of them as they just try to catch the
subway back to their stomping ground Coney Island. The film has several
predictable sequences with chases, fights, leadership quarrels, a bit of
romance, and not a little bit of stupidity. This fits well in the comic-book
format used to frame the story. The live action is freeze-framed and then
becomes a comic panel. The appearance of the panel resembles the look of the
rotoscoped images in Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly, but the
technique is probably similar to that used in the 1960’s TV program The
Wild, Wild West. The director’s cut was introduced with the statement
that it was done to accentuate the comic-book nature of the film. Since I
have not seen the original released cut, I can not comment on what changes
were made for this director’s cut version. While the film is full of action
sequences, it does address a number of other issues. The acting is only
adequate, with most of the major characters played by character actors early
in their careers. Nevertheless, this is an interesting, action-packed genre
film that was very much worth seeing.
