THE MAINE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2004 Diary

DAY 10

By Laurie Meunier Graves

It’s finally here. Day 10. And despite playing hooky yesterday, I feel, as my friend Susan Poulin would say, like road-kill. It happens this way every year, and thanks to Raphael Di Luzio, I now understand why. In a panel during the festival, he spoke of the “quiet eye” of times past versus the “quick, noisy eye” that we have today, spawned by movies and heightened by television, the child of movies. I won’t deny that I am attracted to the quick, noisy eye or that many films have artistic merit. I am a keen moviegoer and have been delighted, illuminated, and entertained by films great and small. But I need the quiet eye, too, which gives me a chance to replenish my mental energies, to think slowly, to consider. For me, a proper balance includes both—nature, museums, and books spiced with movies and, occasionally, television.

However, there’s a small group of filmgoers, the hardcore, as I shall call them, who can’t seem to get enough. These dedicated cinephiles see between thirty-four and thirty-seven films in ten days and then actually talk about coming to Railroad Square Cinema on Monday night to see a movie or two after the festival ends on Sunday. How do they do it? I suspect the hardcore are drawn more to the noisy eye than I am, and perhaps this is even where they get their energy. Someday, I’ll have to discuss it with them and find out what they think.

In the meantime, the shows come to an end, the music stops, and the screen goes dark. The party is over, and we all head over to You Know Whose Pub for drinks and pizza. We compare notes, argue, and feel sorry and relieved at the same time that the festival is over. We saw films that we would never see anywhere else, and for ten days, we were bound together by our love of movies. The festival is one wild, crazy ride, and despite the fatigue at the end, only the direst family tragedy would keep us away. Vive le Cinéma!

THE LETTER
USA, 2004; 76 minutes; video; in English



Yet another terrific documentary, this time featuring Maine and a subject—discrimination— that hits all too close to home. As a Franco-American, I am very much aware of how it is to be on the receiving end of scorn and ridicule, and from elder Francos, I have heard many tales of discrimination. As an ethnic group, we’ve been there, and you would think this would make us sensitive to the plight of newcomers, to those who look different and talk with an accent. Unfortunately, some of us didn’t seem to learn a thing from our own hardships, and Laurier Raymond, the mayor of Lewiston, was especially obtuse. When a group of about 1,000 Somalis emigrated from their war-torn country to Lewiston, Maine, did Mayor Raymond welcome them, sympathize with them, and do everything in his power to integrate them into the community? Did he try to calm the hostility that many local people, who were struggling to get by, felt toward the newcomers? Did he reach out to churches and local agencies for help? He did not. Instead, he sent the Somalis a letter, telling them that the city’s resources were “strained to the limit” and asking them to tell other Somalis not to settle in Lewiston. This happened in the fall of 2002. I remember the incident very well, and it is still galling to think about it.

The Letter charts the course of the Somali immigrants from the ugly civil war raging in Somalia to crime-ridden Atlanta, Georgia, and finally to Lewiston, Maine, where they thought they could live in safety and peace. With sensitivity and even objectivity, director Ziad Hamzeh also gives us Lewiston’s history, of how it went from being a very prosperous community to a city of silent, empty mills and economic hard times, which in turn produced edgy people looking for someone to blame. Who better than the Somalis, with their dark skin and exotic clothes? The real culprits, the mill owners, were long gone, first to the South and then out of the country. The Somalis were an ideal group—vulnerable and powerless—for the locals to blame, and, as it turned out, for politicians to exploit.

According to the film, Laurier Raymond ran for mayor on an anti-Somali platform, and he got substantial support. In fact, he won the election. Before that Kaliegh Tara, the former mayor, and various pastors, priests, and social agencies were doing their best to soothe tensions and promote understanding, and to some extent they succeeded, forming a real bond with the Somali community. But with his letter, Mayor Raymond turned the tide for the worse, provoking not only violence in the community but also drawing the attention of a white supremacist group. Rumors began to circulate—the Somalis were getting free cars, were exempt from paying taxes, were being given cash. None of these rumors were true, and they were based on hate, but as Mayor Tara put it, many people didn’t much care for the facts and were more than glad to believe these rumors. I am struck by Mayor Tara’s statements and of how this disregard of facts applies to many, many things, not just to what happened in Lewiston.

It seems that Mayor Raymond didn’t have much regard for facts, either. It turned out that only 1 percent of city money was going to the Somalis, and even by the stingiest standards, this hardly qualified as being a strain on the budget. When confronted with the facts, Mayor Raymond shrugged it off by saying he was “not a numbers guy.” Well, in that case, maybe he shouldn’t have been “a mayor’s guy” either. Somehow, it seems reasonable to expect a mayor to have more than a passing knowledge of his city’s budget.

As the tension escalated and the white supremacist group planned a rally in the city, Mayor Raymond continued to shrug off the problems by refusing to meet with the Somalis, by refusing to retract his letter, by refusing to be in Lewiston on the day of the white supremacists’ rally. He shrugged himself to Disney World in Florida, leaving behind an apprehensive city that had to frantically prepare itself for what could have been a violent day. Eventually, he shrugged right out of office, and I can’t help but feel that he got what he deserved.

The day of the rally came, and a strange and wonderful thing happened. Only one hundred or so of the white supremacists showed up, but in a counter rally across town, over four thousand people gathered to show their support for the Somalis. My husband and I were at the counterrally on that freezing cold day in January, and it was an extraordinary event. For once, hate was routed as Governor Baldacci, Franco-Americans, and many others spoke out against the white supremacist rally. The counter rally almost compensated for all that had come before. Almost.

Was Mayor Raymond a fool, a political opportunist, or a racist? Only he can answer that question, and so far he hasn’t, at least not publicly. However, director Hamzeh manages to make us feel sympathy for Mayor Raymond, when at the end, the old man is in tears, unable to talk about what happened. Needless to say, The Letter is storytelling and filmmaking at its finest.

SEARCHING FOR THE WRONG-EYED JESUS
UK/USA, 2003; 86 minutes; video; in English



What could be an interesting documentary about one man’s exploration of his religious roots in the South turns out to be a literal snoozer as I take my first nap of the festival. The picture is grainy, the music is mediocre, and the narrative is jumpy and boring. True, it’s the next to the last movie of the film festival, but I think I would feel the same even if it had been the first movie. The only difference is that I probably wouldn’t have taken a nap.

THE BLIND SWORDSMAN: ZATOICHI
Japan, 2003; 116 minutes; 35mm; in Japanese with English subtitles



The last movie of the festival and unfortunately a stinker. According to the festival magazine, The Blind Swordsman won the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival. This serious lapse of judgment makes me wonder about the Toronto audience. Was it something in the air that produced a sort of temporary insanity?

The Blind Swordsman is a perfect example of how too much violence in movies can be just as tedious as too much sex, thus proving the point that it is never a good thing for a movie to focus on body fluids. In The Blind Swordsman, the body fluid, of course, is blood, lots and lots of it that spurts as the various characters hack away at each other. We are treated to arms being amputated, bodies being sliced in half, and throats being cut. We see a fight scene once, and then we see it again as it is relived in memory. Oh, what a jolly film!

Without the excessive violence, this would be a much shorter movie and a much better one. The central character is engaging enough—the good guy who comes into town, kicks butt, and gets rid of the bad guys. Justice is served, order is restored, and everyone lives happily ever after. It’s an old story, but it’s a good one. It might even be called archetypal. In addition, Zatoichi, the blind swordsman, tricks everyone into thinking he is nothing but a mild-mannered masseuse rather than a fierce fighter. The trickster is another pleasing type that we never get tired of. Unfortunately, this movie plays the whole thing as one bloody laugh, with a host of buffoonish characters to go with all that spurting blood. This might be fun for hyper-repressed teenaged boys who are hooked on video games, but for this adult, anyway, the effect was less than thrilling.



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