My week in film: Tintin, The Sapphires, Sister and more

Posted on by harrietwarman

Beginning this week; my film journal that (without being reductionist and categorical) will most likely traverse the spectrum from mainstream to experimental and include viewings on the small and big screen. This week the desire for adventure had me seek out recent exercises in Hollywood spectacle, which resulted in a bad film/good film double bill.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) was very silly indeed. Despite being set in 1890’s London (and other locations) the overall aesthetic resembled a 1980’s action film, all huge explosions and elaborate fight scenes. The decision by director Guy Ritchie to explain Holmes’s extraordinary levels of anticipation and observation by showing how he calculates combat moves before letting the fight play out, rather deflated tension instead of amplifying it. Jared Harris was excellent as Moriarty.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011) really impressed visually and was the first motion (or should that be ‘performance’?) capture film not to challenge my tolerance for the uncanny. With some truly beguiling sequences, benefitting from the unrestricted camera movement possible with animation, The Adventures of Tintin is perhaps a little thin on characterisation, but fun and exciting enough as a pure entertainment.

I finally saw Bergman’s Persona (1966) and wondered why it has taken me so long to make the effort.  Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann had me totally transfixed – despite and because of such a contrast between communication (from Andersson as Nurse Alma) and disavowal thereof (by Ullmann’s silent actress, Elizabeth Volger). Formally vigorous in its use of dream-like montages that interrupt the narrative like a tear in the film’s fabric, Persona also surprised me in its tenderness too.

My continuing predilection for monster movies meant I discovered Wolf Creek director Greg Mclean’s Rogue (2007) about a crocodile tour boat in Australia becoming stranded in the territory of a vicious and unusually large ‘living dinosaur’ croc. Starring Radha Mitchell and Avatar’s Sam Worthington – managing to express something beyond his usual bland visage – Rogue was tense and delivered a few good scares despite its predictability.

I watched a couple of excellent Czech films, Diamonds of the Night (1964) and Intimate Lighting (1965) which deserve full reviews (coming soon) and at the cinema, split my viewing between light and dark fare. The Sapphires managed to get the balance exactly right between feel-good, soul inflected melodrama and social/political drama, whilst clearly going for the broader laughs. The now ubiquitous Chris O’Dowd brought an abundance of charm and was contrasted excellently by Deborah Mailman as oldest sister Gail. Despite the plot involving the usual sibling rivalry it was refreshing to see a music film that doesn’t place the characters career success centre stage and makes you want to dance out of the auditorium after.

Finally I saw Sister, Ursula Meier’s Silver Bear winning follow up to 2008’s Home. The French title for the film L’enfant d’en haut translates as The Child from Above, perhaps relating to the central character, Simon’s (Kacey Mottet Klein) daily ascent to the ski resort above his tower-block home, where he steals skis from tourists to make a living.

 

As in Home, Meier places her child protagonist in a difficult dwelling, and frequently frames Simon against the vastness of the mountain, and the empty sky. Perhaps a stronger film than her previous outing, Sister benefits from excellent performances – including in the unlikely casting of Martin Compston as chef Mike – and a truly touching tale of a thrown together family. For anyone who enjoyed the Dardennes The Kid with a Bike, Sister is an easy recommendation.

Coming up: I’ll join in and get on with seeing the awards seasons’ crop of films and a what should prove to be some excellent retrospectives at Edinburgh Filmhouse. As for home viewing well, who knows what I’ll be in the mood for this week…

EIFF 2012 in retrospect: Papirosen

Posted on by harrietwarman

Ostensibly a home-movie portrait, Papirosen (the title refers to a Yiddish song about an orphaned boy who sells cigarettes to survive) becomes so much more than that. Carefully interweaving his own footage covering a ten-year period in the life of his Argentine Jewish family with that of Super 8 recordings stretching back to the 1960’s, Gastón Solnicki’s film reveals the intricacies of familial ties. Beginning with the birth of his nephew, Mateo, and documenting the small and big moments in his family members’ lives, Solnicki trains his camera on his family with so much love we sense that he doesn’t ever want to turn it off.

We are first introduced to the family members while they holiday in Florida: sister Yanina, mother Mirta, and, at the centre of it all, father Victor. A patriarch in every sense of the word, Victor exudes the air of a charismatic protector and stern authoritarian, one who dotes on his grandchildren and doesn’t mind scolding his daughter for her suitcase packing skills. Gradually Gastón’s continued presence (whether welcomed or not by his family) exposes the deep-rooted emotional scars left from the family’s experience as part of the expulsion of Jews from Poland during World War II. Victor’s mother, Pola, provides a voice-over that opens the film and continues at points throughout. At one point she wearily describes the outbreak of war: “After about half a year the Germans gathered people to take to the concentration camps… Treblinka, Auschwitz and many more I can’t remember. I was 16 back then.”

In one of many other arrestingly poignant scenes, a friend of Victor’s father breaks into song during a meal at a diner, provoking instant tears from the otherwise unflappable Victor. At this outpouring of memory and emotion, Mirta declares that her husband needs psychotherapy, if only to help him get over the death of his father, whom he says died of sadness.

Although the family gather for a formal dinner towards the end of the film, this is not the moment of catharsis that a more conventional documentary might build towards. Demonstrating himself as a sensitive and thoughtful director, Solnicki chooses a cyclical route, closing the film with a quiet scene between Victor and Mateo. Seen at the film’s opening in wide shot, and now in close-up on a chairlift heading upwards to snowy peaks, Victor sings to his grandson, just as his father did for him: “He is our Father, He is our King. Our Father Saviour.”

Papirosen was given a special mention by the International Feature Competition Jury at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2012. The jury was headed by Elliott Gould and also included Lav Diaz and Julietta Sichel.

This text originally appeared in the EIFF Catalogue.

Mundane History

Posted on by harrietwarman

The relationship between the individual and society is at the core of Mundane History by Anocha Suwichakornpong, but far from being a straightforward treatment of causality or employing a definitive narrative context, the film expands its theme to tackle spiritual and philosophical considerations as well. This expansion reaches as far as cosmological imagery – a juxtaposition with domesticity perhaps realised more coherently than in Malick’s Tree of Life.

The plot concerns a young man, Ake (Phakpoom Surapongsanuruk) who is paralysed from the waist down and confined to his room in his father’s manor house. Cared for by male nurse, Pun (Arkaney Cherkham), Ake oscillates between fury and obstinacy at his new, restricted world. Ake and Pun’s initial interactions are awkward, with Pun seeming unprepared for the tension and emotion of his patient, and Ake resistant to conversation with his round-the clock carer. Eventually the two find common ground, with both expressing their previous ambitions toward creative careers – one of many instances of the way the film is concerned with differences between outward appearances and internal desire.

The sense of an underlying, unspoken strain in the household – demonstrable by Ake’s father’s persistent absence – is maintained throughout, not only by the other inhabitants, who hold back from open conversation, but in the quiet, still shots of the house – both internal and external – that show through diegetic sound, how little seems to occur there. One wonders if this was the case even before Ake’s accident – the cause of which is never revealed – or if the quiet respectability is inherent to the patriarchy of the home.

In an excellent interview included with Second Run’s DVD release of the film, Suwichakornpong speaks of the way the film deals with the notion of life cycles in Thai culture. The stages of birth, decay, death, and rebirth are present both in the imagery of human childhood and Ake’s condition, and the montage, or layering of images of nature with a voice over describing the life cycle of a star. A shot of Ake’s empty room: the bed and chair notable for his and Pun’s absence cut to footage of a caesarean being performed. When described simply in this way, the grand, national and cosmological reach of Mundane History might seem heavy handed, however the effect is quite the opposite – by this point sympathy for Ake and Pun’s combined enclosure – one physical, one socio-economic – is established well enough to view their circumstances as symptomatic of the cultural norms (and life cycle) of the country as a whole, and reflective of even the most banal existence sharing elemental origins with other life forms.

It is testament to Suwichakornpong and editor Lee Chatametikool’s deft handling of the films various audio/visual elements that the pervading result comments on family structure and Thai culture with such subtlety. Finding the right music for the soundtrack was key for the director, and the editing process required a song that would compliment the visual edit. The final choice of a song by Malaysian band Furniture combines with visual shifts in the film, and punctuates the narrative. This punctuation was for the director a way of creating little ‘explosions’ of sorts that gradually expand, providing a way to introduce the cosmos to an ostensibly domestic setting.

Comparisons with Apichatpong Weerasthakul are inevitable, given the films ambiguity and balance of spiritual/familial aspects, but Suwichakornpong has clearly developed her own aesthetic, and one that is closer in its use of non-linear narrative to Wichanon Somumjorn’s In April the Following Year, There was a Fire (my review of which, you can read here).

Mundane History is an invigorating, hugely rewarding film, and one that only improves on repeat viewings – don’t miss the directors fantastic short Graceland also included in another excellent release by Second Run DVD.