Days of Glory (Indigenes)

Though the English title is more than a little misleading, there is an element of “Saving Private Sayeed” in this story of a small unit of soldiers taking back Europe step by step from the Nazis. The wrinkle of Rachid Bouchareb’s film is ironically alluded to in the French title, which properly means “Natives” -- that the soldiers liberating the “motherland” of France are Arabs from its North African colonies. Though not without Spielbergesque underlining, Bouchareb’s direction is meticulous and his point well taken. It was clearly an act of cultural and historical recovery for him and the actors, who as an ensemble won an award at Cannes -- and had an impact to the extent of convincing Chirac to restore the pensions of French soldiers in the now-free colonies. The military action is very well rendered, the characters well delineated, and the issues too. The impulse, however, is celebratory rather than angry, focused more on the valor and camaraderie of the good fight, than on the futility of war and empire. I figured we would wind up with any survivors fighting against the French in the Algerian War, but instead we postscript 60 years later at a military cemetery in Alsace. Still, this is an honorable effort all round, an action flick with a heart, a war movie with a brain. (2006, dvd, n.) *8* (MC-82.)

Jesus Camp

Scary and funny in its depiction of Evangelicals raising up a new generation “to take back America for Christ,” this film by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady is deadpan enough to please the people portrayed (except de-frocked charlatan Ted Haggard), and yet overt enough to frame the action with radio commentary from an appalled Christian with a more liberal viewpoint. That the kids are cute and engaging, as in Spellbound or Mad Hot Ballroom, only makes the fire & brimstone cult behavior all the more alarming. That the jolly, plus-size child pastor is a dedicated educator only makes her nonsense more ominous. Her madrassa is different from one in Pakistan or Palestine only because, “Of course, we’re right.” One more example, if any is needed, of fear being hyped up as a form of social control, of religion exploited as a call to holy war. This film is uncomfortable yet fascinating to watch, on several levels, not least to explain how 30% of the populace is still sufficiently divorced from reality to support Bush and his gang. (2006, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-62.)

Documenting artists recap.

I’ve been watching Simon Schama’s Power of Art series currently showing on PBS, but I’m not recommending that you tune in. There’s enough art and context to engage a middlebrow such as myself, but I have two main impressions. One is that Schama reminds me a little of the Clark’s director of education, Michael Cassin, but with the latter’s delightfully animated manner carried to the point of caricature. And secondly, that this series demonstrates by contrast the particular excellence of the films I just showed in the “Documenting Artists” series, and will show in a “Documenting Modern Artists” series come September. The films on Michelangelo, Van Gogh, and Frida Kahlo were each notable in a different style, but the film I want to plug particularly in retrospect is Winslow Homer: Society & Solitude (2007.) Filmmaker Steve Ross was kind enough to bring his just completed film to the Clark for an advance screening, and it delighted a capacity crowd, many of whom stayed around for a lively Q&A afterwards. I urge you to look for it at a museum near you, or eventually on PBS or dvd. The film is a well-rounded view of the life and times of a fascinating American original -- Homer and his era come through vividly in an interweaving of multi-faceted imagery and polyphonic commentary, for a circumspect and many-sided view of the artist and his work.

Not worth mentioning

Here are two films that I can’t recommend you see, and there is no chance you’re thinking about seeing, unless you are a directorial completist such as myself.

With films such as Battle of Culloden and Edvard Munch, Peter Watkins was established for me as a director to watch, so when I saw his latest had been released on dvd, I moved La Commune (Paris, 1871) to the top of my Netflix queue. Despite its six-hour length, I thought it was something I might wind up showing at the Clark during some Impressionist show. But this was no Best of Youth, where the hours speed by in a pageant of beauty and passion -- frankly it was a chore to sit through despite its obvious merit, and I fast-forwarded through the second disk (still able to read the subtitles.) Watkins assembled a group of 200 actors, and commandeered an abandoned factory to create sets of several streets of the 11th arrondisement. Over a period of weeks, the actors researched their characters and the revolutionary events of 1871, and then staged reenactments into which the camera plunged as a participant. The layers of reality are transparent and permeable, the actors speak in character and out, on historical fact and contemporary relevance, and the medium is the message to the extent that most of the action is covered by male and female reporters in period dress for Commune TV, while the other side is seen by news commentators on the official Versailles TV. There’s a good deal going on, but Watkins does nothing to speed up the process, allowing lots of repetition and then slowing things down even more with explanatory title cards instead of voice-over narration. Still you get a palpable sensation of revolutionary fever building, with a strong feeling of “You Are There” (for those old enough to remember the Walter Cronkite series from the ’50s.) At half the length, this might have been a great film, or it might have been a truncated record of a great experience, who knows?

I have no recollection of what led me to put In Celebration (1974) on my Netflix queue; it took years to filter to the top of that list of 200+ films. It must have been the idea that it was a Lindsay Anderson film I had not seen. But it was less a film than a modestly opened-out record of a stage production of a David Storey play -- very much a late product of England’s Angry Young Men, sort of “Long Night’s Journey into Day” meets “Who’s Afraid of John Osborne?” Three sons return to their old home in a Yorkshire mining town to celebrate their parents’ 40th anniversary. Family history is dredged up, dysfunction is revealed behind a brittle facade, you know the drill. Alan Bates is excellent but not quite right for the eldest son who wants to unearth grievance and turn everything over. A startlingly young Brian Cox is the tormentedly silent youngest brother. The middle brother is a successful businessman who wants to make everything okay for his parents, while suppressing his apparent homosexuality. The father has spent nigh on fifty years down in the mines, mainly to hide from the chilly woman who married down and whose main concern is to maintain “human hygiene” in a dirty world. It was all interestingly familiar to me (the mother strikingly like my English grandmother), enough to make me go back and finish it after it had put me to sleep the first time through.

"In Dutch" film series at the Clark

"In Dutch: Highlights of Film from Holland" is a series of free screenings at the Clark, Saturdays at 2:00 p.m. starting July 14th. Offered in conjunction with “NL: A Season of Dutch Arts in the Berkshires,” this survey of “Netherlandish” films explores a variety of national themes and historical situations, and includes two Academy Award-winners for Best Foreign Film. All films are in Dutch with English subtitles, and true to the mature spirit of Dutch culture, this free series of Saturday matinees is decidedly not for children.

July 14: Keetje Tippel. (1975, 104 min.) Paul Verhoeven, best-known of all Dutch directors, mounts the Netherlands’ most lavish historical recreation ever, following a young girl (Monique van der Ven as the title character) as she comes to Amsterdam from the country with her large and impoverished family in 1881, and makes her way into society, high and low, exploiting her beauty and free spirit.

July 21: Character (Karakter.) (1997, 114 min.) Set in Rotterdam in the years after 1900, this Oscar-winning oedipal drama directed by Mike van Diem is adapted from a classic Dutch novel, with a dour but distinctly Dickensian flavor, telling the story of a bailiff father and his lawyer son, severely estranged but locked in life and death struggle.

July 28: Twin Sisters (De Tweeling.) (2002, 137 min.) Two young girls are abruptly separated at their father’s funeral in 1926, and follow different fates when one goes to a well-off family in Holland and the other to a hardscrabble farm in Germany. Three pairs of actresses effectively portray their respective passages through World War II, the Cold War, and beyond -- based on a Dutch bestseller, and Oscar-nominated.

August 4: Antonia’s Line. (1995, 102 min.) This Oscar-winning family saga from Marleen Gorris became an international hit and a feminist rallying point. In her 80s, Antonia reflects on her life in flashback, from World War II onward, telling about the generations of women she raised and sheltered on a communal farm in rural Holland.

August 11: The Vanishing (Spoorloos.) (1988, 106 min.) This chilling psychological mystery was perversely remade in Hollywood by director George Sluizer, but the original remains a revelation, one of the most authentically scary horror films ever made, and no doubt the quietest. A young Dutch couple is headed for vacation in France, when she disappears at a rest stop, and he is haunted by her fate thereafter, until he meets the sinister character who holds the key of knowledge.

August 18: Simon. (2004, 102 min.) Sex and drugs, gay marriage and legal euthanasia, this free-spirited Dutch tragicomedy from Eddy Terstall has it all. Simon is the straight but crooked friend of the gay dentist narrator, and the film follows their friendship in swift and funny fashion, from its heyday in swinging Amsterdam to its surprisingly wise and moving conclusion.

Wide Awake

Lucky Alan Berliner -- he gets to indulge his own obsessions, and turn them into completely personal films. Unlucky Alan Berliner -- though he makes films that are funny and intriguing, almost no one notices. Compared to him, Ross McElwee is a superstar celebrity (both figured in a film series I showed at the Clark a while back, “Self-Portrait in Cinema”). His new film has no Metacritic listing, and only one review on the Movie Query Research Engine; the user comments on IMDB and Netflix are preponderantly impatient and dismissive. Well, I’m here to tell you -- Alan Berliner is a filmmaker you ought to be watching. He has mined his own family history and visual archive to make incisive and entertaining films like Intimate Stranger and Nobody’s Business, and gathered a dinner party of a dozen people with the same name as his in The Sweetest Sound. He’s a compulsive archivist of family pictures (even of families he doesn’t know) and old footage (from home movies to educational films to antique Hollywood clips), as well as random sound effects, and he edits them fast, furious, and funny. The personal obsession in his latest film is his odd sleeping pattern, how he got it and how to keep his infant son from developing the same. His family is tolerant and good-natured but sometimes annoyed with his intrusive insistence on talking day and night about his insomnia. The audience should be the same -- he’s demonstrably nuts, but he makes you laugh and he makes you think. With a rapidfire cascade of imagery alternating with narcissistic image-taking and direct to the camera monologue, Berliner takes you on a giddy ride, while circling a small subject that widens out as it unspools. (2006, HBO/T, n.) *7+*

Wandering off topic.

I have to confess to a recent cross-media obsession with Leonard Cohen. I guess the excuse for writing about it here is that I just re-watched the recent concert/tribute film, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, and also the ancient Film Board of Canada documentary from which its early footage is filched. In my enthusiasm for the discovery of an overlooked master, I gave the concert film an *8+*, which on second viewing I would demote to a *7*, as a barely adequate and sometimes annoying approach to a great subject. But in between viewings I made intimate acquaintance with the work of the man himself, and I am blown away. It’s like having a new star in the heavens swing into ken. Who knew? Some did, but not I. I knew Cohen almost exclusively for the songs in McCabe & Mrs. Miller and cover renditions by Judy Collins and her ilk. Little did I know that all these years, he’s been vying with Bob Dylan for the heavyweight songwriting crown -- both of them ecstatic wordsmiths with a divine croak of a voice, masters of many sounds, prophets in motley. (Of course, Dylan has fought many more bouts, lost a few but still a champ, while Cohen has compiled a Joe-Louis like career.) Reviews compiled by Metacritic had led me to purchase his only new cd in the past dozen years, “Ten New Songs,” but a cursory listen then yielded only a drone and it went into a drawer -- until the film revealed that Leonard Cohen is indeed my man. After I’d returned to and absorbed that album deep into my soul and the soundtrack of my life, I got the two-cd set of "The Essential Leonard Cohen," and lately I’ve listen to nothing else. And when I’m not listening, the words are revolving in my mind and revealing new aspects all the time. I just obtained two books of his poetry as well, though I haven’t started to read them yet. As a poet, Cohen is a bit sing-songy, but as a songster he is transcendentally poetic and prophetic. I love the way he plays his well-enunciated, gravel bass off against varied orchestrations and soaring female voices. Either in the guise of ladies’ man or Zen monk, he is attuned to the spirit that moves in the world, and the love that moves the sun and stars. I admire the man immensely, and urge you to make his acquaintance if you have not already.

Sherrybaby

Maggie Gyllenhaal is certainly the story here, as a slutty addict trying to stay clean after coming out of prison, so she can reclaim the love of her young daughter, lost when she was deep in a love affair with heroin. There’s an intimation of voyeuristic slumming in this production, but also an authentic attempt at intimacy with broken lives being pieced back together. It follows a familiar indie formula, but the writing and direction by Laurie Collyer has some understated grace. The supporting cast is solid too. It’s hard to pinpoint just what this film lacks, but with Maggie it’s worth watching, if you don’t mind an hour and a half in the company of desperately needy people. (2006, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-66.)

The Bridge

Normally I like documentaries that let you see for yourself and make up your own mind, but if ever there was a film that cried out for narration, personalization of viewpoint, or contextualization of some kind, this is it. Otherwise, Eric Steel’s film about the 24 people who jumped to their death from the Golden Gate bridge in 2004 is perilously close to being a snuff film for morbid voyeurs. The viewer really needs to know how and why this film was made, the responsibility the filmmakers took for what they were observing. With gorgeous photography of the magnificent bridge, and the use of music and cinematic suspense, the film flirts with the romantic myth of the Golden Gate as the place to step off to suicide. In defense from criticism, the director has explained that they had two cameras, wide and telephoto, recording HD video all day every day for a year, and that the cameramen would call bridge security whenever they started to follow someone who looked about to jump. The interviews with survivors (the friends and relatives left behind, but also one jumper who lived to tell) provide some backstory, and raise interesting questions. But the film does not answer them, or the reason for its own existence as document. Sure, the timelapse photos of fog rolling in are pretty to look at, and the actuality of self-murder has a grisly fascination, but why should we be watching? After the fact, the makers can make the connection to Bruegel’s “Fall of Icarus” but what we actually see in longshot is a pretty postcard picture of the bridge, with a sudden and inexplicable splash in the water. What does it mean? (2006, IFC/T, n.) *5* (MC-58.)

Blood Diamond

A queasy enterprise all round. Not just the business of smuggling diamonds, in trade for arms that fuel African civil wars, but the business of making preachy thrillers. When this film opens with a frightening scene of child soldiers on a rampage in Sierre Leone in 1999, you are receiving important news viscerally, but when the chases and fireballs continue you are being subjected to would-be blockbuster entertainment. And don’t get me started on the juiceless romance between Leonardo DiCaprio (otherwise okay as a Rhodesian soldier of fortune) and Jennifer Connolly (otherwise ludicrous as a crusading reporter.) Nor on the waste of Djimon Hounsou as an epitome of African suffering and nobility (just notice how he ends up being applauded without being allowed to speak a word.) Edward Zwick makes a film that is pure Hollywood flapdoodle, interspersed with earnest lectures on the dirty backstory of bling. I admit I was a bit drowsy while watching this, but far from waking me up, this high-calorie, low-nutrition concoction was dozey rather than a doozy. (2006, dvd, n.) *5+* (MC-63.)

Young Adam

Well-shot and well-acted, this film unfolds depths of odiousness in its main character, and then lets him escape judgment, so it will never be a crowd-pleaser. But it is flavorful, even if the aftertaste is bitter. David Mackenzie’s film is mostly set on a barge plying the canals between Glasgow and Edinburgh in the 1950s, so the visual comparison to Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante is inevitable, though the contrast in tone and outlook is striking. Ewan McGregor has enough innate appeal to make his success with woman plausible, but also to keep the audience on his side until it has to turn away in revulsion. Tilda Swinton and Emily Mortimer are two he woos and wounds. The film works as a highly sexy mood piece with starkly beautiful -- though down and dirty -- visuals, but it’s convoluted unfolding of the central mystery and unmasking of the amoral protagonist are likely to alienate many. (2002, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-63.)

Best of 2006: Metacritic rankings

At the halfway point of 2007, I have finally caught up with all the best-reviewed movies of 2006, as measured by Metacritic.com -- so here is their list of the Top 20, with my rating attached. Click on the title to link to the respective Metacritic page; use "search box" above to find my review of a given title.

1. Army of Shadows 99 *6+*
2. Pan's Labyrinth 98 *9*
3. Queen, The 91 *9*
4. United 93 90 *8*
5. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan 89 *7*
6. Letters from Iwo Jima 89 *7*
7. Lives of Others, The 88 *8-*
8. Overlord 88 *6*
9. L'Enfant (The Child) 87 *6+*
10. Fateless 87 *7*
11. Deliver Us from Evil 86 *7*
12. Our Daily Bread 86 *7*
13. Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film 86 *7-*
14. Departed, The 85 *6*
15. Half Nelson 85 *7*
16. Street Fight 85 *7+*
17. Neil Young: Heart of Gold 85 *8*
18. 49 UP 84 *8*
19. Iraq in Fragments 84 *7*
20. Children of Men 84 *8-*