Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Coming to the Clark

“Toil of the Soil: Films of Peasant and Yeoman” is a free film series offered by the Clark in conjunction with the major summer exhibition, “Pissarro’s People,” and looks at the realities of rural labor that were so close to the painter’s heart and eye.

Monday August 1 2:00 pm:  Jean de Florette (1986, 121 min., in French with subtitles).  Gerard Depardieu stars as the title character of Claude Berri’s adaptation of a Marcel Pagnol novel about a man who inherits a farm in Provence and tries to make a go of scientific cultivation, while canny old villager Yves Montand schemes to drive him off the land in this harsh but lovely, sad but engrossing drama.

Monday August 8 2:00 pm:  Farrebique (1947, 85 min., in French dialect with subtitles).  George Rouquier’s beautifully staged documentary follows a year in the life of an old French farm, in timeless images that recall Pissarro’s rural themes.  The Clark is pleased to unearth and present this little-seen classic.

Monday August 15 2:00 pm:  Pelle the Conqueror (1987, 150 min., in Swedish with subtitles).  Max von Sydow is monumental and heartbreaking as the peasant hero of Bille August’s depiction of a life of hardship and toil in Sweden and Denmark around 1900, winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

Monday August 22 2:00 pm:  The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978, 185 min., in Italian dialect with subtitles).  Ermanno Olmi’s epic saga follows four peasant families who live and work on an estate in Lombardy around 1900.  Crushingly sad but transcendently beautiful, this slow and patiently observed masterpiece is among the greatest films ever made.

Monday August 29 2:00 pm:  Days of Heaven.  (1978, 95 min.)   Terrence Malick’s intense vision of farming on the Great Plains before World War I, which won an Oscar for cinematography, follows Richard Gere and Brooke Adams from the steel mills of Chicago to the wheat fields of Texas, where they labor for landowner Sam Shepard.

Dreaming of gods

Having finally wrapped up the best films from 2010, I am ready to review two that are bound to be on my list for 2011.  I’ll be back soon to post my huge backlog of comment on films and tv series, but with this I want to bring Cinema Salon back into some sort of currency.

Just out on DVD is the acclaimed French feature by Xavier Beauvois, Of Gods and Men (2011, MC-86).  I somehow remained unaware of the true story that this film retells, so for me the film had enormous suspense rather than fateful foreknowledge, and worked awfully well that way.  I will have to watch it again sometime, knowing the end of the story -- I suspect it will be equally compelling.  I’d heard enough about the film to get the idea it was worth seeing, something about a face-off between monks and soldiers, but had somehow formed the notion that it was set during WWII.  So it took me a few minutes to realize the setting was more contemporary and the bad guys were not going to be Nazis, but Islamist insurgents – same difference, from human decency that is.  Only afterwards did I learn the facts of the case, Algeria in 1995, so for me it played out as a parable of faith and duty, and wonderfully well at that.  First off, one has to say that the film is stunningly beautiful, in the setting of the Atlas Mountains and within the monastery, and then acknowledge that it is slow-moving by usual movie standards.  But I found myself perfectly in tune with its rhythms, as I was not with the recent well-regarded documentary about another Trappist monastery, Into Great Silence.  The spiritual journey of the brothers, collectively and individually, is captivating in detail and arc.  The acting is superb across the board, as is the sense of place.  And the moral quandaries of the situation make the film an exceptional philosophical experience.  In fact, it occurs to me that I will surely show this at the Clark when the Cinema Salon film club resumes in September, it’s a natural for discussion afterwards.

 

I applaud Beacon Cinema in Pittsfield for straying from their usual mainstream fare to show Werner Herzog’s new documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3-D (2011, MC-86).  I had wanted to tie-in with a series of Herzog documentaries at the Clark, to be called “Cave/Man/Art,” but scheduling couldn’t be worked out.  Nonetheless I was delighted for the chance to see this film in 3-D, which in truth was a mixed bag, sometimes blurry and disorienting, but at other times absolutely magical, putting you right there in an otherwise inaccessible spot, truly mesmerizing and awe-inspiring.  Chauvet cave in France was just discovered in 1995, and sealed from public access, until our boy Werner wangled his way in.  It contains wall paintings believed to be twice as old as any previously discovered, begun perhaps 30,000 years ago.  The art itself is astounding, seeming as fresh as yesterday, and the whole environment of the cave equally magical, with its limestone formations and extinct animal remains.  After a century in which primitive art has been emulated by the avant-garde, these first glimmerings of the representational impulse seem instantly familiar and readable, however remote.  The combination of pictorial and physical remains in this sealed tomb of time is exquisitely poignant and thought-provoking.  Werner’s characteristically portentous and wide-ranging narration sometimes goes over the top, making claims and speculations that the already miraculous sights do not support, but there’s no doubt this film goes to the deepest levels of humanity, and is an experience not to be missed, if you have the opportunity to see it.   

Based on no more connection than “dream” in the title, and wall art as a theme, I append notice of another documentary I just watched, for possible future showing at the Clark.  In a Dream (2009, MRQE) is a very intimate look at an outsider artist in South Philly who has covered acres of walls in his neighborhood with large-scale mosaics.  Isaiah Zagar is an understandably but amazingly obsessive character, as portrayed by his filmmaking son Jeremiah and supported by his activist and gallerist wife Julia.  Psychological and family troubles impinge on the artist’s quirky but stunning work, and add a whole other dimension to the film, which is also a visual feast.  So there’s a lot going on here, perhaps a little too much, since the film seemed slightly long to me, even at less than 80 minutes.  Nonetheless, it’s a well-made and fascinating documentary.

How 2010 stacked up

With my usual half-year delay, by now I’ve seen almost every well-noticed film of 2010, going by rankings such as the top 50 in the Film Comment critics poll, and here I distill them into four categories of consumer advice.  Since almost all are out on DVD by now, you should find something here for your Netflix queue.  For fuller commentary, use the search box at the top of this page to find my personal review, which in turn will link you to the respective Metacritic page surveying other critical opinion.

Exhortations, which I urge you to see:  For sheer ambition, my choice for best film of the year is Carlos, the three-part epic by Olivier Assayas, which illuminates the international franchising of political terror from the Seventies on, and may ultimately rank with The Godfather Saga.  I share the general enthusiasm for The Social Network – let’s just say I “friend” it.  And I also share the enthusiasm of the cognescenti for Winter’s Bone, the Ozark indie thriller that’s a cross between horror film and documentary.  Into this exalted company I would admit the HBO biopic, Temple Grandin, with its transcendent performance by Claire Danes as the autistic expert on animal behavior.

Recommendations, which I advise you to see:  Here I’ll start in the mainstream and branch out into various tributaries.  I like The King’s Speech and True Grit as much as most people do, and Toy Story 3 much more than I anticipated. 

Polanski’s Ghost Writer is a very effective political thriller, and three foreign crime dramas reward the effort to watch their grisly violence – the Red Riding Trilogy (like Carlos a three-part series originally made for television) tracks the long and convoluted case of the Yorkshire Ripper; Animal Kingdom follows the decline of a Melbourne crime family ruled by an Aussie lioness of a mother; A Prophet shows in intimate gory detail how an Arab youth in a French prison comes to depend on the Corsican mob that runs the joint and much else besides.

The relationships amongst family, friends, and lovers are examined from many angles in an international array of worthy films.  The American indies Mother & Child and Please Give weave together the stories of several families -- Roderigo Garcia with an excellent cast led by Annette Bening and Naomi Watts as a mother and daughter separated at birth, and Nicole Holofcener out of a cross-section of Manhattan neurotics surrounding Catherine Keener.   From Britain, Mike Leigh does not disappoint but does not top himself with Another Year, and Never Let Me Go tells a surprisingly thought-provoking dystopian fable about some attractive young people at a boarding school that is not what it seems.  From Italy, the operatic and sensual family drama of I Am Love is anchored by Tilda Swinton.  From France, The Father of My Children meticulously examines the lead-up to and fall-out from a family tragedy.  From Germany comes the step-by-step break-up of a mismatched couple on a Mediterranean vacation in Everyone Else.

Appreciations, which I consider worth seeing:  I would cite both The Fighter and The Town for knowing portrayals of rough’n’tumble Massachusetts working-class communities.  Among the other Oscar nominees, I like The Kids Are All Right less than many do, but 127 Hours more than I expected, though neither strikes me as a legitimate contender for “Best Picture.”  The rest of this category is a mixed-bag of little-known films, each of which found some support in critics polls, except a couple I would point out as suiting my particular (peculiar?) personal taste – Neil Jordan’s selkie fable Ondine appeals to me for its local Irish flavor and the un-star-like performance of Colin Farrell, and I appreciate the relatively serious portrayal of Darwin by Paul Bettany in Creation.  Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling enact a winsome romance and lacerating break-up in Blue Valentine.  Highly-charged historical situations are depicted, again from a variety of nations -- Lebanon looks at the 1982 war from the perspective of some raw Israeli recruits confined to a tank; White Material takes in an African civil war from the perspective of French coffee plantation owner Isabelle Huppert; Vincere looks at the rise of Mussolini from the view of the woman and son he discarded on the way up the ladder; and Four Lions is an unlikely terrorist comedy about a half-assed group of British Islamicists.  Alamar is sui generis, quietly following a young mixed-race boy as he goes to spend a summer with his father in the natural paradise of the Mexican coral reefs.

Equivocations, which I leave to your discretion:  Two critical favorites that I halfway appreciated, but cannot recommend, are the Noah Baumbach-Ben Stiller acerbic comedy Greenberg and the Korean murder mystery Mother.  I have high expectations for Sofia Coppola’s films, which were severely disappointed by Somewhere.  For a while I was under the spell of Black Swan, but when the spell was broken by sheer over-the-top implausibility, I turned against the film rather violently.  I never fell under the spell of Christopher Nolan’s Inception or Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, and wound up fast-forwarding through both.  Two highly praised and highly offbeat foreign films I stubbornly refused to get were the Greek family fable Dogtooth and Alain Resnais’ weird and not-so-wonderful Wild Grass.

Documendations:  Inside Job won the Oscar for best documentary feature and came in #7 overall in the Film Comment poll, but this recapitulation of the financial collapse of 2008 was not my favorite of the year’s nonfiction films.  Among the nominees, I was more impressed with Restrepo, with its intimate you-are-there feel for a remote military outpost in Afghanistan at the furthest extension of the American empire (the co-director was subsequently killed in action in Libya); Waste Land, about a project by the international art star Vik Muniz set in the largest garbage dump in Rio; and Gasland, a D-I-Y exploration of the environmental disaster-in-waiting that is “fracking” for natural gas.  For understanding of America’s political and economic crises, I would turn to Alex Gibney, whose Casino Jack and the United States of Money was truly illuminating and enraging about the lasting toxic influence of the cadre of College Republicans led by Karl Rove, while his Client 9 detailed the rise and fall of Eliot Spitzer in a way that was virtually as informative as Inside Job in fingering the culprits of the financial meltdown.  The Oath offered surprising access to the inside of Al-Qaeda by following Osama Bin Laden’s ex-bodyguard, who is now a taxi driver in Yemen.  The Tillman Story showed how truth was one of the casualties of the Afghan war, and Last Train Home put the face of one family on the immense impact of huge internal migration in China from the countryside to the cities.  On nonpolitical themes, standouts of the year included Sweetgrass, a nearly wordless meditation on a great sheep drive to grazing in the wilds of Montana, and a late work by cinema verite pioneer D.A. Pennebaker, Kings of Pastry, about chefs vying for a French medal of honor.  One quirky outlier that has its detractors as well as advocates, Catfish, finds another proponent in me, as it takes a highly personal approach to exploring the implications of social media.  Some will tell you that Exit Through the Gift Shop was a great look at contemporary street art, but for art from an outsider perspective, I much prefer Marwencol.

So all in all, 2010 definitely goes in the book as a year of worthy films.  Take a look for yourself.

Another Year

In most years Mike Leigh is in the running for best director, but this is just Another Year, well-done and extremely watchable, though at times excruciatingly so.  Lesley Manville has been widely celebrated for her portrayal of a desperate lush, trying to fend off the sexual and existential panic of middle-age, but she is just one of the characters that circle around the cozy central couple played by Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent – she a counselor, he a geological engineer, both products of the Sixties -- who seem to maintain an open house for family and friends, while extending an open-hearted acceptance, even acquiescence, to the quirks of others -- until one of them does the unacceptable.   Leigh always creates characters who are real and rounded and whole, but your heart does not go out to any of this bunch, as it did to Vera Drake or Poppy in Happy-Go-Lucky, so you are left with their foibles, be they smugly happy or desperately unhappy.   They are analyzed as specimens, all too human specimens, but the film, while even-handed, remains stubbornly unsympathetic on several levels.  Not as unsympathetic as Naked, but not among the director’s most approachable, such as Topsy-Turvy.  Nonetheless, Mike Leigh remains a must-see.  (2010, MC-80)