Coming to the Clark

"SPANISH MASTERS OF CINEMA"  FILM SERIES

In a summer when the Clark will be featuring the work of two Spanish artists, Pablo Picasso and Juan Munoz, this free film series will look at the work of six great Spanish directors.  All films will be shown in Spanish with subtitles, on alternate Fridays at 4:00 pm.

Friday, June 18, 4:00 pm

Viridiana

1962, 91 min.

Luis Buñuel returned to Spain from Mexican exile and was immediately banned for this scathing surrealist satire, which won the top prize at Cannes and eventually was hailed as a sacrilegious masterpiece, with its parody of the Last Supper as portrayed by venal peasants and beggars.

Friday, July 2, 4:00 pm

The Spirit of the Beehive

1973, 98 min.

Victor Erice takes a mesmerizing child’s eye view of rural Spain after Franco’s victory in the Civil War.  In this enigmatic, allegorical film, Ana Torrent became a sensation as the little girl haunted by visions of Frankenstein’s monster after seeing Boris Karloff in the role.

Friday, July 16, 4:00 pm

Carmen

1983, 101 min.

Carlos Saura intermingles art and life in this retelling of the Bizet opera through the story of choreographer Antonio Gades mounting a flamenco version of the classic story of Spanish passion.

Friday, July 30, 4:00 pm

All About My Mother

1999, 106 min.

Pedro Almodóvar’s Oscar-winning film follows Cecilia Roth as a mother who tries to cope with the death of her teenage son by seeking out the boy’s transvestite father and along the way meeting with old friends who re-enfold her into the community of women that the director always celebrates.

Friday, August 13, 4:00 pm

The Sea Inside

2004, 126 min.

Alejandro Amenábar’s Oscar-winner relates the moving and thought-provoking true story of a quadriplegic writer, superbly embodied by Javier Bardem, who mounts a campaign for the right to die with dignity and the help of three devoted women.

Friday, August 27, 4:00 pm

Pan’s Labyrinth

2006, 112 min.

Guillermo del Toro reprises many of the themes of this series in the spellbinding story of a young girl who escapes from the realities of wartime Fascist Spain into a realm of fantasy.  Sergi López chills the soul as the evil stepfather, one of Franco’s commanders rooting out the resistance.

Tokyo Sonata

I went into this film with no foreknowledge, based solely on its ranking in critics' polls for last year (#23 and #44).  After the fact I learned that director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is best known for horror films, so this mostly realistic social commentary represents a departure.  Like Laurent Cantet’s Time Out, it tells the story of a white-collar worker who gets laid off, but too embarrassed to tell his family, he sets off each morning as if he still had a job.  This missive from Japan’s “lost decade” certainly has relevance for an American audience today, as economic disaster frays the fabric of family and society.  This was a good film to know nothing about in advance, because one definitely does not know where it’s going as it unfolds.  Some events border on the surreal, but for the most part the film is only too real, showing for example how economic stress leads to domestic violence.  The acting is generally good, for the downwardly mobile father and the two sons, one a disillusioned recruit to American forces in Iraq and the other a surreptitious young piano prodigy.  Outstanding is Kyoko Koizumi as the mother who tries to hold the family together, until abducted into her own fantasy of escape.  I didn’t know what to think about all this as I was watching, and I still don’t know what it adds up to, but many of the elements are good and the intent seems serious, if occasionally oddball.  (2009, dvd)  *6+*  (MC-80)

Yi Yi [& Y.V.]

I have either too little or too much to say about Yi Yi, Edward Yang’s film about a middle-class family in modern Taiwan, voted third best of the decade by two different critic polls.  I recently watched the Criterion Collection DVD twice, once with a small film club audience at the Clark and again on HDTV with the commentary track on.  I didn’t mind that so few forsook a beautiful May afternoon to come inside and spend three hours in the dark with me, looking at ordinary folk in an extraordinary film.  As it happened, a dimming projection bulb did not make the most of the glowing Criterion transfer, but it certainly did show through in HD.  The viewer becomes a neighbor in the modern apartment building where a businessman father, a mother overburdened by the collapse of her own mother, a teenage daughter, and a grade-school son interact with family, friends, and associates, in what gradually becomes a wonderfully rounded portrait of life as it’s lived in a contemporary city.  Warm and funny, while quiet and exquisitely controlled, Yang expresses a viewpoint that is unblinking but endearing, especially in the persons of the two children.  Suspended between a wedding and a funeral, with a birth in the middle, the film encompasses a lot in a small scope, and gets richer upon repeated viewing.  (2000, dvd)  *9*  (MC-92)

On the other hand, I really have little to say about The Young Victoria (2009, dvd, MC-64) except the costumes and settings were impressive, and the estimable Emily Blunt does project a novel approach to the dowager queen, as a teenage monarch falling in love with her Prince Albert.  Despite raising hopes for more than it delivers, the film felt thin to me, and tarted up with perfunctory editing tricks, as if the budget had been shot on the décor so they had to truncate the running time.  The giveaway is extended title cards at the beginning and end of the film, as if to tell the story they never got around to telling.  Anglophiles may still want to see it, for the production values alone.

The Messenger [et seq.]

Oren Moverman’s effectively affecting debut film depicts the military’s point of the spear, not one that penetrates the battlefield, but one that pierces the heart of the next of kin when the knock on the door comes.  Ben Foster convinces as a wounded and decorated Iraq veteran who is assigned to serve out his enlistment as a casualty notification officer, in tandem with the reliably unreliable Woody Harrelson, as a lifer with a drinking problem that has kept him in this job since the first Iraq war.  When the film remains focused on six successive families reacting to the fatal message, it seems honest and respectfully probing, a fresh and empathetic approach to the subject of war and its effects.  But when it pays homage to the buddy genre and has the boys behaving badly, with the obligatory drunken tearful confessions, it seems formulaic, even if well-played.  For me, in the end, the film was redeemed by the presence of Samantha Morton -- I always find her subtly involving -- as the widow of one of the dead soldiers, with whom Foster, against all regulations, forms a delicately evolving bond.  (2009, dvd)  *7*  (MC-78)

To follow the next step in the military’s rituals of bereavement, I looked into the recent HBO movie, Taking Chance, which follows the diary of an officer who volunteers for escort duty with the remains of a soldier killed in Iraq and going home to Colorado for burial.  Kevin Bacon is quite good in the role, and the unfolding of military ceremony surrounding the preparation and return of the body was definitely eye-opening, especially when you imagine it being repeated thousands of times.  But finally the piety of the source material shone through HBO’s typical gloss of sophistication, with nonstop musical cues tugging hearts relentlessly, as every citizen met along the way uniformly honors the fallen.  Yeah, it’s a different era, but I can imagine how a Viet vet (or current VA patient) would gag on this sugarcoated celebration of how we all support the troops.

Séraphine

Long and slow, but majestic and moving, Martin Provost’s film about an outsider artist in France between the wars swept seven Césars last year, including Best Picture and Best Actress.  Séraphine (Louis, later known as De Senlis) is a pious middle-aged cleaning lady and laundress, nowhere near as simple as she seems, with a passion for painting in secret, mostly still lifes of flowers imbued with hallucinatory intensity.  One of her paintings comes to the attention of a tenant whom she’s serving, and he turns out to be Wilhelm Uhde, a gallerist and art critic who gives her crucial encouragement, but his promises of exhibition in Paris come to nothing when he flees before the invading Germans at the start of World War I.  Despite the disappointment, Séraphine redoubles her efforts, so when their paths cross again more than ten years later, she has a body of work to show, which he begins to sell.  The late-blooming success then goes to her head in more ways than one.  Already I’ve betrayed the way the film unfolds, unless you are familiar with the painter’s biography in advance, since you never know for sure where it’s going.  You see Séraphine going about her chores -- with some mysterious interludes of collecting pigments -- for half an hour before you get the idea that she is anything more than a peasant.  Yolande Moreau is exceptional in portraying a simple, circumscribed life lit from within, and also the pride with which the artist later displays her work, in scenes that artfully survey her paintings in their finished state, as well as her distress when things go bad.  Director Provost’s approach is unhurried and visually acute, attuned to concentrated looking, so it’s definitely not a film for everyone, but rather for those with eyes to see and patience to understand.  (2009, dvd.)  *7*  (MC-84.)

Filling in 2009 et al.

I’m getting close to writing up my year-end summary of the best films of 2009, on my typical six-month delay, as the last DVDs finally come out.  Here are several that I’ve watched recently that won’t make the list, two that finished high in the Film Comment critics poll (#13 and #22, respectively) and one that made no one’s list but that I liked better.

I’m not hipster enough to be a real fan of Jim Jarmusch, but I’m willing to give a look to most anything he does.  The Limits of Control (2009, dvd, MC-41) has a number of elements that make it watchable, if ultimately frustrating.  First mention must go to Christopher Doyle’s eye-catching cinematography of Spanish locations.  The acting works as well, with Isaach de Bankolé suitably impassive as the stone-faced operative in the midst of an operatic conspiracy, with a parade of familiar faces as the contacts he meets in turn, including the likes of Tilda Swinton, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Bill Murray.  This movie is all “maguffin” -- the dispensable plot mechanism by which Hitchcock drove his audience manipulations -- and no substance.  Jarmusch is too laid back to manipulate, so he takes the stalking assassin plot and just riffs on it in theme and variation, much of it amusing and visually striking, but going nowhere despite being all over the place -- just as critical and audience response has been.  At best, the film is a surreal tour through old movies and I didn’t mind going along for the ride, even if it didn’t take me anywhere in particular.

I also didn’t mind taking the trip with Spike Jonze to Where the Wild Things Are (2009, dvd, MC-71), another film with a wildly divergent critical response (the Metacritic average comprises rankings from 100 to 40).  But in fact it was a huge letdown when the film entered the realm of mopey fantasy, after the promising “real-life” introduction, with Max Records making for an electrically bad-behaved Max and Catherine Keener making the most of her minutes as the stressed mother.  After sailing a wild imaginary sea and landing at an island with an equally imaginary variety of landscapes (all in Australia, I understand), Max runs into the Wild Things, a group of hulking creatures, cleverly costumed with digitally enhanced facial expression, and voiced by the likes of Tony Soprano (!).  Even with wild rumpuses, the air goes out of the film with the grumpy lamentations of the wild things, a rather depressive lot.  For me, there was more magic in the realism, and too much didacticism in the fantasy.  A much better collaboration between Spike Jonze and Maurice Sendak was the former’s documentary portrait of the latter, Tell Them Anything You Want, which is also now out on DVD.

Garnering strictly middle of the pack reviews was Adam  (2009, dvd, MC-56), and I am not going to single it out for your delectation, but I did enjoy Max Mayer’s debut film, a Sundance-endorsed romantic comedy, with the offbeat angle that the male lead explicitly has Asperger’s Syndrome.  While no Claire Danes as Temple Grandin, Hugh Dancy evokes well many attributes of mild autism, without going all Rainman.  I thought Rose Byrne was destined to be something, but in this film she disappointed me.  Maybe it was the script, perhaps all Mayer’s empathy was with the male character.  At times the camera does a good job of conveying Adam’s point of view, but we never get the girl’s, just a lame familial backstory (though it was fun to see Amy Irving as her mother, and Peter Gallagher would have been all right if the father weren’t such an intrusion in the story).  And the children’s book that is supposed to make the girl sympathetic struck me as kinda icky.  So I was disappointed in the ending (and also the alternate ending on the DVD), but along the way I was well into it, with so much self-identification that I hardly knew myself from Adam.

One more romantic comedy that I liked perhaps more than it deserved was In July (2000, dvd, MC-71).  Just as a Cinema Salon Film Club screening of The Headless Women led me to other films by Lucrecia Martel, showing The Edge of Heaven sent me looking for more Fatih Akin, as another young filmmaker to follow.  This trifle is slight, and might have made my teeth ache if the road trip were across America, but had the merit of novelty since it followed Akin’s persistent personal route between Hamburg and Istanbul.  A somewhat dorky high school teacher (Moritz Bleibtreu) is accosted by a smitten street vendor (Christiane Paul) and sold a ring with a Mayan sun symbol, which she insists will lead him to his one true love.  The set up seems obvious, but then chance intervenes and he meets a lovely Turkish traveler whom he immediately believes is the one.   After a night of chaste enchantment he puts her on a plane back to Istanbul, but then decides that he must go there to meet her again, and borrows a car to drive through Romania and Bulgaria.  On the way out of town, he picks up a hitchhiker and what do you know, it’s the disappointed hippie girl, setting off for wherever the wind takes her.  Okay, a huge contrivance and you know exactly where it’s going from the get-go, but there are some amusing Eastern European hijinks along the way, with incidental surprises on the well-worn road trip.

Framing Lucrecia Martel

I do not take the critics’ polls in Film Comment as gospel, but I find them a useful point of reference, so it’s worth noting that Lucrecia Martel of Argentina was chosen the 2^nd best new director of the decade (19^th best overall), and of her three films to date, The Headless Woman came in at #2 of 2009 and #50 of the decade, with The Holy Girl (2004) at #56 and La Ciénaga (2001) at #62.  I’ve (re)watched all three lately, and I’m beginning to see the point of all the acclaim.

Right from the beginning Martel has displayed the stamp of an auteur, with her own unique style and subject matter.  Her eschewal of establishing shots is as much a metaphysical as a stylistic choice; she throws viewers into the middle of the action and let’s them fill in the picture.  With tight framing in crowded scenes, what is offscreen is as important as what is shown, and that goes for sounds as well as what is cropped out of her images (the eponymous “headless woman” is not the only one).  Instead of traditional storytelling, she relies on layering.  The social setting, the situation, the characters are revealed bit by bit, laid in stroke by stroke, and not necessarily in the center of the screen.

Two innovations in her third film make that a good place to start.  Putting the audience in the position of the central character, not from a subjective angle but somewhat askance, motivates us to try to piece the story together just as the “headless woman” does, focusing the suspense that in Martel’s previous films might be just puzzlement.  She also goes widescreen, to allow even more information in at the edges of her frame.

Once you’ve seen the earlier two films, her whole approach begins to make sense and her personal obsessions emerge.  What’s her thing with swimming pools?  It seems like immersion in a supposedly refreshing environment that is actually contaminated.  You definitely get the idea that she comes out of a large Catholic family in the provincial northwest of Argentina, where a comfortable but decadent middle class relies on native servants to maintain a seedy but luxurious style of living.  While not overtly political in any way, her films are full of social comment, in a manner that may be more evident in Argentina than elsewhere.  When you are sensitized to the class situation, her films seem steeped in it.

La Ciénaga translates as The Swamp, which is also the name Martel gives to her hometown region of Salta, where each of her films is set.  It may also describe the family around which the film weaves, with vain and indolent drunks for parents, and five grown and growing children getting into various kinds of sexual mischief.

The Holy Girl maintains the hothouse atmosphere, where piety is deeply confused and intermingled with adolescent sexuality.  A spookily intent girl is groped on the street and decides it is her vocation to save the molester from his transgressions, though she is excited by transgressions herself.  He turns out to be a guest in a hotel her mother has inherited but hardly runs, in town for a doctors’ convention, and the mother takes a rather lascivious interest in him as well.  Any summary of plot misses the point, offering no more than a thread through a labyrinth of desire and decay.

The Headless Woman loses her identity in a hit and run accident while driving, where her head is concussed and her conscience left behind, as she drives away without checking the body lying in the road.  Gradually she puts the pieces of her life back together around the missing moral core, with her extended family gathering around protectively to save her from any consequences of her misdeed.

What is easy to miss on first approach to Martel’s films, besides the social commentary, is their deadpan wit.  Like everything else, it is thrown off tangentially, at the edge of the frame, and requires alertness to appreciate.  So she’s an acquired taste, but one worth trying.

Beeswax

Andrew Bujalski established a personal, homemade style in Funny Ha-Ha and Mutual Appreciation, but with Beeswax he has developed his process to an audience-friendly sophistication, worthy of comparison to Cassavetes or Rohmer. Some of the appeal definitely derives from the twin sisters, Tilly and Maggie Hatcher, who play twin sisters, one a wheelchair-bound ant earnestly confronting business problems with her vintage clothing store in Austin, Texas, the other a boyfriend-dumping grasshopper trying to figure out what to do with her life. The former, whose disability is totally taken for granted, turns to a bemused old friend, about to take the bar exam, for help with legal issues in a retail partnership that has gone sour. Nothing much happens, and that’s a good thing, as the extremely naturalistic dialogue and delivery -- an articulated inarticulacy -- opens up to unexpected depths of humor and feeling. It’s enjoyable to spend time in the company of these likable but layered young women, as well as Alex Karposky in the role of the would-be lawyer, would-be boyfriend. You definitely should make it your business to see Beeswax -- it’s sweet and will stick in your mind. (2009, dvd.) *7* (MC-70)

Bigger Than Life

The Criterion Collection resurrects another lost gem, but I’ve never quite gotten Nicholas Ray, in the way that I eventually got Douglas Sirk and became a fan. I find it hard to see past the evident flaws of the melodrama to the genuine passions within. Still, there’s a lot that makes it worth watching. The topical story is taken from a New Yorker article on the dangerous side effects of then-new wonder drug Cortisone. James Mason plays the small-town schoolteacher who is prescribed the drug against an otherwise fatal heart disease; soon his personality is being distorted by the steroid, which makes him feel “ten feet tall.” His megalomania becomes a commentary on the constraints of mid-century middle-class life, but his newfound bravado lurches ominously into psychosis, when he begins to see himself as Abraham called by God to sacrifice Isaac. When his wife points out that God stopped Abraham, Mason chillingly replies, “God was wrong.” Mason is good in the role, but inherently too posh in his diction and demeanor to be a convincing middle American. Barbara Rush as the wife is pretty much a cipher, but then that’s her role; the damagingly inadequate role is the young son, who is not believable for a minute. It’s surprising, but effective, for such a claustrophobic film to be shot in widescreen color. In the context of Mad Men, it’s interesting to see the domestic era of the Fifties depicted in great detail while it was still the present, like Father Knows Best through a broken mirror. The ending seems forced and perfunctory, especially after the tension has been ratcheted up so well, and thus I am left with something less than a full-throated recommendation. (1956, dvd.) *7-*

35 Shots of Rum

Claire Denis’ quiet everyday love story between a widowed father and a grown daughter owes a debt to Ozu, but also to the relationship between her own mother and grandfather, which lends the film an enrapturing intimacy. Denis is wonderfully assisted by the lovely, haunting music of Tindersticks (plus a key scene scored to the Commodores), and the mesmerizing camerawork of her longtime collaborator Agnes Godard. Also by the leads, Alex Descas as the father and Mati Diop as the daughter, as well as the supporting cast. He’s an aging Caribbean immigrant who drives a commuter rail train in Paris; he married a German girl who died long ago and now their daughter is a university student who lives at home and lovingly looks after her Daddy. As in Ozu, he wishes her to be free to pursue her own life, even if it leaves him forlorn and drowning in those 35 shots. Also as in Ozu, shots of trains loom large in the story, but here many of them are taken from the driver’s view, the tracks a sinuous parallel of light stretching into the distance. The film is all about mood and inarticulate feelings beautifully made manifest, through sidelong glances and an intent gaze. Though nothing much happens here, and that frequently offscreen, for those who have eyes to see (and ears to hear) there’s a lot going on. (2009, dvd.) *7+* (MC-92.)

Temple Grandin

Wow, Claire Danes is electric and utterly convincing in Mick Jackson’s biopic about the autistic woman who has become prominent in the realms of both animal rights and autism. She’s always been a good actress, but here she is a revelation. Julia Ormond has not always been more than a pretty face, looking like a less-talented Juliette Binoche, but is excellent here as Temple’s mother, while the usually comic Catherine O’Hara is empathetic as her rancher aunt. David Straithairn brings his usual quiet nobility to the role of the high school science teacher who liberates Temple’s native intellect. But this is Claire Dane’s show, and she takes command of it without being showy – she conveys both the outside and the inside of an unusual personality. The film is swift, smart, and funny, as well as deeply moving. And forceful in its message that different does not mean less, when it comes to innate human talents and limitations. As the title of Grandin’s autobiography, Thinking in Pictures, would imply, her story is a natural for visualization, and one of the levels on which this film works so well is as a quasi-documentary on livestock management and humane treatment of animals, not to mention an inspirational story for anyone whose brain is wired differently from the rest of the herd. The DVD won’t be out till August, but the film is still being repeated on HBO – you ought to track it down one way or the other. (2010, HBO.) *8* (MC-84.)

Going to the Dickens

I think it’s less a matter of production values, even with digital enhancement, than sheer directorial style that makes recent BBC adaptations of Charles Dickens’ novels – memorably, Bleak House (2005) and Little Dorrit (2008) -- stand out from earlier efforts, however worthwhile. Certainly the quality of acting remains a constant, and the authenticity of speech and dialect makes subtitles highly desirable, which the older dvds of Our Mutual Friend (1998) and Martin Chuzzlewit (1994) do not offer. So one misses some of Dickens verbal play, and crucial plot points as well. It usually takes several episodes to sort out the characters, and some of the plot twists remain incomprehensible if you haven’t read the book. I’d mostly forgotten the one, and never read the other. So I enjoyed neither of these as much as the first-mentioned pair, nor as much as the Elizabeth Gaskell adaptations I’ve been watching recently. Still, they are worth taking note of. In Our Mutual Friend most of the familiar faces are in supporting character roles, like Timothy Spall or David Morrissey, but one actress stands out, Keeley Hawes as Lizzie Hexum – you have no trouble understanding why two men would become so fixated on her. (She was also good in Wives and Daughters, so I wonder why I haven’t seen her in any movies?) Of the antecedent pair of adaptations, this is the one to watch, with the river and the ash heap, which figure so symbolically in the story, brilliantly rendered. In the other, the elder Martin Chuzzlewit is played by Paul Scofield, and Pecksniff by Tom Wilkinson, both very well indeed, but best of all is Philip Franks as Tom Pinch. David Lodge, one of my favorite novelists, wrote the script, but I found the plot both obvious and opaque at spots. Martin Chuzzlewit is reputed one of Dickens’ worst novels, so maybe he’s to blame. Therefore let me take this occasion to reinforce my strong recommendations of Bleak House and Little Dorrit – watch either of those, and then go on to the others only if you get hooked on BBC versions of Dickens

Make Way for Tomorrow

The Criterion Collection resurrects a rarity here, and it’s a long-hidden gem, an understandable flop in its day but esteemed from then till now by the cognoscenti. Leo McCarey is better known for directing Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth, for which he won an Oscar in that same year. Or for first pairing Laurel with Hardy, or directing the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, or Bing Crosby in Going My Way, or two versions of An Affair to Remember. So the grim seriousness of this film comes as a surprise, notwithstanding memorable moments of humor. It’s basically the story of five grown children who, when faced with the dilemma of their parents losing the family home in the “Roosevelt recession” (in the interval between the passage of Social Security and its implementation), force them to separate, eventually sending the mother off to a home for the aged and the father off to an unknown fate. This story is so un-Hollywood that the comparison that struck me was Tokyo Story, and indeed it appears that Ozu did take inspiration from McCarey. That’ll shake up your view of film history. Make Way for Tomorrow is notable for its matter-of-fact and even-handed manner – no heroes, no villains, just ordinary people responding in an ordinary way to an ordinary situation. Tears are elicited but not jerked. Smiles earned but not forced. The couple, played by Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi, reunites once for a day in New York City, where they had honeymooned fifty years before, and grace abounds for a fleeting moment, before an ending of ineffable sadness. This hardly qualifies as escapist entertainment in hard times, but makes for a film of lasting import. (1937, dvd.) *7+*

Broken Embraces

Made for cinephiles by an ardent cinephile, Pedro Almodovar’s latest love letter references Hitchcock, Sirk, Rossellini, Powell, Malle, and not least, himself. And that’s just at first glance. I compare it most to Truffaut’s Day for Night, in its passion for filmmaking. So I liked Broken Embraces, and I reveled with Almodovar in his mastery of movie magic, without ever being gripped by the characters or story – it’s good-looking and clever rather than moving and meaningful, which he is also capable of being at times. His usual muse, Penelope Cruz, also gets to channel other actresses, from Audrey Hepburn to Marilyn Monroe. The mutability of personae pervades the exercise, with every character going under multiple names and identities, in different timeframes. In essence, a blind screenwriter flashes back to the days when he was a sighted director in love with his leading lady, making a film very much like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (which I happened to see again quite recently). This film is more self-reflexive than consequential, but seems masterful in every frame, a bravura performance perhaps a shade too in love with itself. (2009, dvd.) *7* (MC-76.)

(500) Days of Summer [etc.]

I wouldn’t urge Marc Webb’s off-beat twentysomething rom-com on you -- unless you, like me, find Zooey Deschanel’s doe-eyed gaze charming, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt a sympathetic young actor. They meet while working at a greeting card company in downtown LA. He, in his own mind an architect rather than a dispenser of treacle, is utterly smitten; she, a no-bullshit free spirit, is willing to spend some time and have some fun with him, no strings attached. Her name is Summer and 500 is the number of days it takes him to get into and then over her. The days are literally numbered and help the viewer keep track through all the flashbacks and flashforwards that are part of the film’s enlivening gimmicks, along with animation and song & dance. You won’t learn much you don’t already know about life or love, but you are likely to be amused for an hour and a half. (2009, dvd.) *7-* (MC-76.)

Two other films of recent vintage could sneak in under the same umbrella description, though less fully satisfying within the parameters of each premise. The Invention of Lying (2009, dvd, MC-58) starts out as sharp, smart satire but then goes all mushy. In a world devoid of the concept of saying anything that is not so, Ricky Gervais tells a lie inadvertently and makes the astounding discovery of the utility of saying untrue words. As his mother is dying, he makes up a comforting story about what’s about to happen to her, and soon he is a celebrity evangelist bringing the word from the Man in the Sky. With someone like Alexander Payne directing, this might have been scathingly sarcastic fun, an equal opportunity offender, but with Gervais collaborating with Matt Robinson on script and direction, the premise peters out in a sub-Groundhog Day romance. To me, however, Jennifer Garner has even less appeal than Andie Macdowell, so I couldn’t buy into the relationship at all. Oh, that Ricky had remained true to the David Brent within, and not tried to imagine himself as a romantic hero!

Mike Judge followed up Beavis and Butthead with the cult hit movie, Office Space, and after several more animated tv series, is back with another live-action, workplace comedy called -- unmemorably -- Extract (2009, dvd, MC-61). It stars Jason Bateman – whom I have come to like through several recent supporting roles in good movies, but moreover from my belated viewing of the three seasons of Arrested Development – as the owner of a small factory turning out extracts, like vanilla and such. Ben Affleck is his druggy bartender buddy, who has all the wrong answers for Jason’s marital frustrations. Don’t ask -- but it involves a dimwitted pool boy gigolo and a hot little con artist trading on her sex appeal. The heart of the film is the real-life factory, where realistically humorous characters live out their worklives, disrupted by an industrial accident, hilariously-staged, and a subsequent wildcat strike. With so many good things in it, I’m surprised the whole didn’t leave a better impression – despite intelligent amusement throughout, it remains in memory as vague as its title.

Billy Budd

Peter Ustinov produces, directs, and stars in his own adaptation of Herman Melville's tale of a saintly seaman and his tragic end. Terence Stamp in his debut role glows with innocence as Billy, Robert Ryan is convincingly evil as his nemesis Claggart, and Ustinov distinguishes himself as Captain Vere, who must reluctantly mete out justice on a British man o’ war early in the Napoleonic Wars. Notable for widescreen location shooting in lustrous black & white, this film has a clever credit sequence that I don’t remember seeing elsewhere – as the actors’ names appear on screen, they sound off with their characters’ names and ranks. There’s very little swashbuckling action or high seas drama, as the film comes down to a well-done court martial sequence, which may lend a different emphasis than Melville but is dramatically effective. (1962, dvd.) *7*

I’d had Billy Budd on my Netflix queue for a long time, but bumped it to the top in preparation for showing Claire Denis’ Beau Travail (1998) to the Cinema Salon Film Club at the Clark, which also jumps off from Melville’s posthumous novella. There the setting is a French Foreign Legion post in East Africa, and the dynamic amongst the three leads is even harder to parse, but as cinema that aspires to the condition of music and dance, Denis’ film definitely works.

Catching up

I seem to have taken a short holiday from film reviewing, but it won’t take me long to catch up with what I’ve been watching. And it’s easy to single out one film as a recommendation. Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009, dvd, MC-83) is irresistibly charming in its faux-primitive stop-motion animation, with the ingratiating vocal performances of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, et al. I wouldn’t call this free-form adaptation of the Roald Dahl children’s story a must-see but it certainly is fun to see, and does not insult the intelligence of six or sixty year old.

Among other recent releases by well-established directors, Tony Gilroy’s well-made but frustrating Duplicity (2009, dvd, MC-69) does not come close to duplicating his superb Michael Clayton, and Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! (2009, dvd, MC-66) displays a mixed bag, as so much of his career does. Clive Owen and Julia Roberts entertain as the two competing spies in Duplicity – first MI-6 and CIA, then corporate -- who fall for each other and all the deceptions they each spin, but the viewer eventually loses patience with all the doubling back and gives up trying to figure it all out, not believing (or caring about) any of it. The Informant! could easily have had the same title (or The Insider, if that weren’t already taken), and would have been better off called something like Whistleblowing, since that exclamation point is a giveaway to its flaws, the attempt to goose an interesting story with too much goofy first-person narration and slapstick music. Matt Damon is quite good as a duplicitous executive at the agricultural conglomerate ADM, who turned FBI informant at the same time he was embezzling from the company and faking test results. The true story has enough substance and amusing twists that it would have been better told without the honking bells and whistles.

Of course I’ve been in a heavy cycle of screenings at the Clark, which I tend not to review after the fact, since the recommendation is implicit in my programming of them, and I say what I have to say about the films at the event. Last weekend, however, stands out. The Friday screening for the film club, The Edge of Heaven, confirmed Fatih Akin as one of the more interesting young directors out there today, and I added two earlier films by him to my Netflix queue. The “Portraits of Society” film on Saturday equally confirmed that Max Ophuls’ gliding, glittering rondelay, The Earrings of Madame de…, is one of the precious gems of cinema history, with performances from Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer, and Vittorio De Sica that are absolute jewels. Sunday’s Roberto Rossellini double feature was overpowering: Rome Open City coming through with enhanced force in its Criterion Collection restoration, and Paisan pounding home its vast ambition in a way that made even its flaws impressive – I don’t know if I’d call it a good film per se, but it is certainly important and thought-provoking, to the history of war as well as cinema.

The Song of Sparrows

Imagine an Islamic Serious Man with some Bicycle Thief thrown in, and you’ll have an impression of this Iranian film by Majid Majidi. A middle-aged man works on an ostrich farm deep in the steppe-like countryside and lives in a rural village with his wife and three children. A mishap gets him fired from the ostrich farm, his lovely teenage daughter breaks her hearing aid right on the verge of school examinations, and other misfortunes soon pile up, some of which look like lucky breaks at first. Going into Tehran to seek a new hearing aid, he is staggered by the cost, but surprised when someone hops on his motorbike and gives him directions, with a cash payment at the destination. Soon he is carrying passengers and merchandise all over the city, and scavenging discarded stuff for a huge pile growing next to his house. There are some abrupt and inexplicable shifts in the story, but the arc is clear enough. There was a moment that worked exactly like the one when the Serious Man physics professor erased the “F” and wrote in “C,” as the trying of a man’s soul, with inevitable and immediate consequences. In this film the piety may finally outweigh the satire, and the pretty may outshine the dark, but I am stuck on the unexpected similarity between Majidi and the Coen brothers. (2008, dvd) *7* (MRQE-80.)

Having reminded myself just how good a director Majid Majidi is (I also recommend his Oscar-nominated Children of Heaven (1997), and Baran (2001) too), I filled in his filmography by watching The Willow Tree of 2005, which revisits the theme of blindness that he explored in the sublime Colors of Paradise (1999). In this film a university professor is miraculously restored to sight, but in the process loses the light of the divine. As usual in Iranian film, a strong simple idea is explored with visual and moral depth, like a parable or folktale. This one is perhaps too pious, and the protagonist not sympathetic enough, but after seeing Majidi's other films, you might want to watch The Willow Tree as well.

The Baader Meinhof Complex

An interesting mix of documentary veracity with thriller glossiness, Uli Edel’s film is less pointed to an American audience than a German one, for whom the meticulous recreations of recent historical events will be freighted with more personal meaning, especially since many of the scenes were shot precisely where they occurred. For example, a riot that occurred during the Shah’s visit in 1967 ends with the shooting of a student, the photographic image of which is burned into the German psyche as much as that picture of the dead girl at Kent State to Americans of that era. Also, the radicalizing speech of “Red Rudy” at Berlin University, and the showcase trial of Baader, Meinhof, et al. Not to mention all the gang’s bombings, assassinations, and other terrorist acts. Nonetheless, this film is never less than involving, even if it expects you to bring your own knowledge and point of view to the events depicted. Because, make no mistake, these young guys and gals were terrorists -- way more so than the Weather Underground, for example -- despite the Bonnie and Clyde vibe in the culture of the moment. Despite how their story played -- and plays -- on radical sympathies, we now have a better idea of what happens once terror is validated as a political strategy. With Moritz Bleibtrau and Martina Gedeck in the title roles, and based on the bestselling book of the same name, the film may be accused of glamorizing political violence, but seemed to me dispassionate enough to allow one to take the facts and make up one’s own mind, seeking not so much cinematic identification with the protagonists, as understanding of them within the context of the times. (2009, dvd.) aa*7* (MC-76.)

The Damn United

With this film writer Peter Morgan and star Michael Sheen complete a trilogy of sorts. As in The Queen and Frost/Nixon, they take figures from recent British history to tell a story that travels well, and further than you would expect. You needn’t have the slightest interest in soccer to get into this fact-based sports story, which is really a fascinating character study. Sheen plays Brian Clough, a flamboyant and loquacious ex-player rising through the coaching ranks in the early 1970s. He flames out when given the chance to coach the best team in English football, before righting himself, and as the end-titles indicate, going on to a famously successful career. Director Toby Hooper surrounds Sheen with some of the best character actors in Britain -- Timothy Spall as Clough’s coaching better half, Colm Meaney as his great nemesis, and Jim Broadbent as an antagonistic owner – and delivers a little bit of effective on-field action but a whole lot of period flavor. The film is pared down from a novel based on the historical events and clocks in at a modest 1:40, but the DVD offers a number of deleted scenes that definitely add to the story, along with a variety of extras that help define Clough’s standing in the English game. Nonetheless, it’s as a universal story of vanity, obsession, and comeuppance that this film really shoots and scores. (2009, dvd.) *7* (MC-81.)

The Beaches of Agnes

I’m not sure whether you have to love Agnes Varda going in, but there’s a pretty good chance you’ll love her by the end of this warm and witty self-portrait. Not as good as her documentary The Gleaners and I, nor several of her Nouvelle Vague features, it’s still quite charming, as she charts her own story through the beaches of her life – in her native Belgium, in France, in California – as well as the filmmakers, actors, and artists she has known. Fanciful and free, Agnes follows wherever her inspiration leads, from collected memorabilia to conceptual installations, from recreations of her childhood to interviews with old friends and family, from clips from her old films (and those of her beloved husband, Jacques Demy) to whimsies staged with surrealist verve. A quintessential example of the personal essay on film, of the self-portrait in cinema, this film of an “80-year-old woman, plump and happy” mitigates self-absorption with humility and humor, and ought to appeal even to those who’ve never heard of Agnes Varda before. (2009, dvd.) *7+* (MC-80.)

Sin Nombre

This is the first feature (indeed, film school thesis) of American writer-director Cary Fukanaga, having received a big boost in both production and reception from Sundance. I went into it cold, assuming it was actually a Mexican film, which it plausibly seems to be, following in a semi-documentary, semi-thriller style as a group of illegal immigrants travels on top of boxcars from Honduras to the American border, as “nameless” as the title implies. They cross paths with a group of scary gang members, after we’ve seen a few jolting scenes of their violent rituals. An innocent Honduran girl falls for a disillusioned gang member who rescues her from the others, adding the element of romantic implausibility to the otherwise truthful-seeming exploration of poverty and desperation. Nonetheless, this gritty but lovely film, with an effective nonprofessional cast, is a testament to the commitment and skill of a young American filmmaker. (2009, dvd.) *7-* (MC-77.)

Joy of sets

Whether by DVD disk or DVR recording, well-produced television series provide some of the most reliable viewing pleasure you can find. Here’s what I’ve been watching and enjoying lately.

I have read avidly lots of Austen and Bronté, Dickens and Trollope, but it took the BBC to introduce me to the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell. Having just caught up with their earlier production of Cranford, I was primed for the recently-broadcast Return to Cranford. What a delight to be back in the company of Miss Mattie (Judi Dench) and the rest. Though perhaps a little too plotted, Return to Cranford ties up all the threads neatly, and as much as I enjoyed it, I hope they don’t go back to the well once too often.

But that certainly set me off in search of other BBC adaptations of Gaskell novels. I particularly liked
Wives and Daughters (1999), with most of the same crew and many of the same actors, and the same setting in pastoral England. North and South (2004), however, ventures into Dickensian settings in the manufacturing North to offset the idylls of the South. The view of Manchester cotton mills feels authentic, but the fully-anticipated attraction of opposites, between the mill owner and the daughter of a doubting cleric, is undercut by the blankness of the female lead, so different from the immediate appeal of the heroine of Wives and Daughters, who endures disappointment with saintly good humor until she finally gets her just reward. These two miniseries will put me in search of more Masterpiece Theater classics I might have overlooked.

In the current season of Masterpiece Classic, I didn’t really feel the need to watch Romola Garai as Emma, but did so because my viewing companion is on a Jane Austen kick. I liked it well-enough, but still prefer the Kate Beckinsale version from 1996, which I then showed to my partner and watched enough to confirm my own preference. Now we’ll probably re-watch the Gwyneth Paltrow, also from 1996, and Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, because really, one can never get enough of Emma Woodhouse.

Of course one can never get enough of Abraham Lincoln either, so when I heard of it, I had to watch the miniseries of Gore Vidal’s Lincoln (1988) as well. I am a dedicated follower of Gore Vidal’s historical novels, but the highlights of this minimally-produced tv series were the performances of Sam Waterston as the President and Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Todd Lincoln. Never less than interesting in its depiction of Old Abe’s political maneuvering, this is more like filmed theater than grand historical recreation.

On the subject of tv series, I have lately been catching up on dvd with the well-regarded sitcom, Arrested Development (2003-05), which is indeed witty and hilarious, if in the end just a sitcom. I’ve made my way through the first two seasons, and look forward to the third. If you’re looking for a laugh, Arrested Development is definitely something to look at.

Of series currently showing on tv, I have one strong recommendation, one warning, and one heads-up. Friday Night Lights, whose fourth season (MC-81) I was able to catch on DirecTV preview and soon to run on NBC, definitely qualifies as must-see tv, whether you think you’re interested in Texas high school football or not. This portrait of a small-town community just keeps getting better, after a bit of a wobble in the second season when they made a pitch to become more popular and not just a favorite of the critics and cognoscenti. In the fourth season the setting changes to another school and a new set of characters, but doesn’t miss a beat. If you haven’t been watching, you could tune in now, but I would strongly advise going back and watching the first three seasons on dvd. With one season to go, FNL bids fair to enter my all-time pantheon of tv series right between best-ever, The Wire, and long-time favorite, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

On the other hand, in the current season on HBO, Big Love has definitively “jumped the shark,” so intent on injecting ridiculous new twists into the story that even one’s accrued affection for the characters of the three wives is overwhelmed by the implausibility of the husband’s implacable will to power. I watched it, but only with frequent rolling of the eyes and rebellion of the mind. I do not look forward to any more. HBO certainly seems to have lost its mojo with miniseries.

They seem to have ceded it to AMC. We will have to wait till summer for a new season of Mad Men, likely to shoehorn itself into my Top 5 as well, but this week Breaking Bad will resume with its third season. If you can handle the occasional gruesomeness and the pitch-black humor, then you would be well-advised to jump on this critical bandwagon, though I can’t see dropping into the story at midpoint. The first two seasons are already on dvd, and that’s the place to start, as long as you can take the drug-related violence and mendacity that inserts itself into the life of an ordinary high school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque.

Film Club update

Next up is Moolaadé, a 2004 film from Ousmane Sembene (MC-91), which looks at the plight of women in a Senegalese village, to be shown at 4:00 pm on Friday, March 12th.

Two weeks from then, on March 26th, the next screening will be The Edge of Heaven (2007), the latest from the estimable German/Turkish director Fatih Akin. (MC-85.)

On Sunday, March 28th, I will finally get around to showing the Roberto Rossellini double feature I’ve been promising since our Neorealism series last fall: Open City (1945) at 1:00 pm and Paisan (1946) at 3:00 pm.

The only nomination for future screening offered by the club at the last session was for a film from Vietnam, so for screening on April 9th we will vote amongst the following:

*Vietnam: The Scent of Green Papaya (1993). There doesn’t seem to be a film industry in Vietnam, at least for export, so this sensuous memory piece was filmed in Paris, as Tran Anh Hung looks back at Vietnam before Dien Bien Phu. A patient and poetic tale of women in servitude.

*Belgium: Le Fils (The Son) (2002). The acclaimed Dardennes brothers continue their exploration of the underside of EU affluence, with a direct but subtly controlled approach that tests the attention of the audience, probes its mind and soul. (MC-86.)

*Argentinia: The Headless Woman (2008). Lucrecia Martel is another favorite on the international festival circuit, enigmatic yet illuminating in this story of a woman who has a car accident and loses her memory, which we piece back together along with her. (MC-80.)

*France: Beau Travail (1998). Claire Denis loosely adapts Billy Budd in the setting of a French Foreign Legion post in Africa, in a moody symphony of images that cries out to be seen on a big screen. As the Time Out Film Guide advises: “Prepare to be blown away.” (MC-91.)

In compiling these nominees, I came across one film I really wanted to see again -- on the big screen from a restored dvd -- namely Yi-Yi (A One and a Two…), a 2000 film from Edward Yang of Taiwan (MC-92. Also ranked #3 on Film Comment’s critics survey of the best of the decade). At nearly three hours, it won’t fit in the Fridays at 4 slot, so I will be looking for a Sunday afternoon in April to show it, after we see how the Rossellini double feature goes.

Following up on our last session, I include Netflix links to the two Chinese directors I discussed. To epitomize the career of Zhang Yimou, I particularly recommend To Live (1994), which follows Chinese history since Mao’s revolution through one family’s fate in the succeeding decades. The rest of his films may be divided into trilogies: first the explorations of sensual color and female passion, with the gaze riveted on the magnetic beauty of Gong Li (Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern); then the neorealist phase of peasant drama (Story of Qiu Ju, Not One Less, The Road Home); and latterly the riot of color and action in a series of martial arts films (Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower, with the last a fever dream made notable by the reunion with Gong Li.)

As indicated, Jia Zhang-Ke is an acquired taste, seeming to get better with each film one sees, so you might want to follow The World with its successors, Still Life (2006) and 24 City (2008).

Hunger & Revanche

Tough stuff, indeed. Hunger is an unflinching look at the extremities of life in the Maze prison during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the first feature of Steve McQueen. No, not the American icon of cool, but a burly black Brit who is a Turner Prize-winning artist. Without excessive aestheticizing and without special pleading, this tour de force presents not just the brute facts but the personal feelings of conflict between terror and repression, between power and the powerless, between captivity and freedom, between prisoners within and without the walls of H-Block. In short, the conflict between humanity and inhumanity. While remaining particular and specific about the case of the IRA and the mortal hunger strike of Bobby Sands and others in 1981, McQueen’s steady gaze illuminates hidden corners of human motivation and behavior. Michael Fassbender is outstanding as Sands, but the cast maintains a uniform verisimilitude. In fact, this film presents more truth than many will be able to stand. Definitely not for the squeamish, it’s sensational in a deeper sense, making one feel the pain of captive existence on one’s own skin. The storytelling is elliptical and evocative, but centers around one scene where the camera remains fixed for much longer than ten minutes on a silhouetted two-shot of Sands facing off across a table with a sympathetic but adversarial priest, endeavoring to justify his extreme strategy. McQueen’s own strategy is not to change minds, but to open them. (2008, dvd.) *7+* (MC-82.)

The Criterion Collection is branching out from their impeccable dvd reissues of classic films to more current releases. Besides Hunger, they’ve just put out Revanche, an Austrian film that was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars . Gotz Spielmann combines elements of thriller, psychodrama, and parable in this film, whose title may translate either as “revenge” or “rematch.” Two different couples are introduced in alternation and you surmise they will intersect at some point, but you won’t be able to predict how, or what will happen next. But stick with it and the film unfolds to unexpected depth. One couple lives on the seedy margins of Vienna; she’s a Ukrainian prostitute and he’s an ex-con gofer in the brothel where she works. The other lives in a rural village; he’s a policeman and she’s a hausfrau who longs to be a mother. Their paths cross; many complications ensue. You have to watch carefully and patiently to find out what will happen, which is as shocking and quietly devastating as the splash into a country pond that begins the film, sending concentric ripples across the quiet surface. Neither of these films is fare for everyone (plenty of nudity plus revulsion in each), but I thank Criterion for both. (2009, dvd.) *7+* (MC-84.)

Tripleheader

Every once in a while, I watch three films in one night and return three disks to Netflix the next morning. So now I have three reviews to write, but at least I don’t feel the need to make a special case for any of them. The first was certainly my favorite -- The Secret Life of Words (2005) has received little attention, but I found it an effective antidote to Breaking the Waves, as a story set on a North Sea oil rig, in which a damaged woman ministers to a wounded man. Instead of woman-tormentor Lars von Trier, this film is directed by a female, Isabel Coixet, in a production as polyglot (one of the producers is Almodovar) as the skeleton crew left on the decommissioned oil rig. Sarah Polley, whom I admire both as actress and director (Away From Her), is a survivor of the Balkan wars who has retreated into herself in silence and exile, but in a chance encounter gets to resume her profession as nurse, in caring for Tim Robbins, who has been burned and blinded in a fire on the rig. You know where this is going, but a sense of suspense and involvement is nicely maintained, with a real kicker of significance. (MC-68.)

Medicine for Melancholy (2009) is mainly about a look and a mood. Barry Jenkins bleaches his digital images of all but the occasional hint of color, as a black man and woman spend a day following a drunken one-night stand trying to get to know each other, while visiting various attractions of San Francisco, not incidentally the least-black major city in America. The man is played by Wyatt Cenac, of Daily Show fame. This is the sort of film that may stand out at an indie festival, but hardly stands on its own. A worthy apprentice effort rather than satisfying in its own right, it’s local in ways both good and bad. (MC-63.)

All you need to know about Julia (2009) is two words: Tilda Swinton. She gives an all-out performance as an alcoholic hellion who gets involved, way out of her depth, in a kidnapping. Julia/Tilda demands attention, and attracts it magnetically to her flame-haired intensity. Erick Zonca made a memorable debut with Dreamlife of Angels a dozen years ago, but hasn’t been heard from again till now. The film is too long and too meandering (between LA and Mexico), but effectively creepy and scary along the way, with the caper taking crazy turns that are probably truer to the insanity of such a crime than clockwork suspense. But the director certainly forces us to share his own fascination with his leading lady, even if she is nothing like a lady. (MC-62.)

24 City [& film club news]

With each of Jia Zhang-Ke’s films, I get a better idea of what he is about, as he negotiates the shifting boundary between documentary and fiction filmmaking, and between old Maoist and new capitalist regimes in China. This film about a strategic aircraft plant in Chengdu being torn down to make way for the modern apartment complex of the title looks like straight documentary, with direct to the camera testimony from various participants and witnesses. But some of the characters are “real” and some are actors, a split that seems seamless, unless you recognize the actor. Even to the uninitiated the game is given away by a character who introduces herself by the nickname of “Little Flower,” which she was dubbed because of her resemblance to the famous Chinese movie character played by Joan Chen – and she is played by none other than Joan Chen. Each of the witnesses narrates a segment of the history of Factory 420, as it was created by equipment and workers being moved across the country into an all-encompassing factory village within the city, turning out military parts to combat “American imperialism” in the wake of the Korean War. The progress of the generations from hardship through proud productivity to globalized consumerism is portrayed through the succession of witnesses, and adds up to a compelling story. With the added twist that Chengdu was the site of a major earthquake in Sichuan just after the film was shot in 2008. (2009, dvd.) *7* (MC-75.) (24 City ranks #16 in the indieWire critics survey for 2009, and as I work my way down the list, I also watched #15 You, the Living, Roy Andersson’s deadpan series of black humor vignettes set in the monochrome landscape of urban Sweden, but it was lost on me.)

Jia’s 2004 film on globalization within China, The World (MC-81), will be the next screening for the Cinema Salon Film Club at the Clark, on Friday, February 26, at 4:00 pm (I’ll start my introduction at 3:45 since the film is over two hours), and I expect it to be a revelation on the big screen, which is a must for searching out detail in the meticulous framing of Jia’s long-shot, long-take style.

Following up on the last session, I recapitulate the Iranian films I recommended:
Abbas Kiarostami: Close-Up (1989), The Taste of Cherry (1997), Ten (2002).
Mohsen Makhmalbaf: Gabbeh (1996), Kandahar (2001).
Majid Majidi: Children of Heaven (1997), The Color of Paradise (1999), Baran (2001).
Jafar Panahi: The White Balloon (1995), The Circle (2000), Crimson Gold (2003), Offside (2006).
Not technically Iranian, but informative about Iran and highly recommended is Persepolis (2007), the animated adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoirs.

For access to these DVDs, I refer you to this Netflix listing of Iranian films, ranked by viewer ratings.

An Education

In contrast to The Hurt Locker, this was a film in which I identified with or related to each character, even though I am no more a bright 16-year-old schoolgirl in 1961 London than I am a bomb disposal specialist in Iraq. As a big fan of novelist and screenwriter Nick Hornby, I went in highly predisposed to find this film right on my own wavelength, and I came out a big, big fan of Carey Mulligan in the lead role, bedazzled as everyone else seems to be. The Audrey Hepburn comparisons are not out of line. Peter Saarsgard’s recessive mix of charm and guile is perfect for the role of a gentle seducer of a girl half his age. The supporting roles are all spot on, from Alfred Molina as the girl’s father to Emma Thompson in two brief but telling scenes as a headmistress. Not only are all the characters clearly and deeply drawn, but so is the time and place -- England on the cusp between postwar austerity and the Swinging Sixties. And the implicit moral dilemmas are honestly faced. Like it’s adorable but flawed heroine, this film is funny and smart, moving and meaningful. Chastely directed by Dogme 95 veteran Lone Scherfig, An Education delivers truth, humor, and feeling without pyrotechnics. (2009, Images.) *8* (MC-85.)

The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow’s film begins with the premise that “war is a drug” -- and then delivers repeated strong doses. This ambiguity of motive in the movie prevents me from joining in whole-hearted acclaim. I cannot dispute that the film is well-made, and provides a useful “you are there” feel for what American servicemen (no women -- except the director!) have experienced in Iraq. But for me the gold standard is still Generation Kill, which has many more dimensions than this stripped-down action flick. Yes, the action is cleanly and brilliantly depicted, but its implications are slighted. Is this a recruiting pitch for adrenaline-junkies? You could not ask for a more vivid demonstration of what a bomb disposal unit does when confronted by an IED, and what the battlefield is really like in Iraq. But larger questions hang in the air and remain unaddressed. As a portrait of men at work, it is unsurpassed, but as a portrait of the men themselves, it leaves plenty to ask. I found the characters sometimes obvious and sometimes obtuse. Jeremy Renner brings great intensity of focus to his job, along with bravura nonchalance, but I don’t see the Best Actor nomination. All the other characters seem genuine enough, except for a straw man military psychologist, but none engaged me deeply. I went in expecting more than sharply delineated action sequences, but found myself remote from any deeper involvement in meaning or motivation. Is this just another movie that loves to blow things up, with only an added dose of reality? (2009, dvd.) *7* (MC-94.)

Humpday

"Mumblecore bromance" would have to be the shorthand designation for this film, but I found the result much more engaging than I expected. The premise – two straight friends decide to make a gay porn film – seems both familiar and ridiculous, but Lynn Shelton’s film is neither, instead very canny about male bravado and self-deception. Whether scripted or improvised, or some combination of both, the dialogue between Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard rings true, sometimes painfully so, sometimes hilariously so. They are college friends ten years out. The former has settled in Seattle, married and working as a transportation planner; the latter remains a would-be artist and world traveler, who blows into town on a whim and shows up in the middle of the night at his old friend’s house. Let the joshing and rassling begin, and the meandering conversations. The bemused observer is Alycia Delmore, the hopefully ovulating wife, and she gives the guys – and the film – ballast and a tether to reality. As a low-budget, three-person chamber piece, this film is as surprising and satisfying as Richard Linklater’s Tape, though much funnier. Another obvious comparison would be Kelly Reichardt’s well-received Old Joy, but I liked this much better. My unexpected enthusiasm for this film urges me toward a plus, but an acknowledgement of the limited appeal of Cassavetes-inflected indie fare suggests a minus, so they balance out to a simple, solid recommendation. 2009, dvd.) *7* (MC-74.)