Opinionated Judge

PIFF POST #5: A WINDOW INTO ALBANIAN CULTURE, AND A MISTITLED NORWEGIAN STORY

2012-02-13T10:30:00.001-08:00

Sunday's batch contained one real gem and a fun coming-of-age story--but first was a Romanian film, "Morgen" (2.5) that didn't quite catch fire. This story of a quiet, slow-thinking security guard who finds the will to help a Kurdish immigrant trying to cross the border into Hungary contains, in the first five minutes, an interesting metaphor for the senselessness of borders. But it fails to do anything to advance the idea after that, and instead gives you 100 minutes of the man's wife haranguing him and the immigrant pleading to him in Turkish (with no translation into subtitles, so the viewer is just as lost as he is). Perhaps there are subtleties of Romanian culture that I missed that would have made it more involving.

"The Forgiveness of Blood" (8), set in Albania, was the real find of the day. It's the second film of Los Angeles director Joshua Marston, whose first film was "Maria, Full of Grace," the story of a Colombian woman who serves as a drug mule. Marston, who used to be a journalist, seems to be attracted to stories way outside the usual Hollywood fare, and he tells them truthfully and without artifice. In this case, he enlisted the help of an Albanian screenwriter for the screenplay, and tells the story of a modern-day family in a small Albanian village, caught in a blood feud with another family. The dispute is over the right-of-way over a piece of land that the protagonist, Mark, needs to cross for his daily bread delivery route, and culminates in a struggle that leaves one man dead and another, Mark's brother, in jail. Mark manages to go into hiding, leaving the family of the dead man demanding recompense according to a centuries-old tradition that feels especially out-of-place in a context of cell phones and television and other indicia of modern-day life. Recompense means either blood (apparently male blood) or a kind of house arrest for the male members of the family, which means that Mark's teenage son, Nik, must remain indoors (along with a younger boy) and his teenage daughter, Rudina, a gifted and motivated student, must leave school to in order to deliver bread in the family's horse-drawn cart. This is the second film I've seen in the last month (the other being the excellent Iranian film "A Separation") which displays in very specific, cringe-inducing detail how a society functions without the rule of law as we know it here in the U.S. Part of what makes this particular depiction so powerful is the focus on the experience of the two teenagers; their father (by all indications a good man) has taken his actions in order to "protect the family," yet they are left to struggle in a system that makes no sense, shouldering responsibilities far beyond what should be hoisted onto their young shoulders. Some of the reviews I read lacked sympathy for Nik, but I think his response is acutely believable and appropriate. Indeed, the generational struggle here--how the kids fight for a way to impact a closed system that keeps sucking them back in--offers insights that apply beyond this very particular and well-realized time and place. The film's festival run is over but it's scheduled for a limited theatrical release in the U.S. and is worth watching for.

I have often wondered about the process for marketing films from abroad in the U.S.; often the English title bears no obvious relation to the original title or expresses something that doesn't convey quite the same meaning here. It appears that some very bad advice led to the English title for the Norwegian film, "Turn Me On, Dammit" (6), which sounds a lot seamier than it turns out to be. It's actually a mostly delightful teen comedy about a 15-year-old, Alma, who is frustrated with her small town and fixated on her sexual urges. Alma's mother is at a loss for what to do about her daughter's obsession with phone sex and pleasuring herself, and Alma's response to an awkward encounter with the boy she has a crush on turns her into an outcast at school, earning her a nickname that gets translated as "Dick-Alma." It's Europe, so some of Alma's fantasy sequences (and one that may or may not be her fantasy) are a bit more explicit than we might see in the states--but on the other hand, this film is actually more realistic and even more innocent and interesting than teen sex comedies here, in which all teenagers are supposedly pursuing and achieving great sex. This film, by contrast, maintains a fun, rueful tone and conveys some actual wisdom about teenagers, plus it is refreshingly realistic in terms of how these teenagers, and their parents, look, dress, and act (that is, NOT as though they have all have unlimited funds and personal stylists). Surprisingly, it's scheduled for a limited release in the U.S.; it's a fun diversion if you can find it and will play at the festival again on February 15 and 19.

Today, I'm hoping to see a war film from South Korea, an Oscar nominee from Canada, and an Argentine film that won a major prize at Cannes. More to come!

PIFF POST #4: GOOD FILMS FROM CHILE, GERMANY, ISRAEL, AND BRAZIL

2012-02-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

Today was the kind of film festival day I live for: four good films back-to-back, no disappointments. The first was "The Life of Fish" (7), about a man, Andre, who returns to his home town in Chile ten years after making a life abroad as a journalist. The movie takes its time in revealing the tragedies and youthful carelessness that caused him to leave behind his group of friends, and lingers on his ambivalence about what kind of connection to reestablish with someone who was important to him in his youth. The film depicts small moments that surely are cataclysmic to the characters but since all of the action occurs at a party that Andre can't seem to leave, the story seems a bit slight in the end. That said, the film is so emotionally resonant and so beautifully acted and directed that it is far more satisfying than most Hollywood fare. You can still catch this one on Wednesday night.

The most delightful film of the day was "Almanya--Welcome to Germany" (7.5), which won an audience award at the Chicago Film Festival and German Film Prizes for Best Film and Best Screenplay. It's a buoyant look at one Turkish family whose patriarch was part of the wave of Turkish guest workers to immigrate to Germany in the early 1960s. The film moves back and forth between the present day and the family's early years in Germany, depicting how the family came to be Germans but also celebrating the richness of their Turkish heritage. It doesn't go particularly deep or try to solve any of the complexities of this mix of cultures--but it is so warm-hearted and strikes such a charming comic tone that I didn't find myself longing for more. Instead, I willingly surrendered to this film's joyous celebration of this slice of immigrant experience and the riches possible in understanding one's roots. This film has one more upcoming performance on Sunday evening.

The best film of the day was "Restoration" (8), set in Tel Aviv. For 40 years its protagonist, Yakov (Sasso Gabay), has run an antique furniture restoration shop with a partner, Malamud. Their arrangement is that Malamud handles the business end; Yakov prefers to spend his time in the quiet, painstaking work of restoring the shop's store of ancient treasures, sanding and varnishing and finding the beauty in things long-discarded. But when Malamud dies suddenly, the taciturn Yakov, though watchful by nature, discovers that he has somehow ceded to his partner so much of their shared life that their finances and his own relationship with his son, Noah, are in a precarious state. Struggling to save the business, Yakov hires a mysterious young man, Anton, as his assistant; Anton becomes a sort of surrogate son, but introduces more layers of trouble as well as he pursues an attraction to Noah's pregnant wife and also seems to thwart Noah's plans for his father's business. Anton and Yakov work to restore an antique Steinway piano, which might be worth enough to cover all Yakov's debts if they can replace the frame, a delicate task necessary to restoring the instrument's voice. It's an apt metaphor for the task facing Yakov as he works to restore his life. All of the relationships and performances are suitably complex, and the director takes his time to reveal, quite skillfully, the essential character of the two younger men, the dead partner, and Yakov himself, in relation to the ancient piano. This film, and Gabay's performance in particular, are marvelously nuanced and full of hidden treasure. You have a couple more chances to catch it on Monday and Tuesday evenings.

Finally, though its premise is slight, "Beyond the Road" (6.5), a Brazilian film, is an enjoyable road movie that made me yearn to travel the Uruguayan coastline. In it a young Argentine banker named Santiago encounters a lovely Belgian vagaband named Juliette on the ferry from Buenos Aires to Montevideo. He is headed to check out some inherited property and she is wandering toward a boyfriend who lives at a hippie commune. He gives her a ride and the ride turns into a longer road trip, as the two opposites discover the gorgeous Uruguayan coastline and countryside, encounter an array of roadside attractions and quirky local characters, and move toward and away from each other. It's an easy ride that captures the desultory nature of youthful journeying (especially if those youth happen to have some resources and beauty to smooth the way). You can still catch it on Tuesday and Thursday this week.

Sunday's fare will take me to Romania, Albania, and Norway. The feast continues!

PIFF POST #3: A MIXED BAG FROM SPAIN, DENMARK, AUSTRIA, AND FRANCE

2012-02-11T01:19:00.000-08:00

Film festival attendance is always a very mixed bag--and I can't remember a more eclectic mix than I saw today. I began the day with "Extraterrestrial" (2.5) from Spain. Brother, what a mess. It begins with alien spaceships landing in Madrid--but that event ends up being only the catalyst for a sit-com-worthy romantic quadrangle. The film seems to be aiming for comedy, but ends up being a misfire because nobody's motivations make sense and the characters' overreactions to events never seem believable even within the world the movie has constructed. No need to put this one on your festival list or in your Netflix queue.

Nor need you add "Clown: The Movie" (5) to the list, unless you are impossible to offend and really like raunchy humor. This Danish film reminded me of "The Hangover," though I wasn't a fan of that film--this one is funnier, but so dirty that it will never get a U.S. release unless they cut maybe a third of the film. Based on a popular Danish television comedy, it follows the inexcusable exploits of two idiots who plan a canoe trip which one of them dubs "Tour de Pussy" because of his plans to bed prostitutes and any sexy teenagers who happen along. Problem is, the other idiot, desperate to prove to his newly pregnant girlfriend that he has potential as a father, drags along her 11-year-old nephew at the last minute. What follows is basically unprintable and would never make it past U.S. censors, though both of these guys manage to get it past their longsuffering, beautiful, and by all accounts intelligent girlfriends. In short, it's a male fantasy film, though I'm guessing not all males have these particular fantasies. The film is funny, I'll grant, and this film festival will likely be your only chance to see it. Or not.

The best of the day was "Breathing" (7.5), an Austrian film that was honored at the Cannes Film Festival. It follows 19-year-old Roman,who has spent several years in a juvenile detention facility for killing another youth. It turns out that Roman has spent most of his life in institutions, having been abandoned by his mother when he was an infant, and seems to be feared by the other juveniles. With the help of a parole officer who seems genuinely committed to helping him earn his release, Roman gets a job working for the city morgue. His small tastes of freedom are interspersed with scenes of the many indignities he endures living in confinement and what his experiences have taught him to expect from life. The film takes its time to lay the groundwork for crucial revelations at the end, especially those involving the mother who abandoned him. You can still catch it at the festival on February 12 and 14.

I ended the day with "The Fairy" (7), a charming French comedy set inthe industrial coastal city of Le Havre in Normandy. The French do have a gift for whimsy; this film reminded me of "The Triplets of Belleville" and "The Illusionist," French animated films featuring quirky characters who do inventive things with their bodies. Like those films, this one features a host of odd characters, particularly Dom, a stringy man with a hangdog face who works the night desk in a humble hotel, and Fiona, the lithe and homely woman who enters his world announcing that she is a fairy and granting him three wishes. More likely she has escaped from a mental institution--but to him and to herself, she does seem to have magical powers, and they quickly fall in love. The film follows their exploits, which include several inventive dance numbers, a fanciful backrub, a comical depiction of childbirth, and acrobatic feats on a scooter. You can still catch it on February 11 and 14.

Tomorrow, I plan to tour films from Chile, Germany, Israel, and Brazil. More reports to come!

PIFF Opening Night

2012-02-10T02:27:00.000-08:00

In some past years I understand that PIFF opened with a really good film--like "The Lives of Others." Not this year, unfortunately. "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" (3) thinks it's a romantic comedy--but it is really a bland and obvious exercise in which the plot elements feel like chess pieces being mechanically moved around the board--make that checkers pieces, not as complicated. There isn't a moment of emotional truth in the film, though Emily Blunt's winning smiles come close to tricking you into thinking they are truthful. Weirdly, the characters all comment on the pointlessness of the film's signature effort--introducing salmon fishing into the Yemen--as though they will come to reveal why that's not so, yet the film never delivers on that implied promise. Pleasant in a mindless sort of way but otherwise a waste of time.

Ah, well, now the real fun begins. Today, four films--from Spain, Denmark, Austria, and France!

P.I.F.F. PRESS SCREENINGS AND OSCAR COMMENTARY

2012-02-02T01:47:00.000-08:00

It's been too long! My movie viewing has not slowed, but reviewing sure has. For those of you who haven't yet picked up on this, even in lean times I have been posting short descriptions and ratings of everything I see. Sometimes there is a delay but the all eventually make it onto the blog, so keep checking back. I post the short bits on Facebook as well.

The long silence is officially over! You will be hearing lots from me this month especially, as the Portland International Film Festival is about to begin and I am aiming to see and post short reviews of about 40 films. Also, my list of the best films of 2011 will come out on the day of the Oscars, February 26.

I attended my first PIFF press screening today and saw a good French film, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (7.5). It's about an idealistic middle-aged couple who have occasion to wonder how well they are living into those ideals. The husband, Michel, is a dock worker high up in his union, a man of principle who foregoes the opportunity to take his own name off the lay-off list and consequently loses his job, as do 19 of his comrades. His wife Marie-Claire is a lovely and supportive nurse's aide who gave up her aspirations to become a nurse to raise the couple's two children. Now grandparents and sharing a nice middle-class life, they wonder how their younger selves would view their current selves. But unlike the typical Hollywood fare, this film really sits with that question and requires the couple and their friends and family to really and honestly struggle with those questions. From several different vantage points, the film deftly conveys how the ethical choices and opinions of even very good people shift when they feel themselves to be aggrieved. Although the film can't resist some manipulative plot twists, mostly it is a worthy effort to wrestle with some issues that I wish more films had the courage to depict and explore. PIFF officially opens on February 9 and you can see this film on February 11, 13, and 16.

And now for the Oscars. As usual, I find the nominations on the whole to be pretty frustrating, more like a high school election for prom queen. (That is, only the "popular" folks are deemed eligible, though occasionally an outsider sneaks into consideration, if only to make the proceedings seem more fair. I can say this because I was a prom queen--I will leave it to you to guess which category I fell into.) There are so many wonderful films and performances that don't have a prayer at a nomination--which is why I always release my own list of the best films on Oscar day as an alternative. But here are some random thoughts for Oscar season.

1. BEST PICTURE NOMINATIONS: I've seen all but one of the of the best picture nominees and, in my opinion, only one of them--"The Tree of Life"--truly deserves to be on the list. Three more--"The Descendents," "Midnight in Paris," and "Moneyball"--are worthy enough; I enjoyed all of them quite a lot and recommend them highly. "The Artist" is somewhat overhyped, in my view--it is notable for recreating the world of silent pictures in a way that really highlights the craft involved and it features a terrific lead performance, but the story is pretty thin and keeps the material from truly soaring. The remainder of the nominees are part of the Hollywood popularity machine. "The Help" is nominated because Hollywood is congratulating itself (as is typical) for making a film about race relations; the film is just okay and represents only the discussion about race that the industry thinks is possible, not the one that is actually possible. I will say that the two African American leads salvage the material and make the film worth watching. "Hugo" is technically fine but the story is pretty dull for a film about the magic of movies; I view the hype as Scorcese worship. "War Horse" also is technically fine, as Spielberg always is, but very manipulative and not remotely subtle. Like Scorcese, Spielberg is too much an icon for his work to get an honest assessment from Hollywood. I haven't seen "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," but the critics don't seem to be too impressed.

2. SCREENPLAY NOMINATIONS: The nominations for best original screenplay are extremely odd. The weakest part of "The Artist" is the screenplay--the story is a total retread and keeps the film from being as interesting as it might have been. "Bridesmaids" is a hoot but I don't think its screenplay is one of the best of the year. Same with "Midnight in Paris"--it's a delightful film but not for its screenplay. "Margin Call" is a decent enough screenplay, though the film wore me out. I haven't seen "A Separation" yet, though I expect to before Oscars. Missing from the list is "Beginners," a sparkling film about a man who learns a whole new set of lessons from his dad when the elder comes out as gay at age 75.

The nominations for best adopted screenplay include two worthy candidates: "The Descendents"--for once, a family drama that is truthful and complicated--and "Moneyball," which tells a pretty amazing story and manages to make baseball statistics riveting. I'm not a fan of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," but most of the critics are and I'm willing to chalk that one up as a matter of taste. One of the last things I would honor "Hugo" for is its screenplay, which is ponderous and uninspired. The same with "The Ides of March," which I found to be a pretty mechanical depiction of soulless politics. Missing from the list: The brilliant adapation of "Jane Eyre" that came out this year, and the luminous French film, "The Hedgehog," which is also one of my favorite films of the year and is based on a novel that I understand is much beloved.

3. ACTING NOMINATIONS: I'm still working on seeing some of the nominated performances, but mostly think the lead actor and actress nominations are deserved. Some of the supporting performances are overrated, however. I was not particularly wowed by Berenice Bejo in "The Artist" and, though I love Jessica Chastain's work, "The Help" gave her only cliches to work with. Nominating Melissa McCarthy for "Bridesmaids" is just silly. I also love Kenneth Branagh's work but wasn't particularly impressed with him in "My Week With Marilyn." I definitely would not give Jonah Hill a nomination for "Moneyball," though I think it is his best work. Christopher Plummer definitely deserves the nomination, and the award. Performances that should have been recognized include Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender in "Jane Eyre," Michael Fassbender in "Shame" (my pick for best lead actor), Carey Mulligan in "Shame" (who should have been a nominee for best supporting actress), Michelle Williams for "Meek's Cutoff," and Brendan Gleeson in "The Guard."

4. BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: This category always frustrates me because I always find out that Hollywood has passed up much better films. As is usual, very few of the eligible films have been released here but I will see most of the five nominees in the next three weeks via PIFF and elsewhere.

5. BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Two of the nominated films, "Pina" and "If a Tree Falls," are absolutely terrific--in fact, "Pina" is headed for the top of my list of best films of the year and I strongly urge you to see it in the theater in 3D. I saw scores of other wonderful documentaries this year that didn't make the cut, but many will be on my list of the year's best films.

Be sure to check my blog regularly for ratings and short reactions to the films I don't review. Happy movie season!

BEAUTY FROM SADNESS: "BEGINNERS" AND "BUCK"

2011-07-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

I'm amazed at the spiritual riches available in theaters this summer. I'll save "The Tree of Life" (10) for a future review (except to tell you not to miss it on the big screen)--but there are two others hanging on in theaters in Portland that you should not miss.

"Beginners" (9.5) maintains a remarkably light touch while telling a story with layers of deep sadness. In fact, part of what I loved about it was the sense that a clear-eyed experience of life contains not only grief but also whimsy and sweetness.
At its center is Oliver (Ewan McGregor), a man in his late-30s who has recently lost his father after an extended bout with cancer. Four years earlier, Oliver lost his mother, also to cancer (I suspect we are onto something here), and shortly thereafter his father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), revealed that he was gay. Not only Hal's death but, more particularly, his last four years of life--in contrast to the 44 years that he was married to Oliver's mother, Georgia--seem to have left Oliver lost in grief and confusion. For in that last four years, he saw a father he had never known--joyfully reveling in life outside the closet where he has lived so many years. Hal found a younger boyfriend and a whole community of gay friends. He changed his wardrobe and went to clubs and joined a book group. Even as his health deteriorated, he embraced life with deepening fervor and optimism.

This is not the father Oliver knew growing up. We see from flashbacks that Hal wasn't around much in Oliver's childhood. Oliver spent most of his time with Georgia (Mary Page Keller), whose quirkiness, in retrospect, barely masks her deep loneliness. Both of Oliver's parents maintained that they loved each other--indeed, Hal believably insists on that even in his last years. But their evident distance from each other has left Oliver unsettled, even more so having seen the warmth and intimacy and hopefulness of which it turned out Hal was capable.

But this is not a didactic "issue" film. Its observations are revealed with subtlety and tenderness, without implausible explanatory speeches. Yet I can't think of a film that conveys more profoundly the costs of living in the closet (in whatever sense--Hal's closet isn't the only kind). One sees how sacrificing his essential nature hollowed out Hal, and also left Georgia, and Oliver, bereft. Each endures the kind of loss that is both profound and barely perceptible, the kind that one can go decades without ever acknowledging or naming, even to oneself.

Oliver arrives at his late thirties unable to trust that intimacy is possible, a string of failed relationships in his wake. But shortly after Hal's death, Oliver meets Anna (Melanie Laurent), a lovely French actress who shares his perceptiveness and sense of whimsy. They share moments of wonder and fun, until both of them hit a wall of fear and uncertainty that each has learned to expect from relationships. The film's joys involve them navigating their first baby steps toward intimacy, instructed by the example of the courage Hal discovered in his later years.

Writer-director Mike Mills--reportedly drawing from his own life--maintains a tone of such sincerity and truthfulness that details that would seem too precious in a lesser film (Oliver's narration, his cartoons depicting a "history of sadness," his ongoing conversations with his father's grieving Jack Russell terrier, a newly discovered interest in graffiti) serve as convincing vehicles for conveying Oliver's inner life. Ewan MacGregor does his best work since "Trainspotting," conveying, often wordlessly, Oliver's sadness and watchfulness. He is matched by all three of the important people in Oliver's world. Christopher Plummer is a revelation as Hal, who we see only in his latter years but who manages to embody both Hal's newfound youthfulness and also his years as a stoic, respectable man. We see Georgia only in flashbacks to Oliver's childhood, and Mary Page Keller evinces her off-kilter beauty and the origins of Oliver's use of whimsy as a defense against despair. And Melanie Laurent (the amazing female lead in "Inglourious Basterds") is again wonderful here, the perfect embodiment of a woman who, like Oliver, is both an old soul and an arrested one.

There are similar riches to be found in "Buck" (9), a wonderful documentary about a renowned horse trainer who has a lot to teach people, whether or not they are trying to work with horses. Buck Brannaman was something of a trick roper child star in the rodeo world with his older brother Smokie, but both were subjected to daily and brutal beatings by their sadistic father. The beatings increased when his mother died (Brannaman was still quite young), until he was finally placed in foster care. Because of his early experiences with brutality, Brannaman has a deep understanding of what it means to fear for one's life--and this understanding has shaped his work with horses, and people.

As a young man, Brannaman came into contact with Ray Hunt, one of the founders of the National Horsemanship movement. Though skeptical at first, Brannaman quickly recognized the power of working with animals from a place of caring and trust-building rather than fear and control. He built on what he learned to become a master at it. As a childhood friend who also works with horses puts it, "We all have our bag of tricks--but Buck has an arsenal."

I am not a horse person myself--in fact, as it happens, as a child I was bucked off of every horse or mule I mounted, and I haven't tried since I was a teenager. (I imagine Brannaman would have something to say about that.) But watching this film was for me like watching the work of a brother or kindred soul. Indeed, we were born the same year and I think we came to similar understanding by similar means. As Brannaman himself puts it, people come to him with horse problems, but he ends up helping the horses with people problems. Brannaman's work with horses is his means toward spiritual understanding; he understands how energy works, and how to engage with another creature in a manner that acknowledges and respects that creature's essential nature. This leads him to insights that make him look like a miracle worker--horse people are astonished at what he can do after only a few minutes with a horse. In a sense, he is a miracle worker, but really, he is just remarkably present and clear and able to work with what is right in front of him. That seems miraculous because it is so rare.

The film is a revelation mostly because Brannaman is himself so inspiring. He is full of pearls of wisdom, able to quickly size up both people and horses and identify where they are stuck or what is ailing them. He is present with what his life has taught him and open-handed with his own lessons for others. And he is a student himself; he comments that when he started out, he thought it was about learning to train colts, but "come to realize, it's not about that at all." Indeed.

"BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK": INSPIRATION FROM A MODERN-DAY HOLY MAN

2011-05-31T16:27:00.000-07:00

Take the values espoused by any of the great spiritual traditions, and you will find them embodied in the subject of the wonderful documentary "BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK" (10), an 80-year-old gentleman who has spent the last 40 years photographing street style and couture in New York. To me he is a modern-day Christ figure--modest, buoyant, and faithfully and unceremoniously living his values, "to be honest and straight" in a city and an industry where those qualities are often in short supply.

Cunningham has been soaking up fashion in New York since the late 40s, working in department stores, in advertising, and as a writer covering fashion for Women's Wear Daily, the Chicago Tribune, and Details magazine. In the 60s, someone gave him a camera and he tumbled into photographing what he finds on the street. For many years he has been contributing two weekly columns to the New York Times--"On the Street," depicting the style he captures out on the street every day, and "Evening Hours," his photographic chronicle of New York society.

From the beginning of this appreciative depiction, Cunningham's delightful personality shines through, and I relaxed into watching an enjoyable film about a city and a subject that I love. But gradually the significance of what I was witnessing snuck up on me--I was aware of a dawning comprehension that I was seeing greatness of a kind I would not have expected to find in a film about from a fashion photographer.

It's apparent in both aspects of Cunningham's work. His idea of street style is so different from what you'd find in most fashion mags--what he is on about is genuine appreciation of the creativity he finds on the street. He will do anything for a shot of a great shoe or an interesting hemline or an inventive ensemble, in use by an actual person. "You have to let the street speak to you," he confides--and because he has been listening so attentively and for so long, he has contributed a visual history of New York style dating back decades.

Cunningham doesn't want to embarrass anyone; it's not about who's in and who's out--it's all equally in. In fact, his former editor at Details tells a pivotal story of his falling-out with Women's Wear Daily; he had photographed items seen on the runway and contrasted them with pictures of real women wearing those items on the street. The magazine changed his copy to make it critical of the ordinary women, and he was absolutely devastated and "beyond upset," and ended his relationship with the daily. Because his approach is so appreciative, his subjects are always delighted to be captured by him; people like Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Tom Wolfe, and Annette de la Renta agreed to be interviewed for the film out of their obvious affection for him, and the famously frosty Wintour warmly acknowledges that "we all get dressed for Bill."

Yet Cunningham is no celebrity worshipper. He's interested in clothes, not celebrity; the film shows him declining to photograph Catherine Deneuve at a Paris event because she wasn't wearing anything interesting. He chooses what society events to attend based on the worthiness of the charity or cause being promoted, and refuses to accept even a glass of water while working the events because he doesn't want to be bought. And he is interested in invention wherever he finds it; one decked-out transvestite recalls appreciatively how Cunningham lobbied the Times to publish pictures of him in a dress long before that was acceptable.

Cunningham is remarkably unaffected by the extravagance he observes. He travels all over Manhattan, day and night, by bicycle, riding from event to event with a orange safety vest over his dark jacket. He appears almost everywhere, including Paris fashion week, in the same trademark blue cotton work jacket worn by Paris street sweepers, because it is practical and he likes the color, and rather than sitting at the end of the runway with a straight-on shot like the other photographers, he sits off to the side and only lifts his camera when he discerns something really interesting. He knows his stuff, too.

For fifty years, Cunningham (like a host of other artists) lived over Carnegie Hall in a spartan, rent-controlled studio without a bathroom or kitchen, lined with filing cabinets filled with negatives of his photos. ("Who the hell wants a kitchen and a bathroom?" he asks.) He slept on a single mattress among the cabinets and hung his few clothes on the handle of one of the cabinets. At the time this documentary was being made, Carnegie Hall was in the process of evicting its venerable artist tenants to use the space for other things. Yet Cunningham faced his impending displacement with characteristic equanimity; "I suppose it will bother me at the time," he says, "but you can't concern yourself with that nonsense."

Cunningham's choices are not an affectation and they don't come with disdain for anyone else. He patches his rain ponchos with duct tape and survives on simple $3 sandwiches--but though he makes kidding comments about "damn wasteful New Yorkers" he also notes that his choices simply work for him. He is genuinely self-effacing; the film shows him being honored as an officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, a very prestigious honor, and he appears in his blue work jacket and snaps pictures up until the award is presented. He gives a very gracious acceptance speech in which he protests that he doesn't deserve the recognition since he is only doing what he loves, and then chokes back a little sob of gratitude as he remarks, "He who seeks beauty will find it."

And find it he does. More than that, he evokes it. I saw a whole documentary about Anna Wintaur and never saw a fraction of the humanity that she reveals here when talking about Cunningham. He calls nearly everyone "kid," and everyone from designer Michael Kors to the wait staff at charity events to philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor greets Cunningham with affection. Cunningham doesn't "get a lift" out of being with society people, as Tom Wolfe observes--but it does seem they get a lift out of being with him. He works day and night, but nearly always with a grin that indicates he is having the time of his life. His child-like joy is infectious, too; in one scene, his colleagues at the Times surprise him with a very endearing birthday celebration, and he literally jumps up and down when he blows out the candles.

The film contains an interview with Cunningham from about twenty years ago where he talks passionately about fashion and its importance. He calls it the armor we use to survive the reality of everyday life. You couldn't do away with fashion, he comments; that would be like "doing away with civilization." It's a typically buoyant Cunningham moment, but it only captures a part of what I observed. There is something about the quality and enthusiasm of his attention to the people who cross his path that struck me as more than just style photography or society reporting--it is a ministry of presence that people respond to without understanding it.

Director Richard Press, here with his first feature, approaches the task of telling Cunningham's story with patience and a discerning eye that befits its subject. It took Press eight years to persuade Cunningham to go along with the project, and then he had to approach the filming process with great care, filming only with small, handheld cameras that did not compromise Cunningham's goal of being unobtrusive in his own work. Press's patience--which also meant waiting for the rare moments with Cunningham would consent to be filmed--pays off here in a very sensitive portrait of an extraordinary soul. There's a fine interaction late in the film when Cunningham discusses his family, his solitary life, and his religious faith, that could only come about as a result of the painstaking work of trustbuilding necessary to this subject. By that point in the film, I had fully realized I was in the presence of greatness, of a living example of all the values I hold dear and can only dream of embodying in anything like the fullness of this fashion photographer.

The end credits play to accompaniment of the Velvet Underground's song, "I'll Your Mirror." It's a fitting tribute to the portrait just witnessed, and a lasting inspiration: "I'll be your mirror/reflect what you are/in case you don't know./When you think the night has seen your mind,/that inside you're twisted and unkind,/let me stand to show you that you are blind./Please put down your hands 'cause I see you./I find it hard to believe you don't know/the beauty you are./But if you don't, let me be your eyes,/a hand in your darkness so you won't be afraid."

TWO STOLID FEMINIST HEROINES: "JANE EYRE" AND "MEEK'S CUTOFF"

2011-05-10T22:33:00.000-07:00

I went to see "Jane Eyre" (10) with low expectations; I had yet to see a film adaption that captured what I found so compelling in the novel I loved best from childhood. The current version, with Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, does not disappoint, faithfully capturing the novel's smoldering passion, grief, and valor. If you've not read it, this film may inspire you to do so.

Like only the best period films, this one transcends the sense of modern people dressed up in self-conscious period costumes. Jane's world looks actually lived in, conveying what it must have felt like to run in a corset and petticoats and ridiculously uncomfortable shoes, or to travel by buggy across large expanses of the English moors, or to spend many of one's waking hours in dark spaces lit only by fire and candlelight. Social conventions that seem strange now are believably portrayed in all their intractability--the rigidity of Jane's orphaned circumstances, her dependence on the benevolence of her cruel aunt, the confines of her status as Rochester's hired subordinate. The best period films (about Victorian times especially) manage to convey social mores that now seem strange and needless in such a way that one reflects on which of our social conventions also qualify as self-imposed prisons.

The most significant and inescapable prisons here involve Rochester, who hires Jane to serve as governess to his ward. Fassbender (always compelling, and here especially so) makes sense of Rochester's gruffness, his imposing and mercurial moods. This man is trapped, has pulled out of meaningful engagement with life, convinced that real happiness and human connection is to be denied him. He toys with his money and social position only to acquire experiences that divert and distract him from his profound isolation.

In the world of this film, then, it is apparent why Rochester finds Jane so compelling. From earliest childhood, she displays a fierceness and a penchant for identifying the truths that are covered over by privilege and social convention. She is brave, declaring, at the moment of greatest childhood loss at her aunt's hands, that people view the woman as good when really she is hard-hearted. Jane speaks this truth with such clear-eyed precision that her aunt reacts to it years later as though the statement had been a curse. And though Jane spends the rest of her childhood denied all comfort and affection and devotes herself to acquiring the discipline necessary to withstand suffering, she retains her longing for beauty and genuine love, as well as her capacity to name what is true.

Thus, from the moment of their first encounter, Jane, though intimidated and often confused by Rochester, asserts herself, conveying a respect (for him as well as for herself) that goes beyond convention. He responds to her innocence, her genuineness, her unswerving courage, her piercing intelligence. He comments on the distance between the self each of them projects and their true natures, and with increasing directness identifies their essential equality, as Jane does herself. "It is my spirit that addresses your spirit," she says in a moment of anguish, scarcely recognizing or daring to hope that his spirit seeks to make a similar address but from a place of even deeper anguish.

This retelling is greatly helped by Moira Buffini's intelligent screenplay, director Cary Fukunaga's fresh eyes for the soul of the story and his attention to period detail, and the three performances at its center. The dialogue brilliantly renders a sense of daring in the conversations between Jane and Rochester, even as the language of each remains within the confines of Victorian restraint, and Buffini has cleverly begun the story at the end, with Jane's exile with the austere St. John Rivers, framing the story from Jane's lowest point in a way that makes sense of what went before. Mia Wasikowska perfectly captures Jane's gravity and fierceness, and Fassbender Rochester's tormented longing. And Dame Judi Dench is a perfect Mrs. Fairfax, simple and kind-hearted.

One comes away profoundly affected by the archetypes of the novel, its sense that real love requires vision, creativity, and courage. Love also requires self-respect, something Jane begins with and then acquires more of through the hardship of loss. She tells Rochester at a critical moment, "I would do anything for you, sir--anything that was right." Later when a desperate Rochester suggests a solution to their dilemma that is too far outside what social convention allows, she breaks away with the desperate comment, "I must respect myself." Her time with St. John Rivers helps Jane to move to a more essential sense of right within her circumstances, and to recognize that not all forms of self-denial qualify as right. That transformation continues to inspire me.

"Meek's Cut-off" (9.5), Kelly Reichardt's haunting, acutely observant film about lost pioneers, is more enriching than it is entertaining; in fact, some may find it a slog. But it rewards the patient and the curious with rich insights into human nature, the dynamics of power, and what life was really like for people, and especially women, on the pioneer trail.

The film follows three pioneer couples in 1845, who apparently have wasted the money they spent on a guide to lead them to the Willamette Valley. They have been wandering for weeks longer than Stephen Meeks told them to expect, and their growing dread is palpable. Being lost is unsettling enough in a car driving through an unfamiliar neighborhood--but as this film depicts in excruciatingly concrete detail, it's another matter entirely when you are mostly on foot in a huge open desert where days might go by without any sight of water and where all your belongings are stuffed into rickety wagons. As days drag on and family heirlooms become just weight to be jettisoned, Meeks shows no signs of fear or contrition, remaining ever quick with trail wisdom and tall tales of his own exploits.

Meeks' bragging becomes increasingly insufferable to Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams), a newly married young woman whose husband, Solomon, appears to be the de facto leader of the group. She and the other wives are not privy to the conversations in which the men decide what measures the group will take; we, and they, only overhear muffled tones from a distance. But Solomon keeps his wife informed of what the men are up to and even seems to value her input.

When the group members encounter a lone Indian, they are thrust into the dilemma of what to do with him. Meeks wants to kill him, but Solomon recognizes that the Indian may be useful. Everyone fears the stranger, with whom communication is virtually impossible, yet the film nicely straddles the prejudices and ignorance and misunderstandings that would surely have characterized how white people would have perceived an Indian in 1845 with our regretful current perspective, holding both in tension. The encounter with the Indian becomes the locus of a power shift from Meeks to Emily, who experiences an awakening of sorts occasioned by her dawning sense of the truth about Meeks, the Indian, and the realities of the group's situation. She finds her power in standing up not only to Meeks but to the limits of her own understanding, acting on what she knows and standing up in the face of what she doesn't know.

Unlike so many period films, this one (like "Jane Eyre") looks lived in. Director Kelly Reichardt has the patience to depict the painstaking realities of life on the trail, with its unrelenting dust and exertions and tedium and long silences filled only by the sound of creaking wagon wheels. She has assembled a stellar cast, most notably Rod Rondeaux as the enigmatic Indian and Williams, who captures the subtle shifts that characterize a genuine transformation and conveys Emily's contrasting qualities, her weariness and her acuteness. Reichardt's patience pays off in a revelatory vision that places pioneer experience and women's experience in the larger context of the human struggle. What does it mean to be lost? How is power gained, lost, and shared?

MY FAVORITES FROM FULL FRAME

2011-05-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

As I've reflected on this year's Full Frame Fest, "Project Nim" and "Scenes From a Crime" definitely had the biggest impact on me, though they both are pretty upsetting. I've found myself talking about those two more than anything else I saw. I highly recommend both to those of you whose commitment to understanding the truth about human beings gives you a willingness to sit through some painful stuff.

The film that most moved me in the moment was "A Good Man" (9), a profound exploration of the creative process and also of how a good man grapples with the truth of himself and his heroes and even the idea of heroes. African American choreographer Bill T. Jones, a visionary of post-modern dance, was commissioned to create a contemporary dance concert honoring Abraham Lincoln, who was one of his childhood heroes. A man who describes himself as a someone without many heroes who has allowed alienation and cynicism to creep into his soul, Jones approaches the project with some trepidation, wary of learning anything that will cheat him of a childhood attachment that meant something to him. Yet Jones is a truth-seeker, temperamentally inclined toward wrestling with hard questions, and his journey in finding a way to honor an American hero turns into struggle over what it means, more deeply, to be a good man.

The film depicts that journey, but is also an intimate look at the creative process. Jones and his company gave the filmmakers nearly complete access to rehearsals and the fits and starts of developing the piece, including moments of frustration and exhaustion and misunderstandings. I had the great pleasure of watching the film with many of the company members who were seeing it for the first time, and it was a rich pleasure to overhear their often boisterous responses to watching Jones and themselves work. The film does a wonderful job of depicting the agony of creation, and the complicated relationships between Jones and members of the company, especially his creative director, Janet Wong. Jones and Wong and the directors participated in a post-film discussion that deepened that pleasure--especially when Jones bounded up to the stage and danced a buoyant impromptu interlude.

It's hard for me to say now whether I was mostly impressed with the film or with the man. I identified deeply with his struggle to remain engaged, to fight--even to use--cynicism in himself to create something truthful. There's a beauty in it, and in that process of making art and oneself, that inspires and opens and instructs.

POSTCARD #4 FROM FULL FRAME

2011-04-17T20:34:00.001-07:00

I have seen so many strong films at this year's festival--but, surprisingly, none were award winners. However, I was happy to see that "How to Die in Oregon," which I loved so much at PIFF, won two awards at this festival.

On Sunday I saw two films that were not in competition, and one, "Scenes of a Crime" (8), which won the festival's Grand Jury Award. I'll admit that I had opted not to see it during its first festival showing yesterday; it deals with a ten-hour police interrogation of a man accused of causing the death of his four-month-old son, and it seemed like a little too much law for me. I'm glad I caught the extra award showing though--the film is excellent, even if upsetting in all the ways I expected it would be. The filmmakers have done a careful job of presenting how it is possible for a person to confess to a crime that he did not actually commit; they have found a case that is complicated, in which the motives of the police interrogators make sense, but also where the defense attorneys and defense experts do a very credible job of explaining the defense case. Unlike so many films about legal topics, there are no cheap short-cuts here; just clear-eyed analysis, painstakingly laying bare where the process broke down. The ten-hour interrogation was taped and played for the jury at the man's trial, and is also a focal point of a film. Even though review of such interrogations is a regular part of my work, the film was quite helpful to portraying where an interrogation can go wrong. Though it's unlikely to receive a theatrical release, I hope this film is able to secure a wider audience, perhaps on television.

Director Errol Morris loves oddball and strange-but-true stories, and he is right in his wheelhouse in "Tabloid" (7), which unravels a story that was notorious in the Britain tabloids in the 1970s (and apparently is still notorious among Mormon missionaries). At the heart of the story is Joyce McKinney, who clearly relishes the opportunity thirty years later to relate her version of what happened on camera. Problem is, she's as unreliable a narrator as you could possibly want--but then, there aren't any actually reliable narrators to counter her story, just alternative ones. The mystery here has been dubbed "the case of the manicled Mormon" and, without giving too much away (since the unfolding is half the fun), it involves the intersection of a patently delusional woman, members of the Mormon church, and the tabloid culture itself. Morris is obviously having great fun with the absurdity of it all, and though I don't know that there is any broader significance to the proceedings, it's a unique and entertaining ride.

One more post left to go: for my favorite film of the festival. Coming up!

POSTCARD #3 FROM FULL FRAME

2011-04-16T20:26:00.000-07:00

Three strong films today. The first was "Bobby Fischer Against the World" (8), apparently the first documentary about the enigmatic chess genius. Director Liz Garbus has a wealth of archival footage to work with, and also assembles a fascinating mix of people who knew Fischer, ranging from his brother-in-law to Henry Kissinger, and including chess competitors, officials from the Iceland world championship match between Fischer and Boris Spassky, Fischer's bodyguard, personal trainer, and photographer, and an assortment of friends, all of whom he eventually alienated. Although the Glenn Gould documentary from last year ("Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould") went deeper than this one, it's an often mesmerizing exploration of Fischer's unique personality and the significance of his achievements (quite easy to follow for someone who doesn't understand the game of chess), and it opens lots of opportunity to ponder the inner workings of a mind that could achieve such heights and yet also wreak such havoc and ultimately decompensate so tragically.

"Page One: Inside the New York Times" (7.5) offers unprecedented access to the inner workings of this bastion of the institutional press, during a time of great turmoil and change. The film follows the paper's newly formed media desk for an entire year that includes rapidly evolving "new media," the unfolding WikiLeaks controversy, and industry cutbacks. The film covers such a broad array of subjects that it feels a bit unfocused at times, but it does give you a fly-on-the-wall perspective that allows you to watch the development of a few key stories and gives a rare inside look at the interaction between writers and editors. I was a little disturbed by the predominance of white male subjects, but a Times editor who appeared at the Q&A afterwards indicated that that was really a product of who agreed to cooperate. (I hope that's true; there do appear to be a number of highly placed women and a few minorities around, but none of them talk on camera.) The most compelling figure--and worthy of a documentary all his own--is the venerable columnist and sometime movie blogger David Carr, who is bold and funny and versatile enough to thrive in both the old and new schools of journalism. (There's a great scene where he deftly cuts an arrogant new media guy down to size.) Overall, the sheer work and professionalism on display makes a compelling case for the essential contributions of traditional journalism to an informed public.

The best film of the day was "The Interrupters" (8.5), another fine piece of work by Steve James (whose previous work includes "At the Deathhouse Door," "No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson," and "Hoop Dreams"). Few filmmakers have such a knack for spotting and telling stories with real heart; this one had everyone on their feet at the end and you could sense the urge for a giant group hug. James spent a year following three of the "violence interrupters" who work with CeaseFire, an organization in Chicago that aims to reduce gang violence. Though not a focus of the film, its founder and executive director, Gary Slutkin, provides a compelling backdrop for the story of CeaseFire's work; an epidemiologist who spent his early career working on reversing infectious disease epidemics like cholera, tuberculosis, and AIDS, Slutkin explains that infectious diseases like the plague used to be treated as the fault of their victims, until epidemiologists learned to arrest the behaviors that spread the disease. Using the same basic principles, CeaseFire treats violence as an epidemic that must be stopped by interrupting the behavior that spreads it. The "interrupters," all former gang members, many of whom served long prison terms, understand the streets and the people caught up in the cycle of violence, and seek to offer them the means of stopping. Often this means first agreeing with them about all of their grievances and then convincing them that the person who backs down is actually the stronger one. It's something to watch (and nowhere near as mechanical as it sounds), because the scenes they enter are often so volatile and dangerous. But these people understand the dynamics of violence from the inside, and also understand where it leads. The amount of access James gets is remarkable, and is a testament not only to his skill as a filmmaker but also to the force of anger that so overcomes people that even the presence of a camera doesn't temper it. An absorbing and inspiring window into a powerful form of peacemaking.

POSTCARD #2 FROM FULL FRAME

2011-04-15T16:12:00.001-07:00

I highly recommend today's first film, "If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front" (9), a very thoughtful examination of the extremes of environmental activism. The film focuses on the story of Daniel McGowan, who is currently serving seven years in federal prison for his involvement in arsons and other property destruction while working with the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Because his sentence included a terrorist enhancement, he is serving his time in an especially restrictive Communication Management Unit where he is limited to 15 minutes of phone calls per week and one four-hour visit per month through plate glass. Over the course of the film, we learn about McGowan's own evolution from more peaceful forms of activism to the more serious property destruction methods he engaged in, what motivated him and other members of the ELF, and what ultimately split that particular movement, which destroyed millions of dollars of property in a reported 1,200 incidents but never caused a single death. We also hear from members of the Eugene police force, a federal prosecutor involved in the case, and some of the business owners who were targeted, as well as from members of McGowan's family and other ELF members and environmental activists. The result is careful and wonderfully balanced, and the use of the dreaded "terrorist" term sits as a question underlying all that transpires. The director, Marshall Curry, studied religion, and commented that sometimes in religious studies he would find, after extended inquiry, that he was "still confused, but at a higher level." That was reportedly his experience in making the film, and he has succeeded in creating just such an experience for viewers.

In the short film, "Diary" (6), the co-director of the war film, "Restrepo," Tim Hetheringon, has assembled a montage of images from ten years as a war photographer, juxtaposed with his life in London and New York. He captures the jarring extremity of the images to which he exposes himself, mixing scenes of conflict in Chad, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan with scenes of the English countryside and a street parade in the U.S. or the sounds of voicemail from his wife. Often the transitions or the images themselves are off-kilter and disorienting, capturing the sense of waking up and wondering for a moment where you are. It's effective, as far as it goes, though it felt almost too personal to be illuminating.

Continuing the theme of what it means to bear witness to terrible suffering, Hetherington's film was paired with "An Encounter with Simone Weil" (6.5), a very personal documentary in which director Julia Haslett struggles with the life and writings of the French philosopher and, ultimately, with her own role as a documentary filmmaker. Although I don't think the film is wholly successful, I was very glad I saw it and actually would like to watch it again. Weil's central ideas--especially that "attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity"--are quite compelling and, as she lived them, quite challenging, and learning of her struggle and her journey was well worth the effort. In her short life (she died at the age of 34), she taught high school students and union members and wrote enough to fill fifteen volumes, fought in the Spanish Civil War, worked in a factory and as a farm laborer, and advocated for the poor and disenfranchised. All the while she struggled with the problem of human suffering, pushing herself to take on the suffering of others and living by the view that one should always do what costs the most. Haslett mines Weil's writings (full of wonderful gems), as well as archival photography, and interviews a few who knew her and also some who know and are inspired by her writings. Unfortunately, it felt to me that Haslett got in the way of her own film at times. For example, I sense that there is more to be gained from exploring Weil's religious life; a non-religious Jew, she eventually was attracted to Christianity, which she termed a "religion of slaves," of which she counted herself one, and had some mystical experiences. But Haslett finds Weil's religious life hard to connect with and leaves it largely unexplored. Also, she hires an actress to study Weil so that they can stage a dialogue and she can pose questions to Weil in a more immediate way--but these portions of the film don't end up being particularly illuminating. All in all though, Haslett's exploration, accompanied by a very effective score, is thoughtful and unsettling in the best ways.

The day ended with "Project Nim" (8), a wonderful new film by director James Marsh, who won an Oscar for "Man On Wire" a couple of years ago. As with that film, Marsh chooses a subject that includes a colorful cast of characters and allows him access to a lot of archival footage to tell an exceedingly complex story of human blindness. This time his subject is Nim, a chimpanzee who was seized from his mother at two weeks old in the early 1970s and sent, with apparently no plan at all, to live with a family as though he is a human. The intention was to teach him sign language and determine the extent of a chimp's ability to communicate with humans. The problem is that, at each stage of the proceedings, the humans involved, often (though not always) operating with the best of intentions, act with colossal blindness to Nim's experience. The scientist at the heart of the project is a narcissistic serial philanderer who mistakes callousness for objectivity; Nim's adopted human mother (a former lover of the scientist) is a hedonistic hippie who gives no thought to how bringing Nim into her home will affect her family, her marriage, and NIm; and his various trainers are left without any appreciable guidance from the scientist and have no say when the scientist abruptly pulls the plug on the project and sends Nim back into an environment that he will surely experience as a sort of incarceration. Marsh is a master at eliciting each individual's piece of the story and letting them tell it in their own words, and then assembling the elements insightfully and with a minimum of judgment. What emerges is often painful to watch, but is a fascinating portrait of humans' inhumanity to an animal that feels remarkably like humans' inhumanity to humans.

POSTCARD #1 FROM FULL FRAME!

2011-04-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

Woo hoo! I love this film festival more every year. I'm happily composing posts from the press lounge this time and will keep you updated on all the wonderful stuff I am seeing.

The first program I saw this morning began with a short film, "Everybody's Nuts" (7), in which the director, Fabian Euresti, films his family's home in California's San Joaquin valley, a beautiful agricultural area where oil wells have seeped into the local water supply. The film depicts a very potent example of injustice that persists for years without redress, so much so that it becomes usual and mundane. Euresti's tone is contemplative rather than didactic; he shows, rather than tells--and even when he tells, it is by means of quietly narrating the signs of oil contamination coating small aspects of daily life, and the small rewards that Euresti's father receives for his more than two decades spent watering orange groves. It's an insightful observation of how the stakes can be so persistently askew as to enable wrongdoing to continue without notice.

It was followed by "The Harvest/La Cosecha" (6.5), a feature-length film examining the lives of children who are migrant farm workers. It follows the stories of three such children, as they travel from state to state with their families in search of work, put in ten to twelve hours of back-breaking labor a day in the hot sun, and find themselves missing more and more school because their families need the small pittance they can eek out. It's worth spending some time contemplating the existence of these kids, on whom we have allowed our economy to depend--especially when you realize that much of their lives cannot be shown. For example, the director mentioned that they could not show the families looking for work, because having the film crew there would have jeopardized those efforts. The culture of secrecy around this part of American life is itself profound and interesting. I did find the film to be a bit divided in terms of its themes; it focused some on how child labor laws need to be changed to prevent this sort of exploitation (Mali, Ivory Coast, and India all have stronger child labor laws than we do in the U.S.)--but in many ways the more interesting questions have to do with the pressures that lead these families to need their children's small income so desperately, and the deep divides of wealth and poverty in this country that put them in such a position. Also, apparently the director was outvoted by the producers so that the end of the film contains several examples of prominent American citizens who were farm laborers as children; I felt, as did the director, that the message of exceptionalism at the end undercut the impact of the film.

The best film of the day was "The Boy Mir: Ten Years in Afghanistan" (8). A prior award-winning film that I have not seen, "The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan," depicts a year in the life of a charming eight-year-old Afghan refugee. This film carries on with a ten-year examination of life in war-torn Afghanistan under the Taliban via the experiences of this boy and his family, and it is a compelling piece of work. For the first few years of that time, Mir and his family are living in a cave, having been driven out of their village. Only half of the 200 families living in these caves eventually gets a house after several years, and Mir's family is not one of them, so they return to their village in the north. Tales of Taliban atrocities emerge bit by bit in matter-of-fact retellings, and we watch as the bright-eyed Mir's dreams of becoming "a teacher, or a president" are crowded out by the toil needed to ensure his family's survival. It's gripping to watch him grow up, knowing his life could go wrong in so many ways--and yet his essential good humor and determined work ethic persist. Director Phil Grabsky's camera work is gorgeous (assisted by the harshly beautiful Afghan landscape and the compelling subjects he found in Mir and his family)--but most impressively, one cannot obtain footage this intimate and authentic (including fights between Mir's family members and tiny windows into how poorly women are treated in Afghan culture) without a deep commitment of time and trust-building. Grabsky's film had already inspired my trust, and he is so insightful in person that my respect for the film deepened. He spoke frankly of the ethical dilemmas involved in filming people in such abject poverty, and of the challenges of working inside a culture and language where he is an outsider and must rely on one or two trusted and talented insiders. The film is going to get a theatrical release, and I highly recommend taking this rare opportunity to look inside the lives of ordinary Afghans.

I ended the day with the festival's opening night film, "Guilty Pleasures" (3.5), which did nothing to alter my skepticism about opening night films. The audience seemed to love this exploration of Harlequin romances (a few people even stood to applaud at the end), but I found it to be pedestrian and immature. The film's subjects are three women (in England, Japan, and India) who are ardent Harlequin fans, a British pensioner named Roger who writes them under a female pseudonym and narrates the formula he uses, and a plastically handsome male model named Stephen whose image graces many a Harlequin book cover and is himself in search of a soulmate. The titles and quoted passages from some of the books are indeed good for a laugh, but director Julie Moggan's subjects don't seem to yield her any real insights about why people love these novels or what they reveal about our ideas about love and romance. Instead, she takes cheap shots at all her subjects (for example, Roger takes a well-timed sip of coffee as his voiceover narrates a little sexual innuendo, and the Japanese woman and her husband's ballroom dance competition preparations are accompanied by strategic passages from the romance novels that fuel her fantasies but make the couple look like buffoons). Nothing is illuminated and what little entertainment there is seems to come at the expense of the subjects.

PIFF CLEAN-UP: THE LAST SEVEN FILMS

2011-03-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

I succeeded in my goal of seeing 39 films at PIFF this year! Although, the last 7 were a mixed bag, there are a few of gems here to watch for. Here's a quick run-down, from most to least worthy:

The best of the bunch was "Nostalgia for the Light" (8), an unexpectedly probing meditation on the importance of looking deeply for the truths we don't want to see. It's set in Chile's Atacama Desert, which, at 10,000 feet above sea level, is a perfect vantage point for astronomers to ponder the marvels of the universe. Atacama also is the site of a concentration camp where Salvador Allende sent political prisoners before they "disappeared." Thirty years later, in the shadow of the observatory located in this desert, a small band of women still devote endless hours to searching for their loved ones' remains--and it turns out there are some interesting parallels between the work of astronomers and the work of those searching for the truth of Chile's past. Director Patricio Guzman rewards the patience this film demands with profound insights about the temerity it takes to be a truth-seeker, especially in the face of our collective desire to forget. Challenging and deeply moving.

"The Colors of the Mountain" (7) is a fictional story but stays very true to the life of small-town people caught between rebel and government forces. It's set in a mountain village in Colombia, and is told from the point of view of Manuel, a young boy whose life revolves around playing soccer with his little band of friends. The children stay focused on their small concerns of school, soccer, and friends--but their parents live in dread of the competing forces around them. The film conveys this difference in perspective very well, and also the sense of how quickly life can disintegrate in times of conflict. I appreciated how the director did not try to load the scales for dramatic effect; the simple facts are challenging enough, and you see here how instanteously one must be able to move on, even from extreme loss.

"Circo" (7) follows a family-run circus as they travel through small towns in Mexico in search of an audience. The circus has been the focus of this family's life for generations, but it is a dying art and the work never stops. At the center of this struggle is Teno, who does everything from pitching the circus tent to taming tigers to training his four young children in various circus acts. He also must pay a never-ending debt to his father, who seems to own both him and the circus, and must field the frustrated litany of complaints from the wife he married when they were both teenagers. One gathers that she is probably right about Teno's father's exploitation of the family and the things the circus life requires their children to do without. But for Teno, the circus is all there is. This documentary's observations are so plain and so acute, you feel as though you have been traveling with the family.

I don't really recommend the last four films. "Black Bread" (5) is a mainstream Spanish film focused on events during Spain's civil war, largely through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy, but the themes have been treated better elsewhere (most notably in "Pan's Labyrinth"). Although its production values are high, the plot here is often muddled, the boy is not particularly interesting or likeable, and the big emotional moments actually lack impact. "When We Leave" (3.5) has won lots of critical notice for its treatment of a story of a Turkish woman living in Germany who brings shame to her family by leaving her abusive husband--but it is so clumsy in its handling of these themes that I found it frustrating. A filmmaker who aims to depict culture clashes this huge needs more insight; in this film, none of the Muslim characters make sense or are believable, so I left feeling manipulated. "Carancho" (2.5), from Argentina, features the wonderful Ricardo Darin and an actress who looks like she could Rosario Dawson's sister, Martina Gusman, in a thriller involving a doctor and a shady lawyer who helps people get insurance money. But it is so full of noise and car crashes that it actually feels assaultive. Finally, "The Woods" (1) is an exercise in wasted talent in the service of a sort of anti-cleverness. It's the work of Matthew Lessner, a young director from Roseburg, who gathered a bunch of his friends to film a story (if you can call it that) about a group of listless youths trying to build a utopia out in the woods. It's beautifully filmed, but has absolutely no ideas animating it. The director appeared at the screening I attended and contributed to my disgust for the film by confirming, in spades, his utter lack of a useful thought. It probably won't help his next film that critics have been fawning over him.

TOP TEN MOVIES OF 2010--AND MY PICKS (NOT PREDICTIONS) FOR THE OSCARS

2011-02-27T14:34:00.000-08:00

It's time again for my annual ritual of recognizing the best films I've seen this year. The top five are fictional stories that for me rang deeply true, four are documentaries, and one is an animated film that I wish more people would see. There's a notable lack of comedies, but all are stories of courage, or transformation, or unearthing difficult truths, or all of those things--so for me, it was the year of inspiration. I've written on half of these films before, so some of this will sound familiar, but I've added to all these reviews, including bits about who deserves Oscar recognition. Here's the list:

1. Biutiful

2. Winter's Bone

3. The King's Speech

4. True Grit

5. Animal Kingdom

6. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsburg and the Pentagon Papers

7. Raw Faith

8. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer

9. How to Train Your Dragon

10. Wasteland

I've added my picks for the Oscars at the end. Happy movie day!

1. One of the things that frequently bugs me about Hollywood films is that they nearly always present such a prettied-up version of life, mostly unattainable even here in the wealthiest country of the world--where, for example, a woman can be a raging alcoholic with no discernable income and still manage to live in an expensive suburb, to always be dressed to the nines, and to serve gourmet meals to her four impossibly gorgeous daughters. (See "The Upside of Anger," directed by Mike Binder, one of the worst peddlers of this kind of crap.) I often wonder about the distorted view of life in the U.S. that people in other parts of the world get from Hollywood--not to mention how Hollywood films, bleached of emotional honesty, distort the perspective of people here.

My theory is that it's our acclimation to that level of distortion that has caused so many U.S. critics to complain that "BIUTIFUL" (10), my favorite film of 2010, is a "gloomfest" or a manipulatively dark film. I would hasten to point out that the version of life depicted in Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu's masterpiece is a lot closer to the experience of the majority of the world's citizens than what you see in most American films. Poverty, mental illness, moral compromise, needs that outstrip physical and emotional resources--this is simply life for so many people. To me, though, Iñárritu has aptly named (complete with a child's misspelling) his vision of a world that includes such struggle and loss. Both times I saw it, his film left me deeply moved and filled with love and hope for meaning that transcends the struggle of human existence.

The film is anchored by an astounding performance by Javier Bardem (he won the best actor prize at Cannes and is my pick for this year's Best Actor Oscar) as Uxbal, an underworld businessman mixed up in an array of illegal activities involving undocumented Chinese sweatshop workers and pirated goods and drugs sold by undocumented African street peddlers. He spends his days mostly in the seedy parts of Barcelona that tourists never see, negotiating the unreasonable and irreconcilable demands of the police who he must bribe to look the other way and the exploiters of all kinds who take their cut from immigrant labor. Uxbal is also a devoted father to his young daughter and son, struggling to manage his and their complicated relationship with their estranged bipolar mother (beautifully played by Maricel Alvarez). And he is a spiritual sensitive, accepting money from those desperate for him to communicate with their recently departed loved ones. His life, then, is already untenable when he learns that he is dying of prostate cancer and has only a short time left to put his affairs in order, whatever that could possibly mean.

As Uxbal navigates the treacherous waters of his existence, he is constantly confronted by crises, by the need to compromise or to assert control, by people in desperate need of protection, his children chief among them. He is not a typical movie hero--he sometimes makes poor choices and, indeed, often has only poor choices available. Yet his choices make sense; they are animated by an essential goodness and clarity of purpose.

The level of chaos is high, shifting from the children to the illegal workers to the police to Uxbal's troubled ex-wife. But the film's perspective, to me, felt God-like--sympathetic, specific, and yet from a sufficient distance that one can see past the moral compromises of all the characters to what is most essentially true about them. Decent, afraid, lost, desperate, evil, good--in truth, the underworld depicted in this film struck me as more like the world most of us in the American movie-going audience live in than we would care to admit.

Suffusing it all is the question of life after death. A real estate development forces Uxbal and his brother to exhume the body of the father Uxbal never knew, who fled Spain to escape Franco, and Uxbal asks to see his father's long-ago embalmed corpse. Like so many of his encounters with sorrow, this one also is tinged with tenderness, and by Uxbal's willingness to be present. His encounters with a fellow seer are also especially potent--she shares his resoluteness, and prods him to continue to look steadily at the truth of his life and death. A recurring image of water pervades the film, a metaphor for the waves of chaos that envelop the world's inhabitants, but also for a comforting, enveloping divine presence that surrounds them all.

Iñárritu has assembled all the right elements to tell this story--wonderful performances (the children are especially poignant); a grave and haunting score by the masterful Gustavo Santolalla; cinematography so sweeping and yet so intimate that it perfectly captures Uxbal's visceral experience of walking through a frenetic ghetto while lost in anxious thought; Barcelona, its fierce beauty still evident even away from the touristed areas, La Sagrada Familia Basilica rising up through the chaos. And then, Bardem, whose intense performance suggests that he is, himself, spiritually sensitive. [In Spanish; rated R for disturbing images, language, some sexual content, nudity, and drug use; on at least one other critic's top ten list; nominated for, and should win, the Oscars for best foreign language film and best actor (Javier Bardem); still in theaters]

2. The best American film this year is "WINTER'S BONE" (10), director Debra Tanik's searing depiction of a teenager who quickly acquires wisdom beyond her years in a family crisis. Set among people living way off the grid in the Missouri Ozarks, it captures a world of poverty, crime, and hardship with more particularity than any film I can remember; its command of gritty details is complete and utterly convincing. Even more remarkably, its clear-eyed insight extends to the spirituality and inner workings of the individuals and the culture it depicts. By the second viewing, I had the powerful sense that, though I haven't lived in a context like this, its dangers are eerily familiar. And the courage of its heroine (played by a remarkable newcomer, Jennifer Lawrence) inspired me. (I'd give Lawrence the Oscar for Best Actress, though Michelle Williams' more showy performance in a lesser film, "Blue Valentine," is also deserving.)

I should admit that it took me two viewings to fully appreciate the film's power. It's not that I didn't admire it on first viewing; it's that the story is so harsh that I had a hard time hanging in there with it at first. I'm a pretty empathetic viewer, and felt intensely the darkness with which this stolid girl must do combat, so much so that I felt a little nauseous by the end. It helped on the second viewing to know what to expect so that I could enter into the film's world more fully. Even without the benefit of true surprise, I was absolutely blown away the second time through.

The teenager at the center of the story is Ree, a smart and resourceful 17-year-old who stoically devotes herself to the day-to-day survival of her silent, lost soul of a mother and her two younger siblings. Her father, a notorious meth cooker, has been missing for a couple of weeks, which apparently is cause for no more concern than the daily struggle for food and heat. But when the local sheriff informs Ree that her missing dad has posted as bond their land and the roof over their heads upon his latest release from jail, Ree's bleak daily struggle suddenly becomes more urgent; she must find her dad before his upcoming court date or she loses the struggle for good.

The hills are full of her kin, which she thinks should mean something. Problem is, as part of her seems to suspect, what it means is not necessarily good. Those relatives seem to know much more than they are willing to say; all are in the grip of a harsh world that keeps them at odds with the law, a world rigidly ruled by demands of loyalty and silence. Ree's need to know the truth in order to ensure her family's survival so conflicts with the dictates of custom and code that her own survival is threatened.

From the very first frame, the film feels immediate and raw. Every detail is right: the kids sleep in their clothes, and desultorily amuse themselves by skateboarding in the dirt or bouncing on a riding horse atop a large trampoline. Their hair looks like Ree probably cuts it herself with blunt scissors just enough to keep it out of their eyes; she teaches them to find and shoot squirrels and pull out their guts, and when her brother asks if they eat that part she says simply, "not yet." Ree tramps all over these hills on foot and when she needs to go further than is practical on foot she has to beg the use of a married friend's truck, who has to beg its use from her husband on the promise that Ree will pay for the gas. The men in the community seem to run things, but the women make things go, following up the threats of the men folk by either showing Ree the way around them or warning her to heed them or offering her food or cash when they can do no more.

Yet all of this is depicted with a kind of dignity and even respect. The people are not treated as oddities, nor do you have the more usual sense of filmmakers throwing dirt on actors and filming them lying around on dusty furniture and looking slovenly. There's a kind of order to this world, as brutal as it is, and there is kindness to be found in the ways people find to operate within its rigid code. In one scene, Ree begs her silent mother for help, "just this one time," in discerning what to do--but finds help instead from her uncle Teardrop (Deadwood's John Hawkes in a particularly memorable performance that deserves an Oscar), a menacing crank sniffer who is one of the first to urge her that she'd best leave the truth alone. Eventually Teardrop helps her find it, though when she confesses that she has always feared him, he comments, "That's because you're smart." There is also a group of women who offer help and brutality, sometimes in the same moment; they are protecting themselves, for sure, but at times you catch a glint of a motive to school Ree. For her part, Ree almost never flinches, watchful, perceptive, adjusting her eyes with each new revelation.

There isn't a wasted line or mannered detail anywhere; the storytelling here is as clear-eyed as the heroine. The most profound revelation for me was that this world, for all its brutality, seemed in some ways less dangerous than the worlds I know better--as a friend put it, everything looks broken down, but it functions. And without access to the artifice one can acquire with money and respectability, there's a kind of truthfulness to the way things work. People don't pretend to be serving some higher goal when they are stabbing you in the back; at one point when Ree asks, "Are you going to kill me?" the response is simply, "That idea was talked about." I admired the honesty of this world even while I was gripped with fear at the thought of what this child is meant to learn. And I found her courage--her ability to look hard, and to act on what she sees--inspiring, and instructive. [Rated R for some drug material, language, and violent content; on at least 56 other critics' top ten lists; nominated for, and deserves to win, the Oscars for best picture, best adapted screenplay, best actress (Jennifer Lawrence) and best supporting actor (John Hawkes) and should have received a nomination for best director (Debra Granik); available on DVD]

3. The film on my list with the most universal appeal is "THE KING'S SPEECH" (10), a surprisingly stirring depiction of the struggles of King George VI (the current Queen Elizabeth's father) to overcome a stutter so that he can assume the public persona demanded of him. It is directed by Tom Hooper, whose brilliant cable series "John Adams" was one of the richest treatments of history I have ever seen on film. As with that series, in "The King's Speech" history becomes intimate, personal, immediate, and relevant; we find ourselves identifying with people (a British monarch and his wife) whose lives don't remotely resemble the lives of most of the audience. (Of those nominated, I think Tom Hooper deserves the Oscar for Best Director.)

It was news to me that King George (who took the throne when his brother abdicated to marry a twice-divorced American in the 1930s) struggled his whole life with a crippling stutter--crippling because, as a member of the royal family during the early years of radio, when broadcasts were mostly done live with no editing, he could not escape the nightmare of public speaking. And for an otherwise quite capable military man, a speech disability was particularly shameful and inexplicable; surely his sheer force of will should have been sufficient to overcome it, or so it was thought.

The screenwriter, David Seidler, himself a stutterer, found inspiration from King George's story as a child and for years wanted to turn that story into a film. He actually asked the Queen Mother (the king's wife Elizabeth, who lived for decades after his death) if she would be alright with the story being told in that way, and she requested only that he wait until after her death, because it was still quite painful for her many years later. Without being manipulative or heavy-handed, the film makes sense of that pain--George (known to his family as Bertie) is presented as a decent, strong, and thoughtful man who sincerely wants to do right by his office, quite a contrast with his more self-absorbed older brother. Having subjected himself to a series of quack speech therapies with no success, Bertie has lost hope of finding help--and one senses that he is also somewhat imprisoned by the distance his royal status places between him and almost everyone else, and by the curious combination of deference and infantilization that seems to come with the royal territory.

Hope arrives in the unlikely form of Lionel Logue, an Australian who comes highly recommended. Only desperation could have inspired Elizabeth to suggest Lionel, who is entirely self-taught and uncredentialed and whose unconventionality (not typically tolerated in royal circles) is immediately apparent. Bertie quickly finds Lionel exasperating and rejects him as a therapist--and yet circumstances drive him back and the two begin working together.

One of the things that makes Lionel so compelling--and ultimately, so successful--is that he relentlessly insists on what he knows even when he can't explain how he knows it (at least not in a way that Bertie could hear). Lionel operates out of his own way of knowing, not respected by Bertie's world--and yet Bertie's world doesn't have a way of addressing his condition. Lionel gently but firmly requires that he and Bertie be on a first-name basis--part of his method, for sure, but perhaps also particularly necessary given the sense that the forced formality and deference of Bertie's world is part of what keeps him unable to speak. Lionel's method includes some vocal exercises, but it also includes friendship and attentive listening, a sort of ministry of presence that helps Bertie find his voice. Lionel's is the kind of knowing that is little understood and rarely recognized, but always effective where healing is longed for.

The film is observant about how class affects what is possible and what can be seen. Bertie is trapped by his class, yet insists upon the trap. Lionel is a no-account Australian (gasp!) with no credentials and is seen as not deserving of any deference. His attitude toward class distinctions seems disrespectful and, in one sense, it is--and yet, in another sense, he is offering Bertie a more genuine respect. The contrast is especially apparent when it comes time for Bertie's coronation, and we see the difference between the "deference" shown to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the kindness and patience shown by Lionel. By then, Bertie insists on respect for Lionel, something only Bertie can enforce.

The film is anchored by three resonant, Oscar-nominated performances. Colin Firth is just the person to play a quietly troubled but stolid monarch; it is no small feat to so grippingly convey the pain of a stutter, and also to pull off the very clipped way of speaking that was formerly common but has long since fallen out of fashion in Britain. Firth conveys Bertie's depths less with words than with the resolute set of his jaw, the pain in his eyes, the sense that his voice is not his own. Geoffrey Rush captures the sense that Lionel is comfortable with what he recognizes as his own awkwardness, compelled by the sense of what he sees and can demonstrate but can't always explain. And Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth is at her best as a woman who chooses to be cheerful and resolute and always quite appropriate, even while she is in agony over the suffering of the good man she loves.

Eventually, Bertie honored Lionel by inducting him into the Royal Victorian Order, a knighthood recognizing personal service to a monarch. It was a fitting tribute, but no more so than the friendship that the two maintained until Bertie's death. This film speaks profoundly of honor, and of friendship, and of shared humanity that has the capacity to heal what has seemed hopeless. [Unjustly rated R for a string of profanity that Bertie unleashes without stuttering--but I think this is perfectly fine for middle-schoolers on up; on at least 36 other critics' top ten lists; nominated for, and deserves to win, the Oscars for best director, best original screenplay, best art direction, best costume design, and best original score; also nominated for Oscars for best picture, best actor (Colin Firth), best supporting actor (Geoffrey Rush), best supporting actress (Helena Bonham Carter), best cinematography, and best editing; still in theaters.]

4. "TRUE GRIT" (10), the latest from Joel and Ethan Coen, is not so much a remake of the John Wayne-Glen Campbell-Kim Darby vehicle from 1969 as it is a new adaptation of the novel that inspired both films. Not having read the novel, I can't really comment on which is a more faithful adaptation (though I understand from other critics that the Coens win on that score by sticking with the novel's bleakness and its focus on Mattie Ross's character). What I can say is that the new film has it all: it's funny and warm and spare and colorful and, to me, inspiring in all the right ways.

To begin with, the casting is inspired. Matt Damon is delightful as La Boeuf (which he hilariously pronounces "La Beef"), a Texas ranger whose exaggerated pride makes him into a buffoon--until he turns out to be quite brave and true. Damon manages to make La Boeuf laughable while still imbuing him with dignity. Jeff Bridges far outdoes his Oscar-winning turn in "Crazy Heart" (the Coens have, of course, written him a much better part) as Rooster Cogburn, an unredeemable cuss who is half drunk most of the time and doesn't care what anyone else thinks, but whose unparalleled instinct and determination kicks in in a crisis. And newcomer Hailee Steinfeld shines as 14-year-old Mattie Ross, the determined girl who hires Cogburn to hunt down her father's killer on the non-negotiable condition that she be allowed to come along and help him finish the job. It took me a bit to decide how I felt about her clipped line readings--but ultimately I thought she perfectly captured the assuredness of a Victorian-era girl who has done her learning from books and also from observation that most adults don't live up to their billing. Her Mattie is determined without being cocky; she simply knows what she knows. She chooses Cogburn for the job over a candidate who comes more highly recommended, uncannily spotting in him what she rightly senses is needed: true grit.

The chief inspiration I drew from the film was its depiction of that rare and precious thing. It shows three characters who you wouldn't necessarily want on your side--an arrogant buffoon, a profligate drunkard, and a preternaturally confident child--and reveals that they share in common a sort of focus that kicks in when it is most needed, an ability to suddenly know and do exactly what must be done, even if that thing seems and is impossible. There really isn't a way to describe it better than the film's title does, and how that quality manifests in these three disparate people is a sight to behold. When Cogburn springs into action late in the film to save Mattie's life, I wept at the beauty of it.

Where does it come from, this quality that Portis's novel, and the Coens' film, celebrates so well? Mattie Ross is the lens through which the answer to that question is revealed. She has cannily observed by the age of 14 that most people don't follow through with what they say they will do, or pay attention long enough to see what is really going on. She stands out--and, among other things, can best a grown man in negotiations--because she does both of those things. Whatever she lacks in experience and maturity, this girl is awake; her eyes are open, and she looks hard at what appears in front of her. That focus gives her the ability to see a pathway through situations that nearly everyone else would deem impossible--and she has the will and the courage to act on what she sees. Likewise with Cogburn, though he has grown old and fat and "loves to pull a cork," and even La Boeuf, though one senses that might be a result of Mattie's influence in this case. The two men (first Cogburn, then La Boeuf) come to realize that they have misjudged the girl, and find in her a worthy ally who brings out the best in them.

Though some may be disappointed that the Coens have omitted the cynical wink characteristic of most of their films (which I happen to love), I think they wisely chose to play this one clear-eyed and true. It's not that they have presented an unquestioning homage to the Western ideal; rather, they have presented the genre in all its stark beauty and its contradictions--the barren landscapes (beautifully captured in Roger Deakins' cinematography, which deserves the Oscar); the cold; the strangely precious-yet-profane language almost entirely stripped of contractions (a la "Deadwood"); the rough and even lurid qualities of frontier justice--as the perfect backdrop for showing an admirable quality rarely seen and rarely understood. This film left me inspired to fight another day. [Rated PG-13 for some intense sequences of Western violence including disturbing images; on at least 28 other critics' top ten lists; nominated for, and should win, the Oscar for best cinematography; also justly nominated for Oscars for best picture, best actor (Jeff Bridges), best supporting actress (Hailee Steinfeld) (hardly a supporting role), and best adapted screenplay; deserved an Oscar nomination for best original score; still in theaters.]

5. I first saw "ANIMAL KINGDOM" (10) alone and late at night, and my heart was still pounding as I walked the two blocks to my car. It scared me more than any horror film--not in the sense of expecting someone to jump out and attack me, but rather from the tension of spending two hours in a world of violence and treachery. First-time Australian director David Michôd (who also wrote the excellent screenplay) is officially on my list of directors to watch out for; he handles this complex material with a very sure hand.

Like "Winter's Bone," the story involves a teenager's coming of age. Newcomer James Frecheville as Josh is one of the most believable teenage boys I've ever seen on film, a man-boy who mumbles and instinctively doesn't give too much away. In another family, he might be an endearing, hulking presence, focused on hanging out with his friends and not much else. But in the film's first scene, we see him staring blankly at a television game show as the police come to retrieve the body of his mother, who's just died of a drug overdose. Not knowing what else to do, Josh calls his grandmother, Janine Cody, to pick him up, though he hasn't seen her in years because his mother was afraid of her and the rest of their family.

With good reason, as it turns out. Janine, innocuously nicknamed "Smurf," presides over a gang of bank robbers consisting of her three sons and their mate. The compact 60ish woman with the strange gleam in her eye looms large in the lives of her sons, not least because of her disturbing habit of planting lingering kisses on their mouths. She bribes dirty cops, orders hits, and soothes her volatile sons, all while maintaining a relentlessly cheery veneer that fits her suburban grandmother image but feels a good deal more sinister. There is little doubt that she will engineer the demise of anyone who stands in her way. Jacki Weaver's eerie performance deserves the Oscar for best supporting actress.

The sons she has raised are dangerous too, particularly the eldest, Pope, a menacing sociopath. They, and she, superficially welcome Josh into their household and even make noises about schooling him. And they do, after a fashion--but mostly that means acclimating him to violence and lawlessness. Offers of help to Josh clearly are leeched of any genuine concern for his education or safety.

The dangers don't end there. It turns out that the Cody gang is at war with the brutal and corrupt Melbourne police, who apparently would rather simply shoot a suspect to death than be bothered to arrest and mount a case against him. Tensions mount as brutal police action provokes a particularly brutal response from the gang--and this time Josh is involved.

Part of the genius of the film is that we are discovering this treacherous terrain at the same time as Josh is--yet he's only 17 and not obviously equipped to fend for himself. Eventually an apparently decent detective, Leckie (well-played by Guy Pierce), sees in Josh an opening to break past the family's unyielding wall of silence and save Josh from the fate that inevitably awaits him. But can Josh really trust the detective? As Leckie himself asks, where does Josh fit in the animal order of things? Josh's answer to that question is surprising.

The machinations here are intricate, but one of the strengths of the film is how handily Michôd navigates them. The plot is nearly as complex as a whole season of "The Wire," though easier to follow. Michôd maintains an undertone of tension and inevitability; things play out as it seems they must. Shot almost entirely inside gray bars and the confining, dismal rooms of the Cody household, you feel intensely how limited Josh's options are, and cast about in your mind for what to hope for him.

Along the way are pearls about the nature of this world, many of them contained in Josh's narration, though you wonder if that narration is coming from beyond the grave. The chief of these: "Crooks always come undone, always, one way or another." Even with that premise, the film maintains suspense as to how and when its dangers will materialize, and wows with its insights about how dangerous the world actually can be. [Rated R for violence, drug content, and pervasive language; on at least 12 other critics' top ten lists; nominated for, and should win, an Oscar for best supporting actress (Jacki Weaver); should also have been recognized with nominations for best director, best picture, and best original screenplay; available on DVD.]

6. "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: DANIEL ELLSBURG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS" (10) was the best documentary I saw this year, although, like all four on this list, it did not receive wide distribution. More suspenseful and gripping than most fictional films, it finds in the events surrounding Ellsburg's release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 a tale of transformation, unusual courage, and the costs of telling the truth.

Daniel Ellsburg was the ultimate insider, a former Marine officer and architect of the Vietnam war who shared responsibility for propagating some of the bad information that fueled the war for many years. He personally advised Robert McNamara, and spent time serving in Vietnam himself. He narrates his own story here, explaining all the personal satisfaction and respect he got from his role as a strategist, a job he was good at.

As time went on, Ellsburg began to doubt his own thinking about what he was doing. But for years, he ignored those doubts. He describes in particular an occasion when he spent a plane ride discussing with McNamara reasons why the war was doomed to fail. McNamara agreed with him--and then stepped off the plane and assured the public that we were winning. A decades-long edifice of lies and justification kept the war going, complete with a long list of reasons why it was inevitable and in the national interest.

Finally, though, the very rigor and strong will that made Ellsburg such a cunning strategist--and, perhaps, a hard person to like--eventually made it impossible for him to ignore the mounting evidence that the war was untenable. Those same qualities enabled him to, as Mick LaSalle put it, "get fed up and stay that way" (San Francisco Chronicle). His description of the change in his thinking really qualifies as a spiritual transformation, culminating in one pivotal day spent with people willing to serve jail time in order to avoid military service. Listen to the conviction of those people, and their willingness to sacrifice for what they believed, left him sobbing. "It was as if an axe had split my head," he says, still visibly moved at the memory. "But what had really happened was that my life had split in two. And it was my life after[wards] that I've lived ever since."

Ellsburg knew that the Pentagon Papers revealed the lies and fallacies that had been used to keep the war going because he'd helped to construct those lies himself. He also knew that he faced a risk of significant jail time, not to mention loss of reputation, if he released them. The determination, and sheer time, that it took to copy all 7000 pages on the copiers available in 1971, and then to convince the New York Times to publish them, was considerable. The Nixon administration played hardball in response--but ultimately, when the administration obtained an injunction against the Times' and later that Washington Post's release of the information, scores of other newspapers carried forward publication of the papers. Meanwhile, a brave junior congressman read them into the congressional record. Ultimately, the Supreme Court's decision that the Nixon administration could not stop the Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers is widely viewed as the preeminent free press decision in our history--and one wonders if we still have a press that would function with that degree of courage and independence today.

You won't find a film that does a better job of laying bare the complicated facts surrounding this part of our history; for that reason alone the film should be required viewing for all American citizens, especially those too young to remember these events. What the film does even better is to impart what this story has to teach us about the costs of telling the truth.

One of the things that is most remarkable about what Ellsburg did is the personal cost he paid--and just how rare it is to find people willing to pay that price. He did not serve any jail time; the film presents the argument that he did not break any laws, but in any event the government's case against him ended with a mistrial after it was revealed that members of the Nixon administration had broken into Ellsburg's psychiatrist's office and had offered the judge presiding over Ellsburg's trial a job as head of the FBI. But Ellsburg did pay dearly in terms of friends and reputation. He was 40 years old at the time he released the papers, and was at the height of a very successful career--and afterwards, he was a pariah in the very community in which he had achieved that success. A psychiatrist advised his trial team that their worst jurors would be middle-aged men, because they might well have sacrificed principle for the sake of career and family and would have disdain, even contempt, for men who risked those things for the sake of principle. "I've come to realize," Ellsburg reflects forty years later, "the fear of being cut out from the group of people you respect and whose respect you want and normally expect, that keeps people participating in anything, no matter how terrible."

Another sobering part of this tale is how little impact the release of the Pentagon Papers had on public opinion, at least in the short term. Ellsburg had fully expected that once the information was out there, people would demand an end to the war. Instead, Nixon was reelected in a landslide the very next year, and the war was escalated. Every time he was interviewed, Ellsburg would publicly decry the bombs still being dropped on Vietnam in a war that was demonstrably unjustifiable and unwinnable, but those comments were not even reported. It was only after Nixon's impeachment in 1974 that Congress finally began to cut back funding for the war. "I gave up my job, my career, my clearance, and I staked my freedom on a gamble: if the American people knew the truth about how they had been lied to, * * * that they would choose against it. And the risk that you take when you do that, is that you'll learn something ultimately about your fellow citizens that you won't like to hear. And that is that they hear it, they learn from it, they understand it--and they proceed to ignore it." A person who acts in furtherance of the truth in the face of those realities is, indeed, a very dangerous man. [Not rated; nominated for an Oscar for best documentary in 2010; available on DVD.]

7. "RAW FAITH" (10), the first feature-length documentary of Portland director Peter Weidensmith, is still making the rounds of film festivals and, I'm told, will have a limited theatrical release and will air on television. I will do my best to keep you informed of a DVD release or other opportunities to see it.

I despair of describing the film in a way that will really convey its power. Its subject is Marilyn Sewell, a beloved minister of a large Unitarian congregation in Portland . As Sewell contemplated retiring from her post, a couple of her parishioners proposed the documentary as a way of shining a light on her prophetic perspective, which they greatly admired. What Sewell brought to the enterprise was her characteristic commitment to profound honesty, which enabled Weidensmith to find a story that goes beyond Sewell's compelling family history and her thoughtful approach to her ministry and retirement. What he finds is a portrait of transformation that is specific, and uncommonly rich with inspiration and insight.

The film really sneaks up on you. It begins by conveying Sewell's approach to her ministry, something I can't recall seeing done before. Effective ministry is not well understood, in my experience--but here the attempt to depict it is helped by Sewell's own clarity of intention and by her obvious and genuine love for her congregants. You see her dedication, and get an inkling of the focused energy it takes to do her job well. Her sermons are authentic and clearly spring from a life of personal devotion.

The film acquires power as it mines Sewell's troubled childhood and finds how the pain of her early life fuels her desire to experience love in the context of ministry. The losses she experienced feel fresh; one senses how grappling with childhood suffering can and sometimes must become the work of a lifetime. Most films, like most people, miss entirely the nuances of a lifelong journey and suggest instead that one's issues can be somehow solved like a math problem or tidied like a messy room. Here we see a life lived with intention, and how that intention regularly requires conscious and painstaking effort. Often when one attains a certain degree of professional success it becomes easier to focuses one's efforts on less challenging pursuits, especially for someone who can comfort herself in the knowledge that she devotes herself to doing good. But Sewell is unwavering in her devotion to seeking truth, not only for her congregants but for herself.

And here lies the film's real power: Sewell's choice to be honest and appropriately but courageously vulnerable in front of the camera ends up giving us a front-row seat to an experience of transformation. Her journey to retirement takes twists and turns that she and presumably the filmmakers were not expecting; she confronts her deep loneliness and loss, her longing for an intimate partner, her fear of the unknown. We see that goodness and devotion does not insulate one from genuine confusion and struggle. Sewell's navigation through these waters is powerfully instructive. [Not rated; deserved a nomination for an Oscar for best documentary--maybe next year? No DVD release yet.]

8. No one does better work telling a complicated story than director Alex Gibney, as he already demonstrated in "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" and "Taxi to the Dark Side," both of which received Oscar recognition (the latter won for best documentary in 2008). I find it interesting that his latest film, "CLIENT 9: THE RISE AND FALL OF ELIOT SPITZER" (10) has not received similar recognition because, to me, it's his best and most illuminating film yet. Perhaps there is a connection.

Gibney has chosen the best of complicated subjects, excellent partly because we think we already know the story of this rising politician who was undone in a sex scandal. But there's a lot more to the story than what we think we know, not least of which is a compelling and complicated hero/villain. Eliot Spitzer's best and worst qualities endlessly fascinate; his utter courage and clarity in exposing and going after Wall Street excesses as New York Attorney General catapulted him to the governor's office and diagnosed the rotten core that brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy after Spitzer left office. But Spitzer's cunning pursuit of previously untouchable targets appears to have been fueled not only by righteous determination, but also by unparalleled arrogance that made it very difficult for him to govern as an executive. His legendary tirades inspired staffers to refer to his evil twin, Irwin, and his scorched earth tactics left him friendless when his questionable extracurricular activities were revealed.

Yet many politicians have continued their careers in the face of similar or even worse scandals. Why did this one bring Spitzer down? What fueled the investigation itself? What drove Spitzer to engage in such high-risk activities that he himself had prosecuted? None of these questions can be answered definitively, but that does not mean they don't deserve attention--and Gibney's triumph is that he sheds light where definitive answers are not possible and illuminates what is true in a deeper sense.

He largely does this by his ability to access people at every level of the story, who appear on camera and speak, at length and with evident vigor and satisfaction, for themselves. The giggly young former CEO of the Emperor's Club, Spitzer's preferred supplier of "escorts," provides a fascinating window into how this sort of business works. Several other Emperor's Club employees also speak on camera, most notably "Angelina," a frequent Spitzer companion, whose interview is delivered verbatim by an actress since she is now a successful commodities day trader and did not want to appear on camera. Her description of her encounters with Spitzer is illuminating rather than salacious, as is her account of being interviewed by FBI investigators. Ashley Dupree, who turned her one date with Spitzer into a career launcher, is seen through a selection of her many interviews with other journalists, including one in which that faux-muckraker Geraldo Rivera invites her to sing on camera. (I love David's Edelstein's comment in New York Magazine that her rendition of "Let It Snow" "lingers through the credits like a richly fricative fart"). The media's handling of Dupree raises a whole different set of questions about who was using whom.

Spitzer's political enemies not only criticize Spitzer on camera with surprising glee, but wax eloquent about how much they personally despise him. Joe Bruno, the Republican state senator who was one of Spitzer's main opponents in Albany, fares best, though he makes no secret of his distaste for Spitzer's tactics and can hardly contain his glee at the memory of reading those "Luv Guv" headlines. Ken Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot and, as head of the New York Stock Exchange's compensation board, a target of Spitzer's campaign against excessive CEO pay, is more chilling to watch, as he speaks with utter conviction about his hatred of Spitzer and even blames Spitzer for that. "I'd like to think I'm not a vindictive person," he says in a confidential tone. "And a basic tenet of my faith is forgiveness. The most harm that Eliot Spitzer's done to me is, I am defying my faith. I can't forgive him." Hank Greenberg, former chairman and CEO of insurance giant AIG and also a Spitzer target, smugly attacks Spitzer on camera and has the temerity to suggest, in the face of compelling evidence otherwise, that had he (Greenberg) not been ousted from his job as CEO, he could have prevented what happened at AIG. Self-described "GOP hit man" Roger Stone's role, if any, in bringing Spitzer down is unclear, but he is happy to talk about how morally compromised Spitzer is while crowing about his own excesses. One of the film's many ironies is the apparently justified attacks on Spitzer for his hubris, coming out of mouths like these.

Gibney mines the prosecution itself for clues as to the reasons for and meaning of Spitzer's downfall, noting that the clients of escort services are never targets of criminal prosecution and that the indictment reads like a detective story, full of salacious details with no apparent purpose other than to lead the press right to Spitzer (as, of course, it did). The very same Bush-appointed U.S. attorney who warned Spitzer off his prosecution of some Wall Street wrongdoing headed up the investigation of the Emperor's Club--and two Republican congressman caught in similar scandals during roughly the same time period are still serving in Washington.

Ultimately, the most interesting footage is of Spitzer himself. He makes no excuses for the spectacular lapse in judgment that most obviously brought him down, correctly noting, "I brought myself down." But he is not as contrite, or as forthcoming, about his famous tirades against his political opponents. For example, the CEO of Goldman Sachs claims that Spitzer screamed at him, "You have fired the first bullet, but believe me, by the end of this war, I will fire the last one, and you will be dead!" Confronted with that claim, Spitzer hems and haws and then says, "He and I had a heated conversation. I will leave it at that." Nevertheless, he does display some capacity for self-examination and for sitting with the unanswered questions about himself. When asked why he sought the company of hookers rather than engaging in affairs, Spitzer comments, "You cave in to temptations in a way that perhaps seems easier, and perhaps, in some very twisted way, less damaging." And, asked about what drove him to such high-stakes subterfuge, he offers no explanation: "Those are the mysteries of the human mind, I suppose. I don't think I can answer that question because I don't think I know." I give him, and Gibney points for staring this and other questions in the face. [Rated R for some sexual material, nudity, and language; deserved a nomination for an Oscar for best documentary; available on DVD.]

9. Although I also loved "Toy Story 3," my favorite animated film of the year is "HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON" (10). It's remarkable not only for its spectacular envisioning of a world of Vikings and dragons and fire and dramatic sky, but for its extraordinarily insightful depiction of a cultural paradigm shift. In this story, it's the people, not the dragons, who are really dangerous.

I can't say that I've made a study of criticism of this particular film, but it appears from my brief perusal that film critics, while admiring the film's inventive animation and worthy use of the 3D format, dismissed the story as pleasantly pedestrian. I find that baffling. In my view, it's one of the best depictions I've ever seen of the perils of a changing a community's values, and a virtual how-to manual for being an agent of such change. I left the theater not only moved and inspired, but smiling to myself at the thought that children would carry away such excellent instruction on the value of being an outsider and on the mechanics of cultural change.

The story involves a teenager named Hiccup who is an embarrassment to his dad, a leader in their macho Viking community. Hiccup is scrawny, and curious, and more prone to devising experiments that will explain to him how things work than to simply smash them if they don't. In a culture that loves brawn and brute force and chutzpah, Hiccup's inventiveness (which admittedly could use some polishing) makes him look like an idiot. He exacerbates that problem with his ambitious but ill-conceived adolescent efforts to fit in on his culture's terms, which always end in failure.

Hiccup's Viking culture is built around subduing the local dragon population, and all dragons are hated and feared. One day in yet another solitary ambitious attempt to achieve notoriety, Hiccup invents a catapult and succeeds in shooting down a Night Fury, the most feared and least understood of all dragons. The weapon succeeds--and yet, finally faced with the opportunity to redeem his reputation, Hiccup sees something in the dragon's eyes that keeps him from killing the dragon. Fear.

Thus begins a relationship with the dragon (whom he nicknames Toothless) that leads Hiccup to the realization that everything his culture believes about dragons is wrong. It's a dangerous thing to know, and Hiccup instinctively keeps this knowledge a secret, rightly sensing that he has stumbled onto realities that no one is ready to accept. Meanwhile, he follows the first revelations where they lead him, to a deeper understanding of the dragon's world and to a collaboration that will itself be transformative for the community, all things only an outsider is liable to be able to see in the first place.

I know I'm using spiritual terms here--and there is no question that this story can be enjoyed simply on the level of a dragon-flying fantasy. The filmmakers have conceived a visually stunning world, even enlisting the Coen brothers' crack cinematographer, Roger Deakins, to help them depict gorgeous and rugged mountain scenes and soaring flights through fire and clouds.

But the content here really is profound. My only criticism of the film (which may be a product of how the story morphed from its source material, a children's book that I haven't read) is that the title misses the power of the story. It really should be called something like "How You and Your Dragon Can Train Each Other." Because at the heart of this story is an example of the kind of mutual mentoring that is necessary to bridge differences and open worlds of possibilities never before envisioned. Then again, maybe people are ready for that yet. [Rated PG for sequences of intense action and some scary images, and brief mild language; on at least four other critics' top-ten lists; nominated for, and deserves to win, the Oscar for best animated feature; available on DVD. ]

10. "WASTELAND" (9.5) was audience award at several film festivals and, of those nominated, should win the Oscar for best documentary. It's a story of the power of art to transform, and of the impact of personal involvement that empowers people to see their own worth.

Vik Muniz grew up in poverty in Brazil and is now a respected artist in Brooklyn known for making use of unusual objects--dirt, chocolate syrup, sugar--in his portraits. Having achieved a great deal of professional success, he envisions a project for giving back to his native country by creating art out of ordinary objects important to the lives of some poor Brazilians and then using the proceeds of the art sales to benefit them. He decides to locate his project in Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest garbage dump, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, where some of the city's poorest denizens eek out a living collecting recycling. His idea is to create art using recyclable materials culled from the garbage.

The evolution of the project is fascinating. In the beginning, there is great distance between Muniz and his subjects--he scouts the location on Google Earth and discusses safety concerns with his wife. When he arrives there, he marvels at the scale of the dump, and notes how quickly one acclimates to the awful smell. The resourcefulness of the recyclers is impressive, and he slowly comes to know them--a charismatic labor organizer who reads discarded books; a trained restaurant cook who feeds the workers using discarded produce; a teenager already parenting two children. Soon Muniz is photographing them; the photos will be the basis for the finished pieces, which involve blowing up the pictures and then adding materials to them. Finally, he involves his subjects in the actual creation of the works (which are stunning).

Muniz had been motivated by a sense that exposing people to art, even if briefly, allows them to reflect on their lives differently. His wife wonders if that is a good thing given the realistic limits of their power to changes their lives, something I have wondered about while traveling in developing countries. I often notice that the poorest of the poor nearly always possess television sets (as do these Brazilians), and I have wondered what is the effect of constant exposure to lifestyles that one has no real hope of attaining.

But it is apparent from the film that the experience the recyclers have working with Muniz is not at all like watching television. It is for them a full body, transformative experience. They are engaged in recycling themselves. As we come to know the recyclers, we see the evidence that work in the studio and being involved in the creation of art enables them to step back and to see their lives, themselves, with new eyes. They begin to value themselves, to want things, to aspire. As they watch themselves literally being transformed into works of art, they come to see themselves as valuable. And the work has a transformative effect on Muniz as well; I related to his sense that he received so much more than he gave.

Garbage-to-art ends up being the perfect metaphor for the transformation at work, and Lucy Walker's beautiful film challenges and inspires in all the right ways. [Not rated; in English and Portuguese; nominated for, and should win, the Oscar for best documentary; DVD release scheduled for March 15, 2011.]

MY PICKS (NOT PREDICTIONS) FOR WHO SHOULD WIN THE OSCARS (WITH A FEW NOTES ABOUT GAPING OMISSIONS IN THE NOMINATIONS)

Best Motion Picture of the Year (in English): Winter's Bone

(Bad nominations: 127 Hours, Black Swan, The Kids Are All Right, The Social Network)

Best Performance By An Actor in a Leading Role: Javier Bardem for "Biutiful"

Best Performance By An Actress in a Leading Role: Jennifer Lawrence for "Winter's Bone"

Best Performance By An Actor in a Supporting Role: John Hawkes for "Winter's Bone"

Best Performance By An Actress in a Supporting Role: Jacki Weaver for "Animal Kingdom"

Best Achievement in Directing: Tom Hooper for "The King's Speech" (though both Alejandro González Iñárritu and Debra Granik deserved nominations for "Biutiful" and "Winter's Bone" and both are more deserving)

(Bad nominations: Darren Aronofsky for "Black Swan" and David Fincher for "The Social Network")

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen: David Seidler for "The King's Speech" (though Iñárritu and his co-writers deserved a nomination and win in this category)

(Bad nominations: Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg for "The Kids are All Right")

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published: Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini for "Winter's Bone"

(Bad nominations: Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy for "127 Hours" and Aaron Sorkin for "The Social Network")

Best Animated Feature Film: "How To Train Your Dragon" (though I also loved "Toy Story 3"

Best Foreign Language Film: "Biutiful"

(Should have been nominated: "Of Gods and Men" from France and "The Light Thief" from Kyrgyzstan.)

(Bad nominations: "In a Better World" and "Incendies." I have not been able to screen the other two nominees.)

Best Achievement in Cinematography: True Grit (Roger Deakins)

SIXTH AND PENULTIMATE PIFF BATCH

2011-02-23T21:18:00.000-08:00

The weather is making the rest of my film festival plans look a bit uncertain--and in any event, I won't blog the rest of the films until after Sunday, when I intend to post my list of the top films of 2010. For now, here's what I've seen since last Sunday:

"Katalin Varga" (8) is a powerful depiction of destruction wrought by a series of acts of punishment and vengeance. When Katalin's husband learns the secret that she has been keeping from him--that their 11-year-old son is not biologically his--he calls her a whore and casts out her and the boy. With only a horse and buggy (and telling her son that they are going to visit his grandmother), Katalin and her son venture out into rural Transylvania on a quest to find the man who brutally raped her. She intends to exact vengeance herself, but with tragic consequences. Although set in modern times, the makeshift nature of Katalin's transportation and the rustic Romanian setting gives the story a sort of mythic quality. Beautiful, chilling, and spare, this powerful film left me unsettled and pondering the meaning of justice. The very skillful work of a first-time filmmaker. (In Hungarian and Romanian.)

I'm of two minds about "The Man Who Will Come" (6), an Italian film that depicts a particularly tragic part of World War II history through the eyes of a compelling child heroine. On the one hand, the girl at the center--mute since her baby brother's death--is absolutely wonderful, scrambling unchecked over the hills of her little village and observing gravely her father's toils, her pregnant mother's worrying, and the plotting and escalation of violence between local rebels and the occupying Nazis. As the situation worsens, both she and the adults around her must spring into increasingly desperate action, and all this is well-played and compelling to watch. However, it culminates in scenes of civilian slaughter (upsetting but also a little prettier than they should have been) that I ultimately felt like I didn't really need to see. I have seen a lot of films about atrocities (including at this festival) and am willing to go there if I feel like I understand the filmmaker's reason for taking me there. In this particular case, other than the opportunity to depict a tragedy, I didn't. (In Italian and German.)

"Eastern Plays" (5), a decorated Bulgarian film, is worth seeing as a window into Eastern European culture. It's a well-made film about disaffected youth, focusing on a teenager who falls in with a group of skinheads and, more interestingly, on his older brother Itso, an artist who scrapes by on a carpentry work and appears to be on a regimen of methadone and alcohol. Itso is mostly drunk and morose and mean to his girlfriend--until he intervenes in his brother's gang's attack on a family of Turkish tourists and develops a connection with a young Turkish woman. The film has its moments but, ultimately, drifted and left me feeling disaffected. (In Bulgarian, Turkish, and English.)

I won't be surprised to see a Hollywood remake of "The Double Hour" (3.5), since this Italian film is the type of bauble which audiences seem to love but I find empty and irritating. It's a twisty story about an improbably beautiful hotel maid whose new romance with a hot former cop whom she met on a speed date is cut short by tragic events that leave her reeling and, possibly, a bit confused. To me, the plot felt manipulative and contrived, and the connection between the maid and the former cop is just there because the movie says it is. I didn't care about anyone in the film and was especially irritated by a gratuitous suicide early on and a gratuitous sex scene later, both prime evidence of a filmmaker who can't be trusted. Plus, the whole "double hour" thing has no content. But if you like this sort of thing . . . . (In Italian and Spanish.)

FIFTH PIFF BATCH - including two fine documentaries you can still see.

2011-02-19T23:54:00.000-08:00

Of the eight films I saw in the past two days, six were excellent. That's some pretty good odds! And you can still catch a couple of them at the festival.

The best of the weekend was "How to Die in Oregon" (10), which recently won the award for best documentary at Sundance. The director, Oregonian Peter Richardson, is particularly skilled at handling difficult and polarizing subjects; his first film, "Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon," waded into a live controversy in Oregon's timber country and managed to present both sides' views in a way that exposed each's merits and weaknesses. This time, however, rather than seeking to portray the polarized views of those for and against Oregon's ground-breaking death-with-dignity law, Richardson set out to do something more delicate: he explores the stories of people who are making the choice to use the law. When I asked him about that choice after the screening today, he noted that the controversy has been well-aired, but these stories have not been fully explored; he knew he had the capacity to do so and felt a sense of calling to try. After watching Richardson's sensitive film, I was not surprised to hear him refer to a sense of calling. With the great empathy and care that such stories demand, Richardson follows the journeys of several people who contemplated taking advantage of the legal permission to take a lethal dose of barbiturate (not all of them ended up doing so), and thereby greatly deepens public conversation about death and dying. Much of the film focuses on ten months in the life of Cody Curtis, a lovely Portland woman in her early-50s, walking through the painful process of confronting limited options left to her by a recurrence of liver cancer. Richardson's months of being on-call to ride the waves of terminal illness with Curtis and others are, in the end, a gift to the world, a filmmaker's ministry of presence yielding a film that, while agonizing at times to watch, is also quite moving and life-affirming, in the way of all such clear-eyed work. His film equips those who are willing to be similarly present, and similarly clear-eyed. (Plays once more on Monday night; advance tickets are sold out but if you're determined, you may still be able to catch same-day tickets. The film also may have a limited theatrical release and will eventually air on HBO.)

This was the weekend for documentaries; I saw three more that I also recommend. My next favorite was "Louder Than a Bomb" (8), an inspiring look at a Chicago slam poetry competition by the same name that draws students from scores of high schools all over the city. In the tradition of "Spellbound" and "Mad Hot Ballroom," the film follows four schools' preparations for the big competition, the largest youth poetry slam in the world and one that uniquely requires the participants to participate in teams rather than as individuals. The experience is a life-changer for many students, so many of whom are society's cast-offs. More than the competition, the film inspires as an example of the power of words and creativity to lift people up; the poetry here demands to be heard and is a testament to the strength of these students' spirits, and to the teachers who invest in helping them find their voices. Totally irresistible. (Playing once more on Monday.)

"The Arbor" (8) makes use of a particularly bold artistic choice to bring to life the story of a complicated working class community. In 1980, Andrea Dunbar, a teenage single mother from a poor Yorkshire housing project called the Arbor, remarkably drew on her own life to write two plays (and later a screenplay--"Rita, Sue and Bob Too") that shone the light of truth on a hardscrabble part of British culture. A decade of hard living and neglectful parenting later, Dunbar was dead at age 29, leaving behind three children and a legacy of suffering. This hybrid documentary is built around two years of interviews with members of Dunbar's family who shed often contradictory light on her life in its larger context--but the filmmaker then had actors lip-sync the recordings, allowing them to be more artfully staged. It's an interesting choice, a sort of two-pronged attack that aims to bring the truth to more vivid life. I thought it wholly succeeded; family truth is hard to come by, and the stagings also reverberate with Dunbar's own method for bringing her culture to life. In fact, portions of her plays are also restaged in the film at the setting of the Arbor. It's particularly interesting to see the difference in memory and perspective of her two daughters, and to think about what explains those differences and whether both can be true.

Finally, in "Russian Lessons" (7), a Russian couple, Andrei Nekrasov and Olga Konskaya, explore the truth beyond the 2008 war between Russian and Georgia. The two already had been researching Russian-Georgian relations when the war broke out, and already had reason to distrust what was reported in the Russian press,. Determined to find the truth while it was happening, the two entered Georgia from opposite sides and reported what they saw--which was that Russia was the aggressor, ruthlessly wiping out whole Georgian towns and then manipulating images of Georgian victims to spread the story that Russian troops merely responded to Georgian aggression. The Putin government's appalling efforts to manipulate world public opinion is helped by disinterested Western media. The story is complicated and demands some work from the viewer, but the valiant efforts of this couple to bring the truth to light demand respect for their subject. (In Georgian and English; plays again Monday afternoon.)

I also saw two very worthy fictional films. The director and writer of "The Light Thief" (7.5) , Aktan Arym Kubat, also stars as Svet-ake, or "Mr. Light," a local hero in his small impoverished village in Kyrgyzstan for finding ingenious ways to connect the villagers to electricity that they can't otherwise afford. Of course, this lands him in trouble with the local police--and one senses from the reaction of his wife that this is not uncommon for Svet-ake. Their relationship and family life are especially sweet--they clearly love each other and their four daughters (though he longs for a son), but the combination of Svet-ake's renegade ways and his essentially trusting nature regularly imperil the family and worry his wife. The story perceptively conveys how those with money often acquire it by exploiting people--and they often target the poorest communities. Though not a saint, Svet-ake consistently acts out of a sort of pure-heartedness that can get a person killed. He is affable and determined and visionary; though people scoff, he has some ideas for how to harvest enough wind power to light the whole community. The problem is, benefit to a community isn't enough to power a good idea; the scheme with momentum behind it is promoted by a greedy developer who eerily uses visionary-sounding rhetoric about past exploitation of the community to persuade people to allow him to exploit them yet again. Featuring beautiful cinematography and haunting Kyrgyz music, the film offers not only an arresting view of Kyrgyz culture but also some real insights into the mechanics of oppression, couched in a powerful metaphor. Who exactly is the light thief here?

"My Tehran For Sale" (7) is yet another worthy tale of oppression. Shot in secret in Tehran, it tells the story of Marzieh, a young actress whose livelihood and, indeed, her entire personality are likewise driven underground. The risks of filming in secret are apparent in the jailing of other Iranian directors (including the director of "The White Meadows," which remains my favorite film of the festival so far)--and it's pretty clear that the Iranian government would not take kindly to this story. The benefits, though, of filming in Tehran are clear--the filmmaker immerses us in a culture that we in the U.S. have little occasion to observe up close. The truth that emerges here is complex--Marzieh's entire way of being is antithetical to Iranian society, and she must live in the shadows, shunned by her family and at risk of serious punishment for so much as attending a party. We later see her struggling to make a case for asylum in the West; Westerner don't even know what questions to ask to determine that someone is in genuine peril. A penetrating window into a world of people forced to live a double lives in their own country.

The first of the two films I don't recommend is "Last Report on Anna" (3), which takes as its subject a former Hungarian government minister, Anna Kéthly, who was forced into exile after the failure of the 1956 revolution. The film is set mostly in the 1970s, when the young nephew of her former lover (working for the Hungarian government) attempts to persuade her to return to Hungary in order to neutralize her influence abroad. The problem is that the story is told in a completely ham-fisted way; flashbacks to Anna's political speeches seem overglamorized and the government plot as depicted here seems way too obvious to succeed, yet this supposedly brilliant woman falls for it for romantic reasons. Whatever the story is here, this film doesn't tell it in a believable way. (In Hungarian, English, and French.)

"7 Days in Slow Motion" (3) is harmless enough but is clumsy in just about every way. It centers on a movie-obsessed boy growing up in upper middle-class India who sets out to make his own film when a video camera literally falls off a passing truck. The kids in the film are cute, but they can't really act--nor can the adults, for that matter. And the story starts out silly and unravels from there, setting up several faux problems and then solving them all in the period of seven movie days. Though it's intermittently entertaining and elicited lots of laughs from the audience I was in, I'd class it with poor Disney films like "Cheaper By the Dozen." (Mostly in subtitled English.)

FOURTH PIFF BATCH--INCLUDING ONE TO CATCH THIS WEEKEND

2011-02-19T00:41:00.000-08:00

You still have a chance to see "Boy" (8) on Saturday night at 8:15 p.m., and it's worth the effort. It was a crowd pleaser in New Zealand, and it's easy to see why; I can't think of a film that does a better job of depicting life from a kid's perspective--and, at the same time, walking a line of humor and poignancy that is pretty hard to pull off. Set in 1984, the story centers around an 11-year-old Maori boy named Alamein, called Boy, whose thumbnail version of his life offered to his class as school is filled with love of Michael Jackson and tales of the heroic dad he never sees. His mother is dead and he lives with his grandmother, his observant six-year-old brother Rocky (especially wonderful), and an array of younger cousins. When Boy's grandmother leaves town for several days to attend a funeral, he is left in charge of the household--and then his long-lost dad returns. His name, too, is Alamein, but he prefers to be called "Shogun" and, far from living up to Boy's fantasy of him, dad is a petty criminal, an idiot, and in no way father material. That doesn't blunt Boy's admiration of him though; dad's ideals are pitched right at an 11-year-old maturity level, and the film does a great job of depicting how kids see what they want to see and block out the rest. Dad is hilariously played by the film's writer-director, Taika Waititi, who does a masterful job of conveying what a loser dad is and how hurtful he is as a parent, but yet making him likable and fun. The tone throughout is playful while still evoking worry for the kids, and the children playing Boy and Rocky are terrific. To top it off, the evocation of the '80's is spot-on. A joy from start to finish-- and be sure to stick around for the credits, which include a delightful surprise.

I was not so enamored with "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" (3), which bafflingly won the Palme D'or at Cannes in 2010, awarded by a jury headed by Tim Burton. Ostensibly about a man whose last illness seems to be inspiring visits from all manner of inhabitants of the spirit world (including the wife who died 19 years ago and the son who seems to have been transformed into a red-eyed monkey god for no apparent reason), it is so frustratingly opaque that I couldn't find anything to grab onto. And my brain simply could not make sense of the disparate forays into what is supposed to be the spirit world--including, most inexplicably, a woman having an orgasm with a catfish. It was downright irritating to have to listen to people afterwards comment admiringly on how hypnotic it all was; the only thing hypnotic about it was that it made me very sleepy. (In Thai.)

THIRD PIFF BATCH

2011-02-16T00:22:00.001-08:00

Here are the films I've seen since Sunday, ranked from best to worst:

"The Woodmans" (9) was so intriguing that, if it plays at Full Frame this year, I am likely to see it again, especially if the filmmaker is in attendance. It's a restrained and skillful examination of a family of artists--parents Betty (a ceramicist) and George (a painter and photographer) and their children Charlie (a video artist) and Francesca (a photographer). Francesca committed suicide in 1981 at the age of 22, and since her death her haunting black-and-white photos, many nude self-portraits, have been hailed as among the best photo art of the 20th century. Although the film includes interviews with Francesca's friends, most of it consists of her parents talking. The filmmaker makes no judgment of them, and lets them--and Francesca's photos, which are heavily featured in the film, along with excerpts from her journals--speak for themselves. It's possible to appreciate the film as a fascinating exploration of the world of artists--but I walked out of the film absolutely amazed at how little affection her parents express for their ridiculously talented and also tormented daughter, and how prominent is their envy of her posthumous success. In a post-film discussion with a friend who saw it with me, both of us became quite convinced that the parents were classic "people of the lie" (a term coined by M. Scott Peck in his book of the same title)--that is, extreme narcissists who are shockingly unable to see anything but the view of themselves they want to hold and will sacrifice anything to get. See it and draw your own conclusion--but I was struck by how little genuine sadness they showed, except for themselves, and how little genuine concern for Francesca. It seemed to me they were aptly named.

"Certified Copy" (7.5), too, is quite intriguing. The work of a celebrated Iranian director, Abbas Kiarostami, and set in Tuscany, it explores the themes of art and authenticity by means, mostly, of a conversation between a British author and a French antiques dealer played the luminous Juliette Binoche, who won the award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. He has come to Italy to promote a book about the value of copied art, and then spends a day driving and walking and talking with the French woman. In format, the film is much like "Before Sunset"--but it actually is a bit more challenging; as the film progresses, you are never sure in which part of the conversation you had the right impression about the nature of their relationship. Are they strangers playing the part of a couple, or are they a couple playing the part of strangers? Would the literal answer be authentic or just a convincing copy of the truth? Binoche especially (as usual) is a marvel to watch, and the film beguiles by leaving you with the questions rather than answering them. (In French, Italian, and English.)

"Poetry" (7) really made me work, but is a thoughtful and interesting film if you're up for it. Its director, Lee Chang-dong, seems to be interested in themes involving intractable oppression and people whose experience is ignored in dominant Korean culture, including the disabled. (His film "Oasis," a very challenging love story about two disabled people, made it onto my top-ten list the year it came out.) Here his subject is Mija, a chatty woman in her sixties who seems to be floating through her life--until she learns, to her horror, that the grandson who she is parenting has been serially raping a classmate with a group of his friends, leading the classmate to commit suicide. As the fathers of the others boys rush to protect them from the consequences of their behavior, they do not really give Mija a choice about participating, one of many examples in the film of the intractability of male privilege. Experiencing the early stages of dementia herself, Mija walks through much of the film in a sort of stupor, apparently reeling from all the unthinkable things she is experiencing and can't seem to impact. Her impulse to take a poetry class seems random--but over time, it gives her a way to make sense of her experience, to find a new language for it, and to find the means of self-determination. The film was a bit of a slog, perhaps due to cultural characteristics that were new to me, but ultimately I could see how it garnered the prize for Best Screenplay at Cannes. (In Korean; playing on 2/19 and 2/21.)

The audience was obviously enthralled with "The First Grader" (5), so much so that I won't be surprised if it wins an audience award. It left me somewhat unsatisfied, however. It is based on the true story of an 84-year-old farmer, Maruge, who sought to take the Kenyan government up on its offer of free education for all, in the face of fierce opposition from locals who didn't like the idea of resources being wasted on such an old man. He is well-played here by Oliver Litondo, and the film also features a good performance from Naomie Harris (who you may recognize from the "Pirates of the Carribean" movies) as the head of the local school who alienates the locals and her own husband when she fights for Maruge's right to stay in school. The problem is that the film really doesn't do a good job of illuminating why the opposition was so fierce. There are allusions to tribal divisions and to baseless local suspicions that Maruge, who became a media darling, was getting some kind of pay-off that he should have been sharing with the community. And there are some flashbacks to brutality that Maruge suffered at the hands of the British, including the murder of his wife and children. But the film seems satisfied to settled for stock villains whose motives don't seem to go beyond inexplicable meanness, and the British history seems to serve to make only the rather rudimentary point that the locals should have been more grateful to Maruge because they owed their freedom to him. It was frustrating to me to see evidence of so many more interesting stories, and to have the filmmakers (and the audience) settle for such a simplistic one. (In English and unnamed African languages.)

"If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle" (5) really had me going for awhile. It starts out to be a terrific exercise in Romanian realistic cinema, with a charismatic young man at its center. Eighteen-year-old Silviu (George Pistereanu) has spent the last four years in a decrepit juvenile detention center, and is two weeks away from his release. His younger brother Marius (who looks like he is maybe 11 or 12) comes to visit, and tells him that their no-account mother, who apparently abandoned the boys years before, has returned and wants to take Marius with her to Italy. This sends Silviu into an at-first believable tailspin--he begins to break prison rules and take big risks, jeopardizing his release, out of anger and a desperate need to prevent the break-up of his family. Pistereanu is riveting as Silviu; his intensity and rage, and his affection for his brother, are moving to see. Even without a lot of detail (this film is planted firmly in the present), Silviu's anger at his mother seems to spring from a real place. The incompetence and randomness of prison discipline (favorite themes in Romanian cinema) are also well-portrayed. Unfortunately, the whole thing unravels into an ill-conceived hostage drama in the last half, squandering the film's gritty immediacy and realism. (In Romanian.)

Finally, "Steam of Life" (4) failed to move me, though the premise sounded tailor-made for an authenticity junkie like myself. It's a documentary that takes as its simple premise that stoic Finnish men are strangely willing to open up when naked in a sauna. Apparently saunas are so popular in Finland that men create them inside even old campers and phone booths--and once the sweat is pouring, they share their sad tales with each other with abandon. The problem here is that the stories themselves, mostly sad tales of loss and heartache, aren't told in a very engaging or illuminating way. No one is more sympathetic to heartache than I am--but I'd hope that a film with this premise would do something more interesting with it, either by mining the stories for more interesting truths, or by perhaps filming the stories in a more interesting way. It felt to me like the filmmakers didn't know how to find the potential in their concept. (In Finnish.)

PIFF--A MIXED SECOND BATCH OF FILMS

2011-02-13T09:27:00.000-08:00

The weekend spanned the gamut from great to terrible. Here's my report:

The best of the bunch was "The White Meadows" (10), the work of Iranian director and screenwriter Mohammad Rasoulof, who currently is a prisoner of his government. I have never seen anything like this mesmerizing film. It follows Rahmat, an older man who travels between salty white islands on a bleached sea, visiting scenes of despair and cruelty, listening to people's heartaches and collecting their tears in a tiny pitcher. He treats these tears as precious; it is rumored that he turns them into pearls, and perhaps in some sense he does. He encounters a succession of preventable tragedies: a beautiful young woman, buried in salt, whose death is unexplained but is seen as a relief because she made the men in the village tremble; a village whose inhabitants are enacting a strange and brutal ritual to appease a fairy who they believe holds the power to address their sorrows; a young virgin whose village sacrifices her to the sea in hopes of obtaining rain; a man whose village is punishing him for choosing the wrong color to paint the sea. In each case, Rahmat serves as a nonjudgmental witness, carefully collecting and preserving the tears of the lost and the suffering. Gorgeously shot, the film kept our audience absolutely spellbound. Full of metaphors that are simultaneously clear and enigmatic, it seems, at the least, a parable about the brutality wrought by corrosive collective thought. You can still catch it in Portland on Monday--and so far it's the best I've seen. I expect it will end up on next year's ten best list. (In Iranian; showing again 2/14)

I also loved "A Family" (8), a Danish film that deals very sensitively with issues of family, legacy, and mortality. Ditte, a successful young woman who runs an art gallery in Copenhagen, has just been offered her dream job in New York. She's the eldest and apparently the favorite of the four children of Rikard, who is the last in a line of prosperous bakers, proud purveyors to the Royal Court. Ditte's life is thrown into upheaval by the news that her powerful father is dying of an incurable illness. She is the most like her strong father, and each does combat with the question of the meaning of her father's legacy and what Ditte's loyalty to him demands of her. The other members of the family, too, are fully realized: each struggles differently; each behaves badly according to the extremes of his or her essential character, and then each, at least partially, rights himself or herself. It's painful and poignant to watch, but an absorbing portrait of how people who are basically healthy and good but also flawed cope with the inevitable human tragedy. And an array of wonderful performances is topped by Jesper Christenson's insightful depiction of a man's fight with his own death. (In Danish and English; playing again on Monday night, during the same slot as "The White Meadows").

The last of my recommended films from this batch is "Of Gods and Men" (8), the French film that won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes last year. It is based on the true story of a group of French monks in Algeria who found themselves threatened by Muslim extremists rebelling against a corrupt government. The group of men, aged from their fifties to their eighties, have lived peacefully among a poor group of Muslim villagers for decades, and are genuinely and rightly afraid of what fate may befall them. The film very respectfully captures their religious practice and also their struggle as individuals and as a community to carry out their principles of faith when put to the test. I was surprised to see later that some reviews suggested they did not seem to be fearful and were portrayed as too heroic; to me the monks seemed quite human, their fear apparent, and their struggle instructive. The film is filled with scripture and beautiful chants sung by the monks as part of their religious practice, especially moving when you know they are anguish. A rare cinematic experience of inspiration. (In French and Arabic; may well get a theatrical release soon.)

Now to the other end of the spectrum. "Son of Babylon" (4), from Iran, depicts the journey of a 12-year-old (who seems more like 8 or 9 years old) and his grandmother across Iraq right after Saddam Hussein is toppled, in search of the boy's father. The cinematography is intermittently compelling in capturing scenes of desolation, but the story seems somewhat half-baked, as though the main characters are just types rather than fully fleshed-out individuals. And the acting, especially by the boy and his grandmother, seems pretty bad, unless Iraqis commonly yell at each other even when they are not angry. (In Kurdish and Arabic.)

"Barbershop Punk" (3.5) is a U.S.-made documentary about Robb Tolposki, a Hillsboro, Oregon software engineer who discovered, while trying to share his collection of barbershop quartet recordings, that Comcast was secretly blocking his uploads. Tolposki's experience sparked a debate about media corporations' attempts to control free expression. Unfortunately, the film's talking-heads format is dull and not very illuminating, especially since a lot of the interview subjects (including Tolposki himself) either speak in clichés or talk like geeks (or both). (Playing again on Thursday, 2/17.)

Finally, it is beyond me how "Incendies" (2) could have scored an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film given any number of much finer qualifying films. The action in this Canadian film about family secrets veers back and forth from the present day to a woman's life in Lebanon in the 1970s. In the present, the woman has left a will which sadistically involves her young-adult children in her painful past. I'll admit that the acting is fine and the story diverting--until in the last half an hour the story spirals and left me feeling angry. For all the time the film spends in Lebanon, you never really learn much about the political context that drove the mother, and the film's big revelations feel forced and manipulative. Note to the Academy: just because a story is complicated doesn't make it good, people. Sheesh. (In French and Arabic.)

2011 PIFF BEGINS!

2011-02-09T10:27:00.000-08:00

It's one of my favorite times of the year--the Portland International Film Festival is in town. Every year I up the ante and try to see more films and this year I may approach 40 films--we'll see! I intend to blog everything I'm seeing, even if the entries are brief; many of these films will make it back around to theaters and the ones that don't often show up on Netflix, so hopefully I'll be able to scope out stuff that you might otherwise miss.

I attended the opening film tonight and also have managed to catch several preview screenings, so here's what I've seen so far:

The opening film, "Potiche" (6), wasn't really my cup of tea, but I give the filmmakers some credit for carrying through on a (rather simple) idea in fine style. It's a comic jab at French society, with Catherine Deneuve as Suzanne, the always cheerful, perfectly coiffed wife of a cartoonish philandering husband who treats her (and everyone else) like complete idiots but is himself driving into the ground the umbrella factory that she inherited from her father. Everyone thinks of her as a "potiche" (basically, a decorative object)--until the stress of a strike wrecks her husband's health and she must take over the company. It turns out that she's a stylish and humane leader, and also her own person; I liked that the film doesn't concentrate on just putting her with a different guy (Gerard Depardieu has fun playing her easily wounded ex-lover, whom she keeps lightly rebuffing). Overall, though, the film never elicited more than a smile from me.

The best of the preview films was "La Pivellina" (7), an Austrian production set in Italy. It's codirectors, an Austrian and an Italian, here make their first foray into fiction after directing documentaries, and the realistic tone of their film reflects that background. The story involves an older middle-aged couple who are small-time itinerant circus performers living in a trailer outside Rome and getting by on occasional small jobs and smaller audiences. One day, while out searching for her missing dog, the woman comes upon an abandoned toddler in an empty park. She stays with the youngster for awhile, but when no one shows up to claim her she takes the child home and discovers inside her jacket a note from the girl's mother, pleading whoever finds the girl not to call the police and promising to return for the child. Although the woman's husband worries that they should involve the police sooner rather than later, their long experience with living on the fringe (not to mention their pity and affection for the child) fuels their reluctance to involve the authorities. So, they keep the girl and treat her as one of their family, fully intending to return her should her mother reappear. The film has no real plot, but simply follows the lives of these outsiders, and the bonds of affection and resourcefulness that make their lives go. The directors' observant eyes and handheld camera work, and their ability to coax wonderful performances out of a cast of mostly non-actors (including the toddler), makes for one of the more absorbing exercises in neorealism that I've seen. (In Italian; playing on 2/14, 2/16, and 2/17)

I was slightly disappointed in "Kawasaki's Rose" (6), the latest film of a Czech director, Jan Hrebjek, whose other films (especially "Divided We Fall" and "Beauty in Trouble") have managed to tell compelling political stories with a lot of insight. Here he tackles a story of how the Czech Republic's Communist past led even some of its best citizens to compromises that are not well understood decades later. It's a compelling theme, but the treatment here is more melodramatic than illuminating. The plot involves a revered Czech dissident whose scoundrel of a son-in-law, a filmmaker, thinks he has uncovered pay dirt that reveals the elder is not such a hero. I like stories like this, but this one felt like a slog to me; we hear the different characters talk about what they think happened but none of their perspectives is particularly reliable and the differences between them is interesting but doesn't lead beyond the predictable. (In Czech and Swedish; playing on 2/11, 2/13, and 2/14)

I was even more disappointed in "Human Resources Manager" (4), an Israeli film that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. It follows a workaholic human resources manager in a large Jerusalem bakery who gets stuck cleaning up the mess when one of his employees, a Romanian immigrant, is killed in a suicide bomb and sits in the morgue for several days when no one can identify her. Somehow (I never quite understood how but everyone seemed to agree) this is the bakery's fault, because no one missed the woman when she didn't show for work. The reason, though, is that the night manager on her shift fired her because he was in love with her and his wife found out, but he kept her on the payroll. A tabloid picks up the story, and the manager then embarks on a publicity trip to return her body to her family in Romania. It seems like there might be the elements of an interesting story here, maybe involving anonymous immigrants to Israel or the lasting effects of Soviet militarism in Eastern Europe. But beyond some stock characters (the workaholic manager who neglects his family, the woman's angry teenage son, her rustic home villagers) and disparate whimsical elements (including a trip in a repurposed Soviet tank), the filmmaker doesn't appear to have a point anywhere. At least I couldn't find it. (In Hebrew, English, and Romanian; playing on 2/12 and 2/13)

Although I have admired other films of Danish filmmaker Susanne Biers ("After the Wedding" and "Brothers"), her most recent film, "In A Better World" (6) is not up to their level, and definitely did not deserve the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film (particularly against the far superior "Biutiful," which also is up against it for the Oscar and is, in my view, the best film of the year). Although the performances are all fine, the screenplay seems driven more by a desire to be provocative than by actual insight into how human beings work. The plot involves two Danish families with middle-school-age sons, Christian and Elias; Christian channels his rage at his mother's death into an excuse to take vengeance against bullies, including the one tormenting Elias. The relationship between the two boys has its moments, as does the relationship between Elias and his father, a principled doctor who makes regular trips to treat refugees of tribal warfare in Africa. But the bully theme is laid on with a trowel; besides the school bully, Elias's father encounters adult bullies both at home and abroad, and tries to model non-violent principles for his son, who finds them unsatisfying and is drawn to Christian's more vengeful approach. These dilemmas (and a few more thrown in for good measure--the separation of Elias's parents and Christian's anger at his father) are real as far as they go, but aren't depicted with much nuance, and the resolution of all of them at the end is pretty unsatisfying, as though it was simply time to end the movie. (In Danish, Swedish, and English; playing on 2/20 and 2/21)

The worst of the preview screenings was "The Whistleblower" (2), a Canadian film "inspired by" the story of Kathy Bolkovac (played here by Rachel Weisz), an American police officer who went to work as a peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia and uncovered a brutal sex trafficking ring that was facilitated by UN peacekeepers themselves. I don't know what it is about sex trafficking that seems to make filmmakers think they can get by with such dishonest storytelling (maybe it's the whole righteous indignation thing)., but this is the second PIFF film I've seen on the subject that I think does more harm than good to an important topic. (The other is "Trade" from 2007.) I don't have any trouble believing that things this awful happen and that people high up in the power structure are involved. But the fact that the villainy here is so evil does not give the filmmakers license to lie and be manipulative to hammer their point home--in fact, the more complex and terrible the story, the more important it is to be truthful in the depiction of motive and dialogue and political mechanics. The real Bolkovac is listed as a consultant to the film and I don't doubt that she saw some horrible things--but she entrusted her story to the wrong filmmakers. Although, if she is as big of a naive idiot as depicted in the film, then she probably doesn't realize that. (Primarily in English; playing on 2/18, 2/20, and 2/21)

As you can see, I haven't been thrilled with most of the films I've seen so far--which means the best is yet to come!

A CROWD-PLEASER, AND TWO THAT SOME WILL APPRECIATE

2011-01-15T17:56:00.000-08:00

If there is one film that is likely to have universal appeal this awards season, it's "The King's Speech" (10), a stirring depiction of the struggles of King George VI (the current Queen Elizabeth's father) to overcome a stutter so that he can assume the public persona demanded of him. It is directed by Tom Hooper, whose brilliant cable series "John Adams" was one of the richest treatments of history I have ever seen on film. As with that series, in "The King's Speech" history becomes intimate, personal, immediate, and relevant; we find ourselves identifying with people (a British monarch and his wife) whose lives don't remotely resemble the lives of most of the audience.

The film is observant about how class affects what is possible and what can be seen. Bertie is trapped by his class, yet insists upon the trap. Lionel is a no-account Australian (!) with no credentials and is seen as not deserving of any deference. His attitude toward class distinctions seems disrespectful and, in one sense, it is--and yet, in another sense, he is offering Bertie a more genuine respect. The contrast is especially apparent when it comes time for Bertie's coronation, and we see the difference between the "deference" shown to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the kindness and patience shown by Lionel. By then, Bertie insists on respect for Lionel, something only Bertie can enforce.

The film is anchored by three resonant performances. Colin Firth is just the person to play a quietly troubled but stolid monarch; it is no small feat to so grippingly convey the pain of a stutter, and also to pull off the very clipped way of speaking that was formerly common but has long since fallen out of fashion in Britain. Firth conveys Bertie's depths less with words than with the resolute set of his jaw, the pain in his eyes, the sense that his voice is not his own. Geoffrey Rush captures the sense that Lionel is comfortable with what he recognizes as his own awkwardness, compelled by the sense of what he sees and can demonstrate but can't always explain. And Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth is at her best as a woman who chooses to be cheerful and resolute and always quite appropriate, even while she is in agony over the suffering of the good man she loves.

The other two films I have to recommend are definitely not for everyone, but will intrigue a few of you. "Marwencol" (8.5) is not exactly entertaining, but it is certainly fascinating and challenging. It's a documentary about a very unique lost soul, Mark Hogancamp, who suffered profound memory loss and a personality change after being beaten nearly to death in a bar fight in his small New York town. Before the beating, he was a raging drunk who also loved to draw (mostly violent characters); after, he has no interest in alcohol but also can't really work; his insurance benefits didn't begin to cover the amount of rehabilitation he needed. Although he can no longer draw, the latent artist in him drives Hogancamp to devise his own therapy, the creation of a startingly life-like miniature world populated by Barbies, G.I. Joes, and other dolls that he dresses and poses to look like very convincing characters based on people he actually knows. He names the town that he devises Marwencol and makes it the center of a WWII drama, in which his alter ego is the hero and which has its own social norms and complex story lines. He photographs Marwencol and its inhabitants from artistic angles that require him to painstakingly pose the figures and to physically enter the world itself--and the photographs are so good that he is invited to exhibit them in Greenwich Village. I cannot possibly prepare you for the strangeness of it all--the world Hogancamp creates is eerily complete, and he is strangely lucid and forthcoming about how his nearly constant work on devising Marwencol absorbs and heals him, even while he seems quite childlike. The film is sort of a map of a human soul that will leave you ruminating for days.

"Tiny Furniture" (8) is the work of 23-year-old writer-director Lena Dunham, who also stars as 22-year-old Aura, just returned from college to move back home with her successful artist mother and younger sister in their Tribeca loft. Dunham cast her own mother and sister to play fictionalized versions of themselves and filmed it in their family home, and the film is filled with very knowing and often cringe-worthy dialogue for its self-involved characters, which also include two bad boyfriends and a flamboyant vixen of a female friend. There isn't much of a plot; rather, the film seeks to mine the dilemma of a recent grad who hasn't quite grown into her education (similar to how gangly middle-schoolers take awhile to grow into their adolescent bodies). I liked this film much better in retrospect than I did while watching it--Aura and her friends are insufferable and frequently deserved a good slap. But I have chuckled to myself since then, remembering how aptly Dunham has depicted a sort of lost self-absorption that is common to people of her generation. And despite my irritation, in the end I did sympathize with Aura's struggle to adapt to a world that promised her things it can't really deliver. I also appreciated Dunham's willingness to look like a real-life, doughy girl with a rather ill-advised wardrobe, in contrast to the usual stick-thin, stylist-dressed movie population. Dunham describes herself as "self-absorbed but not vain," which also somewhat describes her film. I think in the end that vibe made it delightful.

MOVIE SEASON BEGINS!

2010-12-25T22:37:00.000-08:00

It's been longer than normal since I last posted--and not because I haven't seen anything noteworthy. "Animal Kingdom" (10), a heart-pounding depiction of a teenager's dawning comprehension of just how dangerous his crime family really is, will most certainly end up on my top-ten list and is by far the best work of fiction I've seen since I last posted. "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" (8) is an absolutely fresh and delightful riff on video-game culture. I've also seen a host of good documentaries: "Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer," (10) is the best work yet of director Alex Gibney (who also directed "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" and won an Oscar for "Taxi to the Darkside"); it probes all the right questions and makes sense of an extremely complicated story. It's a good companion to "Inside Job" (9), a bracing and helpful examination of the global financial crisis which also features Spitzer (who spotted some of what was happening long before the news broke). "The Tillman Story" (9) is an absorbing account of the Bush administration's exploitation of an ex-football player's death by so-called "friendly fire." And "Breath Made Visible" (8), a documentary about the amazing Anna Halpern, a visionary of post-modern dance, inspired me with her persistent creativity in pushing against boundaries that are viewed as immutable.

Now, at long last, Oscar bait is hitting the theaters, and some of it promises actually to be good. I've seen two so far that I highly recommend. The first is "True Grit" (10), the latest from Joel and Ethan Coen. It's not so much a remake of the John Wayne-Glen Campbell vehicle from 1969 as it is a new adaptation of the novel that inspired both films. Not having read the novel, I can't really comment on which is a more faithful adaptation (though I understand from other critics that the Coens win on that score). What I can say is that the new film has it all: it's funny and warm and spare and colorful and, to me, inspiring in all the right ways.

To begin with, the casting is inspired. Matt Damon is delightful as La Boeuf (which he hilariously pronounces "La Beef"), a Texas ranger whose exaggerated pride makes him into a buffoon--until he turns out to be quite brave and true. Damon manages to make La Boeuf laughable while still imbuing him with dignity. Jeff Bridges far outdoes his Oscar-winning turn in "Crazy Heart" (the Coens have, of course, written him a much better part) as Rooster Cogburn, an unredeemable cuss who is half drunk most of the time and doesn't care what anyone else thinks, but whose unparalleled instinct and determination kicks in in a crisis. And newcomer Hailee Steinfeld shines as 14-year-old Mattie Ross, the determined girl who hires Cogburn to hunt down her father's killer and fully intends to come along and help him finish the job. It took me a bit to decide how I felt about her clipped line readings--but ultimately I thought she perfectly captured the assuredness of a Victorian-era girl who has done her learning from books and also from observation that most adults don't live up to their billing. Her Mattie is determined without being cocky; she simply knows what she knows. She chooses Cogburn for the job over a candidate who comes more highly recommended, uncannily spotting in him what she rightly senses is needed: true grit.

The chief inspiration I drew from the film was its depiction of that rare and precious thing. It shows three characters who you wouldn't necessarily want on your side--an arrogant buffoon, a profligate drunkard, and a preturnaturally confident child--and reveals that they share in common a sort of focus that kicks in when it is most needed, an ability to suddenly know and do exactly what needs to be done, even if that thing seems and is impossible. There really isn't a way to describe it better than the film's title does, and how that quality manifests in these three disparate people is a sight to behold. When Cogburn springs into action late in the film to save Mattie's life, I wept at the beauty of it.

Though some may be disappointed that the Coens have omitted the cynical wink characteristic of most of their films (which I happen to love), I think they wisely chose to play this one clear-eyed and true. It's not that they have presented an unquestioning homage to the Western ideal; rather, they have presented the genre in all its stark beauty and its contradictions--the barren landscapes, the cold, the strangely precious-yet-profane language (a la "Deadwood"), the rough and even lurid qualities of frontier justice--as the perfect backdrop for showing an admirable quality rarely seen and rarely understood. I left inspired to fight another day.

I also recommend "The Fighter" (8), which is garnering lots of acting award nominations for good reason. It's based on a story of two brothers who are both boxers; the older of the two, Dicky, well-played by Christian Bale, is a hometown hero of Lowell, Mass., for having knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard, and now coaches the younger brother Micky (Mark Wahlberg). But Dicky's crack addiction and a seriously screwed up family system, including mom Alice (wonderfuly portrayed by Melissa Leo), interfere with the success of Dicky's, and Micky's, efforts.

As boxing movies go, this one follows a familiar tread, still worth seeing, of a working class hero fighting for more than just success in the ring. But where the movie really reaches for greatness is in its depiction of the family at its core. Rarely has the intractability of a family system been so well portrayed; the movie demonstrates how Alice and Dicky are utterly convinced they are there to help Micky as "only family" can be trusted to do, even while they are in the very act of sabotaging him. Alice is always surrounded by a bevy of daughters who look and act as though they walked onto the set from the streets of Lowell. And we see how the love of a decent, though flawed woman (a lovable and very convincing Amy Adams) gives Micky the courage and impetus to break out of the system, and how relentlessly that system pulls him back. For me, it made for perfect Christmas Day viewing.

The story falls apart a bit at the end, where the family resolutions seem too easy and the boxing ending is too predictable to be as interesting as it might have been. Given that we're talking about a living family, I would have been surprised if the authenticity had gone the distance. Still, it's worth seeing if only for a group of really fine performances and some moments of recognition for those of us who've fought these battles and don't usually see them so well-portrayed.

For those of you who visit my blog, up to now I've been listing a numeric rating for all the movies I see. Once I start watching 2011 movies, I'll start adding a sentence or two about each. I'll keep sending the longer reviews by email as well. Always feel free to ask me for more on anything.

Happy new year!

BEST OF THE YEAR SO FAR: "WINTER'S BONE"

2010-07-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

My favorite film of the year so far is "Winter's Bone" (10), director Debra Tanik's searing depiction of a teenager who quickly acquires wisdom beyond her years in a family crisis. Set among people living way off the grid in the Missouri Ozarks, it captures a world of poverty, crime, and hardship with more particularity than any film I can remember; its command of gritty details is complete and utterly convincing. Even more remarkably, its clear-eyed insight extends to the spirituality and inner workings of the individuals and the culture it depicts. By the second viewing, I had the powerful sense that, though I haven't lived in a context like this, its dangers are familiar. And the courage of its heroine (played by a remarkable newcomer, Jennifer Lawrence) inspired me.

I should admit that it took me two viewings to fully appreciate the film's power. It's not that I didn't admire it on first viewing; it's that the story is so harsh that I had a hard time hanging in there with it at first. I'm a pretty empathetic viewer, and felt intensely the darkness with which this stolid girl must do combat, so much so that I felt a little nauseous by the end. It helped on the second viewing to know what to expect so that I could enter into the film's world more fully. Even without the benefit of true surprise, I was absolutely blown away the second time through.

The teenager at the center of the story is Ree, a smart and resourceful 17-year-old who stoicly devotes herself to the day-to-day survival of her silent, lost soul of a mother and her two younger siblings. Her father, a notorious meth cooker, has been missing for a couple of weeks, which apparently is cause for no more concern than the daily struggle for food and heat. But when the local sheriff informs Ree that her missing dad has posted as bond their land and the roof over their heads upon his latest release from jail, Ree's bleak daily struggle suddenly becomes more urgent; she must find her dad before his upcoming court date or she loses the struggle for good.

The hills are full of her kin, which she thinks should mean something. Problem is, as part of her seems to suspect, what it means is not necessarily good. Those relatives seem to know much more than they are willing to say; all are in the grip of a harsh world that keeps them at odds with the law, a world rigidly ruled by demands of loyalty and silence. Ree's need to know the truth in order to ensure her family's survival so conflicts with the dictates of custom and code that her own survival is threatened.

From the very first frame, the film feels immediate and raw. Every detail is right: the kids sleep in their clothes, and desultorily amuse themselves by skateboarding in the dirt or bouncing on a riding horse atop a large trampoline. Their hair looks like Ree probably cuts it herself with blunt scissors just enough to keep it out of their eyes; she teaches them to find and shoot squirrels and pull out their guts, and when her brother asks if they eat that part she says simply, "not yet." Ree tramps all over these hills on foot and when she needs to go further than is practical on foot she has to beg the use of a married friend's truck, who has to beg its use from her husband on the promise that Ree will pay for the gas. The men in the community seem to run things, but the women make things go, following up the threats of the men folk by either showing Ree the way around them or warning her to heed them or offering her food or cash when they can do no more.

Yet all of this is depicted with a kind of dignity and even respect. The people are not treated as oddities, nor do you have the more usual sense of filmmakers throwing dirt on actors and filming them lying around on dusty furniture and looking slovenly. There's a kind of order to this world, as brutal as it is, and there is kindness to be found in the ways people find to operate within its rigid code. In one scene, Ree begs her silent mother for help, "just this one time," in discerning what to do--but finds help instead from her uncle Teardrop (Deadwood's John Hawkes in a particularly memorable performance), a menacing crank sniffer who is one of the first to urge her that she'd best leave the truth alone. Eventually he helps her find it, though when she confesses that she has always feared him, he comments, "That's because you're smart." There is also a group of women who offer help and brutality, sometimes in the same moment; they are protecting themselves, for sure, but at times you catch a glint of a motive to school Ree. For her part, she almost never flinches, watchful, perceptive, adjusting her eyes with each new revelation.

There isn't a wasted line or mannered detail anywhere; the storytelling here is as clear-eyed as the heroine. The most profound revelation for me was that this world, for all its brutality, seemed in some ways less dangerous than the worlds I know better--as a friend put it, everything looks broken down, but it functions. And without access to the artifice one can acquire with money and respectability, there's a kind of truthfulness to the way things work. People don't pretend to be serving some higher goal when they are stabbing you in the back; at one point when Ree asks, "Are you going to kill me?" the response is simply, "That idea was talked about." I admired the honesty of this world even while I was gripped with fear at the thought of what this child is meant to learn. And I found her courage--her ability to look hard, and to act on what she sees--inspiring, and instructive.

"RAW FAITH" AND OTHER WORTHY SUMMER CHOICES

2010-07-10T22:13:00.000-07:00

It's summer time, which means I am seeing more bad films than usual (including the foul "Solitary Man" (1), the insipid "Twilight Saga: The Eclipse" (1), and the unwatchable "Splice" (-2), which is one of the two worst films I have ever seen)). Oddly, all of these got fairly decent reviews--which makes me wonder about the state of film criticism at the moment (not to mention the state of filmmaking). Fortunately, I've seen several films recently that are worth seeing.

The best of these, "Raw Faith" (10), is, unfortunately, the hardest to find. The first feature-length documentary of Portland director Peter Weidensmith has screened several times locally but hasn't received a wide theatrical release. It deserves one--and I will do my best to keep you informed of a DVD release or other opportunities to see it.

I despair of describing the film in a way that will really convey its power. Its subject is Marilyn Sewell, a beloved minister of a large Unitarian congregation in Portland . As Sewell contemplated retiring from her post, a couple of her parishioners proposed the documentary as a way of shining a light on her prophetic perspective, which they greatly admired. What Sewell brought to the enterprise was her characteristic commitment to profound honesty, which enabled Weidensmith to find a story that goes beyond Sewell's compelling family history and her thoughtful approach to her ministry and retirement. What he finds is a portrait of transformation that is specific, and uncommonly rich with inspiration and insight.

The film really sneaks up on you. It begins by conveying Sewell's approach to her ministry, something I can't recall seeing done before. Effective ministry is not well understood, in my experience--but here the attempt to depict it is helped by Sewell's own clarity of intention and by her obvious and genuine love for her congregants. You see her dedication, and get an inkling of the focused energy it takes to do her job well. Her sermons are authentic and clearly spring from a life of personal devotion.

The film acquires power as it mines Sewell's troubled childhood and finds how the pain of her early life fuels her desire to experience love in the context of ministry. The losses she experienced feel fresh; one senses how grappling with childhood suffering can and sometimes must become the work of a lifetime. Most films, like most people, miss entirely the nuances of a lifelong journey and suggest instead that one's issues can be somehow solved like a math problem or tidied like a messy room. Here we see a life lived with intention, and how that intention regularly requires conscious and painstaking effort. Often when one attains a certain degree of professional success it becomes easier to focuses one's efforts on less challenging pursuits, especially for someone who can comfort herself in the knowledge that she devotes herself to doing good. But Sewell is unwavering in her devotion to seeking truth, not only for her congregants but for herself.

And here lies the film's real power: Sewell's choice to be honest and appropriately but courageously vulnerable in front of the camera ends up giving us a front-row seat to an experience of transformation. Her journey to retirement takes twists and turns that she and presumably the filmmakers were not expecting; she confronts her deep loneliness and loss, her longing for an intimate partner, her fear of the unknown. We see that goodness and devotion does not insulate one from genuine confusion and struggle. Sewell's navigation through these waters is powerfully instructive.

While you're waiting for an opportunity to see it, here are some others you can find more easily:

"Micmacs" (8) is the latest from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director of such wonders as "Amelie," "Delicatessen," and "A Very Long Engagement." If you enjoy his captivating visual style as I do, this, also, is a must-see, though the story isn't quite as inspired as some of Jeunet's other work. Still, it's engaging, involving a man whose life is twice-wrecked by weaponry and who finds renewed purpose in devising an elaborate comeuppance for two unrepentent arms dealers. He is helped by an array of eccentric characters, including a contortionist, a human calculator, and a man who speaks only in cliches. Jeunet does so love specific details that bring characters to life and devising elaborate strategems for conveying something of the connections that make us human. Like his other films, he packs this one with imagination and wit and inventive details. It's still in theaters and worth seeing on the big screen.

There are a couple of excellent documentaries still hanging on at the Livingroom Theaters in Portland. "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" (8) is a fascinating exploration of show business and what it does to people. I used to admire Rivers back in the days when she was a regular on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson but in recent years have been put off by her freakish forays into cosmetic surgery and her seemingly bottomless need for attention. This film puts both into perspective and gave me a renewed appreciation for Rivers' talent and the barriers she broke down, even while some of her antics also made me cringe.

"Stonewall Uprising" (7) locates the events of 40 years ago as the beginnings of gays and lesbians claiming an identity for the first time. Using interviews with many of the participants (including one of the policeman who was first on the scene, several young men who had been inside in the Stonewall Inn, and one of the few women involved in the uprising), the film conveys what life was like for gays and lesbians before this event and how a cataclysmic shift in energy occurred at the moment of this uprising. What looked like a riot was really the only way then available to say "we are here, and we are claiming respect for our selves"--and some of what the film conveys is how this particular struggle for human rights had to look different from others because of how gays were viewed 40 years ago. (For example, nonviolent protest didn't have the same prospects for provoking attention when the culture believes you deserve to be punished.) Oddly, the Stonewall uprising was barely even covered in the media--that's how unnameable gay experience then was. This film is a powerful exploration of a still-unfolding story.

Finally, though its short run at the Hollywood Theater is finished, put "Daddy Longlegs" (8) in your Netflix queue if you are interested in an excellent, observant, and painfully realistic study of a train wreck of a father. Ronald Bronstein, who plays the dad, had never acted before when he created this vivid character of a man who loves his two school-age sons but doesn't have the first clue how to care for them. His brilliant, mostly improvised performance conveys how it is possible for someone to be both caring and uncaring at the same time--and how the children react to a dad who is always full of fun but frequently leads them into chaos. Their dawning discomfort is palpable, as is your own sense of dread as you watch the dad endanger them by making choices that are believably unbelievable. Excellent directing work by another team of brothers, Ben and Josh Safdie, whose work here is semi-autobiographical. The young pair, apparently still in their 20s, were at the screening I attended and literally talked over each other in their frenetic excitement about their film, which received favorable notice at the Cannes and Sundance Film Festivals. Their presentation may have been lacking, but their directing talent is evident and worth watching for.

BONDAGE TO DESTRUCTIVE MYTHS IN "MOTHER AND CHILD"

2010-05-30T16:55:00.001-07:00

I don't usually blog about movies I loathe, since I prefer to focus on getting the word out on films I WANT people to see--but I've gotten some requests for comment about "Mother and Child" (1) so here's my take. I warn you, it will be a rant, and it will contain spoilers.

This film is the worst kind of offensive crap. It peddles every negative stereotype about adoption and motherhood that you can imagine and, though the writer/director Rodrigo Garcia (whose work I have admired elsewhere) seems to believe that he is glorifying women, none of the women here are believable or even remotely likeable. Garcia seems totally oblivious to the messages embedded in his story--among them, essentially, that a woman should never plan an adoption (or, in the language of the film, "give her child up" for adoption) because she will be haunted for the rest of her life, "her" child will be desperately unhappy and feel abandoned, and the severed bond will have nothing but bad ripples for the rest of both of their lives. Adoptive parents are never mentioned, except in a disparaging way, and the one birthparent planning an adoption in the film is depicted as mean and wielding god-like power--and, of course, as deciding not to go through with the adoption at the last minute.

Before I go on, I want to make clear that my reaction to the film is not just based on the political messages that I think it sends. My overall objection is that it displays absolutely zero insight into how human beings work. None of the characters are believable; their transformations are hackneyed, their motivations merely convenient to the plot. The fact that this kind of thing frequently gets described as moving and insightful, frankly, drives me insane.

The plot revolves around three women: Karen (Annette Bening), whose pregnancy at age 14 ended in a closed adoption that has left her bitter and still living with her elderly mother at age 51; Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), Karen's 37-year-old birth daughter (always referred to as Karen's daughter), who is a cold-hearted careerist whose unwillingness to commit or make any real human connections obviously stems from the fact that her "mother gave her up"; and infertile Lucy (Kerry Washington), who is planning to adopt the child of a bitter and unmarried 20-year-old college student, Ray. As the plot unfolds, the film hammers home that all of Karen's and Elizabeth's respective unhappiness and inability to connect stems from the fact that their bond was so unwisely severed. The film very clearly implies that everyone would have been better off if Karen's own mother had not "made" her plan Elizabeth's adoption--a highly questionable assumption given Karen's age at Elizabeth's birth and the utter lack of warmth in Karen's relationship with her own mother, but whatever. Whenever anyone asks Elizabeth about her mother, she skips right over the mother who raised her from birth (or, at most, merely notes that their relationship was "difficult") and goes right to the disclosure that her mother gave her up for adoption. Meanwhile, we can tell from the beginning (telegraphed by none-too-subtle dialogue about how unthinkable it is that one could love "someone else's" child and how "unnatural" adoption is) that Lucy's marriage is headed for the rocks because she can't "give" her husband a biological child and, of course, that the adoption she is planning will be disrupted.

The motivations of the men in this film are especially inexplicable. Karen is a self-described "difficult" woman (the adoption, remember) who has never loved anyone since the kid who knocked her up at 14. Naturally, she hates her housekeeper's adorable school-age daughter and bites the head off her handsome, kindly co-worker, Paco (Jimmy Smits!), every time he tries even to engage her in polite conversation--but, for no reason at all, he sticks with it, and soon she finds herself disclosing to him that her whole life boils down to the adoption she regrets as he nods sagely and takes her hand. The next thing we know they are married and Karen is turning into a nice person who sees the same school-age child of her employee sleeping and falls in love with her. Though Karen doesn't believe in God (none of the three lead women do, as they are all happy to say) she is only too happy to accept advice in the form of a platitude-filled speech from Paco's annoying adult daughter about God, motherhood, and why Karen must immediately locate the daughter she gave up. Meanwhile, Elizabeth, who is supposed to be smart and is most definitely hot, tells her much older widower boss (Samuel L. Jackson) when he hires her that she prefers to report to men, noting that women don't like her because she "isn't part of the sisterhood." But within a month of work, she beds him, ordering him to "lie still, old man" while she has her way with him. Of course, he is quite taken with her and, when he finds out that she is pregnant months after she has dumped him, tells her that, though he was planning to drop his law practice and move across the country with a woman he met three months ago, he would dump her to stay with Elizabeth instead if she'll accept him. Sheesh.

Sorry about the spoilers (there are a few zingers left in the plot which you may even be able to predict from what I've told you)--but not really, because no one should see this film. If you want to see a really good film about adoption, try "Secrets and Lies," Mike Leigh's miraculous film about a woman who locates her biological mother after her adoptive parents die and forges a complicated and funny and believable relationship with her that doesn't in the least denigrate the meaning of her relationship with the parents who raised her. Perhaps someday we will see more films involving adoption that don't peddle the same, tired destructive myths we so frequently see. For that matter, perhaps some day we will see more films about career women who are actually smart and accomplished and not just heartless ball-busters, and adoptive mothers who are not so prone to hysteria and self-pity, and adoptive fathers who actually love their wives and stick around for their children. There are actually interesting stories to tell about such people, after all. I can dream, can't I?

POSTCARD #4 FROM FULL FRAME 2010

2010-04-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

It's been a wonderful festival. Here are some thoughts on the last few films I saw.

"Waste Land" (9.5) was my favorite film in competition this year--and, in fact, it won the Audience Award at Full Frame, as it did at Sundance and at the Berlin International Film Festival. It's a story of the power of art to transform, and of the impact of personal involvement that empowers people to see their own worth.

Vik Muniz grew up in poverty in Brazil and is now a respected artist in Brooklyn known for making use of unusual objects--dirt, chocolate syrup, sugar--in his portraits. Having achieved a great deal of professional success, he envisions a project for giving back to his native country by creating art out of ordinary objects important to the lives of some poor Brazilians and then using the proceeds of the art sales to benefit them. He decides to locate his project in Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest garbage dump, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, where some of the city's poorest denizens eek out a living collecting recycling. His idea is to create art using recyclable materials culled from the garbage.

The evolution of the project is fascinating. In the beginning, there is great distance between Muniz and his subjects--he scouts the location on Google Earth and discusses safety concerns with his wife. When he arrives there, he marvels at the scale of the dump, and notes how quickly one acclimates to the awful smell. The resourcefulness of the recyclers is impressive, and he slowly comes to know them--a charismatic labor organizer who reads discarded books; a trained restaurant cook who feeds the workers using discarded produce; a teenager already parenting two children. Soon Muniz is photographing them; the photos will be the basis for the finished pieces, which involve blowing up the pictures and then adding materials to them. Finally, he involves his subjects in the actual creation of the works (which are stunning).

Muniz had been motivated by a sense that exposing people to art, even if briefly, allows them to reflect on their lives differently. His wife wonders if that is a good thing given the realistic limits of their power to changes their lives, something I have wondered about while traveling in developing countries. I often notice that the poorest of the poor nearly always possess television sets (as do these Brazilians), and I have wondered what is the effect of constant exposure to lifestyles that one has no real hope of attaining.

But it is apparent from the film that the experience the recyclers have working with Muniz is not at all like watching television. It is for them a full body, transformative experience. They are engaged in recycling themselves. As we come to know the recyclers, we see the evidence that work in the studio and being involved in the creation of art enables them to step back and to see their lives, themselves, with new eyes. They begin to value themselves, to want things, to aspire. As they watch themselves literally being transformed into works of art, they come to see themselves as valuable. And the work has a transformative effect on Muniz as well; I related to his sense that he received so much more than he gave.

Garbage-to-art ends up being the perfect metaphor for the transformation at work, and Lucy Walker's beautiful film challenges and inspires in all the right ways. It is expected to have a theatrical release later this year, and there is a fan page on Facebook. I'll do what I can to keep it on your radar.

In "12th and Delaware" (7), the co-directors of "Jesus Camp" turn their cameras on two clinics--and abortion clinic and a pregnancy care center--that are situated directed across the street from each other. The latter, like most such centers, does not advertise that it does not offer abortion services--and, according to the directors, every day a few women would come there intending to go to the other clinic. The majority of the film is shot inside the pregnancy center, as the clinic's director explains and justifies her approach on camera, trains her staff, and talks to the women who enter seeking services. Her unabashed aim is to persuade these women to keep their babies. She and her staff, and the protesters who picket the abortion clinic day and night, speculate regularly about what is going on inside the other clinic and in the minds of the women who enter there. The latter part of the film takes you inside the other clinic.

The directors here have a somewhat lighter touch than in "Jesus Camp." They simply allow all the subjects to speak for themselves, without contradicting them or correcting the information they give out. It's the right approach for informing audiences of the deeply held beliefs of both sides and of what is an apparently common phenomenon of pro-life clinics planting themselves directly across from abortion clinics. I have to say, I found the tactics used in the "pregnancy care center" to be quite troubling--other than free ultrasound (which aims to convince the women not to go through with an abortion), no actual pregnancy care is dispensed, and the women are pressured pretty hard. Much of the information that was being given out seemed to me to be false--including apparently, information about how far along the women were in their pregnancies. But the film does not take sides--it simply provides plenty of opportunity to see for yourself. It won the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights, which is given to a film that addresses a significant human rights issue in the U.S. It appears that the film will air on HBO later this year.

I saw two war films, neither of which I was all that wild about. "How to Fold a Flag" (6) sets out to tell the stories of several men who has served in the same unit in Iraq. It does a decent job of representing four versions of how tough the return home can be; I certainly felt for these man and was interested in their stories. I didn't think the film probed that deeply however, and it could have benefitted from some more careful shaping.

The other war film I saw, "Restrepo" (6.5) followed a battalion into combat in Afghanistan. It won an honorable mention for both the festival's Grand Jury Prize and its Emerging Artist Award, which is given to a new director. It was nowhere near the top of my list of new films, however. It basically sets out to show what conditions are like for these men (awful) and how compromised the mission is (they are in a totally no-win situations with insufficient guidance and undefined goals). The men are alternatively traumatized, bored, beseiged, and amped up on adrenalin. It's a close-up view of combat, for sure; I'm just sure not sure how much more evidence I need that war is hell.

The last two films I saw were among my very favorites: "The Most Dangerous Man in American: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" (10) and "Freedom Riders" (8). I will write about them in the next couple of days because they both deserve some attention.

POSTCARD #3 FROM FULL FRAME 2010

2010-04-10T18:20:00.000-07:00

I am just blown away by the quality of the films I am seeing this year. Here'a few more to watch for.

I can't think of any filmmaker better equipped to convene good and deep conversations about a difficult subject than director Steve James. His film "At the Deathhouse Door," one of my favorite films at Full Frame two years ago, found a perfect vantage point for discussion of the death penalty in the Reverend Carroll Pickett, the laconic pastor who served as a death row chaplain at the Huntsville Prison for many years. This time around, in "No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson" (8.5), James has found a perfect vantage point for discussion of race in America: the story of the legal controversy that swirled around a pro basketball star while he was still in high school.

Around the same time that James was making another great film, "Hoop Dreams," Allen Iverson had risen from extremely rough circumstances to become a star athlete in James' hometown of Hampton, Virginia. However, a racially charged brawl in a local bowling alley turned Iverson into the locus of a controversy that still rages more than 15 years later. Felony charges were filed against only the black participants (including Iverson), on the theory that the white participants were the most seriously injured. The resulting trial and sentencing sparked anger, grief, and protest in the black community and heightened racial tensions that, it turned out, had been simmering just below the surface.

James purposely avoids retrial of what happened in the bowling alley, but instead focuses on the meaning of the event to the community. He does a superb job of presenting an array of views about the incident, from Iverson's friends, former coaches, the local press, and various community leaders. Extremes appear on all sides, but also very reasoned views. All sides are presented with respect and are allowed to speak for themselves. It becomes apparent that neither the black community nor the white community is monolithic in their responses to the incident, and James grounds the story in the history of the area (it happens to be where the first slave ships embarked, though that's not how the town literature describes it), James' own history as a local athlete and his experience of race relations growing up white in Hampton, and Iverson's personal history.

Iverson's story begins to feel very familiar--black child raised in poverty (as so many black children are) and without solid parental guidance turns out to be an extraordinary athlete and soon acquires access to untold opportunities. Everyone wants a piece of him, and the same chutzpah that made his rise possible against all odds also keeps him from being the saint one would need to be to navigate the pressure, the parasites who want a piece of him, and the money and fame that are to be showered upon him. He makes a mistake, or two, or three--and the power structure and, at least to some degree, the media (both of which are still largely white-controlled) come down on him like a ton of bricks. The black community reacts, at least in part out of a sense that a white star athlete would not suffer such harsh consequences and that the white community is giving a black man his comeuppance. Complicating the story is that Iverson is such a difficult character himself. But isn't that to be expected, given his circumstances? How can society hold a person like Iverson accountable for his behavior?

In the law, we have a concept of "unclean hands"--that one cannot approach a court for equitable relief if one's own hands are not clean. Given that power still mainly resides in the hands of the white majority, and given the racial inequities that still exist, is judging a black man still somehow inherently problematic? I can't think of a film that does a better job of sustaining the tension of these questions. Watch for it on ESPN; it premieres on April 13 as part of ESPN's 30 on 30 series. http://30for30.espn.com/film/no-crossover-the-trial-of-allen-iverson.html

I've seen three documentaries at the festival so far involving music and musicians. The first, "In My Mind" (8), was unlike anything I've ever seen. It comes closest to a concert film, but it is more than that. The concert in question was the commissioned project of a rising star jazz pianist, Jason Moran, who pulled together an amazingly talented group of musicians to do a 50th anniversary tribute to bebop pianist Thelonius Monk's historic 1959 Town Hall big band concert. But this is jazz, so it wouldn't really be a tribute (nor would it be possible) to just try to recreate that 1959 concert. Instead, Moran and filmmaker Gary Hawkins sift through photos and audio recordings from that time period to present a context for understanding Monk's life and times, so that the interpretation of his music offered by Moran and the other assembled band members (all excellent) makes sense. The music is incredible, Hawkin's visual choices are fascinating and rich, and listening to the musicians attempt to describe what it is that they do is involving. Each is eloquent in his own off-kilter way.

"Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould" (9) is an entirely different kind of treat. Making canny use of the abundant archival footage that exists of Gould himself (he died in 1982) and of interviews with people who knew and loved him, directors Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont present a soulful portrait of this complex man that made me feel as though I understood something of the mystery of an essentially unknowable person. They capture just the right small details, and have such an ear for small turns of phrase that convey more than it first appears. All of this is presented in the context of Gould's recordings, which were controversial in their day and yet continue to inspire fierce admiration and loyalty for the inventiveness of his interpretations. Moving, and rich. Watch for it on PBS's American Masters series.

"Strange Powers: Stephen Merritt and the Magnetic Fields" (5) was my least favorite of the three. The film makes the case that Steve Merritt and his indie rock band deserve more recognition than they have received and that Merritt is a great lyricist. The problem is that the film doesn't make a very compelling case for Merritt as a documentary subject; yes, he has a distinctive brand of dry humor, but the audience immediately laughed so loudly at his fairly bland comments that I felt I was watching the film with a group of fans of his cult of personality, and the directors (who spoke afterwards) and the two people who introduced the film seemed to have bought in as well. It wasn't that I didn't understand the humor (I did) or appreciate his gifts as a songwriter (I did, though I don't particularly like his voice)--I just wasn't that impressed. Judging from the audience reaction, though, fans may appreciate the experience more than I did.
More tomorrow!

POSTCARD #2 FROM FULL FRAME 2010

2010-04-09T13:33:00.000-07:00

Lots to think about today--which is, of course, what I come for.

First up, two films exploring the outer reaches of what it means to be a parent. The first, "The Space You Leave" (5.5) is a ten-minute film that sets out simply to enter into the experience of three parents whose adult children have been missing for several years. Ten minutes isn't really long enough to do much with that subject, though it may be as much of this type of pain that many people can endure. The filmmaker does an admirable job, at least, in creating a sense of space for grief in his depiction of his three subjects.

It was followed by "Google Baby" (8), an exploration of the global baby industry, which allows those with sufficient means (mostly white Westerners) to become parents by implanting the fertilized egg of their choosing into a surrogate mother in India. This first feature film of Israeli director Zippi Brand Frank wisely depicts this latest manifestation of "outsourcing" (a term applied by one of the film's subjects) without histrionics, simply observing the various players with little commentary. The filmmaker's watchful eye seems to know just where to linger to leave you quietly and increasingly unsettled.

The film spends a fair amount of attention on a surrogacy center in Gujarat, India, run by a female doctor who is impressive in her way. She moves efficiently between cell phone marketing, brisk Caesarian deliveries, and negotiating deals for her cadre of surrogate mothers, who live in her clinic for their entire pregnancy and are motivated by the chance to better the lives of their own families. Her surrogates are required to have had healthy pregnancies already and she will only serve prospective parents who either cannot conceive or have only one child. She warns the potential surrogates clearly and firmly (at least on camera) of the risk of hemorrhage and other complications, including death, and also that they will have no claim on the fetuses they carry for nine months. She seems protective of them, in her way--yet there is a briskness to her response to the occasional sign of tears in these mostly stoic women during delivery ("Why are you crying? Are you happy?" she inquires in the classic leading question) that is disturbing to watch.

She is approached by an Israeli entrepreneur who has fathered a child with his male partner through a more expensive U.S. surrogate and has the idea of harvesting eggs and sperm from white Western donors and implanting them into these Indian surrogates. He seems benign enough at first, and is clearly grateful for the opportunity to be a parent himself--yet there is a blitheness to his references to "his pregnancy" that seems to betray a lack of reverence for the real biology involved. That impression grows with scenes of his own deal-making, including a switch to a Mumbai surrogacy clinic that suggests implanting two surrogates to improve the chances of a successful pregnancy and, one suspects, is not so protective of the surrogates as the clinic in Gujarat. The ensuing discussions with his clients and his tepid ethic struggle afterwards made my blood run cold.

There are also scenes with a Tennessee woman who is chosen as the egg donor for another gay Israeli couple. Again, the chance to better her family's circumstances is the motivation--but one can't help but notice the contrasts with the Indian women, who are paid (for carrying a child to term and delivering it by Caesarian section) less than half of what she is paid to harvest her eggs by IVF; she wants to remodel her comfortable home and buy more firearms, while a representative Indian woman wants to buy a two-room house.

Through it all, Frank wisely realizes that she need only light on the ethical implications of all this. The signs of exploitation of the women seem less and less subtle as time goes on, though partly what makes this film disturbing is the very real sense that many people would miss those very signs. All the women in the film seem to be making a free choice--but how free is it? How awake are the men in the lives, and the various others who stand to benefit, of the real costs to these women? Is there any limit to the degree wealthy people, mostly Westerners, are willing to exploit people to get what they want, simply because they have the means to do so?

It's so late and I'm so bushed that I'll have to wait until tomorrow to write about two of the other films I saw today, since they deserve more careful praise than I can dash off. I will mention, though, that I was not a fan of "The Oath" (4). While director and cinematographer Laura Poitra deserved the award for cinematography that she won at Sundance, I found the film really frustrating. She chooses as her primary subject Abu Jandal, the brother-in-law of Salim Hamdan (Osama Bin Laden's former driver and the most famous Guantanamo prisoner). Jandal, Bin Laden's former bodyguard, recruited Hamdan to al-Quaida and says he now feels guilty about that--in between claiming to be everything from a hardened jihadist to a repentent one. But while Hamdan spent several years at Guantanamo and was the subject of a notorious appeal and trial, Jandal appears to have been much more involved with Bin Laden and hasn't suffered in the same way. What makes him a terrible subject, in my opinion, is that he is clearly such a manipulative liar and attention hog--and Poitra never finds a vantage point for illuminating why it is worth our while to spend 97 minutes basically serving as the audience he obviously craves. I actually don't feel like I gained much insight from watching this film at all. Maybe I'm just too familiar with this kind of psychology to find it inherently fascinating--but actually, I've seen films that displayed much more perspective about people like Jandal.

More tomorrow!

POSTCARD #1 FROM FULL FRAME 2010

2010-04-08T21:54:00.000-07:00

I am never happier than at a film festival--so right now I'm pretty darn happy. It's time again for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina. My two years of blogging have paid off, and I'm here on a press pass (which hilariously dubs me "Darleen Ortega, Opinionated Judge")--and after two hours standing in line for my 15 tickets (which, under the circumstances, did not even make me cranky), I'm officially in hog heaven.

So here's the line-up of day one:

My favorite movie of the day was "Last Train Home" (9) which already won the award for best feature-length documentary at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival and was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. It actually could be a companion film to the gorgeous "Up the Yangtze" which I saw two years ago at this festival and put on my top-ten list for 2008. Like that film (whose director was a co-editor here), the film conveys important things about life in modern China, writ large, by means of painstaking observation of the life of one family.

Each year, 130 million Chinese workers make one annual trip hundreds of miles to their homes in the rural provinces to celebrate the New Year, having spent the entire rest of the year in industrialized cities which offer them the only real hope of earning enough to support their families. The journey is arduous--not least because so many Chinese are making the trip at one time, in the world's largest migration. How the filmmakers managed to capture the crowds of frustrated and beleagered workers jammed onto trains after spending sometimes days waiting to board I can't imagine--yet this journey is depicted as merely one in an endless series of unendurable trials that are the stuff of daily life for these workers, who labor long hours in factories to make just enough to support the children they rarely see.

The film focuses on a couple who have lived this life since their oldest daughter, now 17, was a baby. The wife, the more expressive of the two, explains in a remarkably matter-of-fact way how it pained her to make that choice, necessitated by desperate poverty--and her husband's expression, while always laconic, nevertheless conveys that her description probably doesn't do justice to her actual suffering. Over the course of the film, one sees how the two endure unending hardship, all for the sake of their two children, in the hopes that their children will have access to better opportunities than they had. Yet, on the rare occasions when they see the children, the parents come so burdened with the weight of those hopes that they immediately begin inquiring about their school performance and lecturing them about the need to study harder. Their children, like children all over the world, resent the parental pressure--and feel especially aggrieved because it comes from people who, in their minds, have never been available enough to have earned the right to criticize them.

The family conflicts that play out feel utterly universal despite the distinctly Chinese character of the situation. The daughter devastates her parents by dropping out of school, and her barely contained resentment of them begins to find more overt expression as she samples what feels to her like freedom. The only work available to her is extremely arduous, but somehow the fact that she is doing the choosing makes those hardships seem more endurable; she just wants to have fun and to forge her own identity. Yet, like all children, she lacks the ability to understand her parent's choices in their larger context, and wounds them terribly with her increasing disdain for their concern about her future. The filmmakers, as in "Yangtze," gained incredible access to this family--so much so that a climactic argument feels uncomfortably voyeuristic. Yet, assuming the family agreed to its inclusion, it seems utterly truthful and earned after the many scenes of understated but extraordinarly perceptive observation that preceded it. The distance between these generations, first evident in body language, the disappointment in the parents' eyes, and the resentment hardened in the daughter's face, erupts believably in the mother's overreaction to a moment of callousness. The extreme display of disrespect that finally causes the father to lose his temper comes after 5000 stressful moments that he has borne resolutely.

I also admired "Enemies of the People" (8), which won a Special Jury Prize and a nomination for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. It depicts the remarkable and heroic work of reporter Thet Sambath, who spent a decade traveling to the site of the killing fields of Cambodia and building trust not only with several men who did the actual killing (and who describe their methods in detail on camera) but also with Nuon Che, Pol Pot's right-hand man. Sambath does this without revealing (until very late in the film) how personal the subject is to him: his own parents and brother were murdered in the killing fields.

His interviews with the actual killers are especially compelling, as the toll their actions took on these men is evident in their faces. The film searches for who gave them their orders and what motivated those orders--but the reality appears to be that the Khmer Rouge during their five-years in power escalated a regime of such paranoia about "enemies of the people" that, for the peasants, their choices were virtually to kill or be killed. I found the scenes with Nuon Che to be somewhat less compelling, though; I wasn't convinced that he ever really grappled with the truth of what happened, though the filmmakers seem to read him differently than I did. I was more struck by how complex Sambath's own reaction was to these killers, after spending so many years building their trust.

Although I'm not sure that the film totally lives up to its claim to illuminate the reasons for the Khmer Rouge killings, perhaps such a thing ultimately cannot really be explained.

The last program of the day reaped fewer rewards. "The Poodle Trainer" (6) is a colorful 7-minute portrait of a Russian circus performer who has built her entire identity around what she experiences as a profound connection to the animals to whom she cultivates a striking resemblance. It played with "The Thorn In the Heart" (5), Michel Gondry's film about his aunt Suzette, who taught school in rural France for 30 years. I frequently admire his work ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is one of my all-time favorite films), but this one seemed too unfocused to hold the interest of most of the audience (myself included). Suzette's relationship to her son was the most interesting thing about the film--though she is quite likable, the disappointment evident in all her interactions with him seems to set him up for failures that might or might not actually be inevitable. But even that aspect of the film seemed underdeveloped--and then the film is laced with other focuses (like visits to her old schools and an outdoor evening at the movies) that seem entirely too diffuse to held the film together.

TOP 5 THINGS THAT IRKED ME ABOUT THE OSCARS THIS YEAR

2010-03-07T22:44:00.000-08:00

1. Sandra Bullock's win for best actress. Her performance in "The Blind Side" was right for the part and good as far as it went--but it was totally two-dimensional in a field of rich three-dimensional performances (even the ones in films I didn't care for). It was one of the clearer popularity picks in recent memory. It's not the award for most popular actress; it's called an award for best performance by a leading actress. I defy anyone to make a convincing case that Bullock's performance in "The Blind Side" even belongs in the same league with Helen Mirren's or Gaby Sidibe's.

2. The way they introduced the best actor and actress nominees by talking about their work in other films and what nice people they are. Unless we are going to rename it the award for "most popular actor" or "most likable actress" or even "best body of work," these speeches were irrelevant and contribute to the sense that this is actually just a popularity contest.

3. I love Jeff Bridges and, if we were rewarding his body of work, I'd totally support him receiving a best actor award. He has a string of really wonderful performances, including his performance in "Crazy Heart." But the best performance by a leading man was Colin Firth's. Honestly, it's not even Jeff Bridges' fault--the material he had to work with in "Crazy Heart" did not give him nearly the opportunity to plumb the depths that Firth did. The two performances don't even compare.

4. All the attention for "The Hurt Locker." No question it is technically a very competent film, but it doesn't have a sufficiently coherent message do justify dragging the audience through two hours of the hell of war. The closest it comes to a message is that war actually is sort of addictive for some messed up personalities--so why is everyone in their speeches praising war heroes? Whatever truth is contained in the film isn't worth talking about without grappling with the implications of the point the film stirs about war's addictiveness. The film doesen't coherently do that grappling--and the speeches reinforced that essential failing.

5. The fact that the orchestra played Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" after Katheryn Bigelow won the best director award. That is just offensive.

Grrr.

THE VERY BEST FILMS OF 2009

2010-03-07T09:05:00.000-08:00

It's time again for the ritual that started me writing reviews: the annual list of my favorites for the year. This year I give you a top 11 (including two terrific stop-motion animation films in the 10th spot), along with two films I saw at the 2009 Portland International Film Festival that never made it beyond the festival circuit and haven't been released on DVD in the U.S. They are hard to come by, but I mention them for the motivated among you since they might be available in specialty video stores like Movie Madness--plus I own both and am happy to loan them out.

I've written on all these films before, so much of this will sound familiar, though I've added to all these reviews, including bits on who deserves Oscar recognition. Here's the list:

1. Bright Star
2. Precious, Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
3. A Single Man
4. The Class
5. A Serious Man
6. The Cove
7. Unmistaken Child
8. Inglourious Basterds
9. In the Loop
10. A Town Called Panic/Fantastic Mr. Fox

And for the particularly motivated:

Karamazovi

The Necessities of Life

1. "BRIGHT STAR" has been almost entirely ignored this awards season--but if I were deciding the Oscars, it would receive the awards for best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay (Jane Campion), best cinematography, best actress (Abby Cornish), and would receive nominations for best actor (Ben Winshaw) and best supporting actor (Paul Schneider).
It's an ode to John Keats and the young woman who inspired and loved him in the last couple of years of his short life before he died of consumption at the age of 25, and is based on a celebrated biography that I'd love to find the time to read. I've admired Keats's poetry since my own youth, but it took Campion, the middle-aged Australian best known for directing "The Piano," to help me actually envision what his genius might have looked like and to begin to understand it and even to believe in it.

A tall order, with me as her audience, because the story involves young love, generally a tough sell for me. No offense to my young readers, but romances, particularly those about youthful lovers, generally inspire eye rolls from me. Most romances are totally unbelievable, written with no real insight about what actual love looks like (see, e.g., "500 Days of Summer"), and the emotional excesses of young screen lovers tend to annoy me even more. Keats's story involves his love for a young woman whom he met when she was 19 and her family moved into the house where he was also a boarder. Much flirting (all very restrained, since this is England in the Regency-era) and swoony romance ensues.

Yet this film could not be more lovely, or, in its way, more believable. Campion's cast helps. Winshaw is a compelling and utterly convincing Keats--tragic, a little frail, yet with a grave intensity that infuses his lush poetry with a surprising sincerity. Abby Cornish is miraculous as his love, Fanny--bright, petulant, determined. A charming young woman who designs her own clothes, quite edgy for their day, and who seems quite comfortable with the fashionable balls and coquetry that are expected of her as a young woman of marriageable age, she seems an unlikely match for Keats. One senses that she pursues him at first to spite his roommate and friend, a boorish Scotsman named Brown who is himself an aspiring poet and who mercilessly teases Fanny for her frivolous pursuits and disdains her as a person of no conceivable substance.

Brown is the toughest role in the film, and Schneider (brilliant in "Lars and the Real Girl" and becoming one of my favorite actors) displays amazing range here. His place in the film confused me at first, but I eventually concluded that he grounds a story that might otherwise have floated away. Brown treats Fanny and her artistry as ridiculous and silly, far beneath the heights which a poet dares to scale. As Fanny and Keats begin to form an alliance, he warns Keats against her feminine wiles and finds it inconceivable that she would be a fitting match for him. He fancies himself Keats's equal, if not in talent at least in substance, warning Fanny and her family not to disturb them when they are thinking great thoughts.

Fanny's sharp tongue is quick with retorts to Brown's barbs, and one admires her spunk and wit--but truthfully, it's not at all clear in the beginning that Brown is wrong about Fanny. Yet as the story unfolds, it seems as though Keats awakens something in her. She understands beauty, and responds to Keats' depths with depths of her own. One senses that her interest in fashion might well be how a heart for loveliness might find expression in a young woman in Regency England. Before long, it is Brown whose essential callowness is revealed.

The look of the film befits its subject. Fanny's fashions are arresting (the costumes did receive well-deserved Oscar recognition), the colors are sensual, and the cinematography at times caught my breath, particularly with close-up shots of bits of embroidery or small touches and looks between the lovers. Keats climbs a tree rich with blossoms and rests in its branches; Fanny gulps a longed-for letter sitting in a meadow awash with blue flowers. The film's lushness evokes how colors appear to be more intense when one is deeply in love.

Fanny's family, too, is so dear. She has two younger siblings who shyly adore Keats and tenderly look after Fanny (the younger sister, Toots, with her red curly locks and rosy cheeks, looks as though she just stepped out of a painting by Fra Angelico). And rarely has maternal love been portrayed more sensitively than in Fanny's scenes with her mother, who justifiably worries for her (due to the unyielding social conventions of the time, a marriage between Fanny and the penniless Keats was quite out of the question) and yet responds to the progression of events with steadfastness and practical generosity of spirit.

All of this, finally, brings Keats' poetry to vivid life. Never have those words sunk so deep into my soul--until, in the closing credits, the sound of Winshaw's voice reciting "Ode to a Nightingale" left me quite undone. Ah, bright star. Would I were as steadfast as thou art. [Rated PG for thematic elements, some sensuality, brief language, and incidental smoking; on at least 11 other critics' top ten lists; nominated for--and should win--an Oscar for costume design; should have received nominations for best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay (Jane Campion); best actress (Abby Cornish), best actor (Ben Winshaw), best supporting actor (Paul Schneider), and best cinematogrophy; available on DVD]

2. "PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE," the wrenching story of a morbidly obese, illiterate African-American teenager barely surviving abject poverty and unthinkable abuse at the hands of both her parents, is my pick among the nominated films to win the Academy Award for best picture. . It amazes me to say that--although I teared up every time I saw the preview for this film and knew I'd have to see it, I didn't hold out much hope that it would rise above the typical Hollywood shortcuts and clumsy exposition. But it most certainly does.

I saw the film at Portland's Lloyd Mall, in a very diverse audience of mostly older upper-middle-class whites and mostly younger African Americans, and the two hours we spent together in this movie's thrall were strangely unifying; nearly everyone sat in stunned silence with me as the credits rolled and waves of grief and admiration and amazement washed over us.

I don't have a clue how second-time director Lee Daniels figured out how to tell this kind of truth--and indeed, Sapphire, who wrote her novel in the early 90s, told Terry Gross in a recent interview that she for many years turned down requests from Daniels and many other directors to make this film because she doubted any director's ability to tell it well. She also wisely doubted that audiences were prepared to understand the story in the way that she meant it. She finally dared to hope for more after seeing Daniels's work as a producer in "Monster's Ball"--and, in an era when a more diverse array of African American stories have infiltrated popular media than when she originally wrote the book, she thought perhaps we were ready for one in which not all the oppressors are white.

The reality the film depicts is so harsh that I am amazed (and heartened) that audiences have had the temerity to sit still for it. Many of those connected with the film--producers Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, comedian and actress Mo'nique (fearless in the role of the Precious's abusive mother, Mary), and Daniels himself--were themselves abused as children, so they understand that experience from the inside out. But understanding it and depicting it are two different things.

The truth they manage to convey is specific, unrelenting, and unendurable. Sixteen-year-old Clareece Jones is crassly nicknamed "Precious," though everyone treats her as worthless and she knows it. Stalled in the eighth grade and functionally illiterate, she is invisible in plain sight, enormous but ignored except for the occasional taunt by a neighborhood kid. She speaks rarely and only in a congested mumble, as though she is buried in those mountains of flesh, and returns each night to a squalid apartment that she shares with a mother who hurls insults, orders, and the occasional frying pan at her. She is pregnant with her second child by her drug-addict father, who is otherwise mostly absent; the first, a girl with Down's Syndrome who is cruelly named "Mongo," lives with a grandmother who brings her to the apartment only as a necessary prop for visits from a welfare worker.

In crumbling prose, Precious narrates her inner life, including glittery, TV-addict fantasies where she wears ball gowns and has a "light-skinned boyfriend" and "good hair." A thin blonde white girl looks back at her in the mirror. She is someone people see but don't see, "her massive body at once a prison and a hiding place" (A.O.Scott, NY Times)--yet glimmers of a fighting spirit flicker. "The other day I cried," she recounts at one point. "But you know what? F--- that day."

Her second pregnancy gets her kicked out of the eighth grade, but a defeated guidance counselor hangs in there long enough to refer her to an alternative school for pregnant and parenting teens. The fact that Precious follows up on the referral indicates another flicker of unaccountable self-regard, a small seed of potential that finally can be nurtured by a teacher, Ms. Rain, who actually sees her and doesn't look away.

That first day, Ms. Rain pushes her to read a page from a children's book, and confirms that Precious can barely sound out the simplest words. "It all looks the same to me," she says. It's a perfect metaphor for her neglected soul, her utter inability to articulate a point of view. The rest of the film is devoted to her painstaking climb out of the rubble to form an identity, fueled by genuine caring and by the simple instruction that she write, and keep writing, every day. She acquires the ability to assert herself, along with the ability to name her experience, until she can actually cry out that all "love" has done for her is to beat her, rape her, and make her feel worthless. It's hopeful, but doesn't spare you the arduousness of the struggle that lies before her.

There are some remarkable performances here. The task of bringing Precious to life is no small feat, because she is so blank most of the time and yet has such a colorful, TV-dream-fueled inner life; newcomer Gabourey Sidibe captures her blankness yet seizes your attention so that you don't look away in the way that most people naturally would in Precious's actual experience. (I'm delighted that she is nominated for best actress, though I think Helen Mirren's remarkable performance in "The Last Station" deserves the award.) Paula Patton is quietly effective as Ms. Rain, and the scenes with Precious and her classmates avoid the treacly over-simplification of so many stories of classroom triumph, showing the distance these girls must come and how completely they have acclimated to chaos and violence. Mariah Carey is unexpectedly convincing as a social worker who is in way over her head. Most remarkably, Mo'nique pulls off a miracle in her portrayal of Mary, brutal, self-pitying, and malevolent. It's nearly impossible to depict a person this evil without making her into a cartoon, but her Mary is complete, true, believable, and complex. She totally deserves the Oscar for best supporting actress for this astounding performance.

Daniels manages to convey a lot without explaining it directly: the failures of the education system; the ineffectual efforts of the welfare system to provide the poor with meaningful help; the complexities of the resulting cycle of dependence; and the intractable, unrelenting nature of family violence, particularly in a culture that bears the scars of slavery. As Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly observed, "Mary is raging and defeated, a woman who treats Precious as a slave--* * * these two are living out patterns of cruelty that go back for generations." Daniels tells this story so well that the film earns the payoff of a devastating final scene between Mary, Precious, and Mariah Carey's well-intentioned but misguided social worker in which Mary's true character is utterly revealed. Never has this type of abuse been so truthfully deconstructed.

Ms. Rain asks the girls in class, "What does it mean when the author describes the protagonist's circumstances as unrelenting?" The film asks that question too, yet somehow manages to avoid shortcuts that would turn Precious and Mary into stereotypes. The hope that emerges, then, is earned, and yet also challenging. It's a painful journey, work to sit through, but it will change you. This story deserves the attention it demands.

As Precious begins to acquire an identity, she begins to glimpse signs that Ms. Rain has her own sadness, her own struggle. She muses that "some folks has a lot of things around them that shines for other peoples. I think that maybe some of them was in tunnels. And in that tunnel, the only light they had, was inside of them. And then long after they escape that tunnel, they still be shining for everybody else." Those of you who know me best might understand how profoundly that struck me; we who have managed to rise out of unimaginable darkness know that, as scripture says, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." This film captures how high those stakes actually are, because the truth can just as easily kill you--but what doesn't might actually set you free. [Rated R for child abuse including sexual assault, and pervasive language; on at least 17 other critics' top-ten lists; my pick of the Oscar nominees for best actress in a supporting role (Mo'Nique), best adapted screenplay, best picture, and best director; also nominated for best editing and best actress (Gabourey Sidibe); still in theaters]

3. Perhaps the fashion designer Tom Ford is insufferable, but the great care he has taken with his first film, "A SINGLE MAN," deserved more attention that it got. The film is a meditation on grief and invisibility that he directed and wrote based on a seminal 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood (author of the source material for "Cabaret"). Each shot is carefully composed, every detail of wardrobe and scene scrupulously art-directed, and the camera lingers lovingly on mascaraed eyelashes, smartly tailored suits and, especially, toned masculine flesh. I disagree, however, with critics who compared this film to a too-perfect perfume ad--Ford's gift with style serves a purpose here, and as far as I am concerned, he has not put one foot wrong.

It helps that his film is anchored by the best lead performance by an actor this year. (Jeff Bridges is considered for the favorite for his performance in "Crazy Heart," and I am a huge fan of his--but the script doesn't give him nearly this much to work with.) Colin Firth (who I previously loved best for his performance as Mr. Darcy in the 6-hour 1995 PBS version of "Pride and Prejudice") here portrays George, a 50ish British expat and English professor who is sinking under the weight of his grief over the death of Jim, his lover of 16 years. Because it is 1962, this man's solitude is total; each day he puts, as he says it, the finishing touches on the nearly perfect persona that passes as George, carefully insulating the world from what it would see as filthy and unspeakable: his deep love for Jim; the lustful stirrings he is now too weary to indulge; and a grief so profound that he can no longer find a reason to go on living. Yet even while going through the motions of what he has decided will be his last day, and carefully planning every detail of a death that he is determined will be as carefully arranged as the life he has led so scrupulously, his gentleness and essential goodness shine through.

That goodness is part of what makes George so compelling. His relationship with Jim is revealed in flashbacks that radiate the warmth between them. We notice, too, the small pause each time a student or colleague asks him a question and the way he genuinely listens before making a thoughtful reply. He is kinder to women than most straight men would be, utterly sincere in his expressions of appreciation for his housekeeper's attentions and his secretary's lovely skin and hair style. And he is loyal and affectionate to his best friend Charley (wonderfully played by Julianne Moore), a boozy divorcee' and fellow expat with whom he had a years-ago brief romance. Although it meant more to her than to him (she obviously still carries a torch for him, without really understanding him), their last evening together is characterized by little kindnesses and gentle admonitions characteristic of a long friendship.

The attentiveness that characterizes all his interactions makes the completeness of George's isolation all the more devastating; he gives lavishly the very thing he is utterly denied. Very early on, the film flashes back to the phone call when George learned from one of Jim's family members (a day-and-a-half later) of his death in a car crash; before George has a chance to absorb that blow, he must endure the news that the memorial service is "for family only." A charming neighbor girl innocently tells him that her father would like to kill him, minutes before her mother sweetly invites George over for cocktails. Even Charley, to whose arms he fled the night of that awful phone call, asserts that, despite what Jim meant to him, George must surely want a "real relationship." In a rare push against the bounds of his isolation, George offers a coded lecture to his students about the perceived threat posed by invisible minorities, but is not surprised when it goes straight over their heads. "I am exactly what I appear to be, if you look closely," he tells the one young student whose flirtatious attention he has captured. He says this with the rueful smile of someone who expects that no one will.

It's rare for a film to portray so completely and truthfully such private, invisible suffering. Ford, and Firth, manage the feat not in spite of the film's somewhat artificial, staged beauty, but making full use of it. As Bob Mondello (NPR) put it, "George is a man who manages his feelings, and visualizing him in such pristine terms lets Ford highlight the tiniest of gestures: the finessing George does to navigate a can't-ask-can't-tell world; the veiled '60s hints and glances that would never even register today; and the glimmers of hope that flare unexpectedly at the edges of despair."

Any number of films have attempted to portray this type of painful history (from which we have yet to fully evolve) with much less success--in "An Education" or "Mona Lisa Smile" or "The Changeling," for example, oppression of women is portrayed so clumsily that these films add to the myth that we have solved that particular problem. The success of this film is in its completeness, its utter dedication to truth, even while clothed in unearthly beauty. Isherwood's source material, Ford's attention to detail, and Firth's soulful insight bear careful witness to a type of suffering that is sadly common not only to gay experience, but also to the experience of other outsiders. Somehow these artists know, as one character puts it, that "sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty." I left this film grateful and affirmed by that approach to telling an otherwise invisible story. [Rated R for some disturbing images and nudity/sexual content; on at least 8 other critics' top ten lists; nominated for and should win Oscar for best actor (Colin Firth); should also have been nominated for best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay, best art direction, and best cinematography; still in theaters]

4. "THE CLASS" (originally titled "Between the Walls" in French) is far and away the best and most hard-hitting film I've ever seen about teaching. It's also a profound exploration of the challenges of multi-culturalism. Though filmed in France, it could hardly be more relevant to the American experience. It's a must-see for educators and for anyone who cares about bridging the cultural gulfs that divide us in America.

As you might have begun to expect from that description, this film is not light nor is it exactly entertaining, though it is never less than engaging. My first viewing felt like hard work; I felt a bit wrung out at the end. It is really like spending two hours right in the thick of the most challenging teaching job imaginable. But unlike typical Hollywood fare like "Freedom Writers," and "Dangerous Minds"--also about relatively affluent white teachers trying to reach angry, at-risk, inner-city kids from poor and immigrant families--this film does not take sides, nor does it attempt to explain or solve the kids' anger, nor does it depict a teacher who, alone among his checked-out colleagues, finds the hope and vision to connect with his students. Instead of easing the tension that drives the conflicts in this junior high French class, the film examines that tension and invites you to live in it for awhile. The kids' behavior and antagonism toward their teacher is not excused or softened, and the hard-working teacher is not exactly a hero, nor are his efforts particularly richly rewarded. He can't ever be sure when and if he is getting through to his students, and if he is it seems almost by accident.

The film stars Francois Bergaudeau, himself a teacher and author of a book that inspired the film, as Mr. Marin, a teacher in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Paris. The book documents one school year, with no real plot; the film takes a similar approach, allowing you to just live with the class. The effect is appropriately unsettling; you wonder what will happen, if the film (the class) is going anywhere in particular. In that way, it's a wonderful approximation of the experience of Mr. Marin and his students, as he struggles to persuade them that there is some value in learning to conjugate verbs, use the imperfect indicative, and speak French in a manner that they are convinced no one actually does. How do you tell what is for writing and what is for speaking? a student asks, accepting for the moment Marin's argument that there is a need to learn written French. Use intuition, he explains. But what's intuition? And what if you don't have it?

The director and Bergaudeau started with a loose script and then created the film over a year of improvising with the kids themselves, who developed the characters from composites of themselves and the kids described in Bergaudeau's book. Many of the exchanges depicted arose from this process of improvisation, in their attempts to express their world to him. Most of the action takes place in the classroom, with one camera trained on Mr. Marin, one on the student(s) currently at the center of the dialogue or action, and one recording other reactions. It is as though you are there, even when you may not want to be.

Mr. Marin's teaching style is confrontational; you see the huge quantity of energy he expends navigating a line that involves pushing and engaging his students, working with what they throw at him, but not getting drawn in by their attempts to trap or anger him. He's fairly successful at it, and is pretty good at getting them talking, but he also misses them a lot. Watch for one exchange in which a Chinese student, Wei, new to France, notes that other students don't feel enough "shame." Mr. Marin, thinking Wei has chosen the wrong word, turns the discussion to what people do feel shame about--and it turns into a cacophony of different ideas about shame that don't connect and that it is clear Mr. Marin doesn't understand. Often what they are trying to say really is beyond his ability to grasp and their ability to express; the gulf of culture and language and class seems impossibly wide. We see their distrust of him, a distrust they nurture, which causes them to miss or discount his attempts to reach them, but also a distrust that is in some ways quite well-founded. There often is a kind of condescension in Marin's responses to their challenges, though one wonders if it is in some ways like the psychological callouses a surgeon needs in order to cut into the human body on a regular basis.

The teachers, for their part, struggle to bring some order to the chaos, reaching for rituals like requiring students to stand when an adult enters the room to reinforce a sense of decorum. They struggle aloud with each other (though never in front of the students) over how to mete out discipline, debating the merits of point systems and varying degrees of flexibility in applying the rules. Mr. Marin is conscientious, usually arguing for a flexible approach--so it is particularly frustrating when his students pounce on any evidence that he is insulting or discounting them. They have him pegged as an oppressor--the empired striking back--but their assessment of him is not entirely fair. It's tough to watch how quickly they unite in attempting to get him into trouble when he finally takes the bait and says something he shouldn't.

The misunderstandings here run deep. In addition to the usual adult-vs.-adolescent disconnects, here you have the additional layer of cultural difference complicating matters. I came away with such a profound sense that the education system as it has been set up is woefully ill-equipped to provide for these kids, who already resent being pre-judged and cast-off by a culture that has no use for them, yet resist identifying themselves as part of it, calling themselves Malian or Caribbean rather than French--or, as one Arab student says, "I'm French, but I'm not proud of it." The rules and efforts to control them don't really work--as one student retorts after Mr. Marin forces her to apologize for a classroom affront, "I didn't really mean it"--and yet how to reach these kids with classes this size and differences this profound? Even when it's clear that some learning is taking place in the midst of it all, it's not necessarily what these kids need or what Mr. Marin hopes for. As Richard Schickel puts it in Time magazine, "the educational machinery * * * clank[s] onward, in the largest sense indifferent to the needs of its charges, the best efforts of its functionaries."

In the end, this wonderful film (which won the Palme D'Or at Cannes and should have won the Oscar for best foreign language film last year instead of the dreadful "Departures") is not only a rich meditation on the challenges of teaching in a broken educational system but also a master class on cultural difference. Here's what happens when one's best intentions are tested by the real world, "when the underprivileged don't show gratitude the way they do on TV shows" and where teaching is "moment to moment, an endless series of negotiations that hang on intangibles--on imagination and empathy and the struggle to stay centered." (David Edelstein, New York Magazine) I laughed to myself thinking how diversity education is considered a "soft" subject; bringing real understanding into the arena in which we now find ourselves is nothing if not hard. Right now most majority culture people can avoid these front lines, but not for long. Time to listen, and struggle. [In French; rated PG-13 for language; on at least 9 other critics' top ten lists in 2008 and 2009; nominated for and should have won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2008; available on DVD]

5. My predominant reaction the first time I saw the Coen Brothers' film, "A SERIOUS MAN," was delight and gratitude that the brothers had thought to make a film about a part of American culture that hasn't really been portrayed in our popular media. Who else would even think to make a film depicting life in a fairly enclosed Jewish American community in the Midwest, circa 1967? Who else would begin their film with a seemingly disconnected Yiddish fable set hundreds of years ago in a shtetl somewhere in eastern Europe? Who else would have viewers scratching their heads in the very first scene, and yet fill their film with so many fascinating bits of detail that they never lose their audience's interest?

The Coens love to riff on familiar stories ("The Odyssey" in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" is the best example) and the homage here is to the biblical story of Job, a righteous man whose experience with a series of tragedies leaves him questioning what God is doing to him, and who receives unhelpful advice on his situation from a series of religious advisors. Here he is embodied by Larry Gopnik, a gently befuddled college physics professor who is up for a difficult tenure vote and whose life is beginning to unravel. His inexplicably bitter wife has taken up with an unctious older man; his brother, who appears to be struggling with mental illness, is living with him and engaging in increasingly worrisome behaviors; his son, soon to celebrate his bar mitzvah, has developed a somewhat problematic fondness for marijuana and Jefferson Airplane; and an oddly menacing student is attempting to bribe Lary to change an "unacceptable" grade.

All of this throws Larry into reverie. Appropriately, he is an admittedly tenuous expert on baffling ideas like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle which, as A.O. Scott points out, more or less translates into "God knows" since we can't. The problem is, God (or Hashem--"the name"--in Jewish parlance) doesn't appear to be taking questions. What does Hashem want? Is he trying to teach us something? Larry grasps for a way to make sense of it all, visiting three successive rabbis for answers, and each time comes up empty. God knows, but apparently He's not telling.

An earnest struggle for meaning takes particular shape in the context of Jewish culture--indeed, what better place for such a struggle? As one character memorably exclaims, "Thank heaven we're Jews, and we have access to such wonderful traditions to help us sort out the answers." When she urges Larry to talk to a rabbi, he wonders aloud, "What's the rabbi going to say?" Her response: "If I knew that, I'd be the rabbi."

That exchange is a perfect example of what Larry's pondering yields him. He poses the right questions, and asks them with an apparently pure heart. As he puts it, he tries to be a "serious man." Yet, despite the promise of meaning to be found in his religious tradition, the promised answers disintegrate in his hands.

The Coens do not dishonor their Jewish heritage, however. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a more careful, loving tribute. They revel in so many small details: the potty-mouthed kid on the bus home from Hebrew school; the fables about everything and nothing; the rabbi whose office is filled with odd and vaguely menacing artifacts and is too busy "thinking" to see a desperate Larry but is surprisingly present and even wise with his 13-year-old son; the complex mix of loving attachment and offhandedness with which members of the community treat its traditions. I also admired the Coens' willingness to sit with the questions the story raises; faithful to their biblical source material, they have honored the story, the culture the film depicts, and the questions themselves. [Rated R for language, some sexuality/nudity, and brief violence; on at least 25 other critics' top ten lists; nominated for Academy Awards for best picture and best original screenplay (my pick to win the latter); should also have been nominated for best director (the Cohens) and best actor (Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays Larry); in second-run theaters and on DVD]

6. "THE COVE" deserves the Oscar for best documentary feature. This daring film, itself an act of subversion, sets out simply to show (not just tell--since telling so far hasn't worked) the truth about the appalling treatment of dolphins in a Japanese village that portrays itself as a center of dolphin love, complete with monuments and a dolphin museum.

Every year in Taiji, Japan, thousands of dolphins are forced into captivity. Hundreds of them are sold into the very lucrative but inhumane international dolphinarium trade--and the rest are lured into a secluded cove by a wall of sound, brutally slaughtered by the thousands, and sold as mislabled, mercury-poisoned meat. This senseless and violent deception is carried out under secrecy enforced by a fierce and highly organized network of police, corporate interests, officials at all levels of government, and petty thugs. It is downright shocking how much energy is devoted to lying about what is happening and to preventing anyone (by any means necessary) from photographing or even seeing what is going on. I am always complaining about how movie villains are way oversimplified to eliminate any ambiguity or any risk that we won't hate them (e.g., "Avatar"); this film certainly portrays the complexity of the web of forces protecting this senseless slaughter--but I must admit, there isn't any ambiguity here about the evil of these particular villains.

Ric O'Barry, the man who got rich creating the "Flipper" show in the early '60s that, according to him, sparked the dolphinarium trade, recounts how, after a decade, he finally came to realize just how profoundly cruel it is to keep these exceptionally intelligent, even soulful creatures in captivity. For him, the moment of truth came when one of the "Flipper" dolphins died in his arms in what he is convinced was a suicide. He since has spent more than 35 years trying to break down what he feels responsible for starting--and in the process found the walls of protection around the industry impossible to penetrate by legal means.

He eventually found an ideal collaborator in first-time documentary filmmaker Louie Psihoyos, formerly a still photographer for National Geographic, who brings to the enterprise an exuberance for cloak-and-dagger strategy and risk and an eye for powerful images. I like Ella Taylor's comment in the Village Voice that Psihoyos "possesses the showboating instincts and righteous rage of Michael Moore, but without Moore's bile or self-importance." Psihoyos assembled a dream team of champion free-divers, a military reconnaissance expert, and Hollywood special effects designers who built fake rocks to hide cameras, and the group set out to mastermind an operation that aims to simply show the truth of what is happening. The group filmed clandestinely in the middle of the night under extraordinarily dangerous conditions, in a natural fortress that is nearly impossible to reach, hounded by thugs who wanted to kill them. The footage they captured is profoundly disquieting and absolutely essential viewing.

It also provokes difficult questions (which is how you know they've portayed the villains correctly). How can people shield themselves so completely from recognizing how lying destroys their humanity? How can they fail to see that deliberately and forcefully squelching the truth rots one's insides? As Andrew O'Hehir asks (Salon.com), "Why [have we] treated the species closest to us in intelligence with such cruelty and contempt?" How did O'Barry find the courage to look so square in the face of a wrong that he helped to perpetrate and to never look away in 35 years? Watch his eyes for evidence of the pain he absorbs as he devotes himself to a life of bearing witness to unspeakable evil. Attend to the filmmakers' struggle to anticipate the objections to their attempt to make sense of what is happening. The details and explanations they lay out so carefully are important--but such details cannot truly account for such senseless evil. One must look at the bigger picture--and the courage it took to collect the images necessary for us to bear witness to that picture is hard to fathom. Especially since the lies continue. (Rated PG-13 for disturbing content; on at least 9 other critics' top-ten lists; nominated for, and should win, the Oscar for best foreign language film; available on DVD.)

7. One documentary that was unfairly overlooked this awards season is the miraculous "UNMISTAKEN CHILD," which I saw and loved at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in April. The first feature film of Israeli director Nati Baratz, it tells a profound and complex story, of Buddhist monks searching for a reincarnated master, with delicacy and a remarkably sure hand.

In the Buddhist tradition, when a master, or lama, dies, it is believed that signs may indicate his intention to be reincarnated, and that the "rinpoche," or reincarnated master, may be located by spiritual practices of divination. In this case, Tenzin Zopa, a gentle young man who for 21 years (since childhood) was the closest "heart disciple" of a beloved departed lama, is charged with the task of locating his master, receiving direction from his own dreams, from signs discerned from the ashes of the lama's cremation, and from discernment by Zopa's superiors regarding the region where the rinpoche will be born and the first letter of his father's name.

Zopa, still grieving the loss of his master, feels unworthy of the task, but sets out, as directed, to the valley where he himself was born, visiting along the way the mountainside retreat where he spent beloved years with his dear master. He then goes from house to house in the valley, inquiring after any children between the ages of a year and 18 months. He sits with the little candidates one by one, asking each whether he recognizes the lama's prayer beads, looking for signs that the child harbors the spirit of the revered master. Once he locates a one-year-old who shows signs of being the "unmistaken child" who will now embody the master's teachings and bring enlightenment to the people, Zopa must guide his now-diminutive master through the various processes for confirming that he is indeed a rinpoche, including an audience with the Dalai Lama, and must prepare the child's parents to release the little master to the care of a monastery far from their mountain home.

It's hard to convey just how profoundly this film works on you--but take my word for it, it is not to be missed. Its rich pleasures involve how simply it conveys the devotion of these believers, particularly Zopa, with his tender attention to the little rinpoche, and its patient observance of the signs of greatness in the toddler. I wondered as I watched what god-likeness should look like in a person so young (a provocative question for a Christ-believer) and marveled at the faithfulness, devotion, and strength of the gentle Zopa, who seems always to be fully present to whatever is happening. With gorgeous cinematography and exquisite grace, this story will inspire you no matter what your religious tradition. (In English, Tibetan, Hindi, and Nepali; not rated but accessible to mature kids; on at least 2 other critics' top-ten lists; should have received an Oscar nomination for best documentary feature; available on DVD)

8. Quentin Tarentino's latest and greatest, "INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS," provokes controversy, but I still have to include it in my top films of the year. It contains the very best performance of the year by a supporting actor (Christoph Waltz). I've always admired and enjoyed Tarentino's work, particularly his wonderful dialogue and visual inventiveness--but have found his last few films to be not quite up to the promise of "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction." This one exceeds all his prior work, in my book. He always strikes me as playful--but here the mix of emotions and ideas he evokes is more complex and deep rather than just dark.

I hesitate to say anything that would give away much of the plot to those who missed it on the big screen (where it deserves to be seen) because I am convinced the movie is best enjoyed with no advance information that could undercut its tension and suspense. I saw it the first time without even knowing that it was set in German-occupied France in the 1940s, though you figure that out early on. Tarentino weaves an array of fascinating characters in and out of a multi-chapter story--some appear only once, and others appear in mixed combinations throughout the film--and the first couple of chapters use spaghetti-Western conventions to introduce the essential conflicts, between the Nazis (and, in particular, a chilling and vivid officer who has been nicknamed "the Jew Hunter" and has been given the task of hunting down the last Jews remaining in occupied France); a fictional band of American Jews led by a Tennessean of Apache descent played by Brad Pitt, who set out on a vigilante mission using Apache methods (including scalping) to terrorize the Nazis; and a young Jewish woman who is the only member of her family to survive slaughter by the Nazis. Along the way, Tarentino plays on and then remakes interesting and disparate movie conventions (the proper British officer sporting nerves of steel, German officers who are frequently unfailingly polite as they twist the knife, and the Americans behaving like uncouth ruffians and callously expecting everyone to speak their language). He also plays with the whole convention of film--an important French character owns a movie theater which is variously coopted by the Nazis, and Joseph Goebbels's ambition to create a film industry that would surpass what he saw as a Jew-dominated Hollywood machine plays prominently in the film, which also involves a revenge plot that plays out in a film-within-the-film and an act of destruction that involves a literal use of film.

In every case, Tarentino has an absolute ball with these conventions and ideas. The story and characters feel fresh, the connections arise naturally, and the outcomes surprise yet seen somehow right. The dialogue is characteristically rich and often funny--yet the emotions feel genuine and often powerful. The acting is first-rate across-the-board, except for Pitt (who is clearly having a ball but is not up to par with the rest of the cast); Tarentino has otherwise wisely cast mostly European actors unknown to American audiences. The portrayals of Hitler and Goebbels are particularly good, and the French actress who portrays the young Jewish woman conveys a delicate balance of steely vulnerability and determination.

The best, though, is Waltz, an Austrian television actor, who won the best actor award at Cannes for his role as the Jew Hunter. I consider his performance to be one of the best I have ever seen. From the very first scene (one of the most riveting opening scenes of any film I can remember), his combination of exaggerated courtesy and chilling coldness is so rich and complex that you both hate him and live for the moments he is on-screen. With a facial structure that, to my mind, strangely and coincidentally resembles Tarentino's, he functions as Tarentino's surrogate, in a way--like Tarentino to the audience, Waltz's character can barely contain his glee as he engages in wordplay and exaggerated courtesy while his listeners wait for him to lower the boom, inspiring both admiration and foreboding. Waltz owns the Oscar for best supporting actor is there is any justice in Hollywood. (In English, German, French, and Italian; rated R for strong graphic violence, language; and brief sexuality; on at least 23 other critics' top-ten lists; received Academy award nominations for best supporting actor (Christoph Waltz--and he should win),best picture, best director, best cinematography, best film editing, best sound mixing, best sound editing, and best original screenplay; available on DVD)

9. "IN THE LOOP," a biting and bitterly insightful comedy that takes as its inspiration the lead-up to the Iraq war, has earned more respect from me each of the four times I have seen it. By means of the most artful profanity imaginable ("Deadwood" is the only thing I've ever seen that comes close to this), the film depicts how functionaries embroiled in the political process can each become so focused on their own vanity and personal self-interest that they lose sight of any coherent principle or defensible version of reality, struggling mightily to stay in the game of contenders--but for what? Even if profanity offends you (it doesn't me), that may in fact be the point--one should be offended by lying that comes this fast and furious. And yet the film is utterly hilarious. The laughs come so relentlessly that it takes several viewings to feel like you're getting anything like the full effect of this exceedingly clever script, which was justly nominated for an Oscar. I'm planning my DVD purchase so that I can watch it with subtitles; it is that good.

I love A.O. Scott's observation that "[i]t is somehow fitting that [this] sharply written, fast-talking, almost dementedly articulate satire * * * should also commence with a verbal slip-up." In a period of confusion and military build-up in the Middle East, a British international policy minister bungles a BBC radio interview by opining that war is "unforeseeable." The stupid but seemingly minor comment is sufficiently off-message for the British government that it sends the prime minister's director of communications, Malcolm Tucker (particularly brilliant), into a seething rage (though it is soon evident that he is always in a seething rage). Soon, media bloodhounds smell blood in the water and begin hounding the minister for further explanation--and he, under pressure to walk the statement back, instead trudges deeper into the hole he has dug for himself and feeds American hawks their new slogan by opining on camera a few days later that, while peace is of course desirable, it sometimes becomes necessary to "climb the mountain of conflict." Newly infuriated, Tucker dubs him a "Nazi Julie Andrews," and communication on both sides unspools from there.

Director Armando Iannucci is a British TV veteran expanding here on "The Thick of It," a series about British politics. He wrote the script with four other screenwriters--for once a group project that feels amazingly unified--and gets a lot of comic mileage out of the differences between the Brits and the Americans. The Brits veer from sycophantic to apoplectic (particularly Tucker and another Scot who have the best and most furious lines in the film) while the Americans are boorish, entitled, or, as Mick LaSalle put it, "cheerfully psychopathic." (San Francisco Chronicle) There's a hilarious running joke in which the Brits are persistently appalled that the American government is basically run by a "master race of highly gifted toddlers."

Beneath all this acerbic humor lie some pretty profound observations about the shockingly empty rhetoric of bureaucracy and how groups of people vying for power can hurtle toward decisions that no one really believes in, heedless of the devastating consequences. Having observed close-up less far-reaching but still disturbing examples of this same phenomenon, I found myself wishing I was clever enough to generate an internal commentary even half this funny and apt, so that at least I could keep myself entertained. (Not rated but surely deserves an R rating for rampant but artful profanity; on at least 21 other critics' top-ten lists; nominated for an Academy Award for best adopted screenplay; available on DVD.)

10. Finally, I'm including two brilliant stop-motion animated films in my number ten spot: "A TOWN CALLED PANIC" and "FANTASTIC MR. FOX." The former is the first feature-
length film of two Belgian animators, and received a very limited release, though it is still playing in Portland. Where the delight of "Fox" is in the meticulous care in every detail, the joy of "Panic is in its zaniness, its absurd sight gags that come fast and furious, and its general mischief that seems random (though of course it's not). It's an absurdist tale starring a dashing plastic toy horse and his hapless housemates, a plastic toy cowboy and Indian, both on awkward little stands, living in an idyllic village improbably called Panic. The jerky movements of these figures suggest what naughty kids might play at when adults aren't looking--except these kids picked up a few ideas the adults didn't expect them to overhear.

Beginning with the daily toilette of Horse, Cowboy, and Indian, in which all three shower and brush their teeth, and continuing through a manic adventure that includes a botched internet shopping order, a raucous party, a romance between the suave Horse and a sultry equine music teacher, a journey to the center of the earth, the discovery of an alternative underwater universe, and a giant robot penguin who hurls perfect snowballs from one universe to the other, the film is endlessly inventive and laugh-out-loud funny. Each detail is riotously imagined, the rudimentary, childlike dialogue uttered in exaggerated adult voices is a hoot (I especially loved the constant shout of the plastic farmer next door, and hearing the dialogue in French punctuated with American slang made it somehow more amusing), and the action is joyously frenetic. Even if you don't normally go for animated films, give this one a try--it's utterly original and fun. (In French; not rated but fine for any child who can read the subtitles; not on any other critics' top-ten lists, though perhaps because it wasn't widely distributed; deserved an Academy Award nomination for best animated feature; still in theaters--look for it!)

"FANTASTIC MR. FOX" is less reckless, more mannered, but just as joyous. Speaking as a fan of writer-director Wes Anderson (except for his ride off the rails in "The Life Aquatic"), I think this is some of his best work, second only to "The Darjeeling Limited" (which others did not appreciate quite as much as I did). Who could have guessed that his quirky, self-conscious dialogue would sound so genuine and natural coming out of the mouths of scruffy animal puppets voiced by the likes of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, and Jason Schwartzman? Here Anderson, his co-writer Noah Baumbach, and a team of skillful designers and animators have lovingly conceived a world in which each character is so authentically who he or she is that it is not only funny and whimsical but also inspiring.

As envisioned here, Mr. Fox (a perfect Clooney) is a dashing corduroy-clad gentleman bandit who was born to steal (chickens, mostly). Upon learning that the practical Mrs. Fox (Streep) is pregnant, Mr. Fox attempts to squeeze himself into the role of a family man by trading his life of crime for a job as a newspaper columnist. I haven't read the Roald Dahl book on which the film is based, but from the film reviews I've read, it is more a survival story; Anderson and Baumbach have ingenuously grafted onto it the more existential question of what it means to be oneself: "Who am I? Why a fox?" he asks. And, "can a fox ever be happy without a chicken in its teeth?"

The question is more fun when asked in the context of raising a child who is sulkily struggling with his own questions of identity. Ash (Schwartzman doing his best work), the son who inspired Mr. Fox's retirement from his life's work as a chicken-stealer, grows into a moody misfit 12-year-old who keeps failing in his attempts to fit into his father's mold and win his approval. Ash resents the arrival of the golden-boy cousin, Kristofferson, who easily follows into Mr. Fox's footsteps (that is, after his daily yoga meditation ritual). Scrawny Ash's misfired attempts at assembling an identity are amusing--he sports a superhero cape and tucks his pants into his socks, tries out for the absurdly complicated sport at which his dad and Kristofferson excel, and begs to be taken seriously and to be include in the newest adventure dad is plotting. Ash yearns to be good at something, but can't seem to find his niche.

All these characters, as well as Mr. Fox's wily lawyer Badger (Bill Murray), his spaced-out sidekick Possum, and the three very rich and very mean local farmers, are lovingly imagined in every detail. I understand that Anderson had a very particular vision of what he wanted (perhaps driving the animators crazy, since he was directing from his apartment in Paris)--but the film's folk-art feel and the scruffy puppets with their crazed porcelain eyes, jerky movements, and real, matted animal fur work brilliantly. The tiniest props are arranged with infinite care--acorn-patterned wallpaper, cutlery made from deer hooves, Mrs. Fox's Indian-inspired tunic like those worn by groovy moms everywhere. As Dana Stevens of Slate Magazine observes, "You don't want to watch this movie[;] you want to climb inside it and play." I love how the foxes have a kind of refined elegance before they turn into wild animals; as Stephanie Zacharek (Salon.com) describes, "They hover over exquisitely prepared platters of food, savoring the delicate blend of aromas--and then descend upon them, suddenly realistically foxlike, snuffling and snarfing and sending food flying all over the place."

The point of it all, of course, is that each "fox" should be exactly who he or she is. Mr. Fox is, as his wife finally realizes and comes to embrace, a charming and ingenuous rogue, a "wild animal," and that's what he should be. And Ash? Like 12-year-olds everywhere, he needs time--but he'll get there. (Rated PG for action, smoking, and slang humor; on at least 24 other critics' top-ten lists; nominated for Academy Awards for best animated feature (which it should win) and best original score; I would have added a nomination for best adapted screenplay; DVD release slated for March 23, 2010)

As I noted above, I'm tacking on two films that never got a U.S. release either on the big screen or on DVD. Both of these brilliant films are well worth the effort to find--and I will happily loan out my copies (which I had to order from the Czech Republic and Canada, respectively):

KARAMAZOVI was hailed as the best Czech film of the year, and with good reason. The story revolves around a drama company from Prague that comes to Krakow to present a play adapted from Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" as part of an alternative theater festival. They are staging it in the local steelworks as an experiment to place art in the midst of real life. The film then places a rehearsal of the production in the midst of the everyday lives of the actors and a mill employee, whose young son is fighting for his life after a fall from a below-code conveyance in the factory. The worker is attracted siren-like to the production, whose themes so clearly resonate with his own tragedy, contributing to the edgy sense present in the original work. Dostoyevsky's themes of guilt, faith, and doubt come to life amidst the building sense of foreboding for the millworker.

I can't recall ever seeing a filmed stage production that made such brilliant use of the setting and was so powerfully acted. Accompanied by a particularly marvelous score, the film is consistently riveting, provocative, and rich from the very first scene--I actually wanted to see it again immediately, and with each of three viewings I have had that sense that there are more riches for me to find in this gem of a production. [In Czech, Polish, and English; not rated but probably would be R for mature themes; certainly among the best foreign language films I saw this year and should have received an Oscar nomination in 2008; available on DVD from a Czech website or from me.]

THE NECESSITIES OF LIFE was actually Canada's submission for the best foreign language film in 2008, and I'm disgusted by some of the inferior films that received nods instead, as this one is a perfect gem from start to finish. It tells the story of an Inuit hunter, Tivii, who leaves his northern home when he is stricken with tuberculosis in 1952 to recuperate in a sanitarium near Quebec City. Surrounded by people yet utterly alone in an alien land and unable to communicate, his despondence is palpable. Never have I seen the effects of racism so clearly and honestly portrayed, without oversimplification. It is finally his connection with an orphaned Inuit boy who is transferred to the hospital that brings him back from the brink. Only after someone can finally translate for Tivii does he begin to exist in the eyes of his caregivers and fellow patients, and we (and they) discover that the person who they had seen as an uncouth idiot is actually intensely perceptive and bristling with intelligence.

Some of the backstory behind the film is especially interesting. The screenplay was written in the early '90s by an anthropologist and veteran Quebecois filmmaker and documentarian who spent several years working for Inuit television. The director, Benoit Pilon, was given the script and recognized its relevance to current problems, remarkable because it is set in the '50s; I had the sense that the difference in time actually helps to overcome resistance that might arise from a more contemporary story. What Pilon didn't learn until later is that his star (Natar Ungalaaq, who also starred in the marvelous film, "The Fast Runner") is the grandson of a man who had a very similar experience of being sent south to be treated for tuberculosis. Ungalaaq's naturalistic style is perfect, as is Pilon's documentary approach and patient pacing. He reportedly told the crew that they were shooting in Inuit time: "I wanted to respect [Ungulaaq's] pace, his timing," Pilon said in an interview with Eye Weekly. "It's all through him--it's through his looks, it's through his face, it's through the way he breathes." That is, in fact, what makes his experience as an alien in a strange land come alive in a way I have never seen done so well. The film offers a profound depiction of how a dominant culture can unknowingly repress the humanity of outsiders. [In Inuit, French, and English; not rated but I wouldn't expect anything more than a PG rating; fine for middle-schoolers on up; should have received an Oscar nod for best foreign language film in 2008; available on DVD from independent sellers, or from me.]

PIFF Final Four

2010-02-27T23:36:00.000-08:00

Well, it had to end sometime--but this year's PIFF was memorably good. Here are some notes on the last four of the 31 films I saw:

"Nothing Personal" (9) was one of my favorites of the festival. The first film of Polish director Urszula Antoniak in a Irish/Dutch production, it depicts the connection that grows between a fiercely independent young Dutch woman and a gentle Irish widower. As the film opens, the resourceful woman traipses through the rugged landscape of Connemara in Ireland, shunning human contact and living on what she can scrounge out of garbage cans. She eventually stumbles on the home of the widower, Martin, on an isolated lakeside bluff, and he offers to feed her in exchange for work. She agrees, but only on the condition that they exchange no personal information.

The relationship that quietly grows between them is intense and elemental. She at first is curt and absolutely unyielding in her determination to keep him at a distance; he responds with patience but also insists on a measure of respect. They talk little, but observe much, and form a connection that is stripped of artifice and layered with small kindnesses. The paucity of information exchanged between them feels stark at times but comes to feel spacious, respectful, a fitting acknowledgement of the essential mystery of every human being (a mystery that it strikes me people mostly avoid noticing). Antoniak handles this material with a sure hand, and rewards the patience and attentiveness the story demands from the audience. Moving and profound.

"The Inheritors" (8) offers an opportunity for close observation of the lives of children in rural northern Mexico who, from the time they can walk, must work long hours to contribute to their families' survival. The director of this poetic documentary wisely dispenses with commentary and even with many words, instead painstakingly documenting the daily life of these children as they cut cane, gather firewood, harvest tomatoes, peppers, corn, and beans, herd lifestock, weave baskets, and carve wooden figures to sell. The images of such small children at such arduous work instead of in school or on a playground is jarring; it's clear this life is all they know. This film captures the dignity of the lives they lead, and also makes one ashamed at the rhetoric used to disparage immigrants who seek a better life in the U.S.

I don't think "Shameless" (5) is really up to the level of other films by Czech director Jan Hrebejk ("Divided We Fall" and "Beauty in Trouble" are his best). Despite good performances and capable direction, the story of a TV weatherman who hits his 40s and suddenly feels so distracted by the size of his wife's nose that he is compelled to leave her and resume his apparently arrested adolescence never really leads anywhere. It's a pleasant enough diversion but no more.

Still, I liked it better than "Looking for Eric" (4), in which British director Ken Loach ("The Wind the Shakes the Barley") departs his usual social realism genre to make a sort of romantic sports comedy. Why? I can't think of a reason, although apparently I might feel differently if I was a fan of French soccer legend Eric Cantona. Since I'm not (and since the film didn't change that), there wasn't anything to distract me from the fact that this story of a middle-aged man who is pulled out of depression by means of imaginary therapeutic conversations with his favorite soccer star was neither amusing nor heartwarming nor believable.

By the way, one of the best films of the entire festival, "A Town Called Panic," just opened at the Hollywood. Don't miss it!

PIFF Day 13 - Gritty good and gritty bad

2010-02-27T00:24:00.000-08:00

"Down Terrace" (8), like "The Sopranos," portrays dysfunction in a crime family where the stakes might just get you killed--but the brand of gritty realism and dark humor in this first film by British director Ben Wheatley feels more like the work of director Mike Leigh ("Secrets and Lies" and "Happy Go Lucky"). The set up is that Bill and his son Karl have just been released from jail and are determined to figure out who ratted them out to the police. An array of family friends and potential suspects come through the ordinary-looking household that father and son share with wife and mum Maggie, and each visitor (including a despised lackey, Karl's pregnant girlfriend, and two menacing hatchet men, one of whom brings his toddler along on jobs), becomes a target of Bill, Karl, and/or Maggie, in some combination,though not for any particularly good reason.

I loved every minute of this dark film. Once you settle into the bumbling rhythm of how they talk and relate, these Brits are surprisingly funny--man-child Karl swings from petulant to apoplectic at the slightest discomfort, Maggie's perpetually beleagured look barely hides her vicious instincts, and Bill slathers on the charm seconds after he has coldly concluded that someone is a worthless piece of garbage. One monologue in which Bill extols the idealism that characterized drug-dealing in his youth and his supposed commitment to "goodness, truth, and beauty" is particularly hilarious. The self-delusionment of these three is profound--it's a peculiar combination of appalling and funny and keeps you hooked as their behavior becomes increasingly chilling, until it slowly dawns on you just how sinister they really are. Eventually you realize that there actually is no limit to what they will do; the most vicious behavior might arise without warning in the most mundane circumstances--and with absolutely no evidence of shame in the aftermath.

This perceptive, canny film reminded me of a family I know from the inside out but frequently despair of describing--the dynamics here are similarly destructive, but with guns and hammers thrown into the mix. Watching the film made me feel strangely validated, as weird as that may sound, because this truth (in a fictional guise) is so much stranger than fiction. It's hilarious and profound.

Not words I'd remotely apply to "Strongman" (2.5), a documentary about Stanley "Stanless Steel" Pleskun, the self-described "strongest man in the world at bending steel and metal." I fear that films like "American Movie" and "Anvil: The Story of Anvil" have convinced filmmakers less talented than the ones behind those films that hapless losers will make great documentary subjects. It turns out that it's not easy at all to make an engaging film about a person so limited by his intelligence and ability as is Stan, who can leg-press two-ton trucks and bend pennies with his fingers but doesn't have a clue how to turn those skills into a show that would be remotely entertaining. Likable though Stan is, his world, peopled by even bigger losers, is just plain depressing--and the long shapeless scenes of pointless dialogue show this director to be as talentless at filmmaking as his subject is at turning the odd skills he has honed into something actually marketable.

PIFF Day 12 - "Nora's Will"

2010-02-25T11:07:00.000-08:00

The premise for "Nora's Will" (4) had some potential in the right hands. A woman in her 60's commits suicide, leaving careful instructions for preparation of a Passover Seder that will occur on the day the family will be finally allowed to bury her under Jewish law. Her careful planning brings together the atheist husband from whom she has been divorced for 20 years, their son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren, a cousin, a beloved housekeeper, and members of the tight-knit community of religious Jews in Mexico City.

This film seemed to be very popular with the mostly older PIFF audience and has gotten good user ratings on IMDb. I, however, found it to be too shallow and even frustrating. For one thing, a suicide isn't a very good basis for a film that is trying to be a gentle comedy. The woman (who we're told has attempted suicide 14 times but we don't ever acquire any deeper understanding of why) has set things up so that her ex-husband (still her neighbor) will be the one to find her and will be tasked with sitting with her body for several days because it can't be buried without violating Jewish laws that he has rejected. Then everyone rolls their eyes when he is irritated and doesn't always react generously. It seemed to me that this film, which was supposed to be amusing and heartwarming (and most people seemed to find it so) wasn't very emotionally honest.

PIFF Day 11 - "Reporter," "Vincere," and the worst film of the festival

2010-02-22T00:39:00.000-08:00

I saw a couple of very good films today. The first, "Reporter" (7.5) is a documentary about Oregon native Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on the crisis in Darfur. The director, Eric Daniel Metzger (whose documentary, "Life. Support. Music" I admired at Full Frame a couple of years ago), has found a good focus for this film, using Kristof's current interest in the crisis in the Congo as a context for examination of his methods as a reporter and of the larger questions of how and whether it is possible to break past the public's tendency toward "psychic numbing." That's the psychological term for the common tendency to ignore the suffering of large numbers of people; in fact, the film points to research showing that our willingness to help begins to decrease when we are asked to help even two people rather than one. Conscious of this phenomenon, Kristof seeks to use individual stories to bring attention to larger social problems, yet struggles for a way to broaden the focus. The film poses challenging questions about what it means to do good in horrific situations, and Kristof's tenacity and courage inspires, even as one sees how in a way inured he has become to extreme suffering. There's also a fascinating depiction of back-to-back visits with a woman who is starving as a result of the war, and a Congolese warlard, who denies the starvation and disease faced by civilians and then offers Kristoff and his company a very good meal. The film grapples well with the value of bearing witness and the struggle to truly do good.

"Vincere" (9) (which translates as the imperative form of "victory" in Italian) tells the compelling and long-hidden story of Ida Dalser, who bore Benito Mussolini a son and then was cast aside in favor of the only wife he acknowledged publicly. This stylish and inventive retelling begins in his early radical days, when Dalser was one of the first to believe him. Note to self: don't fall hard for a monomaniacal future despot. These early scenes are intriguingly passionate, although it's clear from the beginning that Il Duce is not a nice guy; there's a beautfully filmed depiction of their lovemaking showing only their faces, with Mussolini staring intensely ahead, already looking past Dalser and never returning her passionate professions of love. Nevertheless, they seem perfectly matched in intensity and idealogy, and she sells all her possessions to fund the newspaper that helped his ideas find a mass audience.

About a year after Dalser bore him a son (whom Mussolini acknowledged), he married another woman and set about repudiating Dalser. She claimed for years that he had married her, but no written proof of that was ever offered. The film suggests she may have hung onto the proof--and with good reason, since she spent the last 11 years of her life in an insane asylum for insisting that she was Il Duce's true wife. The fierceness she had formerly devoted to supporting Mussolini she enlists to make increasingly shrill public protestations of her status as his wife and the mother of his firstborn son. Eventually she is hospitalized and loses custody of her son.

I loved the way the couple is depicted, and loved the film even more after he dumps her and is seen only in newsreel footage. Dalser does at times seem on the edge of sanity--yet it is her insistence on the truth that makes her seem crazy. The inscrutability of her dilemma is conveyed a million times better than were similar problems in "The Changeling"--this is compelling, bracing stuff.

And finally, the very worst film of the festival: "The Wild Hunt" (1) from Canada. It's an utterly ridiculous story of the intersection of life and a large role-playing game involving Celts, elves, Vikings, and a sinister shaman waging battles somewhere in the forests of Quebec. There might be a potential comedy here, but instead the director decided that the foam-padded acts of violence should turn genuinely ugly. Problem is, the supposedly real-life story is even stupider than the role play, and the director never finds either believable characters or a consistent tone. Groaningly awful.

PIFF Day 10: Two excellent and two decent films

2010-02-20T23:46:00.000-08:00

I caught four films today, and two deserve more discussion than I can give them right now, but here's a start.

I'm not a Disney junkie by any means, but found "Waking Sleeping Beauty" (6.5) interesting primarily as a tale of corporate politics that felt strangely familiar. It's an insider look at Disney animation studios from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, when Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg were brought in to remake the company into the profitable machine that turned out such hits as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?," "The Little Mermaid," and "The Lion King." There are some interesting peeks into the creative process, particularly with regard to the music, and the political infighting is genuinely fascinating (especially accompanied by mean caricatures drawn by angry animators--that revenge must be sweet). What amazed me most, though, was watching this group of geeky white males at work--you would never imagine such a group being the masterminds behind these projects--and also the film's utter lack of consciousness about the homogeneity of the players. There is hardly an ethnic minority in sight and, though from still photos it's apparent that lots of women worked at the studio during this era, not a single one is interviewed. How did no one notice this?

One of the real finds of the festival so far is "A Town Called Panic" (10), which must be seen to be believed. The first feature-length film of two Belgian animators, it is an absurdist stop-motion animated tale starring a dashing plastic toy horse and his hapless housemates, a plastic toy cowboy and Indian, both on awkward little stands, living in an idyllic village improbably called Panic. The jerky movements of these figures suggest what naughty kids might play at when adults aren't looking--except these kids picked up a few ideas the adults didn't expect them to overhear. Beginning with the daily toilette of Horse, Cowboy, and Indian, in which all three shower and brush their teeth, and continuing through a manic adventure that includes a botched internet shopping order, a raucous party, a romance between Horse and a sultry equine music teacher, a journey to the center of the earth, the discovery of an alternative underwater universe, and a giant robot penguin who hurls perfect snowballs from one universe to the other, the film is endlessly inventive and laugh-out-loud funny. Each detail is riotously imagined, the voices and dialogue are a hoot (I especially loved the constant shout of the plastic farmer next door--and hearing the dialogue in French punctuated with American slang made it somehow more amusing), and the action is joyously frenetic. Even if you don't normally go for animated films, give this one a try--it's utterly original and fun.

"Welcome" (8.5) is perhaps the best film about illegal immigration that I've seen; though I liked "Dirty Pretty Things" and "The Visitor," this film is not so heavy-handed as the former and delves much deeper than the latter. Set mostly in Calais, it tells the story of Bilal, a 17-year-old Kurdish refugee who has travelled for three months on foot to northern France and is desperate to get across the English channel to his girlfriend, who has immigrated with her family to London. He is uneasily befriended by Simon, a middle-aged swimming instructor whom he enlists to train him so that he can swim across. Simon, whose soon-to-be ex-wife Marion works with an organization that provides aid to the many refugees who congregate on the border, seeks at first to impress her by aiding Bilal--but his reasons become more complex as his eyes are opened to the experience of the community of illegals who are his neighbors. Simon puts himself increasingly at risk because the French government treats harshly not only immigrants but those who seek to help them. This is the kind of film that rarely comes out of Hollywood--which is to say, it doesn't oversimplify a complex situation and doesn't tie everything up neatly. I hope it gets wider distribution.

Finally, "The Shock Doctrine" (5), based on a best-selling book by the same name, is fine as far as it goes, but I had the feeling I'd have been better off reading the book. It seeks to explain how elite corporate interests exploit moments of extreme crisis and cultural upheaval to push an unregulated, free-market idealogy. But a lot of footage and examples are crammed into the film's 82 minutes, to very conventional effect that doesn't take any real advantage of the medium or add much to the analysis. May be worth seeing if you want an introduction to the book or are not going to read it, but not spectacular.

PIFF Day 9 - "Fish Tank" and "Mother"

2010-02-20T00:59:00.000-08:00

Three years ago, British director Andrea Arnold's first film, "Red Road" was a highlight of PIFF for me and made it onto my top 10 list for the year. Her second film, "Fish Tank" (9.5), shows she is the genuine article. But be forewarned--hers is a bleak vision.

Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com described the film as a cross between "Precious" (which I loved) and "An Education" (which I found facile) and he makes a good point. Like "Precious," it depicts a neglected teenager's life with brutal honesty. Fifteen-year-old Mia lives with her slatternly mother and volatile younger sister in a depressing housing project; what passes for communication between them consists entirely of insults, profanity, and slammed doors. Ostracized by her peers and seething with fury, she doesn't appear to attend school and, within the first few minutes of the film, taunts a group of girls, breaks one of their noses with a head-butt, and tries to free a pitiful-looking horse tethered to a concrete block until she is herself attacked by a group of boys. Constantly in motion, she seems unable to contain or understand her rage, calmed only by practicing dance moves to hip hop music in an abandoned space in her apartment building.

Her interest is piqued by her mother's new boyfriend, Connor, who quickly demonstrates an ability to break past her angry force field. He is calm and amused and interested in her. But in what way? You dare to hope for her sake that he could be a kind of father figure--but caring is mixed up with other things for her, and for him too. She doesn't know to be afraid--but we do.

The way in which the film handles that relationship is 100 times better than "An Education," which pretties up the situation too much and doesn't make psychological sense. Arnold knows how to traverse difficult emotional terrain; she is prepared to (and does) make you uncomfortable but not just because she can. Through a combination of close observation and subtle metaphor (watch for a scene in which Connor takes the family for a drive and shows Mia how to catch a fish with her bare hands), Arnold conveys complexities other films can't even touch.

The fishing scene shows Mia's fearlessness and also her vulnerability; Connor comments on how the fish are too stupid to be afraid, and Mia leaves the scene with a minor injury that doesn't deter her interest. She is young, but more than that, her world has deadened her self-protective instincts. She gives danger as little quarter as she gives everything else, never really sensing what easy pickings she is.

I also especially liked the final scenes between Mia and her mother and sister. It's a believable moment of connectedness, but not tidy, the three of them being as awake as they ever are. I will be thinking of this film for some time--and it is scheduled to play again soon at Cinema 21, for any Portlanders who'd like to see it on the big screen.

I wasn't so taken with "Mother" (4), the latest from the Korean director of "The Host," which I enjoyed a few years ago. Bong Joon-Ho displays similar inventiveness here with a tale of a mother's determined efforts to vindicate her mentally disabled son, who has been wrongly accused of a brutal murder. The mother, portrayed by an actress quite famous to Korean audiences, is intriguing--tough, relentless, and capable of handling all of the dark surprises she uncovers underneath the placid surface of her provincial town. But though I admired Bong's imaginative ideas, I couldn't find anyone to care about--the son was annoying and not well-played, and the extremes of the other characters held me a distance. Even the mother, as intriguing as she was, ultimately annoyed me. I can imagine that some will find the odd vibe of this film more enjoyable than I did--it appears so from the criticism I've seen.

PIFF Day 8 - French film day

2010-02-18T23:13:00.000-08:00

Director Catherine Breillat is known for provocative films about female experience (e.g., "The Last Mistress"). Her latest is "Bluebeard" (7), a retelling of a classic French fairy tale about a mysterious, rich, blue-bearded ogre whose young wives keep disappearing. He takes a new wife, who is innocent and not afraid of him and even likes his blue beard. They get along well until he goes away and leaves her a set of keys to everything in his castle but forbids her to use one of the keys. Of course she can't resist . . . .

Breillat's retelling is brief, simple, and potent. Along with the fairy tale she includes another story of two sisters, the younger and brighter of whom enjoys spooking her older sister by telling her the old fairy tale. It's an interesting device, and like the fairy tale itself, contains lots of interesting nuggets about the workings of the unconscious, about female power, and about the risks of looking at what is hidden. Maybe not for everyone, but fun for the literary folks among us.

On the other hand, "The Girl on the Train" (5) left me frustrated. Based on a famous incident in France in which a Gentile girl lied about being the victim of an anti-Semitic hate crime, the film seems at first as though it is going to round out the story and illuminate the girl's psyche and the reverberations the story had with the French public. Yet, despite a long build-up to the lying incident, it still seems to come out of nowhere, though the film lays down enough groundwork that I sensed the director was convinced that he had made more sense of the story than he actually had. I don't mind the girl's motives remaining inscrutable, but the problem for me was that I didn't believe she would do what she did. The reaction of her boyfriend to an earlier crisis also didn't really ring true for me.

PIFF Day 7 - "Nobody to Watch Over Me"

2010-02-18T09:49:00.000-08:00

Even though I can't recommend "Nobody to Watch Over Me" (3), I would really like someone who understands Japanese culture to see it and give me their take. It's apparent throughout the film that a lot of what drives the story are aspects of Japanese culture that I can't really relate to, so I can't be sure that my reaction is totally fair to the film.

Before the story begins, two small children have been murdered, and the prime suspect is an 18-year-old boy. The film explains that police often will asign officers to protect family members of an accused in such a situation because of the very real risk of suicide. In the world of the film (which is not explained but is convincingly demonstrated), the risk results from a strong undercurrent of shame in Japanese culture along with the way in which family connections are viewed, which seems much more extreme than in Western culture. Additionally, in the world depicted here, the Japanese media are particularly vicious, hounding the families of suspects and demanding information and atonement for the crime. The film depicts high speed chase scenes comparable to what Princess Diana experienced, as a family member is hunted down by reporters, and hysterical online media efforts to locate and shame her.

All of that I could buy--but the film unraveled for me as the story unfolded. Most of it involves the 15-year-old sister of the accused, and the officer who is assigned to protect her, who is fighting his own demons from the bind police work puts him in with his own family and the conflicts between following the dictates of his superiors and actually protecting the public. I found the story-telling clumsy and increasingly unbelievable from a psychological standpoint. The relationship between the cop and the kid culminates in a conversation in which he gives her advice that sounds to me like absolute claptrap. Would it make better sense to an insightful Japanese person? Who knows?

PIFF Day 6 - "Garbage Dreams" and "Ajami"

2010-02-17T00:31:00.000-08:00

The Egyptian documentary "Garbage Dreams" (6) depicts the Zaballeen, an impoverished community in Cairo which has for decades performed the role of the city's only garbage collectors. Though their working conditions are doubtless dangerous and unsanitary and their methods somewhat rudimentary, they manage to recycle 80% of what they collect. However, their way of life is threatened when the city (which has never contracted for garbage collection) hires foreign contractors to perform garbage collection. The new collectors in town use more modern methods, but recycle only 80% of what they collect. They let all kinds of garbage go unsalvaged and simply bury their waste in landfills.

The film provides an interesting window into a culture of forgotten and overlooked people. The community's real attachment to their role as salvage artists, and to garbage itself, is portrayed with respect and without irony. The dreams of the three teenagers who provide a focus for the film all center on what is possible in their world--owning a can cutting factory, or earning respect for wearing the uniform of the foreign garbage collection company. They have grown up in a community that is unified around the work of garbage collection, with winding alleys piled with trash and crevices stuffed with bags of refuse. Yet their attachment to that way of life is profound. So too is their isolation--because of the poorer and less presentable world they come from, what they have to teach about salvage methods is lost.

Like the other Oscar-nominated film I've seen at the festival ("A Prophet"), I had trouble connecting with "Ajami" (7), though I admired its elements. It uses mixed timelines and interlocking stories (a la "Crash" but more confusing to my American eyes) to depict life in a very rough, mostly Arab part of Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv. I had trouble keeping straight the large cast (speaking Arabic and Hebrew) and felt I was missing some of the connections just from my lack of familiarity with the setting and culture.

That said, I did appreciate the film's depiction of interlocking communities who live in close proximity but are profoundly alien from each other and are locked in pointless cycles of violence. In each of several episodes that divide the film, people (sometimes children) are abruptly and senseless killed, due to misunderstandings. Co-directed by an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian and featuring mostly non-actors working through a process of improvisation, the film neither explains nor judges the tangle of humanity it depicts. Though the film doesn't offer any hope, one wonders if there isn't at least some to be found in the fact that a group of Jews and Arabs worked together to depict this piece of the truth.

PIFF Day 5: "Protector"

2010-02-15T22:56:00.001-08:00

Monday's selection, "Protector" (9) was one of my favorite films of the festival so far. A highly stylized and fresh depiction of a certain aspect of the Czech experience of Nazi occupation, this film crackles with inventiveness. And, like the best films about wartime experience (including another wonderful Czech film that I wrote about a few years back, "Divided We Fall"), it shows how war sometimes asks of people more heroism than they possess.

The story centers on Hana, a beautiful rising film actress, and her jealous journalist husband, Emil. The Nazis invade just as Hana is completing her first film star turn and, because she is Jewish, the censors prevent the release of her film. The power balance suddenly shifts in the marriage, as the Nazis quickly impose anti-Semitic laws that prevent her from working or even going to the cinema. Meanwhile, Emil's fortunes improve, when the most popular radio journalist is pulled off the air for refusing to cooperate with the Nazis and Emil makes a deal with the devil to become the voice of the Third Reich. He does this, ostensibly, for Hana's sake--rather than divorcing her, he has vowed to protect her.

The idea of protection figures potently in the film. The Nazis refer to themselves as protectors of the Czechs--their country becomes a "protectorate" and the head of the Reich there, Reinhold Heydrich, becomes the "Reichsprotektor." Emil promises to protect Hana, who formerly protected him. Yet none of this actually feels like protection--it's really about power. The protector in each case is given license to steal--in Emil's case, as compromises pile on top of each other, he feels himself to be making so many sacrifices on Hana's behalf that he loses respect for her and easily succumbs to various female admirers. Hana, for her part, bored at home and robbed of the spotlight, sneaks into the local cinema and takes up with a morphine-addicted projectionist. She engages in little acts of artistic rebellion as the projectionist photographs her all over Prague in places forbidden to Jews, wearing the bleached blond wig from her starring role that no one has seen. She considers herself to be in hell, and she is in a way--but not, of course, compared to other less protected Jews.

The artistry here makes everything fresh and suits the nature of the story, which is all about likable but vain artists robbed of the attention they desire and forced to make decisions where the stakes go beyond artistic compromise. Bicycles are a potent recurring symbol--Hana pedals furiously on a stationary bicycle in her film, and Emil pedals furiously in his efforts to appease the Reich and grab what he can for himself. The score has a pedal-powered feel that sounds like a very good remix of the most innocent 30s and 40s music, revealing its darker edge. There is much to admire, and much to think about--particularly because war is arguably just a more extreme version of how people behave most of the time.

PIFF Days 3 (cont.) and 4 - "Untouchable Girls" and others

2010-02-14T23:31:00.000-08:00

Nine films into the festival, my favorite so far is "The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls" (9.5), a documentary about two of the most charming and genuine people you'd ever want to meet. What's good about this documentary is that it really captures who these women are--but I'll admit that a lot of the reason I rate this film so highly is because of the women themselves, not because of the film's quality. I seriously want absolutely all of you to meet them, and I defy you to watch this film and not be changed by it.

Jools and Lynda Topp are icons in New Zealand--but it's hard to imagine more unlikely icons. "On paper," says a comedy-writer friend, "yodeling lesbian twins don't really work," least of all in the salt-of-the-earth culture of New Zealand. Yet their fan base includes rednecks, left-wingers, and everyone in between those extremes. With characteristic modesty, Lynda Topp comments, "We're not comedians; we're singers who are funny." I'd argue that they are quite clearly skilled comedians--their array of characters ingeniously lampoon various aspects of Kiwi culture and put them in a league with Monty Python. But the modesty is also part of who they are. The truth is, these buoyant women, aptly dubbed an "anarchist variety act," are mostly just whole-heartedly who they are--and who they are disarms every tendency to label and marginalize them and instead makes everyone just want to be around them. It's brilliantly inspiring, and also buoyantly subversive.

The film tells their story of growing up as farm girls and contains wonderful footage of their start as performers in the early 80s, when they began by busking on street corners. Obviously out lesbians, they easily gathered crowds with their full-throated country-and-western songs, sung "like one voice in stereo," as one admirer puts it. They always are having so much fun that folks want to join in, even when they are singing radical lesbian love songs. They're close enough to my age and remind me of so many of my friends that it was especially easy for me to see the significance of the toehold they claimed on the Kiwi psyche--and the film shows that too, as they cheerfully joined the fight for gay rights in New Zealand and lent their voices to other causes, such as Maori land rights and the fight against South African apartheid. The film also introduces their parents, salt-of-the-earth New Zealanders who matter-of-factly explain their momentary disappointment at learning that all three of their children (including the twins' brother) were gay--until they realized, that is, that "it doesn't actually matter."

The characters the twins have invented are a particularly brilliant part of their success. Farmers Ken Smythe and Ken Moller with their beer guts and bad polyester; posh Socialites Prue and Dilly Ramsbottom; country girls Belle and Bell Gingham; and the hilarious Camp Mother and Camp Leader--all these and others poke fun at staples of Kiwi culture, but with such genuine affection that they are loved by the communities they represent. The twins are utterly fearless and without vanity, and often the characters comment on Jools and Lynda themselves, as if to locate the lesbian twins in the same array of Kiwi staples.

This film really snuck up on me. I couldn't help but like these women right off--but as the genius of their whole-hearted method sunk in, I felt increasingly moved and spent the last quarter of the film with tears in my eyes. I thought lovingly of so many friends who would feel so celebrated by these wonderful, genuine women, their courage balanced with radiating love. Don't make the mistake of missing this one, even if you can't imagine being entertained by a documentary about yodeling lesbian twins. Put it in your queue or see it at the festival Tuesday evening.

Though I found much to admire in "A Prophet" (7), which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes and is nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film, I couldn't seem to find a way to connect with it. The film tells the story of Malik, an illiterate 19-year-old of mixed Arab and Corsican heritage, who enters jail as a petty criminal and, like so many young men, leaves a much savvier player in the criminal underground. In a way this is like a mob movie, in that it portrays the intricacies of survival in prison and indirectly makes the case that the "fittest" will survive by becoming more entrenched in lives of crime. The characters and setting were interesting and well-drawn, but the prophet theme was unsatisfying, and I never moved from a remote place of observation. I expect others will like the film more than I did, though.

"Home" (6), for all its occasional charms, struck me as a bit of a misfire. This Swiss film depicts an apparently happy family of five who live in a non-descript house set on lots of open grassland--right up against an unfinished highway. In the beginning of the film it is apparent the highway has been been functioning for them as an expansive front yard--until the government finally finishes it. Within a few short days, the family is driven more than a bit mad by the noise, exhaust fumes, and gawking passersby. The film is strongest in depicting the family bond and the happy ordinariness of their lives, but begins to unravel when the craziness begins. And its treatment of themes of industrialism encroaching on family life wasn't particularly insightful and enlightening.

The delight of day 4 was "Mid-August Lunch" (7), the directorial debut of Italian screenwriter Gianni De Gregorio, who also stars in the film as a man in his 50s who serves as caretaker to his elderly mother in their charming apartment in Rome. As a holiday weekend approaches, his landlord and then a friend each imposes on him to care for their elderly mothers and an elderly aunt. Gianni soon finds himself taxed to the limit waiting on four petulant, neglected octogenarians as they fight with each other, complain like children, and compete for attention. The ordinariness of the premise and the authenticity of the setting and actors gives this an improvised feel, made especially delightful by how much it reflects all that is amusing about Italian culture (the lilting, insistent language; the colorful decorative, if sometimes shappy, touches; the affection for heavy food, wine, and cigarettes; the ability to make a demand sound courteous; the sentimentality of and towards the elderly). It's a treat.

Finally, the first bad film I've seen so far is "The Window" (2) from India, a muddled mess about a couple whose plans for marriage are thwarted by a series of events mostly initiated by the do-gooder young man. The problems begin when he visits his decrepit old school and impetuously decides to donate an elaborate window (which he can't afford) to replace the now crumbling one he gazed out of as a boy. Though the festival guide describes the film as depicting "a picaresque netherworld of petty crime and mystical visions," I didn't see any deeper meanings and in fact thought the film needed a better director and screenplay. One to avoid.

PIFF Day 3

2010-02-14T09:53:00.000-08:00

What could be better than a Saturday afternoon spent closely observing a dying way of life out in the mountains of Montana? Beautifully shot over a period of years, without any narration on or off camera to guide you, "Sweetgrass" (9) show the life of sheep and sheep herders (the word "shepherd" simply does not capture the work depicted here) in the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains of Montana. This particular herd was the last to graze there on a federal grazing permit during the spring and summer months, so what we are seeing is no more.

The film begins on the ranch itself, and almost the whole first half contains no human voices, just those of the sheep (which, since my childhood living across a dirt road from a sheep herd, have always sounded to me like every range of human voice making sheep sounds). It is stunning how loud the life of a sheep herder is--a constant cacophony of sound, and a constant chaotic swirl of animal flesh. The camera work here is so astute, and varied: sometimes you see what seems an undulating mass of wool; other times you feel as though you are among successive sheep faces nosing each other away from food pellets; then you see how roughly the sheep are accustomed to being handled as they submit to every manner of contorsion during shearing. A few lambs are delivered, with varying degrees of difficulty, and you see the assist the humans provide for eating and bonding between lambs and mother sheep. The rough treatment the sheeps accept makes sense when you see how the lambs are dragged and tossed around--and the care is often ingenuous, as when a man pulls a fresh lambskin over an orphan, in an attempt to fool a mother into nursing it as her own lost lamb.

Then you see the drive to the mountains, beginning with the massive herd pouring through the small local town. Life in the mountains is fascinating in its own right--the beauty of the scenery becomes terrible in its way, as the men must suffer the winds, the ruthless terrain, and the never-ending randomness of sheep behavior. One wonders at the chaos of it, and at how in a way unliveable that life is for the men; there's a particularly entertaining moment where one of the men whines about the sheep (whom he calls "bitches") and his bad knee to his mom on his cell phone. After a long stretch of the cacophony of the herd, the filmmakers pull back for a particularly long shot that shows again the brutality of the landscape. You can't even make out the sheep at first, until the camera slowly pans in enough to show that you've been looking at the entire herd.

Interestingly enough, this slow visual feast doesn't show a directing credit--it's the work of two Harvard academics, one the director of the Sensory Ethnography Lab and the other an associate curator of visual anthropology at the Peabody Museum. They've given us a magnificent vision, and a beautiful work of art. You'll have another chance to catch it Tuesday night.

That's all I have time to write for now--but stay tuned for two more Day 3 reviews, including of my favorite film so far, "The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls" (9.5), a glorious documentary about a yodeling lesbian twin comedy act from New Zealand that I desperately want everyone to see. (You can, on Sunday or Monday afternoon--or put it in your queue.) On to church and then more movies!

PIFF Day 2

2010-02-13T00:20:00.000-08:00

I plan to see 31 films at the film festival, and will attempt to blog them all. Every year I see several wonderful films, some of which don't get a theatrical release at all--so my hope is that you can put the ones that sound appealing in your Netflix queue and catch them when they are released on DVD.

Tonight I saw two films that are probably not for everyone. The first, a Romanian film called "Police, Adjective" (7.5), won two significant prizes at Cannes. I'll warn you that it is quite slow--it's a police procedural that is the absolute antithesis of all the CSI shows, in that it depicts just how monotonous actual police work really is. But its rewards are significant--in fact, the film really grew on me and I think I will stew on it for awhile. It's about a young detective who is assigned to perform surveillance on a high school student whose friend has snitched on him for selling drugs. Every day the detective watches the kid do absolutely nothing of note except smoke hashish with the so-called friend (whom the detective dubs"the Squealer" in his written reports) and a girl who apparently is the subject's girlfriend on whom the Squealer wishes to make a move. The detective becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of going after this kid, which he knows his supervisor expects him to do. Why ruin the kid's life for casual use of small amounts of hashish, which isn't even prosecuted in most neighboring countries?

Watching the detective plod through his day is quietly, boringly amusing (really). He is subtly stubborn and subversive as he deals with his boss (mostly avoiding him) and his recalcitrant coworkers who can't be bothered to give him the assistance he needs to work the case. He trudges through days of surveillance wearing the same sweater and goes home to have desultory conversations with his wife, including an amusing one about a song that she finds metaphorically interesting and he finds utterly lacking in content. (I actually agreed with him.) I like A.O. Scott's description of he detective's rejection of his wife's defense of the metaphors in the song as "a hyperbolically blunt statement of an impulse that drives much recent Romanian cinema, away from metaphor and toward a concrete, illusion-free reckoning with things as they are."

The climactic scene between the detective and his boss actually involves a surprisingly suspenseful session of dictionary reading occasioned by the tension between the detective's conscience and his duty as perceived by his superiors. The similarities to my own job and its occasional sense of disconnection from the moral and practical dilemmas that underlie the legal problems we are called upon to address made me laugh aloud, since often a dictionary is involved in my world, too. At least the lawyers among you may appreciate this one.

"The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" (5) probably has more audience appeal--in fact, it was nominated for an audience award at the European Film Awards. It's an effective potboiler that has had huge box office grosses in Sweden and is based on a really popular crime novel that a large number of people in the audience I was in had read. It's got high production values and interesting lead performances--and a lot of sexual violence. So, if you like that sort of thing, it's a good little thriller with absolutely nothing significant to say. It will play again at the festival on Sunday night and then will come to Cinema 21 in April.

PIFF Day 1

2010-02-11T00:15:00.000-08:00

The 2010 Portland International Film Festival doesn't officially begin tomorrow--but I caught my first film today at a press screening. "The Wedding Song" (9) may be the first Tunisian film I've ever seen--and it is wonderful. It's the second film of director Karin Albou, and is a closely observed portrait of women's lives. It focuses on two 16-year-old girls in Nazi-occupied Tunis in 1942, friends since childhood, one Jewish and one Muslim. Both are poor and both are both oppressed and oppressor. The Muslim girl longs to marry the handsome cousin to whom she is betrothed, but can't until he finds work; the Jewish girl and her widowed mother can't afford the crushing reparation payments assessed by the Nazis, so the mother (played by Albou) promises the girl to a wealthy much-older doctor, a plan that fills the girl with loathing. As the Nazis increasingly foment tension between poor Muslims and the Jewish community, who enjoyed greater access to education and status under French rule, the two girls are pitted against each other. Albou's telling of this story is full of universal insight, and much of its power comes from its concreteness, especially Albou's frank depiction of women's bodily experience of oppression. Aided by riveting performances by the two girls, the film is vivid, tactile, and profound. You can catch it Thursday, February 18 or Saturday, February 20. (In Arabic and French.)

WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU MIGHT SET YOU FREE

2010-02-08T22:45:00.000-08:00

As you have no doubt heard, "Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire" (10) tells the wrenching story of a morbidly obese, illiterate African-American teenager barely surviving abject poverty and unthinkable abuse at the hands of both her parents. Though I teared up every time I saw the preview for this film and knew I'd have to see it, I didn't hold out much hope that it would rise above the typical Hollywood shortcuts and clumsy exposition.

No way, then, did I expect to leave the theater so utterly moved, and so enriched. I saw the film at Portland's Lloyd Mall, in a very diverse audience of mostly older upper-middle-class whites and mostly younger African Americans, and the two hours we spent together in this movie's thrall were strangely unifying; nearly everyone sat in stunned silence with me as the credits rolled and waves of grief and admiration and amazement washed over us. Of the Oscar-nominated films, it's my pick to win best picture.

I don't have a clue how second-time director Lee Daniels figured out how to tell this kind of truth. The reality is so harsh that one can scarce imagine that audiences will have the temerity to sit still for it. Many of those connected with the film--producers Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, comedian and actress Mo'nique (fearless in the role of the Precious's abusive mother, Mary), and Daniels himself--were themselves abused as children, so they understand that experience from the inside out. But understanding it and depicting it are two different things.

The truth they manage to convey is specific, unrelenting, and unendurable. Sixteen-year-old Clareece Jones is crassly nicknamed "Precious," though everyone treats her as worthless and she knows it. Stalled in the eighth grade and functionally illiterate, she is invisible in plain sight, enormous but ignored except for the occasional taunt by a neighborhood kid. She speaks rarely and only in a congested mumble, as though she is buried in those mountains of flesh, and returns each night to a squalid apartment that she shares with a mother who hurls insults, orders, and the occasional frying pan at her. She is pregnant with her second child by her drug-addict father, who is otherwise mostly absent; the first, a girl with Down's Syndrome who is cruelly named "Mongo," lives with a grandmother who brings her by only as a necessary prop for visits from a welfare worker.

In crumbling prose, Precious narrates her inner life, including glittery, TV-addict fantasies where she wears ball gowns and has a "light-skinned boyfriend" and "good hair." A thin blonde white girl looks back at her in the mirror. She is someone people see but don't see, "her massive body at once a prison and a hiding place" (A.O.Scott, NY Times)--yet glimmers of a fighting spirit flicker. "The other day I cried," she recounts at one point. "But you know what? F--- that day."

Her second pregnancy gets her kicked out of the eighth grade, but a defeated guidance counselor hangs in there long enough to refer her to an alternative school for pregnant and parenting teens. The fact that Precious follows up on the referral indicates another flicker of unaccountable self-regard, a small seed of potential that finally can be nurtured by a teacher, Ms. Rain, who actually sees her and doesn't look away.

That first day, Ms. Rain pushes her to read a page from a children's book, and confirms that Precious can barely sound out the simplest words. "It all looks the same to me," she says. It's a perfect metaphor for her neglected soul, her utter inability to articulate a point of view. The rest of the film is devoted to her painstaking climb out of the rubble to form an identity, fueled by genuine caring and by the simple instruction that she write, and keep writing, every day. She acquires the ability to assert herself, along with the ability to name her experience, until she can actually cry out that all "love" has done for her is to beat her, rape her, and make her feel worthless. It's hopeful, but doesn't spare you the arduousness of the struggle that lies before her.

There are some remarkable performances here. The task of bringing Precious to life is no small feat, because she is so blank most of the time and yet has such a colorful, TV-dream-fueled inner life; newcomer Gabourey Sidibe captures her blankness yet seizes your attention so that you don't look away in the way that most people naturally would in Precious's actual experience. Paula Patton is quietly effective as Ms. Rain, and the scenes with Precious and her classmates avoid the treacly over-simplification of so many stories of classroom triumph, showing the distance these girls must come and how completely they have acclimated to chaos and violence. Mariah Carey is unexpectedly convincing as a social worker who is in way over her head. Most remarkably, Mo'nique pulls off a miracle in her portrayal of Mary, brutal, self-pitying, and malevolent. It's nearly impossible to depict a person this evil without making her into a cartoon, but her Mary is complete, true, believable, and complex.

Daniels manages to convey a lot without explaining it directly: the failures of the education system; the ineffectual efforts of the welfare system to help people while holding them accountable; the complexities of the resulting cycle of dependence; and the intractable, unrelenting nature of family violence, particularly in a culture that bears the scars of slavery. As Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly observed, "Mary is raging and defeated, a woman who treats Precious as a slave--* * * these two are living out patterns of cruelty that go back for generations." Daniels tells this story so well that the film earns the payoff of a devastating final scene between Mary, Precious, and Mariah Carey's well-intentioned but misguided social worker in which Mary's true character is utterly revealed. Never has this type of abuse been so truthfully deconstructed.

Ms. Rain asks the girls in class, "What does it mean when the author describes the protagonist's circumstances as unrelenting?" The film asks that question too, yet somehow manages to avoid shortcuts that would turn Precious and Mary into stereotypes. The hope that emerges, then, is earned, and yet also challenging. It's a painful journey, work to sit through, but it will change you. This story deserves the attention it demands.

As Precious begins to acquire an identity, she begins to glimpse signs that Ms. Rain has her own sadness, her own struggle. She muses that "some folks has a lot of things around them that shines for other peoples. I think that maybe some of them was in tunnels. And in that tunnel, the only light they had, was inside of them. And then long after they escape that tunnel, they still be shining for everybody else." Those of you who know me best might understand how profoundly that struck me; we who have managed to rise out of unimaginable darkness know that, as scripture says, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." This film captures how high those stakes actually are, because the truth can just as easily kill you--but what doesn't might actually set you free.

THE BEAUTY OF INVISIBLE GRIEF, AND OTHER AWFUL THINGS

2010-01-24T23:26:00.000-08:00

The fashion designer Tom Ford has taken great care with his first film, "A Single Man," (10) a meditation on grief and invisibility that he directed and wrote based on a seminal 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood (author of the source material for "Cabaret"). Each shot is carefully composed, every detail of wardrobe and scene scrupulously art-directed, and the camera lingers lovingly on mascaraed eyelashes, smartly tailored suits and, especially, toned masculine flesh. I disagree, however, with critics who compared this film to a too-perfect perfume ad--Ford's gift with style serves a purpose here, and as far as I am concerned, he has not put one foot wrong.

It helps that his film is anchored by the best lead performance by an actor this year. (Jeff Bridges is wonderful in "Crazy Heart," but the script doesn't give him nearly this much to work with.) Colin Firth (who I previously loved best for his performance as Mr. Darcy in the 6-hour 1995 PBS version of "Pride and Prejudice") here portrays George, a 50ish British expat and English professor who is sinking under the weight of his grief over the death of Jim, his lover of 16 years. Because it is 1962, this man's solitude is total; each day he puts, as he says it, the finishing touches on the nearly perfect persona that passes as George, carefully insulating the world from what it would see as filthy and unspeakable: his deep love for Jim; the lustful stirrings he is now too weary to indulge; and a grief so profound that he can no longer find a reason to go on living. Yet even while going through the motions of what he has decided will be his last day, and carefully planning every detail of a death that he is determined will be as carefully arranged as the life he has led so scrupulously, his gentleness and essential goodness shine through.

That goodness is part of what makes George so compelling. His relationship with Jim is revealed in flashbacks that radiate the warmth between them. We notice, too, the small pause each time a student or colleague asks him a question and the way he genuinely listens before making a thoughtful reply. He is kinder to women than most straight men would be, utterly sincere in his expressions of appreciation for his housekeeper's attentions and his secretary's lovely skin and hair style. And he is loyal and affectionate to his best friend Charley (wonderfully played by Julianne Moore), a boozy divorcee' and fellow expat with whom he had a years-ago brief romance. Although it meant more to her than to him (she obviously still carries a torch for him, without really understanding him), their last evening together is characterized by litte kindnesses and gentle admonitions characteristic of a long friendship.

The attentiveness that characterizes all his interactions makes the completeness of George's isolation all the more devastating; he gives lavishly the very thing he is utterly denied. Very early on the film flashes back to the phone call when George learned from one of Jim's family members (a day-and-a-half later) of his death in a car crash; before George has a chance to absorb that blow, he must endure the news that the memorial service is for "family only." A charming neighbor girl innocently tells him that her father would like to kill him, minutes before her mother sweetly invites George over for cocktails. Even Charley, to whose arms he fled the night of that awful phone call, asserts that, despite what Jim meant to him, George must surely want a "real relationship." In a rare push against the bounds of his isolation, George offers a coded lecture to his students about the perceived threat posed by invisible minorities, but is not surprised when it goes straight over their heads. "I am exactly what I appear to be, if you look closely," he tells the one young student whose flirtatious attention he has captured. He says this with the rueful smile of someone who expects that no one will.

It's rare for a film to portray so completely and truthfully such private, invisible suffering. Ford, and Firth, manage the feat not in spite of the film's somewhat artificial, staged beauty, but making full use of it. As Bob Mondello (NPR) put it, "George is a man who manages his feelings, and visualizing him in such pristine terms lets Ford highlight the tiniest of gestures: the finessing George does to navigate a can't-ask-can't-tell world; the veiled '60s hints and glances that would never even register today; and the glimmers of hope that flare unexpectedly at the edges of despair."

Any number of films have attempted to portray this type of painful history (from which we have yet to fully evolve) with much less success--in "An Education" or "Mona Lisa Smile" or "The Changeling," for example, oppression of women is portrayed so clumsily that these films add to the myth that we have solved that particular problem. The success of this film is in its completeness, its utter dedication to truth, even while clothed in unearthly beauty. Isherwood's source material, Ford's attention to detail, and Firth's soulful insight bear careful witness to a type of suffering that is sadly common not only to gay experience, but also to the experience of other outsiders. Somehow these artists know, as one character puts it, that "sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty." I left this film grateful and affirmed by that approach to telling an otherwise invisible story.

BEST OF THE LAST TWO MONTHS OF 2009

2010-01-01T14:44:00.000-08:00

The press of life has put me behind on movie reviews, just at the time when more good stuff is rolling into theaters. Here are abbreviated reviews of the best films I've seen in the past couple of months; you'll likely see more from me on all three of these in my top 10 list at the beginning of March.

Speaking as a fan of writer-director Wes Anderson (except for his ride off the rails in "The Life Aquatic"), Fantastic Mr. Fox (9.5) is some of his best work to date, second only to "The Darjeeling Limited" (which others did not appreciate quite as much as I did). Who could have guessed that his quirky, self-conscious dialogue would sound so genuine and natural coming out of the mouths of scruffy animal puppets voiced by the likes of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, and Jason Schwartzman? Here Anderson, his co-writer Noah Baumbach, and a team of skillful designers and animators have lovingly conceived a world in which each character is so authentically who he or she is that it is not only funny and whimsical but also inspiring. Pure delight.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire (10) is currently in contention with "Bright Star" for my number 1 film of 2009. Its story of a pregnant, illiterate teenager whose soul and body and life are very nearly destroyed by horrific abuse and poverty and agonizing disregard and neglect is nearly impossible to tell because it is so painful and requires more attention than most people can stand to give such a tale. And yet, if you can spare your heart and attention for 109 minutes, you will never be the same. Director Lee Daniels and a fine cast, including a remarkably truthful Mariah Carey and comedian Mo'Nique (who deserves an Oscar for her betrayal of a mother with a diseased soul) have performed miracles here, and props to Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry for putting their money and influence behind the film. The story's parallels with my own childhood (which was not so physically horrific but contained similar emotional elements that I have always found difficult to explain) were so subtly and convincingly captured that the film, for me, embodied one of the core principles that has kept me sane: You shall know the truth and, somehow, the truth shall make you free.

"Up in the Air" (8) isn't in that league, but is still a delight. George Clooney is perfect as a corporate hatchetman who has carefully constructed for himself a life free of attachments, except to the goal of acquiring a record-shattering number of frequent flyer miles. He meets his match (both as an actor and as a character) in a fellow traveler played by the marvelous Vera Farmiga (the psychologist in"The Departed") and stumbles into just the mid-life crisis he thought his choices would spare him. The film has its finger on the pulse of an American culture bowed by economic woes and, in its depiction of Clooney's relationship with a young female upstart whose strategy for firing via videoconference threatens to transform Clooney's work life forever, aptly portrays generational conflicts whose implications are just now beginning to come to light. Though the film doesn't go deep in its struggle with ultimate questions, it does ring true. I loved it.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

2009-11-28T00:07:00.000-08:00

My predominant reaction the first time I saw the Coen Brothers' film, "A Serious Man" (9.5) was delight and gratitude that the brothers had thought to make a film about a part of American culture that hasn't really been portrayed in our popular media. Who else would even think to make a film depicting life in a fairly enclosed Jewish American community in the Midwest, circa 1967? Who else would begin their film with a seemingly disconnected Yiddish fable set hundreds of years ago in a shtetl somewhere in eastern Europe? Who else would have viewers scratching their heads in the very first scene, and yet fill their film with so many fascinating bits of detail that they never lose their audience's interest?

The Coens love to riff on familiar stories ("The Odyssey" in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" is the best example) and the homage here is to the biblical story of Job, a righteous man whose experience with a series of tragedies leaves him questioning what God is doing to him, and who receives unhelpful advice on his situation from a series of religious advisors. Here he is embodied by Larry Gopnik, a gently befuddled college physics professor who is up for a difficult tenure vote and whose life is beginning to unravel. His inexplicably bitter wife has taken up with an unctious older man; his brother, who appears to be struggling with mental illness, is living with him and engaging in increasingly worrisome behaviors; his son, soon to celebrate his bar mitzvah, has developed a somewhat problematic fondness for marijuana and Jefferson Airplane; and an oddly menacing student is attempting to bribe him to change and "unacceptable" grade.

All of this throws Larry into reverie. Appropriately, he is an admittedly tenuous expert in baffling ideas like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle which, as A.O. Scott points out, more or less translates into "God knows" since we can't. The problem is, God (or Hashem--"the name"--in Jewish parlance) doesn't appear to be taking questions. What does Hashem want? Is he trying to teach us something? Larry grasps for a way to make sense of it all, visiting three successive rabbis for answers, and each time comes up empty. God knows, but apparently He's not telling.

An earnest struggle for meaning takes particular shape in the context of Jewish culture--indeed, what better place for such a struggle? As one character memorably exclaims, "Thank heaven we're Jews, and we have access to such wonderful traditions to help us sort out the answers." When she urges Larry to talk to a rabbi, he wonders aloud, "What's the rabbi going to say?" Her response: "If I knew that, I'd be the rabbi."

That exchange is a perfect example of what Larry's pondering yields him. He poses the right questions, and asks them with an apparently pure heart. As he puts it, he tries to be a "serious man." Yet, despite the promise of meaning to be found in his religious tradition, the promised answers disintegrate in his hands.

Yet the Coens are not dishonoring their Jewish heritage. It's hard to imagine a more careful, loving tribute. They revel in so many small details: the potty-mouthed kid on the bus home from Hebrew school; the fables about everything and nothing; the rabbi whose office is filled with odd and vaguely menacing artifacts and is too busy "thinking" to see a desperate Larry but is surprisingly present and even wise with his 13-year-old son; the complex mix of loving attachment and offhandedness with which members of the community treat its traditions. I also admired the Coens' willingness to sit with the questions the story raises; faithful to their biblical source material, they have honored the story, the culture the film depicts, and the questions themselves.

A BRIGHT STAR, AND A THING OF BEAUTY

2009-10-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

The most lovely film I've seen so far this fall--which very much deserves to be seen on the big screen--is "Bright Star." (10) Australian director Jane Campion (best known for "The Piano") has written and directed this ode to John Keats and the young woman who inspired and loved him in the last couple of years of his short life before he died of consumption at the age of 25. I've admired Keats's poetry since my own youth, but it took a woman in her 50s to help me actually envision what his genius might have looked like and to begin to understand it and even to believe in it.

A tall order, with me as her audience, because the story involves young love, generally a tough sell for me. No offense to my young readers, but romances, particularly those about youthful lovers, generally inspire eye rolls from me. Most romances are totally unbelievable, written with no real insight about what actual love looks like (see, e.g., "500 Days of Summer"), and the emotional excesses of young screen lovers tend to annoy me even more. Keats's story involves his love for a young woman whom he met when she was 19 and her family moved into the house where he was also a boarder. Much flirting (all very restrained, since this is England in the Regency-era) and swoony romance ensues.

Yet this film could not be more lovely, or, in its way, more believable. Campion's cast helps. Ben Winshaw is a compelling and utterly convincing Keats--tragic, a little frail, yet with a grave intensity that infuses his lush poetry with a surprising sincerity. Abby Cornish is miraculous as his love, Fanny--bright, petulant, determined. A charming young woman who designs her own clothes, quite edgy for their day, and who seems quite comfortable with the fashionable balls and coquetry that are expected of her as a young woman of marriageable age, she seems an unlikely match for Keats. One senses that she pursues him at first to spite his roommate and friend, a boorish Scotsman named Brown who is himself an aspiring poet and who mercilessly teases Fanny for her frivolous pursuits and disdains her as a person of no conceivable substance.

Brown is the toughest role in the film, and Paul Schneider (brilliant in "Lars and the Real Girl" and becoming one of my favorite actors) displays amazing range here. His place in the film confused me at first, but I eventually concluded that he grounds a story that might otherwise have floated away. Brown treats Fanny and her artistry as ridiculous and silly, far beneath the heights which a poet dares to scale. As Fanny and Keats begin to form an alliance, he warns Keats against her feminine wiles and finds it inconceivable that she would be a fitting match for him. He fancies himself Keats's equal, if not in talent at least in substance, warning Fanny and her family not to disturb them when they are thinking great thoughts.

Fanny's sharp tongue is quick with retorts to Brown's barbs, and one admires her spunk and wit--but truthfully, it's not at all clear in the beginning that Brown is wrong about Fanny. Yet as the story unfolds, it seems as though Keats awakens something in her. She understands beauty, and responds to Keats' depths with depths of her own. One senses that her interest in fashion might well be how a heart for loveliness might find expression in a young woman in Regency England. Before long, it is Brown whose essential callowness is revealed.

The look of the film befits its subject. Fanny's fashions are arresting, the colors sensual, and the cinematography at times caught my breath, particularly with close up shots of bits of embroidery or small touches and looks between the lovers. Keats climbs a tree rich with blossoms and rests in its branches; Fanny gulps a longed-for letter sitting in a meadow awash with blue flowers. The film's lushness evokes how colors appear to be more intense when one is deeply in love.

Fanny's family, too, is so dear. She has two younger siblings who shyly adore Keats and tenderly look after Fanny (the younger sister, Toots, with her red curly locks and rosy cheeks, looks as though she just stepped out of a painting by Fra Angelico). And rarely has maternal love been portrayed more sensitively than in Fanny's scenes with her mother, who justifiably worries for her (due to the unyielding social conventions of the time, a marriage between Fanny and the penniless Keats was quite out of the question) and yet responds to the progression of events with steadfastness and practical generosity of spirit.

All of this, finally, brings Keats' poetry to vivid life. Never have those words sunk so deep into my soul--until, in the closing credits, the sound of Ben Winshaw's voice reciting "Ode to a Nightingale" left me quite undone. Ah, bright star. Would I were as steadfast as thou art.