Formally, the film is deep-dish pleasure. Cinematographer Ed Lachman (using the Red camera system) enables Solondz to raise his visual game to a new level; the richly colored compositions are as bold as the dialogue. —Variety
After a four year hiatus from filmmaking, Todd Solondz is back with his latest feature Life During Wartime. Not to be confused with the Talking Heads song, Life During Wartime is an un-sequel (more of a variation to) Happiness because it stands alone as a singular body of work. Solondz (who made quirky indie favorites like Welcome to the Dollhouse, Storytelling, Happiness, and Palindromes), does not stray too far from his prior films in regards to his controversially dark themes (child abuse, suicide, incest, etc), but does in the regard of compassion. The characters in Life During Wartime have undergone life and the most brutal of its hand, and the way in which Solondz depicts them is with utmost honesty. His ability to tactfully comment the less than savory elements of human behavior—although at times uneasy and unsettling in nature—solidifies the understanding of the people in the film, of society’s capacity of growth and compassion.
While it is not necessary to see Happiness before seeing this film, there are subtle and very funny references to the previous film for those who are familiar with this work. The same characters, played by different actors, have moved on. Their lives have changed, but the memory of something terrible from the past lingers as three distant sisters reconnect and create a portrait of those seeking love and rebuilding family, all to the backdrop of mounting fear of terrorists.
The Walker will be hosting a sneak preview of Life During Wartime on Wednesday October 28th at 7:30 pm.
Tony Manero is not a name often associated with Chile’s dark days under Pinochet’s regime. For those unacquainted with the 1971 film Saturday Night Fever, Tony Manero is the charismatic character John Travolta plays.
Naturally the question to consequently follow is how exactly do the dots of Saturday Night Fever and Pinochet connect? In a simple response, through Pablo Larrain’s latest feature Tony Manero. But in actuality, the answer is not that easy.
Derived by both Larrain and actor Alfredo Castro, Tony Manero makes political and social commentary on Chile (and the United States, simultaneously). Released in 1978 in Chile, Saturday Night Fever came about in one of the bleakest and most miserable times during General Augusto Pinochet’s rule. Director Pablo Larrain and actor Alfredo Castro shared the role of writer, and as the film shows, were able to develop a story that not only exists in allegorical, but also in literal terms.
On the surface, it seems that the film is merely about a social outsider who is unable to break his obsession with Saturday Night Fever and consequently the American Dream. Because of his deep commitment to the film, he finds himself in a routine of watching it in the local theatre repeatedly, auditioning for Chile’s version of Saturday Night Fever, and eventually embodying a dark mutilated version of the character Tony Manero and perhaps Pinochet himself.
With the historical understanding of Chile and the time period, Tony Manero embodies the psychological process of living in a country that undergoes a deep cultural change, which defines how citizens act and relate to the world.
The film has garnered quite a bit of attention as of late. In a recent article from the Village Voice, J. Hoberman writes,
“Impassive but alert, Raúl not only internalizes Tony’s version of the American dream, but memorizes Tony’s lines for use in the four-actor version of Saturday Night Fever he’s staging, with an inexplicably adoring cult of losers, in a grungy Santiago cantina. Raúl’s obsession is complemented by a total disinterest in any human contact… Feasting on this bizarre fascist posturing, Larrain suggests that, with his sordid charisma, Raúl is a miniature Pinochet—reproducing the brutality of the state in his willingness to steal, exploit, betray, and kill in the service of a fantasy.”
Larry Rohter from the New York Times also did a piece on the film that is worth checking out.
As Pablo Larrain stated in an interview,
“I wanted to tell the little story of a man obsessed with what is foreign to him, who lives in a country going through the cultural process which defined our actual way of acting and relating to the world. A prowl on the process of a common man and what surrounds him; or as well, a fragment of something bigger that cannot be seen, because finally, the dance of Raul Peralta’s is, to me, the dance of all Latin-Americans. The dangerous air of underdevelopment and it’s delirious wild abandon that saw itself very much exposed and threatened during the seventies, in the middle of the military dictatorships that struck our region.” (Tony Manero Press Packet)
And that he does.
Tony Manero screens as a part of the Premieres: First Look Series in the Walker Cinema September 11, 7:30 pm, September 12, 4:00 pm, September 12, 7:30 pm, September 13, 3:00 pm. For more information, visit the Walker website.
Everyone loves free stuff, regardless of what the free thing is. In my humble opinion, free art, especially free film screenings, is even better. Film/Video has two events coming up, both of which are at no cost.
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The first takes place on September 15th as a part of the “A Think and a Drink” member program with the screening of Herb and Dorothy, a documentary about the legendary art collecting couple the Vogels. Herb and Dorothy, he a retired postal worker and she a retired librarian, have built one of the most influential and extensive modern art collections to date. The documentary features a handful of artists the couple has collected from and consequently developed a relationship with over the years.
This event is free to Walker members.
Walker Film/Video is also pleased to announce, as a part of the Premieres: First Look series, the screening of No Impact Man on September 16th in the cinema. The documentary is based around author Colin Beaven’s (and consequently his wife and daughter) 2007 initiative to live a no-impact lifestyle. What started as perhaps a farfetched idea spiraled into a high-traffic blog, news stories, and documentary film, but ultimately the transformation from the Manhattanite lifestyle Beaven and his wife Michelle were accustomed to.
Co-Directors Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein followed Beaven’s family as they changed habits and adapted to their new lifestyle. The film and blog have created quite a stir, not only about the concept of living a no-impact lifestyle, but also around Colin Beaven’s motives (rumored as a gimmick for his new book). Regardless of your take on the issue, it seems best to actually see the film and decide for yourself. Viewers have reacted across the spectrum, from being moved by the lifestyle concept, to not being sold on the Manhattanite’s motivation. And now it is your turn to see the film (for FREE!) and make your own mind up.
Co-Director (and native Minnesotan) Laura Gabbert, who has a lush history with Walker Film/Video (participating in Women with Vision and other programs) will be in attendance for the screening along with a Q&A session following the film.
Check out the No Impact Man blog and/or book for more background on the project.
No Impact Man will be playing at the Landmark Cinema beginning October 2nd.
Recently, seemingly obscure and/or random movies have been infiltrating my life. You see, I have no real problem with this, however, after having a film pop-up over three times within a period of one week, it begins to feel not-so-coincidental and instead just weird.
Two weeks ago, I embarked on a cross-country trip to California via a ‘99 red Chevy Cavalier. On day one, my copilot mentioned that she put Pee Wee’s Big Adventure on her laptop to watch. I laughed, found the movie fitting for our excursion, and recalled a random moment in history—when I was a freshman in college; a friend wrote a bogus grant that allowed access to the HUGE soccer dome on campus. There we projected Pee Wee’s Big Adventure on the inside of the dome and encouraged students to bring sleeping bags and lay on the Astroturf to watch the movie.
On day five of our trip (the first four were scenic-scapes of driving), we arrive in California. We take the BART to San Francisco and walk up one million hills. On the descent of the last hill, we land upon an old repertory theatre, whose marquee reads, “Tonight’s Movie: Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.”
Day six, I walk into a kitsch/vintage store and a wind-up Pee Wee doll hangs in the window.
Day Seven, the last day in California. Somewhere in Chinatown, a dusty bobble-head-sized Pee Wee guards the cash register in a tourist market.
I get home and forget about Pee Wee’s strange inclusion in our journey; how this movie and others have found a way of infusing themselves into my life. When I thought all was safe, Pee Wee turned up again, almost an entire week after arriving home. Upon making an alteration appointment for a bridesmaids dress, I asked the man at the shop where exactly they were located. He gave me the precise location, and added that there is a different tailor next door and to make sure I go to the one with Pee Wee Herman in the window.
Now it had surpassed coincidence and chance.
What this made me realize is that the movies, as much as we may deny, are inescapable. Past and present films hold a prominent place in the collective conscious and unconscious, and have a tendancy to reveal themselves when the relevant time indicates. It seems that not a single day is able to go by without some mere mention or film reference. What will be next? Cool Hand Luke or reoccurring images of Paul Newman?
So my curiosity lingers, and wonders what the new film/image will be and how it will work itself into my life.
In cleaning out the K files, I opened Elia Kazan’s folder. For those who are unfamiliar with Kazan, he was a film and theater director known especially for his works On the Waterfront, and A Streetcar Named Desire. Kazan was nearly blacklisted as a Communist by the HUAC (House of Un-American Activities Committee) but instead turned in eight friends to save his name. In 1999 he was granted an Honorary Academy Award, the Life Time Achievement Award, in 1999 which caused a stir among actors and directors–both current and those once-blacklisted.
I assumed that either nothing would be in the file or that what did remain would be newspaper clippings and photocopied articles. Don’t get me wrong, these things were in here, too. But what I found was a short correspondence between the Walker and Kazan. The request was to have him in attendance for a potential Regis Dialogue. His response, although not rude, was short and to the point. Something to the effect of, “No, ask me again when I am eighty. And too, flattery is bad for the soul.” I could not help but smile at the pointed rejection, at his dry touch of humor.
Needless to say, Kazan did not take part in a dialogue and passed away in 2003 at the age of 94. In the file, no later correspondence exists nor did he ever come for a dialogue–perhaps nobody contacted him when he was eighty, as he suggested.
The Film/Video director’s files. Where to begin? Perhaps in starting, it would be appropriate to explain just what exactly these elusive files are. The director’s files consist of nine large and four small drawers in the office that house hundreds of manila folders. There is one folder (in some cases multiple) for each director with whom the Walker has been in contact or has had any relation with. So, since the beginning of the files (which I assume was in the 70’s), oodles of newspaper clippings, letters, and other seemingly pertinent items have been placed in the files. Also since the beginning, a plethora of, well, junk (like copies of copies of articles, “while you were out” slips for past curators, etc.) has been added.
Over the course of the past five months, I have worked on unearthing the contents of these drawers. To be fair, they have been worked on for nearly three years, but I as an individual have only been with them for nearly half a year. In the beginning, it was arduous, even dreadful. Imagine having nine large, mostly unorganized drawers housing dusty, potentially very important or very meaningless content staring you in the face every day. Initially, I thought of the task of cleaning out the files as busy work, as something nobody else wanted to do, therefore intended to keep the intern occupied, while cleaning out the beast that no one else had the time to touch. But luckily, I was wrong. I was terribly, terribly, wrong.
My assignment for the content itself was quite simple-discard any print outs from the New York Times, IMDB, or any other document that is easily accessible online, put aside any direct contact, photo or correspondence with the director to be archived, and keep anything else in the folder. I then replaced the bent manila folders with shiny new ones, labeled them, and maintained/restored the alphabetical integrity.
Last week, after having graduated, I had a new burst of life. It was weird, really, because I assumed that graduation, just like birthdays, would do nothing for me-I wouldn’t feel older or smarter, but would simply keep on keepin’ on with my usual life-but that wasn’t the case. I was extremely motivated to accomplish something, anything (as if a diploma wasn’t object enough) and set my sights on the director’s files. I figured that since they had been worked on for three years with little progress, I was going to be the one to plow through and put my organizational competency (and/or slight OCD) to good work.
What I found was a new yet old aesthetic. I found pieces of history-letters typed on thin onion-skin like paper, photographs, and postcards-from some of the greats such as Maya Deren, Elia Kazan, and Bruce Conner. It really was quite beautiful sorting through these documents, these passing notes of history that still remain. There was something very meditative and methodical about cleaning the drawers, and something that verged on the edge of sad. In handling these carefully crafted artifacts, I realized that the art of the letter is nearly gone. Almost every transmission between the artist and the Walker up until the 1990’s was via letter or postcard. An air exists around these letters of thoughtfulness and sincerity that seems lost in the era of e-mail and constant communication.
It took me just over a week at full throttle to complete the files after chiseling away at them for some time, and strangely enough became saddened as I finished the last drawer. It felt like the end of an era as I put the last folder away, felt as though I just sorted through the last of the sincere. But as I ended my romanticized soiree not only with the files but with history, I realized that because these documents exist here, they not only serve as an aesthetic art form in themselves, but are true artifacts of the past and what is yet to come in the future.
So what I leave you with is a few things. One, think about extending yourself past an e-mail and writing a letter, whether small like a postcard or grandiose like a diligently crafted letter composed on an old typewriter. And two, since I did not know how long the director’s files would take me, I decided to extend a similar unknown to this blog by creating a series of posts (whose length is currently undetermined) that will document in pictures and vivid recollections a few specific encounters I had with the director’s files.
“There is energy inside this and it’s not artificial energy because it is nature, very natural energy and people feel this-that it is original and original energy.”
–Sergey Dvortsevoy in an interview with Scott Foundas
For a culture addicted not only to social networking, Twittering, and living on a constant schedule, the last thing we believe we have is time. For many of us, time is money, but to some-namely Sergey Dvortsevoy-time is not of the essence, but rather authenticity is.
Tulpan, Sergey Dvortsevoy’s first feature film, has a rare authenticity that most films lack. Rather than focus on effects and high tech cinematic devices, Dvortsevoy harkened his attention to creating an original film set in Betpak Dala (Hunger Steppe) in Kazakhstan. The land is inhabited only by shepherds and the occasional small village. While working for a Russian aviation company, he fell in love with the country side as he flew over across the Steppe. Immediately after, it became his dream to film there, to show the life of solitude, isolation, work.
Some might call it crazy, others impractical. But for Sergey Dvortsevoy, the only way he could feasibly make Tulpan was to settle in and allow the film to take its shape. He did something most filmmakers are not willing to do: wait. And wait they did.
In an interview with Scott Foundas at the New York Film Festival in October 2008, Sergey Dvortsevoy responded to what life was like over the four year process and similarly responded to the topic in an interview in the Tulpan press kit:
Did you and the crew have to live like nomads to shoot this film?
Sergey Dvortsevoy: Although we built our own camp one kilometer away from the set where we had water and electricity from generators the crew lived a life very close to nomads on the steppe. We also spent a lot of time living with local shepherds and with the actors because they already moved into a jurte (traditional tent house) one month before shooting and really lived there together as a nomad family. Samal Eslyamova (Samal) did all the work of a shepherd’s wife and Ondasyn Besikbasov (Ondas) actually worked as a shepherd. A lot of the things he does in the film he experienced during this period himself.
All this was necessary to give authenticity to the film. Ondasyn and Samal had never lived in a jurte before. Samal is from the north of Kazakhstan, where life is much more European. So the shoot was especially hard for her.
Approximately how many shepherds and their families are still living this nomadic existence in the steppe? Are they dying out as more and more young people like Asa move to the city?
Actually there are still a lot of families living like nomads in Kazakhstan. But it’s different compared to the times of the Soviet Union. Very close to the life that Samal and Ondas live in the film, which is considered a modern life. Then there are different kinds of nomads.
Very few have their own livestock. Most are hired by big sheep owners to tend to their sheep and get paid for this in money or in livestock. But they all still live in jurtes in the steppe and travel around hundreds of kilometers a year. Some of them are very poor. What is shown in the film is a realistic portrayal of the current situation. Almost all young people want to go to the city. Because they think they can make good money there. But then you see them in the big city Chimkent for example sitting there waiting for a job they cannot find. So they end up as construction or temporary workers if they don’t have a special profession. People like Asa and Boni would not find what they are looking for.
It appears that the long, often time’s grueling production of Tulpan is paying off. Critics and cinephiles alike are singing Tulpan’s praises. A.O. Scott of the New York Times recently wrote nice piece on the film, which also garnered the honors of Critic’s Pick. As it travels to festivals and art-house cinemas across the country, it seems even more praise is inevitable.
Recently I read a review that compared Tulpan to the works of John Ford. Although I initially did not see the relation (because, of course I immediately thought of John Wayne), it soon made sense. Ford too was keen on potentially tedious shoots, especially in his early works, and the vast expanse of the landscapes is an obvious similarity. It now seems quite natural that he would be compared to John Ford, and in a sense, this is a Kazakh version of a John Ford film, yet the spatial beauty and breath of the characters and land make it so much more.
Tulpan screens in the Walker Cinema May 8th & 9th at 7:30 pm and May 9th and 10th at 2 pm.
Steve McQueen is no newcomer to awards and acclaim. Hunger, his latest success and first feature won the Camera d’Or (the award for best first feature) at the Cannes Film Festival last May. In 1999, he was awarded the Turner Prize and will be representing Britain this year at the Venice Biennale. But the acclaim is well justified. Hunger, which screens in the Walker Cinema April 10-26, was made because McQueen wanted to create a film about “an extraordinary world that has become ordinary.” And so he has, in three distinct parts, created a different realm for viewers to enter in and experience the hunger strike of 1981.
Hunger is tactilely-visual, which at times makes the film hard to watch. In an article from the New York Times, McQueen said, “If you see a drop of rain on someone’s knuckle, you feel it because you know that physical sensation. That sensory experience brings you closer to an emotional one.” McQueen has mastered this experience he speaks of. In the opening of Hunger, a guard dips his hands-whose knuckle are covered in freshly opened-sores-in scalding hot water, as the camera pans up to his sullen eyes reflected in the mirror. There is nothing numb about this scene or the movie, for that matter.
Similar to the visuals, the component of sound in the film is absolutely remarkable. McQueen talked about the sound in Hunger in Issue 23 of Reverse Shot:
Reverse Shot: The aesthetic of the film overall is so striking, but perhaps most striking is the care put into the sound design.
Steve McQueen: I spoke to the sound recordist and told him that I wanted him to capture everything. If someone’s finger is tapping on the table, I wanted it. I wanted all the details. Sound, for me, was the most important part of the film because it fills the spaces where the camera just can’t go. A sound can give you the dimensions of a room. It can give you smell, it can give you tension. In some ways sound can travel itself into other areas of our senses, other areas of our psyche that unfortunately cannot be just viewed. Imagine you’re in a room with the lights switched off and you have to feel your way around a room. This is a chair, this is a table, this is a light switch. You have to use your other senses to figure out what you’re looking at. As you’re watching the piece, that’s what I wanted.
The sound design is certainly atmospheric, but it also becomes a bit unbearable at times, though in a paradoxically pleasurable way.
One can talk about the sounds of the baton banging on the plastic shields as being unbearable as such, but that’s what actually happened. It’s raised the tension of the prisoners, but the noise also was a way of rallying the guards. The sound passes on that tension to the audience. Your heartbeat races, your anxiety increases. It’s the perfect soundtrack.
Immediately after I viewed the film, there was nothing I could say, nothing I wanted to say. At that moment, it seemed that any movement, word, description, or analysis would in some way taint what I just experienced.
And so I walked back to my desk speechless and proceeded to lunch-an irony that was not lost upon me. Over the course of my break, I found myself unable to take my mind off of Hunger, an entrancement that extended into the weekend.
I spoke very little about Hunger besides a mere mention that I saw it. A friend asked over the weekend what I thought of the movie, since he had recently read a write-up. All I could say was “You simply need to see it.” For a moment I contemplated extrapolating, but refrained. “McQueen’s praise isn’t for nothing-he is doing something very right,” I said.
There exists a tremendously thin and seemingly tight line in making any remark about the movie. Because of the breathtaking pacing, composition, and camera movement (or lack thereof), it seems instinctual to say the movie is beautiful. But when you step back from your experience (I say experience because Hunger extends much farther than simply a film), you are appalled by the actions and plights of human kind.
Recently in an interview with McQueen, he mentioned how people are shocked when they see the brutality in Hunger, of reliving and remembering what happened in 1981. Not an attempt to justify the happenings both in 1981 and the replication in Hunger, McQueen reminds that events and brutality such portrayed in the film are still happening to this day. He brings up Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
After looking into the history of the Troubles and the 1981 hunger strike, I realized that background information is not necessary before watching Hunger. Because of the film’s structure and attention to every detail, every perspective, part of me thinks each viewer should go in empty handed. To have no prior knowledge of Hunger, of McQueen, of the 1981 hunger strike, the audience is able to then be completely immersed; let it be said, however, that in this day and age, it is impossible to have a completely primary experience. Regardless of how much or little you know, Hunger will be an experience that will be mulled over for some time after.
This said, what is interesting to note is that Hunger is McQueen’s first feature film (previously he was a gallery artist): You should also know that he is about the visceral rather than the technique (he attended the Tisch School for film but left because “It was full of all these rich kids who could afford the fees. It was nothing to do with talent.”) Lastly, you should know that Steve McQueen captures the essence of life and the essence of filmmaking that is lost upon so many and in watching Hunger, McQueen’s vision of history, of art, and of human kind is extended and leaves an imprint in the viewer.
Because of the immensely diverse responses I assume Hunger will create, I would like to offer up this place as a forum to discuss/share your reaction and thoughts on the film.
Hunger screens Friday and Saturday April 10, 11, 17, 18, and 25 at 7:30 pm and Saturday and Sunday April 11 and 26 at 2 pm in the Walker Cinema.
Astra Taylor, Canadian director of Žižek! has conquered and surpassed the traditional aesthetic realm of documentary filmmaking, by moving past the talking head. Her new film, Examined Life takes eight philosophers to the streets, placing them in non-traditional settings (Slavoj Žižek, for example, talks about the fascism of ecology in the midst of a garbage dump). Needless to say, it’s pretty interesting.
I found a really great interview with Taylor on the Spoutblog – here are a few highlights:
(On her definition of philosophy)
For me, one really simple definition of philosophy I like is that philosophers are people who persist in asking childish questions. Maybe questions that are timeless and eternal and ones in which there is no consensus on the answer. Maybe that’s why some people think it’s an indulgent, pointless exercise, but I don’t see it that way.
Spout: For a film that’s almost entirely comprised of people talking about philosophical concepts, Examined Life is quite dynamic and visually stimulating – how did you conceive the aesthetic for it?
Taylor: I became very invested in the kinetic element of filmmaking. I came to filmmaking by accident. I wasn’t schooled in it, I don’t really know any of the formal language of cinema, I don’t understand three point lighting. One of the biggest letdowns of the documentary format is that its talking heads. People never say that as if it’s a good thing. So when I decided to make an ensemble piece about philosophy, the question that concept raises is will the film just going to be a series of talking heads? So I was thinking about ways to do something inexpensive and yet still make a film that was monologue driven and mostly propelled by speech. I was thinking about different options and of course considered animation. It seems like an obvious tool when you’re making a pedagogical film. I decided I really didn’t want to do that. I decided early on I wanted to make a film devoid of any bells and whistles like that. I wanted to make something very simple and formal.
Examined Life will be screened on Friday, March 13 as a part of the Women with Vision Series in the Walker Cinema. Director Astra Taylor will be in attendance to introduce the film.
In an attempt to conjure up one word to describe So Yong Kim’s second film, Treeless Mountain, I immediately came up with melancholic. The story, based loosely on So Yong Kim’s childhood, revolves around two children, Jin and Bin, who in essence are abandoned by their mother when she places them in temporary holding with their aunt, referred to as Big Aunt. With the summer ending and their mother still gone, the girls are moved to a farm owned by their grandparents.
Treeless Mountain
The visual component of the film surpasses the singular description of melancholic. Alone, melancholic sets the viewer on the wrong foot, the wrong emotional key upon viewing. Clearly one adjective cannot describe Treeless Mountain; indeed it needed at least two words. Within the story So Yong Kim tells, an almost lush array of visual undertones surface. Jin, the older child in the Treeless Mountain (played by Hee Yeon Kim), doesn’t do much in the traditional sense of acting. Most of what Jin portrays is a simple, natural performance of a child. It is here, in the captive space of So Yong Kim’s observational camera, where the story truly begins to surface and the second description of the film became apparent-wistful. There is a softness in the long takes and thoughtful close-ups of Treeless Mountain. Because the lens is focused on the methodical yet unscripted movements of the children, the film captures the sincerity of youth.
Throughout Treeless Mountain, the sisters work together, perhaps not intentionally, to not only to survive but to fill a void in each other. There is no music in the film, which lends to the wistful style of So Yong Kim’s cinematic eye, to enhance the interactions between the siblings. It is here that the bond of the sisters shines through, and made clear that by surviving and taking care of her younger sister, Jin has filled the missing component in her heart.
Treeless Mountain marks the first film of the Walker’s Women with Vision series. Director So Yong Kim will be in attendance on Friday March 6th in the Walker Cinema to introduce the film.
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