Enjoy some sneak peeks of the upcoming retrospective, In the Realm of Oshima: The Films of Japanese Master Nagisa Oshima
Cruel Story of Youth (Seishun zankoku monogatari)
The Sun’s Burial (Taiyo no hakaba)
In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no corrida)
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Furyo)
The student symposium programmers must’ve wanted this year’s batch of up-and-comers to stay hopeful and excited about the world. In a festival packed with grim content (most notably Steve McQueen’s Hunger which explores the Irish Republican Army’s 1981 hunger strikes in Long Kesh prison; Gomorrah which brings Roberto Saviano’s expose of contemporary Neapolitan crime to the silver screen; and Nandita Das’ Firaaq which takes on the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat India through a series of tragic vignettes), we skipped out on some of this darker material and saw a disproportionate number of films celebrating life and human beings in their best form.
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s documentary Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love, which follows the great Senegalese musician through the contentious release of his latest album, Egypt, certainly fits this category. More than the filmmaking, Peter Sellers’ loving introduction and the sounds pouring out of Ndour’s heart convinced me this guy was about more than being one of the biggest musical sensations of our time. Indeed, Youssou Ndour begs us to fill our souls with light and hope, to face our friends and enemies with nothing but love, and to sing and dance with our whole beings. And, after the documentary and the live three song set Ndour shared, it became pretty much impossible to say no.
The series “Laughing ‘Til It Hurts,”composed of four slapstick shorts from the pinnacle (and end) of the silent era, provided another instance at Telluride where joy was unabashedly held up as something to be saught, captured, and savored at all costs. The series was curated by Paolo Cherchi Usai, a man who–from his position as director of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia to his wiry, hunched figure and sun-deprived aura to his beautiful indignation that silent film might EVER be considered primitive or “less than”–perfectly fits the mold of silent-film archivist and enthusiast. And great choices he made. The Cook (d. Roscoe Arbuckle, 1918), Should Men Walk Home (d. Leo McCarey, 1927), There It Is (d. Harold L Muller, 1928), and Pass the Gravy (d. Fred L. Guiol, 1928) kept the audience rolling (especially the ridiculous, squawking woman behind me) pretty much the whole time. As it turns out, fat dogs running up ladders and dinners made out of the neighbor’s prize-winning chicken are still unmanageably funny.
Above all, Mike Leigh’s new film Happy-Go-Lucky–which will show as part of the Walker’s Mike Leigh Regis Dialogue and retrospective this October–embodies the world view behind the slapstick-ers’ comedy and Youssou Ndour’s music. Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is an elementary school teacher who maintains a pretty serious high-on-life disposition and calls on those around her–a disgruntled but complicated driving instructor, an impassioned flamenco teacher, one feisty, sarcastic sister and one super square sister–to do the same. That we sometimes identify with these supporting characters’ impatience and frustration with Poppy and her perpetual joy, drives the point home. For when Poppy brings unharnessed energy into the suburban home of her married and pregnant sister, or goads the inner rage of her driving teacher, or wanders into desolate surroundings and shares a moment with a crazy person, we’re put on edge. We get annoyed or tense up in response to Poppy’s behavior. And just at that moment, it becomes crystal clear that through Poppy, Leigh is asking all of us cynics in the dark theater to give ourselves over to optimism, to see colors in all their vibrancy and life in all its opportunity, and to engage in the joke before all else. Once I realized Poppy and Leigh have a point, a really really good point, Poppy transformed from a naive and slightly annoying distraction into a mindful being exercising the courage to confront the world’s bleak moments with laughter and grace. Leigh and Hawkins serve up digestible portions of this life philosophy throughout the film; The wild giggling of best friends, Poppy’s mantras of you’ve got to make your own luck, haven’t you?, and Leigh’s choice of Kodak’s brand-spanking-new color-friendly film all work to shout, go ahead and live!
Martha Polk is an intern in the Walker’s Film/Video department. Recently graduated from Carleton College with a degree in Modern Middle East History and Cinema and Media Studies, she plans to write and talk about movies for the rest of her life.
Apparently once the Telluride festival and the accompanying student symposium start, they unfold at mind-crushing speed. All of a sudden I’m back in the Twin Cities with four days behind me that permitted hardly a moment to eat a meal or navigate the bears roaming the nighttime streets. Well, better late than never, I suppose:
As an animated war documentary, from the outset Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir operates on intriguing ground. After all, documentaries are supposed to at least tip their hats to that murky, malleable concept of objectivity, so why the cartoon medium in this business of uncovering truth? Alas, Folman combines these somewhat contradictory tendencies successfully. An Israeli veteran from the 1982 war between Israel and Lebanon, Folman opens the film with his realization that he has virtually no memory of the war and thus ventures on a personal and cinematic quest to uncover what actually happened. In this way, Waltz with Bashir embarks on the kind of fact-finding missions of more traditional documentaries and halts on familiar questions of war reflection, namely, who and how did I hurt. He interviews classmates, other soldiers, the first Israeli reporter on the war, and his best friend who also happens to be an expert in post-traumatic stress disorder. Slowly, the pieces start to come together around the Sabra and Shatila incident, a massacre that left thousands of Palestinians dead by the hands of Lebanese Phalangist militiamen and by the acquiescence of Israeli forces. Such interviews and historical descriptive elements could have thrived on film or video (as such material does in the talking-head/news footage documentary genre) but Folman’s movie demands more. Waltz with Bashir is made complete not by mountains of facts but by the fog of memory, the fluidity of dreams, and utter darkness–both emotional and aesthetic. In other words, a revealing interview with the ex-reporter carries the same narrative significance as a dream in which Folman jumps the boat to war and finds refuge on the curves of a giant naked woman in the sea. A pack of wild charging dogs, their ferocity other-worldly; a vague and repeating vision of silhouettes emerging from water; a surreal dance through gunfire–these elements necessitate the animated image in order to realize their full effect. “I knew it had to be this way,” says Folman, “if I couldn’t animate the film, I couldn’t do it at all.”
And so, Waltz with Bashir manages a difficult harmony of elements. The animated image pulls us into personal dream worlds that, side by side with interviews and bits of historical exposition, compose Waltz with Bashir’s truth, a truth which lies both in the hidden intimacies of one man’s memory and in the assertion that universally, war is hell.
Martha Polk is an intern in the Walker’s Film/Video department. Recently graduated from Carleton College with a degree in Modern Middle East History and Cinema and Media Studies, she plans to write and talk about movies for the rest of her life.
Maybe it’s all the dogs moseying in and out of restaurants absorbing affection from strangers, or maybe it’s the crates of fresh Colorado peaches sold at every corner, or maybe it’s just these humbling pine-covered mountains, but I think I’m finally understanding why everybody kept telling me Telluride Colorado is a special place. I come to the Telluride Film Festival 2008 as part of the Student Symposium, a program that invites a lucky group of 50 undergraduate and graduate students from around the country to watch and discuss the festival’s films. I arrived yesterday afternoon and though the official screenings have not yet begun (the schedule kicks off in all its intensity this afternoon), the festival is alive and breathing. Everybody smiles here… all of the time. Seriously. The sun is fierce, the tap beer is $2.50 a glass (take that Sundance!), and the usual boring banter between strangers has been replaced by non-stop-movie-talk.
Last night I did manage to get into a special staff screening of American Violet, a new film by director Tim Disney and writer/producer Bill Haney. The film tells the story of an African American family struggling against the corruption and racism of the police and court systems in small town Texas. Disney and Hall give us a straight forward narrative replete with all the heart-string tugging clichés of classic good guys vs. bad guys drama, all of which had something like a 50% success rate; the unfolding action earned applause and sharp intakes of breath from about half the Telluride staff crowd. I must say, newcomer Nicole Behaire throws down a remarkable performance and manages to look stunning the whole time…even when desperate and in jail. Lastly, the film followed Obama’s acceptance of the nomination by a mere hour, pushing the film’s political pertinence to extremes. Not only did Disney and Haney mention the connections between their work and Obama’s ideals in their introduction, but the film takes place during the epic battle of 2000 between Bush, Gore, and hanging chads. Bush’s rhetoric and Gore’s unrealized promises fill tv screens and political posters, composing a powerful backdrop to American Violet at this significant moment in American history.
So, let the Telluride games begin. I’ll keep bashfully coating myself in sunscreen and shamelessly combing the streets for Werner Herzog and hopefully you’ll check back soon for updates. Exciting things to come include: Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love, October Regis Dialogue guest Mike Leigh and his new film Happy-Go-Lucky, among so much more.
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