The Writings on the Wall

24 City plays again tomorrow, 10/23, at River East at 8:50pm.

After seeing more than half-a-dozen or so movies at any festival, one starts seeing patterns in the selections, overlapping themes. It’s always risky to lunge at generalizations about The State of World Cinema or (grander yet) What the World’s Thinking About. Better to regard the experience as a private optical illusion—the magic reassembly of disparate films into a cohesive whole.

That said, almost everything I’ve seen so far at CIFF has involved somebody losing their job. The exceptions—Sleep Dealer, Don’t Look Down, Delta, and 24 City—have involved people accepting menial labor. Comparisons to the global economic crisis are so obvious they don’t need to be spelled out… except these movies were conceived at least a year in advance, by artists working in different countries with different agendas. How legible was the writing on the wall?

Of the movies I’ve watched concerning unemployment, only one has incorporated failure in its overall aesthetic strategy: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata. The CIFF program aptly describes it as a quiet drama about an average Japanese family—just barely avoiding an allusion to Yasujiro Ozu—and so it is until the final half-hour, when it operates in a sort-of narrative free-fall, with each new development seeming to come from a different movie. Before then, it is a compelling, but somewhat familiar look at a family in crisis, with the central story concerning the businessman father who’s too proud to admit he’s been laid off. The film follows his wife and two children (well-meaning misfits both) separately, so to stress how alienated they’ve become from one another. In its structure and patient, long takes, Tokyo Sonata has less in common with Ozu than with Edward Yang’s Yi Yi (2000), the greatest contemporary family film; and like Yang’s great accomplishment, understated humor tempers the melancholy of Modern Life. But then there’s the final 30 minutes. Without giving away too much, it forces the audience to switch from thinking about a family in crisis to what it means to lose everything—home, relations, one’s very sanity. It’s been less than a day since I watched Tokyo Sonata, and I’m still undecided as to whether its plot twist is brilliant or merely a great trick. Either way, I hope it returns to Chicago with a proper run so I can see it again.

From Mexico (and the future): SLEEP DEALER

Sleep Dealer plays again Wednesday, 10/22, at 600 North Michigan at 8:30pm.

In a few generations, migrant workers will no longer need to cross the U.S. border for menial jobs: They can perform them from home with the use of virtual reality. That’s one of the ideas floating around Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer, a Phildickian sci-fi story that approaches a high-tech future from the perspective of Mexican laborers. As a film, Sleep Dealer is sometimes flat and too indebted to the Hollywood storytelling it aims to subvert. But as a think piece, it’s clever and endlessly imaginative. During a warm-hearted Q-and-A after tonight’s screening, Rivera admitted to spending 11 years on the project from conception to final cut; he clearly made great use of the time by realizing his future world down to the smallest details. (The intravenous modem cables that connect Mexican workers to U.S. job sites also enable a new form of writing whereby users upload their thoughts like video files. We come to learn that the movie itself is one such “novel.”) One measure of the film’s success is that it’s able to touch on big, relevant subjects—U.S. corporations privatizing water sources in the Third World, the military outsourcing combat duty—without making them seem extraneous to its fictional universe. The may characters may seem a bit transparent as a result, but, as in some of Dick’s best novels, Sleep Dealer still works as a funhouse mirror of current events, with the characters serving to help us explore the variegated terrain. The second and final screening would count as a must-see if Rivera is in attendance again. Animated, honest, and blessed with seemingly bottomless optimism, Rivera has the potential to become the Wayne Coyne of American independent cinema.

A visual essay on Steve McQueen's HUNGER

There's still one more screening of Hunger (2008) at 8:30pm tonight. If you miss it, don't fret: IFC has plans to release the film Stateside in the very near future.

Possibly the most arresting film about prisoners since A Man Escaped (1956), Hunger invokes so many different types of images that it's hard to define director Steve McQueen's achievement in words. There's barely any dialogue in the film -- one crucial several-minutes-long scene excepted -- and as such it seems appropriate to express feelings about it using images. Here goes:

1. 

Francis Bacon (1909 - 1992): Three Studies for a Crucifixion - 2 (1962)

2.

Imperial War Museum archives: Bergen-Belsen, Germany, 1945

3.

Bill Viola (1951 - ): Ocean Without a Shore (2007)

4.

A chamber in Her Majesty's Prison Maze, Northern Ireland

+++

5.

Still from Alan Clarke's Elephant (1989) -- Side A (companion film)

6.

Still from Hunger (2008) -- Side B

7.

Tough Decisions

In the first four days of the festival we had, in competing time slots, two films about pickpockets (The Pleasure of Being Robbed and Sparrow), two films about physical transformation (Beautiful and Hunger), and two important directors doing their sole Q&A's (Darren Aronofsky and Mike Leigh). In pure must-see terms, the new films by Abdel Kechiche, Kelly Reichardt, and Erick Zonca were competing on Friday as a run-up to the even more painful scheduling of 24 City, Of Time and the City, and Gomorrah in simultaneous slots on Saturday.

This may register as a complaint. In fact, it isn't. A cinephile faced with the luxury of having to decide between the new Jia Zhang-ke and Kiyoshi Kurosawa films, not to mention the lesser-known titles that don't come with the same level of critical support, should feel as though at a luxury dinner banquet. Tough choices are a part of festival life, and the more information available to the discerning cinephile, the more discerning his or her choices will be.

A serious discernment should consider the films themselves and never the projection standards, since one always hopes that those will be consistently excellent; however, a few discerning cinephiles have not been pleased the festival's digital projection, and had they been able to discern in advance that 24 City, to take one example, would be shown in subpar conditions, they would have certainly opted for another title.

Theater five and six at the River East, specifically, are the two screens in question. This reviewer spent four hours of Saturday with two films that should have looked a whole lot better: the aforementioned 24 City and Shanghai Trance by Dutch filmmaker David Verbeek. Different in mood though similar in dealing with a contemporary post-industrial backdrop, you wouldn't have been able to tell their visual designs apart if you saw them at this weekend's screenings. With theater five's dark and off-calibrated projection, they both looked muddy and indistinct.

It should be noted that the critics on this blog (and elsewhere) get into the movies for free. We're hardly the ones to complain. This isn't about us. But at the screening of 24 City, the couple who paid $12 sitting next to this critic made their aggravation seem perfectly understandable.

Let's Make Love

Don’t Look Down screens tonight at 8:30pm and Friday, 10/24, at 10:30pm. Both screenings will take place at 600 North Michigan.

Born in ’68 screens today at 1:15pm at 600 North Michigan.

The nearly-full house at yesterday’s screening of Don’t Look Down (Argentina; 2008, 85 min, 35mm) challenged several clichés about U.S. movie audiences. Namely, they seemed perfectly comfortable with its joyous depictions of explicit sex, and when they laughed during these scenes (which was often), it wasn’t nervous laughter, either. But this may be less indicative of Chicago’s good vibes than of the strengths of Don’t Look Down—a rare film that manages to be funny and erotic at once.

At the outset, writer-director Eliseo Subiela doesn’t hint that his film will turn into a lesson in Tantric sex. The movie starts as a charming story about Eloy, a 19-year-old eccentric who works odd jobs and has crazy dreams about his dead father. (One of these dreams—unexplained until much later—has the father slowly emptying nuts and bolts from his suit pockets. The image plays as a wry parody of art-house cinema, and it got one of the bigger laughs of the day.) In one of many unpredictable turns, Eloy becomes a sleepwalker. He winds up one night in the apartment of an old lady therapist and her granddaughter, Elvira. Instead of kicking him out, the women take a liking to Eloy, with the beautiful, Gypsy-ish Elvira (who’s nine years his senior) deciding to make him a great lover by the end of the summer.

This premise verges on teenage male fantasy, but Subiela makes clear that the sex is not about Eloy’s gratification only. As in the classic comedies by Dusan Makavejev—particularly W.R. Mysteries of the Organism (1971)—sex is presented as life-affirming for anyone who enjoys it. (There’s another weird plot twist later on in which Eloy finds himself literally dematerializing at orgasm, but he makes sure not to deny Elvira pleasure before he does.) The film’s conflation of dreams, character quirks, music and eroticism yields a sensibility overflowing with life. Granted, this should feel familiar to anyone who’s read Gabriel Garcia Marquez or any other of the great South American Magical Realists. But how refreshing it is to encounter it in an accessible, crowd-pleasing film. Don’t Look Down also doubles as an instruction guide to more than a dozen challenging positions from the Kama Sutra. As our society enters a depression and more people will have to “make their own fun” (as my grandparents used to say), perhaps Subiela’s film will prove a rather utile one in the coming years.

Another film that conflates societal and sexual awareness is one of CIFF’s French entries, Born in ’68, by the writing-directing team of Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (who are best known for their Jacques Demy tribute Jeanne and the Perfect Guy [1998]). As the title suggests, the movie begins with a look at France’s revolutionary/utopian generation before moving forward through the next four decades. The early passages depict an idealistic group’s efforts at establishing a commune in the French countryside—with as many scenes of free love as of farming. It’s hard to think of many other films that stage group sex with this much tenderness, and the most commendable thing about Born in ‘68 is its rich sensitivity. (Similarly, the large ensemble cast has no weak link—especially impressive, as many of the actors have to age believably over 40 years.) But apart from Ducastel and Martineau’s daring choice to shoot so much of a period piece in Bergman-esque close-up, much of the film comes across as a retread of Lukas Moodyson’s Together (2000), John Sayles’ Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980), Alain Berliner’s classic Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976), and other like-minded works. It much follows the now-familiar pattern of Leftists coming together to make good, falling apart, and then finding comfort in some modified version of their ideals. Not that this is necessarily a bad message (It’s especially valuable to hear in the United States as a corrective to the conservative propaganda of Forrest Gump [1994] and Oliver Stone’s ‘60s-set films), but it’s hard to say whether it merits a full three hours of attention. Still, Born in ’68 is a surprisingly leisurely three hours, and the confidence of its storytelling never bores.

Notes from last night's screening of HAPPY-GO-LUCKY

The CIFF screening of Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) last night in anticipation of its release later this month (Oct. 24) served a twofold purpose: to present Mike Leigh with a career achievement award and to offer Chicago audiences their first opportunity in a long while to engage the great British filmmaker.

First, on the award. Festival director Michael Kutza commented that Leigh's first film, Bleak Moments (1971), won CIFF's Golden Hugo back in 1972. Gracious, Leigh said the career achievement award was "very special indeed", adding, "It's as if I've come full circle, though I hope it's not the end of the circle!"

Leigh then sat down for a Q&A with Tribune critic Michael Phillips. The proceedings were lively, to say the least. Audiences were clearly stunned by Leigh's lucid and amicable approach. He was never disengaged for a moment, even (you could say especially) when faced with a myriad of confused questions.

Happy-Go-Lucky was described by its director as "a story about being connected to your feelings and integrity", an "anti-miserabilist film". This commentator, for one, was grateful to see Leigh address world issues right off the bat. "There's a great deal for us to be gloomy and pessimistic about," Leigh explained, "I mean, we're suicidally destroying the planet!"

Getting back to the film, he summarized his point: "Happy-Go-Lucky is about a character getting on with it."

Indeed, Sally Hawkins' Poppy is that rare film heroine, a smart, disciplined woman with a career, dreams, and friends, but who unpretentiously floats from place to place and is content with the terms of each situation she encounters. If there's frivolity or dissatisfaction in her world, it's the others who see it and become the judges of Poppy's behavior. She has an unassertive wisdom and a heightened sense of awareness that places her on a different plain than virtually everyone she meets.

Poppy is one of the greatest film characters to emerge in the 21st century: a boisterously joyous and inventive elementary school teacher, she maintains the same free and unmournful approach throughout the film. "Teaching is an act of optimism," Leigh asserted last night, referring not just to Poppy, but also to the other teachers who dominate the film.

Teaching is the overarching subject of Happy-Go-Lucky; the characters comment on their own teaching and refer to the lessons of others. It's a critical dialogue that manifests itself with such a quiet ease that by the end of the film you leave the theater wanting to continue the discussion. A public school teacher in the audience was so elated that she personally thanked Leigh.

Happy-Go-Lucky's most crucial interactions occur in the confined space of a Ford Focus. Hawkins' Poppy and Eddie Marsan's Scott are perfect opposites. He's a peppery driving instructor who won't conform to Poppy's apparent lack of seriousness. A viewer familiar with Abbas Kiarostami's Ten (2002), in which the Iranian director almost solely used two cameras in a cramped car as his entire visual design, might wonder if Leigh saw it prior to making Happy-Go-Lucky.

The two cameras, one angled toward the passenger seat, the other to the driver, impose a curious limitation on Leigh's luxurious palette of London vistas (he opens the film with an amazing shot by a train track worthy of Antonioni). He alternates the two angles in an almost rhythmic way. As in a John Cage composition, the tension in these rhythms becomes so rigid that it offers an appropriate visual parallel to Poppy and Scott's intensifying conflicts.

(For a more in-depth summary of the film's many characters and details, check out fellow CIFF blogger Marilyn Ferdinand's critique.)

A scene that will surely stand out to viewers has Poppy on a nocturnal tour where she encounters a stuttering man underneath what appears to be a bridge. This writer asked the filmmaker for his thoughts on it, describing it as a moment that felt as if it had snuck away from Leigh's own Naked (1993). "It's a scene from the film Happy-Go-Lucky," Leigh retorted, but conceded, "I'm not surprised you would say that." Speaking of his intentions, Leigh said, "We wanted to subliminally pull the audience out of their comfort zone in that scene."

It's a key instant to understanding Poppy, something Leigh confirmed: "It's about her openness, her natural ability to connect. She's going to move on; the man, unfortunately, won't." Leigh even emphasized the film's own afterthought of the scene: "When she goes home, Zoe [her roommate] asks her where she's been and she doesn't respond. She keeps the moment private."

These dynamic shifts in the film are masterfully integrated, and it only takes a careful viewing to see this. A rambling audience member, stroking his sideburns and looking distractingly around the room as he told the filmmaker (and us) that he thought the ending didn't exactly summarize the film in a satisfying way had Leigh responding thusly: "Yeah, you're trying to say it's maybe too neat and tidy. Okay, that's a fair criticism."

What a gentleman. The rest of the festival will certainly have a hard time living up to this magical evening.

Winged Idiots and Wordless Angels

Idiots and Angels (2008) screens tonight at 10:30pm, Tuesday (10/21) at 6:30pm, and Wednesday (10/22) at 7pm. Director Bill Plympton will be present for the Tuesday and Wednesday screenings.

Veteran animator Bill Plympton's latest uses a clichéd noir setting and a catalogue of hard-boiled genre characters to tell the rather unique story of a pathologically unfriendly man named Angel who unexpectedly grows a pair of heavenly wings. Unlike his last feature, Hair High (2004), which used the voices of Sarah Silverman, Dermot Mulrony and others, Idiots and Angels is completely wordless (if you don't include the Tom Waits waltz that's included towards the end of the film).

The question on fans' minds will be whether Plympton can sustain the same level of interest at seventy-eight minutes as in his similarly styled shorts. There's something kind of overwhelming yet cleverly executed about Idiots and Angels that doesn't exhaust the viewer. Call it a sort of formalism, but the imagination the film displays always leaves some room for further reflection. It's a counter-intuitive animated film, in which images can be contemplated and don't have to be immediately understood.

Consequently, there isn't anything very animated about it in the general sense. It takes place mostly in dreary settings -- grimy bars, small bathrooms, doctor offices -- where the only thing a spectator is tempted to contemplate is the flurry of wobbly pencil sketches (it's especially impressive to see on the big screen). Also, Plympton would rather show us the characters react to each other blankly -- a technique that finds its closest equivalent in the films of Aki Kaurismäki.

The point of view is always an unexpected one -- whether it's from a butterly flying around or inside the mouth of a protagonist as he downs a whisky shot -- and keeps us from fully settling in. It's uncomfortable at first but makes sense when you realize that Plympton may be using these inventive digressions as a way of distancing himself from the moral world of these characters.

The title refers to idiots and angels, plural, though there is really only a single person in the film who safely fits into the angel profile. This is a direct indication of Plympton's generosity towards the material. All of his characters are idiots and angels; he never shows a world that is better, with characters that are nicer or more virtuous in their deeds.

Finally, when someone violently appropriates Angel's wings, we realize he may have done the same in a like scenario. Does the film offer a catharsis, a sense of growth in these characters that we end up feeling a pang of regret for Angel? The wings try to guide him but Angel's journey remains ambiguous.