Film – Page 6 – Consolation Champs

The Way I Spent The End Of The World

The Way I Spent The End Of The World (Romania/France, director Catalin Mitulescu): This was an earnest but uneven film about life in Romania during the final months of Ceausescu’s rule in 1989. Teenaged Eva and her young brother Lalalilu live with their parents and suffer the hardships of living under a hated dictator. Since their neighbour is a cop, they have to be careful what they say, and Eva’s parents encourage her budding romance with the policeman’s son Alex because of what the family connection could do for them. Instead, her rebellious attitude gets her expelled from her school and sent to a technical school for troubled students. There she connects with another neighbour, Andrei, whose family have already been punished for protesting against the regime. Together they make plans to escape Romania by swimming across the Danube, but when the crucial moment comes, Eva turns back.

Meanwhile, Lilu is plotting with his friends how to kill the dictator. Young Timotei Duma is very reminiscent of Salvatore Cascio, who played young Salvatore (Toto) in Cinema Paradiso. Which means he was extremely cute, and some of his scenes were the best in the film. There are two whimsical scenes where we seem to enter his childlike world: one is set in a submarine taxi where all the villagers can be taken to whatever city in Europe they wish to visit, and the other visualizes the boy blowing a huge chewing gum bubble that becomes so large that it floats away. Clearly, the theme of escape is on everyone’s mind.

I wish there had been more scenes like that. Instead, most of the film consists of Eva’s various meetings with Alex or Andrei and very little dialogue. For a main character, she was just a little too enigmatic. I definitely felt the film could have used a bit more dialogue and a bit more editing to speed the pace a bit. As well, the ending could have used a bit more explication. There are some pictures of Ceaucescu on live television and what appears to be live coverage of him fleeing but there is no explanation. For Romanians this might be self-evident but for the rest of the world, we could use a little bit of help.

The ending itself is quite lovely, with the increasing tension suddenly released with Ceaucescu’s fall. And there were some moments of dark humour, as when the students are required to sing patriotic songs about how wonderful their lives are in Romania when it’s plain that everyone is living in misery. But there is a bit of unexplained business at the end surrounding the policeman and his son Alex that bothered me. As well, there were a few strange cinematographical choices throughout the film that proved distracting. Scenes would be clumsily blocked by objects as if the director didn’t quite know where to place his camera. It’s not a huge surprise to discover that this is Catalin Mitulescu’s first feature film.

7/10 (7/10)

Offside

Offside (Iran, director Jafar Panahi): Filmed during an actual qualifying match for the 2006 World Cup, Offside works brilliantly as both a comedy and a tragedy. The film follows the fortunes of a group of young women who are caught trying to sneak into a football match at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium. The country’s Islamic religious leaders have decreed that women may not sit with men at sporting events, lest they be exposed to cursing and other morally questionable behaviour. This hasn’t stopped the country’s young female fans, who continue to sneak in using various tricks. But Panahi focuses on a small group who have been caught and are being detained agonizingly close to the action. They beg the bored soldiers guarding them to let them go or at least to let them watch the match. The soldiers tell them they shouldn’t have tried to get in, that they could have watched the game at home on TV. They banter back and forth in almost real-time as the game continues, just off-camera.

There is one very funny sequence where a young soldier accompanies one of the girls to the restroom. Since there are no female restrooms at stadiums, he has to clear the room of any men before he can allow her to go in. Plus, he makes her cover her face so no one can see she’s a woman. This is accomplished using a poster of Iranian soccer star Ali Karimi as a mask, with eye holes punched out.

You get a real sense that even the soldiers are baffled by the prohibition, and are only carrying out their orders so as to hasten the end of their compulsory military service. One soldier complains that he was supposed to be on leave so he could take care of his family’s cattle in the countryside. Little by little, the girls and the soldiers talk to each other, and there are numerous small acts of kindness on both sides to show that these are basically good people living in terrible circumstances. However, the soldiers’ constant reminder that “the chief” is on his way lends a sense of menace, since we don’t know what sort of punishment the women will face.

Unlike most Iranian films, which are known for their strong visuals, Offside is filmed in a realist style with no artifice. In fact, the film was made during the actual qualifying match against Bahrain that took place on June 5, 2005. The “plot” in many ways was determined by the result on the pitch. If Iran won the match, they would qualify. If they lost, they would not. Since the World Cup has come and gone, I don’t think it is a spoiler to say that Iran won the match. The scenes of celebration at the end of the film were real and spontaneous, which gave the film a real authenticity. Seeing how much this meant to the people of Iran was deeply touching.

As well, one of the young women makes reference at the end of the film to seven fans who died during the Iran-Japan match on March 25, just a few weeks before. They were trampled to death after police began to spray the crowd with water to move them in a certain direction. Knowing that this was a real-life tragedy added another level of poignancy to the celebrations.

I don’t want to go off on a long political tangent, but this film gave me real hope that there are those in Iran who are hoping for change and working at it. Iran is a nation of young people, and it is only a matter of time before they take the place of their elders in the political sphere. Films like this one show the proud spirit of the Iranian people in spite of their present difficulties, and it’s my sincere hope that there is a brighter future for them.

Interview with director Jafar Panahi

Good review from Sight and Sound magazine

9/10 (9/10)

The Host

The Host (Korea, director Bong Joon-ho): A huge box office hit in Korea, The Host is a good old-fashioned monster movie, and a lot more. The director introduced the screening by saying that the film isn’t really a monster movie at all, but an emotional Korean family drama, and he’s right, mostly.

The family in question is a strange one. There are no mothers and no spouses, just a grandfather, his three unmarried children, and the daughter of his eldest son, whose mother abandoned her shortly after she was born. The grandfather and eldest son run a food stand next to the Han River, and one day, a gigantic lizard-like monster emerges from the water and attacks the people picnicking along the riverbanks. In the process, 13-year-old Hyun-seo is carried off before the horrified eyes of her father Kang-du. The family grieves together in the hospital to where they’ve all been quarantined until Kang-du receives a staticky cell-phone call from his daughter, who is alive and begging him to come and rescue her from the monster’s lair, somewhere in the sewer system.

The reason for the quarantine is that the government believes the monster is carrying some sort of virus and are trying to limit exposure to the rest of the city. The problem is that they’ve called back all the troops that they’d first sent to capture the monster, and now it falls to this dysfunctional family to find their child. After breaking out of the hospital, the whole group embarks on a search and rescue mission armed only with a couple of rifles and sister Nam-ju’s bow (she’s a bronze medal-winning archer). They’re all ineffectual in unique ways. While Nam-ju (Bae Doo-Na, so great in last year’s Linda Linda Linda) is an excellent archer, she’s slow to take aim, which cost her the gold medal. Brother Nam-il is a university graduate who can’t find work, so he’s turned to booze. And Kang-du is just generally lazy and a bit dim-witted.

There is quite a bit of humour in the way the family members interact, as well as a fair bit of social and political satire at the expense of both the Korean and U.S. governments (the Americans are blamed for dumping toxic waste that created the monster in the first place). This was amusing, though pretty heavy-handed.

The cinematography made use of lots of rain and cloudy skies to convey the claustrophobic feeling of the sewers even when we weren’t actually there. In fact, the only sunny skies in the film occur just before the monster’s first appearance.

While I did find the film enjoyable, I felt it ran a bit long, and stretched credibility a few times too many. It’s a monster movie, after all, so maybe I shouldn’t have had such high expectations. The effects are well-done and it was certainly fun to watch, but it’s not an art film by any stretch of the imagination. The theme seemed to be that even dysfunctional families are still families, and that we need to take care of each other and not expect our governments to protect or rescue us.

7/10 (7/10)

The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema

The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (UK/Austria/Netherlands, director Sophie Fiennes): Not as salacious as it sounds, this is a three-part documentary (each episode is 50 minutes) featuring Slovenian superstar philosopher/psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek. Zizek takes us on a journey through many classic films, exploring themes of sexuality, fantasy, morality and mortality. It was directed by Sophie Fiennes, of the multi-talented Fiennes clan (she’s sister to actors Ralph and Joseph).

I enjoyed this quite a bit, although I think it will be even more enjoyable on DVD, since there is such a stew of ideas to be digested. Freudian and Lacanian analysis can be pretty heavy going and seeing the whole series all at once became a bit disorienting by the end of two and a half hours. It didn’t help that an ill-advised coffee and possession of a bladder led me to some discomfort for the last hour or so.

My only real issue with this is that Zizek picked films that were quite obviously filled with Freudian themes. He spends quite a bit of time on the films of Hitchcock and David Lynch, not exactly masters of subtlety. I would have liked to see him try to support his theories by using a wider range of films, although that’s really just me saying I’d like to see part four and five and six.

Zizek is very funny, and part of the humour was watching him present what amounted to a lecture while inserting himself into the actual scenes from some of the films he’s discussing. So, for instance, we see him in a motorboat on his way to Bodega Bay (from Hitchcock’s The Birds) or sitting in the basement of the Bates Motel (from Psycho). Which is not to say that his theories are not provocative. Even when I found myself disagreeing with him, it definitely made me think a little more deeply about the films. Which is exactly what he’s trying to accomplish.

Visit the film’s web site

8/10 (8/10)

TIFF 2006: Final Schedule

When I dropped off our picks, we were in box 17 and the randomly-drawn starting box was 22. There were 40 boxes in all, so that meant we were in the 36th of 40 boxes. Bad news. Brooke got all ten of her films, which only figures. My friend Jay only got 3 of his 9 films (he got two tickets to one, though). I managed to get half of my ten choices. So, after more than three hours of lining up and lining up again this morning, here is my final schedule for this year. I only missed out on three films, since I was able to get tickets to alternate screenings for two others:

Saturday September 9, 12:15pm: The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (UK/Austria/Netherlands, Director: Sophie Fiennes)
Sunday September 10, 3:45pm: The Host (South Korea, Director: Bong Joon-ho)
Sunday September 10, 6:30pm: Offside (Iran, Director: Jafar Panahi)
Monday September 11, 5:30pm: The Way I Spent the End of the World (Romania, Director: Catalin Mitulescu)
Tuesday September 12, 8:15pm: The Sugar Curtain (France/Spain, Director: Camila Guzmán Urzúa)
Thursday September 14, 5:30pm: Blindsight (UK, Director: Lucy Walker)
Thursday September 14, 9:00pm: Exiled (Hong Kong, Director: Johnnie To)
Friday September 15, 6:15pm: El Ratón Pérez (The Hairy Tooth Fairy) (Argentina/Spain, Director: Juan Pablo Buscarini)
Saturday September 16, 11:45am: Glue (Argentina/UK, Director: Alexis Dos Santos)
Saturday September 16, 4:30pm: Lake of Fire (USA, Director: Tony Kaye)
Saturday September 16, 9:00pm: Lights in the Dusk (Finland/Germany/France, Director: Aki Kaurismäki)

9/15/06: I dropped Glue and picked up El Ratón Pérez (The Hairy Tooth Fairy), due to the Waking City game which starts tomorrow. As well, Brooke’s seeing the film tonight and wanted me to go with her.