Author: James McNally

Workingman’s Death (Austria/Germany, director Michael Glawogger): After you see this film, you’ll never complain about your job again. Subtitled something like “Five Portraits of Work in the Twenty-First Century,” Glawogger’s documentary features some of the most dangerous, difficult, or just plain unpleasant work in the world.

Each segment except the last one is about twenty-five minutes long, and is shot without any voiceover narration and very little editorializing. We are simply presented with people working and talking about their work. The director possesses a very painterly sense of composition, and we’re often presented with shots of workers posing as if they were in front of a still camera. The camerawork is even more impressive when it is moving, and I often found myself wondering how they were able to film in some of these conditions.

The segments follow, in order, a group of miners in Ukraine who have dug their own coal shafts, a group of men in Indonesia who collect sulfur from an active volcano and haul it down the mountainside, butchers at an open-air slaughterhouse in Nigeria, men who break apart rusting ships for scrap metal in Pakistan, and steelworkers in China. Although all of these workers are merely surviving, the thing that struck me most was how contented, even happy, most of them were.

That being said, three of the five segments featured Islamic societies, and I found myself wondering about the connections between the conditions these men were working in and the rise of Islamic radicalism. Among the shipbreakers in Pakistan, for instance, there was an interesting segment which followed a photographer who circulated among the men charging them a fee to take pictures of them holding an assault rifle. There was no voiceover, but I got the impression that these men wanted to be seen as revolutionaries instead of just subsistence scrap workers.

The most intense segment had to be among the butchers, and there was quite a lot of blood and gore evident as we watched the men work. But strangely, I found this a more honest approach to the production of food than I saw in the factory farms in We Feed The World. These butchers are “hands-on,” literally.

The final segment, filmed among steelworkers in China, was the shortest, and the least interesting, but the director was trying to end with the optimism of the Chinese workers for the steel industry, which he contrasts with shots of a defunct steel mill in Germany that’s been turned into an art installation. His point was slightly unclear, but overall, his unflinching eye for detail, even in some harrowing work environments, makes this documentary a must-see.

(9/10)

Citizen Dog (Thailand, director Wisit Sasanatieng): I’d heard some buzz around this film, that it was sort of a Thai Amelie. In fact, it’s Amelie cranked up to 11. Which is entirely too much. This film is absolutely overstuffed with whimsy. A narrator tells us the story of country boy Pod, who comes to Bangkok to find work and falls in love with Jin. Along the way, he loses and then finds his finger, drives around a chainsmoking talking teddy-bear as well as a man who licks everything, and shares his house with a gecko that has the face of his dead grandmother. If that’s not enough, the object of his desire is an obsessive neat freak who carries around a book written in Italian that she can’t read. A case of mistaken identity sends her off on an environmental crusade that results in her accumulating a mountain (literally, a mountain) of plastic water bottles. Will this pair find love in the end? Well, by the end, I didn’t care that much.

The problem was that the visual tricks and whimsy overwhelm the characters, who end up being nothing more than a collection of quirks. The constant voiceover also never really lets the characters tell their own stories, and the romance never feels believable.

Sasanatieng is obviously a director of huge talent, and there are quite a few great sight gags and some really original visuals. But there’s just far too much of it. It’s like eating a whole chocolate cake at one sitting. If he could tone down the trickery a bit, and find a story with real characters, he could one day make a really outstanding film. This isn’t it yet, but I hope he does it. I’m giving this 6.5, though my graphic below doesn’t show halves.

(6.5/10)

Twelve And Holding (USA, director Michael Cuesta): Ostensibly about a group of friends, this film tells three separate tales that veer from comedy to tragedy and back again. I’ll sketch them in the order of most successful to least.

Malee lives with her mom and never sees her dad. She’s just started her period and begins to develop a very strong crush on a construction worker who is one of her therapist mother’s patients. Her attempts at flirting are both painful and very funny to watch. She’s obviously missing a father figure, but there’s something else stirring as well, and she’s lonely and looking for adult attention. Zoe Weizenbaum was just a joy to watch, beautiful and earnest and lovable and willing to take amazing risks for the film. The director told us to watch out for her as “Young Pumpkin” in the upcoming Memories of a Geisha.

Leonard is an overweight kid from a family where everyone is overweight, and he’s tired of being the butt of other people’s jokes. After a serious accident in which (bizarrely) he loses his senses of taste and smell, he starts eating healthy food and exercising, and takes radical action to, as he sees it, save his mother’s life. Played soulfully by Jesse Camacho, Leonard is never just comic relief, but a hurting little boy who wants to change not only his life, but his family’s as well.

Jacob (Conor Donovan) and Rudy (also played by Conor Donovan) are twin brothers who are very different from each other. Rudy is athletic and fearless, Jacob withdrawn and shy, mostly because of a large birthmark on his face. One night, Rudy and Leonard stay overnight in their treehouse, after bullies threaten to destroy it. Their plan to stay awake and defend it goes horribly wrong when they doze off, and the bullies light it on fire, unaware that anyone is inside. Leonard escapes with relatively minor injuries (but as noted above, the odd side effect that he can no longer smell or taste). But Rudy is killed, and his family is devastated. Jacob is racked with guilt for not being with the others on the night of the fire, but he’s also filled with a desire for revenge. After the two perpetrators are sent away to a juvenile facility for a year, Rudy and Jacob’s mother expresses her wish that the guilty pair die, a sentiment that Jacob stores away in his heart.

For a while, Jacob goes to the juvenile facility regularly to threaten the two, telling them that when they get out, he’s going to kill them. But after one of the boys commits suicide in custody, Jacob softens and even continues to visit the other boy and bring him comic books. As the boy’s release looms, they make a plan to run away together. Jacob is unhappy at home, feeling unwanted due to the arrival of a new adopted child. But his plans lead to even more tragedy.

If all this sounds melodramatic, it is. And despite the heavy subject matter, at times there was a vaguely “after-school special” feeling about the film. This last story, which in some ways ties the others together, carries the most weight, but is the least successful. I’m not sure why, but it may have something to do with the huge dramatic burden placed on the shoulders of a young actor with little experience. The fact that the film careens through a wide emotional territory like a drunken elephant doesn’t help, either.

In the end, the performances of Camacho and Weizenbaum are so winning that I sort of wish they were in a film of their own. As a story of three kids seeking the love of their parents, the film is only partially successful. I also wish the kids had been in more scenes together, since you don’t really get to see why they’re friends in the first place. I’m giving this 7.5, though my graphic below doesn’t show halves.

(7.5/10)

Thumbsucker (USA, director Mike Mills): Another directorial debut, this time for Mike Mills, who’s been making short films and music videos for a number of years. An altogether sunnier film than The Squid And The Whale (see review below), the two films are actually interesting mirror images of each other.

Justin (newcomer Lou Pucci) is 17 years old and still sucks his thumb. He tries to hide it from his parents, but they know, and it’s beginning to cause some trouble. He hides it from his new girlfriend, but she dumps him when she senses he’s not “opening up” to her. A school counselor suggests that the problem is that Justin is ADHD and that Ritalin will help. Ah, simple. But he soon dumps the pills and begins to try to stop being “weird”. Along the way, he learns a few things about his parents and about being himself. It’s a fairly standard coming-of-age story with a bit of a twist.

It baffles me why this film was savaged by Variety and a few other critics, who derided it as a “paint-by-numbers” indie film. I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Sure, there’s a great soundtrack (Polyphonic Spree and Elliott Smith), and an androgynous young lead (Pucci is excellent and plays innocent like a young Johnny Depp). But there are no shootings, no weird sex, and the family, though far from perfect, are caring and decent people.

It’s actually refreshing to see people in this kind of film portrayed as anything other than freaks. Veterans Tilda Swinton and Vincent D’Onofrio play parents who really love their kids, though they don’t always understand them. And the film defies convention by having D’Onofrio play the failed athlete dad as someone who really wants a genuine connection with his oddball, non-athletic son.

And even though, compared to something like The Squid And The Whale, this film is polished to a high gloss, it never feels fake. Instead, Mills has created an atmosphere of safety, a place where a great many teenagers actually live.

There is some exposition near the end of the film involving Benjamin Bratt (as a recovering coke addict TV star) that feels contrived, but it’s played for laughs. As is Keanu Reeves’ role as a wholistic orthodontist. His over-the-top performance for once doesn’t seem to detract from the film. Perhaps it was because Mike Mills introduced the film personally, but I get a feeling of sincerity from the film that seems anything but paint-by-numbers. At every step of the process, from his casting, to his soundtrack choices, I think Mike Mills was trying to make an irony-free film. And I think he has succeeded.

Film’s Web Site: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thumbsucker/

Director’s Blog: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thumbsucker/blog

(8/10)

The Squid And The Whale (USA, director Noah Baumbach): This film contained the best ensemble acting I’ve seen this year. Based on the autobiographical experiences of writer and director Baumbach (co-writer of Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic – Anderson serves as producer on this film), The Squid And The Whale is about the family dynamics of a family of four going through a divorce in the mid-eighties. Father (Jeff Daniels) is a writer whose best days are behind him, yet he remains an unrepentant snob. Mother (Laura Linney) is also a writer, about to have her first novel published. When her multiple infidelities emerge, the parents decide to divorce. Their sons Walt and Frank are thrown into turmoil. This is not original stuff. But the writing is of such high quality, and the performances so genuine, that I found myself drawn right in.

The film is obviously told from the sons’ perspective. Walt seems to be like his father, snobby and self-righteous, while younger Frank seems more sensitive, though also more self-destructive. Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates’ son Owen Kline is a revelation in this role. His sister Greta also appears briefly in the film. You might remember these two from The Anniversary Party, but this is really a breakout role for Owen, and I hope he’ll continue acting.

The film makes it painfully aware how people hurt each other when they can’t talk directly about their feelings. Daniels is excellent as a man whose intellectual pride and snobbery hide his deep insecurities and the pain of rejection by his wife. And Laura Linney is able to make even an unsympathetic character a little less blameworthy. The only issues I had the film are probably related to its miniscule budget. The handheld camerawork is often a little bumpy, and the film feels a little unpolished. But after hearing how Baumbach had a 23 day shooting schedule, and took five years to obtain the funding for the film, I have to give him credit for producing a smart and moving piece of cinema.

Just as an aside, I was pleasantly surprised when the end credits rolled that the beautiful titles I’d been noticing were designed by Torontonian Leanne Shapton, who was art director at Saturday Night magazine for a few of its most visually exciting years (circa 2000-2001). I’m glad to see she’s finding new places to bring her great eye for design.

(9/10)