31st Telluride Film Festival 9/3-6/04
“It’s not about seeing the film. It’s about being seen at the film.”
I think I’ve finally pinpointed the main difference between the South By Southwest Film Festival and the Telluride Film Festival. It’s only taken me four years of going to and working for both for me to figure it out.
SXSW is run and attended by film geeks. We love film, but in a really fun way. Sure, it’s art, but we like the trashy stuff, too. You know, the Tromas, the Fulcis, sometimes even the Bays.
On the other hand, TFF is run and attended by film elitists. They look down their noses at Lloyd Kaufman because he just makes stuff to shock his audiences. They honor people like Arrabal and Angelopoulos. Personally, I had never heard of Arrabal and the only reason I had ever heard of Angelopoulos was because I worked at an Evil Empire Video when his film with Harvey Keitel came out. (Ulysses’ Gaze, in case you’re keeping score.) It’s definitely for the more high-brow filmgoer.
Both approaches work for me. I try to be somewhere in the middle, but I lean a little more towards geekdom. I actually love being a part of two such different festivals, but I’m kind of glad that the one in my hometown is closer to my heart. That way I can learn about the more obscure and artsy directors when I go to Telluride, but I can feel like I know what I’m talking about when I’m at home. Home field advantage, ya know?
Not only did I have that revelation, but I also experienced some of the strangest weather that the festival has ever seen. Usually it’s either cold or hot all weekend. This time, though, it was hot on Friday and turned butt-ass cold on Saturday. In fact, not only was it cold on Saturday, but it rained, it sleeted, it snowed, it groppelled and it snained. I’m not exactly sure what those last two are, either, but I’m told that they happened. It was so cold, in fact, that Ken Burns bought hot drinks for his fans waiting for his film, Unforgivable Blackness. The rain helped the dried up Bridal Veil Falls flow again.
Then, just as suddenly as it got cold, it got hot again. Sunday and Monday were beautiful with fairly cold nights. The snow-peaked mountains started melting. The people who thought that they would need to wear sweaters and jackets stripped. The theatres were cooled off again.
And, speaking of theatres, this was the last year for The Max, the Egyptian themed theatre built inside the high school gym. It’s the theatre that I have worked for the past four years, so it’s a little sad to see it go. But next year we won’t have to build a theatre out of nothing. The high school has a brand new fine arts center (partially donated by the festival so that they can use it) that will be set up with Dolby Digital Surround Sound and a big-ass screen. It’s a nice theatre space and I can’t wait to see if they come up with some kind of theme for us to play with.
The theme this year was (un)officially salaciousness and taboo. Old films such as the scandalous for 1933 Ecstasy (featuring a nude Hedy Lamarr, known at the time as Hedwig Kiesler) and new films like Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education about priests, kids and cross-dressers held up the theme, but, alas, I didn’t get to see either of those films.
Instead, I saw films that held a secondary theme: kids in trouble. (Bad Education follows that theme, too.) Whether it’s sexual trouble or life and death trouble (or sometimes both), there seemed to be kids in all kinds of peril at this festival. Let’s start with the best of these films.
Directed by: Hirokazu Koreeda
Written by: Hirokazu Koreeda
Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda (After Life, Distance and Maborosi) brings the true life tale of four kids in modern Tokyo whose flighty, but loving mother (You…that’s her name, not a pronoun) leaves them alone for months at a time while she goes off to find the perfect husband. While she’s with them she treats them more as siblings than as her children. Perhaps that’s because each one is from a different father and she just can’t seem to latch onto any of them.
She leaves them some money, but it’s really not enough to keep them for as long as she leaves them. As rent and bills come due the kids start to have to survive by other means. The oldest, 12 year old Akira (Cannes Best Actor winner, Yuya Yagira) has to take over as the father figure for his brother and two sisters. He makes friends with some of the people at the local market and hides the fact that his mother has left them from most of the folks in the neighborhood.
And, just to add to the difficulties, the landlord doesn’t know that there is more than one kid in the apartment. Yuki, Kyoko and Shigeru all have to hide the fact that they even exist.
At two and a half hours, this was the longest film that I saw at this year’s festival, but there was not a wasted moment in all of that running time. The story could have been told in half the time, but it would not have been as rich. We would not have cared as much about these kids. When tragedy comes (as it always must in these stories) it hits us hard and fast because of the time we have spent growing up with the kids.
All of the performances were very good, but 14 year old Yuya deserved his award at Cannes. His portrayal of Akira was sad, but hopeful, just like the film that he’s in. He showed subtlety that most kids wouldn’t know what to do with.
And the final frame reminded me of the final freeze of The 400 Blows. The film is sad and depressing, but there’s an edge of hope that let’s us know that those of us who make it through this kind of life will eventually be alright.
I have only heard of Koreeda’s other films, but I can’t wait to check them out now. This was his dream project and the one that he is the most proud of. He read the story of the kids about 15 years ago and immediately wrote the screenplay loosely based on it. Finally, after financial backers leaving him and studios deciding not to do it, he has been able to bring his vision to the screen. And he does it in a way that is universal. Tokyo is not that different from any city in America. Kids are kids and tragedy is tragedy. When the two meet, we can all relate. I’ve seen a lot of films about kids left alone by their parents (Soderberg’s King Of The Hill, The Cement Garden, etc.), but this is probably the best of the lot. In fact, I think this is the best film I saw at this year’s festival.
Directed by: Andrea Arnold
Written by: Andrea Arnold
On a similar note, this short is about a young mother of three little girls and baby boy on the poor side of London. She loves her kids, but she also resents them for taking away her youth. She wants to go out and date, but that’s hard for a single mom. When she meets up with an old crush from school she takes desperate measures to hang out with him at a bar. While she’s inside with the guy (whom she told that the kids were a friend’s) her kids are outside the bar eating their dinner of potato chips and a soda.
Then the title is literalized maybe a bit too much.
(I don’t care if it’s not a word. I like it. Shut up.)
A good short, but it beats its point home with a sledgehammer. The ending is open ended and hopeful…perhaps too hopeful. If this were a true story, it would be pretty bleak. Director Andrea Arnold knows how to make us sympathize with everyone involved, though. Zoe may be a bad mother, but you can almost understand her actions. How hard must it be to be so young and have so many kids? Yes, you have a responsibility to raise these kids and keep them from danger, but there are so many other issues and feelings tugging you in so many different ways at that age.
Now, on to a completely different kind of peril for kids.
Directed by: Todd Solondz
Written by: Todd Solondz
In the world of Todd Solondz, kids are never safe. Whether they’re being threatened with rape and ridiculed (Welcome To The Dollhouse), or actually molested (Happiness), they are always victims.
Aviva is one of the biggest victims of Solondz oeuvre. She is a 13 year old girl whose cousin has just died. She doesn’t want to end up like her cousin, but some of her family members see her as just another statistic. Why we’re not really sure, but they see some of the dead girl in this younger girl. Her mother (Ellen Barkin) is a loving woman who doesn’t always know the right things to say. (“Maybe if she had cleaned her face a little more then she would have been happier and more loved.”)
This is when Aviva decides that she wants a child of her own. She has sex with the neighbor boy and gets her wish. Unfortunately her parents have other ideas. They take her straight to the abortion doctor who accidentally takes away her ability to ever have children.
Aviva doesn’t know this, though. She runs away and starts to have sex with who ever will have such a young girl. She sees nothing wrong with her new found love for a trucker who gave her a ride and a quickie. When he leaves her she is devastated.
This is when she meets Mama Sunshine and her crew of young misfits who have found God. They are all perfectly happy with their particular disfiguring disabilities because of their personal relationship with their God. Unfortunately, Mama’s husband and Dr. Dan (Richard Riehle) take their religion a bit too seriously.
Just in case you missed the fact that this could happen to any girl in the world, Solondz pulls a Bunuel and has Aviva played by many different little girls and grown women. That makes the proceedings even creepier.
Aviva is a typical child hero of Solondz’ work. She is quiet, shy and painfully introverted. She almost can’t speak to anyone. Of course, all of the actresses play her slightly differently (the first girl plays her as the opposite of everyone else, actually), but most of them have the same horribly shy demeanor.
For you Dollhouse fans out there, Mark Wiener (Matthew Faber) shows up as Aviva’s neighbor who has been accused of being a child molester.
I kind of liked this movie just because it was so weird and I’m a Solondz fan. Does that make it good? Well, not really. It was very exploitative (all of the kids at the Christian Camp had something physically or mentally wrong with them (like his version of Freaks) and the big, black girl who plays Aviva throughout this sequence is constantly shown in tiny clothes just to show how fat she is) and it didn’t really seem to know what its point was. Was it anti-abortion or anti-zealot? Maybe it was trying to show both sides, but they were both kind of shown as being completely ridiculous. The post-9/11 statement was interesting, but seemed a little forced.
And what was up with Jennifer Jason Leigh showing up for one scene? Did she show up saying, “Todd! I want to be in your movie! What can I play?!”
This is certainly Solondz’ weakest film, but for his fans it’s probably worth it. It’s an interesting experiment that didn’t really work the way it should have.
Now let’s move on to the biggest film of the festival and one that almost had a common theme. At least, some characters thought that it did.
Directed by: Marc Forster
Written by: David Magee
Based on play by: Allan Knee
JM Barrie (Johnny Depp) is a playwright who is in trouble. He can’t seem to write another hit. His latest is a resounding flop and his producer, Charles Frohman (Dustin Hoffman), is wondering where his money is going. He has faith in James, but things are starting to look dim.
His home life is no better. Barrie’s wife, Mary (Radha Mitchell), is losing interest in her husband. She sees him less and less and is just unhappy in general, especially since he doesn’t seem to have any interest in becoming part of “society.” He is a childlike man who has no time for trivial things like dinner parties and manners.
That’s when he meets his new muses. Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet) and her four boys run into James while he is playing with his dog at the park. He instantly falls in love with the family and starts to spend a lot of time with them teaching them and learning from them. The second youngest, Peter (future Charlie Bucket to Johnny’s Willy Wonka, Freddie Highmore), is that saddest of creatures, a child who has lost his imagination. Ever since his father died, he hasn’t been able to be a kid. When James is dancing with his pet bear, all Peter sees is the big sheepdog.
But a strange thing starts to happen. As James spends more and more time with Sylvia and her family (and more time away from his wife), Peter and James both start to learn how to use their imaginations. Peter learns that he might be able to be a kid after all and James starts to write his greatest creation, Peter Pan. Charles thinks he is insane, but history tells us differently.
Of course, tragedy must strike every uplifting story like this, and it does in the form of tuberculosis. But Kate looks great even if she’s sick.
As manipulative and Hollywood as this movie was, it was actually probably the second best film that I saw at the festival. It was involving right from the start. The acting was great (people are talking about an Oscar for Johnny). It was sad, charming, heartbreaking, funny, magical and full of the hope that sometimes only children can see. The scene where James sees that the oldest boy has grown up right before his eyes is so touching that it makes you forget that growing up is supposed to be a good thing in our world.
Director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) switches from James’ Neverland and his real world in a way that is disorienting in a really cool way. At one point the kids and James are playing Cowboys And Indians. Every shot changes between the two worlds. It’s a great scene that keeps you wondering exactly where you are.
If you like Johnny Depp or the story of Peter Pan, you need to check this movie out. Even if you just like movies about plays, this is a very good one.
Directed by: Fernando Arrabal
Written by: Fernando Arrabal/Claudine Lagrive
Based on book by: Fernando Arrabal
Viva La Muerte puts its young protagonist in a completely different kind of peril. Young Fando (Mahdi Chaouch) is without a father (he was killed by the national army), has a pretty strange mother that he has an even stranger relationship with and his country is being ruled over by Fascists. Every once in a while he dreams of what he would rather be doing, whether it be figuring out how his father died or rubbing mud all over his mother and licking it off.
Obviously, this is a surrealist’s look at Fascism. Many of the images in the film are meant to be a child’s view of what was going on in Franco’s Spain. It’s all an homage to Bunuel and Fellini, but director Fernando Arrabal forgot one thing: those guys knew how to keep it interesting. Arrabal let his vision get a bit out of hand and it went on and on and on……and on.
His point is obvious. Religion is sometimes used for evil and Fascism is bad. Fando’s mother is very much against fighting the system. She just wants to go along with whatever is going on and sometimes gets a little too into it, like when she cuts off the balls of a cow towards the end. (No fake cows here. Those are real yarbles. Pretty twisted.) She is the non-fighter of the country. Go with the flow and let them do what they want. She’s just as bad as the Fascists.
Speaking of balls, check out the scene where the priests balls are cut off and fed to him. Funniest line of the whole movie: “Oh, mi cajones. Thanks you, O Lord, for this wonderful treat.”
Um. Yeah. I’ll take your word for that one.
That is one lesson that Arrabal didn’t forget when he was learning from the Surrealist Masters: comedy. Early surrealism was meant to make people laugh and think. Un Chien Andalou was meant to be a sensationalist piece of film, but it was also made to make us laugh occasionally. The surrealists had senses of humor and it always showed in their films.
And this is something that was lost on Peter Sellars, the man who introduced the film. He gave us probably the most pretentious intro. of the festival. It was full of pregnant pauses and deifying of Arrabal (who was in the audience). To him, even the early surrealist filmmakers and artists were trying to convey deep meanings. “Surrealism was never surreal. It was real.” Yeah. That’s why Bunuel and Dali always said that there was no meaning for Un Chien Andalou. They purposefully rejected anything that made any kind of sense. Later surrealists may have had more meaning, but the early guys were just going for dreams. If meaning came out of it, great. That’s your interpretation and they can laugh at it if they want to. (And they often did.)
If you’re a fan of Bunuel or Jodorosky (El Topo, Santa Sangre), check this one out. It drags, but it’s definitely an interesting cinematic experience.
Let’s move on to a younger kid in trouble.
Directed by: Jan Hrebejk
Written by: Jan Hrebejk/Petr Jarchovský
(I can’t find any information about this movie online and it was a sneak preview, so there’s nothing in the festival program. Sorry if my details are a little slim.)
This Czech Republic film starts off with two truck drivers having a typical truck driver conversation. Well, typical for modern movies, anyway.
After they make it through the customs agents at the border, they pull over and let the contraband people out of their trailer. Unfortunately, one of them gets left behind. A little baby boy is still in the trailer and the drivers decide to sell him to a black market adoption agency.
This is where a young couple that can’t have kids picks him up. And this starts a chain of events that involves thieves, an upper class family and their children and racism in the newly Democratic Czech Republic.
I had no clue what to expect from the film since no one knew anything about it, but it ended up being completely different even from what I wasn’t expecting. The first scene made it seem like it would be some kind of heist film involving two guys stuck with a baby. Then it ended up being a dark comedy. Then it was a social drama. And all of the films worked really well. The pace was slow, but it needed to be so that we could pick up all of the intricacies of the plot and message.
The characters were well drawn and didn’t always end up where you wanted them to end up. And the theme even changed mid-way. Racism didn’t show it’s ugly head until a little after the mid-point, but it ended up being the central theme of the film.
If you get a chance, check this one out. It may be hard to find, though, until it comes out on DVD.
Now for a child who is working through her peril through film.
Directed by: Mariya Saakyan
Written by: Mariya Saakyan
This short film was considered by some to be the best film of the festival. It’s a 27-minute homage to Andrei Tarkovsky that is about the death of filmmaker Maria Saakyan’s father and the life that came before it. There is almost no dialogue (and no subtitles for the little dialogue that there is) and a collection of images that is sometimes beautiful and other times ponderous.
I like Tarkovsky. His imagery is always interesting, even when the camera sits on it for 5 or 10 minutes. He constructed stories with pictures more than with words and evoked a feeling with these images and stories that was above anything that could actually be put on the screen.
Saakyan tries SO hard to do this, but she is not Tarkovsky. She’s just a fan who wants to emulate her hero. Like Gus Van Sant before her, she wants to be the man (but she doesn’t remake one of his films into oblivion). Also like Van Sant, she ultimately fails to achieve what Tarkovsky could do. In fact, her short felt longer than any of his 4 hour epics.
Some kids may be in trouble, but they may not actually exist.
Directed by: Lodge Kerrigan
Written by: Lodge Kerrigan
William Keane (Damian Lewis from Band Of Brothers and Dreamcatcher) starts off as a jittery, possibly insane man. He talks to himself as he roams the streets looking for clues about the location of his daughter and her kidnappers. She was abducted from the train station as he turned his back on her and now his life is shattered. This is all he does all day. He has no job. He has no family. He self-medicates with booze and cocaine. He just walks the Earth looking for his daughter.
Keane is so crazy, in fact, that we start to doubt the fact that his daughter ever actually existed. He’s a heartbreaking figure, but what if his broken mind just made the whole thing up?
Director/writer Lodge Kerrigan (Clean, Shaven and Claire Dolan) has, along with Lewis, created a character that actually gets creepier as he starts acting more normal. After meeting a beautiful little girl (Abigail Breslin from Signs) and her mother (Amy Ryan from “The Wire” and You Can Count On Me), Keane starts to calm down a bit. But then things might be going off the deep end for him. Lewis is amazing in a role that keeps him on screen the entire length of the film. He keeps you on the edge of your seat waiting for tragedy to befall someone and always looks like he’s ready to lash out at the smallest little thing.
I’ve never seen either of Kerrigan’s other films, but I’m seeking them out.
Here’s a movie about something that even kids should know about.
Directed by: Bill Condon
Written by: Bill Condon
Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson) may have been repressed by an overly religious father (John Lithgow), but as he grew up he started to realize that sex was something that everyone did and everyone should know something about. That’s why, in 1948, he published Sexual Behavior In The Human Male. It caused a huge controversy, but it was also a best-seller and was the first real scientific book treating sex like the everyday act that it is.
But first, Al was an introvert. He wasn’t exactly sure how to act around people, so he kept to himself. He was great with his students, but didn’t know any of them too well. That all changed with Clara (Laura Linney—recipient of a Silver Medallion at the festival this year). She changed his life and, eventually, decided to marry him.
That’s when his sex life started. The two of them were very open about their sex life and they felt that everyone should follow suit. Why not? We all do it.
As Alfred and Clara get deeper into the research (both with each other and with just talking to other people) they gather a close group of confidants that start as assistants and end up, sometimes, as lovers. Peter Sarsgaard is the most trusted of the group and becomes a lover of both Alfred and Clara. Chris O’Donnell and Timothy Hutton are his other two assistants.
Kinsey, directed by Bill Condon (Gods And Monsters), is a pretty typical Hollywood biopic, but it’s a very good one. It was compelling from frame one and never stopped being interesting. And, because of it’s subject matter, it’s a very important film.
In fact, it’s so important that it was surrounded by security. Why, you might ask? So did we. Someone in line at my theatre said that she had heard that it was because it was being released after the elections. Why, again? Because it’s too politically explosive. Why is sex political? Because our current administration is afraid of it. If it’s not missionary with the lights off, then it’s deviant. And for a film to show someone back in the conservative 40’s who realized that perverse acts weren’t as perverse as we all thought at the time would make their entire sexual infrastructure crumble. They would suddenly realize that about 75% of all people are at least partially homosexual. They would start to see that just about everybody has performed some form of oral sex. And they would find out that everyone masturbates.
This information actually kind of pisses me off. How could a studio force a producer/director to hold their film’s release until after an election? How dare they? This is a very important film that could open the eyes of a lot of people. And now, instead of allowing the people who see it to be informed, they hold it back to where it can’t do any “damage.” And, besides, this film is not a political statement! It’s not like Fahrenheit 9/11. It’s something that states facts about a man’s life. It’s about a man who finally figured out that our culture is based around hiding sex instead of embracing it and he was sick of it. He believed that sex was good, fun and necessary. It’s something that married and unmarried couples do. He also found out that marriage DOES matter. So does love. Once you’re married, that’s it. Your spouse is your partner. How is this a political statement!?
Kinsey said something that stuck with me: “In a more enlightened country, every 12 year old would know what I now have to teach you.” This is a sad comment. Sex should be talked about in an open manner. Yes, you can keep your privacy. You don’t have to tell all of your gory details to everyone. But don’t be ashamed of them, either. And certainly don’t berate someone else for having different details. Or even similar ones.
How about some films about people acting like children?
Directed by: István Szabó
Written by: Ronald Harwood
Based on book by: W Somerset Maugham
Julia (Annette Bening) is one of the biggest stage actresses of her time (30s London). And, boy does she ever act like it. She’s kind of a bitch, actually. Her agent/husband (Jeremy Irons) loves her, but they don’t have a true marriage. They love who they love and they don’t really care otherwise. In fact, Julia cares so little that her feelings have pretty much died. She’s just a sarcastic bitch who seems to not have much love for anyone.
Until, of course, she meets Tom (Shaun Evans), a younger man from America who seems to not have anything except for great admiration for Julia and her talents. She soon begins an affair with the kid that causes her to feel love for the first time in years.
But is Tom everything he’s cracked up to be? Or is he just fishing for money to pay off his debts? And who is this new actress (Lucy Punch) that everyone is pushing to the fore-front?
Based on the book by W. Somerset Maugham called Theatre, this is a great story of rising fame and fading fire. Like All About Eve it shows how the theatre world can be backstabbing while it’s smiling in your face. The end is hilarious.
But the movie itself almost collapses on its own wit. It’s almost hard to tell that it’s a comedy because it’s so dry. The acting is amazing all around and very subtle, but I don’t think the movie is going to play too well to a general audience. Definitely worth seeing for Annette and Jeremy fans. Especially for that ending.
Directed by: Gustave de Kervern/Benoît Delépine
Written by: Gustave de Kervern/Benoît Delépine
And speaking of endings, that was about the only good thing about this movie. When one of the actor/director/writers said, “The first 6/4s of the movie are incredibly boring, but that last two minutes are amazing.” I thought he was kidding. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.
The movie from Belgium is about two men (stand up comics Benoit Delepine and Gustave de Kervern) who hate each other. When they cause an accident that makes them both paralyzed from the waist down, they are for some reason forced to hang out together all the time. Why? I have no idea. I would think that they would want to get away from each other. But there they are, wheeling themselves around together.
That’s the whole fucking plot! It’s a movie that really tried to be offensive in the Farrelly sense, but ended up being offensive in a cinematic sense. Boring with a capital BOR.
The one bright spot was a hilarious karaoke scene with a guy singing the old Bobby Hebb song, “Sunny.” But he’s not just singing it. He’s mangling it in ways that only a non-English speaker could do. Oh, he’s singing in English, but he’s singing English words that ALMOST sound like the real lyrics. (“Sunny, once and two. I luff you.”) It’s awesome.
And, just like that, it’s over. Then we go back to five or ten more minutes of these two assholes having what I have a hard time calling adventures. They’re just too boring.
Skip this one unless you can fast forward to that one scene.
And, of course, don’t pay for it at all. I don’t want to encourage these guys to make another “film.”
Directed by: Nimród Antal
Written by: Nimród Antal/Jim Adler
Kontroll is about a different kind of asshole. In Eastern Europe they don’t run the subway system like we do. It’s mostly on the honor system. But if you get caught by the ticket inspectors, be prepared to possibly be physically thrown off of the train.
Everyone hates these guys. Even children spit on them. Basically, they are the losers of society who have no other place to go for a job. So they go to the lowest place in the country to find employment in what is basically a night world all the time.
Bulcsu (Sandar Csanyi) is the leader of one group of these inspectors. He doesn’t have a life above ground. In fact, he sleeps in the underground tunnels. But when a mysterious man starts running around and pushing people in front of the trains, things really heat up for Bulcsu and his crew. Is one of them doing it? Or is it their rival group who is responsible?
The Budapest Underground is a really cool world to set a film in. It’s cavernous in an almost beautiful way. These guys live down here where there is no sun and basically no happiness. The only joy they get is when they get to kick someone off of a train. And then they feel like kings.
And now, ever since Trainspotting, young directors have been trying to create a kinetic world for their characters to live in. No better world for these characters to be kinetic (and yet still completely stationary) than the Underground tunnels.
This is Nimrod Antal’s first film and it’s pretty impressive for that fact. It’s not a great film, by any means, but it’s certainly interesting and worth seeking out. The murder mystery almost bogs the whole thing down, though. I would rather just spend time getting to know these guys than have some weird-ass outside force take over all the time. And it kind of drags at times. Bulscu runs a lot. And he gets beat up. A whole lot. He’s bloody for most of the movie. Wouldn’t he wash up at some point?
The end, though, is completely up for interpretation. I must have heard at least three different versions of it. I don’t want to give away too much, but the fate of Bulscu is up in the air.
Check it out if it comes to a theatre anywhere near you. And then tell me what you think of the ending. And if you can find the soundtrack, let me know, too. It’s pretty awesome.
Directed by: Shaohong Li
Written by: Yao Wang/Zhong Zheng
This was the last Asian film I saw and it’s the weirdest movie that I saw at the festival. (Even weirder than Viva La Muerte.)
Baober (Zhou Xun) is a young girl who has no real ties to the real world. She lives the way she wants to and takes nothing for granted except for sanity. When she finds a videotape of Liu Zhi (Huang Juc) she realizes that she has to save this guy from his loveless marriage. In the video he complains about his sex life and the things that his wife takes for granted about him and Beijing in general. She takes the tape to the wife and, in effect, ends their marriage. And, of course, Liu falls in love with Baober.
At least, that’s what I got out of the movie. Like Kontroll, it has a very kinetic pace that makes it a little bit difficult to keep up with. (Of course, my lack of sleep didn’t help that at all, either. That’s the problem with festivals—too much time NOT sleeping.) And, once the two fall in love, there’s not really very much going on anymore. That leaves about an hour of film, though. So I just sat back and enjoyed the surrealism (pretty over the top for a Mainland film) and pretty images while I drifted off for lack of storyline.
Zhou Xun was pretty interesting, too. At times she acted like she was in a horror movie. It was a very cool performance. Too bad the movie wasn’t interesting enough to really keep up with her.
The movie was controversial in China for its frank sexuality. Are they even more repressed than we are? I saw more frankness in The Road To El Dorado. Sure, he talks about masturbation and he and Baober have sex, but it’s not very graphic.
The soundtrack is cool and the images are cool. That’s really about it. And what was up with that ultra-dark ending?
Supposedly there was a message about new and old Beijing hidden in the film somewhere. I’m not sure that I got it. There certainly was a lot of construction going on, so I saw it there. But was she supposed to be New Beijing shaking up the world of Old Beijing (him and his wife)? I dunno. I’ll let the scholars talk about that one.
In the meantime, let’s move on to the last Asian film and the one that was the most fun.
THE HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (2004)
Directed by: Yimou Zhang
Written by: Yimou Zhang/Feng Li/Bin Wang
From Zhang Yimou, director of Hero and Raise The Red Lantern, comes another period action film that shows that the Asian dramatic directors should cross over as much as possible.
This time out he tells the story of two policemen and the girl who comes between them. Mei (Zhang Ziyi, who was in attendance at later screenings…DAMMIT!!! I missed her!!) is a blind prostitute, but she’s also the daughter of the slain leader of the titular revolutionary group. Leo (Andy Lau) goes under cover to get her to take him to their lair. Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) keeps popping up to almost blow Leo’s cover, but he may have ulterior motives.
Like Hero, the visuals are stunning in this film. Director of photography Xiaoding Zhao has an amazing career ahead of him.
The plot isn’t the most intricate, but it’s one that has been ingrained into the Chinese consciousness for so long that it is almost sacred. It’s like Romeo And Juliet. We play with that plot all the time and call it new every time we do it.
I know a lot of people still don’t understand how these people are supposed to be flying through the trees and walking on water. Those people need to understand, martial arts is not really a fighting technique or even a way to protect people. It’s really a sacred discipline. A spiritual endeavor. A way to be closer to your own personal “supreme being.” These kinds of films express that idea better than any other film. They show how these people are so nimble, balanced and disciplined that they can stand on top of a bamboo tree. Sure, it’s not realistic, but it makes sense. I love Jackie and Jet, but these films are for the die-hard martial arts film fans. And what’s so awesome is that they are becoming mainstream. Hero was number one for two weeks. It took this kind of serious martial arts film to put Jet Li in the top spot.
I really liked this movie a lot. It’s not as good as Hero, but it’s still very good and very, very beautiful. I’m sure all of the colors meant something (green is betrayal and orange is love? Maybe?). And when the whole world turns to winter at the end, you can feel the coldness that these two men feel for each other.
Originally there was a part for Anita Mui. When she died, Yimou rewrote the film out of respect for her.
Go see this one after you see Hero. It’s opening at the end of the year.
Thus endeth another year at the Telluride Film Festival. Not a standout year, but not a horrible year, either. Until next time, make more black movies.
This page is dedicated to the memory of TFF Staff Member Tim Gillespie. He was a great musician, teacher and an all around great guy. We missed you, Tim.
