Another Year: A Lesson in Compassion

I have to confess a history of prejudice on my part against the work of Mike Leigh. I was in my early twenties when I watched my first Leigh film, Secrets and Lies. Watching that film was like fingernails on a chalkboard – particularly the persistent crying and whining of Brenda Blethyn’s character. I was determined to not let that particular film turn me off to the work of such a respected director. So I watched his previous film, Naked, and I had a similar negative response. But I still didn’t give up and watched his next film, Career Girls, which also left me feeling very underwhelmed. I just simply couldn’t find the value of his cinematic voice. All I could see and hear were loud, miserable and desperate people living rather hopeless lives. I skipped his next couple of films but decided to give Leigh another shot to win me over with Vera Drake – and he kind of succeeded. I liked the film quite a bit but considered it an anomaly. It wasn’t until my partner Nick wanted to discover for himself the films of Mike Leigh, and I got dragged along for the ride, that I started to appreciate Leigh’s work. His unique style of social-realist filmmaking struck a chord with me. I’m not sure why my response to his films changed but it did. Maybe I simply had been too immature and had not experienced enough of the world to be able to empathize with his characters. I see the world through different glasses now.

Another Year is Leigh’s most recent work. The film is character driven and there is an absence of any sort of traditional story. The activity centers on Tom and Gerri, a very happily married middle-aged couple. They are content with their lives and fulfilled by their careers as geologist and counselor. They enjoy working together in their community garden and have a grown son who actual loves them. As a result of the contentment they feel, they have become a magnet for lost and damaged souls. The film has four acts – Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. It ambles pleasurably through the four seasons of their joint life with a natural rhythm. These seasonal acts provide a thematic structure. In the film Tom and Gerri are seen busy planting, tending, and harvesting their garden through the course of a single year. They are also tending and nurturing the broken and lonely souls that are drawn to them. Tom and Gerri are not saints. At times their patience wears understandably thin, but they remain a constant force in the lives of their friends. They are unable to fix problems, but some problems can’t be fixed. However, Tom and Gerri are a sustainable constant for their friends just as they are for their garden. Even though not always completely warm and inviting, their friendship is steadfast. They always provide at least a minimal refuge which means everything for people who are so lonely and in such deep pain.

Leslie Manville plays Mary, a secretary in Gerri’s office, and her character is the gear that keeps the film moving. Manville’s interpretation of Mary is hands-down one of the best performances of the past year. Mary is not an easy character to watch yet I was drawn to her with fascination in every scene. She is a person who is terribly unhappy but is trying any way she can to break free – whether buying a car or looking for love by flirting with a younger man. There is a constant quiver in her voice. Even her nervous laughter seems to be a cry for help. She is filled with self-hatred and self-delusion but rather than feeling scorn for her, I actually felt some recognition. I have known people like Mary, and in fact, I recognized some of her insecurities as my own. There is a scene near the end of the film where Mary finds herself alone in Gerri and Tom’s house with Tom’s non-communicative brother. Within minutes, even within seconds, her face unravels into hope and hopelessness, despair and defeat, humility and gratitude. Manville’s performance is perfection.

Another Year is a film full of keen observations drawn from characters that are all too real. These characters are familiar to me. I could identify with them, love them and be appalled by them all at once. In their lives as in my own, I was reminded that some problems can’t be solved and that some emotional pain can’t be alleviated, but only managed. I felt genuine empathy for these people. This is a quiet, powerful, and compassionate film.

Why are there not more films like Animal Kingdom?

Big Mama "Smurf" of the crime clan about to kiss her son too long....

Right before we started our Movie Group screening of our most recent film, Craig, Nick, Marc and I were imagining what kind of film we would make if we had the chance. After about half an hour of watching Michod's Animal Kingdom, I claimed in despair: "After that last scene, why should I even try to dream of being a filmmaker?" In the face of such virtuosity, I am content to be a consumer of film and not a producer. It is just one of those films that show how complex and intertwined the whole filmmaking process is.

The scene in question was unremarkable in content, just a picture of the twisted family leaving a cheap restaurant together. But it was a little miracle in its form. The depth of field was unbelievably complex, with the focus bringing different characters to attention at different times. The movement, angle and tempo were just off-kilter enough that they capture your eye without drawing attention to themselves. You just can't help yourself, you have to keep looking and you want to see more.

I agree with Craig that Mendelsohn deserves more recognition for his monstrous role as the psychopathic kingpin of the dysfunctional crime family. But it is not only his acting that does it--it is the unbelievably subtle narrative (for such a violent film) that reveals the depth of his depravity bit by bit, with horrifying insights that almost go unnoticed sometimes (the intense way he peers at different members of the family, the loathing for his gone-straight brother that is re-directed immediately into rage and grief at having lost him).

This is not a heavy-handed, twisted story that beats you into submission, but a series of intricately-developed characters that are set into motion and allowed to crash into each other in ways that fascinate, repel and convince you. If you have had to watch Avatar or whatever overdetermined crap that your brother-in-law dragged you to see last week, get your hands on Animal Kingdom and let it wash away the cineplex mediocrity. But watch out--you will end up expecting so much more from other films, and they will come up short.

Thanks Nick and Craig--An excellent Movie Group night. And the food (lemon-garlic pasta with fresh tomatoes and spinach, individual form-cakes with chocolate sauce) was worthy of this film.

Can I have the recipes?

Animal Kingdom: Ben Mendelsohn’s Overlooked Performance

Nick and I hosted February’s movie group and chose to show Animal Kingdom, an Australian film by David Michod in his first effort as both writer and director. He has crafted a dark and moody thriller with a pace that is deliberately slower than most films of its kind. The film really benefits from the slowed down pacing and allows the characters to fully develop and you really appreciate the amazing performances from the entire cast. Jacki Weaver is outstanding as the matriarch of this crime family and her performance has already garnered her a lot of recognition and awards during the 2010-11 award season. However, I’d like to call out an equally strong performance by Ben Mendelsohn as the eldest brother “Pope”.

Mendelsohn delivers an extremely chilling performance. His character is pure evil. He internalizes his hatred. He is quiet, calculating, and demented and his rage is barely concealed below the surface of his frighteningly blank face. He speaks with eerie quietness that is very unnerving. Physically, he is the smallest of his brothers but his appearance is deceiving as you soon realize that it is often the weak looking ones that will do anything to compensate. He is cunning and unpredictable and his actions are almost always lethal.

Mendelsohn has two standout scenes that come to my mind. The first is between Pope and the youngest brother Darren. The scene takes place in the family kitchen after Pope has re-emerged from hiding. He is interested in quickly re-establishing his place as the “king” of the clan. Pope quietly and unrelentingly accuses Darren of being gay. By questioning Darren’s sexuality Pope is making Darren feel less of a man and Pope uses this strategy to let Darren know who is in charge and that this is simply how it’s going to be in the future.

The second scene takes place late at night while Air Supply’s music video “All Out of Love” plays. The song plays long enough to establish a mood for the scene but slowly the camera pans over to Pope sitting quietly on the couch. At that point, upon seeing Pope’s blank face, the mood of the scene shifts into something menacing. Pope’s next actions are very creepy as his eyes turn to his nephew’s unconscious girlfriend.

In a film full of excellent performances, Ben Mendelsohn is as an example of the adage that less is more. His subtle and subdued performance conveys a current of troubled emotions running deep inside. It is his performance that anchors the ominous and frightening tone of the film.

The Magician: Art as Sophistry

So I have a habit of buying Criterion Blu-rays; usually without ever having seen the movie before. I feel this is a good gamble most of the time, but there have been some that I would probably never watch again. "The Magician" was definitely a welcome surprise.

You just never know what you are going to get with Bergman. This film was dark, funny, and creepy all at once. Not slow and plodding like some Bergman films, yet still philosophically compelling. Oh, and be sure to look up the essay by Oliver Assayas which appears in the October 1990 issue of Cashiers du cinema.

A Few Days of Respite

“A Few Days of Respite” follows a gay Iranian couple fleeing persecution in Iran where homosexuality is punishable by death to search for the freedom to live their lives openly. The film aspires to be a love story and also a political story and fails miserably to achieve either one of those goals.

Here’s the plot. Mohsen (the older man) and Hassan (the younger man) have fled Iran where their relationship could ultimately mean a death sentence. They have been dropped in a forested area along the Italian/French border. Their goal is to eventually make their way to Paris. While traveling on a train, Mohsen meets Yolande, a somewhat older French widow. He helps her with her luggage and accompanies her on the train ride. Unaware that he is traveling with Hassan, Yolande offers Mohsen a job painting her apartment. After arriving in the village, the men get a hotel room together and Mohsen decides to take the job to earn some cash before they move on to Paris. The painting job leads to lunch, then to a bed for the night, and then ultimately an offer of marriage.

This film feels false at every level. A very poor script and one dimensional performances by the actors, the film is simply boring and pretentious. This is a film that attempts for importance and instead achieves artificiality. The blame for this failure rests almost solely on the shoulders of Amor Hakkar, the writer, director, and lead actor.

There is nothing to indicate that these men are actually in love which should be the heart and soul of the film. After all, the catalyst for the story is that Mohsen and Hassan are so in love that they feel they can’t hide it anymore and they must flee Iran. There isn’t even a hint that the two men are romantically involved even when they are alone together in the hotel. They barely even speak to each other. Their greatest intimacy is a scene where Mohsen steps out of the shower in front of Hassan and Hassan places his hand on Mohsen’s shoulder. The film doesn’t need to be more explicit, but it does need to provide some sort of evidence that these men are in love. Even at the start of the film Hassan asks Mohsen if he would have waited for him if he had been late only to hear Mohsen’s answer that he would have left without him. Another filmmaker would have celebrated the new freedom the men were experiencing with some sort of physical interaction. Even the title of the film suggests that the men have an opportunity, even if it is brief, to be themselves. Then to confound the viewer and make the plot even more ridiculous, Mohsen actually sleeps with Yolande while Hassan is upstairs in the attic where he can hear what is taking place. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the filmmaker was interested in telling what he believed to be a politically relevant and also politically correct story while himself being unwilling to actually depict a real relationship between two men in love at the risk of appearing to be a homosexual himself. Amor Hakkar never captures what it means to be in a relationship.

The film also introduces story points that are left unresolved and ignores obvious lapses in logic. During the Q&A following the screening, Hakkar made matters worse when he deflected answering questions from the audience asking him about some of these gaps. His responses were patronizing and disclosed that he himself wasn’t quite sure where he was going with the story at times.

The superficiality of the film was underscored at the end of the film when a note tells the viewer what happens to Mohsen and Hassan. Rather than evoking emotion toward the characters, this note made me angry at the filmmaker. I felt that Hakkar was simply exploiting the characters for a political purpose. While that purpose may seem noble, this hollow film does nothing but belittle the cause.

The only compliment I have for this film is that the technical aspects of the film are adequate – though undistinguished.

In a Better World

In a Better World is an intense drama from director Susanne Bier and her co-screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen. The film is a meditation on the choices between pacifism and violence that are faced in civilized societies as well as in extreme Third World situations.

Here’s the setup: The story follows two Danish families that are brought together as a result of a newly formed friendship between two boys, Christian and Elias. Both boys are coping with their own set of problems. Elias’ parents are teetering on the verge of divorce as a result of his father’s infidelity, and he is the target of relentless bullying at school. Christian's mother recently lost her battle with cancer and he has returned to Denmark with his father whom he blames for "giving up" on his mother. Also, Elias’ father, Anton, is a doctor who spends much of his time working at a refugee camp in Africa. While in the refugee camp much of his work involves treating the victims of a local warlord who cuts open the bellies of pregnant women for fun.

Upon this backdrop, the plot is set into motion. Christian stands up for Elias using a bike pump to pummel the boy bullying Elias and a hunting knife to threaten him. Problem solved. Don’t jump to that conclusion too quickly. The consequence of revenge gone "good" can turn into something altogether bad. Also, Anton is a pacifist and even treats the wounds of the monstrous warlord in Africa. So when he is hit in the face by a belligerent man in Denmark in front of the two boys, he does not strike back and walks away.

The film compares the brutality Anton witnesses in Africa with Christian’s escalating anti-social behavior. In a Better World contemplates this moral dilemma. Is it always best to help someone in need? Is revenge ever the proper course of action? The answers may seem obvious but they aren’t. In some instances there just might not be a "right" answer.

The acting from the entire ensemble is superb. Each actor is very human and complex and brings compelling dignity to their characters. The young actors are particularly excellent. In his film debut, Johnk Nielsen as Christian is an incredibly threatening young man unwilling to settle for anything other than revenge. He is mad at the world and has no tolerance for anyone that crosses him. Alternately is Markus Rygaard who plays Elias with sweetness and innocence. After being bullied most of this life he’s just happy to have a friend and is willing to do anything to make Christian happy.

In a Better World delves into matters of fear, revenge, forgiveness and passiveness and it will have you looking at the world around you and wondering if we're better off now than we were before. Where have our advancements in technology and medicine gotten us? To a place where we are all living in harmony or someplace much scarier? This is an emotionally ravaging film in which the lines become blurred as it explores our human instincts and our interpretation of knowing what is right and what is wrong.

The Best and The Worst of Sundance 2011

Sundance 2011 officially concluded on Sunday with three screenings in Salt Lake though for the filmmakers the festival really ended on Saturday evening with the awards ceremony. While my festival experience is still fresh and clearly visible in the rearview mirror, I want to capture the high points and the low points of this year’s film festival. The festival awards reflect the opinions of the jury members and the greater consensus of all festival goers. I’ll let those films and their awards speak for themselves. The films that I will mention in this post will include my five favorite films of the festival and also the five films of the festival that in my opinion, simply put – sucked.

With a film festival as large as Sundance, if it impossible to see all of the films. I took advantage of every opportunity I had to see a film and managed to view a total of 37 features along with a handful of shorts. I felt like there were some common themes in many of the films that I watched – particularly with the films that I enjoyed the most. Both documentary and dramatic films explored the dynamics of power and control in personal relationships and within the larger national and global political landscape. When is it okay to surrender power? When is it appropriate to fight to gain power and control? What things are worth fighting for? When do you turn the other cheek? What would you do when you feel like you are powerless? What strategies are you willing to use in your struggle? And possibly the most important question of them all: as you engage in these battles of power delivering as well as receiving cuts and bruises, who and what actions are you willing to forgive?

So with that introduction, here is my list of the best films of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. One more thing, I will be providing full reviews of the best films during the coming week. Now queue the drum roll please………………

1. In a Better World. This was the film that I was most excited to see during the festival. I went into the screening with very high expectations and this film managed to exceed them all. Susanne Bier has crafted a deeply moving film. The characters are fully developed and I quickly felt like I knew these people intimately. Creating this intimacy between the characters and the audience is something that Susanne Bier does better than any other filmmaker. I’m not sure how she accomplishes it but the result is a cinematic experience of extreme depth. Great actors are essential to her storytelling and the acting here is some of best you’ll see in contemporary cinema – particularly the performances from the children. This film is currently nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. See this film.

2. Happy, Happy. Another great film out of Scandinavia – this time from Norway and from the 28-year old director Anne Sewitsky. This film is hilarious, heartbreaking, and finally hopeful as it tells the story of two couples and their children. The comedy comes at a cost though and it cuts deep. I felt the force of the cuts as this story about the dynamics of relationships unfolds. These are complex characters and complex relationships. The title of the film is definitely ironic, however I still left the film feeling satisfied and hopeful for all of the characters.

3. Take Shelter. This is a film that taps into the paranoia that exists in society today – something is happening or about to happen and it is not likely to be good. Worst of all, things seems to be outside of our control. Is this paranoia rational or is it the onset of some sort of collective schizophrenia? Writer/Director Jeff Nichols’ brilliant film tells the story of one family and how these forces threaten to tear them apart. This is a beautifully shot and engaging film and with performances by Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastian that are likely to be recognized at next year’s Academy Awards.

4. If a Tree Falls / How to Die in Oregon (tie). I know I’m cheating a little bit by selecting two documentaries for my number 4 ranking, but I just couldn’t separate them. “If a Tree Falls” tells the story of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) through the personal story of one of its members. “How to Die in Oregon” is about the right to die law in Oregon and while the film introduces us to many people, the heart of the film belongs to a woman named Cody who is losing her battle with liver cancer. Both films grapple with big issues and ask similar questions regarding activism, personal choice and responsibility.

5. Salvation Boulevard. This film is a hilarious satire of Christian fanaticism. It is a story about a megachurch whose charismatic minister’s plans for his “City on a Hill” are about to come unraveled. This film has a cast any director would die for. The script is smart and funny from beginning to end. I loved every minute of this film.

The worst films of the festival are:

1. The Ledge. This is a thrill-less thriller that pretends to profoundly deal with the conflict between Atheism and Faith (in this case specifically Christianity). The film is full of immature adolescent ideas and it delivers them all to the audience in a preposterous story that is poorly written, poorly acted, poorly directed…………you get the idea. However, I have had a lot of fun ridiculing this film during the festival so maybe that counts for something.

2. I’ll Melt with You. Yet another poorly acted and poorly written story about four forty-something men – college friends – who meet for their annual “guys-only week” where anything goes. Each man is experiencing their own midlife crisis. During the course of the week they decide to act on a suicide pact they made 25 years earlier. The film is loud, pretentious, chaotically edited and it is a piece of crap.

3. The Son of No One. This is a mess of a cop film with a plot that doesn’t make any sense that lacks any real inherent drama. The cast suggests a much better film and includes Al Pacino, Juliette Binoche, Ray Liotta, Katie Holmes, and Channing Tatum. Katie Holmes out acts them all which isn’t saying much since all she does is yell convincingly at her husband with whom she has absolutely no chemistry.

4. Hobo with a Shotgun. When you see a film in the Park City at Midnight category of the festival you generally expect to see some campy horror film. This film was campy but it was one of the most hateful movies that I’ve seen. The extreme and relentless violence inflicted on women and children made the film simply unbearable especially when the film was supposed to be campy fun. Let’s just say that I’ve seen one school bus of children too many being torched.

5. A Few Days of Respite. I’ll write a full review of this film later but until then just know that this film actually made me angry. The film tells the story two Iranian gay men that are in exile due to their homosexuality and while traveling in France one of the men is befriended by a French woman in a small village. There is plenty about this film to criticize all of which ultimately come down to the fact that I believe that the writer/director/lead actor is probably actually a homophobe.

Overall it was a great year at the festival and in one more year I’ll be more than ready to do it all over again.