Criterion Sunday 511: Juventude em Marcha (Colossal Youth, 2006)

I’m not sure is this is the best of Pedro Costa’s three films grouped together as the “Fontainhas trilogy” after the Lisbon slum/shanty town where they take place, but after spending so much time with these characters in this place, its quiet reflectiveness feels the richest, perhaps because of that time spent. Costa too has developed his video aesthetic that he began with In Vanda’s Room, recapturing some of the painterly contrast that was at play in the first of the three (Ossos) but without the conventions of the narrative. The characters are still slouching around going nowhere, interspersed with the tall and elegant elderly man Ventura narrating a letter to someone long gone it seems. and there’s not much in the way of plot to speak of, but it swaps out the crumbling buildings of the previous films for the new apartments built in their place, which have a sort of antiseptic quality, though there’s still plenty enough places for Costa to find his crepuscular shadows. I can’t really explain too much why I like it, but it’s an experience that just needs to sort of wash over you, and at that level I find it rewarding.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director/Writer Pedro Costa; Cinematographers Costa and Leonardo Simões; Starring Ventura, Vanda Duarte; Length 156 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), Wellington, Saturday 12 March 2022 (and I’m fairly sure I saw it a cinema in London, probably the ICA, back in around 2007, but I don’t have a record of it).

Criterion Sunday 477: Bergman Island (2006)

There’s a film with the same title directed by Mia Hansen-Løve currently doing the festival circuit rounds, but this is not that film, it’s rather the Criterion release of a documentary about Ingmar Bergman, filmed a few years before his death in his reclusive life on the island of Fårö. It’s edited down from a much longer conversation, and you can see snippets of the rest appearing as introductions to the various Bergman films in the collection as he talks about his own films. However for this documentary a lot more focus is on his own life as an artist, with a few clips from his films and some discussion of a handful of specific titles, but really it’s about him as a creator and about him as a person. The latter leads to the most revealing stuff, as he admits to having been a cruel man in his life, playing with women’s feelings (he had five wives, nine children and a string of affairs). But perhaps the most indelible turning point is his return to Sweden after being invited to a pool party by Barbra Streisand. I’m sorry, Ingmar, you made some good movies but that was the wrong choice.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Marie Nyreröd; Cinematographer Arne Carlsson; Length 83 minutes.

Seen at home (Blu-ray), Wellington, Sunday 7 November 2021.

Criterion Sunday 440: Brand Upon the Brain! (2006)

Clearly Guy Maddin had been working up to a full-blown pastiche on silent films for quite a while at this point, and it’s a style that has largely defined a lot of his subsequent work: expressionist pools of darkness; rapid cross-cutting; fragments of frames as if rescued from decay; and bonkers storylines with incredulous, exclamative (!!) intertitles aplenty. To the extent that this has become his stock-in-trade, I didn’t even recall having seen this at the London Film Festival back when it came out, but reading up on it, I see that a number of its original presentations were accompanied by a live narrator in Japanese benshi style (whether this is how I saw it in 2007 is lost to my memory, but I don’t think so). In any case, it has an expressive beauty and it’s fun even if it still feels ultimately like a pastiche-y farce about weird parental manipulation of orphan kids, polymorphous sexuality and death — all of which is by way of saying, it feels very Canadian.

CRITERION EXTRAS:

• Chief among the bonuses are two 2008 short films that Guy Maddin made to go with this feature film. One is “It’s My Mother’s Birthday Today”, which deals with one of the cast members, but in a typically Maddinesque impressionistic — er, actually expressionist, I guess? — kinda way. It’s a blur of images and feelings that tend towards the dark.
• The other short film is “Footsteps”, and if you’re going to do DVD bonus featurettes about the making of your film, this is about as good as they can really be. It’s Guy Maddin showing how the sound effects were made, by the working collective of the title, but filmed as a Maddinesque short film — and, like anything by Maddin, I’m not exactly convinced of how truthful it is, either. However, it is fun and funny, and it gives a good sense of the rather absurdist work of a foley artist.
• There’s also a deleted scene which runs for a few minutes but which was probably excised wisely as I don’t recall very much about it having seen it a mere hour or two ago, but it was intended to up the ‘queer’ factor of a film which already plays enough with gender identities.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Guy Maddin; Writers Maddin and George Toles; Cinematographer Benjamin Kasulke; Starring Gretchen Krich, Maya Lawson, Isabella Rossellini; Length 99 minutes.

Seen at NFT, London, Saturday 20 October 2007 (and most recently on DVD at home, Wellington, Sunday 20 June 2021).

Global Cinema 22: Bosnia and Herzegovina – Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams (2006)

I am currently in the process of moving halfway around the world, so some of my regularly scheduled reviews may be a little delayed, and that’s also the reason I haven’t been running my theme weeks. I’ll get back up to speed soon enough I’m sure, when I have better access to films and places to watch them. In the meantime, here’s an older review (and a rather short one) for a Bosnian film, as we’ve reached that country, which has gone through a tumultuous recent history, and emerged as its own sovereign state in recent years.

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Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina)
population 3,301,000 | capital Sarajevo (276k) | largest cities Sarajevo, Banja Luka (185k), Tuzla (110.9k), Zenica (110.6k), Bijeljina (108k) | area 51,129 km² | religion Islam (51%), Christianity (46%) | official language Bosnian (bosanski), Serbian (srpski) and Croatian (hrvatski) | major ethnicity Bosniaks (50%), Serbs (31%), Croats (15%) | currency Convertible mark (konvertibilna marka) (KM) [BAM] | internet .ba

A Balkan country in southeast Europe, with a mountainous interior, flatlands in the northeast, and a Mediterranean climate in the southern (Herzegovina) region, and only 20km coastline on the Adriatic. The name can be traced back to the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII in the 10th century, who wrote of “Bosona”, deriving from the river Bosna, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European for “running water”; Herzegovina meanwhile derives from the German word for “duke” (herzog), in reference to a Mediaeval ruler. Settlement in the region can be traced back to the Upper Paleolithic era (late Stone Age), and has had permanent settlements since the Neolithic. Illyrian and Celtic people gave way to South Slavic, and the earliest existence of Bosnia as a polity was in the 7th century CE. The Banate of Bosnia was established in the C12th followed by the Kingdom in the C14th, then taken up as part of the Ottoman Empire until the 19th century, which is how Islam was introduced. After a brief period as part of Austria-Hungary, it became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia following World War I, and gained full republic status after WW2. Independence was proclaimed on 1 March 1992, leading to a civil war with Bosnian Serbs that lasted until 1995, ended by the Dayton Agreement that year. The country is largely divided into two as a result (the Federation of B&H and Republika Srpska), with a three member presidency for its three main ethnic groups (Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats), among whom leadership rotates, a democractically-elected parliament, with oversight provided by an external High Representative (required under the terms of the Dayton Agreement to ensure that peace is kept).

The country’s film heritage goes back to its time as part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, with notable Bosnian film figures like Danis Tanović, Emir Kusturica and the director of the film I’ve reviewed below. The Sarajevo Film Festival was established in 1995 and continues to be a prominent part of film culture in the region.

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Grbavica (Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams, aka Esma’s Secret, 2006)

Made over a decade after a bitter civil war, the effects of it are still powerfully felt in this Bosnian drama. It’s called Esma’s Secret in the UK, though quite what is that secret never really feels surprising, as the truth is always so painfully near the surface. The source of her trauma, rooted in the civil war, really radiates out from the lead actor’s eyes (Mirjana Karanović), her hollow expressiveness, and it affects particularly her relations with even ostensibly friendly men.

CREDITS
Director Jasmila Žbanić; Writers Žbanić and Barbara Albert; Cinematographer Christine A. Maier; Starring Mirjana Karanović, Luna Mijović; Length 90 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Saturday 26 November 2016.

Criterion Sunday 361: The Beales of Grey Gardens (2006)

I suppose it was inevitable in this series — especially now that I’m doing them twice a week — that I’d eventually miss an entry, though this isn’t the first. However, as I’ve moved halfway around the world, this one slipped a little as I wasn’t able to watch it before we left. I shall try to avoid any more glaring holes.

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It turns out that when the Maysles brothers were filming the Beales for Grey Gardens (1975), they had enough footage to craft this sequel of sorts, revisiting them in their weirdly cut-off little bit of derelict suburbia, as they continue to seem addled and out of time. I suppose it makes clear that any successful documentary at least comes down to the screen presence of its subjects, and the Beales (scions of the same family as Jackie Kennedy) certainly have that, as the elderly mother constantly berates her preening show-offy daughter, while the latter is constantly playing up for the camera, singing songs or swanning around showing off her seemingly homemade fashions. Indeed it becomes almost a familiar rejoinder that the younger Edie says something only for her mother’s voice to pipe in from off camera correcting her or saying that never happened. One wonders at times, as in the original, about the ethics of the thing, as the Beales hardly seem the most present in mind, but it’s fairly benign I think and there’s a lot here for fans of the original.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Directors Albert Maysles and David Maysles; Cinematographer Albert Maysles; Length 91 minutes.

Seen at a hotel (Blu-ray), Auckland, Thursday 15 October 2016.

Global Cinema 20: Bhutan – Milarepa (2006)

There aren’t a huge number of Bhutanese films, but one of the most well-known is 1999’s The Cup, which starred the director of this film, himself a Buddhist monk. Given the prominence of the religion in the country, it seems fitting that it should be the choice for my representative film for Bhutan, though it’s set in Tibet (now part of China), and filmed in India near the border.

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Kingdom of Bhutan (འབྲུག་ཡུལ་ Druk Gyal Khap)
population 754,000 | capital Thimphu (ཐིམ་ཕུ) (115k) | largest cities Thimphu, Phuntsholing (28k), Paro (11k), Gelephu (10k), Samdrup Jongkhar (9k) | area 38,394 km² | religion Buddhism (75%), Hinduism (23%) | official language Dzongkha (རྫོང་ཁ) | major ethnicity not recorded | currency Ngultrum (Nu.) [BTN] | internet .bt

A small landlocked South Asian country surrounded by India on three sides, and bordering Tibet (China) to the north. It is situated on the historic Silk Road, and has avoided colonisation, with its identity largely formed by Buddhism. Geographically, it moves from subtropical in the south to alpine in the north. The name probably derives from the Tibetan name for Tibet (“Böd”), though traditionally it is said to come from the Sanskrit “Bhota-anta” for “end of Tibet”, and since the 17th century its own official name (Druk Yul, “Land of the Thunder Dragon”) refers to the country’s dominant Buddhist sect. Settlement dates back to 2000 BCE, and the aboriginal peoples were called the Monpa. Buddhism was introduced in the 7th century CE, and promulgated widely the following century, although historical records are scarce about early Bhutan. However, it seems that it is warlords and fiefdoms, each subscribing to a different sect of Buddhism, that defined the political divisions within the country, united in the 17th century. Bhutan attempted a bit of expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries, but were beaten back by wars with the British. A monarchy was instituted (the House of Wangchuck) in 1907, and a legislature created in 1953. Much of the monarchy’s power was transferred to an elected parliament in recent years, and the first elections took place in 2007. It is governed by a Prime Minister, though much power still remains with the monarch.

The cinematic industry emerged in the 1990s (television was banned until 1999), influenced by neighbouring India’s Bollywood. Some films blend this tradition with Buddhism, and the country produces around 30 features a year, with six cinemas in the capital.

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མི་ལ་རས་པའི་རྣམ་ཐར།། Mi-la-ras-pa’i rnam-thar (Milarepa, 2006)

This tale is about the famous 11th/12th century Buddhist yogi of the title, and was originally intended to be the first of two parts about his life (though sadly the latter was never made). It covers his birth and journey towards becoming a Buddhist, specifically the period when he learned arcane powers to kill his family’s enemies, something that jarred him to the extent of wanting to turn his back on a violent life and pursue a higher ideal. Dramatically, it’s not always satisfying, though there’s plenty still to recommend it in the scenery and the setting, which is unusual enough to be of interest, even if Milarepa’s moral quandaries often seem a little bit buried in overly dark interior scenes and a lack of urgency. Still, it’s a very handsome work.

CREDITS
Director Neten Chokling གནས་བརྟན་མཆོག་གླིང་རིན་པོ་ཆེ; Writers Chokling and Tenzing Choyang Gyari; Cinematographer Paul Warren; Starring Gimyan Lodro, Jamyang Lodro; Length 91 minutes.
Seen at home (Gaia via Amazon streaming), London, Tuesday 22 September 2020.

Films by Valeska Grisebach: Be My Star (2001), Longing (2006) and Western (2017)

She’s only made three feature films, but on the basis of just that work Valeska Grisebach is one of the most interesting German-language filmmakers of the last few decades. She was trained at the Vienna Film School, though she isn’t Austrian (she was born in Bremen), and is often included in the so-called ‘Berlin School’ with Angela Schanelec (whom I’ll cover later this week), Christian Petzold and others. She makes unglamorous films with non-professional actors that often resist the more florid aspects of storytelling, not a million miles from say Kelly Reichardt or Claire Denis. This perhaps accounts for why she’s been able to make so few, but those she has made are all excellent and well worth checking out (though her graduate film, Be My Star, is somewhat rougher aesthetically).

Two Relationship Dramas by Nicole Holofcener: Friends with Money (2006) and The Land of Steady Habits (2018)

There’s a certain strand of filmmaking that I like to think of as ‘low stakes cinema’ where nothing really bad happens or is likely to happen to any of the characters — no one’s actions are going to kill or seriously hurt anyone, and there might be a bit of embarrassment or hurt feelings, or even a relationship break-up at the very worst. Much of Nicole Holofcener’s cinema sort of fits neatly in there, and the lives she depicts are just a little more ragged around the edges than, say, Nancy Meyers’s (certainly their homes are less punishingly set designed). Both of these films deal with ensemble casts, groups of people defined by relationships, whether romantic or those of friendship, navigating through complications, without the kind of pat resolution you get with, say, sitcoms. In this way they fit somewhat into the same mould that younger ‘mumblecore’ filmmakers were doing at the same time, though her filmmaking seems closer to the kind of comfortable New York background of Noah Baumbach, something which traces its lineage back through Woody Allen. Between these two films below she made Please Give (2010, which I’ve seen and liked, though wasn’t able to rouse myself to write much about it) and Enough Said (2013), which is just lovely, and I think one of the last screen performances from James Gandolfini.

Four Underappreciated Films by Hirokazu Koreeda: Distance (2001), Hana (2006), Air Doll (2009) and The Third Murder (2017)

The filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda has been turning out warmly-received films since his fiction feature debut Maborosi in 1995. Many of them — certainly, it seems, all of the most acclaimed — are warm-hearted family dramas, whether dealing with children directly as in I Wish (2011), with parents of kids in Like Father, Like Son (2013) or with young people in Our Little Sister (2015). However in many ways that’s only half his output, as he’s also made plenty of films that don’t fit quite so neatly into this framework. I was planning on writing a post about maybe one of these, but then I realised I had a vast cache of reviews of films that really aren’t very well known by this famous director, and I wonder how many great directors could have made great films if they’d been given as many chances. For one example not even covered here, there’s his latest English/French-language The Truth (to be reviewed here later this week), but there are also these four films reviewed below: a film about terrorists; a period drama; a sex drama; and a legal thriller.

Маяк Mayak (The Lighthouse aka Փարոս, 2006)

I’m still going to be covering some of my favourite films I saw during 2019 until at least the end of this week, as well as inevitable best-of lists. As it happens, the end of this month sees the UK release of another film called The Lighthouse, but not to be confused with that Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe psychodrama is this 2006 film by Armenian director Maria Saakyan, who died far too young in January 2018, from cancer. It’s expressionist and beautiful and weaves a poetic tableaux of rural Armenian life interrupted by war.

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This poetic, beautiful film that touches on war and family in rural Armenia is very much my kind of thing, where the narrative almost takes a back seat to imagery that suggests via metaphor and allusion to inner states, as Lena (Anna Kapaleva) tries to get her family out of a war-strewn area. It feels very much like some Theo Angelopoulos films (but without the overweening self-importance) or the more elegiac films of Aleksandr Sokurov, and to be sure there’s a lot of beautiful and potent imagery that can feel almost abstract. And yet, focusing on the women of this village grounds it in customs and lived experienced in a successful way I think. It’s really very sad that the filmmaker didn’t live to make many more films, because as a debut feature this is extraordinary.

CREDITS
Director Maria Saakyan Մարիա Սահակյան; Writer Givi Shavgulidze Գիվի Շավգուլիձե; Cinematographer Maxim Drozdov Максим Дроздов; Starring Anna Kapaleva Анна Капалева; Length 80 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Saturday 9 March 2019.