Taking It Home: A Better Life

The grass is always greener, except when it's not.

I had the opportunity recently to observe removal hearings at a federal immigration court. The calendar moved in quick succession (5-10 minutes per case) and included the first appearances by respondents accused of being in the United States illegally. These were not detainees or, depending on your definition, even criminals, but they were nonetheless up against the law on this day.

Some had been in the country for less than a year, others had been here for decades. Maybe they hopped the border themselves, or through the help of a mule, or maybe they just overstayed their originally legal visas. They didn't explain how or why they came, only that they wanted to stay, for the welfare of themselves (in the case of asylum-seekers) or the welfare of others, such as children or spouses. Each story was different, and yet they were all identical, in that they portrayed lives lived in two places at once - here and abroad, above ground and underground, in comfortable peace and in extreme danger.

There were no tears or emotional speeches or really any kind of the desperation I might have expected in such an environment. Names were replaced by case numbers, legal jargon was interspersed with yes or no questions interpreted in different languages, and future dates and years were planned ahead matter-of-factly (cases are so backlogged that follow-up hearings were being scheduled on this day for mid-2014). It was, in other words, devastating in its banality.

The same can be said for A Better Life, although it unfortunately dips its toes into schmaltz every 15-20 minutes. So many recent movies have been made about immigration, and so many of those movies have told the same story (except Sean Baker's singular Take Out), that it was a little disappointing to watch A Better Life drive down that heavily-trafficked road and pass up possible detours to new cinematic territory. It's predictable and occasionally pedantic, and to be perfectly honest it's hard to defend as a "good movie".

But my measure of quality here has always considered social importance above cinematic artistry, and to that end A Better Life is as good if not better than most films I've seen this year. And it's not as if it's "bad" even on traditional cinematic terms; it transcends most of its flaws thanks to lived-in performances and a steady grounding in reality. Its characters are familiar not only from other movies, but from your daily bus commute or restaurant meal or hotel stay. (Perhaps the most conspicuous characteristic of undocumented immigrants, on screen and on the street, is their stoic work ethic.)

So if immigration-themed films are a dime a dozen, why do they keep being produced? First and most obviously, because immigration - both legal and illegal - is an issue facing not only every state and community in the United States, but nearly every country on earth. And it will continue to be a relevant social issue until, perhaps generations from now, the world will be so globalized that borders will be virtual and national identities will be nominal.

Until that time, if and when it does come (certainly not in our lifetimes), immigration movies will continue to portray undocumented immigrants in a sympathetic light, simply by virtue of their often narrow focus on the hard luck and difficult struggles these characters face every day. We don't see them as job takers or drug smugglers or fraudulent voters, but as honest workers, family members, and people of high moral character. Which the majority of them are, as I saw in court and as I see everyday when I look in the mirror (as a U.S.-born child of naturalized immigrants from two countries).

Secondly, the movies often strive to portray one of the unappreciated realities of this issue: it's not about the immigrants at all, but about their families, both now and for generations to come. Any emotion tied into these stories is related to these family bonds; I can't think of a moving illegal immigration film about a loner character whose family ties are not central to the story (though Sugar and Lorna's Silence come pretty close). So, as filmmakers continue to try to emotionally engage us about immigration, it will be an exercise in who can tell the most compelling story in the most unique way (Ramin Bahrani is among the new pioneers I admire).

And lastly, what of cinematic musings on immigration policies and politics? Put simply, I'd suggest that films about immigration are films about failed immigration policies (and documentaries like 9500 Liberty approach them head-on). The vast majority of these movies posit that current policies are either unfair or irrelevant, and that no matter what the politicians decide, illegal entry across borders will continue, and the stories we see on screen will continue to play out in real time all around us. There will be consequences for everyone involved, and there are no easy answers.

But as I've said before I think the purpose of these films, and all thoughtful films for that matter, is not to set forth policy but to initiate a conversation about it, or, in the case of A Better Life, serve as a conventional yet compassionate reminder of the importance of an issue.

What did you take home?

300 Words About: Mississippi Damned

Taking its name from the provocative Nina Simone song, Tina Mabry's Mississippi Damned reveals itself as, in essence, an adaptation of the downbeat lyrics:"Lord have mercy on this land of mine/We all gonna get it in due time/I don't belong here/I don't belong there/I've even stopped believing in prayer...Oh but this whole country is full of lies/You're all gonna die and die like flies."

Yeah, this one ain't for the kids.

Written and directed by Mabry (recent recipient of a prestigious United States Artists grant) and based on her own family history, the film is a generation-spanning tale of physical and sexual abuse, poor choices, missed opportunities, poverty and strife, and even sickness and disease. It's all of Shakespeare's tragedies wrapped up in one story, updated and set in the American South. The plot, such as it is, doesn't require much explanation: three sisters and their families live and then relive some truly awful experiences, with only young Kari keeping hope alive that one day she will escape the cycle.

The production values and acting are very impressive for an independently produced film, particularly considering there is more action, movement, and variety of setting than most small films would dare attempt. And, although seemingly every other scene presents itself as ripe for some scene-chewing, Mabry keeps the cast on an even keel. The actors are comfortable in their characters and the scenes mostly develop naturally, lending authentic emotion to the story. Ironically, the overwhelming bleakness that exists as the film's greatest flaw is also the central reason it's so affecting.

Independent Lens presents: Lost Sparrow

Lost Sparrow is the type of documentary that should come with a warning label: "May cause severe emotional distress". It does not contain much disturbing or graphic content, but the tragedy of the Billing family history is so nakedly laid bare that you can't help but be affected. I was mentally worn and emotionally vulnerable on the night that I watched it, and I'll fully admit the film's denouement had me sobbing. While I was reminded of Capturing the Friedmans, Surfwise, and Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, I was keenly aware while watching Lost Sparrow that there were many more social layers under the surface of this particular story.

Never manipulative and consistently engrossing, Lost Sparrow is a downward spiraling journey into the marginalization and mistreatment of the Native American community, the strength of the family bond, and the challenge of forgiving an unforgivable sin. If making a film about the skeletons in your family's closet is considered a sign of bravery (and I think it is), director Chris Billing deserves a medal of valor.

In the early 1970's, Billing's family adopted four Crow Indian siblings (two boys, two girls) who were removed from their home on an impoverished Montana reservation after numerous allegations of domestic abuse. The Billing family, already with six children, quickly became a family of 10 kids and two parents, seemingly as happy as they are in the family photo above. 

In 1978, however, the two Crow Indian brothers were mysteriously killed by a freight train near the family's home in upstate New York (no one knows why they were lying on the tracks). The accident devastated the family and the community, the children were buried nearby (against Crow tradition) and the wounds slowly began to heal - or so it appeared. Chris Billing went on to become a highly-respected journalist and the Beijing Bureau Chief for NBC, but he was always uncomfortable with the uncertainty around his brothers' death. Lost Sparrow is his effort to find out what happened, and in doing so he discovers much more than he bargained for, and much more than anyone should ever hope to discover and publicly share about their family.

What impressed me so much about Lost Sparrow was the impossibly objective light Chris Billing shone on the tragic history of this family, no doubt due to years of journalistic practice. He somehow does not condemn and he does not apologize, and tells an incredibly personal story without making an overtly personal film. No family is perfect, and the themes in Lost Sparrow - love, forgiveness, fear, and pain - resonate on a universally human level. While Lost Sparrow could be seen as a traditional documentary about family history that you'd expect to find on PBS, I saw it as much more: an unforgettable portrait about adoption, redemption, and owning up to a past that has haunted your family for 30 years.

Lost Sparrow premieres on PBS on Tuesday, November 16 (check local listings)

300 Words About: Waste Land

Topically similar to Garbage Dreams but thematically similar to Born into Brothels, Lucy Walker's endearing Waste Land is a humble, tender tribute to the millions of people we walk by daily but avoid looking in the eye. In the U.S., as in Brazil and maybe every other developed nation, an undercurrent of classism wreaks havoc on the social fabric. We marginalize and generalize about the groups below us on the social ladder, never considering to recognize the ambitions and talents of the individuals who comprise those groups. If a picture is worth a thousand words, Vik Muniz' portraits of workers in the world's largest landfill (Jardim Gramacho, outside Rio de Janeiro) tell a timeless story of human ambition, cooperation, innovation, beauty, and creativity.

That's pretty flowery language applied to a film set amongst mountains of rotting garbage, but it's there if you look for it - and you don't have to look too hard. These portraits, which are photos of garbage arranged to represent photos (you might have to see it to understand it), are astounding artistic achievements even without considering the subjects of the photos, the team of people involved in constructing the portraits, or the materials from which they are composed. When all of that is evaluated as well, it's not surprising to learn that the "Pictures of Garbage" (double entendre intended) collection broke attendance records at modern art museums around the world.

On the surface, the motive behind Muniz' project (to "change lives") appeared naive, even foolish. This is partly because he had the complete wrong impression of the people who worked at Jardim Gramacho, and partly because no good deed goes unpunished, and whatever sacrifices Muniz was willing to make (in this case, his marriage) were not necessarily going to guarantee a better life for the civil servants who provide what amounts to indentured labor in picking recycled materials out of the landfill.

But Muniz was successful, and director Lucy Walker was successful (for the second time in two years), because both of them realized that often the most effective way to lift someone up is to embrace who they are, where they are, before finding a way to tap into the positive aspects of their individual character. It's probably not a coincidence that the subjects chosen by Muniz for this particular project are quite attractive by most standards, but if he has shown anything, it's that even beautiful people might not recognize their beauty until someone shows it to them.

Independent Lens presents: The Longoria Affair

You could be fooled into thinking Latinos have only had voting rights in the U.S. for the last decade or so, what with the ongoing hand wringing and analysis by political pundits over which party controls "the Latino vote" (as if their respective cultures haven't already been overgeneralized enough). As it turns out, Latinos and in particular Mexican-Americans have played a vital role in American politics for more than half a century, and, as I was surprised to find out from The Longoria Affair, John F. Kennedy won the popular vote in the 1960 U.S. Presidential Election thanks in large part to Latino voters - years before the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were even signed into law by Kennedy's VP and successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.

While this documentary takes its name from U.S. Army Pvt. Felix Longoria, his life (and early combat death) serves as less of a focal point and more of a jumping-off point to explore a hidden era in Latino-American history. After Longoria was killed in action during World War II, the local funeral director in his hometown of Three Rivers, TX, refused to honor the fallen veteran because of his Mexican heritage. Longoria's wife reached out to Dr. Hector Garcia, a prominent physician and Mexican-American activist (and early influence of Al Sharpton?) who "used" this act of discrimination against Longoria as the catalyst for launching a nationwide Latino movement. One of his allies in Texas happened to be then-U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, and together the two men marched toward history, first making Longoria the first Mexican-American buried in Arlington National Cemetery, then swinging "the Latino vote" almost exclusively to Kennedy in 1960, and, after Johnson assumed the presidency, ultimately laying the groundwork for the American civil rights movement.

The Longoria Affair is a remarkable story about American politics (particularly timely during this election season) that also deftly illustrates the respective character of Johnson and Garcia, two very ambitious, very idealistic, and very stubborn men. Felix Longoria, for his part, may never know that his heroism on behalf of the United States didn't end in his death on a battlefield. On the contrary, that's only where it started.

The Longoria Affair premieres on PBS on Tuesday, November 9, and streams online for free through November 16 (check local listings)

Carlos @ the Walker - This Weekend Only

Tell you what, if I'm going to spend 5+ hours in a theater for one film, I'd much rather it be in the comfort of the Walker Cinema than in the chiropractic-certified Uptown Theater, where I saw Steven Soderbergh's epic, Che. So if back pain is your excuse not to see Carlos this weekend in its exclusive engagement at the Walker, you better come up with another excuse.

And I better come up with a worthier excuse for missing the Regis Dialogue with director Olivier Assayas last week, in which he must have given terrific insight into his latest film. If you haven't seen any of the Assayas films being screened at the Walker this month, this weekend is your last chance to see his newest critical darling, which will premiere on the Sundance Channel and Video on Demand later this year.

What I appreciated most about Carlos, aside from its impossibly quick 319-minute running time, is that it tells so much critically important world history while also illuminating the inner life of "Carlos the Jackal", one of the most notorious international terrorists of the last generation (to me, the potential similarity to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda is striking). Assayas has somehow made a historical film more action-packed than it should be, and an action thriller more historically relevant than it should be. And in addition to its watchability, Carlos features one of the flat-out best performances of the year by Édgar Ramírez as the title character (incidentally, he also starred in Che).

Granted, before the first scene we read that there is no way to accurately portray two decades worth of Carlos' exploits, and yes, much of the political dialogue is as subtle as a sledgehammer. But to me this is an ambitious, original film that doesn't substitute entertainment for art - something Soderbergh may have wisely considered before Che landed with a bit of thud to restless audiences. People have assumptions and mythical ideas about terrorists, after all, and artistically painting them in a sympathetic light isn't likely to do much but confuse and disengage. Assayas understands this desire on the part of the viewer (kind of strange considering the art-value of his other films), and essentially delivers the made-for-TV version - just done really well. We can only hope other marathon movies follow suit.

Carlos screens Sat 10/30 and Sun 10/31 at 1:00 PM,

with a 15- and 30-minute intermission.

Tickets are only $8 (!)

300 Words About: Howl

Hmm...people had a hard time understanding my poetry...how will they understand this film?

To be perfectly honest, I went into Howl at a distinct disadvantage: I've never connected much with the Beat Generation, and I find a lot of poetry just plain bewildering. Put it to music or use imagery that I understand and I'm good, but meditate on "peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns", as Allen Ginsberg does in his infamous poem, "Howl", and I'm lost.

Call me culturally illiterate, but I'm afraid that while I understand the social significance of the poem in its time (both as a cathartic statement and as a legal precedent), it just has no emotional resonance for me at all. Should this have affected my viewing of Howl? Probably, but since much of the film is animated I didn't have to do much heavy lifting anyway. The metaphors and raw passion were brought to life for me, so all I had to do was try and understand, which I did with infrequent success.

In theory I love the idea of bringing poetry to cinematic life for the very reasons I've mentioned: it helps me make some sense of the underlying meaning. But "Howl", with its huge cultural and historic significance, may not have been the best poem to explore in this way. The entire film should have been animated, or the entire film should have been a legal drama about obscenity and censorship in the 1950's, or the entire film should have been a biopic of Ginsberg (heck, maybe it just should have been a documentary).

Instead, Howl is all three, and suffers because of it (even if I admire the fact that none of the dialogue was scripted). I was tossed around from the courtroom to a living room to a coffeehouse to an animated nightmare. It was disorienting and, apart from James Franco's committed performance, it made disappointingly little use of a terrific cast featuring Jeff Daniels, Jon Hamm, and David Strathairn.

The end of the film is much tidier than the rest of it, and underscores, at least to me, that directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman were more interested in telling the story of the poem than exploring the poem in the story, as if the meaning of the lines in "Howl" should be obvious to anyone who reads them (in a Q & A after the screening I attended, the directors talked almost exclusively about the technical aspects of making the film). Well, consider this viewer a little more enlightened about why "Howl" received so much attention, but still pretty much in the dark about what half of it actually means.

Sound Unseen 11: Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone

Screening as part of Sound Unseen 11 - Sat., Oct. 9, @ 5:00 PM @ the Trylon

Trivia question: What music was John Cusack blasting from his boombox in that iconic scene in Say Anything? If you think it's "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel, you're right - kind of. That song was reportedly added in post-production, while the music that was actually playing during filming was by a band named Fishbone, "one of the most distinctive and eclectic alternative rock bands of the late '80s", according to their allmusic profile.

This anecdote perfectly exemplifies the life of the band: loved by all the cool kids, but inevitably overshadowed by the radio-friendly pop music of the day. I myself knew little about the band, and even less about the world that shaped them, before seeing Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone. It's a great documentary not only because it chronicles Fishbone's career in an interesting way, but because it also appropriately addresses social issues like race and power, and reveals historical nuggets such as the African-American migration to Los Angeles and the birth of the punk scene in the San Fernando Valley.

Sound Unseen 11: Wheedle's Groove

Screening as part of Sound Unseen 11 - Thu., Oct. 8, @ 8:45 PM @ the Trylon

When people talk about "discovering" music, I think they typically mean hearing a song they like in a commercial or at a bar and tracking it down, or reading about an up-and-coming artist and checking out their MySpace page for a free listen. Rarely is the case, I would imagine, when one actually physically discovers the music - as in, buried in a record store after years of neglect. Wheedle's Groove, winner of the Jury Award at Sound Unseen Duluth last summer, is the story of what happens when that music is found, and what it can mean to the people who lost it.

If I were to ask you to list the most influential cities for the emergence of soul and funk music during the 1960's and 70's, I would bet with some confidence that a few places would go unmentioned: Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle. But ah, how wrong you would be to omit the Emerald City: Seattle was, shockingly, home to some of the funkiest bands of the era, and involved musical giants like Quincy Jones and Kenny G (yes, that Kenny G). Few people remember this, of course, which makes Wheedle's Groove both extremely depressing and extremely important to the historical records of the city and the genre.

Wall Street: People Never Change

Hair color may change, but an obsession with a certain shade of green never does...

If Oliver Stone is disappointed that his inconsequential Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps isn't nudging its way into the Best Picture race, he might consider sneaking it into the Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Fact is, for American viewers the characters may as well be speaking a rural Turkish dialect as they argue and fret about the recent financial crisis. It's yet another aimless Recession Movie that ultimately serves no purpose other than to remind us that we still have no idea what a credit default swap is. We don't understand Wall Street, and thus we can't understand Wall Street.

But then, that's assuming Stone set out to explain this disaster in the first place, which we can rule out based simply on the fact that he doesn't actually portray even one financial shenanigan (leaving Charles Ferguson's upcoming Inside Job as the all-important final chance to explain the recession in Main Street terms). Instead, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a timeless examination of greed, similar to its prequel in an attempt to personify evil as a white guy in a dark suit.

To the extent that Stone successfully portrays bankers and brokers as scheming swindlers, we should be thankful. It puts us at much greater ease when we can pin the blame on them, the lenders, and not us, the borrowers, and Stone's stylish flair throughout the film, as unnecessary as it is to the story, still achieves an essential purpose in distracting us from the film's bleak central theme: people never change.

Although advertising firms and media headlines and magazine columnists naïvely and hopelessly attempt to convince us that we've entered a "new normal" in which people will spend sparingly and save wisely, the inconvenient truth is that 90% of Americans are earning and spending as much as they ever have (and in the case of the top earners, earning more than they ever have). Interest rates remain at historic lows and credit is still freely available to nearly anyone who desires it. As the recession begins to fade on a wider scale and the opportunities for easy money begin to emerge, we will be resurrected like millions of Gordon Gekkos, anxious to reclaim our financial kingdoms, no matter the literal or figurative cost. Isn't that human nature, or, at the very least, the American way?

When Worlds Collide - Premiering Tonight on PBS

Boy, I sure don't feel like celebrating Columbus Day this year (not that I ever have; how does one do so anyway?). In fact, after seeing When Worlds Collide: The Untold Story of the Americas After Columbus, I almost feel like joining the movement against formal recognition of the holiday. This is not the film's purpose, but it's difficult to objectively consider the ramifications of Columbus' invasion (not quite a discovery) of the Americas when you learn about the millions of indigenous people who were killed and enslaved for "God" and the Spanish crown.

Narrated by author and journalist Ruben Martinez, the film richly chronicles the history of Latin America in a series of chapters that outline how the clash of European and American cultures influenced generations of mestizos up to the present day. It is indeed an "untold story", and as Martinez explains at the end of the film, the global community should by now be ready to discuss the history of this part of the world and the tragic consequences of the Spanish conquest.

It is perhaps an uncomfortable reality to acknowledge, but this historical perspective is vital for understanding ethnic identities and international relations in 2010. You might never look at Spain the same way again (or really any country that based its economy and empire on the exploitation and enslavement of Indigenous Americans), but then the best documentaries are the ones that open the eyes of viewers to new realities.

Indeed, although When Worlds Collide has its flaws (and I found Martinez' narration rather awkwardly staged throughout), a wide-ranging documentary like this is inherently limited by the scope allowed in 90 minutes of airtime. What it should do, and what it succeeds in doing, is planting a seed of interest in the minds of viewers and encouraging them to continue their own discovery and dialogue afterward. The film's website is particularly user-friendly (I like this Old World vs. New World timeline), and I really hope educators take advantage of the downloadable lesson plans, because this is the kind of material that is inexcusably absent from American classrooms - especially those that include Columbus Day on the chalkboard calendar.

When Worlds Collide premieres tonight, Sept. 27, on PBS

Click here for local listings and future air dates

300 Words About: I'm Still Here

Last week, before Casey Affleck inexplicably broke his silence about I'm Still Here being a mostly scripted hoax, I told a friend of mine how great it would be if Joaquin Phoenix walked out onto the stage of "The Late Show with David Letterman" tonight with a clean-shaven face and a normal personality. What a perfect "Gotcha!" opportunity it would have been.

Alas, his appearance will now be an anticlimactic reunion in which he will no doubt apologize to Letterman and probably fail to explain exactly what I'm Still Here is "about". From where I sit, having seen it a couple of weeks ago and immediately recognizing a number of things that just could not be real, I don't think there is anything to explain. Either you consider I'm Still Here a brilliant skewering of Hollywood celebrity culture (featuring a Best Actor-nominee worthy performance; the best of Phoenix's career), or you consider I'm Still Here just plain offensive, a joke on the movie industry and a waste of everyone's time. Much of your reaction may depend on whether you saw it before or after the cat was officially out of the bag - but if you have seen it, wasn't it pretty obvious while watching that Casey Affleck was documenting a manufactured reality?

Up the Yangtze, With a Paddle

The Yu Family, 2007

I consider 2008 the best year of the last decade for documentary film. Consider Surfwise, Trouble the Water, Man on Wire, Young @ Heart, Nerakhoon (The Betrayal), and Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, along with the second tier of Encounters at the End of the World, Dear Zachary, American Teen, Blindsight, Waltz with Bashir, and Standard Operating Procedure.

Above all of these great films that year, however, I placed Up the Yangtze, Yung Chang's heartbreaking examination of the impact of the Three Gorges Dam on the lives of lower and middle class Chinese living along the banks of the Yangtze River. From my review: "Yung Chang masterfully weaves power, wealth, culture, humility, sacrifice, tradition, national pride, poverty, and environmental concerns into a rich tapestry worthy of the world's attention...The unique aspects of Chinese culture are on such brilliant display in Up the Yangtze that we Westerners will have difficulty understanding them with one viewing."

The film somehow eluded the attention of AMPAS (who award the Oscars), but it did win numerous other awards and received healthy praise from critics. It was also broadcast on PBS as part of its POV documentary series, and now, two years later, the POV blog has an encouraging update from Yung Chang about the main family profiled in the film. Some highlights are below:

The Social Network: Ahead of Its Time...Literally

After watching (most of) the trailer for The Social Network in the theater the other day, I was reminded of a recent discussion about it at Living in Cinema in which I wondered aloud why this movie is being made in 2010.

It's not as if there was a recent New York Times-bestseller about the founding of Facebook and David Fincher and Sony Pictures are cashing in on the hype. (Update: I'm an idiot. Apparently there was such a book, "The Accidental Billionaires", written just last year. Has anyone read it?) It's not as if Facebook has changed or significantly evolved in recent years, aside from a growing user base and some negligible dust-ups about privacy. It's not as if Mark Zuckerberg is some megalomaniacal, misunderstood genius that the walls of Harvard just couldn't contain, or that his behavior could be considered anything other than extraordinarily normal for a 26 year-old with $4 billion in his pocket. And it's not as if the story behind Facebook, such as it's publicly known, is any more special than the story behind, say, AOL or Google.

Taking It Home: 9500 Liberty

 

Has anyone in Arizona talked to these people? 

You may have heard about a controversial ordinance that was recently passed which requires police officers to question any individual they have probable cause to suspect is an undocumented immigrant. You may have heard about the ensuing protests and planned boycotts, and the election year hand-wringing by the involved politicians, and the fiery "man on the street" rhetoric about God and country. 

But this isn't Arizona's Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (SB 1070) of 2010. It's a county ordinance in Virginia from 2007. The same kind of law elicited the same kind of reactions, but without the same level of attention - until now. Indeed, there exists a unique opportunity to see a glimpse of the future by simply taking a look at the past in the fascinating new documentary 9500 Liberty, directed by Asian-Americans (and Coffee Party founders) Annabel Park and Eric Byler. The film is coincidentally rolling into theaters across the country this month, including in Arizona on July 27 - only two days before SB 1070 goes into effect.

If you've been paying attention to the Arizona dilemma (and if you're an American of any color you should be, since this will affect everyone), you owe it to yourself to watch this engrossing film and then spend some focused time deliberating and discussing it. What 9500 Liberty confirms, not surprisingly, is that there are no easy answers to the problem of illegal immigration. Moreover, it underscores how much of this debate - on both sides - is driven not by rational logic, but by emotional panic.

It becomes apparent while watching 9500 Liberty that the Arizona bill will be a trumpeted success in some aspects and a humiliating failure in others. The trick will be learning how to navigate between the rhetoric and the reality while maintaining a big picture perspective on the future of the United States. At the end of the day, and as it has for every controversial social change this country has experienced, this question remains begging: What will adapt first - laws or people? The American Constitution or the constitution of America?

MSPIFF 2010: Week 2 Roundup

The final week of MSPIFF 2010 (yes, the one that ended ten days ago...) proved alternately frustrating and fulfilling. I only made it to an additional four films, easily amassing my lowest total since I moved back to Minnesota four years ago. There was a long list of films that I missed, but I prefer to reflect on the fact that nothing I saw was outright terrible.
 

My Only Sunshine - Plans to see the sold-out Today's Special were foiled on a packed-to-the-gills Friday night, so we opted for a Turkish film, My Only Sunshine (an appropriate choice as we'll be on our honeymoon in Turkey in just a few weeks). As breathtaking and vivid as the cinematography was, My Only Sunshine does not make Istanbul a particularly appealing place; maybe compare it to New York City as seen in Chop Shop. On the other hand, it was fascinating to observe the environment and cultural quirks of Istanbul that I'm sure we won't see on our brief and touristy stop to the teeming seaside city of 12 million people. My Only Sunshine is a slice-of-life story as experienced by Hayat (Elit Iscan), an adolescent girl living with her troubled father and dying grandfather (the effects of emphysema caused by smoking have truly never been captured on film as they are captured here). You expect it to develop into a warm coming-of-age tale, but despite a few laughs and a completely tacked-on happy ending, it's an altogether bleak depiction of a lost childhood in Istanbul. Nonetheless, I remained engaged throughout and the production had the decidedly "foreign film" feel that I specifically seek at these festivals.

MSPIFF 2010: Week 1 Roundup

I made it to only three films during the first week of MSPIFF 2010 - significantly fewer than any other year in recent memory, but a major feat nonetheless considering all things (moving, working, wedding planning, etc.). I still have ambitious plans to make it to ten total films before the festival wraps up next Friday, though it may require booting up my time machine or employing the Zack Morris Time-Out.

Thoughts on the first three, in order of viewing:

Bananas!* - That both the exclamation point and asterisk in the title go entirely unexplained during this documentary is a curiosity, as is the fact that it's really not about fruit at all. While Swedish filmmaker (emphasis on Swedish, because this film is produced and titled in a decidedly non-American way) Fredrik Gertten presents an admittedly interesting legal drama about the Dole corporation's use of a controversial pesticide that rendered sterile a significant number of the company's banana farmers in rural Nicaragua, the film is the victim of unfortunate timing as it exists as simply a lesser version of last year's Crude, which had an almost identical story to tell about ExxonMobil and a community in Ecuador (including a championing American lawyer using the "David vs. Goliath" analogy). 

I'm glad I saw Bananas!* because the courtroom scenes are engrossing and issues like this deserve to be shared with the world, but at the same time I don't feel I received a complete picture of the banana industry.The film boasts the already tired claim that we'll "never look at ______ (insert bananas) the same way again", which is partly true. I'll never look at them the same way again without wondering, "why didn't I learn more about bananas from Bananas!*?"

The Oath - Leave an Oscar nomination slot open on your ballot next year for Laura Poitras' riveting documentary about Osama bin Laden's former bodyguard, Abu Jindal, and his ideological struggle to remain loyal to the al-Qaeda oath without advocating terrorism. As I've already mentioned, Poitras was previously nominated for My Country, My Country, an underrated film about an Iraqi doctor in the months following the U.S. invasion in 2003 (Poitras, an American, was reportedly placed on a no-fly list because of the film's critical stance). This is the second film in her planned "trilogy" about Iraq, and I'm here to tell you that the positive buzz out of Sundance in January was warranted. Summarizing the storyline is not really helpful, but suffice to say it is extremely rare that you will see a documentary cover this much material and still remain grounded in its primary subjects.

If you have any interest in international relations, history, war, terrorism, Guantanamo Bay, the Supreme Court, Islam, or the Middle East, The Oath may be considered required viewing. Not surprisingly, it will be broadcast as part of the upcoming P.O.V. season on PBS (My Country, My Country was a selection during the 2006 season). If you miss it theatrically don't miss the chance to see it for free at home. 

Night Catches Us -  I noted in my festival preview that Night Catches Us is an example of a film rarely screened as part of MSPIFF (no doubt the influence of guest programmer Linda Blackaby), and sure enough there were only a couple dozen people at the Wednesday night screening. Oh well, those who missed it missed out. On the surface, Tanya Hamilton's directing debut doesn't necessarily transcend the familiar trappings of other racial-historical dramas, but there's no denying this really is an unique story that lingers in the mind for further reflection. The Hurt Locker standout Anthony Mackie shows impressive leading man potential as a former Black Panther re-acclimating to life in 1976 Philadelphia. Kerry Washington holds her own as his moral compass and love interest, but the film belongs to Mackie whenever he is on screen, almost to a distracting degree. To boot, the cinematography is beautifully absorbing and the original music by Philadelphia natives The Roots adds immediacy and authenticity.

The film does not dive headlong into the history of the Black Panthers, but then this is a film about relationships, not politics. Nonetheless, it's easy to view the Panthers' militant spirit in the context of the brewing social unrest in America in 2010 (earlier in the day I'd listened to a local right-wing conservative radio host justify violence on behalf of the Tea Party by quoting JFK: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.") . In any case, whatever Tanya Hamilton's motive was in telling this story I hope she receives a deserved amount of attention for it.

300 Words About: Dirt! The Movie

Dirt - a surprisingly fertile subject for a documentary

In writing about the best documentaries of the last decade recently, I made a comment that the 2000's ushered in a new era of documentary filmmaking. These days anyone, seemingly anywhere, can get funding to choose any subject and claim to be the "first" one to fully explore an issue, historical event, person, animal, or what have you. What this has led to, of course, is a great number of television documentary series ("Ice Road Truckers"?!) and feature-length documentaries (The Real Cancun) about rather inane subjects. I thought dirt might be one of those inane subjects. I was wrong.

I can't claim that Dirt! The Movie kept me riveted for all 86 minutes of its running time, but I can't claim it's ever boring, either. On the contrary, it's so subject-dense at times that it can be disorienting. Who knew dirt was such a complicated matter? Or rather, who knew dirt could be used as a jumping-off point to talk about complicated matters (e.g., agriculture, religion, politics, history, science, biology, world cultures)?

Getafilm Gallimaufry: A Prophet, Fish Tank, Robin Hood and More

[Note: This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]

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A Prophet (A) 

A Prophet is the first must-see film of 2010. Maybe that's not saying much considering the caliber of movies that have been released in this first quarter. How about this instead: A Prophet is one of the best crime sagas in recent memory, and, along with last year's Lion's Den and Hunger, it has helped usher in a new era of harrowing prison dramas (the last truly memorable one being what, The Shawshank Redemption?).

Written and directed by Jacques Audiard, whose last film (The Beat My Heart Skipped) was highly acclaimed but unseen by me, A Prophet boasts impressive verisimilitude for a completely fictional story. Maybe it's not surprising considering former convicts were hired as extras and advisers, but Audiard himself has admitted that prison life is rarely depicted in French film and television. French citizens are apparently clueless about what goes on behind prison walls in their country, so it doesn't take much convincing to accept this story as reality.

Indeed, life on the inside is reflective of life on the outside: the old French/European power structure is fading as new immigrant groups - particularly Arab Muslims (that term should not sound nearly as redundant as it does) - are arriving and establishing their identities as the "new French". Symbolically speaking, this film is urgently relevant (it won nine of the record 13 César Awards for which it was nominated); cinematically speaking it is a masterful showcase of acting, cinematography, pacing (even at 150 minutes), suspense, music, action and, most importantly, global insight.

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Minneapolis Movie Madness

Spring in the Twin Cities is always a frustrating time for my movie life. I consider March, not January, the beginning of the new movie year, and every post-Oscar-night morning I look forward to a little respite from thinking about movies, especially as the temperature edges above 30 degrees and Daylight Savings begins.

Trouble is, March and April are two of the most jam packed months if the year for movie lovers in Twin Cities. It's literally impossible to see everything you'd want to in theaters, and you can forget about catching up with anything on DVD. Want to enjoy the weather outside? Fine, but know that you're missing some movies that will likely never be shown here again.

In addition to 6-8 new releases every week (already too much to consume), there is: