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)

Getafilm Gallimaufry: Animal Kingdom, Get Low, Let Me In or Leave Me Out, & Perfect Song #8

[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).]

_______________________________________________________________

Animal Kingdom (A)

Aside from being among the best indie movies of the year, David Michôd's Animal Kingdom is also the Feel Bad Movie of the Year. It's not graphic, it's not lewd, and it's not even particularly violent, but you become so intimate with the cold, calculating, evil characters that you just want to shower immediately afterward. I haven't been this disgusted walking out of a film since Boy A, another excellent movie that not coincidentally deals with trust, regret, family, and crime.

Stories about criminal families are nothing new, but Animal Kingdom boasts such a crackerjack script and stellar cast that you don't even realize you've heard this story before (it helps that the actors are unfamiliar to American audiences). I was a big fan of the stylistic flourishes (understated use of slow motion, haunting music, etc.) and undercurrent of unpredictability, and well, I'll just say it: if Animal Kingdom were made by a veteran American director like Scorsese, it would be a shoo-in for a Best Picture nomination.

The Guy With the Butterfly Tattoo

"See that butterfly? You think it's Danaus plexippus, but it's not - it's Pieris rapae!" 

"A butterfly?," my wife wondered aloud as we watched George Clooney's character, Jack, perform his daily calisthenics routine in his cozy flat tucked away in a small Italian village. She was referring to the tattoo on his upper back (although it would have made just as much sense on the small of his back, and been funnier), and while I also noticed the unexplained marking, I was busy trying to determine whether Jack traveled with a pull-up bar or if they are actually standard in century-old Italian dwellings.

Whatever we were focused on while watching Anton Corbijn's The American, it wasn't the plot - such as there is one. The potential for a simmering thriller exists (the film is based on Martin Booth's well-received 1990 novel, "A Very Private Gentleman"), but the on-screen translation is a cliché-ridden and ultimately inconsequential film. Much as it tries to transcend the genre, it still ends up a vanilla "One Last Job" movie where the bank robber/assassin/detective/soldier/criminal plods along as a tortured soul, haunted by a lost love, chased by inept enemies, unable to trust anyone and forced to accept his likely fate - to die either as a martyr or as a ghost. Generally these characters do a good deal of brooding and philosophizing to supporting characters about their life's path.

Problem is, Rowan Joffe's screenplay for The American calls for very little in the way of characters talking and very much in the way of George Clooney just looking depressed. He is the picture of melancholy, sipping espresso alone in cafes, nervously walking and driving with an eye over his shoulder and a hand on his gun, tossing and turning in bed, making safe, emotionless conversation with locals, rubbing his eyes in anguish, and so on. At some point I just had to wonder, "Was this the right guy for the job?".

Returning to La Sierra

Watching Restrepo earlier this summer I was reminded of La Sierra, a similarly styled you-are-there war documentary about the deadly urban battles between Colombian paramilitary units and rebel guerrilla factions, which killed more than 30,000 people during the late 90's/early 00's. Within this setting La Sierra plays like a non-fiction version of City of God, which was inspired by true events but never given the documentary treatment (unless you consider parts of Jeff Zimbalist's hopeful Favela Rising; coincidentally Zimbalist also knows a thing or two about Colombia having recently directed the excellent The Two Escobars).

Anyway, I saw La Sierra years ago at a small film festival in San Diego, and it was unforgettable enough for me to name it among the best documentaries of the decade. Revisiting again last week thanks to Netflix (add it now), I was struck by the rich layers it efficiently provides in 84 minutes, as well as its ability to haunt me with dozens of unanswered - and perhaps unanswerable - questions.

Like Restrepo, La Sierra was made by journalists (Scott Dalton and Margarita Martinez) who embedded themselves and risked their lives in an extremely dangerous, highly complex political situation. Both films juxtapose disturbing raw combat footage with serene scenes of nature and poignant interviews with jaded fighters. One of the main differences, however, and one that lends a profound sadness to the film's eventual outcomes, is that the interviews in La Sierra all take place in real time, within the period documented by the film. The characters talk a lot about living one day at a time, not being able to plan or even imagine their lives past the next week. Death is ever present, and when it arrives suddenly and violently for one of the film's main subjects you experience a sickening realization that this story was not planned out. There was no script. The camera was simply turned on and life was lived, at least for a while.

REVIEW: The Lovely Bones (C)

Exactly what is it about rape, kidnapping and murder that appeals so much to Americans - or at least to the Americans who tune in each week to watch "CSI" (all three versions), "Criminal Minds", "Without a Trace", "Cold Case", "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit", and "Bones"? That there are so many of these shows should tell you how popular this genre is; that I've never seen an episode of any of them should tell you how disturbed I am by that trend.

Anyway, I don't want to make generalizations about the viewers of these shows any more than I do about the millions of enthusiastic readers of Alice Sebold's celebrated novel, "The Lovely Bones", but suffice to say I don't belong to either group. If you do, you'll likely appreciate Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones much more than me, and you may even glean some meaningful insights from the melodramatic depths of what I considered a whole lot of sentimental muck.

P.O.V. (Season 21, Fall Special): The Way We Get By

This is what "supporting the troops" looks like...

It was tragically ironic that I watched The Way We Get By on the same night as President Obama's speech outlining the troop surge in Afghanistan. Any other night the speech would have been mildly depressing, but that night, after watching the story of a group of seniors greeting more than 900,000 soldiers stepping back onto U.S. soil in Bangor, ME, well, it was soul-crushing. 

The Way We Get By, which is still available to view for free online at PBS through Sunday, is not a documentary about the war (we've had plenty of those, most forgettable), and it's not even about the soldiers. It is about finding meaning in the sunset years of life, and serving others without any condition or expectation of reward. In essence, it is about finding life in the face of death.

Living in Emergency: A Nationwide Screening and Discussion on Monday, December 14

Recently shortlisted for an Oscar, you have the rare chance to see the film and watch a live panel discussion moderated by Elizabeth Vargas

Soon after watching Mark Hopkins' award-winning documentary, Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders, I came across yet another talking heads debate on cable television about U.S. health care reform: blah, blah, blah, premiums, plans, policies, programs, and of course, the nefarious "public option". The irony was tragic considering I'd just learned that 2 billion people worldwide have no option, as in no access to essential medical care. This may not be news to many people with an eye on global issues, but Living in Emergency doesn't dwell on mind-boggling statistics like that because it's not really about the patients at all. It's about the doctors who volunteer to risk their sanity, careers, marriages, and even their lives to help alleviate suffering in the most dangerous environments on earth.

The four doctors profiled in Living in Emergency all work for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF/"Doctors Without Borders"), the Paris-founded, Nobel Peace Prize-winning NGO that provides free medical care annually to 10 million people in more than 70 sites worldwide - most of them previously, or too often currently, ravaged by war.

These are the kinds of settings where doctors become chain smokers. Where doctors are encouraged to have sex frequently, because when you're losing patients day in and day out, sex represents life. Where doctors end up questioning their career choice and doubting their own sense of self-efficacy. Where the Hippocratic Oath is a quaint, tidy motto.

The film marks the first time MSF has given a documentary crew uncensored access to its field sites, however Living in Emergency was not produced by MSF, and it could hardly be considered a glossy recruiting video to show to idealistic medical students and public health professionals (they might not be excited at the idea of wearing headlamps to treat patients in the dark). But they are probably the first people who should see it, followed by Americans with any vested interest in international relations and/or our current health care debate. It is a hard film to watch (e.g., very graphic surgical scenes and war footage) but an important one, and its recent inclusion on the Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature is deserved.

Next Monday, December 14, MSF will be teaming up with Fathom Events and ABC's Elizabeth Vargas for a nationwide screening and live post-screening discussion with the film's subjects. The one-night event will be held in New York City and streamed live in more than 440 participating theaters (click here for theaters in Minnesota). For this night, at least, we should be humbly grateful for the access to health care that we have in this country.

Taking It Home: Precious

("Taking It Home" is an alternative review style in which I share my thoughts on a movie's themes and how they may relate to my life, while focusing less on the acting, writing, technical aspects, or even plot of the film. It's a collection of the ideas I took home, "because the movie experience shouldn't end in the theater".)

The most tragic "happy" ending you'll see in any movie this year...

Sitting through Precious in a movie theater is about as torturous a cinematic experience you can get these days outside of a Saw film. It is the most foul-mouthed, stomach-churning, disturbingly violent film I've seen in 2009, and despite the fact that little blood is actually shed, its characters (Precious in particular) are, along with the audience, beaten to unconscious submission during 110 minutes of unrelenting emotional violation at the hands of director Lee Daniels.

Yes, Precious delivers a knockout, battering us with so much vile depravity that we leave the theater unsure of what we're even supposed to feel, and unable to immediately understand that the abuse has been inflicted on us not to educate or evoke sympathy, but to make a tragic ending appear relatively uplifting. It's been called "unflinchingly gritty" and "brutally realistic" and all kinds of other hyperbole (most are accurate), but the most explicit truth in this film is left out: Precious Jones is dead.

A Conversation with the Coens & a Look at Their First Decade (1984-1994)

Last night I had the once-in-a-lifetime luck to score a ticket to the 50th Regis Dialogue at the Walker Art Center, a 2 and 1/2 hour discussion between Elvis Mitchell and Joel and Ethan Coen. The conversation kicked off the second week of the Walker's current Coen Brothers retrospective, Joel & Ethan Coen: Raising Cain, and the the good news for those who couldn't get in last night is that the films of the Coens will still be shown in 35mm in the comfy Walker Cinema through October 17th. Click here for the remaining schedule, and note that the Burn After Reading screening is free. 

The brothers also attended the reception following the dialogue, but even as I was literally brushing shoulders with them I couldn't work up the nerve to ask them: in No Country for Old Men, where is Anton Chigurh at the Desert Sands? I did ask Elvis Mitchell but I think we were talking past each other. My question was about the night scene at the hotel where Chigurh is looking through the keyhole, not the day scene when Tommy Lee Jones first arrives and finds Josh Brolin. Elvis was convinced that Chigurh wasn't there, that it was an out of sequence scene. Well obviously, but that's not the scene I'm talking about. By the time I realized the misunderstanding, both Joel and Ethan had wandered away from us left the reception, leaving it a mystery forevermore. Wasting an easy 10 minutes standing right next to the Coens and not asking them a question, let alone that question, is something I'm going to be regretting for a long time. 

What would you have asked the Coens, given the opportunity? Everybody knows that they are among the most private personalities in Hollywood, and Elvis Mitchell deserves props for his attempt at getting them to open up about their childhood and influences. But the Coens are the Coens, and their inherent reluctance to talk makes interviewing them akin to pulling teeth; indeed, it looked like they'd rather have been at the dentist than on the stage. Pregnant pauses were filled by countless "yeah"s and "uh-huh"s, to the point that I was waiting for Mitchell to throw up his hands in defeat (he almost appeared ready to a couple times).

Despite all of this he was still able to squeeze out some interesting insights about their influences and childhood. Although it would have been nice to have a Minnesotan ask them about Minnesota, the truth is that a.) by now the Coens have been New Yorkers longer than they've been Minnesotans, so despite A Serious Man they're probably not as nostalgic for this place as most people think, and b.) Mitchell proved to be a brilliant analyst of their films, surprising even Joel and Ethan with his insights into their literary style and story patterns. Overall I still think it was a really interesting discussion, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't one of my most memorable film experiences. (Here's a longer recap by Tad Simons.)

Now while I still can't claim to be anything close to an expert on their films (I still need to see Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, and several others I've only seen once or twice), I'd like to remain true to my goal of writing something on each of their films before this retrospective ends. So here I'm offering some thoughts on the five films the brothers made in the first decade of their career. I hope to follow this with a second decade (1995-2005) and present day overview as well. Obviously I owe some thoughts to A Serious Man once I see that next weekend, since I've been howling about how good it will be for so long.


(Title screens via the Walker blog.)

Blood Simple (1984) 

As I mentioned last week, I saw Blood Simple for the first time only recently, but it made an immediate impression on my understanding of the rest of the Coen films, particularly No Country for Old Men. The desperate characters, the mind games, the desolate Texas landscape - in just one film they had already established a wholly unique style of storytelling (Ethan claimed the story was inspired by crimes of passion that were prevalent in Texas in the mid-80's). Everything is weaved together so seamlessly that you can't believe they were only in that this was their first feature (interesting trivia: Blood Simple premiered before its theatrical release at the Walker in 1984).

It's not nearly as polished as their other films, but of course they were working with a tiny budget and mostly amateur cast. It actually took me a while to recognize Frances McDormand as Frances McDormand, and I thought Dan Hedaya was enjoyably smug as well. All in all Blood Simple is just a flat-out solid debut, and the stylish scene transitions (the finger pointing, the bed falling) are worth rewinding and rewatching a few times.

REVIEW: Forgiven (B)

Paul Fitzgerald's Forgiven explores a familiar story with a familiar lesson, but it stands apart from most character dramas because of the boldness with which it approaches some pretty thorny subjects: racism, American politics, murder, capital punishment, corruption, betrayal, redemption and, of course, forgiveness. In fact one of the film's weaknesses is a sense that perhaps it bit off more than it could chew, resulting in a narrative that plays like a television series condensed into 81 minutes. At the same time, however, this breadth of focus is also one of Forgiven's strengths because it illustrates how interconnected many of this social issues are.

After receiving a pardon from the Governor of North Carolina mere moments before his execution for a murder conviction, Ronald Bradler (Russell Hornsby) finds himself suddenly back in society, aimless, jobless, and very near to hopeless. He had maintained his innocence of the crime to the execution gurney, and now, angry about the years he lost on death row and the social stigma attached to his identity as a convicted felon, he's seeking retribution. His primary target is the former D.A. who prosecuted the case against him, Peter Miles (Paul Fitzgerald, who also wrote and directed the film). The timing couldn't be worse for Miles; he is in the home stretch of a U.S. Senate campaign and can't afford any skeletons in his closet aside from the drug and alcohol abuse he's already admitted.

The real seed of Bradler's frustration is the implicit role he felt his race played in the case - until he learns of known evidence that could have cleared him just weeks after the trial. When Miles denies any wrongdoing and brushes off Bradler's meeting requests by telling him to "move on" and "get on with your life", well let's just say things get out of hand quickly.

Forgiven arrives at a time in this country when accusations of racism and power are beginning to enter almost every national conversation. About education, about health care, about taxes, about unemployment and, most recently, about civility. I'm a little surprised prison populations and the justice system haven't received any attention in 2009, but if Forgiven hits the right chord it has the potential to be a catalyst. I don't think that's Fitzgerald's motive, however, so it's unfair to peg Forgiven as an "issue" movie, but rather one that attempts to test a viewer's sympathy for its characters as they stumble through a difficult situation - a situation that requires conditional forgiveness for unconditionally terrible crimes. Fitzgerald and Hornsby offer strong performances, but the acting in general is a bit uneven, with a few strained, emotional outbursts that unfortunately reminded me of the overacting in 21 Grams.

And while I ultimately found the ending to be a little more disturbing than it may have been designed to be, I think that caused Forgiven to linger for a few days, challenging me to consider the motives and justifications of its character's actions. I'm blessed not to have yet experienced a "wrong" in my life that would beg the question of forgiveness at this level (i.e., rape, murder, war crimes, imprisonment, etc.), but this movie in some way makes me consider how I would act under such circumstances. And in doing that - in asking challenging questions and not necessarily offering easy answers, Forgiven achieves its goal.

Grade:
Writing - 8
Acting - 7
Production - 8
Emotional Impact - 9
Music - 5
Social Significance - 5

Total: 42/50= 84% = B

Forgiven is currently available on Amazon's Video On Demand, and can also be added to your Netflix queue in advance of its DVD release.

Tony Manero Dances at the Walker This Weekend

Before the 50th Regis Dialogue and Retrospective with Joel and Ethan Coen kicks off this month, the Walker Art Center is screening a couple of recently buzzed-about films. Next Wednesday a one-time free screening of No Impact Man will be held, and this weekend the Chilean 2009 Oscar submission, Tony Manero, will be shown in the Walker Cinema. Tickets are, as always, $8 for the public and $6 for Walker members.

From the description on the Walker's website:

"In an intense film set against the backdrop of General Pinochet’s late 1970s Chile, Alfredo Castro plays Raúl Peralta, an aging lowlife obsessed with Tony Manero, John Travolta’s character from Saturday Night Fever. The film is rife with plot twists, and Peralta’s bleak and darkly comic reality descends into an unrestrained world that mimics the totalitarian regime all around him; he will stop at nothing to become his idol."

I haven't seen many films about Chilean life during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet; the only other one I can think of is the above average Machuca from a few years ago. So as I was reading up a bit on the Pinochet timeline I discovered irony in the fact that Tony Manero will be premiering here on September 11, which is the same date in 1973 that Pinochet overthrew Allende in a bloody coup d'état.

That coincidence is not nearly as bizarre as the film itself, and I can say without hesitation that Tony Manero is one of the most discomfiting movies I've seen this year. Alfredo Castro delivers a perfectly restrained performance as Peralta - it's an older and decidedly creepier version of Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Bickle's isolation and violent disgust is self-initiated and a little less focused, while Peralta's angst is environmentally imposed and specifically targeted toward those who impede his assumption of the identity of Travolta's Tony Manero.

There are obviously a lot of layers of cultural significance here, but for my money Tony Manero is maybe just a little too twisted to deliver its message most effectively, that message having been described by director Pablo Lorrain in a recent interview as follows:

“I wanted to tell the little story of a man obsessed with what is foreign to him, who lives in a country going through the cultural process which defined our actual way of acting and relating to the world. A prowl on the process of a common man and what surrounds him; or as well, a fragment of something bigger that cannot be seen, because finally, the dance of Raul Peralta’s is, to me, the dance of all Latin-Americans. The dangerous air of underdevelopment and it’s delirious wild abandon that saw itself very much exposed and threatened during the seventies, in the middle of the military dictatorships that struck our region.”

I don't think it's out of the realm of possibilities that someone like Peralta may have existed during the Pinochet era, but ultimately I feel like the frequently cringe-worthy scenes in Tony Manero say more about psychosis, or at least about this particular character's quirks, than they do about life under Pinochet (I would make the same argument about Taxi Driver not painting a very complete portrait of 1976 New York, either).

You can decide yourself this weekend:

REVIEW: Take Out (A)

I believe the only moment in the extraordinary Take Out that made me laugh occurred while main character Ming Ding (Charles Jang) was sweeping the sidewalk. He has one of those telescoping dust pans and brooms, and as he tries to sweep the pile into the pan, a stubborn wet piece of paper remains stuck on the cement. After three or four unsuccessful sweeps over it, he just has to bend down and pick the stupid thing up. This is a fill-in shot that lasts not more than three or four seconds, but it perfectly captures the essence of Ming Ding's frustrating situation. I sympathetically chuckled to myself, "Man, isn't that life?".

Completed in 2004 but not released on DVD until this week, Take Out is an unassuming early effort from filmmaker Sean Baker and his writing partner, Shih-Ching Tsou. The film received a very limited theatrical release last summer, but the few critics who saw it were unanimously and enthusiastically impressed. I can only add to the chorus of praise for this movie; were I to know what year to place it in it would definitely be in my Top 10. If you know my taste you won't be surprised, of course, since Take Out is another neorealistic, slice-of-life look at American culture, in this case focusing on the underworld of illegal immigration.

Ming Ding has left his wife and young child in China, smuggled through Canada by a group of unforgiving loan sharks. He makes a living, if you can call it that, as a bicycle delivery guy for a busy Chinese take-out joint on the Upper West Side. Having fallen behind on loan payments to his smugglers, Ming is giving an ultimatum one fateful morning: Pay back at least $800 of his debt that night, or see his entire debt double. How do you make $800 delivering Chinese food in just a day?

The only way he knows how: anxiously bicycling through the pouring rain all day and having cranky New Yorkers slam doors in his face, tease him about his inability to speak English, leave him coins as tips, and complain about their orders. The circumstances in which Ming works are stressful to begin with, but the added burden of his debt on this day makes every otherwise mundane interaction feel incredibly tense. Will some kind soul save Ming with a huge tip? Of course not - that doesn't happen in real life, and Take Out is about real life.

And you thought you had a bad day at work...

A person who is bored by Take Out is a person, I would argue, who is uninterested in people, uninterested in the human condition. Years ago that may have been me, someone consumed by their own existence and oblivious to the unending daily challenges faced by the other almost 7 billion people living around me. I had a heady knowledge of the world and its problems, but it was probably the four years of living in a city and commuting daily on a subway during college that really helped me study people in a new way. Where did these people come from? Where are they going? What is their story? Many of them may have surely been in the exact same situation as Ming Ding, stuck in a new country and working themselves to death in pursuit of the American Dream. In that way Take Out has much in common with Ramin Bahrani's films (especially Man Push Cart), but it's much more disturbing.

Take Out certainly sympathizes with Ming's plight, but it doesn't glorify in any way the life of a new immigrant. Ming is isolated, miserable, tired, and lacking any of the social or legal supports that so many of us take for granted. A scene in which Ming gazes at a photo of his wife and child is, in its heartbreaking silence, one of the most genuinely moving portrayals of immigrant loneliness I've ever seen. Credit is due equally to the way the scene is placed in the timeline of the story, and also the awe-inspiring performance by Charles Jang.

The acting all the way through this film is top-notch, and all the more impressive because several of the cast members are making their acting debuts. Of course, with a $3,000 - yes, $3,000 - budget, you can't afford a lot of professional talent, but every dollar of that budget was well spent. Baker and Tsou, who co-wrote and co-directed the film, could not even afford to close down the actual restaurant in which Take Out was filmed. The customers are real (several bring to mind the Chinese restaurant skit from The Fugees album, "The Score") and "Big Sister" was played by the woman who actual managed the place. The shots of food being prepared are shots of food being prepared for actual customers. It's all real and rich and absolutely mesmerizing to watch; the snappy editing moves things along in a way that doesn't allow you take your eyes off the screen.

I am perplexed as to why Take Out did not make a bigger splash in theaters or on the festival circuit. It did earn an extremely well-deserved Independent Spirit Award nomination for the John Cassavetes Award (for best film with a budget under $500,000), but lost to In Search of a Midnight Kiss. Ironically, one of the other nominees was Sean Baker's second feature film, Prince of Broadway (fingers crossed that it will see a theatrical release soon). It should say something that Baker had two films nominated in the same year. To find out why, I recommend taking a night to watch Take Out on DVD. Order some Chinese food - and make sure to tip your delivery person well.

Grade:
Writing - 9
Acting - 10
Production - 9
Emotional Impact - 10
Music - 5
Social Significance - 5

Total: 48/50= 96% = A

+ Official website for Take Out
+ Buy Take Out on DVD
+ Add Take Out to your Netflix queue

Revanche, Jerichow, and the State of the American Suspense Thriller

In discussing the Underrated MOTM for May, Breakdown, I lamented that American suspense thrillers are about as prevalent and dependable as American cars these days:

"...shouldn't we appreciate it and movies like it more during this absolute drought of American thrillers? Over the last two years, for example, every first-tier No Country for Old Men or Zodiac, or second-tier Transsiberian or Gone Baby Gone, is outnumbered by an Eagle Eye, Vantage Point, 88 Minutes, Righteous Kill, or Untraceable, to name just a few. That I've seen none of those last five is, well, the point. American directors and studios are in far too deep with remakes, sequels, and "reboots" to think of anything new, while across the pond there's a seemingly constant stream of quality suspense. But this is really another rant for another time."

Like now. If anyone has any evidence to the contrary I'm all ears, but you'll be hard-pressed to convince me that big-budget projects like State of Play, Valkyrie, Traitor, or Body of Lies can sit on the same shelf as imports like last year's Three Monkeys, Let the Right One In, Boy A, Tell No One, and Roman de Gare, or this year's Revanche and Jerichow.

What's the problem? Well for one, Hollywood is in the midst of a decade-long remake/reboot/sequel bonanza that defies all logic, reason, and, in my young memory, precedent. I may not be happy with it, but I think I get it: moody suspense thrillers ain't exactly the easiest films for studios to market, and if you're developing a film that doesn't have a major star and can't dominate a box-office weekend, you might as well forget about it. Which leaves us, for the most part, with mediocre "suspense blockbusters" and very good foreign films with extremely limited releases. (Although in addition to the recent second-tier American thrillers I already mentioned, I would even add a third-tier of halfway decent, if not at least admirably original thrillers like Lakeview Terrace, Reservation Road, and We Own the Night.)

Secondly, I'm increasingly convinced that the majority of American directors just aren't using the right formula to create true suspense. Admittedly there are a handful who have done some solid work in recent years, including the Coen Brothers, David Fincher (Zodiac), Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects - and also Valkyrie), Christopher Nolan (Memento), Sam Raimi (A Simple Plan), and Scott Frank (The Lookout). But on balance, the American market is flooded with films that are "suspenseful" because of their action sequences (e.g., the Bourne series) or suspenseful because you're on the edge of your seat wondering if you're the only one who has absolutely no clue what's going on (e.g., Syriana).

What's frustrating is that American directors used to be masters of suspense (but not, of course, The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, who is above and beyond this discussion); consider Orson Welles, Jules Dassin, Sydney Lumet , Alan Pakula, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, John Boorman, William Friedkin, Sydney Pollack, John Frankenheimer, Jonathan Demme, David Lynch, and even Steven Spielberg. Many of these directors have unfortunately passed on, but those who are still with us (Spielberg) seem to have lost their creative touch, and their successors have done little of significance in recent years.

Meanwhile, in Europe (and particular Germany), a group of young filmmakers is churning out original thrillers of extremely high quality. In addition to the directors of the foreign films I mentioned earlier, as well as Germans Tom Tykwer (The Princess and the Warrior) and Fatih Akin (The Edge of Heaven), we have two very promising writer-directors with new films out this summer: German Christian Petzold and Austrian Götz Spielmann.

See these movies if possible, and then ask yourself why, on this side of the Atlantic, we haven't figured out that simple story + well-developed characters we can relate to + a bad decision or two - manipulative musical cues - obligatory sex and action = real suspense. It's a pretty elementary formula, but then I suppose we've always been behind the rest of the world when it comes to math, right?

________________________________________________________________

(Revanche opens today at the Landmark Lagoon Cinema)

As the global economy continues to go through, oh, a rough patch, conventional wisdom would say that a rise in crime and illicit activity would follow along. People might start getting desperate and robbing banks, for example, and as most of us are not professional criminals, things are bound to go awry. Such is the case in Revanche when Alex (Johannes Krisch, a striking Colin Farrell lookalike) and his Ukrainian girlfriend attempt to hit a small bank on the outskirts of Vienna.

What goes wrong is for you to find out, but I'm giving little away to disclose that Alex is soon hiding, or rather living, at his grandfather's pastoral country cottage. He spends his days moping and cutting wood, and his nights moping and having an affair with one of his grandfather's neighbors (Ursula Strauss). In his mind he is always plotting his revenge (revanche), but the further he gets from the bank incident, the less sure he is that revenge is really the answer.

The tagline for the film is "Whose fault is it if life doesn't go your way?", which is somewhat misleading in that it suggests an answer would be sufficient. More appropriate would something like "What do you do when life doesn't go your way?", because while much of Revanche is about assigning blame to the right person when an accident happens (hint: you can't), on a deeper level it's more about what happens when you think you've figured who that is.

We don't really know how long it takes Alex to fully understand this, because writer-director Götz Spielmann has given us a tense, moody character who, like Benjamin Button, primarily communicates with his eyes. The difference is that Johannes Krisch completely owns this performance, no make-up or CGI required. What is he thinking? What is he planning? We can only guess, and in the meantime we're wracked with gripping anxiety about how and when he might snap.

One of the interesting things about Revanche (as well as Jerichow) is that unlike in Breakdown, the typical Hitchcock set-up of "innocent character trying to escape situation and/or clear their name" is thrown out the window. Alex is not innocent, yet you almost have to convince yourself of that fact as you begin empathizing with him throughout the film. This is a pretty amazing achievement by Spielmann, and despite a legendary year for foreign film in 2008, it would be hard to argue with the Academy Award nomination he received for Revanche.

________________________________________________________________

(Jerichow opens July 10, 2009 at the Landmark Edina Cinema)

Despite all of my whining and complaining about remakes, I find I forgive such movies if they're able to play by their own rules and establish their own identities, maybe thus disqualifying them as actual remakes. A popular term recently is "retread", and so maybe as Breakdown was a retread of The Vanishing, Christian Petzold's noirish Jerichow is a retread of The Postman Always Rings Twice.

It doesn't get much simpler than this: Thomas (Benno Fürmann, who also starred in The Princess and The Warrior) is a strapping army veteran who's recently completed a tour in Afghanistan and moved into his late mother's house in the formerly East German town of Jerichow. Unemployed and with little direction in his life, he fatefully meets Ali, a Turkish businessman, and Laura, Ali's beautiful blonde wife. Despite (or perhaps because of) his jealous tendencies, Ali asks Thomas to work for him as a delivery truck driver. Thomas and Laura predictably fall for each other and bad decisions are soon made by everybody.

Judging by the trailer you might think Jerichow plays like a soap opera, but as in real life, the dilemmas faced by Thomas, Laura, and Ali are believable, and the consequences of their actions are grave. Moreover, Petzold keeps the intrigue high by gradually allowing these complex characters and their backstories to fully bloom over the course of 93 riveting minutes. You don't get to know somebody after a five minute discussion in real life, so why shouldn't it be the same in movies? Because of Petzold's patience (and because there are only three characters), by the climactic ending our loyalties are torn among the three.

Immediately after seeing Jerichow at MSPIFF in April I regretted missing Petzold's Yella at last year's festival. As in Revanche, greed, lust, guilt, and distrust are simmering under the surface, discussed but never spoken. Jerichow, however, also has urgent real-world issues on its mind, including the fact that German-Turkish cultural tensions (a must in any contemporary German film) are no longer relegated to the big cities.

I should mention that Jerichow's finale, while not necessarily contrived, wasn't what I had hoped for. In other words, you can sense what's coming but you hold out hope that it won't happen in predictable fashion. Nevertheless, it was a pleasant surprise at MSPIFF and frustratingly better than its recent American counterparts. By that, I mean there are none.

REVIEW: Tulpan (A-)

(Tulpan plays in exclusive engagement at the Walker Art Center this Friday-Sunday, May 8-10. Tickets)

If there is a place on Earth that looks as unforgiving as Minnesota in January, it is the Kazakh Steppe as seen in Sergei Dvortsevoy's Tulpan, an astonishing film and winner of the Un Certain Regard Award at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Framed as a romantic tragicomedy but witnessed more like a documentary, Tulpan features scenes that are absorbing and amazing, engrossing and, well, gross (if seeing shepherds give CPR to their newborn flock right out of the womb isn't a daily occurrence in your life). I've never seen or even heard of any of Dvortsevoy's other films, but with the armful of awards he's won for Tulpan (and its selection as Kazakhstan's Oscar submission last year), it's unlikely he'll have a hard time attracting attention in the future.

After completing his service in the Russian Navy, Asa (Askhat Kuchencherekov) heads to the Kazakh Steppe to live with his sister, her husband, Ondas (Ondas Besikbasov), and their three adorable children. Eager to begin his adult life and his own family, Asa attempts to court Tulpan, the only young woman on the Steppe. Despite his attempts to win over her parents with tall tales of the sea, Tulpan rejects Asa because his ears are too big, leaving him stunned, dejected, and desperate. "What could I've said wrong, he frustratingly asks his sister back in the yurt. "I described the octopus' weak point, and the sawfish".

The comedy in Tulpan is as dry as the film's climate, and earnest scenes like that one illustrate that life in the Steppe is often like life anywhere else. Despite what would appear to be a lifestyle where most choices are limited, the characters still struggle with decisions and confusion about marriage, jobs, locations, and relationships. Much of their inner turmoil is mirrored by awe-inspiring weather phenomena (dust tornadoes, lightning storms), but the characters in Tulpan are not unstable people, just humble, hard-working people living in an unstable place.

Only the most determined souls can survive in a place like this, and Asa is nothing if not stubborn in his quest to win over Tulpan and secure his own flock of sheep. His best friend (who seems a bit out of place here, almost like a character from a Judd Apatow movie) tries to persuade Asa to move with him to the city. Ondas gives Asa a hard time for being a "city boy" who's not made out for living on the Steppe. Tulpan's parents are completely unimpressed with Asa, and they hide her away so he doesn't even know what she looks like. Everything is telling Asa to give up this idyllic dream, but he just won't bend.

Whether or not you'll have the patience to struggle through this plight with Asa is questionable, but if not there is still some magnificent scenery to be seen in Tulpan. Each frame is packed with eye-catching details, and what the camera captures is often more impressive than how it's captured. You may have seen infinite desert vistas before, but some of these weather patterns and animal behaviors look like never-before-seen footage from an episode of "Planet Earth". A sheep-birthing scene in particular is both squirm-inducing and tear-inducing because we know how much the healthy lamb means to Asa.

In the end, Tulpan is a love story that's been well worn by filmmakers over the years. But although the story may be familiar, I can assure that you probably haven't seen it take place in a culture or climate like this. As Tulpan tenderly illustrates, a common humanity is often most easily found in an uncommon environment.

Grade:
Writing - 9
Acting - 9
Production - 10
Emotional Impact - 9
Music - 4
Social Significance - 5

Total: 46/50= 92% = A-

Underrated MOTM: Breakdown (1997)

Since I've enjoyed some really solid European suspense thrillers over the last month at MSPIFF, I've jumped back to the 90's again to find a decent American one for April's (belated) Underrated Movie of the Month (MOTM). Jonathon Mostow's Breakdown, which opened 12 years ago this week, is a flawed but ultimately well-crafted and nerve-wracking film. To be honest, it's stayed with me primarily because of the theater experience I had while watching it (kind of a long story), but after seeing parts of it again I remembered its horrifying premise and gripping delivery.

Not that it's really considered a dud, but mostly positive reviews aside, shouldn't we appreciate it and movies like it more during this absolute drought of American thrillers? Over the last two years, for example, every first-tier No Country for Old Men or Zodiac, or second-tier Transsiberian or Gone Baby Gone, is outnumbered by an Eagle Eye, Vantage Point, 88 Minutes, Righteous Kill, or Untraceable, to name just a few. That I've seen none of those last five is, well, the point. American directors and studios are in far too deep with remakes, sequels, and "reboots" to think of anything new, while across the pond there's a seemingly constant stream of quality suspense. But this is really another rant for another time. The point is, Breakdown deserves credit for being, flaws aside, one of the last decent thrillers of the 90's, when filmmakers attempted to make original stories and plot twists were patiently paced (one of my favorite movies, A Simple Plan, being another example of this).

The story is simple: Jeff and Amy Taylor (Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan) are a married couple moving from Massachusetts to San Diego. Somewhere in the desolate desert of the Southwest, their new Jeep Cherokee breaks down. A friendly trucker (J.T. Walsh) stops and offers to help. He agrees to take Amy to a local diner to call a tow truck while Jeff waits with the car. Problem is, Amy never comes back, and when Jeff eventually finds the diner and the trucker, everybody plays dumb, claiming they've never seen him or his now-missing wife.

Although it was accused of being too similar to The Vanishing (which I haven't seen) and Deliverance, some of the criticism of Breakdown was surprisingly harsh. James Bernadelli ripped Jonathon Mostow for his"pedestrian direction and unoriginal script," complaining that "its increasingly-preposterous turns come across as laughable." He went on to call Breakdown "a long, drawn-out bore...if this movie was a car, it would have been hauled off to the junk yard." Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader was even less forgiving, attacking the film on moral grounds for "turning people into garbage...Breakdown has plenty of deft action sequences, and what they add up to is nifty garbage disposal, with all of us--characters, filmmakers, viewers--ultimately spiraling down the same drain." Ouch, guys.

Getting more specific, Stephen Hunter complained in the Washington Post that Kurt Russell's "lack of energy afflicts the film as much as its director's lack of ideas". He goes on about Russell repeatedly: "He does a lot of running around while making desperate faces, but he never projects a sense of deep rage. He never gets dangerous." So driving his car into a river, choking and stabbing a guy and then wielding and firing a gun is child's play? Russell's performance is wholly unappreciated and pitch perfect. There are few actors who can play calm, charming, paranoid, desperate, and enraged, all while toughing out some impressive stunts. Also, after rewatching those parts of Breakdown I appreciated how well Russell simply played a loving husband doing everything in his power to save his wife.

As Red, the evil trucker, J.T. Walsh also gives a controlled, creepy performance. It would be the last film Walsh would see released before his death from a heart attack in February of 1998, and it was a perfect example of his sleazy style. I'm sure Walsh was a nice guy in real life, but man, what a track record of nasty characters.

This solid acting in a Hitchcockian, innocent-guy-seeking-retribution story makes Breakdown a movie you can't turn away from. I don't know why this movie doesn't show up on cable more often, and I can only lament the fact that American directors seem uninterested in making suspense thrillers like it these days. The closest they come are, of course, remakes, such as the recently announced American remake of last year's Tell No One. As it's likely that will be terrible, do yourself a favor and just rent Breakdown instead. It's elementary, pretty predictable, and not altogether perfect. But it's well-executed and tense, and you'll never drive through an empty desert again without thinking about it.

MSPIFF Weekend #2 Roundup

After seeing some good to great movies at MSPIFF last weekend, I hit Il Divo and Heart of Fire (review likely forthcoming) on Monday and A Walk to Beautiful on Thursday. I had a tough time following Il Divo due to either confusion or exhaustion (or both), but I still appreciated it and on balance I've yet to see anything resembling a "bad" film at this festival.

I know it seems like I'm being overly generous with praise, but I'm not surprised that I've enjoyed most of these movies because I've been selective in only seeing the most promising ones (highly recommended international award winners). Sure, it may take away from the adventure of just randomly picking movies, but if I'm paying for all of these I'm going to do my best to make sure it's worth it. As it's happened, then, a number of them really have been among the best films that I've seen in 2009 thus far.


Letters to the President (B+)
Iran (2009); Directed by Petr Lom

In one way, the most surprising thing about this documentary was the fact that it was made at all. Filmmaker Petr Lom somehow gained behind-the-scenes access to the nerve center of Iran’s public relations department (and yes, they have a busy one), ironic because of the number of times when someone is told to not speak to the cameras. Taking the popular practice of sending letters to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Lom ultimately focuses on the differing political attitudes between the rural and urban populations of Iran. What he finds is perhaps not surprising for Americans, but it nonetheless casts serious doubt on Ahmadinejad’s genuine desire to be a man of the people. His khaki jacket in place of a suit appears to be for show only, and a few interviews (in particular with two incredible mural painters) really drive home the message that true democracy is not alive nor well in Iran. Letters to the President is a good primer for those wanting a look at the situation ahead of the country’s presidential election this summer. It does not play again at MSPIFF but should probably get some limited distribution in 2009.


The Song of Sparrows (A)
Iran (2008); Directed by Majid Majidi

I followed up Letters to the President with the richly layered film that Iran submitted to last year’s Oscars. (With every submission I see I become more convinced 2008 was an amazing year for foreign films.) The Song of Sparrows, from acclaimed director Majid Majidi (Children of Heaven), is the kind of movie that lures you in with lighthearted comedy and sympathetic characters, making its necessary tragedies both unexpected and emotionally turbulent (the sold-out theater audience let loose with anguished cries more than once). As the film’s main character, an ostrich farmer turned motorbike cabbie, Reza Naji delivers a perfectly nuanced performance. A second screening was added because a reported 150 people were turned away from this showing on Friday; watch for a more thought-out review before The Song of Sparrows arrives in Minneapolis on May 29th.


Three Monkeys (A)
Turkey (2008); Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

A brooding, exceptionally crafted thriller, Three Monkeys was another highly acclaimed addition in this year’s festival. Following a year in the life of a Turkish family mixed up in some very bad things, it builds an almost unbearable amount of tension in the last 20 minutes. Delicately shot in a washed-out sepia tone, it simply doesn’t allow you to look away from the screen; any and every detail is important (not surprisingly, Ceylan won the Best Director award at Cannes 2008). I haven’t Ceylan’s Distant or Climates, but the latter is now playing for free through May 3 on the The Auteurs website, where Three Monkeys also premiered for a 24 hour period yesterday. If you missed it and you’re not seeing Moon, get your tickets now for it’s second showing TONIGHT at 7:15 PM.



Jerichow (A-)
Germany (2008); Directed by Christian Petzold

I was on the fence about Jerichow until about five minutes before its showtime, but when I realized it was by the director of Yella (which I regrettably missed last year) and starred Benno Fürmann (The Princess and the Warrior), it was an easy decision. Wow, was that worth it. It's the impossibly simple story of three deceptively complex characters (the suspense comes easily as we learn about their backstories at the same time they do) who just want a little something more in their lives. If not for a convenient plot device in the last few minutes, Jerichow would have been nearly perfect, but even that flaw doesn't significantly take away from it. I don't know why it's so hard for American directors to make suspense thrillers like this. Get rid of the manipulative music and memorable quotes; all that's needed are believable characters making questionable - but not unreasonable - decisions. Jerichow doesn't play again at MSPIFF but it will receive limited distribution later this spring/summer.


Tokyo Sonata (A-)
Japan/Netherlands/China (2008); Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes last year, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's meditative drama about an unhappy family reminded me of American Beauty set in Tokyo. They're moody, unfulfilled, and don't particularly like or trust each other. Taken in context it's a pretty powerful illustration of what may be happening in many cities as the unemployment numbers rise, but even without the topical urgency it provides a fascinating look at contemporary Japanese culture. A fair amount of patience is required on the part of the viewer, but I found it worth the wait as Tokyo Sonata boasts my favorite ending scene of any movie so far this year. It also does not play again at MSPIFF, but is definitely recommended on its return to Minneapolis on May 15.

Yep, it was a high-quality weekend at MSPIFF, and the four on my list for this week (Moon, Tyson, Oblivion, The Infinite Border) look pretty promising. I cannot take this festival for granted.