SFFILM

Movies to See Right Now

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Jason Isaacs and Steve Buscemi in THE DEATH OF STALIN

The San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) closes on Tuesday. Here’s my festival preview.

OUT NOW

This week’s top picks:

  • The wonderfully dark, dark comedy The Death of Stalin.
  • Another dark comedy, this one about two teen girl sociopaths, Thoroughbreds.
  • Outside In: Now on Netflix, this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
  • I liked Al Pacino’s portrayal of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno as his storied career was killed by scandal in HBO’s Paterno.

ON VIDEO

This week’s video pick salutes the San Francisco International Film Festival, now underway. From last year’s SFFILMFestival, the topical French drama The Stopover explores the after-effects of combat in contemporary warfare. We also get a female lens on the acceptance of women in combat roles and on sexual assault in the military from the co-writer and co-directors, the sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin. The Stopover is available to stream on iTunes.

ON TV

This week, Turner Classic Movies brings us a couple of curiosities. First, on April 14, is arguable the first on-screen CSI in Mystery Street (1950). In an era where police detective work seemed to be mostly sweating out confessions under bright lights, the investigator in Mystery Street uses the methods of forensic science. And he’s played by Ricardo Montalban, no less. The Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller will supply the intro and outro on this week’s Noir Alley.

And on April 15, TCM will air the sci-fi classic Solaris (1972), the masterpiece of Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. A psychologist, with that common Russian name of Kris Kelvin, is sent to check out a space mission orbiting the oceanic planet Solaris. He finds things ominously awry, with a suicide and suspiciously furtive behavior by the surviving crew. Then he is face-to-face with his own dead wife from Earth; and after he dispatches her into space, she reappears on the spacecraft. Things are seriously messed up.

Much of Solaris’ two hours and 47 minutes – watching this movie is  a commitment – is trippy shots of the ocean planet, with waves breaking across its colored surface. Solaris is not so much an enjoyable art movie as it is a fascinating one. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes and is firmly placed in the sci-fi canon. Solaris is a must see for sci-fi fans [Note: This is NOT the inferior 2002 Steven Soderbergh remake.]

SOLARIS
SOLARIS

SFFILMFestival Stream of the Week: THE STOPOVER – PTSD takes more than an umbrella drink…

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Ariane Labed and Soko in THE STOPOVER photo courtesy of SFFILM
Ariane Labed and Soko in THE STOPOVER
photo courtesy of SFFILM

This week’s video pick salutes the  San Francisco International Film Festival, now underway.  From last year’s SFFILMFestival, the topical French drama The Stopover explores the after-effects of combat in contemporary warfare. We also get a female lens on the acceptance of women in combat roles and on sexual assault in the military from the co-writer and co-directors, the sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin.

The Stopover’s title refers to a French combat unit’s three-day stay in a luxurious Cypriot seaside resort. The unit, heading back to France after a tour in Afghanistan, is supposed to decompress at the resort. They are required to engage in group therapy, enhanced by virtual reality goggles. As with any group of gung-ho and mostly macho twenty-somethings, talk therapy is not their thing. But they sure need decompression, because their service included a terrifying engagement in which they lost three comrades.

This combat unit includes women, and The Stopover focuses on Aurore (Ariane Labed) and Marine (Soko). The strong and purposeful Aurore has physically recovered from an emotionally (and literally) scarring experience in Afghanistan. The more impulsive Marine, on the other hand, is not a deep thinker, but has a serious chip on her shoulder.

Everyone in the unit wound very, very tightly. Some are fighting to keep psychotic outbursts from bubbling over. Plopping these guys amidst tourists and locals in such an absurdly and artificially tranquil setting creates a powder keg. From start to finish in The Stopover, we’re waiting for any and every character to snap or erupt.

Ariane Labed in THE STOPOVER photo courtesy of SFFILM
Ariane Labed in THE STOPOVER
photo courtesy of SFFILM

Labed is excellent as Ariane, who feels need to suppress her PTSD, to mask it with rowdy fun and, finally, to confront it. Labed won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for a completely different kind of movie in 2010, the absurdly goofy Attenberg, which I also watched at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

I just can’t take my eyes of Soko, who is a French pop music star. Here, as Marine, she has a feral fierceness. Soko is also a force of nature in the excellent period drama Augustine. She brings a simmering intensity to the screen, in contrast to her offbeat, ironic pop music.
The rest of the cast is excellent, too, particularly Karim Leklou as a sergeant with an unresolved issue or two.

The Stopover is available to stream on iTunes.  It’s an engrossing and powerful film.

Movies to See Right Now

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Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.

This week I’m diving deep into the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). Here’s my festival preview.

OUT NOW

This week’s top picks:

  • The wonderfully dark, dark comedy The Death of Stalin.
  • Another dark comedy, this one about two teen girl sociopaths, Thoroughbreds.
  • Outside In: Now on Netflix, this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
  • The Last Movie Star: An aged action movies star (Burt Reynolds playing someone very similar to Burt Reynolds) examines his life choices. Funny and sentimental (in a good way).
  • Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story is the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.
  • The Leisure Seeker is an Alzheimer’s road trip dramedy with Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. Mirren and Sutherland are excellent, possibly enough to see this in a theater.

VIDEO

In tribute to SFFILM, my Stream of the Week is from last year’s SFFILM Festival: NUTS! is the persistently hilarious (and finally poignant) documentary about the rise and fall of a medical and radio empire – all built on goat testicle “implantation” surgery in gullible humans. NUTS! is available to stream from Amazon (free with Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

TV

Tonight, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1964 serial killer movie The Strangler, with its brilliant and eccentric performance by Victor Buono.

And on April 8, TCM will air Stalag 17 (1960), adapted and directed by the great Billy Wilder. This is a taut WW II POW drama from a play written by two former POWs. If it’s not bad enough being held in a Nazi prison camp, there is a German mole informing on the prisoners. The POWs blame the wrong guy – the cynic played by William Holden – and he must uncover and expose the real traitor and help a POW in peril to escape.

This is a thriller, not a comedy, but you can’t tell from this trailer, which oversells the humor; it makes you expect Hogan’s Heroes.

SFFILM Festival: Preview

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Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.

This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) opens on April 4 and runs through April 17. As always, it’s a Can’t Miss for Bay Area movie fans. This year’s program is especially loaded. Here are some enticing festival highlights:

  • Leave No Trace is Debra Granik’s first narrative feature since her 2010 Winter’s Bone (which I had rated as the best film of that year).  Leave No Trace stars Ben Foster and Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie as a dad-daughter team and co-stars Dale Dickey (so unforgettable in Winter’s Bone and Hell or High Water).  Winter’s Bone launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence, and buzz from Sundance indicates that Leave No Trace might do the same for McKenzie.
  • Tully stars Charlize Theron, is written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman.  Those three combined on the underrated game-changing comedy Young Adult, so my expectations are high.  Theron and Reitman will attend the SFFILM screening.
  • Sorry to Bother You, described as a “taboo-breaker”, is an offbeat comedy about an African_American telemarketer whose career climbs when he discovers his “white voice”.  Stars Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson and Armie Hammer.  Written and directed by Bay Area artist Boots Riley, Sorry to Bother You shook up both the Sundance and SXSW fests.  Will release into theaters on July 8.
Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in a scene from Boots Riley’s SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
  • First Reformed is a dark drama from director Paul Schrader, the screenwriter of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last Temptation of Christ. Ethan Hawke stars.  Schrader will appear at SFFILM.
  • Godard, Mon Amour is, at the same time, a tribute to the genius of Jean-Luc Godard’s early cinema and a satire on the insufferable tedium of the political dilettantism that squandered the rest of Godard’s filmmaking career.   This is a very inventive film, written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist).  I’ve seen it, and the more Godard films that you’ve seen, the more you will enjoy the wit of Godard, Mon Amour.
  • Claire’s Camera is the latest nugget from writer-director Hong Sang-soo, that great observer of awkward situations and hard-drinking.  Claire’s Camera is set at the Cannes Film Festival, and the great Isabelle Huppert drops into the story.  There’s an especially fine performance by Min-hee Kim (The Handmaiden).  It’s not as surreal as last year’s Hong Sang-soo entry, Yourself and Yours, but just as observational and droll.  Hong Sang-soo has a cult following at SFFILM, so there is certain to be an appreciative audience.
  • How to Talk to Girls at Parties:   This is the North American premiere of the latest from writer-director John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Rabbit Hole).  Mitchell will attend the screening.  Premiered at Cannes.
  • Bad Reputation: Biodoc of Joan Jett – and Joan is attending!
  • Pick of the Litter: This doc by Bay Area filmmakers Dana Nachtman and Don Hardy was the  feel-good hit at Cinequest.  Adorable puppies strive to help the blind.
  • Tre Maison Dasan: This unwavering and emotionally powerful doc is my top pick from the World Premieres at SFFILM.  In her feature debut as writer-director, Denali Tiller follows three kids with incarcerated parents.   Unfettered by talking heads, Tre Maison Dasan invites us along with these kids as they interact with their families – both on the outside and the inside.  Tiller will attend all screenings.

Along with Theron, Reitman, Schrader, Hazanavicius, Mitchell and Jett, there will be personal appearances by storied directors Gus Van Sant and Wayne Wang, actors Bill Hader, Tom Everett Scott, Jason Sudeikis and Henry Winkler, composer Danny Elfman and film historian David Thomson.

The 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) opens this Wednesday. Here’s SFFILMFestival’s information on the program, the schedule and tickets and passes.

Throughout SFFILMFestival, you can follow me on Twitter for the very latest coverage.

A scene from Denali Tiller’s TRE MAISON DASAN, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE LOST CITY OF Z – the historical adventure epic revived

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Charlie Hunnam in THE LOST CITY OF Z photo courtesy of SFFILM
Charlie Hunnam in THE LOST CITY OF Z
photo courtesy of SFFILM

In auteur James Gray’s sweeping turn of the 20th Century epic The Lost City of Z, a stiff-upper-lip type British military officer becomes the first European to probe into the deepest heart of unmapped Amazonia. Finding his way through the lush jungles, braving encounters with sometimes cannibalistic indigenous warriors, he becomes obsessed with finding the lost city of an ancient civilization. I know this sounds like Indiana Jones, but it’s based on the real life of Percy Fawcett as chronicled in the recent book Lost City of Z by David Grann.

The Lost City of Z opens tomorrow in Bay Area theaters. I saw The Lost City of Z at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) at a screening with director James Gray. I’ll be sharing some snippets from Gray’s Q & A on Sunday.

The Lost City of Z begins with an Edwardian stag hunt through the verdant Irish countryside, complete with horses spilling riders. This scene is gorgeous, but its point is to introduce the young British military officer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) as a man of unusual resourcefulness, talent and, above all, drive. Despite his abilities, he has been chaffing at the unattractive assignments that have precluded his career advancement. In the snobby Edwardian military, he has been in disfavor because his dissolute father had stained the family name. One of Fawcett’s commanders says, “He’s been rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors”.

That yearning to earn the recognition that he believes he merits – and to attain the accomplishments of a Great Man – is the core of this character-driven movie. Fawcett resists yet another assignment away from the career-making action, a mapping expedition designed to have a minor diplomatic payoff. But it takes him on a spectacular Amazon exploration that brings him celebrity – and backing for more high-profile expeditions. Fawcett was surfing the zeitgeist in the age of his contemporaries Roald Amundsen (South Pole), Robert Peary (North Pole) and Howard Carter (King Tut).

In that first expedition, Fawcett becomes convinced that he can find the magnificent city of a lost civilization deep in the Amazon, a city he calls Z (which is pronounced as the British “Zed”). The Lost City of Z takes us through two more Amazonian expeditions, sandwiched around Fawcett’s WW I service in the hellish Battle of the Somme.
That final expedition ends mysteriously – and not well.

No one knows for sure what happened to Fawcett. In The Lost City of Z, Gray leads us toward the most likely conclusion, the one embraced by Grann’s book. If you’re interested in the decades of speculation about Fawcett’s fate, there’s a good outline on Percy Fawcett’s Wikipedia page.

Fawcett comes with his own Victorian upper class prejudices, but he has the capacity to set those aside for a post-Darwin open-mindedness. Gray made it a point that the indigenous peoples in the movie are independent of Fawcett; Gray shows them living their lives in a world that Fawcett has found, not just advancing the plot points in Fawcett’s quest. Four real tribes – and their cultures – are shown in the film.

As Percy Fawcett, with his oft-manic obsession and fame-seeking that color his scientific curiosity and his old-fashioned Dudley Do-Right values, Charlie Hunnam gives a tremendous, perhaps carer breakthrough, performance. He’s been a promising actor in Sons of Anarchy and the overlooked thriller Deadfall) (and such a good actor that I never dreamed that he’s really British). Hunnam will next star as the title character in the King Arthur movie franchise.

Robert Pattinson is unexpectedly perfect as Fawcett’s travel buddy Henry Costin. With his Twilight dreaminess hidden behind a Smith Brothers beard, Pattinson projects a lean manliness. It’s probably his best performance.

Sienna Miller shines as Fawcett’s proto-feminist wife Nina. I first noticed Miller (and Daniel Craig) in the underrated neo-noir thriller 2004 Layer Cake. Now Miller is still only 35 years old and has delivered other fine recent performances in Foxcatcher, American Sniper and (in an especially delicious role) High-Rise.

Director James Gray (The Yard, Two Lovers, The Immigrant) is a favorite of cinephiles and of other filmmakers, but regular audiences don’t turn out for his movies. That may change with The Lost City of Z, a remarkably beautiful film that Gray shot, bucking the trend to digital, in 35 mm. The jungle scenes were filmed in a national park in Columbia. The cinemeatographer is the Oscar-nominated Darius Khondji. Khondji shot The Immigrant for Gray and has been the DP of choice for David Fincher (Se7en) Alan Parker (Evita), Michael Haneke (Amour), and Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris). Along with the stag hunt and the voyages up and down the jungle rivers, there is also a breathtakingly beautiful ballroom scene and a gaspingly surreal nighttime discovery of a rubber plantation’s opera house deep in the jungle.

There have been other Lost Expedition movies, most famously Werner Herzog’s Aquirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. The Lost City of Z shares an obsession, a quest and a mysterious tragic end with those films, but it stands apart with its exploration of the motivation of a real life character and the authenticity of Gray’s depiction of the indigenous people.

Movie studios used to make an entire genre of very fun movies from Gunga Din and The Four Feathers through Lawrence of Arabia and Zulu that featured white Europeans getting their thrills in exotic third world playgrounds. We often cringe at the racist premises and the treatment of “the natives” those movies today. Since the 1960s, the best examples of the genre, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, have had an ironic tinge. With The Lost City of Z, James Gray loses both the racism and the irony, and brings us brings a straight-ahead exploration tale.

The Lost City of Z revives the genre of the historical adventure epic, with all the spectacle of a swashbuckler, while braiding in modern sensitivities and a psychological portrait. This is a beautiful and thoughtful film. The Lost City of Z is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Also see my notes from the director James Gray’s Q & A at the San Francisco International Film Festival.[And here are some completely random tidbits. There’s a cameo by Spaghetti Western star Franco Nero. The closing credits recognize the “animal weath coordinator” and the “data wrangler”.]

THE JOURNEY: distrust and risk on a path to peace

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Timothy Spall and Colm Meany in THE JOURNEY photo courtesy of SFFILM
Timothy Spall and Colm Meaney in THE JOURNEY
photo courtesy of SFFILM

The Journey imagines the pivotal personal interactions between the long-warring leaders of Northern Ireland’s The Troubles resulting in the 2006 St. Andrews Accords, which set up the current power-sharing government of Northern Ireland.   Ian Paisley had lit the original fuse of the Troubles in the mid-1960s by igniting Protestant backlash to Catholic pleas for civil rights.  Paisley then obstructed every attempted peace settlement for over thirty years.  Martin McGuinness had transitioned to political leadership from chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army, resisting the violent repression of the british Army with a campaign of terror.  Paisley and McGuinness led the two sides in what was essentially a decades-long civil war, although Paisley would dispute that term.  You could fairly say that both had blood on their hands, McGuinness literally and Paisley morally.  Yet they did agree to share power in 2006.

The Journey uses an entirely fictional plot device to isolate the two of them on a road trip.  (The set-up is unlikely,  but you have to go with it.)  Then The Journey relies on the delightful work of two great actors, Timothy Spall, who plays Paisley, and Colm Meaney, who plays McGuinness.

Beyond the political differences and the blood grudge, the two make a classic Odd Couple.  Spall’s Paisley seems completely impregnable to charm.  The Journey is very funny as McGuinesss’ considerable charm and wit keeps falling flat.  In fact, there are plenty of LOL moments from the awkward situations, McGuinness’ quips and their seemingly clueless driver (Freddy Highmore).  Paisley seems utterly devoid of humor until an unexpected moment.

While The Journey is completely fictionalized, it is certainly true that the two had hated each other for decades, did reach agreement in 2006 and thereafter held posts in the same government and personally got along well, evolving an even affectionate personal relationship.  We also see Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern, Gerry Adams and an imagined MI5 character played by John Hurt.

Spall and Meaney took on a considerable challenge:  Paisley and McGuinness dominated the political news in Ireland for decades and are well-known to audiences in the UK and Ireland. Paisley died in 2014, and McGuinness died just last month.  The Journey’s screenwriter Colin Bateman, was born in Northern Ireland, and The Journey was financed by Northern Ireland Screen.

Achieving a sustainable agreement with a longtime blood enemy requires deciding which of your positions are sacrosanct principles and which have more flexibility. It requires risking the loyalty of your political base, which will revolt against leaders perceived as selling them out. It requires gauging the likelihood that your opponent will stick to his side of the deal. And, you have to focus on your outcome – the long-term goal, not just on defeating your enemy in the moment.  “Young men fight for the helluvit. Old men care about their legacy”, says Hurt’s character in The Journey.

I watched The Journey in April at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival).  To further explore this topic, here is my list of Best Movies About The Troubles.

THE LOST CITY OF Z: director James Gray

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James Gray photo courtesy of SFFILM
James Gray
photo courtesy of SFFILM

As I wrote on Friday, with The Lost City of Z, director James Gray revives the entire genre of the historical adventure epic. I saw The Lost City of Z earlier this month at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) at a screening with director James Gray, who took questions afterwards from SFFILM Director of Programming Rachel Rosen and the audience.

Gray joked that “You can’t really pitch a movie as ‘It’s like Indiana Jones, and then he gets eaten…'”  Gray said, “You you can’t beat a story told with elegance”, so you can have a subtext that is subversive. “Classical form allows the subtext to emerge.”

In one of those subtexts, Gray made it a point that the indigenous peoples in the movie are independent of his protagonist Fawcett; not just advancing the plot points in Fawcett’s quest. “It was very moving to be with the indigenous, and I filmed them doing what they do,”Gray said.  He resisted filming the jungle scenes in South Africa and other less expensive locations because he needed the real indigenous people in the movie.  Four real tribes – and their cultures – are shown in the film. Living so remotely, deep in the Amazon forest, the indigenous had little use for cash. One tribe asked to be paid in irrigation improvements. Another tribe negotiated for Lands End shorts.  Referring to the Battle of the Somme scene, he explained that the folly and barbarism of “WW I was the end of any idea that Europe was superior”.

“I was genetically designed to be an accountant in Minsk. There’s no reason for me to go to Amazonia to be eaten by mosquitoes”.  “Herzog has made three movies in the jungle. He is Superman. I’m not going back.”

Gray said that the real Fawcett is more complicated and less attractive than the screen version. As a man of his time, Fawcett was racist by our standards, and even thought that he would find more advanced “white Indians” responsible for his Lost City. The speech to the Royal Geographic Society was taken almost verbatim from Fawcett’s historical words. The actual location of Fawcett’s exploration “is no longer jungle because it has been cleared for soy bean fields”.

To shoot a film in 35 mm, Gray’s team had to train a film loader in 1970s camera equipment.  Each day, the day’s work went by crop duster to a local airport to Bogotá to Miami and, finally, to the lab in London. Each day the crew endured a nerve-wracking wait until getting a call by satellite phone to confirm the film’s arrival in London, Three days’ work didn’t make it and had to be shot over again.

Gray originally adapted the screenplay for Brad Pitt, who owned the movie rights to the book by David Grann, but, by the time they had raised the money, “then his big WW II movie came along”. Pitt’s producers pitched Benedict Cumberbatch for the lead, and Gray thought, “Wow, this guy looks very odd”, but then embraced that casting choice.
Two weeks before shooting, Cumberbatch backed out because his wife was pregnant and due during what would be the middle of the jungle shoot.

Pitt’s producers then pitched Charlie Hunnam for the lead. Gray’s wife had been binge-watching Sons of Anarchy, so Gray didn’t see the fit until he dined with Hunnam. Gray learned that Hunnam is a Brit from Newcastle and found him to be swashbuckler-handsome, charming, intelligent and driven – feeling underappreciated as a TV actor.  “I could mine that”. thought Gray.  Gray “understood the burden of having a father blow the family fortune” and was attracted to the character responding with an obsession to with become a famed success.

Gray also noted that Charlie Hunnam will play the title character in the King Arthur movie franchise and that Tom Holland, who plays Fawcett’s son, will be the new Spider Man.

As I wrote on Friday, movie studios used to make an entire genre of very fun movies from Gunga Din and The Four Feathers through Lawrence of Arabia and Zulu that featured white Europeans getting their thrills in exotic third world playgrounds. We often cringe at the racist premises and the treatment of “the natives” those movies today. Since the 1960s, the best examples of the genre, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, have had an ironic tinge. Gray’s The Lost Cuty of Z has all the spectacle of a swashbuckler, while braiding in modern sensitivities and a psychological portrait. This is a beautiful and thoughtful film.

I highly recommend this brilliant interview of Gray by Peter Canavese on Groucho Reviews If you stay with it to the end, there’s a whopper of a Joaquin Phoenix anecdote.

Charlie Hunnam (right) in THE LOST CITY OF Z photo courtesy of SFFILM
Charlie Hunnam (right) in THE LOST CITY OF Z
photo courtesy of SFFILM

THE LOST CITY OF Z: the historical adventure epic revived

by
Charlie Hunnam in THE LOST CITY OF Z photo courtesy of SFFILM
Charlie Hunnam in THE LOST CITY OF Z
photo courtesy of SFFILM

In auteur James Gray’s sweeping turn of the 20th Century epic The Lost City of Z, a stiff-upper-lip type British military officer becomes the first European to probe into the deepest heart of unmapped Amazonia. Finding his way through the lush jungles, braving encounters with sometimes cannibalistic indigenous warriors, he becomes obsessed with finding the lost city of an ancient civilization. I know this sounds like Indiana Jones, but it’s based on the real life of Percy Fawcett as chronicled in the recent book Lost City of Z by David Grann.

The Lost City of Z opens tomorrow in Bay Area theaters. I saw The Lost City of Z at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) at a screening with director James Gray. I’ll be sharing some snippets from Gray’s Q & A on Sunday.

The Lost City of Z begins with an Edwardian stag hunt through the verdant Irish countryside, complete with horses spilling riders. This scene is gorgeous, but its point is to introduce the young British military officer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) as a man of unusual resourcefulness, talent and, above all, drive. Despite his abilities, he has been chaffing at the unattractive assignments that have precluded his career advancement. In the snobby Edwardian military, he has been in disfavor because his dissolute father had stained the family name. One of Fawcett’s commanders says, “He’s been rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors”.

That yearning to earn the recognition that he believes he merits – and to attain the accomplishments of a Great Man – is the core of this character-driven movie. Fawcett resists yet another assignment away from the career-making action, a mapping expedition designed to have a minor diplomatic payoff. But it takes him on a spectacular Amazon exploration that brings him celebrity – and backing for more high-profile expeditions. Fawcett was surfing the zeitgeist in the age of his contemporaries Roald Amundsen (South Pole), Robert Peary (North Pole) and Howard Carter (King Tut).

In that first expedition, Fawcett becomes convinced that he can find the magnificent city of a lost civilization deep in the Amazon, a city he calls Z (which is pronounced as the British “Zed”). The Lost City of Z takes us through two more Amazonian expeditions, sandwiched around Fawcett’s WW I service in the hellish Battle of the Somme.
That final expedition ends mysteriously – and not well.

No one knows for sure what happened to Fawcett. In The Lost City of Z, Gray leads us toward the most likely conclusion, the one embraced by Grann’s book. If you’re interested in the decades of speculation about Fawcett’s fate, there’s a good outline on Percy Fawcett’s Wikipedia page.

Fawcett comes with his own Victorian upper class prejudices, but he has the capacity to set those aside for a post-Darwin open-mindedness. Gray made it a point that the indigenous peoples in the movie are independent of Fawcett; Gray shows them living their lives in a world that Fawcett has found, not just advancing the plot points in Fawcett’s quest. Four real tribes – and their cultures – are shown in the film.

As Percy Fawcett, with his oft-manic obsession and fame-seeking that color his scientific curiosity and his old-fashioned Dudley Do-Right values, Charlie Hunnam gives a tremendous, perhaps carer breakthrough, performance. He’s been a promising actor in Sons of Anarchy and the overlooked thriller Deadfall) (and such a good actor that I never dreamed that he’s really British).  Hunnam will next star as the title character in the King Arthur movie franchise.

Robert Pattinson is unexpectedly perfect as Fawcett’s travel buddy Henry Costin. With his Twilight dreaminess hidden behind a Smith Brothers beard, Pattinson projects a lean manliness. It’s probably his best performance.

Sienna Miller shines as Fawcett’s proto-feminist wife Nina. I first noticed Miller (and Daniel Craig) in the underrated neo-noir thriller 2004 Layer Cake. Now Miller is still only 35 years old and has delivered other fine recent performances in Foxcatcher, American Sniper and (in an especially delicious role) High-Rise.

Director James Gray (The Yard, Two Lovers, The Immigrant) is a favorite of cinephiles and of other filmmakers, but regular audiences don’t turn out for his movies. That may change with The Lost City of Z, a remarkably beautiful film that Gray shot, bucking the trend to digital, in 35 mm. The jungle scenes were filmed in a national park in Columbia. The cinemeatographer is the Oscar-nominated Darius Khondji. Khondji shot The Immigrant for Gray and has been the DP of choice for David Fincher (Se7en) Alan Parker (Evita), Michael Haneke (Amour), and Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris). Along with the stag hunt and the voyages up and down the jungle rivers, there is also a breathtakingly beautiful ballroom scene and a gaspingly surreal nighttime discovery of a rubber plantation’s opera house deep in the jungle.

There have been other Lost Expedition movies, most famously Werner Herzog’s Aquirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. The Lost City of Z shares an obsession, a quest and a mysterious tragic end with those films, but it stands apart with its exploration of the motivation of a real life character and the authenticity of Gray’s depiction of the indigenous people.

Movie studios used to make an entire genre of very fun movies from Gunga Din and The Four Feathers through Lawrence of Arabia and Zulu that featured white Europeans getting their thrills in exotic third world playgrounds. We often cringe at the racist premises and the treatment of “the natives” those movies today. Since the 1960s, the best examples of the genre, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, have had an ironic tinge. With The Lost City of Z, James Gray loses both the racism and the irony, and brings us brings a straight-ahead exploration tale.

The Lost City of Z revives the genre of the historical adventure epic, with all the spectacle of a swashbuckler, while braiding in modern sensitivities and a psychological portrait. This is a beautiful and thoughtful film.

[And here are some completely random tidbits. There’s a cameo by Spaghetti Western star Franco Nero. The closing credits recognize the “animal weath coordinator” and the “data wrangler”.]

SFFILM: interview with DISCREET director Travis Mathews

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Travis Mathews photo courtesy of SFFILM
Travis Mathews
photo courtesy of SFFILM

Here’s an interview with San Francisco filmmaker Travis Mathews, the writer-director of Discreet.  Mathews has also directed Do I Look Fat?, I Want Your Love, Interior. Leather Bar. and the In Their Room documentary series.  The San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) is hosting the U.S. premiere of Mathews’ newest film Discreet, which debuted at the Berlinale.

The Movie Gourmet:  SFFILM is giving your U.S. premiere the prime Saturday 9 PM slot at the Castro. Must be a good feeling.

Travis Mathews:  Two of my earlier films have been screened at the Castro in the Frameline Festival, but not at the San Francisco International Film Festival.  I can tell you that it’s pretty awesome. It’s my favorite theater in the world.

TMG:  Where did you find Bob Swaffar, and just how tall is he? [Bob Swaffer plays John, the child sexual abuser, in Discreet.]

Travis Mathews:  He’s really, really tall.  6′ 7″, I think.  At least 6′ 5″.  I found most of our cast at an open call in Austin – which is its own interesting experience.  Bob is a gentle, wise man who makes pottery.  I had already decided that his character would not speak.

TMG:  Did you see a menace in Bob?

Travis Mathews:  No.  I knew that menace would be created by the editing and sound design, and that the menace would be projected (on Bob) by the audience.  It’s like a Rorschach Test.

TMG:  And where did you find Joy Cunningham?  She’s great in a brief scene as Alex’ mom Sharon.

Travis Mathews: She’s a friend of mine, a lesbian married to a great woman with a couple of great kids.  At the time (of shooting Discreet), they were renting out the house where Sharon lives (in the movie).  Joy is a comedic actress.  She had never done drama, but I knew that she’d be great.  She and her wife Gretchen, they were invaluable when I was writing the film, giving me notes on the screenplay.

TMG:  You’ve made a revenge film where the final act of violence is off-camera.  It’s kind of anti-Peckinpah, with none of the customary splatter for the genre.  What informed this choice?

Travis Mathews:  In previous films, I’ve explored the opposite and showed more, especially raw emotion.  This time I wanted to play with withholding instead of showing.  That was part of the fun in making Discreet.  We did a lot of test screenings and the audiences told me, “yeah, I already knew that” or “this wasn’t clear”.  That helped with the editing choices of what to withhold.

Travis Mathews: I didn’t want to be so clear who was in the body (the body bag floating down the river) at the end. I have an idea, but it is elliptical.  I don’t want to be “I don’t know – who did YOU think it was?”.  But it (the ambiguity) strengthened the movie.

[Note:   If the body isn’t the most obvious character, as I’d thought, then it’s got to be…Holy Toledo! This movie would be even darker than I’d recognized!]

TMG: Why did you have your characters carry out clandestine acts next to a freeway, when we would expect you to have set them out in the woods where no one could see?

Travis Mathews: I was in Texas for a long time on another film project.  I was driving around the same van that Alex drives in Discreet.  I became fascinated by the freeway structure in Texas.  So many are built almost like roller coasters for reasons that seemed arbitrary.  It’s a like a Texas show of strength: We have the tallest freeways!  So I found it both absurd and fascinating.  I wanted them to be a man-made monster in the background.  A freeway is in the background of every setting except Joy/Sharon’s house.  It made sense.

TMG:  What’s the distribution plan for Discreet?

Travis Mathews:  It’s being released (theatrically) in the UK and Ireland.  We’re playing the festival circuit (here in the U.S.) as part of our strategy to get distribution.  It’s a tough movie.  I know that’s it’s not a commercial movie in several respects.  I hope that people see it – it is a film that lingers, as it did with you.

TMG: What is your next project?

Travis Mathews:  I will be a little coy here.  I’m working on two projects.  One is a remake of a 1970s film.  The other is an original with horror elements.  I want to do a horror movie, and Discreet is inching me toward the genre.

TMG: Will these be films that you both write and direct?

Travis Mathews: Yes.

TMG:  One last question – and it’s about Interior. Leather Bar.  Do you really believe, in your heart of hearts, that Friedkin had to cut an entire FORTY minutes of gay sex from Cruising?

Travis Mathews: Maybe not all gay sex, but forty minutes of what someone found too sexual, too violent or too something.  Maybe 37 or 42, but about 40 minutes, yes.

On Sunday evening at 6 PM, Travis Mathews and author Karl Soehnlein will be speaking about art in the age of Trump, including Discreet, at Dog Eared Books, 489 Castro Street, San Francisco.

Bob Swaffar (left) and Jonny Mars in DISCREET photo courtesy of m-appeal World Sales
Bob Swaffar (left) and Jonny Mars in DISCREET
photo courtesy of m-appeal World Sales

 

SFFILMFestival: DISCREET

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Jonny Mars in DISCREET photo courtesy of SFFILM
Jonny Mars in DISCREET
photo courtesy of SFFILM

The San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) presents the U.S. premiere of the psychological drama Discreet tomorrow, April 8 – and it should be the indie highlight of the festival.

Within a revenge tale, writer-director Travis Mathews has braided threads of social criticism and political comment.  Most of all, Discreet is a compelling portrait of one damaged, very unwell guy and a thoughtful exploration of the alienating aspects of the current American zeitgeist.

Discreet is centered on Alex (Jonny Mars), who has drifted back through his Texas hometown to find that his childhood sexual abuser has re-surfaced.   Alex is untethered either to home or sanity.   Away from home for a long time, Alex has been roaming the country, oddly stopping to shoot videos of freeway traffic.   The most hateful alt-right talk radio plays incessantly from the radio of his van.  And, in a creepy juxtaposition, he’s obsessed with a New Agey YouTube publisher (the comic Atsuko Okatsuka).

Alex sets out to find and confront his abuser (Bob Swaffer), and Discreet takes us on a moody and intense journey, filled with unexpected – and even flabbergasting – moments.  Only the ultimate vengeance seems inevitable – and even that act is handled with surprising subtlety.  The catharsis is intentionally understated, and there is none of the customary splatter.

Swaffer’s physicality, along with his character’s condition, makes him a monster unlike anything I’ve seen in a movie before – a unique blend of the bone-chilling and the vulnerable.

Discreet is only 80 minutes long; keeping it short was a great choice by Mathews, allowing the film to succeed with a deliberate, but never plodding, pace.  We’re continually wondering what Alex is going to do next, and the editing by Mathews and Don Swaynos keeps the audience on alert.  Cinematographer Drew Xanthopoulos makes effective use of the static long shot and gives Discreet a singular look.  The idiosyncratic sound design, with its droning and its use of ambient noises, sets the mood.  It’s an effective package – and an impressive calling card for Travis Mathews.

Bob Swaffar (left) and Jonny Mars in DISCREET photo courtesy of m-appeal World Sales
Bob Swaffar (left) and Jonny Mars in DISCREET
photo courtesy of m-appeal World Sales

While he’s in town, Alex is on the lookout for secret – and sometimes very kinky – sex with other men.  It’s a comment on the repression in Flyover American culture that drives gay sexual expression underground. And furtiveness can make anything seem seamy.  Indeed, the movie’s title comes from the Craiglist euphemism for anonymous sexual hookups.

One critic referred to Discreet as “Travis Mathews’ latest queer experiment”.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s far too narrow a label.   True, Discreet definitely comes from the point of view of a gay filmmaker, and it addresses the repression of gay sexual expression. But this is a film, with its broader focus on alienation, that is important for and accessible to every adult audience.

Mathews previously collaborated with James Franco on Interior. Leather Bar., which is nothing at all like Discreet.   Interior. Leather Bar. is talky and centered on artistic process with a hint of sensationalism.  Discreet more resembles an experimental film such as Upstream Color.  Come to think of it, Discreet has more of the feel of a budget indie (and less languorous) version of Antonioni‘s The Passenger.

Jonny Mars is very effective as Alex, a character who is usually stone-faced, but whose intensity sometimes takes him completely off the rails.  In her one speaking scene as Alex’s mom, Joy Cunningham’s stuttering affect gives us a glimpse into both her past parental unreliability and her current clinging to sobriety by her fingernails.

But the heart of Discreet is Alex and his unpredictable path.  To what degree has Alex’s madness been formed by the childhood abuse?  To what extent has he been deranged by absorbing random and unhealthy bits of American popular culture?  Stylistically, Discreet is a near-masterpiece, and audiences that embrace the discomfort of the story will be rewarded with a satisfying, ever-surprising experience.