Movies

THE BRINK: craving relevance

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Steve Bannon in THE BRINK, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

The Brink is documentarian Alison Klayman’s up-close-and-personal portrait of Steve Bannon, the outsized personality who founded Breitbart as a “platform for the alt right” and who encouraged Donald Trump’s race-baiting right into the White House.

But even Trump is not shameless enough to keep Bannon around – as The Brink opens, Bannon has just been fired from the Trump Administration in the wake of the wake of the Charlottesville disgrace (“very fine people on both sides“).  Bannon is now embarking on a campaign of uniting the European populist Right around a common racist/ white supremicist/anti-immigration message.

Bannon, of course, is a genius at political messaging, and his major outcome was the once unthinkable re-emergence of public white supremicism – voicing those who lived under the dark, damp underside of rocks and logs with the other creepy-crawlies, and making them feel like they can walk the earth erect like other vertebrates.

Bannon is a major ham, and all too happy to let the world watch him in action.  Bannon, of all people, is savvy enough to understand that Klayman is hostile to his beliefs and career,yet he granted her intimate access.  His ego must not have allowed him to resist a movie about himself – or he learned from Trump that no publicity is bad publicity.

For her part, Alison Klayman (Ai Wei-wei: Never Sorry) is clever enough to let Bannon himself reveal his flaws.   As he thinks he is showing us his skills, he is also showing himself to be an attention-craving blowhard.  The horror isn’t that Bannon is some invincible evil mastermind but it’s in the masses (only glimpsed) that are so consumed by the fear and hatred that he peddles.

In the riveting opening sequence, Bannon describes how German technocrats designed the Birkenau death camp to be masterfully efficient.  The banality of evil is not an original thought, but Bannon’s insights are more than a little scary (and his appreciation of Nazi efficiency is uncomfortable).

I found The Brink to be irresistible and watched with fascination.  To those who have had their fill of the propagandists of the Right in Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes and Get Me Roger Stone (with Paul Manafort as bonus, I say that The Brink still offers insights – and more satisfaction.  Bannon wants his political skill to be validated, but The Brink reveals how pathetically he craves relevance.

SUNSET: mysteries in a dying empire

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Right: Juli Jakab as Írisz in SUNSET.  Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

For the first hour-and-a-half of Sunset, I was convinced that I was watching the best movie of the year.  Sunset is a visual masterpiece but the story’s coherence and pacing slips away in the final act.

Set only months before the outbreak of World War I, anarchy is erupting as a response to corrupt, senile empires.  The young woman Írisz Leiter (Juli Jakab), who was sent to Trieste at age two when her parents died, returns to Budapest and to her parents’ prestigious millinery store.   That store – still hatmaker to the elite of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – is now owned by Oszkár Brill (Vlad Ivanov), who is threatened by her reappearance.

Írisz is determined to find out more about what happened to her parents, but she becomes entangled by one more mystery after another.  She encounters  a former family retainer who is mad, and an aristocratic widow who may be mad; they and some sympathetic milliners leak  the shocking snippets.  Soon she is surprised to learn that she has a sibling – but can she find him?  Then she finds out about a notorious murder – but what really happened and why?  She stumbles upon an anarchist plot – but against whom and when?  And an upcoming royal visit has a decidedly sinister side.

As Írisz insinuates herself in Brill’s squad of young female milliners, she plays detective, unspooling the web of mysteries.  While the story is focused on Írisz’ family secrets, Sunset is gripping.  When the story grows wider, into a royal perversion and an anarchist upheaval it gets less coherent and less compelling.

Sunset was written and directed by László Nemes, who burst into world cinema with the gripping, innovative and impossibly grim Son of Saul.  That film won the Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar.  Sunset’s cinematographer Mátyás Erdély won the American Society of Cinematographers Spotlight Award for Son of Saul.

From the painting of Budapest in the opening titles. Sunset is a feast for the eyes. I haven’t seen a film since Ida in which every frame is composed to be a stand alone piece of art. The color palette of the daytime scenes conjures a time that we know from sepia-tinged photos. The chiaroscuro in the nighttime scenes lit by early electricity and open flames is magnificent.

Right: Juli Jakab as Irisz Leiter in SUNSET.  Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Center: Evelin Dobos as Zelma, Vlad Ivanov as Oszkar Brill in SUNSET.  Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Center: Evelin Dobos as Zelma in SUN.SET.  Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Some have noted that the part of the always intense Írisz doesn’t offer much range for Juli Jakab.  But Jakab is able to carry this film in which she’s in every scene, and I admired her performance.

Ivanov is best known for the Romanian  masterpiece 4 Days, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, in which he played one of cinema’s most repellent characters, Mr. Bebe, the sexually harrassing abortionist. American audiences have also seen Ivanov’s performances in Police, Adjective and Snowpiercer.  Hopefully,  Ivanov’s star turn in Hier, which I reviewed for Cinequest, will get an American release.

Nemes, in partnership with his cinematographer Erdély is a peerless filmmaker, but he is not yet a peerless storyteller.  I still recommend Sunset, even with its flaws, for its uncommon artistry.

TRANSIT: the thrill was gone

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Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski in TRANSIT. Courtesy of Music Box Films

In Christian Petzold’s puzzling thriller Transit, George (Franz Rogowski) flees Paris for his life, just ahead of the invading Nazis.  He assumes the identity of a dead author, which comes with a ticket from Marseilles to the safety of the Western Hemisphere.  Trouble is, the ship won’t leave for weeks, so he must wait it out in Marseilles as the Nazis get closer and closer.  He finds himself in a community of other refugees – all forlornly hoping for a ticket, a visa, a letter of transit so they can get out, too. Completely at the disposal of impenetrable bureaucracies, their situation is Kafkaesque.  It’s a puddle of human desperation, and the clock is ticking.

Georg glimpses a mysterious beauty, Marie (Paula Beer). She turns out to be the widow of the man that Georg is impersonating, but she doesn’t know that her husband is dead.  What Georg knows is that he also has papers for her to join him on the escape ship.  While waiting for her husband to appear in Marseilles, she has taken up with the altruistic doctor Richard (Godehard Giese).

So, we have European refugees holed up, trying to get letters of transit to escape the Nazis. Our protagonist is in love with a woman, who is with a selfless idealist. Yes, this story does have its similarities to Casablanca – there’s even a dramatic sacrifice at the end.  But the impeccably plotted Casablanca is easy to follow, and Transit has its surreal aspects. Casablanca is of its time – when individuals subsumed their interests to a great, global cause: “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”  Set in the same wartime period, Transit is of our time – focused on the micro-plight of individuals.

I’m trying to think how to explain this – it’s a period story shot in modern times. So, the characters wear 1940s clothes and use 1940s typewriters. But the environs are modern Paris and Marseilles, so the storm troopers are modern French SWAT teams and the police vehicles are modern French cop cars with their Euro sirens. It may sound weird, but it worked for me. I just became absorbed in figuring out what was going on.

Franz Rogowski and Lilien Batman in TRANSIT. Courtesy of Music Box Films

There is a sweet and effective subplot involving Georg and a boy with a disability.  Their relationship is the most relatable part of Transit.

Franz Rogowski (so good as Boxer in Victoria) has an intensity that pays off in his portrayal of  Georg, who is either escaping or, when he has a moment, seeking.  Beer captures Marie’s  unreliability and fragility; she makes us understand why Georg’s would be so attracted to Marie – and why that might not work out for him.

At some point in Marseilles, Transit lost me.  I still was engaged in the intellectual execise of figuring out the puzzles, but I stopped caring about Georg and Marie.  Christian Petzold’s previous films Barbara and Phoenix prove that he is an exceptional filmmaker. Transit, for all its originality just isn’t Petzold’s best.

THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT: it’s a movie about nanoseconds, but it slows to a muddle

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Salma Hayek and Jesse Eisenberg in THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT

In The Hummingbird Project, two brothers take on Wall Street power in a race to build a fiber-optic cable network from Kansas City to New York City. They plan to take advantage of getting financial data several nanoseconds before everyone else and to become zillionaires. Vincent (Jesse Eisenberg) is the wheeler-dealer and Anton (Alexander Skarsgård) is the technical whiz.  It’s a ridiculously audacious bet, and the movie is about whether they can pull it off.

Their ruthless Wall Street competition is personalized in the character played by Salma Hayek.  Hayek is okay, but she appears to be performing in a different (and better) movie than the other leads.

The Hummingbird Project doesn’t quite work.  Eisenberg is not a stranger to jittery, fast-talking roles.  But here, he accelerates into auctioneer-pacing, and he speaks so quickly that it’s hard to follow.  There’s too much film footage invested in the cable-laying procedural.   And why the hell does Vincent return a THIRD time to visit the Amish farmers in the rainstorm?

There are two good scenes in The Hummingbird Project, both involving Anton.  In one, he decides to physically run away from the FBI and, in the other, he exacts some hacking revenge on the Wall Street baddies.

I saw The Hummingbird Project at Cinequest, and it is now playing in Bay Area theaters.

TRE MAISON DASAN: sins of the father…

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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.

The unwavering and emotionally powerful documentary Tre Maison Dasan was my top pick from the World Premieres at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) – and you can finally watch on TV this weekend.  The title reflects the names of three Rhode Island boys 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.  It’s all about the kids, all of the time – an effective choice by writer-director Denali Tiller In her feature debut.

One of the parents is released from prison early in the film; the other two are going to stay there during critical developmental periods in their children’s lives. Tre, Maison and Dasan are each taking different paths.  One kid is getting wonderful nurturing and guidance from a released parent, and lots of support from the community; we sense that he’s going to be OK.  That’s not the case with all of the kids.

Tiller doesn’t get academic or partisan.  By simply showing the impact on these children of having a parent incarcerated, she gets our attention and sympathy.  Tre Maison Dasan may not be a call to action in itself, but it’s an essential predicate.   PBS is airing Tre Maison Dasan on its Independent Lens series on April 1; you’ll also be able to stream it on PBS.

RICH KIDS: topical, but…

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kids (but not the lead kids) in RICH KIDS

Rich Kids has topicality going for it, as it explores our society’s disparity of wealth.  Matias (Gerardo Velasquez), his brainy crush Vanessa (Michelle Magallon) and their pals are dirt poor teens.  There’s a nearby vacant luxury home, and the kids hop the fence  for a dip in the pool.  The pool party moves inside, and the kids get to experience what to them is fantasy opulence.    Drama ensues.

Unfortunately, Rich Kids wears its  social message on its sleeve.  The dialogue is too obvious and heavy-handed.  Rich Kids becomes a predictable screed.  Most of the actors playing the kids are too old to pass for high school students, and they just aren’t able to elevate the dialogue.

On the other hand, the opening scene pulses with verisimilitude, and the actors who play Matias’ parents  (who I believe are Ricky Catter and Amelia Rico) are really good.

Rich Kids played at Cinequest.

THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE: finally!

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Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce in THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is director Terry Gilliam’s final conquest of the iconic Miguel Cervantes novel. Gilliam has been trying to make this movie for decades, and the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha, which chronicles one disastrous attempt, is a more entertaining movie than this one. Lost in La Mancha can be streamed on Amazon and iTunes.

Adam Driver plays Toby, a film director, in demand for his commercials, who had failed at a Don Quixote film as a young indie director. Now Toby returns to Spain, and tries again with more resources. He finds that the older local man (Jonathan Pryce) in the first film shoot has become deluded that he really is Don Quixote. He also finds that his earlier venture changed the life of a young girl from the village (Joana Ribeiro).

Terry Gilliam is nothing if not imaginative, as demonstrated by his earlier films Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The Zero Theorem). Here he creates thread after thread of deluded quests and braids them together. He captures the combination of absurdity and futile earnestness in the source material.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is witty and well-made, but neither Gilliam’s nor Cervantes’ stories make the film engrossing. I saw The Man Who Killed Don Quixote at the 2019 Cinequest, where it was the closing night film.

SOMETIMES ALWAYS NEVER: wry, deadpan and never frenetic

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Bill Nighy in SOMETIMES ALWAYS NEVER

In the wry and deadpan Bill Nighy vehicle Sometimes Always Never, a father and son make an unwelcome road trip – a pilgrimage to identify a corpse, possibly that of their long-missing son/brother. This often sweet and more often funny film poses a serious question – how does one resolve the unresolvable – a tragedy in the past that is still unexplained? And, in searching obsessively for the Prodigal Son, what about the Other Son?

Writer Frank Cottrell Boyce and director Carl Hunter combine to flesh out Nighy’s character with a lot of singular touches. Nighy’s proper-looking father is an enthusiastic and ruthless Scrabble hustler (who knew THAT was a thing?). And, from some combination of a grief reaction and OCD, he tries to impose order upon his universe with a Label Maker.

The most compelling reason to watch Sometime Always Never is that Bill Nighy is always such a pleasure to watch. Here, he is delightful when he is devious at Scrabble and when he benevolently unblocks his grandson’s courtship. Perhaps one day. iPhones will learn not to autocorrect his name to “Night”.

Hunter’s pacing is most decidedly not frenetic and his color palette is Mid-Century Modern in a contemporary story.

And here’s a random note: I enjoyed seeing the actress Jenny Agutter again, 43 years after she captivated me in Logan’s Run

I saw Sometimes Always Never at Cinequest, where the affable and mischievous Bill Nighy made a personal appearance at the screening.

ORIGINAL SIN: sending up the rich

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ORIGINAL SIN

The Paraguayan sex comedy Original Sin (Pecado Original) is primarily a social satire, sending up the stiffness of Paraguay’s upper class.  A young married couple is trapped by the roles expected of them, and the wife chafes at her life devoid of anything except daytime TV and day-drinking.  The husband is a prig, and has a particular repression that no male audience member will be able to relate to.  The wife MAY have purchased a painting at a charity auction, and the impossibly handsome artist show up to deliver the painting.  Raucous, and fairly predictable, humor ensues.  A duel-by-badminton is pretty funny.

Cinequest hosted the North American premiere of Original Sin.

THE BRA: just your average silent Azerbaijani comedy

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THE BRA

In the charming Azerbaijani-German comedy The Bra, train tracks run through the narrow main street of a remote Azerbaijani village.  The villagers set up cafe tables and hang their laundry across the tracks.  When the daily train arrives, a 10-year-old boy runs up the tracks sounding the alarm, and the villagers scramble to clear the tracks.  Occasionally, the train snags an object or a piece of laundry, which is rescued by the train’s mournful engineer Nurian (Serbian actor Predrag ‘Miki’ Manojlovic). Nurian then hikes from his even more remote home back to the village to return the item.

One day, the train ends up with a blue brassiere. Nurian goes door-to-door, holding up the bra to each woman in the village, hoping to find its owner. Along with many doors slammed in his face, he gets a variety of responses from village women. Of course all this is absurd, and The Bra is a triumph of absurdist humor.

One day, the train ends up with a blue brassiere. Nurian goes door-to-door, holding up the bra to each woman in the village, hoping to find its owner. Along with many doors slammed in his face, he gets a variety of responses from village women. Of course all this is absurd, and The Bra is a triumph of absurdist humor

Subtitles are unnecessary in The Bra because there is no discernible dialogue.  It’s not a silent film – we hear the ambient noises and the human characters mutter and yell, but we can’t distinguish what they are saying.  Like a silent film, the actors convey their feelings by what is essentially pantomime.  And it’s all more naturalistic than it may seem on paper.

The Bra is the work of German director and co-writer Veit Helmer, who has been making films in Central Asisn nations for a decade.  The cast is Central Asian and Pan-European, with some recognizable faces like Denis Lavant from France and Paz Vega from Spain.  The performance by Manojlovic, so filled with humanity, is very special.

The little boy who runs up the tracks is a homeless orphan, cruelly treated by the villagers. The relationship that Nurian builds with the boy is a touching counterpoint to the film’s many comic situations.

Now I need to say that The Wife hated this movie and found it offensive to women; I think this was an aberration caused by her physical discomfort during the screening. I heard women laughing heartily throughout the film and other women told me how much they liked the film, which was, after all, a festival favorite among all genders.

Cinequest hosted the US premiere of The Bra, and was one of the hits of the festival. The Bra won the jury prize for Best Narrative Feature (Comedy) and, when a prime time screening needed to be filled, programmers called on The Bra. Yes, this is an Azerbaijani comedy without any dialogue, but it’s a Must See if you get the chance