Hey folks, Harry here... There exists a festival programmer on this planet of remarkably astounding beauty and that so exudes an excess of powerful pheromones that both sexes find him absolutely delish to swish. I am, of course, talking about the man that embodies depravity and sex... Ant Timpson. To know Ant, is to live in complete furor over your personal place in the sad side of the genome project. For Ant is the next evolution of mankind... Like Zombies and Vampires and Christine Jorgensen and those Bastards that landed, Ant Timpson is more than just a magnificent Carny attraction gone right... He's the future of our society, if we pray every single night. And right now he's bestowing his blessed higher understanding of all things upon a lucky fucking audience in Auckland. At a Film Festival that he actually talked a beer into sponsoring... And that quite honestly is truthfully named the INCREDIBLE FILM FESTIVAL. And you suck, I suck and everyone that isn't there sucks... Those in attendance... They Rule, and we hates them for that. But that's ok, it isn't like Ant Timpson and those folks will be at the Alamo Drafthouse's Drive In Double Bill of FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL and SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS at an actual Drive In, with the original Pussycats from Russ Meyer's classic.... And two badass bands... Ummm, yeah, we rule Ant, don't you forget it. Ahem....
Good Evening (or whatever time it happens that you happen to be reading this). I have an assortment of reviews from films playing at Ant Timpson's Incredible Film Festival here in Auckland, New Zealand.
I shan't give the usual rant of 'Long time reader, first time
contributor.' That would just be silly. Not that I'm silly, but that is
another matter entirely.
The Happiness of the Katakuri's
Takashi Miike, whose 'Audition' played at the IFF last year, returns to the Film Festival with two new films, 'Visitor Q' (of which a review shall shortly follow) and 'Happiness of the Katakuri's', a film that is aptly described as an horror-comedy-musical-drama.
HoK (as I now wish it to be called) is a film about death, and, as to be expected from the director who brought us the 'Deeper, deeper, deeper...' scene in 'Audition,' it is a morbid view not only of how death affects people but of how death can interrupt the calm living of a family.
The premise of the film is simple; Father Katakuri, after being fired from a department store, sets up a guest house in the middle of nowhere with his wife, unmarried daughter (replete with the narrator of the film, a six (I am presuming) year old girl, a son who is an ex-con and a grandfather who is an expect in hitting flying birds with well-aimed pieces of two-by-four. Not that the setup is obvious; the first five minutes of the film seems like a disturbing rendition of the opening credits of 'Brain Donors.'
The film is plotless in the respect that it is a collection of increasingly unfortunate events that leads to a kind of conclusion that makes you think of the beginning of the 'Sound of Music', but, due to the virtue of not needing to appeal to a strict structure the film develops its characters well. Of all the family the son is the best drawn in regard to actual development; the father, though, is the character you will most sympathise with, even if he is, in part, responsible for a major source of the family's worry come the latter half of the film.
The film keeps its boundaries quite closed; the drama focuses on the relationship of the son to the rest of the family, the horror focuses upon the fate of the Katakuri's guests and the comedy proper is the relationship between Richard 'I work for the US Airforce; to be precise, the British Royal Navy' Sagawa and the Katakuri's daughter. That which bridges these strands are the song and dance numbers.
I'm no expect in Japanese music, and I can't read or speak a bit of the language, so I cannot say whether it is sung well, or whether the music sounds particularly impressive for a Japanese musical. The lyrics, though, as fun, they are great and often quite fantastic. From a piece about the discovery of a corpse to love songs where people literally fly from place to place, the songs add to the building atmosphere of the film in their own way. Takashi Miike makes each song fit the mood of the strand; the musical horror, while possibly a little melodramatic, looks and feel like horror (those of us lucky enough to have seen the staged musical version of Peter Jackson's 'Brain Dead' (aka 'Dead Alive' in the States will appreciate how this can work).
One fault I do have with the film is that it seems just a little long in
the middle, with too much happening that seems like a repetition of what
has gone before. It picks up (notably in the musical sequences) from time
to time, and the last quarter is just brilliant, making you temporarily
forgive the film its previous indulgence. That, the fact that the print we
watched was a little blurry (it looked like a DVD being projected on to a
large screen), though, ends up being a minor point. 'Happiness of the
Katakuri's' is a grand film that doesn't answer many of its own questions,
but it isn't meant to. It's a few days in th life of a unique family, and
damn, damn fun.
The Bully
There are some films that work so well you might never want to see them again. 'The Bully' may well be one of them, a tortured, anxious journey to murder by an alarming increasing Florida cast.
Larry Clark creates, from a true story (apparently, although even I, brought up on an Antipodean distrust of the American education system, cannot believe people could ever be that stupid), a tale of one man's repression and how it is dealt with. It's evocative; at no point do you ever feel out of touch with the characters; in fact, often you feel you understand only too well what they are doing, along with the understanding that this cannot end well.
Marty has been bullied by his 'best' friend Bobby since the day they were born; it is, and always has been, the way of things. They share everything, or at least, Bobby shares all that Marty has, but things begin to change when one of Bobby's casual flings introduces her friend, Lisa, to the submissive Marty. Lisa, played by Rachel Miner (a delightful redhead), becomes increasingly aware of Bobby's control over Marty, something she decides to break by inviting her friends (and their hanger-ons) to kill the Bully. Things, though, have been going wrong since well before that point.
To say anything more about the plot would be to give away some of the best (yet utterly disturbing) comedy of recent note. What can be said, safely, though, is something about the mood of the film. Larry Clark draws an image of Florida as a place of little hope, where a B average seems like a startling good grade and where owning a stereo shop is as good as it is going to get. The kids smoke dope and drop out of school and all the parents' can do is scowl. It looks like an idyllic paradise, but it is the pointless world of the Eloi, where the Morlocks rise with every word of dissent.
Each character has their own peculiar motivation for their actions and it is true to say that, as characters, the principles do not change. Marty, bullied by Bobby for his entire life, effectively swaps one bully for another in the shape of Lisa, never escaping his fate as a puppet, something made all the more tragic by the ending of the film. The part of Marty is perhaps the less well drawn, or the most normal (depending on your point of view). He seems to live, at least a little, in the real world outside of Florida, while Marty, Lisa and her friends are so much a part of the world of this film that you wonder what Marty could have done if he had grown up elsewhere.
'The Bully' is not the best film I have seen this year (that accolade goes
the wonderful 'Gloomy Sunday') but it certainly one of the best of recent
note, not because of its plot, or even its characters but, instead, for the
sense of anxiety it creates as it moves, slowly, towards the act of murder
and the frustration and sense of hopelessness the characters give the
audience afterwards. I spent near two hours in Florida that night, and for
a few moments I knew a new kind of malaise. Such a sense of evocation is
good reason to see any film. See this one.
The Experiment
There is a reason why psychologists don't perform certain experiments; 'Das Experiment' is a film based upon some degree of fact. The setup is simple; take a group of willing men and simulate a prison. Some of the men are inmates, some are guards and each group has to take it completely seriously. Lock them away for fourteen days and see what happens.
The Experiment is the tale, nominally, of one of these men, a prisoner, who is playing and being played. Tarek, for reasons never specified, left his previous employment as a journalist two years ago under the excuse of stress. He answers an ad in the paper to take part in an test situation for a remarkably good amount of money. He takes the role, knowing that it will make a good story, especially if he exacerbates the situation. Unbeknownst to him, the Project Director has singled him out as a major focal point of the experiment and wants him to clash with the guard Berus, someone who quickly takes control of the prisoners with a touch too much gusto. The rest, well, if you can't imagine it the film will provide the imagery for you.
The Experiment is a taught film, building its pressure and sense of unease slowly, making you realise with grim fascination what is likely to happen next. It walks a fine line between sympathy for the prisoners and a sympathy for the guards; the former are oppressed, the latter are being used by both Tarek (for the sake of a story) and the project directors (for the sake of an experiment the Army are interested in). Characters do not evolve as such; aspects of their personalities simply become more evident. This is a story based upon real events (and then spiced up for the box office) and it feels very real, for the most part. It is a tale of the loss of individual identity, a tale about the worse excesses of power possible and it is a tale about normal people. That the latter category is pre-eminent throughout the nature of the film works most in its favour.
'The Experiment' looks good; the sets are well designed in that, when you think about them, they look cramped yet obviously have space for roving camera crews and operators. The use of lighting and the use of costuming rob the prisoners of their visual identity to the extent that when Tarek starts using peoples' names rather than their numbers it is startling. It is a cold world that this film creates, and not just for the prisoners.
The narrative isn't perfect, however. The situation between the guards and prisoners works well; the relationship between the project directors seems a little clichéd, with one director having issues with the project that her superior will not hear or act upon. Having read up on the Stanford Prisoner Experiment (upon which this is based, by way of a book based on the actual events) it would have been more interesting to have had the military subplot stripped away and have the project directors descend into a madness where they did truly believe, for a time, that they were running a prison. Allow the audience to be the armchair psychologists for the duration.
Another issue is the 'girlfriend' that Tarek obtains a few days prior to entering the experiment; after a one night stand a relationship seems to form between the two of them based entirely upon dreams they have of one another. It is almost as if they want to suggest a psychic link between the two of them, but this is never really mentioned and her actions for Tarek seem remarkably hasty for a man she has known less than a week. This is movieland, I realise, but even so I would like a somewhat more concrete reason other than sympathy sex.
'The Experiment,' just because of the film festival, stands in comparison
to last years German thriller offering, 'Anatomie.' I prefer 'The
Experiment' since it keeps its tensions high throughout, something the
third quarter of 'Anatomie' failed to do, in my opinion. As I really like
'Anatomie' I really, really like 'The Experiment.' It may not be perfect,
but as a film experience it really does get you to wring your hands in
frustration and make you dread the inevitable outcome. See it.
Possible Worlds
The last Canadian film I saw was 'Cube,' so I was somewhat curious as to what kind of film 'Possible Worlds' would be. Now, near a day later, I'm stuck between two views. One is that the film is very clever and beautifully shot, the other is that the film is beautifully shot and has a clumsy yet promising narrative that settles for a conclusion that is unsatisfying.
'Possible Worlds' starts with the murder of George Sanders and then proceeds, seemingly, to jump back to a series of events prior to his death, which is being investigated by two police detectives of the 'old and wise' and 'young and stupid' variety.
The film soon reveals that George is existing simultaneously in a variety of possible worlds where his beloved Joyce is a different person. George is fully aware of his shifting from one world to another and has embraced his travelling existence; Joyce is unaware of her other selves.
Meanwhile, the dedectives are investigating a spate of deaths, of which George is a victim, where the murderer then steals the brain of the victim, seemingly without leaving telltale abrasion in the act. Throw in references to flying saucers and a man who freezes to death in a non-functioning freezer and the film takes on a Coen-like air. But is it clever?
Much of the interesting material about the conception of possible worlds in which George moves freely is lost in the films conclusion, instead raising a sequence of other questions, questions to which no real answers are given, although some hint as to what it all means could be taken from the film. And here I have issue; it is not clear whether I am taking the gentle hints of the director at an answer or simply providing a linking narrative to a series of unrelated events. If it is the former then the film is a very clever discourse on identity and our relationship to the world; if the latter is true then a film with much promise has failed to satisfy. It would mean that some of the points made early in the film (the lack of imagination in the younger detective, the strange way in which the brains are removed from the bodies and so forth) are answerless in a way that makes them so irrelevant, as if they simply there to try and make you think the film is cleverer that it really is.
(A small note: Last year as the festival I saw 'Open Your Eyes' and hated the conclusion, for the sheer fact that it seemed so obvious and so determined early on that the last half of the film seemed an utter waste. Queue early this year when I saw 'Vanilla Sky' just to see what Cameron Crowe could do with the material. 'Vanilla Sky' is so similar to 'Open Your Eyes' that I was surprised to find that I enjoyed it immensely; once I knew properly what was going on from the first scene I was able to appreciate not the narrative but the overarching nature of the character development. Watching 'Vanilla Sky' made me revise my opinion of 'Open Your Eyes,' and I believe that a second viewing of 'Possible Worlds' could well make me appreciate it more...)
No matter the truth of the nature of the story I can say that this is a beautifully shot film. In some respects it feels like a play (which I now discover it is based upon) given an epic budget to be transferred to film. Most of the film, in regard to George, is conveyed in dialogue; sometimes the words carry so much that you do not notice the precise and clean shots the director is carrying out around his characters in beautifully stark sets. The camera hardly ever seems to cut to characters; it moves towards, almost echoing the kind of movement an observer might take to a series of events they are only indirectly involved in. And when you notice the camera work it impresses, especially in the few special effects shots used sparsely throughout the film.
There is a consistent use of water imagery in the film that echoes the use of the ambient sound. The director gives an sense of space to his sets not only in his composition of shots but also in the sound, or lack thereof. I can honestly say that I remember no incidental use of music in this film, but I do remember the quiet use of waves crashing onto a nearby shore. When music is used it acts as a audial special effect, often taking the place of a visual effect that would have lessen the psychological impact of what is going on around, and through, George.
As a piece of celluloid 'Possible Worlds' is a beauty to behold; as a story I am uncertain to its merit, although the process of this review has made me think that it may well be as clever as I thought was and definitely deserves a repeat viewing to make sure. Another film that may not beat 'Gloomy Sunday' but has left me thinking over the issues within.
That's all for now.
Hieronymus Oliphant Ransome
