Hey folks, Harry here with another report as Harold Hellman passes the half way mark on this year's SEATTLE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL... I'm very curious to see this first film, WILD FLOWERS as his parallel to Neil Jordan's THE COMPANY OF WOLVES has me a bit excited as I am really quite fond of that film. Here's Harold...
WILD FLOWERS - written by F.A. Brabec, Deana Jakubiskov·-Horv·thov·, and Milos Macourek, based on the stories by Karel JaromÃŒr Erben; directed by F.A. Brabec
Once upon a time, there was a sweet young woman who stumbled into the lake behind her house, and discovered a handsome water sprite. They fell in love, of course, and produced a beautiful baby. When the girl grew lonely for the mother she left behind, she begged the water spirit for leave to visit; he agreed, but set a dangerous penalty if she failed to return.
This is the first of seven stories in "Wild Flowers," from Czech director F.A. Brabec, a movie that can best be described as a collection of fairy tales for grownups. The film takes these superficially romantic stories -- which while originally and specifically from Eastern Europe are certainly classic legends that will be recognized in their broad strokes by almost everybody -- and treats them with an adult sensibility. They're still fairy tales, with a dreamlike, otherworldly feel, but the darker elements, the violent and sexual themes particularly, aren't soft-pedaled the way they would be in a child's nursery room. A good comparison can be made to Neil Jordan's 1984 film "The Company of Wolves," but "Wild Flowers" isn't quite as explicitly Freudian in its approach.
The stories are told mostly visually, with limited dialogue. This works pretty well, as the cinematography is breathtakingly gorgeous; these are images you can drown in. One shot of an endless field of impossibly golden wheat, for example, drew an audible murmur from the audience. And while there is spoken dialogue, it's highly stylized, taking the form of verse couplets. (My compliments to whomever had the thankless task of figuring out the rhyming English subtitles.) There's also a wonderfully textured and highly varied musical score, by Jan Jir·sek.
The stories vary considerably in length, and while some of them end happily, some have a tragic finale (it all depends on who dies). Some of the tales are humorous; some are very dark indeed. Some of the stories, it should be said, work better than others, as there's a fair amount of melodramatic overplaying that gets old fast (I guarantee you'll be tired of all the giggling and cackling by the end of the film). That's okay, because if one story isn't working for you, another will be along in a few minutes to take its place. A possibly more significant failing is that, with the film made up of discrete vignettes, there isn't really a climax. It's true that there's a seasonal progression (the last tale happens in winter), and that the characters' dilemmas get less supernatural and more earthbound toward the end, but the film is still basically structured as a list.
As far as the experience of watching the movie, I would compare it to Latin American "magic realism," with its use of supernatural spirits and spells to tell short self-contained moral fables. Sometimes sweet, sometimes sad, "Wild Flowers" is an interesting and beautifully filmed -- if somewhat flawed -- journey deep into a region's mythology.
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LIBERTY STANDS STILL - written and directed by Kari
Skogland
"My intention," said writer-director Kari Skogland as she introduced her new film "Liberty Stands Still," "was to start a discussion, to let a debate play out before your eyes." Well, I hate to break it to her, but there's no debate here -- only a shrill, obvious diatribe that will convert nobody, entertain few, and irritate many.
"Liberty Stands Still" is really two movies crammed into one, and one of the annoying things about it is that one of the two movies is actually pretty good, so you can't just dismiss the whole. As a gritty, fast-paced action-suspense flick, "Liberty Stands Still" is fairly effective. The basic premise may or may not be borrowed from the much-delayed "Phone Booth" (whose script, by B-movie vet Larry Cohen, circulated Hollywood for years before Joel Schumacher finally directed it with Colin Farrell in the lead), but the comparison is superficial; Skogland has other things on her mind.
In a nutshell: Liberty Wallace (Linda Fiorentino), wife of Victor (Oliver Platt), is on the way to an assignation with lover Russell (Martin Cummins) when she gets a call on her cell phone. The mysterious stranger, calling himself Joe (Wesley Snipes), explains he has her in the sights of a high-powered sniper rifle, and orders her to chain herself to a nearby hot-dog cart, which contains a bomb. "A really big bomb," says Joe helpfully. Under duress, Liberty complies, and as she talks to Joe to draw out his motivation, she tries to attract attention and assistance from passersby without Joe's noticing. Eventually, Victor finds out, the police descend, and Joe's reasons become clear -- and the film spirals towards its high-energy climax.
As long as this is all the movie is doing, it actually works fairly well. Despite the static scenario, Skogland manages to hold our interest and create a sense of urgency, employing visually stimulating camerawork and editing and a nearly wall-to-wall percussive techno score by Michael Convertino. She draws good performances out of her cast; Fiorentino starts with her patented ice queen routine, but delves much deeper than usual, while Platt finds interesting ways to humanize the husband, who might otherwise have been a shallow corporate shark. Snipes, on the other hand, doesn't provide much variety, playing Joe basically as someone who deals with being deeply wounded by turning cold and stoic. He's good, but not outstanding; he brings nothing extra to an unchallenging role.
But, unfortunately, "Liberty Stands Still" isn't just a thriller -- it also desperately wants to be an Important Movie. The opening image of the film is a shot of the United States Constitution, while feedback howls on the soundtrack; the opening credits (which I'll admit are quite stylish) are underlaid with the text of the Second Amendment. Liberty and Victor, you see, are the co-heads of a major firearms manufacturer, and Joe wants to demonstrate to Liberty that her chosen vocation has an unavoidable social impact. At one point, for example, he specifically tells Liberty that the sniper rifle pointed at her is, in fact, made by her company.
Skogland is obviously passionate about this issue, but that seriously gets in the way of her ability to tell an actual story. Joe and Liberty go back and forth on the morality of her work; this could have been interesting and valuable, but Skogland loads the deck so heavily against the gun industry as to make the arguments laughable. The result is ham-fisted, obnoxious, and one-sided to a ridiculous degree. And I don't say this because I have an opposing opinion; I tend to a liberal philosophy, and I take a dim view of the gun culture in the United States, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to tolerate a heavy-handed simplification of an extremely complicated situation just to score a few hollow points. In much the way thinking conservatives are embarrassed by Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, and the other loonies on their side of the aisle, I found myself seriously annoyed by Skogland's defiant refusal to mention or even acknowledge the complexities of the gun issue. (The overly cute title, for example, is not an accidental pun.) She's not just preaching to the choir, she's preaching to other preachers, and it rapidly becomes very, very tiresome.
And because of this, we slowly disengage from the competent and well-handled thriller, because we start realizing that every time we allow ourselves to surrender to it, we'll get slapped back out again by another moment of shallow grandstanding (at least, those of us who aren't already members of Skogland's self-righteous choir). It's too bad, because Skogland demonstrates an extremely sure hand with the film's technical elements, and shows that, with the right material, she'd be capable of producing quite an adrenaline rush. I hate saying this, but if this kind of simple-minded agitprop is what Skogland generates when she sits down at the word processor, then she really ought to work from other people's scripts for a while.
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