Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Hands... cramping... huge... articles... must... conserve strength... for own writing...
Hi Harry,
As a longtime reader of AICN, very occational talkbacker and a regular visitor of the International Film Festival of Rotterdam for some fifteen years now, I thought I might give Elaine a little hand by reporting on some of the movies I've seen at the festival the last few days.
In keeping with the fine tradition on your site of long atmospheric introductions (perfect for people like me, who enjoy wasting a lot of time reading about - well, anything really) I'll start off with some background stuff that is only peripherally related to the actual movies. Feel free to edit stuff out if you think I'm overdoing it. I don't have time to really work it into a very good story, so you're encouraged to trim it if you think that's necessary.
First off, a little crashcourse on working a filmfestival.
Opinion is widely divided on the proper way to select your movies. In a large festival like Rotterdam you have to make difficult choices, since there are usually sixteen different films starting at any given timeslot. There are six timeslots each day, and even though many films are shown more than once, it is inconceivable that you can get close to seeing them all. Six films a day is possible, but my festival-companion and I have found that five is really the maximum that is sustainable for a larger number of days.
So, if you are able to stay for the full ten days you will see a maximum of about fifty films. Many people I meet at the festival aim for that goal. These people are easily recognised: they have a vacant look in their eyes, avoid eye-contact with strangers, and storm out of each screening to hurry to the next one. During their scarce moments of rest they pour over the program schedule to fine-tune their selections, trying to squeeze a small retrospective of experimental video art from Bolivia in a small opening between an old Guy Maddin movie and a German horrorflick about the Antman, set in Mexico (but more on that one later).
For the serious filmbuff it is a logistical nightmare. Novices frequently make the mistake of not taking the travel time between the locations into account. Everything in Rotterdam is within walking-distance, but a walk can occationally take fifteen minutes or so, which has to be taken into consideration when preparing your personal schedule. These facts alone make certain combinations difficult or even impossible. Also, some of the most interesting films are well sought after by the public and are often sold out. Hunting for that elusive ticket for that new Miike Takashi film can be a very frustrating affair. All this, however, is not a setback, but a wonderful opportunity.
Over the years my friend and I have adopted a Zen-approach to working the festival. I write this to share the obvious wisdom of that approach to all prospective festival attendees. I proudly present the Zen-rules of festival viewing:
1 DON'T PREPARE I. Only start consulting the program schedule at the first day you attend the festival. Elaborate planning and ordering tickets in advance may get you into more of the 'better' movies, but this takes away a lot of the surprise. Also, the really good stuff will usually be in normal circulation in the arthouses later in the year anyway. You want to find the weird stuff that will never be seen on a moviescreen again. This means that some of the stuff you see is crap, but the line between brilliant and crap blurs when you see five movies a day, so that's perfectly all right.
2 DON'T PREPARE II. Only read the brief (20 words or less) description of the movie to make your selection. Don't read elaborate reviews. This again will only spoil the surprise.
3 KNOW YOUR KEYWORDS. In order to correctly interpret the brief descriptions, you only need to pay attention to certain key words and know their meaning. A few examples:
EXPERIMENTAL: the filmmaker had no intention of making a coherent movie. He or she just started shooting without a decent script. Could still be fun, though.
THOUGHTFUL: the movie is incredibly slow. I may still be a good film, but 'thoughtful' in combination with certain subject matter should set off some alarm-bells, especially when the running time is very long. A 'thoughtful' three-hour film about Iranian burial-rituals is quite a challenge, as I know from personal experience.
PERSONAL: the filmmaker has issues about with his past. Rather than working them out with his psychiatrist he or she chose to deal with them by making a movie. Could still be good, but it depends on the nature of the issues he's dealing with.
4 NEVER LEAVE A SCREENING. You chose it, now deal with it. The Zen-approach means that you will see a lot of awful stuff. That's perfectly fine (see rule number 1). In fifteen years I have only left two screenings before the end, one this year (but more on that one later), and I still feel guilty for twice breaking rule no. 4.
5 MAKE A WORLD TRIP. One of the fun things of an international film festival is being able to see cinema from all over the world. Try to get in as many different countries as possible. This also safeguards you against over-exposure to specific cultural idiosyncrasies; there is only so much French, Indian, Dutch, Taiwanese stuff you can absorb in a single day. However, if you switch between countries often enough the experience will remain fresh and appealing. And you may actually learn something about other places. Among the unexpected discoveries I have made are: Germans and Austrians can make very funny comedies, and 'lightharted' in Asian movies can still mean that everybody dies in the end.
6 AVOID DUTCH SHORTS. This rule perhaps applies uniquely to the Rotterdam festival, which is, after all, a Dutch festival. This evidently means that the threshold for qualifying for screening is slightly lower for Dutch entries, with results in collections of short films that are usually abysmal in quality. For general use, the rule should perhaps be 'avoid domestic shorts'. Unless, of course, you enjoy watching an incomprehensible collage of amateur video, accompanied live by the auteur with musical instruments he has barely mastered whilst frequently apologizing for the out-of-focus footage.
These six simple rules ensure your enjoyment of the festival, without much of the headaches that go with serious planning.
Finally, I will briefly (ridiculously briefly, considering the introduction) go through some of the films I've seen. Some are premieres, some are older films that are part of a retrospective, like the first one, Careful (1991).
Careful
Shot to look like a movie from the 1920's (including scratches and jumps) it is the story about a mountain village that lives in perpetual silence for fear of avalanches. Most men in the village seem to attend the local butler school, hoping to one day enter in the service of 'the count' in his castle. In the end everybody dies. Consistently executed and with a strangely engaging story it almost manages to remain interesting until the end. I wouldn't have been heartbroken if it had been a half hour shorter.
Far From Heaven
The opening film of the festival is billed as a hommage to the Douglas Sirk films of the sixties, and it looks like it's right out of the period, shot in Technicolor and all. But the story of Dennis Quaid as the succesful father and businessman who discovers he is homosexual and his wife who almost starts an impossible affair with her black gardener could not have been made at that time. Well made and acted, but not the sort of weird surprise you may expect to find while randomly selecting movies at an international filmfestival.
Cinemania
When you're watching five films a day at a moviefestival, Cinemania is like a mirror showing your own reflection. Several serious moviefreaks from New York are followed as they do little else then watching movies all their lives. These people have fallen victim to their love for the cinema. Nothing else matters. They live in run-down appartments, are barely able to take care of themselves, but they see a lot of films. Full of hilarious anecdotes told by the maniacs themselves and the people working in the cinema's they attend. A truly wonderful documentary.
Blue Moon
This is an Easter European roadmovie. At the opening of the film we see a Eastern European gangster accompanied by what appears to be a call-girl. They are waiting in an Austrian car-park for their contact to finish some shady deal. The Austrian contact apparantly didn't bring enough money and the gangster gets very upset and the poor Austrian's life hangs in the balance. Fortunately the call-girl comes to his rescue. She sprays tear-gas in the gangsters' face and the Austrian and the girl escape in the gangsters' car. Trying to sell the car they travel all over Eastern Europe, get separated, and the Austrian runs into a german shoe-salesman, who sells the gangster-car. The Austrian looks for the girl, but succeeds only in finding her twin-sister with whom he starts a relationship. But that turns out to be just the beginning. Good roadmovie, well acted.
Planet B: The Antman
This German attempt at making a B-horrormovie fails becaus it is trying to be parody of the genre, but tries too hard. It is quite beautifully photographed, and this works against the light-hearted tone of the movie. Set in Mexico and spoken in German, it is like you watch a weird translated horror-version of El Mariachi. That is just too much. It's not funny, it's just weird. And the leading girl who is the 'damsel in distress' looks scary rather then sexy, which doesn't help either. Cute soundtrack, though.
Divine Intervention
This Palestinian (I think) movie was announced by one of the festival people as a masterpiece. That introduction made it very hard for me to take it seriously. Why proclaim something that should just speak for itself? Perhaps she was just over-enthousiastic.
It was a decent film, but in no way a masterpiece. The lovestory about an (I think) Israeli guy and a Palestinian girl consisted of them meeting every day at a military checkpoint. During these encounters they merely sat in a car holding hands. The guy was so unappealing and the girl so attractive that the only reason for her liking him would have to be something about his behaviour or intellect, but he exhibited none of either. He just sat there with his fishy eyes. Several funny scenes, though, but they seemed rather haphazardly combined into a semi-profound collage. Won the jury prize at Cannes, so I probably just don't know what I'm talking about. The firing-squad ballet of Israeli policemen with the ninja palestinian freedomfighter at the end, however, was worth the price of admission. And the free Yasser Arafat-balloon that was handed out at the exit.
1/2 miete
Proof that Germans have a subtle sense of humor is often shown in films at the Rotterdam festival. This film, about a hacker on the run form the authorities also proves that point. The hacker is not only on the run because he stole and tries to sell valuable information, but also because he is suspected of being involved in the drowning of his girlfriend in his bath-tub. He is innocent of the latter - she died from an overdose of some medicin she was addicted to. While on the run with just a pack of cash, a laptop and his skateboard he gets hit by a car driven by a girl. Not seriously hurt he merely checks if his laptop still works and takes off, leaving his skateboard behind. Later he returns to her street and starts to follow her. At the same time he starts looking for a place to lay low for a while. He gains access to several houses in the street where she lives. One appartment turns out to be used as an office by a middle-aged script-writer who, surprisingly, doesn't call the cops but allows him to stay at his office during the night, provided he leaves in the morning. During the day he finds refuge in another appartment. When he is inevitably found out by the owner he is beaten up, but somehow it is made plausible that even that man turns out to allow him to stay during the day. He ends up playing chess with the lonely man and helping the script-writer with his work. Somewhere down the line he decides that he wants nothing to do with his previous criminal lifestyle and gets rid of the laptop. Then he starts to stalk the girl. He enters her appartment and finds she has kept his skateboard. He leaves clues of him having been in her appartment. Again surprisingly, but somehow made plausible again, she is amused by the stranger who leaves mysterious notes during the day and they start communicating with notes and puzzles. In the end everything turns out fairy-tale fine. Charming film.
Circling Zero: Part One, We See Absence
A homevideo record of the aftermath of the destruction of the WTC twin towers. The second time in fifteen years of festival attendance that I have left a screening before the film was finished. There was absolutely no point in watching this, unless you are family of the maker, Ken Jacobs. Incredibly poor amateur camerawork, constantly shaking, induced a headache after half an hour, but went on 110 minutes. Apparently he tried to give a personal view of what happened to him and his surroundings after the disaster. There was nothing there we hadn't seen a million times before: the streets, the despair, the mess, the notes everywhere of missing people, the applause for the firemen as they passed by, the bonding of the people in the streets. All very relevant, but it has been done a million times allready, and usually much better filmed.
The film was preceded by a short of the same filmmaker that was so pretentious that it could almost have been a Dutch short.
Chatte a deux tetes
French movie tells the story of a day in the life of a porn cinema. We get to know the lady who sells the tickets, the young boy who is the projectionist and, of course, the people who attend the screenings. Wonderful stuff: the way the guys enter the dark theatre and then routinely check the seat with the light of a cigarette-lighter to check for wet spots before sitting down, the transvestites who constantly try to seduce the men to let them suck of their cocks, the fact that many men actually agree to that - not because they are necessarily gay, but because they have become indifferent about their sexuality; sex is sex and I don't care how I get it. It's not likely to get a large theatrical release, because the blow jobs are very explicitly filmed, including the cum-shots. A very strange film, but very, very interesting to see.
Deadly Outlaw: Rekka
Typical Takashi-fair. Violent, funny and clever. Like an Asian Pulp Fiction on Acid. Yeah, that's it: Asian Pulp Ficion on Acid. Go see it.
Choses Secretes
There is nothing I can say about this movie that Alexandra DuPont (sp?) hasn't already said. It's clever, funny, slighty over-intellectual (hey - it's french!) and very, very sexy. Alexandra made a reference to Kubricks 'Eyes wide shut', and on leaving the theatre I said to my companion that this was the movie that Kubrick was trying to make. It's not really true, of course. But it is the movie I hoped Eyes Wide Shut would be.
That's about it for now, the rest of the twenty movies I saw didn't merit a review. My festival days are, alas, over now. I have gone back to work in my lovely city of Amsterdam.
Should you choose to publish this rather lengthy and shabbily written account, call me: Berend, since that is, after all, my name.
Excellent work, man, and for those of you who are going to bag on Berend’s spelling, get back to me when you’re multi-lingual and writing reviews for a foreign publication.
"Moriarty" out.
