Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I love the Seattle Film Festival, and I’ve never been there. I love the programming, and I love that we’ve got tons of people up there who write in each year with some outstanding coverage, including Harold Hellman, who we’re pleased to welcome back this year:
Hi, guys, Harold Hellman here, sending in as I have the last couple of years as many reviews of the dozens of movies I'll be seeing as my tired brain can produce. Note, that won't include the Heroic Grace movies, since your contributor Mark Pollard is doing such a good job covering those. Enjoy!
MEKHONG FULL MOON PARTY - Thailand - written and directed by Jira Maligool
Within the first five minutes of "Mekhong Full Moon Party," you know pretty much what it's going to be about. While it's not an original theme, the movie does manage to make a few unpredictable choices along the way. In the end, it winds up being somewhat better than you'd expect, though it's not as good as it should have been.
As the purportedly-based-on-truth story gets going, we are introduced to a full-moon festival in a river town in Thailand which has been recently growing in popularity due to a strange and beautiful phenomenon: mysterious spheres of burning light that, on a particular holy day, rise from the river and into the sky. The townspeople argue about what might be causing the display, vacillating between the naturalistic explanations offered by visiting scientists and the supernatural tales spun by the monks across the river about giant serpent deities (the "naga").
So right away, the film's intent is clear: it's going to look at the tension between science and superstition, and the conflict between the desire to explain something based on rational facts and the wish to believe in magic despite the absence of proof just because it's emotionally satisfying. Normally, movies of this type take one of two approaches: Either they're angry and cynical, attempting to reveal religious authorities as faithlessly corrupt manipulators of the gullible masses, or they're sentimental glurge, trying to use the idea that science doesn't know everything to support the existence of clairvoyance or leprechauns or whatever. (The latter position has wide popular appeal; consider how the ostensibly science-based Discovery channels beef up their ratings with depressing schlock about pet psychics and the "face" on Mars.)
But what's surprising about "Mekhong Full Moon Party" is how carefully it threads a course between the two extremes. Writer/director Jira Maligool knows very clearly what the film is about, and takes time to explore the theme as a backdrop to the main story. The town is still very traditional, despite the adoption of certain modern innovations, and we see a number of superstitious beliefs played out, from a technique for coping with too-spicy food to a trick to keep a dog from crapping in your yard. One grandmotherly character, for example, is just bursting with oddball folk remedies; whenever someone complains of an ailment around her, she's immediately reaching into her cupboard for salt to lick or ordering the sufferer to rub rainwater on his head. The film, to its credit, is sometimes surprisingly thoughtful about its theme, showing most of the superstitions to be unsupportable bunk that have held on more from wishful inertia than anything else. And the scientists, while fallible and sometimes foolish, have a lot better idea of how to think about and analyze the mysterious fireballs than anyone else in town. But even while not rejecting the ideas of modern science as a lesser film in this genre might, "Mekhong Full Moon Party" manages to leave a little room for people who still feel like they need to believe in magic.
Unfortunately, while the movie aspires to and achieves this fine balance, and while there are many individually fun and interesting moments, the film as a whole doesn't work very well, for a variety of reasons. There are too many characters, for one thing, leading to a sometimes unfocused point of view. The story also spins its wheels through a lot of the middle third, going down a number of blind alleys and spending too much time on material that relates to the theme but doesn't advance the plot (e.g., a scene in which a group of men sits around a fire telling spooky stories). As a result, the movie feels like it's about twenty minutes too long, which for something this lightweight is pretty deadly.
And worse, the movie's attempts at comedy, while copious, are frequently clumsy and mistimed. This is a little surprising, given that Maligool's previous movie is the very funny, if stereotypical, "Iron Ladies," about the real-life champion cross-dressing volleyball team. It's as if Maligool doesn't know how to get laughs if the characters aren't cartoons; while the overall movie represents a jump in filmmaking maturity, a lot of the comedy just falls flat. Consider, for example, a bit where a local girl shows a doctor/scientist a simple (though suspect) trick to separate male birds from females, which gives him the idea to apply the same technique to a perplexing human patient. As jokes go, it's pretty dumb, but if the timing and delivery had been improved it could have been a lot funnier than it is.
That's too bad, because the movie is usually fun to look at, sometimes strikingly so, as in a sequence in which ancient temple paintings come to animated life to provide some history on the naga. The cast of supporting characters is amusing, too, especially a loose-cannon headmaster who hates the notion that the fireballs should be evaluated and explained naturalistically, and who can't understand why he keeps getting in trouble for obstructing the scientists' efforts. "Mekhong Full Moon Party" has most of the ingredients for a successful film, but their assembly leaves something to be desired.
CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS - U.S. - documentary, directed by Andrew Jarecki
I'm coming to a realization about documentaries. The older I get, and the more of them I see, the more I find that I have a strong preference for films in which it's clear the documentarian didn't know entirely what to expect when beginning work on the subject. This is something of a paradox, of course, because the filmmaker needs to know in advance that there's something worth exploring before he or she can commit to the film. But if the documentarian is not just aware of what's interesting about the subject but also already has a preconception of what he or she expects to see and hear and, worse, how the material will likely be organized and presented when it's done, I generally find the resulting film winds up not as a rich exploration of the true complexities of human life, which is what documentaries at their best do better than fiction, but rather as an agenda-driven statement of the filmmaker's existing biases and beliefs, which is sometimes worthwhile but is more often limited, simplistic, and irritating.
For comparison, consider a couple of documentaries where it's obvious the filmmakers knew they'd found a fascinating topic but didn't try to preconceive or impose any decisions in advance, and were therefore free to capture anything they came across. First, there's "Hands on a Hardbody," about a car-dealership contest to win a truck merely by standing with your hand on it longer than any of the other competitors. Because of the nature of the event, there's built-in uncertainty and suspense about who's going to win, but clearly the filmmakers didn't expect the returning champion to be such a font of scabrous wit or the actual contest to be as compellingly grueling as it is, and the finished film has a lot more to say about how one engages with life than simply how to win a truck. And Errol Morris, in the masterful "Gates of Heaven," was obviously intrigued by the very strange phenomenon of pet cemetaries, but his willingness to be surprised by what people would say and do in front of the camera is what gives him tremendous latitude in the editing stage to assemble a stunningly resonant cross-section of the human soul.
By contrast, look at Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine," which while undeniably entertaining comes off as somewhat deficient in its perceptions, because it seems evident that, for the most part, Moore had packed most of his conceptual bags before he even started. While the film occasionally surprises us with its presentation, it rarely surprises us with its insight (the comparison of American and Canadian newscasts excluded), because, with one exception, it never seems to have surprised Moore himself. That exception is the scene wherein K-Mart unexpectedly caves to Moore's grandstanding (though it probably isn't that simple) and agrees to stop selling ammunition, a decision that clearly stuns Moore. This is simultaneously one of the most interesting parts of the movie, because it's such an unpredictable development, and, paradoxically, one of the least successful, because since it doesn't fit into Moore's pre-established conception of the film he doesn't really know how to handle it.
I'm describing all of this at length in order to provide context for explaining just how superb "Capturing the Friedmans" is as a documentary, in the best sense of the word. Director Andrew Jarecki uses his camera as a scalpel, carefully cutting open the dark and tangled history of a family and letting us share his discoveries almost as he himself is making them. He's extremely fortunate to have been given access to the family's own voluminous film and video archives, and he's able to intercut decades' worth of personal history into his own contemporary interviews and footage. The effect is one of shocking and unprecedented intimacy, and the story that emerges comes alive in ways no one could have expected.
Jarecki lulls us into complacency at first, using the most mundane material to establish an outsider's view of an ordinary middle-class family: the eldest of the three sons performing his magic act at a party, the much-younger husband and wife filming themselves on vacation in Mexico, another son banging on a piano, and so on. The ugliness begins to creep in when postal inspectors intercept a parcel of child pornography addressed to the father; the authorities use this leverage to pry off the lid of the family's privacy, until the father, formerly a respected teacher of a computer class for neighborhood kids, is swamped with shocking allegations of rape, molestation, and abuse.
One of the most remarkable qualities of the film is how even-handed it is in exploring the accusations against the father and, later, the youngest son, and how open Jarecki apparently is to whatever he might be confronted with. In their interviews, the authorities show no doubt whatsoever of the suspects' guilt, and the information and evidence they offer is quite damning. The family, as one would expect, maintains the innocence of father and son -- until one of them begins retreating to a safer emotional distance, giving us doubts about the offered alibis. The rift in the family is caught by their by-now almost compulsive videotaping of themselves, and we have a dinner-table seat at their most venomous, divisive arguments.
The film then follows up on the family's protestations of innocence, and begins suggesting that perhaps all of this is a horrid miscarriage of justice resulting from hysteria and borderline misconduct, as in "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills" or Morris's own "Thin Blue Line." The available evidence is evaluated, and disturbing contradictions are found in the statements of prosecutors and police. Even though the documentary project was launched well after the verdicts were reached, the use of the family's film and video gives the impression of real-time events, and we have the growing sense of dread that perhaps two innocent men are going to be sent to prison.
Ah, but then there's a stunning revelation, a confession from one of the participants, that suddenly makes us think that the charges may in fact have some merit after all. It's not overwhelming, but it's enough to form a crack in the family's story, a crack that is quickly forced wide to reveal new and astonishing information. The film continues nosing around in dark corners, unearthing sordid and long-held secrets, and making remarkable juxtapositions, such as the possibly self-serving assertions of the son with the directly contradictory statements of his own attorney. Our view of the legal proceedings gets murkier and murkier until we finally decide that not only are we unable to decide what really happened, we aren't even confident the family members themselves can trust their own emotions and memories.
And by continuing to go back to the family's own film and video, "Capturing the Friedmans" reminds us that this is not fiction, that these are real people, and that because of the confusingly ambiguous information and evidence any judgement we make will be suspect. It's only human to try to come to a solid conclusion about these events, and many of us are happy to form what we consider to be concrete opinions based on a lot less, but in this film Jarecki makes it clear that, even if he himself may be tempted to impose judgement on the events, the only people who really, truly know what happened may not be reliable even to themselves.
I may not be justified, morally or objectively, in judging the Friedmans, but I can say with conviction that the film Andrew Jarecki has made about them is fantastic. It may be difficult and sometimes squirm-inducing to watch, but it's one of the most thought-provoking works of documentary filmmaking I've seen in years.
More to follow!
Oh, man, I missed a screening of CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS here in LA the other night, and it’s eating me up. I want to see this film. It sounds incredible. Everything I’ve read about it has left me dying to see it now. All I can do is rush to check it out the second it opens here. Can’t happen soon enough.
And here's another couple for you...
MUSA (festival title: MUSA THE WARRIOR) - South Korea - written and directed by Sung-su Kim
Based on actual historical events (how loosely, I cannot say), "Musa" tells the initially exciting but ultimatingly frustrating story of a group of Korean soldiers and diplomats caught up in the chaos of Chinese politics in the 1300s. Boasting superior production values, the film resurrects a remarkable moment in history virtually unknown in the West. Unfortunately, after a very effective opening, the film's structure and pacing begins falling apart in the final hour, and eventually you just want the thing to be over.
As the complex plot gets underway, China's formerly dominant Yuan dynasty is losing power to a rising Ming hegemony. Into this volatile situation comes a delegation from Korea, now making overtures to what will clearly be China's new ruling clan. Unfortunately, but perhaps understandably, the Mings don't entirely trust the Koreans, and peremptorily sentence them to exile. On their journey, they unexpectedly run across a group of Yuan-allied Mongols who have kidnapped a Ming princess; somewhat impulsively, they decide to rescue her, as she will no doubt be useful for repairing relations between Korea and the Mings.
It sounds complicated, I know, but all of that is breezily handled in the first forty minutes or so, thereby clearing the last two hours for the action-packed chase and battle scenes that make up the body of the film. With the princess in tow and angry Mongols in pursuit, the Koreans race eastward, debating whether to continue their escape to Korea and deal with the princess later or head straight for the new Chinese capital to deliver the rescued woman and claim their diplomatic prize.
The movie doesn't stint on the gory mayhem as the Koreans are frequently forced to stop and fight off their pursuers. Our heroes are primarily represented by three combatants, each one more bad-ass than the next. The leader is General Choi, who is from the aristocratic class; he's a tough swordsman, but his muleheaded insistence on some rather questionable strategies sparks discontent in his ranks. Serving under him is Sergeant Jin-lip, a grizzled professional soldier who has a better touch with the men and a remarkably deadly bow, though he lacks the General's education and confidence. And then there's Yeo-sol, a slave who is freed by one of the elderly diplomats in his dying moments and turns out, to everyone's surprise, to be nearly invincible with a spear. When these guys spring into action, you can count on rolling heads, flying limbs, and gallons of spurting blood.
But then, in a pattern that will become maddeningly familiar over the course of the film, they all stop and argue about who's loyal to whom and where they should be going and what they should do with the princess, and on and on, until it comes time to be set upon again by another bunch of Mongols. During each break, the movie tries to take time to humanize the supporting cast, as in, for example, a tentative romance between the Korean translator and a Chinese woman they pick up when they rescue the princess. However, these relationships are handled so sketchily that they have to remind us of them during every break, which means they basically repeat what they did before. I think it was the third time some baby-faced assistant diplomat told a pregnant refugee tagging along to sit and rest because she didn't look well that caused the audience to laugh, to give you an idea of how these moments play out.
This rhythm holds true when we finally arrive at what will obviously be the setting for the climax, a small fortress in which the Koreans will attempt to make their stand while waiting for Ming reinforcements summoned by the princess via messenger. They make preparations to hold off the inevitable attack, the Mongols arrive and set up a perimeter, and the battle is engaged, building to what will apparently be a thrilling, rousing finale... until the Mongols withdraw, giving our heroes an overnight breather, and another opportunity to argue about loyalty, tactics, etc. Had the movie ended after its first attack on the fortress, I'd be giving the film a much higher recommendation, but instead, more than once, the story suggests it's going to wrap up and then, frustratingly, doesn't. It's impossible to tell whether this repetitive, drawn-out ending is a desire to stay true to known history, or if the filmmakers thought it would be a good way to communicate what a heroic stand the outnumbered Koreans are making. In either case, even after snow begins to fall for the final battle and the already-strong visuals get an additional kick, the last forty-five minutes or so of the film drags badly.
There are also some attempts to explore the characters of the leads, especially the General Choi, freedman Yeo-sol, and the princess (who form a potential though platonic romantic triangle), and to give them some personality beyond the superficially obvious. Unfortunately, the way the film chooses to do this is to make the characters inconsistent, obstinate, and sometimes just bloody-mindedly stupid. In one scene, for example, as their pursuers loom ever closer, the Koreans are stunned to hear the princess demand to be carried in a litter, even though it'll slow down the group. (At least up-and-coming star Zhang Ziyi, playing the princess, shows she isn't afraid to portray an unsympathetic character.) The freedman at first seems to be one of the only members of the group willing to help carry the princess without complaining; but then, in an almost identical scene fifteen minutes later, he flies into a rage at her selfishness and smashes the litter, without any indication of what changed his mind. He continues to flip-flop throughout the film, until the only way you can predict what he might do at any given moment is to expect the opposite of whatever he was doing ten minutes previously. It's possible he's just plain nuts, but it seems more likely that it's merely sloppy writing.
These could have been forgiven, though, until the interminable last act derails the film. It's too bad, really, because through the first hour and a half or so I was enjoying myself despite the flaws; it's a big, ambitious, Kurosawa-style historical battle epic, with stark, if stock, characters (the Mongol general makes a noble villain), gorgeous landscapes and costuming, and balls-out action scenes. The combat carnage is occasionally inspired, though it's shot mostly as a frenetic, stuttering blur as has been the fashion since "Saving Private Ryan" and "Gladiator." One standout sequence is an atmospherically intense ambush in a sun-dappled forest, as Sergeant Jin-lip leads his men on a stealthy sprint to cut down a handful of enemy horsemen almost before they know they're under attack.
For those few minutes, and for other stretches throughout the film, "Musa" represents some great filmmaking. As a whole, though, I'm not sure I can recommend it. There's a great opportunity here for a smart editor to trim out some flab, especially in the second half; if the film were shortened by thirty or forty minutes, and the climactic standoff greatly compressed, this could become the rousing adventure the amazing history deserves.
BUBBA HO-TEP - U.S. - written and directed by Don Coscarelli
It's a difficult trick to successfully pull off a deliberate attempt at a cult movie. There are many obstacles to overcome: By their very nature, they rarely make much money, so you have to go into it with a limited budget. You have to have an original idea, something to set yourself apart from the hundreds of other odd-looking titles in the back corner of the video store, but it can't be so weird that your prospective audience rolls their eyes at you. If you want to be funny, you have to be quirky or dark; conventional silliness doesn't play. If you want to be violent, you have to show the gorehounds something they haven't seen. And so on, and so on. The point is, when playing in this genre, there are a thousand ways you can screw it up.
"Bubba Ho-Tep," starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis, is definitely one of these movies, and it's certainly more successful than most. It knows what its likely audience wants to see, and it works hard to please. It deserves a long life on the college and midnight circuits, and may get somewhat wider play, but for a variety of reasons it's unlikely to completely break through to a mainstream audience.
It's got the kind of outlandish premise the middle-America-focus-group-led studios wouldn't even know how to categorize, let alone respond to. As widely reported on the 'net, the movie uses the buddy formula, teaming an elderly black man who says he's JFK with an aged Elvis Presley to resist an evil mummy that's invading their retirement home. This is one of those ideas where you react first by blinking in disbelief, and then you slowly smile and say to yourself with tentative hopefulness, "Huh, that could be... fun." Rest assured, it is. The story milks the expected jokes (Elvis's flashy costumes, JFK conspiracy theories) for all they're worth, and then goes beyond, giving Elvis a variety of health and personal problems for him to grumble about, and using the rest-home setting to support a gentle wagging of the finger at the way American society forgets its elderly.
That can be said about the movie as a whole, in fact: it does what you expect, and then adds a little more. Since it's a mummy movie, for example, there are a couple of effectively creepy scarab attacks, which is par for the genre course, and the mummy's a slow-moving shambler (which is perfect considering JFK uses a motorized wheelchair and Elvis has a walker), but then there's a small tweak to the way it moves and (oddly) its physical appearance that gives it a little extra pep. Likewise, Campbell makes a surprisingly credible older Elvis, with the lazy baritone and the curled lip, but then he adds several layers of regret and bitterness and self-loathing.
With everything the movie does right, though, there are a couple of places where it falls a little flat. First, the filmmakers know that an essential aspect of the iconic performance to which Campbell clearly aspires is providing him with some funny and quotably eccentric one-liners. Many of these work well (after he dispatches a scarab, he drawls, "Don't ever fuck with the King"), but some of them are a bit, well, feeble ("Your soul-suckin' days are over").
Worse yet, the restrictions of the low budget mean the film is limited in its locations; fully ninety percent of the story takes place in the rooms and corridors of the nursing home (a welcome exception is a flashback explaining why the world thinks Elvis is dead). While this is understandable, eventually the eye gets tired of looking at the same stuff; the location, to put it charitably, isn't photographed with a lot of variety. I think it was the third time we look down the same hallway with the camera in the same position and the exact same lighting that I had to wonder whether they'd bothered to shoot it every time or were just recycling the same piece of footage. The unfortunate side effect is that the plot begins to feel like it's wearing thin in the last fifteen or twenty minutes; it isn't, really, but it's a natural by-product of our visual fatigue.
Thankfully, the problems are relatively minor, and don't sink the film. From its hilarious beginning (offering dubious dictionary definitions of the words making up the title) to its unexpectedly poignant conclusion, "Bubba Ho-Tep" is great fun. It's probably a little too low-key and offbeat to win anything like a wide release, but the people who know to look for it will love it.
More to come!
--HH
Thanks, man. Between you, Vern, Mark Pollard, and Secret Asian Anne, we’ve got one of my favorite line-up of festival reviewers ever. Keep ‘em coming, everybody.
"Moriarty" out.
