Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
What a nice way to start off a Sunday as I’m typing up my DVD column... publishing two great Rotterdam reports in a row from both of our major fest reporters this year. As always, the lovely Elaine comes through with a great report. Check it out:
As I write this, the 34th RIFF (or IFFR, as it is locally known) is a thing of the past. The screenings are over, the prizes have been awarded and all those badly in need of sleep, fresh air and proper food are getting it, relieved another festival is over but already looking forward to the next edition.
As for myself, I had a unique fest experience in that I felt better coming out of it than going into it, which has never happened to me before. Forget what I wrote earlier about zombification and ending the festival as an even lower life form than a zombie; I’m feeling far better now than I did ten days ago. Which probably tells you more about how busy I was going into the festival than about the festival itself, but even so it is a memorable fact that I, who usually sleep for fifteen hours solid the night after the festival ends and frequently swear I won’t see another film for at least a month, feel energetic, and rather like, well, watching a movie. This could be because I didn’t see enough films at the festival (I had to skip quite a few due to work and reviewing duties), but also because the films I saw were generally engaging. The jury is still out on whether it was actually a good festival (I’ve heard different opinions), but as far as I’m concerned, it was. Any festival during which I don’t walk out of a single screening is a good festival in my book.
Of course, I owe you a few reviews, and you’ll get them. Over the next few days, I’ll give you in-depth reviews of the two Kim Ki-duk films in the festival (which both ended in my top-4), as well as a festival round-up featuring my personal top-10 and a bunch of capsule reviews of films which I don’t feel like going into at length but which do deserve some mention. First I’m going to give you proper reviews of two Iranian films, though, one of which (“Turtles Can Fly”) unexpectedly won the audience award in Rotterdam (if by the smallest of margins), and the other of which (“Beautiful City”) holds the distinction of being my all-time favourite Iranian film, with Tamineh Milani’s “The Hidden Half” ranking a close second.
First, however, some awards stuff.
There are people who say that the RIFF awards too many prizes. That the festival began as a film-watching event which was happy to leave award ceremonies to more glamorous events such as Cannes, Venice, Toronto and Berlin, and that it should have stayed that way. Quite frankly, I agree with these people. Rotterdam does award an insane number of prizes, and while some of them are commendable (the Amnesty International Award for best film dealing with a human-rights subject is a sympathetic initiative, and I like there being a youth panel that gets to vote on films featuring children’s and adolescents’ topics), the majority of the awards are nonsense. Who cares what the best French film in the festival is, or the best South-East Asian film? If one is going to present awards like that, why not add awards for, say, the glossiest-looking African film, the most politically incorrect Eastern-European film, the funniest German film, the best film dealing with an Islamic subject and the most insightful documentary on American politics? If it were up to me, I’d suggest the RIFF focus on the good old Tiger Competition (open to debuts or second-time efforts which are getting their world or European premiere in Rotterdam) and abolish all the other stuff. Except the audience award, obviously, because keeping an eye on developments in the audience award poll is a source of endless entertainment and discussion to Rotterdam folks.
Which leads me to this year’s audience award. As befits the world’s most internationally-oriented film fest, the top-20 according to the Rotterdam audience features films from seventeen different countries. They are, in order (marks out of five):
1) Turtles Can Fly (Bahman Ghobadi, Iran) 4.63
2) Brothers (Susanne Bier, Denmark) 4.62
3) The Edukators (Hans Weingartner, Germany) 4.59
4) Bin-jip (Kim Ki-duk, South Korea) 4.49
5) Le grand voyage (Ismael Ferroukhi, Morocco) 4.45
6) Sabah (Ruba Nadda, Canada) 4.43
7) The Devil’s Miner (Kief Davidson/Richard Ladkani, USA) 4.41
8) Moog (Hans Fjellestad, USA) 4.39
9) Hawaii, Oslo (Erik Poppe, Norway) 4.38
10) Forgiveness (Ian Gabriel, South Africa) 4.37
11) Sideways (Alexander Payne, USA) 4.34
12) Beautiful Boxer (Ekachai Uekrongtham, Thailand) 4.34
13) Electric Shadows (Xiao Jiang, China) 4.33
14) In My Father’s Den (Brad McGann, New Zealand) 4.31
15) Dalecarlians (Maria Blom, Sweden) 4.29
16) Czech Dream (Vit Klusak/Filip Remunda, Czech Republic) 4.28
17) Le chiavi di casa (Gianni Amelio, Italy) 4.26
18) Yasmin (Kenny Glenaan, UK) 4.25
19) Princesse Marie (Benoit Jacquot, France) 4.25
20) Kammerflimmern (Hendrik Hölzemann, Germany) 4.24
Of course, opinions differ as to whether a high rank in the audience award poll actually says anything about the quality of a film. For while the RIFF is an arthouse festival with (for the most part) a suitably arthouse-savvy crowd, accessible feel-good movies have a habit (as elsewhere) of outscoring more daring, sombre and artistic fare. Usually, the more accessible the film, the higher it scores. Case in point: “Sabah”, a Canadian feel-good movie about a Muslim woman who falls in love with a white Canadian and has to keep her relationship a secret from her family, which very nearly cracked the top-5 despite the fact that it’s shallow as hell and utterly predictable. Granted, it’s a fun flick whose leads have excellent chemistry, but more than Islam for Beginners with a lot of belly-dancing in it it is not. By all accounts, Kenny Glenaan’s “Yasmin”, which also made the top-20, is a much better film on the same subject. Quite a few of my personal favourites didn’t even make the top-70, but that’s par for the course. I won’t cherish them any less for it.
For the record, 54 films (out of 206) scored an average of 4 (“good”) or more. The lowest-ranking film, at 2.17, was “Sanctuary”, a sloooooow, dull Malaysian drama which ironically drew large crowds because one of Holland’s leading film critics gave it a five-star review in the festival programme. I bet he’s lost a few fans.
As for the three Tiger Awards (Rotterdam’s own awards for best directorial debut or second feature which gets its world or European premiere in Rotterdam), these went to Ilya Khrazhanovsky’s “4” (Russia), Mercedes Alvarez “El cielo gira” (Spain) and Daniele Gaglianone’s “Nemmeno il destino” (Italy). I haven’t seen any of these films, but I’ve been told “4” (which actually premiered at Venice – go figure) is great.
As I said, I’ll be back with my own top-10 and some final reviews later. For now, though, here are reviews of two good Iranian films: “Turtles Can Fly” and “Beautiful City”. “Turtles Can Fly” can be seen in several countries, and will soon get a limited release in the USA. “Beautiful City” may be harder to come by, but is very much worth seeking out if you ever find yourself in its vicinity.
Enjoy.
TURTLES CAN FLY (Lakposhtha ham parvaz mikonand)
(Written and directed by Bahman Ghobadi)
Four years ago, Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi wowed the arthouse crowd with “A Time for Drunken Horses”, a tale about poor Kurdish orphans which won a Golden Camera in Cannes and got rave reviews from all over the world, but which I personally found rather overrated. I didn’t care for the overly melodramatic tone of the film, and found Ghobadi’s amateur cast, some of whom had the acting chops of a drowned goose, rather annoying. I came away thinking I’d much rather seen a real documentary on the plight of the Kurdish people than this heavily dramatized pseudo-documentary.
Now Ghobadi is back with another documentary-like film about the plight of the Kurds (this time Iraqi Kurds), and again, his protagonists are orphans, and most of his cast is comprised of amateurs. Thankfully, though, “Turtles Can Fly” is a better film than “A Time for Drunken Horses” – almost as melodramatic as its predecessor, but better acted and better paced. It’s a nifty look into a world most of us know all too little about, full of local colour and gruesome local detail, but at the same time, quite universal.
“Turtles Can Fly” is set in a Kurdish refugee camp in Iraq, near the Turkish border, on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq. Long rows of tents harbour people who have fled cities terrorised by Saddam’s soldiers, many of them orphans. In order to make some money, the refugees look for and dismantle landmines. The leader of the pack is an enterprising lad from the village, nicknamed Satellite, who can get everyone what he wants; he even gets the village elders, who have heard rumours of an impending war and want to know what’s going on in the world, a satellite dish. Among Satellite’s army of refugee labourers are Henkov, a teenager who has lost both of his arms, and Agrin, a beautiful young girl who carries a baby around whose parentage is not revealed until the end of the film. Satellite falls in love with Agrin, and through his love for her is transformed from a well-meaning but rather obnoxious busybody into a considerate (albeit still bossy) young man. Infatuated, he tries to save Agrin, her brother Henkov and the baby they look after from harm. However, it quickly becomes clear that Agrin doesn’t want to be saved. She has scars that won’t be healed, and the only way out that she can see is to die – the sooner, the better.
“Turtles Can Fly” is a meticulously researched film. The moment Saddam fell, Ghobadi travelled to Iraqi Kurdistan, where he saw and filmed refugee camps, weapon markets and children clearing minefields with a handycam. When he went back to shoot the film itself, the refugee camps had disappeared, so he built one himself, like the ones he had seen earlier, and cast local kids (many of them crippled by working in minefields) to play in the film. The result is (like “A Time for Drunken Horses”) a very authentic-looking film. A film which is more about life in a refugee camp than about war, for although the outbreak of the war is frequently discussed in the film, and real American soldiers can be seen entering (and ignoring) the Kurdish village at the end, it’s more about what drove the Kurds to leave their cities in the first place, and what later befell them in the camps, than about what happened to them after the war. Which wasn’t an awful lot, it seems; if the film is to be believed, the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan is still as grim as ever. Except that certain people have learnt that as long as they are resourceful, there may be a tiny bit of hope left, even if they have only one leg or no arms.
As you would expect from a film about a subject like this, “Turtles Can Fly” features some pretty grim and heart-breaking stuff. The flashback in which you find out what happened to Agrin before she came to the refugee camp is horrible, as are the scenes in which she tries to dispose of that which ties her to her earthly life. Furthermore, there are images of disgusting-looking refugee camps, scores of kids who genuinely miss limbs, and some scarily cheerful footage of local weapon markets where just about anyone can get hold of rifles, mines and hand grenades, provided he has a little money or something to trade. And yet it’s not really a depressing film. For one thing, the crippled kids are amazingly resourceful (even a boy who lacks arms can win a fight if he knows how to head-butt someone, and missing a leg doesn’t mean you can’t move awfully fast); for another, there is plenty of humour in the film, mostly stemming from the character of Satellite. Much of that humour is universal; it stems from love and friendship, from teenage infatuation, from wishing to make the best of a bad situation, from being an enterprising type, and from misunderstandings which could arise anywhere. Likewise, much of the tragedy is recognisable. The Western viewer may not have encountered the horrors the protagonists have to deal with, but the loss of hope that these horrors engender is all too understandable. Thus, it is easy to identify with the protagonists, despite their terrible, remote conditions.
The acting isn’t always faultless (there are a few too many close-ups of characters with preposterously happy smiles on their faces), but it’s pretty decent, given that the cast consists almost entirely of amateurs. The script (in which powerful emotional scenes alternate with lighter moments) also works quite well; it is well paced, moves towards an excellent climax and greatly benefits from the beautiful, atmospheric cinematography. The result is a moving, compelling film which deserves all the attention “A Time for Drunken Horses” got, and more.
BEAUTIFUL CITY (Shahre ziba)
(Written and directed by Ashgar Farhadi)
Have you ever seen a deliberately paced, endlessly repetitive Iranian film which showed scenes that didn’t seem to be the slightest bit relevant to the storyline and seemed to lack both a story and a resolution, only to wonder afterwards what the fuck it was all about? Well, this is not one of those films. Despite its very Iranian subject, “Beautiful City” is a remarkably Western-looking piece of film-making – straightforward, well-paced, and free from the references to classical Persian poetry and Islamic symbolism which make many other Iranian films so inaccessible to Western viewers. If it weren’t so terribly honest and political, I’d call it a slick film, and it’s the first time ever I’ve felt called upon to use that epithet in relation to an Iranian film.
“Beautiful City” is about the Iranian legal system, in which a murder isn’t a murder unless the next of kin of the dead person call it that and press charges. It is the story of Akbar, a young man who in a fit of unexplained despair killed his girlfriend and was apprehended before he could finish the job and kill himself, too. When the story opens, Akbar is in prison, awaiting his execution. Meanwhile, his sister Firouzeh (a beautiful young woman with a past that is only gradually revealed) and his best friend Ala (a thief who has just been released from a detention centre) do everything in their power to save him from execution. Which doesn’t mean that they get Akbar a good lawyer, as it would in the West, but rather that they badger the father of the girl Akbar killed, in order to get him to drop charges against Akbar. Because if he drops charges, the murder will be considered a tragic accident, and Akbar will not be executed (although his family will have to pay blood money). So Ala and Firouzeh make an all-out effort to bring the girl’s father around. They bring him presents and try to appeal to his compassion and forgiveness. When that doesn’t work, they try to get people close to him to convince him. They talk to the man’s wife, who seems sympathetic to their cause but later turns out to have an agenda of her own. They talk to a cleric at the mosque where the man worships, who admits that, yes, the Koran does indeed preach compassion, but also says a man has a right to demand an eye for an eye. And so it goes on for quite a while, until you realise that Ala and Firouzeh are in for trouble no matter what the girl’s father decides, since even if he does drop charges, they will have to pay the blood money required for the loss of his daughter – an amount so huge that they’ll have great trouble putting their hands on it.
To Western viewers, “Beautiful City” is first and foremost a fascinating peek into the Iranian legal system, where pleading with the victim’s family appears to be a common practice. It is not entirely clear where Farhadi stands on this practice; he follows the process documentary-style and doesn’t seem to judge either way. He does lose some of his restraint when the subject turns to blood money (a practice he obviously abhors), but even then the film remains remarkably objective. Thanks to the ingenious script, the case is covered from all angles. You mostly get to see the story from Ala and Firouzeh’s point of view, which is that Akbar was only a teenager when he committed the murder, that he seriously repents the crime and that forgiveness is a great thing – a point which becomes more acute when you realise that neither Ala nor Firouzeh has a squeaky clean past. However, you also understand why the dead girl’s father wants revenge (after all, he has lost a daughter), why his spiritual leader has some trouble talking him out of his revenge (because the Koran is self-contradictory on this score), and why there is something to be said for blood money, even if no human life can be expressed in or replaced by money. By presenting you with all these sides of the story, personified by uniformly likeable or at least understandable characters who all have a back story which bears on their actions, Farhadi gives you a chance to ponder the subject for yourself, and to see why Muslims have struggled with it for generations.
Yet it isn’t just an issue film. Farhadi also takes his time to weave in and work out a romance. The relationship which develops between Ala, the juvenile delinquent with a heart of gold (a convincing and charismatic Babak Ansari), and Firouzeh (the luminous Taraneh Alidoosti) is well drawn, and every bit as gripping as the legal battle they fight. You constantly wonder what will happen between these two, and whether Firouzeh has enough influence on the essentially good but volatile Ala to prevent him from returning to his old ways. Combined with the legal stuff, several eye-popping subplots involving domestic violence, drugs and different kinds of prostitution, an unusually tight and action-packed script, and wonderful, colourful cinematography, the well-acted love story makes for one of the best Iranian films in years – powerful, educational and romantic all in one, and quite exciting to boot.
If only there were more Iranian films like it.
Elaine
Exceptional. I really want to see BEAUTIFUL CITY now. Sounds great. Thanks so much, Elaine.
"Moriarty" out.
