Hey folks, Harry here... A little perterbed to see PRETTY PERSUASION on his IFFY list - if only watching Selma Blair spank herself seemed too good to pass up. Well, sounds like a helluva festival, gonna have to check it out some year. Here ya go...
Hey guys, it's your faithful correspondent Harold Hellman, back again
with a summary of what's worth seeing and what should be avoided out
of what played the Seattle International Film Festival this year. I
made it to sixty movies; below is capsule commentary on the
twenty-four I saw that I found most worthy of discussion. Special
note, it was a particularly good year for documentaries. Enjoy!
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE IFFY
::: THE GOOD :::
— NARRATIVE
3-IRON (South Korea) - The best film I saw at this year's festival.
Impossible to summarize fairly; it's just completely original, totally
involving, and thoroughly satisfying. I will say that it's the best
romance I've seen in years, and that it's a marvelous urban fairy
tale, executed almost perfectly. The less you know, the better. Highly
recommended.
2046 (Hong Kong) - Not Wong Kar-Wai's best work, but worth seeing. As
we watch a writer mistreating a succession of girlfriends, we wonder
why we keep digressing into representations of the science-fiction
story he's writing; but note the insightful contrast between his
real-world behavior and his emotional fantasies, as well as the
statements Wong is making about his own relationship to his work as a
filmmaker. Probably best for diehard fans of Wong and Chinese cinema
generally.
THE LIZARD (Iran) - A petty thief steals a holy man's clothing and
escapes imprisonment, and finds himself running a small-town mosque
while waiting for papers he can use to slip across the border.
Worthwhile for its transplantation of an otherwise unremarkable
by-the-numbers Western comedy formula into fundamentalist Muslim
culture. Winning performances, good gags, and just a hint of audience
righteousness in the recognition that this innocuous comedy was hugely
controversial in its home country and eventually banned.
OMAGH (Ireland/UK) - Verite-styled recounting of a 1998 incident,
focusing on the father who lost a son in an Irish revolutionary
bombing and who rallied friends and families of other victims into a
support group seeking justice from government and law enforcement.
Suffused with a quiet rage, but never preachy or melodramatic, as we
see the survivors neglected by institutions more interested in
abstract political considerations than the families' needs. Towering
lead performance by Gerald McSorley.
THE STORY OF MY LIFE (France) - Sparkling romantic comedy about a
ghostwriter for celebrities who focuses more on the unknown and
unattainable than what's right in front of him. Not without flaws, but
very funny and sometimes even wise, and pulls everything together in
the end. An inferior American remake seems inevitable.
HEAVEN'S GATE (USA) - Michael Cimino's notorious epic Western is
getting a second critical look in its three-hour-forty-minute version.
While it's hardly the artistic disaster it was labeled on its release,
it's also not quite the masterpiece festival organizers trumpeted it
as, either. Cimino deserves credit for attempting something new and
interesting with the Western, turning the mythology on its head and
reinventing the genre from the ground up. His directorial behavior was
selfish and irresponsible, but his film, while falling somewhat short
of its lofty goals, is pretty good.
FROZEN (UK) - Slow but thoughtful meditation on the circularity of
grief. Shirley Henderson is very good as a woman whose life has been
on hold in the two years since her sister vanished; she checks and
rechecks the official investigation, not because she has better
information, but because she doesn't know what else to do. The ending
is a bit weak, but up until then it's an absorbing, sometimes haunting
character study with an unconventional structure and just a hint of
mysticism.
STRINGS (Denmark) - Believe it or not, this is the third all-puppet
movie I've seen in the last year, after "Team America" and Taiwan's
"Legend of the Sacred Stone." Of these, "Strings" is the best, telling
a dark-fantasy story of a golden prince about to lose his throne due
to the machinations of an untrustworthy adviser to his
recently-deceased father. The somber story is sometimes labored and
definitely over-serious, and the mythology is ridiculously
impenetrable ("remember the treaty of Asgorth, blessed by King
Quilbank after the armies of Mayvelk and Yakfrij battled across the
River of Looftrag..."), but the puppetry is amazing, the imagery is
breathtaking, and the world of the story accepts the reality of the
marionette strings in ways that are unexpected and sometimes
beautiful. Like nothing you've ever seen, in a good way.
— NONFICTION
GRIZZLY MAN - The best documentary in this year's festival. Legendary
filmmaker Werner Herzog adds another real-life madman to his catalog
of obsessive oddballs engaging in fierce single combat with both
civilization and the implacable wilderness. Simultaneously funny, sad,
and philosophical; somehow manages to be both one-of-a-kind and
perfectly in tune with Herzog's canon. Highly recommended.
MURDERBALL - A year on the Quadriplegic Rugby scene, specifically
following a few members of Team USA and the coach of Team Canada,
culminating in the Athens Paralympics in 2004. It's remarkable how
quickly we stop seeing the players as men in wheelchairs and start
seeing them as just another rowdy bunch of foul-mouthed, girl-chasing,
testosterone-soaked jocks. Hugely entertaining.
THE ARISTOCRATS - Gross, vulgar, and utterly hilarious from beginning
to end. Dozens of comedy professionals describe their relationship
with a particular legendary underground joke and offer their own
versions and interpretations. Sounds repetitive, but it's actually
quite enlightening on the nature of comedy and the interaction between
comics, their material, and their audience.
MAD HOT BALLROOM - A sweet and entertaining look at fifth-grade
students in a public-school ballroom class and subsequent contest in
New York. Somewhat inelegantly produced, but the strength of the kids'
personalities more than makes up for the film's technical and thematic
shortcomings.
ROCK SCHOOL - Rude, raucous profile of the man who apparently inspired
the dramatized "School of Rock." Neither an attack nor a whitewash,
the film shows both the positive and negative of the alternative
educational experience for its kids and the overgrown manchild who
runs the program.
SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL - Heartbreaking look back at the Rwandan
genocide ten years later, from the perspective of the U.N. commander
who found himself hamstrung by politics. Not groundbreaking in its
approach, but a respectful treatment of a very important subject.
PUCKER UP - The creators of the remarkable documentary "Southern
Comfort" return with a completely different subject: competitive
whistlers. Film profiles half a dozen whistlin' experts as they gather
for the annual contest to name the world's best. Feels like a Chris
Guest mockumentary, with a varied cast of characters ranging from
deadly serious to completely whacked out. Good fun.
AFTER INNOCENCE - Wrenching study of men who have been wrongly
convicted, exonerated after years in prison, and freed to deal as best
they can with their ruined lives. Illuminating and infuriating. Partly
financed by Showtime, so watch your cable listings after it finishes
its festival rounds.
::: THE BAD :::
YES (UK) - I'm utterly mystified by the rapturous response audiences
are giving Sally Potter's latest effort. This is the kind of film for
which the adjective "pretentious" was intended: Its dialogue is in
rhyming verse (highlighted with laughable mad-sad-glad couplets), its
lead characters are named He and She to underline the intended
allegory, and its themes are simplistic and obvious. It gives us a
forbidden romance between a white Westerner and a dark-skinned Muslim,
apparently believing that making a correlation between the
communication problems between men and women and those between West
and East is somehow deep and provocative. Shallow, reactionary,
puerile. A major disappointment from a filmmaker whose work I usually
respect.
THREE EXTREMES (Asia) - Empty, pointless exercise in attempted shock,
anthologizing three films by Takashi Miike, Park Chan-Wook, and Fruit
Chan. Interesting in concept, asking three Asian filmmakers - one
Japanese, one Korean, one Chinese - for three different approaches to
horror, but the result doesn't really hold together. Miike's ghost
story is atmospheric but largely inert, Park's reflexive tale of a
kidnapped and tortured filmmaker is sporadically interesting but
ultimately too overheated for its own good, and Chan's segment of a
beauty treatment with nasty ingredients is just gross (though probably
most representative of what the movie's producers were looking for
when they commissioned the project).
DEEPWATER (USA) - Dopey neo-noir built around a twist ending that's
supposed to make your head spin but which actually makes the foregoing
film a manipulative waste of time. Centers on a drifter who falls in
with strange characters in a dead-end lake-resort town, where
Something Strange Is Afoot and Things Are Not What They Seem. Mystery
movies like this live or die on the strength of their climactic
reversals: it's death for a film when you think you've figured it out
after half an hour but assume it has to be something else because the
twist is too obvious and kinda stupid. Yeah, it's that kind of movie.
Wastes some strong performances (including Michael Ironside and Lesley
Ann Warren) and a decent sense of directorial style on a clumsy,
careless script.
::: THE IFFY :::
GODZILLA: FINAL WARS (Japan) - A big, slobbering puppy of a movie,
shamelessly eager to please, but ultimately it's hard not to get tired
of getting drooled on. A kitchen-sink movie for genre fans: gives us
invading aliens, cameos from Godzilla's assorted nemeses over the
years, a leather-clad team of martial-arts popstars, a cutesy-pie baby
'Zilla complete with monster-loving boy whiner, and more. Pretty good
midnight movie if you've had a sixpack beforehand; casual viewers
should stay away.
CAPE OF GOOD HOPE (South Africa) - Low-key and entirely innocuous
charmer about the romantic trials of people working in and around a
pet rescue facility. Not a bad movie; the sort of feel-good fluff you
can safely take your mother to see and then forget about five seconds
after it's done. I'm putting it here because the festival director
said it was among the top finishers in audience balloting, which I
find simply perplexing. It's basically a James L. Brooks movie,
complete with sitcom ending where a villain falls in a mud puddle
while the hero characters stand and point and laugh. This impresses
people?
PRETTY PERSUASION (USA) - A dark and brutally funny script suffers
under the weight of lifeless, amateurish direction. Evan Rachel Wood
(from "Thirteen") is a conniving high-schooler who organizes a
harassment claim against a teacher (Ron Livingston) against the wishes
of her foully racist father (James Woods). The situation is savagely
fascinating, the characters are rich, and the dialogue sparkles with a
serrated edge, but the camera sits on a stick in boring masters and
two-shots, staring dully at flatly lit actors who have been directed
to stand facing each other and just talk. There's no rhythm or build,
and the movie plods where it should race. If I were the writer or in
the cast, I'd be more than a little ticked off.
DEAD MAN'S SHOES (UK) - Paddy Considine is an army vet who returns to
his small Northern hometown pursuing vengeance against the lowlifes
who abused his simple-minded younger brother. For most of its running
time, it's a big blunt hammer of a film, as Considine methodically
chews through the hapless thugs who are no match for either his anger
or his skills, which makes for dreary, uninvolving viewing. Then in
the last five minutes it turns into something else entirely, and it
becomes very interesting all of a sudden. Kind of a slog to get there,
but worth a look.
R-POINT (South Korea) - Interesting if frustrating genre-hybrid piece,
mixing combat and horror to middling effect. During the Vietnam War, a
small squad of soldiers ventures into the jungle searching for missing
countrymen, only to find themselves at the mercy of unearthly forces.
Feels a bit like "Predator" meets "The Blair Witch Project," but fails
to capitalize entirely on the opportunities inherent in the premise;
it's basically half an hour of pretty good story padded with twice
that much atmosphere. Interesting more for its potential than for its
execution.
::: OVERALL :::
Sort of a middlin' year for the festival, with a lot of good movies, a
fair amount of mediocrity, and precious few gems. I heard secondhand
that the festival director has been apologizing for the dearth of
movies from Asia and Africa, and the over-representation of American
and European titles. Also, this marks the third year in a row the
Secret Festival was decidedly sub-par, but I can't talk about that,
wink-wink. All the same, when next May rolls around, you know exactly
where I'll be.
Until next year—
—Harold Hellman
