Hey folks... Once again our Minority Reporter from Chicago's International Film Festival has chimed in again with 3 more films plus the award winners from the fest. I've been hearing good things about RATCATCHER for quite some time, but this film called NOTHING from Poland... This is the first I've heard and it sounds interesting. Well... here ya go...
Hello Harry,
After an absence of a few days, Minority Reporter is back in business. Before reviewing three movies, let me just give the list of awards announced yesterday.
Golden Hugo for Best movie: :Le Maladie de Sachs (France)
Haven't seen it, but heard good things about it.
Silver Hugos :
Best Actor: Giuseppe Piccioni (The Carriers are Waiting/ Belgium )
Seems to be a rather weak year for actors at the festival, but this was a deserved award. his complex portrayal of a domineering father was the heart of this movie.
Best Actress : Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry/ US)
A no-brainer! Even though I have seen at least two more excellent female performances in competition, Hilary Swank's performance is so unique and so stunning that the award could not go to anyone else.
Best Director : Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher / UK)
Solid debut movie by this director. She extracted uniformly fine performances and employed a range of superb visuals to flesh out her movie (lengthier report below)
On to the reviews:
Ratcatcher (UK) Grade : B+
Dir : Lynne Ramsay
English with English subtitles.
Coming of age stories form a genre that has yielded a lot of good movies, most of which also tend to be very personal.
'Ratcatcher' is a coming of age story set in 1970s among the Glasgow working class. James (well played by William Eadie) is an adolescent boy, who lives with his parents and two sisters in a dumpy neighborhood. A silted canal flows just behind their tenements. The opening scene in the movie shows James being responsible for the accidental drowning of a neighboring kid. No one else knows of his involvement and the rest of the movie shows how his guilt colors his growing up process. The script checks off all the usual scenes a coming-of-age story typically has: a quasi-sexual experience with a slightly older girl, harassment by older kids, a trip outside his neighborhood, tensions within the family, etc. But they are all well-integrated into the screenplay and do not feel as if the script-writer had a check-list next to him/her when writing the script. The way the milieu is captured dictates how successful a coming-of-age story is, and in this respect, this is a brilliant movie. Not only does it capture a particular place perfectly, it also sets the movie during a very specific time. There was a garbage worker strike that let all the garbage pile up behind the apartment buildings and the film is set during that strike. Setting the story in a very specific time and place ironically allows the movie to be more universal in capturing the emotions.
Since it is a United Artists movie, it should find distribution in the US. Since the thick Glasgow accents are next to impossible to understand, the movie thoughtfully provides sub-titles.
Ms. Lynn Ramsay won the best Director award at the festival for this film.
Nothing (Poland) Grade : B+
Dir : Dorota Kedzierzawska
Polish with English subtitles
The best political statements are those that tells an intensely personal story, a story that lays bare the issues involved. The director who was at the screening said, in response to my question, that it was not her intention to make a political statement, but to tell a true story as best as she could. In that, she succeeded. But by the very nature of the story, the movie becomes a powerful political statement against the anti-abortion laws that were enacted in Poland about five years back. [I guess I should reveal at this point that I firmly believe in the woman's right to choose] The story is simple. Hela (Anita Kuskowska-Borkowska) is mother of three very young children, pregnant with a fourth, but afraid to tell her husband. The family barely gets by as it is and her husband is not exactly the most sympathetic guy in the world. She cannot get a legal abortion in Poland and all doctors are afraid to even suggest an alternative began because of fear of prosecution. The Catholic Church is an all-powerful institution that is against even birth-control devices. Hela is at her wits end trying to find a way out. She tells her husband that she has a tumor in her belly and that it will go away by itself- even if her husband suspects the truth, he does not want to know how she proposes to deal with it. The ending sequences are harrowing as you see a young mother going to extreme lengths to dispose an unwanted baby. Beautifully shot in sepia tones and focusing tightly on the young mother and her family to the exclusion of everything else, "Nothing" shows powerfully how anti-abortion laws can destroy a woman's life.
The performances are all very good- especially the three kids. They are not angels, but typical boisterous kids who drive their mother mad. There are extended shots of the kids playing, that are a marvel to behold. The film deliberately loses a sense of time and place- it is set in the 90s, but often feels like it could be set in the 1920s. Which, considering the subject matter, works to its advantage.
"Nothing" has done well in Poland, but has not been picked up for distribution. It will probably make it to the Polish Film festival which is held in Chicago in November.
Heroes in Tyrol (Austria) Grade : B
Dir : Niki List
German with English subtitles
"An Alpine Rock Musical" was how the publicity blurb put it. Now, I love musicals. Always have, always will. It is really a pity that we haven't had a decent musical since "Cabaret" ("Evita" is more of a hagiography, though I enjoyed it). It is in the fringes that one finds some daring new musicals- "Zero Patience" by Canada's John Greyson comes to mind. So, it was with some enthusiasm (but not a lot of hope) that I went to see "Heroes in Tyrol". Boy, did I have fun!
Helden (translates to 'Heroes') is your typical bucolic paradise in the mountains of Tyrol. You have your mayor who wants to Disnefy it into a tourist destination. And then you have your hero, a Robin Hood like figure who has to save the village (and of course, get his girl). There are a host of unforgettable characters: the local priest who has regular conversations with Christ, the village idiot who reads Proust, the afore-mentioned Mayor with his three sons Peter, Paul and Mary (real name:Erich, but you know why he is called Mary :-)), the rustic beauty who is wooed by both our hero and the mayor's son, the old hag on a motorbike, and so on and so forth. All characters are richly realized and burst into song periodically. and the music is wonderful: rock ballads, yodeling, polka ditties, etc. etc. There are at least a couple of big laughs (the sex scene is hysterical) and a score of small ones. The taste is often cheerfully low-brow. What I liked most about the movie, other than its tongue-firmly-in-cheek attitude was how well it understood musical conventions. One has only to see how the ballads are filmed to make that out. In spite of all the cheerful mayhem, it is at heart an old-fashioned musical. I have to issue one warning though- the humor is not to all tastes.
It is really nice to see a decent musical. I wish Hollywood would stop dithering and start making them again. "Rent" would be a good start.
That's all for now. I will report on the hysterically funny "East is East" starring Om Puri ("My son the Fanatic") in my next dispatch.
-Minority Reporter.
