Hey folks, Harry here with that Lucian fellow that claimed on Day 2 to be near exhaustion... wellllll, seems the fella caught his second wind and is doing fine now... This is his second update of the day... Meanwhile, it's looking like tonight might have claimed the peak of human endurance for ol Anton Sirius as... I have yet to receive the day's update from him... To rest on Sunday is to be even superhuman.... I mean, God did... why not Anton. Heh... Well, good ol Lucian has two good movies for ya... enjoy....
Shadow of the Vampire
Directed by Elias Merhige
In brief Shadow of the Vampire tells the story of the filming of the classic vampire horror film Nosferatu. The twist here is that the film supposes that Max Shreck (a character actor who appeared in no other films) was a genuine vampire hired by perfectionist E. W. Murnau to give his film the ultimate in realism.
Briefly the film is quite good. Funny and scary in places with outstanding performances by John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Dafoe as Shreck in a role at least as good as Martin Landau's Oscar winning turn as Bela Legosi in Ed Wood. The script is not perfect but the film makes a decent horror comedy.
What is far more fascinating than the film's storyline is the multi-layered implications it has about film and its place in our society. Revising the history of entertainment is not new and Shakespeare in Love explored a different side of the Bard of Avon with Oscar winning results. But here film, a more recent media, is explored. The character of Murnau's obsession with film and an eternal record is only now beginning to dawn on society as we reach a point where there are very few people alive in the world who have never seen a film, and fewer each year who were alive before film became an entertainment for the masses. With the majority of the world population having grown up with film we now begin to more and more see films looking at how films have shaped the world.
Shadow of the Vampire fictionalises a real story about making a fictional story as real as possible. An actor plays a vampire playing an actor playing a vampire. Dafoe seems as lost in the role of Shreck as the real Shreck must have been on the role of Nosferatu. The film shows how realism becomes a deadly force in fiction yet fiction gains a deadly power over the real. Creating a film's illusion sacrifices the real which is in turn sacrificed for the illusion. There is nothing post-modern here. These discrepancies are not pointed out to the audience in order to gain laughs or even to distance the audience from the action. Here the conventions of media are assumed to be intimately familiar to the audience who could never hope to understand the film otherwise. This abandonment of post-modernism and instead using the conventions of film to draw an audience deeper into the realm of the film is only possible with audiences who have grown up so immersed in media they accept media to be as real, or even more real, than the physical world. This growing trend can be seen in a myriad of other entertainment (a few examples being The Blair Witch Project, Magnolia, Being John Malkovich or even the Survivor phenomena). It's a trend I call the Hyper-Real part of a theory of modern media I've been slowly developing for years (it is my theory and it is mine) and now have seen moving towards crystal clarity as I immerse myself in 50+ current films. It is a trend I feel will reshape the world's perceptions of media and its place in society.
Well that strayed a bit... Hmmm...ok so to sum up I recommend this film.
waydowntown
Directed by Gary Burns
Four young office workers are 28 days into a bet to see who can last the longest without ever leaving the connected apartment/mall/office complex to go outside. It's like a self-imposed reality TV program without the cameras following them. Each of the four has begun to develop their own psychological problems they attribute to the bet. But, as we explore the world they have exiled themselves to it becomes clear they are surrounded by people just as disturbed as they have become and their environment comes to resemble a giant asylum without any sane people to maintain order.
Tom, who keeps an ant farm in his cubicle, glides through his daily life ignoring most of those around him. Curt, two years into an engagement where his fiancé demands they wait for marriage before having sex has become a smooth playboy faking every stage of the courtship process to ensnare new sexual partners. Sandra, a corporate team player, is overjoyed to have been given the task of shadowing the company's soon to retire founder who has developed a severe case of kleptomania. Last is Randy who uses his relationship with a mall security guard to spy on his colleagues and others in the mall complex.
Each has their own motives for pursuing this quest they themselves admit is juvenile. To cope with a world where faking connections with others is the norm and having principles seems like a liability the four move towards breakdowns all the while failing to notice the breakdowns of those around them. But, as time passes, the act of pretending to care in an environment where caring is assumed to be fake forces the four into really examining their feelings.
The malls and office towers of Calgary are the perfect environment for this story. The style of the film is fascinating: fast cuts, changing colours, changing costumes and hallucinations that become as important as reality draw us into the fracturing mindsets of the characters (still more evidence towards my theory of the Hyper-Real I outlined in my review of Shadow of the Vampire). The director also uses the media itself to enhance the theme by shooting certain scenes with film while others are transferred from digital video clearly distinguishing the realm of outside from the enclosed ant farm of the downtown. waydowntown is also hilariously funny and full of excellent performances from a largely unknown cast. Don McKellar, the crown prince of Canadian cinema, appears as a twenty-year veteran of the company who makes the four principles appear sane and solid (this show also finally gave me a chance to see him live at the festival).
In the end it is not outside that is salvation...the characters must discover for themselves what they need to escape from. waydowntown was described by some as the best Canadian film at the festival. It's too early for me to judge that but waydowntown is certainly a hilarious and provocative film audiences should seek out as soon as it comes to an arthouse theatre near them.
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