It sometimes seems that all Father Geek does anymore is post stories on film Festivals... there are just so many. Especially with our international columns up and running to expand the breath of that paticular coverage. Don't get me wrong I love giving worldwide exposure to these fests. Lots of really great flicks get discovered on the fest circuit. And some of them would never see the light of day without these festivals. Thats why we cover them. The big films, the blockbusters don't need our help to find an audience, but these little movies, the ones with no budgets for advertising, they're dying from lack of buzz. So I do what I can here at AICN, and my rewards are the GODS AND MONSTERS, the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, etc... that due in part to our efforts get a wider release, and reach your eyes and ears.
Hey all, Fallen Angel here giving a brief re-cap of what I've been lucky to see so far at this year's New York Film Festival.
First, let me begin by extolling the virtues of the world's greatest practitioner of cinematic lyricism and unfulfilled yearning, Wong Kar Wai. His latest masterpiece, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, doesn't actually open at the fest until Sunday night and American audiences won't get to see the movie until February. But as it stands, it's the event of the year for die-hard film buffs. I was lucky enough to attend a screening a few weeks back which was so crowded that I had to stand the entire time. WKW and his equally brilliant key technical team [Cinematographer Chris Doyle aided adroitly by Hou Hsiao Hsien's cameraman Mark Li Ping-bin who finished the job when Doyle left and Production & Costume Designer/Editor William Chang Suk-ping] always deliver a ravishing experience where intense emotions are expressed through evocative cinematic techniques. This film is the culminating work of an artist obsessed with romantic longing and loss. Someone once called WKW the poet of missed connections, and that's a perfect way to describe him. (If anybody knows who said that, please let me know).
Those most familiar with Chungking Express or Fallen Angels may be surprised with the more visually disciplined approach of the film. WKW uses less camera movement than usual and employs a more careful mis-en-scene than those two films which were shot more on the fly with a rougher visual texture. Every detail of Hong Kong in the 60s is lovingly recreated and suffused with WKW's rich romanticism. In this respect, the film somewhat recalls Days of Being Wild - but this film has a more simple, streamlined narrative. This is the story of a man and a woman who are neighbors in an crowded apartment suite in HK who discover that their respective spouses are having an affair with each other. In a technique that I call the Charlie Brown approach, we never see the spouses of either Tony Leung Chiu-Wai or Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk…we only hear their voices (and occasionally see a shadow or the back of their heads). Even though their affair triggers the story, the spouses are unimportant. WKW is only concerned with the emotions of his two leads. Those who recall the awful Random Hearts might be concerned that this film takes a similarly sodden approach. Fear not - this is a moodily beautiful musical tone poem not a contrived melodrama. And of course, WKW likes to repeat bits of music - this time a haunting score by Michael Galasso and a few samba songs sung by Nat King Cole. Watching this movie is like remembering a love affair while listening to a significant piece of music.
I have been remiss in talking about the acting. Both stars are at the top of their form in challenging roles that require them to fill in the many gaps that WKW likes to leave by not providing them with a finished written script before hand.
Tony Leung Chiu-Wai has long been the world's greatest non-verbal actor. His face registers an astonishing array of feelings with delicate precision. Subtitles are almost unnecessary. Tony received Best Actor honors this year at Cannes and I hope it propels him into the International sphere (or I should say Western sphere since Asia's top directors have been using him for years).
The exquisite Maggie Cheung matches Tony at every gesture and glance. And more importantly, she expresses the emotions that Tony's character intentionally represses - giving the film some crucial balance.
I should also say, both stars look beautiful and sexy together & have wonderful chemistry.
My words will never do complete justice to the film, so just rush out and see this film when it does come out. It's a true movie lover's dream. In my opinion, Wong Kar Wai along with Steven Soderbergh is on an incredible roll and has never made a bad film (even if As Tears Go By teeters on cheesy with its repeated usage of "Take My Breath Away" in Cantonese).
Moving on, Saturday I saw two films: CHUNHYANG from South Korea's Im Kwon-Taek. According to the program notes and the Q & A afterwards, Mr. Im has directed 97 features! (and is working on his 98th). As a Korean-American, I'm ashamed to say that I usually expect the worst from Korean cinema. I have yet to see something that could honestly hold its own against the masterworks that have come from Japan, mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. That being said, I really liked Chunhyang. Apparently there have been 13 previous film versions of the story, since it's a beloved love story. The story is pretty simple - your basic boy meets girl but they come from different social classes so things gets messy type of deal. Mongyong is the local Governor's haughty,scholarly son who falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a local kisaeng (kind of like a geisha, but subtly different - you'd have to have dinner with somebody could explain this better than me) named Chunhyang. They marry against his family's wishes and enjoy a brief period of marital bliss. Before too long, Mongyong is called off to Seoul because his father receives another position with the Emperor. Chunhyang stays behind and a new Governor comes to town. Let's just say the Governor and his cronies are a bunch of corrupt, brutal bullies who steal from the people by levying unfair taxes, and the Governor tries to ravage the beautiful girl like a whore. Loyal to her one true love, she refuses his advances. In response, she is severely beaten and imprisoned for defying the social order. I won't spoil all the fun, but it ends somewhat happily when Mongyong comes back to town after passing first in his exam (you'll get a glimpse of the importance Koreans place on doing well on standardized tests - they tend to determine social standing later - which schools you attend, which major you can have, which jobs, companies etc - which is why Korean parents may later hound their children about the SAT or LSAT which are far less meaningful). What makes this film special is the inclusion of a pansori singer who sings the entire story. The film begins with a stage view of the singer with the musician playing an instrument to accompany him. We cut back and forth between a period recreation of the story and the pansori singer's intense singing. This style may take a while for Westerners or even Asians not accustomed to pansori to acclimate themselves, but eventually it all coheres nicely.
On a more unfortunate note, I also saw BOESMAN AND LENA that night at the fest. The film is an adaptation of Athol Fugard's 1969 South African play starring Danny Glover and Angela Bassett and was directed by the late John Berry who was blacklisted for many years. Sadly, Berry died soon after the film was edited. Even sadder, the film isn't very good. I'm sorry to report that the film comes across stilted, stagey, heavy-handed, dated, and monotone. I love both actors (well when Danny Glover isn't doing Gone Fishin' he can be a good actor - see To Sleep With Anger please & Angela Bassett still gets a lot of respect from What's Love Got To Do With It) - but they seemed to give forced performances this time. I just didn't buy them and they were encumbered with accents that just made it harder for me to accept the reality of their situations. I take no pleasure in saying any of this because clearly both actors did this as a labor of love and the film is full of deep social-political commitment. In any case, the actors star as Boesman and Lena a mixed-race couple who have recently been thrown out of their homes and end up setting up fort somewhere in South Africa. They squabble mostly and a third character, a more dark-skinned African shows up but they don't speak his language. We discover some details such as the fact that the couple had a baby but that the child died. But in the end, I had trouble following the story because the tone never wavered from the beginning to end. In the end I wasn't really sure what was being articulated, came away unenlightened - and even worse, unmoved.
Sunday night, I saw two films adapted from the work of another playwright, Samuel Beckett. These were happier and more successful blends of the theatrical and cinematic forms. Two major league talents directed the films & they recruited two major league actors to help them. First, Neil Jordan directed Julianne Moore (or her mouth at least) in a short film of NOT I. We see a vertiginous array of extreme close up shots of Moore's mouth endlessly speaking a stream of words. At first, the words sound like the non-sensical ravings of a lunatic and we feel like we're being verbally assaulted. Gradually, however, an internal logic develops as certain phrases repeat and the film begins to feel like a piece of music with varying rhythms and tempos. It's a fascinating and somewhat maddening (intentionally so) meditation on language, identity, and meaning. The mouth seems to be a powerful frightening creature independent of any human being. I forgot that it was Julianne Moore speaking and felt as though I had entered some eerie scifi universe where only demonic mouths existed.
The second piece was longer, but equally compelling. KRAPP'S LAST TAPE directed by Atom Egoyan and starring the wonderful John Hurt shows the last night of an old man listening to a recording he made thirty years ago in which he comments upon a recording he had made ten years prior to that. Rather than being an exercise in post-modern self-reflexivity, the piece is profoundly moving since we're clearly dealing with a man near death reflecting upon the loneliness of his life. The film is shot in long takes with a few movements of the camera as Krapp occasionally walks around his cluttered office and retrieves a banana or two out of the drawer to eat.
Neither of these films will likely receive wide distribution due to their highbrow pedigree, but the brave producers (who hail from Dublin's legendary Gate Theatre - where Orson Welles among others got his start as a professional actor) told the audience that the films will be available on home video next year "and please buy them!"
Last night, I saw "Beat" Takeshi Kitano's latest BROTHER. For those who were turned off by the sentiment and lack of body count of his last film Kikijiro, this film is a back to basics yakuza film filled with stunning shootouts and other explosive bits of ultraviolence laced with Kitano's idiosyncratic blend of offbeat humor and oblique emotion. This also marks Kitano's first production (at least that he wrote, directed and edited - let's all try and forget his role in Johnny Mnemonic) filmed largely in America with 60% of the dialogue spoken in English. It's an uneasy transition at first and a lot of the American actors (including Omar Epps) initially come across somewhat awkwardly. Eventually, however, the mix of different races and cultures yields some amusing results. I don't think the NYFF crowd has been subjected to this kind of mayhem since Abel Ferrara's King of New York and even that nihilist classic is pretty mild in comparison. (One old woman a few rows in front of me bolted as soon as a yakuza began committing seppuku - leaving his guts spilling out of a gash). This isn't at the level of Hana-bi or Scene by the Sea, but a few notches above Sonatine and Violent Cop.
That's all for now. I'm seeing POLLACK and In the Mood For Love again on Sunday.
