Capharnaüm [2018] by Nadine Labaki

Capharnaüm is a rich and moving immersion into the world of kids on the streets of Beirut, Lebanon.  It is also expert filmmaking and even those who are offended by its existence admit these are some of the best performances by young children in the history of cinema.  It is a miserable existence, but told without brutality or pathos.

Having become somewhat jaded by seeing 50 films in the preceding fortnight with the unmissable New Zealand International Film Festival, I was shocked into the silence by the immediacy and deep, intimate empathetic immersion into the life of Zain, a boy of about 12, whose parents have too many children without the resources, energy or enthusiasm to take care of them.  Zain is bitter and caustic in his speech and his eyes are weary and cynical, but he retains a love for his siblings, and when his parents invoke in him a particular unbearable disgust, he runs away to make his own life.  We follow him through the minutiae of his experience with total engagement and compassion, and Zain shows the same compassion himself, despite his precocious world-weariness.

Where else can you expect such intimate and empathetic access to such a world?

First Reformed [2017] by Paul Schrader

In 1976 Paul Schrader's script, made into the film Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese, was released.  This was a powerful cinematic moment that reverberates into the present.  Last year, Lynne Ramsey's You Were Never Really Here covers similar ground; a broken isolated man uses extreme violence to liberate a child from sexual exploitation.  It was hailed by critics, particularly for Joaquin Phoenix's deserving performance, but for me it lacked truth.  It wanted to deal with the real stuff, the difficult stuff, like Taxi Driver had, or at least it wanted to give that impression.  It showed an unequivocal evil, child sex slavery, something that would justify the extreme violence perpetrated by the film's hero in the process of liberating a particular child.  But what was it really confronting?  The violence that perpetuates violence that justifies violence, a violent man damaged by violence who commits violence to stop violence.  Meanwhile, we the audience, who may not yet have been damaged by violence, are exposed to it.  To what end?  Is it artistically rooted, philosophically grounded, ethically justified?  Is this film really the modern installment of the true wake-up call that Taxi Driver delivered?  No, it is not.

In 2017, 40 years after Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader offers a film of equal weight, difficulty and integrity.  It may not have the same stylistic originality as Taxi Driver, but at its core it is the film's contemporary incarnation.  Ethan Hawke inhabits his character at least as fully as Robert De Niro did his.  He is Reverend Toller of First Reformed, 250 years old, a museum but not really any longer a church.  Abundant Life, with seating for 5000, is the local affiliated modern church, with a full congregation and corporate sponsorship.  Toller is asked by a woman to speak to her husband, an environmental activist overwhelmed with the destruction of the world and in despair at the prospects of the future, particularly about bringing a child into the world, as his wife is pregnant.  Toller finds the conversation very stimulating and in his own emptiness he takes on the man's vision, his disgust and his despair.

The delicate complexities of the situation are woven through the richly portrayed character of Reverend Toller, his internalisation of this despair and his response.  How does one choose to live in the world, engage with the world, having fully accepted that our culture is destroying the planet at a rapid rate.  Will God forgive us?  Or, more importantly, how do we choose to respond ourselves?  There is no prescription of course, there is no naive hope nor unrelenting despair offered, just the masterfully laid out texture of an intricate spread: what Toller sees, what he doesn't see, what is obvious, what is bewildering.  And how do we choose to respond?  With integrity?  What does that involve?  With denial?  What crutch will facilitate that?

In Taxi Driver we were presented with Travis Bickle's solution: kill all the people associated with this girl's sexual exploitation and take her out of the situation.  We saw this violence in graphic detail not to revel in it, not to be entertaining or give the film a gritty realism, but to see it for what it is.  If this is the solution, we need to look hard at it before we choose it.  You Were Never Really Here is an inferior film because it doesn't present the protagonist's response so dryly that we can see it for what it is, it presents it like a thriller, we are there with him, smashing skulls, saving the girl, being the hero, surprised by the plot twists along with him.  There is no philosophical complexity, no ethical integrity.  But in First Reformed we are presented with a situation - repugnant, complex, problematic - and although we have deep empathy for Toller and can relate to his anguish, we are not drawn into his psyche, we can see his strengths, we can see his faults.  We can see his thinking, we can see the solutions he has reached, we can map and trace his mistakes if we choose to.  We can contextualise his decisions.  And thus we have not an easy answer nor a nihilistic despair, but a complex tapestry, an invitation to engage, to think and feel, to make our own decisions; we have an extraordinary central performance and a masterful film.

Orlando [1992] by Sally Potter

ORLANDO is quite a spectacular romp through 400 years of English history with Tilda Swinton as our tour guide.  She plays Orlando, a soft-faced young man who the queen loves enough to give him an estate, on condition that he never grow old.  So he does not. 

The costumes and the settings are lavish and the clearest indication of what historical period we are in, because Orlando tends to go against the grain of each period, pursuing his interests with utter passion and determination until he is struck by failure and moves on. 

It is theatrical but also so cinematic, what other medium could facilitate such an extravagant and unlikely a concept?  But it is Tilda Swinton who holds it all together with her dignified performance, wearing the costumes and moving through the moods as if it's all normal, staring at us through the camera when it surprises even her/Orlando. 

I came out of this film uplifted with the clever and light-hearted delight of a long life, carrying around 400 years of baggage, and letting it all go to pursue a new life in a new time.  Our greatest power, after being able to experience life intensely, is to let it all go and move on, ever-changing, ever-evolving, ever-growing creatures that we are.  Funny, spectacular and utterly delightful.

The Seen and the Unseen [2017] by Kamila Andini

In The Seen and the Unseen a boy takes an egg from the offerings to the gods and then falls mysteriously degeneratively sick.  His twin sister wants to keep playing with him while he lies unconscious in the hospital bed.  She processes her defiance, her hope, her realisation and her grief through dance, denying his sickness, defying his sickness, dreaming, channeling the spirits and the animals.  The two worlds, the seen and the unseen, are painfully close, but painfully incompatible.

This is a strange and beautiful world, and this film is worth seeing simply because it is very much from a cultural context not our own.  Don't expect a narrative or a lot of stimulation, but expect gentle and embodied expression from this amazing little girl, sometimes corralling her brother to join her; costume, movement and grief without despair, channeled beautifully through the body and imagination of a child in touch with her Balinese cultural heritage.

Border [2018] by Ali Abbasi

An ugly woman working on border patrol has a strange talent for being able to smell fear and guilt on people, perfect for sniffing out who has too much duty-free alcohol.  But her talent, and her ugliness, is a mystery to her, until she meets someone who looks similar.  He likes roaming the forest and eating insects, and he has the clue to her peculiarity.

This film is fun, although it's not funny.  It is a genre film for people not dumb enough for most genre films.  Although it's dealing with trolls, mythical creatures of the European woods, there is something subversive about them roaming naked through the forest, encountering wildlife peacefully, eating insects, shrieking joyously in the river in the rain.  But the film always restrains itself, never reverting to sensationalism or sentimentality.  Always dry, always grounded and never giving in to the obvious pitfalls of genre convention.  Having said, this feels like it could be the start of a franchise, but let's hope not; let's hope that our myths are retold, as in this film, with integrity and feeling and not exploited to sell merchandise like the crap of the multiplex.

Burning [2018] by Lee Chang-dong

Burning is an extraordinarily involving and mysterious film.  It is difficult to critique a film that is more sophisticated than me.  I was masterfully drawn into a world I totally believed in, without irony, without sensation, the film remains totally grounded, even as the characters unravel.

Three characters whose lives become intertwined, almost by accident; Jongsu, a reserved young man, supposedly writing a book; Haemi, a passionate, unstable young woman who demands Jongsu's attention and then certainly maintains it; and Ben, a relaxed and self-assured rich man who becomes Haemi's companion, to Jongsu's consternation.

We can see the reverberation of Haruki Murakami's short story source material in the softness of the characters, the mysterious changes that life forces upon them.

American Animals [2018] by Bart Layton

American Animals is a film that will subvert your expectations.  It plays with reality and it plays with fiction.  It is a documentary and it is a drama, maybe even a thriller.  It is about an art heist, but one performed by teenagers, and based on a true story.  It is very clever and very entertaining.

Ten years ago a small group of American college students decided to steal millions of dollars of rare books from their school library.  They were bored and wanted something interesting to happen in their lives finally.  They wanted to take a risk.

In this film we get to enjoy the best of both worlds.  We get the ten-years-later reflections of the four guys involved, told through very charming and candid interviews, and we see their story dramatically and thrillingly come to life, moment by moment.  Strong characters, both real and performed, are very engaging, and the complexities of the situation spread out from the original seed of their idea as the story progresses.  They are not psychopaths, which would have helped.  They are clever, but are they well organised?

This is the dramatic debut from the filmmaker behind the outrageously entertaining and surprising documentary The Imposter [2012], about a French man who posed as the three-years-lost son of an American family.  Again, he has managed to tell a crime story of peculiar humanity and complexity in a highly cinematic, striking and involving way.  This film even has Udo Kier.

AMERICAN ANIMALS subverts expectations, subverts the thriller genre and questions the truth of its own story in a very engaging and entertaining way. This real-life teenage art heist docu-drama plays at #TheCivic in #Auckland Fri 27 July with #NZIFF.

Ága [2018] by Milko Lazarov

In ÁGA, the old woman has a dream that she's walking with a polar bear who becomes a young man who takes her home with him, into a deep hole where all of the stars have been taken down from the sky into that bright dazzling hole where she forgets everything, who she is, where she came from and all the world outside. 

The daily life of this old Yakut couple in North Eastern Siberia is carefully documented, travelling via dogsled, fishing, trapping, making medicine, maintaining their yurt, as the world changes around them, helicopters pass overhead, their children have moved to the city, and yet they persist with calm resolution. 

The frozen landscape is exquisitely photographed and the tiny but complete world of these characters is a privilege to be invited into.  They live in a harsh environment, but they live their lives with sensitivity and patience.  The delicacy with which they communicate, tell stories and dream of the past is very moving.

This film really is spectacularly composed, the landscapes huge and cold and unforgiving, and movingly written and performed for the warmth and depth of the human element.

The Cleaners [2018] by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck

THE CLEANERS is a very serious documentary about a very complex and deeply problematic subject and it offers no solutions. What right do major social media sites have to censor our expressions? What responsibilities do they have when their sites are being used to promote violence?

The film merely lays out the dangerous parameters of the situation, the massive influence that Facebook, Twitter and Google have on the world and how we communicate, and suggests there is some responsibility there regarding how that technology is being utilised. It is critical of these companies using economically marginalised and untrained Filipinos to do their vast editorial work.

I left the film much more uncertain of my position on the subject than when I went in.

Leto [2018] by Kirill Serebrennikov

LETO is about the surprising influence of UK and US punk and rock music on a scene of young Soviet musicians. Living under the oppressive watch of the USSR, but deeply passionate about the expressive possibilities of music, a group of charming young Russians, revolving around a rock music club that requires government appointed bureaucrats to approve all lyrics, manage to live the lives they want to live, slipping through the cracks and making great music; often in fantasy segments of defying authority that turn into musicals. The film goes down very easily, especially if you're into the music, but if only because of the pleasure of seeing lives lived well in difficult circumstances.

Strangely, the cinema was almost empty. Are there any fans out there of T-Rex, Lou Reed, David Bowie or Blondie? Or fans of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, another film about punk rock's influence beyond the iron curtain? Or fans of Once, that sweet fictional film about real musicians making music together? Or just good Russian cinema? (I'm in the latter boat.)

Plays again in Auckland Friday 27 July and Sunday 5 August and continues around the country.

Our New President [2018] by Maxim Pozdorovkin

OUR NEW PRESIDENT is satire as collage. We are now in an age when global politics is so ludicrous and out of control that satire has become superfluous. The filmmaker needs merely to compile a sequence of the regime's own propaganda and it reveals itself for the bright, funny, corrupt and manipulative charade that it is. 

As the film shows, news is also superfluous. The masses don't need to be informed so they can make considered choices, they just need to know who the heroes are, and who the villains are.  It's not the petty facts that are important, but the larger truths.  We watch as the spectrum of Russian news channels are amalgamated into one government run organisation, Russia Today, and the most revealing moment in the film is certainly when the boss addresses his staff with an inspiring speech, “The time of detached, unbiased journalism is over… Editorial policy will be based on love of Russia.”  When a staff member asks for clarification he is accused of planning subversive activities.

It is all fairly funny and charming, as long as you don't consider the implication of such a successfully sterile bubble of propaganda.  It makes me wonder what it would look like if such a carefully constructed satirical collage was made of our own national news, what invisible ubiquitous propaganda we are exposed to.

The Image Book [2018] by Jean-Luc Godard

Less of a film, more of an anti-film, with a total commitment to not being entertaining and to disassembling our naïve and uncritical absorption of cinematic images. The pleasure of watching beautiful sequences of film is interrupted with over-exposure, sudden cuts and images being separated from their soundtracks. Coherency is interrupted with inexplicable juxtapositions, little continuity in even the commentary and even the English subtitles failing to translate all the spoken and textual French.

The first sound we receive from the filmmaker, before any image appears, is a loud and obnoxious high-pitched noise, somewhat of a “fuck you” to the audience. Was it just me, of did the commentary become more coherent a significant way through the film, when everyone who was going to walk out had already walked out in boredom or confusion? Romantic and chivalrous films and images of war are equally violated in the filmmaker's attempt to destroy both our sentimental attachment to the films and our ability to unconsciously suspend disbelief and allow the film to entertainingly indoctrinate us with its implicit ideology, either pernicious or superficial.

Jean-Luc Godard, whose moody black and white films from the 1960s are remember with such affection, is disgusted with what he sees in the world. I found, when I moved through my boredom and irritation and engaged with the language of the film, a satirical humour present only when the dissolution of the grammar and glamour of film is complete, exemplified by over-exposed old footage of can-can dancing that is the final and most sustained excerpt in the film.

The Image Book screens as part of the New Zealand International Film Festival.

Dog's Best Friend [2017] by Eryn Wilson

DOG'S BEST FRIEND is a very heartfelt portrait of a man's love for dogs, and his lifetime commitment to rehabilitating them and allowing them to rehabilitate him, and each other. 

Jacob and Jennah, with a baby on the way, have had traumatic pasts, but they have created a sanctuary of healing with many dogs. Jacob works tirelessly with the dogs for the betterment of every being involved. The love he shares with the canines is very moving and the methods he uses to rehabilitate them and keep them calm and happy is very instructive. 

A small but very genuine film radiant with love for dogs and their unflagging commitment to making us happy.

Dog's Best Friend screens at the New Zealand International Film Festival 23, 25 and 29 July.

Films about the life of humans

The New Zealand International Film Festival continues here in Auckland and today there was another interestingly synchronistic double-feature.

Policeman is an Israeli film about a tribe of Police Fighters and a tribe of Revolutionary Socialists.  We are brought into each of their worlds and then we see their violent interaction.

Dead Europe is an Australian film about a man visiting the village of his Greek father for the first time and discovering the lingering hatred and violence throughout Europe.

Both of these films have very bleak views of the price of confronting the damaged nature of our societies.  The idealistic youngsters in the first film feel compelled to address the economic imbalance in Israel.  "It is time for the poor to get rich and the rich to start dying,"  they announce.  They are not the only ones to feel this way.  Last year there was a massive demonstation in Tel Aviv involving half a million people (1/16th of the population of the state) in favour of significant changes to government, social and economic behaviour.  As unprecedented numbers of people around the world have discovered in recent years even peaceful demonstations against governments and corporations eventually end with dispersion or destruction from Riot Police.  However, the characters in this film are quite happy to use violence themselves and thus justify a rapid and uncompromising violence from Police.  What can be done to change society if any mass attempt leads to anti-human Police violence?  Policeman shows that terrorists and police are groups made up of human beings and that one group does violence much more successfully than the other.

Dead Europe has an equally hopeless but much less concise story to tell.  Ambiguity and depravity emerge from every dank corner of Europe that the protagonist encounters, revealing little that can be made sense of.  It is a sprawling trashy and convoluted mythical exploration of why Australia came to be a European colony.  Why would anyone want to leave Europe for this new continent, you might ask?  Tony Krawitz's film suggests that perhaps it is because Europe is dead, a cesspool of generations of dehumanising violence, exploitation and self-abuse.  The only solution, it seems, is to leave and never return.  There is no hope for a land that has been the stage for so many centuries of incomprehensible and unjustifiable acts, we can only give our lives and our passports to our children while they still possess the hope to venture out into the world for a better life, leaving behind the continent where it all happened and the habits of the parents who allowed it all to continue.

It would be easy to understand emerging from this double-feature devoid of hope for any type of future or instead choosing a denial that replaces the difficult face of reality.  I emerged onto the rainy night street of Auckland, however, with a clarity and a peace that is the result of powerful art experiences bringing to world into focus.  It would be easy to have no hope, some might say; but I disagree.  Hope is essential and logical and there was a third film today which exemplified the hope that I continue to experience.

Winter Nomads began my day, before this double-feature.  It is a Swiss documentary about a man and a woman, donkeys, dogs and a huge flock of sheep performing the traditional winter practice of moving the herd around to glean the final vegetation of the year from every available grassland.  These two humans live a simple life with their animals, in the snow, relaxing by the fire in the evening, sleeping in the tent with the dogs.  The practice is going out of fashion and some progressive locals oppose their tradition but when we sit with these people we realise what a human being is and receive a palpable peaceful suggestion about how human beings might live.

Sighing

I trip to South America soon, with Dad in tow, 

for five long years we burn under the American sun. 

I have one year's money saved, but while there make fuck-load on sale of manuscript, nature unknown.

 

I take bunkers of cookies and wash them down with soapy beer and faeces, 

tomorrow I will break my back lifting Moloch to Heaven. 

I feel like the world is getting heavier every day, but I don't know who to consult. 

Most people are unfamiliar with the concept of weight, they only understand smell, and what it feels like to rub pine cones against your vagina.