Ebertfest 2008, Day 3

Seen: Friday, April 25, 2008
The following films played on day three of Ebertfest 2008:

Underworld (1927)
If pressed to say which are my two favorite silent films, Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931) would probably top the list, but directly on its heels would be Josef von Sternberg's phenomenal gangster pic--also known as the first movie of the gangster genre--Underworld (1927). I honestly didn't believe that it would even make the program for Ebert's festival of underrated and overlooked films, for what cinephile has either dismissed or been left unaware of such a wonderful film? Well, no one, is the answer. As Ebert believes (and I think he's right), silent films are simply overlooked in general by contemporary audiences. So von Sternberg's film was picked as the annual silent screening, but the flickering sound of the projector was hardly the only sound reverberating through the Virginia Theater, enter: The Alloy Orchestra. Live musical accompaniment made a film that is already so smartly built that its series of visuals double as built-in sound cues, even better. In fact, Underworld, which I have seen at least a handful of times, was practically a whole new and enriched film. The sound accompaniment made such a difference in maintaining the story's tone and flow, it actually felt like a longer movie--not tediously so, just more fleshed out and engaging. I love to watch von Sternberg films, and I love to watch Underworld even more; this was simply the best experience seeing any of the above.

The Real Dirt on Farmer John (2005)
If ever you need a pick-me-up, find joy in the story of Illinois farmer and hippie, John Peterson. His heart is as large as that beautiful, organically grown cabbage he's got his arms around at left, seriously. The documentary follows Peterson's plight to save his farm that has been in his family since (if memory serves) before he was even born. Bright super 8mm home movie reels are woven with present day digital footage to narrate the personal story of his mother's life and death, the dismantling of his land in years past when financial times were tough, and shocking stories of his bewildered country neighbors who perpetuated rumors that murderous black magic took place on John's plot of land (you never knew what those nutty long-hairs where up to in those days, I guess!) But mostly, it's an inspiring, hopeful story couched in the organic food movement that only in recent years has gained a lot of commercial steam. Plus John is such a lovable dude, honest and forthwith and impassioned about his quiet everyday life, it's not presumptuous to say his story makes you feel glad that you are alive.

This is what happens at Ebertfest!

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
Ah, and the grand finale for the day! We marveled over writer-director-Hollywood legend Paul Schrader's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. It comes post-Taxi Driver and post-Raging Bull, at a time in cinema history that is frowned upon as the era of the bloated blockbuster. That may only partially be true, using Mishima as the definitive case study for the kind of experimental story structure and visual aesthetics employed during the 1980s. The story is a story within a story within a story--the novel, a stage play, and the filmed frame around it all--embellished with sets that simply glow, and a musical score from Philip Glass that haunts me to this day. Schrader was there and I like how he speaks, thoughtful sentences strewn with swears. I don't mean that only in a provocative way either, it's just that there is an amazing energy to how Schrader articulates himself and those choice four letter words are just part and parcel of his individuality. He injects a sense of reality to the conversation, trimming all the fat and self-inflated B.S. you can often easily get from Hollywood directors. The print of the film we saw was Schrader's own. For me, this was the most personal events of Ebertfest, partially because I sat a few feet away from the writer of my favorite American movie (Taxi Driver, 1976), though mostly because I saw a new movie pumped full of magic, wonder and fear--to fall in love at the theater! Mishima is the newest addition to my long best-of list.


Read more about Ebertfest Day 3 as it happened live at Scarlett Cinema!

The Chicago International Film Festival

The sad reality of a day job prevents one from devoting full days to a fleshy portion of a film festival's schedule. But luckily a good chunk of the movies one has to miss for myriad reasons--scheduling of course, but probably the cost of a $13 ticket price, too--luckily, a lot of those movies will get released in the succeeding months. Thus, after finding out director Anton Corbijn's pseudo-documentary on the truncated life and times of Joy Division front man Ian Curtis in Control was sold out (and was to be released theatrically 2 weeks later); and that scheduling issues would make me miss Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (yet to be released in the Chicago area), I made three ticket purchases with the following provisions: 1) something new and/or by a director I knew; 2) something with a lot of buzz that I'm unfamiliar with; and 3) a retrospective. There are pros and cons to be argued for these logistics, the cons being that treading on unfamiliar territory can lead to some rather dull cinema. But the inverse can also be true; there is something exciting about wandering into a film you know nothing about, it could end up being the best thing you see all year.


Thursday, October 11, 2007

The Walker, a new release by cinema veteran Paul Schrader, a screenwriter (Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980)), director (Affliction (1997), Autofocus (2002)), and occasional movie critic, was underwhelming in that "aw, shucks" kind of way (and certainly was not the best film I've seen all year.) By that I mean, with the set of credentials behind Schrader we want to be awestruck again with something that redefines what the world looks like, and it is usually its darker underside. Taxi Driver is seventies disillusionment defined; Raging Bull has a seedy swiftness that bowls you over in defeat; and his directorial contributions are likely to reveal regular peoples' more wretched sides (Autofocus takes this to a raunchy extreme.) The Walker stars Woody Harrelson as the homosexual son of a deceased senator with an outlandishly strong southern accent, an eye for high fashion, and a prejudice for almost no one. Weaving through the web of Washington society and politics he's a perfect fit among his gossipy gal pals (Lily Tomlin, Kristen Scott Thomas and Lauren Bacall) for weekly card games, but when a murder turns things terribly awry his friends disappear quickly. Washington politics are dirty, the story overtly goes. What's curious about The Walker, however, are how brightly lit his characters and sets are; the aesthetic is unnaturally sterile and symmetrical for a story regarding characters in up to their ears in deception, lies and greed. An irony that tips its hat directly to the planned, museum-like landscape of Washington, D.C. itself perhaps. If nothing more, Schrader remains consistent with The Walker in the way he shows us that nothing is ever as regal as it appears. It's the lack of urgency in this story where he diverges from his past.


Friday, October 12, 2007

The Man From London was the first film I've seen by Hungarian director Bela Tarr, and was decidedly the most important to watch at the festival after the critical buzz his past films had received. I am going to think of this film as an easier, or at least more digestible, introduction to Tarr, whose Sátántangó (1994) clocks in at 450 minutes (that's 7 1/2 hours), and Werckmeister harmóniák (2000) at 145 minutes. The two hour run time of The Man From London felt a touch longer than that, but only as an adjustment from the standard film fare these days that allows for an abundance of (some say unnecessary and/or sloppy) cuts and close-ups. The first thing to know about Bela Tarr is his penchant for the long shot and long take. The still image from the film above is a nice illustration of this, the primary establishing shot of the movie that later comes back as a bookend at the film's conclusion. What you won't glean from the image above is the thick texture of the picture, the deep contrast of black against white so dense and dimensional it's analogous to the sound of a needle on a dusty record, a tactile sound, and in Tarr's case, image. It is a movie to be seen on a big screen, on DVD-TV at home as a last-ditch effort, for much of the meditation on form will probably be lost in translation. The scenery is stark and minimal, yet enveloping and hypnotizing; there's a simple sense of space the characters live in that doesn't make it seem artificial, even though each scene is staged as much (if not more) than that of any other fiction film.

The story is simple: a man from London arrives in the opening scene smuggling a briefcase of money ashore; from the watchtower (the view as seen in the still above) a guard watches the man's actions, and his subsequent fight with a man at the dock edge unfold. Without seeing the character from whose eyes we're watching this drama, the camera pans inch-by-inch, back and forth across the window panes of his watchtower, careful not to be seen by anyone below. But after the guard steals the money the camera's perspective changes; we meet his family, towns people, and finally an investigator on his trail to get the money back; that is, he's as vulnerable being seen in public as the first man he witnessed sneaking the briefcase on land. A shot framed by the windows of his tower reveal a skyline of windows from which he too may be seen, and reveals an incredible amount of depth as to be a window itself, and not simply a projection onscreen.

My favorite shot takes place in the last third of the film as the watch guard Maloin (Miroslav Krobot) carries a grocery sack at his side, seen from the tracking low-angle shot directly at the bag's level, and about the height of Maloin's knees; a minor object becomes the subject of greater consideration, and therein lies the beauty of The Man From London, an attention to the mundane, to everyday objects that adorn life, and how they are placed and consume time within the bigger picture.


Saturday, October 13, 2007

One of the big retrospectives this year at the festival was Rouben Mamoulian's 1935 film based on William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair, one of the main characters of which is Becky Sharp. If you know the novel, you know her character, a conniving gold digger in search of permanent socialite status. I found the performances over-played, melodramatic, but inadvertently so; the color palette was the main pull of the film, shot originally in 3-strip Technicolor. From reel to reel you could see a drastic difference in the tone and color contrast, and a friend of mine pointed out after the screening that not every reel was a copy of the 3-strip process, but rather 2-strip Technicolor. The picture at left gives you a good idea of the garish color scheme employed, which in and of itself was dazzling. However, as a piece of cinema the staging and dialogue was too theatrical to be memorable.