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Mike D'Angelo's Pre-Festival Toronto Drive-bys

Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France/Italy): 81

Oh my, a plot. How terribly vulgar. Never mind that the Dardennes have been masterful storytellers from the jump; or that Lorna's Silence differs from La Promesse only in very slight degree; or that few other filmmakers are as skilled at withholding narrative detail and then abruptly revealing it, almost as an afterthought. We can't have our spiritual journey sullied by melodramatic twists, now can we? Oddly, it doesn't seem to have entirely escaped the folks bitching about the unprecedented amount of "incident" here that the film also diverges from the brothers' established trajectory at roughly the midpoint (immediately following the most disorienting wtf elision since Assayas' A New Life), and of course everyone dutifully notes for the record that we're not in Seraing anymore, Toto. And yet few seem to recognize -- or at least appreciate -- what a genuinely radical break Lorna's Silence represents in the Dardennes' gallery of tortured consciences. Unfortunately, I can't say much more than that without potentially ruining the experience for others -- if you've managed to avoid the logline thus far, do yourself a huge favor and remain as tabula rasa as possible, the better to be blindsided. But here's a hint. Think of the final scene in any previous Dardennes movie. Count the number of people you see in it. That number has changed. But only we know that. Devastating.

Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel/France/Germany): 40

Man, where to begin? At the end, I suppose, since that's where my creeping unease with this extraordinarily misguided project turned to outright distaste. It's not just that suddenly introducing actual footage of moldering Sabra/Shatila corpses amounts to the same cheap ploy De Palma used last year in Redacted, though I did in fact have more or less the same conflicted response: horror at the images undermined by anger at their baldly exploitative function as a dramatic trump card. But seeing these grisly live-action tableaux also retroactively confirms, in a nauseatingly powerful way, what an obtuse idea animating an atrocity was in the first place*. Understand, I decidedly do not belong to the school of thought that believes certain terrible events defy representation (e.g. the folks who think Schindler's List is somehow obscene). I am now convinced, however, that if you are going to represent such events onscreen, the very last fucking thing you want to do is aestheticize them, especially via crappy Flash animation that makes everything look like Homestar Runner Goes to Beirut. Folman's approach works beautifully for the opening-title nightmare sequence, and holds its own in isolated moments of pure subjectivity -- the furlough flashback, the Beirut airport. But his talking heads are just talking heads, only distractingly ugly and inexpressive, and those wartime flashbacks based on memories that aren't suspect (which is most of them) inevitably turn into set pieces. Show me an animated Phalangist gunning down four animated Palestinian civilians in an animated landscape artfully filled with animated rubble, and no matter how aware I am that this actually happened in 1982, I'm observing it from a great distance -- it might as well be the tentacle-rape bullshit in demonlover. Furthermore, I really don't think that a non-animated Waltz With Bashir would distinguish itself in any way from hundreds of similar docs involving post-traumatic testimony, or from hundreds of similar dramas involving wartime atrocity. It's the hybrid aspect that's got so many people convinced this is a masterpiece -- you've never seen a movie quite like this before. And you know what? There's a good reason.

* But what about Dogville?, you may be wondering. Didn't I respond to that film's abrupt, climactic shift from the abstract to the specific with great convulsive sobs? Indeed I did, but that's because Von Trier has no use for half-measures. His Brechtian bare stage and allegorical narrative is several orders of magnitude more alienating than Folman's animation, which merely adds a superficial veneer of unreality to what would otherwise be photorealism. The latter has the worst of both worlds, essentially, and as a result its shift to palpability is its undoing.

Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, USA): 46

Watching this dour exercise in solipsism is like taking up permanent residence in the Malkovich Malkovich feedback loop, except none of the Malkoviches are midgets or torch singers or anything remotely amusing -- it's just one dumpy dude whining, multiplied a hundredfold. As a diehard Primer fan, I suppose I have no right to complain about Synecdoche's migraine-inducing recursiveness, but in Carruth's hands that degree of impenetrability worked as a projection of the characters' fatally limited understanding, whereas here it just comes across as so much sub-Borgesian wankery. In point of fact, the film itself seems just as gargantuanly misguided as Caden's epic theatrical workshop, which may be intentional -- probably is, knowing Kaufman -- but doesn't make the result any less enervating to watch. Impossible not to admire its insane ambition and uncompromising Kaufman-ness, and isolated moments and ideas are as brilliant as you'd expect; among other virtues, this film has the most unexpected and jarring chronology leaps ever, so casual that you're never entirely sure whether they're real or not. But even the ostensibly light, playful touches, like Hazel's house being perpetually on fire, feel weirdly labored and oppressive. You can actually imagine Synecdoche having been made by Nicolas Cage's depressive "Charlie Kaufman" from Adaptation., and by the second morosely surreal hour you can't help but long for a dash of Donald.

The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson, USA): 76

It's almost touching, really, to see a scarily talented young filmmaker who's still struggling to overcome the tyranny of influence and develop his own voice. Brick, with its hyperkinetic camerawork and floridly stylized dialogue, was an unapologetic (and first-rate) Coen Bros. pastiche, though you could catch glimpses of Johnson's own personality reflected in his banal yet evocative San Clemente locations. This time around, it's Mr. Wes Anderson who should feel sincerely flattered, which would be disheartening (given all the other Wes-lite pictures we've seen in Rushmore's wake) were Johnson not such a remarkable and inventive mimic. Unlike other imitators, he mixes the jaunty tone and melancholic undercurrent in just the right proportion, lending the film a sort of effervescent gravity; he also knows his way around a terrific sight gag and a casually tossed-off punchline. Best of all, he actually has something to say: This is the first con-man picture I've ever seen that not only recognizes our inherent distrust in everything we're seeing but takes the resulting feeling of detachment as its subject. (You could almost read it as a rebuke to Mamet.) Enormously entertaining and ultimately quite poignant; apart from the lack of formal originality (which I believe and hope Johnson will soon overcome), my biggest quibble is Mark Ruffalo, who's just too naturally diffident to convince as the brash, flippant, überconfident showman Stephen is evidently meant to be. Why cast such a thoughtful actor as the glib, scheming brother? After his final scene, though, I understood.

Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/China): 59

Jesus, I've been doing this so long now that I can refer you back to the original review I wrote twelve freakin' years ago (in an earnest prose style I find almost unrecognizable). How much reconstructive work Wanker has performed I'll leave to others, but the film seemed far more comprehensible this time around, basically just a series of tangentially related encounters between Leslie Cheung's brooding loner and the various folks who wander by seeking succor and/or revenge. Brigitte Lin's impassioned segment, with its omnipresent cross-hatched birdcage shadows, works gorgeously as a self-contained short, and Wong's patented step-print process lends the later fight sequences a smeary grandeur; frame for frame, this is probably the most visually ravishing film he's ever made. But as a Westerner who totes in no cultural baggage regarding these iconic characters and their eventual fates (which I gather the average Chinese viewer would know like we know Batman and Superman), I still found myself tuning out whenever formal élan gave way to dramatic longueur. (Maggie Cheung's guest appearance, which is evidently intended as the film's emotional fulcrum, had me studying the art direction during her entire lengthy monologue.) Anecdote follows anecdote with little apparent rhyme or reason, apart from a rather wan throughline about the perils of memory; when the concluding titles gravely inform us that Cheung's character would become "Lord of the West" and The Other Tony Leung's character "Lord of the East," I more or less shrugged and said, "Okay." Which I don't think is the desired response.

Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, UK): 58

Certainly there's no denying the blunt (tour de) force of Sally Hawkins' soon-to-be-legendary performance, which essentially amounts to a photonegative of David Thewlis' caustic misanthropy in Naked. But this is the first of Leigh's movies (or at least of his post-'87 theatrical features -- I still haven't caught up with most of the TV stuff) that seems expressly designed to demonstrate a predetermined thesis rather than simply to explore various offbeat facets of human behavior. There's something almost dictatorial about the film's evident desire to make us reconsider our initial, most likely distasteful reaction to Poppy's relentless chipperness; in its own quirky way, Happy-Go-Lucky plays like Leigh's humanist version of Funny Games, implicitly scolding the viewer for his/her shallow assumptions. Consequently, I found the dichotomy between our heroine and her bitter driving instructor (an over-the-top Eddie Marsan) too neat by half, and certain other scenes -- most notably Poppy's late-night encounter with a homeless "crazy" -- come across as weirdly passive-didactic. And yet I'd happily spend another couple of hours in Poppy's dithery company, which only goes to show that Leigh's unique method (and his ability to sniff out unknown but tremendously gifted actors) transcends any possible agenda.

A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, France): 72

Let's hear it for clarity and focus. Arguably even more sprawling than Kings & Queen -- larger cast of characters; multiple complicated backstories that require lengthy explication via kickass puppet show; a brand-new visual and/or narrative strategy introduced roughly every other scene -- Desplechin's follow-up nonetheless coheres quite admirably about a poignant central theme of family ghosts, with nearly every choice perfectly judged. It helps a great deal, I think, that this is a true ensemble piece, and quite a balanced one at that. Characters occasionally take the spotlight for a brief aria, but nobody remotely predominates -- even the brother-sister rivalry, which seems central at the outset, vanishes for long stretches. The all-of-human-life-is-here approach works much better applied to a wide swath of humanity, even as embodied by a single extended family. I must say that I still don't quite grok Desplechin's weirdly personal fixation on open enmity between blood relations -- some of the conversations here are casually hostile to the point of absurdity -- and the movie runs out of steam perhaps 20 or 25 minutes before it actually ends. But its unapologetic immersion into a hermetic yet recognizable world captivated me like nothing this director has done before. I knew I was a goner when a slow track into a photograph of a deceased character we've literally never even heard about prior to this scene had me blinking back tears.

Of Time and the City (Terence Davies, UK): 52

Davies' intimately sardonic (or is it sardonically intimate?) voiceover narration casts such an enveloping aural spell that I half-wished for no visual content whatsoever, or perhaps just an unvarying void à la Derek Jarman's Blue (a film, you might be surprised to learn, that I rather enjoyed). Instead, we get a panoply of archival footage that only rarely transcends PBS-doc obviousness, employed by Davies in service of a cranky fall-and-decline narrative that reminded me of the loaded nature vs. Western Civ dichotomy in Koyaanisqatsi. Uncertain why I wasn't being transported, I finally realized what was missing during a brief, thrilling sequence in which images and soundtrack memorably collide: The defiantly anti-modern Davies proclaims his love for classical music (and the unpronounceable names of its European composers) over shots of teenagers twisting and shouting in the bowels of the Cavern Club. But that's an anomaly -- mostly, it's e.g. random Korean War footage set to "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," which anybody could proffer. I can see why people were gushing at Cannes -- this is the kind of deeply personal, intensely uncommercial project that cinephiles love to champion, and it certainly sounds awesome on paper. But creating stunning images isn't the same thing as assembling them from a variety of sources, just as a great sculptor isn't necessarily going to kick ass at found-object mosaics. Watching Of Time and the City, it's abundantly clear where Davies' gift lies.

Cross-posted with The Man Who Viewed Too Much

Posted on 08/29/08 by: dangelo 03:08 PM