Short Take: The Raid

Grade: B

If you go into the theatre expecting a film with a plot, or any form of elaboration on the basic main storyline, or anything resembling human characters, you’ll be grossly disappointed. The nicest way to put this is to say that watching The Raid doesn’t involve any intellectual or emotional stimulation. But your nervous system? That’s a whole different story because all The Raid does is essentially force its audience into an eternal state of twitching and squirming and grabbing the armrests and groaning like the men who are being slaughtered in the film.

It would, however, be unfair to Gareth Evans to criticize his film for the weaknesses of its screenplay because he does so much else right that in the end, one wonders if a better script wouldn’t actually hurt the film. If we are to enjoy watching a man with a light bulb stuck in his neck do flip kicks, wouldn’t any emotional commitment to the characters or even any type of thinking just get in the way of our pleasure?

The Raid is, in a way, only a filmmaking exercise solely aimed at enticing the audience with intense action, careful camera work that alternates exquisitely between rapid pans and deliberate tracks, and engaging sound work that adds so much to the film beyond all the yelling and screaming. For an audience, too, it is an exercise to prove who can sit through more gore before they finally cave and cover their eyes at some point. It’s a ruler for guys to measure their dicks against each other – figuratively speaking, of course, though I’d wager that an overwhelming majority of the film’s audience is male.

The most surprising thing about The Raid is that it has actually stayed with me for a while. You might not feel like you’ve taken anything away from the film once the curtain closes, but if action films are your cup of tea, you’ll have a great two hours at the theatre and you’ll be thinking about its little details long after. This is the best action film to come since... oh, god knows when.

APSA winners announced, one more award for A Separation

I’d talked about the Asia Pacific Screen Awards previously when the nominations were announced. It’s one my favourite awards of the season because it’s the main international stage where Iranian films are consistently featured.

Leila Hatami and Peiman Moaadi in A Separation

The prizes were handed out today and lo and behold, an Iranian film claimed the top prize for the first time in the five year history of the awards. It’s yet another honour for Asghar Farhadi’s brilliant film A Separation. The result was predicted by almost everybody except yours truly. I thought the jury wouldn’t ignore A Separation’s screenplay and lead actor and also wouldn’t be willing to reward a single film with three prizes, hence why I predicted Once Upon a Time in Anatolia would prevail. I was wrong on all accounts.

The jury was in fact totally okay with handing three prizes to one film, that being the aforementioned Turkish film which took the Grand Jury Prize, Best Director for Nuri Bilge Ceylan (it’s his second win after 2008’s Three Monkeys) and an incredibly well deserved Best Cinematography award for Gokhan Tiryaki (I've already written about how much I love his work here.)

A Separation’s prize in the top category is the film’s lone award of the night. What I think is most surprising is that A Separation missed the Best Screenplay award since I think everybody would agree that that’s the film’s strongest suit. Maybe the jury didn’t want to over-reward Farhadi after what happened in Berlin? Or maybe the acclaimed Russian winner Silent Souls, which I haven’t seen yet, is actually a more deserving winner. (Iran’s second prize of the night was the High Commendation Best Children’s Feature Film given to Wind and Fog. I hadn’t heard of this film before the nominations were announced but it looks really intriguing.)

Aside from the cinematography prize, another category I did predict correctly was Best Actress which went to the second Russian winner of the night Nadezhda Markina for her role in Elena. I missed the film at TIFF but everyone who's seen it is doing cartwheels for her so it’s surely something to look forward to.

On a final note, Iran and Turkey have submitted A Separation and Anatolia for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, as you probably know. Both films are stellar feats and the academy would be wise to nominate them, though I think A Separation stands a much better chance.

Anyway, take a look at the full list of winners after the jump:

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Asia Pacific Film Academy announced nominees, Oscar submissions dominate

The nominations for this year’s Asia Pacific Screen Academy, Asia’s highest continental honour were announced a couple of days ago and the news bears typically Oscar-y titles. (This is one of my favourite awards of the season, actually.) Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and A Separation – Foreign Language Film submissions on behalf of Turkey and Iran, respectively – lead the pack with four nominations apiece. Joining these two films in the top category are another Iranian film called Goodbye (I reviewed it for The Film Experience at TIFF), China’s Let the Bullets Fly, and India’s Wedding Planners. Winners will be announced on November 24th and the awards ceremony will be held in Gold Coast, Australia.

The awards were first handed out in 2007 and previous best picture winners are South Korea’s Secret Sunshine, Kazakhstan’s Oscar nominated Tulpan, Australia’s Samson and Delilah and China’s Aftershock. Something tells me this year’s prize will come to the Middle East for the first time.

Here’s the list of nominees in the main categories along with my comments.

Best Feature Film
A Separation (Iran)
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Turkey)
Goodbye (Iran)
Let the Bullets Fly (China)
Wedding Planners (India)

Prediction: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

The big snub of the category is Lebanon’s Where do we go now? I haven’t seen the list of all eligible titles though and I suspect it missed out because of release date regulations. Russia’s extremely well received Elena and Australia’s The Eye of the Storm are two other films I expected to see here. They’re nominated elsewhere but not in the top category.

All these five countries have been on this stage before. China has the most previous nominations with four (and one win). Turkey follows with three, Iran with two and India with one. Nuri Nilge Ceylan and Asghar Farhadi both had their films in contention here with Three Monkeys in 2008 and About Elly in 2009. Iran is not the first country to score double nominations; China got there in 2009 and South Korea in 2010 but neither country managed a win. Given the popularity of Poetry over Aftershock last year, I’d blame Korea’s loss on vote splitting. If that’s the case, A Separation might be left behind by the Turkish film this year as well. I’ve put my money on Anatolia.

Best Director
Asghar Farhadi (A Separation)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)
Mohammad Rasoulof (Goodbye)
Jiang Wen (Let the Bullets Fly)
Na Hong Jin (The Yellow Sea)

Prediction: Jiang Wen (Let the Bullets Fly)

The lone director nominee is the South Korean filmmaker. Ceylan has won this award in 2008 for the aforementioned Three Monkeys. Iran and China have also won the award (with different directors) in the past.


Best Actress
Leila Zare (Goodbye)
Judy Davis (The Eye of the Storm)
Shayesteh Irani (Facing Mirrors)
Nahed El Sebai (Cairo 678)
Nadezhda Markina (Elena)

Prediction: Nadezhda Markina (Elena)

The only nominee I’ve seen here is Zare and she’s very strong if a touch too cold. Hopefully I’ll get to see Elena before the ceremony too.

Best Actor
Peiman Moaadi (A Separation)
Daniel Connors (Toomelah)
Fa’afiaula Sagote (The Orator)
Wang Baoqiang (Mr. Tree)
Sasson Gabay (Restoration)

Prediction: Peiman Moaadi (A Separation)

The biggest surprise here is that none of the men from Anatolia made the shortlist. The cast was strong all around, but Muhammet Uzuner created a complex character with his nuanced performance that really stood out. Given the film’s warm reception, I think that’s the biggest snub in the nominations.

Best Screenplay
Asghar Farhadi (A Separation)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ercan Kesal and Ebru Ceylan (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia)
Yoon Sung-hyun (Bleak Night)
Denis Osokin (Silent Souls)
Alexey Balabanov (A Stoker)

Prediction: Asghar Farhadi (A Separation)

Silent Souls had a good festival run last year but its only nomination comes in this category. Bleak Night and A Stoker didn’t have luck anywhere else either.

Best Cinematography
Mark Lee Ping Bin (Norwegian Wood)
Gokhan Tiryaki (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia)
Yuri Klimenko (The Edge)
Sonthar Gyal (Old Dog)
Vladimir Bashta (Brest Fortress)

Gokhan Tiryaki (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia)

I’ve seen three of the nominees here (Anatolia, Norwegian Wood and The Edge). While all are strong works, Anatolia should walk away with this one easily.

The other three categories are Best Animated Feature (where all five nominees look terrific), Best Documentary (where Iran competes with Amin) and Best Children’s Feature (where Iran competes with Wind and Fog).

The main question for me is whether one film can sweep or not. If it can, it’ll be A Separation unless the jury feels the film is over-rewarded with the sweep at Berlin. If there’s no sweep, A Separation will miss out on the top prize since the screenplay prize is a no brainer. Can it win both AND best actor or is Moaadi the one who comes up short in favour of the big prize? Can any film other than Anatolia beat A Separation to the top prize?