2014 Oscar Predictions

The Oscars played a significant part in my obsession with the medium of cinema in my formative years. I think the experience is more or less similar for a lot of people in my generation, particularly those who live outside of major film markets, where awards can look like a real barometer of quality at a distance, to people of a certain age. The Oscars also played an equally important part in my becoming a blogger and in gaining some of the opportunities that I did. But I've moved on, not because I'm looking at such awards from above or because I condescend to those who care about them -- I'd be the first defend the importance and influence of the Oscars -- but because my taste and the Academy's has been so drastically different over the years that I've grown weary of caring and thinking about them. I take no joy in writing about the machinations of "awards season" if I don't find the films or the discourse surrounding them appealing, and frankly that discourse has become aggressive and toxic to the point of complete alienation. I used to feel that the shenanigans about awards were the tasty, spicy side dish to the cinema's delicious main course, but that side dish is rotten now and tastes bitter. I've stopped mulling it over.

Under the Skin, my favourite English-language film of the year, was completely shut out.

Still, one Oscar column a year is something I can handle, and because I'm a betting man, I'll make this one post about predictions. Either this is an uncharacteristically tight year in too many races, or my obliviousness to the whole charade has kept me in the dark about what pundits are feeling confident about. Either way, put your money on these predictions at your own peril! If you're interested in knowing what I would have voted for were I given a ballot, your answer is here. If you're interested in knowing how well I did on my predictions last year, I went 17/21, having not made predictions in the three short categories. Without further ado...

Best of 2014

Best Film

1. The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zurcher)

2. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)

3. Closed Curtain (Jafar Panahi, Kambozia Partovi)
4. Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund)

5. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)

6. A Most Wanted Man (Anton Corbijn)

7. Citizenfour (Laura Poitras)

8. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)

9. Manakamana (Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez)

10. The Homesman (Tommy Lee Jones)

Honorable Mentions: Night Moves (Kelly Reichardt), Listen Up Philip (Alex Ross Perry)

Best Unreleased Film

1. The Look of Silence

2. Timbuktu

3. Silvered Water: A Syria Self Portrait

4. Girlhood

5. Black Coal, Thin Ice
Honorable Mention: Fish and Cat 

Best Director

1. Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin)
2. Anton Corbijn (A Most Wanted Man)
3. Ruben Ostlund (Force Majeure)
4. Damien Chazelle (Whiplash)
5. Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel)
Honorable Mention: Dave Mackenzie (Starred Up)

Winter Sleep

Grade: B+/A-

*This review was originally published on Movie Mezzanine.

“I’ve never had a spare second to be bored,” exclaims Aydin (Haluk Bilginer), the protagonist of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s dauntingly titled, 197-minute long Palme d’Or winner, Winter Sleep. It’s a sentiment mirroring what one feels about the gargantuan and wordy film, which breezes through its running time without a sluggish moment. The Turkish master’s lush and absorbing latest work is complex and has no easy resolutions, but its multifaceted study of the Turkish society through the prism of its protagonist is richly rewarding.

Aydin is a former actor and current owner of a hotel compound and several other properties on the Anatolian steppe – Ceylan thus returns to the same geographic turf as his last film, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Aydin passes his days by writing think pieces for a local publication, while his right-hand man, Hidayet (Ayberk Pekcan), takes care of the business side of things: collecting rents, running the hotel’s errands, and occasionally roughing up anyone whose payments are running behind schedule. Two women live with Aydin: his divorced sister, Necla (Demet Akbag), and his much younger wife, Nihal (Melisa Sӧzen). Aydin doesn’t spare either of them any of his holier-than-thou, snobby attitude, projecting onto the former his own insecurities and categorically accusing the latter of not knowing the ways of life and condescending to her regarding her financial affairs.

Having mostly locked himself up within the confines of his estate but for semi-regular visits from a friend, Aydin seems so closed off from the rest of the world that his ideas border on delusion. He’s an intellectual whose insistence on devoting an article to the shabbiness of the local imam suggests something about his character, especially as it is juxtaposed to the dire living conditions of his tenants in the nearby neighborhoods. Class division is a major theme of the film, and one that, unlike everything else being argued and philosophized by Aydin and his entourage, is more subtly suggested in the events on screen. Not that Aydin’s disdain for everyone beneath him is concealed at all, even when he’s alone in his study room.

Adapting le Carré in A Most Wanted Man

*This piece was originally published at The Film Experience as part of the Team FYC Series, in which the website's contributors make a case for an under the radar candidate for Oscar nomination.

Anton Corbijn’s latest film, A Most Wanted Man, is one of the year’s best American films. It’s the type of work that is elevated above the trappings of its overly familiar genre with superb performances and intelligent observations on the real world conditions that give birth to its story. It is arguably the smartest film made about America’s increasingly troubled relationship with, and its definition of, terrorism. Yet, it is surprising to compare the film's screenplay, penned by Andrew Bovell, to its original source, the 2008 novel of the same name by John le Carré, and notice the dramatic improvement that the adaptation has made to the text.

With densely plotted novels, particularly in the espionage genre, one of the biggest challenges of adaptation is the careful omission of narrative threads without disrupting the harmony or logic of the story. Le Carré’s book is one of his lesser works, a straightforward piece about Issa (Gregoriy Dobrygin), a Chechen fugitive in Hamburg, whose history of being tortured in his homeland is sufficient cause for authorities (German and American) to assume ties with terrorist organizations. Issa’s story is intertwined to three other protagonists who are afforded equal attention in the novel: a banker named Tommy Brue (Willem Defoe), a lawyer named Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams) and a spy named Gunther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Bovell and Corbijn remove almost the entirety of Annabel and Tommy’s back stories and shift the focus of the narrative entirely, tightening the scope of the film but lending it more political resonance. They introduce Dr. Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi) in the opening scenes instead of the latter half and make several crucial decisions that don’t just improve upon the book, but create thematic subtexts that were absent originally.

Two examples illustrate this best: first, the film eliminates the two most memorable exchanges of dialogue from the book: Bachmann’s Cantata, a long manifesto about the history of Hamburg and how it is interwoven with terrorism in today’s world. In this belligerent speech’s stead, the film relies on the subtlety of Hoffman’s performance and his dejected, knowing gaze, always aware that the anti-terrorist empire is one moment of misjudgement away from complete collapse. One memorable monologue is taken away; a delicate, slow-burner of a performance takes its place to more lingering effect. (Chris Ryan of Grantland has written about this omission at length here.) The second piece of dialogue is the book's finale, a rather explicit definition of extraordinary rendition delivered in lecture form. The film's silent ending is sublime in comparison.

The second example is the addition of Abdullah’s son, Jamal (Mehdi Dehbi), completely absent from the book in the present form. A secret collaborator with Bachmann’s espionage team, Jamal’s character does as much as Issa’s in painting a nuanced portrait of how Muslims as a whole are misunderstood in the West with regards to their views on terrorism. He is less a symbol of tolerance and more a complex figure of conflicted sentiments: peace activist on the one hand, guilt-ridden son on the other. As a smooth, perfectly paced thriller, the screenplay is structurally robust and extremely entertaining, but the sharp commentary on America’s convoluted, haphazard foreign policies – timely as ever in the wake of the release of the torture reports – create a text that is nothing short of outstanding.

Visual Effects in Under the Skin

*This piece was originally published at The Film Experience as part of the Team FYC Series, in which the website's contributors make a case for an under the radar candidate for Oscar nomination.

"Generally speaking, if you drop the adjective Best and replace it with Most, you come to a better understanding of what the Academy Awards are often about.”

That statement is taken from Nick Davis’ review of The Lives of Others written several years ago, but it’s a sentiment I have not only shared, but have come to recognize as the defining element of my relationship with the Oscars, responsible for the bulk of my disagreements with their choices. Nick called the application of his theory to the visual effects category “self-explanatory” and it’s hard to disagree with him. How often do we find nominees in this category that subtly work their visual effects into the narrative? Filmmakers who employ effects as a storytelling device rather than a show-stopping juggernaut of colors and flying objects? This isn’t to say that some worthy work hasn’t been rewarded in the process. No one can argue with the impressive quality of what is on display in Gravity, but the emphasis is on “on display.” Visual effects in Cuaron’s films are equivalent to an oiled up body in a tight thong, flexing muscles in your face, and that type of “most” visual effects is what the Academy has come to reward repeatedly, even when the results aren’t quite as impressive or innovative, which brings me to this year.

None of the films that are bound to be nominated in this category will have imagery that is as iconic or memorable as the understated work in Under the Skin.  Yet, Jonathan Glazer’s masterpiece – his third from three tries – faces two very big hurdles on its road to nomination. First, the film isn’t in the Academy’s wheelhouse or likely to get any other nominations. Second, that the visual effects aren’t showy. In the words of its VFX supervisor, Dominic Parker, the techniques “are supporting the film, not the main event.”

Technically, Under the Skin isn’t doing anything that Kubrick didn’t do fifty years ago; one particular sequence – the disintegration of one of Alien’s preys, which is the only colourful segment in the film – unmistakably mirrors the colored vortex sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But the application, completely at the service of the story and actively designed to go unnoticed, is what makes the experience memorable.

The plain black void in which the alien’s victims, lit in blue hues, float endlessly until their moment of implosion is the year’s most terrifying, unshakable imagery. The sense of inescapable horror that these sequences create is precisely due to their sleek emptiness. Similarly, the emotional gravity of the final moment, a literal stripping to bare the soul, or lack thereof, is conveyed with such weight because of the simplicity of the non-obstructive effects. Still, one need not look further than the film’s opening "creation" scene to see the genius of the effects. Glazer and his team trimmed down the concept of this scene from the formation of a full human body to just the eye and ended up with sheer minimalist brilliance. The gradual, shocking revelation of what it is we’re witnessing is the most wondrous sensation in the film, a moment of genuinely awe-inspiring quality. Here’s hoping Academy voters take note.

Sleepwalker

Grade: C

*This review was originally published at Movie Mezzanine. 

In Mona Fastvold’s debut feature, The Sleepwalker, Kaia (Gitte Witt) and Andrew (Christopher Abbott) are a young couple who have recently began residing in the former’s paternal house, a remote and gargantuan building surrounded with untamed nature and filled with remnants of a family whose dysfunctions are plain even in small, dusty photographs. Their serene stay consists of a gradual attempt at renovating the place, which is cut short by the abrupt entrance of Kaia’s sister, Christine (Stephanie Ellis). Christine is a troubled young woman whose nervous gestures betray something deeply broken inside her. Shortly after it is revealed that she is pregnant, her fiancé, Ira (Brady Corbet) also arrives, completing a quartet that is no less problematic than the original family.

Christine is soon proved to be the sleepwalker of the title, though not before an increasingly uncomfortable dinner-table conversation reveals a mysterious past relationship between her and Andrew. The primary force of the plot is the mystery surrounding their childhood and their potentially abusive father. The large burn marks on Kaia’s body are particularly a source of intrigue: possibly the result of a violent fire set to the home’s garage by Christine or a severe punishment by their absent father, or perhaps some other unknown secret the film cares little to expand upon.

These mysterious elements allow Fastvold – who co-wrote the film with Corbet – to create an eerie ambience that feels genuinely terrifying at times. One particular sequence, in which Andrew leaves the house for the next-door garage at night induces horror with such nonchalant ease that one wonders what could have been if a first-time director of such confidence had better material on paper to work with. For every moment of brilliance as such, there is one in which a clichéd horror trope is used to pointless effect – a knife for a birthday gift!

Emptying the Skies

Back in 2010, Jonathan Franzen wrote an investigative report for The New Yorker magazine called Emptying the Skies. The subject was a group of environmental activists who put their lives at risk to protect increasingly endangered species of migrant birds that are hunted in Europe for sale at high prices. The piece was a hit and granted renewed attention to an issue that Europe, particularly Cyprus, Italy and Malta, has been dealing with for decades. Douglas and Roger Kass's eponymous new documentary takes it cue from that article and follows the activists on their dangerous trips to the birds' hunting grounds.

The wondrous migrant birds travel thousands of miles every year, often going all the way from Scandinavia to South Africa, resting and refueling around the Mediterranean area. Their energy and migration process is nothing short of a miracle. Some of the birds weigh as little as twenty grams and measure barely two inches in length. They are hunted using cruel methods like limesticks and crushing stone traps. The birds often suffer for hours in pain before they are dead.

These methods of hunting are ostensibly employed for personal use – since sale of these birds for food consumption has been outlawed in most of Europe – or otherwise for "recreation". In one outlandish sequence, a man comically sheds alligator tears, arguing that he needs to hunt the birds because it reminds of the time he spent with his deceased son doing the same. In reality, the birds are sold and served as incredibly expensive delicacy, often eaten whole with the bones.

The Overnighters

Grade: B-

*This review was originally published at The Film Experience. 

Jesse Moss spent more than a year in the North Dakotan town of Williston following a news story he had found about mass immigration to the oil rich area. When the practice of fracking began to turn the fortunes of the Midwestern state around after recession, thousands of men flocked there from all the around the U.S. in search of a new life. The sudden, unsustainable upsurge in population caused tensions to grow between the local residents and the itinerant workers, fuelled by reports of theft and sexual abuse that were alleged to be committed by the “overnighters”.

In the midst of this, pastor Jay Reinke of the Concorida Lutheran Church is opening the doors of the church (and its parking lot) to these men and allowing them to sleep there at nights. His congregation feels uneasy about the presence of the nomads. The more reserved church members complain ostensibly about the mess and chaos left over by allowing more people in the small space than it was designed for, or bring up fire hazard issues. The more outspoken members mention the past records of the temporary workers, some with felony charges, others with their names listed on the sex offenders list.

Christianity itself seems to be at stake. Reinke is a smart man, alert to the challenges of the conflicts his decision has created in the community. He questions others’ faith while his own begins to shake, he asks them to redefine their Christianity, but he ignores his own family the more he loves his neighbours. Helping others takes a toll and the community moves no closer to accepting their guests with open arms. One man, afforded the cloak of anonymity by the camera’s placement, calls the nomadic workers “trash.” Reinke understands the steep hill he has to climb to warm the locals' hearts to the misfits. When he asks one worker to cut his long hair short to look better in the eyes of the community, then man asks whether Jesus had to cut his hair in response. Reinke cleverly retorts: “Jesus didn’t have our neighbours.” But it takes more than awareness on Reinke’s part to combat the challenges.

Force Majeure

Grade: A

*This review was originally published at The Film Experience.

The opening sequence of Ruben Ostlund’s fourth feature, Force Majeure, has an ominous aura to it. On the surface, there is nothing strange about a happy, wealthy Swedish family stopping for a family portrait during their vacation at a posh French ski resort. Yet, as their unseen photographer becomes more assertive with his commands, ordering them to get closer together and forces the corners of their lips upward, something seems amiss. No sign of trouble is yet to be found though, as Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke), Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and their white-as-snow children spend the first couple of days skiing together. It is during lunch at the high-end restaurant on the balcony of their hotel that everything falls apart at the seams, revealing the tenuous links that keep this family – or is it every family? – together.

Tomas insists that the loud bang and the ensuing avalanche are controlled by resort patrols, but when panic strikes all diners, it is he who abandons ship first, opting for his own survival as he runs away from his family. When this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pivotal moment in the narrative is over and the snow powder settles, Tomas is overcome with shame but returns to the table as though nothing out the ordinary has happened. For Ebba and the children, however, the gravity of the mistake makes it unforgivable. As the vacation progresses and the story of that fateful moment is repeated between Tomas, Ebba and their friends, perceptions change, stakes are raised and bonds are severed and mended again. The avalanche has hit the family like, well, an avalanche; though the analogy only feels forced when articulated by the reviewer, not when the director slyly works it into the film.

Ostlund tells this story with a remarkable panache for minimalist style and minimalist storytelling. The snow-covered background affords him the possibility to concoct some of the most memorable images and sounds of any film this year, but more impressive is how he replicates the same clean, sparse atmosphere in his storytelling. With a keen eye for small interactions between characters, Ostlund manages to say quite a lot while saying very little. Note one particular instance, where an uncomfortable Brady Corbet (unexpectedly brilliant in a tiny role) is asked to adjudicate between Tomas and Ebba. Ostlund has been similarly preoccupied with awkward group encounters in his previous films, and here, holding the camera as a taciturn Corbet nervously fidgets around in his seat to avoid delivering responses, he proves his knack for capturing truthfully these small but crucial interactions.

Camp X-Ray

Grade: B-

*A version of this review was originally posted at Movie Mezzanine.

Putting aside Prince of Persia, in which Jake Gyllenhaal, one of America’s whitest actors, played Persian royalty, Hollywood has rarely ever shown us a Middle Eastern man who is not an imminent threat. When it does, there is so much self-conscious winking involved that the audience is constantly made aware of the filmmakers’ efforts to create believable Middle Eastern characters who are normal people. Still, that modicum of character development causes much shock and chagrin to the American Right Wing – recall the hyperbolic, panic-stricken reaction to the Taqiyah-wearing medical doctor in Non-Stop. Within that context, Peter Sattler’s first feature film, Camp X-Ray, is such a breath of fresh air that one—at least, this one, Iranian viewer—can almost forgive its abundance of flaws.

The film opens with a stellar sequence in which Ali (Peiman Moaadi) is kidnapped as he prays in the privacy of his home, beaten ruthlessly, and taken away with a black bag over his head to Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay. He is taken to a solitary cell in a block that houses other suspects of terrorism who have been arrested without trial. A few years into his detention, the annual rotation of guards brings him the inexperienced but tough presence of Amy Cole (Kristen Stewart). Amy is drawn to the educated, artistically inclined prisoner—officially called a detainee for reasons of political shadiness on the US government’s behalf—but the obvious limitations of their relationship leaves it as tenuously as budding attraction can be.

Before too much credit is given to the film as some sort of ideal of representation, it needs to be underlined that Camp X-Ray isn’t entirely free of Hollywood’s problematic relationship with the Middle East. Complications remain. The necessity for the lead character to be a prisoner so his story can be told is irksome, though we can’t blame Sattler for choosing to tell this story and not a romantic comedy starring Moaadi instead. What Sattler can be blamed for is the stark difference his screenplay creates between Ali and the largely silent but evidently violent company of detainees he enjoys in the camp. Though Sattler’s heart is in the right place, the feeling that the film is making an extra effort to convince the audience of the humanity of its subject is inescapable. Perhaps it is the unaccustomed audience that needs convincing, but the presumption on the film’s part is nevertheless obvious. Worse yet, the classic signifiers that treat Middle Eastern people of diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds as a monolith are regrettably on show. At one point, an Arab prisoner inexplicably speaks fluent Persian, for example, when he’s meant to be speaking Arabic; a lazy, “surely no one will notice” attitude that has lamentably become a staple since Michael Mann deployed it in the otherwise precise The Insider.

The relationship between Ali and Cole develops gradually over the course of a year. Ali begins this period by throwing a cup of his faeces on her in an act of revolt and ends by sharing one of the most intimate moments of his life with her through the barrier of a small glass window in his cell’s door. In between, there are several conversations about Harry Potter, the seventh book of which Ali desperately wants but cannot find in the camp library. Most of their interactions are written and directed with a heavy touch, with one particular conversation about a caged lion Amy once saw in a zoo especially worthy of an eye roll. Yet, Moaadi and Stewart paint such stellar portraits with the limited palette they are offered that they elevate the film well above its text. Moaadi, in particular, who is getting a rare chance for an Iranian actor to shine in a prominent role in an American film, brings a level of grace and humor to the role that frees it from its spatial and thematic limitations. Much like in Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s festival hit, Tales, Moaadi is easily the best thing about this film. One only wishes the film could match the nuance and energy of his performance.

Watchers of the Sky

Grade: B

*This review was originally published at Movie Mezzanine.

“We’ve run the numbers here and have decided that each American life is worth about 80,000 Rwandan lives.”

There is no context under which this sentence is not completely outrageous, much less so when you realize that real foreign policy decisions that cost the lives of thousands of innocent civilians were made according to that line of thinking by the U.S. government. Referenced by Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the UN, regarding the Rwandan genocide, that concept is one of many absurd and absurdly terrifying revelations in Edet Belzberg’s informative and perversely entertaining documentary, Watchers of the Sky.

Following the lives of four political activists who’ve been inspired by the iconic activist Raphael Lemkin in different ways, the film traces common links between several crimes against humanity during the 20th century, from Armenian genocide to the carnage in Syria today, to redefine how we, as a global community, deal with these mass atrocities. Lemkin’s family were killed during World War II, igniting his lifelong passion and exhausting efforts to reshape the worldwide legal landscape for punishing state crimes. Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, argued that crimes committed by states against their own people should not be observed and ignored by other states, but that perpetrators must be brought to justice in international courts.

The difficulty of uniting the global community against crimes most countries felt distant to without any personal stakes presented a hill too steep for Lemkin to climb alone. He was worn down by increasing illness and poverty, but became an inspiration for activists who picked up the baton. Samantha Power was one of them. Another is Luis Moreno Ocampo of the International Criminal Court, responsible for efforts to sentence the Sudanese president for his crimes in Darfur. Emmanuel Uwurukundo, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide currently helping victims in Darfur, is another, as is Benjamin Ferencz, a prosecutor during the Nuremberg trials who is now a human rights lobbyist at the UN.

20,000 Days on Earth

Grade: B+

"What performance is to me is finding a way to tempt the monster to come to the surface."

The above words, quoted by Australian musician and writer Nick Cave, come near the end of 20,000 Days on Earth, but they rather succinctly express the essence of the film and Nick Cave’s artistic career. There is an elusive quality to the wild, emotionally unhinged music of this eccentric artist that feels akin to a dormant monster coming to life upon every encounter. The energy of the performances devours the audience. Directors Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard’s uncategorizable film looks beyond that energy, beyond the surface, to find the monster.

20,000 Days on Earth is a kind of a documentary film, clearly transferring elements of Cave’s life directly to the screen, but its hyper-stylized aesthetic and fictionalized recreations of scenes from his life make the film as hypnotic an experience as listening to the music that inspired it. Covering a short span of time during the recording of Cave’s latest album, 2013’s “Push the Sky Away”, the film begins with a dialogue by the singer that immediately suggests something deeper and more peculiar that the run of the mill music documentary. The disturbing imagery produced with a simple concave mirror in Cave’s bathroom is reminiscent of the best of body horror cinema, reflecting the intensity of his music.

Cave is no stranger to cinema, of course, having composed music for films like Andrew Dominic’s The Assassination of Jesse James and penned the screenplay for John Hillcoat’s Lawless. Co-incidentally, a conversation with a former bandmate is filmed with such heightened stylization that it wouldn’t be completely out of place in a crime film like Dominik’s Killing Them Softly. His cinematic sensibility lends a visual quality to his live shows that elevate it beyond theatricality.

Stop the Pounding Heart

Grade: B

*This review was originally published at Movie Mezzanine. 

Stop the Pounding Heart, the latest feature by independent director Roberto Minervini, focuses on Sara, a 14-year old girl living in the heart of America, where bull riding is the pastime of choice and the Confederate flag can still be freely waved. She’s one of twelve children in a devoutly Christian family. The parents, goat farmers, home-school their kids, teaching them passages from the Bible. Sara and her family are all real people, playing slightly fictionalized versions of themselves in this loosely constructed story of their lives, where fact and fiction blend not to tell the story of her life, but rather to allow the audience to spend some time in her house. Short on expositions and heavily reliant on conveying the atmosphere through its vérité style, pale color palette, and a shaking, roving camera, Heart is a keen study of this teenage girl’s gradual, quiet grappling with doubt and her struggle to come to terms with her womanhood despite her religion.

Amir Sat on a Branch Reflecting on TIFF

*This column was originally published at The Film Experience.

Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence

You may have noticed that after a few years of covering the festival to various degrees for The Film Experience, I was completely absent from this space for the past ten days, mostly because of a personal decision to enjoy the films without sweating over writing. TIFF is a big festival, maybe the most frantic and hectic in the world, with more choices than one can physically experience over ten days. Nathaniel and I shared so few films from the program’s sprawling lineup, we could have each written about every single thing we saw and you’d never know we attended the same festival. It’s this overwhelming scale that made me want to take a break from reporting, and yet, I feel unsure about how that affected my festival experience.

Writing about films for me is a passion born out of the necessity to articulate my thoughts on the things I watch. Maybe that process of writing makes the films more memorable? Isn’t it so that writing, even about bad films, makes us appreciate good cinema all the more? Without recording my memories, details about this year’s films have fled my mind quicker than ever. My feelings about some of them have been diluted a bit, too. There is something missing, even though I had the best festival experience of my life, meeting more people than ever and watching some terrific films. Maybe this pessimism is just a withdrawal symptom. Let’s stay positive!

As has become something of an unplanned tradition for me – with precedents including Oslo, August 31st and Closed Curtain – my favorite film of the festival came my way on the last day. The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer’s follow-up to The Act of Killing is a remarkable achievement, one that I dare say, with festival hyperbole now fully behind me, is one of the best documentary films ever made. Where the original film shocked its audience with both the viciousness of the story and the inventiveness of its approach, this sequel of sorts is rather more formally straightforward. Turning his camera 180º to focus on the victims of the Indonesian massacre of the 1960s, Oppenheimer examines unhealed wounds and social and familial fractures that are still silenced decades on. The Look of Silence is no less brutal than its predecessor, yet, its emotional punch comes not by shock, but from the force of personal traumas visible in the victims’ silent looks.

Canopy

Grade: B

*This review was originally published at Movie Mezzanine.

Aaron Wilson’s debut feature film, Canopy, begins with a splendid but ominous shot of the lush forests of Singapore. From a place beyond several shades of densely packed greenery, thick clouds of smoke slowly rise to the sky. A caption informs us of the date: February 9th, 1942, when the Japanese powers defeated the Allied forces to occupy the island. As the island slowly reveals itself, the stillness begins to convey a sense of ghostliness lurking beneath the beauty of nature. This opening sets the tone for the rest of the film, a work of minimal, expressionistic storytelling whose unconventional dramatic beats inject fresh blood in the tired genre.

The serenity of the atmosphere is broken when a soldier (Khan Chittenden) drops down on a tree with a parachute, bloodied and in a state of shock. We soon learn he is Australian, though further personal details are never openly explained. Trapped on the island, he’s on the run from the menace of Japanese soldiers whose conquests are visible throughout the land, and from the forest itself. Although he’s figuratively on the run, Canopy is devoid of conventional instruments of thrill, instead creating an atmosphere of suggestive threats with lights, shadows, and sounds. The hissing and rattling of insects and the dappled darkness of the night create what tension there is.

Canopy and its protagonist meander their way through the Singaporean forest during the first half-hour. Our eyes adjust to the environment as the soldier does to its dangers. Cinematographer Stefan Duscio does a brilliant job of highlighting the atmosphere’s splendor. At certain times, the imagery feels overwhelming, shot in a way that attracts attention to the grandiosity of the photography rather than creating tension.

The Congress

Grade: B-

*This review was originally posted at The Film Experience. 

The Congress, Ari Folman’s follow-up to his brilliant debut feature, the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir, starts rather normally. The opening shot is a staggeringly beautiful close-up of a tearful Robin Wright (playing an imaginary version of herself) as her agent Al’s (Harvey Keitel) voiceover informs us that her career is in tatters. Robin has hit the film industry’s glass ceiling age of 45 and with an already troubled reputation as a difficult actress to work with, her options are quickly dwindling. Al is trying to convince her to sell her digital image rights to the Miramount studio headed by Jeff (a remarkably greasy Danny Houston). This would mean that the studio will use her scanned image to create characters in future films in exchange for a fat paycheque and her right to ever act again.

Everything about this opening setup is promising, signifying a film that is aware of the fears and tensions within the entertainment industry. The Congress is ripe with smart ideas and astute observations about the challenges that technology presents to the men and women active in cinema. It also knows the industry’s inherent sexism and the possibilities that the medium present to its practitioners in the modern age. Unfortunately, Folman doesn’t prove as adept at creating fantasies as he was at recreating realities in Waltz with Bashir, leaving with a wild, messy film filled to the brim with missed opportunities.

Digital scanning isn’t the only revolutionary change in acting. Twenty years later, when Robin (or her image) has become the world’s most famous action star, Miramount introduces another futuristic technology: a small liquid that transforms anyone who takes it into anybody they want to be in the form of an animated avatar. The idea is advertised as an equal opportunity revolution, a serum to eliminate egos and give everyone the chance to be a star. The Congress showcases these avatars in a hallucinatory, animated world that Robin describes as “designed by a genius on an acid trip.”

Jealousy

Grade: C

*This review was originally published at Movie Mezzanine.

Philippe Garrel’s Jealousy (La Jalousie) opens with a static medium shot of Clothilde (Rebecca Convenant). The young, blond woman’s lips begin to tremble and tears gradually stream down her face. It’s a stunning composition and one that instantly throws us in the emotional whirlwind she is experiencing. Despite the complete absence of background information about her at this point, there’s an immediacy and punch to the scene that sweeps us up. It’s as powerful an opening as one can expect, upon whose promise the film unfortunately never quite delivers.

Jealousy tells the story of Louis – though the concept of “telling a story” is used very loosely here – a young man who is revealed to be the reason behind Clothilde’s tears, breaking up with her in a conversation we witness through the keyhole from the perspective of their bubbly daughter, Charlotte (Olga Milstein). Louis is played by the director’s son, the eponymous Louis Garrel, in his fifth outing with Garrel Sr. Louis is a struggling actor, a fact that Jealousy emphasizes via many clichéd visual hints: the perfectly imperfect coiffure, the absent gazes, and his general gloomy, confused look. All that and there are still wistful musical cues, too.

The failure of Louis’s marriage is partially due to a passionate affair with another struggling actor, the posh, raspy-voiced Claudia (Anna Mouglalis), whose mere introduction in the film portends another failing relationship. This unfortunate predictability isn’t entirely Claudia’s fault; instead, the film’s heavily New Wave-inspired mood is so familiar that little is left to the imagination. The triangular path of this romantic entanglement is well trodden and outdated, and Garrel adds nothing to the formula that has been in practice since the era of Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. Without that element of friction, a romantic unpredictability, Jealousy waltzes through its compact running time, offering glimpses of men and women whose lives in which we are inexplicably asked to be invested.

Fifi Howls From Happiness

Grade: B+

*This review was originally published at Movie Mezzanine.

The history of 20th-century Iran is brimming with fascinating, complex tales of personal and social travails and triumph. The country went through name changes, revolutions, several dynasties, countless heads of state, and the Islamicization of the government after 2,500 years of monarchic rule. This tumultuous atmosphere and the continual shift in powers that presided over the distribution and exhibition of art had a double-edged effect on Iranian artists: the turbulent environment cultivated intelligent and dissenting voices, and hindered their freedom all the same. Many chose to reform themselves, whereas others were forced into exile. Bahman Mohasses, the subject of Mitra Farahani’s stellar new documentary, Fifi Howls From Happiness, chose something in between.

Born in the north of Iran, Mohasses was a painter, sculptor, and translator whose avant-garde works gained him his “Persian Picasso” moniker. He was an eccentric figure, befriending oppositional artists and the royal family at once. He traveled between Italy and Iran, and felt unsettled at either home. He was a fish out of water, as many of his pieces and the film’s opening allegorically suggest. His work – much of it now destroyed either by the Islamic regime or by him– remained consistently powerful and subversive, and Mohasses was as restless and vibrant as ever even in his final days. Yet he became something of an enigma, living in total anonymity in Rome, even thought to be deceased by some.

Director Mitra Farahani is herself a similarly curious figure in a more modern mold. A successful filmmaker and painter who resides in Paris, she has made films like Just a Woman – winner of the Teddy prize at Berlinale – and Tabous, Zohre and Manouchehr, films that deal with sexuality in ways unfamiliar to Iranian audiences, making the latter something of a cult hit. In that light, this is the perfect marriage between the filmmaker and her subject. Farahani doesn’t explain how she first found Mohasses, shrouding his figure in even cloudier mystery. She is nevertheless granted access to his living space, a small hotel room in Rome, decorated with a variety of his art works. But the small space is no obstacle for the film’s edgy energy. Mohasses notes at one point that “a painting is a confined space, but reflects the infinite with limited tools.” The same can be said of Fifi Howls From Happiness.

The Dog

Grade: C

*This review was originally published at Movie Mezzanine. 

Sidney Lumet’s Oscar-winning film Dog Day Afternoon tells the story of Sonny Wortzik, a man who robs a bank in Manhattan to pay for his lover’s sex reassignment surgery. The film is based on the true story of John Wojtowicz, a soldier-turned-criminal who became a local celebrity with his outrageous character, association with the Gay Liberation movement in its nascent stages, and, most importantly, the events of that fateful day depicted superbly by LumetAl Pacino. In The Dog, the new documentary about Wojtowicz by directors Francois Keraudren and Allison Berg, he is gratuitously granted an opportunity to extend his fifteen minutes of fame for another hour and a half.

Following the clichéd trajectory of most biographical documentaries, The Dog combines archival footage of John’s early life with talking-head interviews with himself and those close to him. There’s an unusually large amount of footage available from his pre-fame life that give a fascinating glimpse into his early years. Wojtowicz is a strange character, with oscillating political views that range from war-mongering to anti-war activity, from pacifism to bank robbery. His most defining characteristic, however, is his sexual appetite. He claims to have no other vices and therefore channels all his energy through sexual expression, which really means he will fuck anything that moves. Wojtowicz married several times but had affairs with countless men and women on the side. His first gay encounter occurred in the military, an experience that only served to broaden his sexual horizons. His affiliation with the gay activists of the New York scene in the early 1970s was mostly a result of his desire to sleep with as many men as possible. The clandestine gatherings were a gateway for him to meet new prospective partners. That, in essence, is where the film’s problematic nature stems from.

There is an unshakable sense that The Dog magnifies the significance of Wojtowicz’s story beyond the boundaries of his reality, and comfortably glosses over certain unpleasant facts. There’s never an indication that this film can transcend its protagonist’s oddball personality to arrive at any meaningful conclusions. The majority of the film gives the impression of a slideshow of colorful antics assembled together to give one last hurrah to an obscure cult superstar who does not deserve this reevaluation. His presence in the most monumental events of his time seems almost accidental, not of any fault of The Dog’s, but of Wojtowicz’s own accord. He doesn’t want anything more from the gay scene than abundant options for sex, but he attaches himself to the liberation movement nonetheless. He doesn’t want his partner, Liz Eden, to have the surgery, but he robs a bank purely out of love for her, a proclamation no one seems to fully believe. He was a loud goofball who happened to be at the right place at the right time, denounced by everyone associated with him – including gay activists and Liz – but himself and his mother.

Borgman

Grade: B-

Alex van Warmerdam's Borgman opens with a disorienting, enthralling sequence in which three men, led by a priest, raid on hidden lairs in a forest where three other men, shabby and unkempt, have hoarded a treasure trove of weaponry. The motives of neither group are clear, but the sheer force that propels the scene promises a wild ride. The entirety of the film can't quite match the energy of this scene, but maintains its fresh air of ambiguity.

The titular Borgman (Jan Bijvoet) is a bearded, mysterious wanderer who settles on an affluent house in which Marina (Hadewych Minis) and Richard (Jeroen Perceval) live with their three children and their young, Danish maid. When Richard firmly rejects Borgman’s request to take a bath in their house and viciously beats him, Marina takes pity on the vagrant and hides him in a backyard bunkhouse. The audience is alerted both to the underlying sense of unease that begins with this game of hide and seek, and to van Warmerdam’s overarching allegory about a Dutch society scarred by class divisions and racial tension.

Borgman charms Marina and enchants the children with his story, yet remains inexplicably hidden from Richard’s sight. Borgman’s comfort at the residence, where his presence has brought others nothing but discomfort, has a comic absurdity to it. He prances around the house, takes long baths as he watches television and sips red wine, and tells the children horror stories about a sea monster. Marina is increasingly attached to this intruder whose mysterious, naked presence above her as she sleeps at nights induces in her nightmares in which she sees herself in violent conflict with her husband. Borgman succumbs to Marina's request to stay with the family, eventually plotting a plan to replace the estate’s gardener. With the plan in place, Borgman brings his accomplices, four other lair people who assist him in his progressively ruthless takeover of the house.