Another great Iranian film. It’s amazing how many fine films have come from Iran in the last ten or fifteen years. (Better enjoy them while we can, before Bush, Rumsfeld, and company destroy the country). Anyway, Marooned in Iraq, by Bahman Ghobadi, takes place in Kurdistan, in isolated, mountainous territory on the Iran/Iraq border. An old musician goes with his adult sons to look for his ex-wife, rumored to be in a refugee camp after Saddam’s chemical and bombing attacks against the Kurds. What he finds, or what the film finds as it follows him, is terrifying, surreal, sometimes almost absurd and carnivalesque. Like many other Iranian films, Marooned in Iraq relies on non-professional actors, real locations, and picaresque, relatively unscripted plots. Ghobadi, however, is more expressionistic in his style than many other Iranian directors; also, his insistence on the Kurdish language and Kurdish ethnicity is something of a political statement. All in all, this is a powerful, deeply affecting film, moving from grotesque comedy to sublime tragedy to a very tentative humanist affirmation.
Another great Iranian film. It’s amazing how many fine films have come from Iran in the last ten or fifteen years. (Better enjoy them while we can, before Bush, Rumsfeld, and company destroy the country). Anyway, Marooned in Iraq, by Bahman Ghobadi, takes place in Kurdistan, in isolated, mountainous territory on the Iran/Iraq border. An old musician goes with his adult sons to look for his ex-wife, rumored to be in a refugee camp after Saddam’s chemical and bombing attacks against the Kurds. What he finds, or what the film finds as it follows him, is terrifying, surreal, sometimes almost absurd and carnivalesque. Like many other Iranian films, Marooned in Iraq relies on non-professional actors, real locations, and picaresque, relatively unscripted plots. Ghobadi, however, is more expressionistic in his style than many other Iranian directors; also, his insistence on the Kurdish language and Kurdish ethnicity is something of a political statement. All in all, this is a powerful, deeply affecting film, moving from grotesque comedy to sublime tragedy to a very tentative humanist affirmation.
Under Another Sky, by Gael Morel, is a French/Algerian film about clashing cultures that leaves no easy answers. Samy is French, but of Algerian ethnicity. When he gets in trouble with the cops, his parents ship him back to relatives in Algeria. He finds himself in a strange landscape–he doesn’t know the language, the customs, or the politics (the threat of fundamentalist terrorism), even though Algeria is ostensibly “his” country. This is a grim, tormented film, shot in a carefully controlled, but understated style: there are mostly tight closeups in some sequences, handheld cameras in others; the style varies according to what is happening, but it is always claustrophobic and relentless. The film is both political and psychological; it seems impossible for Samy to find release, let alone freedom, in either France or Algeria.
Under Another Sky, by Gael Morel, is a French/Algerian film about clashing cultures that leaves no easy answers. Samy is French, but of Algerian ethnicity. When he gets in trouble with the cops, his parents ship him back to relatives in Algeria. He finds himself in a strange landscape–he doesn’t know the language, the customs, or the politics (the threat of fundamentalist terrorism), even though Algeria is ostensibly “his” country. This is a grim, tormented film, shot in a carefully controlled, but understated style: there are mostly tight closeups in some sequences, handheld cameras in others; the style varies according to what is happening, but it is always claustrophobic and relentless. The film is both political and psychological; it seems impossible for Samy to find release, let alone freedom, in either France or Algeria.
The 29th annual Seattle International Film Festival has started; I’ll be seeing a lot of films in the next three weeks or so. The first film I saw, Valentin, was a well-made, but lame and overly feel-goody coming-of-age film from Argentina. But Rana’s Wedding, which I saw today, was quite good. A Palestinian film, directed by Hany Abu-Assad. A young woman is given an ultimatum by her father: either she must get married by 4pm, or else she has to leave Jerusalem with him, and go into exile in Egypt. The young woman has a boyfriend, but she needs to track him down, convince him to marry, and get all the necessary things accomplished for the wedding before the deadline. The film has little plot; it is more about the passage of time, and the struggle to meet a deadline in the face of many obstacles. Most of the obstacles are due to the Israeli occupation–roadblocks, searches, armed and trigger-happy soldiers marching about. What makes the film work is how these obstacles are not foregrounded, but just portrayed as aspects of everyday life, annoyances that need to be taken for granted, and taken into account. Such a portrayal is far more effective than an in-your-face political denunciation would be, in conveying how the occupation dominates Palestinian life.
The 29th annual Seattle International Film Festival has started; I’ll be seeing a lot of films in the next three weeks or so. The first film I saw, Valentin, was a well-made, but lame and overly feel-goody coming-of-age film from Argentina. But Rana’s Wedding, which I saw today, was quite good. A Palestinian film, directed by Hany Abu-Assad. A young woman is given an ultimatum by her father: either she must get married by 4pm, or else she has to leave Jerusalem with him, and go into exile in Egypt. The young woman has a boyfriend, but she needs to track him down, convince him to marry, and get all the necessary things accomplished for the wedding before the deadline. The film has little plot; it is more about the passage of time, and the struggle to meet a deadline in the face of many obstacles. Most of the obstacles are due to the Israeli occupation–roadblocks, searches, armed and trigger-happy soldiers marching about. What makes the film work is how these obstacles are not foregrounded, but just portrayed as aspects of everyday life, annoyances that need to be taken for granted, and taken into account. Such a portrayal is far more effective than an in-your-face political denunciation would be, in conveying how the occupation dominates Palestinian life.
Shinji Aoyama’s Eureka (2000) is 3 hours 40 minutes long; but subjectively it felt much shorter to me. That’s because the film is so beautiful, so bleak, and so compelling, that I was drawn into its rhythms, its landscapes, and its world. Eureka is about the aftermath of trauma: the pain of working it through, and the dim, distant possibility of some sort of–I don’t want to say redemption–but coming to terms, and reviving some sort of human connection. Yet it seems inadequate, somehow, to say that this is merely what the film is “about”–I will say, rather, that the film is, and embodies, such a process…
Shinji Aoyama’s Eureka (2000) is 3 hours 40 minutes long; but subjectively it felt much shorter to me. That’s because the film is so beautiful, so bleak, and so compelling, that I was drawn into its rhythms, its landscapes, and its world. Eureka is about the aftermath of trauma: the pain of working it through, and the dim, distant possibility of some sort of–I don’t want to say redemption–but coming to terms, and reviving some sort of human connection. Yet it seems inadequate, somehow, to say that this is merely what the film is “about”–I will say, rather, that the film is, and embodies, such a process…
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David Cronenberg’s Spider is a strong and disturbing film. In terms of its stark emotional power, it is one of the director’s best; even though, ultimately, it is not what I have really hoped for from Cronenberg….
David Cronenberg’s Spider is a strong and disturbing film. In terms of its stark emotional power, it is one of the director’s best; even though, ultimately, it is not what I have really hoped for from Cronenberg….
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Xiaoshuai Wang’s Beijing Bicycle recalls in certain ways VIttorio De Sica’s neorealist classic The Bicycle Thief; but Wang’s film leaves behind the humanist pieties of the Italian film, painting a harsher picture of poverty and wealth in post-Communist China…
Xiaoshuai Wang’s Beijing Bicycle recalls in certain ways VIttorio De Sica’s neorealist classic The Bicycle Thief; but Wang’s film leaves behind the humanist pieties of the Italian film, painting a harsher picture of poverty and wealth in post-Communist China…
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Josh Kornbluth‘s film (with his brother Jacob) Haiku Tunnel (2001) is basically a shaggy-dog story about the horrors of office work, told with self-reflexive wit and self-deprecating Jewish humor…
Josh Kornbluth‘s film (with his brother Jacob) Haiku Tunnel (2001) is basically a shaggy-dog story about the horrors of office work, told with self-reflexive wit and self-deprecating Jewish humor. It started out, in fact, as a comic monologue, but its translation into a movie went quite well. You have all these absurd situations, both those imposed by the nature of the workplace (a law firm) and those that result from Josh’s own out-of-control (but endearing) neuroses. (I refer to the fictional “Josh Kornbluth,” of course, not to the person of the same name who wrote, directed, and starred in the film). It’s always nice to see a low-budget, independent film like this, unpretentious but smart and on the money with what it is trying to do. Not to mention that it’s shot in San Francisco, and my old friend (from elementary school!) Joshua Raoul Brody has a small role. Extra points for including, briefly, stuff about heterosexual Jewish men’s lusting after WASP women (on the one hand) and black women (on the other). (A double subject that was treated much more extensively, but also much less interestingly, in Barry Levinson’s Liberty Heights).
Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention is a masterpiece of oblique eloquence and dark humor….
Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention is a masterpiece of oblique eloquence and dark humor….
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I finally caught up with Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love and Basketball (2000), a film I had wanted to see for some time. It’s pretty good, a mixture of sports movie and melodrama, and one of the scandalously few films directed by a black woman to get any sort of Hollywood release…
I finally caught up with Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love and Basketball (2000), a film I had wanted to see for some time. It’s pretty good, a mixture of sports movie and melodrama, and one of the scandalously few films directed by a black woman to get any sort of Hollywood release…
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There are some works of art that so boggle the mind that nothing you can say about them quite seems adequate. Such is the case with Asia Argento’s film (she wrote, directed, and starred in it) Scarlet Diva. This film is simultaneously so awful and so wonderful that it leaves me exhausted and defenseless. And I don’t mean that it’s so-bad-it’s-good, a la Ed Wood. I mean that it’s simultaneously both bad and good, in completely novel ways…
There are some works of art that so boggle the mind that nothing you can say about them quite seems adequate. Such is the case with Asia Argento’s film (she wrote, directed, and starred in it) Scarlet Diva. This film is simultaneously so awful and so wonderful that it leaves me exhausted and defenseless. And I don’t mean that it’s so-bad-it’s-good, a la Ed Wood. I mean that it’s simultaneously both bad and good, in completely novel ways…
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