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HannahBrown82
Reviews
Histórias que Só Existem Quando Lembradas (2011)
A Story Best Left Forgotten.
It's hard to find distinct words to describe this film so lacking in distinction. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but neither is there anything particularly profound or even aesthetically stark about it. Recently acquired by 'FILM MOVEMENT' in North America, I suppose Murat's HISTORIAS could be best summed up as a 'FILM MOVEMENT' sort of film. 'FILM MOVEMENT' characteristically tends to sell bland international films through its monthly subscription service that might otherwise struggle beyond the festival circuit. HISTORIAS is unfortunately such a film. It is the sort of slow moving, under-written, and blankly directed--but technically functional--film common to the world sidebars of film festivals desperate to pander to marginalized filmmakers, but that will most likely go unnoticed in the real world. The synopsis above is pretty succinct and complete--and that's really all you get. In a rural village in Brazil where the old folks no longer die and the village cemetery has been locked, a young female photographer happens upon them to challenge their tradition of immortality. If the parable seems generic it's because it is. Think Borges-lite, but in place of philosophical complexity and poetic subtly you instead get some armchair existentialism about living and dying and rather ham-fisted poetry and sophomoric metaphors. The use of the photographer character (come to show the geriatrics their world with a NEW EYE...get it?) as a story device is the sort of contrived symbology at work here. You get all the clichéd shots and scenarios you'd expect given the topic (camera chasing girl down corridors of the village's abandoned train...because they're STRANDED in time...get it?, or girl dancing for an entire scene to Franz Ferdinand on her ipod, because she's the YOUNG and vibrant contradiction to the immortals...get it?, etc.). The same conceit is underscored again and again until the film's makers exhaust it (and the audience) and stall at the expected climax to put the oldie immortals (and the film) out of their misery. There just aren't any 'ecstatic truths' in it, as Herzog would say, nor are there any real SCENES or points of interest, just the same juvenile ponderance (i.e. "What if we didn't die?") being cartoonishly and artlessly illustrated over and over without any culminating revelation. It's a rather formulaic and cliché abstraction that you can almost SEE being written in whatever screen writing workshop it was almost certainly born in. The direction is as clumsy and amateurish: the presence of the guiding voice just behind the camera is distractingly evident in most scenes (indeed many of the actors' performances seem like on-camera rehearsals) and the anchored-camera mise- en-scene often has the charmless arrangement common to TV production. There is some nice cinematography of the organically ornate Brazilian landscape and the old locals used (exploited?) for the story are compelling, but they make the film only accidentally interesting. The filmmakers may have made better use of both had they forgone their vain efforts of forcing a trite story upon the place and its people and simply made a sincere documentary instead of a forced narrative. As is, HISTORIAS wastes its very real village and its very real villagers for a story that is not worthy of them. Worth seeing if you want a few peripheral postcard peeks at life in the Brazilian countryside, otherwise not worth the 100 minutes it asks you to trade for it.
Andante (2010)
The Disappointing Dreams of ANDANTE
Given the almost generic trend of cultural drama (both dwelling on historical and current Jewish/Israeli themes) usually on view at the Jerusalem Film Festival, I was quite happy to come across a seeming existential sci-fi thriller like ANDANTE in this year's program and even more happy, given that I'd be stranded from this year's fest, to be invited to a special preview screening ahead of its premiere there. My excitement was dashed within minutes however. This is, without question, the worst film I've ever seen presented at JFF. I was familiar with the first-time helmer of the film, Assaf Tager. Tager had some marginal attention mid-decade with a few Israeli rock music projects (Ketamine, comes to mind). Tager's music projects tended to recruit some very impressive technical allies (such as Sonic-Youth famed producer Wharton Tiers) and the same is true with his first film, ANDANTE, which draws some regarded (at least in Israel) cast and crew members. But as with his music, this makes the eventual disappointment of the film all the more frustrating. As a singer, Tager's output tended to wear his influences almost embarrassingly on its sleeve, nearly to the point of uninspired plagiarism. The songs were always very sturdy and technically well-constructed, but there were no real ideas in them. Such is the case with ANDANTE, which takes its name after the city in the film--a city plagued with dreamlessness and reliant on a factory which farms dreams from old "Mr. Coma" the last known dreamer. A young woman, Sarah (played by Sarah Adler) takes to dreaming again, much to her confusion and much to the evil greed of those who wish to exploit her talents at their factory. Of course, there is a male love interest who is, of course, employed at the factory, who, of course, wishes to protect her from those who, of course, wish to pin her upon Mr. Coma's bed. I won't spoil the plot, though I'd be hard pressed to do so, as it spoils itself so extravagantly. Everything is tiringly obvious, right on down to the obvious source symbolism of the film's premise. Hollywood, long called the "dream factory" and the "boulevard of dreams", was always the metaphoric producer and supplier of dreams to an increasingly dreamless public. ANDANTE takes that cliché and simply makes it literal. A playful conceit in recognizing the obviousness of such uninspired symbolism would have done the film well. But it takes itself unbearably and fatally seriously. And there is not much to take seriously. Every shot, every scene, every line seems familiar. You could almost play a drinking game with the pilfered images from other films and music videos. The dream sequences, which might have promised so much potential, rely on stale Freudian constructs--the sort that bore you to death when friends force last night's dream upon you over dinner. It's all been done so often and so much better before, from the novels of Phillip K. Dick to the old film DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN BUY to Terry Gilliam, not to mention in far too many cheap comic books. And this is precisely what ANDANTE feels like: a confusing comic book with far too many panels missing. Tager, who seems as dreamless as the residents of his ANDANTE, would perhaps have done better with a different writer other than himself; his music outings always suffered most from poor lyrical writing and his pen fares no better within the confines of a 100-minute movie than it did in the confines of a 4-minute song. The film is clearly very expensive, which affords it a nice sheen. But that is its lone achievement. The cinematography, CGI, and production design, which are all sterile but nonetheless notable, are no more than symptoms of this hardy budget. There are simply and sadly no ideas delivered by it all. The story is clunky in design; there is no real awareness of plot structure or credibility (the scenes hardly justify each other at all). The film consistently mistakes pretension for poetry. Its philosophy is incoherent, understudied and confused. If it's intended as an art film, it's not very artful or insightful. If it's intended as a thriller, it's not very thrilling or even entertaining for that matter. In truth, it feels less like a proper film than it does a jumble of lost, over-quoted images. And it is safe to say, were this movie not among the very few produced yearly in Israel which the JFF plays exclusive home to, it wouldn't be showing at all. This sort of cultural incestuousness which burdens the programming of the festival is precisely why the JFF is not taken seriously and has no international esteem. I doubt ANDATE will play elsewhere, beyond its State-sponsored screenings, and I say so with real pity for those involved. I really wanted to herald a new talent; but there is none. Much money (and I can imagine time) seems to have been wasted on what appears to be a vanity project, an indictment which Mr. Tager's music projects have previously suffered in local circles. Unfortunately it seems, should this film ever find distribution, ANDANTE is destined for the same budget bins and obscurity Tager's music has suffered as well. The real crime here is that Israeli cinema does so desperately need a new wave of abstract and poetic films and, when pathetic films like ANDANTE are made, they cheat that new wave of its arrival by dwindling the ever-scarce national funds for new filmmakers. I've never heard so many insults and so much genuine rage from a crowd exiting a theater as I did tonight. And rightfully so. The waste on exhibit this evening was criminal. Such films' births baffle me. Their swift and tidy deaths do not, however. And so it will be with ANDANTE. Let's hope Mr. Tager has the good sense to return to his day job behind the guitar, where he at least achieves a dependable and proficient mediocrity.
Blank City (2010)
A Bit TOO Blank
BLANK CITY is a surprisingly sterile account of the New York City underground film movement of the late 70's and early 80's, covering such directors as Amos Poe, Richard Kern, Charlie Ahearn, Jim Jarmusch, etc. The film fatally falters in spending its 90 minutes proselytizing to the uninitiated, taming its overly slick presentation into a film that lacks all of the rage, cynical sincerity or glorious bloodletting of the Cinema of Transgression that it attempts to tell the history of. The filmmakers were unfortunately in such bleary-eyed awe of what they were being told by those in front of their cameras to question it and search for the real film here: which is not a prolonged multi-voiced soliloquy on how "undeniably and vitally important" this movement was, but rather the reality of these filmmakers' obscurity. I arrived to the film well familiar with many of the filmmakers, if not the films, included in BLANK CITY and I can say I am a fan. But there is a reason most people have not heard of Nick Zedd, et al. And that is that the films are enjoyably merely as a bratty novelties. They do not really survive as any great artistic achievements. The people who made them were hardly the geniuses herded together in, say, the French New Wave or the new American cinema of the 1960's and 70's. And BLANK CITY, god bless its naive little heart, really attempts to convince you they are. You're told by all the usual suspects (Thurston Moore, John Waters, and Jim Jarmusch seem to be contractually obligated to appear in EVERY film on the period to echo the same soundbites) over and over about how innovative and brave these films were. And you're not told much else as the documentary flits past this clip or that. Yes, there are the requisite anecdotes about poverty and such, but we've heard them all before in SO many other films. The result is a sort of congealed DVD commentary over films most people, frankly, won't be that curious about. You get the sense the documentary is trying to convince itself of its own purpose, of its own need-- "SEE! LOOK HOW GROUNDBREAKING ALL OF THIS IS!" Yes, many of the No Wave films are worth a look for any cinephile. But BLANK CITY is disingenuous (or perhaps just undereducated) in pitching that those filmmakers broke any more ground by DIY-ing it to make their rebel images than Jack Smith did 20 years before or even Hans Richter did 40 years before that. The director seemed a bit disingenuous as well when, in presenting the film at the EIFF last week, she said that she felt she was working in the same manner and tradition because she had only "one...or maybe two credit cards to work with." I pitied her completely missing the point of the movement she was documenting. And the film suffers very much for it, for all of its sheen and optimism. BLANK CITY, in attempting to exploit the underground to a larger audience, finds its teeth surrendered, pieced together as little more than the run-of-the-mill historical survey of talking heads and animated titles and pictures that you might find on MTV or VH1. It learned nothing from the films it studies in way of originality or outrage. It's...polite. And it's guilty, in its stubborn propagandizing, of glossing over the reality of what befell these filmmakers. Most gave up. Some sold out (Amos Poe and his desperately and embarrassingly commercial outings of the 80's come to mind). Some like Kern, became pornographers of still-pubescent girls. Jarmusch made it and generally because he abandoned the methods so endorsed in BLANK CITY. But by and large, the pantheon gathered here is not of cinematic Gods, but wretches and failures and outcasts. And THAT is what is so glorious and fascinating about that underground movement of that period. THAT is what might have yielded an honest and far more compelling documentary on its subjects, á la Errol Morris, far more so than pleading on their behalf for their acceptance. THAT is what might have been keeping in spirit with the No Wave. I give the film 3 stars for its technical proficiency and because there are some expected choice insights from John Waters and Steve Buscemi, in particular. If you're not one of the very few fans of that movement, you'll probably be bored by the documentary's constant advertising of it. If you are, though, it's worth catching it at a festival if only to see some of those clips on the big screen. I don't imagine it will be shown elsewhere; it's nearly two years old and still undistributed (a result, I suspect, of the uber-niche audience it would draw commercially, if any, and of the extensive use of clips and music which I imagine must be very expensive to deliver).