AFI Film Fest
Title: AFI Fest Shines Light On The Edges of Cinema
Publication: Valley Scene Magazine
The 25th AFI Fest, which ran from November 3rd-11th in Hollywood, featured a host of galas and special screenings of international features, yet-to-be-released U.S. indies and a compelling slate of documentaries. Here are some highlights:
CARNAGE (Dir. Roman Polanski)
In the screen adaption of Yasmina Reza’s play, two sets of parents meet following a playground fight between their sons. What ensues is canny conversation on the very nature of nature, which always teeters on anarchy – a metaphor for our rapidly blurring geo-political reality. The four adults in the room regress to bickering 12-year-olds, and Polanksi’s mastery of black comedy serves him well, as do his visual bookends. But the staginess of the action suggests this story is probably best digested in the theater. Jodi Foster’s turn as a humorless, self-righteous mother seems like typecasting, and Christoph Waltz gets to ham it up big-time with his go-to sleazy cynicism.
RAMPART (Dir. Oren Moverman)
Woody Harrelson stars as corrupt LAPD cop “Date Rape” Dave Brown in this second pairing between Harrelson, actor Ben Foster ( who also produced) and writer-cum-director Oren Moverman (their first collaboration was the much-lauded The Messenger). The film tries desperately to be a wrenching character drama, a noir mystery (the script was co-written by James Ellroy) and a gritty cinema vérité look into the Rampart scandal. The audience gets none of this — characters pursue confusing ends, missing pieces of the puzzle don’t add up, and five minutes of a single episode of “The Wire” has more authenticity.
SHAME (Dir. Steve McQueen)
Another follow up for an actor-director team (2008’s Hunger followed IRA leader Bobby Sands and his prison hunger strike), Shame takes on the dark world of sex addiction with Brandon (Michael Fassbender again in the lead role, showing why he has become a legitimate leading man). The film was one of the more effective and visceral experiences and, unlike other heavy dramas, was able to navigate the line between existential suffering and exploitation.
THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD (Dir. Josh Marston)
The second feature from director Josh Marston that explores a foreign cultural landscape (his first was the award-winning Maria Full of Grace, which told the story of a young girl becoming a Columbian mule smuggling cocaine into the U.S.). Albania is the setting now, and a land dispute pits two families against each other, as well as a father and a son. Marston has a real gift for coming-of-age stories that capture time and place, but the dramatic stakes fall short in the third act.
INTO THE ABYSS (Dir. Werner Herzog)
German director/cult-of-personality Werner Herzog seems to have settled into full-on documentarian mode. Always an astute observer of behavior, Herzog takes on a death penalty case in the Texas heartland. Openly stating in the pre-screening Q & A that the film was in no way an examination of capital punishment, the film proceeded as an examination of capital punishment. Herzog’s famous irreverence aside, he does seem ultimately more interested in the dramatic elements of everyone in involved in a triple homicide case, and the subsequent sentencing and execution of Michael Perry. The most harrowing footage features the father of Perry’s accomplice, himself a lifer, and an interview with a warden who has overseen dozens of executions.
KINYARWANDA (Dir. Alrick Brown)
The story of the Rwandan genocide told from multiple perspectives, including through the young eyes of Jeanne (played beautifully by newcomer Zaninka Hadidja), a young Tutsi woman involved with a Hutu man. The story of her parents mirrors her own, and the horrific events in which more than 500,000 were reportedly killed over the course of 100 days in 1994 is set against the backdrop of individual lives intersecting and fighting for survival in a sea of despair. The raw power of the story could have sufficed without a sweeping musical score, but it’s still a harrowing — if not sentimental — journey.
ATTENBERG (Dir. Athina Rachel Tsangari)
Greek director Athina Rachel Tsangari created festival buzz with her feature Attenberg – winner of the Special Jury Prize and the official submission from Greece to the Best Foreign Language Film category for 2012. The story follows 23-year-old Marina and her sexual awakening because of (and in spite of) her best friend Bella. Bella teaches her that humans are basically animalistic (she’s learned everything from the documentaries of Sir David Attenborough, although she cannot pronounce hi s name, hence the title). Although the film showcases very strong performances, most of the drama is played out in exposition. Characters here seem to love to explain their idiosyncrasies.
AUDIENCE AWARDS
World Cinema: (Tie) JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI (David Gelb) and KINYARWANDA (Alrick Brown)
New Auteurs: BULLHEAD (Michaël R. Roskam)
Young Americans: WUSS (Clay Liford)
Breakthrough: WITH EVERY HEARTBEAT (Alexandra-Therese Keining)
JURY AWARDS
Grand Jury Prize: THE LONELIEST PLANET (Julia Loktev)
Special Jury Prize: ATTENBERG (Athina Rachel Tsangari)
Acting Award Prize: BULLHEAD’s Matthias Schoenaerts
Title: AFI Fest Continues Rich Tradition of Showcasing the Best & Brightest
Publication: Valley Scene Magazine
Billing itself as the premiere “celebration of international cinema from modern masters and emerging filmmakers,” AFI Fest 2013 ran November 7-14 in Hollywood. For the most part, it lived up to it’s own hype.
NEBRASKA (Dir. Alexander Payne)
Screened as part of a gala tribute to legendary actor Bruce Dern, “Nebraska” tells the story of an elderly man struggling with dementia who embarks on a trip to reclaim what he believes is a $1 million prize from a Publisher’s Clearing House-type scam. Along the way, the journey becomes a series of revealing moments for his son (played gracefully by SNL-vet Will Forte). Whether or not the moments add up to something more profound may be up to debate. Last nominated for an Academy Award for 1978’s “Coming Home,” an Oscar nod is likely for the 77-year-old actor. This is a performance-driven piece, reflected in the in-person cameo from Quentin Tarantino whose summary of Bruce Dern’s acting work riled up the crowd at the Chinese Theater.
THE UNKNOWN KNOWN (Dir. Errol Morris)
If documentarian Errol Morris (“Fast, Cheap and Out of Control,” “The Fog of War”) has taught viewers anything about his subjects, it’s that — like the director himself — his protagonists operate outside the realm of conventional reality. They’re rebels. Misfits. Many are even too smart for their own good. Here, Morris comes face to face with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (literally through his “Interrotron,” a camera rig that allows subject and director to stare into each other’s eyes). The Iraq War is what’s really being interrogated here, and the audience comes away not with a mea culpa from Rumsfeld, as much as a glimpse at a tragic, archetypal character in the tradition of the Greeks or Shakespeare — an aging relic desperately clinging to a murky, half-baked doctrine that you says you can’t anticipate world events. The visual cutaways are elegant and play like a mystery, with a haunting score by Danny Elfman. Still, the collective cost remains unknown.
NOTHING BAD CAN HAPPEN (Dir. Katrin Gebbe)
Sometimes, first-time directors bite off more than they can chew. Like our central character getting force fed a plate of rotten meat, the viewer is left with the churning stomach. Tore (Julius Feldmeier) may be off the charts on the passivity scale, but he’s played with warmth and sincerity, even though his agency has been stripped. The problem is the story. Essentially a Christian parable, the film’s central cheat is that our world is as unjust and sadistic as the one brought on by Tore’s makeshift family (he starts as part of a religious sect called the “Jesus Freaks” and ends up living with a family even the Romans would disavow). His trajectory toward an excruciating end is laid out early. And everything that follows seems to come from Gebbe reverse engineering a plot to teach the audience a lesson in faith and sacrifice. Like the two innocent characters that eventually escape this Hell, we didn’t ask for the pain in the first place.
THE WIND RISES (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
The final animated feature by Japanese legend Hayao Miyazaki (“Spirited Away, “Howl’s Moving Castle,”) this is a fictionalized biographical take on Jiro Horikoshi, a Japanese aeronautical engineer who designed military planes like the “Zero” used during WWII. A dreamer betrayed by the eventual use of his designs for violent ends, Jiro finds true love with Nahoko. We watch Jiro’s ascent through the Japanese aviation industry, and see how his childhood awe at the wonder of flight complicated by the actual war machines he finds himself creating. But what is seen isn’t always felt. While visually stunning, the film’s overt sentimentality and cryptic protagonist make for an exhilarating takeoff but a difficult landing. Still, it’s far from Kamikaze territory.
HER (Dir. Spike Jonze)
Spike Jonze’s latest trip could easily have been helmed by frequent collaborator Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation”). It’s absurd, challenging and totally original, exploring the metaphysical challenges of love in a modern world. Set in the not-too-distant future, a lonely writer Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) downloads an advanced operating system for his computer (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), and then falls in love with her. Surprisingly, the surreal love story works as both rom-com fantasy, and a pointed exploration of small life in a chaotic world of big technology. Jonze flair for the fantastic comes with pointed observations on humanity, often in spite of a dazed audience who may be checking in on their Smartphones.
Honorable Mentions: “The Congress” (Dir., Ari Folman), “Child’s Pose” (Dir., Călin Peter Netzer), “Awful Nice” (Dir., Todd Sklar), “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” (Dir., Zeke Hawkins, Simon Hawkins), “Congratulations!” (Dir., Mike Brune).