Anyone else exhausted from seeing (or working) so many of this year's screenings at the Portland International Film Festival? The festival officially came to a close last night (although you still have time to catch a few of today's encore screenings at the Whitsell Auditorium and Cinema 21) with, of all things, the PIFF After Dark presentation of Invasion of Alien Bikini.
With PDX' biggest fest behind us, now what? Of course, there's always tonight's Academy Awards telecast, which you could watch in the privacy of your own home or, if you're looking to make it more of a communal thing, catch over at the Hollywood Theater (got my fingers crossed for Mr. Malick and his film, although I'd be just as fine if they give it all to Woody).
But, if I were inclined to just ignore the Oscars (as I often do), the number one thing appearing on a local screen that I'd hit up is the Laurelhurst Theater's limited engagement of The African Queen. Bogie and Hepburn floating down the river under the direction of Humphrey's best drinkin' buddy John Huston (the duo were reportedly soused on gin for much of the production, "to keep the mosquitoes off)...what's not to love?
The African Queen will
screen for
the public at the Laurelhurst Theater today at 1pm & 6:40pm. It runs through Thurs. 3/1, all weekday screenings are at 6:40pm.
...and there's absolutely no reason that you can't pull for Demián Bichir as the long-shot for best actor while simultaneously getting your Bogie on, right?
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If there's any justice in this world, Bullhead will take home the trophy for best foreign language film next Sunday (although I suspect a much safer film will do so). Either way, go see this movie! Hit the link to see what I had to say about it a couple of weeks ago.
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Like it or not, 35mm projection is a dying form. The rumors of its death have been coming for years now as the digital revolution has rapidly gained ground, at first on film and television production sets, then, more recently, as the majority of theaters nationwide have added (or, in many cases, transitioned entirely to) digital projection for exhibition purposes.
Care for a more local example of this technological shift? One of the Regal Cinemas locations in Portland is abandoning 35mm exhibition forever this week; the last film (read: 35mm presentation) shown there will be a PIFF 35 screening.
But (with all this context building) I'm kind of spinning away from the event that I wanted to highlight: next week, local gem Cinema 21 is hosting what they're calling "a celebration of over a hundred years of celluloid bliss, before it disappears." What this translates to is a double-feature of Billy Wilder's 1944 noir classic Double Indemnity paired with Hammer Productions' 1969 technicolor horror flick Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed.
Tom Ranieri and the gang over at Cinema 21 are offering up their 35mm-centric, double-feature for two nights only, Wednesday, February 29th and Thursday, March 1st. What's more, admission is on them! Yeah, that's right, a FREE, classically-minded double billing at one of the best theaters in town. Be sure to thank them at their very reasonably priced concession stand. Maybe I'll see you in line?
The FREE double feature of Double Indemnity (@7pm) and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (@9:15) runs next Wednesday (2/29) and Thursday (3/1) at Cinema 21. Don't miss out!
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It didn't matter how tired I was after so many PIFF screenings. There was no way I was gonna miss out on Wim Wenders' appearance at Cinema 21 last week. The man is a personal hero of mine, his fluidity of process continually inspiring my own approach to creative work.
There's a unique flavor of narrative freedom saturated with resigned nostalgia present in the best of Wenders' work (Alice in the Cities, Lightning Over Water, Paris, Texas, and The American Friend, to name just a few). Even if you've only seen a couple of his movies, his style is unmistakable, though his path to getting there varies from project to project.
One of the New German Cinema pack (a name given by film journalists to a group of post-reconstruction era German auteurs of the time that also included Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, etc.) that sprung into the limelight during the 1970s, Wenders, like Herzog,
is one of the few who grew into an international artist, working outside
of Germany regularly, spreading his European sensibilities beyond the borders of his homeland.
Presently, he's promoting his most recent film, Pina, the Oscar-nominated, 3D documentary that presents the work of the late choreographer/dance company director Pina Bausch. It's why he showed up in our small burg, introducing the film, as well as sticking around to answer a few questions from the audience after the 7pm screening.
Before the film, Wenders asked if anyone had ever been to a small village named Wuppertal, where the film is set. A couple of hoots from the audience either suggested that, yes, a few people had visited, or that the many beers being sold in the lobby were inspiring an agreeable conviviality bordering on benign deception; either way, it was clear that the audience was already in the palm of Wim's hand.
The film itself is a wonderful use of stereoscopic technology. Even more than Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, I can't imagine how reduced the experience would be by seeing the film in a two-dimensional presentation. It requires the illusion of defined 3D space to properly convey the dances that Pina and her company conceived together. Beyond that, it's a beautiful introduction to Pina's work, even to a dance neophyte such as myself.
Post-screening, Wim admitted that if Pina had not passed shortly before
shooting on the project began the film would have been an
entirely different picture. He said his original vision was to make a film about Pina's eyes, the way she saw, and how it influenced her work. After Bausch's death, the dancers convinced Wenders that there was still a film that could be made about Pina; one that still included the four numbers that Pina had wanted in the project.
On their own, those dance pieces were not enough to constitute a film and Wenders found himself in need of an appropriate solution for supplementing the material. He relied on the dance company's intimate knowledge of Pina's process to inform his own ability to add to the planned material, devising a film that included additional dances prompted by a complex series of (Pina's) questions answered by danced responses. Those additions, all filmed outside the studio, add a harmonizing playfulness that breathes much life into the film. Yet again, another example of Wenders' ability to work outside the box to great results.
If you'd like to hear Wenders speak more about the project, why not listen to the most recent edition of the NW Film Center's Adjust Your Tracking podcast, featuring Film Center staffer/journalist Erik McClanahan's phone conversation with him. Hit the link to tune in.
All photos are courtesy of Viva Las Vegas, who was lucky enough to be in the front row for Wenders' Q&A. Thanks again, Viva!
Also many thanks to both Cinema 21 and PIFF/NW Film Center for partnering to bring Wenders to PDX! A great night, folks.
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And here I thought I was going to be clever by comparing Béla Tarr's latest masterwork, The Turin Horse, to the 1993 Bill Murray vehicle, Groundhog Day. All it took was a quick Google search to dispel any notion that mine was an isolated observation. The comparison does hold quite well, though, as Tarr's picture places its characters, Ohlsdorfer (János Derzsi) and his daughter (Erika Bók) into a framework built upon daily repetition; one bleak, thankless task after the next, lather, rinse and repeat.
Where the two films diverge, however, is in intent; Tarr's story seems
focused on the social plight of those made to subsist on little food and only meager shelter, while unnamed
others have "acquired everything in a sneaky, underhanded fight." The unending storm raging outside Ohlsdorfer's cottage, paired with the repetition across the film's documentation of six days, traps the characters in this world, allowing for few options other than those that preserve them in a state barely resembling life.
The Turin Horse is some kind of horror show; one where base reality becomes the stuff of nightmares, a slow, creeping apocalyptic vision that indicts the day-to-day, hand-to-mouth existence of the majority. Tarr's affinities lie with Ohlsdorfer, his daughter and the titular
beast, whose own degraded state is reflective of the people in the film. Those not suffering under such conditions are kept out of view, hidden by the storm and ignored by the film, save a brief mention of having "debased everything."
This is reportedly Tarr's final work as a director. If this holds true, it's one hell of a way to end his career. Tarr and his regular crew of collaborators have crafted a slow-moving, elegiac farewell of such depth and substance that one wonders if they ever could have topped it.
The Turin Horse will
screen for
the public at Cinema 21 on Feb. 18th at 8:15pm and Feb. 21st at 7pm.
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Darkness enshrouds the landscape in much of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's (Climates, Distant) latest work, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia; the best film I've seen from this year's crop at the Portland International Film Festival. Whereas some films at the fest have seemed wafer thin (The Silver Cliff being a prime example), Ceylan's is a substantial feast; a visually stunning, 2 1/2 hour-long flick that navigates its extended running time without losing the interest of viewers or relying on cheap spectacle to keep 'em in their seats. The balance is all in the story and characters, both of which are, like the land traversed, hidden from full view at first.
At the beginning of this tale, all we know is that a caravan of cars are driving at night. They carry a group that includes a police commissar (Yilmaz Erdogan) and his men, a prosecuting attorney (Taner Birsel), a doctor (Muhammet Uzuner) and some suspects. One of the suspects, Kenan (Firat Tanis), is leading them to where a body has been buried. The only problem is that Kenan had been drinking heavily when the suspects disposed of their victim, so he's having a difficult time remembering the exact spot. Frustration sets in; an emotion that is transferred to the viewer, given the immersive quality lent to the film by its languid pacing and, eventually, the men begin to tell each other stories.
Ceylan pulls off a clever narrative bait-and-switch here: we expect the film to be about the search. But as the characters divulge their secrets one by one, it becomes clear that the film isn't in any hurry to resolve that quest. So we're left with what the men have to say to each other and the golden-hued spaces in which they speak their truths; a far more fascinating prospect than I could describe here without spoiling the content of those conversations.
I've enjoyed other films by Ceylan, especially Climates, but Once Upon a Time in Anatolia feels to me like the moment in which a good director has transformed into a great one. This belongs on every cinéaste's queue. Don't wait for video; the film deserves to be seen on the big screen.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia will
screen for
the public at Cinema 21 on Feb. 19th at 7:30pm and Feb. 24th at 3pm.
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In the overall realm of indie drama, there's the gritty stuff and then there's Snowtown, an Australian feature that makes darkly-themed masterpieces like Michael Cuesta'sL.I.E. and Andrea Arnold'sFish Tank seem almost lighthearted in comparison. First time director Justin Kurzel shows an unflinching resolve to tell his story without compromises; a choice that means that many people will not make it all the way to the end of his debut film. For what it's worth, it's an incredibly well-crafted but, ultimately, bleak and disturbing picture.
Let's quickly go over the details: Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) lives with his mother, Elizabeth (Louise Harris), and his brothers in a run down hovel. Not long after Elizabeth unwisely leaves her boys in the care of a neighborhood pedophile, she begins a relationship with John (Daniel Henshall), whose unhealthy obsession with retribution against sex offenders is an early indicator of his own violent dysfunction. John and Jamie rapidly hit a dynamic that mimics a father-son relationship, promising Jamie a respite from his otherwise bleak existence, that is, until John places a gun in his hand, demanding that he become an accomplice in the first of many unthinkable tasks.
Snowtown is based on the true story of John Bunting, a notorious Australian serial killer, whose extreme hatred for homosexuals and pedophiles led him to perpetrate a series of crimes known as the Snowtown murders. Although it's focused on Bunting's crimes, the story is relayed almost entirely from Jamie's perspective, which means the viewer is given just the contours of Bunting's malevolence at first, providing a Hitchcockian tension to the film that, once the threat has been fully substantiated, fills the audience with fearful apprehension about what lies ahead.
It's also worth noting the overall aesthetic at play here. I mentioned Fish Tank at the beginning of the review. Like that film, Snowtown draws heavily from Ken Loach's strategies for social realist storytelling, handheld camerawork mingles with an undressed sense of poverty-stricken places and the disenfranchised people who occupy them.
Because Kurzel's film is about a serial killer, the overall result of the realist approach couldn't be farther from other movies dealing with the same phenomenon; unlike Hollywood blockbusters about serial killers, this film doesn't romanticize or glorify its monster. Contrasted with examples of the genre like American Psycho or Natural Born Killers, Snowtown is truly capable of inspiring a horrified recoil in the viewer, especially in those willing to stick with it and ponder the unmitigated evil being depicted here.
It's an incredibly potent and self-assured debut film, exceptionally nihilistic in its worldview and containing hypnotic, career-making performances from both Pittaway and Henshall. It's also one of the darkest films I've ever seen at a festival, presenting sequences involving incest, pedophilia, torture, murder, animal abuse, etc. Consider yourself warned.
Snowtown will
screen for
the public at the Lloyd Mall 6 on Feb. 24th at 6:30pm and at the Whitsell Auditorium on Feb. 25th at 8:30pm.
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