Meanwhile, 5th Avenue Cinema is hosting an event dubbed Visuals: A Community Film Festival on Fri. the 4th, featuring works by locals. Below is a preview from The New Debutantes, directed by Jarratt Taylor:
And, of course, there's this lil' super hero movie opening all over God's green earth this weekend, too. Looks like I'll be joining the masses by heading out to the 99W Drive-in to catch it tonight:
Until next time...
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Okay, I'll admit it: I'd never seen My Neighbor Totoro or the majority of the output from the geniuses at Studio Ghibli until very recently. That's part of the pleasure of writing for the newsroom site (as well as covering NWFC content on the blog); since a good chunk of what's programmed at the NW Film Center is repertory-based, I get the chance to wax philosophical about old favorites as well as other works of note that may have passed me by somewhere down the line.
So, yeah, many of you have probably seen the film more than a few times with your kids, grandchildren or friends. But, since it's new to me, I'm going to willfully ignore everyone else's superior knowledge of all things Totoro and just let this play out as if we're all looking at a new, unbelievably great anime. (The author takes a deep calming breath). Okay, here we go...
Two young girls, Satsuki and Mei, move into a large, dusty house
with their father, preparing the home for when their convalescing mother
is well enough to rejoin the family. The girls waste no time, rushing
to explore their new surroundings and, what do you know, they happens
upon otherworldly creatures, unlocking a world teeming with magical
possibilities.
I know what you're thinking; these are fairly standard tropes within both children's stories and coming of age flicks. My Neighbor Totoro,
however, is no common children's entertainment. It's a wondrous work
of beauty that takes familiar elements and blends them into a highly
accessible, ageless masterpiece that transcends cultural and
generational barriers.
The animated feature hails from 1988, long before Disney turned Hayao Miyazaki into a household name in the West. With Totoro,
Miyazaki draws more than a little from the atmospherics (and some of the
imagery) of Lewis Carroll's most famous story. It's impossible to watch
Mei travel through the arched thicket without being reminded of Alice's trip through the rabbit hole.
Miyazaki would later dip again into Carroll's iconic tale when making Spirited Away (2001), but, between the Cheshire cat-like bus and the white "rabbit" (or whatever it is) spirit that Mei bounds after through a field of tall grass, Totoro's borrowing of these recognizable features feels more in line with the sense of discovery forwarded in Carroll's writing than it does in that later film.
Discovery is what drives this film. And Mei and her older sister findings aren't limited to just Totoro and his spirit companions. As the story progresses, the girls deal with some fairly advanced emotional material: worries about the future, their mother, each other. It brings to mind what Slavoj Žižek says in Sophie Fiennes' The Pervert's Guide to the Cinema about how to read the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Žižek observes that if one peels away the supernatural or fantastical event, it's far easier to see what is really happening in the story.
Read this way, Totoro reveals itself as a film about the anxiety felt when first entering into the knowledge of harsh universal truths, such as coming to terms with the vulnerability of loved ones and, by extension, one's own mortality. It's pretty heavy content for a kids film but, in Miyazaki's masterful hands, it's deftly balanced with a boundless sense of wonder that lifts the work into the stratosphere, where hope can fly in the face of despair.
My Neighbor Totoro screens as a part of the retrospective series, Castles in the Sky: Miyazaki, Takahata, and the Masters of Studio Ghibli. More info about the Studio Ghibli series here. It plays at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art
Museum) on Saturday, May 5th at 4pm and Sunday, May 6th at 7pm. The film will be presented in the original Japanese w/ English subtitles.
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Vibrating like a raw nerve, Ellen Ratner makes for a fearsome presence at the fore of Academy award-winning director Barbara Kopple's biographical profile on the journalist/philanthropist, A Force of Nature. Ratner's staff appears half-inspired/half-frightened of the woman; one staffer takes most of a minute to verbally feel his way through a positive spin on his working relationship with her. And yet, everyone in the small office easily spills their assessment that Ellen is a good or kind woman; it's just the delivery of that kindness that can be a little rough around the edges at times.
The film's title comes from one of those staff interviews. It's a thoroughly appropriate label, as well as being a clue to Ratner's way of working, something which (at least in the film) she seems to always be doing. Kopple catches her at work, challenging both conservatives and liberals to engage in discourse; she tries to explain to a friend that despising Michele Bachmann's rhetoric doesn't preclude her from befriending the conservative politician.
While Ratner's repartee with pundits and players of the Washington D.C. political scene is highly entertaining, the film really blooms when it looks beyond the day job and to her work as an advocate for the oppressed and suffering. Kopple travels with her to south Sudan where she engages in work opposed to modern day slavery. The film also visits the Katrina-ravaged regions of Mississippi where Ratner began a recovery non-profit after a chance meeting with a woman on a plane.
Remarkably, I found my opinion of Ratner shifting during the course of the film. Her energy comes off as a little too overbearing at first but, by the end of the film, I found myself wanting to shake her hand for her tireless efforts. A Force of Nature reveals her as someone who never passes up an opportunity to advocate for positive change. A very inspiring whirlwind, indeed.
The past haunts and predetermines the path taken by Matt McCormick's latest film project, The Great Northwest, a nearly wordless, travelogue-based documentary that returns the director to his experimental roots, following the more narrative-based musings of his feature debut, Some Days Are Better Than Others. McCormick traces a long journey taken by four women in the late 1950s; a recreational odyssey of the past unearthed by the filmmaker when he purchased a scrapbook filled with photos and various other ephemera from the trip. Inspired by his find, he decided to repeat the voyage, traveling the same route and comparing the sights as they stood in 1958 with how they appear in the present day.
The women (Bev, Berta, Sissie and Clarice) were all nearing 40 when they headed out on the road, before the interstate highway system made such journeys as direct as they often are today. But even before the lonely stretches of I-5 and its paved brethren came into being, theirs was a path that appears loosely planned, guided by whim and the spirit of spontaneity. Sure, they (and McCormick) hit some pretty significant landmarks (Yellowstone National Park, Multnomah Falls, etc.) but the majority of the stops are at small, lesser known restaurants and attractions.
The Great Northwest rarely strays from the structure that McCormick lays out at the introduction of the film. If the ladies visited a spot, he and his camera are headed there, too. With a form some might unfairly dismiss as smacking of NPR-aesthetics, the piece easily could have descended into dry journalistic cliches but there's a winking humor and intelligence present throughout that prevents the piece from unraveling in familiar or expected ways.
Finer details of the journey, such as overheard bits of conversation as McCormick visits various locations, a long, slow drift through a cattle cluttered stretch of road, or, especially, the sole moment where the filmmaker steps out in front of his camera to be photographed atop an (once living?) animal, keep the film humming along at a rhythm all its own. And, speaking of the person behind the camera, it certainly doesn't hurt that McCormick exhibits a great eye for capturing landscapes, either.
The Great Northwest screens at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art
Museum) on Wednesday, May 2nd and Thursday, May 3rd at 7pm. Director Matt McCormick will be in attendance both nights. More info about the screenings available here.
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Chronicling the contemporary garage rock music scene of Detroit, James Petix'It Came from Detroit doesn't stray too far from the standard formula for how these types of documentaries operate. If you've watched Hype!, High and Dry or the locally-produced Northwest Passage: The Birth of Portland's DIY Culture, you know what to expect but, as with the vast majority of music scene documentaries, the draw is in the scene being profiled. And, whad'ya know, Detroit's got more than its share of great, loud punk/garage bands that aren't named The Stooges or MC5.
Petix traces the scene from the mid-80s emergence of The Gories up through the rocket-like ascendance of The White Stripes and beyond. Along the way, he highlights bands within the scene as diverse as The Von Bondies, The Hentchmen, The Electric Six, Blanche, The Detroit Cobras and more. Fans of any of these bands or gritty rock sounds, in general, should be pleased. Folks hoping to see interviews with or a lot of footage of The White Stripes in action...well, there's quite a bit of talk about them and at least one clip of them on stage. But, again, this is a documentary focused on the wild sounds of the entire industrial city, not just their most famous recent export. And you could certainly take another look at Under Great White Northern Lights after seeing It Came from Detroit, if you'd like; no one's stopping you.
It Came from Detroit plays one-night-only at the Hollywood Theatre on Friday, April
27th. More info available here.
Sometimes a film won't easily cut loose its secrets, demanding that you sign up for the long haul, 'cause, otherwise, maybe you're not worthy of making its acquaintance. Terence Davies' new film The Deep Blue Sea(reviewed yesterday) works in that mode as does Daniel Nettheim'sThe Hunter, adapted from the novel by Julia Leigh. It's a film where motives are made transparent, while meanings remain opaque until nearly the end of the picture. Those who found Claire Denis' 2009 film White Material impossible to shake from memory will find something to capture their imagination here, while others may simply find their patience dwindling within the first quarter of the film.
Willem Dafoe plays Martin, the hunter referenced in the title, hired by a shadowy firm interested in cloning to track and harvest the genetic material of what's believed to be the last of the long extinct Tasmanian tiger (aka Tasmanian devil). He arrives in Australia presenting himself as a scientist to the already stirred-up townspeople; there's a struggle being fought in the woods between the local environmentalists and loggers. Martin sets up lodging in the home of Lucy (Frances O'Connor), a woman whose husband disappeared while on the path of the tiger, leaving her children without a father. And it's not long before Lucy and the kids (Finn Woodlock and Morgana Davies) begin to look at Martin as a possible proxy for their missing patriarch.
The film resists overdeveloping the human relationships; Sam Neill shows up here and there as a vaguely menacing individual who's been hired to guide Martin to the edge of the wilderness. Most of the characters conveniently melt away whenever it's time for Martin to get back on the path. What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a man vs. nature narrative that pivots strongly on the question of whether or not our "opponent" has been or should be reduced to raw materials. That might sound like a rather preachy tale; I assure you it is not. The Hunter leans strongly on its wide open passages, sequences where dialogue and explanation take leave in favor of wrestling with the unknown. And, by doing so, it rises above simple proselytizing.
The Hunter begins its run at the Living Room Theaters on Fri., April 27th. More info available here.
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Opening with the voice of Hester (Rachel Weisz) reading a suicide note addressed to her lover, Freddie (Tom Hiddleston), Terence Davies' (Distant Voices, Still Lives) adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play The Deep Blue Sea is saturated with a deep and convincing melancholy from the get-go. It also begins quite inscrutably at first, favoring a thick atmosphere that steals one's breath, before eventually allowing the viewer to enter into a conscious understanding of what's driving this seductive, trance-inducing well of sorrow.
Set against the backdrop of 1950s London, the story revolves around Hester's decision to kill herself; the present time of the film occurs across a single day, though much of the story is based in events of the past, remembrances of what's brought her to this point. Her sexless marriage to a much older man, William (Simon Russell Beale), has been compromised by the affair with Freddie. And, now, the glow of the new relationship has dimmed, leaving her passion somewhat mangled and misdirected due to Freddie's inability to love her with an intensity equal to her affection for him.
Freddie's newly acquired coldness is located in lingering issues surrounding his service in World War II. Hester sadly comments, "his life stopped in 1940. He loved 1940. He's never really been the same since the war." As for her own situation, she tells William that, "zero minus zero is still zero," roundly rejecting any notion that the happiness of the past can be reclaimed by her or any of the lovers in the story.
This is a gorgeously shot film, nearly every frame is lit from within by a sumptuous orange/yellow glow that perfectly accentuates the mood of the piece. Each performance hits its mark quite magnificently but Weisz is exceptional, possibly the best she's ever been. The Deep Blue Sea demands a small amount of patience at first, but, if one invests the effort, the film rewards the viewer with a hypnotic and perfectly pitched glimpse of the not too distant past; a time and place where despair, divorce and pressures of social convention were no less stressful than they are now.
The Deep Blue Sea starts its run at Cinema 21 on Friday, April 27th. More info here.
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