IFFK’08 – Day Two – 15 hours of Cinema
Note : This post does not contain any reference/digs/mentions of Rab ne whatever….
Note 2: This post contains the combined creative energies of two world-cinema-depraved junkies creating a historical blogging event.Taaliyaan.
Note 3: Please read this post for sake of world cinema, Kerala Tourism & as KK would say, Baaaaaaa…
0930 AM
Boarding Gate : I walked in to this film, and thought it was cool, not like a festival festival film but a nice coolly aggressive Michael Madsen playout, and then I see this hot actress. The film moves on, and I begin liking it, it is a normal franco-american tale of deception, deceit, betrayal, Mahesh bhatt, S&M, and arthouse devices. I think, the hot actress is too postcard for a film festival selection, and I hear that she is in fact the one called ASIA ARGENTO.
She of the tattoos. She of crazy mad wild goth child smoulder. Love child for the lost generation. A generation addicted to excess. The devises that old Tushar talks about are just ploys. Ploys that director Assayas employs, barely, in blurs and smudges, to tell his tale of us, the neon feeders. Long, strange corridors made only of modern disposable refuse where the characters wander desperate to make contact but are ultimately adrift and sleep and cry lonely. Asia Argento tangos to the camera, with the lights, with your imagination as she hurtles down a downward spiral. Drug deals gone bust, sadomasochism, secret execution rooms, corporate corridors… Boarding Gate ultimately is a movie about addiction, about excess, about living breathing ghosts of the perpetual twilight that this age of strange irregular globalized marketized seemingly sanitized borders. It’s an indulgent film even exasperating, mind-fucking but at the core of it lies the template, the emotions, the modern loneliness that has guided and informedWong Kar Wai and Haruki Murakami. And to put it very very plainly, Asia Argento is the pin-up, the Amazonian goddess of our times.
Something about Madsen, he sleepwalks through all them scenes with emotional complexity and apparent lack of character. This guy is man enough to pull off a constantly attacked sissy protagonist on screen. Asia was obviously some discovery for me today, and I will keep a watch for her other works not to mention. The film, did capture me absolutely from the 70th minute onwards and I was stuck like a bee. However, it never looked like finishing once it crossed the 90 minute mark, a never ending tirade, a pointless quest and self-discovery. I would still give it to the man to give hopes for this genre really hitting you on the senses. I never like action films.
1145 AM
Alain Resnais
The guy surely knew how to expres himself. I saw 3 of his documentaries – Guernica, Even Statues die and Night and Fog, and the very style possessed me from the word go, the whole intermix of elements of sound, music, voice-over, brutal reality, archival footage presented in an aesthetic manner only to heighten the effect and so on.
I felt it was a great idea to see the 3 in a row, with each passing minute, you grow more aware of Resnais’ visual style of capturing your attention, nevermind the Michael Moores of the world. Loved the whole concept Even statues die – a culture that thrives on art as an ingenious attribute and inherent constituent and how it gradually gets affected by another culture hijacking its very concept of ingenuity of expression. In other words, Whites screwed the Negro Art.
Night & Fog truly filled the ‘gruesome’ /disturbing category in the festival so far. Auschwitz in its horrific glory, juxtaposed with the barren and neglected grasslands, an edgy yet painfully witty voice over, disturbs you to no end. When the film gets over, the only feeling you are filled with is numbness, a nadir of thoughts, a gloomy drop-your-head sorry state of paranoia.
The cinema. Oh yes, the bloody cinema. Images. History. Culture. Love. Death. Memory. Nostalgia. What strikes, impresses, screams at you and wakes you up from the complacent warp you have descended into is the almost spiritual faith that Resnais and his collaborator the great Chris Marker have in cinema. Their idea of cinema is beautiful to behold. For them cinema is not image or story or any of those standardized bars that we now conveniently judge and grade cinema by. Their vision is beautiful- Cinema as a medium of great mystique. A mystique that is part technology and part human. What makes cinema potent are the same traits that inform our human condition- history, culture, memory, love, death and the short span of time that we call life.
In Guernica, Picasso’s most famous painting literally screams out of the screen. Focusing his camera on each detail of Picasso’s opus and with a poetic chanting voiceover, Resnais powerfully invokes the night when Guernica was plundered and bloodied. The 2nd film ‘All Statues Die’, the most complex and ambitious of the three Resnais shorts shown today, literally wanders through space and time challenging all our preconceived notions of history, culture, God and most importantly, beauty. The camera winds through strange totems of a lost past, of a past whose truth has been covered up by the lies and perspectives of the invaders, the plunderers. Through stark black & white image of statues, masks and obscure relics, the film lapses to the origins of man and through history critiques the ways of the white man. The movement of the camera, the editing, the music all work towards creating a time portal in which we wander back and forth with Resnais and Marker trying to uncover the lost truth. It’s exhilarating and at the same time exasperating for us. We who are so used to cross-referencing, citing, drawing freely from sensesofcinema.com. This is cinema for the ‘eye of the beholder’. It speaks right into your private beliefs, emotions, ideals, memories. And what better place for a dialogue on culture. The 3rd film ‘Night & Fog’ once again moves through time recreating the sights, the sounds, the smell, the horror &inhumanity of the concentration camps and the affect of the movie is still, even after around 50 years, just as shattering.
Even as movies drift into complex matters, there is an intelligent wit running through his films like when he discusses the architecture of the concentration camps watchtower or when he juxtaposes a wild jazz drum solo to a boxing match where a black man punches the hell outta a white. Watching Resnais was like sitting through a dense college lecture. As I sit here typing this, I have to admit that I haven’t understood a lot of what his movies were talking about but if I ever learn, the movie is there in my mind, waiting to unspool. Bloody cinema.
0345 PM
Talk about getting heady. This is just the afternoon. The time where you run for the coolest, or spare the comparison and competition will you cool food place, and you got no time for that extra drink. Well, so did that, and its time for the big decision – which film will it be to defy the afternoon siesta. The choice hangs between Three Monkeys and Postcards from Leningrad. The perverted mind always goes for the sadistic trips, and so we headed for a movie spanishly titled- Postcards from Leningrad. The director was also present here before a full house to present her film. And so I thought this is it, this is gonna rock.
The film starts off as a personal nostalgic narration of a little girl, her little brother, how he was born, their love for fake names, pork legs and the violent neighborhood fighting over it that eventually brings them together for that community meal that no one wants to miss. The only difference being the story is interspersed with a wacky reality of a guerilla warfilm that is on TV. Then there are comic strip images that move the film, Ad film interludes that move the film, songs that move the film, postcard frames, indulgent camera, talk to the cameraman, pop elements in overdrive that, well, erm, move the film. Wait, if you think that is enough to get you a selection in the competitive category of contemporary world cinema, think again, you might need more that good-spanish-venezuelan luck and pork legs. You need to entertain, so ya, let us put in a few Spanish humor jokes and blow ‘em up on Santana. Fun, eh?
The most recurring though that kept flashing in my head all through the 90 odd minutes of ‘Postcards from Leningrad’ was ‘what the fucking hell?’. Here’s a movie that seduced us with a cool art house title, a nifty poster and a synopsis that talked of superheroes. First signs of suck made appearance when it was revealed to be yet another ‘coming-of-age’ art house flick which any festival roster will be chock-a-block with. No other genre/sub-genre says Festival filler like a ‘coming-of-age’ tale. And ‘Postcards…’ is the worst kind, a ‘coming-of-age’ movie where it becomes difficult to distinguish the good guys from the common household article ‘sugarcubes’. Everything’s especially nice. The weather’s nice. The friends are nice. Neighbors. Grandmoms. Distant Cousins. Revolutionaries. All very very nice. If the niceness isn’t enough to bring the choke on you and make you squirm molasses then the director opts to go all-Godard on the story and narrative with it actually adding anything to the film other than utter incomprehension. It’s the equivalent of getting lost in mounds and mounds of sugar-boiled candy. So we have Calvin Klein model-looking revolutionaries wandering around in the fakest equatorial forests this side of Anaconda 3, getting tortured in the fakest prison cells since Deewar: let’s bring our heroes home, having the fakest orgasms since Sheesha, giving birth to the fakest ever precocious kids…… and it goes on and on and on with all sorts of fake pseudo-ass Gondryisms and Amelie animations and flourishes until it ties it all up in a neat little fake philosophy ending. It was like wandering into a boutique and being confronted by an annoying salesman who jus refuses to let go until you buy into his load of crap. Festival films are rarely more disappointing.
So as you pretty much as well have guessed by now, Postcards from Leningrad sucks, well, yeah, though a little less that Oye Lucky Lucky Oye. Oh bc$$&%&*%*&! What did I just say! Oops, galti se mistake ho gayi b&&%c%$d..Sorry Bhai-logo, I am good for festival reviews only.
0615 PM
Now comes Bert Haanstra. A director I fell in love with few months back in the Water Film festival. This one was Glass, his tour de force documentary, well, on glass manufacturing. I did try writing few discourses on Haanstra at that time, but his cinema is best experienced for oneself. I would just give you few words – jazz, eyes pop up, glass bottle falls, assembly line, the human endeavor, the music of bodies, sweet lovin’.
Luis Bunuel. Before you could say ‘surreal’, let me confess it was one of the toughest films to sit through today – Nazarin. It was a Bimal-Roy-Bergman-ish Bunuel with ample landscape images, social commentaries, a true to his salt protagonist read asexual self-convinced human spirit of faith and goodwill. Put this in a regular set of Bunuel devices – loud scenes, prostitutes, wounds in close-ups, grueling and troubling situations, confronting your inner devils, the concept of good and evil and its implications in a god-fearing society, rooks and crooks, good-for-nothing fellas, midgets(yes, midgets, for all you Love Guru and Walk Hard folks out there), and you got yourself and hour and a half of classic and painful Bunuel. Wait for the only 48 seconds of background music and there is little chances you will forget it anytime soon.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Bert Haanstra’s ‘Glass’ is prescribed syllabi in film schools. When I first came across the master during the Water film fest, I had an impression of him as a great talent completely forgotten everywhere but in his native Netherlands. ‘Glass’ was screened at IFFK 2008 as a part of the newly initiated ’50 years ago’ section. Classic Haanstra. Walk down that road next to your house and stop every two minutes and just wonder at the poetry at the heart of it all. The tapping of hands. The stray smile. The eyes fixed in concentration, the whole world at the tip of your nose. Haanstra’s fascination with the everyday is child-like. There is innocence, poetry and the wonder of being human at every corner in every frame. Who but Haanstra can find the exuberance of a jazz tune in a glass factory as he juxtaposes the workers puffing down pipes, rolling the molten glass in moulds, lighting a cigarette with bebop. The orchestra of the common man, the music of his everyday life, the beauty tucked away in every corner.
Following Haanstra at the ‘50 years ago’ screening was Luis Bunuel’s ‘Nazarin’. High subversion with exquisite irony. Bunuel’s tale of an all-too righteous priest and his travails questions and challenges the very foundations of the bourgeois. His narrative and imagery is ambiguous and irony is almost subliminal. Bunuel questions our notions of good and evil that are taught to us in the garb of religion and Gods and debates these dictums in the very language and tone of the Holy Books and their teachings. His tale is narrated as a parable of a righteous man. Bunuel relies on gross exaggeration to etch his critique. The priest character himself is almost anally good-hearted and like a Candide keeps falling into disasters on account of his extreme goodness. There is a mean-streaked humor with which Bunuel humiliates his protagonist with successively increasing degrees which finally peaks at the climax. The priest is drained, lost, tired, beaten, suffering and good ol’life, with all charity and goodwill and loving smiles, hands him a pineapple.
0930 PM
I’m not there. Firaaq. Blindness. Ramchand Pakistani. Rang Rasiya.
Rang Rasiya? Yes, Rang Rasiya – Colors of Passion, if you will. The choice was easy for Ketan Mehta doesn’t make too many films, and when you have the night show at a sweetly nostalgic single screen called Krupa, and all the hotels are closed, and people are few and far between on the streets, and no one wants to go with you, and the film is based on local hero(well, sort of), you go with it.
I have always found Ketan Mehta’s films interesting in some or the other way, for their subjects, their daringly diverse themes, their settings, etc. I liked Mangal Pandey and was wondering what is he doing all these years. Rang Rasiya – Colors of Passion didn’t really boil my noodles but I still could not turn it down for anything else tonight. And I was surprised to find a restrained Mehta himself opening the film in what was its Indian Premiere.
The film kicked off with one put-off after the other, and I found myself often in fits at something or the other. But as I was telling Sid after the film, this has been an important year, not for what it has delivered but for what it has shown a hope for, or rather the reality, of stalwarts losing their ways while trying to retrace their roots, so many examples but 3 appear to the mind now – Ghai, Santoshi & Mehta. While I have written at length on how I could relate to Ghai’s Yuvvraaj, for reasons best known to me, the issues go deeper. A generation that refuses to acknowledge cinema’s growth – its natural birth and death, there are hardly any sane voices heard. OK, I agree a film maker has lost his charm and strengths, he sucks, his films suck, and probably you would never risk your Friday multiplex money again on another colossal disappointment, and you might be better off spending that decadent currency on something more ‘new wave’, but I would still continue to watch these films.
Mehta makes a fool of himself, and his strong narrative skills, helped to certain extent by some shoddy production, camera, sleazy frames, poor colors, B-grade angles, and quite a series of rebellious support systems, but you can’t take away the man’s belief over the story. The film rises again and refuses to let go, in what could be the finest film-script of the year, ends up being a ‘good’ film.
Randeep Hooda is having fun and it shows, Nandana Sen gets her grandiose arthouse moments and a few more surprises(hold on), rest is all gone down the road except the constant laughtrack-great-indian-fan-taare-zameen-par-ka-sadass-papaji and a you blink you miss Prroshaant Narayanan in a killer one liner.
5 hours after I’ve seen Rang Rasiya, one aspect that occupies my head is Nandana Sen’s scenes of partial nudity that have worked towards the film being embroiled in a long, bitter standoff with the censor board. The very same nudity represented in the film was responsible for the film’s protagonist Raja Ravi Varma’s tribulations. ‘Rang Rasiya’ ends with the announcement that Ravi Varma died in 1906. Over a century has passed and the shame of it is that it seems society is still shackled by the very same morals and codes. The nudity in the film is essential to the fabric of the film, it adds meaning, it gives the film a different level of potency and there is hardly anything that can be called ‘gratuitous’ about it. The censor board by being anal about the whole affair has elevated the film from being nothing more than an elongated and glorified version of the ‘Wild Stone’ Deodarant Ad to a cause film. Now along with its baggage of controversy and the debate it has triggered, ‘Rang Rasiya’ has probably turned into one of the most important films of our time. Our freedom of expression is at stake.
It is imperative for us the movie-going audiences to rally behind the film. For all its camp and cheesiness, the movie has succeeded in provoking and for once, it has raised all the right questions. If the movie manages to get itself screened in the theaters outside the festival circuit, uncut, it bodes well for not just cinema or freedom of expression but for society and the country as a whole.
After the film, as we slowly dragged ourselves out still thinking about the wonderful possibilities the film presented, we saw a man slowly rising amidst the mass of human indifference. The man, tall as his claims to good film-making, quietly looks around for a light, and Mr. Mehta soon joins him. I stop and stare and not having anything else to say or do, murmur, “wow, Sudhir Mishra!”.
Thanks Tanul Thakur for that cruel sense of humour of yours.
Day Three starts in 2.
Acknowledgements:
nowrunning.com for Rang Rasiya image
Indian Censor Board for Rang Rasiya image
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Asia Argento is such a treat to watch.
U must see ‘Transylvania’, if u already haven’t Tushar bhai.
‘Three Monkeys’ and ‘Rang Rasiya’ are on my list!
But ‘Firaaq’ is the one I so badly want to see.
It was shown in London at the festival.
Missed it :-(
Damn, wish I was there man!
Chief, kuchh kha-pee bhi lo. Aise hi chalta raha to Sid and you might become cinemartyrs
hmm…..havta watch Nazarin…..
It is unfortunate that your daily updates somehow stopped after day two. Here are my brief opinions on the 24 movies I watched over five days, in the order in which I saw them.
1. Magician by Ingmar Bergman
Brief synopsis: A travelling magician/healer and his team reach a city where the authorities are trying to expose the team as frauds.
A typical Bergman movie – like most of his stories, this one also takes place over a period of two days, without any flashback. Bergman reuses the same cast he used in most of his movies – Max von Sydow, Gunder Bjornstrand, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, etc. The story exposes the hypocrisy of both the magician’s team and the city officials. In the climax there are some interesting twists, of the kind usually seen in a Hitchcock movie rather than a Bergman movie.
2. We are Jazzmen by Karen
Brief synopsis: Few musicians try to promote Jazz in Communist Russia against oppositions from those who consider Jazz as bourgeois.
Had seen some online reviews calling this one a “gem”. Though there were some hilarious moments, I felt that this one did not deserve to be in IFFK.
Favorite dialogue:
“His name is at the tip of my tongue… It has some relation to meat…”
“Is it Porkov?”
3. Kanchivaram by Priyadarshan
Brief synopsis: a weaver of silk sarees wanted to drape his wife in silk on their wedding day, but fails because of economic reasons. When his first daughter is born, he promises that he will gift her a silk saree on her wedding.
After going through many previews and reviews, I was expecting Kanchivaram to be a melodramatic tale of poverty, exploitation, communist movement, etc. But, I ended up watching a true classic. Each and every frame is composed and choreographed brilliantly. The screenplay is excellently crafted. Hats off to Priyadarshan – I don’t know if any other filmmaker in the world can boast of such a range – both Kilukkam to Kanchivaram have been crafted by the same person!
The movie starts two day’s after Gandhiji’s murder, when Vengadam (Prakash Raj) is released from jail on parole for two days. He and two policemen board a bus to Kanchivaram. The movie jumps back and forth between scenes from the bus journey and flashbacks from his past life.
Favorite scene: (contains spoilers) In the flashback we see Vengadam’s wife dying in his hands. In the next shot we see people carrying a dead body. One by one they enter the frame from behind the camera and walk away and away from it. Then we see this crowd crossing the bus in which Vengadam and the policemen are travelling. A really smooth transition from flashback to the main story…
A long description of the movie’s historical premise is displayed at the beginning of the movie. It could have been avoided, as most of that info is weaved into the story at later stages, and as the movie would have been understood and enjoyed even without all that information.
4. Breath by Kim Ki Duk
Brief synopsis: A prisoner, who is in death row for murdering his wife and kids, attempts suicide for a second time. A young lady whose husband has an extramarital affair meets the prisoner and starts a relationship with him.
The fan base Kim Ki Duk has in Kerala is amazing – the queue for Breath was probably the longest in this IFFK. The crowd was so unmanageable that they closed the theatre doors half an hour before the screening, to be reopened only after a lot of discussions. And the movie validated all the rush.
Favorite scene: (contains spoilers) In a computer monitor which displays input from the prison’s surveillance cameras, the young lady and the prisoner are seen making love in the visitor’s room. Then the operator changes the display in the monitor to input from another camera, and we see the lady’s husband and their daughter happily making a snow man in the prison’s courtyard.
5. Yellow House by Amor Hakkar
Synopsis: A young man is killed in an accident. His father drives to town to collect the dead body and takes it to their village. He is also given a video tape with some message from his late son. Back home, the soldier’s mother is unable to cope with the loss. They purchase a TV and VCR to watch the video cassette, only to realize that they cannot use them as there is no electricity at their home. Then they meet the town officials, get electricity, and watch the cassette.
I heard many people praising this movie, and it even won an award. But, I felt nothing attractive in it, and still wonder how this one made it to the competition section.
6. Postcards from Leningrad by Mariana Rondon
Brief synopsis: The story of 1960s’ left upraising in Venezuela is told from a child’s perspective
The movie had an innovative structure, with occasional use of animation and TV footage. While we have seen a dead body doing the narration in Sunset Boulevard, here we have an unborn child narrating events like her parents’ first meeting and her conception. Though the story is told from children’s perspective, there are some scenes of torture and butchering of a pig.
7. Hafez by Abolfazl Jalili
Brief synopsis: A Quran scholar is stripped of his Hafez status when he peeps at the local priest’s daughter while teaching her to recite Quran
To be honest, I was not able to follow much of what happened in this movie.
8. Firaaq by Nandita Das
Brief synopsis: Some survivors adjusts to their new life about a month after the Gujarat riots.
Firaaq was one of the best movies of this IFFK (I would rank it just below Blindness and Kanchivaram). It has a multiplot story, with characters of various storylines occasionally crossing each other’s paths, as in Crash, Babel, Traffic, Yun Hota To Kya Hota, etc. It is similar to Crash in many ways, though less well made than Crash. And the relationship between different plots is not as interesting as in Babel. Still, it is a very food film.
Favorite scene: (contains spoilers) Some background info before coming to the scene proper– a Muslim youth whose house was burnt during the riots plans to revenge, and collects a gun and a bullet with help of his friends. One from the group fires a shot, police hears it, and starts following them. This Muslim youth is followed by a policeman through narrow lanes. In a wide shot, a person standing in the balcony of a big house is seen asking the policeman “who was it?” The police man answers that it was a Muslim. That man happily points to the policeman the way through which the Muslim youth had gone. After some time, the policeman is seen going back, unable to find the Muslim youth.
After some time, the Muslim youth comes out, and stops near that big house to take some rest. In the same wide shot we see the man on the first floor leaving the balcony and going into his house. Someone from the audience commented “He is going to call the Police.” After few seconds he reappears on the balcony, and drops something like a concrete slab to the head of the Muslim youth standing below, instantly killing him.
9. My Marlon and Brando by Huseyin Karabey
Brief synopsis: In the initial days of the US invasion of Iraq, an actress tries to cross Iraq border to meet her lover.
There have been many movies which tried to depict the condition of a country by following someone travelling through it, like Kandahar, Getting Home, etc. There was only one interesting aspect I noticed in My Marlon and Brando – In one of the first scenes the actress receives a video cassette from her boyfriend. We see the video in full screen -it is shot on a handycam, and contains his musings about his love for her. Further into the movie, whenever the couple talks over phone, the guy’s part is shown as if he is speaking to the handycam.
I was able to guess the climax about 30 minutes into the film (and I assume you have guessed it already)
10. The Photograph by Nan T Achnas
Brief synopsis: A struggling prostitute and a widowed photographer get close to each other
Another good movie from this IFFK. A theme that could have easily slipped to clich'©s and melodrama was handled in a subtle way, with magnificent cinematography and background score adding to the magic.
11. Short Sharp Shock Turk by Akin
Brief synopsis: a story of three friends, their crimes and their girlfriends
This one was like one of those commercial Hindi movies. I don’t know why they chose it for IFFK.
Favorite dialogue: (contains spoiler) The movie has a good last line. As one of lead characters is in his home preparing to leave the country after a murder, his father invites him to join him in the prayers, saying: “Like every film, every life is also going to end.”
12. Blindness by Fernando Meirelles
Brief synopsis: A city goes blind.
In last year’s IFFK I was enthralled by Sleepwalking Land. This time I was expecting more movies of that standard, but only Blindness came close. The director of City of God has come out with another magnificent work of cinema. The way Memento puts us in the protagonist’s shoes by saying the story from end to beginning, Blindness puts us in the blind men’s position by using faded, out of focus, black and white, under lit or over lit shots most of the time.
Blindness is based on a novel by Nobel laureate Saramago.
13. Dreams of Dust by Laurent Salgues
Brief synopsis: Mocktar joins a desert gold mine in another country to escape from the grief of his daughter’s death.
This one was another disappointment. Those who have not seen Woman of the Dunes or Lawrence of Arabia may feel that this movie has excellent shots of the desert.
In one scene, the gold miners are seen watching television – and on the screen there is the song “Chalte Chalte” from Pakeeza.
14. Farewell, Gulsary by Ardak Amirkulov
Brief synopsis: A story about the ill effects of “nationalization” of agriculture by Stalin, told through the relationship between a communist party member and his beloved horse.
This movie uses an interesting perspective to deal with a political issue, and clearly succeeds in it.
15. Machan Dir: Uberto Pasolini
Brief synopsis: Few unemployed Sri Lankan youth masquerade as National Handball Team to enter Germany.
A really hilarious movie, which rightly won the Audience Choice award. It is interesting to note that the movie was made by a director from Italy.
Favorite scene: when the “National Handball Team” is learning the rules of handball, a Police jeep approaches and stops near the ground. One “player” mutters that we are going to end up in jail instead of Germany. Two policemen get out of the jeep, one whispers to the other that “these are the suspects”. Upon reaching the anxious players the policemen take out their own passports and visa applications, handle them over to the players, and join the “team”!
16. Tokyo Sonata by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Brief synopsis: Four members of a Japanese family cope after the father/husband lose his job due to outsourcing.
The father/husband hides the news of job loss from the family, and after trying to get another good job and eating free lunch from a charity for many days, joins as a sweeper in a super market. The elder son joins US army. The younger son diverts his lunch money and flunks classes to attend a piano school. The mother goes on a ride in her dream car with a thief and spends a night with him in a beach.
One of the good movies from this IFFK. Though it is based on the usual-festival-movie-theme of the ill effects of globalization, the story was developed and told in an interesting way. The mother’s subplot was a treat to watch.
This movie had won Jury Award in Cannes.
17. Two Legged Horse by Samira Makhmalbaf
Brief synopsis: A boy is hired to carry a handicapped boy on his back.
Another good movie. Iranian directors seem to have a special skill in getting excellent performances from child actors (remember Children of Heaven, Buddha Fell out of Shame, Turtles Can Fly, etc.) Can you start hating a handicapped young boy within the first few minutes of a movie? In this one, Samira succeeds in forcing you to do that.
18. Gulabi Talkies by Girish Kasaravalli
Brief synopsis: Gulabi, a separated Muslim woman living in an island, is a movie buff. She gets a TV and dish antenna in her hut, and the life in the island slowly changes.
One of the disappointing movies. Both the script and direction had many flaws. The screenwriter wants you to believe that listening to TV serial’s story can motivate a lady to elope with someone. The director takes some day-for-night scenes in which there are very sharp shadows and bright light over the sea when one of the characters reminds us that it is midnight.
Favorite shot: (contains spoilers) The movie had a good closing shot. When most ladies in the island crowd in the Gulabi’s hut to watch the serials, two old Hindu ladies stay away, saying that we cannot enter “their” place. In the climax, when Gulabi is driven out of the island, these two old ladies are seen entering her hut and sitting in front of the TV.
19. Parque Via Dir: Enrique Rivero
Brief synopsis: A house keeper tries to cope when the house in which he has been working for decades is getting sold.
Winner of the suvarna chakoram. This is a really unusual movie. The audience was very restless and had started hurling abuses in the first 30 minutes. Reason – all that happens in the first 30 minutes is that the house keeper is repeatedly shown doing his daily chorus – drying the clothes, mowing the lawn, cleaning the window panes, brushing his teeth, having food, passing urine, checking his weight, watching TV news while eating some snacks, going to sleep, getting up when the alarm rings, then again doing the same things once more… I myself would have walked out of the theatre if I did not already know that this movie has won an award in Locarno. But, after all these monotonous shots, the house owners get someone to purchase the house. The plot gradually thickens, till it reaches a surprise ending.
Favorite dialogue:
“How are my thighs? Aren’t they cute?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why”
“Because they are the first things I am going to move apart”
20. Song of the Sparrows by Majid Majidi
Like Kim Ki Duk, Majidi also has a strong fan base in Kerala. The theatre was full, even though first screening of the movie was at 9 PM. Amir Naji, who acted as the children’s father in Children of Heaven, plays the lead role of Karim. Karim loses his job when an ostrich escapes from the farm in which he works. The movie is a series of small but interesting incidents which occur when he tries to make the both ends meet. Though Majidi has even used some magnificient helicopter shots in this one, I rate this one two points below Children of Heaven.
Favorite scene: When Karim rides a taxi in Tehran, he gets a chance to escape with a refrigerator. While he tries to sell it in the market, he sees few ostriches in a shop. The birds remind him of the previous job in which he was honest, he changes his mind, and returns the refrigerator to its owner.
21. Faro by Salif Traore
Brief synopsis: An engineer returns to his village to find his father and to educate the villagers about their blind faith in a water goddess.
Yet another tale dealing with the conflict between tradition and modernity, Faro was full of clich'©d characters – a village drunkard, a villain who wants to become the village head, his son who desires the hero’s girlfriends, etc.
22. Three Monkeys by Nuri Ceylan
Synopsis: (Contains spoilers) A politician kills someone in an accident. He persuades his driver to accept the crime, in return for a huge sum of money that will be given when he returns from jail after nine months. The driver agrees. The driver’s son needs money to buy a taxi, and sends his mother to the politician to get some advance from the amount he is going to pay the driver. The politician and the driver’s wife become interested in each other, and they meet in her house. Driver’s son comes to know about this, but hides the news from his father. The driver gets out of jail, comes to know that his wife had visited the politician to collect the money, and suspects that the two may have started an affair. The driver’s wife wants to continue her affair with the politician, but he is reluctant. The driver’s son is aware of the raising tension in the family, and kills the politician. The driver requests a tea shop owner to accept the crime, and offers to give him a large sum when he returns from the jail.
Three Monkeys was a simple story told in a beautiful way, and it had won the Best Director award in Cannes.
23. Teos Voyage by Walter Doehner
Another tale of human love and national borders, like My Marlon and Brando.
Synopsis: (Contains spoilers) Teo, a nine year old boy whose father is in jail, has been living with his uncle. His father comes out of jail, takes Teo with him, tries to cross the border from US to Mexico illegally, and disappears when the group is attacked in the night. (Those who have seen Babel or Traffic will remember the desert in US Mexico border – it always looks great in films.) Teo reaches Mexico, tries to cross the border back to US with few friends, gets lost in the desert, and is rescued and taken back to Mexico by an army helicopter,. In the meantime he comes to know that his father has been actually trying to take him to his mother who is in Mexico. In the last shot we see Teo’s mother approaching him.
24. Kippur by Amos Gitai
I watched only the first half of the movie. It looked more like a documentary on a war. Besides, it was projected from a low-quality DVD, and the picture quality was poor.
Thanks much Shahul! It’s not over mate. We just got stuck with some film screenings. I am almost ready with few more reviews(Kanchivaram, Takeshi Kitano, Birri) and a list of 25 could be great films that I missed in the festival.
Sid should be coming up with his take on more films as he stayed till the closing.
We’ll definitely get back to you :-)
And I am gonna include your comment in our next post, as it is truly a nicely done short festival wrap and deserves more space. We’ll also talk about Kanchivaram soon.I mostly agree with you on it except that I didn’t think of it as a daring/new film.
Thanks again.
Thanks for responding, Tushar.
I am waiting for your reviews. I also want to know which good movies I missed.
I had posted these reviews as a comment in another blog, and they have published it as an article.