Friday, September 06, 2002
City of God - Brazil - Fernando Meirelles
Fernando Meirelles, the director of City of God, was at the screening; and he told us the film was based on a true story set in an outlying Brazilian slum called the City of God. The homeless from the cities like Rio are just relocated to the City of God. Here they do have homes, but no electricity or paved roads, and not many jobs. They do seem to have plenty of crime.
Meirelles described the process for getting his actors for the film. Six months before shooting, the production company set up an acting school recruiting hundreds of local youth. Within a month the group was winnowed down by half. During the following months of training and rehearsals, Meirelles said he learned a lot from his young cast about the realities ot life in places like the City of God. The excellent acting shows the result of this careful casting for faces and charisma. Our narrator is passive by nature, but not too many of the other people we meet could be called passive.
After the opening producers and distributors screens there is a sequence of blackouts of screen-filling closeups of a large blade being drawn across a stone. The reflected light flashing from the metal blade with each quick stroke is almost blinding,. It is accompanied by the greatly amplified sound of metal drawn against stone. As each stroke ends there is silence and darkness for a beat. Then another dizzying stroke. As the sequence progesses we begin to see quick glimpses of people preparing an outdoor feast in a claustrophobic bombed-out looking urban area - still in closeups. There are chickens destined for the blade we have been getting to know. All of them are in varying stages of becoming part of the feast, until the camera settles on a lone bird who realizes he is not only not yet food, but somehow unfettered. As he begins his escape, a group of young black men notice some of the meal is getting away and begin to chase him through winding streets and alleys, whipping out their pistols and firing wildly.
Two young men, one carrying a camera, are walking through quieter streets. The would-be photographer is planning to get photos of some of the neighborhood gangsters; but hoping to do so without being seen. The flaw in this plan becomes clear when the hapless chicken finds himself between the gunwaving maniacs and the man with the camera. "Stop that chicken!" they order him. As he hesitates, dozens of cops show up with their guns drawn. Now in the middle with the bird, he can see that any move he makes will be a losing one. This has been his position for as long as he can remember.
At this point the action stops so the man in the middle can explain who the players are and how things got this way.
Almost all the important characters are teenagers or younger. The community called the City of God is a repository for the poor, the homeless, the jobless. But they have hope. Not so much the hope to escape, but the hope to have more than they have; and some of them accomplish this by taking what they want from their weaker neighbors. Unfortunately, with a gun even a young boy can be stonger than most. Unless they also have guns. Some of these boys take what they need, some take what they want, and some just like to hurt and kill.
The film follows three or four generations of thuggish youth as they replace one another. The first group we meet are called the Tender Trio, and compared to their successors, maybe they are kinda tender. Relatively speaking. Whatever tenderness there is among these kids is systematically being removed from the gene pool.
Meirelles previous directing experience is in commercials, music videos, and children's films. The influence of all three can be seen in City of God, his first feature film. The quick cutting to pounding beats of videos; the slo mo and exteme closeups of the commercials; and the one-upon-a-time narration by our young "hero" ala' a children's film. But these effects are put into the service of a subject that is brutal and unrelenting; and they don't glamorize the violence.
Because of the elliptical narration, this film has been compared to Pulp Fiction. Well, City of God may be stylish, but it's never fun. Pulp Fiction was a violent comedy - there isn't much humor in the City of God (the place or the film.) It's more like Lord of the Flies with semiautomatics.
It's a powerful film; but not easy to watch. Seeing kids kill and die shouldn't be.
It was certainly a counterpoint to Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Apparently the gun culture is not exclusively American.
Here is a link to the 2002 Telluride Film Festival Program. (It opens as an Acrobat pdf file.)
Wednesday, September 04, 2002
Some thoughts on Rabbit-Proof Fence - Australia - Phillip Noyce
After several big Hollywood films Philip Noyce goes back home to Australia to film this true story of "half-caste" aborigine children who are systematically separated from their families in order to "breed the black from their blood." This was done during the first half and beyond of the 20th Century in accordance with a secret law which most Australians apparently only learned of in the 1970's. The film focuses on the efforts of three young girls who strive to escape their camp and return to their family on foot over 1200 miles. The young actress who portrays Molly, the fourteen year old leader of the trio, is superb. The film is beautiful heartrending, uplifting, mysterious. Veteran aborigine actor David Gulpil's dark wooden face gives a strong prescence as the tracker who (almost) always gets his man (or little girls). The director made the point that thousands of the "Stolen Generation" have never found their family or their own identity, but the film is being used as a rallying point at its screenings Downunder.
Morvern Callar - The Last Film
Morvern Callar - Scotland - Lynne Ramsay
Since we saw so many good and great films at this year's festival, it only seems fair that our last should be our least favorite. Last year we finished with a film about a young schizophrenic with no hope. This year Morvern Callar was the story of a sociopath. This would be downbeat enough, but the Scots accents were nearly indecipherable; and even without the language barrier, it was hard to understand what was happening in many scenes. The most positive thing about the film was the title character was portrayed by Samantha Morton who did such moving work with her eyes as the mute in Woody Allen's Sweet and Low and again this summer as Agatha, the almost mute empath, in Spielberg's Minority Report. I wanted to see this film based on the fact that she was the lead, but her work here was obscured and disappointing. At the end of the screening no one applauded, which is rare at Telluride. Now I face a day or two without movies...
Here's a couple of links to essays by Roger Ebert about the 2002 Telluride Film Festival:
Crowd Pleasers & Shockers
Taking a Shot at Firearms
Monday, September 02, 2002
So far, here's how I spent my Labor Day weekend at the 29th (my 16th) Telluride Film Festival
Film Log:
Friday 6:30 PM - Bowling for Columbine - Michael Moore
Friday 9:45 PM - My Mother's Smile - Italy - Marco Bellocchio
Saturday 9 AM - Talk To Her - Spain - Pedro Almodovar
Saturday 12 Noon - Spirited Away - Japan (Anime)
Saturday 3 PM - Cuckoo - Russia - Alexander Rogozhkin
Saturday 7:15 PM - Man Without a Past - Finland - Aki Kaurismaki
Sunday 9:30 AM - Singing In The Rain - Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
Sunday 1 PM - City of God - Brazil - Fernando Meirelles
Sunday 4 PM - Le Corbeau - France - Henri-Georges Clouzot
Sunday 6 PM - Naqoyqatsi - Godfrey Reggio
Sunday 8:30 PM - Lost In La Mancha - Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe
More to come (if my poor eyes can hold out)...
Sunday, September 01, 2002
Okay, it looks like a very good year at Telluride.
In 1989 Lesley attended her first Telluride Film Festival. Her first film was at the Mason's Hall, the most austere of all the venues (up two flights of stairs, wooden seats, no food or drink allowed). It was the world premiere of something called Roger & Me by an unknown film maker named Michael Moore. The film was great fun and being in the theater when someone's career gets launched is a kick. I had the same experience at Sundance a few years later when I saw the first screening of Kevin Smith's Clerks. Anyway, we decided that the only logical choice to start this year's TFF was Michael Moore's latest: Bowling for Columbine. It's a typical M. Moore production: he shambles out into the world with a microphone, a cameraman, and an agenda. This time that agenda is gun deaths in America. No one will ever accuse Mr. Moore of objectivity, but it's hard to ignore his central question: why are there 11,000 annual gun deaths in America compared with what seems like almost none in the rest of the "civilized" world? In a search for answers we are taken to Littleton, CO; Flint, Michigan, Hollywood (to quiz Charleston Heston himself), and several Canadian cities. Like most of his films, this one offers us a reflection of America that we can't help but recognize. And our hearts did not swell with pride.
