the da vinci code

Never did see this one, my feelings ranging from indifferent to hostile. But the dvd just came out, or is about to come out, or something, and some word ought to be entered into the public record. For my spokesperson, I have selected Kevin Jackson of Sight & Sound: his ruminations appeared in the July issue.

Since it is hardly an arcane and closely guarded secret that Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's THE DA VINCI CODE is achingly dull, it seems only sporting to note some of the ways in which the film significantly improves on the book.

One, the viewer does not have to wade through Brown's execrable prose; the merits of this deletion can hardly be overstated.

Two, though Hanks brings no more than a slighly baffled Everyguy decency and an unusual, medium-long haircut to the role of Robert Langdon, said to be a professor of "religious symbology," he is far more likeable and less of a pompous bore than his prose counterpart, who (the fact is embarrassingly obvious within about two pages) is an adolescent dream version of the author himself ("a dark stubble was shrouding the strong jaw and dimpled chin... His female colleagues insisted the grey only accented his bookish appeal..." Phwoar, missus.)

Three, similarly, though Audrey Tautou, playing cryptographer Sophie Neveu, is given almost nothing to do with her part except look worried and dismayed, she is... well, Audrey Tautou. Red-blooded chaps will not find it too hard to stay awake during her scenes. ...

...Purists might find (Howard's) decision to stage the Council of Nicaea as a cross between closing time at the New York stock exchange and a football riot a trifle dubious, but there is an undeniable frisson in seeing the tenets of Christianity being thrashed out in hooligan manner...

Just when things almost get cracking, it's time to stop dead for yet more specious drivel about the Knights Templar. The result is stodgy, but also confusing, at least for those lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the book: after the screening I attended, the auditorium echoed with questions like "so who was the monk in the car?" and "doesn't the Louvre have security cameras?"

Theological debate was notably absent; the Catholic Church will probably remain unshaken for quite a while yet.

Nov 29: Ken Priebe on Stop Motion Animation

STOP MOTION & COMPUTER ANIMATION
A presentation & panel discussion at the Vancouver International Film Centre
Wed Nov 29, 7:30pm (6:30 book signing)
More details

Ken Priebe is a new film buddy of mine - he showed up one night at the movie group that meets occasionally at our house (kinda like a book club, but with... you get the idea). It was fabulous! We were looking at IRON GIANT that night, an animated classic that Ken has spent a lot of time with. See, he's an animator himself, and he brought incredible insight into the film and its themes, on top of all kinds of detail about the craft of the film.

Ken's also a regular contributor to Hollywood Jesus - well, less regular now that he and his wife have created a new little animated feature of their own, who needs regular feeding, cleaning and entertainment - and I've really enjoyed his pieces in the two published annual review anthologies from HJ, in which Ken brings a distinctly Christian perspective to HOME ON THE RANGE, GARDEN STATE and MARCH OF THE PENGUINS. (Wish he could have joined me at the HAPPY FEET preview! I'm reviewing it this week for CT Movies).

Ken also teaches 2D and stop-motion animation - in fact, he wrote the book on sto-mo! Quite literally. “The Art of Stop-Motion Animation” went into print this summer, and is already the textbook for courses on making movies like WALLACE & GROMIT.

You can join Ken and other industry professionals for a presentation and panel discussion on all that kinda stuff at the VIFC on Nov 29.

*

Ken Priebe
Ken earned a BFA from the University of Michigan, where he studied art and film and directed several independent animation shorts. He has worked as an animator for several childrens' games and freelance projects for Hasbro Interactive and other independent filmmakers. Ken currently works in admissions at VanArts and teaches part-time courses in 2D and Stop-Motion Animation.

joyeux noel

I've often wondered about this one. Anybody seen it? New at Videomatica

JOYEUX NOEL (Coming Nov 14/06) (2005)
---------------------------------------
Cast List: Diane Kruger Benno Fürmann Guillaume Canet Dany Boon
Director : Christian Carion
Based on a true story, "Joyeux Noel" is an inspired tale of peace and hope
in a time of deep conflict. On the Western Front, German soldiers are
fighting their French and English counterparts with the Christmas season
quickly approaching. Against the orders of their superior officers, the
front-line officers on each side call a truce on Christmas Eve to share in
a private game of football and a night of peace. Christian Carion's film
was Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-nominated for Best Foreign Language
Feature Film. --JA

NOT PLAYING

Movie projects in development, in production, in post-production or in limbo. Maybe someday we'll get to see them.

Updated May 28 2007

CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT
Anne Rice, the vampire lady? Sting's evocative "Moon Over Bourbon Street" was inspired by her "Interview With The Vampire", so I checked out the novel. The opening chapters struck me as fine literary writing, before the book devolved into something more generic and commercial. Word is she's become a Christian, and all of a sudden everybody seems to be reading her fictionalized recreation of Jesus' childhood years, and declaring it worthy.
Anyhow, there's a film deal now.
(More here)

CONTAINER
Yet another Jesus movie - Mel, what hast thou wrought? Definitely the strangest of the new batch, from Lukas Moodysson. (More here) Updated Nov 21

MARY
Bad boy Abel Ferrara's entry in the Jesus Movie Derby that Uncle Mel revved up. Seen on screens big and small in Europe, but nothing outside the festivals here in North America. Check out the whole saga here.

PARADISE LOST
Scott Derrickson is developing an adaptation of John Milton's Paradise Lost. PTC: "Joining the conceptual team is none other than artist Wayne Barlowe, whose book BARLOWE'S INFERNO has given readers a nightmarish and fascinating look at hell . . . . The painter/illustrator has also lent designs on a number of Hollywood projects, notably Guillermo del Toro's BLADE II and HELLBOY. "One of the first things I did was to go after Stuart and Wayne; I liked Stuart's writing skills and Wayne's visual skills," the director says. "INFERNO was the reason I was so passionate about trying to get Wayne involved, and I knew that if PARADISE LOST was going to work, it'd have to have that kind of visual imagination."

POPE JOAN
Film Comment, May-June 2006: "Donna Woolfolk Cross's historical novel, Pope Joan, has been translated into 23 languages and, in Germany, is number one on the long-term bestseller list. The book tells the tale of a ninth-century Englishwoman who posed as a man to become a monk, and the subsequent road she traveled that eventually led to her securing the title of His Holiness. (The truth of the story remains subject to controversy.) Some may recall the 1972 version of the story starring Liv Ullmann - and now Volker Schlondorff has a film adaptation in development." Years back I read a stage treatment of the story, briefly considered it for Pacific Theatre.
Schlondorff's THE NINTH DAY, about a WW2 priest pressured to stop opposing the Nazis, is now available on DVD.

RESURRECTION
I'm pretty qualmy about Tim LaHaye's books ("Left Behind," "Right Behind," etc), so my enthusiasm for Upcoming Jesus Movie Project #387 is a tad muted. But I figure you all deserve to be in the know...
http://soulfoodmovies.blogspot.com/2006/11/resurrection-2007.html

SEPTEMBER DAWN
PTC reports that The Hollywood Reporter says Jon Voight and Lolita Davidovich are currently shooting a film called September Dawn in Alberta: "a love story set against the 19th century massacre of a wagon train of settlers in Utah at the hands of a renegade Mormon group. Voight plays the leader of the renegade Mormon faction, while Davidovich is a member of the wagon train who stands up to Voight's threats."

SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL
Summer 2006: Currently filming on location in Rwanda, a Canadian feature-film treatment of the story of Romeo Dallaire, the French Canadian head of the UN mission at the time of the genocide. After the original documentary by the same title, then HOTEL RWANDA, then SHOOTING DOGS, you start to wonder if there aren't other atrocities film-makers might turn their attention to. Still, Rwanda deserves all the attention it can get. And certainly Dallaire is a compelling figure. A Catholic, he was asked whether he still believes in God after his shattering experiences, and he replied that he did - after all, he'd shaken hands with the devil. Globe & Mail, Aug 5: "Dupuis, having prepared for his latest role with instruction from Dallaire, says he's playing the retired general more like a priest at the start of a spiritual odyssey. . . ."

SILENCE
"Scorsese is turning his sights to a story of missionaries in 17th century Japan. "Silence" is a long-cherished project that he hopes to shoot partially in Japan in summer 2008. Although it's a period piece, Scorsese thinks it has lessons for America today. "It raises a lot of questions about foreign cultures coming in and imposing their way of thinking on another culture they know nothing about," Scorsese told The Associated Press on Thursday -- raising his eyebrows just to make the point absolutely clear." Associated Press, May 24 2007

SOLITUDE
Jason Goode writes: " Ron, While you are building your book with reviews of soul food movies, I thought I'd recommend one that you probably haven't seen: SOLITUDE by Robin Schlaht (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0281206/). Robin is a
Regina based filmmaker who I got to know while living in Sask and we've been in touch ever since. Solitude is beautiful film about 3 lives that intersect at a Saskatchewan monastery. The film had a great festival life, but it was never released on DVD (perhaps in the future)."

untitled Dardenne Jesus film
Doug Cummings: "in his newly published diary, Luc Dardenne mentions a couple of times that he and Jean-Pierre are thinking about making a Jesus film. I don't have it with me at the moment, but he writes something like, 'this would not be the story of his life, but a snapshot of his reality; the faces, places, bodies, and interactions of his world' or somethign like that. He insisted they'd shoot it in Israel."

untitled "Inherit The Wind" project
Film Comment, May-June 2006: "The 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which substitute science teacher John T. Scopes was basically charged with heresy for teaching evolution to Tennessee high-school students, has been resurrected. Paramount has hired the prolific scribe Ronald Harwood (who won an Oscar not too long ago for his screenplay for THE PIANIST) to create a contemporary Scopes script based on the proceedings of the 2004 Dover Area School District case in Pennsylvania. Siding with blue-state ethos, the presiding U.S. district court judge barred the teaching of 'intelligent design' in the classroom, and accused the thinly veiled creationists of 'breath-taking inanity.'"

untitled Von Trier Dreyer project
Film Comment, May-June 2006: "Lars von Trier is making a documentary about one of his favorite films (no, not THE SOUND OF MUSIC): Danish master Carl Th. Dreyer's 1964 swan song, GERTRUD."

THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY
Peter Chattaway: "Paramount Pictures is headed to Sunday school with the purchase of the A.J. Jacobs novel The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Obey the Bible as Literally as Possible. The studio has taken the book to Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment, which will serve as the producer of the adaptation. Living Biblically will be published by Simon & Schuster in fall 2006. In the book, Jacobs, an editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, spent a year of his life trying to live, literally, by the rules set forth in both the Old and New Testaments."

sherrybaby

Was slated for NY/LA opening September 8. No sign of a Vancouver screening yet.

With all the twelve step language in the blurb, I wonder how the good old Higher Power will come into this one? I hear it's pretty raw, and suspect Sherry's jail-cell religion is mostly something she drops like hot jewelry once she's out of The Big House. Still, as I'm wont to say, you never know. In any event, this business of living out your best intentions, following through on a change of heart, is always close to my heart.

"Three years after entering prison for robbery as a 19-year-old heroin addict, Sherry Swanson (Maggie Gyllenhaal) begins her first day of freedom, clean and sober. A model prisoner who has undergone personal transformation, she immediately sets out to regain custody of her young daughter Alexis. Unprepared for the demands of the world she's stepped back into, Sherry's hopes of staying clean, getting a job, and becoming a responsible mother are challenged by the realities of unemployment, halfway houses, and parole restrictions. Bobby and Lynn's concerns about Sherry's ability to care for Alexis, and her inability to prove them wrong, threaten to destroy the already delicate relationship she has with her daughter, as well as her newfound sobriety."

mary (ferrara)

Godard meets Arcand?
The saga of Abel Ferrara's MARY, still not released in North America...

Film Comment, Nov/Dec 2004

Vincent Gallo Superstar. Yes, he of The Brown Bunny will partake in a film delving into the psyche of our Lord Jesus Christ, and yes, Abel Ferrara, our baddest cinematic lieutenant, will direct. Gallo will play two roles in Mary, one as the director of a controversial (you don't say?) film depicting the life of Christ - and the other, we assume, will give him yet another cross to bear. Sarah Polley will play the titular virgin."

Hollywood Reporter, August 2005

Modine will also be in Toronto to tout "Mary," in which he plays an independent director casting himself as Jesus Christ in his film. Abel Ferrara directs the drama that includes Juliette Binoche as an actress playing Mary Magdalene. The drama will first bow in Venice before having its North American premiere in Toronto.

Venice Festival, Summer 2005

"U.S. director Abel Ferrara won the Jury Grand Prix for "Mary," starring Juliette Binoche as an actress haunted by the figure of Mary Magdalene after having played her on screen."

But here's the reaction from Variety when MARY screens at the 2005 Toronto Fest

"Maverick helmer Abel Ferrara's Catholic angstfest "Mary" met with considerable disbelief after its first Venice screening, but the Ferrara faithful will recognize a partial return to form after several disappointments. Not quite a standout like "Bad Lieutenant," but hardly a dud like "New Rose Hotel," "Mary" reps a sincere grapple with faith and redemption in cynical times. Tricky construction, nesting a film within the film, hits plenty of duff notes. But passionate turns from Forest Whitaker and Juliette Binoche could be the touch of grace needed to get pic a distribution blessing after ancillary-only releases for the last few Ferrara pics.

Cocky American film director Tony Childress (Matthew Modine, amusingly channeling Ferrara's persona) finishes helming a revisionist biblical drama shot in Italy called "This Is My Blood," that stars him as Jesus and major Euro star Marie Palesi (Binoche) as Mary Magdalene. Portions show Mary not as a prostitute but rather a full fledged disciple locked in a power struggle with fellow-disciple Peter, and feature an intense perf by Binoche/Marie.

Having gone deep into the role, Marie has had some kind of spiritual epiphany. When it's time to strike the set, she refuses to go home and sets out for Jerusalem.

A year later in Gotham, Ted Younger (Whitaker) hosts a slightly implausible weeklong, primetime nightly network TV special examining the historical truth about Jesus. Various experts (played by real-life scholars such as Jean-Yves Leloup, Amos Luzzatto and Elaine Pagels) and clergy discuss alternative gospels or issues in theology on the show.

Younger goes to see a press screening of "This Is My Blood" introduced by Childress. Younger asks Childress to appear on his show to discuss the film, which looks set to reap similar controversy to Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." Younger would also like to book Marie on the show, but Childress claims not to know where to find her. . . ."

Summer '06, word of a potential US distributor, and PTC comments

"Jeffrey Wells says the eventual DVD release should include Rafi Pitts's Not Guilty (2003), a documentary about Ferrara, as a bonus feature. Personally, I think it would be even more appropriate to package the film with Alex Grazioli's Odyssey in Rome (2005), which chronicles the making of Mary."

Paste mag is dismissive...

Over-the-top Biblical mess intrigues as only Abel Ferrara can

Louder and more chaotic than its material seems to warrant, Abel Ferrara’s Mary seems like the condensed version of a much larger movie. It includes scenes from a religious epic, TV interviews, street fights, limo rides, infidelity, hypocrisy, apostasy and conversion, but at a mere 83 minutes it’s over before it really begins.

Forest Whitaker plays a TV host examining the historical Jesus on a nightly broadcast, and Matthew Modine is the director and star of an unconventional Biblical film. Modine agrees to appear on Whitaker’s show, boosting both their careers, but one person they can’t yoke to their PR efforts is Juliette Binoche who plays Mary Magdalene in Modine’s movie. She’s been so transformed by the experience that at the shoot’s end she drops everything and heads to Jerusalem.

Very little of this mess works in any conventional sense, but as the performances begin to redline — as Whitaker bottoms out and begs God to save his child and Binoche takes to the water like a fisher of men — the movie examines the relationship between performance and contrition. All the characters are actors; some are trying to open a channel to God while others are putting on a show intended to earn some grace. It’s a fitting topic for Ferrara, whose movies frequently embrace the same contradictions. They’re all here in Mary — the excess, the guilt and the search for truth. Intriguingly jumbled with some assembly required.

And now Matt Page tells us there's a European DVD available through Amazon (in France).

But still no sign of MARY round about these here parts...

resurrection (2007)

I'm pretty qualmy about Tim LaHaye's books ("Left Behind," "Right Behind," etc), so my enthusiasm for Upcoming Jesus Movie Project #387 is a tad muted. But I figure you all deserve to be in the know...

June 08, 2006: Paul Bond, The Hollywood Reporter

"Picking up where the biblical story of Jesus Christ's passion leaves off, Screen Gems is angling for an Eastertime release of a feature film tentatively titled "The Resurrection," people familiar with the project confirmed Wednesday. Using the Bible for its source material, RESURRECTION will tell the story of Jesus Christ beginning the day he died on the cross and ending about 40 days later with his ascension into heaven.

According to insiders, Screen Gems, headed by Clint Culpepper, commissioned a script several months ago from Lionel Chetwynd, the veteran screenwriter, producer and director whose credits include THE HANOI HILTON for the big screen and the Emmy-nominated TV movie "Ike: Countdown to D-Day." Set to produce is Tim LaHaye, co-author of the best-selling "Left Behind" series of books. A popular minister and frequent TV news pundit, RESURRECTION will mark LaHaye's first foray into mainstream filmmaking.

In mining biblical material, those behind the project hope to tap into the same vein that so richly rewarded Mel Gibson for his self-funded "The Passion of the Christ." The 2004 release earned $612 million in worldwide boxoffice receipts, making it one of the 30 most-popular films of all time.

"THE PASSION ends with Jesus being taken from the cross, and THE RESURRECTION opens with the empty cross," a person familiar with the script said. According to the Bible, women who visited the tomb of Jesus Christ three days after his crucifixion found it empty, and his disciples and other acquaintances, including Mary Magdalene, encountered him postresurrection on various occasions during a 40-day period. The film will focus on these dramatic encounters and their implications for the Roman garrison in Judea and the broader Roman Empire, insiders said. "This is not a fanciful rendering. It's a serious attempt to understand the Roman world in which Christ moved and the Christian era was born," a person familiar with the project said."

REQUIEM

REQUIEM (2006, Germany, Hans-Christian Schmid, Bernd Lange)

A restrained and understated treatment of the same events that inspired THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE, dramatizing the tragic exorcism in 1976 of a young German university student whose "demonic" manifestations may have been supernatural in origin, or may have been some form of epilepsy. The fascination of the Derrickson film lay in the interaction between the director's Christian convictions about the reality of evil and genre expectations raised by fictionalizing the story in the guise of a commercial horror pic. Though also fictionalized, REQUIEM sticks much closer to the historical events, employing a matter-of-fact cinematic style that elicits more sorrow than terror, resulting in a sympathetic psychological study that refuses to come down on either side of the natural / supernatural debate, leaving the viewer with the same agonized perplexity one might experience in the face of such events in real life. Both films are anchored by stage actresses in breakout turns: Jennifer Carpenter delivers a body-blow physical performance in the title role of Emily Rose, while Sandra Hueller's tightly contained uber-naturalism as Michaela Klingler won her the Berlin Festival’s Silver Bear. A rigorous, heart-breaking film: if not exactly faith-affirming, still highly recommended.

THE EXORCIST

perfume (tykwer)

Limited release December 8, wide release Jan 5

I know this looks like just another horror/depravity/murder/thriller picture, and that may be all it is. Two things, though.

One.
A few years back, a theologically-inclined buddy insisted I read the source novel for its real insights into the nature of sin and salvation: it's not an amoral novel, but a moral novel that shows the reality and consequences of evil – rather like Doctor Faustus, or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Two.
Even better, it's being directed by Tom Tykwer, so it's sure to be something much more thoughtful and substantial than a typical exploitative thriller: he directed the brilliant RUN LOLA RUN, which I (and theologian Robert K Johnston, in his book on Ecclesiastes and film) consider profoundly spiritual, as well as its "follow-up" THE PRINCESS & THE WARRIOR (on similar themes). Tykwer was also chosen to direct the first of the HEAVEN/HELL/PURGATORY series of films which were to have been the next projects of European director Krystof Kieslowski, who was completely concerned with moral / spiritual issues: his THREE COLORS trilogy and his DECALOGUE series (which looked closely at each of the Ten Commandments) regularly place right near the top of the Arts & Faith Spiritually Significant Films poll.

Saw the trailer last night when I went to see THE QUEEN, and Liz and I both agreed, you can tell this is the biggest-budgeted German film ever: the money's all up there on the screen. Looked more Gothic Lush than Tykwerian, but you never know...

nina's house

Variety:

"Quietly magnificent, if classically told, tale of tentative, incremental readjustment by young Jews who survived the horrors of WWII, LA MAISON DE NINA takes place between Sept 1944 and Jan 1946 in an orphanage housed in a chateau outside Paris. ... Starting in 1944, in the wake of the Liberation, and continuing into the '60s, "houses of hope" were established to lend a semblance of continuity to the lives of youngsters orphaned by the war. Dembo, born in 1948, went to summer camp in one such establishment, where he observed some of the people who had lived there since the war – and the real-life Nina who inspired his script. ... Conflicts are keenly portrayed between the initial residents (who lean toward secular Jewish pride) versus the boys and young men from points East, including Poland and Romania, who survived the camps. Latter feel obliged to assert the faith of their exterminated fathers and revive their rituals. ...

"Jean (Alexis Pivot) still plays classical piano but is no longer comforted by the music; Sylvie (Adele Csech) and her little brother, Georges (Jeremy Sitbon), dream of their mother every night; Izik (Gaspard Ulliel) has gone mute; Gabriel (Vincent Rottiers) discovers one of his parents survived the war, yet can't rejoice; and Leiser (David Mambouch, a standout) needs to re-connect with the teachings of the Torah. ... Precise dates are superimposed to indicate such momentous events as the fall of Berlin and Hitler's suicide, the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima and the founding of the United Nations. All are contrasted with the smaller but equally momentous events at the chateau."

jesus camp

Though it's only in limited release (hasn't yet reached Vancouver), that hasn't stopped this one from garnering lots of attention. For example, over at CT Movies;
Jesus Camp Sparks Controversy
Brainwashed In The Blood
On Fire At Jesus Camp
Jesus Camp Shuts Down

Some comments from Peter Chattaway:

"BOYS OF BARAKA filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady screened their latest effort, JESUS CAMP, in the International Documentary Competition, to a packed house in Lower Manhattan. The emotional doc from A&E IndieFilms profiles "Kids on Fire," a summer camp in Devil's Lake, North Dakota devoted to inspiring children towards a deeper devotion to the evangelical Christian movement. Organizer Becky Fischer, who has dedicated her life to spread her religious beliefs to the young, is a polarizing yet affable figure who is likely viewed as a hero to some and frightening to others. Backers of the film told indieWIRE that the film can play to audiences on either side of the political spectrum, and quite frankly, it's true.

"[The Christian right] feel empowered right now and they gave us a lot of access - more than had we done [the film] some years earlier," said co-director Heidi Ewing following the film's screening Thursday. Ewing and Grady said that Ms. Fischer had seen the film and was pleased with its content, although, unfortunately, she was not present for the screening because she was attending a charismatic conference in Los Angeles. "Becky saw the film and loved it," chimed the directing duo.

One particularly inflammatory scene in the film takes place at a revival meeting at the camp lead by Fischer and her associates, in front of well over 100 children. Fischer takes a life-size standup photo of President Bush to the stage, with a large American flag in the background, and asks the crowd to raise their hands towards him as they begin to chant for him to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court. Fischer and her fellow evangelicals view Bush as their primary hope to push their right wing agenda regarding abortion rights, prayer in school, and gay rights, and the film captures the emotional devotion instilled on a new young generation of evangelicals. Many in the mostly liberal New York audience could be overheard saying that the film should be a call to arms for people on the left side of the cultural/political divide. The evangelicals, however, are reveling that their message has become an entrenched and potentially irreversible reality."

And then Peter tells us the latest news: Jesus Camp Back To Haunt Ted Haggard

(While you're waiting for this one to arrive, you could always rent HELL HOUSE.)

the virgin spring

THE VIRGIN SPRING (Jungfrukällan, Sweden 1959)
Pacific Cinematheque
Thu Dec 21 – 7:30 pm
Fri Dec 22 – 9:20 pm

Cinematheque: "Winner of the 1960 Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film, The Virgin Spring is one of the most powerful and important works in the Bergman canon, and the film with which the great Sven Nykvist became the director's regular cinematographer. Based on a 13th-century folk ballad, and offering (like Bergman's earlier The Seventh Seal ) an immaculate recreation of a barbarous and superstitious medieval milieu, the film stars Max von Sydow as Töre, a wealthy landowner whose beloved virgin daughter is brutally raped and murdered while on a religious pilgrimage. A twist of fate finds the three killers seeking shelter at Töre's farm; when he discovers their responsibility for his daughter's death, he exacts a vengeance of Biblical proportions. The film ends on a hauntingly hopeful note suggestive of divine forgiveness; with his "faith" trilogy of Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence , Bergman would soon forswear the existence of the divine altogether. The Virgin Spring won the International Critics Prize at Cannes, where it (and Buñuel's The Young One ) was announced as "too good to be judged" in the competition for the Palme d'Or. "One of Bergman's finest films, certainly a masterpiece" ( James Monaco). B&W, 35mm, in Swedish with English subtitles. 88 mins.

fanny and alexander

FANNY AND ALEXANDER (Sweden 1982)
Pacific Cinematheque
Saturday, December 23 – 7:30 pm
Wednesday, December 27 – 7:30 pm
Friday, December 29 – 7:30 pm

I've got a bit of a chip on my shoulder about Ingmar Bergman. Sure he gets the obligatory name-check when people talk spiritual film, but Ingmar's world (at least, starting around 1960) is more God-haunted than God-blest, and since you only get to haunt stuff once you're dead, what's that tell you? Something about his dad, I'm thinking.

FANNY & ALEXANDER at least leaves behind the pervasive angst (though of course the baddie is a minister) and celebrates not only life but also the theatre. So I'm down with that.

Cinematheque: "An enchanting, life-affirming, celebratory evocation of childhood and the magic of theatre, Bergman's wonderful Fanny and Alexander won four Academy Awards, including the Swedish master's third Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and Sven Nykvist's second for Best Cinematography (the first was for Bergman's Cries and Whispers ). Fanny and Alexander begins during Christmas 1907, with ten-year-old Alexander and younger sister Fanny enjoying the warmth and good humour of their ebullient, eccentric, and prosperous extended family. Their lives will soon take a less happy turn, however, with the death of their actor father and the remarriage of their mother to a strict, puritanical Protestant minister. Bergman's semi-autobiographical tale is shot in glowing images by long-time collaborator Nykvist, who effectively contrasts the rich, warm hues of the children's old environment with the stark coldness of their new stepfather's home, and whose snow-bound exteriors capture the landscapes of provincial Sweden with Brueghellian expertise. Fanny and Alexander is also something of a summation and compendium of Bergman's career in the cinema, touching on many of his characteristic themes, and replete with references to many of his other works. It may also be Bergman's most opulent and optimistic film — something of a surprise, perhaps, from a director whose work has long been synonymous with Scandinavian austerity and angst. "A sustained triumph . . .For those who have kept faith with Bergman it is an inexpressible relief to find that despair has not gained the upper hand" ( Sight and Sound ). Colour, 35mm, in Swedish with English subtitles. 189 mins."

Children Of Men

Released already in UK, hasn't made its way to Vancouver yet, but I'm keeping watch. A friend said the trailer made him cry! Yikes.

Film version of a novel by P.D. James, one of the most widely-read (and literary) mystery novelists in the world, a Church Of England Christian. Children Of Men is her most explicitly Christian/spiritual work, tackling "right to life / value of human life" issues in a quasi-sci-fi, quasi-apocalyptic genre setting. Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Clive Owen, Chiwetel Ejiofor (remember him from DIRTY PRETTY THINGS!)

"CHILDREN OF MEN envisages a world one generation from now that has fallen into anarchy on the heels of an infertility defect in the population. The world's youngest citizen has just died at 18, and humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction. Set against a backdrop of London torn apart by violence and warring nationalistic sects, CHILDREN OF MEN follows disillusioned bureaucrat Theo as he becomes an unlikely champion of Earth's survival. When the planet's last remaining hope is threatened, this reluctant activist is forced to face his own demons."

*

Nov 17: And now Jeffrey Overstreet's had a chance to preview it, and here are his initial comments, posted at A&F (deliberately vague: I believe he's reviewing the film for CT Movies, and there's a publication ban until a film has officially opened);

If you've seen the preview, well... you've mostly seen stuff from the first ten minutes of the film. And let me tell you... you ain't seen nuthin' yet.

Greg Wright and I saw this together today, and I think I can speak for both of us in saying that we were enthralled... no, ROCKED... by this film. If you see one Christmas movie this year... this should be it.

(And I'm willing to include The Nativity Story in that rather large claim, even though I haven't seen it yet. Because, well... this IS a nativity story of sorts. And I highly doubt that Hardwicke's film will give me a clearer sense of how dark and dangerous was the world the Christ child entered, how desperate Mary and Joseph felt, how badly people needed him to come, or how much it meant to the vigilant, the humble, and the wise when he arrived.)

Stu, you're not alone. Children of Men brought tears to my eyes more than once.

The film has played in enough places, and been reviewed by enough publications, that I don't understand why the publicists are telling us not to publish reviews. I mean... it's already out there, folks! Oh well, I'll save my *review* until later, but I'm not going to box up my enthusiasm.

I'll just say a few very general things to get you curious:
- Alfonzo Cuaron is suddenly one of the best action directors on the planet. All plans for another Die Hard film should be dropped, and they should start from scratch with him. It might end up being as good or better than the original. I might even consider giving him Indiana Jones 4.
- The vision of the future is both terrifying, heartbreaking, and unnervingly plausible. I can't think of a futuristic film that has made me feel like I really am living in the last days of the world the way that this movie does.
- STUNNING, SHOCKING things happen in this film. I think I actually shouted at one point.
- It has chase scenes. Wicked chase scenes.
- Michael Caine. 'Nuff said.
- Peter Mullan. 'Nuff said.
- And Charlie Hunnam is a freaking chameleon. I didn't even know he was in the film until I saw his name in the credits, and even then it took me a moment to figure out who he had played.
- What I said about Danny Huston in The Proposition thread... I'm saying it again here (although I wanted a lot more of him).
- A classic rock song that never meant much to me suddenly means something to me.

Oh... so much more I want to tell you. I can't wait until you all see it.

Jeffrey Wells writes...

"Best Picture of the Year" means different things to different folks. For some (most, I suspect) it means being the most fundamentally "entertaining" -- the one that reaches the broadest middlebrow audience. (Which is why a lot of people are suddenly behind Dreamgirls.) For others, it's the film that's the most soul-soothing or life-capturing (Volver, Babel, Little Miss Sunshine, The Lives of Others ). Or that seems the most complete and fully realized according to its own particular rules (The Departed, The Queen, Pan's Labyrinth, United 93).

But for me, the highest synthesis of Best Picture satisfaction means delivering on one or two of the above plus one other -- it has to be visually historic. It has to knock your socks off by way of sheer visual energy or innovation. So much so that what you're seeing becomes absolutely "real" and everything else drops away. The popcorn is put under the seat, notions of bathroom breaks are out of the question, and you almost stop blinking for fear of missing something.

Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men is that film, and is my choice so far for Best Picture of the Year.

Angel-A

ANGEL-A (France 2005. Director: Luc Besson)
Pacific Cinematheque
Sat Dec 2, 7:30pm
VANCOUVER PREMIERE

Eye candy that might also feed the soul?

Cinematheque: "A visually ravishing black-and-white valentine to Paris, shot mostly in shimmering, crack-of-dawn light, Angel-A marks the much-anticipated return to the director’s chair of French high-concept stylist Luc Besson, luminary of le cinema du look. (Besson, director of La Femme Nikita and The Fifth Element, has been startlingly prolific of late as a producer and a screenwriter, but hadn’t helmed a movie himself since 1999’s The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc).

Playing like a chic hybrid of It’s a Wonderful Life and Wings of Desire, Angel-A pairs up André (Jamel Debbouze), a little guy in debt up to his eyeballs, and Angela (Danish model Rie Rasmussen), a long, leggy blonde in the skimpiest of black dresses. These mismatched lovers meet when their respective suicide attempts bring them to the same picturesque Paris bridge on the same night. After André pulls Angela from the Seine, she resolves to be the guardian angel who will deliver him from his myriad difficulties. Besson’s film, true to form, is drowning in style; the exquisite images are by cinematographer Thierry Arbogast, a Besson regular since Nikita. (Arbogast also shot Brian De Palma’s Femme Fatale, Ms. Rasmussen’s film debut). B&W, 35mm, in French and Spanish with English subtitles. 90 mins.

amazing grace

There's already plenty of hype about this one in Christian movie circles, and that will only intensify in the coming months. Sounds like we oughta NOT let the hype prejudice us against this one - I'm guessing there'll be plenty to like. Just pretend you happened to stumble on the thing unexpectedly in some little arthouse somewhere, and you can't believe nobody's heard of the thing...

CT Movies: "Set to be released on February 23 2006, the 200th anniversary of Britain's abolition of the slave trade. Stars Ioan Gruffudd as Wilberforce, an outspoken Christian and political activist who played a large role in bringing about the slave trade's end. Albert Finney, Romola Garai, Rufus Sewell, and Michael Gambon also star."

First I heard of this one was early this fall. A friend phoned me from L.A., where it was showcased at a Jim Wallis / Richard Rohr / Anne Lamott conference. My buddy was ambivalent, mostly because the film felt more like propaganda than art in the context of being used to stir up political consciousness about modern day slavery. So I lost some interest in the flick. But then I checked out the TIFF listing, turns out it's directed by Michael Apted! So it's the real deal. And I've since learned that the screenplay is by Steven Knight, who penned DIRTY PRETTY THINGS - an extreme favourite of mine. Hurry February....

The Toronto International Film Festival write-up...

Festival favourite Michael Apted brings his unique cinematic finesse to Amazing Grace, a captivating historical drama that is tremendously appealing to both the heart and the mind. Skyrocketing Welsh star Ioan Gruffudd embodies William Wilberforce, the impassioned British Parliamentarian who led abolitionists in their crusade to end the slave trade, while the matchless Albert Finney is riveting as a former slave trader-turned-penitent man of the cloth. In the sure hands of these great talents, Amazing Grace materializes as a lavishly realized tribute to individual strength of will.

We first meet Wilberforce, a disillusioned shell of a man, in 1797. Not so many years before, his name had inspired reformers fighting for the future of the nation. Now, however, he is haunted by the guilt of his great failure: he had fallen just short of legislating freedom for those being shackled in the colonies of the New World.
From here, the film moves backwards, introducing us to the younger Wilberforce, a firebrand politician. Heralded early in his career for his integrity and courage, he is undaunted by the boys' club atmosphere enclosing his parliamentary fellows in a bubble of moral indifference. Attractive and charming, he becomes a prodigious idol of reformers: many a proper young woman swears off sugar when he exposes the evils of plantations. His friend - and, later, the country's Prime Minister - William Pitt (Benedict Cumberbatch) is an ideal foil. Pitt keeps avenues open by hewing to the straight and narrow, while Wilberforce storms through the doors, hollering for reform. They harbour great hopes, but change is slow to arrive: the spoils of the slave trade funnel into the pockets of the nation's most powerful politicians and the old guard persistently sabotage Wilberforce's campaign.

But he would not be defeated and Apted and his tremendous cast - which also features Romola Garai, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Ciarin Hinds and Youssour N'Dour - have crafted a brilliant account of his perseverance. Culminating with Wilberforce's final, all-important showdown against his political foes, Amazing Grace is a stunning tribute to the victory of those seeking the common good over the machinations of those hiding in the dark corners of power. It is truly, deeply inspiring.

The Sacrifice

THE SACRIFICE (Offret, Sweden 1986)
Pacific Cinematheque
Thursday, December 28, 9pm
Saturday, December 30, 7pm

This one stunned me when I saw it twenty years ago at the Ridge. Don't go bored, don't go tired, don't go expecting a lot of action or story. Don't read about the film in advance: so little happens narratively, the filmmaker's great strategy is to keep us "leaning in to the film," our minds whirring with questions as the camera and the story move ever-so-slowly, ever-so-elegantly. Think of it as a moving picture more than a filmed story: there's event there, even (I found) almost unbearable dramatic tension - but it's constructed subtly, with the sparsest of materials. You're better to go in tabula rasa and let Tarkovsky have his way with you.

Even the Cintematheque blurb says too much for my liking: here's an edited bit from their blurb that shouldn't wreck anything...

"Tarkovsky is for me the greatest," Ingmar Bergman once said. Tarkovsky's devastating final film — "a Faust for the nuclear age" (David Parkinson) — was made in Sweden with several regular members of Bergman's team, including cinematographer Sven Nykvist and actor Erland Josephson. Described by Tarkovsky as a meditation on "the absence in our culture of room for spiritual experience," the film is set on an isolated island, where Alexander (Josephson), a distinguished man of letters, lives in seemingly idyllic semi-retirement. The apple of his eye is his young son Little Man, who represents for him the great hope of the future. …

Photographed in ethereal northern light, and opening and closing with two of cinema's most breathtaking single-take sequence shots, The Sacrifice is a masterful, elegant film of great formal rigour and intensity. Tarkovsky supervised its editing from his hospital bed; he died of cancer in December 1986. "No one else can approach his sense of the Apocalyptic. His death leaves a gaping hole in the cinema of spiritual quest" (Chris Peachment). Colour and B&W, 35mm, in Swedish with English subtitles. 145 mins.

Because the film is so intensely visual, and because the film is so purely cinematic, telling its story almost entirely in image, the opportunity to see this on the big screen is one to be seized. (If only it were at the VIFC, where the seats are comfier!)

Copying Beethoven

This one went into limited release yesterday, November 10. Eager for it to hit Vancouver.

There's a great interview with Ed Harris on the Sep 22 "NPR: Movies" podcast. He talks about COPYING BEETHOVEN, and something especially caught my ear;

"It's the fictional story of a young woman who lands a job copying musical scores for Beethoven near the end of his life. Beethoven is at first reluctant to have the help of a young woman, especially as he prepares his Ninth Symphony. In this scene, he is in a tavern, talking with his friend the tavern owner. He's wondering if he should send the woman away, or see her as a sign from God."
Dialogue clip:
Beethoven: This new symphony, it's my farewell.
Bartender: You're not that sick.
Beethoven: No, no, no, my farewell to music as I've always known it, as I've always written it.
Bartender: You've been talking about that for years, Louie.
Beethoven: I'm starting a new chapter in my life. New forms, a new language. And now this woman is sent to me at this very moment. What if she was sent… by Him?
Bartender: Women are usually sent by the other one.
Beethoven: Suppose it's a sign.
Bartender: A sign of what, Louie?
Beethoven: That it's time.
Bartender: Time for what?
Beethoven: Time for me to join with him.
Bartender: Well if it's true, and she was sent by Him, and she's waiting in your apartment… You shouldn't be sitting here drinking, should you?

It's directed by Agnieszka Holland, which makes me think of THE THIRD MIRACLE, which she also helmed, which is all about faith. And EUROPA EUROPA, about a Jewish boy who tries to survive WW2 by posing as a Gentile. TO KILL A PRIEST, for which she also gets a story credit: "A young priest speaks out against the Communist regime in Poland and is killed for it." And now I find out she was involved in writing scenario for THREE COLOURS WHITE and BLUE, and has a film in production called MAGNIFICAT: "A gentle music loving Irish monk - elected as a malleable interim Pope - rebels and announces that he wants to canonise a Lutheran Protestant - Johann Sebastian Bach, thus throwing the Vatican into turmoil and making a dangerous enemy of Cardinal Platoni, the ambitious, Machiavellian and ruthless pretender to the throne." (IMDb)

MAGNIFICAT, COPYING BEETHOVEN and, say, AMADEUS - great future triple feature!

The "young woman copyist/muse" thing also puts me in mind of little-seen but fascinating Euro-flick about Doestoevsky writing his novel "The Gambler" under an impossible life-or-financial-death deadline. The film, like the novel, is called THE GAMBLER (not to be confused with older flicks featuring Kenny Rogers or James Caan), and interweaves three levels of reality: the "present" story-line about the novelist and his amanuensis, the events of the novel Fyodor is writing, and flashbacks to the autobiographical events out of which the novel was shaped. Real explicit God stuff , and pretty girls too.

Container

Looks like yet another Jesus movie - Mel, what hast thou wrought? Definitely the strangest of the new batch, from Lukas Moodysson, whose LILYA 4-EVER was an overwhelmingly despairing film about a young woman who fled to the big city and ended up a prostitute: some Christians found the angel bits to be glorious light in the darkness, but most found them unconvincing, not nearly enough to counterbalance the film's bleak-beyond-bleakness.

Anyway, the director describes this work in progress as "a black and white silent movie with sound... A woman in a man's body. A man in a woman's body. Jesus in Mary's stomach. The water breaks. It floods into me. I can't close the lid. My heart is full."

Well. English is his second language.

I'll keep you posted.

*

Nov 21 update

Sight & Sound coverage gives not the slightest nod in the direction of Moodysson's "Jesus in Mary's stomach" reference, so either Lucas was being something other than literal there (not outside the realm of possibility), or they missed it (not outside the realm of possibility, either).

If Bergman's PERSONA is solid art-house 'canon fodder,' it contains passages that could easily have been clipped from the contemporary avant-garde. by abandoning narrative altogether, Moodysson has travelled still further toward the gallery film. CONTAINER's 74-minute runtime feels arbitrary: you could walk in at any point and get the gist of the thing. For all that, it shares with PERSONA the central theme of the fragmented self in a violent, godless world.

...avivion of personal misery and social and environmental breakdown that makes the hellish tenements of LILYA 4-EVER (2002) look like the salubrious Stockholm suburb in TOGETHER (2000).

...For most of the film Lorentzon acts out various poses of despair: falling over himself in his apartment, half-heartedly attending an orgy, and sticking a model foetus to his face. ... The foetus-model, various flash-montages of religious iconography, and the possibility that Lorentzon is in the hospital for a sex-change operation, together with running references to dilation on the soundtrac, add up to a slightly obscure discourse on rebirth or regression. ...

SYNOPSIS

The images and soundtrack in CONTAINER are formally separate: there is no diegetic sound, and the voiceover, which comprises the entire soundtrack until the closing minutes, when it's accompanied by an electronic drone, bears no direct relation to the action on screen. The image track follows a dejected occasional transvestite, sometimes accompanied by a young woman, through a number of locations in an unnamed city, a landfill site and a seemingly deserted hospital. The soundtrack is a continuous off-screen monologue by someone who may or may not be the American actress Jena (Donnie Darko) Malone.

Christ The Lord: Out Of Egypt

Anne Rice, the vampire lady? Sting's evocative "Moon Over Bourbon Street" was inspired by her "Interview With The Vampire" novel, so I checked it out. The opening chapters struck me as fine literary writing, until the book devolved into something more generic and commercial.

Word is she's become a Christian, and all of a sudden everybody seems to be reading her fictionalized recreation of Jesus' childhood years, and declaring it worthy.

Anyhow, there's a film deal now. I'll keep you posted.