Roy Anker: SILENT LIGHT / "Catching Light"

Thanks to Mike Leary at Filmwell for spotting the Books & Culture piece. Ankers' title comes from Emily Dickinson, "The truth must dazzle gradually," but I wonder if he's been reading Jeffrey Overstreet, who makes much of that expression in his book Through A Screen Darkly and at his website, Looking Closer. (Heck, maybe Roy IS Jeff - all this obsession with looking and light - I bet O-Street had to split himself in two to get everything done...)

Dazzle Gradually: Mexican Filmmaker Carlos Reygadas

by Roy Anker
Books & Culture | July 6 2009

Young Mexican writer-director Carlos Reygadas remains, even after three films, a rather large puzzle—and a hotly controversial one at that. He says he left his lawyer-diplomat career after viewing films by Andrei Tarkovsky, the great Russian mystic filmmaker (Andrei Rublev), and he also claims the hefty influence of France's arch-Catholic Robert Bresson (The Diary of a Country Priest, The Pickpocket), the fellow who, more than anyone else, put on the cinematic map "transcendental style in film," as Paul Schrader titled it for his classic book. That bodes well for both seriousness and style, unless taken too far, and for that, an over-the-top artsiness, Reygadas has gotten huge flack. In one sequence he may well deliver long splendorous takes of a numinous nature, enough to make the jaded gasp and kneel right there in the theater. And in the next, well, porn—meaning fully graphic sexual display, stark and transgressive, especially in its lack of eroticism. . . .

Reygadas displays the whole of his tale within an effulgent, circumambient radiance whose quiet majesty seems to bestow meaningfulness of some kind on all that happens. Call it, if you wish, the loving eye of God, which goes everywhere, attending and transfiguring, even into dankest corners of woe and evil. What stood out, remarkably, in Reygadas' first film, Japón, was his camera work, even though that was done in 16 millimeter adapted to a very grainy widescreen. Throughout a somewhat cryptic, disjointed narrative, the camera glides and watches, always relishing what it sees. In Silent Light, the camera is pretty much stationary, but the marvel of light, landscape, and people is all the more entrancing for that. The long rhapsodic opening shot of the sun rising over the farms of Chihuahua sounds sure-to-be draggy, clichéd, and artsy, but in fact, it's quite the opposite: it dazzles, as more than a few jaded reviewers have admitted. The same is true for the long scene in which Johan and family bathe and swim about in an irrigation sluice. And throughout, a purity and whiteness of light in which there is hardly shadow at all adorns people, young and aged alike—especially near the end, as they all sit in funeral vigil.

For Reygadas, that arresting, transfiguring light falls on everything and everyone, and especially on the ordinary and the unlovely. Very ordinary-looking people inhabit his films. The married couple in Battle in Heaven—one portly, the other morbidly obese—parade nude and make love, minutely inspected by Reygadas' go-everywhere camera, and none of it, even in their love-making, panders. So also with the ancient Ascen in Japón, eighty if she's a day, her face a map of wrinkles upon creases; she too appears naked when giving herself to a younger man (that film is an amped-up retelling of Solzhenitsyn's luminous short story "Matryona's Home"). Nor does the mistress Marianne in Silent Light come close to any notion of Hollywood prettiness, and when we do meet her, the unprettiness, at least in conventional terms, comes as a jolt, so inured are we to axioms of attractiveness, and, lo, how little we understand of people and souls.

To see the world this way, as if through a pair of Vermeer-tinged eyeglasses, is, frankly, startling. Perhaps this is Reygadas' foremost gift: his "eye," his luminous apprehension of the physical world. Whether it be the stolid, intractable fleshliness of humanity in Battle in Heaven, or here, among the Mennonites in Mexico, the palpable radiance of the sun on the high plains of Chihuahua and of the plain people in the plain, white interiors of their simple farmhouses, Reygadas imbues the full amplitude of being with just enough "whatever" to inspire awe—what he calls "contemplation." And he does this without recourse to the cheesy devices that Hollywood uses to signal the portentous.

Reygadas seems fully aware of what he's after, confessing in an interview, "In reality, I do not believe in miracles, but I think reality is a miracle." So when the "wow" of the conclusion does come round, it seems a logical extension of the irreducible glory already contained in every sort of thing. Near the end, Marianne tells Johan that "peace is stronger than love," at least of the romantic sort, and it is the fullness of peace, wrought by agapic love, that in the end accomplishes all. Indeed, that old Mennonite banner of peace seems to win the day, celebrating the quiet, grateful heart over the psycho-blitzes of passion and romance. In all of this, loss is perhaps the severest teacher. Reygadas cops his ending from a famous film by a famous Danish filmmaker, though he says his point is different. And so it is.

With Silent Light Reygadas has come to look like the real thing, a filmmaker of enormous visual talent who has something to say, though he tends to scorn the necessity of stories. One reason he left Europe, he says, was that he found it insensible spiritually, and he adds that, while for a long time he wanted to be an atheist because it was cool, he finally couldn't pull it off. He's beginning to sound very much like an orthodox Catholic, talking about love, sacrifice, redemption, and God's own cross-dying. And there's also that profound wonder and reverence for all that is. Indeed, he seems all of a piece, displaying in breathtaking fullness the gift of what Esther at one point calls "the pure feeling of being alive" and the coming of Light itself—all of that, to borrow from Emily Dickinson, a knowledge "Too bright for our infirm delight." Indeed, with "Truth's superb surprise," Reygadas does "dazzle gradually," but dazzle he does, opening eyes and, just maybe, a soul or two.

Anker pays attention to light. That's appropriate here, of course, given both the film’s aesthetic and its title, but light is an ongoing theme in Ankers' film writing. In the introduction to "Catching Light: Looking for God in the Movies” (2004) the author considers human veneration of light, and the ways that films reflect both light and Light.

“One of the more surprising turns in the contemporary cinema of North America and Europe has been the regularity and maturity with which it has cast cinematic light on those ‘animating mysteries of the world,’ as Clarissa Vaughn in Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours (1998) puts it. Like other characters in that novel, Clarissa ponders the origin and significance of the majesty she feels all around her: the possibility that ordinary physical light in fact emanates from Light, that ours is a radiant world made so by a Love that transfigures the material into resplendent glory.”

Anker carries that focus through the rest of "Catching Light," as seen in his section headings:
Part One: Darkness Visible | The Godfather Saga (1972/74/90), Chinatown (1974), The Deer Hunter (1978)
Part Two: Light Shines In The Darkness | Tender Mercies (1983), Places In The Heart (1984), The Mission (1986), Babette’s Feast (1987)
Part Three: Fables Of Light | The Star Wars Saga (1977/80/83/etc.), Superman (1978), Close Encounters (1977), E.T. (1982), A.I. (2001)
Part Four: Found | Grand Canyon (1991), American Beauty (1999), Three Colors: Blue (1993)

It’s great to see Anker writing about current film. Though his book was published five years ago, it grows out of a Calvin College course he initiated in 1988, and while he has continued teaching and refining the syllabus, it is clearly rooted in the quasi-canon of spiritually engaged films of the seventies and eighties. Anker is an English professor, but he does a very good job engaging with film as film - the continued attention to his theme of light, and a good eye, make him a real film writer, not just a lit guy slumming it at the movies.

SILENT LIGHT available at Videomatica

"Revisiting Tarkovsky": Lincoln Center, July 7-14

Extraordinary images.

The video originates at the Lincoln Centre Film Society website, where they've just launched a retrospective of films by the Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky, running from July 7 - 14. (I really do need to move to New York.)

I saw THE SACRIFICE during its original run at The Ridge. I had little idea what I was in for, went in knowing nothing about the story I was about to see, and I'm glad of that: every moment I was leaning into the film, "What's that?", "Why is he doing that?", "What's at the end of the hallway?" and "Who is she?" About half an hour worth of story crammed into a 148 minute running time, the film could be excruciating or mesmerizing: I saw it on the right night, in the right frame of mind, and was gripped from beginning to end. My three words of advice: 1) Read nothing about the film, not even the DVD cover or the blurb at the Lincoln Film Centre website. 2) Don't see it if you're tired, impatient or distractable, or looking for action. 3) DO go see it; go contemplative, go visually hungry, go for mystery, but go. Even if you have to go to New York.

It was a decade or more later that I met Peter, my movie-list-making twin, and found out ANDREI RUBLEV is his Number One Film Of All Time. Around the same time as I learned that another film-loving buddy (Mel) also counted the iconographer biopic his Top Flick. So I watched it, and found it an endurance test. Watched it again, admired the visuals, still struggled to get hold of it. Then viewed it a third time, in the company of both Mel and Peter, and it started to click. Worked my way through the film scene by scene on my own over the space of several weeks, transcribing the dialogue, immersing in the film contemplating it, and it became one of my own personal favourites. Showed the film to people at Regent College, and marveled that it hadn't gripped me the first time out. All the questions of art-making in the face of suffering have been my questions, one time or another, and once I grew accustomed to the film, it has become a place I can go to contemplate those troubling things.

I've only attempted one other Tarko flick to date, the sci-fi-ish STALKER. Infuriating! As much as I was in the right frame of mind for THE SACRIFICE, I was in the wrong one for STALKER, and it was torment. I watched it with two other buddies, both new to the film as I was, and it didn't take long for the room to be filled with a silent vibe of antagonism. But I take my share of the responsibility for that, and new even as I viewed the thing that I'd need to give it another chance. Viewing the video clip above makes me wonder if maybe that time has come.

See you in The Zone. Or in New York City. Or both, at the Walter Reade.

PS Looks like I may need to watch THE MIRROR next. This next clip is justifiably titled "Best Sequence Shot Ever" on YouTube...

Soul Food Trailers

Tim Dixon points us to IFC.com and their 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time. (Thanks, Mr D). Here are three of my great Soul Food favourites...


Magnolia


The Lord Of The Rings


The Matrix


All available at Videomatica

MAGNOLIA (1999, USA, P.T. Anderson)

A favourite piece of movie writing, an early piece by one of my favourite cinephiles, Doug Cummings. This was posted at PTAnderson.com back where there was a PTAnderson.com, but now that there isn't, I think it deserves a new home....
Magnolia: Spirituality in Film

And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just "something that happened." This cannot be "one of those things..." This, please, cannot be that. These strange things happen all the time.

These words, spoken in the beginning of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, inaugurate the movie's unpredictable narrative that many reviewers claim is a comment on "chance" as a part of life. However, careful viewers will note an ongoing obsession with the numbers 8 and 2 that reveal a different message. "82" appears attached to a hanged man, on an airplane's fuselage, and on a rooftop beside a suicidal jumper. It provides an 82% chance of rain, an unlucky combination of playing cards, and appears in everything from apartment numbers to answering machines to public meetings at 8:20. Eventually, the motif refers to Exodus 8:2, a verse citing a plague God used to deliver the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt. The verse lurks on signs and posters in the background of the film's present day Los Angeles, but it's not until well into the movie that its significance becomes clear when the Divine enters human affairs late one night on Magnolia Avenue.

Magnolia is a creative frenzy of a movie, highlighting the intensely spiritual struggles of its characters caught in contemporary emotional conflicts. It hops from character to character tying them together in a web of loneliness, rage and guilt that builds to a crescendo until brokenness ultimately yields confession, grace and forgiveness. It's a movie that holds the depths and heights of humanity in perfect tension and it does so by overtly suggesting the work of God, making it something of a miracle in itself.

And it's a good thing, too, because the characters in this movie are in dire need of a miracle. And like the Children of Israel, the children in the movie are the ones most in need of liberation. The film's wounded characters come in pairs: TV executive Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) and TV personality Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall) are dying of cancer; their distraught wives Rose (Melinda Dillon) and Linda (Julienne Moore) respectively respond through emotional suppression and drug addiction; their prodigal children Frank (Tom Cruise) and Claudia (Melora Walters) escape their troubled pasts through misogyny, denial and drugs. Two other characters provide separate views of exploitation, quiz show kid Stanley Spector (Jeremy Blackman) and middle-aged, ex-quiz kid Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), who reminds everyone that he used to be smart. Finally, two characters of compassion, LAPD officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly) and male nurse Phil Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman) attempt to traverse the lives of these characters with grace and sensitivity.

The film sees relatedness in people, not so much in blood relationships, but by their spiritual and emotional struggles. All of the characters in the film begin the movie in crisis and the drama rises and falls in an universal arc emphasizing their common humanity. And most of the characters' lives revolve around the television, which both empowers and oppresses them. The TV studio ultimately appears as a microcosm of the larger world with its many narratives teeming beneath one roof.

Anderson's flashy visual style is at times fast and furious (like the brilliant opening sequence depicting some urban legends) and at other times is fluid and graceful. Grounded in a world of cluttered apartments, professional offices, darkened bedrooms, TV back stages, and dilapidated streets, the sets provide a sense of realism that reinforce the raw emotions exhibited by their inhabitants. The film's narrative is finally graced with a collection of soulful Aimee Mann tunes that regularly appear throughout, much like Simon and Garfunkel's work in The Graduate.

Magnolia is Anderson's third feature after Hard 8 and Boogie Nights, and the 29-year-old writer/director is trying hard to establish himself as America's brightest young star on the filmmaking scene. In many ways, he's succeeding. While Magnolia sometimes seems like a never-ending sequence of explosive acting monologues (Anderson has written his stock ensemble plenty of showy material), the film gradually reveals a larger view of humanity and its potential for redemption-- the sort of thematic material one rarely expects from today's Hollywood. (Or those familiar with Andersons previous work, for that matter.)

Through an abundance of profanity and anguish, the movie's characters reveal the fears, dishonesties, and delusions that define their hopelessness. TV executive Earl Partridge is on his deathbed and speaks in painful gasps: "Now I'll die and I'll tell you the biggest regret of my life: I let my love go... Mistakes like this are not okay. You know that you should do better... I'm 65 years old and... don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't regret anything. You regret what you want... use that...use that." He asks his nurse Phil to contact his long lost son, Frank.

Phil develops a genuine compassion for Earl and decides to do whatever it will take to find Frank. Phil is one of the few characters in the film who isn't obviously struggling with his past, and uses his balanced persona to offer compassion to the people around him. Even in a hurried phone conversation based on a lead, a stranger mentions his mother had cancer and Phil's train of thought is quickly interrupted as he consoles, "I'm sorry. Did she make it? It's a terrible disease."

Frank, as played by Tom Cruise in the first truly inspired performance of his career, hides a disappointment from years past by leading male-empowerment seminars promoting women as sexual conquests: "I'm in charge. I'm the one who says yes, now, no or here... That is not to say that we don't all need women as friends, cause we're gonna learn later in Chapter 23 that having a couple of them laying around can come in real handy in setting Jealousy Traps." Frank lives in a sexually-charged present and bristles at any mention of his past. "The most useless thing in the world is that which is behind me," he repeatedly intones.

Earl's wife, Linda, finds herself in a perpetual state of drug-induced emotional turmoil as she attempts to escape the pain of Earl's death and her inadequate role as his wife: "I don't want him to die, I didn't love him when we met, and I've done so many bad things to him that he doesn't know, but now I do: I love him." Like many of the film's characters, she's convinced she's unlovable, and tries desperately to remove herself from Earl's will because of the guilt she feels from cheating on him.

The other line of characters begins with Jimmy Gator, the no-nonsense game show host who wants to reconcile his daughter Claudia, but refuses to confess the truth about their relationship. His life is one of moral denial and surface facade. One of the film's great moments occurs when Jimmy's inner turmoil builds to a climax and he finds himself stumbling over his questions on live TV, his denied emotions breaking free from their entrapment.

Jimmy's wife Rose is a determinedly pleasant person who continually subjugates her emotions. Upon hearing a confession from Jimmy regarding marital infidelities, she replies calmly, "I'm not mad... I am, but I'm not. Y'know?" Unfortunately, it takes a more severe accusation to awaken her to her need for moral judgment and action.

Claudia is the movie's key figure, who highlights the tragic position of children and the universal need for love and self-love. She hopes to bury the past through a flurry of escapist activity: cocaine hits, one-night stands, and deafening music. She's convinced salvation is beyond her grasp, and though she desires a healthy relationship, she fears one as well. "You wanna make a deal with me?" she says on a first serious date, "I'll tell you everything and you tell me everything and maybe we can get through all the lies that kill other people." But when she's given the opportunity, she admits fearfully, "I'm really nervous that you're going to hate me soon. That you're gonna find stuff out about me and you're gonna hate me." Claudia's story provides the dramatic paradigm for all the other stories in the movie.

The figure of compassion in Claudia's life is LAPD officer Jim Kurring, who the movie makes clear is a Christian who prays so God will enable him to "do good." Like Phil, Jim seems to have dealt with his past and is ready to help others. "In this life and in this world, I want to do well," he says to himself in his police car, "And I may get twenty bad calls a day. But one time I help someone-- I make a save. I correct a wrong or right a situation. Then I'm a happy cop." It's refreshing to see a Christian represented by the media in a non-stereotypical fashion in these days of WASP deconstruction. (He's no judgmental Bible-basher.) Jim is an ordinary person who struggles with his reputation as a mediocre law enforcer and habitually prays for guidance as well as thanksgiving for what he perceives are the blessings God gives him.

Donnie Smith, the ex-quiz kid, suffers from an inability to find love and acceptance in a world that tossed him aside after winning thousands of dollars on a game show when he was a kid. His parents stole his winnings and he now works as an appliance salesman and hangs out in bars hoping to find romance. He also delivers two of the movie's most profound lines: "We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us," and "No, it's not dangerous to confuse children with angels." After one emotional eruption, Donnie even quotes from Exodus 34 about the sins of the fathers being placed upon their children and their children's children, thus reinforcing one of the movie's prime concerns.

Finally, Stanley Spector is a younger version of Donnie who finds himself being forced to exhibit his mental faculties on Jimmy Gator's game show "What Do Kids Know?" so that his unloving, domineering father can become rich. Stanley spends his school days sitting alone in a library surrounded by stacks of books so he can perform for the amusement of television audiences everywhere. At a critical point, he says, "I'm sick of being (the winner). The one who always has to do everything." Stanley's future is set on a course that will mimic Donnie's life and he must somehow find a way out before it's too late.

All of these struggles build up to a moment that transcends Hollywood formulas and elevates the movie to a new level. First one character begins softly singing to an Aimee Mann song, then the scene cuts across town as another character picks up where the last one let off, and the film continues to jump from person to person until the song is completed. "It's not going to stop," they sing, "Until you wise up." The characters sing of being trapped by choices they made in the past that seemed right at the time but have only brought misery to themselves and those around them. The inspired sequence emphasizes their need to redirect the course of their lives in a moment of spiritual awareness. It's a moment that affords the audience a larger perspective, a Divine perspective, of the troubles and hurts that pervade the story of humanity and its need for redemption.

Not long after the universal recognition of their need for repentance comes what must be the most startling and unexpected sequence in the movies this year. The distraught lives of the film's characters brush momentarily with the supernatural as the full impact of Exodus 8:2 reveals itself. In the chance that readers have not yet heard what exactly transpires, this review will not give anything away. But suffice it to say that the movie's ongoing references to urban legends and biblical stories rises to the fore in a manner that suggests strange things do happen and offer meaning to our daily lives. The Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that God entered human history at specific points in time, and the movie illustrates this truth in its ultra-contemporary setting.

Fortunately, Anderson plays the miracle out in a mysterious fashion that affects his characters in various ways. To some, it teaches humility and brings about a recognition of false ambitions. To others it forces personal reconciliation. And for some, it hardly has much of an effect at all. But it's primarily the impetus for change that underscores God's supernatural work affording people the opportunity for repentance and forgiveness. There is no simple formula for happiness here, but through the mysterious work of grace, salvation is offered.

In the end, officer Kurring reflects on his life (and unknowingly comments on the many characters in the film): "A lot of people think this is just a job that you go to. Take a lunch hour, the job's over, something like that. But it's a 24 hour deal. No two ways about it.. And what most people don't see: just how hard it is to do the right thing. Sometimes people need a little help. Sometimes people need to be forgiven. And sometimes they need to go to jail. And that's a very tricky thing on my part... making that call. The law is the law and heck if I'm gonna break it. But can you forgive someone? Tough part of the job... tough part of walking down the street."

Magnolia is a magnificent film with startling energy, rage, compassion, and an inventive visual style that offers a unique look at the real-life despairs people often suffer through. On the eve of the 20th century, and in contrast to the sort of cartoon-like religious imagery Hollywood has been dishing out lately, the movie provides a sense of spiritual direction for present day humanity immersed in its own exodus into the next millennium. More than any other film this year, it stands as a testimony to God's hope offered to people who need it.

In interviews, Anderson is wary of delving too deeply into the film's message, hoping the film can be self-explanatory and conducive for personal interpretation. Fair enough, for from a Christian perspective, the movie conveys humanity's depravity and need for salvation through the process of confession and forgiveness and an abiding sense of divine purpose. Intentionally or not, Anderson has stumbled upon Truth with a piercing immediacy. And it is in the humble opinion of this reviewer that this is not just "something that happened." This cannot be "one of those things..." This, please, cannot be that. These strange things happen all the time.

NOW PLAYING

I'm a terrible one for whining about the cinematic silly season of summer, but 2009 is proving me wrong, at least here in Vancouver. First-run fare includes UP (which I've seen twice, and will see again), AWAY WE GO (looks charming), NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 2 (if only because it's got Kerry Vander Griend as a neanderthal), and even STAR TREK is a lot of fun.

But the real action is at Cinematheque, VanCity and Videomatica - quel surprise!

RASHOMON
Pacific Cinematheque
July 3-6, 8
One of the "34 Films"

LAST STOP 174
VanCity
July 9
Wonder how it differs from BUS 174?

TOKYO STORY / THE RULES OF THE GAME
Pacific Cinemathequ
Double Bill July 10-13
Two of the unquestionable film masterpieces.

THE TENANT
July 15
Creepy early Polanski.

ON THE WATERFRONT
July 18, 19, 21
Another of the "34 Films," and certified Soul Food to boot

REVANCHE
Pacific Cinematheque
Friday, July 24-27, 29-30

On small screens, there's plenty of new Soul Food on Videomatica shelves, including brand new DVD releases of THE SEVENTH SEAL and MY DINNER WITH ANDRE. DEFIANCE and GRAN TORINO are other recent additions with SF content.

And then there's the Film Noir series in August at Cinematheque. Highlights include a pair of Chandlers with THE BIG SLEEP and THE BLUE DAHLIA, NIGHTMARE ALLEY (penned by C.S. Lewis's wife's first husband, with the creepiest sideshow outside Bradbury), Jacques Tourneur's NIGHTFALL, and A TOUCH OF EVIL - yet another of the "34 Films".

The Auteurs | theauteurs.com

The Auteurs is a new film site that aims to be an online cinematheque / film festival, making foreign, independent and art film available on demand in high quality, full screen streaming video. In addition to a growing catalogue of films that can be screened for three bucks ($1 for shorts), there is a new "Film Festival" of specially curated films which rotates month by month. The May/June selection was extraordinary - a selection of cinematic masterpieces which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival - and the films were offered FREE, sponsored by IFC. Since it's July 1 and the films are still available, I'll highlight a few...

L'Avventura (1960, Italy, Antonioni)
A girl mysteriously disappears on a yachting trip. While her lover and her best friend search for her across Italy, they begin an affair. Antonioni’s penetrating study of the idle upper class offers stinging observations on spiritual isolation and the many meanings of love. The Criterion Collection. FREE

Cleo From 5 To 7 (1962, France, Varda)
Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer (Corinne Marchand) set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina. The Criterion Collection. FREE

Black Orpheus (1959, Brazil, Camus)
1960 Academy Award Winner and winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus retells the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice against the madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. With its magnificent color photography and lively soundtrack, this film brought the infectious bossa nova beat to the United States. The Criterion Collection. FREE

Also The Cranes Are Flying, Harakiri, Cria Cuervos, Dry Summer, The Housemaid


One of my all-time favourite films, a documentary on artist Andy Goldsworthy whose life embodies Robert Farrar Capon's idea of Oblation.

Rivers & Tides (2001, Germany/UK, Riedelsheimer)
Landscape sculptor Andy Goldsworthy is renowned throughout the world for his work in ice, stone, leaves, wood. His own remarkable still photographs are Goldsworthy’s way of talking about his often ephemeral works, of fixing them in time. With this film shot in four countries and across four seasons, and the first major film he has allowed to be made, the elusive element of time adheres to his sculpture.
Director Thomas Riedelsheimer worked with Andy Goldsworthy for over a year. What Riedelsheimer found was a profound sense of breathless discovery and uncertainty in Goldsworthy’s work, in contrast to the stability of conventional sculpture. There is risk in everything that Goldsworthy does. He takes his fragile work – and it can be as fragile in stone as in ice or twigs – right to the edge of its collapse, a very beautiful balance and a very dramatic edge within the film. The film captures the essential unpredictability of working with rivers and with tides, feels into a sense of liquidity in stone, travels with Goldsworthy underneath the skin of the earth and reveals colour and energy flowing through all things.
Riedelsheimer’s film, like Goldsworthy’s sculpture, grows into something beyond the simple the making of a object. It touches the heart of what Goldsworthy does and who he is, in much the same way that Goldworthy touches the heart of a place when he works in it and leaves his mark on it.In this film, which is Goldworthy’s work as much as Riedelsheimer’s, “you see something you never saw before; that was always there but you were blind to”. $3

Scanning the rest of their catalogue, I've dug out a batch of potential Soul Food movies, none of which I've seen yet.


Sea Of Silence (2009, Belgium/Netherlands, Coninx)
In 1969, nine-year-old Caro lives on a pig farm with her 5 siblings in a small town in Holland. She is determined to understand the mysteries around her but her Catholic father can’t explain the modern world and her mother is too busy for philosophy so Caro engages in direct conversation with God. After the heartache brought on by her father’s drinking Caro eventually learns she cannot worry about the things beyond her control. A bittersweet film on the universal quest for personal meanings in life against the self-assured dominance of wealth and science. $3

Fragments Sur La Grace (2006, France/Belgium, Dieutre)
A filmmaker and his crew try to enter the passionate world of Port-Royal and of Jansenism. Another Age of Louis XIV comes to life, the age of Pascal, Racine and of the “Friends of Truth”. An age much darker and deeper than the splendors of Versailles. Through the landscapes of Port-Royal and Paris, thanks to the reading of texts in the French language of the time, thanks to interviews with specialists and to notes, the historical quest changes into a philosophical and historical vertigo. The film itself turns into something else while it comes up against the unanswerable question of grace. $3

Kedma (2002, Israel, Gittai)
May 1948. Battles are raging in Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs. In two weeks, the British mandate will come to an end and they will leave the country. A rusty cargo ship, the Kedma, is on its way to the Promised Land. Hundreds of Holocaust survivors from all over Europe are packed aboard. On a beach in Palestine, soldiers of the Palmach – the clandestine Jewish army – wait to welcome them, whilst British soldiers intend to stop them disembarking. Nevertheless, a small group of men and women manages to escape to the hills and finds itself in the midst of the battle for the road to Jerusalem. An unconventional epic from celebrated director Amos Gitai. $3

Sacred Hearts (2005, Italy, Oztepek)
In Irene’s unscrupulous hands, the profits from the family business have grown immensely. But when two of her friends commit suicide after her buy-out of their company, her self-confidence begins to crack. She retreats to Rome, to her family residence and learns the secrets of the last years of her mother’s life. She meets Benny, a street smart little girl, who is a challenge to her life and values. Captivated by her, Irene starts to perceive the world and people around her in a new light. When she is hit by a new tragedy, Irene throws herself into charity work turning her palatial villa into a shelter for the homeless, taking this new vocation to the very limits of madness. But to find peace, she will have to harmonize her materialistic life with her humanitarian calling. $3


And this. My movie-buddy Peter is a fan of Jań Švankmajer, whose work I've not yet seen, and The Auteurs offers me the chance to tick off four titles on Peter's All Time Faves list for a total of six bucks...

Faust (1995, Czech Republic, Svankmajer)
Goethe’s classic story, Christian Dietrich Grabbe’s novel and Marlowe’s ‘Doctor Faustus’ combine in the phantasmagoric world of famed Czech animator Jań Švankmajer. In Švankmajer’s version, Faust is solicited by the devil’s assistants at a Prague subway exit. He agrees to sell his soul directly to Mephistopheles in exchange for 24 pleasure-filled years. The deal is done, but Faust gets more than he bargained for, as he is first turned into an actor and then into a puppet. This most unusual of adaptations is a highly inventive surrealist fantasy featuring surprising and imaginative clay animation combined with live-action and grotesque life-size marionettes. It is a modern myth, offering illusions within illusions that illustrate the ordinary corruption, miseries and vanities of the human soul. $3
And there are some Švankmajer shorts for a buck apiece: Flora, Food, Meat Love.

WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND (1961, UK, Forbes)

WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND (1961, UK, Bryan Forbes)
He's not your private property. Everyone can see him if they want.

This Hayley Mills vehicle – adapted from a novel her mum wrote – has a much darker tone than you might expect. When three Lancashire children decide the man in their barn is Jesus, they form a secret society to keep the truth from the grown-ups, "Cause if you don't, they'll come and take him away again like last time." And no wonder: their surly father and overbearing aunt are as hard as the land they farm. Filmed in black and white, it's all dreary hills and rock quarries under oppressive grey skies.

These children lead a secret life, ducking out of view of the adult world that carries on around them, mostly oblivous. Left to their own devices, they hammer things out in a curious blend of childhood innocence and pragmatic bloody-mindedness. Clearly, Jesus needs food: if that means stealing some bread and wine for him, so be it. " Do you think it's wicked?" "No. How can it be when we're doing it for him?"

Out of the mouths of babes. One immediately thinks of the evils and compromise that have been justified with the same easy logic – while also being reminded of the words of Christ, "Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me."

Alan Barnes, who had never seen a script before, plays the tough-minded little brother who pretty much steals the movie out from under Miss Mills and even the haunted, hunted performance of Alan Bates as "The Man." He's the tough, clear-sighted boy who'll prove, sadly and inevitably, father to the stony Lancashireman he'll inevitably become. Or maybe there's more spirit in him than that. Certainly his sheer spunk brings endless, sharp comedy to the film. He shushes a chattering gaggle of village children on their way to the stable: "Do you want to see Jesus or don't you? Well, shut up then." He disarms his younger sister's qualms that "Jesus wore a long dress" with the simple observation that "That was in them days."

I'm not sure the climax of the film works all that well – though a comparison to WITNESS is interesting. But the world of the film is unique, and for all its simplicity it grows richer on repeat viewings. Perhaps the film escapes the expected coyness because we are constantly aware that the man in the barn is not Jesus – he may even be an escaped criminal – and the convolutions the children indulge to sustain belief take the piss out of adult "true believers." At the same time their simple loving concern for this man has an undeniable sacredness about it. There's a thin line between serving Jesus and visiting a criminal, whether in a stable or in a prison.


VHS only available at Videomatica

O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000, USA, Coen)

O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000, US, Joel & Ethan Coen)
“Well that's it boys, I been redeemed! The preacher done warshed away all my sins and transgressions. It's the straight-and-narrow from here on out and heaven everlasting's my reward!”
“Delmar, what are you talking about? We got bigger fish to fry...”

The jokiness of the Coen brothers' southern-fried Odyssey means it's unlikely to touch the deep places of the human heart, but hey – so what? It's a lot of fun. The unexpected thing is that this shaggy dog yarn unravels in a cartoony world that's also surprisingly moral, taking seriously things like salvation and prayer.

Not that "serious" is a word we really should apply to anything here: Joel and Ethan are in their most playful mood this time out, gleefully juggling Deep South and Depression era mythologies with twinkle-in-the-eye movie references (like a Ku Klux Klan ceremony choreographed like the Yellow Winkies in THE WIZARD OF OZ!), glorious old time music and campy riffs on Greek mythology. The Coens admit no more than a Classics Illustrated acquaintance with Homer, but the tie-ins are daffy and delicious: we've got one-eyed Bible salesmen, beguiling sirens, fellow travelers turned into animals and a gospel-singing blind Teiresias. Ulysses' Greek name, Odysseus, translates to "man of pain and sorrow," and when George Clooney's stooge-like trio of chain gang escapees cut a record under the alias Jordan Rivers & The Soggy Bottom Boys, it's the traditional "Man Of Constant Sorrow" that becomes their theme song.

On first viewing, this film felt slight to me: the glorious soundtrack, featuring roots-gospel luminaries like The Fairfield Four, Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris and Alison Krauss, promised a spiritual potency that the silliness of the rest of the film didn't come close to fulfilling. Sure Delmar and Pete got baptized and saved, but the absurd suddenness of those conversions and their "dumber'n a bag of hammers" characterizations seemed to shrink the significance of those events, rendering them nothing more than the occasion for plenty of good-ol'-boys-get-religion gags.

Seeing the film a second time, that whole perception turned on its head. Sure this is a looney-tunes world, but if Pete and Delmar are hilariously naive and mostly just plain dumb, they're also just plain right more often than not, particularly when they put their trust in God or give credence to the words of the flatcar prophet. The most truly foolish of this gathering of likeable fools is Ulysses Everett himself, whose deliciously overblown rhetoric glibly explains away the Inexplicable and denies events that are, within the world of the story, undeniably miraculous – answered prayer, deliverance from death and prophecies fulfilled, even unto a cow on the roof of a cottonhouse "and oh so many startlements!" And inevitably, Everett's rational evasions just lead ever more impossible tasks on the road to his promised salvation.

If Everett is the kind of fool whose false wisdom is mocked in the biblical Book of Proverbs, his redeemed side-kicks point the way to another kind of foolery that's praised in Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians;
"Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Were is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards, but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things, so that no one may boast."

Like a piece of rock candy or some horehound twist tucked away under your tongue, this childishly sweet and mischievous story yields up its greatest pleasure gradually, over time. Where I once found its comedy superficial and its performances over-the-top, I now glory in the film's wise foolishness and serious fun, returning to favourite scenes over and over again. And when, out here in the less-wacky "real world," I listen to the pundits and professors of Nothingbutness summon up all manner of verbose and fancy justifications for their proposed world without wonder, I can't help but think of the obtuse and self-serving obfuscations of George Clooney's brilliantly-rendered Ulysses Everett McGill, and I find myself grinning.

SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS

LES MISERABLES (1998, UK/Germany/USA, August)

LES MISERABLES (1998, UK/Germany/USA, Bille August)
You no longer belong to evil. With this silver I've bought your soul. I've ransomed you from fear and hatred. And now I give you back to God.

Forgiveness and transformation are at the heart of Christian faith, and Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is one of the most deeply Christian stories ever told. The inspector Javert personifies the law, relentlessly pursuing what he considers truth and justice, exaggerating offenses – even his own – and demanding payment. And he does not believe in the human capacity to change: "Reform is a discredited fantasy. Modern science tells us that people are by nature lawbreakers or law abiders. A wolf can wear sheep's clothing but he's still a wolf."

Jean Valjean, on the other hand, is a thief "who has been forgiven much" and, like a character from the Gospels, learns to love much. Early in the film the bishop provides him a meal and a bed to sleep in, and the convict remarks that "In the morning, I'll be a new man." Truly, the rest of his life will be spent testing that possibility.

Hugo's plot is a brilliant construction, an endlessly inventive series of variations on these themes of justice and mercy (one thinks of Portia's speech in "The Merchant Of Venice), of fundamental human nature and divine renewal (one thinks of II Corinthians 5). Danish director Bille August's star-studded treatment of this vast novel is a favourite of many, focusing on the story of these two characters. He is a director capable of great understatement and tenderness – Twist & Shout and Pelle The Conqueror are moving and evocative stories of childhood and coming of age – and one of the fascinations of this Les Mis is the tension between his directorial subtlety and the melodrama of the Rafael Yglesias screenplay. The dialogue in particular is often "on the nose," potentially off-putting for a sophisticated viewer: it spells things out for us with all the bluntness of a fable or an allegory.

But there is something deeply right here. The very directness of the story and its telling feels almost like scripture, one of Jesus' parables perhaps. "A certain man, a thief, was brought before a Bishop from whom he had stolen precious silverware. But the Bishop, being a merciful man...."

This story is melodrama: the focus is on plot, the events are writ large, the stakes always life and death. Sometimes the machineries of narrative clank a bit. (It may even be that the adaptor made an intentional choice to embrace and even heighten these genre conventions: like the director, this writer is capable of much more subtle writing, as evidenced in his script for Peter Weir's Fearless.) Perhaps for a sympathetic viewer, such conventions signal deep truths, eternal verities: what can seem on first viewing over-stated and obvious may have the capacity to stick in the mind and, with familiarity, prove profoundly True.

For me, the film is at its best in the first half, where the focus is entirely on Javert and Valjean. It loses some of its power once the story moves to Paris: the clash between the two men is backgrounded, and the adolescent love story doesn't have the same capacity to move me. At this point the revolution should inflame my passions – their cry for justice would be a glorious variation on the story's central themes – but the filmmaker doesn't spend enough time on the social context in Paris or on Marius's story for this new story to truly catch fire. We don't get to feel the passion of the revolution, the justice of their cause. Political backgrounds are summed up in an explanatory sentence when needed: we absorb the information, but we are not moved. If only the filmmakers had been willing to make a longer film, to show rather than tell some of these things, it could have been a much more potent realization of Victor Hugo's masterpiece of mercy and redemption.

The best reflection of the social passion of the novel comes earlier, in the trial of Carnot, an addled simple man who struggles to describe himself: "I'm a man who... what's the word for it? I'm one of those people who doesn't eat every day. I'm... I'm hungry, that's the word."

Ultimately, the power of this film probably lies not so much in what the filmmakers have done or failed to do with the story, as in the story itself, the underlying myth. C.S. Lewis writes of "the art of myth-making," where the pattern of events retains all of its power independent of the means of its telling: "it produces works which give us (at the first meeting) as much delight and (on prolonged acquaintance) as much wisdom and strength as the works of the greatest poets."

Whatever its successes and its failings – and indeed, it has both – this rendering of Hugo's mythic story has immense power to move, and perhaps even to transform. As a Christian, I find the essence of Valjean's central story to be my own. I recognize this man who has been bought with a price and then set free: a new creation who may never escape the reality – and the consequences – of his own human failings.

LES MISERABLES DU VINGTIEME SIECLE

LES MISERABLES DU VINGTIEME SIECLE (1995, France, LeLouche)

LES MISERABLES DU VINGTIEME SIECLE (1995, France, Claud LeLouche)
In the history of the world, only two or three stories keep recurring forever. This story is one of them, and it has every alibi.

Critics are radically divided in their response to Claude LeLouche's deeply personal reworking of Victor Hugo's classic. Some are with Damian Cannon, who finds it "A wonderful and impressive film," intricately structured and deeply resonant, while Rita Kempley calls it "a turgid three-hour epic," "miserable," an "earnest extravaganza."

This story, set a century and a half after the novel, is equally ambitious in scope, opening with the swirl of a grand ball on the eve of the 20th century and following its characters through "the most miserable of times," World War Two in occupied France. Everywhere are echoes of the original story: a man is unjustly imprisoned, a desperate women sells not only her hair but her body, helpless people must rely on greedy opportunists, while underground idealists fight against overwhelmingly powerful government oppression. Eventually the story comes to focus on a certain character's "painful rebirth," which begins when people begin referring to him as Jean Valjean: illiterate, he relies on others to read or tell him this story which he once saw in a silent movie, projected on a bedsheet in a seaside inn, and around which he now begins consciously to shape his life.

The film careens wildly between stunningly beautiful visual moments and sophisticated narrative subtleties and complexities on the one hand, and overly self-conscious parallelism to Hugo's story on the other. Hand in hand with that tendency to overstatement are episodes that are criticized for being overly romantic, melodramatic, even maudlin, and a thematic explicitness that can diminish the impact of events. But it may be that this is entirely in keeping with the spirit of the original – if Hugo is a myth-maker, he is also a moralist, and Lelouche seems to embrace it all whole-heartedly. At one point a character comments that the novel's final section is "a bit over the top – like us in the Resistance!" Perhaps the actions of real people caught up in cataclysmic events take on a certain melodramatic quality, viewed at a safe distance.

Those who are severely critical of the film neglect to mention its many extraordinary details, such as images of the convent girls running downstairs in white night gowns, or practising "It's A Long Way To Tipperary" on a seemingly endless row of pianos. (Note the way the sound is handled when we return to this same scene later). And while the morality of the movie is sometimes black-and-white obvious, it is also subtly nuanced in other places: the film is masterful in creating for the viewer an understanding of the extraordinary ethical dilemmas, the compromises and collaborations that tore at French citizens under the Vichy regime. Notice how LeLouche approaches the difficult question of discerning God's hand in times of great evil: the filmmaker comes at it through a complex layering of dramatic ironies in the scene in the Normandy pub, where the son of the original innkeeper argues "Thenardier is an angel! He's sent by the Lord. I'm not saying he isn't a scumbag. I'm saying he's sent by God." The film's detractors overlook the fact that several of the parallel storylines actually evolve into fascinating inversions of the comparable characters or events in the original, lending the film a constant unpredictability.

Still, no one who writes about this film overlooks the extraordinary work of French screen icon Jean-Paul Belmondo: you need look no further than the extended opening scene to see the power in a face, the depth of this man's connection to a role. Particularly glorious are some of his sequences with the director's daughter, the wonderful Salome Lalouche. She plays a Jewish girl (in another flourish of inter-textuality, the character is also named Salome) who is torn from her parents through the harsh circumstances of war. When she is with Belmondo, watch those two faces, the one so beautiful and young, the other so leathered and worn.

While this film stands on its own, you'll really appreciate its richness if you're familiar with the original story, whether by acquaintance with the musical, reading the novel or viewing one of the many film adaptations. Les Miserables provides a central myth for many Christians, and when this French director interweaves it with the central events of the twentieth century, the story of the Jews under Nazi oppression, the result – however uneven – is an intricate, important film experience.

SCHINDLER'S LIST, THE PIANIST, DIVIDED WE FALL, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, THE HIDING PLACE

June 12-15: Touched By Tibet

Graham Peat, owner of Soul Food's beloved Videomatica, sends us this...

Dear friends;

I invite you to attend the 2nd Touched by Tibet film series, which runs Friday June 12 to Monday June 15 at the VIFC/Vancity Theatre (the most comfortable and modern theatre in town).
The very best new films or Tibet and Buddhism are featured this year and we offer talks by guest musicians, speakers and film directors at many performances. The large lobby will have Tibet-related and human rights groups displays and sales.
More event information and ticket details here

Tashi delek!
Graham Peat
Touched by Tibet 2 www.vifc.org
presented by Canada Tibet Committee Vancouver & VIFC Vancity Theatre



TOUCHED BY TIBET 2
June 12 - 15

The Vancity Theatre’s second Touched by Tibet series is programmed by, and co-presented with, the Canada Tibet Committee, an independent organization of Tibetans and non-Tibetan Canadians concerned with the continuing human rights violations and lack of democratic freedom in Tibet.

Touched By Tibet screenings will include guest speakers,lobby displays by Tibet-related groups, appearances by some of the filmmakers, and a performance by the Vancouver Tibetan Music Ensemble (June 12). Friday June 12, 8:15 Reincarnation/Thread of Karma will have comments and Q&A with Prof. Jeffrey Hopkins. Saturday June 13, 8:00 Meltdown In Tibet- Q&A with director Michael Buckley, and 6:30 Tulku will be followed by a live Q&A via Skype with director Gesar Mukpo.

VIFC TICKETS AND INFO

Call the FILM INFO LINE: 604.683.FILM (3456) for the latest info and listings. Tickets can be purchased in advance on-line at www.vifc.org or in person 30 minutes before showtime.

Vancity Theatre is located at 1181 Seymour St. (at Davie)

Anthony Lane on TERMINATOR: SALVATION

"If you arrived late for TERMINATOR: SALVATION and missed the name of the director, at what moment would you realize you were not watching a Mike Leigh film? I would nominate the scene in which a rusty tow truck, armed with a wrecking ball, is pursued by a riderless robot motorbike, armed with automatic machine guns . . . The business of the film is not to tell a cogent story or earn the devotion of our sympathies but to analyze alternatives and, when in doubt, pick whichever is loudest . . . Take John Connor, played by Christian Bale as a scar-nicked warrior, consumed by a messianic belief that he can save the world by shouting. After the opening battle, he answers his radio with yelps of "Here!" and "Connor!" as though introducing himself to a befuddled and very deaf grandmother . . . When, and on what possible ground, did someone decide that the Terminator franchise should be no fun to watch? It's surely not a good sign when time travel gives you a sense of deja vu. . . . The title is unfortunate, giving the impression—which is more than borne out by the film—that something must be done to save the franchise . . . With a brief cameo by a C.G.I. version of Arnold Schwarzenegger; or maybe this is him, and the virtual one is governing California."

Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, June 1 and June 8, 2009

FIELD OF DREAMS (USA, 1989, Robinson)

FIELD OF DREAMS (USA, 1989, Phil Alden Robinson, W.P. Kinsella novel)
Is this heaven?
It’s Iowa.
I coulda sworn it was heaven.

Late in my work-weary third decade, God sent a book that rekindled a vital spark that hadn't fired me up since my childhood. It would be going too far (a lot too far) to say He drew me back to my first love, but it was at least a childhood crush that got stirred up again, and it kindles my heart in a way that has sustained me through some very tough years.

I didn't find this inspirational classic in a religious bookstore. Even though it's done as much for my spirit and my soul as a shelf full of devotional literature, it wasn't recommended by my pastor, or even a therapist. My muse was a scratchy voiced radio announcer, who very clearly said to me – well, to me and however many other hundreds of thousands of CBC listeners had tuned in that afternoon – "If you read it, your life will be changed." (Well, not in so many words. But I know what I heard!)

I went straight to the used bookstore and got myself a copy of a book that began;

My father said he saw him years later playing in a tenth-rate commercial league in a textile town in Carolina, wearing shoes and an assumed name.
He'd put on fifty pounds and the spring was gone from his step in the outfield, but he could still hit. Oh, how that man could hit. No one has ever been able to hit like Shoeless Joe."

And I was hooked. I read Shoeless Joe three times through before I started devouring everything else W.P. Kinsella had written; The Thrill of the Grass, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and lots more as they issued forth from the pen of this prolific baseball prophet.

I'll be honest here: Kinsella would be appalled to be considered the mouthpiece of God. I don’t think he even likes Christians that much (apart from his red-headed wife Anne, with whom he is smitten, and who, interestingly enough, happens to be a devout Christian. Go figure....) and that dislike comes through in his books. But he understands calling, loves life and the "Behold it is good!" glory of the created world, and the way these simple earthly joys are caught up in spiritual mysteries as close to hand as a cornfield or a ballpark. If God can speak through donkeys, if rocks and stones can praise Him and the trees of the field can give Him a standing "O," surely we can hear from Him through a baseball writer, or find heaven in a blade of outfield grass.

When the film version came out, I was astonished. Even though they changed the title (yet another attempt to strike Shoeless Joe from the history books, I couldn’t help thinking) and plenty of other stuff, it worked. An amazing book became an amazing movie, using film language to do what written words did a different way. We lost the narrator's voice, so droll and beguiling and expressive, but we gained that amazing final shot, and lots of other gorgeous, evocative images. They moved things around, had to cut other things – but what we lost in J.D. Salinger, we gained in the amazing James Earl Jones. And the heart of the thing, the thrill of the grass and what it feels like to be called to fulfill an impossible, impractical, maybe-divinely-inspired dream, was all still there. I'm only one of many who watch this movie through tears (see, there is crying in baseball!).

It's a film about the price we pay for obedience – and the higher price we pay for its opposite. About the tough choices involved in discerning between enthusiasm and calling. It's about fathers and sons (what baseball movie isn't?), husbands and wives and daughters, restoration of the fallen and how it feels to get some good wood on the ball on a green field in a summer evening. And if you think this is just sentimental wish-fulfilment about playing ball instead of living life in the real world, don’t forget Moonlight Graham stepping across that white chalk line.

The story is so well known, I won't lay out the details. And anyway, if you're one of the lucky ones who can still go see it for the first time, I'm not going to be the guy who spoils even one of its wildly imaginative, deeply inspiring plot twists. Don't bother to find out more about it, don't talk to your friends, don't even read the back cover of the video – just rent it, and watch it.

Maybe all you'll get out of it is an enjoyable evening at the movies. Or maybe you'll hear another voice, whispering to you in the middle of a cornfield. I know I did. A voice that came in a weary time, giving me back not only baseball – abandoned since my childhood, a blessed release from the pressures of day-to-day responsibility – but even more, a deepened certainty that my sometimes pointless and seemingly inescapable day-to-day toil is actually a God-breathed calling. And that He can use it to ease people's pain. My own included. That what we're building here may be a field of dreams, a little corner of the kingdom of God.

THE ROOKIE, BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY, BULL DURHAM

Available at Videomatica

Bahrani vs Dardennes

My second contribution to Filmwell is now up. Notes on the Dardenne retrospective at Lincoln Centre, NYC, with lots of links to things Dardennian. Best part is an interview excerpt from Cineaste magazine, where Ramin Bahrani (MAN PUSH CART, CHOP SHOP, GOODBYE SOLO) takes issue with L'ENFANT - the bum! - and we consider the fine line between moral and moralistic.

While you're over there, you might also want to check out a nice essay by fellow Filmweller Alissa Wilkson - "Goodbye Solo, This American Life, and Ramin Bahrani" - which niftily connects my favourite radio show ("This American Life") with Bahrani's small-scale cinematic realism. And she points to an exceptionally fine A.O Scott piece on Neo-Neo Realism that references everybody from Bahrani and the Dardennes to Roberto Rossellini, Satyajit Ray and WENDY & LUCY.

"What if, at least some of the time, we feel an urge to escape from escapism? For most of the past decade, magical thinking has been elevated from a diversion to an ideological principle. The benign faith that dreams will come true can be hard to distinguish from the more sinister seduction of believing in lies. To counter the tyranny of fantasy entrenched on Wall Street and in Washington as well as in Hollywood, it seems possible that engagement with the world as it is might reassert itself as an aesthetic strategy. Perhaps it would be worth considering that what we need from movies, in the face of a dismaying and confusing real world, is realism."

A.O. Scott, Neo-Neo Realism, New York Times, March 17 2009

Most Dardenne and Bahrani films cited here are available at Videomatica

L'Argent (1983, France, Robert Bresson)

"There is much to savor in The Late Film, a BAM series of movies made toward the close—or the climax—of their directors’ careers. Of all the works selected, none could be less autumnal than Robert Bresson’s L'ARGENT (1983), which screens on May 10. Adapted from a tale by Tolstoy, it is as swift and wintry as a sudden frost. As often with Bresson, the actors are mostly nonprofessionals, and they move through the series of terrible events like stoics and sleepwalkers, lacking the will to fight fate. A schoolboy pays for a picture frame with a forged note, which enters the social system as if it were a virus, and leads in the end to a feverish killing spree, in which not even the saintly are spared. Yet Bresson—who was eighty-two years old when the film came out, and clearly in no mood for mellowing—frames the acts of wickedness, both great and small, with a terrifying calm. Prepare to be haunted by his closeups of objects: a wallet, a ladle, a bowl of hot coffee, an axe. They might almost be guilty themselves."
Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, May 11, 2009

Available at Videomatica

Leon Morin, Priest (1961, France, Jean-Pierre Melville)

"Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1961 drama, based on a novel by Béatrix Beck, is a strange hybrid and one of the most peculiarly mutilated films ever. Set in a small French town, it spans the years of the Second World War and the Occupation and carries over into the postwar period. The story is centered on a young widow, Barny (Emmanuelle Riva), a Communist whose late husband was Jewish and who struggles to spare their two young children from being deported to a concentration camp. Melville’s depiction of wartime France is peerless: the brazenness of collaborators, the casual anti-Semitism, the presence of the swastika and of German street signs, the arrests and disappearances are presented with a harrowing simplicity. But the film’s main drama concerns Barny’s relationship with the handsome, brave, vigorous, and intellectual priest of the title (played with virility and verbal aplomb by Jean-Paul Belmondo), who seduces women’s souls—and Barny’s above all. Melville presents their relationship without irony, avoids any trace of satire, and, to make it the heart of his film, cut out (against the producers’ wishes) an hour of footage about the Occupation. Melville films wartime with barely restrained passion, he films religious dialectics with remarkable but dispassionate skill, and he uses the story of Barny and Morin to skew the postwar political context—to reinforce the role of Catholics in the newly founded Fifth Republic and suppress that of Communists. In French, English, and German."

Richard Brody, The New Yorker, April 20, 2009

*

"Here’s the thing about LEON MORIN, PRIEST, Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1961 adaptation of the novel by Béatrix Beck, opening today in revival at Film Forum. Melville praised Beck’s depiction of the Occupation, and his film, too, is a remarkable representation of it—but when German soldiers carry out the deportation of Jews, the events take place at a distance and reflected in the glass pane of a storefront; the soldiers’ faces aren’t seen, except for that of one, silent and immobile, who is standing guard beside the window. But, later in the film, two German soldiers are seen in action—one, aware that he’s about to be sent to the Russian front, tenderly approaches a French child and gives her his bracelet to wear; another, guarding a railroad crossing, warns a French woman that she is forbidden to cross the tracks, but, when she ignores him and continues on her way, he benignly lets her go. Melville’s skew of things doesn’t look like an accident: in the early sixties, the president of France, Charles de Gaulle, was actively working on achieving reconciliation with (West) Germany; by suppressing the faces of German soldiers arresting Jews and instead showing only the most humane of German soldiers speaking and acting in close-up, Melville was contributing to that cause."

"Similarly, in his approach to the story about a Communist woman who falls under the influence of a priest and converts to Catholicism, he doesn’t just make the woman’s Communism vanish, he makes all the Communists in the early part of the story vanish. Melville’s depiction of the Occupation is superbly textured and detailed, but his vision of the way he wanted postwar France to be then took precedence over his power to depict it as it was. (I know that in France in 1961 films with political content were subject to stringent censorship; but there’s no evidence that Melville struggled with it, or rather, against it.)

"P.S.: Here’s Melville speaking about the film in the indispensable book of interviews with him by Rui Nogueira (long out-of-print, in translation in Viking’s great Cinema One series, readily available in the original French): “I didn’t shoot the scene where Christine describes the terrible death of a child who is killed by an Italian soldier. I like Italians, and I didn’t want to show them in an unsympathetic light.”

Richard Brody, The Front Row Blog, The New Yorker, April 17, 2009

VHS may be available at Videomatica - check with staff

NOW PLAYING: Big Screens

A few things that may have some Soul Food content...

FIERCE LIGHT: WHEN SPIRIT MEETS ACTION is at the Fifth Avenue, filmmaker Velcrow Ripper a one-time Vancouverite.

Atom Egoyan's ADORATION continues at the Granville 7.

Soul Food pal Luci has been at the movies lately, and recommends THE SOLOIST (Tinseltown, Esplanade, Fifth Avenue) and IS ANYBODY THERE? (Tinseltown). The latter makes me think of SUNSHINE CLEANING, which I liked (Granville 7). Saw the former Saturday evening: mostly avoided the "two men changing each other's lives forever" sentimentality I dreaded; good looking pic, doorways / archways, and note the cinematic hat tips to Robert Downey's other journo movie, ZODIAC (wonder how many tributes to newspaper people we'll see in the near future); nicely realized scripting about us well-intentioned "homed" people getting involved with street people and figuring we'll be their saviours - our inclination to play god; pity, though, they had to caricature the Christian character, the fault was in the performance/directing not the script, which had room for a more nuanced, complex reading; last word, I'll watch anything with Downey or Catherine Keener.

And if you want to get charged up, U23D continues three-dimensionally at the IMAX Theatre, Canada Place.

Filmwell: Loose Canon

Last week I told you about Filmwell, a new film site involving Jeffrey Overstreet and some other of my favourite film/faith writers. This week I can tell you, I'm one of them! Jeff invited me to become a contributor, and I posted my first article yesterday morning. (Looks like I'm The Wednesday Man.)

"Loose Canon" talks about my recent list-making binges (tabulating the five editions of 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die, and comparing those to several other Greatest Films Of All Time lists), announces a summer project to catch up on the films that made all seven of those lists, and chats up THE APARTMENT - first on that list, an amazing film.

By the way, in 34 Films I DO Want To See Before I Die, I listed all the movies that had shown up on six interesting "Great Films" lists. Since that time I blended in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made (Second Edition), which shrunk the list to 30 titles. The four flicks dissed by the NYT are BLADE RUNNER (1982, Ridley Scott), CITY LIGHTS (1932, Charles Chaplin), METROPOLIS (1927, Fritz Lang) and SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS (1927, Fritz Lang). So I reckon I'll have myself a little Fritz Fest once I've watched my way through the rest of The Sevens (having already seen Chuck and Ridley's pix), then on to the Six Flicks!

Summertime, and the livin' is movie...

Scenes From A Parish (and Filmwell)

Soul Food Movies friend Jeffrey Overstreet called to let me know about Filmwell, a movie site featuring writers Mike Hertenstein (Flickerings/Cornerstone), Mike Leary (film-think), Jason Morehead (opus), Jeffrey Overstreet (Looking Closer) and Alissa Wilkinson (Curator)). My first visit yields this tip from the artist formerly known as (M)Leary: currently in earliest stages of release, playing around Boston, but now we know to watch for it. The trailer shows that somebody behind a camera had a good eye...


(My favourite quote from the trailer: "I had a grandmother that, she came from Canada. And she could hardly speak English. But she made herself understood." I'm inspired: time to get over to the community centre and re-enroll in that American as a Second Language night class...)

Fierce Light opens this week in Vancouver

Off the top of my head, Velcrow Ripper is a Vancouver filmmaker who travels the world making documentaries about spiritual stuff. SCARED SACRED played the VIFF a few years ago, and this one opens in Vancouver this week. I don't know if it comes from the WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW end of the spectrum, or the Sojourners end of the spectrum, so let the popcorn buyer beware...

"Fueled by the belief that another world is possible, acclaimed filmmaker Velcrow Ripper takes us on inspiring journey into what Martin Luther King called Love in Action, and Gandhi called Soul Force; what Ripper is calling Fierce Light. Illustrated by interviews with spiritual luminaries Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Thich Nhat Hanh; and activists including Alice Walker, and Julia Butterfly Hill - FIERCE LIGHT is a spiritual experience in itself, about the impact and the necessity of spiritual action in today's world." IMDb

"Is Anybody There?" opens this week

I've not seen this, but judging from the descriptions, it's maybe a thematic companion piece to SUNSHINE CLEANING?

"Set in 1980s seaside England, this is the story of Edward, an unusual ten year old boy growing up in an old people's home run by his parents. Whilst his mother struggles to keep the family business afloat, and his father copes with the onset of mid-life crisis, Edward is busy tape-recording the elderly residents to try and discover what happens when they die. Increasingly obsessed with ghosts and the afterlife, Edward's is a rather lonely existence until he meets Clarence, the latest recruit to the home, a retired magician with a liberating streak of anarchy...." IMDb

Opens this week in Vancouver

WISE BLOOD (1979, USA, John Huston)

WISE BLOOD (1979, USA, John Huston, Benedict & Michael Fitzgerald from Flannery O'Connor novel)
"That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them Hazel Motes' integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to." Flannery O'Connor

Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum writes that this is conceivably John Huston's best film, certainly his finest adaptation. While not widely seen, it was widely celebrated by critics for its unfailing faithfulness to what might seem an unfilmable novel – the screenwriter (see also Mel Gibson's Passion) and producer are sons of Robert and Sally Fitzgerald: Dad was O'Connor's literary executor, Mom the editor of the collected letters. Virtually all the dialogue is lifted directly from the page, and it plays well, at times authentic or bizarre, evocative and poetic, or downright funny. Motes swaps his faith in Jesus for faith in an absurdly broken-down car, and confidently proclaims "Nobody with a good car needs to be justified" as the radiator water pours straight through the rusted shell and onto the ground.

A strikingly boyish Brad Dourif is perfection in the central role, bringing an unadorned naivete that combines with a rat-like nastiness to create an unsentimental, multi-layered performance utterly suited to one of O'Connor's most uncompromising, confounding creations. (Intriguing to learn that Dourif ends up as Grima Wormtongue in Jackson's Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and – this is trivia, now – the baddie in Myst III, a groundbreaking computer game). Where another actor might have "played crazy," his work is uncluttered and direct, an earnest drivenness that will not be deterred – ideal in a film that is essentially about a man on the run from his divine calling. In Mystery And Manners the novelist writes "while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted," and Hazel Motes is the ultimate embodiment of that. Even a charlatan of a blind street evangelist can smell it on him: "Some preacher's left his mark on you. Did you follow me for me to take it off or to give you another one?"

John Huston himself plays Hazel's hellfire and brimstone grandfather in lurid flashbacks, and there are other strong performances in the key roles as well as in a number of the peripheral parts. I usually find that non-professional actors detract from the believability of the scene by their self-consciousness, the constant awareness that they are acting. Here that's simply not so: the amateurs are almost without exception both authentic and believable, and add an almost documentary quality that echoes some of the photography, such as the unforgettable opening montage of billboards, gravestones and even Dairy Queen signs that proclaim sin and redemption.

These elements all remain strong decades after the film was made. Others have aged poorly. One wishes Huston had retained the 1940s setting: late-Seventies details jar, and the musical soundtrack – unremarked on in its day, as far as I can tell – is a problem. While humour is essential to O'Connor's voice – she remarks that her tongue is always in her cheek – there are times when the wacky soundtrack is more suited to Green Acres or Hee Haw than a film where the comic turns need a certain ironic, sometimes tragic bite. She's playing for keeps, but too often this music is playing for laughs: imagine the sequence where Hazel's car drives down the hill in silence instead of to the accompaniment of "ain't this cute" banjoes for a sense of the impact such scenes could have had.

Flannery O'Connor is a literary and spiritual force the twentieth century had to reckon with, and her enthusiasts – there are many – should make the effort to seek out this rare film. They won't need to be warned that it's odd, grotesque, eccentric, perhaps even unsatisfying. Lauded by critics and avoided by movie-goers on its initial release, that's just how Ms O'Connor would probably have wanted it. As she herself wrote, "Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it."

THE APOSTLE


Released May 2009 on Criterion
Coming soon to Videomatica

May 6-10: TROUBLE THE WATER at Cinematheque

haven't time to dig into it right now, but wanted you to know about TROUBLE THE WATER before it's gone. seems to me there's a god angle on this one...

TROUBLE THE WATER
Pacific Cinematheque
Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 7:30pm
Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 9:15pm
Friday, May 8, 2009 - 7:30pm
Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 7:30pm
Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 9:20pm
Sunday, May 10, 2009 - 9:15pm

Named Best Documentary at Sundance, nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, and picked as one of the ten best films of 2008 by critics at The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly and Politico.com, the extraordinary Trouble the Water offers a unique first-person, from-the-floodwaters account of heroism and hopelessness during the Katrina disaster.

"What divine inspiration moved Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist [as Black Kold Madina] and toweringly self-possessed woman from New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, to grab her Hi8 camcorder and document the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina as it smashed up her neighborhood? And what grace brought Roberts to the attention of Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, filmmakers who, like so many others, went to Louisiana after the levees broke? Whatever the cosmic luck, the result, Trouble the Water, is essential, unique viewing: a stunning experience of the hurricane and its aftermath, rooted in immediate personal response and emotions that encapsulate the full national catastrophe" (Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly).

Time’s Richard Corliss included Roberts on his list of top ten movie performances of 2008, calling her "a real-life heroine...the star, and in a way the director, of this soul-roiling nonfiction film...Just look at the good she did, the person she is, in this movie. Amazing."

"The year’s most riveting documentary film...It is also a stirring rebuttal of the ‘objectivity’ mandate in news reporting" (Rob Nelson, Minneapolis Star Tribune). Colour, 35mm. 93 mins.

"Superb...One of the best American documentaries in recent memory."
New York Times

"Extraordinary...Has a desperate urgency that surpasses any other news and doc footage I have seen."
Chicago Sun Times

"Starkly surreal...A first-person disaster movie...An eyewitness epic of history in miniature."
Village Voice