The Song of Sparrows

Imagine an Islamic Serious Man with some Bicycle Thief thrown in, and you’ll have an impression of this Iranian film by Majid Majidi. A middle-aged man works on an ostrich farm deep in the steppe-like countryside and lives in a rural village with his wife and three children. A mishap gets him fired from the ostrich farm, his lovely teenage daughter breaks her hearing aid right on the verge of school examinations, and other misfortunes soon pile up, some of which look like lucky breaks at first. Going into Tehran to seek a new hearing aid, he is staggered by the cost, but surprised when someone hops on his motorbike and gives him directions, with a cash payment at the destination. Soon he is carrying passengers and merchandise all over the city, and scavenging discarded stuff for a huge pile growing next to his house. There are some abrupt and inexplicable shifts in the story, but the arc is clear enough. There was a moment that worked exactly like the one when the Serious Man physics professor erased the “F” and wrote in “C,” as the trying of a man’s soul, with inevitable and immediate consequences. In this film the piety may finally outweigh the satire, and the pretty may outshine the dark, but I am stuck on the unexpected similarity between Majidi and the Coen brothers. (2008, dvd) *7* (MRQE-80.)

Having reminded myself just how good a director Majid Majidi is (I also recommend his Oscar-nominated Children of Heaven (1997), and Baran (2001) too), I filled in his filmography by watching The Willow Tree of 2005, which revisits the theme of blindness that he explored in the sublime Colors of Paradise (1999). In this film a university professor is miraculously restored to sight, but in the process loses the light of the divine. As usual in Iranian film, a strong simple idea is explored with visual and moral depth, like a parable or folktale. This one is perhaps too pious, and the protagonist not sympathetic enough, but after seeing Majidi's other films, you might want to watch The Willow Tree as well.

The Baader Meinhof Complex

An interesting mix of documentary veracity with thriller glossiness, Uli Edel’s film is less pointed to an American audience than a German one, for whom the meticulous recreations of recent historical events will be freighted with more personal meaning, especially since many of the scenes were shot precisely where they occurred. For example, a riot that occurred during the Shah’s visit in 1967 ends with the shooting of a student, the photographic image of which is burned into the German psyche as much as that picture of the dead girl at Kent State to Americans of that era. Also, the radicalizing speech of “Red Rudy” at Berlin University, and the showcase trial of Baader, Meinhof, et al. Not to mention all the gang’s bombings, assassinations, and other terrorist acts. Nonetheless, this film is never less than involving, even if it expects you to bring your own knowledge and point of view to the events depicted. Because, make no mistake, these young guys and gals were terrorists -- way more so than the Weather Underground, for example -- despite the Bonnie and Clyde vibe in the culture of the moment. Despite how their story played -- and plays -- on radical sympathies, we now have a better idea of what happens once terror is validated as a political strategy. With Moritz Bleibtrau and Martina Gedeck in the title roles, and based on the bestselling book of the same name, the film may be accused of glamorizing political violence, but seemed to me dispassionate enough to allow one to take the facts and make up one’s own mind, seeking not so much cinematic identification with the protagonists, as understanding of them within the context of the times. (2009, dvd.) aa*7* (MC-76.)

The Damn United

With this film writer Peter Morgan and star Michael Sheen complete a trilogy of sorts. As in The Queen and Frost/Nixon, they take figures from recent British history to tell a story that travels well, and further than you would expect. You needn’t have the slightest interest in soccer to get into this fact-based sports story, which is really a fascinating character study. Sheen plays Brian Clough, a flamboyant and loquacious ex-player rising through the coaching ranks in the early 1970s. He flames out when given the chance to coach the best team in English football, before righting himself, and as the end-titles indicate, going on to a famously successful career. Director Toby Hooper surrounds Sheen with some of the best character actors in Britain -- Timothy Spall as Clough’s coaching better half, Colm Meaney as his great nemesis, and Jim Broadbent as an antagonistic owner – and delivers a little bit of effective on-field action but a whole lot of period flavor. The film is pared down from a novel based on the historical events and clocks in at a modest 1:40, but the DVD offers a number of deleted scenes that definitely add to the story, along with a variety of extras that help define Clough’s standing in the English game. Nonetheless, it’s as a universal story of vanity, obsession, and comeuppance that this film really shoots and scores. (2009, dvd.) *7* (MC-81.)

The Beaches of Agnes

I’m not sure whether you have to love Agnes Varda going in, but there’s a pretty good chance you’ll love her by the end of this warm and witty self-portrait. Not as good as her documentary The Gleaners and I, nor several of her Nouvelle Vague features, it’s still quite charming, as she charts her own story through the beaches of her life – in her native Belgium, in France, in California – as well as the filmmakers, actors, and artists she has known. Fanciful and free, Agnes follows wherever her inspiration leads, from collected memorabilia to conceptual installations, from recreations of her childhood to interviews with old friends and family, from clips from her old films (and those of her beloved husband, Jacques Demy) to whimsies staged with surrealist verve. A quintessential example of the personal essay on film, of the self-portrait in cinema, this film of an “80-year-old woman, plump and happy” mitigates self-absorption with humility and humor, and ought to appeal even to those who’ve never heard of Agnes Varda before. (2009, dvd.) *7+* (MC-80.)

Sin Nombre

This is the first feature (indeed, film school thesis) of American writer-director Cary Fukanaga, having received a big boost in both production and reception from Sundance. I went into it cold, assuming it was actually a Mexican film, which it plausibly seems to be, following in a semi-documentary, semi-thriller style as a group of illegal immigrants travels on top of boxcars from Honduras to the American border, as “nameless” as the title implies. They cross paths with a group of scary gang members, after we’ve seen a few jolting scenes of their violent rituals. An innocent Honduran girl falls for a disillusioned gang member who rescues her from the others, adding the element of romantic implausibility to the otherwise truthful-seeming exploration of poverty and desperation. Nonetheless, this gritty but lovely film, with an effective nonprofessional cast, is a testament to the commitment and skill of a young American filmmaker. (2009, dvd.) *7-* (MC-77.)

Joy of sets

Whether by DVD disk or DVR recording, well-produced television series provide some of the most reliable viewing pleasure you can find. Here’s what I’ve been watching and enjoying lately.

I have read avidly lots of Austen and Bronté, Dickens and Trollope, but it took the BBC to introduce me to the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell. Having just caught up with their earlier production of Cranford, I was primed for the recently-broadcast Return to Cranford. What a delight to be back in the company of Miss Mattie (Judi Dench) and the rest. Though perhaps a little too plotted, Return to Cranford ties up all the threads neatly, and as much as I enjoyed it, I hope they don’t go back to the well once too often.

But that certainly set me off in search of other BBC adaptations of Gaskell novels. I particularly liked
Wives and Daughters (1999), with most of the same crew and many of the same actors, and the same setting in pastoral England. North and South (2004), however, ventures into Dickensian settings in the manufacturing North to offset the idylls of the South. The view of Manchester cotton mills feels authentic, but the fully-anticipated attraction of opposites, between the mill owner and the daughter of a doubting cleric, is undercut by the blankness of the female lead, so different from the immediate appeal of the heroine of Wives and Daughters, who endures disappointment with saintly good humor until she finally gets her just reward. These two miniseries will put me in search of more Masterpiece Theater classics I might have overlooked.

In the current season of Masterpiece Classic, I didn’t really feel the need to watch Romola Garai as Emma, but did so because my viewing companion is on a Jane Austen kick. I liked it well-enough, but still prefer the Kate Beckinsale version from 1996, which I then showed to my partner and watched enough to confirm my own preference. Now we’ll probably re-watch the Gwyneth Paltrow, also from 1996, and Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, because really, one can never get enough of Emma Woodhouse.

Of course one can never get enough of Abraham Lincoln either, so when I heard of it, I had to watch the miniseries of Gore Vidal’s Lincoln (1988) as well. I am a dedicated follower of Gore Vidal’s historical novels, but the highlights of this minimally-produced tv series were the performances of Sam Waterston as the President and Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Todd Lincoln. Never less than interesting in its depiction of Old Abe’s political maneuvering, this is more like filmed theater than grand historical recreation.

On the subject of tv series, I have lately been catching up on dvd with the well-regarded sitcom, Arrested Development (2003-05), which is indeed witty and hilarious, if in the end just a sitcom. I’ve made my way through the first two seasons, and look forward to the third. If you’re looking for a laugh, Arrested Development is definitely something to look at.

Of series currently showing on tv, I have one strong recommendation, one warning, and one heads-up. Friday Night Lights, whose fourth season (MC-81) I was able to catch on DirecTV preview and soon to run on NBC, definitely qualifies as must-see tv, whether you think you’re interested in Texas high school football or not. This portrait of a small-town community just keeps getting better, after a bit of a wobble in the second season when they made a pitch to become more popular and not just a favorite of the critics and cognoscenti. In the fourth season the setting changes to another school and a new set of characters, but doesn’t miss a beat. If you haven’t been watching, you could tune in now, but I would strongly advise going back and watching the first three seasons on dvd. With one season to go, FNL bids fair to enter my all-time pantheon of tv series right between best-ever, The Wire, and long-time favorite, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

On the other hand, in the current season on HBO, Big Love has definitively “jumped the shark,” so intent on injecting ridiculous new twists into the story that even one’s accrued affection for the characters of the three wives is overwhelmed by the implausibility of the husband’s implacable will to power. I watched it, but only with frequent rolling of the eyes and rebellion of the mind. I do not look forward to any more. HBO certainly seems to have lost its mojo with miniseries.

They seem to have ceded it to AMC. We will have to wait till summer for a new season of Mad Men, likely to shoehorn itself into my Top 5 as well, but this week Breaking Bad will resume with its third season. If you can handle the occasional gruesomeness and the pitch-black humor, then you would be well-advised to jump on this critical bandwagon, though I can’t see dropping into the story at midpoint. The first two seasons are already on dvd, and that’s the place to start, as long as you can take the drug-related violence and mendacity that inserts itself into the life of an ordinary high school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque.

Film Club update

Next up is Moolaadé, a 2004 film from Ousmane Sembene (MC-91), which looks at the plight of women in a Senegalese village, to be shown at 4:00 pm on Friday, March 12th.

Two weeks from then, on March 26th, the next screening will be The Edge of Heaven (2007), the latest from the estimable German/Turkish director Fatih Akin. (MC-85.)

On Sunday, March 28th, I will finally get around to showing the Roberto Rossellini double feature I’ve been promising since our Neorealism series last fall: Open City (1945) at 1:00 pm and Paisan (1946) at 3:00 pm.

The only nomination for future screening offered by the club at the last session was for a film from Vietnam, so for screening on April 9th we will vote amongst the following:

*Vietnam: The Scent of Green Papaya (1993). There doesn’t seem to be a film industry in Vietnam, at least for export, so this sensuous memory piece was filmed in Paris, as Tran Anh Hung looks back at Vietnam before Dien Bien Phu. A patient and poetic tale of women in servitude.

*Belgium: Le Fils (The Son) (2002). The acclaimed Dardennes brothers continue their exploration of the underside of EU affluence, with a direct but subtly controlled approach that tests the attention of the audience, probes its mind and soul. (MC-86.)

*Argentinia: The Headless Woman (2008). Lucrecia Martel is another favorite on the international festival circuit, enigmatic yet illuminating in this story of a woman who has a car accident and loses her memory, which we piece back together along with her. (MC-80.)

*France: Beau Travail (1998). Claire Denis loosely adapts Billy Budd in the setting of a French Foreign Legion post in Africa, in a moody symphony of images that cries out to be seen on a big screen. As the Time Out Film Guide advises: “Prepare to be blown away.” (MC-91.)

In compiling these nominees, I came across one film I really wanted to see again -- on the big screen from a restored dvd -- namely Yi-Yi (A One and a Two…), a 2000 film from Edward Yang of Taiwan (MC-92. Also ranked #3 on Film Comment’s critics survey of the best of the decade). At nearly three hours, it won’t fit in the Fridays at 4 slot, so I will be looking for a Sunday afternoon in April to show it, after we see how the Rossellini double feature goes.

Following up on our last session, I include Netflix links to the two Chinese directors I discussed. To epitomize the career of Zhang Yimou, I particularly recommend To Live (1994), which follows Chinese history since Mao’s revolution through one family’s fate in the succeeding decades. The rest of his films may be divided into trilogies: first the explorations of sensual color and female passion, with the gaze riveted on the magnetic beauty of Gong Li (Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern); then the neorealist phase of peasant drama (Story of Qiu Ju, Not One Less, The Road Home); and latterly the riot of color and action in a series of martial arts films (Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower, with the last a fever dream made notable by the reunion with Gong Li.)

As indicated, Jia Zhang-Ke is an acquired taste, seeming to get better with each film one sees, so you might want to follow The World with its successors, Still Life (2006) and 24 City (2008).

Hunger & Revanche

Tough stuff, indeed. Hunger is an unflinching look at the extremities of life in the Maze prison during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the first feature of Steve McQueen. No, not the American icon of cool, but a burly black Brit who is a Turner Prize-winning artist. Without excessive aestheticizing and without special pleading, this tour de force presents not just the brute facts but the personal feelings of conflict between terror and repression, between power and the powerless, between captivity and freedom, between prisoners within and without the walls of H-Block. In short, the conflict between humanity and inhumanity. While remaining particular and specific about the case of the IRA and the mortal hunger strike of Bobby Sands and others in 1981, McQueen’s steady gaze illuminates hidden corners of human motivation and behavior. Michael Fassbender is outstanding as Sands, but the cast maintains a uniform verisimilitude. In fact, this film presents more truth than many will be able to stand. Definitely not for the squeamish, it’s sensational in a deeper sense, making one feel the pain of captive existence on one’s own skin. The storytelling is elliptical and evocative, but centers around one scene where the camera remains fixed for much longer than ten minutes on a silhouetted two-shot of Sands facing off across a table with a sympathetic but adversarial priest, endeavoring to justify his extreme strategy. McQueen’s own strategy is not to change minds, but to open them. (2008, dvd.) *7+* (MC-82.)

The Criterion Collection is branching out from their impeccable dvd reissues of classic films to more current releases. Besides Hunger, they’ve just put out Revanche, an Austrian film that was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars . Gotz Spielmann combines elements of thriller, psychodrama, and parable in this film, whose title may translate either as “revenge” or “rematch.” Two different couples are introduced in alternation and you surmise they will intersect at some point, but you won’t be able to predict how, or what will happen next. But stick with it and the film unfolds to unexpected depth. One couple lives on the seedy margins of Vienna; she’s a Ukrainian prostitute and he’s an ex-con gofer in the brothel where she works. The other lives in a rural village; he’s a policeman and she’s a hausfrau who longs to be a mother. Their paths cross; many complications ensue. You have to watch carefully and patiently to find out what will happen, which is as shocking and quietly devastating as the splash into a country pond that begins the film, sending concentric ripples across the quiet surface. Neither of these films is fare for everyone (plenty of nudity plus revulsion in each), but I thank Criterion for both. (2009, dvd.) *7+* (MC-84.)

Tripleheader

Every once in a while, I watch three films in one night and return three disks to Netflix the next morning. So now I have three reviews to write, but at least I don’t feel the need to make a special case for any of them. The first was certainly my favorite -- The Secret Life of Words (2005) has received little attention, but I found it an effective antidote to Breaking the Waves, as a story set on a North Sea oil rig, in which a damaged woman ministers to a wounded man. Instead of woman-tormentor Lars von Trier, this film is directed by a female, Isabel Coixet, in a production as polyglot (one of the producers is Almodovar) as the skeleton crew left on the decommissioned oil rig. Sarah Polley, whom I admire both as actress and director (Away From Her), is a survivor of the Balkan wars who has retreated into herself in silence and exile, but in a chance encounter gets to resume her profession as nurse, in caring for Tim Robbins, who has been burned and blinded in a fire on the rig. You know where this is going, but a sense of suspense and involvement is nicely maintained, with a real kicker of significance. (MC-68.)

Medicine for Melancholy (2009) is mainly about a look and a mood. Barry Jenkins bleaches his digital images of all but the occasional hint of color, as a black man and woman spend a day following a drunken one-night stand trying to get to know each other, while visiting various attractions of San Francisco, not incidentally the least-black major city in America. The man is played by Wyatt Cenac, of Daily Show fame. This is the sort of film that may stand out at an indie festival, but hardly stands on its own. A worthy apprentice effort rather than satisfying in its own right, it’s local in ways both good and bad. (MC-63.)

All you need to know about Julia (2009) is two words: Tilda Swinton. She gives an all-out performance as an alcoholic hellion who gets involved, way out of her depth, in a kidnapping. Julia/Tilda demands attention, and attracts it magnetically to her flame-haired intensity. Erick Zonca made a memorable debut with Dreamlife of Angels a dozen years ago, but hasn’t been heard from again till now. The film is too long and too meandering (between LA and Mexico), but effectively creepy and scary along the way, with the caper taking crazy turns that are probably truer to the insanity of such a crime than clockwork suspense. But the director certainly forces us to share his own fascination with his leading lady, even if she is nothing like a lady. (MC-62.)