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The Winners
The Gold Hugo
"Kontroll" (Hungary)
Directed by Nimród Antal
The Silver Hugo (Special Jury Prize)
"Turtles Can Fly" / "Lak poshtha ham parvaz mikonand" (Iraq/Iran)
Directed by Bahman Ghobadi
A Silver Hugo
Day and Night / Dag og nat (Denmark)
Directed by Simon Staho, for "its perfectly balanced ensemble acting by Mikael Persbrandt, Sam Kessel, Maria Bonnevie, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Hans Alfredson, Pernilla August, Fares Fares, Marie Goranzon, Tuva Novotny and Erland Josephson."
"Whisky" (Uruguay/Argentina/Germany)
for "the direction of Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll, its confident pacing and ironic distance."
Source: www.chicagofilmfestival.com
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(Continued from Page Three)
Just based on the opening credits, I already knew that I was going to like the “special presentation” of the late Kinji Fukasaku’s 1973 yakuza saga, Battles Without Honor or Humanity. It was not as stylized or inventive as any of Seijun Suzuki’s yakuza films from that period (1963–67), but it was every bit as enjoyable. In rapid succession, within the first few minutes of the film, Fukasaku introduces us to about fifteen of the film’s major characters: the godfathers, bosses, and under-bosses, from two, rival Hiroshima gangs. And the erratic handheld camerawork doesn’t help make these matters clear. I suspect that the style was, in some way, evoking the chaos of post World War II Japan – Hiroshima, in particular. But once I figured out who was who (there are at least three guys with facial scars, so that method was rendered useless), the film took me on an entertaining ride of deceit, double-crossing, yakuza-style backstabbing, grown men crying, and 70s-for-50s style fashion, big sunglasses, white suits and all. Also worth noting, on many occasions, yakuza hits were carried out in a manner where magazines were emptied into the victim’s limbs and stomachs, but never was there a headshot. Apparently, that would be too honorable, or too humane.
Up to this point, I had been very disappointed with the festival’s crop of films… or at least those out of the program that I had chosen to see. Sure, they were mostly good films, but I was still waiting to be swept out of my seat. And finally, that came in the form of Shane Carruth’s Sundance Grand Jury prizewinner, Primer. I had never seen anything quite like it. Sure, I could liken it to many films that it reminded me of – in terms of look, structure, and story – but yet it remained entirely unique. Sure, the cinematography was lacking. Night scenes – both interiors and exteriors – were under-lit, thus overexposed, and then compensated for in post, all of which resulted in massive amounts of grain. And the blowup from super 16 to 35 only magnified the problem. But, with its budget in mind, I must congratulate Carruth for even attempting to shoot on film, regardless of the result. So, for all its technical shortcomings, the film’s overall affect was trump; the story was so well thought out, researched, and presented, that it seemed impervious to any formal analysis. The science in its science fiction was extremely convincing, and the science fiction, itself, made for an excellent device to carry the weight of the film’s philosophical and ethical subtexts; dealing with friendship, power, and trust. The film is as intellectually exhilarating as anything I’ve seen. It’s Formula 1 racing for the mind… but only for minds with the requisite sixth gear.
My first welcome surprise was Katsuhito Ishii’s Taste of Tea. I’m not sure what I was expecting from the Kill Bill animator, but certainly nothing as offbeat and wonderfully joyous as Taste of Tea. I don’t know if I cared for the CGI, bar the train coming out of Hajime’s head – Magritte? …no, the film just doesn’t take itself seriously enough for such allusions – but it seemed that every absurd element in the film worked as a building block for the next, creating a world of hyperboles that resulted in a jumble of laughs. And how to explain that a little girl named Sachiko is bothered by her giant-sized double, which appears at inopportune times and drives her crazy by staring at her. Or that when Sachiko is sitting on the floor in her room, with her nightgown stretched out from her neckline to her toes, her grandfather, perhaps the greatest oddball of them all, walks into her room and asks her, yelling: “Why are you a triangle?” To which she responds, yelling: “Because I have three sides.” Brilliant!
By the time I got around to seeing Ousmane Sembene’s Moolaadé, word had it that it was a favorite for the Hugo. Word was wrong, but the hype was mostly right. The film, yet another prize winner (Un Certain Regard) from Cannes, is an affecting story about one village’s stand against an age-old ritual of female circumcision, which mutilates those who are lucky enough to survive it. Sembene said that the film represents “everyday heroism”. Yes, it certainly does that. However, the unfortunate thing about its depiction is that the film is excessively political and sermonizing in its delivery. Here are the bad people, advocating the religious and social importance of the ritual, and here are the good people, risking their family’s good standing and honor in order to protect the lives of several girls terrified by the ritual, and never shall the two sides meet. In terms of setting up the situation, the film has the complex tone and delivery of an after-school special. It’s like, female circumcision? …I didn’t know that was bad. I thought female circumcision and scalping were good. My bad. I mean, of course female circumcision is barbaric. We don’t need all that much convincing. With that said, Moolaadé is 100% agenda driven. I hope the film serves its purpose in raising public awareness and puts an end to all such ceremonial cruelty. If they put it on a ballot, I’ll check that box when I see it.
Personally, I had been anticipating Benedek Fliegauf’s Dealer from the first time I read its synopsis. For one thing, it’s a slow-paced, meditative film from Hungary that’s not by Bela Tarr or Miklós Jancsó. That in and of itself makes it a must see. Is the young generation of Hungarian filmmakers following in the stylistic footsteps forged by these masters? Fliegauf is, there’s no doubting that. His filmic method, with its roaming, parabolic camera movements, frontal obstructions, and radical use of coverage, as well as his actors’ deliveries, talking as if to themselves, with these hypnotized monologues, like something out of Heart of Glass, is vintage Tarr.
The only two criticisms I have of the film are of the bike riding sequences – I just didn’t care for them – and the overuse of this framing technique, where Fliegauf would capture an actor’s face, keep it at the edge of the frame, in semi-profile, and then track and pan, maintaining that framing, in relation to the face, but constantly changing the backdrop. Once or twice would have been enough to convey his message, and three was certainly plenty, but six times!? On the contrary, the soundscape was this nonstop droning, which played throughout the entire film, oddly enough, to great affect. The story is episodic, as it follows a drug dealer, traveling by white bike (white bike!), from addict to addict, so as to deliver their score. A simple premise really, but Dealer has unexpected depth and power, and it’s seeped in symbolism, all of which leads to the best ending I’ve seen this year; something eerily suggestive of Kubrick’s 2001. Dealer is a real discovery.
I ended the festival on a particularly good note, with Faith Akin’s Berlinale winner, Head-On. It’s somewhat geared towards the masses, but that’s not a detriment. The film is formulaic without being predicable, and predictable without being boring. It chronicles the arbitrary pairing of two wayward, self-destructive masochists, Cahit and Sibel (products of failed suicide attempts), who meet in a psych ward. What follows is a kind of rock opera set in Hamburg, as these two Germans with Turkish roots try to find salvation in each other, are offered a glimpse of what might be, only to throw it all away. The story is interspersed with these strange, interludes – shown one verse at a time – of a Turkish band playing a love song on the banks of the Bosphorus, with Istanbul as the backdrop. This gives the film a segmented feel like that of Breaking the Waves, and there are probably many similarities beyond that. Head-On is a very gritty, affecting film, full of energy and subtle truths. An amusing example of which had Cahit and Sibel jumping around their apartment, singing “punk is not dead”… although most of the other truths were far more subtle.
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