Going to a Film Festival is a bit of a luxury. And not a luxury I think I will always be able to afford. I don’t know…I’ve always found them invigorating, inspiring for whatever projects or ideas I have in mind. Sometimes though… at Four Minutes the audience was made up of mostly seniors and I sat there in the darkness with them wondering if it wasn’t inspiration then what was it? The lights go down…
I’m taking a cue from db here. The films I saw at this year’s Film Festival:
Still Life
Still Life could be memorable just for where I was seated…front row - extreme right. That’s a unique cinema experience right there. Still Life follows the stories of several lives in the modern context of China’s Three Gorges dam. By turns surreal and then poignant, I enjoyed the slow pace of the film which unfurled at the same pace of the dialogue.
China is so huge that a film like this seems to say “You have no idea…” I liked the scene when a reunited husband and wife share a tender moment while in the distance an apartment building is demolished to a dull thunder.
Radiant City
Set to the unique guitar soundtrack by Joey Santiago of The Pixies, the reality of planned suburbia on the fringes of the USA’s cities is terrifying. I could feel the cellphone waves in my teeth. Do they really call shopping malls “Power Centers” over there?
This was one of those films where you come away indignant at the West’s greed and opulence but at the same time with some pity those trapped in soccer-work-ballet-shopping cycles. Your wife wants a new home. In the suburbs. With a new kitchen. And she really wants it. And why don’t you want it? And don’t you love her? And the children? Don’t you want the best for the children? How can you be so selfish!
A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints
A Guide… radiated intensity, I said to my mate David when we were leaving the cinema that every scene seemed poised to go really bad at some point and you just kind of held on wondering at the karma of it all. The hot sticky tension of New York City in the 1980’s. It was not hard for me to identify with this film, to just leave it all and go live somewhere thousands of kilometers away. What do you take with you? What do you never leave behind? Where do you go? Does it matter as long as it is anywhere but here?
My Best Friend
So don’t go to this film expecting a comedy. This film is a bitter pill wrapped in a glossy French wrapper. It pokes and pries at friendship in modern Western society, what real friendship means and our expectations of our friends. How many people would come to your funeral? I sat there squirming, I thought of Radiant City and these self-contained boxes for people to separate themselves from each other, hide from real friendships that hold each other accountable and lift us all to greater things.
Four Minutes
I also saw Four Minutes, a German film about a violent troubled prisoner in a woman’s prison who was once a child prodigy on the piano. A old woman who was alive during the Nazi regime is trying as her piano teacher to revive her talent and ambition. Both characters wrestle with their pasts, weaknesses, hopes and desires in what turns out to be a very human story of the capacity to act out good & evil. Some of the scenes are very dramatic but the film swings away right until its strong conclusion. The main character’s self-expression through playing music was an interesting meditation on the power of music to change us and transport us.
August 5th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
…Inland Empire…??
August 5th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Der Neiner. Funds and geo-location forbade my attendance.
Maybe db went?
August 10th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Nice one Dave…. that’s what you call Dedication with a capital double D.