NEW YORK FILM
FESTIVAL
2011 – 49th
Festival
The 2011 NYFF ended on 16
October. This first Festival fully under
the leadership of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s
new Executive Director Rose Kuo and
her excellent new team was an enormous success—and the first NYFF to use our
new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (the “Ellie,” or, as the industry seems to be
calling it, the “Bu”).. It was one of those NYFFs where there were
not a lot of films I knew about in advance or was particularly excited about in
expectation; the
single film I was most excited about seeing was not even in the NYFF proper (the “main slate” of approximately 30 films that
are selected each year that constitute the heart of each year’s festival)—it
was the tenth anniversary re-screening of Wes
Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums! (The fact that next year will be the 50th
edition of the NYFF has meant that the Film Society is beginning what will be a
year-long revisiting of some of the great films that have been part of the
festival’s history. In addition to
screening The Royal Tenenbaums, there also was
a screening of Luis Buñuel’s 1962 The Exterminating Angel, which
had been opening night film of the very first NYFF. And similar events will be occurring
throughout the year, leading up to next year’s 50th NYFF.) We even had had some trepidation about the
new Almodóvar film, The
Skin I Live In, because of some of the way it had been described—which
turned out to be completely unwarranted, as it was fabulous, and our favorite
film in the festival. The truly marvelous
thing about NYFFs like this one is that they so often turn out to be
fantastically good—and this year was one of the best and most enjoyable ever.
There
were many completely wonderful films that we saw in addition to The
Skin I Live In: Le Havre by Aki Kaurasmäki, A
Separation by Asgar
Farhadi, and Pina by Wim Wenders being the main examples. And, as always, there was the array of
incredibly beautiful, moving films one would never have the opportunity to see
anywhere else which we have come to expect from the NYFF—the most wonderful of
these being The Loneliest Planet by Julia Loktev and This Is Not a Movie by Jafar Panahi. There was one strange—and large—group of
films in this NYFF characterized by their having been done by great directors
and executed by wonderful actors, but that suffered to varying degrees from
having bad screenplays. These ranged
from David Cronenberg’s actually quite terrific A
Dangerous Method, which was thoroughly successful despite the fact that its greatness was diminished by the
underlying flaws in its screenplay, to Alexander
Payne’s The Descendants and Roman
Polanski’s Carnage, films that were seriously undermined by the dreadful
screenplays they were built upon, despite the artistry of their directors and
the skill of their actors. There were
some terrific Special
Events (in addition to the special anniversary screenings described above),
including a screening of Grant Gee’s
surprisingly satisfying Patience (After Sebald), and a most
informative and extremely interesting 20 Years of Art Cinema: A Tribute to Sony Pictures Classics (which itself included a special anniversary
screening of James Ivory’s 1992 Howard’s
End). The most completely
wonderful part of the NYFF, however, was its Masterworks
series, which, in addition to presenting a newly discovered print of Sara Driver’s extraordinary little 1981
film You
Are Not I,
included what was for many of us the biggest treat of the entire
NYFF—a screening in Alice Tully Hall of Charlie
Chaplin’s 1925 silent masterpiece, The Gold Rush, with a live orchestra
doing the music. There were also some
wonderful Directors
Dialogues (most notable among which being the ones with Alexander Payne and Wim Wenders).
We saw 14 of the films in Main Slate of this year’s NYFF (somewhat fewer than usual because we had to be out of town for the middle weekend of this 17 day event), and I saw four other films screened that were in other parts of the festival (Nancy in addition saw and loved Simon Curtis’s My Week with Marilyn, starring Michelle Williams) and three of the non-screening presentations (Nancy was able in addition to get to see the Wim Wenders Directors Dialogue, which I most regrettably had to miss). We consciously chose to stay away from the Dardenne brothers’ new film, The Kid with a Bike, as we are not fond of their work (although I hear, for those of you who are, that it is quite good), and even more so avoided Lars von Trier’s new film, Melancholia (which, while I have forever sworn off this director’s work, I am told by reliable sources was quite different from his other work, and quite good).
For
those who are interested, the entire 2011 NYFF program and the Film Society
descriptions of each event can be found at http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2011/schedule
. My reviews of past years of the NYFF can be
found at www.RLRubens.com/nyff.html.
For
those of you who over the years have not noticed my subtlety in this—and who
can be blamed for not looking for me
to be subtle about my judgments about anything—I thought I might mention again
that I have always placed my reviews of these films in approximately descending
order of how much I liked them. (Had I
chosen to include them along with those in the Main Slate, The Gold Rush and The Royal Tenenbaums
would have been at the highest end of this list, and You Are Not I and Patience (After Sebald) would have
been in the top half.)
The
list is composed of active links, and clicking on a title will take one to the
review of that film. All films are dated
2011 unless otherwise noted.
THE
MAIN SLATE of FILMS IN THE FESTIVAL
The
Skin I Live In. (La piel que habito)
A
Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin)
This
Is Not a Film (In fIlm nist)
Goodbye First Love (Un amour de jeunesse)
George
Harrison: Living in the Material World
SPECIAL EVENTS (in
no particular order)
20 Years of Art Cinema: A Tribute to Sony Pictures Classics
The Exterminating
Angel (El ángel exterminador)
MASTERWORKS (in no particular
order)
The Main Slate:
The Skin I Live In. (La piel que habito). (Spain, Spanish
with English subtitles,117min. Sony Pictures
Classics) Based on Tarantula (a novel by Thierry
Jonquet), The Skin I Live In is yet another fabulous film written
and directed by Pedro Almodóvar.
The NYFF publicity for this film said, “At ‘The Cinema Inside Me’
program at the 2009 NYFF, Almodóvar surprised many when he spoke of his great love
for American horror and science fiction films—a clue, it turns out, to what he
was then just planning.”; and this new film does partake in some elements of
those genres. But please do not be misled
(as I had been): it is actually not meaningfully a part of either of
these genres. The Skin I Live In is a true Almodóvar
film, with all the emotional nuance, psychological complexity, and
cinematographic subtlety we are accustomed to expect from this master
filmmaker. It is a film of great beauty;
but it is also a film that is built around a gripping, engaging, and
wonderfully surprising plot. Dr. Robert Ledgard
(powerfully and effectively played by Almodóvar regular, Antonio Banderas) is a famous plastic surgeon, whose wife was
burned to death in a car accident, and whom we see at the beginning of the film
at a scientific meeting, arguing for the development of a transgenic, tougher
human skin. On one level, this is a plot
line crucial to the compelling story we are about to see; on another, it is the
foundation of metaphoric themes that are more subtly central tensions within
the film: the vulnerable and damaged,
natural as opposed to the powerful, impervious unnatural; perception as opposed
to reality, the surface as opposed to the underlying essence. Secretly, Dr. Ledgard
has illegally been putting his theory into practice, doing some kind of
experimentation on a mysterious beautiful young woman, Vera (played in an
extraordinary fashion by the gorgeous Elena
Anaya, who made one brief appearance in Almodóvar’s
earlier film, Talk to Her),
imprisoned in his mansion. I shall not
ruin the pleasure of experiencing for yourself the
unfolding of this amazingly well-constructed film by describing the movement of
the story through time, plotlines, and other characters. Suffice it to say that this is a true
masterpiece—as entertaining as it is beautiful and completely gripping
throughout. (There is one brief moment
that was too violent for me in a way—if I dare to make such a criticism of a
director I consider to be an absolute master—I felt to be unnecessary; but I am
hyper-sensitive to violence, and I may therefore be wrong about this; and it is
a minor problem, at most.) See it as
soon as it comes out!
Le Havre. (Finland/France/Germany, French with English subtitles,
93min. Janus Films) I knew to be
looking forward to this film written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki, whose The Man Without a Past, was a film I had loved
in the 2002 NYFF; and this new work in no way disappointed! In my 2002 review, I mentioned that Kaurismäki had reminded me of Jim Jarmusch, and with this film I
believe I understand more why that is so:
in addition to continuing the tradition of what I described in that
earlier film as being “a
somewhat bizarre, dark, strangely funny, off-beat film that succeeds in being
hilarious and heart warming,” Le Havre made me realize that there was an
underlying lyrical, musical sense to Kaurismäki’s work that is similar to the
musicality that is so rewardingly at the foundation of Jarmusch’s
films. Le Havre is the story of an aging shoe
shiner, wonderfully named Marcel Marx (and marvelously portrayed by André Wilms),
who has retreated to the port of Le Havre, away from his former artistic
career, and is now dividing most of his time while not shining shoes between
his neighborhood bar and caring for his sickly wife (hauntingly played by Kati Outinen). An African boy, Idrissa
(very successfully and enigmatically portrayed by Blondin Miguel), illegally making his way to London to find his mother,
enters Marcel’s life in a transformative way for all concerned. Le Havre is a fabulously deadpan treat, which quite
whimsically tells a story that is at the same time deeply moving. Along the way, many other wonderful
characters move in and out of the story: a fellow shoe shine man, Chang (which,
it turns out, is a false identity which he is living to himself hide from the
immigration police—his real name being Quoc Dung
Nguyen, who, in a wonderfully playful Kaurismäki twist, is played by the actor Quoc Dung Nguyen); some neighborhood
women (played by Elina Salo and Evelyne Didi) and
neighborhood men (one played by François
Monnié and the other by none other than Jean-Pierre Léaud—so
appropriate that he [who played the boy in Truffaut’s 400 Blows] be in a movie about a young boy on the run!); a police
inspector, Monet (dressed always completely in black, and perfectly
played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin); a down-and-out local rock music legend
named “Little Bob” (played by Roberto Piazzo—who actually is a well-known local rock musician
who performs under the name Little Bob),
and even a wonderful dog named Laika. The film is warm, gentle, funny, moving, entrancing,
and just plain entertaining. It also
subtly has a sense of underlying rebelliousness against irrational
authority: Kaurismäki
has said he was inspired by his wish to have lived during the French Resistance
(and there are delightful allusions in this film to films about that
period—including a musical nod to Casablanca);
and there is an important theme in this film about the meaningfulness of
personal action, even in a pretty absurdly meaningless world. This film is simply a gem!
A Separation (Jodaeiye
Nader az Simin). (Iran, Persian with
English subtitles, 123 min. Sony Pictures Classics) Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, this is a
sophisticated, intense film which
won the Golden Bear
at this year's Berlin Film Festival, as well as that Festival’s acting
prizes for all four lead performers. We
have deeply enjoyed the works of other Iranian directors (viz., Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar
Panahi) at the NYFF over the years; and, while Farhadi was new to us, we shall certainly keep an eye out for his
work in the future, as this was a most
impressive film! Beginning during the
credits with a couple, Simin (Leila Hatami) and Naader
(Peyman Moadi),
obtaining visas for themselves and their 11 year old daughter Termeh (played by the director’s daughter, Sarina Farhadi) to leave Iran for the United
States, the starting point for the story quickly develops from the husband’s
refusal to go because he is caring for his father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi)
in the latter stages of his decline into Alzheimers,
through the wife’s attempt to divorce him and take her daughter to the US by
herself, to the court’s refusing both requests, but permitting her to leave
alone should she want. And this is just
where the story begins. What ensues is a complex human drama, in
which each of the parties—soon joined by a deeply religious servant, Razieh (Sareh Bayat), hired to take care of the household and Nader’s
father in Simin’s absence, her out-of-work
husband (Shahab Hosseini), and their very young
daughter—plays out his individual longings and desires (all be they in highly
conflicted form), confronts (at varying levels of awareness) the dilemmas
produced by the pursuits of his desires, and needs to confront some truths
about himself in the process. There is
an emotional intensity and a plot tension that is riveting throughout this
fast-moving film. Nevertheless, what
makes it extraordinary is that Farhadi never
is reductionist about the human dilemmas and moral complexities that the film
is depicting. There are incredible
conflicts that grow within each of the characters—and rather terrifyingly so in
the children; and Farhadi powerfully respects what Carl Jung referred to as
“the terrible ambiguity of immediate experience.” (Psychology
and Religion.
1938) A Separation is a deeply engrossing, emotionally
wrenching, and intellectually stimulating film.
Moreover, it has a perfect
ending—which is a particular achievement, since so many lesser filmmakers would
have chosen to end this story quite differently—and quite badly. One should always appreciate a good ending,
they are a rarity. A Separation has distribution, and it will be
released theatrically—it is already a commercial success in Europe. See it as soon as you can!
Pina. (Germany/France, German,
English and French with English subtitles, 106min. Sundance Selects) This is another one I was especially looking
forward to: we like Wim Wenders’
films (his documentaries, like the wonderful 1999 Buena Vista Social Club,
are most relevant to this project; but it is films like his fabulous 1977 The American Friend which made us such
fans [that is a film which, if you do
not know it, you should run to your Netflix account to rent!]), and we have
been entranced by the dance of Pina Bausch (for
a sample, go watch Almodovar’s Talk to Her again, and pay particular attention to the dance
performances at the beginning and toward the end of the film—they are by Bausch
and her company, and they are amazing).
So, a film by Wenders
about Pina Bausch rates as an immediate must-see
by us. We had not known that Wenders and Bausuch had been
close friends for decades, and that this was a project they had discussed and
wanted to do together for decades. Over
that period of time, however, Wenders had declined to
make the film, as he was never able to envision how it would be possible. Bausch’s unique style, a form of “Tanztheater” (a form of German Expressionist dance of
which Bausch was the main inheritor), very actively blends the dancers’
movements, the very specifically created dynamic spaces of her sets, and the
music—the overall composition of all of which she insisted be created with the
active and extensive collaboration of her dancers who would ultimately be the
performers in each specific piece. The elegant and moving complexity of the
spatial/movement/musical/emotional world of Bausch’s Tanztheater seemed impossible to capture on film. That all changed with the advent of modern 3-D
film technology: it gave Wenders a way that he felt could meaningfully capture some
of the sublime experience of the movement of emotion and energy in space that
he so loved in Buasch’s choreography and her
dancing. They worked out a plan
together, and were about to begin shooting when Bausch died suddenly in 2009, just
shy of her 69th birthday. Wenders aborted the project, only to resurrect it a year
later at the insistence of her company, who wanted to do it as a tribute to
her. The result is astounding—and the
3-D experience is an unbelievable effective presentation of the exhilaratingly
powerful and movingly beautiful work. Pina includes three of
Bausch’s most famus pieces, “Café Müller,” “Le Sacre du Printemps,” and “Kontakthof”; but these performances (done on stage in the
theater in which the company has always performed over the years, the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina
Bausch) are interspersed with “interviews” with all the members of the
company. Wenders
poses a question to each of them, and asks—as Bausch herself was accustomed to
do—that they answer in dance, rather than words. (Some also give verbal responses as well, and
these are most brilliantly and effectively presented as voiceovers while
showing a portrait shot of the speaker, seated on stage, but not actually speaking
at the time. This is also the format by
which Wenders is able to state the questions which
are being asked of the performers.) The
incredibly powerful dance “responses” to the questions are filmed in various
outside locations around Wuppertal, Germany—the city which supported Bausch, her
work, and her company for almost four decades.
I am not one to go to a lot of dance movies, but this one is not to be
missed—and it will open at the Film
Society’s Walter Reade Theater on 23 December!
A Dangerous Method. (Germany/Canada, Running time: 99min. Sony
Pictures Classics) This film about Carl Jung in the early years of the
development of psychoanalysis—and, in particular about his relationship with
his first patient, and his relationship with Sigmund Freud—could have been
dreadful; instead it was quite fabulous. Its success is a tribute to the
extraordinary directorial talents of David Cronenberg, and amazing acting skills of Michael Fassbender (who quite
profoundly conveyed the obvious appeal and more subtle repulsiveness, of Jung),
Viggo Mortensen, (who captured Freud in all the confusing intensity
of the combination of his unparalleled brilliance and creative genius and his
neurotic shortcomings), and Keira Knightley (who played Sabina Spielrein,
a young Russian Jew who was Jung's first psychoanalytic patient) with such
accuracy and convincingness that the whole of her symptomatology and history
was powerfully revealed to the psychoanalytically trained in the audience—even
beyond those aspects that were directly revealed and explored in this film.
What was created in the interaction between Cronenberg and the
unbelievable performances of these actors more than made up for the problems
with the story they were bringing to life—and there were many serious problems therein. There are the easily excusable
inaccuracies in the theoretical discussions (mostly problems of anachronism);
but these are more than compensated for by the extreme accuracy of the
presentation of the clinical picture, and of the therapeutic and relationship
dialogue. There is the shallowness of the exploration of the patient's
pathology—and, in particular, the meaning of her sadomasochistic
preoccupations; but what is presented is valuable enough largely to offset this
shortcoming. There is a far more important problem in the film's artificial
idealization of the importance of Jung in his complex relationship with Freud
(they were both extremely neurotic in both their own idealizations of each
other [Freud correctly having seen Jung's brilliance, but somewhat less nobly
having been impressed by his wealth, social standing, and particularly the fact
that he was not Jewish; Jung having correctly understood the seminal genius of
Freud's creation of the field, but wishing to find in the master an
unreasonable level of perfection], but they were equally neurotic in their
competitiveness with each other [Freud actually wanting filial submission from
his "disciple," and Jung Oedipally needing to reject and destroy his
"paternal" authority to the extent of misunderstanding and attacking
some of Freud's most brilliant and important insights]; and, while this
tendency in the script (most disturbingly reprised in the epilogue titles
before the credits in which Jung is rather ridiculously described as "the
greatest psychologist of all time") is rather effectively emotionally
offset by Cronenberg's palpably deep respect and
appreciation for Freud, this imbalance was bothersome to me. Most
important, however, was the disturbingly easy treatment Jung's personality and
actions receive in the film. The fact that he has an affair with this
young woman while he is treating her, his pretense of conceiving of it as in her interest, his self-glorification of
it as an important, deeply meaningful step in his own evolution as a person,
and—most dreadfully—his attempt to make her feel bad about her reluctance to
being re-assigned the role of "mere patient" when he terminated the
sexual component of their relationship, do not in the viewpoint of the film
bring down upon Jung the professional and moral judgments appropriate to his
actions—or to his actual personal character; and this was to me inexcusable.
In actuality—and in the events portrayed in the film—Jung, despite his
great intelligence and early insights, was an infantile, entitled, selfish,
mean, and ultimately rather seriously crazy man (and the depth of this can be
sensed in the film only ever so slightly in his despicable treatment [actually
understated in the film] of his own wife, who, it was noted in the film, was
the source of his wealth and support—albeit she was not particularly
well-treated as a result). It is to me an enormous tribute to the
success of the film as a cinematographic creation that these rather dreadfully
serious plot flaws interfered almost not at all with my intense enjoyment of
the film. It is a beautiful, completely riveting, intensely provocative,
and profoundly—and enjoyably—successful film...and I recommend it
enthusiastically! Although I should like you to be aware of its
shortcomings as a serious discussion of the topics involved, I do not want to
do so in such a way as to interfere with your enjoyment of it as a film. I may have to add the screenwriter [Christopher Hampton] and most probably the author of the book [John Kerr] to the group of such writers about whom I feel so
negative because they had such a deleterious effect on several of the films in
this year’s NYFF, even though in this instance the quality of the film survives
the damage they did.
The Loneliest Planet. (USA/Germany, English 113 min.) Julia Loktev, who wrote and directed this
film (based on a short story by Tom
Bissell), has created a deeply beautiful, richly sensuous, and profoundly
involving work of art. It begins in somewhat
inexplicable tension: we watch a young woman repetitively jumping up and
down in the grayness of a primitive shower (evoking in me
thoughts of patients in old psychiatric facilities), beautiful in the starkness
of her total nakedness, but against the disconcerting grating, obsessive
quality of the soundtrack. After this confusingly disturbing but sensual
opening, we find that we are actually following a young couple on their
vacation trip to the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia. The woman in the
opening scene turns out to be Nica (the
female of the couple, played by Hani Furstenberg). She and Alex (played by Gael García
Bernal), are a few months away from their wedding. They are embarking on a backpacking hike in
the Caucasus, led by tour guide Dato (Bidzina Gujabidze). They are apparently quite happy with each
other and quite close in their friendship, as well as in their sexual
relationship. Whatever the tensions of
the opening sequence had been, we quickly find ourselves enjoying the eroticism
of their sexual encounters, and the breathtaking beauty of the landscape they
are walking through—which we see in languorously gorgeous landscapes,
sumptuously directed by Loktev (who is bravely
willing here to take the time to create the slowness of mood that so
contributes to the success of this film) and beautifully filmed by Inti Briones, the
film’s DP. There is a single, intense,
inexplicable moment that disrupts all this bliss; and the rest of the film
takes place against the tension that is created between Nica
and Alex. This film is a psychologically
sophisticated, artistically elegant work:
it is a textural unfolding of an emotional drama, expressed more in
subtle gesture and nuance than by action in the plot, and integrated on every
level into the tapestry of its lush and beautiful settings As much as I loved the slow pace and
exquisite, meandering evolution of the story, I must say I thought the film
would have profited from being 15 or 20 minutes shorter—not that I would have speeded
up any moment in it, but rather that I would have chosen to have fewer of
them. But it is still a most worthwhile
film.
This Is Not a Film (In fIlm
nist) (Iran, Persian
with English subtitles, 75 min.) We have
very much liked Jafar Panahi’s earlier films (particularly The Circle from the 2002 NYFF, and Crimson Gold from the 2003 NYFF), so
we were looking forward to his latest film, which he made in collaboration with
the Iranian documentary filmmaker Mojtaba Mirtahmasb. Nevertheless, we did not know what to expect
from this new film, particularly since it was described as “a remarkable day-in-the-life chronicle that…finds a rich middle ground
between fiction and reality. Shot with a digital camera and an iPhone, the
movie is almost entirely confined to the director’s apartment, where he
discusses his films and an unrealized script, while the outside world imposes
itself through phone calls, television news, a few comic interruptions, and the
sound of New Year’s fireworks.” We knew
that in December 2010, Panahi had received a six year jail sentence and was
placed under a 20-year ban against giving interviews, leaving the country, or making
any movies. What we did not know was
that This Is Not a Film was a project he did subsequent to
this ban (thus the name of the “film”), while waiting to hear the expectedly
bad results of his appeal of his sentence.
The biggest surprise was how powerfully emotional and deeply moving this
little piece turns out to be.
Essentially Panahi has called
his friend Mojtaba Mirtahmasb
to come to his apartment and film him talking about a script that of his that
he had wanted to turn into a movie, but was now enjoined from doing so by the
ban. Mojtaba
Mirtahmasb films him setting up the story, laying
out with yellow masking tape on the floor of his apartment the set for the film
his is envisioning, and then proceeding to describe—in understandably extremely
visual terms, but surprisingly in emotionally moving terms, as well—the action
of the film. The script is about a young
woman from a lower class family; she has been accepted into a university, but
her parents are refusing to allow her to matriculate; to keep her from doing
so, they are keeping her locked in a room in their home. Panahi describes in the first scene of the
script the details of the physical conditions of her confinement. When he starts to describe the chair she has
positioned in the middle of the room that she intends to stand on to hang herself, he stops, tears up, and cannot go on. The poignancy of this moment—and its
implications for the years of confinement he is facing—is truly heart-rending;
and this description may convey a bit of the emotion that is present at the
very foundation of This Is Not a Film. Nevertheless, in good Panahi form, there is
also a great deal of upbeat emotion and humor in the film. It is a pretty amazing little piece of “non”-filmmaking, and even the fact that Panahi begins using
his iPhone to photograph Mirtahmasb photographing him actually works quite
effectively. Of course, beyond the
filmmaking, there is the fact that this is an act of courage and principle, so
characteristic of Panahi (and part of what got him into trouble in the first
place)—but also so typical of his entire circle of filmmaker Iranian friends,
all of whom risk such dangers with every film they make. In the final credits, Panahi thanks certain
individuals in that community; but the people he thanks appear simply as blank
lines instead of actual names, in order to protect their safety.
Shame. (UK, 99 min., Fox Seachlight) Steve
McQueen has created a most unusual, interesting, and absorbing film...about
what could be a most off-putting subject—sexual addiction. The main
character, superbly played by Michael Fassbender (who certainly in this NYFF has put in a
couple of bravura performances), is a clearly bright, seemingly engaging and
successful man, who uses his professional skills to achieve business triumphs
and his potent interpersonal talents very effectively to approach and seduce
innumerable women into intense sexual contacts. While on the one hand we begin
to develop some appreciation for him and his prodigious talents (and other
endowments!), nevertheless at the very same time we are increasingly made aware
of a growing dark sense of his unattractiveness and dysfunctionality.
As the addictive aspects of his personality begin to be exposed to us, we
simultaneously begin to learn that his obsessive involvement with pornography
and masturbation reveals a side to his "interpersonal" sexuality that
is not much differentiated from it; and that prostitutes can serve just as
well—or perhaps better—than more "intimate" connections. His
sister (very effectively played by Carrey
Mulligan), their relationship, and her more blatant—but ultimately
revealingly similar—borderline pathology, create an awareness of his
dysfunction—and of the suggestively implied (but not explicitly explored)
disturbing family history. Speaking of "explicit," there is a
lot of explicit nudity and sexual activity in this film. Most
interestingly, despite all that (or because of it?) and the rather beautifully
attractive bodies revealed in it, there was, for all with whom I spoke, little
or no erotic thrill in this film. There was, for all of us, one
profoundly important exception: the one more interpersonally meaningful
sexual encounter he has, which, despite the minimal explicitness, was enormously
erotic—and revealingly different in its outcome. Ultimately, I am afraid
the film fell far short of the amazing potential it created: while it so
successfully evoked a complex, sophisticated, and deep understanding, on such a
direct, visceral level of an aspect of human activity so off-putting that we
usually decline knowledge about it, the last several minutes of the film went
in a much less sophisticated, shallower, more melodramatic direction—with
precisely the sort of obviousness absent from the rest of the film. Oh,
that it had stopped 10 or 15 minutes earlier...
There was a moment would have made a perfect, sophisticated ending; but,
instead, McQueen continued on past the fade out to black, to the film’s great
detriment.
The Descendants. (USA, 115min. Fox Seachlight) I had very much liked Alexander
Payne’s wonderful
last two NYFF films (in 2002 About
Schmidt, and in 2004 Sideways),
so I was very much looking forward to this new film. (There was also a wonderful HBO “On Cinema”
90 minute dialogue Payne did with
the Film Society’s Richard Peña the
day before [q.v., below, under
Special Events], which had heightened my anticipation) I was sadly disappointed—and, once again, the
problem was a stupid screenplay. The film
was beautifully filmed (DP Phedon Papamichael captured some amazingly gorgeous
landscapes—particularly of Kauai [which Nancy and I particularly enjoyed,
having been there in September 2010—even having stayed at the Princeville St.
Regis Hotel, which figures prominently in the film, and having hiked through
and flown by helicopter over some of the coastline which is of concern at the
heart of the film’s plot]; and Payne’s
visual directorial decisions were, as always, excellent), well-acted (George Clooney effectively did what he
was supposed to do to portray Matt King, a lawyer and trustee for the estate of
his family’s enormous swath of undeveloped land on Kauai, and husband of a
woman who has just ended up in a coma following a motorboat accident, and the
father of their two daughters—the angry, drug-addicted Alex [well-played by Shailene Woodley], and the pre-adolescent
Scottie [also well-portrayed by Amara
Miller])—if actors playing characters that are totally ridiculous and
unbelievable can be understood to be doing a good job when they correctly
create what a stupid script calls for; and the experience is actually pretty
successfully involving (it moves one on through its action with involvement and
interest)—if one overlooks that what it is involving one in turns out in the
end to be offensive drivel. In case I am
being too subtle, I thought the inanity and stupidity of the screenplay ruined
this film—and, as one of the writers of it (along with Nat Faxon and Jim Rush), Alexander Payne
deserves a great deal of the blame. I
have so come to expect psychological sophistication and mature nuance from Payne, I was completely shocked by the lack of it in The
Descendants. (I must assume that
the Kaui Hart Hemmings
novel on which the screenplay was based also deserves a great deal of the
opprobrium I am handing out for bad writing that ruins movies.) So as not to reveal the details of this
ridiculous plot, I shall not specify more than to say the following: the character of Matt makes no coherent sense,
nor does that of his daughter Alex, nor does their relationship (aspects of
which were infuriating to me—not so much if we were going to be viewing Matt as
a hopelessly insensitive, horribly flawed mess, but inexcusable if we are asked
to go where we are asked to go about him); the screenplay keeps inserting
coincidental aspects into the plot that are beyond ridiculous and vitiate the
power of what might have been an interesting drama. Importantly, Payne does not manage
successfully to integrate his comic elements into this emotionally charged
story as he was able to do in the two earlier films; there are quite funny
moments in this film, but they do not add to the depth of the experience as
they so sublimely do in his other films.
The texture of this film simply is not sophisticated enough to support
the integration into it of the many diverse element of which Payne is usually
capable. The Descendants is,
nonetheless, quite watchable—and that is a tribute to Payne and his cast.
Carnage. (Opening Night. France/Germany/Spain/Poland,
80min. Sony Pictures Classics) Based on the popular Broadway play, “God of
Carnage,” this film is the story of two couples attempting to deal with the
fact that there was an interaction between their sons (seen indistinctly at the
beginning of the movie as a long shot of a group of preadolescent boys in a
park on the Brooklyn shoreline of the East River, with Lower Manhattan in the
distance) in which the one rather unexpectedly hits the other in the face with
a stick. The action essentially takes place completely in the apartment
of the "victim," and mostly in just the living room. Both
couples try hard to deal with the situation in a mature manner, but their
attempts at being civilized rapidly deteriorate. I do not think any
director deals with action in severely enclosed, limited spaces like this as
well as Roman Polanski (and I am a great fan of his directorial genius in
general); and Polanski's direction—including his decision to keep this
over-heatedly emotionally intense film under 80 minutes in length—was one of
the reasons it worked as well as it did as a film. The other reason was
the excellent acting. All four of the cast members (Jodie Foster as Penelope Longstreet, the politically correct,
intellectual, uptight wife of John C. Reilly,
as Michael Longstreet, the apparently affable, earthy hardware salesman from
Queens; and Christoph Waltz, as Alan Cowan, the cell
phone-addicted, detached, angry lawyer arranging the defense for a drug company
client, and Kate
Winslet
as Nancy Cowan, Alan’s well-dressed but empty-headed society wife) turn in
magnificent performances. Unfortunately, this rather magnificent
combination of actors and director is fighting against a rather overwhelmingly
difficult problem: the script itself—and particularly the thought and
perspective behind it—is shallow, simplistic, and trite in what to me was a
totally offensive way and off-putting. Each character turns out to be
merely a gross, hollow stereotype—all of them empty caricatures, devoid of any
depth or personhood. The plot development is completely predictable and
meaningless. And the script's pretensions and wish to view itself as
profound were particularly painful, given the banality of its treatment of
issues and the lack of sophistication of its worldview. (The fact that so
much of it unavoidably evokes memories of “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,”
makes the shallowness of this piece all the more painful.) It is an
achievement that I did not have to run out of the theater screaming, but,
instead found the film somewhat entertaining. The acting was so good, and
the direction so effective, that I found myself only rarely becoming aware of
what to me were the offensively pretentious but empty underpinnings of the
story. From people who saw the play
(which I am sure I would have out-and-out hated),
I know that the film was shorter and contained more comic moments than the
play—which, apparently, took itself even more seriously and pretentiously. Any time I
thought seriously about this story, it just annoyed and infuriated me. I cannot help but believe that most of the
blame for the despicable parts of all this should be laid at the feet of Yasmina Reza, the author of the play and—along with Polanski (who
I assume at least shortened, tightened, and made the mess a bit lighter)—wrote
the screenplay. I am afraid she is
another of the group of writers whom I hold responsible for the downside of
many of the films in this NYFF. Nevertheless, I did not think that Carnage
was a totally bad choice for an Opening Night film for the Festival: it
was short (a big plus for an evening that has a major Black Tie party following
a 9 PM screening); it was involving and entertaining; it was a somewhat worthy
piece of filmmaking, albeit not a good film (and I could not help but think it
must have been a dreadful piece of
theater—at least, I am extremely
quite happy I had not seen the play); and it certainly had folks talking
energetically about it at the party. It is in no way a good movie, but it
may be a movie that is marginally worth seeing for the aforementioned reasons. Of course, there are innumerable Polanski
films I’d suggest you see first—everything from his unbelievably powerful 1962 Knife in the Water, through the 1968 Rosemary’s Baby, to his great 1974 Chinatown. (I suppose it is only fair that I should also
remind you that he has made an awful lot of bad
movies, as well…)
Goodbye First Love (Un amour de jeunesse). (France/Germany,
French with English subtitles, 110 min. Sundance
Selects) This
film by 30 year old writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve is about adolescent infatuation and the general
agony and the ecstasy of adolescence. We
are introduced to 15 year old Camille (beautifully portrayed by Lola Créton) and her teenaged paramour Sullivan (who is played
in an appropriately annoying fashion by Sebastian Urzendowsky). We are
somewhat effectively drawn in to a feeling of support for their relationship,
in part by the successfully erotic, beautiful early scenes of it in the
beginning of the film. Early on there is
some supportable tension created between Sullivan’s seemingly reasonable
decision to take a trip with his two buddies through South America and
Camille’s wish for him to stay with her and not to abandon her or their
relationship. Right from the start,
however, there is also some sense that Camille is just clinging to her immature
infatuation in a needy and unhealthy way—and this sense steadily increases
throughout the course of the film; nevertheless, her lack of reasonableness and
maturity quickly is outpaced by the viewer’s growing awareness that Sullivan is
not at all worthy of her attachment to him.
Camille is devastated, and years have to pass before she takes up an
independent existence. Eventually she
becomes an architect and begins a relationship with the head of her firm (Magne-Håvard Brekke)—a relationship that began while he was still her
teacher (so, not such an independent
existence). It is a well-directed film,
involving and beautiful. The perspective
of the film, unfortunately, is itself
too adolescent and immature to support the film as a totally serious work. Camille’s incredibly adolescent inability
fully to free herself from her immature attachment in the face of unending
evidence that she has no reasonable choice but to do so is annoying enough; but
Hansen-Løve’s literally needing to have
Camille tell us that she thinks she needs to experience things twice before
they are real to her was just beyond bearable to me. It is not a bad movie. Perhaps I can best sum up my feelings though
with the comment I made to Nancy as the credits were rolling: “Some of this film is truly wonderful, and
this director is incredibly talented…and one day she may even grow up.”
Martha Marcy May Marlene (USA, 101 min. Fox Searchlight) When, in the
introduction to this film, it
was noted that it was a continuation and expansion of Mary Last Seen, a short film that Sean Durkin (the writer
and director of this full-length film) had screened at an earlier NYFF, my
heart sank, as I had not yet connected Martha Marcy May Marlene with
that short, which we had not liked,
in which a young woman is essentially kidnapped and taken to a farm in upstate
New York where she finds herself with a group of other similarly held young
women. Martha Marcy May Marlene
is about a young woman Martha (Elizabeth
Olsen) who escapes from a farm compound and is taken to live with her older
sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson), a New
Yorker at the Connecticut country house she shares with her husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy). What ensues is a rather naively conceived
comparison between the obviously mind-numbing, claustrophobic repressiveness of
life in the cult and the more covert version of the same repressiveness in the
bourgeois lifestyle of Martha’s sister.
There is a somewhat successful temporal back and forth in the flashback
revelations of the terrible truth of what Martha’s years in this cult actually
were like, as Martha herself seems to be recovering her memories about the
experience as she moves farther from them—and this parallels the slow
revelation of the shortcomings of Lucy’s life.
Martha Marcy May Marlene is relatively well done: it is beautifully filmed (by cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes),
Durkin is quite successful in
creating and maintaining an involving tension that works on the story level as
well as the overall level of visual flow, and in general it was a far better
film than I feared when I learned it was by the same person who had done that
short film. But, as many films in this
year’s NYDD, it suffers from an essentially bad script: the ideas behind it are poorly conceived and
immature, there are aspects that simply are not credible, and too much of the
underlying thinking it reflects is annoyingly naïve.
George
Harrison: Living in the Material World. (USA, 208 Min.
HBO Documentary Films) Martin Scorsese’s epic documentary on George Harrison has some very
interesting archival footage of the Beatles—and, I suppose that if I were a
rabid Beatles fan, that might have sufficed; and, to be sure, if one were madly
enthralled with Harrison himself, 3½ hours about his life might be
irresistible—but I am not. Scorsese’s
film is extremely well-done, but I was painfully bored through most of it. Most of all, I was uninterested in hearing
Harrison’s rather pedestrian version of Eastern thought: I was not impressed by his foray into
mysticism back when it was happening, and I am no more impressed with it
now. (Harrison’s journey into Indian
music, on the other hand, was quite interesting—as is the opportunity to listen
once again to the likes of Ravi Shankar.) Just because someone is a talented musician
(or a talented visual artist), I do not automatically assume that he will be
verbally talented; and often it simply is not the case that an artist’s
intellectual profoundness is proportionate to his other skills. As Keith Jarrett once told me he replied to
an interviewer asking him to explain something in his music, “If I could
explain it, I wouldn’t need to play it.”
And, to my mind, Harrison—while a good guitar player—was simply a
shallow thinker. He also in my opinion
was not much of a song writer—with the notable exception of “Something,” which
is extraordinary in ways none of his other songs even approach. But most objectionable was having to listen
to the extensive “philosophical” ramblings of his ex-wife (Patti Boyd) or the even more extensive gibberish from his widow (Olivia Harrison, who has an
unforgivably large role in this film, I suppose because she was a co-producer
of it). In the penultimate half hour of
this cinematographic marathon, we get to see something of his interaction with
the Monty Python people, and this
does two things in the film: first, the
wit and vitality of verbal geniuses like John
Cleese, Eric Idle, and Terry Gilliam showed how empty and
lifeless all the film’s other verbal outpourings had been; and, second, it made
me aware of what I now consider to be George Harrison’s greatest contribution
to culture—his personally financing the production of The Life of Brian. (I knew
Harrison had been friends with Eric Idle and close to the Pythons in general at
one point; but the film tells a story I did not know: when the CEO of the studio producing the film
finally read the script, he was so unhappy with how “blasphemous” it was, that
he entirely pulled the funding for it, and Harrison stepped up and provided the
rather considerable sum of money necessary.)
So, if you’re an obsessed Harrison fan, I suppose this is the perfect
experience for you. For me, it was
mostly torture.
The Artist. (France, 98min. Weinstein Company) To be fair,
I might have found this film less problematic had we had not earlier in the
NYFF seen Chaplin’s 1925 silent masterpiece, The Gold Rush. In The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius has created a 21st Century silent film,
in black and white, ostensibly in the style of the 20s, and I suppose that is
an ambitious and noble undertaking. It
tells the story of a dashing silent film male lead (Jean Dujardin, who, while fairly good,
for reasons I cannot understand won the best actor prize in Cannes) whose
career is about to fall apart with the advent of talkies, and his relationship
with a young starlet (Berenice Bejo, who
actually is quite good), who, surprise, surprise, is going to have a meteoric
rise in the new medium. The Artist even worked for a little while: the first portion of the film is reasonably
successful and entertaining; but Hazanavicius simply does not have
the skill or talent to pull this undertaking off, and the film quickly becomes
pedestrian and quite dull—dragging on interminably, and feeling unbearably longer than its 98 minute
length. If one did not know what was
possible in silent filmmaking, one might have considered this an excusable
limitation of the genre; but it is simply not true—totally engaging, deep,
extraordinary works like Chaplin’s powerfully make that point. So, in the end, this being a silent film
turns out merely to be a gimmick, and the underlying weakness of the film—and
of the filmmaker—is painfully apparent.
(There were those who seemed
thoroughly to like this film, but I am willing to wager it is because they do
not know what real silent filmmaking can be.)
There are two moments—one of them even quite successful—when Hazanavicius plays on the fact that this is a silent film by
briefly having sound intrude. Nevertheless, even this is pretty
unimpressive if compared to the all-too-similar—and far more profoundly
wonderful—moment created by Mel Brooks in his Silent Movie, wherein the only sound in the entire film is a single
word—uttered so wonderfully paradoxically by the world renowned French mime,
Marcel Marceau. This whole film is a
gimmick, not a real adventure in silent filmmaking. And, without falling for the gimmickry, it is
an unforgivably mediocre experience.
There should be a current distribution for The Gold Rush instead, and the world could get to see authentic
silent film magic.
Special
Events:
Patience (After Sebald) (UK, 82m) I love W.G. Sebald’s 2002 novel, Austerlitz,
and so I was intent upon seeing this documentary about Sebald and another of
his novels. Nevertheless, given the
ethereal, highly intellectual, intensely verbal, esoterically textural nature
of Sebald’s prose, I was more than uneasy about what to expect from Grant Gee’s film. But
we were pleasantly surprised at how wonderful this little gem was! It was billed as, “a journey through the coastal
Suffolk landscapes described in Sebald’s The
Rings of Saturn.” I have not read that novel, but I learned
from the film that it begins with an author completing his exhausting work on
his latest book and deciding to take a relaxing and carefree fun holiday on the
English coast—and that the journey that ensues is neither carefree nor
restorative nor fun. Instead, the
narrator becomes increasing depressed while visiting the sights in a series of
walks through Suffolk. The grainy, black
and white cinematography seems rather perfectly to capture the world-weariness
Sebald’s character experiences in the book—and the quality of the mood of
Sebald’s prose in general. The images
themselves seem hauntingly beautiful, while somehow at the same time
dreary. Interspersed with the landscapes
are interviews with artists, philosophers, critics, and even Sebald’s
publisher. Some of those interviewed
actually have themselves attempted to retrace Sebald’s journey in The Rings of Saturn; and, In general, they had all discovered that the actual beauty of
the sites themselves prohibited them from recreating the dark emotional mood
Sebald was describing; but this dissonance between the actual experience of the bright beauty of the
sights and the mood evoked in Sebald’s literary presentation of them was central
to the essential meaning of novel, and characteristic of the experiential
texture Sebald’s prose in general. I
find myself completely agreeing with the Film Society’s Richard Peña: “It’s a very creative way to make a film about a book and about an author.
It’s neither an adaptation of the book, nor a didactic presentation of that
book, but an aesthetic response in which the director tries to find a cinematic
form that in a certain way approaches the suppleness of form that Sebald had in
his book.” Patience (After Sebald) is indeed a thoughtful, beautiful, and entertaining response to Sebald
and his work. Even if you have never
read anything by this marvelous author, you will enjoy this film, and you will
emerge from seeing it with some knowledge about Sebald (who, BTW and FYI, was a
German who spent most of his creative life in England, living in Suffolk, and
who died in 2001), some knowledge about The Rings of Saturn, some
sense of the Suffolk coast, and, most of all, a reasonable approximation of
what Sebald’s writing feels like.
20 Years
of Art Cinema: A Tribute to Sony Pictures Classics.
Sony Pictures Classics has been the source of so many films in the NYFF (and I believe five
in this year’s festival). And it has been so essential to the whole genre of
“art cinema,” the Film Society chose this year to honor the founders of SPC, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, their company, and the films they have made
possible. Twenty years ago, Michael and
Tom left Orion Pictures to start SPC, and they have distributed and produced an
unending stream of wonderful and successful independent and foreign-language
films. Before the presentation (which
took place in the Beale Theater in
the Bu (what the industry seemed to
be calling the new Film Center—which
we had been calling the Ellie),
there was a wonderful series of photographs projected (mostly take by Tom
Barker himself) which was like a montage of all the people who figured in the
history of the NYFF. It was followed by
an incredible reel of clips from the huge number of films SPC has presented at
the NYFF over the years. The heart of
the program was a discussion conducted by Richard
Peña with Michael and Tom—joined at
the end by their third partner, Marcy
Bloom. It included many insights
into the development of “art cinema” and how the nature and finances of the
industry have changed—from the days of the isolated art houses, through the
rise and fall of the prominence of college film societies, to the advent of
huge theater chains, and on into the current chaotic day in this arena. Following the talk, there was a screening of
SPC’s inaugural release: James
Ivory’s 1992 Howards End, which grossed more than $25 million at the U.S.
box office and earned nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
The Royal Tanenbaums.
(2001, USA, 110 min.) I love this film,
in large part for how much sheer enjoyment it brings me every time I watch it,
which I have done innumerable times through the years since I first saw it in
the 2001 NYFF. Here is my review from
when I first saw it:
This new film by Wes
Anderson (Bottle
Rocket and Rushmore) had its premier
at the NYFF, and it was the festival's hottest ticket. If you are one of those
people who didn't get Rushmore, you may not like this film
either (although its star-studded cast—Gene Hackman, Angelica
Huston, Danny
Glover, Ben
Stiller, and Gwyneth Paltrow, in addition to Wes Anderson regulars Bill
Murray, and Luke and
Owen Wilson [the latter
being the co-author with Anderson]—give such terrific performances that you may
like it anyway. If, like us, you LOVED Rushmore, you are going to go wild over
this madcap romp through Wes Anderson's incredible imagination. If you
haven't seen Rushmore, for God's sake, go out and rent it! (It is easier
than explaining what Wes Anderson is about. The FF describes it as, "[a
mingling of] romance, tragedy, social observation, and unforgettable characters
in this dense but buoyant film about a family of eccentric geniuses living in a
parallel New York (where Helvetia is the only typeface and all cabs are
Gypsies)."
The
Exterminating Angel (El ángel exterminador). (1962,
Mexico,
Spanish
with English subtitles, 94 min.)
We knew we could not see the screening of this 1962 masterpiece by Luis Buñuel, so we rented it from
Netflix and watched it before the NYFF started.
What an amazing, disturbing, and completely wonderful surreal piece of
filmmaking! Go rent it. (Meanwhile, one of the times I got to chat
with Pedro Almodóvar at the NYFF [he was around quite a bit, seeing a number of
films other than his own], he told Michael Barker and me that we needed to see Buñuel’s film Él, which neither of us had ever
seen. I for one have just purchased a
copy [it is not available on Netflix, unfortunately] and intend to watch it my
first free moment. Who am I to ignore a
suggestion from Pedro?!) Here is the
Film Society note about The Exterminating Angel:
In anticipation of the New York Film Festival’s historic 50th edition in the fall of 2012, the Film Society is proud to inaugurate a year-long retrospective of highlights from the festival’s past 49 editions, curated by current and former members of the NYFF selection committee. We begin with the opening night film of the very first NYFF, Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, described by festival director Richard Roud thusly: “For ninety hypnotic minutes Buñuel shatters all conventional notions of social logic and ethics. Never before has he been able to give such free reign to his vitality, wit and iconoclasm, his power to surprise and shock. Buñuel has been a great name in world cinema for over thirty years now, and we are proud to open the first New York Film Festival with his most remarkable film.”
Luis Buñuel wrote and directed this 1962 classic, set in
Mexico and starring the popular Mexican actress Silvia Pinal. The Exterminating Angel is
unique as it offers characters taking actions which are never explained. You
know something is off when service staff for an upscale
dinner party decide to abandon their duties without telling anyone. They
rush out as if to say: “I do not want to be here tonight.” Later, we see a
group of apparently well-to-do folks who decide not to leave after their meal.
Maybe they were too lazy, maybe they couldn't be bothered. In any case, we
witness these guests slowly descend into inexplicable savagery—or is it inexplicable?
Masterworks:
The Gold Rush.
(1925, USA, Silent, 90m) This film should be declared a national
heritage site! It is certainly a
national treasure. Our screening of it
was introduced by the Film Society’s founder Martin
Siegel and David Rockefeller, both of whom
having been instrumental and bringing Chaplin back to the U.S. after his long
exile abroad. And it was screened in a
restored print of the original 1925 silent version (there was a 1941 version
redone with sound, but Chaplin never approved of it) with a live orchestra
(fifteen members of the New York Philharmonic), conducted by Timothy
Brock, who was responsible for composing the new restoration of
the film’s score. It was a thrill for
every single member of the audience, including the children of all ages who
were in attendance. We were sitting near
two 8 year old girls who were literally quivering with joy and excitement
throughout the whole film—and I was virtually doing the same. Chaplin’s genius is completely apparent in
this masterpiece: while it is hilariously funny on every level of humor from
the slapstick to the sublime, it is also deeply moving and emotional. The idea that so much depth and complexity
could be conveyed by physical gesture is staggering. But it is also a perfect cinematographic
experience, entrancing and entertaining us while it totally involves us in its
story, touching every one of our heartstrings along the way. I could have sat and watched it again right
there…and I am sad that it may be a long time before I again have the pleasure
of seeing it on the big screen.
You
Are Not I. (1981, USA, 48min.) This 1981 short film by Sara Driver, based on a short story by Paul Bowles, was definitely the biggest
positive surprise for us at this year's NYFF. It was not part of the Main
Slate, and we mainly decided to see it because we had known that Jim Jarmusch had been the DP for the film. (It turns out that Jim also co-wrote the screenplay with Sara; and Tom DiCillo was part of the camera crew—and Nan
Goldin did the still photography for the film!)
There was also an odd backstory to this screening: since 1982, there
basically has been no print available
of this early project by Driver
(save one, virtually unwatchable, deteriorating print she herself had); a year
or so ago, a print was found in an unmarked cardboard box in the collection of Paul Bowles--in Tangiers; and, beyond
all reasonable hope, it was in excellent condition. The
film itself is a starkly shot black and white journey--more
internal than external--with Ethel (played with minimalist, but
incredibly intense emotional flatness by Suzanne
Fletcher [who, along with Sara Driver and Jim Jarmusch, was present for
this screening]), an inpatient from some sort of psychiatric facility who has
wandered off the grounds and is exploring the scene of a nearby
automobile accident. As we watch Ethel "relating" to the
several corpses, we listen to the monotone recitation of the thoughts she is
having as she idiosyncratically reacts to and interprets what is going on around her. She makes it as far as her
childhood home, where her sister is living. and where
there is a quite wonderfully odd denouement which occurs. While the piece
is somewhat roughly done (Driver was in her early twenties when she made it), You
Are Not I is eerily effective and profoundly successful. I don’t know whether there will be an occasion
when you will be able to see this one, but do so if the opportunity presents
itself. It is a treat.
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