NEW YORK FILM
FESTIVAL
2014 – 52nd
Festival
For
many complicated reasons, I never got around to writing up all of the films
from this year’s 52nd New York Film Festival. At the end of October 2014, there were 8
films from the NYFF that were
already in current release in theaters, and I wrote them up at that point: Laura Poitras's
CITIZENFOUR, Alain
Rersnais's Life of Riley (Aimer, boire et chanter), Damien Chazelle's Whiplash, Alejandro Iñárritu's Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of
Ignorance, Jean-Luc
Godard's Goodbye to Language (Adieu au langage),
Alex Ross Perry's
Listen Up Philip, Mathieu Amalric’s The Blue Room (La chambre
bleue), and David Fincher’s Gone Girl.
I usually wait
until I have written my reviews of all the film we saw in the NYFF (we saw 24 that year) before
sending out my reviews (my reviews of the films from prior editions of the NYFF
have be viewed on my website at www.RLRubens.com/nyff.html), but
some of these films from this year's Festival were simply too wonderful to
miss—and some were in limited release and may not be in theaters for long—so I decided
to go ahead and send the eight reviews out before finishing the rest—and this
may have contributed to my not having ever finished the others. Somehow, I just lost my momentum.
Anyway, I am
finally posting here on my website the reviews I did do.
The reviews of
these films are listed below, roughly in descending order of my preference for
each film
CITIZENFOUR (World
Premiere; Radius, release date, 24 October) I
cannot believe with all the wonderful films that were in this year’s NYFF that
one of our very favorites was a documentary—but what a documentary! In CITIZENFOUR,
Laura Poitras
(who did the powerful documentaries My Country, My Country [2007] and The
Oath [2010]) has created a magnificent dramatic film as well as an
important documentary record. In the 20
October edition of The
New Yorker, George Packer
describes CITIZENFOUR as “a political thriller in three acts.” As described in the NYFF program, “In January
2013, filmmaker Laura Poitras was in the process of
constructing a film about abuses of national security in post-9/11 America when
she started receiving encrypted e-mails from someone identifying himself as
‘citizen four’ who was ready to blow the whistle on the massive covert
surveillance programs run by the NSA and other
intelligence agencies.” The gradual
revelation and introduction of the film’s main protagonist is done in as
emotionally dramatic and powerfully suspenseful a way as I have ever seen done
in any piece of cinema—despite the
fact we all came to the screening already knowing that it was Edward Snowden. As the thrilling narrative of the story
grippingly unfolds on screen, we come to have insight into the person of Snowden in a way that I could not have
begun to imagine: nothing that I knew about him from the massive publicity he
ended up receiving even began to hint at the intelligence, refinement, and
elegance of this young man. Like a Jimmy
Stewart character in a Frank Capra movie, Edward
Snowden is seen to be an everyday citizen who is spurred to unusual action
by unusual circumstances—a patriot who feels he has to risk everything he
personally has to address a great societal wrong. The other main character in
the room with Snowden and the rarely
seen Poitras
is Glenn Greenwald, formerly a
reporter for The Guardian and deeply involved in reporting abuses of privacy
committed by the NSA, who does most of the
interacting with Snowden. Poitras and Greenwald flew to Hong Kong to spend
several days with Snowden and became
the center of the group of journalists to whom he entrusted the revealing of
the information he had provided. (An
unexpected side light of the process was how concerned Snowden was to insure
that the people he chose to do this would do so in a responsible manner—who
would make public the relevant information in his purloined documents without
causing any unnecessary collateral harm to agents and people not concerned with
the central issues he felt the need to make public, and would be
technologically and personally responsible enough to protect it in the process.) CITIZENFOUR
is completely successfully done
as an edge-of-your-seats thriller of a story, while at the same time it is a
profoundly moving character study of a man moved to action—rising to tragic
stature in his risking all he has personally to do what he feels is morally
demanded of him. It is also a chronicle
of one of the pivotal moments in recent history. For those who are already convinced that
Snowden is a perfidious villain, the strong positive bias of this film’s
perspective of course will prove difficult; and admittedly there is within this
issue an extremely complex question of balancing civil liberties and national
security. Personally, as an old time
First Amendment liberal, I am far more concerned about the massive infringement
of civil liberties (periodically I have as the .sig file on my email the famous
1759 Benjamin Franklin quote, “They that can give up essential liberty to
obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither.”), so I have a powerful bias
in this matter. And the film makes no
attempt at balance in dealing with this moment in history—so if you are looking
for a weighing of these issues, you will not
find it here; CITIZENFOUR has a firm, clear
position. It received a standing ovation at the Festival, and the most sustained
applause of any film in this year’s NYFF—all of which repeated as Laura Poitras, Glen Greenwald,
William Binney, Josh Appelbaum,
and all the others involved in
disseminating the Snowden documents or in making the film then took the stage,
and then again when members of
Snowden’s family took the stage. Whether you are moved to agree with the political slant of this film or
not, CITIZENFOUR is a fabulous piece of filmmaking.
For us it seems a must-see experience, enjoyable as it is important
Life of Riley (Aimer, boire et chanter) (US Premiere, France, Kino Lorber, release
date: 24 October) I adore the works of Alain Resnais: from his 1959 Hiroshima, Mon Amour (a newly restored
print of which is currently being shown at the Film Center) and his 1961 Last Year at Marienbad (L'année
dernière à Marienbad), to his 2012 You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (Vous n'avez encore rien vu), Resnais’s films have thrilled and delighted me. He was present at the very first NYFF with Hiroshima, Mon Amour, and in 2009 he was
present at Opening Night of the 2010
NYFF with his Wild Grass (Les herbes folles), which was my favorite film in the
Festival that year. His death this past
March saddened me, and is a profound loss to the film world. (And what marvelous, impish character he was! During the 2010 NYFF, he discovered Bed Bath and Beyond
across the street from Lincoln Center, and he kept dragging his actors there
when they arrived in NY. I have memories of him and Mathieu Amalric
coming back to Tully laden with packages from there.) And his final film, Life of Riley,
fulfilled all of my wishes and expectations.
As with You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, Life of Riley is as intricately involved with theater as it is with
themes of mortality and death. His usual
repertory cast of incredibly wonderful actors are involved in rehearsing a play
that they are going to stage: the
wonderful Sabine Azéma
(Resnais’s
real-world wife) plays Kathyn, who is married to a
doctor, Colin (played by Hippolyte Girardot); Caroline Silhol is Tamara, the wife of the wealthy businessman, Jack
(played by Michel Vuillermoz);
Sandrine Kiberlain
is Monica, the girlfriend of Simeon (André
Dussollier), and recently separated wife of the
eponymous “George Riley,” who, along with “Penny,” the director of the play
they are rehearsing, are major presences in the story but who never actually
appear in any form. (Are George and/or
Penny alter egos for Resnais? Or elements there of?
Your call…) The story line is simple: Colin, as Riley’s physician, has learned
that George is dying of cancer; Kathryn wheedles the information out of him,
and then proceeds to blab it to everyone; Jack, who is Riley’s best friend, is
grief struck; everyone is—or wants to be—having an affair with everyone else,
especially George; and, in the midst of all this, they all are rehearsing this
play. If this sounds like a typical
French farce, it is—at least to a satisfyingly humorous degree; and Life of Riley is
a really funny film. But that does
not begin to describe what Resnais has
created here. The Alan Ayckbourn play Life of Riley, upon
which Resnais
based this screenplay, is—as is Resnais’s film—the story of this group of friends rehearsing
another Ayckbourn play, Relatively Speaking. These embedded layers of story are reflected
and further complicated in the way Resnais’s
film is constructed: these three couples
live in the English countryside, to which we are introduced in drawings, which
morph on screen into real world filmed images, which then transform into crude
stage sets in front of which the action of the film takes place—even though it
is clear that these are not the sets
for the play they are rehearsing, but rather theatrical transformations of the
world of the film itself, symbolically transported into the world of
theater. Although we often are listening
to the characters running lines for
the play within the film, we do not see the actual rehearsing of the film
itself. The main actions take place in front of the exteriors of the three
houses, but in their stage-set transformed representations. (It is fascinating to note that not until the
very end of the film are we ever permitted to enter into the interiors of any
of the homes, even though that is often where the most significant actions are
occurring—in every level of the realities.)
Life of Riley is a
deeply satisfying, philosophically thoughtful, enormously meaningful
contemplation of the meaning of life, mortality, and death; but one that never
makes this contemplation weighty or heavy-handed, but rather remains happily
enjoyable and life-affirming in its entirety.
Along with his prior two films, Wild Grass
and You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet,
Life of Riley forms a
magnificent farewell trilogy appropriate to the life and work of this fabulous
filmmaker
Whiplash (USA,
Sony Pictures Classics, release date: 10
October) is an electrifying first feature from 29 year old Damien Chazelle, described to us by Gavin Smith (Senior Programmer at the Film Society, editor of Film Comment,
and a member of the Selection Committee) before we saw it as “a cliff-hanger”
and a film we’d love—and he was completely correct on both counts. Based on a short film of the same name by Chazelle (which was shown in last
year’s NYFF), Whiplash is the story of
Andrew (amazingly well-played by 18 year old, Miles Teller), a student at “the most prestigious music
conservatory in New York.” Andrew is an aspiring jazz drummer, desperate to
work with Terrance Fletcher (wonderfully played by the accomplished J. K. Simmons), who presides over the
prestige jazz performance group at the school.
Mr. Fletcher is a perfectionist—demanding beyond the limits of reason
and harsh well into the range of the blatantly sadistic—who exhorts, demeans,
berates, and terrifies his students in an attempt to elicit excellence from
them, without regard to the emotional devastation he causes in the process.
Andrew is hell-bent on making it work with Fletcher and on succeeding whatever
the cost. The relationship/warfare that
ensues between them is as gripping as it is intense. Whiplash very deservedly won both
the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival,
where it was dubbed “Full
Metal Jacket at Juilliard.”
The film is an emotional roller coaster, but it is also an exciting,
powerful, and extremely well-made film—well-worth the exciting ride. The music,
particularly the band’s performances of Hank Levy’s “Whiplash” and Ellington’s
“Caravan, is as emotionally absorbing as it is entertaining. And the climax of the film
is truly ecstatic—even to one who dislikes drum solos, and is wary of drummers
in general.
Goodbye to Language (Adieu au langage)
(France. Kino Lorber, Release date: 29
October)
At
83, this is the 43rd feature film by the French New
Wave (La Nouvelle Vague) master, Jean-Luc Godard. I did not like his last film, Filme
Socialisme in the 2012 NYFF (which was the only
time I included in my “Parrot Droppings” a review written by
a friend), although I am a great fan of Godard. This is an opulently gorgeous film: its
visual images (both their form and their colors), its sounds and music, it
words (both spoken and visually presented text) are magnificent. All of the experience is intensified; from
the often-used hyper-saturation of color to the hyper-realism of the textual
graphics, Goodbye to Language has
an amazingly powerful impact. And in
this film, Godard uses 3-D
technology further to enhance the experience; he uses it only partially to
create realistic perspectival depth, but more frequently to create emotion an
experiential depth. In a way that is at
times extremely disconcerting, Godard
uses the fact that the radio-controlled 3-D glasses allow the viewer’s eyes to
see different images virtually simultaneously: sometimes the image in one eye
is out of focus, while in the other eye it is in focus; sometimes the image
seen by the one eye is moving in a different direction or at a different speed
than that in the other eye; and sometimes each eye is presented with a totally
different image, which one’s brain then has to superimpose on each other. He does precisely the same thing with the
right and left channels of the sound track; and, in a sense, he does something
similar with the words and actions. The
effect is novel, and it is challenging; but, for the most part, it is highly
successful. The film is structured in
two main parts, and within each part there is a series of sections that
basically repeat in each. There is a
story about a man and a woman and the relationship between them; and there is
the awareness of the inexorable passage of time; then it all repeats in the
second part—but not exactly.
Nevertheless, it is not the plot that has any central importance; in
fact, one can only conclude that the main
character throughout the whole film is Roxy, Godard’s beloved dog. Although
I adore much of his work, I have never been able to take Godard seriously as a philosopher; and it has always been clear
that he does consider himself to be
one. In Goodbye to Language, however, it feels easier to ignore the more heavy-handed philosophical
intentions (pretensions?): I feel even the title suggests that we need not
attend too deeply to the linguistic meanings, and instead can feel free to
absorb the emotional tone and sensuous beauty of the film—and Goodbye
to Language is profoundly redolent with
these. It is movingly obvious that Godard is dealing
with the issues of aging and mortality—and the rivers float by much as the flow
of time itself. It is just much more
satisfying to take in the magnificence of his aesthetic feelings about these
issues rather than the specifics of his more intellectual musings. Even at its
70 minute length, the film feels a bit overly long due to some of the
structural repetitions Godard
has introduced; but this is a minor quibble. This is a movingly beautiful film—although
clearly not for everyone.
The Blue Room (La chambre bleue) (North American Premiere, France,
Sundance Selects, release date: 3
October) I love Mathieu Amalric’s
acting, and he has had major roles in great films as diverse as those of Alain Resnais (Wild Grass and You Ain’t Seen
Nothing Yet) to those of Julien Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), including being a regular in
the films of our friend Arnaud Desplechin, so I was
eagerly awaiting this one, which he directed, wrote, and stars in. The story is the adaptation of a crime novel
by Georges Simenon; and the story is
about Julien Gahyde (Amalric) who is intensely
involved in an affair with a pharmacist, Esther Despierre
(very erotically played by Stéphanie Cléau, who was the co-author with Amalric of the screenplay), and,
naturally, Julien’s wife, Delphine (played by the even more beautiful, if more
sexually subdued Léa Drucker). The action of this part of the storyline
takes place primarily in the “blue room” of a hotel, where we get to see rather
explicit and steamily erotic sexual encounters between the adulterous
pair. Fun, of course; but the really
wonderful thing about this film is the mood Amalric creates: it is intensely
noir, completely befitting its crime novel origins and its tip-of-the-hat to
Hitchcock; but it is also quite Kafkaesque in its earlier portions—with
intermittent scenes of Julien being interrogated by the police in a way that is
not understandable for a long time, although it becomes progressively clear how
deeply in the clutches of that system Julien is as the film progresses. If all this sounds terrific, it is because it
was! Unfortunately, all
of this high-intensity dramatic mood does not really go anywhere. The plot lines continue to develop and
thicken, but they do not sustain the intensity or drama of the earlier
mood. I have to confess that I even
found it dragging a bit at times, despite its mere 76 minute length (something
of which I am always appreciative).
So, in the end, I found this one somewhat disappointing, despite how well-done
most of it was.
Gone Girl (Opening Night. World
Premiere. 20th Century Fox and New Regency, release date: 3 October) This one was operating at a disadvantage for
me, as I am slow to like movies in the NYFF that are so clearly aimed at a mass
audience (although I do understand the perceived need to open the Festival
which such things—at least occasionally; and some, like David Fincher’s The
Social Network which opened
the 2012 NYFF were even
terrific films), and I also have a particular aversion to films over two hours
(unless there is something extraordinary that justifies what I otherwise feel
to be a presumptuous intrusion on my time).
Nevertheless I have liked some (his 1999 Fight Club and his 2007 Zodiac, in addition to The Social Network)—but not all—of David Fincher’s
films. Gone Girl, I am afraid, is not going to make it onto the
short list of ones I have liked. The
story is simple, although it ends up with several, mostly predictable
convolutions before it’s done: Ben Affleck is Nick Dunne, whose wife Amy
(Rosamund Pike) goes missing on the day of their fifth anniversary; and
the tale is told against the progression of the number of days that ‘the girl’
has been ‘gone.’ The acting in this film
is actually uniformly wonderful: I was pleasantly surprised by the excellence
of Affleck, from whom I did not expect that; Pike was chillingly
wonderful (although given that her character having diplomas from both Harvard and
Yale hanging on her wall, I had made me wonder what Fincher would have
her do, given his grim view of Harvard in The Social Network); and all the supporting cast did well—Neil
Patrick Harris as Amy’s old boyfriend Desi, Carrie Coon as Nick’s
sister Margo, Kim Dickens as Detective Rhonda Boney, and Tyler Perry
as Nick’s lawyer Tanner Bolt. And Fincher does indeed succeed in
creating one of his signature, dark, somber, threatening moods. The real problem with Gone Girl is its story—and,
since both the screenplay and the novel it was based on were written by the
same person, Gillian
Flynn , it is clear the blame rests with her.
The story is poor: it is contrived, shallow, plodding, and
pretentious—and these are not good things in mystery. In some ways the movie could be seen as
harmless enough entertainment, but not at its ponderous 145 minute length: at
that length it was not able to move along with the pace that would be necessary
for lighter entertainment. And the fact
of its pretensions—even in the predictable but intended as profoundly
surprising turns of plot, and even in the weightiness of Fincher’s
somber mood, which in other contexts would be additive—also militate against
accepting it as just an entertaining trifle.
And as a serious film designed to exude gravitas, Gone Girl simply lacked the requisite depth or substance to make it work. (Of
course, for a wonderful spoof version of Fincher’s mood
creation, I recommend to you instead the episode on our son’s show, Community,
entitled “Basic Intergluteal Numismatics” [because it deals with the ‘ravages’
caused by the crime spree of the ‘ass-crack bandit,’ who has been terrorizing
the campus by dropping quarters down people’s butt-cracks] which was done from
beginning to end in the style of a Fincher film, including the credits.
Same dark Fincher moodiness, but far more fun!)