WEST OF MEMPHIS opens at Violet Crown Cinema Feb. 22
When the bodies of 8 year-old boys Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Beyers were found in a creek with gruesome cuts and scratches all over their bodies including their genitalia the scene was so horrific, it enraged the whole community. Collectively they asked, “who could do something like this?” Considering the strange and brutal nature of the murders, Satanic ritual seemed to be the only plausible answer, leading police to Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelly. Deemed “The West Memphis 3″ these teenage boys were aggressive, dark, and disrespectful of authority. For the prosecution, getting the guilty sentence was easy, but it was not honest. The details of what went wrong to land 3 apparently innocent young men in jail and on death row, and what went into freeing them are elegantly laid out in WEST OF MEMPHIS, Amy Berg’s (DELIVER US FROM EVIL) illuminating documentary.
WEST OF MEMPHIS owes much to PARADISE LOST, the trilogy of documentaries which played a vital role in spreading awareness of the injustice and promoted the activism that helped the West Memphis 3 win their freedom. Berg’s documentary does not echo PARADISE LOST, but rather, builds upon it and shows how it effected the key players in the story. Much like the outrage that ignited the community following the discovery of the bodies of the murdered children, WEST OF MEMPHIS shows the outrage of the millions of people involved in the “Free the West Memphis 3″ movement. However, in this story which has a lot of pain and anger, Amy Berg focuses on the overwhelming dedication and love exhibited by the West Memphis 3, their families, friends on the outside, and the countless strangers who fought for them.
The West Memphis 3. Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols, and Jessie Misskelly
Perhaps the most engaging aspect of WEST OF MEMPHIS is the way in which the ever-increasing number of people close to the WM3, including the film’s producer, Peter Jackson, get more and more energized as each piece of evidence comes to the surface and the narrative told by the prosecutors begins to unravel. Though the fight was very long and not without its share of roadblocks, their conviction and positivity is nothing short of inspiring. However, it is impossible to forget at the heart of this story is the tragic death of 3 innocent lives. With every new discovery, questions about who did not commit the crime are settled, but that only leaves us to wonder who is really responsible for the death of Stevie, Michael, and Christopher.
Michael Haneke’s AMOUR opens at Violet Crown Cinema January 25th
For those familiar with the films of director, Michael Haneke, devastation and intensity are to be expected. In films like CACHE and FUNNY GAMES, Haneke brutally confronts his audience with an outlook on humanity that is aggressive and sometimes difficult (albeit fascinating) to watch. Here with his second Palm D’or winning film AMOUR, he slightly diverges from what we have come to expect from him by presenting something that is devastating, yes, but is also very moving and personal.
Many people in loving, committed relationships must live through the trauma of experiencing the slow decline and death of their partner. Such is the case for Georges and Anne (names that will be very familiar to fans of Haneke), a married couple whose love for each other has been constant, even in the face of the indignity Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) suffers after a serious stroke. Learning the meaning of the words “in sickness and in health”, Georges (Jean-Louis Trintingnant) suffers as well in his inability to comfort and console his wife. Because Anne is so ashamed of her condition, Georges feels he must shield her from embarrassment and stress at the hands of her nurses, visitors and their well-meaning, but intrusive daughter. Eva (Isabelle Hupert). However, AMOUR is not without tenderness. As the title implies, the love and compassion between their family is palpable.
Perhaps it is the sublime level of humanity Haneke is able to achieve with his actors in AMOUR that makes its unflinching realism that much more savage on your emotions. Emmanuelle Riva’s beautiful performance got her an Academy Award nomination. More than just physically adopting the characteristics of a stroke victim, she is continually able to keep her character active, even if her body is not. Playing opposite her is the legendary Jean-Louis Trintignant whose portrayal of a man who is finding it increasingly difficult to be strong for his wife, is what carries the film. In an interview with Larry Rother of the New York Times Michael Haneke said, “As far back as when I was a young man, there were two actors who were my favorites: Marlon Brando and Jean-Louis Trintignant.” When watching AMOUR, it is clear to see why. Trintignant perfectly executes the kind of stoic, subtle, intensity that Haneke deals in, but brings something extra to the table. Ultimately, it is the emotional investment from the actors and the audience that makes AMOUR something special and should not be missed.
Zero Dark Thirty, the latest film from Academy Award winning director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), tells the story of Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA operative who led the US intelligence’s attempts to track down Osama Bin Laden. The film opens on a black screen with the audio from 9/11 passengers calling families and loved ones from the plane, an emotional scene for any American, and from there jumps to a CIA torture room where we meet Maya in her first interrogation.
Bigelow spends no time establishing Maya’s backstory, choosing instead to focus entirely on what the CIA was doing post-9/11 in their attempts to track down Bin Laden. Jessica Chastain plays the role of Maya perfectly, leading the hunt for Bin Laden all across the world, from Afghanistan to Langley, and from Pakistan to DC. Although Maya is never given a backstory, she is given plenty of motivation for her relentless pursuit of Bin Laden throughout the film. The more involved with CIA operations in the Middle East she gets, the more entangled she gets with her leads and her co-workers. Maya rises from being the new kid straight out of Washington to being the agent who debriefs the president’s advisors, and the viewer sees every step of the process… including the many risks associated with being a CIA operative in the Middle East.
If there is one thing that Bigelow captures better than anything else, it is the adversity Maya faces in her hunt for Bin Laden. There were a multitude of reasons why it took almost 10 years to track down Bin Laden, and Bigelow puts those issues right at the core of Zero Dark Thirty. From captured Al Qaeda members refusing to break in torture rooms to politicians refusing to take action against Bin Laden due to high probability of failure or questionable intelligence, Maya is forced to fight battles on all fronts. In the process she loses all of her friends in the Middle East, and becomes the lone wolf trying to finish what she was sent there to do.
Throughout the entire film, the actors surrounding Chastain help provide unprecedented realism for a film about such a well-known topic. Bigelow was able to draw excellent performances from all of the stars throughout the film including Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Mark Duplass, Chris Pratt, Mark Strong, and James Gandolfini. Every actor, regardless of the size of his or her role, delivers a spot on performance. The torture scenes at CIA black sites feel like torture rooms, CIA headquarters and Washington DC are uncannily tangible, and when the SEALS begin prepping for their mission, it is easy to forget that there are actors underneath all of that tactical gear.
When it all comes together, Bigelow has created a film that is a must see of 2013, and will definitely rack up some awards in the coming months. Zero Dark Thirty portrays the hunt for Bin Laden so realistically that it is easy to forget that this film was made in Hollywood, and as a result might not be entirely accurate. Although this is already causing problems with the media and the Senate Intelligence Committee, it doesn’t take anything away from the quality of the film itself, and easily exceeds the high level of expectations set by Bigelow’s earlier films.
In traditional narrative cinema, it is rare for a film to achieve a visual expressiveness that matches – yet does not interfere- with its storytelling. By in large, visual panache is subdued in favor of narrative thrust, and moments of cinematographic flair are reserved for punctuation rather than syntax. Every so often, though, there is that perfect combination of look and feel, style and substance, director and cinematographer that imbues an entire work with the magic feeling we call “cinematic.”
Perhaps the greatest of these collaborative duos was that of director Mikhail Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky whose work together produced a string of world-class motion pictures in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Some of these films have become beloved arthouse classics, such as the 1957 war epic The Cranes Are Flying or 1964’s I Am Cuba, both of which are firmly cemented in the canon of world cinema.Equally dazzling, yet somehow criminally overlooked, is their 1959 collaboration Letter Never Sent. For reasons unclear, this astonishingly beautiful tragedy never broke through in the West like Cranes or Cuba, and has remained one of the true hidden gems of filmmaking history.
The simple story of four Soviet geologists searching for diamonds in the rugged Taiga wilderness, Letter Never Sent is an allegory of perseverance, endurance, sacrifice and survival. Adopting an unusual two-act structure, the first half of the film tracks the team’s virulent and seemingly fruitless pursuit of the precious stones. No sooner are they discovered though, than the expedition is forced to abandon camp by a raging forest fire. The latter half of the film, then, tracks the geologists’ struggle to save not only themselves, but their invaluable discovery as well.
This parable has explicitly political undertones, which fit it squarely within the tradition of Socialist Realism. Hard work and manual labor are glorified within the first half, while the personal sacrifice of the individual for the greater good is the dominant theme of the latter. Still, a more universal resonance can be found in the idea of working hard to attain something, and then working even harder to keep it. With nature as its formidable antagonist, Letter Never Sent is a testament to Man’s will to survive. With nature at center stage, Letter Never Sent is filled with an aspect at once harsh and sensuous. The epic Siberian landscape not only provides a majestic backdrop for the drama, it is presented as a character, a daunting force the mortals must constantly contend with physically and mentally. Falling over loose rocks, wading through snow and freezing waters, even ducking through burning branches, the group is constantly at the mercy of the elements. Their only defense is the sheer will to survive.
What distinguishes Letter Never Sent from other survival films, though, is no doubt the photography, which is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Utilizing the simplicity of the story and characters, Kalatozov and Urusevsky were able to create a visual language that is endemic to the film. Every shot in Letter Never Sent has been carefully conceptualized, choreographed and executed for maximum impact and visual symbolism. In the film’s very first shot, for example, the main characters are seen from the point of view of a departing helicopter. At first, their faces fill the screen, but as the camera rises and rises, they become nothing more than obscure specks on the vast landscape.
This type of visual expressiveness had all but disappeared with the advent of talking pictures, yet Kalatozov was able to blend it seamlessly into a distinctly modern approach to filmmaking. Urusevsky’s arsenal of visual storytelling techniques is applied in consistently elegant yet experimental ways, most notably in the incredibly long, impeccably choreographed hand-held shots following the actors through dense forests. This style, which Kalatozov and Urusevsky began with The Cranes Are Flying and fully exploited with I Am Cuba, can be seen as the steppingstone between the Soviet cinema of Eisenstein and the silent era, and the Soviet cinema of Tarkovsky and the “new wave” of the 1960s and 70s. Letter Never Sent is a delight for both the connoisseur and the casual filmgoer. Its reputation is only now growing in the West, making it one of cinema’s best-kept secrets. – Hunter Shaw, Arthouse Monthly Programmer
The country, more divided than it had ever been and in the midst of a long and bloody war, voted to reelect the president despite very vocal concerns about his ability to lead the nation. This eerily familiar setup is one of the many things that make LINCOLN, directed by Steven Speilberg, an enthralling work of cinema. Much more than just a representation of a moment in history or a reverent and ideological portrait of a president, LINCOLN is a fascinating case-study of how the American government makes policies that affect the course of history. Despite the fact that it is set in the past, nothing could be more relevant.
Anybody who went to grade school in the United States is familiar with the Civil War, the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Lincoln's assassination. So rather than re-hashing that version of that era, Spielberg adapted Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin's, text, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which focuses on Lincoln's struggle to get the 13th amendment passed. To do this, he needs to win the support of several Democrats who are staunchly against him while making sure that the Republican party is completely unified. Meanwhile, the Civil War, the bloodiest in our history, rages on. The scenes on the battlefield, as beautiful as they are harrowing, provide a great deal of moral conflict for Lincoln. The opening of the film shows Lincoln in a Union camp, talking to black soldiers whose contribution to the war effort was vital. He knows that the war is savage, but in order to make sure that the black men who fought did not return to the savagery of slavery, he has to risk prolonging it.
The moral dilema facing Lincoln extends to many members of his cabinet and the House of Repesentatives who each have very strong opinions on what should be prioritized. In perhaps one of the most most stand-out performances in the film, Tommy Lee Jones plays the outspoken abolitionist, Thaddeus Stevens, whose passionate and often comic speaches about the full equality of all human beings threaten to intimidate and enrage the opposing party whom Lincoln is counting on for support. In presenting such moral complexity, the film beggs the question: should elected politicians compromise on what they truly believe in their hearts to be right for the sake of making a small amount of progress as opposed to none at all? With the fiscal cliff rapidly approaching, it is a question that is just as relevant now as it was then.
If it has taken me a while to get around to Daniel Day Lewis's performance as Lincoln, it is because it is so flawless, it hardly seems like there is an actor there at all. All aspects of D.D.L. are completely lost in the awesome power of Lincoln. Even his characteristic booming voice gives way to the high-pitched, light and airy voice that Lincoln was said to have had. It is especially easy to forget you are watching an actor during the handful of scenes in the film where Lincoln is telling humerous stories from history, living in these light-weight moments, the only moments of levity he is allowed to have.
In many ways, LINCOLN is not the film one would expect. It is a political process film that is set in a war; it is about one of the most moral presidents in history making moral compromises; it complicates him and in doing so, humanizes him. Ultimately, what LINCOLN offers is an alternative view of history that is surprisingly similar to the present.
The most talked-about film to come out of Sundance this year, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD has been winning the praise of critics such as Amy Taubin of Artforum who said “BEASTS is an ecological fairy tale, both cautionary and inspiring.” Though it is difficult to avoid the hype surrounding this film in the outside world, when inside the theater, it all slips away and suddenly you are immersed in the intoxicating scenery and character of the Bathtub, the fictionalized community in the bayou of New Orleans where the film is set. Equally captivating are the performances by the multitude of non-actors who are from the surrounding area, especially Quvenzhané Wallis (Hushpuppy), and Dwight Henry (Wink).
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD is told from the point of view of Hushpuppy, a precocious 6-year-old girl who describes her environment in poetic, Malick-esque voice-over. Her ailing father, Wink, is the leader of their poor, but not downtrodden, community and the sole caregiver for Hushpuppy since her mother “swam away.” When a Katrina-like storm threatens the Bathtub, Wink springs into action, determined to protect his home and the homes of his neighbors. Hushpuppy, who experiences the Bathtub as a place that is full of magic and humming with life, perceives the natural threat of the storm and the man-made threat of the evacuators as a stampede of auroch’s, ice-age beasts set free from melting glaciers, coming to destroy her home until they are stopped.
Utilizing the powerful and unforgettable images of post-Katrina New Orleans, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD weaves recent disaster with folklore that speaks to the heart of Americana, where the feeling that anything is possible is prevalent even when reality contradicts it. BEASTS is not a didactic film about the facts of natural disaster and the massive human toll, nor is it attempting to comment on political reactions. (If anything, this film offers possibility of being examined from every point of view on the political spectrum, presenting libertarian rugged individualism in harmony with liberal ideas of diversity, community, and the humanity of the poor). Rather, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD is an interpretation of the emotional experience of an apocalyptic change through the eyes of a small child.
Made by a collective of people living in New Orleans, directed by Benh Zeitlin, and starring people who live in the community, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD is grassroots in aesthetics, theme and production. It is a true American independent film and should not be missed.
As a young filmmaker, I have been dismayed and disillusioned to observe the mainstream and independent markets growing increasingly homogenous over the last decade. Both arenas have grown stagnant, suffocating on their own proven formulas. Perhaps this is simply indicative of the ebb and flow of tastes and technologies that direct the evolution of cinema, but it can certainly leave a film enthusiast feeling jaded. Sometimes, though, there is a game changer, a paradigm shift, the 100th monkey, the final straw. Every so often a film comes out that clears away all the detritus and residual plaque of junk food entertainment. It is like falling in love again: a familiar high in a brand new variation. It smacks you in the face and says “this is how it should be,” and you know it’s right.
“Beasts of the Southern Wild” is that kind of movie. To its core, it is a revelation in filmmaking. Produced on a miniscule budget by a tiny, close-knit crew of long time friends and collaborators, “Beasts” is bursting with visual splendor, charisma, and emotion. Its very fiber challenges the commonplace excess of mainstream filmmaking, displaying the transcendent quality of Cinema that is all too often squashed by the limitations of the studio system. This is salt of the earth filmmaking, a modern day folktale rendered by true craftsmen.
I was able to speak with director Benh Zeitlin about his unique process with COURT 13, the independent production company he co-founded several years ago. When he talks about making “Beasts,” his first feature film, he frequently says “we” when other directors would say “I.” This word choice speaks volumes about the creative community produced by their immersive approach, and the organic genius it creates.
“That sort of fluidity,” he says, “that’s our paintbrush. That’s everything about how we make films. We had this privilege to really allow a lot of people’s creativity to get on screen, which in a traditional process doesn’t really happen. You see the creative energy get kinda sucked out of people by the hierarchy of the method. I’m definitely not interested in making movies any other way. It’s hard to even separate out, because everybody I know works on the films. Like, my family works on the films. The way that we make the films is almost a lifestyle. And it’s a great lifestyle.”
The rewards of this personal involvement come through most explicitly in the performances. “Beasts” feels organic and real, at times even like a documentary. This can be attributed in large part to Zeitlin’s exceptional direction of a cast comprised entirely of non-professional actors – each of whom turn out award-worthy performances. “I think that the big difference working with non-actors than actors” Zeitlin says, “is that actors have a very private way of generating emotion. They all have their own method to channel feeling into a performance that you don’t want to interfere with as a director, you want to let them use their own tools. The difference with a non-professional actor is that you are inventing those tools together. So, it’s much more… It’s just much more personal.”
Zeitlin cites Emir Kusturica and John Cassavetes as influences in his casting and directing technique. “Watching those movies you have this affection for not just the character on the screen, but the person playing that character. You sense so viscerally their life outside the movie. Whether that’s accurate or not, the type of performance that is and the type of people that are cast in like ‘Underground’ and ‘Black Cat White Cat’ give you this joy of entering a community that you want to be a part of- or I want to be a part of! It’s like the party that you want to go to.”
“Beasts’” utopian party comes in the form of a fictional bayou village in southern Louisiana called “The Bathtub.” Although the lifestyle doesn’t exhibit the material characteristics typical of western affluence, the people there live a rich life. There is no need for money in The Bathtub because everyone lives off the bounty of the land. Secluded from industrial society, they take advantage of the ecological richness of their environment. But for every few thousand decadent crab feasts, the bill comes in the form of a massive hurricane. Despite this constant threat, the people of The Bathtub live in a harmonious state with nature, and are at peace with its price. In fact, it seems to bring them closer together. Everyday is a celebration in The Bathtub, because tomorrow it might be underwater.
“The Bathtub is a place with no divisive ideology whatsoever,” Zeitlin explains. “It’s this kind of imagined utopia of what it would be like to have a place where there aren’t class issues, there aren’t religious issues, old and young people aren’t divided, you know, races are not divided. It’s an imagination of pure unity.” The metaphor never comes off as overtly political or preachy, which can be largely accredited to the story being told through the inherently non-political point of view of six-year-old protagonist Hushpuppy. We experience her world through her eyes and her thoughts, which brings “Beasts” to life with the unique magic of child-reality. But her reality in The Bathtub is anything but utopian in the traditional sense. She is treated like an adult, and expected to act like one in a variety of challenging circumstances. Her ailing father Wink teaches her to fend for herself, disguising his own pain and sadness with tough love roughness. Never too rough, though, “Beasts” occupies a refreshing medium that displays neither the sanitized vision of Hollywood nor the brutal, shock effect tendencies of certain independent camps.
Indeed, this recipe makes for a wonderfully accessible and appealing film – for my money, one of the best coming of age stories ever committed to celluloid. Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks so: after it’s Sundance premier, Fox Searchlight purchased the film. Yes, that Fox Searchlight. Though they gave the filmmakers no upfront guarantee, the distribution will certainly get “Beasts” into more than a few mainstream theaters. Hopefully, this will be indicative of a large-scale shift in the kind of films that are picked up by traditional distributors. But if it’s not, at least the Independent scene has a brilliant new auteur.
Despite his “mainstream success,” Zeitlin is resolute to keep making films his own way. At the end of our conversation, I asked Benh what advice he had for a first-time director. He laughed and said, “Oh man, I don’t know. I always hesitate to give advice in any form because we do a lot of crazy stuff. But, I think it’s important to not get too caught up in what people are going to think of your film while you are making it. I always think that the best thing you can make is the thing that emerges the most naturally out of yourself. You don’t want to get bogged down in what type of film is going to get financed or what type of film is going to get into festivals or anything like that. Because, you know, my experience with [Beasts] is that the world is really looking for something different, and they don’t know what they’re looking for. They’re looking to see something that emerges from somebody in an honest way.”
After the announcement that Woody Allen’s next film will be located in San Francisco and New York, it looks like we might be seeing the end of his European sojourn in TO ROME WITH LOVE. And what a wonderful trip it has been, filled with beautifully shot echoes of earlier Allen films. We’ve revisited CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS’ questions of guilt and morality in MATCH POINT, and we’ve luxuriated in RADIO DAYS-esque nostalgia in last year’s surprise hit MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. Now, as Allen makes the requisite stop in Italy for TO ROME WITH LOVE, we find the filmmaker returning to a whole litany of past ideas through four distinct stories, each taking place in a breathtakingly gorgeous Roman setting.
If you recoil at the thought of another multiple storyline film, featuring an overwhelming number of characters and plotlines that slowly converge to an inevitable climax, have no fear. With the exception of a few minor connections, Allen keeps his stories separate, using the many narratives instead to create variations on a theme. What we have, then, are four vignettes that present characters with opportunities to be something that they’re not. When each character embraces these opportunities, hilarity ensues in what is one of Allen’s lightest, breeziest films.
This is not to say that it isn’t also one of his most thoughtful films. As an ardent fan of Woody Allen’s work, I have always argued, even during some of his rougher patches, that the ideas have always been there. Allen’s films all seem to emerge, not from some character or plot device, but from something he wants to get off of his chest. In this latest film, Allen has something to say about celebrity, fidelity, and ambition, and he says it all with wit and poignancy.
With an Italian traffic cop directing our gaze, we look down one street and see Roberto Benigni as a man who suddenly becomes one of the celebrities he and his wife always obsess over in the tabloids and the evening news. After climbing over a few rows worth of Hollywood royalty to accept his Oscar, Benigni has been mostly written off in this country. But I would argue that his appearance in this film proves to be some of the smartest casting of Allen’s career, giving Benigni a chance to return to the Buster Keaton-esque performance style that won him the Oscar and reveals him to be one of the more talented comic actors working today.
Look down another street and you’ll find Woody Allen himself as a retired opera director who, upon being introduced to the parents of his daughter’s Italian fiancé, discovers that the father is a talented opera singer. Unfortunately, this undiscovered voice only seems to work when the man is singing in the shower. How Allen works around this minor obstacle is easily the film’s funniest ongoing gag.
Add to these stories two depictions of young love endangered by ill-fated lusts and infidelities, populated by promising young actors like Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, and Ellen Page, and you have a movie chock full of richly drawn characters and delightfully funny situations. Top it all off with veterans Alec Baldwin and Penelope Cruz sweeping in and stealing one scene after another and you have a film that is not to be missed. It will be nice to see Allen return to his New York stomping grounds, but I, for one, am a little sad to see these European escapades come to an end.
- Stephen Jannise, Film Program Director – Austin Film Festival
