Reviews
Caterina va in città (2003)
Funny, Sad, Touching. Worth your time
Caterina gives us an opportunity to feel and a chance to hope. A young girl both naive and somehow mature, she is unsure of what she wants in life. Her task is learning to navigate the waters of a high school in Rome where she is the new girl from the sticks when her father is transfered from a small town on the coast. He fulfills his dream of returning to the cultural mecca of the capital where he hopes to take his "rightful" place among the intelligentsia. But the film turns on just this point"rightful place". There are no simple answers, though we do have an opportunity to see how complex it is to find one's place, rightful or not, in the world. Caterina is something of a metaphor for the Italian populace at large, I would think. But she is more than this. There is something about her story that touched me, several decades and half a world away from the world she inhabits, a world stratified by cliques and patronage, prejudice and injustice...a world very much like the one I live in and the one I imagine most of us live in. Caterinaas the film that bears her namedoes not take the easy way out in running away or self-repression or living a life of quiet desperation, even when her sheltered provincial upbringing and less-than-ideal family situation do not give her any clues on how to deal with her new life and classmates from prominent families. She tries to adjust to the fast-pace and superficiality of life in the Italian capital, and much of the fun of the movie is seeing her in the various situations she encounters along the way. Her father is great as the frustrated writer with no talent and a loud voice, a self-important boor. My heart goes out to all the Caterinas of the world, who go forward with optimism and pure heart even when they know the odds are against them.
Brava Gente Brasileira (2000)
an anti-epic
I just saw this film at the 2002 Latino Film Festival in the Bay Area
Director Lucia Murat was in attendance and made some comments after the film, among which were that this film is "not an epic...it's an anti-epic". I think this gets it about right. Beautifully filmed, this story is loosely based on historical facts; but very tightly structured around anthropological research into the Guaicuru, a people who once lived in Brazil's Mato Grosso state. The actors portraying the Guaicuru are all modern Kadiweu villagers, descendants of the Guaicuru. The Kadiweu number less than 1000 today, and, according to Murat, face a very uncertain future. Problems of alienation and alcoholism as well as pervasive racism combine to severely limit the horizon of these people of ancient lineage. The film does not portray them as 100% "noble" though we are in no doubt about where our sympathies are to lie. The device of tricking the audience into associating with the Portuguese colonizers is a very effective means to setting up the final climax. Even though the historical events upon which the film are based took place in 1778, Kadiweu elders still have an oral history of them, and this is the basis for the film. How often our histories are written only by the European conquerers. Even though Murat is a white Brazilian, she has done the near impossible--found a bit of living memory of the distant past, and dramatized it to perfection. There is little if any precedent for a film like this, anywhere. Interesting to note is that the Kadiweu people were extensively documented by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his landmark book "Tristes Tropiques" where he said that he thought he would be the last European to see them, as they were clearly headeded for extinction. (Among other things, the women limit themselves to one child, so there is a natural tendency towards decrease in their population. However, since they kidnap children from other tribes their numbers have not declined as much as statistics and Lévi-Strauss predicted.) If you have ever read "Tristes Tropiques" then you will be grateful for this opportunity to travel into the world he documented in the 1930s, and to see how it has survived into today. Dramatized as high art, we also get historical and anthropological research into the origins of not only the Brazilian state, but also by implication of the entire colonial enterprise across many countries and cultures. The artistic choice of not subtitling the Kadiweu dialog contributes to our inevitable association with...ourselves...the descendants of the colonizers. Murat stated that to subtitle the Kadiweu dialog would be forcing an interpretation onto their language...as it is, their language functions musically (amid a backdrop of lush soundscape which for me was one of the highlights of the film) and allows us to feel some of the utter strangeness of the early European experience in the colonial world, while preserving the dignity of the Kadiweu. This film deserves to be seen and I am certain that it will be studied and viewed 50 and 100 years from now, unlike 99% of the other films released in the world today.
Gamlet (1964)
A Treat for the Eyes and the Ears
I have to marvel at the production values in this wonderful film. Exquisite sets, lighting and costumes. Stunning location. Epic original music score by Dmitri Shostokovitsch -- the music alone is more than enough to recommend this film. Great acting by, among others, Innokenti Smoktunovsky as Hamlet. Every scene an artistically complete poem of light and sound. Oh, and if you wonder what it's like to hear Shakespeare in Russian . . . it's great! The translation is by Boris Pasternak, one of the finest poets in any language. An epic treatment of the epic story.
Panic (2000)
Haunting Poignancy, Strong Performances
The end of this film hit me with more poignancy than any other film I have seen recently. I won't give it away, because it's a powerful moment, if you are ready for it.
A carefully orchestrated balance between psychological drama and black comedy, this film satisfies on several levels. Donald Sutherland puts in a good performance as the archtypical bad dad - the root of all evil, so to speak. William H. Macy portrays his son, the emotionally stunted Alex, to perfection. Neve Campbell is stunning in the role of a catalytic strong young woman who knows what she is all about even while doubting herself. When she comes into Alex's life, a chain of events unfolds that leads Alex to self-knowledge, and the audience to an epiphany of the tragic sweetness of life itself.
This film deserves wide exposure.
Taafé Fanga (1997)
"Skirt Power" works on many levels, in different ways for different audiences
The title of this well-produced mythic story from Mali translates as "Skirt Power". For its domestic audience, the story is probably highly comical. For an audience in the industrialized world, the comic aspect is less important. It's a nice, well-told story with a very clear point: women deserve an equal say with men in the way their and their families lives are led. Taafé Fanga makes this simple though profound point by connecting contemporary reality with the collective memory of the not-so-distant past and from there to the mythic origins of the Dogon people and their culture of masks, dance and legend. The Dogon of course are one of the world's great mystery peoples, whose ancient cosmology is based on the 50-year cycle of the Star Sirius B - the existence of which was not discovered by Western Science until the 1960s.
In any case, the drama revolves around a role reversal of the sexes, with men and women reversing their respective characteristic roles and mannerism. The really interesting aspect of this reversal for me was the way that each sex accepted its new role as a fait accompli; a nice commentary on the arbitrary nature of sex roles (in Mali and everywhere else).
An added bonus to this charming film is the high production values - top-notch photography and editing, well-paced, beautiful. Not a perfect film by any means, but a strong production which can stand side-by-side comparison with a major studio release from any country.
Vtáckovia, siroty a blázni (1969)
Disturbing, Surreal, Flawed, Powerful
This film is equal parts 1969 acid trip, socialist-era Eastern European allegorical political manifesto and mirror held up to the Slovak soul. Maybe the surreal aspect of the film is just an accident! In any case, this film shows us the rubble of Bratislava just after the Prague spring. Maybe Spring came late to Bratislava. Maybe it never came at all. There are some great (and classic) surreal scenes, but there is very little continuity to the story - in fact very little story per say at all. To recommend it, this film still has a cutting-edge feel more than 30 years after it was originally made. Its basic premise seems to be that life (or at least life in the Czechoslovak Soviet Socialist Republic at the end of the 1960s) drives one mad - and that madness leads to unthinkable barbarity. Hence the few truly nauseating scenes of violence. Still, a unique look at a unique place and time, with memorable images. View at your own risk.
Croupier (1998)
Gripping.
I profess a certain fascination with the gambler's mentality, so it was easy for me to like this film. But it held my attention in ways that didn't have much to do with gambling at all. Interesting situations, good dialogue, refined film noir aesthetic. This is definitely London, England and not Las Vegas, Nevada. A few elements of the plot seemed contrived (it's all contrived, it's just not supposed to seem that way), but overall I would definitely recommend this entertaining meditation on fate and personality.