Kaunas International Film Festival Film Journalism Workshop

Monika Gimbutaitė – Restless

Kaunas IFF — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:44:06 +0000

Gus Van Sant is famous for his films about youth (“My Own Private Idaho“, “Good Will Hunting”), in which he perfectly reveals their problems. Teenagers in his films are confused, without having any idea what to do with their their lives and the struggles they have to suffer. His latest film „Restless“ tries to combine two most common themes in history of art – love and death.

“Restless” is a love story about two typical Van Santian characters – young, sensitive and troubled people, who are way too familiar with death for their age. Annabel (M. Wasikowska), a girl with brain cancer, meets Enoch (Hopper), who likes to attend funerals of strangers. They don’t have enough time, yet they both try to deal with a fact of death and experience together as much as possible.

Annabel loves nature, she idolizes Charles Darwin and always talks about bugs or birds. Even though she is the one who is going to die, Annabel always tries to see the bright side. Her positiveness and smiling all the time can seem unrealistic and even artificial but this is her mask and her way to deal with grief. Contradictory, Enoch is sorrowful and gloomy after loss of his parents. At the same time he is both fascinated and scared of death. By crashing random funerals and talking with his imaginary friend ghost Hiroshi, who was kamikaze in Japan, Enoch desperately tries to understand the nature of death and reveal it’s secret.

Besides the fact that main characters have to face death in their lives, shadows of death are paranoidly following viewers during the whole film. Story takes place in autumn, when leafs are in ”colors of death”. Annabel tells a story about songbirds that sing because they didn’t know whether they‘d wake up in the morning. Couple goes to morgue and guess what happened to people there. Talking about death is always precarious and it is obvious that in this case “Restless“, written by young screenwriter J. Lew, lacks subtlety and starts to speculate with emotions. It seems that by constantly repeating the same message in different forms and aspects authors nearly forgot other themes. Maybe too much time was spent searching for artfully framed shots (that are actually really good) and looking for retro-vintage outfits for actors before fully finishing and fulfilling the story.
restless
While watching a film it‘s hard to get rid of a feeling that main characters are like perfect paragons – one-sided, predictable and that’s why pretty boring. They are not as complex as in Gus van Sant previous films, where characters had more than one problem and also more than one topic for conversation („My Own Private Idaho“, “Good Will Hunting”). It must be mentioned that actors did their best to give some warmth to their characters, although Hopper sometimes seems unsure of himself in his first lead role. That might be the reason of his eaggertion and overacting in dramatic scenes. Wasikowska (“The Kids Are All Right”, “Jane Eyre”) is always strong even if her character here is way more monotonous than Hopper’s.

If you watch “Restless” as a typical romantic drama, you shouldn’t be very disappointed. Even though a love story is not very special itself, actors do as much as possible to convince the audience. Listening to indie music and watching a cute couple might be quite nice, especially as you still don’t realize that their relationship basically is just a happy montage of skating, fencing, bicycling and running through fields

The strangest thing is that we can’t actually see any symptoms of Annabel’s disease. Her body doesn’t change even during the last stage of cancer. In ”Restless” death is shown more like an idea or a concept, denying what cannot be denied. The scene in which characters rehearse Annabel’s death (which turned out to be their own version of “Romeo and Juliet” ending) is not so different from the death that is shown in this film. An idea of sterile, painless and over romanticized ending of life is too far from reality and faulty itself.

“Restless” gives an impression of schematic and dishonest film, where life flows by somewhere between sentimental flashbacks. It seems that Gus Van Sant is lost between mainstream compromises and his ambitions as independent director, which is the reason of making film about death without real death, film about feelings without real feelings.

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“Black Bread”: The Flight To The Cage

Kaunas IFF — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 08:13:24 +0000

“Black Bread” – the film by Agusti Villaronga made by the same name Emili Teixidor novel, with elements of two other works by him, Retrat d’un assassí d’ocells and Sic transit Gloria Swanson, won many awards in films festivals and first film in Catalan language, has submitted the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards.
The story develops at Spanish Civil War (1944) postwar period in Catalan village. In the forest 11-year-old Andreu (Francesc Colomer) finds corpses of a man and a boy. Suspicion of murder falls on Farriol (Roger Casamajor), father of Andreu, so he is forced into hiding. The boy believes that his father was innocent, but sent to another village further away from his parents’ problems, he has to reflect the question of his father innocence again.
The film is playing two spaces. One is closed – the houses, the cave, and second is open – the forest, the river, the way, the field. In the closes spaces dominate almost just grown-up. In their space-time suddenly all things become serious and ominous, frightening in its rational and inevitable. However, children are not prohibited in some moments intrude into the dangerous grown-up areas. For example, when the police arrested Farriol, children observe the arrest and thus they start to learn to understand an adult world full of negative things. Andreu dreams later that his cousin of his peers Nuria (Marina Comas) and he finds themselves in a cave and sees how adult males unsex a youngster. These images introduce children to the cruelty of adult existence. However, all the woeful experiences, caused by the invasion of the grown-up world, are offset by open space, reserved for children. Forest, road, meadow, where they tell legends, and sometimes have a fight, but the space is open to the most supernatural, magical forces that are friendly for the child, but oppressed by adults.
In this film one of these mystical creatures is a man-bird, which Andreu observes twice. The first time is when a man-bird drink water from the river, and the second time – Andreu cousin Nuria flitter. In both scenes are the substance of the nudity and the flight, but between the scenes is a major difference. Angelic looking naked guy imitate a bird in the back wings movements and drink the water from the river. His white body color combines with the splendor of the river, and creating the picture of some utopian place and with a sacred angelic chastity impression. That purity feeling is the opposite of the second soiled collision of Andreu with a man-bird.
Nuria stands in the balcony half undressed (contrary to the guy on the river nudity) and replicate bird flight. Looking at it there is no thoughts of beauty and spirituality. For girl can be seen in dark, dirty hole in the door and dirty house wall color, emphasizing not so much about living in a family house in material poverty as an earthly child nudity, which, when she flaps its arms, turns into lubricious eroticism. Nuria’s character represents the earthly, the opposite of freedom/flight ideal of Andreu, instilled by his father. Once upon the grenade cut off the hand of the girl, so now her flutter in the balcony is disabled, grotesque and ill-omened fate, because the incomplete hand is like a dead wing, as an allegory of captivity.
Generally the screenplay develops of freedom of human in captivity of human. The first few scenes depicted in the forest shows a place where freedom rules apply. However, although the horse is in the territory of freedom, like one of the most important symbols of her, the opportunity of freedom will soon condemned: horse brutally murdered. All what happens after is marked feeling of incarceration. And really – the lasts film scenes finish unequal struggle between freedom and captivity, poverty and wealth, mind and heart. Disappointed grown-up lie, but perhaps still too young to understand the adult world, Andrew opened his dark corners soul. Lost faith in the authority of his father, ceasing to respect his mother, rejected the proposal hopeful of Nuria escape; he closes in a prison – at school, where everyone wears the same uniforms and receives harsh penalties for noncompliance. Thus Andreu forgets the instruction of his own father that the essence is not that what your mind, and what is in the heart.

by Otilija Kerbelytė

THE RETURN OF DRAGON

Otilija Kerbelyte — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 21:09:18 +0000

Title: The Return of Dragon (Drak sa vracia)

Country: Czechoslovakia
Years: 1967
Genre: Drama
Duration: 82 min.

Director: Eduard Grecner

When the eyes get tired from the bright and impressive images on the screen, there is the right time to watch old black and white movie. Let’s say, the Slovakian new wave, representing by the director Eduardo Grecner work “Return of the Dragon” (1967).

This is an intensive plot story about Martin Lepish, and the story is not much worse than today’s action thriller. Rural community once has made the man of artistic nature a scapegoat for all village woes. Martin otherwise known as the Dragon left the community but one day he returned to resurrect the specter of the past.

In this film Eduardo Grečner brings together all of humanity superstition. However, this concentration is expressed in a relatively sparingly – a black cat appears in the shoots, a woman untied black hair, like freeing the demonic forces, earthen pots break, in magical rituals slaughter old women kill lamb. The ominous soundtrack outside increases the tension, then the sound of fire and the low of the panicky cattle herd replaces it.

Sharpest touched not so much the love triangle theme, as far as the artist state in the community. Although no one character is killed, although the conflict between the two parties – the otherness and commonness – arise and goes out, drama of another human survival will not leave anyone indifferent.

by Otilija Kerbelyte

SATAN AS CREATOR BY BRUNO DUMONT

Otilija Kerbelyte — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:17:07 +0000

HORS SATAN, 2010, drama, France,

Director: Bruno Dumont

Probably devilishest film by Bruno Dumont (best known as author of films “Humanity” (1999), “Flanders” (2006) and “Hadewijch” (2009) was called “Satan Hor” in Lithuania. Although in the original language (French “Hors Satan”) it means “Outside Satan”. But do not start unnecessary debate about the translation – the essence of the film does not lose his demonic nature in any way. In this piece the director become independent but the very philosophical detective and decide to take a closer look at what Satan create without our seeing and knowledge.

Thus, the two young people living in a village somewhere near the sea. Their day begins and ends with a walk in the forests or in the dunes. A girl (Alexandra Lematre) thinks that a man (David Dewael), with whom she is constantly together, he does not love her. So she just follows him from behind as an obedient dog despite his strange behavior to her.

The first films shots really not inspire by viewer to the flight of cinematographic poetry. Someone put out a synthetic white bread sandwich trough the door slot, and then a man kneels before the rising sun. Begins to appear that whole film and would be boring to the inability as “Hukkle” by Gyorgy Pálfi (Hungary, 2002) or “Four Seasons” by Michelangelo Frammartino (Le quattro volte, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, 2010). But soon the movie space and tells the story capture his original supernatural which is forgotten in today’s society.

The story is not orchestrated by the director. Satan himself is making history. How else to call the man full of satanic characteristics: sharp features, sparse teeth, long nails, intensive black eyes. Shining sun easily it creates the impression that it depends only on his who will live and who will dies, who will start and what will end. All other figures of the story (a girl, her mother, swamp keeper, ailing girl and her mother, police and tourist) find themselves in the background. Notwithstanding Satan can vary its power just when it is based on the characters’ existence. But a girl remains most important of this second plan however. Unfortunately, not going to call her some another name. In this story she has no identity, because she is call on a whistle.

Man’s relationship with her – ambiguous. He consoled, protect and encourage her. He shows his support in that he shoots her stepfather, who harm her, he strike a guy who flirts with her. Also he helps her to overcome her fears (the scene where the girl goes on the line which separates the water). But at the same time, he does not want to have any contact which earthily loves representing. It seems that the tension in the film disappear if Satan beloved girl, but in this story is playing no factors of human, just pure rudiments of man, woman, nature, Satan. And they are cleansed from all over the world interpretations of the noise. Also they do not yield the place to the artifact esotericism, academic mythology or platonic love clichés.

Sometimes wistful, sometimes serious characters’ eyes into the distance like the ontological space reveal the philosophical dimensions of the world. But the plot turns destructive oppose this space cleanliness: the man shout, reminiscent of the famous Edvard Munk work “Scream”, the shot bang, deservedly or undeservedly sprinkled blood. Satan really creates the inconsistencies, destroying the harmony of all the characters, but at the end of the film shows that the destruction creates the harmony.

“Outside Satan” – is one of those rare films which consistent, but at the same irrational plot reflects the functioning Satan in this world again. When film critics and their articles yell about one or another shocking movie, Bruno Dumont offers a quiet step into a philosophical essay satanic, no less shocking, but fatal, and modifying the essence of being.

Mari-Liis Rabene – Arirang

Kaunas IFF — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 11:24:53 +0000

Probably not many people, not to mention directors and film celebrities would have the courage to reveal themselves in such an intense way like does Kim Ki Duk in “Arirang” by showing himself in front of the camera almost losing his mind. Kim-Ki Duk, known as one of the best Asian directors, has gained his notoriety with films like “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring”, “Samaritan Girl” and “The Bow”.
Admitting his urgent need for reaching his ambitions and not accepting anything less than that, the story leads to a sincere confession about today’s society, which is built on the expectaton, that everyone’s supposed to achive their goals and if they fail, they might not to be able to get back on the track and might fall into desperation.
During his latest film “Dreams” one of the actresses, who’s character was supposed to commit a sucide almost died. He has been hiding from the industry for 3 years since then. Struggling with the failures he had to face during the past years after experiencing some difficult times after shooting “Dreams”, Kim Ki Duk manages to produce, write, edit end shoot the whole movie all by himself and comes up with a touching story about himself.
Whether it’s should be classified a documentary or a drama, doesn’t matter, matters that it approaches the viewer by pure emotions – the same reasons, which put a human being search for the essence of life, is now expressed by his life.

Mari-Liis Rabene – Le Havre

Kaunas IFF — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 11:22:39 +0000

Le Havre – a small city situated in north-western France, which becomes the meeting point for the characters in Aki Kaurismäki’s movie.
A boot polisher accidently mets a young boy, a nigerian refugee, while her wife is at the hospital. The boy is in search for his mother, but instead of England, where he should be heading, he finds himself in France.
Even though it’s the 21th century, the director leads the viewer back in time and mixes it with contemporary life. The way of telling a story by cinetography, the appearance of the characters and set design is pretty much similar to old masters from the 60s.
The story tells us about ironic sides of human nature giving the viewer a light feeling. Kaurismäki manages to create happy, almost naive endings in the positive sense of speaking. Seems that the audience has missed those contemporary fairytales, which are besides absurdity also filled with kindness and humour.
Le Havre will be nominated for an Oscar for the best foreign language film this year.

Ten winters

Indre Audenyte — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 10:31:18 +0000

Italian story about how simple things could get super complicated and took ten years to find out. Two young people who felt mutual symphathy at the very first sight did not dare to show their feelings and confusion lasted for then Italian and Russian winters. Camilla and Silvestro met on their way to Venice and in this non-romantic and damp place to be in winter their relationship developed from friendship to hostility. And more.

Besides a cat and snails, not much else should be added in the list of the characters, besides those two undecided. Actually, there are some people in the screen but the connection that keeps all ten winter seasons together is, of course, Camilla and Silvestro. Since there are only 99 minutes to explore quite difficult path of Camilla and Silvestro, some of the episodes remain vague and somehow seems uncompleted. Still, a viewer is capable to follow a story without any big confusions or interruptions.

Besides good soundtrack that illustrates mood there is excellent camera work: it focuses on the details, such as glances, hugs and touches, which is very relevant to notice. And there is humour: simple and so suitable in each situation it bursts. It justifies the genre of the film – comedy. But, since the the main theme in this movie is relationships, drama is impossible to avoid. Luckily, the director Valerio Mieli managed to combine hard things with easy ones. And the result is quite good.

By Indrė Audenytė

Restless

elisamartellini — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 09:17:09 +0000

Restless

Directed by Gus Van Sant

Written by Jason Lew

Starring Henry Hopper, Mia Wasikowska

Music by Danny Elfman

United Stated, United Kingdom, 2011, 91’

Van Sant takes a break from his usual style and themes, such as marginalized individuals, social alienation, exclusion and violence, told with rough, plain realism, and turns to the romantic drama, dealing with an enchanted dream love between two young people who find a soul mate in each other.

Enoch is a problematic solitary young man whose favourite activity is attending funerals of unknown people. That’s how one day he meets Annabel, a strange girl in masculine clothes who immediately catches his attention. A sort of connection develops between the two and inch by inch they come closer. Enoch introduces her to his dead parents on their grave and to his invisible friend, the ghost of a Second World War Japanese kamikaze, and Annabel reveals him to be suffering from cancer. He offers to help her cope with her disease and with the shadow of death, she accepts.

Themes of the plot are nothing new – a dying young girl who bravely confronts her destiny, troubled youth who come to terms with their problems and traumas thanks to the power of love, the liveliness and joy of a spontaneous, genuine feeling fed by the delight of small, simple things – something between romance-drama A walk to remember and the more recent 500 days of Summer. However Van Sant succeeds to refresh these quite hackneyed motives by a carefully prepared photography and set design, often loaded with symbolic value, and by humorous, witty undertones.

The story takes place during autumn, the season in which life fades away and nature prepares to sleep. This is not a casual choice, as the story deals with approaching death and getting ready to face doom. Warm colours of autumnal season dominate the tones of the film, at least in the first part of the movie; as winter approaches, they are gradually replaced by cold colours, particularly white. Warm colours (such as red leaves lying on the ground, golden light of the sun, even certain costumes and interior) also symbolise the flame of love that bursts between the two.

The film stands out for a strong visual expressivity, which compensates certain predictable lines and situations (“Is she pretty?” “She’s beautiful”) and the long-windedness of dialogues. See for example the opening scene: Enoch is lying on the ground and with a chalk he’s sketching his silhouette on the cement around him. When the protagonists begin to fall in love, the silhouette of Annabel is added next to his shape. At the end of the movie, we see the two empty silhouettes being faded away by the winter wind.

Apart from that, dialogues prevail in the film: as soon as the two begin to know each other, they break their previous silence and talk, talk, talk. One of the favourite talking subjects of Annabel is nature, particularly birds and the law of natural selection, which especially amazes her: in fact in the end natural selection will be one of the driving forces that operate in this movie. The film recovers when finally all the talking makes room again to silence and to expressions.

Acting here is much less realistic and impressive than in other Van Sant’s works, like Elephant: the actors restrict themselves to a traditional performance, where they don’t have real liberty of improvisation (on the contrary of what happened in Elephant) and they just play their lines for quite an affected and banal result.

by Elisa Martellini

Once more about Le Havre

makethisreal — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:15:15 +0000

Aki Kaurismäki has his special way to talk about complex issues in humorous way, which does avoid melodrama, but doesn‘t avoid concern of things he‘s talking about. His humor has many faces as well.

In “Le Havre“ this humor is soft and canny. Marcel Marx, dignified ex-bohemian meets days of changes – his wife goes to hospital, and in almost same moments he finds himself taking care of destiny of a refugee boy. This story starts to resemble one of old fairy tales, which has some enigmatical interconnections, which cannot be explained by cause – consequence relation, and hiding some bright lesson in it.

“Fairy-taleness” is held not only in the way story is made, also in the way old and new is combined. In most of the time viewer will see just things and surroundings which could have been valid several decades ago as well as now. Personages are also quite timeless. But big advertising screens, mobile phones and modernly armed police troops are here, doubtlessly contemporary.

The world of relations between characters cannot not to make one smile. Firstly, there are mainly ordinary people, and relations among them are very warmhearted. Other thing – sometimes they are really unconventional, like in the case of Marcel and his wife – I would guess you haven’t seen such couple in your lifetime.

Talent and experience of filmmakers can be felt from the very first scene, where movement of camera and movement of actors work in a very coherent way, creating dynamics which immediately draws viewer into world of “Le Havre”. It is also beautiful, employing mannerism and a bit Godard-like minimalism of scenography, carrying meanings as well as joy for the eye.

Kaurismäki takes cultural and political contexts and interconnects them. There are some religious allusions. Marcel asks his refugee boy: “Quo vadis, Indrisa?”, as well as states, that shepherds and shoeshiners are closest to laws of the hill, shoeshiner being interresting parallel with Christian symbol of washing other persons feet. As other Kaurismäki’s movies, this one doesn’t let political-social surroundings to pass by. Being shot in France (and in French) it engages with immigration problems (which is an unintentional irony – at first it was planned to roll it in Spain or other south coast of Europe). Though, the most important thing being that director is professional in extracting some interesting and attractive essence from slum districts and lousy bars, being among true people doing “honest jobs” (what was the choice of director himself some time ago). It’s good to go there with him – alone you’d probably feel just confused and alienated.

This movie is very warmly accepted in festivals since it appeared in competition program at Cannes in May. It just carries some good aura, which also is supported by facts like that actor dog named Laika received a Jury Prize from the Palm Dog jury.

by Agnė Rimkutė

„322” by Dušan Hanák

makethisreal — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 06:34:11 +0000

Czechoslovakia, drama, 1969 m., 95 min.

Slovakian director Dušan Hanák started creating feature films just after spring came to Prague in 1968. After this blossoming whatever movie he created, he knew that screenings will be forbidden, at least in Slovakia. „322“ was his debut feature movie and it was immediately banned. Secretly smuggled to the Manheim-Heidelberg cinema festival for young filmmakers it took the grand prize. No surprize that in such circumstances underlying themes of freedom are common for his movies.

In these circumstances of suppression and search of various ways for liberation, this could have been a cult film – though anything more than an underground cult film could exist then. Dušan Hanák created the complex alegory of society of that time and place, where questions on independence were so essential that one almost didn‘t feel it anymore, as one doesn‘t feel the air. From the very first seconds of movie viewer is exposed for oppositinion between what is human and what restricts human freedom. The human body, holding personal history, can be named part by part in dry latin names. Human beings are numbered, as well as events irreversibly impacting their lives (322 is code for cancer diagnosis). Steps they take can be controlled by voice from loudspeaker. Still, characters in “322“ don‘t cease to exist.

Lauko, middle aged chef, gets sick, though his doctor defers to tell him exact diagnosis. In the meantime calm and good hearted man is living his everyday life in uncertainty. And living in uncertainty about diagnosis can make your everyday life less everyday-like than a trip to Arapawa island by bike.

This movie is multilayered, developing more than one story, and more than one theme. Each of characters has his/her own postinion in the soviet city setting. There‘s Lauko, searching for peace, drifting from one old friend to another and asking: „are you ok with yourself?“. There‘s his ex-wife Marta, searching for happiness in things and beauty, desperately eager to be loved. There‘s her intelligent, though decadent and cynical lover Peter. And also there‘s the one, numebered ID Nr. BU-66 456963, introducing himself as Human Being. Some girls recognize him as Curly as well… Everyone is following his/her own path, moving to certain end.

In this black and white film creative freedom common for avant-garde and experimental artists can be enjoyed. This is not kind of freedom which would make viewer feel dumb and not getting an idea about what had just happened. Cinematograhy and scenography in „322“ creates a rich net and surprises viewer in new way again and again. This is somehow humorous movie, though personages are busy with themselves and don‘t try to make jokes. But there are things, which they don‘t see and don‘t know. For example, that there are titles appearing on screen from time to time. Sometmes they just tell the name of person we see on screen, sometimes they make ironic jokes about exaggerated desires and fantasies that characters are experiencing. Sometimes stopped motion is used, sometimes photography is aptly inserted. Camera is making jokes as it switches unruly to painted tapestry during serious dialogue, adding alternate meanings. In this way viewer becomes accomplice of director, smiling about lifes of heroes, and himself also. Scenography is as well ingeniously used, composing in scenes things which augments meanings about relations between people talking, or reveals states of mind. All this creates really specific, interesting aesthetics.

Musical decisions only enrichens this already pleasantly sophisticated net. There are scenes in slaughterhouse (when one is really happy that movie is in black and white) accompanied with elevated string music. Or Big Brother like situation, where people bitterly obeys for unknown voice from loudspeakers, goes with marches, making an sarcastic oppositinion between harsh reality and exalted rythims of totalitarian dream.

It was really reasonable to choose this movie as one of representing Slovak New Wave cinema in International Kaunas Cinema Festival programme. It contains critical realizm and lyrical humanism, common for both literature and cinema of Central and Eastern Europe. Action taking place among the most simple people shows that under some rules only the ones living in the margins can still maintain some kind of inner freedom and real lifes. Not accidently the most free person in „322“ is the one with ID Nr. BU-66 456963 written on the back of his white jacket.

by Agnė Rimkutė