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Sep 26, 2014

20,000 Days on Earth

Grade: B+

"What performance is to me is finding a way to tempt the monster to come to the surface."

The above words, quoted by Australian musician and writer Nick Cave, come near the end of 20,000 Days on Earth, but they rather succinctly express the essence of the film and Nick Cave’s artistic career. There is an elusive quality to the wild, emotionally unhinged music of this eccentric artist that feels akin to a dormant monster coming to life upon every encounter. The energy of the performances devours the audience. Directors Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard’s uncategorizable film looks beyond that energy, beyond the surface, to find the monster.

20,000 Days on Earth is a kind of a documentary film, clearly transferring elements of Cave’s life directly to the screen, but its hyper-stylized aesthetic and fictionalized recreations of scenes from his life make the film as hypnotic an experience as listening to the music that inspired it. Covering a short span of time during the recording of Cave’s latest album, 2013’s “Push the Sky Away”, the film begins with a dialogue by the singer that immediately suggests something deeper and more peculiar that the run of the mill music documentary. The disturbing imagery produced with a simple concave mirror in Cave’s bathroom is reminiscent of the best of body horror cinema, reflecting the intensity of his music.

Cave is no stranger to cinema, of course, having composed music for films like Andrew Dominic’s The Assassination of Jesse James and penned the screenplay for John Hillcoat’s Lawless. Co-incidentally, a conversation with a former bandmate is filmed with such heightened stylization that it wouldn’t be completely out of place in a crime film like Dominik’s Killing Them Softly. His cinematic sensibility lends a visual quality to his live shows that elevate it beyond theatricality.


Sep 21, 2014

Stop the Pounding Heart

Grade: B

*This review was originally published at Movie Mezzanine

Stop the Pounding Heart, the latest feature by independent director Roberto Minervini, focuses on Sara, a 14-year old girl living in the heart of America, where bull riding is the pastime of choice and the Confederate flag can still be freely waved. She’s one of twelve children in a devoutly Christian family. The parents, goat farmers, home-school their kids, teaching them passages from the Bible. Sara and her family are all real people, playing slightly fictionalized versions of themselves in this loosely constructed story of their lives, where fact and fiction blend not to tell the story of her life, but rather to allow the audience to spend some time in her house. Short on expositions and heavily reliant on conveying the atmosphere through its vérité style, pale color palette, and a shaking, roving camera, Heart is a keen study of this teenage girl’s gradual, quiet grappling with doubt and her struggle to come to terms with her womanhood despite her religion.

Sep 16, 2014

Amir Sat on a Branch Reflecting on TIFF

*This column was originally published at The Film Experience.

Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence

You may have noticed that after a few years of covering the festival to various degrees for The Film Experience, I was completely absent from this space for the past ten days, mostly because of a personal decision to enjoy the films without sweating over writing. TIFF is a big festival, maybe the most frantic and hectic in the world, with more choices than one can physically experience over ten days. Nathaniel and I shared so few films from the program’s sprawling lineup, we could have each written about every single thing we saw and you’d never know we attended the same festival. It’s this overwhelming scale that made me want to take a break from reporting, and yet, I feel unsure about how that affected my festival experience.

Writing about films for me is a passion born out of the necessity to articulate my thoughts on the things I watch. Maybe that process of writing makes the films more memorable? Isn’t it so that writing, even about bad films, makes us appreciate good cinema all the more? Without recording my memories, details about this year’s films have fled my mind quicker than ever. My feelings about some of them have been diluted a bit, too. There is something missing, even though I had the best festival experience of my life, meeting more people than ever and watching some terrific films. Maybe this pessimism is just a withdrawal symptom. Let’s stay positive!

As has become something of an unplanned tradition for me – with precedents including Oslo, August 31st and Closed Curtain – my favorite film of the festival came my way on the last day. The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer’s follow-up to The Act of Killing is a remarkable achievement, one that I dare say, with festival hyperbole now fully behind me, is one of the best documentary films ever made. Where the original film shocked its audience with both the viciousness of the story and the inventiveness of its approach, this sequel of sorts is rather more formally straightforward. Turning his camera 180º to focus on the victims of the Indonesian massacre of the 1960s, Oppenheimer examines unhealed wounds and social and familial fractures that are still silenced decades on. The Look of Silence is no less brutal than its predecessor, yet, its emotional punch comes not by shock, but from the force of personal traumas visible in the victims’ silent looks.

Sep 10, 2014

Screening Log: August

Fifi Howls From Happiness


A Cube of Sugar (Mirkarimi, 2011, A-)
Part slapstick-comedy – new territory for the director – and part a keen study of Yazd’s dynamic local culture, Mirkarimi continues his trend of portraying reticent leads and religious figures with ease. A bitterly enjoyable experience and endlessly rewarding on rewatches.

As Simple as That (Mirkarimi, 2008, B/B+)
As Simple as That could be the title of any Mirkarimi film, but the structure of this one truly embodies the phrase; a sparse narrative of seemingly no propulsion, with one late, low-key but hard hitting revelation. Minimalist storytelling of the highest quality.

So Close, So Far (Mirkarimi, 2005, A-)
Mirkarimi's archetypal silent anti-hero feels lonelier than ever out in the desert. A challenging parent-child relationship made all the more complex by feelings of personal and national guilt. Also, one of the great film endings, to boot.

Under the Moonlight (Mirkarimi, 2001, A)
A rare, revisionist look at Islam and the untouchable concept of doubt amongst clergymen, Mirkarimi's strongest feature reveals more layers of complexity upon every new screening.

Closed Curtain (Panahi, 2014, A) (podcast)
A meta-cinematic experiment that expands the limits of possibility in the medium. Panahi's rich, shape-shifting, formally impressive film is quite possibly his best film and the best of 2014.

The Congress (Folman, 2014, B-) (review)
The Congress oscillates between the good and the head-scratchingly awful, often in a matter of minutes. It appears, quite literally, to be the work of a genius on an acid trip, without an editor.

Canopy (Wilson, 2014, B) (review)
Canopy is a work of minimal, expressionistic storytelling whose unconventional dramatic beats inject fresh blood in a tired genre.

Jealousy (Garrel, 2014, C) (review)
Jealousy is completely occupied with gorgeously packaged, chic Parisian archetypes that remain utterly impenetrable for those looking from the outside into this self-contained, clichéd universe.

The Circle (Panahi, 2000, A-)
Panahi's biggest achievement in narrative cinema, The Circle's smooth and, naturally, circular, navigation of women's issues is structurally impressive, emotionally powerful and an essential piece in the canon of Iranian "social cinema".

A Fire (Golestan, 1961, N/A)
A remarkable visual treat, Golestan's observational documentary about a fire breaking out at an oil refinery in the south of Iran is an outstanding achievement in cinematography and a valuable piece of Iranian history. 

A Most Wanted Man (Corbijn, 2014, A-)
Expert filmmaking on every level. Tense and twitchy in the most unexpected moments, subtle and effective in handling expositions, and incredibly intelligent in challenging vague notions such terrorism and international safety. 

The Mirror (Panahi, 1997, B)
Although a lesser film than Panahi's directing debut, The Mirror is an indicator of the filmmaker's evolving voice taking a more persona shape and gradually departing from Kiarostami's towering influence on him.

Fifi Howls From Happiness (Farahani, 2014, B+) (review)
A dialogue between two artists, one behind and one in front of the camera, that is clever, funny, heartbreaking and outrageous. This rumination on the work of avant-garde painter and sculptor, Bahman Mohasses, is a succinct snapshot of the tumultuous and dynamic environment of the world of Iranian contemporary art.

The Dog (Keraudren, Berg, 2013, C) (review)
At times entertaining, but also consistently meaningless.

Sep 1, 2014

Canopy

Grade: B

*This review was originally published at Movie Mezzanine.

Aaron Wilson’s debut feature film, Canopy, begins with a splendid but ominous shot of the lush forests of Singapore. From a place beyond several shades of densely packed greenery, thick clouds of smoke slowly rise to the sky. A caption informs us of the date: February 9th, 1942, when the Japanese powers defeated the Allied forces to occupy the island. As the island slowly reveals itself, the stillness begins to convey a sense of ghostliness lurking beneath the beauty of nature. This opening sets the tone for the rest of the film, a work of minimal, expressionistic storytelling whose unconventional dramatic beats inject fresh blood in the tired genre.

The serenity of the atmosphere is broken when a soldier (Khan Chittenden) drops down on a tree with a parachute, bloodied and in a state of shock. We soon learn he is Australian, though further personal details are never openly explained. Trapped on the island, he’s on the run from the menace of Japanese soldiers whose conquests are visible throughout the land, and from the forest itself. Although he’s figuratively on the run, Canopy is devoid of conventional instruments of thrill, instead creating an atmosphere of suggestive threats with lights, shadows, and sounds. The hissing and rattling of insects and the dappled darkness of the night create what tension there is.

Canopy and its protagonist meander their way through the Singaporean forest during the first half-hour. Our eyes adjust to the environment as the soldier does to its dangers. Cinematographer Stefan Duscio does a brilliant job of highlighting the atmosphere’s splendor. At certain times, the imagery feels overwhelming, shot in a way that attracts attention to the grandiosity of the photography rather than creating tension.