2007 Film Festival, Day 6
On to Wednesday!
I Served the King of England was my first movie, and in many ways it was interesting to see it so close to Black Book. It was a Czech movie, and done in a comic, almost slapstick style -- the waiters pirouetting around like dancers, the faux-silent film section detailing the main character's humble origins as a railway hotdog seller, his first employer telling him that there are two rules to service -- you must see nothing and remember nothing, and you must see everything and remember everything. But the comedy allows it to address the tricky and painful issue of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, and some of the things it did to that country.
The main character is a small blond Czech determined to make money in the hospitality industry, but we see the story through the eyes of the main character as an old man. I find myself struggling to describe the naive self-centeredness the old man reveals in his younger self. He is very likeable, even when he is sneaking a medal being awarded by the Emperor of Ethiopia away from his mentor. And you just feel bad for him when he's so pleased to be an honourary Aryan, so that his German beau (who believes in the Nazi's racial propoganda) can marry him.
I liked this movie.
* * *
My next movie was Golden Door, about an Italian family and a couple of brides coming to America. One interesting thing that the film does is to finish the film at the point of immigration; you never see them get beyond the Immigration building's doors, or indeed catch any sight of the city they're coming to. And given what we see of the place and culture that they were coming from, it's hard to imagine how much of an adjustment they'll have had to make once they land on the U.S. mainland.
Another oddity worth mentioning; there are occasional dream sequences, where the father imagines what he thinks America will be like -- children carrying radishes their own size, and a carrot that needs two men to carry it. They seem to be inspired in part by some trick photographs that had been sent to one of the brides, where someone had fooled around with forced perspective to make a chicken look the size of a horse, and an onion that needs a wheelbarrow to shift it. You have to wonder how convincing such photos would be to people not used to photographs in general... heh, and what they would make of something like King Kong, any version.
It was interesting how much was left unsaid -- for example, we never find out about the Englishwoman's backstory. And I think that the scenes where everyone obviously has very different ideas of what is "good" clothes are made the point that Italy didn't think of itself as a country even more strongly than the scene in the sleeping berth, where the father says that he's not used to seeing so many "foreigners" -- by which he means, people from other valleys.
I liked it, and I think the fact it felt incomplete was probably intentional. But I didn't love it. :)
* * *
We Are Together, on the other hand, I did kinda love. It focused on "Agape", a South African school for orphans whose parents have died of Aids. The school is well known for their singing, and when the film starts, they're looking forward to recording their CD, and sending a group to sing in England to raise awareness of the problem, and to raise money to expand the school. There is one family that the documentary focuses on, which has the older brother and sisters living together at their parent's old house outside the school -- only one of the sisters has a job, and the brother has just fallen sick, and doesn't seem to be getting better...
While there were definitely sad moments in this film, I think that overall the message was much more upbeat and hopeful than, say, These Girls. I'm definitely thinking about buying their CD, both because I think that they're doing a worthwhile thing, and because I quite liked the music.
* * *
I don't think you could describe Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) as upbeat, though the presentation is anything but grim. It's a documentary about the corruption and crime in Brazil, especially San Paolo. The siege mentality among the rich was a bit scary -- people paying more for their cars than for their houses (because it has to be bullet-proof, of course), plastic surgeons specializing in ear reconstruction (because that's one of the things that kidnappers cut off to send to the family), and a businessman being eager to get not just one tracking chip implanted, but two, from different companies -- so if kidnappers cut one out, he's got a backup. And San Paolo has the largest private helicopter fleet in the world, simply because it's safer -- you can't get kidnapped in the sky. I was about to write that I couldn't imagine living in the constant fear of being kidnapped... but I guess it says something about me and my expectations that I assume that I'd be in the upper crust of the society, rather than in the slums. :)
And then there's the corruption in the politics. They talked to a number of opponents of a politician who has been involved in the biggest corruption scandal to date, and who embezzled millions of dollars in money that should have been invested in businesses in the poorest parts of Brazil, by setting up hundreds of fake companies to receive the money. He had been brought to trial, convicted, forced to resign as president of the Senate... and was then released by a friendly judge, went back to his province, and bribed his way back to his senate seat (in the same way he'd bribed his way up to the senate in the first place). The prosecutors were resigned -- they actually said, we might not be able to send these guys to jail yet, but at least we're making their lives more difficult!
They also interviewed a professional kidnapper. Perhaps scarier than his complete callousness towards the people he kidnaps was the fact that he was, to hear him tell it, something of a philanthropist and community leader within his own slum community.
In a way, this kind of documentary is much more comforting, in that there's no guilty feeling that we should be volunteering, sending money, or collecting door-to-door. And it did make me more likely to consider trying deep-fried frog. :)
* * *
Finally was The Witness, a French film about a group of friends, one of whom (a gay doctor) is infatuated with a young man; it's set at the very beginning of the Aids epidemic. It's not as grim a film as it could have been, and it was deliberately constructed to show an idyll, descending into bleakness... and then people re-emerging on the other side. I liked it, though probably not enough to watch it a second time.
I Served the King of England was my first movie, and in many ways it was interesting to see it so close to Black Book. It was a Czech movie, and done in a comic, almost slapstick style -- the waiters pirouetting around like dancers, the faux-silent film section detailing the main character's humble origins as a railway hotdog seller, his first employer telling him that there are two rules to service -- you must see nothing and remember nothing, and you must see everything and remember everything. But the comedy allows it to address the tricky and painful issue of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, and some of the things it did to that country.
The main character is a small blond Czech determined to make money in the hospitality industry, but we see the story through the eyes of the main character as an old man. I find myself struggling to describe the naive self-centeredness the old man reveals in his younger self. He is very likeable, even when he is sneaking a medal being awarded by the Emperor of Ethiopia away from his mentor. And you just feel bad for him when he's so pleased to be an honourary Aryan, so that his German beau (who believes in the Nazi's racial propoganda) can marry him.
I liked this movie.
* * *
My next movie was Golden Door, about an Italian family and a couple of brides coming to America. One interesting thing that the film does is to finish the film at the point of immigration; you never see them get beyond the Immigration building's doors, or indeed catch any sight of the city they're coming to. And given what we see of the place and culture that they were coming from, it's hard to imagine how much of an adjustment they'll have had to make once they land on the U.S. mainland.
Another oddity worth mentioning; there are occasional dream sequences, where the father imagines what he thinks America will be like -- children carrying radishes their own size, and a carrot that needs two men to carry it. They seem to be inspired in part by some trick photographs that had been sent to one of the brides, where someone had fooled around with forced perspective to make a chicken look the size of a horse, and an onion that needs a wheelbarrow to shift it. You have to wonder how convincing such photos would be to people not used to photographs in general... heh, and what they would make of something like King Kong, any version.
It was interesting how much was left unsaid -- for example, we never find out about the Englishwoman's backstory. And I think that the scenes where everyone obviously has very different ideas of what is "good" clothes are made the point that Italy didn't think of itself as a country even more strongly than the scene in the sleeping berth, where the father says that he's not used to seeing so many "foreigners" -- by which he means, people from other valleys.
I liked it, and I think the fact it felt incomplete was probably intentional. But I didn't love it. :)
* * *
We Are Together, on the other hand, I did kinda love. It focused on "Agape", a South African school for orphans whose parents have died of Aids. The school is well known for their singing, and when the film starts, they're looking forward to recording their CD, and sending a group to sing in England to raise awareness of the problem, and to raise money to expand the school. There is one family that the documentary focuses on, which has the older brother and sisters living together at their parent's old house outside the school -- only one of the sisters has a job, and the brother has just fallen sick, and doesn't seem to be getting better...
While there were definitely sad moments in this film, I think that overall the message was much more upbeat and hopeful than, say, These Girls. I'm definitely thinking about buying their CD, both because I think that they're doing a worthwhile thing, and because I quite liked the music.
* * *
I don't think you could describe Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) as upbeat, though the presentation is anything but grim. It's a documentary about the corruption and crime in Brazil, especially San Paolo. The siege mentality among the rich was a bit scary -- people paying more for their cars than for their houses (because it has to be bullet-proof, of course), plastic surgeons specializing in ear reconstruction (because that's one of the things that kidnappers cut off to send to the family), and a businessman being eager to get not just one tracking chip implanted, but two, from different companies -- so if kidnappers cut one out, he's got a backup. And San Paolo has the largest private helicopter fleet in the world, simply because it's safer -- you can't get kidnapped in the sky. I was about to write that I couldn't imagine living in the constant fear of being kidnapped... but I guess it says something about me and my expectations that I assume that I'd be in the upper crust of the society, rather than in the slums. :)
And then there's the corruption in the politics. They talked to a number of opponents of a politician who has been involved in the biggest corruption scandal to date, and who embezzled millions of dollars in money that should have been invested in businesses in the poorest parts of Brazil, by setting up hundreds of fake companies to receive the money. He had been brought to trial, convicted, forced to resign as president of the Senate... and was then released by a friendly judge, went back to his province, and bribed his way back to his senate seat (in the same way he'd bribed his way up to the senate in the first place). The prosecutors were resigned -- they actually said, we might not be able to send these guys to jail yet, but at least we're making their lives more difficult!
They also interviewed a professional kidnapper. Perhaps scarier than his complete callousness towards the people he kidnaps was the fact that he was, to hear him tell it, something of a philanthropist and community leader within his own slum community.
In a way, this kind of documentary is much more comforting, in that there's no guilty feeling that we should be volunteering, sending money, or collecting door-to-door. And it did make me more likely to consider trying deep-fried frog. :)
* * *
Finally was The Witness, a French film about a group of friends, one of whom (a gay doctor) is infatuated with a young man; it's set at the very beginning of the Aids epidemic. It's not as grim a film as it could have been, and it was deliberately constructed to show an idyll, descending into bleakness... and then people re-emerging on the other side. I liked it, though probably not enough to watch it a second time.