Spank's LFF Diary, Monday 27/10/2003
2.00pm: Resurrection Of The Little Match Girl
About seven hours into last Saturday's screening of Tiexi District: West Of Tracks, I was listening to a couple of disgruntled punters leaving early, and one of them was saying: "I should have suspected something when Tony Rayns recommended it..." That's a bit harsh, in my opinion: the BFI's Asian cinema guru is generally acknowledged to know his stuff, and his opinions are always worth listening to, whether you agree with them or not. But I have to admit that when Tony Rayns talks about Jang Sun-Woo, he always frightens me. For years, Rayns has given me the impression that Jang is some sort of Korean psychopath, making incomprehensible art movies whose primary purpose is to annoy people. So it's a bit of a surprise to finally see an example of the man's work, and find that it's perfectly understandable and rather funny with it.
Resurrection Of The Little Match Girl is an online video game, in which multiple players compete violently for the heart of the Little Match Girl (Yim Eun-Kyung). She's the same character that you remember from the fairy tale, only with a contemporary update so that she now sells disposable lighters instead. The object of the game is to prevent people from actively helping her or harming her: to win, you have to let her die naturally from cold and hunger, while ensuring that you are the person she loves when she dies. (If Lars von Trier had this game in his Playstation, he wouldn't leave the house all day.) The movie follows the progress of one player, Ju (Kim Hyun-Sung), as he battles against a variety of outrageous foes - and against the game itself, which is starting to become a little buggy. (I'm using 'buggy' as an adjective rather than in the sense of a small wheeled vehicle, obviously.)
After yesterday's Save The Green Planet!, this is another South Korean film driven by sheer manic energy and a diminished regard for conventional plot logic. The difference is that STGP! managed to sustain its pace for its full length, and even managed to surpass itself with a final meth-fuelled burst in the final reel. This film starts out at a hysterically blistering velocity, but sadly runs out of steam around the three-quarter mark, as it becomes a more generic pastiche of The Matrix. But anyone with a basic working knowledge of the conventions of video gaming will find much to enjoy here: from the convoluted methods of obtaining supplies, through the way that backstory is relegated to one-line character introductions, to the multiple endings on offer. Thinking about it, it's a pity that movies based on real video games can't have one-tenth of the energy or invention of this movie based on a fake one.
6.30pm: The Missing Half
It's rare to find a cinema in central London that I've never been to before, so it's worth noting that this film marks my first ever visit to the Ciné Lumière at the Institut Français. Throughout the year it provides a permanent venue for the best in French-language cinema. I can take or leave the hoity-toity front of house staff who insist on conducting all their business in French (you're only collecting tickets, for God's sake): but there's no denying that the French as a nation do have a serious love of cinema, and they've made the Ciné Lumière a luxuriously comfy place to see films. It almost seems a shame that my first film there comes from a Belgian director: Benoît Mariage, whose earlier film Les Convoyeurs Attendent (aka The Carriers Are Waiting) was heralded in these very pages four years ago as the sine qua non of door-opening contest movies.
This film is a very different proposition, though. It follows a few months in the lives of optician Pierre (Philippe Grand'Henry) and his wife Claire (Dominique Baeyens), from the point where they discover that she's pregnant with twins. From that point on their marriage goes into a bit of a tailspin, as their various anxieties are brought to the surface. It's around this time that Pierre starts up a friendship with one of his patients: Laurent (Laurent Kuenhen), a slightly soft lad currently resident at the local institution, who's blind in one eye and starting to lose the sight in the other. It's possible that Pierre is using this friendship to compensate for the problems in his life, but if anything it makes them worse.
The Missing Half's original French title is L'Autre, and both versions subtly hint at the main motif running through the story - pairs of items that are forcibly separated. But aside from that motif, there isn't much else to write home about: certainly not at a narrative level, even at an abbreviated running time of 71 minutes. Part of the problem is the character of Pierre, who's seriously underwritten. The film turns out to be more about Claire and Laurent in the end, it's true: but Pierre is the catalyst for the plot, and he's so withdrawn that we never really get a handle on his reasons for doing what he does. There are some overlaps with Mariage's earlier film, notably some unexpected moments of gentle humour and the odd visual coup (notably the lovely final shot). But I was hoping he'd have a little more up his sleeve than that.
9.00pm: Bright Future
I've seen two Kyoshi Kurosawa films now. The first was his 2001 thriller Pulse, which is apparently typical of his output so far: starting as a small-scale personal horror film, escalating to encompass full-scale armageddon at the end. It wasn't particularly satisfying at the time - Kurosawa is great at individual shots and moments, but hopeless at constructing a coherent framework on which to hang them. But mysteriously, some of its images and ideas were coming back to haunt me for weeks after the original viewing.
His new film is obviously intended as a deliberate change in style. It's the story of two friends in their twenties, who both work at the same laundry. Mamoru (Tadanobu Asano) is the cool older one, with big plans for his future: Yuji (Joh Odagiri) is the aimless one who drifts through life on autopilot. When a run-in with their boss results in a tragedy that splits the pair up, Yuji is forced to fend for himself, a process in which he's ultimately helped by Mamoru's father Arita (Tatsuya Fuji).
From the evidence of Pulse, nobody's making horror movies with the same mix of imagery and ideas that Kurosawa uses, and that's why he's become a festival favourite over the years. However, loads of people are making pan-Asian sub-Wong Kar-Wai whimsical pieces of fluff about alienated young men discovering society, and it's a shame that Kurosawa has chosen to go down that route instead. Granted, there are still some terrific ideas on display - notably a sub-plot involving Mamoru's pet jellyfish that threatens to take over the entire film by the end. And though the haphazard use of digital video gives it a curiously inconsistent look, there are some lovely visual moments. The final shot of seven teenagers in Che Guevara t-shirts is particularly fine: but it's symptomatic of the film as a whole that Kurosawa chooses to end his movie with a group of people who've only been tangentially related to the plot.
Bright Future feels too much like the sort of film a rigorous genre director makes to show that he can 'loosen up', what with its baggy structure, ragged visual style and general aimlessness. The LFF programme boasts that this is the full 115 minute version, rather than the 92 minute cut that played at Cannes: but to be honest, I think I'd rather have seen the shorter version. I might be wrong: it may well creep up on me in a few days like Pulse did. But I doubt it.
Notes From Spank's Pals
The Fog Of War
The Sheryl Crow Fanclub - Imagine if you will that some forty years after World War 2, Von Runsted, Von Manstein, Goring, Hedrich, and other architects of the Nazi war machine were the subject of a film such as this. So how would that pan out I wonder? Well obviously age would have mellowed them. There would certainly be some sort of recognition that mistakes were made, that cost lives on all sides. Perhaps someone would say: "people now can't understand the threat Russia posed at that time to all of Europe, and it was only us in Nazi Germany who were prepared to stand up to them". No doubt they would say that some things should have been done different, but certainly no regrets. In the final analysis the darker acts of war could be blamed on Hitler himself. Yes yes yes, that would certainly be a documentary I would be interested in watching. To be able to hear first hand from those in a pivotal role in twentieth century history would be fascinating. However, would the fact that they were now old men, combined with all their insights and hindsights, make them any less war criminals ?
Anyway The Fog Of War isn't about the Third Reich, instead it is a documentary on Robert McNamara, secretary of defense for seven years under the Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson US administrations. Presenting itself as eleven lessons from history, it in reality focuses on McNamara' s role in both the Cuban Missile crisis, and more pivotally Vietnam.
Starting with Cuba there is no new information here that I haven't already heard in other documentaries (featuring McNamara). What is of more interest is the information that isn't put forward by the old man. You see one of McNamara's lessons from history is that you must empathise with your enemy. Thus the fact that they were able to empathise with Kruschev's position meant that nuclear war with the Soviets was avoided over Cuba. However because they knew nothing about the North Vietnamese, they interpreted a long standing civil war into being another theatre for the cold war. Well yes okay then, that sounds good. However what McNamara doesn't say, is that if they had empathised with Kruschev a little more, then the Americans wouldn't have:
1) Stationed the Jupiter 2 missile system in Turkey, which gave the US a fifteen minute first strike capability against Moscow.
2) Been behind the CIA covert Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
Both of these actions being the causal effect that led to the Soviets' decision to deploy nuclear warheads in Cuba.
McNamara then goes on to lie (sorry I mean say) that the Soviets pulled back from the brink with Cuba, because President Kennedy gave an assurance that America would not invade Cuba if the missiles were withdrawn. This is of course merely a partial truth (which McNamara seems a master at). The fact is the Soviets pulled back from the brink, only after Kennedy had given them a specific assurance that the Jupiter 2 missiles would be withdrawn from Turkey within twelve months. Quid pro quo, I think it is called. When the media ultimately found out about this, the Kennedy adminstration set about rubbishing (nowadays called spin) the Jupiter 2 system, saying it was obsolete and they were going to scrap it anyway; didn't stop NASA using the same system to launch satellites though!
The heart of McNamara the man though, can be found in the Vietnam War. As defense secretary to Kennedy, he cautioned the president about increasing the military commitment beyond the limited number of advisors on the ground. However with the assassination of Kennedy, McNamara found himself serving a completely different master. So having given the pro war Lyndon Johnson the same advice, a transcript is played of the president verbally chastising McNamara. Thus no doubt to demonstate his loyalty (and ultimately keep his job), McNamara sets out to become an even greater advocate of involvement in South East Asia than Johnson himself. In fact he personalises Vietnam to such an extent, that the American media begins to call it McNamara's war. One concession McNamara almost makes though (which revisionist historians have long since concluded) was that the Gulf of Tonkien incident (which Johnson used to get Congressional legitimacy for Vietnam) was a complete and bogus sham.
For me though, the best way to sum up McNamara is to compare him to his successor (under Nixon), Henry Kissinger. Both men being possessed of that ruthless cold blooded intellectualism, that can justify any expediency. However whilst Kissinger made policy, McNamara ultimately appeared to be no more than the instrument of it. Thus whereas Kissinger (despite the wickedness of the method) had an overriding strategy to get out of Vietnam, McNamara's strategy appeared to be based around nothing more than remaining in high office.
As for the eleven lessons from history, forget about it. If history teaches us anything, it is that no one bothers to learn any lessons from it.
Burning Dreams
The Belated Birthday Girl - Burning Dreams tells the story of Liang Yi and Yang Yang, and their Dreams 52 jazz, rock and roll and hip-hop dance school in Shanghai. Attractively shot in grainy black and white, this starts out feeling like a fairly conventional, if pleasant, documentary about this somewhat quirky enterprise, and the 70 year old Taiwanese man (Liang Yi) who founded it. Jazz and rock and roll being somewhat frowned upon in China in the past, and very much being assocated with the west, Dreams 52 stands out as being the only school in mainland China with these subjects as majors. Interesting enough as that story would have been, over the course of the film we come to realise it is about the far broader and deeper subject of people's dreams themselves. Yiang Li used to watch Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire films as a boy, and had the dream to be Taiwan's Gene Kelly. Yang Yang, the young woman who runs the school with him, has a song she has written and gets her troupe of students to perform whenever she gets the chance, with herself up front dancing and singing the song. She has a dream to be known throughout China as the dancer who sings. The students discuss their dreams, many to invent their own dance, or merely to work abroad and travel the world. Gradually we come to see how many of these dreams are unrealisable, even completely absurd. There is one particular scene where one of the students, Li Chuang, wants to show off in front of the camera, much to Liang Yi's horror. At first, it's very funny, as the young man does some very poor break-dancing in front of the camera, saying over and over "I want to dance! I'm a superstar!". But the scene is deliberately held for long enough for it to become almost painful to watch, as we see the vast gulf between his dreams and reality. But the film is not being cruel here - the message of the film is one of hope and optimism; that dreams, even hopeless, impossible, unrealisable dreams, are important and good, and that we should all keep on dreaming.
Dogville
The Sheryl Crow Fanclub - As Lars Von Trier was the director behind two of the best films of the Nineties, Breaking The Waves [ha! - Spank] and The Idiots, (as well as the interesting but flawed Dancer In The Dark), then of course this was always likely to be one of the highlights of the Festival for me. Now throw into the mix Nicole Kidman, and well I was already prepared to call this film a classic before I had even seen it. In the event what we got was an adult fairy tale, that although probably not to all tastes, I for one thoroughly enjoyed. It also shows Von Trier as a director who is capable of out-of-the-box working, and out of the grip of studio executives.
Although I had been prior warned that the set was minimalist, I didn't realise that it would simply consist of a town minus the walls, or any visible structure whatsoever, inside a straightforward stage/studio environment. Thus my first thought was that this is merely a theatrical piece set to film. However that would be to do the whole film a disservice. In fact I don't really see this working on stage by virtue of the need to present the whole town, get close into the actors themselves, and the driving structure of the voice over narrative. (If you are familiar with the Jim Henson TV series The Storyteller, then the narration by John Hurt for this was as good as his narration for that.)
Anyway Nicole Kidman is some type of gangster's moll on the run from the mob, who ends up in some small hick midwest town, in Depression era America. Now the townspeople immediately sense trouble and want rid of her, with only a local writer/preacher/dreamer called Tom to befriend her. However whether by a benign nature or by simple expediency, Kidman makes herself more and more useful to the whole neighbourhood, until they come to rely on her many services. Every now and then however, the police come looking for her, which on each occasion alters the balance between Kidman and the townsfolk, thus necessitating more demands on Kidman. All the while Tom the writer acts as intermediary, between the ever more voracious town folk and the put upon Kidman.
So what does it all mean? Familiarity breeds contempt. A critique on labour/employer relations perhaps? A treatise on the small minded nature of country folk. Or as Spank has suggested, following a theme from Breaking The Waves and Dancer In The Dark, namely the pleasures to be had from torturing young women. Well I don't know, and maybe it will come to me in a week from now. What I do know is that there is a real shift in Kidman's character when the gangsters finally hit town. Sure the townsfolk had been using her, but given her previous too-good-to-be-true innocent compliance, had she not also been using them; knowingly exposing the real innocents to terrible risk because it suited her purpose. Anyway without spoiling the grotesquely funny ending, I would say that the finale probably doesn't bear up to too much scrutiny, instead just sit back and cheer along.
It is not normally I pay much attention to the closing credits, but being given a slideshow of real dirt poor, inbred, midwest, trailer trash America, didn't really make any connection with the film for me. As for choosing Bowie's Young Americans as the overlay, what the hell was that meant to be about? Anyway, that niggle aside, this is a must see if you like either Kidman or Von Trier. Maybe for a fairy tale like this, television is its natural home rather than the cinema. Either way there is a lot going on, which I think I would need more than one viewing to really latch onto.
Finally it was intimated during the introduction that the reason Von Trier wasn't here himself was because, at least when it comes to travel, he is slightly bonkers. I would just like to add, that I still take the view that Tom Cruise is completely bonkers. [Actually, there is another explanation, but you'd need to talk to my libel lawyers about that - Spank]
October 28th 2003
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