With Others, In The Dark
Aug. 4th, 2006 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msconductCoughing. Sneezing. People who think “8.30” means “8.40 or thereabouts”. What could it be but… the Auckland Film Festival?
I must admit that since I got a projector and screen at home the number of trips I’ve made to the cinema have decreased a little. In fact, to, er, zero. Schlepping to the cinema to be surrounded by the choking reek of popcorn and the clarion call of the mobile phone has lost all its lustre. Who cares if I have to wait a few months for the DVD?
But when it comes to the Film Festival, all bets are off. Who knows if that obscure little doco about Mongolian wrestling will ever see the DVD light of day? There’s nothing for it but to spend three weekends stumbling blinking into the light before plunging into yet another gloomy cavern. At least Festival audiences don’t eat much popcorn.
And after all, is it so bad to rub elbows with the pressing throng rather than retire in splendidly icy isolation to one’s own castle? Isn’t it worth getting a nasty upper respiratory tract virus to experience that reconnection with humanity? Doesn’t it provide one with the salutary reminder that for all our individual differences we’re all a bum on a seat?
Probably. But until they let one stop the movie to make a cup of tea, where at all possible one is stayin’ in. This being the case, I cheated a little this year: movies I thought would be a definite on DVD I skipped for now. Unfortunately, that still left twenty-four I had to drag myself out of the house for.
The theme of the year: depression. Movies about depression (I didn’t see all of those), but mostly movies (and documentaries) that induce depression. Festival-goers should be issued with a basket of kittens as a counterbalance.
THE WILD BLUE YONDER
Werner Herzog and science fiction? As you would expect, memorably odd. Seems sort of silly at first, but it really stays with you. Preceded by the brilliant Sheep Man, a parody of Herzog’s 2005 hit.
THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED
An intriguing look at the “voluntary” (as in if you choose not to accept it your movie will instantly tank) movie rating system in the US from the Michael Moore school of doco-making. It’s depressing the way US film is getting inexorably more conservative.
JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE
Riveting. Depressing not just because of the suicides, but because he started out actually doing a good thing, providing really good retirement care for followers who otherwise were too poor to have any care at all.
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Actually, not as depressing as I thought it would be, because Al Gore knows how easy it is for people to move from uninformed to overwhelmed and goes out of his way to stop you in the “I’m going to do something about it” middle. Very good stuff.
ANIMATION NOW!
Depressing because this is usually a highlight, but because I have a low tolerance for animation without a narrative I found this year’s programme dullsville. I never thought Animation Now! would be the traditional one dud, but we live and learn.
SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY
A terrific doco about the celebrated architect. How endearing that architects design by making little cardboard models, sticking bits on and ripping bits off.
MAXED OUT
Fantastic. Thought it would be about How Debt Is Bad, but there was a lot more than that. Most depressing? How credit card companies specifically target probable deadbeats because they make the most money off them – tied with how the US government goes out of its way to shield such practices.
BLACK GOLD
The coffee business and how while the big coffee companies are raking the profits in growers aren’t even recouping their costs. Most depressing: the Starbucks employee chirping on about how Starbucks touches people’s lives. Interesting and timely but frustratingly lacking in important info.
FRIENDS WITH MONEY
Nicole Holofcener’s new feature: flawed, but a nicely observed and rare look at the way US classes are separated by money. Depressing, though.
THE METHOD
A Spanish movie about a fictional interview process. Eyebrow-raisingly sexist, and a depressingly barren and desolate take on human relations: well worth seeing.
A LION IN THE HOUSE
Four hours about children with cancer, some of whom die and some of whom survive but with serious learning deficits as a result of their treatment. Very good, but what could it be but a depressorama?
MIND GAME
Genre-stretching anime, incorporating some interestingly arty animation techniques (Richard Linklater, eat your heart out) and a very funny joke about revolving sushi. You see, they're inside this whale... oh, never mind.
ANIMATION FOR KIDS
Yay! Lovely from start to finish, and the Prozac of this particular Festival.
ABDUCTION
A brilliant Japanese doco about the disappearance of a schoolgirl and the later discovery that North Korea had abducted her and many others. Terrifically depressing, but fascinating.
51 BIRCH STREET
When the doco-maker’s mother, married for 53 years, died, his father moved in with another woman three months later. A depressingly melancholy meditation about the unknowability of others, the toughness of relationships and wasted lives.
JOHN AND JANE
Great doco about Indian call-centre workers. Never overtly discussed, the gulf between their lives and the lives of the Americans they call is the actual subject of the film. Most depressing: their imagining of America as paradise and their consequent contempt for their own culture.
MUTUAL APPRECIATION
Part-improvised oh-so-indie black-and-white about US twentysomethings and their (apparently) hesitant and pretentious lives. Not bad, but there’s a reason why you pay a scriptwriter.
THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO
Depression personified in this if anything soft-pedalled account of the so-called Tipton Three and their detainment at the pleasure of the US government in Gitmo.
OILCRASH
Most depressing: the sight of abandoned, previously well-stuffed oilfields in Russia and Texas, which graphically gives the lie to the happy fiction that oil can’t really actually run out. However, I found this a little over-depressing: in their pursuit of doom, they were way too quick to trash alternative energy sources. So solar energy could only meet all of the US’s power needs if an area half the size of California were covered in solar cells? That’s good news – it’s a big country with a lot of roofs, and it doesn’t seem that undoable to me.
AMERICAN CANNIBAL: THE ROAD TO REALITY
They’re not admitting it, but I came out convinced this story of an abandoned reality TV show was a spoof. Your mileage may vary.
THE KING AND THE MOCKINGBIRD
Stunning French animation originally started in 1940. Eerie and politically charged, it’s quite unlike anything else.
IT’S ONLY TALK
Wow. Hiroki Ryuichi’s film about a woman who seems to be the support of several men around her but is herself struggling with manic depression is a complete tour de force. Understated, human, deeply moving (and depressing), with a knockout central performance from Terajima Shinobu. My pick of the Festival.
THE HEART OF THE GAME
Wonderful doco about a high-school basketball coach and his girls’ team which kicks Hoop Dreams to the kerb. Only depressing part: when one of the girls, who has made a determined effort to finish her schooling after having a baby, is denied the right to play for the team (and therefore the chance of a college scholarship) by the basketballing powers that be. Idiots.
WORKING MAN’S DEATH
Five impressionistic portaits of some very nasty jobs indeed. Next time you grumble when the alarm goes off, instead feel grateful you’re not off to tote 115 kilos of sulphur up a mountain. I had unaccountably managed to miss the word “abattoir” in the description of this film, so I spent a fifth of it with my eyes shut (I only wish I’d stuck my fingers in my ears). Oddest: the Pashtun workers in Pakistan, who pull old ships apart, eagerly paying their hard-earned cash to have their photo taken with a toy Kalashnikov. Puzzling and depressing.
Good Festival, but grim. Very, very grim. Gimme those kittens.
I must admit that since I got a projector and screen at home the number of trips I’ve made to the cinema have decreased a little. In fact, to, er, zero. Schlepping to the cinema to be surrounded by the choking reek of popcorn and the clarion call of the mobile phone has lost all its lustre. Who cares if I have to wait a few months for the DVD?
But when it comes to the Film Festival, all bets are off. Who knows if that obscure little doco about Mongolian wrestling will ever see the DVD light of day? There’s nothing for it but to spend three weekends stumbling blinking into the light before plunging into yet another gloomy cavern. At least Festival audiences don’t eat much popcorn.
And after all, is it so bad to rub elbows with the pressing throng rather than retire in splendidly icy isolation to one’s own castle? Isn’t it worth getting a nasty upper respiratory tract virus to experience that reconnection with humanity? Doesn’t it provide one with the salutary reminder that for all our individual differences we’re all a bum on a seat?
Probably. But until they let one stop the movie to make a cup of tea, where at all possible one is stayin’ in. This being the case, I cheated a little this year: movies I thought would be a definite on DVD I skipped for now. Unfortunately, that still left twenty-four I had to drag myself out of the house for.
The theme of the year: depression. Movies about depression (I didn’t see all of those), but mostly movies (and documentaries) that induce depression. Festival-goers should be issued with a basket of kittens as a counterbalance.
THE WILD BLUE YONDER
Werner Herzog and science fiction? As you would expect, memorably odd. Seems sort of silly at first, but it really stays with you. Preceded by the brilliant Sheep Man, a parody of Herzog’s 2005 hit.
THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED
An intriguing look at the “voluntary” (as in if you choose not to accept it your movie will instantly tank) movie rating system in the US from the Michael Moore school of doco-making. It’s depressing the way US film is getting inexorably more conservative.
JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE
Riveting. Depressing not just because of the suicides, but because he started out actually doing a good thing, providing really good retirement care for followers who otherwise were too poor to have any care at all.
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Actually, not as depressing as I thought it would be, because Al Gore knows how easy it is for people to move from uninformed to overwhelmed and goes out of his way to stop you in the “I’m going to do something about it” middle. Very good stuff.
ANIMATION NOW!
Depressing because this is usually a highlight, but because I have a low tolerance for animation without a narrative I found this year’s programme dullsville. I never thought Animation Now! would be the traditional one dud, but we live and learn.
SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY
A terrific doco about the celebrated architect. How endearing that architects design by making little cardboard models, sticking bits on and ripping bits off.
MAXED OUT
Fantastic. Thought it would be about How Debt Is Bad, but there was a lot more than that. Most depressing? How credit card companies specifically target probable deadbeats because they make the most money off them – tied with how the US government goes out of its way to shield such practices.
BLACK GOLD
The coffee business and how while the big coffee companies are raking the profits in growers aren’t even recouping their costs. Most depressing: the Starbucks employee chirping on about how Starbucks touches people’s lives. Interesting and timely but frustratingly lacking in important info.
FRIENDS WITH MONEY
Nicole Holofcener’s new feature: flawed, but a nicely observed and rare look at the way US classes are separated by money. Depressing, though.
THE METHOD
A Spanish movie about a fictional interview process. Eyebrow-raisingly sexist, and a depressingly barren and desolate take on human relations: well worth seeing.
A LION IN THE HOUSE
Four hours about children with cancer, some of whom die and some of whom survive but with serious learning deficits as a result of their treatment. Very good, but what could it be but a depressorama?
MIND GAME
Genre-stretching anime, incorporating some interestingly arty animation techniques (Richard Linklater, eat your heart out) and a very funny joke about revolving sushi. You see, they're inside this whale... oh, never mind.
ANIMATION FOR KIDS
Yay! Lovely from start to finish, and the Prozac of this particular Festival.
ABDUCTION
A brilliant Japanese doco about the disappearance of a schoolgirl and the later discovery that North Korea had abducted her and many others. Terrifically depressing, but fascinating.
51 BIRCH STREET
When the doco-maker’s mother, married for 53 years, died, his father moved in with another woman three months later. A depressingly melancholy meditation about the unknowability of others, the toughness of relationships and wasted lives.
JOHN AND JANE
Great doco about Indian call-centre workers. Never overtly discussed, the gulf between their lives and the lives of the Americans they call is the actual subject of the film. Most depressing: their imagining of America as paradise and their consequent contempt for their own culture.
MUTUAL APPRECIATION
Part-improvised oh-so-indie black-and-white about US twentysomethings and their (apparently) hesitant and pretentious lives. Not bad, but there’s a reason why you pay a scriptwriter.
THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO
Depression personified in this if anything soft-pedalled account of the so-called Tipton Three and their detainment at the pleasure of the US government in Gitmo.
OILCRASH
Most depressing: the sight of abandoned, previously well-stuffed oilfields in Russia and Texas, which graphically gives the lie to the happy fiction that oil can’t really actually run out. However, I found this a little over-depressing: in their pursuit of doom, they were way too quick to trash alternative energy sources. So solar energy could only meet all of the US’s power needs if an area half the size of California were covered in solar cells? That’s good news – it’s a big country with a lot of roofs, and it doesn’t seem that undoable to me.
AMERICAN CANNIBAL: THE ROAD TO REALITY
They’re not admitting it, but I came out convinced this story of an abandoned reality TV show was a spoof. Your mileage may vary.
THE KING AND THE MOCKINGBIRD
Stunning French animation originally started in 1940. Eerie and politically charged, it’s quite unlike anything else.
IT’S ONLY TALK
Wow. Hiroki Ryuichi’s film about a woman who seems to be the support of several men around her but is herself struggling with manic depression is a complete tour de force. Understated, human, deeply moving (and depressing), with a knockout central performance from Terajima Shinobu. My pick of the Festival.
THE HEART OF THE GAME
Wonderful doco about a high-school basketball coach and his girls’ team which kicks Hoop Dreams to the kerb. Only depressing part: when one of the girls, who has made a determined effort to finish her schooling after having a baby, is denied the right to play for the team (and therefore the chance of a college scholarship) by the basketballing powers that be. Idiots.
WORKING MAN’S DEATH
Five impressionistic portaits of some very nasty jobs indeed. Next time you grumble when the alarm goes off, instead feel grateful you’re not off to tote 115 kilos of sulphur up a mountain. I had unaccountably managed to miss the word “abattoir” in the description of this film, so I spent a fifth of it with my eyes shut (I only wish I’d stuck my fingers in my ears). Oddest: the Pashtun workers in Pakistan, who pull old ships apart, eagerly paying their hard-earned cash to have their photo taken with a toy Kalashnikov. Puzzling and depressing.
Good Festival, but grim. Very, very grim. Gimme those kittens.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-04 06:04 am (UTC)In doing so you seem to have seen almost entirely films that aren't being shown in Christchurch. Ah well.
So solar energy could only meet all of the US’s power needs if an area half the size of California were covered in solar cells? That’s good news – it’s a big country with a lot of roofs, and it doesn’t seem that undoable to me.
For reference, California is a little larger than all of New Zealand. I doubt there's that much total roof area in the entire United States. It would be an unprecedented feat of engineering. On the other hand, unless Al Gore's optimism turns out to be justified, we're probably in for a century of unprecedented feats of engineering.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-04 07:00 am (UTC)For reference, California is a little larger than all of New Zealand. I doubt there's that much total roof area in the entire United States. It would be an unprecedented feat of engineering.
There's a lot, though, and that's just the roofs: more could be built elsewhere, and if there's a commitment to it solar tech is likely to get much better very quickly.
On the other hand, unless Al Gore's optimism turns out to be justified, we're probably in for a century of unprecedented feats of engineering.
Al Gore isn't at all optimistic: he pulls no punches as to just how bad things are. What he does say is that there are still things the individual can do to make things better, both on a single-person and on a lobbying level. That's where the hope of his message comes in.