Some thoughts on the language barrier

For some people who live in the United States, this weekend will be their first opportunity to see Norway’s 2012 Best Foreign Language Film nominee Kon-Tiki in a movie theater. Sort of. In point of fact, nobody in the United States, not this weekend nor during the film’s limited roll-out, is going to see the film nominated for that Oscar, unless it’s because they’ve imported the unsubtitled DVD from Europe. Because the version of Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s movie playing in the States is a combination of footage from the “real” version that played in Norway, with dialogue sequences re-shot in English. It is, literally, a different movie, with the exact same plot and shot setups.

(The New York Times had a nifty little demonstration of the two versions a couple of weeks back)

We’re not here to rip apart the Weinstein Company for releasing that version (though seriously, it’s pretty dumb – the audience for Kon-Tiki in English is certainly not significantly larger than the audience for the original version), but to consider the greater questions it raises about watching foreign language movies in the first place. I assume that you, like me, are at least a little bit offended by this bit of Anglophonic pandering, and would all things considered, rather see Kon-Tiki in its original version, and the question I ask both you and myself is: why?

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Posterized: Michael Bay

I can't believe I'm doing this. It feels so perverse. But with the Notorious B.A.Y.'s 10th movie dropping this weekend, why not? Pain and Gain is winning generally favorable pre-release buzz for its dumb brute yuks and for Michael Bay's understanding of his own "gifts". And people are even asking if he's an "auteur"... which, well I called him that really early on because he is. Auteur means "author" so anyone with a clear ownership of their filmography -- where you can see their fingerprints all over their work -- qualifies. It doesn't mean "Great Filmmaker" though that tends to be how people use it.

Besides, I'm genuinely curious if you Film Experiencers have seen his movies. I've often bristled at the notion that movie buffs and cinephiles are elitist snobs. From my personal experience its the multiplex masses who are the true elitists, since they're so unlikely to seek out movies that are outside the mainstream comfort zones. Most "film snobs" I know will see just about anything and can find worth in just about any genre. Have any Michael Bay fans seen a film by Michael Haneke, Jane Campion or Lars von Trier?

Anyway... 

How many of Michael Bay's nine GIANT movies have you seen?

Bad Boys (1995), The Rock (1995), Armageddon (1997)
Remember when you couldn't escape these blockbusters? Actually I escaped them. I only saw Armageddon in theaters from Bay's Noisy Nineties Breakthrough period. Because his films were always on cable at one point I think I have seen sizeable portions of the others.

Pearl Harbor (2001), Bad Boys II (2003), The Island (2005)
Remember when Pearl Harbor had Oscar buzz. Hee!
Remember how profoundly uncool it was of Michael Bay to blame Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson for The Island's box office failure? As if they were to blame for him getting his arguably worst reviews.

Transformers (2007), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
Michael Bay has been directing giant fucking robots (or the green screens where they will eventually be super-imposed) for the past half decade. Now he's got actors again, though he very wisely chose cartoonish ones.

How many of these blockbusters have you seen? I'm surprised to realize that I've seen only 3 in theaters though it feels like I've seen them all from their ubiquity. I do plan to see Pain & Gain. You?

Reader Spotlight: Patrick in Germany

We're getting to know the Film Experience community one-by-one. This is going to take us forever! (That's a good thing. Thank you so much for being part of such a big vibrant fanbase.) Today we're talking to Patrick who lives in Germany and writes for DieAcademy.de, a German site devoted to our favorite awards show.

Hi, Patrick. How long have you been reading The Film Experience?

Maybe 6 years? I like this site so much since it's always interesting topics and wonderful to read.

I know you're really into the Oscars but how about the Lolas, Germany's own movie awards. Which German stars do you recommend our international readers get to know?

The Lolas are not as big of a deal as they should be, but I love some German actors who are still too unknown abroad but doing great work all the time, like: Sibel Kikelli (two time Lola winner for Gegen die Wand & Die Fremde), Susanne Lothar (a three time Lola nominee who died last year) and maybe the best young German actor of our generation August Diehl (who you've seen in Inglourious Basterds and Salt but he's been nominated for the Lola three times and won for "23"). It would be a great pleasure to read a post about any of them.

Two current German greats: August Diehl & Sibel Kekilli

Hey, surely you've noticed my love for Sibel Kekilli. So great every time (though it was weird to see her do that romantic comedy What a Man)

Yes I noticed that. I think she was the best of the cast in What a Man, too but not a good movie. But Head-On. What a performance!

Agreed. Name your three favorite movies in the following genres. Horror, Comedy, Drama, Musical and SciFi. Go...

Horror: The Exorzist, Psycho, Silence of the Lambs (if I put it into this genre)
Comedy: Some Like It Hot, Tootsie, Pillow Talk
Drama: The Godfather (1 & 2), American Beauty, All about Eve (if I could choose 5: Sunset Boulevard and The Hours)
Musical: West Side Story, Chicago, Moulin Rouge!
Sci-Fi: Alien & Aliens, Blade Runner, Terminator (1 & 2).

Do you care about a significant other's taste in movies?

The Answer ist YES! It sounds a bit overdone, but I have a problem with guys, who don't like Kate Winslet in general or have mainstream taste of movies and don't feel complex emotions. The movie that comes to mind is Brokeback Mountain. This movie is not about a gay couple, its about love and why two people can't be together because of external and internal circumstances. Heartbreaking! But I think some hearts are too cold to feel that and that is not what I am looking for. (I hope most readers will know what I mean?)

Patrick with his great love Kate Winslet

I understand you are kind of a lot obsessed with Kate Winslet. What other actors/actresses really grab you?

Julianne Moore. She's still so underappreciated it makes me burst me into tears. I also love Bette Davis, Thelma Ritter, Sean Penn, most of the work of Nicole Kidman and Michelle Williams, the 70s and 80s Work of Meryl Streep (but getting tired of her work after the brilliant Angels of America), Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling and many more.

Take an Oscar away. Regift it.

Only one? I love the Oscars, but wanna change so much, especially the Oscars for Kim Basinger & Catherine Zeta-Jones (both to Julianne Moore). The biggest fault from the last decade was the Oscar for Tom Hooper's Direction of The King´s Speech. TKS was good, but the direction was TV-Movie-Material I think and The Social Network is by miles superior! If Colin Firth had pick up Best Actor Oscar the Year before for his brilliant performance in A Single Man maybe he wouldn't have won Frontrunner Status and The Kings Speech wouldn't win Best Picture and Director??? When Kathryn Bigelow announced Hooper as the "winner" it was the only time I completely lost interest in the other awards for the evening; it STILL hurts!

Previous Reader Spotlights
And our imaginary Honorary Reader Oscars go to...
lovely ladies: Mysjkin, Lynn Lee, Ester, Leehee, Jamie and Dominique 
(and yes we need to hear from more of the girls) 
dashing gents: Christian, Lucio, Joey Moser, Zé Vozone, Tony T, Andy Hoglund, Ferdi, K.M. Soehnlein, Sergio, Borja, John, Chris, Peter, Ziyad, Andrew, Yonatan, Keir, Kyle, Vinci, Victor, Bill, Hayden, Murtada, Cory, Walter, Paolo, and BBats

First & Last: Exiled

first & last puzzles
the first and last image from a motion picture 

Can you guess the movie?

The Manor Opens Hot Docs '13

Amir here, with my first dispatch from Hot Docs, North America’s biggest documentary film festival.

My friends had parents who were dentists or ran stores. My parents own a strip club.”

So says Shawney Cohen, the director of The Manor, the Canadian film that opens the festival tonight. Advertised with images of the invitingly neon-lit entrance of a strip club and scantily-clad dancers, The Manor seems to have been chosen as the opening night film based on an old adage we know all too well: sex sells. It’s a risky move by the festival’s programmers because anyone going in to buy sex will surely leave the theatre disappointed. Those of us going in not based on the marketing material but on the promise of a great opener had nothing to worry about. The Manor is an intimate family portrait that explores universal themes of familial bonding through a sharp and wryly humorous lens.

Shawney was six years old when his Jewish parents – Roger, a European immigrant, and Brenda, a Torontonian – bought The Manor, a strip club in suburban Ontario with a hotel attached to it. The purchase of the club proved to be a turning point in the life of the Cohen family that, for better or worse, has remained tied to the locale for nearly three decades; and indeed, this tenacious relationship between the Cohens and The Manor forms the core of the film.

Very little of what happens on the stages of the club is captured by Cohen’s camera. The Manor isn’t even passively sexy; it’s actively unsexy. Cohen’s attention is directed at what the audience doesn’t want to see. He’s directed his focus on the all-encompassing impact that the strip club has made on the lives of everyone connected to it. From the concierge of the adjacent hotel – a former stripper at the club – whose overdose throws everyone for a loop to the arrest of one the mainstays at the club – an adopted son figure to Roger Cohen – everyone’s life seems irreversibly affected by their presence at The Manor.

The titular club hence becomes the film’s pivot; its importance not the product of the type of service it provides or the low-key glamour of its performers, but the consequence of the centrality it has for the Cohen family. Shawney, having lived his whole life trying to blend in with others and find normalcy in an unusual situation, sees no reason to glamorize or sensationalize a story that has become the only reality he knows. An hour and a half later, the curiously mismatched family members and their deceptive occupation grows into an intimate reality for the audience too.

Cohen doesn’t sex up his family’s story with sensual strip club lighting and alcohol. The club isn’t a guise under which a family film takes shape. As the story unravels, the impression becomes increasingly stronger that the only thing that forms the familial bond between the Cohens is the club. It is what hooks the family to the environment and often times to each other. Shawney takes a lot of mileage from the contrasting personalities of his family members to prove this point. His mother suffers from an eating disorder that has left her so thin and so weak that her hip shatters after a minor fall; his father suffers from a different eating disorder that has left him so obese he needs surgery to lose weight. His brother enjoys running the show at the club and dating the working girls from time to time; Shawney has felt the urge to leave his whole life. But even at times when they seem to share nothing in common, when marriages are about to crumble and relationships about to be broken, the club, its ownership and its problems bring everyone together.

All of this sounds incredibly personal, and it is; but that level of specificity allows Cohen to tell a universal story through his singular perspective. He questions the identities of his family members with intense scrutiny and asks them to reconsider themselves and their relationships at their most testing moments; and with a unique, dry sense of humor and a keen eye for finding the tender side of any situation, he invites us to do just as much.