TIFF: A Funny Man, Love and Bruises,... Anatolia

Amir, here, back with more coverage of new TIFF films. The Toronto International Film Festival is winding down but luckily I have a couple of big name movies still scheduled. Here's a few from the last two days.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
This Cannes grand prix winner is a slow-paced police procedural in which a doctor, a prosecutor and a group of other police agents drag an alleged murderer along with them in the rural Anatolia region of Turkey so he can show them where he’s hidden his victim’s body. More than half of this gorgeously shot film is spent during the night and I for one wished the morning never came. Gokhan Tiryaki’s impeccable lighting and the varied range of shots he creates in the limitless but monotonous locale of the film easily tops my personal list of best cinematography of the year. 

There’s more to the film than the actual nightly search as Ceylan gives us indications that we should question the nature of the crime. Supernatural observations, spirituality and religious themes of guilt and faith all play a part in this hypnotic film. At two and a half hours, Anatolia won't be for everyone, but if you’re willing to go along with Ceylan’s delicate look into the social structure of Turkey and his humanistic approach to this crime tale, the end result is incredibly rewarding.

The cast of "A Funny Man" (Nikolaj Lie Kaas in the center)

A FUNNY MAN (dir. Martin Peter Zandvliet) 

The director’s follow-up to Applause (for which Paprika Steen was a medalist right here in Nathaniel's film bitch awards) is a biopic about Dirch Passer (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), one of Denmark’s best known comedians. Once again, Zandvliet has given us an insightful look into the troubled life of an artist, one who’s always faced with the struggle of transitioning his successful comedic career into that of a serious dramatic actor. Much of the film is similar to what we often see in biopics that cover the bulk of the protagonist’s life, but don’t let that throw you off. A Funny Man is an emotional film that can make you laugh, cheer and cry at the same time and there are truly great performances in it. Nikolaj Lie Kaas (of Brothers and The Idiots fame) is a marvel as the late Passer and embodies both his comic genius and his dramatic talents to the same effect. Even better is Lars Ranthe as his partner Kjeld whose subtle turn in this demanding role is sensational. Both actors would have been easy gets for Oscar nominations had this film been in English. The film’s real champ for me, however, is Sune Martin, whose soothing, gentle score is even better than the eccentric work he did for Applause.  

LOVE & BRUISES (dir. Lou Ye)

This was the beginning of my most disappointing day at TIFF. I was excited to see this for Tahar Rahim (Un Prophete) but my enthusiasm died down just a few minutes into the film. Ye’s hollow and underdeveloped love story between Hua, a Chinese teacher (played by Corinne Yam) and Mathieu, a French construction worker (played by Rahim) who meet by accident on the street of Paris was anything but lovely. One-dimensional characters, a sexist and judgemental view of relationships and an inconceivable plot make it one of the weakest scripts of the year.

Rahim tries but the script gives him very little to work with. Worse still, the film gives us a whopping total of ZERO reasons to like Hua’s character who’s inexplicably adored by almost every man she meets. Though, I'd add that my reasons for disliking Hua all relate to how flatly written the character is which is entirely different from the misogynistic reasons the film itself seems to hate her. Lest you think sexism is the film’s only fault, its on-the-nose depiction of social class division is surprisingly even more distasteful. I’d give this film a straight "F", but I’d probably listen to Peyman Yazdanian’s score out of context, so a "D-" would be fair. 

CUT (Amir Naderi)

I’d like to say it was the after-effect of the previous screening that made me abandon this halfway through, but Cut was no masterpiece either. The film opens with a sequence that begs for our sympathy as a cinephile walks the street yelling “they’re killing pure cinema. Today’s films are only for entertainment” into a megaphone. Then, in a contrived turn of events, he becomes a human punching bag for inexplicably violent men in order to pay his deceased brother’s debts. The film’s subpar production values and mediocre acting weren’t helping its cause but I shouldn't express opinions on a film I haven’t watched in full. Perhaps a miracle of improvement happened after I left?  

>Final Weekend: back-to-back screenings of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis follow-up and Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights which has just been picked up for distribution (albeit in 2012), actressy musicals and Joachim Trier still to come.

 

"Something's crossed over in me. I can't go back. I couldn't live."

For those who experienced the tumultous "girlpower" ride of 1990s popular culture this Pretty Woman vs. Thelma & Louise essay in The New York Times is wonderfully mnemonic... and insightful.

Love that accompanying illustration by Tom Gauld. Spot on, spot!

Here's a morsel from the article on the narrative transformational journeys of Thelma (Geena Davis) and Vivian (Julia Roberts), the "ingenues" as the narratives go.

...only Thelma transitions into a new, more independent self, while Vivian finds a way to be preserved as a wide-eyed child-bride forever.

It was precisely this happy ending that made people love “Pretty Woman,” just as it was the flying-off-the-cliff part that made some people object to “Thelma and Louise.” But while Vivian was happily giving herself to a callous oligarch who would purchase her personhood (as she chirped inanities about “rescuing him right back”), Thelma was saving herself by holding up a gas station and locking a cop in the trunk of his car. As every moment of Vivian’s transformative love story — from buying new outfits to subsuming herself to her Pygmalion husband — is transactional, every step of Thelma’s transformation is about evolving from chattel to free agent. In fact, you can make the argument that it was actually Vivian, not Thelma and Louise, who ceased to exist at the end of her film.

Guess which film predicted the next two decades of pop culture? Sigh.

In the magazine version (alas not online) the sidebar features Susan Sarandon Haikus by Adam Sternbergh. These were the two funniest:

Kind Sister Prejean
Bravely faced down injustice
And Sean Penn's Acting.

Nun, hooker, stepmom,
Your only regret, no doubt:
"Mr Woodcock," yes?

Teehee.

Come back to the five and dime Susan Sarandon, Susan Sarandon. And by five and dime, we mean "good movies."

True Grit's Masculine Ideal

I thought this was noteworthy. It's an argument from Anita Sarkeesian that Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) in True Grit is not a feminist character. I admire Anita's sand, to borrow a phrase from the film in question.

The points are pretty well made (though I'm not sure the existence of character arcs has much to do with masculine or feminine anything) and it's true that pop stories often labelled as 'girlpower' are really just drag exercizes. Though some, like Kill Bill which is visually referenced (negatively), do have relatively complicating issues involving the femaleness of their protagonists which I don't think she's giving enough credit to.

Still it's an interesting conversation to have and interesting even within the confines of the Coen Bros filmography. By Anita Sarkeesian's standards Fargo's Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), for example, is just about as feminist a creation as the movies have ever dreamed up... and that's even excluding her ginormous pregnancy. She never adopts "male" values so much as just making her way through a hostile violent world by her personal truths and unique cooperative funny relatively peaceful spirit.

She really is one of the best movie characters of all time. We love Marge, you betcha.

Request: Tyrone Power in "The Black Swan"

Reader Appreciation Month
Several people requested this during the TCM Contest, most of them mentioning the modern Black Swan (2010, not a remake) so I thought I'd give it a go. Methinks people will be disappointed if Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara don't see themselves in mirrors or have hallucinatory mental breakdowns scored to Tchaikovsky.

Maureen O'Hara and Tyrone Power in "The Black Swan" (1942)

Sometimes I feel like I'm hallucinating when I look at Tyrone Power or Maureen O'Hara in Technicolor so maybe I'll be the one breaking down?

As the movie begins we see a pirate ship called "Black Swan" and a super saturated matte painting of a blue sky (no one speaks of matte paintings anymore) and the following campy text.

This is a story of the Spanish Main -- when Villainy wore a Sash, and the only political creed in the world was --- Love, Gold, and Adventure.

The last time I remember villainy wearing a sash was the X-Men Dark Phoenix saga -- Villainy wore a gold lame sash to be precise. But back to the beginning of the movie. A town crier is shouting "All is well". Oh foolish extra, that's the kind of thing you only shout at the end of a story. Otherwise, you're basically asking for trouble!

(I'm waiting to see what color Villainy's sash is.)

Turns out sashes aren't that much of a focal point of the costumes, mostly because Tyrone is always out of his. I present the evidence...

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