Sunday, September 6 Seminar in Elks Park on "The Challenge of Portraying Complex Heroines on Screen." Speakers included Michael Lerner, Lone Sherfig, moderator Annette Insdorf, M. von Trotta and Brenda Blethyn
Monday, September 7 Labor Day Picnic Seminar on "The Edge of Humor." Speakers included moderator Anne Thompson, George Gittoes, Nicholas Cage, Jason Reitman and Paul SchniederOn Sunday I woke up to catch the 8:30 screening of Haneke’s The White Ribbon, probably tied with Life During Wartime for the best film I’ve seen at the festival. It is a black and white film set in a German village prior to the first world war that has a more classical style compared to his other work. There’s no one else who depicts brutality, both visual and emotional, the way Haneke does. The White Ribbon is an excellent film, however I prefer his films that deal with contemporary life. For me those films provoke more thought and offer more insights. Afterwards I caught a few minutes of “The Challenges of Portraying Complex Heroines on Screen” seminar at Elks Park.
After work I went to see Samson and Delilah, the film that won the Camera d’Or at this years Cannes.
I hated it.
Not the way you hate an amateurish film that gives you a headache, but the way you hate a film that is a complete indulgence of a craft-less filmmaker. It has its merits. Great cinematography. The film is seamless, there aren’t any framing or editing mistakes that throw you out of the film. The problem is that I was never drawn into the story and then the film just dragged on and on. Kind of like the interweaving or nonlinear narrative films of the late nineties, these meditative almost-plotless films with non-actors are becoming a huge tiresome fad. When the hell did everyone think they can be Bresson. All these filmmakers are attempting to out due each other by taking this style of filmmaking to a new extreme. Samson and Delilah does so by presenting two aboriginal teenagers who rarely, almost never, speak. For some reason they don’t even speak their native aboriginal language. Many critics see this as one of the films strengths, it’s main virtue. I see it as a huge deficiency on the part of the director who clearly cannot write dialogue and I think the film suffers enormously from it. The story just doesn’t work. My main issue is with Delilah, who is set up as an independent, responsible, creative thinking teenage girl, which I thought was great and made me like her immediately. But when she runs off with Samson, who is her complete opposite, she inexplicably stays devoted to him after two horrendous violent episodes that leave her near death; and Samson does nothing to prevent or offer any help. (By the way, these two horrendous episodes are completely contrived; I don’t see how these two things could befall the same girl. It’s excessive and ridiculous. Absurd really.) The fact that she goes back to him is in complete conflict with the type of girl she is set up to be. What’s even more frustrating is that when she returns, she doesn’t even say anything because the whole ploy of the film is that these two characters don’t speak. What she went through demands an exchange, some kind of communication.
Then the film’s music was horrible, with the exception of the opening scene. It uses “When the money runs out” in the most cliché, sentimental way imaginable. In the end, the film simply wasn’t for me. This might be the film for those who like Kelly Reichardt, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Lance Hammer and even Carlos Reygadas, but not necessarily Bresson (who was brilliant.) It's interesting. There's an interview with Haneke in the Film Watch where names Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar as the film that changed his life. He says it "remains for me the most precious of all cinematic jewels. No other film has ever made my heart and head spin like this one. " Scott Foundas states that the influence of Bresson manifests itself in Haneke's work in many ways, but most of all in the way his films ask a "great many more questions than they answer about motives of human behavoir." I feel Haneke saw Bresson's films and acknowledge the great questions you can ask with films, others saw his films and acknowledged a cheap, economical way to make a film.
Samson and Delilah left me in a bad mood. I almost decided not to see Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank as I originally planned because I knew it would have a similar style as Samson and Delilah, but I went anyways. It was the first film by Andrea Arnold I had ever scene. It was good. I laughed to myself as the film went on because in some ways it is a ghetto version of An Education. Fish Tank is almost entirely hand held, shot on full frame 16mm. The cinematography is amazing, each frame could be its own perfect still image. The director must have been referencing photographers like Nan Goldin or Ryan McGinley. Michael Fassebender has a great role in the film. It’s a great depiction of a teenage girl, almost as if Dawn Wiener grew up in urban England.
I then rushed over the Gondola to see sneak preview of the newest Herzog film My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done? Herzog flew in from Venice to present the film along with two additional shorts. The first I don’t remember the title to but it was shot somewhere in Africa. The other was a short film by Ramin Bahrani titled “Plastic Bag” that Herzog narrates, playing the role of the plastic bag. I tried my best to stay awake for My Son, My Son. I really wanted to watch it because I think Michael Shannon is amazing. But I must of passed out during the opening sequence and then became conscious again at the closing credits. That happens to me every now and then. Oh well.
The final morning of the Festival, I debated between seeing the Viggo Mortensen tribute and the Daisan No Kagemusha: The Third Shadow Warrior, another Alexander Payne selection. I decided on the Mortensen tribute because the Third Shadow Warrior was screening all the way in Mountain Village. Additionally, I became a little exhausted of watching a film based on the rarity of it’s print. If you walk away from a film only being able to say “Well I’ll never be able to see that again,” it wasn’t really worth it and it’s a lame way to comfort yourself. I am guilty of that all the time. (I thrive off of the idea or potential of a film being amazing, it works out some of the time.) While watching his clip reel at the Viggo Tribute, I had totally forgot he was in Carlito’s Way, and he’s amazing in it. It really struck me how accomplished of an actor he is. His onstage interview was great, he mostly shared stories about his son and how he got involved in acting. When the interview concluded, John Hillcoat’s The Road was screened. The film was getting a lot of bad reviews from it’s premiere at Venice. I haven’t read them, but I think they might be right. I read the novel a couple years ago (which I enjoyed, but it's not McCarthy’s best) and for some reason the filmmakers decided to have the father narrate the story, which wasn’t how the book was told. I found it a little weird because I know that the father dies at the end, so it struck me as not the best approach (It worked in Sunset Blvd and Casino). The film has excessive flashbacks, the novel didn’t have as many. It is a very brutal story, but it seems like they made things more brutal than what they needed to be. Like the birth of the son. There’s a flashback of Chalize Theron standing up and screaming for her life during childbirth. It seemed a bit excessive and artificial. Since I knew the story and wasn’t that interested in how the film worked out, I left early to make it to the Labor Day Picnic at Town Park.
At the Picnic there was a seminar moderated by Anne Thompson titled “The Edge of Humor.” Speakers included George Gittoes, Nicholas Cage, Jason Reitman and Paul Schneider. These seminars are rarely informative as far as the topic goes, but they are great for personal anecdotes of the speakers.
The TBAs for Monday disappointed me. I put off seeing A Prophet to see the other films, hoping it would screen on the last day of the fest. It wasn’t and most of the films selected for TBAs I had already seen. So I went to the Great Expectations program of short films by non-student filmmakers. It’s always a big gamble to attend these screenings and this one didn’t pay off. The only notable short was called The Door, a film by an Irish filmmaker shot in the Ukraine concerning the effects of Chernobyl. The rest ranged from mediocre to horrible.
I didn’t want my Festival to end with the shorts program so I went to the outdoor screening of Jane Champion’s Bright Star. I withstood the cold weather as long as I could and enjoyed what I saw, but I gave in as the evening went on and the night grew colder.
In comparison to past Festivals, this year’s Telluride was my least favorite. I think overall 2009 is not the strongest year for films. The films I chose to attend (I felt) were safe bets as far as quality, but almost all of them under whelmed me. I’m still interested in seeing A Prophet, Farewell, The Last Station, The Miscreants of Taliwood, Vincere, Vision and Window. Hopefully they will be distributed. Unfortunately my work shifts coincided with most of the revival screenings, if I’m lucky I’ll be in the right place at the right time to see them. Back to Los Angeles. There’s a long list of September screenings I am eager to see there.
After work I went to see Samson and Delilah, the film that won the Camera d’Or at this years Cannes.
I hated it.
Not the way you hate an amateurish film that gives you a headache, but the way you hate a film that is a complete indulgence of a craft-less filmmaker. It has its merits. Great cinematography. The film is seamless, there aren’t any framing or editing mistakes that throw you out of the film. The problem is that I was never drawn into the story and then the film just dragged on and on. Kind of like the interweaving or nonlinear narrative films of the late nineties, these meditative almost-plotless films with non-actors are becoming a huge tiresome fad. When the hell did everyone think they can be Bresson. All these filmmakers are attempting to out due each other by taking this style of filmmaking to a new extreme. Samson and Delilah does so by presenting two aboriginal teenagers who rarely, almost never, speak. For some reason they don’t even speak their native aboriginal language. Many critics see this as one of the films strengths, it’s main virtue. I see it as a huge deficiency on the part of the director who clearly cannot write dialogue and I think the film suffers enormously from it. The story just doesn’t work. My main issue is with Delilah, who is set up as an independent, responsible, creative thinking teenage girl, which I thought was great and made me like her immediately. But when she runs off with Samson, who is her complete opposite, she inexplicably stays devoted to him after two horrendous violent episodes that leave her near death; and Samson does nothing to prevent or offer any help. (By the way, these two horrendous episodes are completely contrived; I don’t see how these two things could befall the same girl. It’s excessive and ridiculous. Absurd really.) The fact that she goes back to him is in complete conflict with the type of girl she is set up to be. What’s even more frustrating is that when she returns, she doesn’t even say anything because the whole ploy of the film is that these two characters don’t speak. What she went through demands an exchange, some kind of communication.
Then the film’s music was horrible, with the exception of the opening scene. It uses “When the money runs out” in the most cliché, sentimental way imaginable. In the end, the film simply wasn’t for me. This might be the film for those who like Kelly Reichardt, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Lance Hammer and even Carlos Reygadas, but not necessarily Bresson (who was brilliant.) It's interesting. There's an interview with Haneke in the Film Watch where names Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar as the film that changed his life. He says it "remains for me the most precious of all cinematic jewels. No other film has ever made my heart and head spin like this one. " Scott Foundas states that the influence of Bresson manifests itself in Haneke's work in many ways, but most of all in the way his films ask a "great many more questions than they answer about motives of human behavoir." I feel Haneke saw Bresson's films and acknowledge the great questions you can ask with films, others saw his films and acknowledged a cheap, economical way to make a film.
Samson and Delilah left me in a bad mood. I almost decided not to see Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank as I originally planned because I knew it would have a similar style as Samson and Delilah, but I went anyways. It was the first film by Andrea Arnold I had ever scene. It was good. I laughed to myself as the film went on because in some ways it is a ghetto version of An Education. Fish Tank is almost entirely hand held, shot on full frame 16mm. The cinematography is amazing, each frame could be its own perfect still image. The director must have been referencing photographers like Nan Goldin or Ryan McGinley. Michael Fassebender has a great role in the film. It’s a great depiction of a teenage girl, almost as if Dawn Wiener grew up in urban England.
I then rushed over the Gondola to see sneak preview of the newest Herzog film My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done? Herzog flew in from Venice to present the film along with two additional shorts. The first I don’t remember the title to but it was shot somewhere in Africa. The other was a short film by Ramin Bahrani titled “Plastic Bag” that Herzog narrates, playing the role of the plastic bag. I tried my best to stay awake for My Son, My Son. I really wanted to watch it because I think Michael Shannon is amazing. But I must of passed out during the opening sequence and then became conscious again at the closing credits. That happens to me every now and then. Oh well.
The final morning of the Festival, I debated between seeing the Viggo Mortensen tribute and the Daisan No Kagemusha: The Third Shadow Warrior, another Alexander Payne selection. I decided on the Mortensen tribute because the Third Shadow Warrior was screening all the way in Mountain Village. Additionally, I became a little exhausted of watching a film based on the rarity of it’s print. If you walk away from a film only being able to say “Well I’ll never be able to see that again,” it wasn’t really worth it and it’s a lame way to comfort yourself. I am guilty of that all the time. (I thrive off of the idea or potential of a film being amazing, it works out some of the time.) While watching his clip reel at the Viggo Tribute, I had totally forgot he was in Carlito’s Way, and he’s amazing in it. It really struck me how accomplished of an actor he is. His onstage interview was great, he mostly shared stories about his son and how he got involved in acting. When the interview concluded, John Hillcoat’s The Road was screened. The film was getting a lot of bad reviews from it’s premiere at Venice. I haven’t read them, but I think they might be right. I read the novel a couple years ago (which I enjoyed, but it's not McCarthy’s best) and for some reason the filmmakers decided to have the father narrate the story, which wasn’t how the book was told. I found it a little weird because I know that the father dies at the end, so it struck me as not the best approach (It worked in Sunset Blvd and Casino). The film has excessive flashbacks, the novel didn’t have as many. It is a very brutal story, but it seems like they made things more brutal than what they needed to be. Like the birth of the son. There’s a flashback of Chalize Theron standing up and screaming for her life during childbirth. It seemed a bit excessive and artificial. Since I knew the story and wasn’t that interested in how the film worked out, I left early to make it to the Labor Day Picnic at Town Park.
At the Picnic there was a seminar moderated by Anne Thompson titled “The Edge of Humor.” Speakers included George Gittoes, Nicholas Cage, Jason Reitman and Paul Schneider. These seminars are rarely informative as far as the topic goes, but they are great for personal anecdotes of the speakers.
The TBAs for Monday disappointed me. I put off seeing A Prophet to see the other films, hoping it would screen on the last day of the fest. It wasn’t and most of the films selected for TBAs I had already seen. So I went to the Great Expectations program of short films by non-student filmmakers. It’s always a big gamble to attend these screenings and this one didn’t pay off. The only notable short was called The Door, a film by an Irish filmmaker shot in the Ukraine concerning the effects of Chernobyl. The rest ranged from mediocre to horrible.
I didn’t want my Festival to end with the shorts program so I went to the outdoor screening of Jane Champion’s Bright Star. I withstood the cold weather as long as I could and enjoyed what I saw, but I gave in as the evening went on and the night grew colder.
In comparison to past Festivals, this year’s Telluride was my least favorite. I think overall 2009 is not the strongest year for films. The films I chose to attend (I felt) were safe bets as far as quality, but almost all of them under whelmed me. I’m still interested in seeing A Prophet, Farewell, The Last Station, The Miscreants of Taliwood, Vincere, Vision and Window. Hopefully they will be distributed. Unfortunately my work shifts coincided with most of the revival screenings, if I’m lucky I’ll be in the right place at the right time to see them. Back to Los Angeles. There’s a long list of September screenings I am eager to see there.
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