Saturday Night At The Movies
SIFFting through cinema, Pt. 3
By Dennis Hartley
Visionaries: Avant-garde films make my eyes hurt
The Seattle International Film Festival is in its third week, so I am continuing to share some more highlights with you. Navigating a film festival is no easy task, even for a dedicated buff. SIFF is presenting 405 films over 24 days. That’s great for independently wealthy types, but for those of us who work for a living (*cough*), it’s tough to find the time and energy that it would take to catch 16.8 films a day (yes-I did the math). I do take consolation from my observation that the ratio of less-than-stellar (too many) to quality offerings (too few) at a film festival differs little from any Friday night crapshoot at the multiplex. The trick lies in developing a sixth sense for films most likely to be up your alley (in my case, embracing my OCD and channeling it like a cinematic divining rod.) Hopefully, some of these will be coming soon to a theater near you. So-let’s go SIFFting!
Bran Nue Dae: Walkabout, the musical?
I know what you’re thinking- “Enough, already with the Aboriginal musical-comedies!” I’m being facetious, of course; to the best of my knowledge, the Spell-check-challenged Australian import Bran Nue Dae is the first (and don’t go making up titles like Jimmy B: Bring on da Chant, Bring on da Axe in the comments section to try and fool me, either). So how does it fare? Well, it has all the sizzle of a potential audience-pleaser (especially when you consider the sizable number of sunny-side-up romps that have come out of Australia over the last decade or two), but unfortunately, the steak is a bit undercooked.
Set in the late 1960s, the wafer-thin narrative offers up a sort of Aboriginal variation on Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows. In the sleepy little port town of Broome, a young Aboriginal named Willie (Rocky McKenzie) is conflicted between pleasing his religiously zealous mother (Ningali Lawford), who is pushing him toward the priesthood, and his raging teenage hormones, who are urging him that he needs to start investigating if his longtime friendship with the lovely Rosie (Jessica Mauboy) comes with a benefit package. Just when things start to get interesting between them, mom packs Willie off on the bus for another year at his Catholic school in distant Perth. It’s not long, however, before Willie’s yearnings for Rosie, combined with the tyrannical rule of mean old Father Benedictus (an ultra-hammy Geoffrey Rush) overwhelm him, and he runs away. As Willie makes his way back to Broome, he has encounters with the requisite Whitman’s Road Movie Assortment of colorful goofballs, eventually hooking up with a young hippie couple (driving a VW bus, of course) and a hobo with a heart of gold (Ernie Dingo, who steals all of his scenes). Hilarity (as well as much exuberant singing and dancing) ensues.
I really, really wanted to like this film (especially since I’ve always had a soft spot for stories that are centered on Aboriginal culture) but I’m not sure I can give it a hearty endorsement. There was a lot to like about it (particularly the easygoing charm of the young leads and Dingo’s engaging performance) and I think the filmmaker’s hearts were in the right place…but…I was too distracted by the sloppy editing (which tends to work against the choreography) and almost unforgivably bad lip-synching for some of the musical numbers. While some of the songs were catchy, others were cringe-worthy. Then again, I’m not a huge fan of musicals; if you are a diehard, you might be more forgiving.
Beautiful Darling: For whom the colored girls sing
I find I’m leaning more heavily toward documentaries this year. Not that I have anything against the latest Coen brothers-influenced neo-noir thriller from the Principality of Lichtenstein, mind you; there just seems to be a fair number of intriguing documentaries on the SIFF calendar. So, here are some more you might want to be on the lookout for:
Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling-Yes, we’re talking about “that” Candy Darling, so famously name-dropped in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”. Who was “she”, exactly? Should we care? I went into James Rasin’s documentary with a little consternation. Yet another film about Andy Warhol’s Factory, and his orbiting freak show of sycophants, wannabes and “superstars” who were (mostly) famous just for being famous? As it turns out, Rasin’s film is not so much about the Factory, or really ultimately “about” Darling, who fascinated Warhol for the requisite “15 minutes”, before getting kicked to the curb. It’s a study in sadness. It’s the sadness of a lonely childhood; of a boy growing up on Long Island (as Jimmy Slattery) who yearned to be a famous female movie star; no more, no less. She was featured in a few Warhol films and had the lead in a play tailored for her by Tennessee Williams-only to die of lymphoma in 1974, at age 29, virtually penniless. It’s the eternal sadness of her friend, Jeremiah Newton, still carrying a torch for a long-gone (platonic) relationship, as he dutifully arranges a belated burial for her ashes, 35 years on. It’s the sad sad mood of Rasin’s film-as wistful and ephemeral as the androgynously translucent Darling’s moment in the sun.
Visionaries: An old pal of mine was always fond of dismissing “experimental” film as little more than “movies that hurt your eyes”. As I was watching this new documentary about avant-garde movie critic, filmmaker and curator Jonas Mekas, directed by legendary editing whiz Chuck Workman, I began to chuckle to myself. Viewing the parade of clips from the likes of movement pioneers like Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Luis Bunuel and Kenneth Anger, I began to see what my old pal was driving at. Because, when viewed strictly as non-contextualized clip montage, it does strike one as a jumbled confusion of nonsensical jump cutting, herky-jerky camera movements, images that are under-exposed, over-exposed, fluctuating wildly in and out of focus…in short, a headache-inducing experience that, well, kind of hurts your eyes. But it was precisely this kind of “visionary” and free-form style of filmmaking that informed and inspired the work of more familiar contemporary directors like David Lynch (who appears in the film) and Guy Maddin (who, rather puzzlingly, does not). Now, just because a film might be labeled as “visionary”, does not necessarily equate that it is, in fact, “watchable”. Consider Andy Warhol’s infamous stationary camera epics, Sleep (5 hours, 20 minutes of real-time footage depicting a man catching his Zs) and Empire (8 hours observing the ever-static Empire State Building). Do you know anyone who has actually sat through them (while remaining completely awake and alert)? I stayed awake and alert through Workman’s film; it’s certainly a startling assemblage of images (if anything). But it neglects to address the most important question (which was the impetus behind the excellent documentary My Kid Could Paint That, which I reviewed here)-Is it truly Art?
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work-“Do you want to know what ‘fear’ looks like?” exclaims Joan Rivers, motioning for a close-up of her fingers, as they tamp impatiently on a blank page of a weekly planner, “THAT is what ‘fear’ looks like.” Later on in the film, she laments “This (show) business is all about rejection.” Any aspiring stand-ups out there need to heed those words of wisdom (and I will back her up on this). Fear and rejection-that’s the reality of stand-up comedy. That being said, one could also take away much inspiration from Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg’s engaging “one year in the life” portrait of the plucky, riotously profane 75 year-old, as she rushes from nightclub and casino gigs to TV tapings, taking meetings and sweating over the writing and production of her one-woman stage play. The film also reviews her rollercoaster of a career, from Borscht Belt beginnings to anointment (and infamously, subsequent blackballing) by Johnny Carson, then slowly back up to middling. What emerges is a woman who is still working her ass off, putting people half her age to shame with a fierce drive to succeed. There’s something to be said for perseverance. As Kathy Griffin notes, Rivers was instrumental in breaking down barriers for women in standup. Joan, on the other hand, is not so sure. “I swear-if one more female comic comes up and thanks me for kicking the doors open, I’m gonna say: Fuck you! I’m still kicking them open.” Hey…at least she’s still kicking.
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