Mixed Nutcrackers - The Nutcracker at the Bolshoi Theater (1989)

(T'ain't the poster for the 1989 production.  Please roll with it nonetheless.)

Yep!  In case you thought I was at all sane and would afford the much-delayed Season Challenge stuff its proper day in the sun, we're plowing ahead with another holiday marathon, and one even larger than the last to boot!  Here on Mixed Nutcrackers, we'll take stock of multiple filmic adaptations of ETA Hoffmann's 1816 story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet The Nutcracker, and see if any of em are worth half a damn!  There's Rankin-Bass/Sanrio collaborations, Macaulay Culkin's unfortunate youth, Tom and Jerry for some reason, and inexplicable attempts to merge light children's fantasy with epic war dramas!  Plus, y'know, some nutcrackers, some sugar plums, and a whoooooooole lotta renditions of Tchaikovsky's most famous compositions.  We're already overexposed to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Dance of the Reed Flutes, and the Trepak melody thanks to their idle usage in various Christmas movies and advertisements, so catching ten works with these numbers in their proper context over the course of a month or so is sure to drive us completely and utterly mad.

Which is the whole reason of the season, is it not?  Deliberately exposing yourself and friends to potential annoyances?  Yeah.

Before we start in earnest, though, there's a little bugbear requiring our attention: I've approximately zero familiarity with any version of The Nutcracker, much less the ever-in-production ballet with such ubiquity it's been celebrated and derided alike as Baby's First Ballet.  Though I can no doubt pick up on the particulars of a story initially written and popularly performed for the five-to-ten demographic by watching the other films in this marathon, it seemed untowards to enact this whole shebang without giving the source material the time of day.  So, in this opening entry, we'll take some time to discuss Hoffmann's initial story, and a production of Tchaikovsky's famous ballet, as a matter of prelude.  For reference's sake, my choices here were a public domain audiobook of the story provided by YouTube channel FullAudiobooks, and an upload of the Bolshoi Ballet Company's 1989 production found here.  They're both worth a look if you too need a crash course on what this whole nutcracking business is about.

I think the original Hoffmann story acquits itself best in the early going, before any hint of magic beyond Godfather Drosselmeyer's mechanized marvels rears its head.  The descriptions of Marie's home in full, warm Christmas splendor and the barely contained, excited habits she and brother Fritz keep as they discover new toys and leap from fascination to fascination has about it a comfortable, friendly vibe I very much enjoy.  One feels one hardly needs more than the children's personalities, the simple conflict between Marie's greater appreciation towards a wider variety of possibilities and Fritz's stubborn attempts to act a grown soldier, to remain satisfied.  With a different turn, the story could handily end at Drosselmeyer repairing Marie's beloved Nutcracker and ending on a message about the value of kindness and appreciative thinking.  Might not've provoked such fascination in Alexander Dumas decades later, or Tchaikovsky's compositions, but it'd make a tight, nostalgic little yarn confined entirely to a little lesson on Christmas Eve values.

As there is more to The Nutcracker and the Mouse King than its opening, I find it curious how the story loses some of its charm in my eyes the more fantasy elements it introduces.  The battle between the toy soldiers and the Mouse King's forces is quite fun with how it gradually unfolds from a few strange occurrences to full-small-scale war, Drosselmeyer's story about how the Nutcracker came to be is a nice self-contained yarn though a bit long-winded and convoluted in the way old fairy tales trend towards, Marie trying to save herself from the Mouse King gets a bit repetitious, and the solid chunk dedicated towards Marie and the Nutcracker Prince travelling through the Land of Sweets loses me entirely.  It's doubtlessly down to my age at first exposure, as one hardly expects a story structured and worded with kids in mind to fully thrill an adult, but it falls into a bit of a pattern wherein we're only watching wonder after wonder pass by with minimal involvement from the principles, none of which captures my imagination too much.  Much as I'd hope to find a little childlike sparkly-eyes in any children's work, no dice here.  This proves slightly concerning, as the whole Land of Sweets sequence provides the majority of compositions in Tchaikovsky's personally selected Nutcracker Suite, as well as character and imagery fodder for much of the adaptations to follow.  Hopefully, my not finding the big "isn't this all so spellbinding and awe-inspiring" beats from Hoffmann's story too enchanting doesn't imply a lack of enjoyment in the future.

(I'll briefly remark - between Marie finding something of her godfather's countenance and character in the nutcracker, her transferring her feelings towards him onto the lifeless doll, inventing a youthful nephew for him after hearing about one in his story, and ultimately being proven right, with the young man agreeing to marry him at the ripe old age of eight in the closing pages DOES make the story vaguely uncomfortable in places.  S'mostly a sweet runaround about a girl imagining herself an adventure and romance; some parts still impart some iffy implications.)

With regards to the Bolshoi Company's production of The Nutcracker, I'll have to lay down critical perspective for the moment.  I do not know enough about ballet (or dance in general) to provide any meaningful critique of how it plays out, or designed, or performed.  Ballet when used for cinematic effect, yes; ballet on its own terms, no.  For all I know, this could be the single greatest production of The Nutcracker ever undertaken, and all others are pale imitations of its perfection, or it could be a good effort since surpassed by grander stagings.  How'm I to tell when all I can see is people dancing what I presume is very well, and a fantasia of colors and costumes playing out across the screen?

Well, putting things thusly IS a little disingenuous.  I might not have any overarching opinion on the ballet or its execution, but I CAN at least provide a few stray thoughts.  For example, I thought it impressive how a few dances employed a larger number of performers to supplement the main talent - one can take it as either additional characters joining in on the fun or fight, or an expansion of their mindset to a multitude of persons that express their thoughts and feelings in a grander manner than usual.  The decision to portray Drosselmeyer as a literal magician when presenting his gifts in the early first act communicates much the same notion about his interventions into the magical world as the story's hints towards his greater involvement without needing words, and fits the dancer's limber, spirtely movements incredibly well.  Mouse King's defeat playing more as retreat than distraction leading to a decisive final blow makes a good way to position Marie's involvement as central, though it did confuse me somewhat when the second act contained the Nutcracker Prince recounting his victory with a more traditional final duel on-stage until I thought to look at the Wikipedia summary.  It's incredibly odd how the Arabic Coffee dance in the Land of Sweets lasts longer than the Spanish Chocolate, Chinese Tea, and Russian Candy Cane dances combined - maybe something to do with the length of compositions, maybe it's that way in the original work?  So much has been rearranged since the initial, poorly-received 1892 production, so it'd come across as odd to me if that particular of timing were grandfathered in.

Naturally I'm most impressed by Natalya Arkhipova's rendition of the Sugar Plum Fairy dance.  This is going to sound so, SO mealy-mouthed and ill-educated, but there's a clockwork quality to her movements, very fast motions executed in tiny chunks with a definite pause in-between.  If one considers how those pauses vanish from sight near entirely during the faster spins, and how many mental calculations it must take to hit each point just so in such a compressed time frame even with the rigorous years of training high-end ballet demands, it becomes downright miraculous to think anyone could get it right in one go, much less night after night for a whole holiday season.  The different qualities of movement (twirls, gliding limbs, high kicks, etc) corresponding to individual instruments and conversing with one another as the various segments of the orchestral pit intersect is also quite impressive.  So concludes the extent of my ability to technically or artistically critique this ballet.

This formality out of the way, I'd say we're free to explore the nine(!) following Nutcracker-based works this Chrimbo season.  If I'm not driven to a frenzied rage by Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy's opening celesta notes by month's end, I hope y'all enjoy the marathon!

(And hey - maybe if y'all are good this year, I'll host last year's marathon here too.)

The Phantom Carriage (1921) - Lord, please let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped.

Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-2020!  Theme four, part three - a silent horror film!

(Chosen by John!)

The last time I reviewed The Phantom Carriage, much of my discussion centered on the film's most notable supernatural element, of the last poor soul to die at the strike of New Years' midnight condemned to drive Death's carriage over nights that last thousands of years until the clock's next year-marking strike. What I identified as "the real meat of the film" occupies a rather brief paragraph before I get back to meditating on personifications of death and the overall effect of dwelling in semi-darkness through the cinematic medium.  In my defense, I was just getting started with long-form reviewing at this point, and trying to spit out my reviews soon as I finished watching to boot.  On this rewatch, I think it good and right to give said meat some proper focus, and pick apart just what makes Victor Sjöström's yarn of a wretch redeemed at great cost tick along so well.

I find it notable how the film allows us to think of David as a real bastard before we truly know him.  The opening sequences focus on the bedbound Sister Edit, dying of tuberculosis and begging those around her to summon one David Holm to her side for one final meeting before her expiration.  Scenes of her attendants debating the wisdom of this decision follow, and lead into said attendants scouring the small Swedish village for some sign of this mysterious man whose presence a woman of the faith desires so greatly - but to no avail.  Dialogue hints towards David Holm deliberately dodging those who seek his presence, cuing us into his insensitivity towards those in pain and need.  We then shift focus to listen in on a drunkard regaling his friends with strange recollections of a deceased friends' beliefs about those who die at the year's final chime, presented visually through a series of stacked flashbacks.  While Georges' story about the Phantom Carriage is depicted with the film's first instance of double exposure visuals in a manner that imparts otherworldly, deathly seriousness, and Tore Svennberg's performance within David's flashback personifies a man hollowed with fear at the prospect of such a fate befalling anyone, Sjöström plays the man's pantomimed speaking on either side of the flashbacks with a silent, dismissive cackle, even as he speaks of Georges' passing in such a way as to condemn him to the fate he so feared.  It is only after we separately understand the concept of David Holm as someone who'd actively avoid a dying woman's request and this nameless man as one who laughs at misery and suffering, a good half-an-hour into the film, that we're informed they are one and the same, effectively doubling our disgust.

When Georges arrives as the driver of the Phantom Carriage to inform David of his fate for the next year and expound on how he came to this state, the way Sjöström chooses to present and cut the tale short further exemplifies how he characterizes David as a worm who deserves his fate.  Pastoral scenes of David as a happily married family man with two beautiful children last only a brief time before Georges enters the scene and tempts David into a life of disorderly drunken abandonment, but they speak to how deep this man's faults run, especially to a modern eye.  Much as these scenes were likely intended as a rail against alcoholism and the damaging effects it wreaks upon society (especially given the original Selma Lagerlöf novel's commissioned purpose as public education about tuberculosis), I see David's quick descent as emblemizing the true immaturity of his soul.  What kind of man would turn to such vicious, nasty behavior as deliberately destroying a kindly Salvation Army woman's hard work on repairing his coat with full knowledge of the infectious risk she took in doing so after but a few rounds at the bottle and a brief stint in jail, if not one who didn't truly appreciate what he has?  True, the loss of his family is a devastating blow, but we begin this stretch of film with a David who acts the regular family man, and end it with one willing to risk others' deaths just because he's feeling particularly mean this morning, separated by only a month or two at most.  ANY minor slip would've brought him to this state, and exposed his unfitness to do more than forlornly usher souls to the beyond.

Most interesting of all to me on this watch, I find it fascinating how Sjöström continues David's damnation through the final stretch, and yet still finds reason to bring about his redemption.  When Georges forces David's spirit to stand beside Sister Edit's bed, and listen to her recollections about his life since she knew him, it paints a picture of a soul only a few shades removed from a true moral blackness.  In these passages, David deliberately coughs on people in the hopes his consumption will finish them off, professes a profound hatred for all joy in life, hunts his wife all across Sweden to the point of driving her to illness and exhaustion, reunites with her under false pretenses, deliberately risks infecting his children, and pulls what would become known in sixty years' time as A Jack Torrance with an axe - the only thing saving him from total irredeemablity is his unwillingness to take a swing at his wife once free.  Worst of all, the infection David earlier passed to Edit claims her life towards the picture's end, robbing the world of a truly selfless soul, one who looked on a wretch like David and saw someone deserving kindness and love and sacrifice, and pursued these beliefs to no avail beyond their respective deaths and the increased suffering of all who knew him.  There is practically no reason to want this man to do anything except suffer for the millennia that will pass before he must hand the carriage's reins over to another unfortunate bastard.

And yet he is redeemed.  When David Holm catches sight of his wife, in utter poverty, preparing poison to kill her children and take her own life to end their suffering, he is overcome with such agony at Georges' powerlessness over the living that he is granted a reprieve.  He wakes in the graveyard where he expired, rushes home, saves his wife, and convinces her of his true desire to reform, uttering the above-quoted prayer as the film's final word.  To my eye, David has Sister Edit's selfless kindness to thank for his salvation.  In life, her actions were met only with vindictive destruction and hateful rhetoric, which poisoned her and sank David further into his vagabond life of depravity.  In death, however, as David watches his life over again at Georges' side, seeing his cruelty with eyes free from its blinding effects, what stands out most is how far Edit went in the name of trying to help, even on so little a matter as patching the holes in his coat.  It is the sight of someone truly pure giving her all to the very end and no avail that makes David cower on the floor in an attempt to hide from the horror of his own life throughout the film's latter half, and it is the knowledge of how his living sins will continue to consume and rend apart all he held dear well past his death that gives rise to divine intervention, enabling David to truly repent, and earn a second chance at spiritual maturation before his final time of dying.

He does not deserve this.  He cost the world far, far too much in life, and stands as such a heartless, spineless bastard, I can't blame myself from nearly two years back for thinking Sjöström should've leaned into the abyss and denied David any salvation.  But at the same time, seeing a hopeless sinner realize the full implications and effects behind his careless actions and come to a second chance through purest anguish is the whole point of The Phantom Carriage.  The scenario's horror lies with its connotations beyond all else, its staying power with the impossibility of its conclusion.  Sister Edit's suffering and untimely death only possess a silver lining if we allow for the man she thought savable to the bitter end to be saved and grow beyond what he once was.  If, and only if the worst amongst us are treated as if they can one day become better is Death's terrible sting lessened, and only then does the empty void beneath the hood possess and deserve a human face.  S'a very Christian message, and one I'm happy to go along with for the sake of emotional wholeness.

4/5

The Bat (1926) - I've stood by you through Socialism, Theosophism and Rheumatism; but I draw the line at Spookism!

Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-2020!  Theme four, part two - a silent horror film!

(Chosen by Jackie!)

Might as well start off by noting the most notable thing about The Bat as a media franchise: in his 1989 autobiography Batman and Me, Bob Kane named Roland West's 1930 sound remake of this silent comedy-mystery as a major influence on his most famous creation, Batman.  This would count for something more if it weren't for Bob Kane's major contributions to the Batman mythos beginning and ending with the idea for a guy named Batman.  Considering Kane and his estate spent a good collective seventy-seven years bilking Bill Finger of any and all creative credit on published materials, despite Finger coming up with (among other things), Batman's actual costume, the Batcave, the Batmobile, Robin, Commissioner Gordon, the Joker, Catwoman, many of Batman's villains who hail from the 1940s, and the actual stories and dialogue from the vast majority of Batman stories published during the Golden and early Silver Ages, I do not think it matters much that Mary Roberst Rinehart's 1920 Broadway smash hit eventually played before Kane's eyes as a filmic adaptation when considering the overall Batman legacy.  There's a few tiny elements in common here to make the tenuous connection a little more believable, such as the presence of a circular light with a bat silhouette in the middle, or the bat-shaped calling cards the titular villain leaves behind, but in the main, naming The Bat as a major influence on Batman's creation only gives credence and credit to a man who stole more than enough both during and after his time on this earth.  Someone let me know when a Bill Finger biography mentions this play or either film; then we can start talking.

Anyhow, as a film, 1926's The Bat proves a difficult watch.  Looking over the Wikipedia synopsis for the play, there are mentions of where exactly the act breaks go, and I can see how moments within the film are meant to function as such, yet the pace West adopts to keep things lively makes matters muddled and difficult to follow.  On paper, the tale involves the criminal mastermind known only as the Bat holing up in an old manor where an elderly woman, her youthful niece, and their live-in maid have recently taken residence, joined in short order by a mysterious new gardener, a doctor representing a bank which was robbed under suspicious circumstances, two detectives hired to chase down the bank robber and the Bat respectively, and a late-arriving roughed-up man who nobody can identify.  You set them lose on the understanding that any one of them could be the Bat, and you've the ingredients for a nice spooky run-around.  In practice, there are so many characters with so many hidden agendas, introduced at a pace which does not slow down for or discriminate between act structures, and treated as a single massive pack whose individual members don't much matter so often as to leave one completely lost.  Try as I did, I could not keep track of the plot's twists and turns and double-backs, and eventually asked the room if anyone knew what was going on, to which I received a collective, "No."

It's at least nice to know understanding the mystery is only one component involved to enjoy The Bat.  The other, pertaining to the film's miniature comedic routines, makes a nice time.  If I don't know quite what's going on or why the characters are doing what they're doing, I'm at least guaranteed to enjoy whatever's happening on-screen at any given point.  West cuts between footage and title cards at a rate which I assume is meant to duplicate the dialectic rhythms of the stage play, and finds more success than usual in the attempt.  I'm personally a fan of maid Lizzie's comedic hysterics and how overall extra she gets when faced with the slightest amount of stress.  Characters moving through the manor in a big ol' huddle leads to some decent comedic scenarios here and there, particularly when they all go swinging from the rooftops.  One of the detectives, who looks to me for all the world like Roscoe Arbuckle, gets into a little game of turn-around over a gun on a table with the mystery man while the latter's tied up, and that clicks along nicely.  Connect the gags of comedy the gags of horror, and The Bat also has some nice beats along those lines, such as the moment when the villain corners the niece in a hidden room and we finally get to see his realistic chioptera mask in detail, or the way West frequently narrows the camera's focus to just the diagonal slice of a stairwell to heighten tension.  He's a little incoherent on the big picture, but I'm having myself a decent experience.

I cannot call The Bat a particularly good movie.  Not when the reveal of whodunnit comes at the close, we all spend a few minutes discussing what happened amongst ourselves, and then I look up the plot summary on Wikipedia and find the four of us misunderstood what happened entirely.  West's film does not make the play's plot easy to follow, what with the way it hastily introduces multiple characters at a rapid clip and treats the routines the scenario makes possible as more important than the overarching structure or point of the piece.  With said routines, be they comedic or intended as frightening, serving to draw out a small smile or appreciative nod multiple times throughout, the negative impact of his plotting and character work is dampened to an extent.  It's likely not the best way to experience Rineheart's work between her original novel The Circle Staircase, the stage production, West's sound remake, and the 1959 redo with Vincent Price.  Could easily be wrong on that count - I've not experienced any of the others, so maybe The Bat as a property doesn't hold any appeal for me and this IS the best of all possible versions - but I'd imagine at least ONE of these is still funny while also making it substantially easier to follow who's who and what's going on.

(Gotta love how we just absolutely mangle the Bat's leg during the climax while elderly Miss Ogden casually goes about her crocheting.)

2.5/5

Letterboxd Film Festival Wrap-Up!

My very first film fest, done!  Like three days ago at this point!  Driving up and back four or five times in the space of a week while also writing up reviews for every one of the eight pictures you saw in addition to a VR experience and some material from an entirely different film fest is tiring, so please excuse me for being a little late!  Part of it is my fault for returning to my regular schedule and having to write stuff for that too, but we're here now, we're talking the CICAE Award nominees, and how I feel about 'em in brief!  Let's have ourselves a quick little chat about these films, in ranked order, before talking about the judge's pick for the winner, and my own personal preference thereby!

ONWARD!

8) Falls Around Her: As mentioned in the review, I really wish Tantoo Cardinal had better material to work with.  The story of her singer returned to the reservation with reservations of her own about reconnecting with friends and loved ones has many potentially interesting avenues to develop along, and a compelling small-town friendly vibe, but the film's threats to take greater interest in its least interesting mystery are, unfortunately, made good on, and produce a climax I simply cannot abide by.  A disappointing entry, though one I'm glad to have viewed regardless for its star and overall presence throughout the first two acts.  I have to also admit: not wanting to be down on this film anymore also contributed to this write-up's delay.

7) Hjärtat: Was it the fact of director Fanni Metelius playing her own main character here and not quite clicking with her romantic co-lead that kept me at arms-length from this modern love story?  Was it the difficulties I experienced with her character's shallowness when it does still have merit as a human aspect and ties together thematically with her lover's own challenges in finding their respective ways through young adulthood?  Was it being reminded of Blue is the Warmest Color during the ending without the utter gutpunches the older film served?  Probably all of them, but at least the film still finds its feet and pulls a few resonant moments from its hat for good measure.

6) The Condor and the Eagle: Fine film, fine goals, fine execution, fine people behind it who do more important work than anything I do on this blogspace.  But man, I just can't square away the crimes they show with the "slow and steady wins the race" approach to protest they advocate.  The Guerras and the people they represent on the silver screen have extremely legitimate points about the need for a worldwide cooperative movement between indigenous persons to affect real change; I only wish they'd get louder and angrier about step-by-step tactics to help further said goals.  Its low placement is ENTIRELY a philosophical difference between myself and the directors/subjects, so one's mileage may very well vary.

5) Always in Season: You know you've a solid documentary on your hands when my biggest complaint is wanting more of the stories that rend at my soul.  Each of the subjects here could easily sustain a feature documentary of the same length all on their lonesome, so it'd be nice to see Jacqueline Olive's work stretch beyond its ninety-minute runtime to cast an even more damning light on these ugly parts of American culture, past and all-too-sadly present.  What is here hurts to watch, and because it hurts so bad it is necessary viewing for all.  I'm still knocked a little senseless by the first lynching reenactment scene.

4) I Was At Home, But...: I've been reading s'more reviews of this most enigmatic film at the festival over the last week, and seeing plenty of varying interpretations vastly different from my own.  The old man with the voice box and the bicycle, the extended conversation about the nature of acting with an uneasy director, the way Astrid treats her children, the significance of the other children flatly reciting Shakespeare - every last one a turning point for one's opinion and final analysis.  I remain staunch in my own view of it as the effects of depression on a small familial environment, but I'm always glad to see a cinematic Rorschach test in action, and rather wish I'd seen this with more folks I talk to on the regular to compare notes.  Either way, the slowly paced, sterile atmosphere is wonderful on its own, and the events within highly compelling.

3) Temblores: Its frankness about how even the softest-spoken objections to homosexuality carries an undercurrent of hatred and desire to destroy hits and hits hard.  Despite standard plot points and characters you might find in any queer narrative of this nature, the actors' pained performances and the distant promise of potential understanding before we're dragged through the jagged reality of conversion therapy and hollow eyed reunification grants it an impact and staying power beyond the nature of its components.  As I say, until such time as the world entire has moved beyond this out-and-out refusal to acknowledge those in one's life as essentially human because of such small things as a differing sexual preference and the resultant cruel torture, films predicated on depicting this suffering remain necessary, however overwhelmingly prevalent they remain.

2) Advocate: The international three person jury's pick for the CICAE award, and one I can easily get behind.  Handily the most artistic and clever of the three films here, it speaks volumes about the historical weight of its criminal subjects through the way it chooses to protect their identity, and draws you into the life of Lea Tsemel with a back-and-forth conversation between her life to this point and her activities in the modern day, before revealing a tiny yet crucial piece of information that completely recharacterizes the rest of the film.  There's an ideal synthesis between fascinating subject and clever presentation here that makes for an exceptional documentary.  I do not fault Boglárka Nagy, Luice Morvan, and Alison Kozberg for making this their selection at all, in spite of the crossness I indicated last week.  Advocate deserves all the praise in the world, and as many eyeballs on it as it can get if it means more exposure to the true face of Palestine's plight.

My own heart, however, belongs to another...

1) Aga: Yeah, I was right, no other film could challenge Aga.  It's more than a modern evocation of Flaherty's century-old documentaries, more than a climate change issue movie, more than an exploration between traditional and modern ways of living, more than an exploration of the effect of absence and the drive to reconnect, more than an allegorical representation of how stories and song echo in our daily endeavors, more than the quiet relationship between an old couple with lifetimes of experience between them on the barren landscape of a shrinking, increasingly hostile Arctic circle.  Aga is, above all, what happens when you strive to depict all of these ideas in active conversation with one another, and succeed on every level.  It is as immediate and vibrant and lively as every gasping breath Mikhail Aprosimov and Feodosia Ivanova take as they slowly go about the tasks they've grown old through, as expansive as the stories they tell to shredding emotional impact and the sounds of modern machinery that consume their whole world from miles away, as intimate and human as anything else I've ever seen.  This here is life on-screen, with all that implies, and nothing lost in the effort.  I say once more: this is a triumph of filmmaking.

I do hereby Award Aga The Gilbert W Hays Non-Accredited Bootleg CICAE Award.  It has earned it, and every other ounce of praise I can heap upon it in the future.  Please, God, let this thing have a wide release, or a physical disc, or a digital distribution deal, or SOMETHING I can use to show it to everyone I know.

And with that bit of gushing, I declare this year's film fest coverage over and done!  See y'all on the flip-side with whatever comes next!  Probably a review of The Bat, because we're being REAL slow getting through this season challenge stuff!

Day Five of the Loft Film Festival - Falls Around Her (2018)

Aygh.  What a disappointing way to end my time at the festival.  I was tentatively in Falls Around Her' corner throughout most of its runtime, enjoying the pockets of togetherness and quiet atmosphere whilst harboring reservations about where it was going with all this, and then the third act's focus clarification kicked into gear, and the whole thing lost me.  Would've liked it if we could finish on something other than the weakest film in competition for the CICAE award, but time and resources are perpetual factors, so what're ya gonna do?

Falls Around Her stars longtime Canadian supporting actress Tantoo Cardinal in a rare leading role as Mary Birchbark, a world-famous singing sensation who decides to abandon her tour one night in mid-performance and return to her home on the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek reservation.  Despite the presence of family members, long-disconnected friends, and old flames all looking to pull her back into community life so long as she's here, Mary wishes to spend most of her time alone out in the bush, enjoying the privacy of her cabin and wandering the woods as she pleases.  She cannot, however, shake the notion of someone stalking her whenever she leaves the house, and lines of dialogue when in contact with other characters indicates she has perhaps pulled a stunt like this before when she fell off the wagon for an unspoken reason.  In the watching, there's not much in the way of forward momentum through these two components of narrative, which I chalk up to the segments with Mary alone not rising to the standards of the material around them.  Whether it's the highly compelling vibrancy of the way Cardinal interacts with her fellow castmates or the visuals in these isolated segments looking fine but not quiet polished to the degree I'd like for what they're showing, the central motif the film returns to time and again doesn't draw me too much, and so results in the communal scenes feeling disconnected from one another.

And that's fine in its own way.  Cardinal embodies a lovely impression of a woman with darkness in her past who genuinely wants to make a try for a new life without any harsh feelings towards those she tries and fails to distance in her scenes with Tina Keeper and Johnny Issaluk.  She grants Mary a mild air of mystery that strings the viewer along with just enough information to keep us enticed without making her cold or distant, and the positive energy she exudes when she allows herself to get caught in the moment got me perking up after any scenes I found flagging.  The community's small but has this good sense of togetherness going on, and while I find the brief subplot of their struggle against a local mine polluting their water supply disappointing for the way it only amounts to a red herring, it's nice to have that around as a small element of local activism, as well as the way her cousin is allowed a brief conversation about wanting to marry a woman she's in love with free from any attempt to make it a big thing.  I like being here, I'm on the movie's side, and I want to see where it's going with these hints about Mary's past coming back to haunt her.

Then it DOES come round in the third act, and it is so, so disappointing.  The scenes of Mary growing paranoid over someone watching from the woods already failed to grab me, so the sudden overload of scenes to this effect at the expense of pretty much all other side characters and subplots was a major letdown.  There's a whole new character introduced to  and ushered out of the film inside five minutes, an old lover from Mary's band, who seems to only stop by so she can let her guard down and freak out even more in the aftermath.  We are treated to, I wish I were joking, a scene of Mary arming herself and preparing homemade traps around her cabin set to a hard-shredding electric guitar score, like we've transitioned into some survivalist adventure drama.  And the whole climax... I won't go and outright spoil it, but it involves the simplest answer to what Mary was running away from showing up on her doorstep, and playing out like a breakneck compressed rape-revenge arc, which is both immensely uncomfortable to watch, and hardly fitting for the tone as constructed.  A brief coda acting like this has resolved all of Mary's outstanding issues and rejuvenated her soul does little to help the feeling of getting lashed in the face by a hard swerve to wards left field.

I understand the issues we're working here, I understand the little ways Falls Around Her teases where it's really going, I understand I latched onto something different than what Darlene Naponse likely intended.  None of this changes the fact that I was drawn in by a positive-energy character study of an older native woman returning to her home reservation and resisting both the draws to go back to her life of fame and reconnect with loved ones, and had to go along with the film abandoning the things I believe it presents in a far more appealing, engaging manner in order to deliver on violent catharsis via a fairly lazy round of answers.  The script's goals let down the greatest strengths of Cardinal's performance, and what I assume are attempts at commentary on the music industry and the way it exploits minority performers is out of place and too close to material from an old exploitation film to jibe properly.  Our endgoal here is not supported by the framework as built, and I wish a quieter conclusion more driven by characters we'd already seen, with a less bombastic reason for Mary's choices took the place of what we get.

2.5/5

Alas and alack, but my time at the 2019 Loft Film Festival is officially done!  Tune in tomorrow for a wrap-up post, wherein I'll provide some parting thoughts on these eight films in competition, discuss my feelings on the judge's pick for the CICAE award, and name my own pick for the honor, for whatever that's worth!

Day Four of the Loft Film Festival - Advocate (2019) and Travelling While Black VR experience (2019)

(Skipping Saturday's screenings kinda sucks on my end, because the presenter announced the judges' having chosen Advocate for the CICAE award right before the screening, and while I'm going to give it a glowing review, finding this out before giving the film a shake for myself feels like it has ever so slightly biased me against it in favor of thinking Aga the better picture.  We'll try and leave that matter for the wrap-up post on Thursday, though, and simply write about the film as seen.)

The greatest trick Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaiche pull in Advocate is purposefully withholding a critical piece of information until the last moment.  They have, of course, an admirably clever bag of tricks to draw upon throughout, and in deference to the effectiveness of this trick, I shall do the same until towards the end, focusing instead on their other techniques for the time.  Needless to say, all the tricks in the world cannot do squat without a strong subject, and Lea Tsemel is quite worthy of nearly two hours about her life.  The film is divided between her latest cases defending a thirteen-year old Palestinian boy who stabbed two Israeli teenagers and a young Palestinian woman who detonated a bomb that killed nobody but left her mangled, and regaling her life story as a lawyer and human rights activist through media pieces throughout the decades and interviews with her family and clients, who are often one and the same.  In the present day, we see her researching cases, engaging in rapport with her legal team, dealing with press outside the courtroom, counseling her clients, and living her life in the between-spaces, giving the impression of a tough, spirited professional who still embodies great compassion without needing to set a second of it during trials.  In the past, we are perpetually reminded of how the uneasy and violent Israeli  occupation of Palestine has manifested itself in small ways over the years, and understand the importance of even one figure looking behind the decrees of terrorism and inhumanity to try and help those others decry as despicable.

In both modes of documentation, the screen often splits, typically directly along the horizontal middle, showing two different angles on the same event from either vertical slice, or segregating a third of live action footage on the left or right from photographic montages in the remaining two-thirds.  It's a simple technique, one used to increase the density of parsable information in thousands of documentaries, but it has greater impact for what often happens when part of the frame contains Tsemel's clients.  To protect their identities in moments where their faces appear, the filmmakers have commissioned traced-over animations of the live-action footage, rendering a large part of the screen a crinkled mass of paper with inked impressions of people moving through its frame.  Crucially, the paper is not mere drawing paper; it is comprised of rapidly shifting legal documents, court records and written arguments and printed laws, the sort of things Tsemel frequently consults in her line of work.  When the line dividing the client from the solid, present reality takes the same form as the line dividing footage from the past and an interviewee from the present, an entanglement forms.

These clients, though hopeless cases nobody would consider worth defending at first glance, are not just defendants in a trial with the whole nation of Israel set against them.  They are decidedly intertwined with all the lost causes and hopeless cases Tsemel has championed in the past, their fates resting on precedents formed by their attorney and the few like her who think them worth the effort.  Success doesn't just mean freedom or a reduced sentence, it means another stack of papers in the file, joining thousands of others who might help future Palestinian freedom fighters.  Even failure means another well-documented example of injustice, of how the state and the people it represents refuse to hear any possible qualifying evidence or extenuating circumstances, a tiny step forward but a step all the same.  The people Tsemel represents walk through her case histories because they themselves have become part of those histories, for good or ill, and there is perhaps no better way to defend their identities than by constantly reminding the audience of what they will represent legally in decades to come.

And yet, the last time we see Ahmed, the thirteen-year old who stabbed two Jewish boys and plead no intent to kill, the well-worn collage of documents fades away, as does much of the detail, and we only see a young boy's face, rendered with simple black lines against stark white before the slide of an invisible elevator wipes it away.  For they lost the case - Ahmed was tried as an adult and sentenced to a full twelve years.  Leah Tsemel has lost practically all of her cases.  The numerous landmark trials we're introduced to throughout the segments documenting her own history, including the time she defended her own husband for distributing anti-Israeli literature, all ended in failure.  She has lost time and again, counting her victories in the years she has shaved from her clients' sentences, the legal precedents she has set so she can do better next time, the tiniest little things others might only accept as consolation prizes.  It's the only way she can get through it all, and even still, after nearly fifty years' hard work as her state's greatest devil's advocate, she still needs a significant amount of time to process the judge's final ruling that ignored her every argument in favor of reinforcing first impressions.  After all, a young man has to face the realities ahead of him all alone, and a young woman's family feels no recourse when their suicidal daughter and sister is branded a radical terrorist.  And we have to sit there with her, and watch it all play out, and feel it with her from a million miles away.

Advocate does not pretend there is any hope a lone defense lawyer can resolve the Israel/Palestine conflict, or turn the tide of public opinion, or even make the courts care about justice when a Palestinian stands as defendant for a violent crime.  But it does offer us a picture of someone who knows all of this is impossible, and finds reason to continue the fight and scrape away at the problem while protecting and advocating for those who have no one else, while still remaining vibrantly, personably human through it all.  Letting us know Lea Tsemel has stood at the intersection of all these historic cases, inspired so many in her life, fought for decades upon decades simply because she cannot look into suffering eyes and think their plight right, and conveniently forgetting to mention she has only a small pile of relative victories to show for it rather than a blazing record of unqualified wins until the very end forces us to consider those mildly lighter sentences and changes in convicting language as valuable and important as she does.  No matter the ongoing injustice of occupation, what she has done matters.  It has to if any of this is to come to, if not a peaceful end, then a less horrid state.

4.5/5

***

Throughout the last week, I've had a particular picture of Roger Ross Williams' Travelling While Black VR experience in my head.  One hears about an Oculus-enabled piece that takes one through the history and legacy of the discrimination and violence African-Americans experienced on the road throughout the 20th century, one imagines being placed into black shoes to experience such discrimination and violence firsthand.  Facing the reality of what happened firsthand, from the inside, and considering the emotionally straining impact being targeted while minding your own business takes.  On reflection, such an experience would most certainly become exploitative and needlessly salacious, but I could imagine no other form the film would take, and so stuck to the assumption until I actually sat down and strapped on the headset inside the restored Old Pueblo trolley bus.  And boy am I glad that Ross Williams found a far more creative application for the VR tech, because it communicates its ideas  far better than what I pictured.

See, the vast majority of your time in the virtual space of Travelling While Black is spent sitting inside Ben's Chili Bowl, a Washington DC diner named as one of the safe havens for black travelers in The Negro Motorist Green Book.  Though your location within the diner will shift behind fades to black, and occasionally you will find yourself creeping through the back room in the haze of midnight or watching what seems to be the thick smoke of an evening riot while voice-over plays, the point is less transportation to a different time and place, but rather a grounding in the immediate now.  Your viewpoint is that of an observer in the booth while the people next to you recount their stories of life on the road in the mid-20th century, their fears of being killed on a police stop just for being black, the relief they felt whenever they stepped into a space named in the Green Book.  There's brief visual aids in the form of footage playing on the ceiling during some of Sandra Butler-Turesdale's narration, and a moment when you can look to your left during Courtland Cox's segment and see him as a young man reflected in a bus' mirror while the normal diner scene plays to the right, but for the most part?  You are there in the diner, listening as if you were there in the booth with these people, listening to their stories like it's any other day.

The effect is, for someone like me who's never done VR before, perhaps a little too convincing.  Even though I'm pretty sure my headset was fuzzy and out of focus, there were times in my glancing around to take in details that I would lean forward or to the side because I wanted to get a better view of something which caught my eye, only to be reminded the camera was in a static position and would not respond to THOSE kinds of head movements.  Same thing goes for trying to rest my hands on a table that wasn't there so I could listen more comfortably.  On the flip-side of this token, though, the extended segment with Samaria Rice discussing how her son was murdered whilst traveling in 2014 hits particularly hard, because it is difficult to think of yourself as anywhere but in the booth with her, and despite the ability to look anywhere else in the restaurant, I find myself compelled to look her square in the eye as she described every detail of the night.  Perhaps her testimonial was raw and powerful enough to do this in a more conventional filmic experience, but the grounding offered by VR makes it an even more impactful part of the experience than those brief segments that matched my expectations.

Travelling While Black cuts to the heart of the matter, and makes it clear that listening to black voices coming from black spaces and black experiences is more important than vicariously living those experiences in a facsimile of the real thing.  It is not the kind of experience I can rightly rate, for its impact lies beyond the conventions of how I typically judge a work, but I can easily tell you, it is more than worth the time if it comes to your town, or is made available for commercial purchase through Oculus.  I'm even willing to overlook the headache that kicked in halfway through the drive home and persisted for hours afterwards if it meant a chance to sit and listen and feel in this manner.

Day Three of the Loft Film Festival - The Condor and the Eagle (2019)

(OK, so technically it's day FIVE of the fest, but I wasn't here days three and four, so we're going with my count.)

Under normal circumstances, I'd feel more than confident presenting my initial impressions on the film and how its approach to documenting the efforts of indiginous peoples across North and South America to unite their causes and strengthen their voice in combating climate change clashes against my own views on how one should present such information when distributing it to the public.  The circumstances under which I watched The Condor and the Eagle, however, included a presentation by several native activist groups from around the Tucson area, and a lengthy Q&A session with director Clément Guerra and prominently-featured activist Bryan Parras.  Speaking unilaterally without considering what they discussed is wrong, so I shall structure this review around praise of the lengths they've gone to realize their goals, and then critique based around where it falls short in my eyes.  S'the best, fairest shake I can give them, and after the Q&A I'd say they deserve it.

So, it is highly admirable that The Condor and the Eagle seeks to empower voices from all over the planet.  Guerra and Parras spent the last two years travelling from indigenous community to indigenous community, chronicling how corporate greed, lax government standards, and environmental racism have done irreparable harm to each.  As noted during one answer, there is no European voice speaking over the subjects or much in the way of scientific discussion about potential technological solutions - the film is almost pure appeal to emotion, and I think it benefits from taking this route.  When faced with the injustice of multiple corporations burying oil spills and dump sites they've been ordered to clean beneath shallow mounds of earth, or the repeating refrain of segments focused on the fight to overturn a pipeline's construction or halt a city counsel's decision to give a local polluter a major tax break ending with a card noting how these colossal efforts still ended in failure, it is good and right to strike somewhere deeper than logical thought.  It is also good and right to focus that strike on a sense of togetherness, of letting the world know there are still millions who are disenfranchised by this climate violence in a myriad spread of ways (there's a brief but impactful segment about how the construction of a drilling facility on native land strongly correlated with the rise of women disappearing and turning up dead), and in spite of what I am about to say, encouraging the people to focus their own efforts on maintaining those bonds and not letting outside forces splinter their movement or weaken their resolve is a great message to make your take-away, both in the film and in the discussion afterwards.

However, looking at The Condor and the Eagle as a documentary like any other I might see, I do not think this enough.  All respect due to Guerra and Parras for wanting to keep the mood light with the supporting animations and their focus on unity, but artificially accelerated climate change IS, as they note, a really big problem that we are running out of time on.  Though I am sure they work closely with and support plenty of people who give their all to make a substantial difference through on-the-ground, in-the-courthouse-and-legislature political activism, this is not much reflected in the film.  I'm glad we get to see so many communities, but as with Always In Season a few days ago, I wish many were on-screen longer.  I understand the impulse to keep things light so as not to cause the audience despair, but more causes we're shown are lost than won, and the utter devastation of the losses accelerates the problem far more than the often-temporary victories brake it.  If we are to appeal to emotion here, we SHOULD lean into the dark, the depressing, the despairing, and we should come out the other side ANGRY.  If one is to speak on so large a stage about climate change, there should be far more than "Stick it out, keep doing what you're doing, and we'll beat this thing!"  There should be outrage, horror, a sickened tour through these ills, many a montage of hidden polluted pits and devastated towns and corporations getting away with it all.  There should be a direct, specific call to action motivated by how fucking furious we are that the battle is speeding towards a total loss for all players because the opposition refuses to budge unless we do more.

Understand, the film already contains ample amounts of what I describe, in the form of news clips and interviews with passionate activists and numerous vistas ruined by the site of a flaming smokestack in the uncomfortably-close distance.  The problem, as I see it, is one of overarching tone.  I already had my misgivings when the film ended on a series of protests that transitioned into an animation of hands from the north and south uniting around a broken earth and healing all the damage in an instant, but I could chalk this up to visual shorthand.  Listening to the Q&A session and hearing Guerra discuss his intentions for the film, I think there is simply a fundamental difference in how we view the purpose of documentary filmmaking about so massive a subject as climate change.  He wants to get away from the pessimistic views of other climate change docs and focus on the positives of human interaction, I think it dreadfully vital to emphasize the looming danger above all else.  And he and his co-director wife Sophie has very much done both in this film, but their lack of specificity and his (if I may be so bold as to characterize it as such) somewhat dodgy approach to answering questions about actualizing concrete plans for change on a widespread scale make it fairly clear to me he never had any intention of going where I think his documentary might have become most impactful.

This is fine.  As said, it is a difference in philosophies, one clearly not shared by the audience members around me, who were very audibly (and visibly, once the lights came up) impacted by the experience.  There are those who already do far more than I to spread awareness who thought this great, those who simply came out to see a documentary with its creators in tow who thought it great, those with direct ties to the communities depicted who thought it great, and in the end all of their reactions matter more than the that of some dweeb with a blog.  I desire righteous anger and withering, difficult-to-stomach runtimes from documentaries about subjects I think deserving of righteous anger and marathon audience pummelings, and Guerra and Parras and all the other people who are there on the ground think a lighter touch better.  All good, all fair.  This being a space for reviews and myself being a critic in this space, however, requires me to push my own opinion at least a little, and to my mind, The Condor and the Eagle packs some serious wallops throughout, yet overall takes too light, "get out there and march" over directly suggesting tangible actions worthy of the crisis' severity approach to ascend beyond a good first-time work.  If the planet is indeed changing because of the actions of the wealthy and powerful at a rate that will not sustain modern human society as we know it, if not human life period at so rapid a rate, it DESERVES every available documentarian bellowing with shredded vocal cords from the rooftops for immediate, radical action.

And just so I avoid the risk of hypocrisy:

DO NOT TOLERATE THIS NONSENSE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, ANY OF YOU, INDIGINEOUS OR OTHERWISE.  HELL, INDIGENOUS FOLKS AND MULTIPLE OTHER MINORITY GROUPS ACROSS THE COUNTRY ARE ALREADY MOBILIZED. SO THIS IS PROBABLY BETTER ADDRESSED TO ANYONE IN A RACIAL, ECONOMIC, OR SPIRITUAL MAJORITY.  MARCHING AND PROTESTING IS ONLY THE FIRST STEP.  ORGANIZE.  FIND THOSE IN YOUR COMMUNITY WHO CAN MAKE THE COMPLEX LEGAL AND SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES AT PLAY EASY FOR THE MASSES TO UNDERSTAND, FORM A REGULAR, WELL-ORGANIZED GROUP DEDICATED TO STOPING THE PIPELINES AND REFINERIES AND DRILLING PLATFORMS AND WHATEVER ELSE IS COMING YOUR WAY, AND FIGHT THEM IN THE COURTS.  IF FUNDS RUN SHORTS, DO ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO SCROUNGE MORE - DONATION DRIVES, CHARITY EVENTS, APPEALS TO THE SYMPATHETIC MONIED IN YOUR COMMUNITY, ANYTHING.  MAKE SURE YOU HAVE GOOD LAWYERS, ARE ABLE TO ATTEND ALL RELEVANT MEETINGS, AND SPEAK FIRMLY  IF THE BATTLE GOES SOUTH AND YOU STILL TRULY BELIEVE THIS IS WRONG, DO NOT ALLOW IT TO BE BUILT AS LONG AS YOU CAN.  APPEAL TO HIGHER AUTHORITIES, CHECK WITH YOUR LOCAL MUNICIPAL AND COUNTY OFFICES ON THE REGULAR TO FIND ANY VIOLATIONS THE CONTRACTORS COMMIT AND JUMP ON THEM LIKE SHARKS.  BLOCK CONSTRUCTION PHYSICALLY IF YOU MUST, BUT DO NOT ENDANGER YOURSELVES OR THE WORKERS ASSIGNED BY THE REAL ENEMY TO DO THE JOB.

BEYOND THIS, VOTE.  VOTE FOR POLITICIANS AND POLICIES AND RESOLUTIONS THAT WILL HURT THE POLLUTERS MOST.  IF ANY POLITICIAN YOU VOTE INTO OFFICE DOES NOT KEEP THEIR PROMISES VIS A VIS CLIMATE CHANGE (OR VIS A VIS ANYTHING REALLY BUT WE'VE GOT A FOCUS HERE), HARANGUE THEM ON THAT AND DO YOUR BEST TO HOLD THEM TO THEIR WORD UNTIL THEY DO WHAT YOU VOTED FOR THEM TO DO, OR LEAVE OFFICE.  IF AN OPPOSING CANDIDATE WINS AND DOES NOT TAKE ACTION, STILL TAKE THEM TO TASK - JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE LESS LIKELY TO LISTEN DOES NOT MEAN ONE SHOULD LEAVE THEM BE.  IF YOU ARE IN GOVERNMENT YOURSELF AT EVEN A LOCAL LEVEL, WORK TO MAKE SURE LEGISLATION AND RESOLUTIONS ARE INTRODUCED THAT WILL FURTHER REGULATE NEGATIVELY-IMPACTFUL CONSTRUCTION AND POLLUTIVE PRACTICES IN YOUR AREA.  IF YOU HAVE THE FINANCIAL CAPACITY, KNOWLEDGE-BASE, AND WHEREWITHAL TO RUN FOR OFFICE YOURSELF, DO THAT.  BUT SERIOUSLY, SINCE IT'S THE OPTION MOST READILY AVAILABLE TO THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE POPULATION, VOTE.  AND WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT, FIGHT AGAINST PRACTICES THAT KEEP THE MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES MOST IMMEDIATELY AND WORST IMPACTED BY CLIMATE CHANGE FROM EASILY VOTING TOO.

JUST... I DON'T WANT TO PUT DOWN THE PRACTICES OF MARCHING AND PROTESTING, BECAUSE GETTING VISIBILITY INCREASED AND REACHING OUT TO A LARGER POPULATION WHO WOULD OTHERWISE NOT TUNE IN IS A NOBLE, WORTHWHILE GOAL ALL ON ITS OWN.  BUT AS I SAY, IF THIS REALLY IS AS TERRIBLE AS THE WORST STORIES MAKE IT OUT TO BE, AND BELIEVE ME, IT IS, THEN DIRECT ACTION LIKE THIS IS THE BEST.  AND I AIN'T REALLY THE PERSON TO LAY OUT THE PERFECT TWELVE-STEP PLAN FOR GETTING SHIT DONE, I'M JUST SOME GUY WHO'S WRITING THIS IN A SINGLE ACTIVE BUST NEAR MIDNIGHT IN A TUCSON HOTEL ROOM, BUT I HONESTLY FEEL LIKE SOMETHING TO THIS TUNE WAS NECESSARY IN THE CONDOR AND THE EAGLE, EVEN IF GUERRA FELT A LIGHTER APPROACH WAS BETTER.  HE COULD'VE ACHIEVED THAT AND PROVIDED THIS INFORMATION, NO NEED TO GET INTO MY PREFERRED DOOM AND GLOOM APPROACH.  DO SHIT THAT HITS WHERE IT HURTS AND REFUSE TO TAKE "NO" OR "MAYBE LATER" OR "YEAH BUT ALSO NO" AS ANSWERS.

And after all that!

3.5/5

Night!

Saturday at the Borderland Film Festival - Shorts, Los Truenos de San Juan (2017), and A Day Without a Mexican (2004)

Necessary disclaimer: I had a uniquely bad experience here.  The website for the Borderland Film Fest said there would be a showing of Bad Hombres from 2019 at 10:30, so I arrived at the theater at that time.  An employee told me the showing was actually at 11, which wasn't too big a surprise - the Film at the Fence is advertised as being at 8 in the evening, while the paper's story on the festival notes 7.  So, I hung out waiting for the picture to begin... and waited... and waited... and waited until a large group of people arrived at 12 to watch the shorts.  After nearly hour of this, I was roundabout ready to go, only for them to announce they'd be skipping the last short in favor of screening Los Truenos de San Juan, which supposedly ran yesterday.  As such, I was in the theater FAR longer than expected, and got quite antsy through the documentary.  i don't much want to let the experience negatively color my views or result in an unfair post, so the following reviews will be as positive as I can make them, to offset a problem I created for myself.

***

Rapid fire short reviews, lessgo!

-The Battle of Ambos, Nogales is an amateur short interpreting the 1918 conflict that led to the first border wall between the United States and Mexico through music, film, and dance.  A lot of the techniques at play are those you'd expect from a first-time production (particularly the way footage occasionally reverses, and the deliberate over-saturation to the point of eradicating all colors save glaring white in many shots), but it's interesting how they dug into the the loss of life and human cost of the event without making much of the actual fighting.  The twirling specter of death and fire dancer who marks the last frame by dancing out of sight are rather nice touches, and it'd be neat to see what the creators do once properly established five or ten years down the line.  I would've liked a cleaner view of the short, considering the file seemed mildly corrupted, but the jerky nature of presentation adds to the feel of something fully home-grown when contrasted against the more polished material presented afterwards.

-Loving South (advertised as Minuteman on the site, and noted by director Oliver Rendon as having undergone multiple title changes at the screening) is a slice of a border patrol agent's evening as he goes about his tasks between picking up groups of illegals crossing the border.  There's racially-charged, xenophobic talk over his radio, but he himself seems the sort of man to just do his job, dropping off a young man he caught before the start without a word, and calmly accepting the next assignment at the end.  In the seven minutes in-between, we watch him putter about his sparse trailer, attending to chores and putting his thoughts in order with minimal commentary.  He's in-between spaces here, with none of the hats his job requires worn at home, and it's quite an interesting perspective to take.  Maybe there's some sadness to his movements, maybe willful obliviousness to the larger system he engages in, maybe he's just taken a job to try and keep his house in order.  Whatever it is, when he's not out in the field and just doing ordinary tasks about his bland domicile, he's still just a guy all the same.

-El pulso de la tierra (The Pulse of the Earth) was a little hard for me to watch, due to the up-close horse castration scene, complete with dog eating the freshly severed testicle at the end.  The frankness with which Fernando Alvarez presents the event, though, coupled with the short as a whole's tendency towards getting in tune with the natural world through appreciating horses, helps it feel more natural.  We're making a point about the ebb and flow of life out on the ranch, to the point of having sex in the middle of the desert shortly after the castration scene, so why not film it with such up-front honesty?  I was more than OK with the skinning scene in Aga yesterday, so I should be down with this castration scene - it's something ranch-hands do as a matter of course all the time, so why should I feel compelled to look away?

-Figures that in a group of shorts with tons of extended periods of silence and minimal dialogue, the one with heaviest on narration to the point of demanding your comprehension to get the most out of it (like, y'know, pretty much anything with narration) is the one with no subtitles.  Curse you, shoddy high school foreign language programs.  Fortunately, Juan Hernandez's Bajo el Agua (Underwater) is also a very well-shot compilation of black-and-white landscape shots and close-ups, with an obvious throughline of a woman discussing memories of her father, so while I couldn't understand a full sentence of narration, the emotional impact hit me all the same.  I really appreciate the shots of a decrepit house in the midst of a lake, the studies of an old man's face that creep in as the short goes on, and the way shots of a woman I presume stands in for the narrator increasingly come into focus before a fully-sharp image right before we watch her once-more-blurry figure walk into the sunset.  S'a good experience, regardless of whether you're behind the language barrier, and I fully understand the mix-up regarding subtitles when they were also showing this down in Sonora, where English-as-a-first-language/non-Spanish-speaking audiences are a minority, if present at all.

-José López Aramburo's Camuco was, unfortunately, not shown due to technical difficulties.  Alas.

***

Santiago Maza knows exactly what he has in Los Truenos de San Juan (The Thunderers of San Juan).  A good documentary needs a strong, unique hook to get you drawn in as soon as possible, and as hooks go, San Juan de la Vega's annual festival in tribute to San Juan Bautista is among the more immediately eye-catching.  Few religious ceremonies involve sledgehammers with illegal flashbang powder on the head being swung into the ground thousands of times over the course of several days, producing a deafening, thunder-like bang with each impact.  For all his focus on the cultural context and the reasons why people are so willing to risk limbs to celebrate in this way, Maza knows the allure of metal blasting powder against solid ground and rail irons is deeply, almost primally compelling, and so makes sure to seed his documentary with regular footage of anonymous townsfolk slamming sledges and producing white powder clouds in the aftermath.  What passes for climax in the documentary format even involves a long montage of hammer slammers cut and scored to classical music, peaking with a train running over dozens of powder bags in  a row.

I wouldn't have many words for Los Truenos de San Juan if it were just about the joys of detonation, and Maza brings along a fair amount extra.  He explores the less explosively spectacular aspects of the festival with roaming tours of its reenactments of historical events said to have involved San Juanito.  The people who produce the powder bags are given ample time to discuss their tradition, how they've seen it develop over their lifetimes, and voice their concerns about whether or not the children will take up their mantle in the coming years.  There's a good deal of footage showing certain prominent members of the community negotiating with the police for safer practices, while still working a little under the table to ensure things aren't too restricted.  Interrogation of larger issues pertaining to the town's unwillingness to cooperate with the law or willingness to put up with the harm that does befall those who get unlucky or judge their strike wrong is fairly minimal, but I still go with the documentary for exploring a unique subject I did not know about prior to watching with a decently comprehensive eye.

It's one of those docs where you definitely walk in on promise of b-roll footage, and stay for the stories and personalities.  What interrogation Maza does engage in reveals a community with a strong love of their tradition and a belief in the need to carry it on regardless of danger, tempered... or, since tempering implies strengthening, perhaps broadened... by the youthful wrecklessnesss necessary to swing a heavy weighted tool into shatterable rocks or bouncing steel beams with some pretty strong explosive substances in-between.  One might not learn much about the big picture around any of the issues it touches on, but one learns more than plenty about a slice of culture that often doesn't get this level of focus, and learns in an up-close and personal way too.  S'nice spending eighty minutes in this town, learning about its traditions and seeing the people exercise their practices.  And it all goes boom in the end with enjoyable frequency, so you're not liable to nod off while watching either!

***

(Warning: Bad writing ahead.)

Frankly, I think A Day Without a Mexican has too much going on for its own good.  The film, about a mysterious pink fog descending around California and causing all persons of Hispanic descent to vanish without a trace, already has the baseline thesis of showing how vital those from south of the border are to the local economy in a humorous way.  It already chooses to express this through an ensemble narrative looking at, among other things, a woman whose Mexican husband and half-Mexican son vanished while her half-Mexican daughter remained behind, and her sister who tries to take advantage of the moment to push her apocalyptic religious beliefs on others; a Hispanic reporter who seems to be the last Latina in California and the massive media circus around her survival; an old rancher with a xenophobic son who finds his family ties tested by the economic crisis; a Senator tires to use the situation to ascend to the governorship while his family struggles with having to work like normal people; and a set of border patrol agents whose lives are upended by the lack of illegal immigrants to chase after.  All of these storylines are required to be straight-up humorous, ironically sincere, and genuinely emotional at various points in the film, all cross over with one another at some point, and I'm pretty sure I've missed one or two plot threads in here.  This is the "what the film already has going on" paragraph.

In addition to all of this, director Sergio Arau slathers the film with a grab-bag of asides, genre digressions, and editing oddities that confuse the tone something awful.  Many characters have a background in news media, so we are afforded frequent glimpses into what television has become without contact to the outside world.  The result is a mishmash of desperate reaches for content, wild conspiracy theories played for laughs, a man who looks like John Goodman in The Big Lewbowski ranting about statistics inside a cheap TV frame, and occasional dips into mockumentary footage.  Despite this framing device, the film also makes time for quick little montages of California descending into chaos separate from the media's watchful eye, with a few skits repeating throughout.  When these asides become mainline intersections with the plot, they produce bizarre subplots like the government planning increasingly bizarre experiments on the surviving reporter under the supervision of a crackpot TV scientist.  Through this all, the film makes frequent pauses to throw up informative title cards after a particularly misinformed or stupid-sounding line, to make sure we know the score on whatever was just said.  These many, MANY chunks of content produce frequent laughs, but I have a hard time saying they're particularly graceful in their style.

Normally, I'd hit the wrap-up point ans say A Day Without a Mexican is an overstuffed, unfocused package that holds together mostly because it has so much going and trades in such cheap hooks, it'd be hard for something to NOT land every now and then.  It gets into some convoluted territory towards the end for reaching the "now is when we are serious and make our big points" moments, but rallies around a perfectly ludicrous moment for a finale, and earns some respect for digging up so much to throw at the wall.  Review done, publish button pressed.

Thing is, after watching at the border last night, several people called it a great movie, asked me if I thought so too, and I responded, "Yes."  My intent here is to give the film a 2.5 or a 3, which I would normally not qualify as a great movie.  Why respond in such a manner, beyond the obvious answer of, "There's no reason to pull down people who enjoyed a film more than you did, and keeping the conversation light is more important than spitting out your full critical opinion right then and there"?  Honestly, two things.  One, while I don't think Arau and Yareli Arizmendi's script is particularly smart or graceful, and do in fact find it broad to the point of trying to embody every single joke you could make about the border situation in 2004 at the expense of a consistent tone, it IS written in response to a complicated international relations problem that is frequently boiled down to "Those people bad, keep they out" by proponents of quick, "easy" solutions both then and now.  In its way, a film which looks at this situation, determines to find the comedy beneath the surface, and goes about the task with every tool it can manage at a downright manic pace is making the reasonable choice.  Flinging out actually informative statistics alongside snarky asides like "Contrary to popular belief, Israel is NOT part of Mexico," asking serious-minded characters to stand next to broad prop comedy, being anything and everything under the sun related to migrants across the US/Mexico border accurately reflects the reality of the situation, and makes double mockery of those who think simply throwing up a higher wall is the answer when there are so, so many factors at play.

And that's really the other reason I felt compelled to agree A Day Without a Mexican is great where I wouldn't otherwise: the wall.  As with El Norte last year, where the story of two siblings trying to survive after an illegal border crossing was enhanced by facing away from the wall and hearing the soundtrack duplicated from across the line, watching this picture with the barrier that stands as symbol for every ignorant and hateful attitude it rails against right behind the screen makes its otherwise cheesily-delivered message more impactful.  You tear your eye from the picture for a moment, look through the slats, and see, as it argues somewhat inarticulaely, yes, there ARE people on the other side just like any other, watching this kinda dumb movie and having a great time when surrounded by others.  With the stretch of wall in Nogales featuring yet more barbed-wire than it did at this time last year, and with international relations ever-deteriorating under the Trump administration, it's worth taking the time to be there and think about how, for all the anger and complex factors making any simple solutions impossible and dangerous to entertain, so much of what has fueled the fires over the last century has been little more than needless hatred towards people whose place of birth means they call themselves Mexicans where we call ourselves Americans.

It's a weird way to defend a film, I know, and I've descended into inarticulate, wide-swiping techniques myself in trying to do so.  Saying the film makes a good experience and a proper capper to a day of films in Nogales because it reminds you of how simple and complex the situation is seems paradoxical.  The alchemical processes by which a film I wouldn't otherwise like too much becomes a great time are weird and convoluted and not for a mind that has been operating on very little sleep of late to properly understand.  I can just ramble it all out onto the page, hope it makes sense, and say we really should be trying to smooth out the process of border crossing with more ports of entry and attempts at foreign diplomacy focused on addressing the reasons people come here rather than just throwing up more defenses and encouraging a culture of xenophobia.  That's all.  G'night!

(Best joke in this movie is the sleazy salesman's commercial hawking all the leftover merchandise.  Seen those guys on local TV one too many times.)

2.5/5 for the film, 5/5 for the experience.

Day Two of the Loft Film Festival - Aga (2018), Always In Season (2019), and Hjärtat (2018)

No mincing words here: Aga is easily my pick for film to win the CICAE Award.  After today, there's still three other films in competition I've yet to see, but it's hard to imagine any of them ousting this one as most worthy of the honor.  It is a remarkably complete work, covering all aspects of its subjects' lives across the physical and personal, big picture and inner lives, and all the more remarkable for being such a slow-paced, quiet film that we don't even learn anyone's name until close to halfway through.  Aga is a joy to look at, to listen to, to consider on all levels, and if the three judges I've sat beside through these five screenings thus far somehow don't agree, then that's perfectly fine, they know quite a bit more about film and art than I do - but I shall be quite cross with them nonetheless!

Aga is the story of Nanook and Sedna, an elderly couple who live together in a modest yurt within the Arctic Circle.  Their lives are full of work and hardship, requiring strong hands and stern will to obtain food, maintain shelter, carve anything and everything they need from raw materials, and stay ahead of the harsh environment.  Things have gotten quite hard of late, for Nanook is slowing physically and losing his memory, to say nothing of how he spots ominous signs of warming climate and dwindling animal population that often leave his efforts fruitless.  Sedna is presently nursing a grave case of frostbite on her side, though it seems she does not let Nanook know this.  For all these obstacles, they still continue on, practicing survival as taught to them so many decades ago, even without anyone to pass it to themselves.  They are happy to continue with their lot in life, but are definitely marked by the sense of this all coming to an end when they do.

The modern world rarely encroaches on their domicile, and when it does, it is loud, loud as hell.  The passage of a plane overhead, the tread of a snowplow in the distance, or the sound of their son's radio when he comes to visit round the middle cause the soundtrack to explode with droning sounds well beyond the norm.  Aga's soundtrack is by no means a quiet composition, dominated as it is by bursts of noise from Nanook and Sedna's day-to-day tasks, yet the consistency of noise from modern machinery and devices makes all the difference.  There is no pause for breath in the globe below their home, no need to stop for the detail work.  Auditory expulsions run on and on and on, granting the film the air of something immense and powerful turning its gears far away from their home, though not quite so far enough away to keep it from impacting their lives.  Much of the forces leading to Nanook and Sedna's present difficulties are the results of manmade forces far beyond the scope of their humble lives, up to and including the absence of their children.  While Sergei's absence from home lacks a mystery of motive like his sister's (he has a job in the city, so of course he won't stick to the yurt), he still leaves a spattering of oil outside the shelter upon his departure .

We're never privy to why Aga is so estranged from her parents - the knowledge that something broke in the past and cost everyone something precious is enough.  Once we fully understand how deeply her loss pains her parents, though, Milko Lazarov turns his exacting style to exploring how Nanook can do right by his daughter again.  Stretches of the film concern Nanook and Sedna's storytelling traditions, the elderly couple conjuring fantastic visions of ancient stories and semi-prophetic dreams as the camera focuses on the effect they cast over the listener, which is soon followed by a realistic exploration of how these tales unfold on the next day's dawning.  The old folk tale Nanook learnt from  his father and passed to his son about a hunter whose words to a mystical reindeer brought plenty to the land only brings further reminder of how he will not become the wise, mighty hunter destined to return the world to its previous state, while Sedna's dream of following a polar bear who became a man into a cavern of unspeakable light and beauty is soon mirrored in Nanook's efforts to reconnect with Aga at the diamond mine.  This story has the character of an old Inuit folk tale, but is accompanied by Nanook musing about how the music on their son's radio must have been composed by someone with great suffering weighing upon their heart, and is soon followed by his own suffering being scored by grand orchestral music as he attends to his final needs and accepts help from an ice road trucker to reach his destination.  I'm a particular fan of that sequence, for the trucker's slow, methodical attendance the the demands of his job and his fondness for telling stories reflect Nanook's life so well, showing how, despite the fundamental divide between worlds, some of the spirit still survives.

For a time, I considered the enormous, booming score during the third act a weakness, a reason to consider Aga slightly less than five stars.  The film is so very much a near-documentary-like moodpiece otherwise, concerned with the quiet moments of two elderly lovers lying beside one another, an old man exhausted earlier than he's used to by a routine task, an old woman tending to her illness with silent dignity.  Drawing orchestral music from The Revenant to demand we know how to feel at the moment of greatest tragedy seems antithetical to its overall goal, something ill suited to a film so dedicated to losing figures in the bottom corner of the screen before focusing on their faces or tools of their lives in beautiful, close-up tableaux.  On consideration, the choice seems perfect for so complete a film.  Aga embraces the beauty and nobility in the lives Nanook and Sedna lead, lovingly depicting them skinning an animal caught in a trap for sustenance and a potential present for their daughter, but it recognizes how simply persisting in this way of life will lead to their succumbing to old age and the losses imposed by the outside world, and terminate all they have built across untold generations.  Acknowledging how they are linked to modern times, through their progeny, its negative effects on their lives, and the new emotional mindsets it allows, without sacrificing the fundamentals of who they were, is what allows for the beautiful reunion and final aerial shot of a hole as big as the world, with all the light from the stars concentrated in a single weeping woman, the sight of her blotting out sense and memory of all else.

It is an utter, unqualified triumph of observational, humanistic filmmaking.  I support it not only for the CICAE Award, but for success as Bulgaria's submission for Best Foreign Picture at the Oscars.  Sight-unseen on all other submissions, I'm even in its corner for the win, it's that good.  If you're in Tucson, mark out time for the other showing Tuesday at five.  If not, find out when it's playing near you, or available for rental/purchase online whenever it's made ready for such, watch it, and love it.  Please.

(What happened to the dog, though, someone please tell me what happened to the dog, I need to know.)

5/5

***

I did not know about the Moore's Ford lynching reenactments before this film.  I'm ashamed to say I did not know about the Moore's Ford lynching in the first place before this film, but that is rather expected due to my background, location within the country, and participation in a school system that has largely failed to give adequate due to real injustices in American history in favor of an overly distant view of the nation's past.  Learning about past lynchings in specific and seeing photographs of the grim, horrible results is, however disheartening and disturbing, expected in a documentary interrogating the history of 20th-century lynchings to give context to a 21st-century case.  The lynching reenactment, however, is presented without full context first, in the form of a woman watching footage of the event's murder and mutilation portion sans explanation, before a little card comes up identifying her as a lynching reenactor, which threw the whole theater for a loop.  It's something else watching a group of older white men in Klan hoods dragging screaming black couples through the woods while a black crowd watches, screaming slurs and mocking their oncoming deaths, and not knowing what the hell is going on.  Captures the unspeakable horror of knowing so many can so easily deny this unforgivable chapter of American history in a way less emotionally direct methods could probably not.

Always In Season intermingles three investigative lines together, following the reenactment and fresh federal investigations of the Moore's Ford lynchings in Georgia, the lynching of Claude Neal and how it relates to the history of lynchings as a whole, and the case surrounding the death of Lennon Lacy in 2014, ruled a suicide by the police by strongly suspected by his family and community as a modern-day lynching.  Director Jacqueline Olive apparently started the project in 2009 as an investigation into lynchings as a historical concept, and gradually shifted focus to the Lacy case as it occurred and developed mid-filming.  I'm of two minds about the decision, personally.  On the one, so deeply entangling the Lacy case with the other two major strands is absolutely the right decision, as it immediately communicates how these injustices have not vanished into the fog of history or ceased to damage marginalized lives in the modern day, contrary to what many in-power white interview subjects note.  The outrage Lacy's mother, her lawyer, and her reverend express over how the SBI and local law enforcement placed minimal effort into the case echoes the willing complacence from authorities and media figures in days past when lynchings were advertised with mail cards and plainly described on the following morning, and witnessing their testimonies alongside Danny Glover's narrated recounting of disgusting historical documents around the Neal case makes the effect all the more wrenching.

On the other, attempting all of this in a documentary of a mere 90 minutes does not seem enough.  The effect is already difficult to stare directly in the face, but doing so gives the impression of insufficient runtime to fully cover all topics.  Lacy's case in particular feels somewhat shortchanged, like there's multiple other angles to explore, other voices to hear in specific we just can't find time to showcase.  These events and the public's ignorance of their historical import/lasting present effects could easily support another half hour.  It would be a half-hour of emotionally wearying, moral faith-testing collective agony given form through light and sound, yet I believe seeing and imbibing more can only lead to fuller understanding, stronger emotional reactions, potentially even stronger calls to arms.

If the worst I can say about Always In Season is that it needs to show more harrowing photographic evidence, contain more eye-opening interviews, bring past and present even closer together than it already does, then I should think any potential weakness lies with calling final cut on an already difficult film too soon.  It's a difficult picture to consider for the CICAE alongside the others here, being a documentary of very real injustice and loss in a way that doesn't quite fairly compare with narrative fiction.  Gonna take some careful consideration when making the final judgement call, both from myself and the panel officially doing so.  I think it a powerful experience all the same, with plenty moments to equal the big shock of seeing the reenactment for the first time, many of which are far, far worse in their context and implication than watching an actor rip a black baby doll from a woman's fake womb and smash it to the ground.

4/5

***

Hjärtat (The Heart) is one fuck of a horny film.  Quite literally, as main character Mika (played by director Fanni Metelius) opens the picture by discussing how she simply doesn't masturbate, finding as she does greater pleasure in one-on-one sex of any kind, even if it's of the passing casual sort.  When she falls in love with big city art student Tesfay (Ahmed Berhan), she upends her life to be with him, making sweeping promises about spending the rest of their lives together... at least until it becomes clear that Mika needs sex far, far more often than Tesfay does.  There's quite a lot motivating her to stay with him and his deepening funk across the first and second acts that sees her acting out for attention and him going deeper into his viddy gams rather than engaging in intimacy, but whenever it comes to increasingly angry words, the conversation always centers around the sex.  Mika doesn't seem to know how to express her pent-up frustrations with Tesfay's numerous inadequacies or the hole she feels in her life without presenting it as a disappointment over not screwing one another as often as she'd like.  When the couple DO have sex, it's shot in such a way as to emphasize the naked, sticky closeness of it all, yet rarely goes all the way, cutting off on an interruption or a shift in the mood before what its eye and Mika's character really want.

As an idea, I'm all about Hjärtat and its frank exploration of a couple who really do love one another slowly realizing their incompatibility in the long periods between passionate highs.  S'the kind of relationship drama I live for, and it ends in much the same way as Blue is the Warmest Color, which used the same final beats to utterly blow me away.  As an executed film, I find Metelius' work frustrating, approaching average, unfortunately.  The chemistry between Metelius and Berhan seems off to my eye - the necessary emotional deadness between them at their low points works just fine, but the complimentary highs register at the same level due to their subdued approaches, and leaves me unable to really get behind their situation.  Certain key events seem shot more for the sake of enjoying their excess than saying much about the characters' lives, the appearance of title cards at fairly odd intervals to mark the relationship's development are often at odds with the pace of how it plays out on-screen (I swear, three of them crop up in a twenty-minute period after we've gone without one for forty), and the third act simply doesn't land for me.  It follows Mika on a recovery vacation with friends that sees her hit rock bottom and rise back to self-confidence, only to lead to another encounter with Tesfay which ends exactly how one would expect.  There's some daring to how their relationship finally ends on mutually painful yet agreeable terms, but as third act decisions go, dedicating a twenty-minute block to a character partying her brains out amidst the wildest excesses yet for an ultimate payoff of "they couldn't change at all, actually," is a real tweak to the eyes.

Maybe it ain't for me, maybe I'm starting to feel the effects of driving up and back to watch multiple films in a single day and write about them in the evening.  Maybe maybe maybe, but all the maybes in the world can't change how my experience with Hjärtat was less than ideal.  S'not bad by any stretch of the imagination - I'd wager it handles its romance with a greater degree of emotional maturity and tenderness than many other films out there, and I enjoy how the film sees Mika truly self-actualize after all she's been through.  It takes the edge off of some of the more pornographic-feeling sexual scenes by giving us a moment of private sexual expression that works for the character.  "Good with problems that keep me from engaging as much as I'd like" is still disappointing for a film festival entry, though, and I can only really say there's a good possibility others who hook to this stuff stronger or easier will likely enjoy the film more than I.  This is still a positive, recommending review; just one with an asterisk noting a lack of passion from one reviewer.

(Big points for featuring a scene wherein Mika and Tesfay try and fail to bond over one of the Wolfenstein games for XBox, though.  Gotta wonder, given his age - when Tesfay says it's a remake of a game he played as a kid, does he mean Wolfenstein 3D, or the 2009 Wolfenstein remake?)

3.5/5