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
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