Review: Andrey Zvyagintsev's "Elena"

Elena. 2011. Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev. Written by Oleg Negin and Andrey Zvyagintsev. Produced by Alexander Rodnyansky and Sergey Melkumov. Cinematography by Mikhail Krichman. Edited by Anna Mass. Music by Philip Glass, from his 1995 Symphony No. 3. Production design by Vasily Gritskov and Valeriy Zhukov. Sound design by Andrey Dergachev and Stas Krechkov.

Cast: Nadezhda Markina (Elena), Andrey Smirnov (Vladimir), Elena Lyadova (Katya), Alexey Rozin (Sergei), Evgenia Konushkina (Tatyana), Igor Ogurtsov (Sasha), Vasiliy Michkiv (Lawyer).

(Note: this review has been cross-posted on Twitch.)


Acclaimed Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, The Banishment) taps into the rich tradition of film noir, as well as the influence and cultural echoes of such diverse Russian forebears as Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Tarkovsky, in his latest work Elena, a superb slow-burn drama in which the peripheral details have as much impact as the main plotline.  Zvyagintsev offers sharp, caustic social commentary on contemporary Putin-era Russia, where class warfare and the attendant divide between the haves and the have-nots prove to be not only insurmountable, but to have deadly consequences.  Its impeccably composed, stark visuals lending a near-apocalyptic mood that permeates every frame, Elena leaves the viewer with a chill that lingers long after the end credits have rolled.

Beginning and ending with a shot of birds alighting on a branch outside a palatial, upscale Moscow apartment (just one example of how natural landscapes inform the human action throughout the film), Elena is named after its protagonist (played by Nadezhda Markina), a sixtyish woman living in that apartment who is married to Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov), a rich businessman.  They met each other years before when Elena was a nurse and Vladimir was her patient; Elena’s caretaker role has continued into their married life, in which her main job is to attend to her husband’s needs, getting him out of bed and handling all the domestic duties.  Though they outwardly seem to be a loving couple, this is belied by the fact that they sleep in separate beds, which make Elena as much a maidservant as she is a wife.

Elena and Vladimir both have adult children from their previous marriages, each with their separate problems.  Elena’s son Sergei (Alexey Rozin) is a dissolute layabout, living in a rundown tenement in the suburban outskirts of Moscow who depends on the financial largesse Elena manages to wheedle out of a grudgingly tolerant Vladimir.  Sergei constantly bickers with his wife, usually over his equally aimless and undisciplined teenage son Sasha (Igor Ogurtsov); Sergei’s lack of emotional maturity is neatly represented by the beer bottle that is constantly at his mouth, echoing the milk bottle in the mouth of his infant son.  Vladimir is estranged from his daughter Katya (Elena Lyadova), whom her father terms a “hedonist,” similarly to Sergei lacking gainful employment, apparently spending most of her time indulging in one-night stands and alcohol.

The needs of Sergei and his family, whom Elena cares for fiercely and seemingly without judgment, form the catalyst for the main conflict of the film.  Elena is very much concerned about getting her grandson Sasha into college so that he won’t be drafted into the military, and perhaps harboring an unspoken wish to prevent him from ending up like his father.  Elena repeatedly asks Vladimir for money to help him go to school, presumably to help bribe the right people, since Sasha won’t get into a good school with his grades alone. Vladimir, openly resenting having to provide for Elena’s family, puts his foot down, refusing this latest request for assistance.  Later, when a health scare and a belated reconciliation with his daughter causes Vladimir to redraft his will, Elena contemplates taking drastic measures to protect her own future financial stability as well as her son’s family’s.  Without giving too much away, if you’ve seen The Postman Always Rings Twice or such latter-day European re-imaginings as György Fehér’s Hungarian film Passion (1998) or Christian Petzold’s German film Jerichow (2008), you’ll probably guess where this story is headed.

With now just three features to his credit, Andrey Zvyagintsev has catapulted himself to the ranks of the finest world directors, and certainly one of the best filmmakers to come out of Russia; Elena is his finest creation yet.  Zvyagintsev and his collaborators, especially his brilliant regular cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, excel in every department; especially impressive is how Elena’s cinematic frame teems with details that complement the main action and provide acerbic and disturbing commentary on modern Russian life.  For example, television – sometimes heard, sometimes seen – is a constant backdrop to many interior scenes in the film.  The inane cooking, dating, and advice shows that blare in the background are the new opium of the people, to borrow from Marx’s famous maxim concerning religion, that prevent citizens from thinking too hard about their circumstances and the societal injustices and socioeconomic inequalities that have placed them there. (Not to mention the conditions that have allowed an authoritarian ex-KGB man have constant rule over Russia for what, with the latest election, will be close to two decades.)

Elements of the natural world, especially animals, exist as portentous symbols of the ominous fates awaiting the human characters; for example, the loud cawing of crows (never a good sign) is heard throughout.  Late in the film, Elena’s train passes by a dead horse on the side of the tracks, an unmistakable metaphor for the evil that Zvyagintsev sees shaping the universe he creates in Elena, as well as the world he sees around him.  In his director’s statement, he says that Elena gave him the chance “to explore the central idea of the early modern period: survival of the fittest, survival at any cost … Ever-increasing disengagement and individualism mean that people start to behave more and more like a bunch of tarantulas in a jar.”

I must mention two more elements that contribute to Elena’s artistic success.  Nadezhda Markina’s central performance is a riveting and complex one that elicits both sympathy and revulsion with equal intensity, as we see what Elena is truly capable of when push comes to shove and the drive for self-preservation becomes an all-encompassing force, subsuming any sense of morality, scruples, or even love.  The starkly understated, yet intense action of the film is propelled by Philip Glass’s propulsive score, taken from his 1995 composition Symphony No. 3.  This piece recurs throughout the film, mostly in scenes with Elena traversing the sharply disparate worlds of wealth and privilege represented by her rich husband’s neighborhood, and the relative poverty of the crumbling high-rise inhabited by her son.  Glass’s music plays during an overhead shot of a newborn baby playing on an oversized bed, which becomes a deeply unsettling symbol of the unending cycle of dog-eat-dog materialism that Zvyagintsev so vividly, and unforgettably, depicts.

Elena is now playing at Film Forum in New York through May 29.  Click here for more information and to purchase tickets.

Review: Joe Swanberg's "Art History"

Art History. 2011. Produced, directed and edited by Joe Swanberg. Written by Joe Swanberg, Josephine Decker, Kent Osborne, Adam Wingard, and Kris Swanberg. Photographed by Adam Wingard and Joe Swanberg.

Cast: Josephine Decker (Juliette), Joe Swanberg (Sam), Kent Osborne (Eric), Adam Wingard (Bill), Kris Swanberg (Hillary).

(Note: this review has been cross-posted on Twitch.)

The filming of a sex scene proves to be no simple process (if indeed it ever is) in Joe Swanberg’s Art History, a complex and unsettling examination of the creative process and the materials involved, both human and mechanical, in the making of art, as well as the psychological pressures that go along with it.  Film director Sam (Swanberg) is shooting a sex scene that presumably occurs during a couple’s one night stand.  The film opens both in medias res and in flagrante delicto, with a very explicit depiction of the characters having sex, with full frontal nudity by both participants.  We immediately know that this is not “real,” as we hear Sam’s off-screen instructions to his actors during the scene.  The film within the film has a very different visual style than the one that surrounds it; the film Sam is making is rough-hewn and handheld, not unlike the real Swanberg’s early films.  Art History itself takes the opposite stylistic tack, shot almost entirely with long, static takes, and much more meticulously framed and composed, with many scenes resembling iris shots, the image in the center surrounded by a ring of darkness.  There are a couple of shots that are strikingly lovely, especially one of a shimmering pool with patterns of sunlight that wouldn’t be out of place in an avant-garde film.

Art History invites us to read it as a self-critique of the film director, or as the title indicates, the creative artist generally, as a sort of vampire who preys on the intimate details of those who are used as the objects of this art.  Swanberg himself says as much in his director’s statement, where he writes: “This film is an apology to anyone I have hurt because of the way I work or because of my own emotional recklessness. As the title suggests, I hope all of these instances are in the past.”  The atmosphere of Art History is hermetic and claustrophobic; the film takes place entirely in the single location of the house where the film within the film is being made.  The only acknowledgement of a world outside the film set is the sound of an airplane that intrudes at one point on the scene. 

Juliette (Josephine Decker) and Eric (Kent Osborne), the actors in the scene, are told by Sam to improvise their dialog, during which they reveal details of their personal relationships during their sex scene.  Sam is mostly unconcerned with the specific details of this dialog, concentrating instead on the technical details of lighting, sound, and the physical actions of his two actors.  The intimacy of the scene bleeds into the “real life” outside the film, as Juliette and Eric explore their real attraction to one another, having actual sex off camera during the shoot.  A simultaneously humorous and disturbing moment occurs when Sam turns his attention from checking footage he has shot to peer in on Juliette and Eric as they have sex.  The film shoot runs into a major complication when it becomes clear that Sam and Juliette seem to have some sort of an off-camera relationship as well, forming an inchoate and somewhat confusing love triangle.  This sex act seems to upset the delicate balance of the shoot, as Sam’s jealousy of Juliette and Eric’s relationship gradually becomes more apparent.

Swanberg has come a long way artistically from earlier films such as Kissing on the Mouth, LOL, and Hannah Takes the Stairs; as interesting as those films were, one still got the sense that Swanberg was working out his stylistics, and that framing and composition were very much secondary concerns.  However, Swanberg right now is in the midst of a creatively fecund and boldly experimental phase of his career, and has been incredibly prolific in the past year.  Swanberg premiered three films at two major festivals within a month of each other this year: Uncle Kent at Sundance, and Art History and Silver Bullets at Berlin.  Another film, Autoerotic (co-directed with Adam Wingard), recently opened in New York, and two more films are set to be released later this year.  Art History so far is the only one of these films I’ve been able to see, but if this is any indication of the quality of his other recent work, I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing the rest of them.

Art History is now playing at the reRun Gastropub Theater through September 29.  For screening times and to purchase tickets, visit reRun’s website. The film is also included as part of film distributor Factory 25’s box set “Joe Swanberg: Collected Films 2011,” a limited-edition subscription in which buyers will receive four films over the course of a year: Silver Bullets, Art History, and the upcoming films The Zone and Privacy Setting.  This release includes bonus materials for each film, including vinyl soundtracks and set photography booklets.  For more information, and to order the set, visit Factory 25’s website.

Review: Anne Sewitsky's "Happy, Happy"

Happy, Happy (Sykt lykkelig). 2010. Directed by Anne Sewitsky. Written by Ragnhild Tronvoll. Produced by Synnove Horsdal. Cinematography by Anna Myking. Edited by Christoffer Heie. Music by Stein Berge Svendsen. Art direction by Camilla Lindbraten. Sound design by Gunn Tove Gronsberg.

Cast: Agnes Kittelsen (Kaja), Joachim Rafaelsen (Eirik), Maibritt Saerens (Elisabeth), Henrik Rafaelsen (Sigve), Oskar Hernæs Brandsø (Theodor), Ram Shihab Ebedy (Noa), Heine Totland (Choral director).

(Note: this review has also been cross-posted on Twitch.)

Anne Sewitsky’s debut feature Happy, Happy, winner of the World Cinema Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is a story involving two couples, infidelity, and marital strife coming to the surface after lengthy repression, that goes down smoothly and easily – in fact, far too smoothly and easily, which is the film’s main problem.  Good performances by the four principal actors are subsumed in a scenario that dials the cutesiness and whimsy up to 11, which sits uneasily with material that seems as if it should be more traumatic for the characters.  But again, it all goes down easily – not for nothing was this film chosen as Norway’s foreign film Oscar entry.

Kaja (Agnes Kittelsen), a woman who is ever the eternal optimist, despite her rather distant and chilly relationship with husband Eirik (Joachim Rafaelsen), with whom she hasn’t made love in a year – the resistance is all on his end.   Another couple, Sigve (Henrik Rafaelsen) and Elisabeth (Maibritt Saerens), moves into the house across from them.  All of them live in a remote town, a snowy place far from the city.  There doesn’t seem to be much to do in this place, and the main activity in town comes courtesy of the local church; Sigve and Elisabeth were choir singers where they came from, and they join the local choir also.  They play board games soon after they meet, revealing the dynamics of both couples.  Playing “The Couples Game,” especially, causes Kaja to reveal their lack of a sexual relationship to the other couple, and to reveal herself as someone extremely lacking in guile and completely an open book to everyone.  Her neediness and clinging to her husband, as Eirik cruelly tells her one night, is the cause of his recent lack of attraction.  However, there is another reason Eirik has distanced himself from his wife, which becomes evident in due course.  Similarly, Sigve and Elisabeth moved to this remote place because of a troubled aspect of their marriage that has lain beneath the surface of their outwardly placid demeanor, but which is revealed through their interactions with their neighbors.

All of this sounds like the premise of a Bergmanesque study of troubled marriage (a sort of Scenes from Two Marriages), but Sewitsky and her screenwriter Ragnhild Tronvoll opt for a much lighter tone.  This is an interesting narrative tactic, and a potentially intriguing one; unfortunately, this choice renders the proceedings rather saccharine, especially with the device of a male choir that pops up frequently between scenes with songs commenting on the action, functioning as a gospel-singing Greek chorus.  Another major miscalculation is the subplot involving Sigve and Elisabeth’s adopted Ethiopian son Noa (Ram Shihab Totland), and Kaja and Eirik’s son Theodor (Oskar Hernæs Brandsø).  While their scenes seem intended to represent how their parent’s problems are passed down to their children, they too often (especially when they play “master and slave”) come off as gratuitous, unnecessary distractions from the main storyline.

Happy, Happy opened September 16 in New York and Los Angeles. For more information, visit Magnolia Pictures' website.

Review: Gregg Araki's "Kaboom"

Kaboom. 2010. Written and directed by Gregg Araki. Produced by Gregg Araki and Andrea Sperling. Cinematography by Sandra Valde-Hansen. Music by Ulrich Schnauss, Mark Peters, Vivek Maddala, and Robin Guthrie. Production design by Todd Fjelsted. Costume design by Tracye Gigi Field.

Cast: Thomas Dekker (Smith), Haley Bennett (Stella), Chris Zylka (Thor), Roxane Mesquida (Lorelei), Juno Temple (London), Andy Fischer-Price (Rex), Nicole LaLiberte (Red-Haired Girl), Jason Olive (Hunter), James Duval (The Messiah), Brennan Mejia (Oliver), Kelly Lynch (Nicole).


Kaboom, the latest film by Gregg Araki, is billed as “The Gregg Araki Movie.”  This strongly indicates that Kaboom can be seen as a sort of career summing-up, marrying the anarchic, subversive, go-for-broke sensibility of early films such as The Living End and Totally F***ed Up with the more sophisticated filmmaking techniques of Mysterious Skin and Smiley Face.  Araki’s last film Smiley Face was a pot-fueled comedy, and Kaboom unfolds as a kind of stoner’s conspiracy-theory fantasy. 

Kaboom opens with a mysterious recurring dream of the protagonist, Smith (Thomas Dekker), a college student who, by his own description is “18 and perpetually horny.”  Although he is attracted to men, he refuses to identify himself as gay, being far more fluid in his sexual identity, having had sex with women as well, including his best friend and classmate Stella (Haley Bennett).  Smith is driven to distraction by his blonde, lunkheaded surfer roommate (Chris Zylka), named Thor (“like the comic”), whom Smith suspects may have homosexual tendencies.  “He’s too into his body,” Smith tells Stella; more suspiciously, Thor has a closet full of color-coordinated flip-flops.  Stella, meanwhile, pursues an ill-fated relationship with Lorelei (Roxane Mesquida), who turns out to be a witch with supernatural powers.  This is far from the only strange thing that happens.  Smith begins getting cryptic notes shoved under his door, such as “You Are The Chosen Son.”  But the craziness truly begins at a party during which Smith eats hallucinogen-laced cookies, hooks up with London (Juno Temple), a wild, free-spirited woman, and meets a red-haired woman (Nicole LaLiberte) he first encountered in his dream.  After the party, Smith is involved in a bizarre incident in which he and the red-haired woman are chased an attacked by men wearing animal masks.  Throughout most of the film, it is unclear whether these episodes are real, or a figment of Smith’s hyperactive, over-sexed imagination.  The story threads eventually come together to form a vast, global conspiracy that is hilariously explained breathlessly by one of the characters late in the film, in which everything we have seen before is revealed to be not what they appear.  This late-film explanation is reminiscent of the latter minutes of a typical Scooby-Doo episode, as villains become unmasked.

Kaboom rides at a brisk pace, continually topping itself with outrageous, hilarious, WTF moments.  Araki’s digital palette is full of lights and bright colors, appropriate to the phantasmagoric, psychedelic nature of the proceedings.  Kaboom is far more fun and far less tedious than Gaspar Noe’s wildly overpraised Enter the Void, another film that attempts to convey the experience of being under the influence of hallucinogenic substances.  Kaboom is also steeped in a polysexual eroticism that challenges the orthodoxies of identifying exclusively with heterosexuality or homosexuality.  This free-wheeling fluidity extends to Kaboom’s narrative, which expands outward from its college campus to implicate the entire world, the last shot illustrating the film’s title.

Kaboom opens today in New York at IFC Center.  Gregg Araki and Thomas Dekker will appear in person Friday and Saturday at the 8:10 and 10:10 shows.  Click here for ticket info. 

Review: David Kaplan's "Today's Special"

Today's Special. 2009. Directed by David Kaplan. Written by Aasif Mandvi and Jonathan Bines, based on the play "Sakina's Restaurant" by Aasif Mandvi. Produced by Nimitt V. Mankad and Lillian LaSalle. Cinematography by David Tumblety. Edited by Chris Houghton. Production designed by Darcy C. Scanlin. Music by Stephane Wrembel. Songs by Siddharta Khosla. Costumes by Theresa Squire.

Cast: Aasif Mandvi (Samir), Naseeruddin Shah (Akbar), Jess Weixler (Carrie), Madhur Jaffrey (Farrida), Harish Patel (Hakim), Dean Winters (Chef Steve), Kevin Corrigan (Stanton).

What can I say about Today’s Special, opening in theaters today?  Should I start with the good news or the bad news?  I guess I’ll start with the positives.  This film has in its favor a very good cast, starting with its star, Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  Mandvi co-wrote the script with Jonathan Bines, based on Mandvi’s off-Broadway play Sakina’s Restaurant.  In the film version, he plays Samir, an aspiring French haute cuisine chef who has to take over the family Indian restaurant after his father suffers a near-fatal heart attack.  Mandvi is not exactly a rival to Olivier, but he performs capably alongside the two veteran Indian actors who are his costars: Madhur Jaffrey as his mother; and Naseeruddin Shah as a cab driver/master chef who is best described as the “Masala Whisperer.”  Kevin Corrigan, the stalwart indie film go-to guy, is amusing as usual as Samir’s coworker.  Mandvi is a very funny and brilliant guy on the Daily Show, so I was very much looking forward to seeing how this would translate to film. 

And now, alas, is the part where, as they say in politics, I have to go negative.  In the hands of director David Kaplan, this potentially interesting material is flattened out into the blandest sort of predictability.  I could tell where this was all going to lead from the first frame, and the film does not deviate from this a single iota.  I suspect that this was probably better as a play; the live setting most likely lent some sparks that are utterly missing from the filmed version.  In this context, it is the height of irony that Samir’s main weakness as a cook is that he follows recipes to the letter, rather than allowing his intuitive feel for the ingredients guide how he puts them together.  So much a pity that the film he is in fails to heed this lesson, making it yet another example of a frustratingly underachieving American indie.  It is enough to make one wish that Mandvi had directed the film himself.  Not that this would have necessarily resulted in a significantly better film, but it may have at least have exhibited some sort of a human personality, instead of seeming like a computer program set to “Heart-warming Festival Indie Movie.”  The food looks nice, though; see this film on an empty stomach at your peril. 

Review: Jeff Mizushima's "Etienne!"

Etienne! 2009. Written, directed and edited by Jeff Mizushima. Produced by Giacun Caduff, Joel David Moore, Jeremy Boreing, and Kurt Schemper. Cinematography by Tim van der Linden, Eric Kim, and Jeff Mizushima. Original score by Mark Bachle. Sound design by Katsuyuki Ueno.

Cast: Richard Vallejo (Richard), Megan Harvey (Elodie), Molly Livingston (Molly), Matt Garron (Matt), Caveh Zahedi (Man in Coat), Thibault Debaveye (Backpacker), Marisa Pedroso (Marion), Vittorio E. Razi (Vittorio), Rachel Stolte (Rachel), Solon Bixler (Solon).

The premise of Jeff Mizushima’s debut feature Etienne! at first blush seems almost toxically quirky: Richard (Richard Vallejos), a shy, pudgy introvert, finds out his beloved hamster companion, named Etienne, has cancer. He decides to take the hamster out on a road trip to show him the world (or at least San Francisco) in the week he supposedly has left to live. This scenario seems ripe for the sort of winking, supercilious irony that has infected far too many American independent productions. However, Mizushima refuses to take such an easy route, and instead has crafted a genuinely heartfelt and endearingly earnest film that is as generous to all its characters as Richard is to the beloved pet he dotes on. This, plus a canny evocation of 1970’s cinema in its credits design and visuals, makes Etienne! a uniquely delightful film.


At the outset, Richard has just gotten a job as a maintenance man at a hotel after a decidedly odd job interview and first-day orientation. Richard is a genial, soft-spoken man sporting a distinctive handlebar mustache who talks to and interacts with others, but who clearly is much more comfortable around his constant companion Etienne. In the grand tradition of Benji, Lassie, and Milo and Otis, Etienne (played by multiple hamsters, all named in the end credits) is as instantly memorable a character as the humans in the story, making Richard’s devotion to this creature immediately believable and ultimately very moving.

Although the film’s focus is squarely on Richard, room is made for several other characters, as expertly drawn as the protagonist. One is Richard’s roommate Matt (Matt Garron), as gregarious as Richard is introverted, who spends his time laying down screeching vocals on thrash-rock tracks, and regales his girlfriend with stories about battling ninjas. Richard meets other people during his road trip with Etienne, most notably a French backpacker-scientist (Thibault Debaveye), a despondent man searching for his lost poodle (Vittorio E. Razi), and a traveling musician couple (indie-rock duo Great Northern, who contribute a lovely song dedicated to the hamster). The person Richard meets on his trip who gets the most screen time is Elodie (Megan Harvey), who embarks on a road trip of her own, taking a break from her college studies, and fleeing a failed relationship. Her sadness forms a corollary to Richard’s grief over his dying hamster; the film floats the possibility of the two of them having a more significant encounter beyond the narrative. Another significant character is a pinhole cameraman (Caveh Zahedi, writer/director/star of I Am a Sex Addict), who separately employs both Richard and Elodie to be in his photographs. The sequences with the photographer are the occasion for some strikingly beautiful passages of nature. The photographer opines on how randomness is part of the process in creating his photos; and Etienne! adopts this philosophy as its narrative strategy, showing us how random encounters with others often prove to be life-altering.

Etienne! will play a week-long engagement from September 3-9 at the reRun Gastropub Theater, a wonderful space in Brooklyn that forms the ideal setting for this immensely charming and intimately scaled film. To purchase tickets, visit the theater’s website. 

Macrocosmos

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo. 2009. Written and directed by Jessica Oreck. Produced by Jessica Oreck, Maiko Endo, and Akito Kawahara. Cinematography by Sean Price Williams. Edited by Jessica Oreck and Theo Angell. Music by JC Morrison and Nate Shaw. Additional music by Masami Tsuchiya, Haroumi Hosono, Mishio Ogawa, Logic System, and Paul Grimstad. Sound by Nate Shaw.

Jessica Oreck’s film Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, now at Film Forum through May 18, is not, as its title would seem to indicate, a cult science-fiction film. Instead, it is an impressionistic, non-linear, and often visually stunning documentary exploring Japan’s fascination (indeed, obsession) with insects. This is illustrated by the initial scenes of the film, where we follow a beetle hunter as he stalks new specimens through a forest, and observe a boy hounding his father to help him buy a $47 beetle at a pet store. Later on, we meet a man who keeps boxes of crickets inside his apartment because he so loves their sound, and cruise along with the beetle hunter, driving the bright-red Ferrari he bought with his earnings from selling beetles. It quickly becomes apparent that Oreck is not depicting some bizarre subculture; to the contrary, the Japanese love for insects is something that is deeply engrained in their culture and illustrative of their unique approach to nature and their sense of aesthetic beauty. Interspersed between these scenes of insect enthusiasts (never identified by name) are narrated sequences explaining how insects symbolize art, history, and literature stretching back to Japan’s origins.

Oreck connects the brief lives of insects with the Japanese concept of mono no aware, which relates to the transcendent beauty of all things in nature, and the idea of existence as fleeting and temporary, putting a primacy on appreciating each moment of time as fully as possible. Haiku poetry is the literary form that perfectly embodies this philosophy; many of these three-line poems are dedicated to insects. This belief in life as ephemeral is also connected to Japan’s volatile environment; its history is filled with many natural disasters caused by floods and typhoons. One commentator in the film remarks that ten percent of the world’s recorded earthquakes have occurred in Japan. The hypnotic, sonorous narration which fills in this cultural background match well with the mesmerizing visuals which come courtesy of cinematographer Sean Price Williams, who brilliantly captures microscopic scenes of bugs in grass or on pavement, as well as the neon panorama of Tokyo’s cityscape. Avant-garde cinema deeply informs this documentary; such scenes as fireflies buzzing in grainy low-light and insects flying in blinding floodlights would not be at all out of place in a film by Stan Brakhage or Nathaniel Dorsky.

Jessica Oreck, currently an animal handler at the American Museum of Natural History, reinvents nature documentary with Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, transforming what could have been an unbearably dry lecture with visual poetry that makes it a beautiful work of art. Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo is at Film Forum through May 18; Oreck will appear in person on May 14 at the 6:30 and 8:20 shows with live exotic insects. She will also be at the 4:40 show on Sunday, May 16 with Hugh Raffles, author of Insectopedia, available from Amazon. 

Click here to purchase tickets.

Update, May 17, 2011: Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo is now available on DVD, with three deleted scenes of interviews with philosopher Dr. Takeshi Yoro, whose insights greatly inform Oreck's documentary. To purchase, visit Factory 25's website. The film also has its TV premiere on PBS's Independent Lens tonight at 10pm. For more information and TV listings, visit the Independent Lens website.

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Frederick Wiseman, "La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet" (2009)

La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet. 2009. Directed by Frederick Wiseman. Produced by Pierre-Oliver Bardet, Frederick Wiseman and Francoise Gazio. Cinematography by John Davey. Edited by Frederick Wiseman and Valerie Pico. Sound by Frederick Wiseman.

Documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s latest film, La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet, is a typically rigorous institutional examination, this time of the famed Paris Opera Ballet, getting up close and personal behind the scenes, observing rehearsals, administrative meetings, and many other minutiae of the day-to-day activities of this venerable institution. There is nothing especially earth-shattering or revealing that happens during the course of this film; the closest we get is a meeting with the dance troupe and the ballet’s artistic director about changes in retirement and pension policy that the French government is considering. Neither does this film break with Wiseman’s tried-and-true methods of filmmaking: fly-on-the-wall observation, eschewing interviews with subjects, soundtrack music, or onscreen identification of the subjects. Wiseman holds true with the cinema vérité techniques he has been practicing since Titicut Follies, his 1967 debut. He is less interested in personalities and drama than in process, procedure, and daily institutional life. This film focuses on lengthy, unhurried (La Danse clocks in at 158 minutes) and thorough observation of all the workers at the opera, from the dancers, choreographers, and administrative personnel, down to the cafeteria workers and janitors. Wiseman even gives us some shots of the basement and sewers underneath the opera house, as if to show us just how complete his document of this building is.

The heart of the film is the lengthy rehearsals of the opera repertory shows. These lithe, wiry dancers painstakingly perfect their movements, and under their trainers, refine everything down to the very smallest detail. And while the repetitive scenes of this process can at times be a bit wearying, it is still fascinating to watch, all of it happening at an intimate level that very few of us are privileged to witness in person. Behind the scenes, there are some telling moments that impress upon us the extreme physical demands ballet puts on a person’s body. One older dancer relates to the festival director her concerns that she is being scheduled for too many performances that will tax her physical abilities. “I’m not 25 anymore,” the dancer opines. This scene contrasts with another near the conclusion, in which a young, fresh-faced newcomer to the company gets advice from the festival director. “Don’t be afraid,” the director advises her.

All in all, La Dance: The Paris Opera Ballet is an interesting (if overlong) and worthy addition to Wiseman’s impressive body of work. It screens at Film Forum from November 4 through November 17; Wiseman will appear in person at the 8:30 screening on November 4. Click here to purchase tickets.

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Peter Greenaway, "Rembrandt's J'Accuse" (2008)

Rembrandt's J'Accuse. 2008. Written and directed by Peter Greenaway. Produced by Femke Wolting, Bruno Felix, and Kees Kasander. Cinematography by Reinier van Brummelen. Edited by Elmer Leupen. Music by Giovanni Sollima and Marco Robino. Production designed by Maarten Piersma. Costume design by Marrit van der Burgt. Sound by Bram Boers.

Cast: Peter Greenaway (Himself), Martin Freeman (Rembrandt van Rijn), Eva Birthistle (Saskia Uylenburgh), Jodhi May (Geertje), Emily Holmes (Hendrickje Stoeffels), Jonathan Holmes (Ferdinand Bol), Michael Teigen (Carel Fabritius), Natalie Press (Marieke).

Peter Greenaway’s new film, Rembrandt’s J’Accuse, in which he subjects Rembrandt’s famous 1642 painting The Night Watch to intense forensic, visual, and historical analysis, is one of Greenaway’s very best films, and certainly his best in well over a decade. I have been greatly disappointed by most of Greenaway’s recent output, for example The Tulse Luper Suitcases, in which Greenaway puts into practice his long-standing theories about what he sees as cinema’s currently impoverished state, which he sees as essentially illustrated literature, and how Western culture is text-based instead of visually-based, leading to what he sees as a woeful lack of visual literacy in the public at large. (Early on in Rembrandt’s J’Accuse, Greenaway gives voice on screen to these opinions once more, in the scolding, schoolmarmish tone that is probably his most off-putting and least attractive quality.) Greenaway’s recent films have become increasingly impenetrable and hermetic, seemingly made only for an audience of one – Greenaway himself. The alternative he has come up with to conventional cinema, using text, calligraphy, and frames within frames within frames to form an ornate collage, however visually elegant it often is, turns out in practice to be not quite as compelling as he thinks.

So it is with genuine pleasure (and relief) that I say that with Rembrandt’s J’Accuse, Greenaway has finally come up with a film that puts his visual and intellectual arsenal to brilliant effect, turning Rembrandt’s The Night Watch into evidence of an elaborate murder conspiracy. (Call it CSI: Amsterdam.) Greenaway appears on screen throughout to state the case for the prosecution, namely that Rembrandt’s painting is his “J’accuse,” or accusation of guilt towards the perpetrators of a conspiracy on the part of a group of Dutch military officers to murder their captain to gain more power for themselves. The officers planned to disguise this murder as a military accident. Greenaway is our guide to the evidence for this conspiracy, all of which he believes can be found within the frame of Rembrandt’s painting. His running voiceover and visual presence (usually in a box in the bottom center of the screen) relates 31 clues to the murder conspiracy (Greenaway’s well-documented obsession with numbers and lists continues unabated in this film) that can be found in the painting. Fully-staged reenactments with actors are peppered throughout to illustrate Greenaway’s thesis.

Greenaway identifies The Night Watch as the beginning of Rembrandt’s popular and economic decline, which he sees as a result of the successful attempt by the powers that were to suppress and bury Rembrandt’s accusation and force him into a later life of poverty and obscurity. As Greenaway intones at the film’s conclusion, “It is imperative that we reopen the case.” Greenaway uses the canvas of Rembrandt’s masterpiece to create one of his own, a film that is simultaneously a documentary, a murder mystery, an art history lecture, a political history of Amsterdam, and a seminar on the arts of both painting and visual analysis, and is endlessly fascinating and compelling.

Rembrandt’s J’Accuse is at Film Forum now through November 3. Click here to purchase tickets.

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Lars von Trier, "Antichrist" (2009)

Antichrist. 2009. Written and directed by Lars von Trier. Produced by Meta Louise Foldager. Cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle. Edited by Anders Refn. Production designed by Karl "Kalli" Juliusson. Art direction by Tim Pannen. Costume design by Frauke Firl. Sound design by Kristian Eidnes Andersen.

Cast: Willem Dafoe (He), Charlotte Gainsbourg (She).

Lars von Trier's latest (and most extreme) provocation, Antichrist, opens today at the IFC Center. Below is what I wrote on this film when it screened earlier this month at the New York Film Festival.

At the New York Film Festival, it’s almost guaranteed that there will be at least one controversial film to set the Alice Tully Hall denizens’ tongues wagging. The Danish cinematic enfant terrible Lars von Trier has supplied a few of these throughout the years – Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Manderlay. It’s safe to say that his latest, Antichrist, is without a doubt his most extreme provocation to date. Reportedly the result of a lengthy depression von Trier suffered in the period before he made it, this film astonishes with its free-associative, dream-like (or, more accurately, nightmare-like) style. Though it seems like most of the film doesn’t make a lick of sense, it is never less than riveting, even though most viewers will very much want to look away, especially in its extremely violent latter sessions. Von Trier has often been tagged with the label of “misogynist,” and Antichrist will do little to assuage these detractors. However, as with all things von Trier, the reality is not quite that simple.

The scenario is spare and archetypal: a couple, known only as He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg), after the death of their young son, venture into the woods, to a place they call Eden, where He, a professional therapist, attempts to cure She of her extreme grief over her child’s death. These are the only two characters in the entire film, and von Trier unleashes an arsenal of nightmare imagery and WTF moments to depict this couple’s psychic journey. There are talking animals, genital mutilation, and other extremes, and at first it seems that von Trier is having a laugh at our expense. But it eventually becomes clear that what we see is far from a joke, and that this is as close a peek into an artist’s id as any that has ever been created. Gainsbourg won best actress at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and while evaluating performances in a film such as this almost seems beside the point, one can’t help but admire the fact that both actors are more than game for everything von Trier throws at them.

Divided into four chapters – “Grief,” “Pain (Chaos Reigns),” “Despair (Gynocide),” “The Three Beggars” – bracketed by a prologue and epilogue, Antichrist begins with a gorgeously shot slow-motion monochrome sequence depicting the death of the couple’s child. Accompanied by the music of Handel on the soundtrack, we see the child make his way out of the crib and fall to his death out of the window, unnoticed by his parents having passionate sex, very graphically shown – par for the course for von Trier, ever the provocateur. At the outset of the film proper, which switches to a muted color palette, She collapses during her son’s funeral and is subsequently admitted to a hospital. He pulls her out of the hospital, believing that the hospital is prescribing her too much medication, and that he could do a better job at curing her of the extreme grief and guilt over their son’s death. He intends to be analytical and logical in how he goes about doing this, to the extent that She at one point accuses him of being indifferent to their son’s death.

When the two retreat to “Eden,” a small log cabin deep in the woods, He puts She under hypnosis, to exorcise her guilt as well as her deep fears of the woods themselves. But very soon, his carefully planned strategy begins to unravel. She becomes increasingly erratic and less responsive to her husband’s admittedly unorthodox treatments. Through flashbacks and her husband’s discovery, we learn that She has been working on a thesis titled “Gynocide,” about the history of man’s brutality to women throughout the ages. (The film’s credits include a “misogyny consultant.”) Her studies have brought her to an unexpected and disturbing conclusion: women are the source of evil in the world. And in the increasingly brutal final reels of the film, she sets out to prove her theory in very graphic ways that will torture her husband, as well as the audience.

The above description may make Antichrist seem much more coherent than it actually is, at least initially. Von Trier also indulges in some rather clichéd and tacky depictions of the hypnosis sessions. And yet there is an elemental power to the flow of images in the film that, to this viewer, eventually proved irresistible. Von Trier clearly means to give the audience a taste of the psychological torture he experienced during his depression. Given the catcalling and booing that greeted its premiere at Cannes, it would seem that I am in the minority opinion. How one responds to this film ultimately depends on how one responds to its creator. If you are a hardcore von Trier fan (as I must confess I am), then you will fund much to savor. If not, well, as they say, caveat emptor. As one of the film’s chapter titles state, “Chaos Reigns.” That statement could stand as a credo for von Trier’s entire oeuvre, and it has never been truer than his latest work.

Antichrist can be seen (if you dare) at the IFC Center beginning today. Click here to purchase tickets.

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Claire Denis, "35 Shots of Rum" (2008)

35 Shots of Rum (35 rhums). 2008. Directed by Claire Denis. Written by Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau. Produced by Bruno Pesery. Cinematography by Agnes Godard. Edited by Guy Lecorne. Music by Tindersticks. Production design by Arnaud de Moleron. Costume design by Judy Shrewsbury. Sound by Martin Boissau, Christophe Winding, and Dominique Hennequin.

Cast: Alex Descas (Lionel), Mati Diop (Josephine), Gregoire Colin (Noe), Nicole Dogue (Gabrielle), Julieth Mars Toussaint (Rene).

One of the very best films you will see this year is Claire Denis' exquisitely rendered 35 Shots of Rum, now playing at Film Forum through September 29. Denis' latest film White Material, which returns her to the African setting of her debut Chocolat, will make its latest stop at this year's New York Film Festival, after its appearances in Venice and Toronto. So New Yorkers will have the opportunity this fall to be blessed with two new films by one of cinema's greatest living artists. Below is my review of 35 Shots of Rum, written when it screened at last year's Pusan International Film Festival.

Claire Denis’ gorgeous new film, 35 Shots of Rum, is as essentially plot-less as her previous feature, the globe-trotting philosophical treatise L’Intrus (The Intruder), but it is less experimental and more grounded in character and emotion. However, it is hardly less of a revelatory experience. The central relationship depicted in this film is that of Lionel (Alex Descas), a train operator living with his daughter Josephine (Mati Diop), in a working-class suburb of Paris. 35 Shots of Rum’s affinities with the works of Ozu, especially Late Spring, have been much remarked on by other commentators: the many shots and scenes that revolve around trains; the brief establishing shots between scenes analogous to Ozu’s “pillow shot” inserts; the delicacy with which unspoken aspects of intimate relationships are handled. The film’s central situation also recalls Ozu. Lionel, a taciturn widower, lives a quiet life with his daughter, and their deep love for one another is expressed through such gestures as one early scene in which Lionel buys a rice cooker for Josephine, who expresses great delight. The film is so patient about revealing the connections between its characters that it takes a bit of time before we realize that they are in fact father and daughter.

Two other characters also figure here: their neighbor Noe (Gregoire Colin), a rather eccentric young man who is attracted to Josephine, and Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue), Lionel’s ex-girlfriend who remains close to Lionel and Josephine, and seems to wish to rekindle her romance with Lionel, who in turn keeps her at arm’s length. Everything else in the film flows from this initial situation. But rather than imposing a dramatic plot, although almost any other filmmaker would have turned these potential conflicts into melodrama, Denis allows these characters to interact and lets their actions evolve organically. This is not to say that nothing happens in the film; actually, there is a definite progression that occurs, and it leads to a great deal of emotion. This occurs most significantly with what happens to Lionel’s colleague Rene (Julieth Mars Toussaint), who after being compelled to retire, finds himself adrift and unable to replace the order and sense of purpose that his job provided him.

The way in which Denis depicts the milieu of her film is quite extraordinary. The popular notion of the Parisian suburbs, many of which are inhabited by those of African and Arabic descent, is that of poor and angry people who every now and then erupt into riots against police and other authorities. The depiction of these neighborhoods in French films often plays upon these problems and concentrates on their conflicts with the larger French society. Denis, however, takes quite a different tack, concentrating much more on her characters as individuals rather than representatives of their race. These are ordinary working-class people who experience the normal joys and pains of anyone else, although presented here in an aesthetically beautiful way. Denis, to be sure, does not ignore a global perspective: she includes a key scene in which Josephine participates in a classroom debate about how African nations are adversely impacted by having to repay massive debts to Western nations. However, we are mostly immersed in the lives of the central characters, and it is always a pleasure to be in their company.

The loose structure of 35 Shots of Rum allows for some exquisitely lovely moments, most notably a key scene of the film in which Lionel, Josephine, Noe and Gabrielle all retreat into a bar during a rainstorm after their car breaks down on their way to a concert. Although the bar is already closed, the owner generously allows them shelter. A nearly wordless scene ensues, during which much occurs: Noe and Josephine’s relationship becomes subtly much more than a casual friendship; Lionel sees this happen, and tacitly accepts this despite his slight unease, while Lionel in turn acts upon his attraction to the statuesquely beautiful bar hostess, eventually spending the night with her. The four central characters dance to the tune of the Commodores’ song “Nightshift,” which is quite appropriate to the elegiac tone of much of this film. This is a beautifully choreographed and constructed scene, conveying everything through glances and gestures, and it is a great testament to Claire Denis’ prodigious artistry.

However, Denis is by no means a solo act. She has surrounded herself over the years with an ace group of collaborators who are essential partners in creating one of the great bodies of work in cinema. One of the most important members of her crew is Agnes Godard, one of the world’s greatest cinematographers, who seems incapable of composing a bad shot. She imbues all of the film’s environments with a textured, tactile quality that illuminates everything it touches. Denis’ regular screenwriting partner Jean-Pol Fargeau contributes greatly to a scenario that feels loosely improvisational yet exactingly precise at the same time. And of course, as always with Denis, much credit is due to the excellent cast she has assembled, which includes two Denis regulars: Alex Descas, a ruggedly handsome man who imparts tremendous gravity and great emotion to his role; and Gregoire Colin, who goes far beyond the quirks of his character to deliver a very poignant performance. Newcomer Mati Diop also impresses as the daughter who is protective of her father almost to his detriment (much like the typical Ozu heroine usually played by Setsuko Hara). Nicole Dogue skillfully expresses her character’s sense of regret over her life decisions, and her wish to have to same closeness with Lionel that his daughter enjoys. In every gesture and action Denis’ ensemble cast radiates a deep beauty that makes watching them a joyful experience.

35 Shots of Rum, along with Beau Travail and L’Intrus, is one of Denis’ greatest works, conveying the ebbs and flows of life with uncommon sensitivity. And by the time Lionel partakes of the titular drinks, an act that signifies his philosophy of life, one begins to wish one could spend many more hours in the endlessly fascinating world of this film.

35 Shots of Rum is at Film Forum through September 29. Click here to purchase tickets.

Review: Yoon Je-kyun's "Haeundae"

Haeundae. 2009. Produced, written and directed by Yoon Je-kyun. Cinematography by Kim Yeong-ho. Edited by Shin Min-gyeong. Music by Lee Byeong-woo. Production design by Hwang In-jun. Costume design by Kim Jong-weon. Sound by Eun Heui-su and Andy Wiskes. Visual effects supervision by Jang Seong-ho and Hans Uhlig. Visual effects by Polygon Entertainment. Special effects by Hong Jang-pyo.

Cast: Sol Kyung-gu (Choi Man-sik), Ha Ji-won (Kang Yeon-hee), Park Joong-hoon (Kim Hwi), Uhm Jung-hwa (Lee Yoo-jin), Lee Min-ki (Choi Hyeong-sik), Kang Ye-won (Kim Hee-mi), Kim In-kwon (Oh Dong-choon), Song Jae-ho (Eok-jo), Kim Ji-yeong (Geum-ryeon), Seong Byeong-sook (Dong-choon's mother), Kim Yoo-jeong (Ji-min).

The disaster movie is a tried-and-true mode of popular cinema, the apotheosis being such 70’s films as The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, as well as the all-time box-office king, Titanic. The formula is simplicity itself: take a diverse assortment of characters (preferably cast with as many big stars as possible), spend some time introducing them and examining their conflicts, add a man-made or natural disaster that upends everything with state-of-the-art special effects, stir very thoroughly with some tragedy, pathos, triumph, bravery, and sacrifice, and voila, you’ve got your movie. The next step, hopefully, is watching the tons of cash roll in. Now Korea has one such movie to call its very own: Haeundae, set in and named after the famous beach in the southeastern port city of Busan, a very popular tourist attraction, not only for Koreans but for visitors from Asia and the rest of the world. It is currently a massive blockbuster hit, and is now the fourth highest-grossing film in Korean history, after The Host, The King and the Clown and Taegukgi. The film itself is a crude, clumsily written and edited, yet brutally effective piece of big-budget spectacle, which follows the disaster-movie formula to the letter. It takes its sweet time following its large cast of characters, crisscrossing their stories and connections until the disaster hits, which in this film is very skillfully staged. The filmmaking, which up until that point is rather standard and unimaginative, rises along with the massive tsunami to be thrilling and genuinely emotional. The best aspect of the film is the actors, especially the wonderful Ha Ji-won and the equally excellent Sol Kyung-gu, who do a great job selling this material, even when it is beneath their talents, which is quite often.

The premise of Haeundae is that a massive tsunami, on the order of the one that hit Southeast Asia in 2004 (referenced repeatedly in this film, and which was Busan native Yoon’s initial inspiration), is on track to directly hit Haeundae Beach and the rest of Busan. This tsunami is diligently tracked by seismologist Kim Hwi (Park Joong-hoon), who advocates for a tsunami warning system of their own, and not depending on the one in Japan, a project not without nationalist overtones – “We can’t let the Japs beat us!” one of Kim’s colleagues exclaims at one point. Kim is divorced, and has a contentious relationship with his ex-wife Yu-jin (Uhm Jung-hwa), who refuses to tell their daughter (presumably born after their marriage ended) that he is her father, out of lingering anger over his neglect of their family in favor of his work.

While the scientist nervously tracks the waters, in scenes accompanied by ominous shots of threatening undersea earthquakes, the film turns its attention to several characters by the seaside. Yeon-hee (Ha Ji-won) runs a small raw-fish stand, and is in love with Man-sik (Sol Kyung-gu), who has been akin to an older brother since their childhood; she was taken in by Man-sik’s family after her father’s death. Man-sik is fairly thick-headed, and fails to notice Yeon-hee’s feelings for him. He has a penchant for getting drunk, and this aspect of his character mostly played for laughs, most notably in a scene in which he gets arrested for drunkenly harassing a baseball player at a game.

There is also a colorful assortment of other characters, such as a group of vacationing girls from Seoul, including Hee-mi (Kang Ye-won), a haughty girl rescued by coast guard Hyeong-sik (Lee Min-ki) after she falls off a yacht, which begins a slapstick romance between the two. The town’s vendor association is up in arms over a proposed shopping mall that will drive them off the beach. Much low comedy is supplied by ne’er-do-well slacker Dong-choon (Kim In-kwon), who at one point poses as a blind man to make money.

The film benefits greatly from its vivid portrayal of Busan, a place very distinct in character from Seoul. And just as the broad comedy and corny whimsicality starts to become a bit too much to bear, the big wave hits. And it’s an impressive one, and the lengthy setting up of characters and incident in the first half of the film begins to reap dividends, making the emotional aspects of the story moving, if not any less obvious or heavy handed. Haeundae is an entertaining enough night out at the movies, its crude and clunky scenario elevated by spirited performances by its cast, and expertly staged special effects (supervised by CG whiz Hans Uhlig, who worked on two of this film’s Hollywood natural disaster forebears, The Perfect Storm and The Day After Tomorrow), which in the end make this material more potent than it really has any right to be. And there are a few inspired sequences, most notably a Buster Keaton-type bit where Dong-choon deftly dodges a series of falling freight cars displaced by the wave, and another scene in which he causes an inferno with a faulty cigarette lighter. Just don’t expect great art in the bargain.

For a film that successfully marries its behemoth budget with a smart, politically acute, and genuinely heartfelt story, look no further than the current all-time Korean box-office champ, Bong Joon-ho’s The Host. Bong’s film proved conclusively that one need not pander to the lowest common denominators of both Korean and Hollywood filmmaking to be both an artistic and popular success. One wishes for the sake of art that Yoon had heeded this lesson. Unfortunately, the massive box office receipts of Haeundae will no doubt convince him that bigger, broader, and cruder is better.

Haeundae is currently playing at the AMC Loews Bay Terrace 6 in Bayside, Queens and AMC Loews Ridgefield Park 12 in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. It opens this Friday in Manhattan at the AMC Loews Village 7.

Haeundae trailer:

Two segments from Arirang TV about the film:

Review: Leslie Cockburn's "American Casino"

American Casino. 2009. Directed by Leslie Cockburn. Written and produced by Leslie Cockburn and Andrew Cockburn. Cinematography by Phil Geyelin, Gregory Andracke, Bill Cassara, Bob Goldsborough, and Sam Painter. Edited by Peter Eliscu. Music supervised by Susan Jacobs. Sound by Daniel Brooks, Tom Craca, Michael Karas, Erik Knox, Charlie Macarone, Lupe Mejia, David Mitlyng, Mark Wilson, and Everett Wong.

Just in time for the one year anniversary of the global economic collapse comes Leslie Cockburn's powerful and timely documentary American Casino, which opens tomorrow at Film Forum for a two-week run. Below is what I wrote on this film when it screened at this year's Tribeca Film Festival.

The title of Leslie Cockburn’s nothing-if-not-timely documentary American Casino says it all, an apt description of the world created by the reckless Wall Street financiers who have brought the U.S. economy (as well as the rest of the world’s) to its present sorry state. Much like Charles Ferguson’s Iraq War documentary No End in Sight, Cockburn employs a straightforward, just-the-facts approach to her devastating play-by-play indictment of the barely legal shenanigans that led to our current mess. From the initial stock market free-fall and the attendant billions in government bailouts to Jon Stewart’s recent mano a mano with Jim Cramer, none of this is new information for anyone who has at least been semi-sentient for the past year or so. But what makes Cockburn’s film an especially valuable addition to the burgeoning collection of economic crisis postmortems is that she goes beyond the facts and figures to show us the human faces behind the numbers. Cockburn offers specific, poignant examples of people who existed as simply a line on a brokerage firm’s computer screen, reminding us that these were not simply irresponsible and naïve would-be homeowners, but people with lives of value that are real, and in some cases, tragic. Cockburn also details the aftereffects of the spreading cancer of mass foreclosures and how they led to depressed neighborhood property values, crime, and disease. Class and race were very much a part of the picture also, as Cockburn persuasively demonstrates: the deregulated toxic sub-prime loans that were, and remain, a major part of this crisis were deliberately targeted towards minorities and low-income homeowners, many of whom actually qualified for prime loans. These were the chips that were the currency of the “American Casino,” since through derivatives, credit-default swaps, and other such unregulated financial products, bets would essentially be made on which consumers would default on loans made to them, and billions were made on both sides of the equation. Cockburn’s briskly paced yet sobering documentary makes its case powerfully, and is a humanist work in the best sense, always keeping the individual victims of Wall Street’s games as its central focus.

American Casino is scheduled to run at Film Forum from Sept. 2 through Sept. 15. Click here to purchase tickets.

Review: Li Ying's "Yasukuni"

Yasukuni. 2007. Written and directed by Li Ying. Produced by Zhang Yuhui, Zhang Huijun, and Hu Yun. Cinematography by Yasuhiro Hotta and Li Ying. Edited by Yuji Oshige and Li Ying. Sound by Takayuki Nakamura.

Li Ying's eye-opening and intensely visceral documentary Yasukuni, a controversial film about the equally controversial shrine commemorating fallen WWII soldiers in the heart of Tokyo, opens today for a one-week run at Film Forum, timed to the August 15th anniversary of Japan's surrender. Below is what I wrote on this film when it screened at last year's New York Asian and Japan Cuts film festivals.

Li Ying’s extraordinary documentary Yasukuni examines one of the most politically contentious spots of land in Japan: the Yasukuni Shinto shrine in central Tokyo, a memorial to Japan’s fallen soldiers during World War II. Or, to be more accurate, it is the final spiritual resting place of some of the most notorious war criminals of the Pacific War. In August 15, 2005, on the 60th anniversary of Japan’s surrender, Japan’s then prime minister Junichiro Koizumi caused a major international scandal by going to pay his respects at the shrine. This act, in effect, gave official imprimatur to a site that, while celebrated and venerated by many, for many others – Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Okinawan – is a symbol of Japan’s war of oppression and subjugation of the Asian continent. To those and others who oppose the shrine, this would be akin to placing a Nazi memorial in the middle of Israel. Koizumi justified his actions, as we see in the film, by claiming that it was “a matter of freedom of belief.” The speech he gives to the crowd at Yasukuni elaborates on this. He claims that his prayers represent a wish for all wars to end, and a gesture of respect to those who fought bravely and died for their country. However, the glorification of the military on display in the exercises of the shrine worshipers who prance around wearing WWII-era gear, and exhort with megaphones the glory of those soldiers, gives the lie to Kozumi’s claims of pacifist motives.

What is most remarkable about Li’s film is his approach to this material. As a Chinese, he clearly has strong feelings about the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers during the war. However, he eschews a Michael Moore-type in-your-face confrontational approach, which proves to be a wise strategy. There is no narration; he structures the film as a series of mini-plays, all of which illustrate what this shrine means to people at all points of the political spectrum. There are those who support Koizumi’s praying at the shrine, and see it as simply a benign war memorial. There is also Chiwas Ari, the Taiwanese woman who gives us a very different perspective, speaking powerfully to the role that those countries colonized by Japan played in the war. Colonial subjects were forced to fight on the side of Japan, and some of them are enshrined in Yasukuni along with native Japanese. Chiwas Ari’s impassioned plea for the return of her father’s remains is a virtual aria that is incredibly moving. For comic relief, we have the clueless American whose ham-fisted attempt to support Koizumi, combined with the stunningly boneheaded idea to wave a big American flag in the middle of the shrine, sends this quixotic figure packing by an angry crowd. The protestors who interrupt the speeches at the anniversary event are set upon by some of the crowd in a disturbingly violent confrontation, as they are chased away and beaten by members of the angry mob. Li’s chaotic camera framing, as it does in much of the film, puts the viewer in the center of the action, giving us a visceral sense of the physical dangers of dissent in this space. This is history as blood sport.

Far from the action, tucked away from all the fighting, is Naoji Kariya, the last living Yasukuni sword-maker, still continuing to practice his craft in isolation. The mythology of Yasukuni is bound up in the sword, which is the spiritual symbol of the shrine. Li constantly prods him for memories of the war, and the long, painful silences that follow Li’s questions tell their own story. Whatever memories he has remain hidden away inside him, and hidden from us. He is a curious figure; a metaphor, perhaps, for the historical memory of Japan. He seems unwilling to confront the past, yet is unable to move forward, stuck in a limbo where everything is reduced to rote, refined physical movement, craft divorced from meaning. The swords he has crafted over the years likely were used to commit some of the worst atrocities visited by Japanese soldiers upon their victims, one example of which is the chilling account of a 100-man beheading competition engaged in by two soldiers who were executed and later enshrined at Yasukuni. But Kariya willfully separates himself from this reality, and his stoic silence in response to Li’s queries about the war represents an unsettling side to vaunted notions of Japanese propriety.

The film’s concluding montage steps away from the warring factions and provides evidence from the historical record that demonstrates the truth behind the propaganda peddled by the shrine’s war museum, and the attempts to whitewash history by the petitioners who wish to “refute” the 1937 Nanking massacre, which they claim is a fiction created by aggrieved Chinese. The response to this film by Japan’s ultra right-wing factions all but demands its own follow-up feature. Harassment and death threats directed toward Li and his producers, along with relentless pressure from conservatives, caused the film’s initial Tokyo release to be cancelled in early 2008. (It finally premiered in Tokyo in May 2008, with heavy police security at screenings.)

Ten years in the making, Yasukuni is more than simply a film. Li puts his considerable journalistic and artistic skills in the service of the best use of the power of images: to illuminate, to enlighten, to cut through self-serving rhetoric and propaganda, and reveal unadorned truth.

Click here for more info on Yasukuni and to purchase tickets.

Yasukuni trailer:

Li Ying's press conference following the cancellation of his film's initial Tokyo release:

A report from Al Jazeera English on Yasukuni: