DVD Review: Charles Burnett's "Killer of Sheep"

Killer of Sheep. 1977. Written, directed, produced, photographed, and edited by Charles Burnett. Sound by Charles Bracy. Released by Milestone Films.

Cast: Henry Gale Sanders (Stan), Kaycee Moore (Stan's Wife), Charles Bracy (Bracy), Angela Burnett (Stan's Daughter), Eugene Cherry (Cherry), Jack Drummond (Stan's Son).

Could it be that the best film of 2007 was made in 1977? Charles Burnett’s masterpiece Killer of Sheep, finally receiving a proper theatrical release 30 years after its premiere, makes its own powerful argument as an indispensable work, one of the finest made in America in any medium. Its black and white images, recalling the photographs of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Robert Frank, are like nothing else you’ll ever see. Dispensing with plot almost entirely, the film is so full to bursting with odd, funny, and poignant moments that multiple viewings are necessary even to begin to appreciate its abundant riches.

Made by Burnett as his master’s thesis film as a student at UCLA, the film was shot in Watts, Los Angeles (where Burnett himself grew up), and it so accurately captures the feel of its environment, it’s almost as if you can taste the dirt that the children constantly play in. The film’s central character, Stan (Henry Gale Sanders), works in a slaughterhouse, and lives in a constant state of anxiety, so much so that he cannot sleep, and walks around with a dazed, nearly catatonic expression, feeling disconnected from the world around him. The first time we see him, he is puttering around the house, fixing odds and ends, lamenting to his friend about how he cannot sleep or get any peace of mind. His marriage is strained, because his wife (Kaycee Moore) feels he neglects her and finds her unattractive. He goes with his friend to buy a car engine, and fends off an offer from some local hustlers to make money from a robbery and murder. But that’s about it in the way of plot. The film is truly an experience, rather than something to simply watch. It captures better than nearly any other film I can think of the natural rhythms of daily life, the endless quotidian grind of going to the same unfulfilling job, trying to keep your head above water, and not sink to the depths of despair.

The film, as befits its title, is interspersed with recurring images of lambs being led to slaughter, and it’s not hard to read a metaphor for life in America in this. But Burnett is after much more than such facile comparisons. He creates a complex and endlessly fascinating world, in which all its characters are vividly memorable, even those with the briefest screen time, lending the film an effortless, unforced authenticity that comes from an artist observing actual people in the world, rather than copying other films.

Even though the vernacular of the characters may now seem dated, there are still some memorable bits of dialogue and incident that will linger long in the memory. Stan in one scene chases down a man who owes him money, who protests, “I ain’t got nothin’ but my good looks!” Stan at one point says, “I ain’t poor! I give away things to the Salvation Army! You can’t give away nothin' to the Salvation Army if you’re poor!” The most priceless moment to my mind is a brilliant sight gag in which a group of people sit in the front seat of a car, and a man reaches through the windshield to grab a beer, revealing that there is no glass there. It makes me laugh every time. Stan’s young daughter (Angela Burnett) is the source of some of the film’s loveliest moments: early in the film, she has a literal hangdog expression, wearing a hound dog mask; she sings loudly along with Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “Reasons”; she delicately puts on a dress. There are so many others I could cite, and this is part of the pleasure of watching the film.

Another rich source of pleasure is the film’s great soundtrack, which alternately serves as resonant accompaniment and ironic counterpoint to Burnett’s images. A couple of examples are: the scene in which Stan dances with his wife to Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth”; the slaughterhouse killings set to Little Walter’s “Mean Old World.” These and other songs, such as Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” and Paul Robeson’s “The House I Live In,” convey the intertwined pain and joy felt but not articulated by the film’s characters. This soundtrack, such an essential element of the film, was the reason the film has remained nearly unseen for thirty years, because of the laborious and expensive process of clearing the music rights for these songs.

Richly deserving of its honored place as one of the first selections in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, Killer of Sheep, now being released on DVD in a beautiful 35mm restoration from Milestone Films, after being a sizeable arthouse hit earlier this year, is the film discovery of the year. More than just one of the most vivid depictions of black ghetto life ever committed to film, it is a lovely and lyrical work of art which was quite influential. Best of all, it has ended the woeful critical and popular neglect of Charles Burnett, finally recognized as one of America’s very finest filmmakers.

Killer of Sheep is part of Milestone Films’ “The Charles Burnett Collection,” which also includes both versions of his 1983 feature My Brother’s Wedding, and four short films, including his latest, “Quiet as Kept,” about Hurricane Katrina.

Killer of Sheep trailer:

Bonus clip: Angela Burnett's performance of "Reasons":

Sex, Crime, and All That Jazz

The Warped Ones (Kyonetsu no kisetsu). 1960. Directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara. Written by Nobuo Yamada. Cinematography by Yoshio Mamiya. Edited by Akira Suzuki. Music by Toshiro Mayuzumi. Released by Nikkatsu.

Cast: Tamio Kawaji (Akira), Eiji Go (Masaru), Noriko Matsumoto (Fumiko), Yuko Chishiro (Yuki), Hiroyuki Nagato (Kashiwagi), Chico Roland (Gill), Chigusa Takayama (Yuki's mother).

Japan’s Nikkatsu Studios is best known for their wild, kinetic action films, especially those of Seijun Suzuki (Tokyo Drifter, Branded to Kill). However, there were a number of other directors at this studio whose works rival Suzuki’s. These films are featured in Japan Society’s monthly film series, “No Borders, No Limits: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema,” screening through May 2008. The series, consisting of films screening in the U.S. for the first time, is curated by Mark Schilling, film critic for Variety and Japan Times, and based on Schilling’s recent book of the same title. The series began in September with Takashi Nomura’s A Colt is My Passport (1967), starring popular action star Jo Shishido, and continues with Koreyoshi Kurahara’s The Warped Ones (1960), screening November 9 at 7:30.

The Warped Ones definitely lives up to its title (literally "Season of Heat" in Japanese), as it is a jazz-filled portrait of nihilistic youth, playing at petty crime and prostitution with reckless abandon. The camerawork is as restless as these young people who storm through the streets, leaving destruction in their wake. Akira (Tamio Kawachi) is a jazz-obsessed delinquent whose grand ambition in life is to do absolutely nothing. He hangs out with his friends Masaru (Eiji Go) and Yuki (Yuko Chishiro), the hooker Masaru shacks up with. Contrasted with them are artist Fumiko (Noriko Matsumoto) and her reporter fiancé Kashiwagi (Hiroyuki Nagato), who get caught up in the mayhem after Kashiwagi informs on Akira to the police, landing him in juvenile reformatory for a short time. Akira spots Kashiwagi and Fumiko on the street, and immediately sets out to get his revenge, enlisting his friends’ help. They kidnap Fumiko, and take her to the beach, where Akira rapes Fumiko. But the story doesn’t end there. Fumiko returns to find Akira, informing him she is pregnant with his child, demanding that he do something to repair her “defilement.” Akira’s revenge is turned on its head, as he becomes entangled in Fumiko and Kashiwagi’s own twisted relationship.

Even though Seijun Suzuki is considered the director who most bent the conventions of the Nikkatsu house style, on the evidence of The Warped Ones a case could be made for Kurahara as well. The protagonists are analogous to the amoral hero and heroine of Godard’s Breathless, to which this film shares some superficial affinities. However, the amorality shown here goes much further than in the Godard film. In contrast to Jean-Paul Belmondo’s character, still very much a glamorous hero and all cool detachment, in this film the young people depicted are modern savages, living only for animalistic needs and desire, and all glamour is stripped away.

The Warped Ones is a very unusual film, on the surface hewing to genre films of this kind. However, the film focuses more on the corruption of everyone we see, viewing it all with a cold, dispassionate eye. At the film’s conclusion, both the respectable and the irresponsible end up in the same place, at an abortion clinic, to prevent new lives from entering this spiritually dead society.

Korean Cinema Classics: Park Kwang-su's "Chilsu and Mansu"

Chilsu and Mansu (Chilsu wa Mansu). 1988. Directed by Park Kwang-su. Written by Choi In-seok, based on the short story "Two Signpainters" by Huang Chunming. Cinematography by Yoo Young-kil. Edited by Kim Hyun. Music by Kim Su-chol.

Cast: Ahn Sung-ki, Park Joong-hoon, Bae Jong-ok, Jang Hyeok, Hong Seong-min, Nan Han-il, Ju Ho-seong.

(Note: The following is an expanded version of notes written to accompany a screening of this film at Korean Cultural Service, which I introduced and led a post-screening discussion.)

Chilsu and Mansu begins with the piercing sound of a civil-defense drill siren, a common feature of daily life for Koreans under the military government of Chun Doo Hwan in the 80’s. The film quickly introduces us to the title protagonists, Chilsu (Park Joong-hoon) and Mansu (Ahn Sung-ki), billboard sign painters working in Seoul. Chilsu is the source of much of the film’s humor, as he fights with his boss (“We’re living in a democratic society. I can quit whenever I want!”) and doggedly pursues Ji-na (Bae Jong-ok), a young woman he meets during the drill and begins courting at her job at Burger King, drawing her picture and posing as an art student to impress her. He is obsessed with all things American, taking Ji-na to see Rocky IV and putting up posters of his idols James Dean and Marlon Brando. He drops English phrases in his speech to make himself sound sophisticated and brags about moving to Miami with his brother. However, all of Chilsu’s bluster and bravado serve to mask his shame at his background, as the estranged son of a pimp who ran a brothel serving U.S. soldiers. He hides the real facts about himself from others, especially Ji-na, whom he fears will reject him if she learns his true circumstances.

Mansu, on the other hand, is older than Chilsu and conducts himself in a more sober, level-headed manner. His equanimity slips, however, when he gets drunk, which is his usual nightly ritual. He must constantly hustle for work, calling employers each morning in search of assignments. Mansu is also estranged from his father, who is serving a long sentence as a prisoner of conscience. Mansu is himself apolitical, and in fact resents his father for causing his family hardship and retarding his own career progress. His family background has prevented him from obtaining a passport to travel abroad for more lucrative construction work.

After Chilsu quits his job painting movie theater posters, he cajoles Mansu into having them work together and letting him stay at his place. He enlists Mansu’s help in impressing Ji-na, convincing him to pretend to be a famous artist from Paris. Their work painting huge construction projects and advertising billboards is dangerous, high-rise work that keeps them barely above a subsistence level, living off instant ramen noodles and soju. They are compelled to take a job painting a billboard on a tight deadline and for a low wage. Their simmering frustrations force them to confront the truly miserable nature of their lives, and they finally stop putting on an act for others. They stop working, climb to the top of the billboard, and begin shouting, expressing their anger at the world below. Curious passersby stop to stare at them, causing an instant commotion. Because they are so high above the ground, no one can hear what they are saying, and eventually the police are called, leading to a misunderstanding that has tragic consequences for the two men.

Chilsu and Mansu was based on a short story by Taiwanese dissident writer Huang Chunming, called “Two Signpainters.” Huang’s writings were banned in Korea at the time, thus his name does not appear in the film’s opening credits. Released in 1988, the year of the Seoul Olympics, Chilsu and Mansu was a key film in the 80’s new wave of Korean cinema, in which filmmakers took advantage of the fervor for democracy sweeping the nation and the gradual relaxation of governmental censorship to create works that tackled the daily reality and struggles of Korean people during this period. The years immediately preceding the film’s release saw many labor strikes and a general agitation for freer democratic expression. The mainstream cinema of the time mostly consisted of soft-core pornography, and political expression was very strictly censored. Directors such as Park Kwang-su, Lee Chang-ho, Bae Chang-ho, and Jang Sun-woo, among others, rejected the escapism and triviality of much of the decade’s cinema to create challenging and politically incisive films that, while not always commercial successes (Chilsu and Mansu was in fact a box-office failure), nevertheless were quite compelling and gained much attention overseas, which helped set the stage for the remarkable renaissance of Korean cinema that began in the late 90’s. Chilsu and Mansu’s two stars, Ahn Sung-ki and Park Joong-hoon, exhibited a great chemistry that would see them reunited in later films, including Two Cops (1993), Nowhere to Hide (1999), and most recently, Radio Star (2006). Bae Jong-ok went on to notable roles in such films as Jealousy is My Middle Name (2003), Love Talk (2005), and Herb (2007).

Park Kwang-su was born in Sokcho, Kangwon Province in 1955, and grew up in Pusan. While majoring in Fine Arts at Seoul National University and studying sculpture, he became interested in film, making short films on Super-8. After graduation, Park founded the Seoul Film Group to create underground films that opposed the military government of Chun Doo Hwan. He continued his film study in Paris, at the ESEC Film School. He was exposed there to other politically-minded world cinemas and returned to Korea determined to create similarly socially-conscious feature films. He has cited Lino Brocka of the Philippines as a major influence on his work. Park worked as an assistant to Lee Chang-ho on The Man With Three Coffins (1987) before making his feature debut with Chilsu and Mansu, which won the Young Critics Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival. His other films have screened and been awarded at many major film festivals, including the Berlin and Karlovy Vary festivals. Park’s subsequent films include Black Republic (1990), Berlin Report (1991), To the Starry Island (1993), A Single Spark (1995), and The Uprising (1999).

New York Film Festival Review Roundup #2

A Girl Cut in Two (Claude Chabrol)




With every film, each one more of a lazy trifle than the last, Chabrol makes it easy to forget that he was once the surviving member of the French New Wave with the most wickedly comical wit, his string of thrillers puncturing the duplicitous posturing of the bourgeoisie. His latest is a pale shadow of what his work once was. His portraits of upper-class Parisian society are as empty as the characters that inhabit his films. The titular “girl” (the title is explained in the film’s conclusion with a literal-mindedness which is jaw-dropping) is Gabrielle De Neige (Ludivine Sagnier), a TV weather woman divided, as per the films title, between the affection of the much older novelist Charles Saint-Denis (François Berléand) and the foppish, arrogant pharmaceutical heir Paul Gaudens (Benoît Magimel), the latter of whom pursues her with an obsessiveness that can only be called stalking. All the characters go through their mechanical motions with what passes as wit nowadays in Chabrol’s films. At the end, this concoction is far less than the sum of its parts.




Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas)




Bracketed by stunning, surreally beautiful shots of a sunrise and a sunset, Reygadas’ new film, set among the Mennonite community of Chihuahua, Mexico, contains passages of similar uncommon beauty to the opening and closing shots. Reygadas’ two previous films, Japón and Battle in Heaven, also proved his prodigious command of composition, but his gifts were married to much more provocative subject matter than can be found here. This is both a good and a bad thing. Good, because Reygadas finds exquisite visual poetry in a beam of light, shadow play on grass, and a man’s impromptu dance to a pop song; bad, because the material can seem so gossamer-thin as to nearly disintegrate. My first reaction to the film was disappointment that it seemed to lack the revelatory power of his previous films, but the more I think about the film, the more I suspect a second viewing may be in order. Filmed with an unsettling serenity, Silent Light sets a lulling mood that is violently broken a few times: for a central sex scene and two passages of copious weeping. Cast with Mennonite non-actors, some from the film’s northern Mexico setting, others from as far away as Canada and Kazakhstan, the story is exceedingly simple. Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr) deeply loves his wife Esther (Miriam Toews), yet carries on an affair with Marianne (Maria Pankratz), which in this community is a nearly unthinkable transgression. However, the film focuses less on the taboo-breaking nature of this relationship than on the daily tasks of tending farm and other work which is often mesmerizing to watch. Appropriately for the religious community where this story is set, the film culminates in a miraculous event, which recalls Dreyer’s Ordet. The impact of this is lessened by the fact that the viewer is kept at such an arms-length, observatory distance that in the end one can greatly admire this film, but not quite love it.






Go Go Tales (Abel Ferrara)





Opening to the exuberant strains of Archie Bell and the Drells’ “Tighten Up,” Ferrara’s strip-club fantasia can be said to be a lighter version of Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie as directed by Robert Altman. Taking place over a couple of nights, Ferrara’s film traffics in nostalgia for the seedier New York of the recent past. Adding to the fantasy feel is the patently inauthentic New York set, built on the Cinecitta Studios lot. The restless camera (courtesy of cinematographer Fabio Cianchetti, brilliantly capturing the shadowy blue neon and harsh spotlights of the interiors) becomes its own character, voyeuristically observing the frenetic activity. On this particular night poor Ray Ruby (Willem Dafoe), proprietor of gentleman’s club Ray Ruby’s Paradise, can’t catch a break. He spends the night avoiding his landlady (Sylvia Miles, shrill and hilarious), who threatens to shut down the place and sell it to a Bed, Bath, and Beyond; his strippers are on the verge of striking because of his failure to pay them; and his foolproof scheme to beat the lottery is defeated when he loses his winning ticket. Despite all this he harbors grand dreams, and his fatherly generosity extends to his dancers, for whom he becomes for one night a week the Ed Sullivan of go-go joints, closing down the club to put on a showcase for the girls’ talents to help them achieve their own dreams to leave the stripper life. Willem Dafoe delivers one of his most charming and funny performances as the doggedly (and often foolishly) optimistic Ray Ruby. Ferrara is as generous a director as Ray Ruby’s character (who is also a director in a sense, and who can be read as a stand-in for his creator), investing his film with a lively improvisational air and giving us extremely colorful characters and incident. Well worth the price of admission (surely less than the funny money supplied by Ray Ruby’s club) is Asia Argento’s strip routine, co-starring a rottweiler.





Redacted (Brian De Palma)




Or, Casualties of War II. Containing performances that rarely rise above the level of a high-school play, De Palma’s Iraq war film, despite its impeccably liberal credentials, manages to have nothing to say about the conflict, and is a collection of audience-baiting gimmicks rather than an actual film. Slightly better than the embarrassing mess that was his last film, The Black Dahlia, Redacted nevertheless is a histrionic creation as full of hot air as the apologists and war cheerleaders it is against. Inspired by the actual rape and murder of a 14 year old girl and the murder of her family by American soldiers in 2006, the film uses this potent material to pull off the sort of stunt one would expect from some young hotshot fresh out of film school, eager to show off his shiny, digital toys, rather than by someone who was once a great filmmaker. Constructed from fake found footage – a soldier’s video diary, You Tube-type footage of strident antiwar video bloggers and terrorist recordings, a French documentary – Redacted is little more than old wine in a not so new bottle. The film recently caused some minor controversy when De Palma publicly clashed with his film’s distributor, Magnolia Films, for “redacting” his photo montage of actual Iraq war casualties that concludes the film. Magnolia’s justification that this is to avoid potential lawsuits is admittedly weakly argued and an overreaction. But De Palma’s eagerness to puff his chest with self-important outrage and repeatedly state, clearly relishing the irony, “My film Redacted was redacted,” is to me equally distasteful. Exploiting dead and wounded Iraqis to lend your film a power and sense of tragedy that you have utterly failed to do on your own is hardly a principled stance. For true insight on what went wrong in Iraq and why, I suggest skipping this nonsense and instead seeing Charles Ferguson’s meticulous, brilliant documentary No End in Sight (out on DVD today).

Start at the End

The Lookout. 2007. Written and directed by Scott Frank. Produced by Walter Parkes, Laurence Mark, Roger Birnbaum, and Gary Barber. Cinematography by Alar Kivilo. Edited by Jill Savitt. Music by James Newton Howard. Production design by David Brisbin. Costume design by Abram Waterhouse. Released by Miramax Films.

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Chris Pratt), Jeff Daniels (Lewis), Matthew Goode (Gary Spargo), Isla Fisher (Luvlee Lemons), Carla Gugino (Janet), Bruce McGill (Robert Pratt), Alberta Watson (Barbara Pratt), Sergio Di Zio (Deputy Ted), Alex Borstein (Mrs. Lange), David Huband (Mr. Tuttle), Greg Dunham (Bone), Laura Vandervoort (Kelly).

The Lookout is the brilliant culmination of screenwriter and first-time director Scott Frank’s work on such superior crime films as Out of Sight and Get Shorty. His protagonist Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is wracked with guilt from his high-school car accident in which he suffered a brain injury and two of his friends died. A former hot-shot hockey star, he has now been reduced to working as a janitor in a local bank, hoping someday to be allowed to work as a teller. He lives with the blind, wise-cracking Lewis (Jeff Daniels), both caretaker and companion. He has a particularly strained relationship with his parents, especially his father (Bruce McGill), and he lives with a deep sense of shame at his impoverished circumstances to go along with his remorse.

One night while drinking at a bar, Chris is approached by high-school classmate Gary Spargo (Matthew Goode), who brings along former stripper Luvlee (Isla Fisher), who turns out to be potent sexual bait for Chris. Gary and his set of shady characters, mostly with the use of Luvlee, draw Chris into their scheme of robbing the bank where Chris works. Gary justifies this with a pseudo-Marxist notion of redistributing the wealth taken from farmers. Chris at first is reluctant, but after a particularly embarrassing Thanksgiving dinner with his parents, he agrees to be the lookout for their robbery.

Scott Frank renders this concise tale with a total command of his craft and an unerring ear for revealing dialogue that is as close to perfect as such writing gets. Frank’s work is quite remarkable in going beyond the lazy film noir archetypes that are so misused by lesser hands. Each character, down to the briefest roles, gives the sense of a fully rounded human being. Chris’ daily routine, his scribbling in his notebook to keep things straight, and haunted anguish are quite vivid and memorable. Joseph Gordon-Levitt cements his position as one of the most interesting young actors working today, adding to the great body of work he began building in such films as Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin and Rian Johnson’s Brick. Jeff Daniels invests his role with an effortless authority that impresses all the more for not being overly showy. The Lookout is the sort of film that is becoming increasingly rare: an accessible, entertaining film that nevertheless is quite smart, elegant in its construction, and containing fascinating layers that reveal themselves with repeated viewings. (Frank even cleverly includes advice to writers on constructing a good story, one bit of which I’ve used for the title of this post.) This film, unfortunately, did not survive long in the marketplace, being neither self-important Oscar bait nor a vulgar CGI-laden spectacle. That fact says all that needs to be said about the current impoverishment of American film culture. Hopefully on DVD it will eventually find the audience it should have had theatrically.

New York Film Festival Review Round-up

The 45th New York Film Festival recently wrapped at Lincoln Center. Below are brief reviews of some of this year's selections.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)





Schnabel and screenwriter Ronald Harwood adapt Jean-Dominque Bauby’s memoir of his life before and after the massive stroke that rendered his body completely paralyzed except for his lift eyelid. Bauby composed his book through a laborious process in which the French alphabet (arranged by frequency of use) was read to him, and he would indicate the correct letter with a blink. Schnabel, as in his previous films Basquiat and Before Night Falls, creates a portrait of an artist that is as much about Schnabel himself as it is about its ostensible subject. The first half of the film puts the viewer inside Bauby’s head and behind his one eye as he realizes that he cannot move or speak. This extreme POV lends the film a bracing sense of visual experimentalism that is quite striking. Once Schnabel abandons this approach, the film becomes much more conventional. Mathieu Amalric, as Bauby, gives a typically wry and riveting performance. Brief flashback scenes show him in his glamorous jet-setting life as the editor of French Elle, and cavorting with his mistress. This is contrasted with his post-stroke appearance as a silent, twisted hulk in a wheelchair. Emmanuel Seigner, as Bauby’s wife, and Marie-Josée Croze, as his primary caretaker, both impress as two of the women who nurture him.



Fados (Carlos Saura)




Basically a feature-length music video, Saura’s film is an intermittently lively tribute to the fados, songs brought over by Africans to Portugal. Shot on soundstages with back projection and varied backgrounds, this is undeniably moving music. However, Saura’s presentation often doesn’t do this music justice, since it is often inert and doesn’t match the intensity of the many moving performances captured within its frame.




The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson)




With his fifth feature, Anderson has finally reached creative and aesthetic exhaustion. Anderson once again revisits the same themes he has explored umpteen times before: families with parental-abandonment issues, protagonists at an acute stage of arrested development, an array of odd, quirky characters and incidents, all set to vintage-jukebox soundtracks. However, the brilliant promise of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore has degenerated into a twee artistic repetition and irrelevance that yields ever diminishing returns. Anderson makes a desperate attempt to add some new wrinkles to his familiar scenarios by setting his film in India, where three brothers (Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman) try to repair their differences in the midst of exotic landscapes. The shallowness of the proceedings is perfectly encapsulated in the fact that the brothers’ suitcases (designed by Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton), are given equal billing with the human actors. But we’ve seen it all before: the slow-mo shots set to hipster-friendly music (semi-obscure Kinks tracks, etc.), the lateral camera moves, the quick whip-pans, Bill Murray. When a tragic incident occurs, it does little to disturb the carefully art-directed jokiness. The inclusion of music from the films of Satyajit Ray, who in terms of humanity and artistic achievement is the polar opposite of Wes Anderson’s cliquish navel gazing, is the film’s final insult, and the ultimate expression of the film’s utter contempt for genuine human emotion.





The Romance of Astrée and Celadon (Eric Rohmer)




Rohmer has reached an advanced enough age as to be utterly impervious to cinematic trends or fashion. This is mostly to the good, as evidenced by his latest film, an adaptation of a classic work of French literature that is as exquisitely beautiful as anything in the Rohmer canon. A seemingly minor romantic misunderstanding between the two attractive protagonists engenders a long period of separation when Celadon (Andy Gillet), after attempting suicide, is saved by some nymphs, and is kept prisoner by one of them until he is helped to escape. He refuses to return to Astrée (Stéphanie Crayencour), who is devastated by his apparent death. Celadon takes Astree’s wish to never see her again as an iron-clad command. Instead he builds a shrine to her, and disguises himself as a woman in order to gaze upon his beloved incognito. Rohmer’s landscapes recall pastoral French painting, and everything is permeated with a simmering eroticism that erupts at the film’s conclusion in a startling way. This octogenarian filmmaker has given us an exquisite ode to youth, love and joie de vivre that resonates long in the memory.





Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (Sidney Lumet)




The most bracingly entertaining of this year’s fest offerings, 83-year old Lumet continues to offer excellent primers in no-nonsense, unpretentious filmmaking (are you listening, Wes Anderson?) A classic noir in the tradition of Kubrick’s The Killing, the film features a clan for which the term dysfunctional would be a gross understatement. Two brothers (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke), having foolishly gotten themselves in inextricable financial messes, come up with a seemingly foolproof plan to rob their own parents’ jewelry store. As things go hopelessly awry, and circumstances form a vicious steel trap around them, the film’s overlapping structure reveals the familial hornets’ nest that brought them to this state. Working from Kelly Masterston’s taut, ruthless script, Lumet keeps things going as a brisk clip that nevertheless gives us a sense of the Greek tragedy at the heart of this tale. Lumet proves himself to be just as vital and surprising even at this late stage in his career. Lumet’s actors rise to the challenge of this twist-filled scenario with nicely shaded performances. Albert Finney is especially impressive as the family’s cruel patriarch. Marisa Tomei delivers her best role in years, despite being topless in nearly every scene she appears in. Not that I’m complaining.

This Film Could Be Your Life

Mutual Appreciation. 2005. Written, directed, and edited by Andrew Bujalski. Produced by Ethan Vogt, Morgan Faust, and Dia Sokol. Cinematography by Matthias Grunsky. Sound recording by Randall Good. Songs by Justin Rice and Kevin Micka, Bishop Allen, Omzo, Matty & Mossy, The Common Cold, and Brandon Patton.

Cast: Justin Rice (Alan), Rachel Clift (Ellie), Andrew Bujalski (Lawrence), Seung-Min Lee (Sara), Pamela Corkey (Patricia), Kevin Micka (Dennis), Ralph Tyler (Jerry), Peter Pentz (Scotty), Bill Morrison (Walter), Tamara Luzeckyj (Esther), Mary Varn (Rebecca), Kate Dollenmayer (Hildy), Keith Gessen (Julian), Salvatore Botti (Ron).

Andrew Bujalski, with only two films so far to his credit, has established himself as a major artist, and is now the (reluctant) center of a loose independent film movement, or rather, collective that has been termed as “mumblecore.” The filmmakers working under this rubric, such as Joe Swanberg (LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs), Aaron Katz (Dance Party USA, Quiet City), and Jay Duplass (The Puffy Chair), make films that are analogous to certain trends in indie rock, appropriately enough for the milieu that Bujalski captures in his latest film, Mutual Appreciation. Bujalski’s films concern young people in their 20s and early 30s who are still figuring out what to do with their lives. They often talk in halting, tentative speech, their conversations filled with seemingly trivial details and digressions that very thinly mask their anxiety and apprehension. Bujalski’s first film Funny Ha Ha made quite an impression on observers for standing out immediately from the slew of hackneyed and cliché-ridden “indie” films that flood arthouse and film festival screens. Filmed on 16mm with close friends and associates with money raised nearly entirely outside of the industry, Bujalski captured the awkwardness and confused romantic entanglements of his characters with a sharp eye and an unforced wit.

Mutual Appreciation is superficially much in the same vein, but Bujalski has made a great leap forward with this new film. Even though it exhibits many of the same qualities of his previous film, the elements fit much smoother here, and what sometimes seemed like affectation in his previous film here feels much more in tune with the situations and the characters. Filmed in 16mm black and white, the film’s set-ups and camerawork are quite simple and functional, but this enhances the film and directs our concentration toward the subtleties of his characters’ words and behavior, and Bujalski doesn’t try to distract us with show-off visuals. This shows his confidence in his material and his growing assurance as a filmmaker.

Alan (Justin Rice) comes to Brooklyn shortly after his band The Bumblebees breaks up after an EP that got some attention. He has booked a gig at Northsix, a Williamsburg rock club. He does a radio interview with Sara (Seung-Min Lee), who takes Alan to her house afterward and is not shy about acting on her attraction to him. Alan needs a drummer to play with at his gig, having come alone without a band. Sara hooks him up with her drummer brother Dennis (Kevin Micka). Alan, still pining for his ex-girlfriend, is not really interested in a relationship with Sara, although he hesitates to tell her so. Alan also spends time with two close friends, Lawrence (Bujalski) and his fiancé Ellie. Alan’s gig at Northsix is sparsely attended, and after the show he, Sara and Dennis are invited to the home of Jerry (Ralph Tyler), a friend of Alan’s father who has some connections in the music business. They get drunk and have odd conversations, and Alan, after speaking to his ex-girlfriend on the phone, seizes the moment to break up with Sara.

There are many other incidents in the film, including a monologue one of Lawrence’s students asks him to perform, but Bujalski eschews plotting in favor of a looser, improvisational feeling that captures his characters’ crossed signals and attempts to make sense of situations that bewilder them. Mutual Appreciation is a film that isn’t so much watched as experienced. There are none of the tried-and-true genre safety nets that so many filmmakers fall back on. The generosity of Bujalski’s working method and the beautiful and surprisingly emotional work that results are what makes his films such a joy to see. His work is obviously done out of a love of the craft and from a very authentic and human place.

Mutual Appreciation is released on DVD by Home Vision Entertainment and available for purchase from Amazon.

Mutual Appreciation trailer:

Interview with Andrew Bujalski:

2007 New York Korean Film Festival Review Round-up

Our School (Kim Myung-joon)

This documentary follows a year in the life of a Korean school in Hokkaido, Japan, one of 60 such schools in Japan that educate the third and fourth-generation ethnic Koreans born and raised in Japan. The schools were created after Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonization at the end of World War II. These schools have mainly been supported by North Korea since the country’s division after the Korean War. These schools are more than simply educational institutions: they are a source of national pride, a way for the students to discover their identity as Koreans, and also an escape from the discrimination they experience as Koreans in Japan. Because of the North Korean support, there is much talk of unification between the two Koreas, and a ritual for the 12th grade students is a trip to the “fatherland” of North Korea. This occasions an epiphany for the director while making this film. Since Kim is a South Korean citizen, he is not allowed to accompany the students on their trip to North Korea. “I understood for the first time in my life that my country is divided in two,” he remarks in a voiceover.

Kim examines in great depth the lives of the students and the various circumstances that have brought them to this school. Korean schools have a very hard time in the larger Japanese society, since they are only considered vocational schools, and as such don’t count in the Japanese school system. These schools are also denied the tax benefits that Japanese schools get. Korean-school graduates wishing to go on to Japanese universities must take an extra exam in order to qualify for admission. Nevertheless, these schools afford many benefits for the students. They come to feel pride in their own identity, and they learn to not be ashamed of being Korean in a society that is often hostile to them. The final scenes, in which the graduating class tearfully bids farewell to their school, are very moving, and we feel their apprehension at having to leave this nurturing environment. (Aug. 26)

200 Pound Beauty (Kim Yong-hwa)

This very silly farce would make an interesting double-bill with Kim Ki-duk’s Time, since both films deal with the phenomenon of plastic surgery. Based on a manga by Yumiko Suzuki, the film’s farcical premise concerns Hanna (Kim A-joong), an overweight singer who provides the offstage voice for haughty non-singing pop star Ammy (Seo Yun). She spends her life hidden away from public view, using her voice to make a living; she moonlights on a phone-sex line. She is in love with Ammy’s stage director Sang-jun (Ju Jin-mo). After overhearing a humiliating conversation about herself between Ammy and Sang-jun, she decides to undergo liposuction and full-body plastic surgery, emerging as “natural beauty” Jenny, whose true identity is initially known only to her best friend. Now a conventional beauty, she returns to her old employer incognito to pursue her dream of being a singer. This film owes practically all its virtues to Kim A-joong’s wonderful comic performance. She previously made a great impression in her earlier film When Romance Meets Destiny, and carries this film with great charm and timing, even underneath layers of prosthetics and despite rather cheap jokes based on her size (she falls through a stage; doctors cannot lift her into an ambulance after she OD’s on diet pills). Her first day in her new body is beautifully acted, as she revels in finally being able to buy a dress she coveted in her heavier days, ecstatically twirling in the street to the quizzical stares of passersby. She makes this predictable premise believable, and is a continually riveting presence. The film tries to have its cake and eat it too (pardon the pun), seeming to decry the rigid standards of beauty that women feel compelled to conform to, but at the same time having its happy ending predicated on her physical change. Nevertheless, the film was deservedly a massive hit upon its release in Korea earlier this year, again entirely due to Kim’s flawless performance. (Aug. 24 and 27, Sept. 1)

Unstoppable Marriage (Kim Sung-woo)



This is a rather hackneyed Romeo-and-Juliet romantic farce about a young couple, Eun-ho (pop star Yoo Jin [Eugene]) and Ki-baek (Ha Seok-jin) who has obstacles placed in their path by their bickering potential in-laws: Ki-baek’s mother, a nouveau-riche landowner (veteran actress Kim Soo-mi), and Eun-ho’s father (Lim Chae-moo), a martial-arts instructor and former marine. Kim Soo-mi’s patented foul-mouthed shtick can work in the right circumstances (for example in the far superior comedy Mapado), but here she simply comes off as shrill and grating. Ki-baek’s mother has her sights set on land for a new golf course, but she is thwarted by Eun-ho’s father, who refuses to sell the last bit of property she needs for her course. The romantic comedy clichés come fast and furious: the couple hates each other at first, but after a few plot machinations and a pair of reflective montages, they realize that they’ve found their soul mates. The leads are very attractive and appealing, so the film isn’t quite as painfully banal as it could have been. Still, the mustiness and rather retrograde qualities of this scenario is quite palpable. (Aug. 24 and 29)

Paradise Murdered (Kim Han-min)

This atmospheric thriller is a ghost story crossed with an Agatha Christie locked-door murder mystery. The tiny island of Geukrakdo, or “Paradise Island,” which quickly turns out to be anything but, has its idyllic state ruptured by a series of brutal murders, which seems to dovetail with an old story about a woman who was locked up and starved to death, and whose ghost haunts the island. A young doctor Jae Woo-sung (Park Hae-il), and his assistant Gwi-nam (Park Sol-mi), investigate the murders. While it is a little slow going at first, the careful setting up of characters, as well as the rather shady secrets of the island, pay off in a big way. The denouement is genuinely surprising, and the film as a whole is a diverting, well-written work.

(Aug. 23 and 28)

Herb (Huh In-moon)

This melodrama pushes all the familiar buttons, but is no less affecting for that. Sang-eun (Kang Hye-Jung), a 20 year old woman with the mental capacity of a 7-year-old, lives with her loving and patient mother Hyun-sook (Bae Jong-ok). Her imagination filled with visions from the fairy tales she loves, she meets her prince, rookie cop Jong-bum (Jeong Kyeong-ho). Kang, looking startlingly different than in such previous films as Oldboy, Rules of Dating and Welcome to Dongmakgol, successfully embodies the mannerisms and demeanor of a very young girl, and she looks very much like an anime sprite here. The film also adopts a bright children’s book-style palette with fantastical touches. Hyun-sook contracts cancer, a situation that provides the tear-jerking moments of the film. Another complication occurs when Jong-bum sees Jang-eun’s disability card and realizes her condition (although before this happens, he implausibly mistakes her for a lawyer). The film is an effective manipulation machine, and although the scenario is very obvious in its methods of pulling the viewer’s emotional strings, it still hangs together, thanks largely to Kang’s spirited performance, and Bae Jong-ok’s affecting portrayal as the mother.

Between (Lee Chang-jae)

This documentary follows the lives and rituals of the mudang, female shamans who perform exorcisms and help people communicate with their deceased loved ones. Lee’s film focuses on the initiation of In-hee, a young woman who has the ability to communicate with these spirits, and out of obligation to these spirits, decides to become a mudang, which entails self-sacrifice and often physical and psychic damage. The film begins with a startling scene in which In-hee, crying and shaking with fear, receives a spirit while her mentor, Lee Hae-gyong, guides her through it. This is not a life of choice for most mudang, who are often ostracized from their families as a result. The film goes into great detail about the various shamanistic rituals. However, the film’s repetitive structure presents this fascinating material in a rather numbing way. There is also very little insight about the place of these rituals in society, and since we are always looking at this from the outside, it remains a mysterious, impenetrable process. Perhaps this is appropriate to the nature of shamanism, but an earlier documentary on the same subject, Park Ki-bok’s 2003 film Mudang (which screened at this festival in 2004), is much more successful in conveying the emotional nature of these rituals and is much more interesting visually. (Aug. 24 and 29)

Come, Come, Come Upward (Im Kwon-taek)

This film is part of a four-film Im Kwon-taek retrospective. Come, Come, Come Upward (1989) is a Buddhist parable in which Soon-nyeo (Kang Su-yeon, who also played an acclaimed performance in Im’s Surrogate Mother) enters a Buddhist temple to escape her troubled family life and pursue a path opened to her by a kindly priest she meets. She struggles to follow the teachings, but her life in the convent is complicated by a man she saves from suicide who insists on clinging to her for his personal salvation. Soon-nyeo’s superior then sends her out into the world, so that she can decide if she is truly ready to live an ascetic life. Soon-nyeo’s path to enlightenment is contrasted with that of another nun, Jin-sung (Jin Yong-ming), who diligently follows the written teachings and follows the rituals, but still finds herself blocked. She is sent out into the world also, but unlike Soon-nyeo, who throws herself into the hustle of the outside world, with all the sexual and emotional entanglements that entails, Jin-Sung decides to live mostly in isolation from the outside world, interacting with only a sister who accompanies her part of the way, and with two very different men. One is an activist who exhorts her to participate in the social struggles of the nation, and the other is a hermit monk who castrated himself to free himself from worldly desire. Im sets up the two women’s opposing experiences as a dialectical debate about the most effective way to apply Buddhist teachings to the messiness of everyday life. The film seems to be tipped in favor of Soon-nyeo’s position, if only because her story gets considerably more screen time. At the film’s conclusion, the two face each other and stake out their positions. Jin-sung dismisses Soon-nyeo’s actions as “pathetic delusion.” Soon-nyeo counters, “Without any delusion, how can you bring salvation to a deluded public?” We are left with these two irreconcilable paths: Jin-sung’s detachment from the world as a way to think clearly without influence from the world’s turmoil, and Soon-nyeo’s approach of full engagement with the world and the search for beauty within a painful universe. Im’s parable-like approach to storytelling and graceful visuals make this a rich film that resonates with each repeat viewing.

2007 New York Korean Film Festival Review: Lee Joon-ik's "Radio Star"

Radio Star. 2006. Directed by Lee Joon-ik. Written by Choi Seok-hwan. Cinematography by Na Seung-yong. Edited by Kim Jae-beom and Kim Sang-beom. Music by Bang Jun-seok. Released by Cinema Service.

Cast: Park Joong-hoon, Ahn Sung-ki, Choi Jeong-yoon, Han Yeo-woon, Lee Seong-woo, Hwang Hyeon-seong.

An entertaining tribute to the power of radio and music, Radio Star re-teams popular actors Park Joong-hoon and Ahn Sung-ki, this being the fourth film they have starred in together, after Chilsu and Mansu, Two Cops, and Nowhere to Hide. Park this time is Choi Gon, a washed-up former rock star managed by Min-soo (Ahn), reduced to singing in cafes and getting arrested due to his violent temper. After the latest of these episodes, Min-soo arranges the bail money for Gon’s release from jail, with one catch: he must work as a DJ at the local radio station in Yongwon, a sleepy backwater town. Gon sees this as the ultimate humiliation, but has no choice but to accept. He has a rough time with his first show, due to his unwillingness to participate, a relatively untested young producer (Choi Jeong-yoon), and an expletive-filled on-air phone call from the man Min-soo borrowed the bail money from. However, the show quickly gains popularity, and becomes a community center, a source of advice, and a bulletin board. The townspeople are wonderfully drawn, and are generously given their moments to shine. For example, there is the coffee-shop girl Sun-ok (Han Yeo-woon), who tearfully apologizes to her mother for running away from home; a flower-shop worker who enlists listeners’ help in wooing the bank teller he is smitten with; a group of older women squabbling over the rules to their card game. Throughout the film, the corporate world of Seoul is contrasted with the more down-home qualities of regional towns.

Radio Star is Lee Joon-ik’s follow-up to his historical drama The King and the Clown (also screening at this year’s festival), the top box-office hit of all time in Korea before Bong Joon-ho’s The Host bested it last year. His first contemporary story after his historical films, including his debut Once Upon a Time in the Battlefield, his new film nicely balances humor and more poignant moments. Ahn Sung-ki is especially fine as Choi Gon’s long-suffering manager, whose intense loyalty to his charge causes him to neglect his own family. Despite their dissimilar settings, Radio Star shares some interesting affinities with The King and the Clown. Both films concern performers and how their art impacts their personal lives. The court jesters of King and the Clown and the musicians of Radio Star are passionate about their art; in the latter film the aspiring rock band East River doggedly pursue their idol Choi Gon, petitioning him to help them get their big break. Also, both films are affecting portraits of male friendship, and the complex relationships, breakups and reunions of the male characters are given center stage. Radio Star confirms Lee’s considerable talents at making effortlessly entertaining films told with visual flair and vivid attention to character.

Radio Star screens at the 2007 New York Korean Film Festival on August 26.

Radio Star trailer:

New York Korean Film Festival Review: Im Sang-soo's "The Old Garden"

The Old Garden (Oraedoen Jungwon). 2006. Written and directed by Im Sang-soo, based on the novel by Hwang Seok-young. Produced by Park Jong and Kim Jung-ho. Cinematography by Kim Woo-hyung. Edited by Lee Eun-soo. Music by Kim Hong-jib. Production design by Song Jae-hee. Sound by Kim Suk-won and Kim Chang-sub. Visual effects by Jan Seong-ho. Released by Lotte Entertainment.

Cast: Yeom Jung-ah, Ji Jin-hee, Kim Yu-ri, Yoon Hee-seok, Eun-seong, Yoon Yeo-jeong, Park Hye-sook.

The Old Garden, based on a novel by celebrated dissident writer Hwang Seok-young, recreates the turbulent period of the 1980’s, represented by the memories of Hyun-woo (Ji Jin-hee), who at the film’s outset has been released from jail after serving a 17-year jail sentence for anti-government activism. He gets out of prison to learn that his lover and the mother of his child, Yoon-hee (Yeom Jung-ah) has died from cancer. This occasions a trip to the place where they met, and also a trip through his memories of their relationship. Yoon-hee, an art teacher at a nearby school, is a disillusioned ex-activist. She nevertheless agrees to hide Hyun-woo, wanted by the government, at her house, because of her outrage at the recent massacre of activists at Kwangju. Quickly they begin a relationship, which is troubled due to Hyun-woo’s insistence on traveling to Seoul to check on his comrades, and Yoon-hee’s feeling that he puts his political convictions above his feelings for her. After Hyun-woo is caught by the police and begins his long jail sentence, Yoon-hee struggles to come to terms with both her anger at him and her still strong feelings for him. She now has a daughter by him, a fact which Yoon-hee hides from Hyun-woo for the rest of her life.

Im Sang-soo revisits a wound which is still fresh on Korean history, much as he did with his previous film, the darkly satirical The President’s Last Bang, which re-imagined the assassination of authoritarian leader Park Chung-hee. The Old Garden examines the era of Park’s successor Chun Doo-hwan, who proved to be just as intolerant of dissent and brutal toward activists, if not even more so, than Park. While the government’s extreme tactics and violence toward the citizenry are vividly captured in the scenes of protest, and of Hyun-woo’s prison torture, the activists themselves are not free from criticism. In an especially barbed scene, the activists’ pompous rhetoric and own authoritarian tendencies are held up for ridicule, with extreme close-ups of the debating mouths spouting empty political platitudes. The film casts a rather jaundiced eye on these idealists who often forced members to sacrifice themselves for the sake of media exposure, and who are now disillusioned and apathetic. The mood of the piece, exemplified by the truncated romance between Yoon-hee and Jung-woo, is one of exhaustion, disillusion, and regret for lost time.

While the film is beautifully shot, especially in its images of rain and snow, the film has considerable weaknesses, the most significant being the muted emotion and schematic quality of its scenario. Im’s previous films excelled in creating vivid, brilliantly drawn characters who felt like fully formed human beings, for example in A Good Lawyer’s Wife, his best film to date. The President’s Last Bang, although pitched in a quite different register than this new film, brought its historical figures to life as complex humans. His new film lacks these qualities, and each character seems rather shallow and unformed. The Old Garden strives for more dramatic heft than his other work, but the almost mechanical shuttling back and forth between the present and the past prevents us from fully sympathizing with the characters or feeling anything for their tragic fates. This flatness also carries over into the performances. Yeom Jung-ah’s character is the heart of this story, but there is a rather stiff and forbidding quality to her performance that puts us at a remove. Ji Jin-hee is less than convincing in his present-day scenes as the older Hyun-woo, who has survived years of torture and isolation. He looks basically the same, just with grayer hair. These actors have both acquitted themselves well in other films, so the fault must be placed on Im’s inadequately developed script. Also, the wicked sense of humor that existed alongside the more somber elements of his other films is oddly missing here. Im has made a worthy attempt to evoke this painful period of history, but he has failed at making it a compelling vision of this time and in fully conveying the tragedies that were common features of this period.

The Old Garden screens at the 2007 New York Korean Film Festival on August 26 and September 2.

The Old Garden trailer: