Hey folks, Harry here... Like Capone, I've been dying to get my hands on these foriegn films that'll be vying for the coveted BEST FOREIGN FILM award at this year's Oscars. I just saw THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST a couple of days ago, and it really is brilliant. I like EL CRIMEN DEL PADRE AMARO, but it isn't even the best movie from MEXICO last year... sigh, can't believe they nominated the wrong film. I've tried to get a screening of HERO here in Austin, so I could comment about it's worthiness as a candidate or not, but it seems "That's Impossible." Something that alot of folks are hearing these days, critics all over. Unfortunately the only result this will have for these types are all region DVDs from Asia, which inevitably will be burned online, thus assuring that the second HERO wins (if it wins) millions upon millions of revenue will be lost to Miramax, all because they didn't bring a film, THAT IS READY FOR RELEASE, out when it should have been released... during its Oscar campaign. The only reason to wait would be if you were going to make CHANGES to the film or try to build a larger awareness via a complicated Ad Campaign to reach a larger audience... HOWEVER, selling this movie right now, and creating that awareness right now, would only serve to help its chances of winning BEST FOREIGN FILM... Sigh, alas... At least we'll see it on a big screen... someday...
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago, and I’ve got a bad case of Oscar fever. No, I don’t really care who wins, but it gets under my skin when I see hundreds of movie in a given year and then the nominations come out in February and I haven’t seen some of the nominees in a major category. For example, when I heard the list of nominees in the Best Foreign Language Film category, I almost crapped my pin-striped pants. I’d only seen ONE of them (Mexico’s EL CRIMEN DEL PADRE AMARO). What the fuck? I hadn’t even heard of two of them (The Netherlands’ ZUS & ZOTriple what the fuck?!). Having so many cards stacked against me, there was only one thing I could do: make it my mission using every trick in my arsenal to see as many of these bad boys as I could before March 23. What follows is probably the sum total of my efforts. At least I’ll be able to raise my head high during the broadcast and say, “I saw three of those films.”
NOWHERE IN AFRICA
My guess is, with TALK TO HER not in the running, Germany’s NOWHERE IN AFRICA will win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. It really is that good. The film is about a Jewish family living in Germany in the late 1930s. Things are just starting to get a little hairy for German Jews, but not so much that the rising Nazi Party is stopping them from leaving the country. The lawyer father, Walter (Merab Ninidze) heads out first to establish a home and get a job. He goes to, of all places, Kenya, where he is hired by an English man running a cattle farm. Soon his wife, Jettel (Juliane Kohler), and young daughter follow after, having no idea what to expect. Jettel is appalled by the conditions they have to live in, and even says on occasion that she’d rather have stayed in Germany and risked death than live safely in Africa. Clearly the move puts a strain on a marriage that wasn’t that solid to begin with. The force that binds the couple is their daughter (played by a couple of different astonishing young actresses at various ages), who does grow to love the land and people of Kenya.
When war finally does breaks out, the family is put into separate camps since they are considered German citizens (by everyone by Germany, ironically). They lose their home and jobs while in the camps, and by the time they are released, they essentially must start from scratch. NOWHERE IN AFRICA is a detailed, sweeping story told beautifully by director Caroline Link (based on an autobiographical novel by Stefanie Zweig). The images and tales of Africa are magnificent, the acting is superb, and the outcome may not be what you expect. There’s a lot of humor in the film, even more tears. But more than anything, NOWHERE IN AFRICA is accessible and has the potential to break though to a wide audience because at its core, it’s a story about keeping the family together. Yes, it’s the story of a Jewish family fleeing the Nazis, but there isn’t a single Nazi in the entire movie. The film’s approach to exploring culture clash, the constant fear the family felt in being strangers in a strange land, the conflicts between the husband and wife, everything is done with such power and conviction to its subjects that you can’t help being taken hold of and swept away. If I’d included this movie in my Best of 2002 list, it probably would have made the Top 20. It opens March 21 (the weekend of the Oscars) in Chicago at the Landmark Century Centre Theatres.
HERO
I’ll admit it. I bought a copy of this film from Indonesia. I’ll say that with no shame. It’s probably a bootleg, but it looked pretty good for a bootleg. The colors weren’t as pretty as they should have been, sure, but the English subtitles were clear and literate. So there! I’ve never reviewed a film I’ve only seen on DVD, so this is a first.
By now I’m guessing most of you who care at all about Asian cinema at all have heard of and are in pain not having seen Zhang Yimou’s HERO. Just on paper, this film gets my vote: the reigning king Chinese cinema makes his first martial arts film with some of Asia’s greatest actors; Jet Li and Donnie Yen do battle for the first time since ONCE UPON IN CHINA 2; Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi cat fighting over the love of Tony Leung. Where’s the flaw here, people?
Actually, there are a few, but not enough to sink this elegant, luminous, and vividly realized masterwork. Without getting into too much plot detail, HERO is basically Chinese mythology come to life. I don’t know enough about China’s history to know if any of these characters are based on real people (I’m guessing that the King of Qin character, played by Daoming Chen, came from history), but the things they do in this film probably didn’t really happen quite this way. The King of Qin is under constant threat of assassination because of his aggressive attacks on the other kingdoms of China (there were seven, we are told). There are rewards out on the lives of various assassins, and these awards are both monetary and...physical (I can’t think of another way to put it). No one in the kingdom is allowed within 100 paces of the King, but part of your reward if you slay an assassin it to reduce the number of paces you can get from the King. I guess being near him was some sort of honor. Anyway, Jet Li is known only as Nameless, who presents himself as something of a bounty hunter. He has actually killed several would-be assassins and is about to become a very rich man; he has also earned the right to sit very close to the King. Any guesses why he really wants to get so close? But before Nameless is allowed to collect his reward, the King wants to hear about how he defeated the assassins. The film then launches into a series of flashbacks showing just that.
Donnie Yen (IRON MONKEY and currently in SHANGHAI KNIGHTS) is only in the movie for a few minutes as Sky, the first of Nameless’s conquests. This is a martial arts film to be sure, but don’t look for too much hand-to-hand stuff. The name of the game in HERO is swordplay and defying gravity. There’s more flying in the this film than all the SUPERMAN movies combined. My first criticism of the film is that far too much of the action is shown in slow motion. I realized that by showing the fight scenes in slo-mo, you get a real appreciation for the abilities of the actors, but it wrecks the pacing more often than not and seeing these guys and gals at full speed is so much more impressive. There’s a wonderful element to the Li-Yen sequence involving moving very quickly through water that I don’t think I could describe even if I wanted to. The sequence actually ends with what can only be described as a “mind battle” that reminded me of those moments in the X-Men comics when Professor X fights psy-battles with various brain-gifted villains. Very cool.
Make no mistake, special effects run rampant through HERO. I’m not just talking about the wire work (of which there is much); but CGI elements as well. For example, when Nameless is discussing his battles with the assassin couple Broken Sword (Leung) and Flying Snow (Cheung), there’s a marvelous scene involving what appears to be thousands of archers launching a hail storm of arrows upon a single building housing a group of calligrapher (the spiritual nature of calligraphy plays a big part in this story). This is a breath-taking image; it’s also clearly computer generated. This doesn’t really take away from the beauty of the film, but I’m guessing this is Zhang Yimou’s first use of the CGI and it shows. Also on hand at the calligraphy inn is Moon (Ziyi), who is in love with Broken Sword and may or may not have acting upon it. This is the other thing about HERO you need to know: not everything you see is the truth. Jet Li lies. There are many versions of every tale he tells and we see them all. Each versions has a unique and awe-inspiring color scheme, and every version has a different battle between the players, each one more exciting than the next. Sometimes all the jumping around gets a bit confusingbut it didn’t hinder my enjoyment.
What Zhang Yimou might lack in his ability to capture the action, he makes up for in sheer visual beauty. Jet Li and Maggie Cheung have a tree-top battle that should not in any way remind you of CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON and another fight on the ground where simply swinging a sword near the ground kicks up these beautiful orange leaves and sends them flying in every direction; Jet and Leung have a balletic chase across a placid lake; and Leung and Cheung storm the King’s palace in one scene and manage to fight off hundreds of armed guards. The scale and sheer number of extras used for this film is extraordinary; the tireless attention to detail is commendable; and the symphonic nature of the story, and the fight scenes in particular, is unlike any film (Asian or otherwise) I’ve seen. Zhang Yimou is a master storyteller working with a boatload of the best actors China has to offer, and those elements are what pulls this film through these unchartered waters. This movie needs to come out now, not in November, so I can see this on a big, big screen with slightly better subtitles. Bring it to me, Miramax!
Capone
