Hey folks, Harry here with the last 2 days of Anton Sirius at the Toronto International Film Festival where he has had yet another sterling year of coverage! I can hardly wait to read some of his interviews... though I know I shall... whimper whimper, but I hope to see that Del Toro interview soon, as it is so fun reading Guillermo's interviews out loud to friends while imitating his voice... It is very invigorating... Sort of like transforming into Wallace Beery's Villa... Really good for the soul! Of these, I'm most looking forward to seeing BANG RAJAN and AMERICAN ASTRONAUT... and well... anything Plympton does is must see... so EAT is very much at the top of the list!
"I wonder whatever happened to me?"
- Rufus T. Firefly
Day Nine/Ten
Sorry for the hiccup in my coverage, starkinder. The truth is I’ve never seen the fest like this before- in the early days everyone was focused on celebrating the films, while in the last few years everyone became focused on celebrating themselves and the industry (the real break coming a couple of years ago, when American Beauty received its Oscar annointation.) But this year, obviously, everyone is focused on events to the south and thus, beyond the films themselves, there is very little to report.
As for those films, the added screenings to replace those lost on Tuesday have eaten up the last of my spare time- thus I have been unable to report on things until now. Even my extra-terrestrial endurance has its limits.
I did bump into Salma Hayek at the Uptown, and let her know about the Kahlo exhibit going on just outside the city if she happens to be stuck here for a few days; and Gabriel Byrne, who always sees as many films as he can when he’s here, was still going strong Saturday night; and Peter Fonda just did make it into town for the last screening of Hired Hand, but we couldn’t re-arrange an interview time. So slowly, even the make-believe Tinseltown life gets back to normal.
Lantana (2001, directed by Ray Lawrence)
I always find it very considerate when filmmakers sum up their movies in one line during the credits. It makes my job a lot easier.
In the case of Lantana, that line is, "Adapted from his stage play by…"
Lantana, this year's closing night Gala, is a talky film. A boring film, really. Boring and talky. Very little actually happens in it, although that very little makes a good effort to disguise itself as a lot. By now, if you’ve seen an Altman film (or anything by one of his creative or uncreative descendants) you know the drill. A group of seemingly disparate lives all gradually intersect and collide, while the director tries to make some point or other. It’s a formula that can produce anything from the sublime Magnolia to the ridiculous 2 Days in the Valley.
Lantana, you are no Magnolia.
The problems here are numerous. For one, the collisions and intersections are far too neat. It’s not just that the characters cross paths in coincidental fashion; it’s that they ALL cross paths with the SAME character, Anthony LaPaglia’s Leon. The whole thing smacks of a writer who is far too clever for his own good. On the flip side, the dialogue is very trite and cliched. I found myself playing my old Miami Vice game and guessing lines word for word before they were spoken. The performances, too, are wildly uneven. LaPaglia, who between films like this and stints on Frasier has fallen into an Alec Baldwin-esque career rut, is solid if unspectacular as the lead, but Geoffrey Rush is completely wasted and Barbara Hershey seems utterly lost. However, most of the supporting cast is quite good, with Rachael Blake as Jane and Vince Colosimo as Nik being particular standouts.
Beyond all that, though, the lack of tension in the film is lethal. The film starts with a body, but then makes no effort to identify who it is or who put them there until well into its second hour, dissipating the implied threat. (Note to future filmmakers: Just because Chekov said a gun left on the mantle in the first act should be fired by the third doesn’t mean you absolutely HAVE to wait that long.) Lantana tries at times for some sort of hothouse Consenting Adults-like vibe, but aside from a few sodden instances of guilt- or grief-laden sex nothing much happens. It’s one thing to make a film with suburban, middle-aged characters, but it’s quite another to make a bland, suburban film, which is what Lantana ends up being. In fact, other than a ten-minute stretch in the middle where the movie (seemingly grudgingly) allows itself some sharp character-driven humor, it gives you no real reason to care about its characters at all.
Lantana will probably get some praise somewhere for being very un-Hollywood, which it is, but don’t be fooled. Just because nothing blows up doesn’t mean it’s worth watching.
American Astronaut (2000, directed by Cory McAbee)
Um, wow, was this weird.
Stacked up against most of the Midnight films this year so far (this has been an amazingly strong Midnight Madness program, just a notch shy of the legendary 1992 program that featured Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead aka Dead-Alive, Man Bites Dog, Candyman, Tokyo Decadence, Romper Stomper, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer and Jet Li’s Swordsman II) American Astronaut falls a little short. But that doesn’t mean the film isn’t decidedly bent.
I could describe the plot, but I don’t think that could truly get across the film. Instead I’ll share with you some of the results of the fun drinking game we played afterwards, namely 'Come Up With a Pithy X Meets Y Hollywood Pitch for American Astronaut.' Some of the better entries:
- Plan Nine From Outer Space meets O Brother Where Art Thou?
- Buck Rogers meets Smokey and the Bandit
- Death Race 2000 meets the Rocky Horror Picture Show meets the Grapes of Wrath
I think you get the gist of things from those.
American Astronaut also features a soundtrack by the Billy Nayer Show that is well worth finding, if for no other reason than to hear 'The Girl with the Vagina Made of Glass.'
Eat (2001, directed by Bill Plympton)
The latest Plymptoon short preceded American Astronaut, and it was more inspired flights of lunacy from the diseased brain and pen of Bill Plympton. This one is about a typical (well, typical in the Plympton universe anyway) night out at a chi-chi French restaurant.
If you made a list of people for who you really didn’t want the answer to the question, "Where do your ideas come from?", Plympton would be right up there.
Ichi the Killer (2001, directed by Takashi Miike)
Let's be honest. Miike is a sick bastard when he lets himself go. The average Miike film contains 4.6 acts of truly sadistic, hardcore violence and/or sex, usually performed against the most likable characters in the film.
That was his average up until Ichi the Killer. Ichi doesn't just skew the bell curve; it sodomizes it.
The plot is roughly something along the lines of 'Young lad who was constantly bullied snaps and turns himself into a killing machine, and is used by some guy to eliminate the local yakuza.' But this doesn't do, um, justice to Ichi.
Within the first five minutes Ichi's clean-up crew has slipped in some entrails, and the title credits have risen out of a pool of splooge. And it goes downhill (or uphill, depending of course on your perspective) from there.
Needless to say, I wouldn’t be looking for Ichi the Killer at the Des Moines multiplex any time soon.
The brutality in this film is just incredible. Ichi's method of execution is somewhat unusual- he has become a martial arts expert, and he has blades that spring out from the heels of his shoes. Thus there's a lot of kicking, and dismembering, and arterial spray. In fact Ichi is probably the Citizen Kane of arterial spray movies, or at least the Casablanca.
One guy gets tortured using body hooks and boiling tempura oil. Another guy's face- you never see the rest of him, just his face- slides slowly down a wall. Limbs and guts and blood fly through the air with the greatest of ease.
Oh, did I mention Ichi gets off on all this? And that Kakihara, his main opponent among the yakuza, is a horribly scarred masochist who also gets off on most of this? And that Kakihara has a wardrobe I would kill for? And that he is careful to wear a bib to protect that wardrobe when he chops off his own tongue, thus earning my respect? And that immediately afterwards he answers his phone?
Damn, Miike. You are one sick bastard.
Buffalo Soldiers (2001, directed by Gregor Jordan)
Best described as Catch-22 with Milo Minderbinder as the hero and no war, Buffalo Soldiers is an odd little film, trying to disguise itself as an attack on the military while still making it seem like a really keen place to be.
Set in Germany during the waning days of the Cold War, Buffalo Soldiers stars Joaquin Phoenix as Elwood, the camp clerk who runs a highly profitable black market operation under the nose of the incompetent Col. Berman (played by a brilliantly useless Ed Harris). His world is turned upside-down by the arrival of hard-nosed Sgt. Lee (Scott Glenn, who it's always nice to see get some high-profile work) who doesn't take any of Elwood's shit, and the sergeant's yummy daughter, played by Anna Paquin.
Elwood and Lee go at it hammer and tongs while Elwood tries desperately to run one last big score, selling two truckloads of heavy weaponry that fell into his lap. The arms deal goes south when payment arrives in the form of uncut heroin, forcing Elwood to cut deals left and right with the other assorted bad apples in his unit to turn the drugs into cash. The whole thing plays out as farce against the back-drop of the end of an era, with scenes of stoned soldiers trying to make sense of the Berlin Wall coming down.
Make no mistake, Buffalo Soldiers is a funny movie. Harris is particularly amazing playing completely against type (Col. Berman is basically the exact opposite of Harris' character from the Rock) but the whole cast is solid, and some of the scenes- particularly the climactic 'firefight' set amidst a haze of heroin fumes- are hilariously black. The whole, however, doesn't seem to add up to the sum of its parts, and this has nothing to do with the events of 9/11. Indicting the military by celebrating capitalism certainly makes a statement, but it's hardly as bold as the film seems to think it is. And how much of an indictment is it when the military is shown to be a place where you can goof off, get high, score the babe and make a lot of money? Most campus comedies don't reward their heroes that well at the end.
Depending on when this film gets released (I'm guessing it won't be any time soon) Ed Harris should probably be up for some Oscar consideration. On those grounds alone it's worth checking out. But when those reviews start pouring in comparing Buffalo Soldiers to Dr. Strangelove or- heaven forbid- Apocalypse Now, please take them with a grain of salt. Stripes and Private Benjamin would probably be more appropriate.
Bang Rajan- The Legend of the Village Warriors (2000, directed by Thanit Jitnukul)
Generally speaking, war movies made during the current era are huge disappointments, Gladiator being exhibit A and Braveheart being a notable exception. For some reason the amazing leaps forward in special effects have come at the price of a distinct lack of humanity, and this is nowhere more obvious than in a genre where no matter how large the masses of people you throw together on the battlefield the result is only compelling when the audience actually has an emotional investment in the characters.
Which is why Bang Rajan blew me away on almost every front, and why it is the best movie of the festival.
The plot is simple, yet entirely true- in the 18th century the Burmese Empire sent two armies of 100,00 men each into Siam to stamp out sedition and destroy the capital Ayatthaya. One of those armies, however, was delayed for months by a single village, which fought off wave after wave of Burmese soldiers. That village, of course, was Bang Rajan.
The movie opens with the campaign already having begun, and the Bang Rajan villagers laying a serious ass-whooping on the Burmese. Gradually we get to know the central characters, all larger than life archetypes who hook you immediately- the elder statesman wounded in battle, who cedes his place as leader to the veteran mountain guerrilla with the cool '70s porn moustache; the hot-headed warrior with a wife expecting their first child; the tomboy girl who wants to learn to defend herself, and the stalwart boy who loves her; and the drunken axe-wielding maniac who is maybe the most valiant of them all. Pure melodrama, but given the near-constant battle scenes there isn't much time for more nuanced characters, and quite frankly Bang Rajan doesn't need them.
As for those battle scenes... dear Goddess. If I were to name-drop comparisons it would be Welles and Kurosawa, but quite frankly Bang Rajan cuts its own swath. This isn’t the cavalry charges and orderly units of Europe and Japan, this is jungle warfare. This is war fought with musket and bow, machete and axe, fist and foot. Brave warriors wearing nothing but loincloths charging headlong into the fray and with superior speed and skill taking out a dozen foes, only to fade back into the trees. Soldiers rising out of the river to launch surprise counter-attacks, and flights of burning arrows arcing through the twilight. These battles, too numerous to mention, are ferocious, well-paced and brilliantly choreographed throughout, something Hollywood hasn't managed for decades.
Bang Rajan also cleverly holds back on some of the more gruesome results of the conflict, meaning that you don't see decapitations and dismemberments until you already care about who is doing the dismembering, and who is getting decapitated.
If Crouching Tiger proved anything it's that the modern North American audience isn't afraid of subtitles so long as the action and visuals draw them in. Bang Rajan should be the film to put that theory to the acid test. It may not hit the magic $100 million mark the way Ang Lee's masterpiece did, but then again nobody expected Crouching Tiger- or Braveheart for that matter- to do as well as they did either.
Bang Rajan is a brilliant film. Tense, heroic, funny and beautiful, and with the best battle scenes put to film by anybody, anywhere in twenty years, this film deserves to be seen by a world-wide audience. Here's hoping somebody- Sony Classics, are you listening?- steps up and gives it a chance.
Anton Sirius
