VIFF! Gwai Lo Reviews REDACTED, The New Bela Tarr, And 4 ELEMENTS!

Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. I just got the line-up in today for the AFI Fest, which takes place in November, and I was cruising the website earlier for ScreamFest LA, which starts pretty much any minute now, and I realized... I’ve got festival fever. Seriously. I’ve got a fucking itch, and I’m jealous of people who have been cruising the festival scene for the last few months, who have already digested and passed the rest of this year’s major pictures. Maybe not every single one. Not BEOWULF. Not CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR. Not SWEENEY TODD. There are a few things that people haven’t seen yet. But for the most part, much of the critical press in LA has already seen and processed most of this year’s major offerings, thanks to Toronto and Venice and the New York Film Festival (which is running at the moment), and, in the case of Gwai Lo, the Vancouver International Film Festival. I wish Vern had gone to this. I’d love to know what Vern thinks of REDACTED. I’m just glad to see a De Palma film generating this much conversation. Seems to me tha an intentionally provocative De Palma is a good thing. That’s who he is at his best. Can’t wait to see this one myself, and, as I said, I’m horrifically jealous of you at the moment, Gwai Lo...

Finally some nice crisp sunny weather in Vancouver . My reviews were slowed down this weekend by a faulty internet connection. These were kind of rushed, I’ve had to squeeze them in between seeing movies and seeing movies. I have another four films that I’ve seen waiting for reviews (“The Edge of Heaven”, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, “The Unforeseen” and “Euphoria”) and another two films to watch (“Go Go Tales” and “Paranoid Park”.) I’ll try and crank reviews for all of these films out by next weekend. Anyway, enjoy… REDACTED “Redacted” is a long-awaited return to form for master director Brian De Palma, although it scarcely resembles any of his previous works and should be considered an innovative leap forward rather than a return to anything. It would be almost impossible to review this film without entangling myself in its politics, but I will try and remind myself to stay focused on the film itself as I write this review. As a Canadian I say get the troops the fuck out of there, by the way. “Redacted” (the practice of censoring inflammatory information from the public) tells its story through ‘found’ footage: the video diary of a soldier with film school aspirations, an artful French documentary, international news coverage, terrorist home video footage, and YouTube snippets. It concerns a group of soldiers going stir crazy in Samarra , two of which end up raping and murdering a fifteen year old girl and her family. It is based on true events, although there has been a lot of furor over De Palma’s exacerbation of the truth. This film is the Iraq war distilled, stripped down to its most disturbing facets. Regardless of how close to the specific events De Palma got here, he captured one of the ugliest aspects of humanity that is universal to any major war. The fictionalization of real events almost shields this film from a lot of the flack it’s going to get on a political level, but there should be no reason to believe that there isn’t a degree of accuracy here. These events have occurred for millennia, but it’s only now that the effects on the world are immediate. Filmmakers in most countries are able to make brave and vital comments on war and politics as they occur, with little fear of repercussion. The found footage structure reinforces this sense of immediacy; before the Iraq war is even over we have a visceral and powerful anti-war film that serves as a giant middle finger to everyone involved. A handful of people walked out of the screening, one even muttered “that’s fucking disgusting” on his way out (he was incensed by a scene that replicated the Nick Berg beheading.) There were similar reactions to the chainsaw sequence in “Scarface”. It should be apparent by this point in the review that Brian De Palma has some serious balls. Perhaps we forgot in the last decade, as he gave us bewildering failures like “ Mission to Mars” and “Snake Eyes”. My personal favorite De Palma movie is “Body Double”, but he has a number of entries on my extensive Greatest of All Time List. “Redacted” is a savage attack on American foreign policy, the stereotypical American soldier, and the impotence of those that oppose the war. This is the closest we’ve gotten to “Full Metal Jacket” since Gomer Pyle put a bullet in his brain (“Jarhead” not-withstanding.) “Redacted” doesn’t depict all American soldiers as sociopaths, De Palma simply illustrates the tendency for sociopaths to lead the way. The implications of this notion on a larger scale are scary. Some of the scenes in this film are incredibly affecting, particularly the final montage of actual stills from the Iraq war. The closing shot in particular is tough to stomach, especially considering the fiction that precedes it. This film stunned the VIFF audience into silence, the applause was sparse and people shuffled out in a daze. I don’t interpret that as a negative reaction; I think people were genuinely stirred by this film. I can’t wait to see the uproar when it comes out in December, and wonder how long the “support our troops” mantra can hold out under this type of critical scrutiny. If you are basing your evaluation of this film on acting and dialog you are completely missing the point. It’s obvious that the actors are amateurs, that they’re improvising most of their dialog, that there is no polish on this production. This film is like an infected wound, it hurts and it’s not pretty to look at. However, it’s a crucial film for our times that packs a powerful punch and is almost guaranteed to stir up a lot of trouble in a couple of months. I can’t wait. THE MAN FROM LONDON Bela Tarr’s “The Man From London” was an excruciating film to sit through, an endurance test that recalls Michael Snow’s “Wavelength” in its monolithic slowness. It’s also unquestionably brilliant. I watched the film with an audience that lost patience very quickly. More people walked out of this screening than any other film I have seen so far at the VIFF, including Brian De Palma’s incendiary “Redacted”. I saw the film after a very long day at work. I stood in a Rush Tickets line for an hour to get into the theater and had trouble keeping still in the uncomfortable seats of the Pacific Cinematheque. I must admit that it was difficult to watch “The Man From London” and maintain full attention at all times, but I also think this is an exceptional work of art with some of the most gorgeous black and white cinematography I have ever seen. The plot concerns a railway switchman on the graveyard shift who witnesses a murder at seaside station where he works. He waits until the coast is clear and fishes an errant briefcase out of the ocean, drying the money inside. He goes about his life with his wife and daughter but the burden of his secret begins to weigh on him. Gangsters and detectives hover on the periphery of his increasingly unstable existence and tension escalates. I would not even be able to describe anything else about the story, and had this film been shot Hollywood style at a normal pace it would be a lean film noir at barely half the running time. In Tarr’s hands this film noir premise is just a cipher to channel the same kind of esoteric unease that David Lynch creates from thin air. This is a frustratingly uncommunicative narrative, populated with equally distant characters. Most viewers will be vexed by the impenetrable nature of this film, but if you have the tenacity to stick with it you’ll be left with some powerful and indelible images burned into your brain by way of your retinas. Shot on the island of Corsica , Tarr’s visuals are meticulously composed works of art. Everything in this film feels authentically antiquated, like the long lost reels of a Hungarian noir shot in the forties. This is a film for cinematographiles; each frame is rendered in glowing whites and inky blacks. The score wouldn’t sound out of place in an episode of “ Twin Peaks ”, driving the mood of the film with haunting synthesizer loops. I was reminded of “Eraserhead” and “The Elephant Man” at various points throughout the film, in particular by the monotonous sounds of industry that would periodically intrude on a scene for minutes at a time. Tarr lets shots play until their absolute breaking point, often letting the camera linger on a face or an object for several minutes before cutting away. One shot in particular of a widow’s face as she comprehends the death of her husband is haunting in its prolonged intensity. I don’t know much about Bela Tarr, other than the fact that he is the owner of the coolest name I have ever heard. I know that he directed a film called “The Wreckmeister Harmonies”, referenced somewhere in an avant-garde film class I took at some point, but I have never seen it. “The Man From London” establishes him as a master filmmaker on my radar, although I say that with the caveat that he won’t be for everyone. If this review has piqued your interest, and if you can handle a glacial pace, then by all means track this film down and submit to its will. I hope I’ve provided a thorough warning, however, that this film will give put the healthiest of attention spans in a sleeper hold. 4 ELEMENTS A synopsis of “4 Elements” might make the film sound deceptively similar to a “NOVA” program or an episode of “Dirty Jobs”. Siberian smokejumpers, Alaskan king crab fishermen, German miners and Russian cosmonauts respectively represent the non-hip-hop version of the four elements: fire, water, earth and air. Each element is the subject of a roughly twenty minute chapter, focusing on man’s (I’m not obeying gender neutrality in this review because there are no women in this film) more extreme relationships with the natural environment. This is the best documentary I have seen so far this year (sorry, Michael Moore), a lyrical and transcendent examination of nature and humanity’s place in it. The first segment follows a team of men battling a forest fire. They dig a trench around the fire, torch the perimeter, and watch it burn out. They spend their off hours making mushroom stew and submerging themselves in small hot-spring holes in the ground. The second chapter focuses on Alaskan king crab fishermen, surrounded on all sides by water and dragging armored crustaceans from the ocean in metal cages. The photography in this chapter is eerily reminiscent of “Alien”, especially the claustrophobic corridors of the ship and the shots from inside the crab holding tank. The third segment follows German miners deep into the ground, where they mine valuable black stuff. They emerge from the mine caked in soot, their eyes and teeth glowing like little light bulbs. The final and most impressive chapter depicts the rigorous training of Russian cosmonauts, as they are subjected to intense tests to prepare for the physics of space flight. The film crescendos as their shuttle blasts off into a stunning sunrise, piercing the atmosphere just as the credits roll. “4 Elements” has more in common with films like “Fata Morgana” and “Lessons of Darkness” than a Discovery Channel special. This is not a dry collection of facts and information, it is a living breathing structured story. The film has the same almost-science-fiction vibe that the aforementioned ‘documentaries’ possess. Religiously toned narration provides an appropriate segue between each chapter, but aside from a few brief expository asides there is virtually no dialog. The cinematography in this film is utterly mesmerizing. The colors are crisp and vivid; director Jiska Rickels has a poetic eye for familiar visuals that have never looked quite this good before. Every scene has the quality of found art; absolutely nothing looks artificial or staged. Nothing looks too clean either, this was filmed digitally but Rickels took great pains to preserve the rough edges of film. The soundtrack is a textured compliment to the visuals, a surging symphony of ambient noise. “4 Elements” is the surprise of the festival for me, and with two films left on my itinerary it’s likely to remain one of my favorites. This is as close as a documentary can get to visual poetry, and I mean that in the most unpretentious way possible. Of all the beautiful images I have seen in the last two weeks, a great deal of them come from this film. See it if you can find it.