Hey folks, Harry here... AND BOY DO I UNDERSTAND THE AGONY THAT ANTON has been going through... Folks... Literally... the worst thing in the world is to be in the midst of heavy duty writing and reporting country and have your laptop conk out on you. Right now... Anton has to be in near tears of aggravation and frustration. A broken laptop at TORONTO would be like a flacid unmoving penis with a supermodel laying next to you... However, being the trooper that he is... he found an internet cafe (the equivalent to viagra) to sate his writing urges... and while I radically differ in his opinion of SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE... His embrace and jubilant reaction to CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON... I share completely... Here we go...
Day Five
O evil technology! Woe to he that relies on such a fickle mistress!
I’m sure you’re all absolutely DYING of curiosity, wondering what hole I’ve fallen into in the last twenty-four hours. Contrary to rumor I have not run off to Paris with the stars of Baise-Moi, nor been arrested for stalking Maggie. Nope, the simple fact of the matter is my laptop conked out approximately 30 hours ago, and no resuscitation was possible. So, no neatly typed reviews, just barely-legible scrawls penned while waiting in line-ups, of no use to anyone but handwriting analysts. This is the first chance I’ve had to sit down at a terminal (at the almost-nearly convenient Insomnia Café at Bloor and Bathurst) and share my thoughts with y’all.
The last couple of days haven’t been a total loss. I finished the interview with Jonathan Teplitzky and Susie Porter (you’d have been proud of her George, she didn’t break down and tell me any Episode II dirt no matter what I tried. Heck, when the Q&A audience asked her what she had coming up she didn’t even mention she was in it! Non-disclosure in action, ladies and gentleman), firmed up the interviews with John Fawcett, director of Ginger Snaps; and Bryan Johnson, View Askew logo designer and Vulgar writer-director. Plus Asia, of course- she got into town Sunday evening. Nice little low key pasta reception put on by the Italian Trade Commission, then the EFP conference today where she sat at the center of the table. Naturally.
Oh yeah, and I saw a few movies too...
Long Holiday (2000, directed by Johan van der Keuken)
For my money van der Keuken is the best documentary filmmaker on the planet. I’ve seen far too few of his films, but what I have seen has been unbelievable- beautiful, thoughtful, and patient, a combination of travelogue and anthropological study.
The Long Holiday is his latest, and for his subject he has chosen... himself. A few years ago he was diagnosed with cancer, but rather than withdraw into a shell he decided to do something with what could be his last days on earth. And so he set out to document life itself, a final record for posterity, and infused with the energy that only certain knowledge of your mortality can bring, he travelled ‘round the globe. From doctor’s offices in Utrecht to the home of a Tibetan Buddhist healer in Bhutan, from the Rotterdam film festival to a riverside village in Mali his camera roves, always looking to capture not just life but vitality- the sheer joy of existance.
And he finds it. One of van der keuken’s great gifts as a filmmaker is his ability to render himself invisible. His subjects speak not to an interviewer or a device for recording their image, he finds ways to have them speak directly to the viewer. Most documentaries, most films are recitations, with one viewpoint telling one story to an audience. Extrordinarliy enough van der keuken’s films are dialogues, between subject and audience, even between the different subjects themselves. And in this film the topic of conversation is the oldest story of all. Life.
And, in the end, he does. The film closes in the way everyone watching hopes it will, with the cancer in remission and the potential for more films from van der Keuken, a man who can, with no pretention (OK, maybe a little), be considered the eyes of the world. Be thankful they have not yet gone dark.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, directed by Ang Lee)
This has been a lot time coming. For too long ‘our’ films have been sneered at by the mainstream press, ghetto-ized and dismissed as ‘just’ a genre flick. Sure, the occasional work of science fiction might get paid lip service but for the most part our films- and us along with them- get marginalized and scorned, the rigid critical caste structure not bending an inch and driving us deep into the shadows, where we plot our revenge.
Brothers and sisters- our moment has arrived.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon could never in a million years be dismissed as ‘chop socky’. Lyrical and lush with Ang Lee’s sure, smooth hand at the controls, the film is an epic superior to anything Hollywood has produced in the last twenty years. The performances are marvelous, with the surprise star being neither Chow Yun-Fat nor Michelle Yeoh (although both are magnificent) but Zhang Ziyi (in only her second film) as Jen, the young spitfire torn between love and honor, duty and adventure. Remember the first time you saw Michelle and thought "Wow, a beautiful woman who can kick ass? She must be the perfect woman." Well, this girl has classic china-doll features, gets to kick MORE ass in Crouching Tiger than Michelle and has that all-important quality, attitude. You will fall madly in love with her here, I promise you. The cinematography is beyond breath-taking, ranging the length and breadth of China and finding beauty everywhere, be it forest or desert. The plot is heart-wrenching, with weighty political matters balanced against frustrated love affairs. And of course, it being a Chinese historical drama, you can be fairly sure the ending will not be a happy one.
And the fight scenes! Impeccably staged and shot, they don’t so much redefine martial arts choreography as refine it, honing the poetry of the fighting like a blade. Every major set piece immediately joins the list of classic martial arts movie battles. The first chase over the rooftops and the fight in the courtyard. The night-time battle where Jade Fox is revealed. The confrontation at the inn. The falling out between the ‘sisters’. The testing among the bamboo. And all of them, all of them so unbelievably crisp and gorgeous and brilliant your eyes will pop out of your skull.
Here’s how good the film is. At the industry screening- the showing for press and distributors and the like, at which people usually wander in and out and talk on their cel phones- not one person walked out, the first fight scene got a round of applause, and people left at the end with tears in their eyes. This is the reaction from the jaded insider folk, not the fanboys who rocked the house at the Gala. Mononoke didn’t even get that kind of reception last year.
Patience, friends. You will see it soon. And when- not if- the box office is good, and it pulls down a Big Six Oscar nom or two, we will be vindicated.
Thank you, Ang Lee. Thank you.
Gaea Girls (2000, directed by Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams)
I have a confession- I watch wrestling. I could make all sorts of justifications for it (my favorite being that its combination of physical spectacle, soap opera storylines and CIA-level backstage disinformation campaigns make it the perfect artform for the 21st century) but the fact of the matter is I like the adrenaline rush. But wrestling in North America is very different than wrestling in Japan. There the athlete, rather than the personality, is paramount. Gaea Girls takes us inside the process of becoming a joshi puroresu- a female professional wrestler, at the hands of the legendary Chigusa Nagoya. Nagoya is a drill sergeant, to put it mildly. She prepares her changes by doing everything in her power to break them. Those that survive the crucible of her training are ready to become Gaea Girls.
The film follows one young trainee in particular, Takeoshi (good thing too, since a good chunk of the others leave when they she what she goes through). She has talent, but shows a passivity in the ring when things don’t go her way. Obviously this does not sit well with Nagoya. Physically and verbally she beats Takeoshi down, doing everything she can to wake her up, to translate her desire to wrestle into energy, seemingly to no avail. But Takeoshi has a secret weapon- a grim determination nearly bordering on obsession. No matter how many bloody noses, or worse yet public humiliations, she gets takeoshi comes back for more. Will she survive and see her dream through, or be driven away by Nagoya the taskmaster?
The film’s strength is the strength of the women. These are not North American wrestling ‘valets’, there for their looks- these are athletes who train hard and fight harder. And fight they do- fight for their place, fight for their dreams
Shadow of the Vampire (2000, directed by E. Elias Merhige)
They call ‘em ‘high concept’ these days. Films with a kink in the plot, a central conceit that shines like gold in a stream of loglines. And producers desperately pan the waters looking for the one they can transform into real gold. You know the kind of thing they’re looking for- Kids hip to the rules of slasher flicks are stalked by a serial killer. Maladjusted boy who talks to the dead is cured by the ghost of a child psychologist. Etc. But one of Hollywood’s dirty little secrets is that the idea, the ‘high concept’, isn’t really worth a dime. It’s the execution of the idea that matters. ‘Boy meets girl’ can be the genesis of anything from Romeo and Juliet to, well, Boys & Girls, with a million variations in between.
Take the latest ‘high concept’ on display here- what if somebody made a vampire film using an actual vampire as the star? In the case of Shadow of the Vampire though it’s not just anyone, it’s legendary filmmaker F. W. Murnau, and it’s not just any film, it’s Nosferatu. (For those unfamiliar with Nosferatu, a silent masterpiece from 1922, it still stands today as maybe THE vampire film, and probably the most accurate re-telling of Stoker’s Dracula ever put to film, even though legal problems prevented Murnau from actually calling it Dracula. Part of Nosferatu’s status comes from the ‘mystery’ surrounding the identity of Max Schreck, who played the vampire in the film. Nosferatu was Schreck’s first film role- and that in his mid-40s- and his only notable one, leading some people to conclude that it was in fact his only performance ever.) It’s a brilliant idea. The greatest vampire film ever made is actually a documentary of sorts. It would be as if Spielberg shot Jaws using a real shark- and just as messy.
Shadow of the Vampire starts off swimmingly. Murnau (John Malkovich in a role that requires all of his Malkovichian grandeur) begins shooting his latest film, Nosferatu. Everything is very secretive. Even his producer (played by Udo Kier, solid as always) doesn’t know the identity of the actor playing the title character. The metaphors get laid on a bit thick (the lead actress Greta, played by Catherine McCormack, gives a little speech about how much she detests cinema because while a live theater audience gives her life, "that"- pointing dramatically at a camera- "takes it away!") but once the cast and crew are on location the pace picks up. (And if you’re familiar with Nosferatu you’ll be amazed at how uncannily similar the location shots look.) After a couple of teases we are given the first appearance of ‘Max Schreck’ as the Nosferatu, and quite frankly it’s as shocking, if for different reasons, as the original must have been in its time. Willem Dafoe plays the Nosferatu, a vampire so old he’s forgotten his real name, and he is Max Schreck reborn, in looks and mannerisms. The resemblance, and the performance, are perfect.
Those first scenes with ‘Schreck’ are the high point of the film. Murnau explains the vampire away as a dedicated artist and a student of Stanislavsky’s in Moscow (in other words, the world’s first Method actor), and the scenes with ‘Schreck’ trying to ‘act’ the part of a vampire within the confines of the script are fantastic. Dafoe invests the vampire with a decayed humanity that is both tragic and loathsome. It’s maybe a little early to be tossing the ‘O’ word around (but then, I did it with Crouching Tiger, so fine- OSCAR OSCAR OSCAR), but the thought will occur to whoever sees the film. Malkovich matches Dafoe every step of the way, as Murnau pushes harder and harder to see his vision realized. Finally Murnau pushes too hard, and the vampire’s bloodlust is unleashed.
Here we finally learn of the terrible bargain Murnau made to enlist the vampire’s co-operation. In exchange for his performance ‘Schreck’ will get Greta. The revelation scene is riveting and hilarious all at once, veering back and forth between horror and filmese (at one point Murnau threatens to take away all of the vampire’s close-ups if he doesn’t behave himself.) Murnau begins to realize how little control he has over his ‘temperamental’ star, but forges ahead anyway, a slave to his own hunger for greatness.
Tragically, Shadow goes off the rails at this point. After nearly draining the cinematographer dry, the vampire begins devouring cast and crew alike while Murnau is back in Berlin trying to find a new cameraman. But aside from one seemingly comically-intended attack we never see the deaths, or even feel their consequences- peripheral characters simply vanish from the story. Cary Elwes shows up as the new cameraman, but strangely without Murnau, blurring the film’s focus. The film starts jumping awkwardly from location to location, forcing the audience to keep playing catch-up. Finally the climax (of both the film and the film-within-a-film) arrives, and as all his plans unravel- plans nobody bothers to fill the audience in on, mind you- Murnau is left with nothing to do except go mad and keep filming the slaughter. And then, improbably, the cavalry (in the form of the screenwriter, no less- talk about a lack of subtlety) arrives to save the day.
It’s a shame. Script and direction were both essentially by first-timers (Merhige directed the fantastic bizarro cult flick Begotten nearly a decade ago, and writer Katz did some work on From the Earth to the Moon, but that’s about it) and it shows. Cool concepts aren’t enough. Without a well-executed idea, color becomes pallor; man becomes carcass; home becomes catacomb; and the dead are, but for a moment, motionless.
Damn, even Poe couldn’t cheer me up. I hate being disappointed. I’d still say check out Shadow of the Vampire for Dafoe’s exceptional performance, but Gods & Monsters, or even Living in Oblivion, this ain’t. (Now if somebody would just cast Val Kilmer in a modern-day ‘vampire star’ flick we may have something. Owen Wilson as the director, throw in Jeffrey Combs as Val’s ‘personal assistant’ Renfield, an up-and-comer like Dean Parisot or Steve Miner to direct... hey, anybody know Rudin’s number? This shit’s easy!)
