Capone's Art-House Round-Up with THE KINGDOM OF DREAMS AND MADNESS, TANGERINES, and HYENA!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


THE KINGDOM OF DREAMS AND MADNESS
One of the greatest privileges ever bestowed upon me in my many years doing this job was getting the chance to interview the great animator/director Hayao Miyazaki (KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, PRINCESS MONONOKE, SPIRITED AWAY) in 2009 on my first trip to San Diego Comic Con. He was as personable and insightful as you'd hope, and few things have topped that experience. But I acknowledge that it's one thing to spend 15 minutes with someone like Miyazaki on a press tour and another to observe him over the course of a couple of years as he works to finish THE WIND RISES, which he admits might be the most difficult film to complete in his career as an animator, primarily with Japan's legendary Studio Ghibli. The aptly titled documentary THE KINGDOM OF DREAMS AND MADNESS isn't just about Miyazaki; it's about all of Ghibli, from its most creative members, to its merchandizing and marketing teams, to the producers (primarily Toshio Suzuki) who attempt—and often fail—to keep things on schedule.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspects of the film (from director Mami Sunada) is how it features Ghibli's other great creative powerhouse, Isao Takahata (GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES), as he attempts to finish his latest work, the recent Best Animated Feature Oscar nominee THE TALE OF PRINCESS KAGUYA, which was supposed to be released at the same time as THE WIND RISES (they ended up being released only a couple of months apart in Japan). Takahata clearly didn't want cameras in his workspace in a different Ghibli office, and the two masters rarely speak and maintain a friendly rivalry that seems to fuel them both to do better work. It's a delicate balance that has resulted in some tremendously influential work. (The fact that the only project the two worked on together—the highly lauded 52-episode "Heidi: A Girl of the Alps" series is still not available in this country is a travesty.)

The primary focus of THE KINGDOM OF DREAMS AND MADNESS is Miyazaki and his team attempting to finish THE WIND RISES, and watching the process is extraordinary in its deliberate inefficiency. Unlike most mainstream animation, in which the voice work is done before most of the animation is worked on, Miyazaki doesn't have a script as he does his storyboarding. He writes the character's dialogue at the side of the storyboards as he's drawing them, and that's the script. On THE WIND RISES, Miyazaki took two years to complete the storyboards/script. But once that part of the process is complete, things start to kick into gear with the animators and voice recordings.

Perhaps because there's a camera in the room, a great deal of the workplace tension is undercut with nervous laughter, but there is definitely a sense of how much is expected of the Ghibli team, who are encouraged to leave if they find the work too hard or not creatively inspiring enough. Tales are told of Miyazaki getting mad and yelling at people, but we're never shown that. Perhaps as a man well into his 70s, his days of overt displays are done.

One of the most honest and unguarded moments (and there are many) happens when Miyazaki and producer Suzuki stumble upon the idea of using animation director (and former Miyazaki animator on NAUSICA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND) Hideaki Anno as the voice of the film's main character Jirô Horikoshi, the airplane designer who created the Zero long-range fighter aircraft—the primary attack plane used to destroy Pearl Harbor. But far more telling are the scenes in which Miyazaki is tormented about how anti-war he should make THE WIND RISES (for the record, he wants to make it lean into the anti-war theme). As a child of World War II, he also finds ways to weave into the story early memories of his father, both good and bad. It's rare to see a creative process laid as bare as it is here.

The movie digs a little into Miyasaki's personal life, but we never see his wife (or if we do, I don't remember her being identified), and we only see his son Goro (FROM UP ON POPPY HILL, TALES FROM EARTHSEA) in the context of a meeting in which the Ghibli producers are attempting to get him to direct a project that doesn't seem to interest him. There's no getting around the fact that THE KINGDOM OF DREAMS AND MADNESS is meant to be primarily a glorification of Ghibli, while still showing the very flawed, emotional process of birthing a new film. As an unbridled admirer of all Ghibli films, I couldn't ask for a better peek behind the curtain of this magical workshop, and for that reason alone, it's worth seeing.


TANGERINES
The last of the most recent crop of the Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film nominees to get a stateside release is Estonia's TANGERINES, an anti-war story told in a devastating whisper by writer-director Zaza Urushadze (THREE HOUSES). Set in 1992 during the still-escalating clash between Georgian and Abkhazian groups shortly after the Soviet Union split apart, the story tells the tale of elderly Estonian farmer Ivo (Lembit Ulfsak) and his closest friend and neighbor Margua (Elmo Nüganen), who has a harvest of tangerines that will bring them both lots of money, so they'll be able to flee the region as their fellow Estonian friends and family have. Ivo made hundreds of wooden crates for the tangerines to be carted off in, and all they need is a small group of men to help them harvest and load the crates, which is easier said than done since most of the able-bodied men in the area are preparing for a war that is literally on their doorstep.

A skirmish between the warring sides occurs right between the two farms, leaving two wounded soldiers from opposite sides of the fight in its wake. Ivo takes them both in, nurses them back to health, all the while the two bicker and threaten to kill each other as soon as they're healed enough to do so. Their insults would be downright hilarious if the whole situation weren't so tragic. As is often the case in films about foes getting to actually spend time with each other, these two blood-thirsty men actually start to enjoy the verbal jousting and see each other as something like a fellow human being.

What's most interesting about TANGERINES is how much isn't explained. We know this is a war about land, but it feels like something that has been going on for centuries. It's a fairly straight-forward work in terms of the way it's shot and edited, but the depth of the drama comes from a combination of the burned-out landscapes and the well-worn faces of the characters, especially the extraordinary Ulfsak, who is something of a superstar in Estonia. His composure and grace is a remarkable thing to behold. The film doesn't attempt to make a political statement or even draw conclusion about who the audience should be favoring. Filmmaker Urushadze simply wants the fighting to stop, and he gives us plenty of tragic reasons for wanting the same.


HYENA
I've seen my fair share of British gangster and crime dramas over the decades, with works like THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY being among the most brutal. But director Gerard Johnson (2009's TONY) has given us one of the nastiest pieces of work to every come out of the genre from the UK. HYENA is just as gritty and mangy as its namesake, and many of the characters maintain the animal's predatory vibe as well. The film zeroes in on vice officer Michael Logan (Peter Ferdinando of STARRED UP and HIGH RISE) and his team of like-minded, fully corrupt partners who think nothing of raiding a drug dealer's place of business, just to make off with his cash and stash, giving no thought to actually bringing these criminals in. If they did that, who would they steal from a month from now?

Logan plans to use his cut of the money to invest in a Turkish drug route that promises to bring in so much product that he will make a mint, but when his connection to this deal is mercilessly hacked to bits by the Albanian Kabashi brothers (Orli Shuka and Gjevat Kelmendi), he loses everything and sets out to take his revenge by getting close to the ruthless pair and double-crossing them. His situation is made all the more difficult when a nosy internal affairs officer (Richard Dormer) begins tailing him, an old friend-turned-rival (Stephen Graham) pops up again as the new vice boss, and his girlfriend (MyAnna Buring) basically hates him all the time.

HYENA is essentially just one dirty deed after another. Even when Logan is trying to do good—like when he attempts to save a young woman (Elisa Lasowski) being trafficked by the brothers—he uses the nastiest methods at his disposal. But, as I've said before, there is something noble in watching someone on film who is this good at their job, and Logan is a master manipulator who knows about five ways into and out of every bad situation. He turns on a co-conspirator as quickly as he joined them in the first place, and he's equally capable of being your loyal partner as he is being your assassin. HYENA is not a place to go if you're looking for good people and a happy ending (or any ending at all), which might be the most satisfying thing about this film.

Infected by a searing soundtrack by The The, HYENA eschews slick camerawork and polish for simple, sometimes deliberately ugly lighting and angles to give us no doubt that this is not a world where the innocent will last long. The acting is all about capturing tainted souls, and while you may find yourself siding with one character over another, there are no good people on display here. The film still finds ways to inject humor into its darkness, but the laughs don't last long. Here's hoping director Johnson finds new ways as he moves forward of tapping into the ugly corners of the world; he's quite talented at telling these types of stories.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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