Capone's Art-House Round-Up with UNDER THE SUN, DIRECTOR'S CUT and the Coens' BLOOD SIMPLE restoration!!!

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…


UNDER THE SUN
In one of the most fascinating and almost impossible to grasp experiences I’ve had watching a film in ages, the film UNDER THE SUN is a real documentary about the making of a fake documentary for the government of North Korea. What’s even more difficult to wrap the brain around is that this work began as something sanctioned by the government of North Korea, which worked with Russian filmmaker Vitaly Mansky on what was meant to be a propaganda film about an adorable and party-loyal little girl named Lee Zin-mi and her perfect Communist parents (her father is actually a journalist, but for the purposes of this fictional storyline, he was turned into an engineer in charge of a garment factory).

In title cards throughout the film, Mansky explains how the script for the film was provided by the North Koreans, who also supervised every aspect of shooting, from directing the non-actors to “smile,” “be more patriotic,” and generally be more joyful in their pretending. Although Mansky says the authorities looked at his footage and deleted what they didn’t like, it’s clear that he filmed around the action, capturing what was going on around the production, whether that meant capturing starving children rummaging through garbage cans between takes, propaganda ministers losing their patience with performers who couldn’t remember their lines or stage directions, or even seeing lead “actress” Zin-mi break down in tears as a dance instructor is berating her for not being perfect in preparation for a big celebration in honor of the late Kim Jong-il’s birthday.

It’s my understanding that Mansky was able to take and assemble his footage back in Russia, which is probably a decision the North Koreans regret deeply, but the resulting film is a staggering peek behind a curtain of lies. The shots taken by both Zin-mi’s elementary school teacher and a Korean War veteran against the United States are the least troubling things about what is revealed in UNDER THE SUN. The effort put into staging the perfect classroom, factory, apartment (the family’s dwelling does not actually belong to them), hospital, recital or entire street scene is remarkable, and you can’t help but wonder if the North Koreans spent as much time building these things for real, they might not have to go to such lengths and pain to try to convince their own people the country is in good shape.

Mansky has wisely kept the sanitized elements of the propaganda film within his movie, making it all the more easy to compare the facade to reality. You can almost feel the camera stray from the approved shot to the grim truth existing at the edges of the frame. A little girl struggling to stay awake during a lecture, the faces of supposedly happy factory workers in between takes with their smiles dropped, adding 15-20 years to their faces.

Shot around Pyongyang, UNDER THE SUN is not a glimpse of the real North Korea. For all his stolen shots, Mansky was not allowed to roam the country unescorted and shoot whatever he wanted. Instead what we are privy to is a look at how a country manufactures its own image. Each character and location in this film is hand selected to represent an ideal. The storyline about Zin-mi being the best student and a proud member of the Children’s Union is fiction. And the messages about the triumphs of previous North Korean leaders, the immense productivity of the nation’s factories, and the state of its supposed military superiority are jaw-droppingly warped.

In the end, UNDER THE SUN becomes a love letter to a misled people. It’s not difficult to understand wanting to be proud of your country, but to do so in the face of such blatant attempts to manipulate the truth ends up feeling sad and confusing. The face of North Korea slowly transforms from a bouncy, smiling little girl to the tear-stained face of an exhausted puppet, and it’s not an easy thing to watch. But it’s impossible to stop watching the resulting film, and you should seek this one out immediately.


DIRECTOR'S CUT
I genuinely have no idea what to make of this one. One the one hand, DIRECTOR’S CUT is a great idea, and exactly the kind of cinematic misdirection you’d expect from writer Penn Jillette, who also produces and stars in the film (his magic show partner Teller also has a truly disturbing cameo). What we are watching is tough to explain, but fairly easy to follow. What we’re supposedly watching is a movie called KNOCKED OFF, a run-of-the-mill suspense story starring Missi Pyle, Hayes MacArthur, and Harry Hamlin as an FBI agent and two cops investigation a serial killer who copies famous murders of the past. Sounds simple enough, except that we’re actually watching the DVD of KNOCKED OFF as re-edited by an obsessed movie lover and Missi Pyle stalker named Herbert Blount (Jillette), who is also doing the director’s commentary track, since he now insists that the film we’re about to watch was pieced together by him with additional footage he shot.

The actual “director” of the fake, crowd-funded KNOCKED OFF is also the director of the real film, DIRECTOR’S CUT, Adam Rifkin (DETROIT ROCK CITY, LOOK), and he’s seen in the movie inside a movie working with actors and warding off Blount, who donated a ton of money to be on set and even gets a line in the film. Part of Blount’s fulfillment is that he’s allowed to film behind the scenes, which gives him access to Pyle, and he uses a great deal of these stolen moments as scenes for his version of KNOCKED OFF (which we’re watching), which he clearly thinks is a lame, unrealistic film that demands he go in and insert himself as Pyle’s love interest and co-investigator.

At its core, DIRECTOR’S CUT is a horror film and Blount is clearly a threatening, if not quite outright dangerous, presence. He resents that Pyle’s character starts to fall in love with Hamlin’s silver-fox Godfrey Winters, and ends up kidnapping her during filming to shoot new scenes with her until extreme duress. I won’t lie, it feels strange laughing at this scenario, but it’s not really any stranger to watch a film in which the lead character thinks that Missi Pyle is the greatest actress on the face of the earth. To her credit, she seems willing to endure every indignity that is thrown at her in both versions of this movie.

DIRECTOR’S CUT’s biggest flaw is Jillette’s portrayal of Blount, whom he plays as a long-haired, curly-headed clown in shiny, colorful suits and a big goofy grin. I’m assuming at some point during the unfolding of this story that we’re supposed to go from finding Herbert amusing and goofy to discovering that he’s a genuine threat, but Jillette is trying so hard to make the character weird that the transition never quite happens, and he just becomes annoying rather than dangerous. Ironically, there’s a cameo by Teller as a possible suspect in the KNOCKED OFF killings that would have been far more effective as Blount, but maybe the point is Blount seems like the least likely dangerous fan.

The way DIRECTOR’S CUT folds over and around itself is mildly amusing and fun, and as a statement is astute about fan culture and the way fans feel they now have a say in film or television content. But turning the story into a full-on comedy (disturbing as it may be) underscores just how dull Jillette and Rifkin’s knives are. Going for the jugular would have been a far sharper approach.

BLOOD SIMPLE (restoration)
If you haven’t seen Joel and Ethan Coen’s first film BLOOD SIMPLE and I still need to convince you to see it, then you might be a lost cause. It was one of the films that kickstarted a modern era in film noir (which I trace back to 1981’s BODY HEAT), traces of which can still be spotted today. It’s a classic example of a suspense film in which the audience are the only “characters” who know everything that’s going on, making us feel smarter in the process and the other characters seem just a little bit dim, which is a part of the Coens’ great sense of pitch-black humor.

Every frame of the film feels dusty and sweaty and dirty. The blood is just as often caked on as it is actively dripping. And every decision and move toward self-preservation is the wrong move and leads to more trouble. BLOOD SIMPLE not only introduced us to the Coen brothers, but it birthed the career of Frances McDormand as the untrustworthy Abby, unhappily married to bar owner Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya, the great character actor, elevated to slimy villain) but sleeping with Ray (John Getz), with dreams of running away together from their end-of-the-road Texas life. Julian has hired a private detective (M. Emmet Walsh), who isn’t above being paid to murder someone, to spy on his wife and confirm the affair. And within a matter of hours, these four lives are ruined and/or ended forever.

Director of photography Barry Sonnenfeld (lensing his first feature) adds to the underlying humor of the film with camera work that brings a strangely fluid look to the film. There’s a sinister score by Carter Burwell and a sparing but smart use of songs, especially a particular one by The Four Tops, that all adds up to one of the most assured debuts in recent memory, certainly of that era.

In advance of a home video release in September courtesy Criterion Collection, BLOOD SIMPLE is being presented in a stunning 4K digital restoration, which almost makes it look too clean. I have a vivid memory of seeing this when it was released in 1985, and the scratched-up film stock only added to the worn-in look of the entire piece. Still, any chance to see this one (or any Coen brothers film shot on film) on the big screen should not be passed up, and this remains one of their finest and most precisely realized works.

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