Ahhh, Vancouver. I’d love to be experiencing the early autumn up in the Pacific Northwest. I love that kind of weather, and don’t get nearly enough of it here in LA. But you add that to a film festival? Sounds like heaven to me.
It’s still raining in Vancouver , in case you were wondering. Here is Part II of my VIFF coverage. It’s a tough shtick balancing these with a full time job, but godammit the world needs cogent analysis. I’ll be back this weekend with a look at the latest from De Palma and others, but until then…
TIMBER GANG
I went to see “Timber Gang” based on the write-up in the VIFF program guide/website that compared it to Werner Herzog and called it “the most impressive documentary ever made in China .” The premise is certainly Herzogian: A crew of men ascends a snowy mountain to log trees. Their horses work to death to get the timber hauled down the mountain, and the men endure incredible physical hardship and amazingly seem to have a great time bonding while doing it. The ending is pleasingly ironic, and although there is an excellent chance that you will never see this film I won’t spoil it.
“Timber Gang” is not a great artistic accomplishment, but it is a fascinating glimpse at a rare way of life that few will ever witness. Yu Guangyi has directed a documentary that is as crude and as workmanlike as any of the men on the logging crew. This shouldn’t be regarded as a negative statement; the stylistic qualities of the film are entirely suitable for its subject matter, and probably inextricable. Guangyi shoots his subjects on grainy digital video with the little technical aptitude, and the audio track doesn’t seem to have been adjusted from the original recording on the camera. At some points the sound would just cut out for intervals of several seconds, but to be fair I’m not sure if this can be blamed on technical difficulties in the projection room (it was the North American premiere.) The film is 90 minutes long, but it was culled from 18 months of footage and feels longer than its running time. Despite all these apparent criticisms I’m leveling at this work of passion, I think there’s a brilliant documentary buried deep in this movie. This is Guangyi’s debut feature at the age of 40, so the next statement may come off as a little bit unfair (and off topic to boot.) If Herzog had the same footage as Guangyi in the editing room, I would probably love this film. “Timber Gang” would have been greatly enhanced by some Popol Vuh and Herzog’s trademark sage narration.
I find that it is important to see a few of these films each year, because the chance to see them is literally only there for a showing or two before the festival ends and they might as well cease to exist. If nothing else, it is amazing to see some very tough men working one of the world’s most difficult jobs. You will see some amazing things if you ever stumble across “Timber Gang” in your local Blockbuster, but you will also see some pretty harrowing stuff. You should not watch this film if you can’t handle watching animals die. Six horses are literally worked to death, and when they die they are skinned, cooked and eaten. There was a moment of profound comedy when a boar’s head being charred for supper proved nearly impossible to remove from the hot coals of a metal fire-pit. Several of the men get ticks, removing them by igniting tinder in a jar and clamping it over the tick bite to smoke the arachnid out. “Timber Gang” is brimming with greatness, but in its present form it is not quite great cinema.
I feel I should also deliver an interesting piece of information that was mentioned by the introductory speaker before the film began. Guangyi was invited by the VIFF to attend the screening (the North American premiere of the film) but the Canadian government declined to give him a VISA on the basis that he might try and immigrate here. Apparently they have treated many Chinese filmmakers invited to the festival this year in this way, even established ones that have visited Canada to show their work before. The introductory speaker called it a “scandal”, but I’m guessing this review is about as close as it’s going to get to the press having a field day.
GUIDE DE LA PETITE VENGEANCE
'Guide de la Petite Vengeance' came as a perfect mid-festival palette cleanser after a string of heavy films. An interesting blend of heist movie, romance and dark humor, this French Canadian film is a very tightly controlled exercise in farce. Quebec continues to make its presence known in the Canadian festival circuit, and with the technical finesse on display here it’s not hard to see why.
Bernard is an accountant working for a venomous jeweler named Mr. Vendôme in Old Montreal. His marriage has fallen apart, and his daughter is a poster child for juvenile psychological disorder. He meets Robert (the former accountant for Mr. Vendôme) by chance, and it quickly becomes apparent that Vendôme has ruined both of their lives. Robert explains Mr. Vendôme’s method of psychological murder to Bernard, and suddenly his failed marriage and miserable life make perfect sense. The two men conspire to take back their dignity and a lot more, hatching a revenge plot against their boss that unfolds with meticulous attention to detail. Meanwhile, Bernard attempts to win his estranged wife back from the pretty boy schmuck she’s replaced him with. The “revenge on your boss” set up is hardly unique, but 'Guide de la Petite Vengeance' pulls it off with panache.
This film is exactly what it wants to be, and it would be very difficult to criticize it for any of the choices that it makes. Whether it’s your cup of tea or not is an entirely subjective affair. If Christopher Guest directed “Ocean’s Eleven”, something like this would have popped out. The writing is wry and witty, full of clever jokes and genuinely surprising plot twists. The performances are nuanced and likeable, and Marc Béland (Bernard) deserves kudos for making a criminal/accountant/crappy husband and father an appealing character. 'Guide de la Petite Vengeance' looks clean and crisp, and from an aesthetic standpoint it is nearly flawless. Jean-François Pouliot’s direction has the same kind of polished robustness of a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film, but it is more calculated and less whimsical. This movie, along with films like “C.R.A.Z.Y.”, proves that there are some unique voices coming out of Quebec that deserve consideration.
I can’t say too much more about this film, other than to recommend it. This movie is all plot and character, and to say much more about either would ruin a lot of the fun. Perhaps I appreciated it more after a lot of cerebral exercise, but some say comedy is the hardest genre to execute and 'Guide de la Petite Vengeance' definitely executes its humor with precision. It won’t suffer from a rental either, so check it out if you feel like doing some reading.
MY WINNIPEG
Guy Maddin is a strange duck. If you sublimated the weirder parts of David Lynch and ran them through an old 8MM camera you may come up with something like Maddin (the machine might also require a bolt of lightning to operate.) He’s a Canadian original, an iconoclastic national treasure so far removed from the mainstream he makes Cronenberg look conventional. He belongs in a different time, but we’re glad to have him here channeling the 20’s.
“My Winnipeg ” is a semi-autobiographical love/hate letter to Maddin’s hometown, steeped in the lore of Canadiana and colored with the director’s idiosyncratic wit. There is not much of a plot to describe: Maddin’s narration links a series of recollections and ruminations with a hypnotic lucid dream logic. A sleeping Maddin (played by Darcy Fehr) circles Winnipeg in a train, touching on facets of the city that only a local could do justice to (or embellish, as the case may be.) This is a Freudian travelogue of wintery Winnipeg as only Maddin could present it, the same snow-swept Fantasia that he has shown us for most of his canon. Maddin’s bizarre portrayal bears little resemblance to the Manitoba of reality but somehow in fashioning this lurid antique the director has struck closer to the Canadian soul than something like “Corner Gas” ever will. This is the director’s most personal film, where he works out his mother issues and examines what it is to be from “the coldest city on earth.”
Highlights of the film include LedgeMan (Winnipeg’s longest running serial, about a man who threatens to jump from a ledge every night, only to be placated by his mother) and a surreal sequence where horses are frozen in a river, their heads still protruding from the ice in a grotesque imitation of modern art (the location of course becomes a destination spot for young lovers.) Maddin’s fondness for all things antiquated extends beyond his vintage cinematography; much of the film focuses on the erosion of Old Winnipeg and the systematic destruction of its landmarks like Eatons and the old hockey arena. Geriatric all star hockey players play a climactic last game in the stadium as a wrecking ball pounds it into rubble. Somehow all of this is cohesive, and as iconic as anything I’ve seen from this country.
There’s only one place where you can see this stuff, and I think you can guess where that is by now. There is no one else on Guy Maddin’s wavelength, and they’d probably get body-checked if they tried to encroach on his turf. “My Winnipeg ” is exactly what you’d expect if you’ve seen any of his previous work, so if you have read this far you’re probably already sold. Americans… fear this man.
LUST, CAUTION
I should preface this review by saying that I thought 'Lust, Caution' was a finely made film, as Ang Lee's films usually are. Lee is a world class filmmaker, and this movie is no exception to his track record. As the film progressed, however, the same nagging feeling I always encounter watching an Ang Lee film returned: “I am not enjoying this very much.” I was told after the screening that the film was adapted from a short story, to which I replied “short?” with incredulity. At 158 minutes, the film feels bloated and long winded. That it is derived from a short story is not as much of a surprise as it initially was; after the film settled into my brain I realized that there is surprisingly little meat on the bones. 'Lust, Caution' has the glossy period piece veneer that has won many a golden boy, but as a political or psychological exercise it is a lot shallower than it thinks it is. It aims to be an epic film noir (flipping the format on its ear by telling it from the femme fatale angle) but it lacks the trademark tautness and efficiency of any piece of noir worth its whiskey.
“Lust, Caution” tells the story of Wang Jiazhi (I am unsure of the spelling here, and default to IMDB. It’s spelled differently in the film and the VIFF program guide,) a young girl swept up in rebellion in Shanghai circa World War II. Some theater friends rally the shy and impressionable girl into resistance against the collaborationist government, and she follows along with a plot to assassinate a key government figure named Mr. Yee. What follows is a game of seduction between the achingly beautiful Jiazhi and suave, womanizing Mr. Yee, where she only slides past his radar because she blinds him with love, possessiveness, and some pretty rough stuff in the bedroom. But love and lust are tricky; what does it take to shift your allegiance?
The main problem I had with 'Lust, Caution' is that I did not find the motivations of Wang Jiazhi to be entirely rational. It is difficult to see why a seemingly non-partisan college freshman would become a political radical willing to risk her life. Initially it seems as if she might be participating to impress a boy, but nothing ever comes of this and she quickly and voluntarily becomes the most involved conspirator in the plan. She is soon neck-deep in subterfuge, having kinky sex with a dangerous official and ready to pop a cyanide pill at the first sign of danger. She longs for romance like other girls her age (an early scene shows her weeping during a romantic movie) but commits herself to an illicit and occasionally abusive affair with Mr. Yee. As a character, her decisions don't make a great deal of sense, and I don't feel they can be explained away by labeling her as a 'complex character'. Real people have done similar things; that I acknowledge. The problem was that Jiazhi’s decisions did not seem to spring organically from her character, especially as the film nears its admittedly thoughtful climax.
'Lust, Caution' is still good enough to be my favorite Ang Lee film to date (although I do have a soft spot for 'Hulk'.) The production values are on par with the best period films, the cinematography is lush and elegant. Tony Leung has incredible screen presence, playing the same kind of rough hewn gentleman that Bogart was famous for. I think it’s admirable that Ang Lee would shrug off his Academy Award win and make a film that can only really be considered for Best Foreign Language Picture (I’ll be rooting for “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” at this point.) Ang Lee fans will probably eat this one up, but not much will change for those who think he’s a bit over-hyped to begin with. If nothing else, it was nice to see Twin Peaks ' Joan Chen in something of quality again. I can’t even really disagree with someone who would consider this an excellent film. This review should simply be considered as a minor counterpoint for the flood of praise on its way.
Once again, call me Gwai Lo (pale ghost-faced person)
