Hey folks, Harry here with the latest update from Capone - that damn whisky smuggling cutthroat that gets to relax in Bermuda, smoke cigars with the Kingpin and watch films that you and I can't see yet. Whatta cur! Here he is, at least take note of his discoveries in tropical places - for they may be coming to a theater near you...
Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here. As promised, the sum total of my 5-day excursion to the fabulous Bermuda International Film Festival (BIFF): access to filmmakers and actors, great meals, beach-front accommodations, sweet weather, a decent tan, and, oh yeah, 14 indie and foreign films, some of which you'll be able to see very soon at an art house near you; some may never see the light of day. I confess to being astonished at the quality of the offerings; I think there was a grand total of one movie that I really regret seeing. Almost without fail, the films I screened were well worth my time, and worth your effort in seeking out during the course of the next few months. Read on, faithful filmgoers...
TURTLES CAN FLY
Anyone who saw Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi's magnificent A TIME FOR DRUNKEN HORSES probably cherishes the sacred memory like a fine heirloom. As in that film, Ghobadi's TURTLES CAN FLY focuses on a forgotten generation of Kurdish children and their fate at the hands of those around them as well as those from the outside world. The setting is a refugee camp on the Iraq-Turkey border just days before America invades Iraq in 2003. But rather than showing us suffering child after suffering child, Ghobadi doesn't attempt to yank on our heartstrings. The largely parentless children in this part of the world are forced to be creative to survive. One boy collects radios, trades them in for cheap satellite dishes, and sells his services as a dish installer to nearby villages, which seems to need the dishes to keep track of America's actions against the region. Other children carefully scout on open fields where land mines are buried. They dig out the mines and sell them to arms dealers. Sometimes these expeditions end horribly. The balance of power among the children is throw off when a handicapped boy enters the picture and seems able to predict the future or at least the awful parts of it.
Ghobadi again pulls off something remarkable with TURTLES CAN FLY. I realize I'm making this movie sound like the ultimate bummer, but in fact the films is filled with humor alongside the examination of the physical and psychological damage done to people in this region even before the Americans moved in. In a way the frequent laughter makes the godforsaken elements of the film all the more terrible. The movie doesn't attempt to force a plot onto its characters (I feel confident in saying that nobody in this film is a trained actor). Instead, this is a snapshot of a specific moment in time when everything in the world seemed to up in the air. Suddenly you feel ridiculous about the times when you complained about your Internet service being slow. Stories about people with real problem tend to make yours feel pretty minor. TURTLES CAN FLY is as stark and honest a film as you are likely to see this year.
TWO ANGELS
Another worthy effort from Iran, although compared to the emotional punch in the gut that TURBLES CAN FLY delivers, not quite as memorable. TWO ANGELS is a father-son tale in the context of religious fervor gone horribly wrong. Told largely in flashback from the devout Muslim father crying and praying in a shrine after an event in which he believes he has killed his 15-year-old son Ali. The father tells his unseen god the circumstances of his son's possible death, of vicious squabbles the two have had over the months leading up to that day. After one of the fights, Ali flees into the dessert where, for the first time in his life, he hears music from a Ney (rosewood flute). During this experience, an angel appears to Ali and he snatches the Ney from the shepherd playing it and runs away. He soon decides that he will secretly take music lessons in Tehran (Ali's father considers all forms of music a sin against God).
At the city's most prestigious music school, Ali meets the beautiful Azar, whose father just so happens to be writing a book about angels. Not surprisingly, when Ali's father finds out about his deception, he reacts violently. Part coming of age story, part tale concerning the power of music as a spiritual instrument and a force that bring a variety of people together. Ali is mocked by his fellow students for being a "country boy" who dresses poorly and can't afford his own Ney. Director Mamad Haghlghat manages to tell an story overtly concerned with the overbearing nature of some brands of religion without being too judgmental. Rather than attack the religion, he spends most of his talents allowing us to know his characters and their flaws. Ali is not totally without blame, as he antagonizes his father deliberately at times. TWO ANGELS is more than just a story of music conquering all evils; it's a remarkably well-told family drama combined with a sweet story of young love told from a point of view I've never seen before. TWO ANGELS received favorable notices from the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, and I hope it manages to find a distributor in North America. It's a nice little gem of a film.
MCLIBEL
Is the world ready for yet another frontal assault on the reputation of fast-food giant McDonald's? Hell yes! One of the big premieres at BIFF this year was the British documentary MCLIBEL by director Franny Armstrong, who followed the legendary libel case filed by McDonalds against two anti-corporation advocates Helen and Dave. (For readers in the UK, this film is an expanded and updated version of Armstrong's 1998, hour-long profile of the case.) The pair were handing out leaflets outside a UK McDonald's. The leaflets contained several damning facts about the company concerning the poor treatment of its employees, environmental impact, treatment of the animals that become food, and several other topics. Rather than let this minor demonstration pass, McDonald's slapped the "McLibel 2" with a lawsuit claiming the statements on the leaflets were libelous and engaged the penniless pair in a multi-year court case that attracted international attention (thus exposing McDonald's appalling business practices), and ultimately resulting in revising British libel laws. Because of this case, Eric Schlosser (who is interviewed quite a lot in MCLIBEL) wrote "Fast Food Nation," which begat SUPER SIZE ME (clips of which are shown here).
MCLIBEL is a documentary for the ages, a classic tale of David (and Helen) and Goliath. There's intrigue, including secretly taped settlement conferences in which McDonald's lawyers basically offering to pay the McLibel 2 off to recant their statements. The film is an examination one of the worst public relations disasters in history. If you wonder why McDonald's never really responded to SUPER SIZE ME, this is why. The film also does a wonderful job of bringing us into the lives of Helen and David. They were not born crusaders, and all the attention the relentless British media paid to not only the case, but also their looks and personalities took its toll. Every second of this film is gripping and important. Although it's clear which side of the fence filmmaker Armstrong is on, she still manages to present a mildly balanced look at the events. McDonald's doesn't make it easy, but she pulls it off. Considering that McDonald's is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, I can't think of a better way for the world at large to celebrate.
THE LAST MOGUL
Unlike producer and Hollywood personality Robert Evans, Lew Wasserman was perfectly happy being a behind-the-scenes guy who quietly ruled certain corners of Hollywood, first as a super-agent, then as CEO and Chairman of MCA (and later Universal). Which is not to say Wasserman isn't someone worth investigating, as he is in THE LAST MOGUL, a Canadian television documentary that's been making the festival circuit of late. Wasserman's history is littered with allegations of mob ties and shady deals, but his legend is filled with stories of his king-making abilities (anyone remember an actor named Ronald Reagan?), political ties (anyone remember a president named Ronald Reagan), and multi-million-dollar deals that made his equal parts worshipped and feared. Just as interesting as all the celebrities on hand and the large catalog of films Wasserman got made and purchased (Wasserman was a pioneer in purchase film libraries from other studios, now a common practice), are his early years as a band booker, working in mob-controlled speakeasies. But his list of forward-thinking ideas in the entertainment world is almost hard to believe. He started up studio production arms that created feature films for television. You can blame Wasserman for movies of the week. He trusted Richard Zanuck that a young kid named Steven Spielberg was the right guy to direct JAWS. His ability to predict where the industry was headed was almost uncanny. There's nothing fancy or flashy about THE LAST MOGUL, which seems completely appropriate for the subject matter. But Wasserman's rags-to-riches adventure is as much the American dream (warts and all) as any I've seen.
SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL
There's really only one way to open a review of this remarkable documentary that has been at dozens of major film festivals since its premiere at Toronto last year. Remember Nick Nolte's character in HOTEL RWANDA (called "Colonel Oliver")? Director Peter Raymont's SHAKES HANDS WITH THE DEVIL is a profile of the man that that sketchy character was based on, Maj.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian who led the miniscule United Nations peacekeeping forces sent to Rwanda in 1994. Although Dallaire's role in the war between the Hutu and Tutsi forces that led to the murder of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days was often misconstrued and misrepresented at the time, Dallaire's book "Shake Hands with the Devil" told his side of the story. In recent years, his tireless attempts to stop the atrocities and to implore the U.N. to send more troops are now well known and well documented, and his status as a hero in his native Canada is undeniable.
Raymont's film follows Dallaire and his wife back to Rwanda 10 years, one autobiography, and two suicide attempts later. Every stop on his journey is exquisitely painful, and there are times while watching this movie that you will want to avert your eyes because these moments seem to personal to Dallaire. You feel like an intruder at a funeral. Dallaire meets many Rwandans along his travels, each with stories of losing many family members during the atrocities. His speech before thousands at a ceremony marking the anniversary of the events is devastating. He apologizes not just for his own powerlessness during the nation's time of need but the overt racism of the world at large. The clear message from the world's reaction to the Rwandan genocide is that if you are black, your destruction doesn't matter. SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL is as powerful a film as you are likely to see about a man facing an impossible situation and the emotional destruction he suffers as he witnesses hell on earth unfold. Fingers are pointed at the likes of the French and Belgian governments, the United Nations, the United States, and the Vatican, and rightfully so. Everyone but Dallaire dropped the ball, and the consequences are unforgivable. I don't like to call films "important," but SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL is just that, and seeing it will change your moral outlook on how we are responsible for each other. Prepare to be shaken to your core.
9 SONGS
One of my favorite directors to keep track of is Michael Winterbottom, who was BIFF's "Filmmaker in Focus." My only disappointment of my entire time in Bermuda is that I couldn't quite work out an interview with Winterbottom, but I did get to spend about 30 minutes chatting with the prolific filmmaker informally at a lunch gathering. Works like WONDERLAND, JUDE, WELCOM TO SARAJEVO, GO NOW, I WANT YOU, and CODE 46 are in my pantheon of cool movies, and since the guy works like a maniac and manages to put out about a film a year (he's already got his next film (the ADAPTAION-like A COCK AND BULL STORY) in the can. He's a real spirited, fun guy to talk to about new music (always a major component of his films) and his own films. Maybe one day in the future I'll be able to really sit down with the guy and pick his brain about his uncanny ability to never repeat himself. It's almost difficult to believe that the same guy made such films as THE CLAIM and IN THIS WORLD and 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE, all in the last five years.
Winterbottom's latest release, 9 SONGS (without a doubt the most talked about film at BIFF), probably won't get much of a wide release because of its explicit sexual nature. But if you get the chance to see it, well, you simply must. Half love story/porn film, half concert film, 9 SONGS reminded me a little too much of my high school and college years. My memories of that time in my life have little to do with scholarly pursuits. My most vivid memories of that time revolve around the shows that I went to and the woman I slept with. With no backstory and limited character development, Winterbottom gives us a passionate love affair that is destined to burn out as quickly as it catches fire. Matt (Kieran O'Brien) and Lisa (Margo Stilley) are a young attractive couple that go to concerts by such bands as Franz Ferdinand, The Dandy Warhols, Elbow, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Von Bondies, Primal Scream, and Super Furry Animals, all of which are featured live. In addition to this killer soundtrack, Winterbottom shows us the couple in bed...a lot. As the 65-minute film goes on, the level of explicitness increases. At first the couple's most intimate of areas are hidden in shadows. But as their relationship begins to fall apart, their sex life (and sex scenes) becomes more intense. We're talking very visible oral sex, full penetration, money shots, the whole deal.
Granted, this level of graphic sexual content has been coming to art houses near us with more frequency lately (check out INSIDE DEEP THROAT for proof), 9 SONGS isn't just a sex film. The drama here comes when the couple realize that outside of the bedroom and the concert hall, they don't have much in common. There's no denying that there's a degree of love here, but more than that, there's a fierce, destructive passion. Winterbottom has dealt with such love before in I WANT YOU, but 9 SONGS is more raw (thanks in part to its hand-held DV filmmaking). This is a sexy, scary, realistic film that may not be for everybody, but everybody will have a reaction to it. My reaction was based on my familiarity with the subject matter; yours may be repulsion. You may also enjoy this simply for the music elements. But you can't deny 9 SONGS (unless of course you never get a chance to see it).
MURDERBALL
I realize the year is still young, but I can't imagine enjoying another documentary as much as I loved MURDERBALL, an examination of the full-contact sport of quadriplegic rugby. I've seen argument about how it would be possible that "quads" can play any sport, but as the film explains, being a quad means that you have limited motion in your arms. In fact, the level of collective mobility a team of players has in one major component of the sport. MURDERBALL is filled with heroes and villains, and more drama and unbelievable plot twists than any fiction film on the subject could ever dream up. This film is a clear Oscar contender and certainly one of my favorite films of the year so far.
The focus of the film from co-directors Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro is the U.S. quad rugby team, who play in souped-up, fortified wheel chairs designed to smash into other chairs and hopefully knock an opponent out of play for a time. The team's main adversary is a former U.S. player who now coaches the Canadian quad rugby team. He is a fierce competitor who becomes the villain you love to hate as his level of intensity leads to major health problems. As much as you despise the guy, he more fun to have around than not. Another focal point of MURDERBALL is a young motorcross racer who was recently in an accident that left him a quad. As expected, the once-physical man feels trapped and helpless in his new life. But during a visit to his rehab clinic, he meets members of the rugby team and watches a video about the sport. For the first time since his accident, he sees an opportunity to express his extreme lifestyle. I don't know how the filmmakers picked this guy or why they thought he'd be the one to react to the sport the way he does. It was probably dumb luck, but it falls into place so perfectly that you can't help but feel excited for the guy.
The film culminates at the 2004 Athens Paralymics (held just after the Olympics in the same city and facilities), when the U.S. and Canadian team go head to head. Unlike many other sports films that focus on well-known sporting contests, I had absolutely no idea how this match-up would end. It's thrilling. But more than simply a profile of the sport, MURDERBALL allows us into the lives and homes of its participants. It shows that quads don't spend a lot of time feeling sorry for themselves, although they may very well go through periods when they do, they come out the other side realizing that there are so many things they can still do. A few even say they're capable of more things without the use of their legs. Many of the players have girlfriends or wives, they speak with saltier tongues than most sailors, tell dirty jokes, and hit on women relentlessly (making certain to let the ladies know that the important parts of their anatomy work just fine, thank you very much). Although I don't know if they intended to do so, MURDERBALL's greatest accomplishment is smashing every stereotype about the handicapped I'd ever had. This group of athletes would rather beat you down that have you feel sorry for them. This is the kind of inspirational work that makes you wonder why no one has made a film about this before, why is the Paralymics broadcast in the U.S. (as it is in most other countries in the world), and how much are tickets to these games? Sign me up for the season.
THE LAST OF THE FIRST
Much like Wim Wenders went in search of the great heroes of Cuban jazz in BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, director Anja Baron combs the corners of New York looking for what remains of our American jazz legends in THE LAST OF THE FIRST. Baron may have had a slightly easier job tracking down many of her subjects since quite a number of them are part of a wonderful group of musicians assembled more than 30 years ago by jazz enthusiast Dr. Albert Vollmer and known collectively as the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band. Although many of the players are not names that would be known by anyone other than the most dedicated followers of jazz, they all performed with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Lionel Hampton, and Duke Ellington. In some of the great old archival footage Baron has dug up for her film, you see some of her subjects sitting behind or just to the side of the headliner. She follows this motley crew around the world (not surprisingly, they are far more appreciated in other countries than in their homeland) where they play to packed houses regularly.
But the other side of LAST OF THE FIRST is set in the small apartments and hospital rooms of these largely forgotten masters. Our affection for these people grows every time they play or speak, which makes the heartbreak when one of them falls victim to illness or passes away all the more painful. There's nothing fancy about the director's style or the way she interviews these musicians and others who have been around for decades, but when the subject is music, if the music doesn't make the point itself, no amount of fancy camerawork or editing is going to do the job. More than anything, Baron's film is a call to arms for us not to forget this wonderful American music or the nearly extinct geniuses who made us love it in the first place.
Capone
If you got pictures of me nude sunbathing on the beach, send here, I'll pay a Million Dollars a pic!
