I spent the past three days in Wrocław going to screenings at the film fest Era Nowe Horyzonty most of the time. I sat down in the cinema eight times, once outdoors, six times staying in to attend the Q and A session with the authors or critics.
Thursday
I saw Rok Spokojnego Słońca (The Year of the Quiet Sun) by the Polish moralist filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi, co-produced by the Germans, which tells the story of budding, impossible love between an American soldier on a military mission to Poland, starred by Scott Wilson, and a common Polish woman in her forties (Maja Komorowska). Set against the post-war reality of early-communism Poland, it centres around the problems of miscommunication and cultural shock, as well as moral choices all characters have to take as the story develops. I enjoyed watching it outdoors at the magnificent Wrocław Old Square, but quite a number of people left during the screening, disappinted, which didn't come as a surprise since Zanussi has to be liked, or at least understood, to be watchable. It's amazing to discover that the film has been greeted with considerable enthusiasm abroad, much greater than in Poland, where for years it had a lukewarm reception. It's enough to look at these brilliant user comments at IMDB to put Zanussi in the right perspective. By the way, it was great to hear him speak English with Scott Wilson at the short intro before the film started.
Friday
I started out first thing in the morning with Heaven's Heart, a Swedish Bergman-style marriage drama, starring just four actors and shot entirely in austere interiors, which makes it easier to focus on dialogues, facial expressions or gestures, where the key to the film lies. In terms of labels and categories, it came across as a tragicomedy to me, with two befriended couples first disintegrating as they start voicing their grudges and acting on them, only to see a romance bloom between Ulf, Anna's defensive husband, and Susanna, Lars's frigid wife, with all protagonists resettling into their old marriages in the end, renewing vows.
It went from good to better when I saw Helen, an intriguing whodunnit film by two young Irish directors, Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, made within the Civic Life project. This daring enterprise is disarming in its simplicity, involving local communities (districts, towns, cities) and their residents to finance and take part in professional cinematic projects, which are later screened for them, as well as for larger audiences. Helen is the last job in a Civic Life series and the first feature by the Irish duo, enthusiatically received by the critics, here, here or here, telling a story of the eponymous Helen who agrees to take part in the police reconstruction of the last movements of Joy, her peer who went missing. Helen, who is about to come of age and feels lost herself, being a parentless child staying in a care home, uses this opportunity to seek her own identity. The film beautifully weaves both meanings of getting lost, understood as going missing or trying to find one's way in life, in a story that is uncomplicated, but powerful, and smacks of a modern fairy tale in the way it was filmed.
I couldn't resist to see Polytechnique, a Canadian feature on the 1989 Montreal school schooting (known as the Montreal Massacre), when a deranged male student, driven by his misguided hatred of feminism, shot fourteen young women dead with a rifle. Filmed in black and white to avoid unnecessary exposure to blood, it traces the events from the pespective of two rampage survivors, a boy and a girl. The day when the killings took place, December the 6th, has become the national memorial day for the victims of violence against women in Canada. What'd drawn me to this film, which wasn't pleasant to follow in the end, was another true story, pictured in Out of the Blue, a stunning New Zealand film I saw at the festival last year about a gun collector going on a deadly rampage in a quiet, unsuspecting community in the outback.
To finish off a day full of cinema experiences, I went to see North, a Norwegian road comedy, or as it's promoted an antidepressive off-road movie, which follows the awkward adventures of a brusque Norwegian recluse in his thirties who is challenged to renew contact with his long-lost girlfriend and a child. Spurred by the sudden need to see his family, he sets off on a scooter journey across the snow-covered landscape of northern Norway and on his way stumbles upon a host of weirdos, like a boy who practices making the most out of booze by tying an alcohol-soaked tampon to a shaved skull, supposedly a method a Polish dude taught him. A clusmy type himself, as he moves ahead, the protagonist inadverently sets two huts on fire and practically watches an old man drown in a lake as the ice starts to melt. I relished the Scandinavian feel of the film, ironic, with harsh landscapes and human isolation playing a large part.
Saturday
I managed to squeeze Iluminacja (Illumination) by Krzysztof Zanussi into a busy day. It's something I wanted to see to catch up with the Polish classics and it came along as a perfect opportunity since the director was on the spot to meet with the audience. Stylistically, it's a patchwork piecing together a documentary, a soul-seeking drama and an educational programme, but this couldn't possibly be held against it, as it takes this stylistic freedom to address moral choices of the highest calibre, few other films have dealt with. Franciszek, played by Stanisław Latałło, a director of photography by profession, is an aspiring student of physics engrossed with his quest for the knowledge that best captures the reality and his quest for the meaning of life. He leads an active life, intellectually, socially, professionally, but as he goes on, there always seems to be something that eludes him. The audience is invited to take part in his spiritual journey, as we listen to his colleagues at university speak their mind, witness medical experiments that shed light on what humans might be like or visit the Camaldolese monastery for guidance. I like to think of Iluminacja as a Pandara's box, a kind of film that opens up an awful lot of critical questions, but answers none, only inspires to pursue the answer. It came as no surprise then that quite a large crowd stayed in to listen to Mr. Zanussi speak after the screening, even though his cinema is demanding, to say the least.
Sunday
I knew my last day at the fest would open sharp. Sleep Furiously, a contemplative documentary on the idyllic rural community in Wales which is steadily going into decline, has been repeatedly praised for its artistry, uniqueness and beauty, like here or here or here. Its author Gideon Koppel, who grew up in Trefeurig, paints a slow-moving, detailed picture of a people whose time-honoured ways of cultivating land and tradition are starting to disappear due to economisation and industrialisation of the country. For example, the camera accompanies an itinerant librarian in a van, whose job is to reach far-flung households and keep them updated, cultured and attached. It follows the land rituals as we see the sheep shearing season, the harvest or the breathtakingly captured change of landscape when seasons rotate. The film is full of nostalgia, mysticism, with its subtle sounds, like tree leaves humming, but there is also a potent undercurrent of nervous anticipation, eg. when the residents of Trefeurig assemble to discuss the future of the school building. Koppel managed to catch the riveting charm of the shrinking world on camera, but he wasn't strong enough to suggest any answers as to what such communities could do to survive.
By the way, it ends with a sorrowful epigraph by Philip Larkin: "It is only when I sense the end of things,/ that I find the courage to speak/ the courage, but not the words"
9,99$, an Isreali-Australian production, trying to bring the audience closer to the meaning of life, was a great closing of the fest for me, since its tone was lighter, more optimistic, ironic. Painstaikingly put together by a team of people in a technique called stop-motion animation, it uses clay silhouettes to tell interwoven stories of several characters who are all after their happiness, understood as differently as it only can be. From a teenager who wants to have it explained in black-and-white and buys cheap spiritual guides in search of answers to questions larger than life, to his father who is drained of emotion by his dreary work in insurance industry and craves for a change, to their elderly neighbour who is so lonely he relishes taking part in ridiculous phone surveys as an interviewee for want of other roles people are willing to grant him. The film is based on short stories by Edgar Keret and is directed by Tatia Rosenthal, who was present in her modest self at the screening.
No comments:
Post a Comment