Month: May 2018

That Summer

Posted on by victorfraga

Imagine commissioning an art piece celebrating two very peculiar members of your family. Now imagine leaving that art piece locked up and gathering dust for 45 years, away from everyone’s gaze. Then finally someone comes along decides to finish this art piece, all under the purview of the original artist. This is more or less what happens in That Summer.

Swedish director Göran Olsson rearranges four reels of footage captured more than 45 years ago, in the Summer of 1972. American socialite and decorator Lee Radziwill, who also happens to be the younger sister of late Jacky Kennedy and is still alive at the age of 85, hired Peter Beard back then in order to capture the intimacy of her secluded and elusive cousins Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (Big Edie) and her daughter, Edith Bouvier Beale (Little Edie). The two ladies inhabited the decrepit and enigmatic mansion in East Hampton.

The film, occasionally voiced by Peter Beard is shrouded in longing and nostalgia. “Everything was perfect those days”, cries out the narrator. But this is a very unusual notion of perfection. The house was murky, mouldy and cluttered with decaying furniture, bric-a-brac, picture frames and cat faeces. The Beales were hoarders obsessed with holding on to the past. A raccoon is also regularly featured. There is plenty of casual conversations, intelligible mumbling, phone calls, a little warbling and a couple of heated exchanges.

Big and Little Edie are indeed fascinating in their quirkiness, and it’s hardly surprising that they have become pop figures since. They are immersed in their dirty little world, while still retaining their strange charm and allure. This is glam meets gloom, in every sense of it. There are also images of Andy Warhol, Truman Capote and others, who were all involved in the lives of Lee and her cousins in one way or another.

The European director has such respect for the subjects of his film that he hardly edits his film. The outcome is a bit like flicking through a thick family album of a family that isn’t yours. You might struggle to work out who’s who. The poignancy of the weird characters is alluring at first, but it gets a little tedious and banal halfway through. You probably would flick through your own family album for 80 minutes, but you wouldn’t do the same to someone else’s.

That Summer is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, June 1st, and it’s out on DVD the following Monday.

Look the other way!

Posted on by victorfraga

This was one of the more unorthodox films to debut in competition at The Cannes Film Festival in 2018. A road movie featuring a leper, his donkey, and his child companion named Obama, Yomeddine, which means “Judgement Day” in English, is a feel-good fable about finding your place in the world. We sat down with director Abu Bakr Shawty [pictured below] in order to find out where he got the idea for the film, how he worked with non-professional actors, and why cinema should be dirty.

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Redmond Bacon – The film is such a unique concept. How did you discover your subject?

Abu Bakr Shawky – Ten years ago I made a short documentary about the leper colony in Egypt. I got the idea while I was there because people were telling me all these stories about how people were dropped as children and never heard from their parents again. I wanted to make a film about that. It stayed with me for a few years until in 2013 I wrote the script for it. I started the long journey to get the funding and try to make it which was very difficult. Me and my wife were doing it together. It was very much under the radar; very low budget, no-name filmmakers, no big actors attached. It was a much longer process, especially as it was a very unusual world I wanted to show.

RB – How did you choose your main actor, Rady Gamal [pictured at the top], and how did you convince him to be in the film?

ABS – It was originally written for a woman who was the main subject of my documentary. But she became too ill over the years, and right now she’s not able to move because one leg needs to be amputated. So I had to start looking for someone else. The first person I met after I asked to see people was Rady, and he was just really a magnificent guy. As soon as I met him I knew he was the right person. He had a lot of really good energy, he understood the story, he felt a close connection to it, and he’s also just a very funny guy too. You can really see beyond his leprosy and see him as a person.

RB – Did you have to educate him about acting?

ABS – Because he has no experience of acting, over a period of four months I workshopped with him. We would hang out in our office. Firstly, we got to know each other on a personal level, just so he starts trusting me, that I’m not trying to exploit him [or] trying to do a little circus show where I just show him around. I did not want to do that at all. Then eventually we tried to do some acting, and I tried to introduce him to what acting is and how it works and everything. Then we got in the little boy Ahmed [Abdelhafiz]. They formed a really good relationship right away. It was just a very slow process to build up that trust. It’s one of those things we don’t know if its going to work until the day you start rolling a camera. Until the day before I was really nervous. I felt like I did everything right and I did everything I could, but you’re still not sure until you do the real thing with him. And thank God on the first day with the first take I was like: ok, I got it.

RB – How did you find the other actors who are differently-abled, such as the man with no legs?

Dina Emam [producer of the film, and wife of the director, just sitting down] – Abu had written the role with a specific person in mind who he met in Cairo. And this man [is] not an actor; never been on a film set, never been anywhere near one. [But] when you write a role with this person in mind, that person has to play that role. We explained to him what it means to give your word to act in a film. The day our production team went into location and it was time to pick up the actor, he said: “Can we just do it tomorrow, I don’t feel like coming in today”. And we were like no – we explained to you – we can’t just pick up and leave. He was like ok, I’ll come, but my bike is broken. There was excuse after excuse, so we started to realise he just wasn’t going to come.

There were people we hired to protect our equipment and protect everything, and they thought we were lying. We were like: we’re going to shut down and we’re coming back another day. And they thought we were lying and they were like: you need to give us our money right now, we know you took what you wanted, and you’re lying. So we started to explain [our actor is missing and] it’s a man who doesn’t have legs and we really need a man who can play this role. It would be really hard for us to use green screen. We explained what green screen is, and how it’s really expensive. There’s this one guy who’s standing in the back and he said: “You need a guy with no legs.” I thought he was being sarcastic, [but] he was like:“I have a guy for you.” And we said: “bring him to the office tomorrow”. And he came, Yasser, and he read the sides and he said —and he’s not an actor either, he’s a businessman — and he said: “I see myself in this man and I want to do this role”. And he did, and that’s the man in this film now. And he was so incredible. Sometimes things just fall into place.

RB – The film takes the structure of a classic road movie. Are there any road movies that inspired you when writing the script?

ABS – Definitely. I mean anything that Wim Wenders does, obviously. But there is a very underrated road movie called The Sixth Day (1986), an Egyptian film by Youssef Chahine [starring Dalida]. It’s kind of a road movie, it takes place on a boat that goes across the Nile, but its still the same kind of concept. And that was very inspirational for me. I think road movies have a very specific charm to them, just because you are also able to show your country and turn it into a character of its own.

RB – Has leprosy been shown in Egyptian drama?

ABS – Not that I know of. I’m sure there are TV reports and things like that. But I did the documentary 10 years ago, and I think that was the first documentary that was out there. I think there’s a couple of other people who made short docs. But not in widespread drama — not that I’m aware of.

I think that was one of the reasons it was very difficult to get funding for it. Beyond the fact that I’m a first time filmmaker, and I didn’t really have a long record of things, and the subject was very difficult and very unusual. But I really believed that there was a story there and its possible to do this regardless of what people thought of it. I guess it is bold. I think people should be bold in that sense. I think in cinema in general there’s a lot of conformity. There’s a lot of sequels and prequels and things that have been done. I think maybe its time that people should try some completely unusual worlds that we haven’t seen before.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Disney has hit the mother lode with the Star Wars franchise and is wasting no opportunity to deliver to its huge, hungry fan market further films to fill in between the ‘official’ trilogy episodes eight and nine. This one takes the character of Han Solo, owner and pilot of legendary spaceship The Millennium Falcon and goes back to maybe 10 years before the events of the very first Star Wars film (aka Episode IV: A New Hope, George Lucas, 1977). The script is by veteran Lawrence Kasdan (most notably co-screenwriter on The Empire Strikes Back, Irvin Kershner, 1980) and one of his sons Jonathan; on the evidence of Solo: A Star Wars Story they appear two very safe pairs of hands.

I always had the feeling that George Lucas had lucked out casting the then largely unknown Harrison Ford as Han Solo in the first film. Perhaps Star Wars would still have been the monster hit it was with another actor in the part, but in his first major role Ford lit up the screen every time he came on. Much the same thing happened when Disney bought him back into the series for fan favourite Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J.Abrams, 2015). So the challenge for Solo is to find an actor who can bring to the teenage Han Solo something on a par with what Ford brought to the adult version of the character. Imitating Ford would probably be a mistake. Alden Ehrenreich turns out to be a good choice. His performance effortlessly includes mannerisms which are pure Harrison Ford so you can believe the one onscreen actor will grow into the other later on. Yet Ehrenreich is smoother and less wisecrack-ey. But, the important thing is, it works.

Speaking of imitation, something I personally hate is when a Star Wars film slavishly copies parts of earlier Star Wars films (or even one of the films more or less in its entirety). This really isn’t a charge that for the most part can be levelled at Solo which plays out as a series of unique set pieces: an urban speeder chase, an attempted escape from a planet which is a prison in all but name, an Imperial training base where Solo meets the wookie Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo, here playing a younger version of the character he played in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson, 2017), a raid on a (sort of) monorail train winding its way through mountains along snowy ridges, the gambling den of Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino) where The Millennium Falcon changes hands in a card game, a daring sortie to Kessel to plunder an unstable, explosive substance and a race against time to get that substance to a processing plant before it blows up and takes the Falcon with it.

In between all that comes cross and double cross involving Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke), the girl Solo left behind when he escaped the initial planet who in the interim has done “things you couldn’t possibly understand”, intergalactic criminal player Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and crime lord mastermind Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). There are muddy rumours about a mysterious organisation known as the Crimson Dawn and – in a calculated imitation of Disney’s equally lucrative, rival Avengers franchise – talk of a gangster on the planet Tatooine putting together a crew to do a job both of which will presumably furnish material for the inevitable second and third Solo films. The Crimson Dawn trilogy, perhaps?

The gambling den scenes involve a degree of cheating on the part of Calrissian and in a later confrontation a clever countermove against his underhand methods by Solo. But as with whatever went on with Qi’ra which we never saw, there’s a feeling that what’s actually made it onto the screen isn’t that dirty. Enjoyable and entertaining? Yes. Dirty? Not particularly.

Two other characters fare rather better in terms of whether or not the film is a genuinely dirty vision.

Beckett’s sidekick Val is played with great presence and energy by a terrific Thandie Newton, continuing the franchise’s push for ethnic diversity within its cast. As with John Boyega in Disney’s first Star Wars film The Force Awakens (2015), it’s good to see a black actor take centre stage in a Star Wars outing and the fact that it’s a woman is a definite dirty plus. Newton plays the character as a no nonsense, hardbitten type as effective as Beckett.

Equally if not more worthy of special mention is Phoebe Waller-Bridge for mocapping and voicing Calrissian’s co-pilot and droid with attitude L3-37. She’s far, far removed from the cuddly R2-D2 and subservient English butler-type C-3PO droid and robot of Episode IV, constantly arguing with Calrissian and poking her nose in where it isn’t wanted to speak up about Droid Rights. It’s as if C-3PO changed sex and became a rampant feminist. L3-37’s not perfect either – occasionally someone has to give had a bang on the head to get her circuits to function correctly, but she always comes through in a crisis. The character, and Waller-Bridge’s visually arresting physicality of movement and vocal argumentativeness, is arguably the dirtiest thing in the film and surely destined to become a major element in Millennium Falcon mythology.

The proceedings overall start at breakneck pace and never really let up, with the screen constantly full of amazing visuals and astonishing characters. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that the director holding it all together (after the original directors were fired) and doing a fabulous job is Hollywood veteran Ron Howard who prior to this surprised us all with compelling motor racing biopic Rush (2013) and memorable documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years (2017). If he seems less interested in dirt and subversiveness than in delivering the package Disney and the audience want, to his credit a few dirty elements still sneak into the movie. Meanwhile, Disney currently seem to have the magic touch with the Star Wars movies and their serious presence in the blockbuster stakes looks set to continue for quite a while, dirty or not…

Solo: A Star Wars Story is out in the UK on Thursday, May 24th. Watch the film trailer below:

Zama

Posted on by Alasdair Bayman

To say Lucrecia Martel’s latest feature Zama does not need to be slowly processed would be akin to hastily consuming a Michelin star dish composed of the finest ingredients and culinary imagination. Through adapting Antonio di Benedetto’s 1956 novel, Martel cinematically rewrites the Orientalist and Westernised notions of colonial history. Comparable to Lynne Ramsey’s long absence from film, Martel’s previous failed project in transferring Héctor Germán Oesterheld’s graphic novel El Eternauta has fortuitously benefited her filmmaking- kaleidoscopically merging science fiction and period drama.

Counteracting preconceived notions of giving the audience an establishing shot of the historical surroundings of a period drama, Martel’s first shot depicts Spanish officer Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) looking out across the sandy banks towards an ocean of nothingness. Allusive, he is a figure lost in the natural landscape and incapable of driving himself forward towards loftier political standing in Latin America. Ridiculed by the native women of Asunción (Paraguay’s capital) surrounding him on the shores, the diegetic laughing of such women permeates the initial soundscape, seemingly driving Zama to the fringes of insanity and an act of violence towards one of them. Connecting the past and present together, these laughs linger even after they have evaporated into thin air.

Flowing to the courtly world of 18th century Latin America, Zama seeks to use the power Luciana Piñares de Luenga (Lola Dueñas) to gain favour in Spain, thus achieving his dream of relocating to Lerma. On his quest to gain favour, he desperately accepts the Governor’s (Daniel Veronese) requests for him to hunt down and kill an outlaw of the state; Vicuña Porto. In time, it becomes evident that Porto appears to be a ghostly omnipresence in such surroundings.

Non-linearity, in the case of Martel’s fifth feature, distorts one’s interpretation of the titular character. Cacho’s performance, fused with the director’s writing, leaves a great deal down to his physicality and facial acting. Costumed in the first frame with a vivid red jacket, its corrosion underwear and tear holds a mirror toward the slow decay of Zama’s inner being. Operating in a socio-political atmosphere imbued with a distinct lack of civility and proper bureaucratic governance, the colonial regime in Asunción is a discombobulated as the narrative itself. An evident outcry to the biases of history, Martel’s voice seeks to uncover the barbarity of colonial mindset.

Coalescing sound in its true natural form, the wavering fans inside colonialist’s extravagant homes, barking dogs and distorting insects clicking fill the world of Zama with a tangible pulse. Participatory with human dialogue, layering compositions engulfs one’s presence in this world. Away from diegetic sounds, plucking Brazilian guitar strings of Los Indios Tabajaras juxtapose the ambient noises of sound designer Guido Berenblum’s tones. Creating a distinct scope, the sci-fi elements of El Eternauta have clearly infected the filmic brain of Martel, impacting proceedings of narrative and sound.

A means of another distinctive cinematic element, the cinematography of Rui Poças’s compositions divide the frame into divisions; helping to expand the density of the screen. Positioning a character internally, only to have the background of an exterior location, forges a backdrop of otherness. Poças and his masterful director in this medium expose the inner desires of Zama; to transgress beyond this desolate place.

At times tentative and deeply opaque, Zama searches to truly interpolate one into the shoes of this barren human soul. Positioned in a purgatorial state, Zama’s liberating escape can only occur through submerging himself in the disorder of the world. Stories such as Martel’s, thanks to the aid of di Benedetto, help inform a new generation of filmmakers and creatives away from the trite phrase, introduced by Churchill, that “History is written by the victors’’. Stated by the director herself during a Q&A at the BFI, her latest feature is a cocktail- one that you just drink and see what happens. To that call, I can only proceed to pour myself another serving of this impervious feat of filmmaking.

Zama is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, May 25th and then available for streaming online on Monday, June 4th.

Tilting at windmills in Paris

Posted on by victorfraga

I have waited for many films to arrive, but there’s only one that I’ve anticipated for 16 years: Terry Gilliam’s long-awaited The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Over the years it has even invaded my own dreams, quite fitting for a film made by a dreamer about a dreamer. I’ve followed its numerous iterations, from the initial hope that Johnny Depp would still star (following the success of those pirate films, he ruled himself out in 2009), to the Robert Duvall/Ewan McGregor two-header, and on to perhaps the most heartbreaking and tantalising version with John Hurt as the Man of La Mancha. At one point Gerard Depardieu (with Depp as Toby) was in the frame, then even Al Pacino was considered. Others have come and gone. In fact, the project goes way back, to a more literal concept with Sean Connery and Danny DeVito that Gilliam floated in the early 1990s.

Obviously, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was always set to play at Cannes. It was going to be independently funded with European money, and that’s where the festival directors and distributors gather. However, when former producer Paulo Branco attempted to sabotage it after leaving the project in what looked like a blatant attempt at extortion, everything was up in the air until the last minute. Without Branco’s machinations, the film would probably have played in competition – but in the end, Gilliam’s premiere bagged the final slot, showing the closing ceremony and… out of competition! It also garnered a 20-minute standing ovation despite festival fatigue, one of the longest ever.

With uncertainty still raging days before Cannes, I chose to trek to Paris instead, where screenings had been scheduled and looked likely to go through. With no UK distributor lined up, I wasn’t taking any chances on missing something I’d waited 16 years for, and so grabbed for the earliest screening I could.

How much of that Cannes ovation was for the film and how much for Gilliam’s perseverance is open to question, but in my opinion it’s probably his best work since Brazil (1985), and so richly deserved. Of course, Cannes reactions are not necessarily the best indicator of how well a film will perform with critics or audiences. No one was sure what to expect – from around 1989, when Gilliam was still a hot property in Hollywood, to now, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote transformed from a more faithful retelling of Cervantes’ lengthy and perhaps ultimately unfilmable novel to a meta-version that incorporated elements of Mark Twain’s novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to a deeply personal contemporary version without the time travel angle once considered. The documentary Lost In La Mancha (Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe, 2002) showed something very different than the final film.

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As personal as it gets

At some point in the noughties, co-writer Tony Grisoni suggested that lead character Toby should be a movie director rather than an advertising executive. And so Toby (Adam Driver) emerged as a youngish filmmaker who made a student movie called The Man Who Killed Don Quixote for his thesis. Now back in Spain to make a Quixote-inspired advert, he finds out that the town he shot as a student is close by. He visits to find some inspiration, and learns that his film had a profound, and not necessary positive, impact. That’s especially so for the village shoemaker, who played the role of Quixote (Jonathan Pryce) and now seems to believe he really is Cervantes’ knight.

Obviously, the film owes a massive debt to Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963), which had a major impact on Gilliam (Brazil‘s original title was 1984 ½): a key scene for him was when Marcello Mastronianni dances around the film producers who are coming at him from all directions, a visual that portrayed what would be necessary to work successfully in the movies years to Gilliam before he made a film. Like all of Gilliam’s films, despite being grand, it’s intensely personal. Toby and Quixote portray the director’s two sides: Toby personifies the deeply frustrated would-be artist whose passion and determination have been channelled into commerce, while Quixote is the dreamer whose life was enriched and yet damaged by the story.

The film business is full of damaged people whose lives are lived episodically through the films they make. And when a film crew comes to town, it affects the place socially and even environmentally—living out your dreams carries untold risks. Indeed, there were accusations that the filmmakers damaged a world heritage site in Portugal while this one was made. The thin line between madness and dreams is always the main theme in Gilliam’s work, and there are certainly echoes of The Fisher King (1991; one of his few fully contemporary films), The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) here. Gilliam has joked over the years that his wife, Maggie Weston, says he just makes the same film over and over. Of course, most true artists have certain themes that permeate their work and they constantly re-evaluate those questions because they are close to their heart. 

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A star-studded cast

The casting is exemplary. Adam Driver came to fame as the only reason to watch Lena Dunham’s TV series Girls, but in the last few years he has been able to pick off the directors he wanted to work with, from Noah Baumbach to Jim Jarmusch to Spike Lee. His Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017) role brought stardom, and attaching him to the project helped Gilliam sell the film overseas. Driver isn’t a stereotypical handsome leading man—he has an interesting face but isn’t a pretty boy, and here he perfectly captures Toby’s humour and arrogance. His comedic timing is coupled with enough depth to bring you along on his journey.

Jonathan Pryce has a long history with Gilliam—his breakthrough role was the lead of Sam Lowry in Brazil, and although he had been pegged for a different role in 2001, in 2018 he reached the age where he can pull off the role of Quixote but still has box-office power. He stepped into the role of after Gilliam’s old Python buddy Michael Palin was touted for the role and there was even a mock-up poster made for that version for Cannes. 

Stellen Skarsgård is great as an absolutely horrid producer (perhaps there’s a bit of Branco in there) and Rossy de Palma also shines in a supporting role. Jason Watkins plays Toby’s assistant and perfectly captures a particular campy, upper-middle-class film agent type. The cast is filled out with Spanish and British actors who have perfect faces for a Gilliam production and Joana Ribeiro as Angelica is destined for stardom.

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The eye of the Man of La Mancha

The film was shot by Gilliam’s own Sancho Panza, Nicola Pecorini, who’s a genius cinematographer but rarely gets works. Pecorini has worked with Gilliam ever since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), despite a blip during Brothers Grimm (2005). Blind in one eye, he always comes up with interesting shots. Unlike a lot of Gilliam’s movies, there’s a lot of fish-eye lens work along with the trademark wide lens shots. Of course, the landscapes they found in Spain and Portugal do half the work. There are a couple of jump cuts that don’t work for me, but that’s a minor criticism. There is little CGI, which I think is a good thing and there is even a line about Toby preferring handmade effects than CGI. It’s difficult to get the budget for high-quality CGI, and the handmade quality fits the kind of film that Gilliam wanted to make.

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A long cinematic journey

In other words, it was worth sleeping on the overnight bus from Leeds to Paris just to see The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, not once but twice: first at the UGC Cine Cite Halles multiplex, then at the MK2 Beaubourg, where the audience was smaller but far more enthusiastic. There were a couple of walkouts at both screenings, but in my experience that’s usually a good sign – the director has provoked a strong reaction (although at the MK2 it looked more like a ‘wrong date movie’ situation.) My attempt to blag a poster were, sadly, unsuccessful.

He’s a director who always struggles with length, and it’s Gilliam’s longest film since The Fisher King in a world where independent films are supposed to be 100 minutes max, it’s great that he was able to grab the time it needed—despite some minor pacing issues in the middle, it’s a story that needs time to unfold. If this is Gilliam’s last film (which I hope it isn’t), it’s a good one to go out on. At a time of so many mundane independent films and action/superhero films, the fact that Gilliam can still make a film every few years gives me hope for cinema, because that means it’s still possible to put his dreams and nightmares on the big screen.

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Click here for our editor’s take on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. He was present in Cannes, and far less impressed with the movie.

This is Congo

Posted on by victorfraga

When the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa, formerly known as Zaire) became independent from Belgium in 1960, the future looked bright. The country would finally have control over its territory, particularly over the sale of minerals, which are so abundant in the dense rainforest near Goma (in the Eastern part of the country, near Rwanda and Uganda). People had a lot of faith in Patrice Lumumba, the independence leader who served as the first Prime Minister of the country. Until Patrice was killed. Former colonisers Belgium and the US (who feared Lumumba had “communist” tendencies) were behind the assassination.

This is just the first of the many tribulations of this big country (three times the size of Texas) and illiberal democracy. Soon after, the country was be under the military dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country for 32 years with an iron hand until his death in 1997. The country has been governed by Joseph Kabila since 2001. Elections and change of government remain highly elusive concepts in a highly fractured country with more than 450 tribes and numerous rebel groups. All of these tribes are represented in Goma, and the thick vegetation makes for the perfect hide-out for rebel groups, we are told.

This is Congo opens with the verdant and idyllic hills of Eastern Congo, teeming with colour and life. We are told: “growing up in Congo, according to God’s will, is growing up in paradise”. Then we immediately learn about the ugly and far more realistic side: “according to man’s will, growing up in Congo is growing up in misery”. Impoverished people and weapons steps into the frame. A war tank fires missiles. The noise of the artillery becomes unbearable. People run, cover their ears, jump on the ground. It looks like God God has failed Congo, which has been relegated to human beings with a very dubious agenda.

Helmer Daniel McCabe, who’s on his first feature film, interviews people from the National Army and he also has access to rebel groups, particularly the M23 (which temporarily occupied Goma three years ago). A voice-over of the adulterated voice of an army colonel explains that peace is highly volatile in Congo, a country that has seen continuous conflict for several decades. We also learn that the Army and the rebel groups have a volatile relation: they routinely trade members (even high-ranking officers) amongst themselves.

Coronel Mamadou is far less shy. He’s happy to reveal his real name, face and voice. He’s adamant that the Army should remain loyal to Kabila. He even sounds sycophantic. He justifies his attitude: “we must defend our territory at all costs”. The political landscape of Congo is extremely confusing, with rebel groups promising democracy and liberation, but mostly delivering terror. Mamadou, with the support of the UN, succeeds to liberate Goma from the M23, and he is welcomed by ecstatic crowds. But is patriotism indeed the answer to Congo’s problem?

Colonialism is the root of all problems in Congo, it seems. Firstly, it was the Belgians who instilled a sense of patriotism in the Congolese people, and this now seems to justify the worst atrocities. Patriotism is deceitful. The film also reveals that the colonisers were responsible for creating a sense of “tribal hierarchy”. We hear an old radio extract explain that the Tutsi are racially superior. The Tutsi were the people massacred in the neighbouring Rwanda in 1994, when millions crossed the border into Congo (in what is described as the largest forced displacement in the recent history of Africa). The Rwandan Tutsis are accused of backing and arming the rebel groups in Congo.

No solution is straightforward in the second largest country of Africa, and the future does not look bright. A voice-over suggests that the country needs a change of narrative. But what narrative is that? No one seems to know.

This is Congo is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, May 25th.

Cargo

Posted on by victorfraga

Adapted from their own short film of the same name, Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke’s Cargo is a competent but forgettable Australian zombie film, with a touch a psychological thriller. Though it tries to emphasise character over action and gore, as well as incorporating an intriguing racial commentary, it fails to reach its full potential on both counts.

Martin Freeman stars as Andy Rose, husband to Kay (Susie Porter) and father of one-year-old Rosie (played by twins Lily Anne and Marlee Jane McPherson-Dobbins). The family travel along a river via houseboat, refusing to step onto dry land for fear of the zombies (referred to as ghosts by Simone Landers’s Thoomi) that stalk the Outback. Once Kay is bitten, however, the family are forced to moor. Soon, Andy also finds himself infected and with only 48 hours to find sanctuary for his daughter, before he himself turns into a flesh-eating ghoul.

The premise is a clever one, combining John Hillcoat’s The Road (2009) with The Walking Dead (Preston A. Whitmore II, 1995), and allows Howling and Ramke to downplay the genre thrills expected of a zombie film for something more low key. As such, the co-directors steer clear of bites and blood as much as they can, though their obvious cutaways and fades to black early on not only underline this lack of action but may suggest, perhaps, that the means to construct such scenes were not attainable for the filmmakers.

That Vic (Steve Bannon-lookalike Anthony Hayes) – a seemingly affable stranger whom Andy encounters on his journey – cages indigenous people to bait zombies before shooting them, is an exciting inclusion, but Howling and Ramke don’t take this racial commentary any further; by the end, you can pretty much chalk these actions down to those of a singular racist, rather than centuries of racial discrimination and colonial oppression that one suspects the directors are trying to highlight.

Martin Freeman is his usual solid self, shining when he’s chained to Simone Landers à la Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones (1958), but is responsible for some of the film’s unintentionally funny moments. After Kay is bitten, Andy asks the offending zombie, in a typically British, mildly irritated way, ‘Do you know what you just did?’. That Andy might expect anything other than for the zombie to lunge at him and try to eat his face off is laughable.

A slightly comical climax and a sugary conclusion has Cargo end in disappointing fashion, but Howling and Ramke do deserve some credit for their refreshing take on the zombie formula. Had they cut these more sentimental moments and followed through more thoroughly on their racial themes, Cargo might have been something very special.

Cargo was released exclusively on Netflix on Friday, May 2018.

Fred

Posted on by victorfraga

Cinemagoers have always had a perverse fascination with the mafioso. We delighted ourselves watching James Cagney smash a grapefruit Mae Clarke’s face, enjoyed Al Pacino building an Empire on cocaine and had a ball watching a deluded Bob Hoskins challenge the might of the IRA. Crime and cinema have always gone hand in hand; but this is different. This is where pop and history meet.

Fred Foreman (syndicate and chum to the Krays among others) was one of the leading London criminals of the sixties. Going with the motto “don’t mess with Fred, or you’ll be brown bread dead”, Foreman is the last of a generation of underworld players, understanding this is his final chance to get his story across. “It was only business” Foreman admits “my wife, she never knew nothing”. Audience members have forgiven impresarios like Alan Sugar for their ruthless lifestyles. Is a violent impresario capable of forgiveness?

Foreman, while undoubtedly guilty of some reprehensible actions, is a charming and affable interviewee. The film holds nothing back, returning to Foreman’s childhood in a blitz-ridden England, the film makes some sense as to what shaped a man who would be later accused of forty murders. His poverty-stricken background shaped the adult he became, readily admitting one of the worst things anyone can do is bring a family up in poverty.

Paul van Carter brings Foreman into a modern London, showing how the past can change the future. A case in point comes when Foreman makes a visit least to the set of the Tom Hardy starred ‘Legend’. He still maintains celebrity status, but there is an underlying sense that after all these years spent incarcerated have paid their toll on this man. Aged 85, the film shows a person, once feared for violent prowess throughout England’s capital, now ageing in his own rocking chair.

It’s a fascinating look at a period which has been pinpointed and paid homage to in the works of Monty Python, The Inbetweeners and Blur. While the East End may have been a time of glamour, with the slick suits booted and tooting admirers, this is the aftermath of such a lifestyle. Foreman is left with a conscience to live with, a death awaiting and one last chance to get his story told on film. It might not be the most pleasant of stories, but it’s a necessary one, none the less.

Fred is available for digital download on Monday, May 28th, and it’s out on DVD June 5th.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Posted on by victorfraga

CLICK HERE FOR A VERY DIFFERENT TAKE ON THE SAME FILM

What happens to a cake if you open the oven several times while it’s being baked? I becomes deflated. What happens then if you – despite the interruptions – carry on baking it for a very long time? It becomes burnt around the edges. This is more of less what happened to Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which was in the making for 25 years and finally showed last night in the closing ceremony of the 71st Cannes Film Festival. It’s gooey inside, deflated and burnt. Its texture isn’t consistent. But it’s still digestible with some very tasty bits.

The American-born British filmmaker is very much aware of the problems with his films, and he attempts to use them to his benefit. The movie opens with the tongue-in-cheek “And now … after more than 25 years in the making … and unmaking”. There are plenty of elements of self-mockery. In a way, this is a film about the foolishness of the film director. About the incessant will to fight on, and to finish an art piece. Terry Gilliam is Don Quixote. But his attempt at lampooning himself only works partially.

Toby (Adam Driver) is a cocky and greedy American advertising director working in Spain. He comes across old Spanish shoemaker Javier (Jonathan Pryce), who is convinced that he is Don Quixote himself, and that Toby in Sancho Panza. There are plenty of windmills everywhere, ancient and modern, the ferocious giants with humongous arms for Javier/Don Quixote to fight. Against his will, Toby is dragged into Javier’s web of delusions. Parallel to this, Toby starts an affair with the gorgeous Jacqui (Olga Kurylenko), his Boss’ (Stellan Skarsgard) wife. The forbidden relationship becomes predictably toxic and dangerous.

This is also a film about cultural shock. Spanish and British sensibility mix like water and oil, making The Man Who Killed Don Quixote a very strange and hybrid beast. The humour is entirely British, and I doubt Spanish people will engage with the film thoroughly. Overall, Spanish culture is a difficult nut to crack: Asghar Farhadi did a poor job transposing his Iranian sensibility onto reddish and ardent Spanish soil, in Everybody Knows (the film that open the Cannes Film Festival just 11 days ago). Spanish gold is deceitful. It can easily turn out to be fool’s gold.

The most effective commentary of the film is on ageing. It is very touching to see a delusional Javier convinced that he can fight the evil giants and protect the poor and the vulnerable, despite the clearly visible amount of years on his back. Pryce’s performance is very moving and convincing. By extension, this also applies to Terry Gilliam: he will be an octogenarian is just two years.

The humour in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote isn’t entirely effective. The jokes are a little stale: “my maternal grandmother was Jewish, so I respect all religions” (uttered by Adam Driver, who’s Jewish), “We are in the European Union in the 21st Century” (not sure whether this was intended to be an anti-Brexit statement), people scream “terrorist” as a scarfed lady is revealed to have a beard, and Donald Trump is compared to a toddler. No one at the press screening at Debussy Theatre (with nearly every one of its 1,068 seats occupied) laughed at any of these jokes.

There are other issues. The film is extremely personal, infectious with self-references – which could alienate viewers. Fans of Gilliam will probably recognise those, but younger people, particularly those outside the Anglophone world will probably struggle.

But there’s a far more serious problem, which disappointed me irreparably. The fantastic Spanish actress Rossy de Palma was prominent on the red carpet right next to Mr Gilliam himself. I expected to see this reflected in the movie, giving the whole story a real Spanish flavour. Sadly, she only appears very shortly in the movie. I even suspect it wasn’t her. Looking closely, I think that may have been Adam Driver in drag.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote closed the 71st Cannes Film Festival lats May, when this piece was originally written. A messy treat with some tasty bits. Let’s just hope next time Terry Gilliam doesn’t insist on the deflated and burnt cake, and just starts his recipe afresh. The UK premiere takes place at the BFI London Film Festival taking place between October 10th and 21st, and then at the Cambridge Film Festival October 25th to November 1st.

It’s out in cinemas on Friday, January 31st (2020). On all major VoD platforms in May!

Yomeddine

Posted on by victorfraga

This is probably as close as you will ever get to a leper. Leprosy has been eradicated in most parts of the planet, but still persists in some of the most impoverished countries. The highly contagious disease is immediately associated with removal from society and seclusion. Yet you won’t regret you came into contact with these adorable human beings. Yomeddine gives you the opportunity to embrace, look into the eyes and deep dive into the hearts of these outcasts.

The story starts out in a colony of lepers somewhere in South of Egypt, where Beshay (Rady Gamal) was abandoned 30 years earlier as a child by his father. He has a wife and lives happily with the other members of the colony. There is a real sense of community, and they seem to lead a relatively peaceful existence despite their condition and the abject poverty. Their main source of work and entertainment is a nearby landfill, which they nicknamed Garbage Mountain. Just like the contents of the site, these people have been discarded by society.

Then one day Beshay’s wife tragically passes away, and he decides to ride to the North of Egypt on a makeshift cart pulled by his donkey Harby. He’s also joined by his young sidekick “Obama” (Ahmed Abdelhafiz), a orphan with whom he develops a paternal bond. Along their journey, they come across a number of disabled people: a lorry driver who lost his legs in an accident, a midget and many more. They are all supportive of Beshay’s task. Able-bodied people less so, despite the fact that Beshay is no longer contagious. He’s been cured, but the protuberant tumours and lesions were replaced by permanently and very unsightly scarred skin. His fingers are gnarled, his hands contorted, his nose stumped and his face craggy with bumps. There’s a say in Egypt which explains their attitude: “run from a leper like you would run from a lion”.

This is a comedy that manages to find humour in a very difficult and painful topic, and to challenge die-hard taboos. The lepers are neither sanitised not fetishised. Neither infantilised nor romanticised. They are human and loving. A lot like the characters of Todd Browning’s Freaks (1932). A breath of fresh air in a cinema industry that’s often scared of presenting disabled people exactly as they are. Yomeddine also reminded me a lot of the Brazilian film Central Station (Walter Salles, 1997), where a child and an adult cross the poverty-stricken hinterlands of Northeastern Brazil also in search of a father. Both the Egyptian and the South American film are extremely moving in their representation of a the marginalised seeking to rekindle their sense of purpose by searching for a long-lost relative.

And don’t forget the hankies. The ending of this dirty “feel-good” movie is as stirring as it can be!

Yomeddine showed at the 71st Cannes Film Festival taking place right now, when this piece was originally written. The film was partially funded by the means of a crowdfunding campaign. It premiere in the UK a part of the BFI London Film Festival taking place between October 10th and 21st.

The Wild Pear Tree (Ahlat Agaci)

Posted on by victorfraga

A wild pear tree is misshapen, misfit but still very fertile. Very much like an artist, be that a writer or a filmmaker. Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest film questions the role of the artist within the society and within the family in a highly conversational journey lasting more than three hours.

The film centres on Sinan (Aydin Dogu DEmirkol), who returns home to the rural and coastal town of Canakkale upon graduating in literature. He wants to publish his first book, a collection of essays and short stories named The Wild Pear Tree. His parents are loving and supportive, yet his household has turned dysfunctional and unstable. That’s because his father Idris (Murat Cemcir) has become addicted to gambling, and his mother Asuman (Bennu Yildirimlar) suddenly had to take up a nanny job in order to make ends meet.

Idris is a teacher, and his very existence is defined by literature. His conversations are always teeming with quotes and literary references. Despite the financial difficulties, Asuman does not regret having married Idris, who stole her heart with his rich rhetoric and sweet lyrical talk. She says she would do it all over again. Sinan is following a very similar path to his father, it seems. Or will he reconcile his artistic aspirations with money-making, and become rich and successful with his book?

The Wild Pear Tree is a profoundly conversational and reflective film. Idris and Sinan converse with their friends and also with each other about the meaning of literature, arts, life, religion, and so on. It will feel like you sitting on a table with friends and family talking just about every single existential matter. The only problem is that, as with any conversation lasting more than three hours, the film gets a little draining at times.

The bucolic images of rural Turkey help to sustain this inspiring and and meaningful film. The DOP is particularly skilled with lighting. The shades of yellow provide the movie with a certain warmth. The seasonal changes are also effectively captured. The mood of the characters change with the frost and the snow, and the film culminates with a highly ambiguous closure in Winter.

Like its characters, The Wild Pear Tree never feels pretentious and self-conceited. This is a down-to-Earth story, in both the connotative and the denotative senses.

This is a film about the artist’s biggest fear: that no one reads, listens or understands what they have to say. Sinan’s unrelenting search for recognition is both sobering and disheartening. The young man does not realise that the journey is the actual destination. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Sinan does eventually get his book published, but he now has to face a much scarier prospect. Will anyone read it? Will his words move anyone? All of these comments and questions apply, by extension, to the filmmaker. That’s why, ultimately, this is also a film about filmmaking.

The Wild Pear Tree showed at the 71st Cannes Film Festival taking place right now, when this piece was originally written. Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the Palme d’Or just for years ago with the equally long and meditative Winter Sleep. The film premiered in the UK as part of the BFI London Film Festival in October. It’s out in cinemas across the country on Friday, November 30th, and then on VoD on Monday, December 3rd. On BFI Player on Monday, April 6th 2020.