Author: victorfraga

Blue Imagine

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QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM ROTTERDAM

In a country where even upskirting is still widespread (and most victims unable to react because they become paralysed with embarrassment), men routinely assault women with their hand, their gaze and indeed other parts of their anatomy. While I have no figures to hand, I presume this also extends to the filmmaking industry, an environment where males are in full control. There are very few female directors working on Japanese soil, a deeply sexist country where women are routinely discouraged from working at all. It is both commendable and remarkable that 30-year-old actress-turned-helmer Matsubayashi Urara should choose a #MeToo-related topic for her directorial debut. But that’s about it. There’s very little to salvage in this 93-minute drama.

The story surrounds around a young woman called Noeri, who was abused by a famous filmmaker. She finds refuge in an organisation called Blue Refuge, where other sexual assault victims share their experience and provide each other with emotional support. There’s a restaurant inexplicably connected to the group, where a Filipino cook called Jessica prepares food for the rarely seen customers. Jessica has no connection to the rest of the story, and her plot basically involves overcoming racism by cooking her native cuisine. It is as clunky as it sounds. Jessica is one of these characters clearly created for the sole purpose of meeting the requirements of an international co-production (I correctly hazarded a guess that this is a Japanese-Filipino movie long before checking the credits).

Back to the abuse plot. Noeri soon realises that a further two women were raped by the highly prolific sexual offender. They set out to tell the stories to the local newspapers, but the patronising male reporters refuse to write an article “because there is no evidence”. It takes a female reporter before an piece of news detailing the sexual abuse gets published. Meanwhile, the famous director is planning his next movie, with the unwavering support of his Epsteinish male producer. They explain to a group of aspiring actresses that the most important element of good acting is “showing your arsehole in public”. The attentive women laugh along, thereby firmly establishing their victim potential.

The three women gradually gather the strength to confront their rapist, even if their notion of liberation is a far cry from female revenge movies such as Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2021), and The Royal Hotel (Kitty Green, 2023). Instead, our three “heroines” tremble with fear, keep their head low in submission, and huddle together like terrified kittens. Naturally, overcoming fear and shame is no easy feat for rape victims. But this representation is barely inspiring. Even Fay Wray looks more empowered.

Overall, the execution of Blue Imagine is very poor. The script is wholly didactic, predictable and dogged with cliches. The acting is shoddy, and the interactions are clumsily staged, often resembling a primary school play. The repetitive piano score desperately tries to inject the story with an extra dose of drama, but instead it just irritates viewers. It gets even worse when one of the victims attempt to literally sing her sorrows, off-key and unaffected. Just give it a miss.

Blue Imagine just premiered at the 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Under a Blue Sun

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QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM ROTTERDAM

Sylvester Stallone boasts during an interview that filming Rambo III (Peter MacDonald, 1988) was “advantageous” because the heat was extreme (up to 132°F/55°C) and people were “tense” and “edgy”. He goes even further, with his invariably upbeat and courageous tone: “There were 91 terrorist attacks while we were filming”. How exciting! These highly questionable “advantages” enabled the Americans to craft a very realistic war atmosphere. The film was set in Afghanistan and the bad guys were the Soviets, but it was the Israeli army that lent the good guys (their American friends) a helping hand. They allowed filming to take place in a high security military training zone bang in the middle of the Negev desert, a place where civilians were never allowed (particularly Palestinians).

The land was previous inhabited by the Jahalin Bedouins, a Palestinian tribe that was violently displaced by the Israeli colonisers. Those who did not pack quick enough had their camels and their possessions burned. London-based director Daniel Mann expresses his quiet indignation, while also drawing vaguely ironic parallels between fiction in reality, as he reads the numerous e-mails that he sent to Stallone, all of which remain unanswered. You wouldn’t expect the super-macho, rugged faced, trigger-happy American hero to cower to such sentimentalities, would you? In a way, Under a Blue Sun is a rhetorical movie. The answers to the questions asked by Daniel are right in front of our eyes. Clear as daylight. Bright as the sun.

Middle-aged bedouin Bashir Abu Rabiahr takes the director to the very place where Rambo III was filmed, and shares some of the props and unused reels that survived the four decades since. A member of the crew explains that many of the weapons and explosions were real, and that actual IDF members appeared in the film. A grenade exploded in his own hand because of the extreme heat, he proudly explains before showing the two missing fingers. He laughs the incident off with a bizarre and grotesque glee, despite his disfigured limb. This is the film’s second most powerful and revealing moment (second only to Stallone’s sinister bragging). Such lack of sensibility is staggering. It neatly symbolises an identity built upon military belligerence, combined ruthless, careless and shameless discourse.

A few art devices such as artificial smoke and filters are used in order to provide the movie with an ethereal quality, while not robbing the final product of its subtle yet pervasive political connotations.

The film title refers to the special affects applied to Rambo III on post-production in order to make the red-soaked desert look foreign and blue. Nobody was supposed to know that the film was made in Israel. The director’s tacit allegiance seems to lie with the victims of Israeli aggression, as he allows the bedouins to tell their story of oppression. His crew films as the IDF violently confronts an entire village, arresting a woman and knocking a cinematographer to the ground. His camera becomes a weapon in the geopolitical struggle for visibility and survival. In the same way that Hollywood used a movie camera as a geopolitical weapon against “evil” Soviets in the 1980s. Sadly, Mann’s weapon is not as sophisticated as Hollywood’s. Self-reflective political documentaries do not make it to you local Multiplex.

Under a Blue Sun premiered at the 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam:

Reinas

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Two sisters living in Lima reconnect with their estranged father before they leave for America with their mother so they can start a new chapter of their lives. This story of reconciliation between fathers and their offspring has been represented countless times in the rich history of cinema, incorporating themes of redemption, love, and forgiveness. In recent memory alone there’s been Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper (a highlight of British cinema in 2023), as well as Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere (2010), and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014). So, without feeling like a rehashed idea, something else needs to rise from within. Reynicke does a fantastic job in using the Peruvian conflict as a backdrop; a constant thorn that could erupt in the story at any point, but doesn’t allow it to take centre stage, which forces a wonderful relationship between a father and his daughters to bubble up from its core.

Carlos (Gonzalo Molina), the girl’s father, is quite the character, and the opening scene allows us to find out what type of person he is. “I’m not really a taxi driver, you know,” as Carlos explains his acting talents to a customer who couldn’t care less. Carlos is a compulsive liar; it becomes a defence mechanism when his own failings are questioned, as well as improving the opinion his daughters have of their absent dad. The girls in question, Aurora and Lucía (Luana Vega and Abril Gjurinovic respectively) have been predominantly raised by their mother Elena (Jimena Lindo) and grandmother Abuela (Susi Sánchez). With tensions rising in Lima due to the ongoing conflict, Elena decides to move the three of them to the US, where her new job offers a comfortable new beginning. Reinas’ wheels begin to turn a few days before the big move, as Carlos attempts to build bridges with his girls before being separated once again.

The expectancy of children who rely on absent parents to take responsibility is one as old as time, but in the movies, it makes for emotional and poignant storytelling. The longing, the waiting, the ultimate feeling of being let down results in even the most naïve of children becoming numb to this feeling – although, even absent fathers tend to pull through in the end, and children have a habit of forgetting and forgiving. The combination of Reynicke’s writing and Molina’s acting evolves Carlos into a really likeable character, even with his flaws. There’s a tragic sadness to the guy who seems to be living off former glories and community legend, so when we do experience those joyous moments on the beach and driving across the sand dunes with his girls, it results in something quite sweet and authentic.

Reinas is a little slow at times, and characters have no background. We know nothing of Carlos and Elena’s former relationship or what he’s really been up to after all these years; whether the conflict was something that affected them more than what was eventually shown – it’s all left up to the viewer’s interpretation. For some, the main theme being highlighted by Reynicke might just be vulnerability because it inflicts every main character in the film. Carlos’ becomes exposed to the thought of losing his children and retreats into a shell, while the girls are hesitant about opening up to this ‘stranger’ as a means of not becoming hurt once more. Even Elena’s vulnerability shines through as she worries about her daughters reconciling with their father and therefore, wanting to stay with him instead.

This film delivers feelings of mixed emotions. It’s light-hearted in its theme, tone, and genre, with shades of comedy often seeping through as well, but there are not enough layers for it to become one of the more memorable films that delve into this topic (such as those aforementioned films), but it has enough care and nuance to deliver its overriding message. There is a real insistence to highlight the life of a community though with how the citizens carry on their lives with such chaos happening on their own streets, but it never takes over. The natural instinct would be to let it engulf the story, so, once again, praise must go to Reynicke for not falling into this easy trap (even though no one could blame her for doing so) and creating a lovely little family drama instead.

Reinas just premiered in the 40th edition of Sundance.

Desire Lines

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Trans men suffer a kind of invisibility in society, rarely remembered and rarely discussed, especially in the case of trans gay men. After all, how many films are there about queer love between trans men? Desire Lines, a new film by Jules Rosskam, seeks to redress this in its unapologetic celebration of transmasculine sexualities and their infinite expressions. The film follows an Iranian-American trans man, Ahmad (Aden Hakimi), and his journey through a gay trans archive. His research takes him everywhere from the life of Lou Sullivan, one of the first publicly out trans gay men, to the closure of gay bath-houses amidst the Aids crisis of the 1980s.

Desire Lines is very much about the intermingling of identities, about what it means to be both gay and trans. Different identities are never separate in one person but rather come together to form a unique whole. To this end, it is very fitting that the film itself is a coming together of different forms. Desire Lines is a combination of fiction and documentary in which most of the attention is given to the archive rather than to Ahmad himself, whose story acts more as a framing device. The film consists largely of interviews with various trans men as they discuss their experiences of self-discovery, love, sex, illness, community, and all the other things that make up a life.

This hybrid documentary essay also focuses on the need to find an origin and a history for one’s identity. This idea is explicitly stated at several points and is largely explored through interview footage of Lou Sullivan as well as references to him throughout. For many, he is the person they can trace their identity and community back to. As Ahmad pours through the archival material, he begins to find his own origins by hallucinating himself in photographs and imagining himself in between the lines of letters and articles. It’s a powerful visual expression of how personal history can be, but it strikes an awkward balance of being a frequent occurrence while also feeling inconsistent.

More generally, the storyline is quite minimal. Ahmad finds kinship with a young trans man named Kieran (Theo Germaine) who works at the archive, and what exists of this storyline complements the theme of identity nicely. We get the sense that it is as much through his friendship with Kieran as through his research that Ahmad finally feels able to situate himself within his community. There is also some hint that Ahmad’s identity is fractured because of his forced separation from his homeland of Iran. These things are all suggested, but Desire Lines never really digs into them. We don’t get a a real feel for Ahmad as a character. The interview portions are more engaging than the protagonist, and while the fiction-documentary hybrid works conceptually, the execution could have been more even.

It is refreshing to see trans men talking so openly and frankly about the unique joys that come with their experiences of queer love as well as the difficulties. And there’s a lot to learn about trans history in the course of this film, but the concept of Desire Lines was somewhat wasted in the end. If archival footage and interviews are being presented through the eyes of a character rather than simply as a documentary, it’s important to be able to connect with that character, and sadly this does not come to fruition.

Desire Lines premiered at the 40th edition of Sundance.

In the Land of Brothers

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In their feature debut In The Land of Brothers, Iranian writer/ director duo Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi felt compelled through their own perspectives as liberal Iranians, to give voice to the experiences of Afghan refugees, marginalised by Iranian society. Iran hosts one of the largest Afghan refugee populations, including 2.6 million undocumented people. The quagmires of being an unregistered refugee is personified in the film’s Afghan protagonists, told in an interconnected triptych, each occurring a decade part from each other.

Editor Hayedeh Safiyari is at the helms. She famously worked with Asghar Farhadi’s on A Separation (2011) and The Salesman (2016), amongst other films. In the Land of Brothers encompasses Farhadi’s reserved emotiveness, with an ability to tell personal life-changing occurrences which acutely articulate societal malaise. It does so without sermonising and clichés. Amirfazli and Ghasemi cinematic gaze is more picturesque, with a crisp and sharp cinematography consisting of numerous striking moments of Iranian everyday life juxtaposing the hardships endured by these individuals living in displacement.

The characters originate from the same downtrodden group of refugees introduced in the beginning, ones who escaped war-torn Afghanistan in the early 2000s. The stories are glimpses into their future, their trajectories in Iran with the permanent threat of deportation. A teenage boy is defenceless at the hands of a predatory Iranian police officer. Leila (Hamideh Jafariis) is a housekeeper for a rich family; she is unable to tell her bosses of the abrupt passing of her husband on their premises for fear of alerting the authorities. And lastly a father trying to break the news of the death of their son to his wife, who lost his life in the Syrian war after being recruited into the holy cause of Islamic martyrdom.

Amirfazil and Ghasemi interpret these experiences coherently with just the right balance of sentimentality, with fully fledged characters perfectly conveying their struggles of precarious, unrooted existences. People which in the eyes of Iranian law have no rights. Lives marred by the permanent threat of deportation. At times, the approach feels a little muted of perhaps sanitised, with the grittier aspects of the three stories omitted. An impressive debut, nonetheless. The intention of highlighting the lives of those relegated to the margins resonates loudly. This a situation experienced by millions living in displacement the world over.

In the Land of Brothers premiered at the 40th edition of Sundance:

Evil Does Not Exist

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The familiar battle of the new versus the old takes place. Mizubiki is a rural community of just 6,000 inhabitants. These people are deeply attached to their land, despite the fact that they first moved there after WW2. Their sense of pride and possession is infrangible. They feel threatened by the plans to build a glamping site for Tokyoites seeking a city break. A septic tank is to be dug at the top of the hill, which would inevitably contaminate the crystal-clear waters which they cherish and use as their main staple. A restaurant owner confesses that she moved away from the country’s capital just because the udon tasted better with the local water. The prospect of effluence of the affluent infecting and debasing their lifestyle is a terrifying one.

The first third of the movie is almost entirely observational.The action is unhurried, bordering on slow cinema. Tracking shots with the camera facing up, forwards, backwards and sideways through the woodland emphasise the vastness of the landscape. It is winter and the ground is covered with snow. The laconic Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) carries water through the forest and cuts wood for his fireplace. He is often in the company of his only child, eight-year-old Hana (Ryo Nishikawa). A decomposing fawn reminds father and the daughter that animals too are an integral part of the habitat, and that life is just a fleeting illusion. A minimalistic score by Eiko Ishibashi adds a touch of eeriness. It is only roughly 30 minutes into the film that the action moves indoors, and the plot begins to unfold.

The second third of the film is the most tense one. Locals confront two talent agents – Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) – representing the company that intends to roll out the controversial glamping facilities. There is no sign of the business chief, who made the convenient decision to leave his employees to confront the disgruntled residents. Takahashi and Mayuzumi are not greedy corporate soldiers, and instead empathise with the increasingly aggressive locals. At times, our allegiance lies with the people who may have their environment seriously compromised. At other times, our allegiance lies with the two hapless people seeking a compromise on behalf of a business. Nobody is entirely good or bad. After all, evil does not exist.

Or perhaps it does. During a video call with the self-entitled and unscrupulous business owner (he does have the time to show up in person even for his own employees), Takahashi and Mayuzumi become increasingly aware that the prospect of compromise is remote. The locals are increasingly furious, while the elusive boss is counting on very unethical tactics (such as handing out alcoholic gifts, pretending to listen, and taking on board only the least crucial requests) in order to convince the locals. Mayuzumi notes “these people are not stupid”. At times, it seems she is almost prepared to give up her job in the name of dignity, and Takahashi too displays clear signs of humanity. The man on the video is less willing to budge. It is corporate interests that must prevail. There is a looming subsidy deadline that they must meet by hook and by crook. The devil cannot wait.

The final part of the movie is far more cryptic. Takahashi and Mayuzumi assume an unexpected role, while a missing person turns everyone’s plans into disarray. The ambiguous, punch-in-face type of ending provides more questions than answers. It neither confirms nor challenges the assertion proposed in the film title. Poor or rich, urban or rural, young or old, human beings are prepared to take matters into their hands and resort to very extreme solutions should the circumstances mandate it. Their motivations are often foggy and questionable. Which doesn’t necessarily mean they are evil. They are just fallible.

Evil Does Not Exist premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival. Also showing at the 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam. It is in UK cinemas on Friday, April 5th.

Actor gets behind the camera!

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The transition from being in front of the cameras to behind is not always an easy one. Trying to cover both roles, while acting and directing must be even more of a challenge. But Australia’s most popular and enduring export Russell Crowe has proved he can do it. He has followed up on the modest success of his directorial debut with a much harder challenge where he had to rewrite the entire screenplay and meet some incredibly tight deadlines.

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A brief directorial history

The bearded and usually beaming face of Russell Crowe is one that we mostly associate with his high-profile starring roles over the past couple of decades. These include Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000), Prizefighter (Daniel Graham 2022) and A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard, 2002)to name but three. Prior to that, he underwent the standard rite of passage for any Australian actor – a stint on Neighbours, where he briefly played ex-convict Kenny Larkin in 1987.

If acting in Neighbours is the natural Australian precursor to big screen fame, then a stint in the Director’s chair is the natural next step. It’s a path already trodden by Hollywood stars like Clint Eastwood, George Clooney, Rob Reiner and dozens of others. Crowe made his directorial debut in 2014 with The Water Diviner, a gem of a movie about a father who seeks the truth about what happened to his sons on the battlefields of Gallipoli. The movie was well received by those who noticed it and deserves more attention.

With its strong anti-war message, Crowe’s first movie in the Director’s chair was obviously of personal importance. The second was all about business and would test him in unexpected ways.

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As Australian as a night at the casino

The Water Diviner obviously touched a lot of Australians personally. Gallipoli cost more than 26,000 Australian casualties at a time when the population stood at less than five million, so few families were unaffected. For his second movie, Crowe focused on a lighter topic, but in its own way, one that is just as important to shaping Australian culture.

Australians spend more on gambling than any other nationality, and while Crowe was working on Poker Face in 2021, the closure of casinos across Australia was forcing thousands of Australians online, checking out Gamble Online Australia’s pokies reviews to get their own slice of casino action. A movie about a night of gambling in the Sydney suburbs could not have been better timed – but it almost didn’t happen at all.

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Impossible deadlines and a rewritten screenplay

When Poker Face premiered in Sydney in 2022, Crowe told reporters how the whole project had almost collapsed a little more than a year earlier. Crowe was offered the Director’s job and starring role, but on the condition that production must be underway within five weeks. He said: “you’d normally have 12 or 18 months” before starting production.

Then he looked at the screenplay and saw another problem. Filming in Sydney but setting the movie in Los Angeles would not work. For one thing, the two cities look quite different. For another, the sun would be rising over the ocean instead of setting.

Crowe therefore insisted on substantially rewriting the screenplay to set the movie in Sydney. He also used mostly Australian actors. This latter contingency proved to be a master stroke – remember, all this was happening in 2021 when the world in general was mostly shut down and Australia in particular had its borders closed.

Still, production, already on the tightest of timescales, had inevitable delays when circumstances forced breaks in filming. There was also one of the biggest natural disasters in Australia’s history causing havoc at the same time.

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Rising victorious through adversity

Crowe himself admits that he had moments of doubt and wondered if Poker Face was not meant to be. But he pressed on and took pride in keeping 288 crew members employed during one of the industry’s darkest periods.

This is why Crowe sees Poker Face as his crowning achievement to date. Sure, the reviews might have been mediocre, but they seldom tell the full story.

Pure Unknown (Sconosciuti Puri)

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Dr. Cristina Cattaneo has a difficult job, that of identifying the nameless cadavers found in Milan, many of whom have no belongings, no marks, and are in an unrecognisable state of decay. The vast majority of these cadavers, which Cattaneo labels ‘pure unknown’, belong to migrants and refugees, often dead before they reach the shores of Italy.

Pure Unknown documents Cattaneo’s attempts to identify the growing number of migrant corpses showing up in Milan and further afield, and what makes it so compelling is not just the social urgency of its topic, but the clear interest it takes in Cattaneo’s job. Much of the documentary is dedicated simply to showing the audience how one might go about identifying a corpse with few clues, and the results are utterly gripping. Where appearance cannot be used, things such as hairlines, teeth, pacemakers, and fingerprints must be relied upon. Occasionally, these cadavers might be found with water-damaged photos or mobile phones broken beyond repair. Seeing how Cattaneo pieces together these clues to identify the bodies that find their way into her laboratory is fascinating, but knowing the details of her work also helps us to understand why so many bodies remain unidentified.

The problem goes far beyond a lack of identifying information. As we watch Cattaneo contact institution after institution it becomes clear that the information is often out there, but it is not being shared. To watch Cattaneo at work is to watch the international community continually pass the buck in terms of responsibility for these corpses. Every day her inbox is filled with funding rejections and refusals to share information. As Cattaneo explains, “money doesn’t grow on trees, especially for these people.” Pure Uknown follows her as she attempts to change this state of affairs and push the EU to take responsibility for the identification of bodies and mandate the sharing of information across borders. It should be a no-brainer, but nothing to date has changed.

Interspersed amongst all of Cattaneo’s meetings, emails, and lab work is news footage documenting different areas of the migrant crisis. Italians interviewed express casually racist, anti-immigration views and complain about having to take in refugees. On the other end of the spectrum, the family members of missing migrants send out pleas for information about their loved ones, some of whom have inevitably ended up among the pure unknown. The documentary does not need to tell us what to take away from this. Merely by situating this footage beside Cattaneo’s work, our responsibility to migrants and refugees both living and dead is made evident.

In a particularly moving portion of Pure Unknown, we are introduced to an Albanian woman whose sister, Mbaresa, went missing over 20 years earlier in 1995. New advances in forensics have allowed Cattaneo to identify Mbaresa after all these years and to finally bring closure to her family. The reaction of Mbaresa’s sister is incredibly affecting, so much so that it almost feels wrong to be privy to it. It certainly drives the point home, though: no matter how long ago a family member went missing, those ties are never severed and moving on is impossible without closure. Knowing how many bodies come through Cattaneo’s lab, it is sobering to think how many families are trapped in this state of limbo, not knowing whether to hope or grieve.

Thisis a slow, understated documentary that is nevertheless very effective. The heartbreak and loss that thousands of families go through, the indignity that so many vulnerable people suffer in death – how much of it could be avoided if the international community would simply take some responsibility? It’s a deeply frustrating watch because of how easily some of these problems could be solved, but it leaves room for optimism too. These problems can be solved, and the more people aware of what’s happening, the more likely a solution becomes.

Pure Unknown shows at the Italian Doc Season at Bertha DocHouse on January 27th and 28th.

Bruce LaBruce’s first British film in 25 years is selected by the Berlinale

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I am delighted to announce that The Visitor has been selected for the Berlinale, Panorama section. I produced and co-wrote the movie (with my dear friend Alex Babboni). I was also scouting manager, casting director and 1st AD. In other words, a movie to which I devoted my heart and soul.

The consistently inventive and subversive Bruce La Bruce directed/wrote it. And a/political are the production company behind it.

The Visitor is a reimagining of Pasolini’s Theorem (1968), almost entirely set in London. A hyperpolitical and provocative fantasy drama, which uses real sex as a weapon for liberation (as Bruce does in most of his films). Refugees, aliens, Winston Churchill, Katie Hopkins, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jeremy Corbyn – they are all in the story in one way or another.

This project started with a photoshoot and an interview with Bruce for Doesn’t Exist Magazine in 2022, in Antwerp. It then snowballed into something much bigger as Alex (the Magazine publisher) and I introduced Bruce to a/political, a visceral arts organisation with which I share progressive values and a transgressive world vision. A big thank you to Bruce, Alex and Becky for working as a team and making this happen.

The date of the premiere will be announced on February 6th. Hope to see as many of you as possible in Berlin!

Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer

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Werner Herzog justifies his artistic restlessness: “films are like dreams, and you must articulate them”. His impetus to create remains enviable and inspiring. The octogenarian helmer boasts directing three films in just one calendar year, and not allowing the pandemic to stop him. Perhaps he wants to defy Peter Greenaway’s controversial claim that no filmmaker has ever made anything relevant past the age of 80. Fellow German documentarian Thomas von Steinaecker sets out to celebrate a director with a career spanning more than a half a century, thereby revealing the milestones, the hearts won on both sides of the Atlantic, and also a couple of dirty secrets.

Narrated more or less chronologically, Radical Dreamer starts in the Bavarian mountain town of Sachring, where Herzog grew up with his family after moving away from a war-torn Munich, where he was born. He has no recollections of his father, which he perceives as an asset (perhaps he enjoyed performing the role of the alpha male from a very young age?). He has very fond memories of his mother, who wished she could feed her children her own flesh. It was a time of duress: no food, no water and no sanitation. Present-day Herzog casually visits the house where he grew up without displaying any strong reaction and sentiment. He is a pragmatic, dispassionate and yet strangely captivating man. Captivating, hypnotic and terrifying are also fitting attributes. He confesses that many people who meet him just don’t know how to react to the mythical and often contradictory qualities that have been bestowed upon him.

He also visits the location of Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) for the first time since he finished the film. He recognises the walls and the sound of the rustling leaves. The visit is blended with clips from the actual film. We also see extracts from Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Cobra Verde (1987) – some of his most famous collaborations with Klaus Kinski. The director and the actor had a very tumultuous relationship, with Kinski often resorting to physical violence and creating a toxic work atmosphere. The blame lies entirely with the late actor, with Herzog’s behaviour being spared. There is a strong focus on Fitzcarraldo, perhaps Herzog’s most famous film. American actor Carl Weathers celebrates that Herzog succeeded to move a literal ship up a literal mountain. Other talking heads interviewees corroborate the view that Herzog’s madness is a feat. The film does not acknowledge that countless indigenous people (some speculate as many as 30) died in the making of Fitzcarraldo, partly thanks for Herzog’s recklessness.

One of the movie’s highlights are images of Mick Jagger in Fitzcarraldo, before he jumped off the ship (probably upon realising the risks associated with the role). Herzog explains that the famous singer has a magnetic personality and latent dramatic talent that was never fully explored. Another significant revelation made in this documentary is the support that Herzog receive from French-German film critic Lotte Eisner, who thought that Herzog was the rightful heir to the expressionists like Murnau and Lang (pretty much all German films made in the decades in between were painfully boring). Strangely, the film fails to note that Nosferatu (1979) was the remake of a Murnau movie by the same name. There is a short clip of the vampire movie, but no contextualisation. On the other hand, Radical Dreamer offers a some insight into the New German Cinema, with clips from a couple of films from Alexander Kluge. Wim Wenders and Volker Schlöndorff provide testimonials.

The final third of the movie takes place mostly in the United States, where Herzog found a loyal following in the past two decades, particularly as he became increasingly recognised as a documentarist. The tragic Grizzly Man (2005) gets dissected, and Herzog’s obsession with death becomes a common recurrence in his work. There is almost glee in his voice as he describes how a penguin is walking to his death in Encounters at the End of the World (2007). Americans found a certain gentleness in the grotesquerie, ultimately exoticising the deep-voiced German filmmaker. Perhaps Herzog offered Americans some sort of conciliation with a country they learned to abhor.

Radical Dreamer had remarkable access into the life of Herzog. Not only is the director interviewed, but also virtually every member of his direct family (brother, two wives, etc), and a long string of filmmakers, actors and singers from both sides of the Atlantic: Nicole Kidman, Christian Bale, Chloe Zhao, Joshua Oppenheimer and Patti Smith (in addition to the people in the paragraphs above). They have nothing but unequivocal praise about the director. This is a deeply romanticised and formulaic documentary about a fascinating and inspirational filmmaker. It is neither balanced nor radical. It does not leave any room for debate and reflection about the ethics behind Herzog’s filmmaking techniques. In other words, an enjoyable watch however barely audacious. How not very Herzogian!!!

Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer is in cinemas on Friday, January 19th. On BFI Player and Blu-ray on February 19th.

Saltburn

Posted on by victorfraga

In the year of 2006, Oxford students shun the awkward and shy University of Oxford student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) because of his perceived lack of upper-class credentials and manners. Popular student and heartthrob Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) is moved by the underdog, particularly after learning about his father’s history of drug abuse, and his broken upbringing. So he takes the apparently vulnerable boy under his wing, thus devoting his full care and attention. That raises a few eyebrows, with a fellow student warning Felix: “he buys his clothes from Oxfam”. But Felix is determined to make Oliver feel at home. He invites him to his family’s country house, called Saltburn, where he becomes fully immersed in the lavish, exotic, topsy-turvy world of the British upper class.

At Saltburn, Oliver meets Felix’s eccentric family: his stiff upper-lip father Sir James (Richard E. Grant), his sexy and extravagant mother Lady Elspeth (Rosamund Pike) and his equally beautiful and sexually liberated sister (Alison Oliver). Elspeth’s friend Pamela (Carey Mulligan) and Felix’s American cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe) are also an integral part of the seemingly endless celebrations. It is summer, and gorgeous weather prevails: “this is probably the hottest day of my life”, begrudges an elegantly-clad Elspeth, seemingly unaware that her heavy attire is contributing to the heat sensation.

Much like in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Theorem (1968), the visitor wins over the heart of every member of the family. There is a lingering sexual tension. Audiences keep wondering whether this could morph into full-on seduction, as in the Italian film. At times, it seems that it is Oliver’s vulnerability that appeals to the family. Whatever the reason, they are all equally fascinated by the young man. The similarities with the 1960s’ classic do not stop here. They come full circle as Oliver’s real intentions begin to surface. Our protagonist isn’t as fragile and brittle as his nerdish, Mad-magazine face may suggest at first.

Sumptuous and elaborate parties ensue. Sir James wishes to throw a birthday celebration for Oliver with 100 or 200 guests (despite the fact that Oliver has no apparent real friends). Think of a very vanilla Salo, or the 100 Days of Sodom (Pasolini, 1975) with a very British taste. The wealth is vulgar and grotesque, the meals look repulsively garish (perhaps indeed a little faecal), the upper class manners are so heavily affected that the characters feel barely human. The sexuality is ardent and yet unrealised. Everyone looks hungry, raunchy and deeply unhappy. A disorderly order, a fragile equilibrium that Oliver is more than keen to challenge. Even if it all ends in tears. Or blood.

Oliver initiates a very tense sexual encounter with Farleigh, who refuses to abide by the rules that the outsider created. So Oliver convinces the family to evict the only person who has not fallen into his web of lies. This is when it all begins to take a turn for the worse. At one point, Oliver’s deceitful tactics nearly collapse. Felix finds out where his parents live and takes Oliver on a much undesired trip back home, where he finds out that his family are a rather standard middle-class, and there is not a sign of drug use and deeply dysfunctional behaviour. But Oliver manipulation techniques are very advanced. He begs Felix not to share the news with the rest of the family, sparing them the disappointment and confrontation. Our strangely seductive protagonist is prepared to take very extreme measures in order to retain control over every single one of te different members of the bizarre family.

This is a technically accomplished movie, with the finest top-drawer performances, impeccable production design and elegant cinematography, on a par with the British ostentatiousness it sets out to portray. The imagery is plush, the frame ratio is unusually near-square, providing the film with a distinctive cinema experience, a bizarre fantasy drama where the monsters are the lewd and manipulative human beings. On the other hand, Saltburn lacks a clear message. We never know whether it sets out to criticise or to celebrate upper-class values. While Felix’s family are indeed filthy rich and annoyingly clueless, they are the victims, and therefore our allegiance does at least partly lie with them. There is no pleasure in watching the rich eat. But there is no pleasure in eating the rich, either. Ultimately, Fennel is not the hyperpolitical, transgressive Pasolini. While visually enrapturing, Saltburn is not particularly sexy and audacious, either, and the queer element is hardly innovative. All the sexual tension gets diluted in an overambitious narrative, which culminates in a film lasting 127 interminable minutes. Despite taking place in the sultry summer repleted with salacious characters, not for a minute did the hit of the season leave me feeling hot and horny.

Saltburn is in cinemas on Friday, November 17th.