Tag: Abel Ferrara

Zeros and Ones

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

The Eternal City is often portrayed as joyous place, filled with life, excitement, beautiful people and incredible scenery. But when walking very late at night, it can often feel rather malevolent and mysterious, filled with long-hidden secrets. The Rome of Zeros and Ones is a pandemic-infused noir suffused with dark shadows, the endless symbols of Christianity repurposed for much darker purposes.

Into this reality comes American military officer JJ (Ethan Hawke): equipped with a face-mask, he looks like he has never smiled in his life. He is on a mission to seemingly save the world from an unknown threat. He invokes Jesus through voiceover more than once, boldly stating that he was “just another soldier.”

Any of the genuine Christian elements such as loving your neighbor, turning the other cheek and self-sacrifice seem omitted here: this is a cold and lonely world, exacerbated by the worst pandemic in a hundred years. It’s difficult to say exactly what he is fighting, only that he manoeuvres an almost empty world, solely populated by Russian spies, Asian drug dealers and American spooks. His brother (also played by Ethan Hawke) has been detained, accused of promoting revolutionary ideals across the country. What those ideas are, we never quite know, as the film prefers to shroud its central mystery in an ambivalent, shadow-heavy tone.

Ferrara works hand-in-hand with cinematographer Sean Price Williams, one of the best cameramen in the business, as evidenced through his work with the Safdies and Alex Ross Perry. Williams shoots Rome almost entirely at night, making it seem as filled with betrayals and secrets as The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949). This is complemented by grainy, over-exposed digital footage, ramping up the paranoia with a sense of constant surveillance. The music by Joe Delia then expands the scope where the evidently small budget can’t, featuring reverb-heavy military drums and Glenn Branca-like guitars. The result is an incredibly moody spy thriller so baked in cynicism that it makes John Le Carre look like Frederick Forsyth.

The setting make absolute sense and is integral to the film’s mood. Italy was the ground zero for coronavirus in Europe, the haunting images emerging from the country a terrifying prelude to what would soon devour the continent. Nonetheless, while it is definitely a more interesting corona-influenced film than the comedies and dramas I have seen so far, finding a way to wrap it into a political thriller, Zeros and Ones preference for atmosphere over coherence can make it hard to find a grip.

Ferrera is a great experimental filmmaker, making his relative misfires still worth exploring and digging into. But while something such as Siberia (2019) could work brilliantly as an exploration of the mind and soul despite having little to no plot, Zeros and Ones’ attempt at reconfiguring a genre usually obsessed with plot makes it harder to love. No one could come out of that film knowing what actually happened, but certain images — like the saints of the Vatican shot like members of a secret cult, or Ethan Hawke running down a deserted, barely-illuminated alleyway or yet another Ferrara sex scene between JJ and a mysterious woman — will stick with me, creating an allegory for a world that has been plunged into a new dark age.

Zeros and Ones played in Concorso internazionale at Locarno Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. On all major VoD platforms on Monday, March 21st (2022).

Our dirty questions to Abel Ferrara

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Abel Ferrara is back in Locarno, in high spirits and ready to talk about his latest work, Zeros and Ones, shot last year as Rome was under strict lockdown. Just before the interview at the industry lunch (I somehow wrangled an invite for), the three directors of Juju Stories take pictures with him and call him the “King of New York”, a reference to his iconic 1990 film. Cutting a distinctive figure as he walks across the Piazza Grande and shakes hands with programmers and critics, the veteran figure has returned to Lago Maggiore ready to wax lyrical about his latest work — a genre-ish spy thriller that’s heavy on mood and very light on plot. We talked about his productivity during the pandemic, shooting in his local neighbourhood in Rome and wanting to work for as long as he can.

Redmond Bacon – So the film is set during the pandemic. How did it affect your work?

Abel Ferrara – I was fortunate that I was editing a movie. I was able to edit in the beginning when no one knew what was going on. I’m scared like anyone else. I was 69 (70 years old now) and, you know, it’s two different diseases: if you’re 25 it’s a different disease to my age. I spent a lot of my life trying to kill myself. I don’t want to die now. For us, it was just the opposite, because the editors had nothing to do but edit: there’s no going to bars or taking the wife to dinner. At a certain point, I just really wanted to shoot and then this idea that I had before the pandemic started to come into focus and to work.

RB – You have Americans and Russians in a city under occupation. Throw in French and English and you could have The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)…

AF – Yeah, like the French movies under occupation. Who’s that director of those beautiful movies?

Abel Ferrara

RB – Jean-Pierre Melville?

AF – Yeah. There’s genre aspects of films like Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) too. Ethan’s character himself is one of the lone American solider smoking a cigarette… even the uniform he had is like, they don’t wear that. The uniform that our guys are wearing is a stylised memory.

RB – You seem to prioritise atmosphere a lot more than plot. Is creating a vibe more important than making it clear-cut?

AF – There’s nothing clear cut! That’s the point of the movie. Who’s who and what’s what? What’s everybody’s agenda? Who’s your enemy and who’s your friend? I mean this is real life. You don’t know what side anybody’s on because everybody’s changing. The idea of espionage creates counter espionage, so once you’re in that world of intelligence, it’s by its nature, a lot: you’re accepting that no one is who they are.

Unless you’re a soldier. To be out of uniform, that’s a crime punishable by death. Because if you’ve got a green uniform and I’ve got the other uniform, I know who you are, you know who I am, and we know the rules of engagement. Once you start not wearing a uniform, now comes the great world of what we’re talking about: a world of espionage, William Gibson and Melville.

Zeros and Ones

RB – The Vatican comes off as quite a mysterious and malevolent place, especially with that shot of the saints that ring around St Peter’s Square. Do you feel cynical about Catholic Church and its role in modern society?

AF – I’m not cynical about any place that is preaching spirituality versus consumerism. A: I’m a Buddhist; B, I’m about the word of Jesus Christ. This religion is about a guy who had nothing, who gave everything away, who lived on the street, who didn’t even have shoes. That’s a far cry from what I’m looking at at the back. By the back there’s a political entity. I’m not cynical, I’m just looking at what I’m looking at.

RB – The cinematography is very striking, capturing Rome in the dark. What was it like working with Sean Price Williams, who has worked with the Safdies and Alex Ross Perry, and has such a distinctive style?

AF – He worked with us when he was a kid. I’ve known him since he was young. We live and work in New York together. He was on the crew of Chelsea on the Rocks (2008), we shot The Projectionist (2019) together, we did Sporting Life (2020). He brings the goods.

RB – The film is shot all at night in a deserted city. What was the schedule like?

AF – We didn’t have to wait. We were lucky it was a pandemic. Everything was locked down at 9pm. We used the pandemic as an advantage.

RB – Rome is usually filled with life and vigour, at least in the films I’ve seen. Did you have any references for making it more noirish?

AF – I live in the neighbourhood. I did the documentary Piazza Vittorio (2017). I’ve been living here for seven years, so it’s my hood. Like when I shot in New York, I shot in my neighbourhood.

RB – A lot of films have come out about the coronavirus. And yours is one of the more interesting because it shows just how the world has been thrust into darkness and despair. Would you say it’s been a terrible time for humanity?

Zeros and Ones

AF – All these people dead! I mean, is it terrible? Fuck yeah. Is it true, is it real, do we have to deal with it? Yeah. Is global warming cool? No. The same thing happened one hundred years ago. Nobody’s sitting there nostalgic for 1919. But it is what it is. Your concept of thinking the world is just this place that’s going to be this place that’s going to be here forever and everything going to be the way it is is a fucking fallacy. You’re delusional. Anything can happen at any minute and you’ve got to deal with it. It’s life on life’s term bro. So, is it going to throw you into a deep dark depression? I’m not going to let it. Unless I get it, then I’m either gonna die or get over it.

RB – Does it make you want to create more as an artist?

AF – We’re working. It’s neither here nor there. We’re doing our thing. At this point of my life I still believe in movies. I want to make movies. And I still have the ability to: I can walk, I can talk. I don’t know about thinking straight, but just as long as I can point. At this point of my life I still believe in movies.

RB – What about for streamers such as Netflix?

AF – We’re final cut directors so as long as we have control of the financing, of the budget, of the final cut, we’re not sweating where the money’s coming from.

RB – What are you working on next?

AF – A film about Padre Pio, with Shia LaBeouf. I’m dealing with the period of 1920. There was a massacre in San Giovanni Rotondo. He got the stigmata at the same time, so it was just an incredible moment.

Zeros and Ones premiered at Locarno Festival on Thursday 12th August as part of the Concorso Internazionale.

Picture at the top by Redmond Bacon.

Sportin’ Life

Posted on by victorfraga

Labelling theory holds that behaviour of people is influenced by the descriptions given to them. With Sportin’ Life it is clear that Abel Ferrara has been described as an auteur enough times that he believes his own hype. Following a long and storied career in fictional features, he documents his recent trip to compete in the Berlin International Film Festival with 2020’s Willem Dafoe vehicle Siberia. To accompany the experience, some gigs have been booked for his blues band – all grist for the mill of Ferrara’s ambition to craft a “documentary about the act of making a documentary”. This knowingly ‘meta’ ambition is on smug display. Suddenly global disaster strikes and the ubiquity of lockdown living insists that that the pandemic, too, is covered. The result is a bloated hodgepodge of themes that never quite cohere and the experience outstays its welcome in even the brief 63 minute runtime.

The outcome is an equal parts band-on-tour rockumentary, family postcard, behind-the-scenes look at a Film Festival, career retrospective, quarantine diary, overview of the coronavirus situation and American talk show Inside the Actors Studio with Willem Dafoe. An overbearance of religious imagery is the kitchen sink (try playing count the crucifixes). These elements blur together original footage shot from too many angles with snapshots of media coverage from both the Festival and the pandemic. It’s all powered along by music from the concert recordings of both original blues tracks but the finished product is a purposefully formless experience; a “chaotic rhythm”, in Ferrara’s own words. It is supposed to be disorientating and begins effectively but quickly degrades into a non-narrative slog. Ambition should always be lauded but greater restraint would have produced something more coherent here.

Points are scored for the sound mixing and the enveloping bass notes that help carry the audience through the screen and into the music venues. Dafoe is always magnetic on screen and the moments that are allowed to breathe in his presence are a pleasure. Family life is also on show, with sweet moments at home and on the road with wife Cristina Chiriac and reliably cute daughter Anna. However, any interesting threads are soon undercut by pointless close-ups of artworks or grainy footage of a patient overflow in hospital corridors, for example. These range from high-resolution digital footage to the blurriest of cameraphone shots and the different textures jar. The coffin is finally nailed by Ferrera’s masturbatory decision to include snippets from his oeuvre, chosen to showcase painfully pseudo-philosophical digressions on the nature of man.

Footage from the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent police murders of civilians in the US bring a close to proceedings. There is no effort whatsoever to integrate it with the whole and this serves as a synecdochical example of the film in general. Why tack this on at the end? Just because he could, thinking that he should.

Sportin’ Life has just premiered at the San Sebastian Film Festival in the Festival Surprise slot:

Siberia

Posted on by victorfraga

There is no storyline, no contextualisation and no chronology. This Italian/German/Mexican co-production follows the footsteps and the imagination of a man (Ferrara’s regular collaborator Willem Dafoe, often described as the director’s “acting ego”) who meanders through various continents and episodes of his life, reconnecting with his late parents, past lovers and all types of strangers. And even with his own reflection in the water. There’s a pregnant Russian woman, and a blonde one that morphs into an oriental female. People often speak languages (Russian, Japanese) that our protagonist doesn’t understand, and there are no subtitles. Don’t try to make much sense of it. The distancing is intentional. These fragments are random and diverse, and they are not intended to fit in together neatly. This is a metaphysical and sensory experience, not a prosaic one.

The film, which was penned by Ferrara and Christ Zois, begins in a cold and barren land, presumably the titular part of Russia. It then travels to deserts, woods and dense forests. The cinematography is quiet and meditative. The images of the snowy mountains are particularly impressive. DOP Stefano Falivene films non-conventional bodies from non-conventional angles. This includes Dafoe’s scrawny and bony figure, captured in good Ergon Schiele style. The Wisconsin actor is very effective at conveying a sense of reflection and introspection. I imagine that the New York director, more used to gritty urban environments, found inspiration in Tarkovsky’s photography for his latest movie. Naturally, his cinematographic skills are far inferior to the late Russian filmmaker.

The problem with Siberia is that it focuses on one individual character without allowing for character development. As a results, the images seem gratuitous. Ferrara fails in his lyricism, This is not Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975), a film devoid of storyline and chronology, yet bursting with exuberant and fathomable symbols. Ferrara’s latest feature film has a lot of blood, of dogs, of disabled people, and even a talking fish. But these signifiers never gel together. I have no idea why the film is called Siberia and quite frankly very little desire to find out. It’s a movie intoxicated with idiosyncrasy, to the point of alienation.

Siberia received a frosty reception at the Berlinale, when this piece was originally written. Many people laughed out loud throughout the film, which is intended to be a meditative experience, not a comedy. Plus people walked out of the cinema in droves. It premieres in the UK in October as part of the BFI London Film Festival.