TIFF Review: Public Enemy Number One (part 1)

There are so few bonafide movie stars these days. These are actors that can light up the screen in such a way that even in a highly stylized and kinetic motion picture about an infamous personality, all eyes are riveted on the curve of the mouth or the lift of a brow of the player: Insouciance is celebrated. Vincent Cassel is certainly one of those actors. Whether he is hamming it up in the all star Ocean’s movies (or the goofy Sheitan) or turning into a monster in Irreversible or La Haine. Few stars of Cassel‘s caliber can go from the charm and sex appeal of Warren Beatty to the pure motherfucker-ness Charles Bronson to full on nutter of Jack Nicholson. And director Jean-François Richet allows for all of the above in Public Enemy Number One (Part One). While we get little real insight into one of Frances most notorious criminals, Jacques Mesrine, what we do get is one of the most snappy crime thrillers in quite some time. The stylish presentation and driving narrative do not let up. The film asks you to root, cheer, and laugh for a truly despicable human being, and with its stars charm and menace at the helm, you might just find yourself doing so. Yes, in a the strangest of ways this is a good thing.

North American’s likely know Jean-François Richet from his remake of John Carpenter’s Assault in Precinct 13, but that somewhat forgettable film cannot adequately prepare for the mastery on display in the construction of Public Enemy Number One. Visually echoing the styles of Michael Mann and Brian DePalma, Richet makes the most of split screens, changing film stocks, Ken Burns effects, extreme close-ups and when necessary, precise, static long shots. The opening credits of the film set the tone in the form of multiple versions of Vincent Cassel and Ludivine Sagnier on screen, simultaneous yet different angles and slightly off in timing via a masterful use of split screen. This is the stuff perfect introduction on what the film is going to be, slick glossy and commercial, yet not at the expense of edgy filmmaking. There is something going on: a bomb, a bank heist, the feel is familiar, the cinematic grammar an obvious telltale. But things are cranked up a bit further than your run-of-the-mill thriller. It feels like the film is taking the first step crossing a busy and wide street, knowing that only centimeters away is fast moving death on wheels. That feeling never really goes away over the course of the film, making the 2 hour run time feel like mere minutes. The viewer is asked to watch some pretty grisly stuff, not the least of it being a bit of tense marital gun fellatio. The first part of the film which resembles a good old fashioned gangster yarn in the vein of Scarface of The Godfather, to the second half which fuses a terrorism biopic with Bonnie and Clyde. The two fuse together neatly while chronicling the first dozen years of the stranger personal and professional life of Jacques Mesrine from his time doing hoodlum stuff on the streets of Paris in the 1950s to the full blown crime spree in Quebec in the 1960s which culminates in a full frontal prison assault of all things. As a Canadian, it was curious to get the French take on the Canadian prison system, if the film does nothing else, it is a good adviser against committing felonies in Montreal. The opening credits of the film have a disclaimer that belongs in front of every biopic ever made. Something along the lines that this film isn’t truth, or history, but a artistic and commercial point of view. Truth is in the eye of the filmmakers. Not since The Untouchables has this type of filmmaking been realized so bloody well. Excising much of the stories intimate drama or Oscar-bait histrionics, and relying on the magnetism of Vincent Cassel’s charisma to grab the audience in between bullets, chases and macho posturing, Public Enemy Number One is a bloody shiv, broken off at the handle and shoved in hard by a smiling, crazy, and charming superstar in his prime. Bring on Part Two please.

TIFF Review: Jerichow

Coming into Christian Petzold’s rural neo-noir, it might be helpful to have an understanding of the films that he is aiming to re-create. Like his previous film, Yella, which played with the conventions of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge in the context of modern Germany, Jerichow (presumably named after the town where the film is set) teases audience expectations with their own knowledge of the rich history of noir cinema. Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice even The Last Seduction are bound to guide and confound where the plot is (or should) be going. That Petzold lingers, drops red herrings and shifts audience loyalty between the three characters is one of the joys of the piece. While in the end it comes across a bit more like precise clock work than a living, breathing simulacrum is a bit frustrating however.

Thomas, recently discharged (dishonorably) from the German army is relieved of his discharge funds from his alienated friends, to whom he owes a large sum of money. Broke, with the financial means of renovating the decrepit family home completely evaporated (along with his friends), he is only barely getting by with unemployment office posted jobs. Things take a decided turn when he encounters Ali, a well off owner of a series of falafel huts, with a penchant for drinking and driving. After finding Ali and his Range Rover in the Elbe River, he lies to the police about who was driving. This leads to Thomas getting gainful employment as a driver for Ali as he collects from all his shops. Ali, a wealthy self made Turkish immigrant, doesn’t trust anyone, and Thomas physical presence comes in handy for keeping his shifty franchisees in line. Thomas quickly becomes close to both Ali and his gorgeous German wife, played exquisitely by the über talented Nina Hoss (one of the best (and beautiful) actresses currently working in German cinema). See where the film is going? Perhaps you do. Maybe not.

The trio of performances are pitch perfect insofar as they are both skin deep and subtly vague. Thomas (played by the flexible Benno Fürmann) is a blank slate, smart enough, and watching, he still has some elements of the classic patsy, his posture hints at cockiness although it may just be aloofness or stoicism. Hoss is cool, sexy, desperate and perhaps not as bright as she lets on. Ali (Himli Sözer) is a fireball of suspicion, arrogance, calculation and yet somehow, his immigrant/outsider status offers an interesting form of sympathy. The film as the tiniest morsel to say about how easily money (or lust) compromises trust an where exactly the line between temptation and entrapment lies. But mainly the film lets the actors bump and grind along, against the varied backgrounds of the town shops, verdant countryside and empty beaches. The pacing and construction create comforting notion (perhaps a smugness) of where the film is headed before yielding a twist that is not a twist. In the end, it is a fun and interesting ride, but less revolutionary or re-inventing than it is simply a flippant riff on the genre.

TIFF Review: Pontypool

Now that Don LaFontaine is narrating trailers for the big guy in heaven, I would like to nominate actor Stephen McHattie as the logical successor to the phrase, “In a World, where…” Bruce McDonald’s latest film takes the omnipresent zombie subgenre and turns it on its ear (literally). Yes, ladies and gents, this is the first ‘talk radio’ zombie picture, a film in which so little is actually shown on screen, the viewer is left questioning (for much of the films runtime) whether or not the attacks are even real. Violence and intestine pulling gore are replaced with a plethora of science fiction and social ideas which are very much to the pictures benefit. Like Vincenzo Natali’s single room sci-fi/horror picture Cube, keeping the visuals to a minimum lets the minds eye soar with the strange questions and possibilities raised here. What communication mechanisms case raving mobs to spontaneously form? What is the difference between hearing and understanding? Is language itself a virus? Can talk radio save the world or is it really the pestilence? That the titular Pontypool (besides being a small Ontario town, is itself an interesting linguistic confection) wears its brains on its sleeve, in no way makes it less of a thriller, or for that matter, a great actor showcase (McHattie tears up the screen). Bruce McDonald and screenwriter Tony Burgess surprisingly inject a lot of playfulness along the way. As genre flicks go, Pontypool is the full package deal.
Morning radio personality Grant Mazzy is having a bad month. His career from Toronto radio personality has been diminished to broadcasting small town radio from the basement of a church; a task he makes bearable by thinly veiled sarcasm and small town mockery. His producer wants him to talk about school closings and traffic hick-ups. He wants drama a controversy. With a three person crew running Pontypool’s “The Beacon,” there is already a fair bit of tension in the room. The level rises significantly when reports start coming in of some sort of mob attacks. The traffic reporter confirms that there is indeed a mob attacking the local psychiatrists office, and there is much blood and murder on the scene. Not your average day in Pontypool. While Grant, more than a bit of an egotist, at first thinks the locals are playing a practical joke, when calls from the BBC start coming in asking for details (they think it is a French separatist terrorist attack), he begins to believe that he is nearly at ground zero of a major story. Determined to keep broadcasting even when the infected come up to the front door, The Beacon is pretty much the radio broadcast that the characters in every other zombie flick tune into for a little it of exposition. But what if the language itself is spreading the disease?

When the camera pans across a random desk in The Beacon’s recording studio, where a copy of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is prominently displayed, that is the clincher. The film is going to bounce a few ideas regarding science and philosophy of communication amongst the zombie apocalypse. A lot of the headier stuff comes from a certain psychiatrist who pops in and out of the radio station, Guerrilla style, not unlike Robert DeNiro in Brazil. Some may see this as a bit of a handicap to the film, but things are as much about babble (note the mangled ‘rural Ontario’ French) as they are about communication. The mumbled pontifications (pontifications? Pontypool?) of Dr. Mendez, probably a fan of the The Leiden School, who believes that languages are a form of benign parasite in the brain (this being a horror picture, what if they weren’t so benign). Seeing someone start to lose their ability to speak, in the form of a babbling breakdown, is as creepy as losing sight, hearing or going numb, and this is milked quite effectively here. As the film runs its course, the balance of engaging ideas, chills, thrills and even laughs make this one of the more effective genre-mashing films (and it is Canadian no less) to come along in a while. Highly recommended.

**Note: When this movie winds its way into the cinema, be sure to stay until the end credits for a fun non-sequitur credit cookie. Something which I am nearly sure takes place in the Metaverse, Neil Stephenson’s full-immersion virtual reality world.**

TIFF Review: The Wrestler

The prints of Darren Aronofsky’s new film, The Wrestler, have barely dried (or what is the digital equivalent?) and already it has won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and is on its way, possibly, to the Peoples Choice Award at Toronto. After the emotional and visual epic of The Fountain, the director has scaled the scope of his new film down to about as intimate as one can get (this sentence is amusing in and of itself considering the subject matter is Pro Wrestling). There are essentially three characters in the film, the stylistic tics are kept to a subtle minimum and the actors are simply allowed to perform. At the packed pubic afternoon screening in Toronto, Aronofsky, who was on hand to introduce the film, kept the words to a minimum saying simply all one needs to make a good film is a lens and good performers and that is what he has done here, due largely to a career high from Mickey Rourke. Rourke himself has seen enough trials and tribulations over his acting/boxing career that much of the weathering is quite naturally etched on his face and skin. Fulfilling the promise of his work in the 1980s (Johnny Handsome, Barfly) that was squandered with personal problems and junk-cinema starting with Wild Orchid and throughout the 1990s. While he made a fair bit of a splash covered in make-up and acting against digital backdrops in the testosterone-noir of Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City (and for that matter, shines amongst the equally bombastic Domino), here he is given a role that allows for a gamut of emotions in a rich, patient bit of intimate storytelling. The actor has never shone brighter than here. But The Wrestler is no ‘comeback’ sports story. Rourke’s take on the public and private life of a (fictional) professional wrestler, 20 years past his prime yet still grinding it out in gutter venues, despite the protestation of an aging body, is a warm, generous, and sad portrayal. Likewise, Marissa Tomei, in a rich supporting role, continues to prove that she is one of the most talented actresses working today. Going as the stripper with the heart of gold is about as rote and cliché as one can get, but Tomei realizes her character as a full fleshed role, all the while being mostly naked up on screen. Yes, The Wrestler deserves every bit of praise it is garnering. Those worried that The Fountain (despite its cult audience) may have been a career killer, worry no more.

The Wrestler poses one of the most fundamental questions: what do you do when your entire purpose of being has been stripped away? Will you keep on keeping on even though it is now the mere shadow of past glories even if continuing is painful, potentially humiliating, and likely fatal? What is the cost of comforting over the difficult struggle into unknown territory? The story follows Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson, who, back in the 1980s wrestling boom, was one of the biggest names in the business. Headlining massive stadium shows, Nintendo wrestling games designed on him, and all the fan worship he could handle (note to fans of great opening credit sequences, the information and mood are elegantly set in a scrapbook fashion here). But bad choices and tough breaks (perhaps the nature of the business, chewing up and spitting out the athletes while the money flows to the suits) and the inexorable passage of time has left him living in a hovel of a trailer park (where even still he has trouble making rent), wrestling on the lowest of professional circuits for pennies, and having work a day job stocking shelves during the week. Along the way he has a daughter, one he has neglected over the years (the mother is never mentioned). While he neglects his life, he is actually quite disciplined about his profession, even practicing it at the bottom of the food chain, a day in the life showing him making visits to his steroid and pharmaceutical provider, a trip to the hair dresser for blond highlights, an hour on the tanning bed and a solid gym work out. All this attention to the body, which then gets put through the meat grinder during the bloody matches in the ring where broken glass, razor wire, and other blunt paraphernalia are then used to smash and abuse the same flesh to appease the bloodlust of a hardcore crowd. His evenings are spent in bars and strip clubs where he has an almost-relationship with one of the long-time strippers, Cassidy (aka Pam) her own struggle with age impinging on the practice of her trade, she is old enough to be sent out of the VIP room by a horny bachelor party that is looking for someone younger. Much like The Ram, she seems to be more or less holding up, but her ‘glory days’ are well past her.

After a serious medical issue, the doctors are pretty explicit with him that his wrestling career is over. The Ram’s struggle to adjust to real life is the center of the film. A day job at (of all things) a meat counter, reconnecting with his 20 something daughter. Scenes spent first shopping for a gift for his daughter with Pam and later a pleasant afternoon with said daughter is the stuff of great emotional cinema. But despite being a pretty likable guy (he’s great with the kiddies), Robin Robinson (his real name), who even manages to excel in customer service at the meat counter, there is a lot of baggage that makes the shift to the real world a very difficult one. You can’t help but shed a tear for this guys problems, as the film really doesn’t dwell on Robinson’s ‘asshole’ years. An easy way out? Perhaps, but the rest of the story does speak for itself quite well. Finally a movie that knows the exact right place to end without glad-handling its audience with unnecessary extended endings. The film itself is a denouement to a story of universal resonance.

It was nice to see, like the director is telling a smaller story, that his regular composer, Clint Mansell has scored the film in an equally subdued manner. Most cinema goers are familiar to the point of irritation with his Requiem for a Dream score, which despite being a marvel of modulated assault (much like the film for which it provides the soundtrack) seems to be the muzak for every other science fiction and action film that has came afterwards. His Fountain score is equally operatic, but here he lets 80s stadium rock (as easy to please and skin deep as Pro Wrestling) do most of the musical heavy lifting. The film is even dedicated, of all people, to Axl Rose.

The Wrestler is built kind of like the sport that it is set in. The story is familiar, a bit shop-worn, even contrived, and perhaps a bit faked. While things are playing out on screen, it archives a genuine emotional workout: the best kind of cinematic magic. The film is a weepy and a crowd- pleaser in the best sense of both of those terms. It is a a solid and accomplished work which shows a talented filmmaker at the pinnacle of his career. While it may or may not do any favours to legitimize the modern cartoon that is WWE, it is a strangely positive love-letter to the sport (witness the charming ’shop talk’ in the Wrestlers greenroom) and those who grind themselves away practitioning it

TIFF Review: Genova

When a new Michael Winterbottom film comes out it is always interesting to see where exactly he is going to go with it. Certainly Winterbottom has one of the most diverse CV’s in the cinema with things ranging as far as Tristram Shandy to Welcome to Sarajevo to 24 Hour Party People, to Code 46. With Genova, he explores the rhythms, sites, beauty and danger of the large Italian city from three perspectives, a young girl, a teenager and a middle-aged university professor. All three of these people are in the same family, one recently stricken with the loss of the mother/wife. Naturally lit and laced with some stomach clenching intense moments, the film casually recalls Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now filtered though aspects of intimate Winterbottom’s own urban wanderings of A Mighty Heart, where he burrowed into strange corners of Karachi. The film us a curious mixture of storytelling types. It is graceful drama on the grieving process merged, both smoothly and meticulously, with an intimate documentary style and a novel execution of maximum suspense. Sensitive parents beware, while Genova is attractively interspersed with honesty, the film is really quite nerve wracking.

The film opens with a violent car crash along an American highway. It is established early in this scene that things are going to happen, and Winterbottom lets the scene play out so that it is almost unbearable. Traffic noises are amplified in a subtle way for maximum effect. The mother doesn’t make it, the daughters, 17 and 8 do. Their father (Colin Firth) retreats from their Chicago home, relocating to Italy in the hopes a change of scenery will be good for him and the girls. While there are no objections from the girls, the youngest, Mary, is wracked with guilt for distracting her mother potentially causing the accident and clearly is having trouble dealing with things. Upon getting to the city of Genova, she begins to have hallucinations of her mother which are both comforting and sinister. An family friend, an ex-girlfriend of Dad, played superbly by Catherine Keener, helps ease them into the city, showing them the sites, and becoming a bit of a surrogate mother to Mary. While Dad begins his teaching position in Genova, the girls are more or less left on their own with the city, their only obligation being weekly piano lessons up the street. Kelly the eldest daughter takes huge breaths of Europe, becoming sexually active and a bit of a party girl, neglecting her duties of taking care of Mary (whom see somewhat also blames for the death of Mom). Kelly’s carefree exploits, an Mary’s wanderings are the beating heart of the film. To young girls, the dark, maze-like alleyways are full of wonders and dangers During the trips on the back of a Vespa through the busy and chaotic streets the film is positively electric. The culmination of the three lost souls (daughters and dad) anxious and running make for an interesting metaphor. It may on the surface seem low key and even wispy (plot certainly takes a back seat to tone), but is powerful and professional work from a director at the top of his game. Chalk this up as another success for the UK’s greatest chameleon director.

TIFF Review: Vinyan

There is a scene in Fabrice Du Welz’s new film where the white folks, stranded in the jungle without guide or means, are viciously ridiculed, teased and denied the simplest of sustenance: a small ball of rice. It is a moment of uncomfortable horror in the so-called global village, a moment of extreme retribution for casual western exploitation of so many southeast Asian countries. Vinyan, the title of the film, is loosely translated as “drifting soul” and it can be applied to the film in several meaningful and stimulating ways. Those few who were enthusiastic about Du Welz’s (criminally underseen) Calvaire will recognize the rice-ball scene as his budding auteur moment. While the films are miles apart in setting, language, and tone, there is no mistaking that they are the product of a master horror filmmaker rising to the top of his game. I said after reviewing AJ Anilla’s Sauna (our review) that if I see a better horror film than that one in 2008 that I’d eat my shirt, who knew that I would be having to set the table less than 24 hours later! Taking the large Tsunami’s as the divine hammer for a sinning population, Vinyan is both poetical and political; those who take it literally are bound to get a little stuck with the film. Taken as a visceral meditation, it is a sublime success.

The film starts off thrumming and pounding on the audiences senses. A close up of unidentifiable static turbulence and titles so large they threaten to swallow the audience, it is not a surprise that the cinematographer was the same fellow who shot Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. The camera eventually comes into focus to reveal the static to be air bubbles frantically trying to get to the surface of the ocean. Jeanne (a radiant Emmanuelle Béart) rises from the drink to greet her equally attractive husband, Paul played by Rufus Sewell. Curiously, she offers him a pair of shoes she found in the marketplace. Not really what he needs or even want, but perhaps they will do. An interesting bit of foreshadowing to one of the films audience straining narrative pathways. Du Welz’s intent seems to be to challenge the audience while simultaneously alienating them. Paul and Jeanne have lost their son 6 months ago in the Tsunami that wiped out a lot of the southeast Asian coastline, and they have lingered in Thailand with the thin hope that he may still be alive somewhere. At a charity even, a woman has a video of the extreme poverty of the villages along a river in central Burma. Jeannne is convinced she has spotted her child in that video. Despite protestations of her skeptical husband, it is not long before Jeanne is wandering through the seedier parts of the red light district looking for a Triad contact to get her into closed off Burma. What follows is a decent into the heart of darkness, into the void where the void most certainly looks back. The allure of violence and sexuality that attracts westerners to Bangkok is woven throughout the proceedings as well in the form of primal sexual hum particularly in a curious inversion of the form of the foreign aid worker encountered by the couple.

I find it curious that the Thai mobster leading their party into the jungle deals with the death of his wife at the hands of the Tsunami radically different, a stoic acceptance, rather than the hubristic denial from the white folks. Du Welz comments on how the cost of different races are still measure differently on the global scale. As the couple go further in the jungle, it is not even clear if they encounter ghosts, or have become ghosts themselves, in an uncharted part of the word were arrogant, desperate folks are not likely to return. In a way Vinyan is the spiritual remake Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s fabulous daylight horror Who Can Kill a Child? with inflections of the aggressive spirit arthouse French cinema of Haneke and the visceral intensity of Aja and Noe. Du Welz blends the best of all these things, while tapping into a dark reflection of the power and force of need in small children that is into something very much his own, universal and also very much of our times.

TIFF Review: Lovely, Still

Ever see a film that is so sweet that it passes beyond your instrinsic gag reflex and makes you love it despite any misgivings from the brain? From sheer force of screen presence and chemistry Martin Landau and (positively radiant) Ellen Burstyn, they manage to hold the film on the rails and stabilize it amongst young director Nik Fackler’s need to inject jittery gimmickry into the narrative. It is perhaps one of the first films about December-December romance that will appeal to the younger set (well if there were any way to get them to see it). It is as if Fackler decided to make his own Away From Her through the editing rhythms of Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. Where Sarah Polley had the prose of Alice Munroe as a starting point and captured her story in a straightforward manner, Fackler aims for M. Night Shyamalan, which slightly hurts and cheapens the film in the final act. This film could have been an honest contended for annual Christmas viewing ritual along the lines of It’s A Wonderful Life (which unsurprisingly is watched at one point in the film) or A Christmas Story until the rushed final moments, nevertheless, it is Still quite Lovely.

The story follows Robert Malone, a man of advanced years that is so lonely, he meticulously and deliberately wraps a single Christmas present: From Robert to Robert. The opening camera starts on the street of a town in holiday lights that is a modern spin of a Norman Rockwell scene. A panorama of lighted Christmas purity, before stalking into Roberts tidy bachelor home. The only thing amiss are ghostly stains are on the wall where pictures have been removed, as if his life is unfinished somehow. Robert gets up to go to work in the morning, closeups of Martin Landau flossing and brushing his teeth are revealing and interesting and somehow give insight to the warm, yet lonely man that Robert is. On his way out the door he sees a new family moving in next door, he lingers at the scene, but doesn’t wave back to the cheery movers. At work, where he bags groceries, he has an amusingly parental relationship with his boss, a goofy David Brent type (for fans of BBC’s “The Office”), who quaintly believes in an Amway styled cook-book scheme to the point where he actually tries to sell Robert on it. Robert politely and delicately declines and wanders on home, alone.

Enter the stunningly beautiful Mary (Burstyn) who gets a meet-cute with Robert by pretty much invading his house. They have a joyously silly awkward moment, before the very forward Mary asks him out on a date. The date and the budding relationship to follow is so wonderfully, cinematically, romantic that you will find yourself drowning in syrupy sugar, yet not want to leave it. This kind of thing can only happen this visually and emotionally perfect in the movies. There is a joy captured in the interplay between Burstyn and Landau that is the simplest of movie magic harkening back to a different period of film, not much seen today. Just let the actors spend time together performing. Guaranteed to burble tears of joy from even the most cynical movie goer, the middle act of the film is sublime in successful and natural manipulation of the viewer. It is not interested in the ‘realistic’ complexity of the lives of senior falling in mad love along the lines of Paul Cox’s wonderful Innocence, but rather intent of movie fantasy (the good kind). It is a remarkable feat that this is even possible in the climate of the uninspired shooting of Judd Apatow and Nora Ephron ‘romantic comedy’ flicks. And make no mistake, Lovely, Still has a warm generous, even intimate, sense of humour that never belittles Mary or Paul as human beings. The laughs are as natural as a warm, honest smile. And while are strong supporting roles from Elizabeth Banks (An Apatow regular) and Adam Scott, the romance between Robert and Mary and there Christmas surroundings is clearly the focus.

The third act is a doozy though, I believe a major misstep in the film that is difficult to tiptoe around without spoilers. I don’t know how to end the film, but I do know that the ending events are at odds emotionally from the rest of the film, and this is very much to the detriment of the film. It is not that they don’t make narrative sense, they do very much (like the rest of the film) in a very neat and tidy manner. But a false one, even by the films fantasy standards. Still, the picture is worth a look for two seasoned profession actors allowed full reign on their craft to strut their stuff.

TIFF Review: Sauna

If I see a better flat out horror film than AJ Annila‘s wonderfully twisted Sauna in 2008, I’ll eat my shirt. This film is a major growth from his ambitious, yet fatally flawed 2006 genre fusion urban drama and wuxia epic, Jade Warrior. Where that film was rigid and strained, this one soars into the dark places of the minds of men effortlessly flowing to its soon-to-be iconic conclusion. It is fitting that Finland is half way between America and Japan, because Sauna takes the stylings and tropes of best of American Art-Horror and J-Horror and froths them together into something that is mesmerizing and uniquely Scandinavian. The result, a period film which is impossible to actually identify the period, lies somewhere in the neighborhood of Edgar Allen Poe and the opening credits for Lars Von Trier‘s The Kingdom. Those enthusiastic for Fabrice Du Weltz‘s Calvaire (an film that polarized viewers as much as I expect Sauna will) or John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds are going to be in a state of bliss while this film unleashes its own brand of existential quagmire.

The story is set in the late 16th Century and follows the two Spore brothers, a soldier and a cartographer, charged with marking the border and mapping the terrain between Sweden and Russia after a 25 year war (Over the then fracturing Christian church, but I am no expert). The opening credits and imagery not so subtly suggest that these borders are indeed rivers formed from blood. Blood that will not ever be washed away. Blood that is beyond forgiveness or redemption. This is not an old testament eye-for-an-eye suggestion, but rather older, more pagan notion of morality. Erik, the elder, is a career warrior who has fought all is life, and it is immediately clear, has no way of adjusting to peace. His way of dealing with his own demons and struggles is violence first, questions never. His spectacles give him the veneer of sophistication and civility, Spore is a borderline psychopath, a monster for his times. His younger brother Knut avoided the war in scholarship. Knut far more sensitive, justifiably nervous of his brothers harsh methods, and out of his element in the northern no-man’s land forests. That his compass breaks early in the film is one of many symbols that even the ostensibly ‘good’ natured character in the film is compromised in this unhealthy setting. This is further hilighted in the opening moments of the film, where in a small village where at the good graces of the local peasants. Upon seeing an artifact that he does not approve of, Erik fires off in a rage, killing their farmer host. In an attempt to save the farmers young, blonde-locked daughter from Erik (and admittedly his own) lust, Knut locks her in the root cellar. Upon leaving the village shortly thereafter, the girl is not released from the cellar. The guilt from this action polarizes the brothers and sets the stage for the tell-tale heart tensions between the brothers.

Complicating things is the Russian party that they join up with to set mile-markers up to the norther river. An early scene has the Russian commander wax philosophical on the consequences of the war in terms of filth (this is actually a proposed English title for the film) as, “the mark of where two things have touched.” In this case, it is ostensible civilization intruding in the empty northern lands, pagan beliefs colliding with christian conquering, and a history of war between Kingdoms. The uneasy party comes up to the last obstacle before the river, a desolate swamp that curiously has a village in the center. While arguing who the village actually belongs to, both the Russians and Fins are drawn to the centerpiece of the village, the titular Sauna. A haunting and grim place, that in the old lore was said to wash all of ones sins away. Births, marriages, and corpses were bathed in this dark room which itself is a clean white square in the middle of a stark treed wetlands. It offers the mystical promise that forgiveness can be achieved as easily as waters over flesh, instead of the more rigorous process of mending hurts in the place where they were actually caused. As Lady MacBeth knows, and because this is a horror pictures, things are not so easily done, some sins are impossible to forgive (even for Orthodox or Lutherian Christians). The events in the village boil to a conclusion that should satisfy anyone with a lust for the true horror of the unknown and uncanny. Hardcore gore-hounds who love the quick thrills of the usual films in the genre may be baffled by Sauna’s brooding pace, set almost entirely in daylight (and aren’t the best horror films the one that bring their haunting out into the light?). But those who like a meditative journey through the dark corners of the soul (with a side order of icky poetic nihilism) will find a lot to love here. Sauna deserves a place on the pedestal alongside Solyaris, Insomnia, The Wickerman and Ringu.

Be sure to check out John’s review of Sauna.

TIFF Review: The Sky Crawlers

“Somewhere, in a country similar to ours There are children who do not become adults. They are very similar to us.” goes the tagline of Mamoru Oshii’s latest film. One that carried the promise (during its production cycle) of a more linear form of story telling after the convoluted Ghost in the Shell: Innocence and the strange Tachigui. I am overjoyed to report that while the story is linear, it is anything but straightforward or simple, and not the least bit diluted or dumbed down in regards to his philosophical and social musings - basically the essence of what makes Oshii stand out from his generation of masters of the Japanese animated feature. Using a pastiche of elements of contemporary science fiction (From “Ender’s Game” to “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”) mashed up with stirring World War II aerial dogfights and a his unique brand of austere and cold melodrama, The Sky Crawlers certainly will not be for everyone. The film is a feast for the senses, not only in the gargantuan fighter plane battles, which may be safe to say are the best ever committed to celluloid (and yes, that includes Hell’s Angels and the space climaxes of any of the best of the Star Wars pictures). This is true in ever single detail of the film (Production I.G. have outdone themselves!) even the small moments: The cigarette smoke swirls, a Vespa engine hums as it idles, the airplane hangars and living quarters are textured, lived in, and the apple pie and coffee diners are gorgeously rendered down to the most minute detail. And the sound design (courtesy of Skywalker Sound) is among the best work they have ever done.

But wait, much this technical praise could be more or less said of, say, Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s equally well crafted Steam Boy, and that movie was more or less a failure due to overly convoluted and stilted story telling. The narrative may be cool and deliberately paced for a film with designs on a gigantic canvas, but that dovetails beautifully with the story Oshii is trying to tell (call it the antithesis of Hayao Miyazaki’s similar setting, but radically different Porco Rosso). Make no mistake, this is social science fiction, and tonally controlled storytelling at its finest.

The world of The Sky Crawlers is a social and geographical fusion of 1950s America, Japan and Western Europe that favours propeller styled fighter planes along with satellite television, large multinational corporations and genetic science. While it is a time of apparent peace and prosperity, the large corporations conduct ‘real wars’ (mostly over the border ocean zones), televised of course, to placate any unrest or rebellion from the masses. Contrary to Orwell’s “1984″, where London is a perpetual war wreck and society fragmented and controlled, Oshii (and the writer of the original novel, Mori Hiroshi) postulate that for the most part, this ‘perpetual war’ has actually benefited society. Wars and equally importantly, all the social problems of an idyll, purposeless populace, involving real people can be avoided if they are fought in a fully manufactured way which has ‘real consequence’ built into the equation. The fighter pilots that fight for their parent corporations are of a genetically modified race who never age, fittingly called Kildren. Set in state of perpetual adolescence, they live to fight and pilot the fighter planes, and die for the entertainment and attention of the worlds citizens. The fact that this race is immortal otherwise, only ups the ante and the dramatic spectacle of flaming angels falling from the sky from the fantastic machines.

The story revolves around one of the bases of Kildren and the little ecosystem in which they inhabit. Yuichi arrives to a new posting for the Rostock Corporation. The pilots there are kept under tight wraps from their base commander Suito Kusanagi (a fellow Kildren) and the lovingly stern chief mechanic (and ‘adult human’), both of whom immediately have an eye on Yuichi. This sets Yuichi on edge along with the stories of the non-Kildren ace pilot, a Red Baron type named ‘The Teacher’ who fights for the ‘enemy’ Lautern Corporation. The first half of the film focuses on the ecology of the air-base with a few combat laden sorties to get the adrenaline flowing. The drinking and sexual exploits of Yuichi’s roomate pull Yuichi into a few encounters of his own that strike odd chords of familiarity. This leads to Yuichi questioning his bosses mysterious past while the Rostock Corporation plans its biggest offensive to date. The findings of Yuichi in regards to his bosses and himself are the engine of the plot, but really not the films chief concern, and thusly the storytelling is not the least bit concerned with ‘twist endings’ or other high-concept gimmickry so often favoured within the genre. I’m betting the early lovers of what Paul Verhoeven was doing with Starship Troopers are going to latch onto the (admittedly quite different) vibe of The Sky Crawlers.

Like Kazuo Ishiguro’s wonderful novel, “Never Let Me Go”, Oshii does not bury the mystery or secrets of the narrative so deep that a conscientious observer won’t have things figured out within the first quarter of the film. But the joy here is in how things reflect and refract current social trends, and draw commentary and observation into the forefront of the storytelling. The film is postulating some big questions in amongst the lives of pilots, war melodrama and simply stunning action set-pieces. It is a film concerned for the future, while not necessarily nostalgic of the past. There is a character, one that goes unnamed, in the film (in the background really) that sits alone and silent on the front steps of a diner. The Kildren all look at him, but never make any real contact. This old man weeps for the world as it is, a peace bought at a curious price of static non-progress and cyclic stagnation. A moment in the film when another adult human, the lively cook and bartender at the diner, joins the old man in his silent withdrawal. This moment resonates. At 57, Oshii is obviously concerned with the consequences of toys, distractions and general white noise of modern Japanese society, which can leave many young folks in a state of perpetual adolescence. He has constructed a curious epic that is evocative of history, while starkly original in tone and execution. A message movie that is subtle, urgent, and most certainly worthy of your time and consideration.

TIFF Review: Treeless Mountain

For lovers of both the whimsical free form and bittersweet intimate films of Studio Ghibli (My Neighbor Tortoro and Grave of the Fireflies for instance), there will be a lot to love in So Yong Kim’s semi-autobiographical childhood film Treeless Mountain. It makes a finely articulated plea for the rejuvenating aspects of simple living over urban malaise; but more importantly, it is a showcase for the fragile dignity of children.

The film opens with bright young girl, Bin, who is about 6 years old. She excels in her studies, cleans up against her friends playing Pogs in the schoolyard, and picks up her younger sister, Jin, from the babysitter on the way home. Yet her mom has some serious financial and marital problems (hubby is gone, and probably beat her on the way out there door). It has come to the point where she resents her children for simply being a burden. An eviction from their soulless tenement building seals the deal and the two young girls are sent across town (an even poorer neighborhood) to live with their absentee fathers’ older sister until mom can patch up her affairs. Dubbed Big Auntie, perhaps not for her size, but rather her gargantuan drinking habit, the new ‘caregiver’ is more interested in buying sujo than feeding her charges. Their mom has given the girls a piggy bank with the promise that if they are good, Auntie will give them coins, when the little plastic bank is full, mom will return. Anyone familiar with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows (a film this one will inevitably be compared to, however in tone and intent is quite different) has a good sense of picking up the probability of this coming to fruition by simply watching how mom boards the bus out of town, unawares of her own children’s goodbye calls. The girls discover and explore the sounding shanty town where Big Auntie lives, make a few friends, stack a lot of soju bottles in the back yard, and learn how to grill and eat grasshoppers (on a stick) when it becomes obvious that Big Auntie isn’t going to feed them or give them coins.

Shot in extreme close-up to emphasize the perspective (or lack thereof) of the young girls, the film is very slow moving in its story telling. The director eschews any musical soundtrack whatsoever to emphasize the quiet desperation of the adults and to emphasize the feeling of ‘unwanted’ that the two girls experience. Yet they make due in the manner of having one of those endless summers. Yet the film is quite optimistic (in that magical realist way) that children have the capacity for bottomless love simply from not knowing any better. As child perspective stories go, things are far more in the territory of Jim Sheridan’s wistfully melancholic In America (echoed with the Cinderella dress-up costume that Jin wears, even as it gets more tattered along the films trajectory) than Terry Gilliam’s vile Tideland. When the children are offloaded (again) onto their grandparents farm, there is a sense that they have both grown up a fair bit, but also are allowed (despite given a harvesting workload) to be children again. Treeless Mountain flirts with falling into the trap of presenting the children (both child actors are note perfect) precocious or sappy, but never does. It simply observes without judging or forcing a reaction. If Terrence Malick were to ever make a film about children, it might look a little like this.

There is some subtle subtext on the encroachment of urbanization and the ills that come along (note the films title even), but mainly it is a tale of the growth and rhythms of the human spirit. When parents and their children have watched My Neighbor Tortoro for the hundredth time, this Korean-American co-production may be the obvious next step.