Nowtopian

I’ve been having a fantastic time at the Film Festival. Not that I’ve thought the films are so great… in fact, there have been some amazing gems, but a lot of mediocrity and some outright bombs. Still, amidst a just-broken heat wave and an absolutely iridescent light over San Francisco these past days, it was difficult to keep going indoors, or it would have been if I hadn’t been so lost in the pleasure and rhythm of a full-blown International Film Festival.

I did get a moment to catch up on my ever-rising pile of incoming periodicals and in particular want to recommend to everyone the two-part Curtis White essay in the last two issues of Orion Magazine. I referenced some of his writing a year ago, and once again, he’s come through with one of the most lucid and clearly written repudiations of the basic absurdity and self-destructiveness of modern work that I can recall reading. Check out part two especially.

Anyway, back to my capsule reviews and reactions to films:

The Old Garden
This was a FANTASTIC movie! It will get on to my top 3 or top 5 list for this festival. The plot revolves around a couple, the guy was very involved in the Gwangju uprising in 1980 in South Korea, and a half year later gets caught and imprisoned, before eventually being released two decades later. While on the run he hid out with a gorgeous, feisty, independent woman, a schoolteacher and painter, who angrily watches him leave her after hiding for months, in a rainstorm, they cling, knowing somehow it’s their last moment together… She calls him an idiot as the bus drives away (I fed you, I gave you a place to sleep, a place to hide, I let you fuck me, and you leave… Idiot!). But he’s her true love, and she’s pregnant. The structure of the film jumps back and forth in time, to the massacre, to his return from jail, her death from cancer before his release, numerous episodes among movement activists, arguments then about politics and the military dictatorship; later, one of their close friends is involved in a labor uprising, fired and repressed, after which she suicides through self-immolation. (A reference to the intense class war that continued over the next two decades, that played an important part in bringing South Korea to its present state of modernization.) The personal stories, the wrecked and altered lives admist the big historical narratives that define S. Korea since 1980–fantastic juxtapositions, nuanced portrayal of how personal and political intersect. Beautifully shot, great acting, wonderful editing. When Hoon-yee first comes back from jail to Gwangju he meets an old comrade who has been driven mad. They go to a small reunion banquet which ends in a drunken brawl, one of them saying “Life is long, but the revolution is short!”–towards the end of the film the schoolteacher says the companion line: “Life is long. History is longer!” What a great movie!

Continue reading SF Int’l Film Festival! pt 3

More film capsule reactions:

The 12 Labors
Set in Sao Paolo, Brazil, this story of a young man two months out of two years in juvenile jail who gets a job as a motorcycle messenger, is a good look at Sao Paolo and its insane traffic, class divisions, etc., but like too many Brazilian films, it’s predictable, a bit cliche’d, finaly boring for the telenovela shallowness of the characters. Kind of Brazil’s version of Horatio Alger, the poor kid who heroically escapes a life of crime… heartwearming and sleep inducing–of course it was my 4th movie of the day when I saw it!

Daratt
Set in Chad, the story of a young man about 20 or so named Atim, meaning orphan, who listens to the Truth and Justice Commission’s decision to grant general amnesty to all war criminals from the Civil War. His blind grandfather then bids him to get justice for his dead father by killing his murderer. That man turns out to be a baker and strong Muslim now, aware he caused a lot of harm in his life. Atim travels to his city and becomes his apprentice, wrestling with is urges to shoot him throughout. The great climax, the man wants to adopt Atim and accompanies him to meet his father. (Atim, who is occasionally quite animated and charming, is mostly sullen, filled with rage, and quite mute.) Instead they find grandpa in the desert waiting for Atim’s return. He demands that Atim humiliate the man like his father was, so he is forced to disrobe. Then grandpa says “execute him!”–Atim saves him by feigning it, shotting in the air. Grandpa orders the coup de grace, and Atim feigns it again, fooling the blind grandfather. Atim joins grandpa and they walk away opposite from the terrified baker. Grandpa asks “did you hand shake?” and Atim says “no” and grandpa says “now you are a man.” End of movie… !

Sounds of Sand
Relentlessly bleak, a too-healthy family with beautiful smiles and teeth are forced to migrate when their Sahel village water dries up. The bulk of the film is their impossible trip across the desert, attacked by drug-addled “rebels” and slowly dying of thirst, losing their goats and belongings, one son is taken hostage, another is killed pointlessly. The little girl who was threatened with smothering at the outset of the film, is the only one to survive with her father, when they are saved by a UNHCR patrol from coma in the stark white desert. The refugee camp seems like paradise after this film!

Continue reading SF Int’l Film Festival! Part 2