Friday, April 27, 2012

Attenberg


          “Because something is happening here, But you don’t know
           what it is, Do you Mister Jones?”                 Bob Dylan (1965)
     
                                           Review by Ken Burke
     
A funky, disjointed Greek film about a young woman trying to find her identity with help from a more liberated friend and restrain from her obligations to her dying father.
     
            Given the constantly unexpected aspects of the narrative flow and quirky attitude in Athina Rachel Tsangari‘s (recipient of an MFA in film directing from my alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin) Attenberg (2010, but just now making it into our theatres), a review that matched its spirit would wander off somewhere along the way and comment on the critic’s cats or something else just as unrelated to an analysis of the film.  This independent offering from Greece is a constant, if at times confusing, delight about a young woman (23), Marina (Arlane Labed, on the right in the photo), trying to find her personal and sexual identity at a time in her emerging adult life when her constant companions are her dying father, Spyros (Vangelis Mourikis), and her more libertine friend, Bella (Evangelia Randou), but she wants more even though she’s not sure at all what more should be.  Most other reviews of this film use the photo of Marina and Bella seemingly French kissing (not really; it’s just Bella’s attempt to show virginal Marina what kissing is all about, but the passionless spit-swapping that occurs in this scene is the most un-erotic encounter that you could image—and it doesn’t do anything for Marina either, although she seems to enjoy more the play fight [like a couple of kittens] that ensues after the saliva has dried up), an image which likely attracts some readers or even flilmgoers with the incorrect assumption that this is a lesbian romance, but there’s nothing lesbian and very little romantic going on in this film (although there is some blatant, virtually clinical sex, which Marina finally seeks despite her initial aversion to “piston” encounters with men).  However, there is a strong friendship between these women that shows they don’t have to enter each other’s bodies in order to enter each other’s souls.  In fact, much of the film’s charm is in the illogical cutaway scenes where these two kindred free spirits simply “dance” in various strange harmonies that seem to have been choreographed by Monty Python’s Minister of Silly Walks.

            From its unconventional opening the film then glides us through silent, empty spaces, some of which will have marginal importance later, before establishing the mundane but regular connection of Marina and Spyros.  Another ongoing connection is the shared fascination Marina and her dad have in watching David Attenborough’s (younger brother of actor/director Richard) BBC nature documentaries, to which Marina often responds in a visceral manner by squawking or grunting back at them on her TV screen in harmony with the birds and mammals she’s viewing (she also mispronounces Attenborough's name, leading to the title of our film, which is a bit of a mispronunciation of its own, at least in terms of normal cinematic expectations of cause and effect in a narrative film).  Contrasted to Marina’s occasional animal outbursts we have quiet shots like the opening (or post-opening, to be precise) montage that shows us the environment of Marina’s story:  the factory where she works as a driver for various people (including the visiting engineer [Giorgos Lanthimos] with whom she willingly loses her virginity in scenes that almost seem designed to not require harder than an R rating because they’re so functional [so to speak, given the full body shots and high key lighting], although the penetration is still implied rather than explicit [there’s also a full frontal nude shot of Marina in a mirror which shows off her attractive form but again it’s intended not as erotic but as the embodiment, also so to speak, of a human being in complete contemplation of her true unprotected persona; nevertheless the film is released as unrated—one of the early but now discarded strategies for Bully [Lee Hirsch]—a marketing ploy which avoids the notorious NC-17 but also results in a lot of theatre rejections, so you’ll most likely have to search for this one on DVD), father and daughter eating, daughter taking father on her motorbike to his appointed medical procedures, a mundane landscape that is the “other” Greece beyond those ancient ruins and sun-baked Aegean isles, etc.

            Well, I told you that a proper review for an unusual film such as this one should break off for some commentary on my cats—because Attenberg is consistently goofy enough that I wouldn’t be surprised to see some footage of something just as personal to the director suddenly jumping into the flow of the film (and possibly everything we see is very personal to her but there’s little way to know that).  Therefore, I give you a back view of Annie and Inky sharing our unlit fireplace with their big toy doggie pal, which is just as reasonable an addition to this review of the film as any of the unpredictable scenes that pop up on screen, especially concerning the wacky walk-along segments of Marina and Bella in their purple and blue dresses, which you can see an example of in the suggested short clip noted below at the end of the review, a beautifully-shot, lyrical music video of sorts.

            And while we’re off the subject of the strange Greek film under semi-coherent analysis here, let me also offer another animal-based commentary (but actually connected to the Attenborough nature documentaries so appealing to the characters in Attenberg), which is for you to consider seeing the Disney Nature documentary Chimpanzee (Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield; to which I’d give 3 ½  stars if I were doing an actual review of it because of the stunning camerawork, informational value on the lives of our close primate relatives, and sympathy generated for its sweet little guy but with hesitations about the simplistic narration story, although I’ll admit that the explanations have to be easily comprehendible to children [Good Lord! I’ve actually watched a G film and enjoyed it.]) shot on location in the jungles of Africa with many months of footage of two competing chimp tribes and the very unusual bonding of an abandoned baby, “Oscar” (as named by the filmmakers), with the reigning stud of his group, “Freddie,” after his mother is killed in a raid by a rival tribe (led by fading tough guy “Scar,” who’s probably now more concerned about the stability of the Social Security system than those nut trees he was trying to acquire domain over).  This is a marvelous look at the ongoing reality of the Darwinian principle of the survival of the fittest (not just in physical strength or number of combatants but mostly in well-conceived battle strategy—a frightful understanding of where our propensity for aggressive conquests comes from), with an impossible-to-resist attraction to little Oscar as he finds his way into his preordained society—not unlike Marina in the film I’m supposed to be reviewing.  (You can see the official site for Chimpanzee at http://disney.go.com/disneynature/chimpanzee/ and a trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI5BjbI_IZ8; when you put in the title on YouTube you’ll also get options for several short clips from the movie if you’d like to explore the community building and tool usage aspects of the chimp world.  Also, if you see Chimpanzee before May 3, 2012 Disney will make a donation to the Jane Goodall Institute to help protect our endangered primate relatives, so if you’re considering seeing nature in the raw—even though it’s given a structure via a corny script delivered in corny fashion by Tim Allen—get moving quickly).  OK, enough Attenberg-appropriate digression—except to remind you how wonderful my lovely kitties are and how they’ve understood (?) their urban jungle so well that they still don’t seem to realize that this dog isn’t going to move over at some point so they can get closer to the fire, if it ever comes on—and now our return to the actual review, if it doesn’t dance away from us in a crazy Marina and Bella ballet before I’m finished.

            I offer this last image from Attenberg, in all its unvarnished ordinariness, as indicative of the ongoing spirit of this very independent, very unusual film.  This is simply the industrial landscape that borders on the bay where Marina and Bella have returned after scattering her father’s ashes.  (Which, our ongoing Spoiler Alert Policy aside, would come as no surprise at all as you’re watching the film; this is clearly a dying man who shares what little energy he has with his doting daughter as best he can but is clearly on the way out—despite which, Marina maintains her consistently quirkiness here as well with her complex interests in Spyros, admitting that she imagines him naked but without a penis so that there’s once again no eroticism intended [just as she admits that she admires women but doesn’t lust after them so as to not leave any false impressions with Bella, her easily-prone-to-lust platonic girlfriend who has dreams of "prick trees" where penises abound like fruit ripe for plucking].  Marina’s just a fascinating study in the ongoing emergence of her full personhood, a more contemplative version of Zooey Deschanel’s Jess Day in the FOX New Girl TV series who explores life in her late 20s with her three supportive but perplexed male roommates.)  Spyros’ death is handled in the same straightforward fashion as the rest of the actual narrative of the film (unlike the various sideways excursions, usually with Marina and Bella in their dumbfounding dancewalks):  first he’s in the hospital, then his body is being shipped overseas for cremation (he has his own quirks about where this must be done to avoid local "contamination"), then the urn with his ashes is brought back to Marina, then the girls are out in their little motorboat uniting Spyros for the last time with the waters of the world.  It's all direct, emotionless, with no unnecessary diversions.

            In a fashion now typical of this film (which does a good job of securely establishing its offbeat mood so that the strange parts do fit nicely together), after our two remaining protagonists drive or bike away the camera just lingers on this empty shot for a maddeningly long time, reminding us that the larger planet just goes on with its non-dramatic existence whether anyone we care about is part of its every location or not, as well as reminding me of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1962 The Eclipse (L’eclisse) in which two lovers (played by the marvelous Monica Vitti and Alain Delon) struggle all through the film to repair their broken relationship, agreeing toward the end to meet one more time at a favorite location but neither of them show up so we’re left with 10 min. of "story" beyond the structure of the narrative, simply revisiting previous places we’ve been shown but not without the presence of our protagonists (in a manner not unlike the seemingly anonymous empty locations that open Attenberg ... that is, after Marina and Bella finally close their mouths).  I’m not comparing Attenberg to what I consider to be a masterpiece on the part of Antonioni but I will say that this Greek morsel which comes to American screens 50 years later has touches of what worked so well for me in the films of Tsangari’s Mediterranean neighbor, although Attenberg has a lovely insanity that would have completely eluded Antonioni in both purpose and presentation.   I doubt that anyone more interested in movies such as Think Like a Man (Tim Story) would care for anything I’ve written about here, but for those of us somewhat off in the deep end Attenberg provides the opportunity to dive into some refreshingly unexpected waters.

            If you’re interested in exploring more about Attenberg please consider the following sites:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzmgVN6M5E8 (short clip from the film)




We encourage you to look over our home page (ABOUT THE BLOG), found as the first one in our December 2011 postings, to get more information on what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.  You’ll also see our general Spoiler Alert warning that reminds you we’ll be discussing whatever plot details are needed for our comments so please be aware of this when reading any of our reviews and be aware of our formatting forewarning about inconsistencies among web browser software which we do our best to correct but may still cause some visual problems beyond our control.

Please note that to Post a Comment you need to either have a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Applause and Bully


           “I can’t conceive of any more misery”  Lennon/McCartney (1962)

                                                Review by Ken Burke
                 
                                                    Applause
        
Be forewarned that this grim Danish film takes you into emotionally-barren Ingmar Bergman-style territory in a story about an actress whose life is tragic on- and off-stage.

                                                    Bully
       
Hard to watch because it shows life's cruelty rather than a fictionalized version of it in a documentary about the endless horrors for some in their adolescent years.
      
            In my last posting I cited the Rolling Stones’ song “Time Waits for No One” as the likely reason why I wouldn’t have any option for posting in what has and continues to be a very busy week for me in the non-blog (that is, actual paid employment) world.  However, I come to you anyway with a determined attempt to get in some filmic commentary after all, on two very adult films (rather than the more popcorn-munching material such as Think Like a Man [Tim Story], The Lucky One [Scott Hicks], The Three Stooges [the Farrelly brothers] and The Cabin in the Woods [Drew Goddard], which I’ll leave to their box-office wars because the ones I’m interested in aren’t drawing in much cash, which is a real shame but unfortunately not unexpected).  So, on to some quick (for me) comments on Applause and Bully.

            For those of you familiar with the Beatles’ catalogue you might wonder why (or you might even “Ask Me Why,” the song from which the leadoff quote comes) if I wanted to emphasize one of their songs with the word “misery” in the review title that I didn’t just use “Misery” (1963), where the singer laments about lost love and its awful aftermath.  I chose the other song instead because of the irony of application, in that the line I’ve cited isn’t about being in misery (as the protagonists of these reviewed films are) but about NOT being in that condition because of entering a state of bliss that comes with successful romance (the next lines are “Ask me why, I’ll say I love you, And I’m always thinking of you”).  That’s the emotional and mental state that our films’ primary characters are seeking, the relief that comes from not being able to “conceive of any more misery,” but that’s not really an option available to any of them, making their lives as consciously displaced as my intentional edited use of the Lennon/McCartney lyrics.  The first of our desperate souls is Thea Barfoed (played by the spicily-named Paprika Steen) in the Danish film Applause (Applaus) directed by Martin Pieter Zandvilet, released in Denmark in 2009 but just now getting to us. Thea’s got everything you could want regarding “the fuzzy end of the lollipop” (to quote Sugar Kane [Marilyn Monroe] in Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy classic Some Like It Hot): alcoholism, divorce, estrangement from her children, and a stage actress career where she’s now performing as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf so she has to channel emotional turmoil on a regular basis in public even as she’s trying to purge it from her private life.  That’s really about all you need to know concerning this film’s plot because it’s essentially another piece of Photographic Realism (like Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s The Kid with a Bike, review posted here on April 12, 2012) seemingly shot in mid-def video with images that focus on Thea’s hard times in a very intense, unflattering manner done with frequent closeups on her uncompromising face, a tactic that is simultaneously riveting and overwhelming in the widescreen format of the film’s visualization.

            All Thea wants is to be close to her kids, but her previous failures as wife, mother, and sociable human being make it hard for those she’d like to have share in her personal life to see her as anything but raging, unpredictable Martha off stage as well. Whether it’s possible pick-up German guy at a bar, her dresser at the theatre, or her ex-husband Christian (Michael Falch), she’s consistently hostile and even seems to have no rapport with her kids on a rare visit until she gets out some Viking toys and they all have a whooping good time simulating wanton destruction.  Yet when the time arrives for a family meeting with the social worker counselor that she’s arranged she doesn’t even show up, leading to a fight with her ex that once again channels the confrontations in Virginia Woolf.  By the time that she take her sons to a picnic by the lake you wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she decided to drown them and commit suicide (which I wasn’t eager to see but felt properly prepared for), but fortunately she just decides to disengage from her obsessions with her kids and stay away from them in an attempt to work on her own problems.  This may all sound too much like being burdened with a distant relative’s miserable story at a holiday dinner gathering, but Steen’s performance is so mesmerizing, so dramatically on target that it’s hard to look away from the car wreck that has become her life and hope with her that she's able to rebuild it.

            When you think of brooding Scandinavian directors and the powerful women that they’ve shared with the world on screen you probably first come to Ingmar Bergman, with such haunting interpersonal investigations as Persona (1966), Cries and Whispers (1972), and Autumn Sonata (1978, all of which feature the stunning Liv Ullman, in concern with Bibi Anderson in the first, Harriet Andersson, Kari Sylwan, and Ingrid Thulin in the second, and Ingrid Bergman in the third) or Lars von Trier whose penetrating work in such emotional attacks on the audience as Breaking the Waves (1996, with Emily Watson), Dancer in the Dark (2000, with Björk), and Melancholia (2011, with Kirsten Dunst) stand as arguments for him as Bergman’s successor—although if you’re more historically aware you’d likely start any such Scandinavian remembrances with Carl Theodor Dreyer’s magnificent 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc (definitely one of my all-time Top 10) in which Renee Falconetti embodies enlightened reserve and attendant suffering as the heretic-turned-saint, with her fiery end in the film mellowed to canonization over the centuries—but Zandvilet proves himself capable of adding to that canon with Applause, which is likely all this film will get much of rather than profits because it’s an admittedly melancholy tale that’s not likely to tear many away from The Hunger Games (Gary Ross) or Titanic (James Cameron) in 3-D, but if you’re willing to sacrifice a bit of your own comfort to share the enthralling discomfort of another you couldn’t do much better in the current cinema than to see Applause (although you may find the subtitles a bit strange at times if your print is similar to mine because the English translation was occasionally joined by an additional version, seemingly in Swedish based on what I’ve seen in Bergman films).

            If you’re really up for a challenge, though, look no further (but please look at, because this film desperately needs the exposure) than Lee Hirsch’s Bully.  Even with all of the free press this documentary got over its ratings battle to come down from the restricted-attendance R category (which finally resulted in the coveted PG-13 needed to more easily reach its target audience with some last-minute edits of the dreaded f-word, which seemingly is more shocking and offensive for our national Ratings Board members than it is for the kids who live with this language every day) it’s not raking in much at the theatres so I can only hope that it will endure long enough for an audience to build, or maybe it will eventually be shown in schools, at least ones in more enlightened districts than the ones depicted in the film where hesitation and denial on the part of school authorities helped contribute to the suicides of two of the profiled youngsters.  As the camera roams around the South and Midwest to focus on five particular victims of uninvited repression we see the shocking ease with which the cruelty happens and the even more shocking blasé attitude of some of the attackers who don’t even seem to care that they’re being caught on camera physically and verbally harassing 12 year-old Alex Libby in Iowa just because he’s unattractive enough (“fish face” is one of their nicer choices) to be noticed and not hulky enough to fight off his oppressors, so he keeps rationalizing as often as he can that what’s happening to him isn’t really so bad.  For Georgian Tyler Long, though, the inability to stop the constant taunts at 17 became so overwhelming that he finally committed suicide, which at least brought about a public outcry and pleas from his parents and few friends (especially traumatized but outspoken Devon who admits that as a very young boy he used to be a bully himself) for this type of cruelty to be better monitored and stopped before others embrace the only escape they can imagine from their constant torture, as evidenced further in Bully by another suicide, this time of Kirk Smalley, an 11 year-old Oklahoma boy, whose heart-broken parents formed the anti-bullying group Stand for the Silent to rally support for those unfortunate kids who are constantly menaced by their peers.

            However, 16 year-old Kelby, an Oklahoma lesbian girl who at least has a circle of supportive friends to help somewhat in repelling the unthinking monsters in her life, tried suicide three times herself and still has to live in the Bible-belt environment she shared with Kirk, where many in her community and even some of her teachers condemn her homosexuality, while Ja’Maya, a 14 year-old black Mississippi girl, gets so fed up with it that she takes a handgun from her home and uses it as a prop threat (there’s no indication that she ever intended to actually shoot anyone) to try to keep her bullies at bay on yet another hell-bound school bus.  She understands that what she did was wrong and fortunately did not have to serve extensive jail time for her bad decision, but you can clearly see through testimony from her and her family how anyone so abused by such constant mockery from her fellow students would decide at some point that she had to do something to get her tormenters to back off, even if it was just a dramatic bluff.  Hirsch’s camera can’t possibly be in position to capture most of what is reported about these tormented kids (although we do see Ja’Maya’s “crime” on surveillance video; Alex could use such monitoring on his bus for the many usual days when the attacks on him aren’t being recorded by Hirsch) so most of the film consists of interviews with these kids, their parents, their school authorities and other ineffective law-enforcers in their communities, but this is not stagnant talking-heads footage; rather, it’s revealing, powerful, and ultimately atrocious evidence that anyone would have to live so many of their formative years in daily fear of abuse simply because “boys will be boys” (and girls aren’t innocent either, as we’ve seen in news stories about cyber-bullying that parallel and enhance what’s being forced into mainstream conversation by this compelling film).  Boys may also be good sons if they live long enough, but Tyler and Kirk just couldn’t go on waiting for relief from their daily traumas so they chose to exit the constant cruelty rained down on them.  Both of their fathers deliver memorable eulogies in various ways with loving memories of their departed children.


            Tyler’s dad is powerfully plain spoken, but Kirk’s—an ordinary, humble working man—is the most eloquent of all, in his private statements to Hirsch and in his public speech at a huge rally intended to honor young Kirk’s memory and challenge his son’s community to rise above hate (ironically, a catch phrase for WWE wrestler John Cena, promoted as a hero [despite all the “Cena sucks!” chants that are gleefully shouted by the bullies at the “sport’s” televised events] by an organization that has honorably embraced the national anti-bullying campaign but still presents hours of weekly footage of arrogant jerks who intimidate the more decent athletes in the company, constantly carry out sneak attacks—at times with weapons—and rarely face any confrontation or condemnation from the fictionalized management figures in the scripted stories, so that retribution for such acts comes only occasionally, most often on expensive pay-per-view events that are constantly hyped on the weekly cable shows that aren’t regulated by FCC standards for the regular violence they dish out for profit).  I had some problems myself with being bullied in grade school (where the Catholic morality lessons didn’t always carry over to the playground) and junior high (where I learned to hang around the periphery of a gang of toughs, never joining in with their periodic raids on our cross-town rivals but being familiar enough to them that when they were hunting for someone to punch they released me on my own recognizance), but nothing like what the sad, desperate kids in this film must endure.  This is not a comfortable viewing experience—really, it’s shameful that this bullying problem is so widespread, but what can we expect in a culture where it happens on the sports fields, in political campaigns, and in corporate skyscrapers all over America.  However, this exposé demands to be seen, if only to give the bullied some hope, the bulliers some shame, and the absent adults in these kids’ lives some insights into what their own aggressive offspring are doing to their fellow classmates, the undeserving victims of these junior tyrants whose social swagger may unfortunately result one day in them becoming the principals and police who turn a blind eye toward these hostile taunts as the children of their weaker neighbors again pay the price of simply not knowing how to avoid the cruel ones whose empty lives are filled up with their vicious acts of terror on the weaker members of the disparate herd.  You may not want to watch what Bully is trying to reveal, but if this message doesn’t get out to the millions (and millions, as another WWE favorite, The Rock, would say) of kids who are perpetrators, victims, or silent bystanders of this ongoing reign of terror then all we can expect is more of the same, handed down from generation to generation.
 

            If you’d like to know more about Applause please consider the following links:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lKETR6JT48&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLCE5C434E4E91C2B3 (Applause star Paprika Steen answers an audience question, then just let it run at the end for auto flow of five more questions and answers)




            If you’d like to know more about Bully please consider the following links:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6RDpOGqeCg (15 min. clip of Ellen Degeneres interviewing David and Tina Long, parents of Tyler who committed suicide in 2009)




We encourage you to look over our home page (ABOUT THE BLOG), found as the first one in our December 2011 postings, to get more information on what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.  You’ll also see our general Spoiler Alert warning that reminds you we’ll be discussing whatever plot details are needed for our comments so please be aware of this when reading any of our reviews and be aware of our formatting forewarning about inconsistencies among web browser software which we do our best to correct but may still cause some visual problems beyond our control.

Please note that to Post a Comment you need to either have a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post.