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official site : www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com
Moog [6/10]
The Soup, One Morning [7/10]
Welt Spiegel Kino [6?/10]
Absolut [7/10]
The Neighbor in 13 [6/10]
MOOG : [6/10] : USA 2004 : Hans FJELLESTAD : 70 mins
If people know anything about Robert Moog, they know two things: number one, he invented the synthesiser, and number two, nobody is sure how to pronounce the vowel in his surname. "Oo" as in ‘moon'? ‘Oe' as in ‘rogue'? Or - a minority view - ‘o' as in ‘dog'? Perhaps his family's original nationality (he was born in New York) would provide a clue - but again, there are differing views. Estonian? Dutch (which would have implications for that final g)? One website even reckons he's "actually British".
Unfortunately this new documentary on the man and his work doesn't take the opportunity to settle these disputes once and for all - because this is that rare film which could and should easily be rather longer than it is. Over the course of 70 brisk minutes (the brevity in contrast to the prog-rock filibusters for which the Moog sound is best known), we're given a quick introduction the man and the synthesisers which, we're told again and again, revolutionised music when they arrived on the scene in the 1960s. Moog users like Rick Wakeman (excellent value) provide glowing testimonials to the man and his machine - to the extent that the more skeptical viewer may wonder if we're watching some kind of trumped-up advertisement in the guise of a documentary.
There's little pretense at objectivity, no naysaying voices to rain even a single drop on the parade - this is a similar fan-boy's celebration of a musical legend to End of the Century, the recently-released hagiography of The Ramones which also left many questions unasked and unanswered. Just like the Ramones, however, the subject of Moog really does seem worthy of such adulation and attention. Now an affable, slightly batty 70-year-old - who can still ‘bang' out a mean tune on a self-built Theremin - Moog looks back on his career in an illuminating series of talking-head clips. As is standard for the genre, these are interspersed with archive footage (including a showstopping ad for Schaefer beer). It all adds up to an undeniably entertaining mix, even if such staid, conventional documentary techniques are a somewhat awkward fit for such a radical, quantum-leaping innovator.
Neil Young
8th February, 2005 (seen at Lantaren theatre - public show)
THE SOUP, ONE MORNING : [7/10] : Ara asa soup wa : TAKAHASHI Izumi : 90 mins
One of the names to watch from Rotterdam '05 is 31-year-old debutant writer-director Takahashi, whose DV-shot The Soup, One Morning starts out like an unengagingly slow, low-key relationship-in-crisis chamber-piece gloomathon only to head rapidly down much more welcome, off-beat avenues despite seldom leaving a single set. This is the living room where young couple Kitigawa (Hirosue Hiromasa) and Shizu (Namiki Akie) are forced to confront their problems: Kitagawa is proving increasingly ill-suited to the stresses of modern life; the more grounded Shizu reckons he's losing his grip when he enrols in a mysterious programme of "seminars."
Takahashi isn't yet the finished article, but the way he gradually reveals his hand (the less you know in advance the better) is quietly, deceptively intelligent. Kitigawa and Shizu are rather more complex characters than they initially appear - both are a long way from perfect, and she's not quite the rationalist she initially appears alongside her "believer" of a boyfriend. There's an agreeably absurdist aspect to many of the situations in which they find themselves - watch out for the most sinister movie sofa since Julianne Moore's ‘toxic' settee from Safe.
The result is a skilfully-performed, economic, unexpectedly topical film which, unlike so many far-eastern features from first-time directors, actually gets rather better as it goes along - picking up pace when too many similar dramas run out of ideas and grind to a disappointing halt. Typically, Takahashi withholds the explanation for his arch-sounding title until the very last scene - and it's well worth the wait...
Neil Young
14th March, 2005 (seen at Venster cinema - public show)
WELT SPIEGEL KINO : [6?/10] : World Mirror Cinema : Gustav DEUTSCH : Austria (Aus/Neth) 2005 : 90 mins
It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the space between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.
It is not your memories which haunt you.
It is not what you have written down.
It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.
James Fenton, ‘A German Requiem'
The fact that I exited Welt Spiegel Kino at the one hour mark should not be taken as evidence that I was dissatisfied with the film on offer. I had, by this stage, witnessed two of the three sections, which are of equal length at thirty minutes apiece, and felt that I had got the ‘gist' of what was going on. Herr Deutsch's applies an identical method to each section. According to the Rotterdam '05 catalogue, "It is the intention of the director to make more similar parts, which can then be screened in different combinations and running orders."
At first we see silent-era, monochrome footage taken from a camera which pans across a busy townscape, a townscape in which a cinema can clearly be seen. The footage then begins again, more slowly this time. We focus in on a particular individual which the camera picks out of the crowd. Deutsch (born Vienna, 1952) then inserts further footage apparently featuring the individual in question, in a more private setting. These interpolated sequences typically run for less than a minute, before we fade back to the street-scene and settle upon the next ‘subject'.
The first section shows the Kinematograf Theater Erdberg, Vienna, in 1912. The second section shows the Apollo Theater in Surabaya, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), in 1929. The third section, also filmed in 1929, shows the Cinema Sao Mamede Infesta in Porto, Portugal. Quoth the catalogue: "It is amazing to see how successful Deutsch is in bringing everyday life in Austria, Indonesia and Portugal at the start of the previous century to life. As if disappeared extras can come back from the dead. That goes a step further than archaeology."
Perhaps so. But there's also something rather presumptuous about Herr Deutsch's format. It seems a safe bet that no-one captured on screen here will ever see Welt Spiegel Kino - but even so, there's a prinicple involved. The idea that these individuals, long dead or no, may not have embraced this kind of immortality does not have seem to have entered his head at all. The people in the film become, in effect, mere vessels for his speculation, unwitting vehicles for his ‘time-travel' experiment.
Despite this proviso, Welt Spiegel Kino is an absorbing, stately, often mysterious compilation of clips, organised in an original manner and set to precisely modulated music by Christian Fennesz and Burkhard Stangl. We see the fruits of what was, one presumes, an inordinately lengthy raking-through of the world's silent-movie archives, and anyone enthralled by the Mitchell & Kenyon shorts recently showcased by the BBC should seek out Herr Deutsch's film at their next opportunity. But as they speed into the cinema, perhaps they should scan the surrounding rooftops for the presence of surveillance cameras - as Welt Spiegel Kino illustrates only too well, you never know who might be, or rather will be, watching...
Neil Young
14th March, 2005 (seen at Cinerama cinema - public show - walkout)
ABSOLUT : [7/10] : Switzerland 2004 : Romed WYDER : 94 mins
Mistrust the person who finds everything good, and the person who finds
everything evil, and mistrust even more the person who is indifferent to
everything.
Johann Kaspar Lavater, Swiss theologian and poet (1741-1801)
Absolut is a cool, audacious paranoid thriller for the 21st century: a high-tech, twisty cross between The Yes Men and The Parallax View which, crucially (and unlike fellow Rotterdam '05 title Primer) never lets its twists get out of hand, never becomes seduced by its own cleverness. And once again underlines the assertion (in a recent Variety review of another film) that "memory hocus-pocus is the new time-travel."
Intense, coltish Vincent Bonillo is Alex, an anti-globalisation activist based in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Along with his colleague Fred (Francois Nadin), he has developed a computer virus which is intended to wreak havoc on the 'WLS' (World Leader Summit), a major intergovernmental conference about to be held in nearby Gstaad. At a crucial stage in the plan, however, Alex is injured in a car-accident. He wakes up with memory-loss, and consents to an experimental treatment designed to stimulate the damaged sections of his brain. This produces disorienting results - and also brings Alex to question who, if anyone, can be trusted. And to wonder what, exactly, is going on.
The viewer is placed firmly in Alex's shoes - and we're forced to pay attention as flashbacks and nightmarish dreams mount up, criss-cross: Alex's memories, fears and actual experiences blend into network of repeated scenes, images, lines, characters. This car, that shower, that pub. He (and we) keep spotting a certain woman with a dog - innocent passer-by, or sinister avatar of a vast, omnipotent conspiracy?
Wyder - who co-wrote the script with Yves Mugny and Maria Watzlawick - nudges Absolut into mild sci-fi territory, keeps at least one foot in the real, topical world (the World Leader Summit guestlist features the likes of Tony Blair) keeps the pace cracking along, keeps us on our toes, all the way through to the head-spinningly brave finale (easily the film's most impressive and memorable sequence). Denis Jutzeler's cinematography, meanwhile, is a series of unfussy but chilly DV images, shimmering with the frisson of a firewall facing breach.
Neil Young
14th March, 2005 (seen at Cinerama cinema - public show)
THE NEIGHBOR IN 13 : [6/10] : Rinjin 13-go aka Neighbor No.13 : Japan 2005 : 115 mins
The Neighbor in 13 - world-premiering in the Rotterdammerung strand - looked like it was going to end up in the bracingly dark territory so fearlessly explored by Shibata Go in fellow IFFR '05 entry The Late Bloomer, only to wimp out with a duff last-act twist. The intense, downbeat tale of how childhood bullying can have a lasting impact into adult life, the film is based on Neighborhood 13, the 1994 manga by ‘Santastic' Inoue (no relation) long hailed in Japan as a classic of ‘psycho-suspense.'
Debutant director Inoue brings all kinds of arty touches (including all-too-brief animated bits) to what could and should have been a gritty tale of violent resentment unfolding in a blue-collar urban Japan we seldom see on the big screen. The hero Juzo's Jekyll/Hyde split personality is represented by the fact that two actors play the role: shy-boy pin-up Oguri Shun gives way to scarfaced, homicidal tough-guy Nakamura Shido when the angered. And the first victim of his rage is a complaining neighbour played - amid murmurs of recognition from the savvy R'dam crowd - by none other than Takashi Miike, complete with afro-moptop wig.
Neil Young
14th March, 2005 (seen at Luxor cinema - public show - world premiere)
click here for reviews of Rotterdam films seen on the first day (29th January)
click here for full alphabetical list of features seen at Rotterdam ‘05
official site : www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com
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