all films seen in Leeds (UK) on Saturday 5th November 2005, at the Leeds Film Festival

THE DEATH OF MR LAZARESCU    [6/10]
Moartea domnului Lazarescu : Romania 2005 : Cristi PUIU : 150 mins : seen at Vue cinema (city centre)
   Impressively dour and audaciously monotonous chronicle of a 62-year-old's decline into (terminal?) ill-health, over the course of one hectic night in Bucharest. His timing is somewhat lousy, as the doctors and staff are seriously overstretched by a messy road-traffic accident involving a bus and several cars.
   Nobody seems to be able to agree on exactly what's wrong with Mr Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu), a widower partial to a spot of the booze. And nobody much seems to care - with the glowing exception of middle-aged paramedic Marioara (Luminita Georghiu), who transports 'her' patient to four separate hospitals in search of treatment. But when surgery is finally scheduled, is it in fact too late? Does the title reveal all - or, as with Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun, is it more ambiguous than it seems?
   Puiu's debut feature Stuff and Dough won a few awards on the film-festival circuit back in 2001, but Mr Lazarescu is garnering much wider acclaim - reviews have been largely ecstatic since the international press got wind of it at Cannes earlier this year. There's no faulting the performances - with Cioaba emerging as the real star of the show as Fiscuteanu's hapless Mr  L gradually fades into mumbling semi-consciousness. And the film is notably convincing in its moods and details - as anyone who's spent a long night in a hospital anywhere in the world will wearily attest.
   But verisimilitude, even of this high degree, isn't really enough on its own - especially over such a lengthy running-time. What point is Puiu making with this grim exercise in memento mori? The unusually hectic nature of this particular night means we can't really take The Death of Mr Lazarescu as an indictment of the Romanian medical system, although the callous attitude of several of the doctors clearly leaves a lot to be desired.
   Perhaps Puiu is aiming higher, and making a wider statement about human nature - the character names ('Dante Remus Lazarescu', 'Marioara' [=Mary?], 'Virgil'] would suggest there's at least some degree of historical/philosophical/religious allegory being played out here. Or perhaps this is in fact just a rather well-made, relentlessly dour treatment of some ostentatiously serious/profound subjects. We apparently won't have to wait long for another chance to gauge Puiu's talent: Mr Lazarescu is reportedly only the first of six 'Tales from Bucharest Suburbs' which the director plans to make in the next few years. An ambitious scheme, with clear echoes of a certain Polish decalogue from a while back - but while Kieslowski's movie-sequence kicked off with A Short Film About Killing,  we now have A Very Long Film About Dying...

TELL THEM WHO YOU ARE   [7/10]
USA 2004 : Mark S WEXLER : 95 mins : seen at Leeds City Art Gallery (DVD projection)
   Unique, fascinating documentary profiling esteemed cinematographer - and prominent Hollywood radical - Haskell Wexler. A dual Oscar winner as 'DP', Wexler also occasionally directed - most famously, the influential Medium Cool (1969) - but often found that his uncompromising political stances, not to mention his general stubbornness, meant he often rubbed potential employers up the wrong way.
   Tell Them Who You Are shows Wexler still fighting fit as he turns 80, still looking for work* and slightly uncomfortable with his 'living-legend' status. He's had such a remarkable career that even the 'straightest' bio-doc would probably be of interest. But that isn't what we get here - because this profile is directed by Wexler's own son Mark, also a professional film-maker. Relations between father and son have long been strained - partly due to unfortunate family circumstances, partly to the pair's widely diverging political opinions. This film is both a document of that relationship and an attempt to build bridges - on camera, wherever possible - and as such stands as a valid companion-piece to Nathaniel Kahn's My Architect - A Son's Journey (2003).
   The difference here is that both parties are still very much alive - their bickering is a consistent source of entertainment for the viewer, even if nether of them comes across in a particularly flattering light. it's easy to see why so many of Wexler Sr's director have fallen out with them over the years, no matter how effusive their praise of his abilities - and Wexler Jr, something of a smiling cipher on-screen, doesn't seem to have inherited that much of his dad's iconoclastic talent. He's disappointingly prone to visual and aural cliches, often falling back on the hackneyed Biography Channel formula of black-and-white stills accompanied by intrusive, superfluous muzak, interspersed with clips and talking-head testimony.
    Despite these deficiencies, Wexler Jr does capture some striking sequences along the way: a moving visit to his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother; an illuminating interview on the intergenerational problems of 'Hollywood royalty' with an articulate Jane Fonda; a slyly amusing visit to Julia Roberts and her cinematographer husband Danny Moder; and some sparkling contributions from Wexler's longtime collaborator, the late Conrad Hall - whose own son has followed in his father's dolly-tracks. As a warts-and-all deconstruction of its own awkward production, meanwhile, Tell Them Who You Are? has an edginess and authenticity that mercifully sets it apart from the general run of similarly navelgazing cinema-themed enterprises.

TWIST OF FAITH   [6/10]
USA 2004 : Kirby DICK : 87 mins : seen at Leeds City Art Gallery (DVD projection)
   Though far from easy viewing. this self-help/confessional documentary succeeds in showing the human face behind the 1990s sexual-abuse scandal which rocked the US Catholic church. Most of it is shot by the film's main protagonist, a thirtysomething father-of-two Ohio fireman named Tony Comes, or by his wife Wendy. An almost parodically macho figure with his Navy past, firefighting present, his Morgan Spurlock-ish moustache, gymnasium haircut, lean muscles and tattoo, Comes is very much a tormented individual. Clearly still traumatised by his experiences three decades on, he's dealt a further blow when he discovers the difficulty of obtaining legal redress and/or apology.
   Many raw emotions and sensitive moments are captured by the seemingly-omnipresent cameras - including, inexplicably, a conversation between Comes and his young daughter in which he tells her the family has inadvertently moved into the same neighbourhood as his childhood abuser. This frankness - and willingness to record such private material - makes it all the more noticeable whenever major events occur off-screen (not a problem with, say, Capturing the Friedmans or Tarnation). Indeed, the dramatic denouement of Comes's legal battle is presented in a bald series of end title-cards.
   Likewise, though Comes is unsparingly frank on certain matters, others remain frustratingly vague - there are seemingly unresolved issues around his sexuality (perhaps), his rocky marriage, and his relationship with his (near-unseen) father, not to mention the fact that his status as victim conflicts with his apparent need for a masculine self-image. This means that, despite the film being often compelling, shocking and moving, there's the nagging sense of incompleteness and evasion - and also that, for Comes, the process Twist of Faith may well be a hindrance to recovery rather than a help.
   That abysmal punning title, meanwhile, counts a definite minus - any kind of word-play is a crass hostage to fortune, given the tragic subject-matter and the (under the circumstances, unfortunate) surnames of the director and the main participant. More serious is the lack of wider context: this particular scandal has ramifications which extend far beyond Ohio, and can be traced right to the heart of the Vatican itself - a few talking heads offering social, political and psychological analysis would surely have worked to everyone's advantage.


Neil Young
7th/8th November, 2005

click here for a list of all films seen at Leeds Film Festival 2005

* An end title-card informs us that Wexler was successful in his quest for octogenarian employment - unfortunately for all concerned, this turned out to be on John Sayles' galumphing misfire Silver City.