| SARAJEVO FILM FESTIVAL 2008 : Vladan Petkovic reports |
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 SNOW : [7/10] Snijeg : Aida BEGIĆ : Bosnia & Herzegovina (BH/Ger/Fr/Iran) 2008 : 100m : seen 15.Aug. (SFF opening film) The surprise winner of the Grand Prix at this year's Cannes Critics' Week opened the Sarajevo Film Festival before a crowd of 3,000 at the region's biggest open-air venue. But, bearing in mind what a partisan crowd this event usually attracts, Snow wasn't received as well as expected. Of course, there were no boos, but the applause was timid compared to ovations which greeted, say, Jasmila Žbanić's Berlin-garlanded Grbavica received a couple of years back. Sarajevo-born Aida Begić's first feature film was penned by herself and Elma Tataragic - the latter not only the producer of the film but also and the SFF's selector for the feature and shorts competitions. It shows what we might call a strong "guiding hand", in terms of the director's input. The story takes place in a remote, ruined Bosnian village in 1997, shortly after the end of the war. The village is ihabited by seven women, four orphans and an old man (Emir Hadžihafisbegović, undoubtedly the best Bosnian actor around). They strive to make a living out of almost nothing: selling fruit on a road which hardly ever sees any passing traffic. All their men were killed in the war, and the women mourn their loss in different ways. The story kicks into gear when two businessmen - one a Serb, one a foreigner of undetermined origin - arrive to the village, wanting to buy land for a price which would provide all the residents with a comfortable living. This provokes considerable discussion and quarrelling before a consensus decision is reached... The cast of the film is excellent, from veteran Jasna Beri to (best of all) the relatively youthful Zana Marjanović - who, for the first time in her short career, gets a movie-stealing role and takes full advantage. Her suppressed emotion for her lost husband explodes in genuine tears at a crucial mid-point juncture - unfortunately, after this point the picture's dynamics start to slowly deteriorate. There's a fair amount of padding which saps the story's momentum and some dramatic scenes later on don't quite manage to put proceedings back on a fully satisfying even keel - there's only so much one can do with this kind of corny subject-matter (i.e. the choice between making a living and keeping one's own home.) On the plus side, Erol Zubčević and Igor Camo provide top-notch cinematography and (minimal) music - their efforts all the more commendable considering this is the first major production for each. STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE [9/10] Errol MORRIS: US 2008: 116m: seen 17.Aug. If there's ever been a documentary about war-crimes that tells its story in straight-arrow, no-shortcuts fashion, then it is Errol Morris's stunning Abu Ghraib expose Standard Operating Procedure. Both conventional and unconventionial, it's a breathtaking and moving account of one of the most infamous and talked-about war prisons in recent history. Much of the running-time consists of talking-head interviews with the American service-men and -women who conducted the abuses which shocked the world. These are juxtaposed with letters they wrote back home to their friends and family, the photographs they took of their exploits (and which led to many of them receiving jail sentences), and also some dramatised sequences of conditions in the Iraqi prison. Sounds simple, but Morris achieves much with the most minimal of means. The dramatised sequences largely consists of blurred, dark close-ups of parts of the bodies of the "detainees", and when we are shown extracts from the soldiers' video-recordings, they are shown as if through a keyhole - occupying perhaps a tenth of the screen. Though the two-hour running-time may seem daunting, the film feels less than half that length - partly due to the engrossing nature of the subject-matter, partly due to the skill with which Morris explores it. With an outstanding score by Danny Elfman and photography by Robert Chappell (The Fog Of War, Arrested Development, The Thin Blue Line) and Robert Richardson (Academy Award winner for The Aviator and JFK) this is by far the best war-themed documentary in years. SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK [7/10] Charlie Kaufman : US 2008 : 124m: seen Aug.22. The old Orson Welles line about cinema being the best train-set a boy ever had comes to mind when watching Synecdoche, New York, the directorial debut from brilliant screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. His success with Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, and the Oscar-winning Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind enabled him to play with Welles's "train set" - and he certainly seems delighted with his expensive new toy... The film is the story of theatre-director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who, during a particularly busy juncture in his life, learns that he has a mysterious, unidentified disease, receives the coveted and valuable 'MacArthur' artist-endowment grant, and sees his wife Adele (Catherine Keener) depart for Berlin with their young daughter. As the years pass - with no sign of Adele and the daughter returning - Caden starts devising on an ambitious piece de theatre, constructing a vast model of New York city inside a Manhattan warehouse, and preparing for 17 whole years. Along this time he has further 'difficulties with girls' - including his second wife, actress Claire (Michelle Williams), and the box-office clerk who becomes his assistant, and also his only true love, Hazel (Samantha Morton). Constructed as a play within a play within a film, Synecdoche, New York is essentially a story about the fear of death and the need for love - and it's also a baffling affair. When Caden hires actors to play himself and his various women, identities start to double and then triple - rather like in a David Lynch film, except in a more direct, down-to-earth manner, and with (thankfully) much more in the way of humour. The film trundles along smoothly enough - until Caden actually starts to direct his long-in-gestation play, and problems soon arise. Just as Caden starts to lose his grip on his work and his life, the same thing starts to happen with Kaufman and his film. If one could say that this metatextual 'paralleling' was intentional, the film's construction might arguably be interpreted as brilliantly inspired - but this really doesn't seem to be the case here. The increasing impression is that the man who is probably the best American screenwriter of the present decade needs help from a director (such as Gondry, Clooney, or Jonze) in order to discipline his wild, fecund imagination. Synecdoche, New York isn't an unsatisfying work - for one thing, this top-drawer cast (which also includes Emily Watson and Jennifer Jason Leigh in small roles) ensure proceedings always remain diverting and engaging. But let's hope that Kaufman will in future either learn to rein in his own excesses, or else hand his work over to more assured directorial hands. THREE MONKEYS [9/10] Uc Maymun : Nuri Bilge CEYLAN : Turkey 2008 : 109m : seen 20.Aug. Winner of the Best Director award at the most recent Cannes Film Festival, Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a truly unique filmmaker. With no film education whatsoever and a background in photography, he manages to make films (Distant; Climates) which don't really compare with any other director's work. Three Monkeys is a family story - one in which everyone suffers. The father, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol), works as a driver for a politician running for parliament (Ercan Kesal). When his boss accidentally drives over a pedestrian, Eyup agrees to "take the fall" and serve nine months in jail - in exhange for a considerable sum of money. His wife, the beautiful, fortyish Hacer (Hatice Aslan), starts cheating on him with his boss after he goes inside. Their son, meanwhile, is Ismail (Rifat Sungar), who fails to enrol in the university and falls into depression, pleading with his mother to go to the boss and ask for cash to buy a car. Ismail then discovers Hacer's infidelity - and, when he pays a visit to his father in jail, Eyup twigs that something is amiss in that particular area. Complications ensue - with an added quasi-supernatural dimension revolving around the fact that Ismail, Eyup and Hacer are all "haunted" by the "ghost" - and/or the memories - of Eyup and Hacer's deceased child, who drowned as a five-year-old. The dead child is a recurring figure in Ismail's hallucinations, entering his apartment with wet skin and blue lips - like an escapee from some J-horror extravaganza. Whereas many directors might struggle to integrate such material into a coherent whole, Ceylan's grip on the strings of plot and theme is always expert and strong - his spectacular results boosted by a uniformly strong cast of actors. Of particular note is the film's colour-scheme which takes its inspiration from the actors's skin-tones - a darkish tint of sepia - so that any contrasting hues, from the pallid decor of the family home to the brighter touches in the costume-design, jump out of the frame. Ceylan - and his cinematographer Gokhan Tiryaki - deserve particular credit for achieving his fluent visual style using high-definition digital video. Indeed, their exploration of this new(ish) medium rivals Michael Mann's work in Collateral (though Three Monkeys is, as a whole, a superior piece of film-making.) Ceylan's use of music is also an outstanding feature - listen out for the ring-tone of Hacer's mobile-phone, which consists of a mournful, popular Turkish song whose lyrics are a perfect fit for the subject-matter. All told - a great achievement of modern cinema, which warrants repeated viewing. TRAVELLING WITH PETS : [8/10] Puteshestvie s domashnimi zhivotnymi : Vera STOROZHEVA : Russia 2007 : 97m : seen 17.Aug. Many of the best recent Russian arthouse films deal with the subject of a woman in rural surroundings. But that's only part of the story with Travelling With Pets, a film that shows how the heritage of auteurs from Tarkovsky to Mihalkov can be adapted for the new century. The focus is on Natalya (Kseniya Kutepova), who grew up in an orphanage and, as soon as she departed that institution, became married to a narrow-minded peasant. They lived in a decrepit house by the railway line, making a living out of selling milk to passing train-conductors. Natalya belatedly gets the chance to explore what a woman's life can be after her husband - at the very beginning of the film - dies of heart attack. She wastes wastes little time in exploring her sexuality - helped along by truck-driver Sergey (Dmitriy Duzhev), a divorcee with a five-year-old daughter, whom she meets when transporting her her husband's body to the local morgue. Having saved a few coppers here and there, she invests in a fancy television-set - only to find that she's not interested in what the box has to offer. Instead, she's more interested in trying out various roles - city-lady, mother, mistress - before coming to a surprising decision about what she wants to do. Oleg Lukychev's cinematography beautifully contrasts the pallid colours of the railroad surroundings with vivid hues of Natalya's new dresses; a red balloon of which she takes a great care; and gaudy images from the television set. Pale, red-haired and freckledm Kutepova fits perfectly into this colour-scheme and - even with minimal acting - shows a wider range of emotions than, say, world cinema's most prominent pale, flame-haired siren, Nicole Kidman. Several surreal sequences suggest an influence of Kusturica, but don't be fooled: Storozheva is obviously far too sophisticated to employ a fully Kusturica-esque wham-bang style - an approach which would have ruined this delicate gem. WALTZ WITH BASHIR [9/10] Vals im Bashir : Ari FOLMAN : Fra/Ger/Isr : 90m : seen 19 Aug This self-proclaimed "animated documentary" by Ari Folman (Made In Israel, 2001), is technically, an animated autobiography which combines the documentary approach with "live" (albeit animated) action. According to the film's website http://waltzwithbashir.com/, the project took four years, from the start of research to the final product. First it was shot as a video-film in a studio, then broken down into a storyboard, before an "animatics" technique which produced a version that would be much easier and cheaper to fix than a full-blown animation process. Animators then drew the scenes, frame by frame, resulting in an entirely animated film. After all this, one would be inclined to ask: why bother? The answer is obvious from the result. First of all, the subject-matter is quite delicate. Folman realises that he has almost no recollection whatsoever of the Israeali-Lebanese war in 1992 which started after Lebanon was heavily bombing northern cities in Israel. Then the Israeli army entered Southern Lebanon, which ended with infamous massacre of Palestinians at refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila by Phalangists (Christian forces which were Israel's allies in the Lebanon War.) Folman, the protagonist of his movie, is aware that he took part in the war, but doesn't remember anything beyond one nightmarish scene. So he goes investigating, nudged by a friend's recurring dream of 26 dogs attacking his home - the animals being the guard dogs he killed in Beirut. On the way he interviews his brothers-in-arms and the most prominent media figure of the war, Ron Ben-Yashii (undoubtedly the most important Israeli war correspondent of all time, wounded twice during the War of Attrition in late sixties and once in Kosovo.) Some of the interviewees didn't even want their actual voices to be heard, so they were dubbed by actors. But not Ben-Yashii. The result is technically impressive and emotionally devastating, particularly coming from a person who's had his own share of war and political trouble in his own country. Everything in this film has its point and rightful place, from the animation and photography to strong, but never intrusive music. The editing is particularly important in this kind of "experiment," and here provides terrific dynamism which could be compared to top action films such as The Bourne Identity (or, in terms of war-movies, Saving Private Ryan.) Folman balances top-notch craftsmanship and genuine passion, without letting either ruin the importance of the other. On the whole, if this isn't wholly a documentary (some of the fighting scenes were obviously staged), Waltz With Bashir definitely innovates the genre and will be considered a benchmark when the history of cinema in the early 21st century is written. WE'VE NEVER BEEN TO VENICE [7/10] Nikoli Nisva Šla V Benetke : Blaž KUTIN : Slovenia 2008 : 62m : seen 18.Aug. The 38-year old Slovenian director's first feature film had its world premiere in the competition of Sarajevo Film Festival, and deservedly so. From the very beginning, the three main characters - husband Grega (Aljoša Ternovšek), wife Masha (Iva Krajnc) and Grega's father (Peter Ternovšek) - act like refugees from a Beckett play. They do strange, seemingly unmotivated things - Grega and Masha as destructive as frustrated high-schoolers. Grega's father takes them to a lake for a swim, and on the way they kick parked bicycles, throw stones at cars, while Grega is often unreasonably aggressive towards his wife. We're baffled and bemused - but then, at the end of the film, it all falls into place, in a manner that recalls some of the more provocative work of Lars Von Trier. With acting and the settings that are suitably theatrical, Kutin's guidance shows the kind of potential that will hopefully develop into a unique directing approach. Although the striking finale would have more impact if the performances had perhaps been toned down a touch, the wild behaviour of the characters is perhaps crucial for the story's impact - and, in this film, there can be no middle ground. Vladan Petkovic (Belgrade correspondent, Screen International) August 2008  OFFICIAL SITE |
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