BEAU TRAVAIL : [7/10] : aka Good Work : France 1999 : Claire DENIS : 93 mins : {20/24} : seen at Hålogaland theatre, 21st January : Poetic, elliptical tale of jealousies and petty rivalries among members of the French Foreign Legion stationed in a remote corner of Africa. Consistently striking visually and with a fascinatingly eclectic score, but the final impression is one of slightly excessive evasion: we're given wisps and hints and fragments, which may or may not be combined into a narrative. While regarded in many quarters as Denis's masterpiece, this very loose and wayward adaptation of Melville's Billy Budd isn't really in the same league as her much more ambitious The Intruder (see below). [2000 review]
DISCO AND ATOMIC WAR : [8/10] : Disko ja tuumasíµda : Finland/Estonia 2009 : Jaak KILMI : 80 mins : {19/24} : Fokus cinema, 22nd January : Highly amusing and informative documentary about the elaborate propaganda battles fought during the Cold War, concentrating on Estonia's exposure to western influence via Finnish TV. Some hilarious period clips and droll re-enactments add to the jollity, but the picture is perhaps most interesting for the way it presents the changing face of the USSR over the years. The transition from the dour likes of Brezhnev and Andropov to Gorbachev is so striking it's as if the latter belongs almost to a different species.
THE END OF ST PETERSBURG : [8/10] : Konets Sankt-Peterburga : USSR 1927 : Vsevolod PUDOVKIN : 89 mins approx : {23/24} : Verdensteatret cinema, 22nd January, with live score by Gaute Barlindhaug, Nasra Ali Omar and Victor Shubin : Rousing example of Soviet agit-prop cinema, chronicling how WWI and internal economic/political strifes led directly to the 1917 revolution and the transformation of imperial city St Petersburg into Leningrad. Rousingly persuasive stuff, percussively edited, with harrowing scenes of trench warfare intercut with gleeful profiteers observing the values of their investments spiralling upwards on the stock-market as the bombs fall hundreds of miles away. "We've been at war for three years," one exhausted soldier sighs, "and I don't even know what we're fighting for." Plus ca change…
HELSINKI, FOREVER : [7/10] : Helsinki, ikuisesti : Finland 2008 : Peter VON BAGH : 75 mins : {18/24} : Rådstua, 20th January : Halfway between Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself and Terence Davies' Of Time and the City is this clip-compilation tracing the 20th century history of Helsinki. At once a wryly celebratory city-symphony and brisk guided tour of Finnish cinema, it showcases directors and actors pretty much unknown outside their native land but who are evidently overdue (re)discovery. Von Bagh evidently knows his subject inside out, but his approach is genial rather than drily academic and could easily have justified another 20-30 minutes' running-time.
HIPSTERS : [7/10] : Stilyagi : Russia 2008 : Valery TODOROVSKY : 115 mins : {19/24} : Fokus, 19th January : Overlong but irresistibly boisterous highly enjoyable Russian musical – Hairspray is the most obvious western comparison, though there's more than a touch of Moulin Rouge! here and there - in which a party-obeying young Communist (a winning Anton Shagin) discovers the delights of jazz and "hipster" style in the post-Stalin Moscow of 1955. Fanciful in terms of historical accuracy but evidently heartfelt, it features some exhilarating sequences and one superb love-making scene – between Shagin and the ever-watchable Oksana Akinshina as his hipster sweetheart – that manages to be tender and erotic without actually showing anything remotely explicit between the duo.
THE INTRUDER : [9/10] : L'intrus : France 2004 : Claire DENIS : 130 mins : {24/24} : Hålogaland, 20th January : Brilliantly baffling head-spinner from Denis is perhaps the most successfully example of her audacious, mercurial loose-but-dense style. The plot seems to concern a wealthy, reclusive French businessman (Michel Subor, magnetic) who has a heart transplant and travels to Tahiti in search of his long-lost son. But with realistically-presented fantasy and dream sequences intersecting with the main narrative, it's hard to be conclusive about anything that occurs or anybody that we meet. Challenging and at times maddening, the picture demands to be taken seriously as a work of art and is emphatically deserving of such attention. [2005 review]
KANEHSATAKE – 270 YEARS OF RESISTANCE : [7/10] : Canada 1993 : Alanis OBOMSAWIN : 119 mins : {18/24} : Fokus, 18th January : A remarkable – and under-exposed – incident of ethnic tension in Canada during the early nineties is chronicled in unashamedly partisan fashion by First-Nation documentarian Obomsawin in this absorbing journey behind the headlines. Her assembly of on-the-spot footage with news reports and talking-head interviews is functional but certainly gets the job done, vividly sketching the events of the so-called 'Oka Crisis.' This was an ill-tempered stand-off between members of the Mohawk nation and representatives of local and national law-enforcement sparked by a plan to extend a golf course onto sacred land. Anyone who reckons Canada is a land of quiet tolerance is in for quite a shock when they see how badly the incident was handled, and while one occasionally wishes for a more impartial view, there's no knocking the sheer force of Obomsawin's dignified anger.
STELLA POLARIS : [7/10] : Norway 1993 : Knut Erik JENSEN : 89 mins : {19/24} : Verdensteatret, 18th January : A kind of Nordic variation on Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror, in which we enter the recollections and reveries of a woman who as a child witnessed the Nazi take-over of Norway during World War II, then over a decade later faces the challenge of adult life. There are some chronological disjoints along the way that distract from the near-wordless flow of images and sensations on view, many of them involving fishing, the sea, silent toil, endless forests – Stella Polaris feels like a distillation of "Norwegian-ness," and the striking beauty of the 35mm celluloid image (digital will never look this good) certainly does justice to the spectacular natural landscapes of the astonishing country, even if Jensen occasionally can't help laying things on just a little too thick.
Neil Young
29th January, 2010
all films seen in Tromsø, Norway at public screenings during the 20th Tromsø International Film Festival (via complimentary tickets. Neil Young is a member of the festival's programming board but had no input in the selection of the above films.) Timings taken from festival website.
see also : a paean to festival-highlight Symbol
