BAM Cinemafest: "Boyhood," "Ellie Lumme," "The Mend, "Something, Anything"

I’ve been pretty busy pur­su­ing oth­er pro­jects and thus did­n’t have the tem­por­al oppor­tun­it­ies to see all that many of the movies screen­ing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Cinemafest, but those pic­tures I have seen, four in all so far, have been very good to extraordin­ary. Three of them have already screened at the fest, the fourth will be there on Thursday. 

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, the open­ing night pic­ture, is one I ima­gine you’ve heard a lot about, and I agree with all the enthu­si­ast­ic and maybe even gush­ing things said about it. It really IS all that; one of the things that’s remark­able about it is the way Linklater stuck to the cine­mat­ic gram­mar he had decided on—a simple but not unsoph­ist­ic­ated one—throughout the twelve-year shoot­ing pro­cess, and how this gram­mar yields a relaxed, seam­less view­ing exper­i­ence that gath­ers emo­tion­al power in ways the view­er won’t neces­sar­ily notice until very near the end. The movie also has one of the abso­lute greatest final shots in cinema. When I first saw it (and I plan on see­ing it again, and maybe again, and with pleas­ure), I men­tioned on social media that it was “Edward Yang-level great.” Let me expand on that: the movie has the com­pas­sions and dir­ect­ness of Yi-Yi and the ambi­tion and con­cen­tra­tion of A Brighter Summer Day. (One thing it does not have is Yang’s anger, which is undetect­able in Yi-Yi, the movie more than once cited by “I did SO like a three-hour movie” types who might be in for a rude shock if they ever hap­pen to see Summer Day.) I think every res­id­ent of the United States ought to see this movie; I don’t know if IFC can pull that off, but they release the pic­ture on July 11. 

The eru­dite and per­spic­a­cious young film crit­ic Ignatiy Vishnavetsky went an unusu­al route for his deput pic­ture, Ellie Lumme, con­triv­ing a haunt­ing, sat­is­fy­ingly feature-like exper­i­ence with­in a barely (not even, even!) 45-minute run­ning time. Set and shot in Vishnavetsky’s home base of Chicago, Ellie Lumme begins, it seems, as anoth­er exam­in­a­tion of The Mating Rituals Of Today’s Irritating Young People. But via incre­ments, in spe­cif­ic cam­era move­ments, light­ing shifts, and cuts, it mutates into some­thing odder and dis­quiet­ing. Stephen Cone, a film­maker who also was a cop­ro­du­cer on this, is excel­lent as Ned, the ini­tially indif­fer­ent fel­low who becomes a per­sist­ently both­er­some pres­ence in the life of the title char­ac­ter, played a few notes high­er and finer above the Generic-Indie-Female register by Allison Torem (above). The movie’s cinephil­ic cur­rents are kind of sub­ter­ranean, which is all to the good; in par­tic­u­lar, Cone’s char­ac­ter reminded me of a ’40 or ’50s noir demon, a per­sist­ent neg­at­ive pres­ence in the mode of, say, Robert Ryan in Fritz Lang’s per­sist­ently great 1952 Clash By Night; but that’s not quite it. 

I met Mr. V., with whom I’ve had a num­ber of invig­or­at­ing (and some­times intemperate—my fault as usu­al, and sorry) exchanges online over the years, at a social gath­er­ing on Saturday after the movie’s BAM screen­ing, and he’s an impress­ive fel­low, and taller than I had ima­gined as well. At the party I remarked to anoth­er friend that I thought it was kind of a shame that Ignatiy had made the movie a longer-than-average short; it felt to me that he could have taken this story to a more con­ven­tion­al fea­ture length without stretch­ing the mater­i­al too thin. “Sure,” my friend said, “but isn’t it admir­able that he went and made the movie he wanted to make?” So okay, there’s that.

The Mend, which screened Sunday even­ing, is not just a stag­ger­ing debut fea­ture, it’s a stag­ger­ing movie full stop. The scen­ario setup might seem on the con­ven­tion­al side: One seem­ing hel­lion of a broth­er (Mat, played by Josh Lucas [seen above] with what one might call phleg­mat­ic com­mit­ment, among oth­er things) recon­nects with the oth­er attempting-to-be-a-normal-person-in-Upper-Manhattan broth­er (Alan, an excel­lently often-recessive Stephen Plunkett). But that’s the only thing con­ven­tion­al about it. Writer/director John Magary opens with an arrest­ing iris-out open­ing image that recalls Arnaud Desplechin, and the movie, like many of Desplechin’s, has a deli­ri­ously packed feel. Content arrives in the form of dia­logue, inflec­tion, eye move­ment, cam­era move­ment, cut­ting, light­ing, music, some­times all at once, but nothing’s ever on-the-nose; sel­dom does a shot or a sequence resolve on a con­son­ant note. But Magary’s in full con­trol of his dis­son­ance. The movie is nev­er not pro­fanely hil­ari­ous, but it’s also almost nerve-wrackingly tense through­out. The movie’s open­ing is a good example of how Magary con­founds stand­ard film gram­mar, cut­ting from a down-and-dirty seduc­tion scene to a screech­ing shit fit in which the seducee ban­ishes the sedu­cer, without depict­ing the pre­cip­it­at­ing act. In the hands of a less assured film­maker this kind of ellip­sis can seem affected, but Magary makes you like it, as he does the long, altern­ately mor­ti­fy­ing, tit­il­lat­ing, and immers­ive party scene that fol­lows. The movie’s side-steps into genu­ine sur­real­ism, largely centered around a dodgy power situ­ation in Alan’s apart­ment, are also con­sist­ently exhil­ar­at­ing. I should make a dis­clos­ure here that Magary is a cor­di­al acquaint­ance who’s been a long­time com­menter on this blog, so I came to The Mend with some good feel­ings and high hopes. The movie itself exceeded them, I have to say. Magary is def­in­itely a Director To Watch and I hope The Mend finds dis­tri­bu­tion soon so it can find an audi­ence. It deserves a big, smart one.

Paul Harrill’s Something, Anything, which screens this Thursday, June 26 at 7 p.m., is a sub­stan­tially quieter film than any of the above. It’s a beau­ti­fully con­cen­trated story of a young woman in Knoxville, Tennessee (Peggy, played by Ashley Shelton, seen above) who’s liv­ing her life in the way every­one, includ­ing her­self, expects of her. Works as a real estate broker, mar­ries a hot­shot young pro­fes­sion­al from the social circle she’s likely been in since high school, etcet­era. An inop­por­tune turn of events that every­one around her, includ­ing her hus­band, treats as a life-glitch sends Peggy into a tailspin, and a post­card from a former high-school acquaint­ance who’s now a monk inspires her to under­take a spir­itu­al quest. She doesn’t quite get into Diary of a Country Priest or Meetings With Extraordinary Men ter­rit­ory, but her embrace of a par­tic­u­lar asceti­cism con­fuses the people around her, includ­ing the estranged hus­band. Harrill’s writ­ing and dir­ect­ing is sens­it­ive in the best way pos­sible, high­light­ing small details of beha­vi­or sharply but unfussily. And Shelton’s per­form­ance has a steady intens­ity that gives off a soft but beau­ti­ful light throughout.