To really understand a country you have to go and live there – embed yourself with the people, soak up the culture. If you don’t have the time or inclination for that then the next best thing to is to get stuck in to their commercial cinema. Not the stuff that makes it into major international film festivals like Berlin and Venice, not the stuff that gets nominated for foreign language Academy Awards, but the films that are made to excite and please a local audience. That’s what festivals like Reel Brazil are all about – a week-long portrait of a country via its cinema.
In the late 60s Brazil had a kind of Brazilian Idol television pop competition where brave young artists performed their top song in front of a live audience baying for blood as if they were watching Christians versus lions. But in A Night in 67 we see that year’s competition rise above the boos and jeers to open a new chapter in Brazilian pop music – legendary names like Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso compete to win over the tough crowd and in the process launch massive international careers.
After nearly three and a half years of producing this cinemagoers’ consumer guide, perhaps its time for a statement of intent. A manifesto, if you will. Something to place these musings in perspective as you skim through them over Morning Tea.
I try and find something good and interesting in everything I see, and I see pretty much everything. Most films have an audience of some description waiting for them somewhere, and that audience may be you, so I try and outline what might appeal (along with what might not) so that you can make an informed choice.
Plus, I have some sympathy for the little battler and will often try and draw your attention in that direction (Don’t forget Two Lovers, folks) and I try and watch films not meant for me (kids flicks, etc) with half an eye on how the rest of the audience is reacting.
It is extremely rare, as regular readers will know, for me to warn you off a film entirely, or indeed (in the case of our first film this week) suggest that its creators should be harshly punished for its perpetration. The films that are really sand under my foreskin are those that only exist to pad a resumé and a bank balance, cynical attempts to separate us from our money, marketing campaigns crudely disguised as art.
It isn’t online at the Cap Times, so I thought I would archive my interview with The Visitorstar, Richard Jenkins here. I spoke with Richard by phone last Sunday morning.
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“My drumming sucks” – Richard Jenkins in The Visitor
Best known to New Zealand audiences as the deceased patriarch of the Fisher family in television’s “Six Feet Under”, Richard Jenkins has had a steady career in movies over the last 25 years, often in unsung supporting roles, but this year he has really left a mark.
Speaking to the Capital Times from his home in Rhode Island, Jenkins gave thanks to Thomas McCarthy, creator of 2004’s sleeper hit The Station Agent, for having faith in him despite his lack of marquee presence. “He asked me to read the script and I hadn’t read anything I liked more. But I told him, nobody’s going to give you the money with me in it!” But McCarthy persevered, even when one executive producer suggested just weeks before shooting that Morgan Freeman might be a more commercial choice.
2008 has been a great year for Jenkins. In the sophomoric buddy comedy Step Brothers he got to improvise scenes about dinosaurs with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly; he was reunited with The Coen Brothers for Burn After Reading (in a part that was written for him); and in the sensitive indie he shines as a widowed academic brought back from a boundless depression by a chance New York connection with two illegal immigrants.
But carrying a film on his shoulders was a new experience. “I always wondered what it would be like, you know? Could I do it? But most of all, I didn’t want to let Tom down.” He needn’t have worried, as his performance anchors a typically humane McCarthy film about strangers thrown together and learning to appreciate and then love each other.
Jenkins continues to live in tiny Rhode Island where he moved after successfully auditioning for the Trinity Rep theatre company in Providence in 1970. He happily performed and directed there for 14 years, even spending four years as acting Artistic Director just as his film career was taking off.
The movie work has been so regular he hasn’t been on a stage since 1985 but he never anticipated a film career. ”I’d always loved film but frankly, it was easier to go the the moon,” he laughs. “A career is something you look back on rather than something you plan”.
Now he says he enjoys watching theatre more than he ever did (when he was acting in it) and tries to catch whatever he can, wherever he may be filming.
At the rate that Jenkins makes films (there are another four in the can for release next year), the law of averages suggests he will be shooting in Wellington before too long and he knows the talent we have to offer, describing working with Niki (Whale Rider) Caro on North Country as his best movie-making experience ever.
Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 3 December, 2008.
While the Bond 22 juggernaut threatens to crush everything in it’s path, a couple of plucky little indies try and offer a wholesome alternative (and stay out of harm’s way in the process). Thomas McCarthy’s The Visitoroccupies similar thematic ground to his debut The Station Agentin 2004, but unfurls in altogether less whimsical fashion.
Richard Jenkins plays Walter Vale, a depressed economics professor, fumbling around for some remaining connection to his recently deceased wife (he’s learning to play her piano which is a strikingly futile pursuit for a man in his 50s). Against his wishes he is sent to New York to present a paper he hasn’t written to a conference he has no interest in and he reluctantly has to return to the old apartment he and his wife used to share. Only now it’s occupied by a young illegal immigrant couple who are as surprised to see him as he is to see them – they’ve been conned into thinking it was vacant.
With much apology they pack up and leave but when Vale realises they have nowhere else to go he calls them back to let them stay. And so begins a lovely relationship and a hugely rewarding film, a film that never settles for cliché when (with just a little bit of extra digging) it can find some truth. When laid back drummer Tarek (winningly played by Haaz Sleiman) is arrested and slapped in detention pending deportation, The Visitor effortlessly changes tone and Vale finds someone to care for (and about) once again. One of the films of the year.
American Teenis nominally a documentary but could just as easily be filed in the horror section. An insincere little film about a cross-section of mid-Western American youth in the town of Warsaw, Indiana (a town which appears to have a value system as shallow as the gene pool that’s produced its next generation) American Teen initially provokes nothing so much as despair but eventually wrestles you into submission.
The five central characters are archetypes (the Geek, the Prom Queen, the Jock, the Heartthrob and the Rebel) that slowly emerge as real people despite enduring some tackily manipulative storytelling (not to mention some colossally bad parenting).
Of course, the pressures on these kids are all real – the pressure to be popular or successful, rather than simply be happy – but life wouldn’t have been nearly so complicated if they weren’t all wandering around with radio mics sharing every whispered secret with the world. Someone should have had a word with these kids about boundaries.
Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 3 December, 2008.
Notes on screening conditions: American Teen was screened at the Paramount, in the big auditorium, and was pin sharp at the correct aspect ratio of 1.85:1. It looks like the Paramount’s problems with focus and brightness relate to ‘scope only (and possibly only one of the two projectors).
To really understand a country you have to go and live there – embed yourself with the people, soak up the culture. If you don’t have the time or inclination for that then the next best thing to is to get stuck in to their commercial cinema. Not the stuff that makes it into major international film festivals like Berlin and Venice, not the stuff that gets nominated for foreign language Academy Awards, but the films that are made to excite and please a local audience. That’s what festivals like Reel Brazil are all about – a week-long portrait of a country via its cinema.
