Global Film Review

Is Russian Cinema Dead?

Sean Patrick Murphy — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:59:21 +0000

FPA Russia blogger Vadim Nikitin tackles that question in his latest blog entry:

“In the 1990s, the Russian film landscape had come to resemble something straight out of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, with stray dogs wandering through Mosfilm studios in Eisenstein’s footprints and actors and directors stumbling around a menacing no man’s land in search of money and meaning.
What happened before, and after, is the subject of an engrossing (and plenty flawed) BBC documentary entitled Movie Nights in Moscow on Radio 3, in which Oxford professor Rana Mitter travels to Russia and speaks to directors, academics and viewers to determine the state of cinema in Russia today.”

Find the whole entry here.

Baraka (1992)

Sean Patrick Murphy — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:56:59 +0000

This film is visually stunning.
Filmed in 70mm in 24 countries, it is one long montage of scenes.
The viewer has to be in the right frame of mind to watch “Baraka” – there is no dialogue or narration. All of the images are set to New Age music.
Sometimes the camera lingers on one image of people facing it quietly which makes the viewer have to take note of that person. Other scenes, shown in time lapse photography, are a whirlwind of motion.
What this film does is show the human condition throughout the world. By juxtaposing images of nature with those of man, it presents human activity as part of the organic world.
“Baraka” could be called “A Day in the Life of Planet Earth.”
It shows the flora and fauna of the world as well as items like the Chinese army of terracotta soldiers. There are also shots of homeless people and those left to pick at trash in landfills.
Because the film never lets the viewer know where it is filming, it’s anybody’s guess as to what they are watching. But that works because the audience can simply enjoy the images without the bias that might accompany that knowledge.

So, the movie shows Tibetan monks and Jews praying but never lets the audience know that.
The lack of narration and identifiers drives home the film’s purpose – to show us all as denizens of one world.
Because it films people all over the world in worship, in war, in business, in celebration in simply living, “Baraka” provides sumptuous slices of life, some exotic, some mundane.
“Baraka” is available to rent.

Murphy can be reached at: Lojano@comcast.net

Darshan: The Embrace (2006)

Sean Patrick Murphy — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:51:02 +0000

This movie is a snooze fest.
Which is unfortunate because the subject, Amma, is fascinating.
What director Jan Kounen appears to have tried is to provide a documentary about the life of Amma, a mahatma in India. However, it falls short somehow.
There are long periods of film showing the thousands of people who line up for hours just to be held briefly by Amma, known as “the hugging saint.”
But there is precious little biography as well as barely any interview footage with Amma herself.
What the audience does learn is how Amma was different from most people even as a child. According to her family, she would give food away to the poor and starving even then.
There are also interviews with westerners who have decided to follow Amma and help her with her mission.
It appears that Kounen is attempting to capture the atmosphere in and around events featuring Amma but all he achieves is long boring sequences that frustrate the viewer.
The brief glimpse the audience sees of Amma as a child through interviews with her family are very interesting. More of that could have possibly saved this movie.

And again, the viewer never gets as close to Amma as one would expect. More on her take on her cult of personality would be worth hearing.
The subject herself, however, is portrayed beautifully. It is possible to see her inner light as she makes herself available to her ardent followers.
It’s too bad that it isn’t enough to save this film.
“Darshan: The Embrace” is available to rent.

Murphy can be reached at: Lojano@comcast.net

Sin Nombre (2009)

Sean Patrick Murphy — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:50:35 +0000

Right from the start this film draws the audience in.
It is a movie about a young Honduran woman named Sayra who rides on top of trains hoping to reach Texas through Mexico.
It is also about Casper (a.k.a. Willy), a Mexican gang member in trouble who meets up with Sayra along the way.
Casper’s association with the gang shows how brutal life is for him and his protégé, Smiley. Their initiation rituals are physically punishing.
This film is also about desperation, about the crushing poverty that leads people to risk everything to find a better life. It is also about gang style brotherhood and the long reach of certain gangs.
There is at least one point when Casper, who protected Sayra once, tries to leave Sayra by hopping off a train while she sleeps. But she is stubborn and places her fate in his hands and joins him.
The acting is superb. All of the characters are believable and the audience sees clearly, even in his quietest moments, how Casper (played by Edgar Flores) struggles with his past, a past he is trying to leave behind.
The story also shows how one decision can alter a person’s life, how difficult it is to escape one’s lot in life.

The relationship between Sayra and Casper is refreshingly non romantic. They have an affinity for each other and look out for one another but remain just friends.
This film also puts a human face on migration.
All the while the audience asks, “Will Casper escape his past? Will Sayra make it to the United States?”
It is worth watching to find out.
“Sin Nombre” is available for rent.

Murphy can be reached at: Lojano@comcast.net

Under the Bombs (2007)

Sean Patrick Murphy — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:34:15 +0000

In the summer of 2006, southern Lebanon was under a barrage of Israeli firepower.
The war was nominally between Israel and Hezbollah operating out of Lebanon.
What this film does – and does well – is to humanize this war story.
It shows a woman, Zeina, who has come from Dubai to find her sister and her son in southern Lebanon. She pays and later befriends a taxi driver named Tony who agrees to take her there despite the danger.
Zeina’s desperate search leaves the audience on the edge of their seats, waiting and hoping she finds word about her loved ones.
While they are an unlikely pair, Zeina and Tony develop a relationship forged in wartime. They become friends and confidantes.
This movie cleverly uses footage of actual shelling as well as locations that have been bombed. The background story of the war makes the film almost a true documentary.
Also, there are only two actors in the film – the rest of the people shown play themselves.

It may be a cliché to say the people in this film are a testament to the resilience of human beings, but it’s true.
While many are traumatized by what happened to their bombed out homes, they plan to rebuild.
The short war left about 1,200 people dead and as many as 1 million refugees.
Lebanese director Philippe Aractingi, who made this film, says at the end that it was made for the innocents who were killed in the war.
“Under the Bombs” is available to rent.

Murphy can be reached at: Lojano@comcast.net

Romero (1989)

Sean Patrick Murphy — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:05:04 +0000

“Be a patriot – kill a priest.”
That was a bumper sticker seen on vehicles run by the national guard in El Salvador in the 1980s.
The reason is that the entrenched elite of that country believed that Roman Catholic priests were becoming radicalized and increasingly political and who therefore threatened their interests.
But Oscar Romero was not one of them.
In this film Monsignor Romero is shown as being selected by the Vatican for the position of archbishop because he is modest and will not make waves.
As the film progresses, Father Romero is faced again and again with atrocities being committed against his friends and his loyal followers.
He tries to reconcile the two warring groups – the leftist guerrillas and the right-wing government – as the country’s civil war escalates.
But over time, Archbishop Romero comes to understand that the root of violence in El Salvador is the economic disparity between the haves and haves not.
The late Raul Julia does a fantastic job of conveying Romero’s struggle. It is in some of his quiet moments that the audience sees much of the priest’s attempt to find the right path.

This film, which is now 20 years old, still holds up and provides a snapshot of Cold War Latin America and the conflict between communists and the extreme right.
As many as 60,000 people were killed during the Salvadoran civil war with weapons provided by the United States. So, this film is as much a chapter in United States history as it is of El Salvador’s.
“Romero” is available for rent.

Murphy can be reached at: Lojano@comcast.net

Beyond the Gates of Splendor (2004)

Sean Patrick Murphy — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:35:28 +0000

The story behind this documentary is fascinating.
Several missionaries travel to eastern Ecuador in the 1950s and make contact with the Waodani, a Stone Age tribe.
Five of the missionaries – all men – are brutally murdered by the Waodani.
What happens next is fairly unbelievable: the wives and children of the slain missionaries join the natives and, over time, steer them toward a culture of peace and tolerance. The tribe, with its previous propensity for violence and vendetta, was shrinking rapidly as a result.
Some of the movie drags on, especially the testimonies of people who knew the murdered missionaries. While they may make the victims more human by telling of their sense of humor or other attributes, they do nothing to move the film along.
The film’s score is also distracting. It invades scenes and in some cases draws attention away from the story. If the audience notices the score, that usually means it is wrongly used.

One very interesting part shows one of the Waodani traveling to the United States and experiencing life there. His take on things like airports and supermarkets is as funny as it is revealing.
More of that would have boosted the movie but it is unfortunately short and appears to be almost an afterthought.
Despite its flaws, this film is a testament to human beings’ ability to forgive and change.
“Beyond the Gates of Splendor,” which is rated PG-13, is available for rent.

Murphy can be reached at: Lojano@comcast.net

I Have Never Forgotten You (2007)

Sean Patrick Murphy — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:30:52 +0000

Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal is lionized – and rightfully so –in this documentary.
The film follows him from his life in a German concentration camp until his death in 2005.
It shows how relentless he was in tracking down war criminals and how scrupulous he was.
While many jumped on the anti-Kurt Waldheim bandwagon in the 1980s when Waldheim was seeking to be Austria’s president, Wiesenthal refused to implicate him. Wiesenthal did so because, even though Waldheim had been a Nazi soldier during the war, he had no evidence that Waldheim had committed war crimes.
This documentary, which was produced by Moriah Films, the Academy Award-winning media subdivision of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, also reveals when the Nazi hunter was wrong, like when he was convinced that Josef Menegele was still alive in South America even though he was widely believed to be dead. Mengele was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau known as the “Angel of Death” because of his human experiments on camp inmates.
Wiesenthal was also stubborn and refused to leave Austria even when his popularity decreased substantially and his daughter had to be escorted by police to school.

One person interviewed for the film claims that ad hoc war crimes tribunals like the ones for Yugoslavia and Rwanda exist in part because of the groundwork laid by Wiesenthal.
It’s been said many times before but needs to be repeated because there are those on the world stage who still claim otherwise: the Holocaust happened. The work of people like Wiesenthal to track down the perpetrators of genocide should be supported.
“I Have Never Forgotten You” is available for rent.

Murphy can be reached at: Lojano@comcast.net

The Age of Stupid (2009)

Sean Patrick Murphy — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:09:21 +0000

History was made tonight.
With screenings in more than 550 cinemas in more than 45 countries, the global premiere of “The Age of Stupid” has made a Guinness world record.
It would appear that this film might pack less of a wallop because of former United States Vice President Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”
But that wouldn’t be true.

Pete Postlethwaite does a great job as possibly the last human on earth in 2055 looking back to archival footage in the mid to late 2000s and wondering why humanity continued on its course for self destruction when they all knew climate change would wreak havoc on the world.
Before the documentary/drama began, there was a live feed from the green carpet in New York City where people like director Franny Armstrong and actress Gillian Anderson were interviewed. There was also a song sung by Moby with all of the electrical power created by people riding stationary bikes.
Following the screening there was a live interview with former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan who said that global warming is for much of the world the key to increased poverty.
Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed – who pledged his country will be carbon neutral in 10 years – also spoke about how the sea is rising and forcing people out of their homes and how warmer ocean water has diminished fishing. He also said climate change has been killing reefs which has adversely affected tourism.
There were also live satellite links to the Himalayas where glaciers are receding and to Indonesia where deforestation is a concern. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke also played and sang a haunting tune.

This film makes the viewer aware that United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will take place in December and that it could – with the vocal support of global citizens – be the turning point for humanity when it comes to climate change. Find the UN website here.
For more information about the film, please go here.
It is not known when “The Age of Stupid” will be in general release.

Murphy can be reached at: Lojano@comcast.net

The Age of Stupid (Preview)

Sean Patrick Murphy — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:30:51 +0000

This film is being shown in more than 550 cinemas and more than 45 countries on September 21 and September 22.
Go here to see if it’s playing near you.
‘The Age of Stupid’ is the new cinema documentary from the Director of ‘McLibel’ and the Producer of the Oscar-winning ‘One Day in September’.
From the website: “This enormously ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching ‘archive’ footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change while we had the chance?”

Look for a review of this film after its premiere next week.

Murphy can be reached at: Lojano@comcast.net