Brett Colvin
Burning Man newbie-artist Samantha in Confessions.
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Close Your Eyes
Opens Fri., April 23, at Meridian and Metro
The title of this stale-off-the-shelf British occult serial-killer flick invites the obvious joke, but even following the suggestion in the title won't make this film any less ludicrous, because you'd still have to hear it. A somewhat shady American therapist with borderline clairvoyant powers (ER's Goran Visnjic) is living a seedy existence in London, helping people quit smoking via hypnosis, while his very pregnant wife (LOTR's Miranda Otto, taking three career steps backward) nags about their financial prospects. (They also have a daughter of 10 or so, who might as well have "third-act victim" stamped on her forehead.) One of the psychic's patients is a low-level cop (Shirley Henderson from Intermission), who discovers his mind-reading powers. She's minding a mute 11-year-old girl who's been traumatized by her encounter with "the tattoo murderer," who preys upon such innocent lasses. Naturally the shrink winds up helping her with the case.
From there, Eyes falls into standard police procedural stuff of the sort done much better on TV, overlaid with a patina of black magic, immortal 16th-century French heretics, body snatching, and paranormal mumbo-jumbo likely to remain unsurpassed in sheer ridiculousness until the Exorcist sequel arrives. Periodically, through the shrink's sessions with the mute girl, we take somewhat interesting CGI–tweaked journeys back into her occult ordeal. Then we have to grapple with his considerably less interesting memories of his own trauma back . . . in . . . Seattle!
In a movie this bad, you're almost overjoyed at that special little nugget of extra badness, which arrives when the hypnotist explains how a Seattle patient of his tragically died. Freed from aquaphobia, the kid promptly went for a swim in the nearest lake, where he drowned, Visnjic glumly intones, because in April, "the ice had only just melted." Which reminds me that I ought to put my furs and sealskins into summer storage about now. I think I see the glaciers receding from Capitol Hill. (R) BRIAN MILLER
Confessions of a Burning Man
Opens Fri., April 23, at Big Picture
People who attend Burning Man put a lot of effort into making it as hard as possible to describe. (I've been there myself four times.) Trying to pin it down in a sentence, or even in a 90-minute documentary, is quixotic. It seems untrue to the event's anarchic spirit. Then again, making pronouncements about what is and isn't true to the event's anarchic spirit is itself untrue . . . etc., etc. You see where this is going.
Burning Man is an annual campout in the northwestern Nevada desert during the week before Labor Day; there, its residents (30,500 people last year) build a temporary utopian city. It's a post-apocalyptic state fair, Mardi Gras on Tatooine—the snappy metaphors are many, most ending with the words "on acid." Guidelines are few: You're responsible for bringing everything you need and taking out all trash you generate; no exchange of money is allowed; no spectators, only participants; bring something to share, preferably art.
Filmmakers Paul Barnett and Unsu Lee attended in 2001, following around four virgin Burners who transformed (as so many do) from bewildered gawkers to proselytizers. Granted, Barnett and Lee had to spray a light coating of narrative arc on the experience, otherwise it wouldn't be a film, just footage. But their instincts are sharp: Whenever Confessions is threatening to turn into The Real World: Nevada, they cut back to the random surrealism the fest provides in abundance—a minibus covered in yellow fur, perhaps, or a chess set made out of dildos.
One lesson I've gleaned from Burning Man: Abandon your preconceptions. Your first impressions of the documentary subjects here will probably be wrong. Among them, Kevin, an inner-city filmmaker and rapper—i.e., a keepin'-it-real badass escaping the hood—comes off as artificial, self-important, and patience-tryingly shallow. Anna, born to privilege as a Getty, is perfectly happy to become a blank slate and relish whatever's thrown at her. Artist Samantha makes her mark etching a huge mandalalike labyrinth in the clay desert floor, a classic example of the sort of do-it-yourself, simple-but-beautiful creativity that Burning Man inspires.
The annual event—begun in 1986—has its controversies, which the film doesn't shy from mentioning: It's extremely white, and, bless its anticonsumerist heart, attending does require a chunk of disposable income. (Tickets are $225 as of this writing, $250 after July 31.) The contradiction between the twin ideals of "be self-reliant" and "be generous," which most Burners happily overlook, can produce a little tension.
The one constant for all Burners is the environment, and conveying the physical feel of the desert is where this film excels—daytime's burdensome heat, dust, and sweat; dusk's exhilarating serenity; nightfall's cleansing and revivifying, when the entire city lights up and Burners vibrate with energy. As it happens, I was planning to take a year off from this summer's gathering; after seeing this film, I'm not sure I can. (NR) GAVIN BORCHERT
I'm Not Scared
Opens Fri., April 23, at Egyptian
Italian novelist Niccolò Ammaniti is no Stephen King, and we should be thankful for that. He helped write the screenplay for this '70s-set kidnapping drama, which skirts King territory with its premise but ends up being much better for its sun-bleached sparseness. There's something wonderfully gothic, almost like a fairy tale, in Scared's evocation of two distinct realms: the sunny summer wheat fields where 10-year-old Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano) and his buddies play; and the dank, dark pit in the earth where Michele one day discovers . . . a corpse, a monster, or possibly something even worse.
