Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen
Runs Fri., Feb. 21–Thurs., Feb. 27 at SIFF Cinema Uptown. Not rated. 84 minutes.
With this compilation film, Gyorgy Palfi pays tribute to the precious moments of movie history: It’s a feature-length mosaic weaving 400-ish clips into a single story. This film buff’s salmagundi is therefore fun to watch, but Palfi is also slyly teasing the sameness of so many movie plots. It always comes down to Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl Back Again. And so a coherent Every-narrative can be spliced together from movies as different as The Sound of Music, Stalker, Star Trek—The Motion Picture, and Stranger Than Paradise, to pick one alphabetical run (the film’s website lists all the sources).
Palfi is a Hungarian filmmaker of prodigious imagination; his lovable 2002 comedy Hukkle brought him to international attention, and his unlovable (but really kind of brilliant) 2006 satire Taxidermia established his talent for extremes. Final Cut came about after Hungary canceled a government subsidy for movie projects, leaving Palfi stranded. In lieu of shooting something new, he turned to stitching together pieces of old movies. Final Cut walks through every step of the classic romance: the chance meeting, first date, kiss, wedding, disenchantment, reconciliation. It should be noted that this arc includes sex, and a few moments of explicit coupling are included from porno features. (This citizens’ advisory is included in case you were thinking of taking your kids to see an example of ye olde movie magic only to realize that Deep Throat is submerged in the montage.) The result would be cacophonous if each moment had its original soundtrack, so Palfi uses movie music to carry us through scenes, as well as bursts of dialogue.
The film is full of ingenious cuts that seem to join Joan Crawford flirting with Tom Hanks or Humphrey Bogart surveying Sharon Stone. It’s impossible not to delight in the series of couples riding in the same two-shot during uneasy car rides, as “Runaway” rambles in your ear. The selections are skewed through Palfi’s mindset, which gives us a lot of Hungarian films and a strange emphasis on ’80s and ’90s Hollywood cinema (his youth, having been born in 1974). On a more bothersome level, one might wonder at how few black actors are included in the cascade of images.
Final Cut occupies an accessible place between Christian Marclay’s The Clock (24 hours of clips relating to time in movies) and Chuck Workman’s Precious Images (eight minutes of exquisitely chosen flashes of Hollywood history). This movie lasts just long enough to make its clever point and let you marvel at the stunt, before it walks off into the sunset. It’s unlikely ever to be a DVD—rights issues would prevent that—so if you’re into the idea, this is your shot. Robert Horton
In Secret
Opens Fri., Feb. 21 at Meridian, Seven Gables, and Oak Tree. rated R. 101 minutes.
Within the pages of an 1867 Emile Zola novel lie the seeds of film noir. The hothouse cravings and bloody deeds of Therese Raquin travel in a straight line to James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, books that became a poisoned wellspring for the tawdry postwar American cinema known as noir. Zola gives you the skeleton of the form, fleshed out with a bored married woman, a handsome artist, sexual combustion, and murder. This corker has been newly filmed, in its original period setting, as In Secret—an unfortunately stolid version of Zola’s story.
Rising star Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene) plays the central role. Therese has been raised by her fearsome aunt (Jessica Lange, almost but not quite breaking through to something formidable), whose own son Camille (Tom Felton) has been a sickly near-brother to Therese during childhood. She’s forced to marry Camille as a practical matter when the family moves to Paris, a move that puts her in proximity to Camille’s work friend Laurent (Oscar Isaac, from Inside Llewyn Davis). Laurent fancies himself a painter, but Isaac has the eyes of a born sensualist, and one imagines Laurent has spent more time chasing other men’s wives than perfecting his brushstrokes. He and Therese ignite; murder occurs; the descent into anxiety and guilt commences. But maybe guilt is the wrong word—there’s the sense that Therese and Laurent are mostly bored again and disgusted by what they’ve done. Without the thrill of adultery, even their bodies don’t interest them much. We killed a guy for this?
Based on Neal Bell’s 1991 play, In Secret is the feature debut of director Charlie Stratton, who does low-rent atmosphere just fine but flattens the action into a steady, dreary slog. His best decision is casting Olsen, whose quick responses show us how Therese’s ennui mutates into desire with uncontrollable force. And by the way, Harry Potter fans, Felton (aka Draco Malfoy) is much more spirited in adult form than he ever was at Hogwarts; his Camille is pasty-faced, sincere, and none too bright. Yet these sparks aren’t enough to slap In Secret into shape. This is a story that needs the relentless motion of a whirlpool, but it dribbles away well before the end. Robert Horton
Oscar-Nominated Short Films: The Documentaries
Runs Fri., Feb. 21–Thurs., Feb. 27 at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated. 167 minutes.
Among the five titles included here, four of which I’ve seen, most deal with emphatically Big Topics: prison reform, the Holocaust, the Arab Spring, and queer bashing. (The fifth, an outlier, is about an eccentric New Mexico artist.) It’s hard enough to finance a feature-length documentary, so these shorts skew toward the important—meaning PBS and HBO will take note. (The one I missed, Prison Terminal, will air on HBO next month.)
The Lady in Number 6 is a polished English profile of a 109-year-old pianist and Holocaust survivor; bless her heart for that. Karama Has No Walls, filmed by two extraordinarily brave young cameramen while government forces were shooting at them and fellow protestors, is a bloody news dispatch from Yemen, close cousin to the Oscar-nominated Tahrir Square doc The Square. Cavedigger, the outlier, is a sad/amusing portrait of a guy who creates cathedral-like sandstone caves; but it’s also like every Seattle homeowner’s horror story about the contractor who won’t finish a remodel on any terms but his. Don’t hire this artist, in other words.
The film I predict will take home the Oscar next Sunday is Jason Cohen’s Facing Fear, a Los Angeles crime tale that takes over 25 years to unfold. In 1981, a 15-year-old street hustler and a 17-year-old skinhead meet in the parking lot of a hot-dog stand. It’s an angry mob against one, and the scared gay teen—cast out by his fundamentalist mother—is kicked and beaten unconscious on the pavement. During the ride home to the suburbs, Tim Zaal later recalls, he and his boisterous, drunken buddies got uncomfortably quiet: Did they actually kill that little faggot?
Flash-forward to the present day. Matthew Boger, scars conspicuous on his face, is a soft-spoken manager at L.A.’s Museum of Tolerance, established in 1993, where he coordinates school groups and lecturers from those previously on both sides of the hate divide. Tim and Matthew are going to meet again, and I’ll leave the particulars there. How do you forgive your would-be killer? And how can that violent felon ever atone for his assault? I’ll leave those questions for Facing Fear to answer. (Damn, is it getting dusty in here? There’s something in my eye . . . ) Brian Miller
The Rocket
Opens Fri., Feb. 21 at Varsity. Not rated. 96 minutes.
Written and directed by an Australian, Kim Mordaunt, this familiar little drama is set in a very unfamiliar place: Laos, a footnote to the Vietnam War, a country long isolated and impoverished by its rulers, far from the tourist beaches of Southeast Asia. Mordaunt filmed a 2006 documentary in Laos, Bomb Harvest, about Australians removing dangerous old war ordnance; now he returns to make this first feature with an indigenous cast. The Rocket is a case of ethnography prevailing over rudimentary story (almost a fable, really): You’ve seen this film before, only not here.
In a prologue we learn that newborn Ahlo is considered cursed because he’s delivered with a twin brother. Drown them, the very traditional grandmother (Bunsri Yindi) commands; but Ahlo’s twin is stillborn, so he’s spared. Ten years later, cheerful Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe, a former street urchin) is taken by father Toma (Sumrit Warin) to visit a giant, Western-backed hydroelectric dam, which also has a twin and bears a curse. That new dam will displace Ahlo’s family and village, so the government simply trucks the villagers down to the lowlands, without compensation or new housing.
Among the new refugees Ahlo encounters are cute 9-year-old Kia (Loungnam Kaosainam) and her eccentric, drunken uncle (Thep Phongam), who worships James Brown—right down to the purple suit and pompadour. Kia and her uncle squat in an unfinished building, surrounded by people with electricity, cell phones, and scooters. Yet society has no interest in these dispossessed peasants, so like the Okies in The Grapes of Wrath.
There will be tragedy and triumph for Ahlo’s family, and the plot hinges on an unlikely (but real) homemade rocket competition, a kind of pagan rain festival that suggests a culture far older than the rusting U.S. bombs that Ahlo and company carefully scavenge for rocket propellant. (Yes, it’s as dangerous as it sounds.) When Ahlo swims in the dammed river, he sees an ancient, drowned temple, its Buddhist idols forgotten yet serene. Collecting bat guano in a cave (again, for his rocket), he encounters an old woman who might well be a witch—like his grandmother, for that matter, who gradually sells the beads stitched to her hat to feed the family. There are low-paying factory jobs in the city, but Ahlo’s father resists: Land is still sacred to these wanderers, and his family refuses to sunder its roots to the soil. Brian Miller
Run & Jump
Runs Fri., Feb. 21–Thurs., Feb. 27 at Northwest Film Forum. Not rated. 105 minutes.
The stink of MacGruber had pretty well cleared by the time Will Forte began racking up praise, all of it deserved, for his supporting role in Nebraska. Who knew the guy could act? Well, credit Irish writer/director Steph Green for making at least part of the discovery before Alexander Payne. Forte plays fish-out-of-water American neurologist Ted, who’s staying with a rural Irish family to study its stroke-damaged patriarch, woodworker Conor (Edward MacLiam). After a coma and months in rehab, Conor returns as a sullen, withdrawn presence in the cheerfully disordered cottage also inhabited by a cute little daughter, a teenage son, and his overtaxed wife Vanetia (Maxine Peake). Vanetia can barely keep command over this unruly household, and has little patience for the rather clinical Dr. Ted and his constant videotaping. It’s like having a spy in their home.
Conor has no interest in sex, while the vivacious, flame-haired Vanetia has plenty of life in her, so the romantic tension to this seriocom is fairly clear. However, Green is rather too shy about carrying things through to their logical conclusion. Her script (with Ailbhe Keogan) and direction tend to hang back, rather like Dr. Ted—observing more than stirring things up. Ted and Vanetia may kiss and share a toke, but Green doesn’t want to destroy this happy home. Meanwhile, Conor’s cranial confusion only results in predictable outbursts; his recovery—if even possible—ought to be of more dramatic interest here. Then there’s the matter of son Lenny (Brendan Morris) being bullied, for just the reasons you’d expect.
Rather too genial for its own good, Run & Jump treats all its characters fairly, never letting them drive into the ditch or do anything self-destructive. Recall the moment in Nebraska when Forte’s put-upon son starts walking out the bar where Stacy Keach’s character has just humiliated his father (Bruce Dern): Forte pauses, thinks about it, then turns around to sock that mean old SOB in the face. No equivalent punches are thrown in Run & Jump. Brian Miller
P7 Boxes
Runs Fri., Feb. 21–Thurs., Feb. 27 at SIFF Cinema Uptown. Not rated. 105 minutes.
This is the story of a seemingly unremarkable teen named Victor (Celso Franco) who wants to rise above his station in life, which happens to be as a delivery boy in a Paraguayan market. The first step toward fame and fortune, he believes, is acquiring an expensive camera-phone so he can make movies. The only problem is that Victor is poor—then circumstance puts a $100 payday within his reach. All he has to do is wheel the titular cargo around the marketplace. It is, of course, not that simple. Victor soon finds himself fleeing angry thugs and avoiding capture by the police. He proves elusive, inventive, and, to the film’s benefit, quite likable. Comparisons to Slumdog Millionaire are unavoidable, but 7 Boxes is much more gritty and believable than Danny Boyle’s tale of class jumping in India. The chase scenes are sometimes more gripping, too—even though most involve a wheelbarrow. Directors Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schembori succeed in creating a thriller that doesn’t need a big budget or Hollywood flash to create suspense. Will Victor get his money? And what’s in those boxes anyway? You’ll stick around to see. Mark Baumgarten
The Wind Rises
Opens Fri., Feb. 21 at Cinerama and other theaters. Rated PG-13. 126 minutes.
Beloved animator Hayao Miyazaki has announced this as his final feature, which means The Wind Rises ought to be arriving on a parade float of acclaim, buoyed by pastel clouds and pulled by a collection of amazing imaginary creatures. And yes, the movie’s snagged an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature (Miyazaki won for 2001’s Spirited Away) and good reviews. But the valedictory lap has been slowed a bit by puzzled rumblings about the film’s subject, which—while loose enough to allow for fantastical sequences—is rooted in historical reality. On the one hand, a biographical study of engineer and airplane designer Jiro Horikoshi sounds like a great match for Miyazaki’s wistful style: It allows for beautiful flying sequences and perhaps some self-portraiture in its study of a detail-minded dreamer who assembles his creations from a combination of math-based design and pure imagination.
The problem? Horikoshi’s masterpiece was the Zero, Japan’s lethally efficient World War II fighter plane. Now, The Wind Rises is an antiwar film, and Miyazaki takes some pains to criticize the inter-war Japanese mindset. Still, I have to admit there’s something head-in-the-clouds about this movie’s soft treatment of its central character. The film is so full of dream sequences and wistful humor and regret about a lost love that it doesn’t begin to suggest a deep internal conflict in Horikoshi’s work on the machinery of death, if indeed he felt any.
If the movie does have a head-in-the-clouds spaciness, well—what clouds! And what fields, and flying machines, and cityscapes. Miyazaki mounts one spectacular early sequence around the catastrophic Japanese earthquake of 1923, a stunning vision of fire and fear. The title, referred to more than once, comes from a line from a Paul Valery poem: “The wind is rising! We must try to live!” That soulful stirring defines the film more than its curious treatment of a fighter-plane designer. Miyazaki is the rare film artist who appreciates the natural world; for him the wind is more than an idea—it’s a physical and spiritual force. That fact that he draws his visions rather than just photographing them makes his achievement all the more singular.
One technical note: I saw The Wind Rises in its Japanese-language, subtitled form. Its U.S. release—it’s been a huge hit in Japan—will have both subtitled and dubbed-into-English prints, depending on the theater. The dubbing cast is led by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci. Robert Horton
E
film@seattleweekly.com
