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| Ebertfest: It's Back and Baadasssss! |
by Peter Sobczynski
Although plunged into a state of doom and gloom a couple weeks ago after the defeat of the Illini for the NCAA basketball title, the Champaign-Urbana area of downstate Illinois is all smiles once again-Ebertfest is back!
Now in its seventh year of existence, Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival returns to the town of Champaign, IL to unspool 12 films which most contemporary audiences missed because of poor distribution, promotion or because they were too odd to be summed up in a one-sentence sound bite. The films will play at the beautifully restored Virginia Theatre and each screening will feature an on-stage post-film discussion featuring Ebert and a variety of filmmakers, critics and commentators. As usual, the festival kicks off with a 70mm spectacular and will also feature a silent movie with a live accompaniment from the astounding Alloy Orchestra. Although festival passes are now sold out, there may be individual tickets remaining for some of the films. For information on ticket availability, a list of tentative guests and panel discussions and the answers to any other question that you might have, you should go immediately to the official festival website at www.ebertfest.com
Below is a list of the films that will be playing during this year’s festival and my thoughts on the nine titles that I have already seen. In a couple of cases, I have chosen to reprint my original reviews as they previously appeared on a different website. (In other words, if they sound familiar, feel free to skip over them.)
4/20
PLAYTIME: Jacques Tati, who became an international sensation when he introduced his beloved Monsieur Hulot character in the acclaimed comedies “Mr. Hulot’s Holiday” (1953) and “Mon Oncle” (1958), took an enormous gamble with this 1967 film, which follows the character as he does battle with the architecture of an ultra-modern Paris while trying to contact an American official. He spent nearly three years and much of his money to bring the film to the screen–much of which went into the construction of the massive set where most of the on-screen action occurs–and when it came out, it was an enormous flop in France that essentially sank Tati’s career and when it appeared in America, it was in a severely truncated form that performed equally dismally.
In recent years, however, the film’s reputation have increased in stature and the release of a restored version (in the grand 70mm format in which it was originally shot) in 2004 finally allowed audiences to absorb the full majesty of Tati’s achievements. Because the film is a relatively plotless affair whose glories are almost entirely visual, it is difficult to describe the film in a way that does justice to the astonishments seen on the screen–the best way I can think of to describe it is to suggest that it is what “The Terminal” might have been like if it had been any good and didn’t feature Tom Hanks doing his Latka impression. Combining visual splendor, hilarious gags and a modest sweetness generally lacking in most large-scale films, “Playtime” is one of the all-time greats and a chance to see it in 70mm should not be missed. (7:00 PM)
4/21
MURDERBALL: I haven’t yet seen this documentary about the world of quadriplegic full-contact rugby following the U.S. team as they train for the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens and attempt to settle a rivalry with the Canadian team. However, it was a sensation at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and it seems that everyone who caught it there was highly impressed with the film, the players and their stories. Read the eFilmCritic Reviews (1:00 PM)
THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD: “The Saddest Music in the World" has been described by some people as the most accessible, audience-friendly work to date from Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, who has entranced and bewildered audiences throughout the world with such oddities as "Careful", "Archangel", "Dracula: Pages of a Virgin’s Diary" and the transcendent short film "The Heart of the World"(which will also be screening as well). Although this assessment may be true on at least a superficial level-this is the rare Maddin film to contain both a relatively easy-to-summarize narrative and recognizable actors such as Isabella Rossellini and Maria de Medeiros-fans of his previous films shouldn’t worry that their idol has abandoned his unique sensibility in hopes of scoring a breakthrough hit. This is arguably Maddin’s finest work to date-as funny, twisted and visually astonishing as anything he (or anyone else) has done before.
Loosely based on an abandoned screenplay by author Kazuo Ishiguro that Maddin obtained and made his own, the film takes place in 1933 during the height of the Depression. Escaping financial difficulties, down-and-out Broadway producer Chester Kent (Mark McKinney) has fled to Winnipeg (described as "the world capital of sorrow") with amnesiac girlfriend Narcissa (de Medeiros) to regroup and figure out his next move; as the film opens, a fortune teller advises him "Look to your miseries or you are a dead man". It appears that the fortune teller is onto something because immediately afterwards, a contest is announced by beer baroness Lady Port-Huntly (Rossellini) in order to goose sales with the imminent lifting of Prohibition; since people are more likely to drink when they are depressed, she asks all the countries of the world to send musicians to determine which can produce the saddest song possible for a $25,000 prize. Although hardly a sentimentalist, Chester knows how to put on a show ("I’ve got schmaltz routines that could wring tears from a moose!") and gets himself named the American entry, where he believes his victory is all but assured.
As the other contestants arrive and begin to face off in a series of musical prizefights (with the loser going home in shame and the winner taking a victory dunk in a giant vat of beer), Chester goes around paying off the other winning countries to join him in order to assure his victory. The only hitch to his plan is the fact that two of his toughest competitors are members of his own family. >From Serbia, brother Roderick (Ross McMillan) comes with a load of personal tragedy (his beloved wife mysteriously disappeared after the death of their child) and a song so heartbreaking (he composed it for the child’s funeral) that it would be a shoo-in if he could bring himself to play it simply to win a contest.
The other entrant is Fyodor (David Fox), Chester’s estranged father, whose life has spiraled downward into a pit of alcoholism, guilt and despair. Most of this stems from a long-ago incident when both Fyodor and Chester found themselves embroiled in simultaneous affairs with Lady Port-Huntly-a conflict that climaxed when she lost both of her legs in a tragic accident (actually, a tragic accident after a tragic accident). Since that time, Fyodor has been trying to earn her forgiveness and has finally come up with a gift that might do the trick-a pair of beer-filled glass legs for her to walk again with.
I have described the plot of "The Saddest Music in the World" but in the world of Guy Maddin, the story being told is far less important than the way in which it is told. Although melodramatic to absurd extremes, the actors all play their parts in as straightforward and low-key a manner as possible-which is the only possible approach to such material; if they ever acknowledged the silliness around them, the entire film would simply collapse into a series of scenes of people acting like buffoons. The only characters in the film that violate this approach are the two radio announcers who deliver breathless play-by-play for the various performers; their bits explaining the on-stage grief to listeners are amusing enough but a little too "funny" to comfortably fit in with the surroundings. (Of course, having just written that, I now suspect the possibility that this may have been Maddin’s point in the first place.)
The approach that Maddin has chosen for his actors has also extended to his own behind-the-camera work as well. Although the visual conceit of the film-shot entirely in black-and-white (with sprinkles of color) on deliberately artificial sets to give it a look that plays like a German Expressionist version of "Babes in Arms"-is as self-conscious as anything in recent memory, he doesn’t try to call the viewer’s attention to his arcane visual style; after the first few minutes, the look no longer registers as a trick or a joke because it feels like the only possible way to tell the story. Shot on what must have been a small budget, especially in comparison to most other films, Maddin has made creative use of his limited resources and the result are some of the most extraordinary sights ever seen on film.
One of the most extraordinary of those sights is the presence of Isabella Rossellini, whose acting career has taken some many intriguing twists and turns over the years that her mere presence in a movie is enough to suggest that the proceedings will at least be interesting to watch; her talent, astounding beauty and willingness to try strange things has made her a muse for directors as fascinating as David Lynch, Norman Mailer and Abel Ferrara. Teaming up with Maddin is a move that was probably as inevitable for her and the results are stunning. As the (literally) legless beer goddess, she is a surreal joke to behold and yet somehow oddly sympathetic and touching as well. And as for the moment when she finally straps on those beer-filled legs and goes out on the town-all I will say is that all the hipster babes in the audience will have found their Halloween costume for the year. (4:30 PM)
AFTER DARK, MY SWEET: One of the best, if least-seen, examples of the noir revival of the early 1990's (which also gave us “The Grifters,” “Miami Blues” and the sleaze classic “The Hot Spot”) was this adaptation of the novel by the great Jim Thompson. Jason Patric plays an ex-boxer eking out a living as a drunken drifter who falls into a relationship with recent widow Rachel Ward, who lets him in on a complex kidnaping plot that she has concocted with “uncle” Bruce Dern. Inevitably, things go hideously wrong and none of the plotters know who they can trust. A great thriller that doesn’t really on ridiculous twists in order to provoke a reaction and which features a career-best performance from Patric and an equally memorable turn from Dern.(9:00 PM)
4/22
YESTERDAY: I have not yet seen this South African drama about a mother in a remote village whose struggles to raise her child while her husband works in faraway Johannesburg take on an entirely new dimension when she is diagnosed as HIV-positive. For what it is worth, writer-director Darrell Roodt’s film was one of the five nominated this year for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (1:00 PM)
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA: No, this isn’t the unspeakable Joel Schumacher-Andrew Lloyd Webber debacle that may have helped kill off any momentum that the revival of the musical as a viable film genre may have gained in the wake of “Chicago.” This is the legendary 1925 adaptation of the Gaston Leroux novel–a film that still remains the greatest screen version of the story despite attempts featuring the likes of Nelson Eddy, Herbert Lom, Maximilian Schell, Robert Englund, Asia Argento (whose father Dario directed two films inspired by the story) and Paul Williams. The reason why this film still holds up today is a simple one–Lon Chaney, whose work here is more than just the sum of his iconic makeup job. In fact, it is one of the great performances in the history of the horror genre–both terrifying and strangely moving at the same time. One of the masterpieces of silent cinema. (4:30 PM)
BAADASSSSS!: Contrary to popular belief, independent American filmmakers did not just suddenly emerge during the 1980’s with the advent of Sundance-that was merely the moment when the media decided to latch onto the movement as the next big thing. For decades prior, there had been any number of mavericks who put everything they had on the line in order to put their unique visions on the big screen. One of the most notorious was Melvin Van Peebles, the African-American Renaissance man (besides working in films in nearly every imaginable capacity, he was also a painter, a playwright, an author, an officer in the US Air Force and the first black commodities trader) who shocked Hollywood by making one popular film (the comedy "Watermelon Man", in which a white bigot magically turned black overnight) and then, rather than follow it up with another film along those lines, decided to turn his back on the studios in order to finance and produce a low-budget film in which a black radical went up against a corrupt white society-and won! That film, 1971’s "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song", eventually became a enormous success and was a key influence on the then-emerging blaxsploitation genre. The struggles that he went through in producing the film have now resulted in "Baadasssss!", a docu-drama directed by Van Peebles’s son Mario (who also plays Melvin) so fascinating that they make for a film that is actually better than the film that inspired it.
And there were struggles a-plenty, starting with the simple fact that no studio in Hollywood in 1971 would dare finance such a film. Melvin’s attempts to find financing lead him to a variety of questionable sources-one aging star (Adam West) seems agreeable as long as Melvin does something for him, another shies away after Melvin beats him at a rope-climbing contest ("I was the first n----- in history who hung himself") and a third is all set to cough up the money when he is caught in a drug bust-before he winds up essentially putting up his own money. This means that he cannot afford a union crew (or even much of a crew period) and in order to prevent filming from being shut down, he schedules all of the sex scenes for the first days of filming in order to convince union reps that he is actually shooting a porno film. One of those scenes was the infamous opening depicting the 13-year-old version of Sweetback graphically losing his virginity; with no one else to turn to, he enlists his own son Mario to make a memorable film debut.
Some of these incidents were amusing enough but others were far more serious. A real loaded gun, taken from one of the background extras, is accidentally put away with the other prop guns. Several members of the racially mixed crew are arrested by police who assume that the only way that a group of blacks and hippies could get their hands on film equipment is if they stole it. At a key point, the money runs out and it looks like all the work is doomed until an unlikely financial angel saves the day. The problems don’t end even when the production is completed; the MPAA slaps it with an "X" rating (which Van Peebles wittily turned into an asset by advertising the film as being "rated X by an all-white jury") and the only company he can convince to distribute the picture does so initially in a grand total of two theaters-one in Atlanta and one in Detroit that specialized in horror triple-bills.
Seen today, "Sweet Sweetback" is little more than a curious period piece-much of the impact that it had 30-odd years ago is gone and a lot of the then-trendy visual stylings (loads of split-screens and solarization effects) date the film even more than the fashions. However, by being one of the first examples of radical black culture invading the entertainment world, the film paved the way for not only countless films and filmmakers but would also prove to be an influence on the world of rap and by using the soundtrack (recorded by the then-unknown Earth, Wind and Fire, who happened to have a member dating one of the crew) as a way to promote the film, it also showed Hollywood a new and lucrative way to market their films. Aside from being fast, funny and enormously entertaining, one of the most important things about "Baadasssss!" is the way that Mario Van Peebles reminds us of just how significant his father’s work was; not only has he made a good film but he has made one that makes the original seem as vital today as it did back in 1971.
Nowadays, the American independent film scene has become as complacent as the studio scene that it was supposed to supplant; there are plenty of indie filmmakers out there but many of their creations seem inspired less by a desire to tell a personal story and more by a desire to tell a story that Miramax will overpay for at Sundance. "Baadasssss!" is a reminder that there was a time when independent filmmaking was just that and such films were made because certain people had to make them, no matter what the personal or professional cost. Hopefully, the example set forth in "Baadasssss!" will inspire new filmmakers to take similar risks; if they do, the results could be quite extraordinary.(8:30 PM)
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4/23
THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH: Although the quality of indie maverick John Sayles’s output as a writer-director has been questionable at times (with brilliant works such as “The Brother From Another Planet” and “City of Hope” alternating with disappointments like “Men With Guns,” “Casa de los Babys” and the recent “Silver City”), this 1994 effort is perhaps the one film of his that everyone who sees it seems to adore. Based on the Rosalie K. Fry book, it tells the enchanting story of a 10-year-old girl sent to live with her grandparents in a remote Irish fishing village. There, she learns of the legend of an ancestor who supposedly married a selkie–a seal that can assume human form–and begins to uncover the mysteries surrounding both the town and her own family. An utter charmer–the kind of family film that will equally captivate both younger and older viewers. (12:00 PM)
PRIMER: One of the sensations of the 2004 Sundance Festival, this stunning head-spinner from first-time filmmaker Shane Carruth contains the same kind of trippy drive that fueled such similar films as “2001" and “Donnie Darko.” A group of entrepreneurs are slaving away in their garage on an new invention when two of them discover that their creation has a wildly unanticipated side effect (which I won’t reveal to preserve the surprise for those who haven’t yet caught up with it). As they struggle to deal with the implications of their creation, Carruth creates the kind of intellectual puzzle that will have viewers arguing long into the night, even though it is screening in the mid-afternoon. (3:00 PM).
MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART: This 1993 romantic epic from visionary filmmaker Vincent Ward may well be my favorite of this year’s selections. In 1931, an Eskimo boy (Jason Scott Lee), taken from his remote Arctic village to civilization by a kindly map-maker, meets a French-Indian girl (Anne Parillaud) in an orphanage and they instantly fall in love. Inevitably, they are separated but the bond between them remains and leads to a series of chance meetings and adventures that take viewers from the horrors of the firebombing of Dresden to an unforgettable love scene set atop an enormous balloon. Visually extraordinary and deeply moving, this is the kind of grand romance that is so overwhelming in the size and scope of its emotions that you can’t help but get swept away in it. (6:30 PM)
ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW: Due for commercial release later this summer, this highly impressive feature debut from artist Miranda July is a funny and touching ensemble piece in which a group of wildly disparate people–a lovelorn performance artist, a oddball reeling from a recent divorce, his two young children, an elderly couple looking for a last gasp of happiness, a pair of precocious teen girls flaunting their budding sexuality and a cynical art dealer–go through their days searching for some kind of connection–“a little of that human touch,” in the words of Bruce Springsteen–with someone who understands them, even though they don’t quite understand themselves. (9:30 PM)
4/24
TAAL: I have not seen this 1999 Bollywood musical romance–in which a man falls for an aspiring singer he meets on holiday and continues to woo her (even as she prepares to marry another man)–and I must confess that while I have enjoyed some examples of this particular style of filmmaking (I urge you towards “Lagaan,” the greatest four-hour musical about a cricket match that you will ever see), I have never been the biggest fan of the genre. However, this particular example offers one asset strong enough to keep even naysayers glued to their seats–the chance to spend three hours gawking at the presence of the gorgeous and charismatic Indian megastar Aishwarya Rai, the kind of beauty who inspires the kind of reaction in most right-thinking men that are usually seen only in the works of Tex Avery. (12 PM)
link directly to this feature at http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=1447
originally posted: 04/17/05 15:10:13
last updated: 04/17/05 16:17:25
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