Faith a test even for the religious

You believe or you don’t believe. And while there will always be believers – some true believers – there will also be doubters. And it’s no different now than it was in 1917. That’s when a series of apparitions of the Blessed Virgin appeared to three children in a sheep meadow in impoverished central Portugal. Of course, Catholics have long had a place in their hearts for “Our Lady of Fatima” and numerous churches have been named after the event, a theological miracle. But while all is taken for granted now and a huge shrine has been erected at the site, Fatima, the children’s sightings were highly controversial in their day and provoked huge disruptions in Portugal’s social and religious fabric. And all because few people – aka adults - believed the three little children. The film Fatima (Marco Pontecorvo) (opening in various Michigan theatres and on-demand Friday) puts us right in the middle of this fraught environment not just between the two girls and boy’s parents and their family’s neighbors. But it pits religion – and faith – against an increasingly secular world even in the early 20th century.  Early on in the film, the children witness the original Virgin apparition in May 1917 when World War I was still ongoing. Almost immediately the three children – Lucia (Stephanie Gil), the oldest, and her siblings Jacinta and Francisco – are scorned by their mother (Lúcia Moniz). “Why would the Mother of God choose you of all people?” Of course, since the kids actually saw the Virgin, attempts by their parents, the local priest and the town’s very secular mayor (Marco d’Almeida), can’t make them change their story. It all adds up to turmoil for the family, as they’re accused of harboring delinquent kids. And clergy and government officials are embarrassed their church and town are becoming laughing stocks. Eventually, word gets out and more and more people traipse to the sheep meadow. The children kneel before Virgin visions while those gathered behind of course can’t see anything. Nevertheless, one day a miracle is performed when a paralyzed boy starts walking. Lots of “rational” explanations are offered and why wouldn’t there be? Think how this kind of thing would go over nowadays. The disconnect between the children and adults eventually leads to cruelty as Lucia is temporarily jailed pending psychiatrist interview, who gives her a clean bill of mental health. The film’s narrative is a series of flashbacks from a more contemporary interview between an academic (Harvey Keitel) and a  now aged Lúcia dos Santos (Sônia Braga) a nun. (Lúcia died in 2005.) They two mildly spar. “What is faith if not the search for truth?” she asks. “An inexplicable truth which breeds irrational hope,” he replies. But even the professor can’t answer why Jacinta’s recently exhumed body is fully intact. And, to add credence to the Fatima story, hundreds of people have testified to the Oct. 13, 1917 “Miracle of the Sun” when the Virgin’s appearance seemed to trigger the celestial star's plummeting to the Earth. I liked the fact this film presents religion in a positive light against a typically condescending secular view. And it therefore should attract religious and especially Catholic audiences. However, I somehow wished the direction was less straightforward. For example, there could have been more use of surreal images – even magical realism – to show the juxtapositions between the children’s immersion in the spiritual or transcendent and the adults’ unimaginative, coarse every day.

Through awesome remote Greenland

Through Greenland (Eric Engesgaard) is a five part documentary featuring Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) that will take you to a place you’ve probably always wondered about but was too awesome remote to explore further. (It premieres Thursday, Aug. 27 on Topic.)  Sure, nearby Iceland is the trendy spot in which to vacation – at least prior to Covid-19 – so will Greenland be next? Maybe this series will put that idea into people’s heads. The world’s largest island at 836,000 square miles is simply one of those places that seems so forbidding - three quarters of it is covered by the only permanent ice sheet outside Antarctica – that a documentary about it can be is irresistible. The first episode whets the appetite, starting in the remotest far northwest. Coster-Waldau and crew are on an initial two-stop tour. The first is to the Thule air base, 1200 km north of the Arctic Circle. Though governed by Demark the base might well have been in Kansas. Coster-Waldau is thoroughly disoriented finding bright eyed US twenty-somethings running one of the most critical missile tracking stations on Earth. But while he’s treated like royalty the film’s sub theme is about how the Americans and their Danish overlords brutally kicked out the townsfolk several decades ago. Given three days to pack their worldly belongings the folk in the town of Dundas - incidentally founded as a trading post by Canadians – had to trek three days to their new home of Qaanaaq. They had to sleep in tents during the brutal winter until their houses were built. The fact they had to evacuate into an even more remote part of the “Arctic desert” with few vital supplies is something Coster-Waldau, and you and I, might find “incomprehensible.” In Qaanaaq the actor meets Innuit and indulges in eating raw whale meat, a delicacy. Through Greenland will likely be fascinating, not just for Game of Thrones fans, but because, just like Coster-Waldau, for the first time we’re immersed in an environment we’ve never seen before. Besides watching Coster-Waldau’s interactions with the natives there is always the brooding vistas of the elongated blackened islands topped with snow, creating a serene remoteness. Nevertheless, it's still surprising that even in these austere conditions there is an underlying modernity, with villagers having wi-fi and flat screen TVs and Greenland settlements invariably linked by the country's very contemporary airline. It’s all a tableau that likely will pique the viewer’s interest for episodes to come.

(The original review erroneously was based on an understanding this film was one episode, and not five. I apologize for the error.)

The adventure of watching L’avventura

I had never seen the perhaps most famous and first of Michelangelo Antonioni’s early 1960s trilogy of films, L’avventura, until recently (on the Criterion Channel). L’avventura, released in 1960, predated the other films in the series, La Notte (1961) and L'Eclisse (1962), and was the breakout movie for the esteemed Italian actress Monica Vitti. All three films deal with human alienation and the existential quest for connection, a rarity – perhaps outside of Ingmar Bergman’s films – at that time. Yet, for me, L’avventura is the most inaccessible of the three films. Clocking in at almost two and a half hours, it’s slow and plodding. Nothing necessarily wrong with that but there seems very little going on in it. A group of friends set sail for an island off Sicily and one, Anna (Lea Massari) disappears. The rest of the movie isn’t so much about trying to find her as it is the evolving romantic relationship between Claudia (Vitti) and Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), Anna’s lover. In fact, so little goes on in the film it was famously booed and mocked during its premier at the Cannes Film Festival, though it did win the Jury Prize. So inaccessible is the movie that I had to turn to a companion documentary by critic Gene Youngblood (also on Criterion) which does a scene by scene narration of the film. That was worth it. Now, I started to understand. Sure, I originally got the fact there were two people having a hard time connecting as they roam in various austere environments but I totally missed the extravagant symbolism throughout. And I’m sure those people booing at Cannes did too! In fact, the film is the celluloid counterpart to looking at a piece of abstract art – say, a Mark Rothko painting. Youngblood, who says he watched the film 11 times (in a row, I believe) and “passionately” loves it, explains how the scenes were framed and the symbolism of everything from natural topography to the characters’ physical expressions, placement to one another, use of body parts and extraneous elements like bell towers and urban squares. The movie, by any standard, did break ground in the way scenes were framed. Folks, it’s stuff you and I (okay I’ll speak for myself) probably never would have guessed – and I like these kinds of movies. So, should you embark on watching L’aventurra, do yourself a favor and watch the Gene Youngblood voice over narration as well. But, truth to tell, even with Youngblood’s analysis I still found myself straining that L’aventurra all adds up to what it’s supposed to be.

Film clips: downloading woes, TIFF, WIFF, ersatz music and a glorious French discovery

 

For some reason I can’t stream a lot of new films in Canada. For example, the Scott Crawford documentary about one-time Detroit-based magazine - CREEM: America’s Only Rick ‘n’ Roll Magazine - is supposed to be available in Canada. That’s according to a Toronto newspaper. Not so. It’s going to be out in Canuck-land later this month. The same goes for Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Truth, with an all-star lineup of Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche and Ethan Hawke. Virtually every week over the past two months I have been trying to steam it because it's supposed available in Canada. But no go.

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) will be much scaled down next month due to the coronavirus outbreak. This paradoxically will be good for us non-TIFF goers. While some films will still be screened in person others will be available online for the wider world to see. This, says the Toronto Star, “will be a test of a theory that’s been debated within the movie industry since the rise of Netflix and other online streaming services: Do people really need and want the theatrical experience to fully appreciate film, or do they prefer the convenience of in-home viewing?” Yes, yes, we all want to know.

And congrats to another event you may have heard of, the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF), for quickly, as they say in the Covid universe, “pivoting,” and making some lemonade out of lemons. Sure, the regular fest in late October-early November is cancelled. But WIFF will hold a drive-in festival at the Riverfront Festival Plaza. Called WIFF Under the Stars – along with a logo reminiscent of the famed Cinerama masthead – it runs Aug. 28 – Sept. 12. No, there won’t be the usual breakout independent and foreign films. But there will be lots of frolicking fun from popular and cult classics, everything from 007 to Tarantino and popular family animations. Book online but movie snacks available onsite.

Here’s my newest acting discovery: Judith Godrèche (left). I watched her this weekend in Netflix’s Under the Eiffel Tower (Archie Borders 2019). An effortless actor with charm, sophistication, intellect, a sparking honest smile, and that 'Je ne sais quoi' sexiness in the best French tradition.

Watching another Under the Stars series – this one on TCM’s August Under the Stars programing, and a few Goldie Hawn starred features yesterday (There’s a Girl in My Soup (Roy Boulting 1950) with Peter Sellers  was the best – I have to shake my head at the musical scores of these late 60s early 70s movies. They try to capture the psychedelic era yet the music is hardly real acid rock but what I’ll call “rock elevator music” with chintzy piano tinkling and anodyne brass.

Finally, I couldn’t resist reprinting this howler. Here’s famed New York Post columnist Cindy Adams word for word: “MICHAEL Moore wants a bailout for his canceled Traverse City Film Festival, which is in some resort town in some chunk of wherever northern Michigan is. Begun in 2005, the thing would’ve been last week. E-mailing supporters, he says he’s out a million bucks and needs donations. Moore lives part of the year in this whoknowswhere place and runs two nowclosed movie theaters. Maybe he’ll make a movie about it.”

And now, Covid-19: the movie

The setting: Burbank Ca., Hollywood studio exec., corpulent unshaven producer (similar to) Harvey Weinstein. The pitch: Scrawny dweeb screenwriter, jittery hands holding voluminous unstapled sheaf (script). Producer: “Okay I only have five minutes (the casting couch awaits), give me your pitch and make it snappy.” Nerdy writer: “Well, well, it’s sci fi, see? It’s about this virus that takes over the world.” Producer: “Give me a break but go on.” Writer: “Well, you see, the virus starts in Communist - aka ‘Red’ - China and seeps out spreading all over the world.” Producer: (yawn). Writer: “Well it starts infecting everyone – people in Italy, then America, Europe, South America – in fact, the whole world. That’s why they call it a ‘pandemic.’ Virtually every country has to be shut down. There’s no cure and the disease is, like, super contagious. People die!!! People have to stay in their homes.” Producer: “Ya, so?” Writer: “Well, get this. There’s panic. But not in the streets – in the supermarkets! People fight each other for not food but toilet paper! Also, the virus is so contagious people are afraid to touch surfaces. They disinfect their groceries and use elbows to press elevator buttons. They walk around each other on the street.” Producer: “Oh brother!” Writer: “So, you see, there’s this big lockdown. Manhattan empties out; the streets of New York, London - everywhere - deserted! The Rolling Stones record a song called Ghost Town. That’s not all, when people do come out they have to “social distance” meaning keep six feet apart. People scream at each other for not keeping distance. Neighbors snitch - a little of that old Communist Cold War feeling - if they see crowding. Producer: “Now you’re getting on my nerves.” Writer: “That’s not all. People wear masks, just like surgeons. And some even wear plastic face shields like in a nuclear power plant. How science fictiony is that! Naomi Campbell even wears a hazmat suit. But mainly old people die, no one cares! So this film – social comment - is also about how we treat our old.” Producer: “I’ve heard that before, but it's not our demo.”  Writer: “Ya, well, the cities eventually ‘re-open’ but it’s weird. There are plastic windows between store clerks and customers, restaurants have to “space” tables, there's no singing in churches, sports teams play in disinfected "bubbles," no one rides subways or buses, airlines (figuratively) crash.”  Producer: (On the verge of sleep): “The name of this schlock?” Writer: “Wait for it, it’s a good one: ‘The novel coronavirus or Covid-19.’ Producer: (Yelling) “Get out of my office!!!”