Paris-Manhattan, Suskind, The Other Son, among this year's Windsor Jewish Film Festival offerings

The 11th annual Windsor Jewish Film Festival runs April 29 – May 2 and features 10 films, all made in the last couple of years with the exception of the opening night classic The Two of Us (1967) directed by France’s Claude Berri. Autobiographical, the film is about a Parisian Jewish child who is sent to live with a friend’s elderly Catholic parents on a farm during the Nazi-occupied era. The boy discovers anti-Semitism up close and personal…..On Tuesday the recent film Paris-Manhattan has been generating a lot of buzz about a reluctant romantic, Alice, who in personal life doesn’t want to date because, well, she’s in love with Woody Allen. A fascinating historical documentary is screened later that afternoon Follow Me - The Yonatan Netanyahu Story about the famed Israeli soldier who led the attack at Entebbe and died. His story is told through friends and family including younger brother Benjamin Netanyahu. My Australia is set in 1960s Poland where a mother, a Holocaust survivor, finds her boys running with the wrong anti-Semitic crowd. She moves them to, not Australia but Israel…..On Wednesday Suskind (2012) is another film that has generated buzz. It’s about a German émigré to Holland during the Second World War who harbours Jews while he liases with the Nazi SS. Salsa Tel Aviv, a light comedy, is about a Mexican dancer’s unlikely romance in Israel. It’s followed by The Other Son, another recent film that has drawn considerable attention. It’s about switched identities at birth between an Israeli and Palestinian child and the later discovery of their heritages…..On Thursday, A Bottle in the Gaza Sea is another tender story of reconciliation between two young people, one Israeli and the other Palestinian – “a Romeo and Juliet tale for the Internet Age.” Free Men tells the little known story of a Mosque in Nazi-occupied Paris that sheltered Jews during World War II. It’s followed by Remembrance, a true story about a love affair between a Polish freedom fighter and a Jewish woman who escape a concentration camp only to be separated, then discover each other three decades later……All films are screened at Devonshire Mall Cineplex Odeon.  Tickets are available at the door each day or at the Windsor Jewish Community Centre. Tickets $10.00 cash per film. For more info go to www.jewishwindsor.org

More complexity in a drug store novel

Terrence Malick’s new To the Wonder (opening Friday at the Main) is described as a film that explores “the complexities of love in all its forms.” It’s also lyrical. The characters speak very little. It’s their thoughts – as appear in subtitles – that count. There are four main characters: Neil (Ben Affleck), Marina (Olga Kurylenko), Jane (Rachel McAdams) and Padre Quintana (Javier Bardem), who’s actually convincing as a priest. The film is dreamlike and virtually unscripted with the characters set free by Malick to interact – often in impassioned embraces - over what turns out to be an almost two hour film. So far so good and the score by Hanan Townshend mixes soft classical with something like menacing New Age angst. But exploring the complexities of love “in all its forms” is not what this movie is about. In fact To the Wonder is nothing more than a story about one couple – a seemingly conventional Midwestern oil company worker, Neil, who meets a more exotic Parisian, Marina. The film opens with images among the most romantic scenes in France including Paris and Mont Saint Michel along the tidal banks. (Contemplates Marina: “You lifted me from the ground, brought me back to life.”) It’s reminiscent of Claude Lelouch’s 1966 film A Man and a Woman though that is more romantic. Then jarringly the film cuts to the windswept planes of Oklahoma, where Ben has moved Marina and her daughter. But despite the 180 degree change to the epicentre of Middle America Marina seems only to want to intensify her relationship. It’s Ben who’s the hold out. And here we have a story that is very typical. Ben is the stoic silent type and doesn’t like emotion. Yet Marina is mad for him and wants passion. Marina’s visa eventually expires and she returns to Paris. Ben has a fling with an old flame, Jane. But Jane is just as intense and doesn’t want to make any more romantic mistakes. It seems Ben just can’t find in himself the intimacy women want. As for the Bardem character he is also searching for love and trying to make connection to his God, about which he has unsettling doubts. (“My soul thrusts for you…exhaust me”).He visits the sick and the indigent but whether that increases his passion for the Almighty is hardly clear. At one point I started thinking this film was about emotional weakness: Marina can’t quit an unloving relationship, Ben can’t remove himself from his ambivalence, and Quintana can’t decide whether he’s in the priesthood or not. The best lines go to an acquaintance, Anna (Romina Mondello) who urges Marina to escape. (“Life is a dream…you can be whatever you want.”) Later Marina muses: “Weak people never bring anything to an end themselves - they wait for other people to do it.” So score this movie a few points for naturalism and some nice cinematography. But there’s probably more romantic complexity in a typical drug store novel.  

Pushing the fanciful boundaries

Baseball season has begun and I’m batting zero for two when it came to movies over the past week. The first was Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974) at the Detroit Film Theatre. Many consider it Rivette’s best film. Rivette was one of the main directors in the French New Wave. Rivette is a little more unknown – at least to North American audiences - than his counterparts like Truffaut, Godard and Chabrol. His work is definitely more experimental, perhaps even more so than Godard’s. I loved his La Belle Noiseuse (1991) about an artist (Michel Piccoli) whose mental block put him into a kind of power struggle with his model Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart), having a transforming effect. In Celine and Julie, the leads Juliet Berto (Celine) and Dominique Labourier (Julie), are amazingly spontaneous and unselfconscious in front of the camera. They’re a couple of friends who explore an alternative reality, in which they play roles in a Henry James story. But the question I had at the end: what’s the point? If the characters were supposed to resemble the others or be their alter egos it wasn’t apparent. Maybe, alas, it just is as it is.

 

The second movie was Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s 2012 film Beyond the Hills (at Landmark's Main), which was shortlisted for this year’s Oscars. Mungiu received lots of critical acclaim over his 2007 film 4 Months 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, which won the Palme d’Or, Cannes’ top prize. I saw that movie, set in Communist Romania. It’s about two female friends who try to obtain an illegal abortion. This film, like that one, is about two close women friends, one of whom is a young nun, the other who wants to lure her out of a religious life to live in Germany. Inspired by a true incident of what was thought to be demonic possession, I thought this film might be a kind of surreal European version of something like The Exorcist. It wasn’t at all. It’s a very straightforward drama about friendship, religious orthodoxy, and mental health. It didn’t seem to have a whole heck of a lot to say about any of them, quite frankly. But it was extraordinarily well acted by newcomers Cristina Flutur (Alina) and Cosmina Stratan (Voichita). This movie could have also been cut by an hour, from its running time of just over two-and-a-half. You might say it was a little repetitive.

Mixed feelings about Ebert

You’d almost think Roger Ebert was the patron saint of movies for all the adulation the guy has been getting since his (untimely) death last week. Many would say he is. But that’s going a little too far. Sure, he was a credible mainstream critic but let’s keep the word mainstream in perspective. He actually walked a fine line between pop culture and serious criticism and won a lot of respect from people on both sides of the fence. Of course his tragic illness with cancer generated an incredible amount of sympathy, which adds to the effusive outpouring of the past few days. There was never this kind of sympathetic response when Ebert’s one time co-host on Siskel & Ebert, Gene Siskel, died, also from cancer, in 1999. Like most other people I liked Roger Ebert for his reviews. My personal story about him is waiting in line at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1989 for the screening of, of all things, Michael Moore’s Roger & Me (a different Roger of course, ha ha). My friend nudged me and whispered, “Check out who’s standing in front of us.” The guy was wearing a sports jacket and jeans, and carrying a small leather satchel over his shoulder. It was none other than Roger Ebert, standing all by his lonesome. One of my thoughts was, “Oh, so famous TV movie critics also wear jeans – when they’re not on camera!” In any case, I soured somewhat on Evert in his later years. His film criticism was obviously still okay. But – and I’m sure the vast majority of people don’t know this – he was a rather strident and even vicious attacker of all things conservative as per his numerous almost daily tweets on contemporary U.S. politics. It was an eye opener for me, and I never quite felt the same about the guy. 

No, it's not really live

 

Ever wonder if the National Theatre Live series at Cineplex’s Devonshire Mall is, well, actually live from London, England? That’s how the series, which brings some remarkable world class plays to the local theatre including This House by James Graham May 16 - about the backbiting world of Britain’s Parliament – is billed. But, says Cineplex communications director Mike Langdon, the plays, as you might realistically imagine, are in fact “live to tape.” There is a five hour time difference between Windsor and London, after all, which would mean the “live” aspect would actually have to be performed on staged at 12 midnight London time. That’s not to mention all the other time zones in the world that would also have to be accommodated because the productions are shown in other countries. So, no, Langdon says. “This allows us to account for the time difference between the U.K. and different markets in Canada.” On June 13 Cineplex also shows Peter Morgan’s The Audience, starring Helen Mirren, reprising her Academy Award winning role as Queen Elizabeth II, about the elite audiences that the queen has always held with British prime ministers, the contents of which are never made public. The play will have three encore presentations in late June and early July.

 

One of the best DVD rental deals going is Redbox, available only in the U.S. Redbox is a vending machine and one amazingly easy to use. For $1.27 incl tax you can rent a video overnight by simply inserting your credit card in the machine’s slot. The machines are located conveniently in places like grocery stores. The machine’s on screen ordering directions are easy. And when returning your DVD you just slip it back into the return slot. Quick as can be! The one drawback is the inventory isn’t all that large. But for the last two weekends I was about to rent David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis (2012) and David Frankel’s Hope Springs (2012) starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. Sometimes a lot of the movies are grayed-out depending on their popularity and the time you order. But it’s a cheap home date. Pick up a bottle of (inexpensive) American-priced wine, order from the Redbox, and you have an evening's entertainment for under $5!

 

Speaking of Hope Springs, this is a great acting piece for Streep and Jones. They play a Midwestern couple who long ago lost the spark from their marriage. Streep (Kay) wants to reignite it. Jones (Arnold) is as tight-assed and defensive as you can imagine a 58-year-old stuck-in-his-ways accountant can be. The two have their roles down pat as a mature middle class couple who seem only too typical. And Steve Carell (Dr. Bernie Feld) is convincing as the marriage counsellor. The movie is supposedly set in a picturesque Maine fishing village – where the couple flies for a therapeutic retreat - but is actually filmed in Connecticut. This movie could easily be adapted for the stage.  


Sci-fi that doesn't get the future right

It's always interesting the way filmmakers portray the future. Such was the case when I - finally - got around to watching Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner starring Harrison Ford. The movie is set in 2019. And Los Angeles is portrayed in a way that no one here in 2013 - only six years away - would recognize. It’s like the city had gone through a total transformation and become a brutalized bunker-like forest of skyscrapers with Jetsons-like flying machines shooting between them. But these aren’t just skyscrapers. These are massive blocks of concrete with thousands of slits of windows providing a formidable - indeed fascistic - image, which of course is the point. In fact, it’s become a cliché for filmmakers - and sci-fi book authors for that matter - to predict the (near) future as a totally alien environment from what it’s like when they wrote the novel or made the film. And almost always the future is totalitarian. But in reality the topography of current day Los Angeles has hardly changed since 1982, albeit with a few more office skyscrapers in the core and perhaps a bit cleaner air. Blade Runner’s depiction of the city is almost laughable.....Remember 1984? That year is now almost three decades old, and it came and went almost like every other year – no muss no fuss. Yet for decades prior to it 1984 was considered a foreboding date because it was the title of George Orwell's 1949 dystopian classic about an all-controlling totalitarian state. Sure enough the real 1984 seemed pretty much like the year before and nothing at all like how Orwell depicted it (although there were lots of public discussions in the media and elsewhere about how much the government controlled us, etc. etc.).....But there are aspects of the future that sci-fi authors don’t seem to take into account - for example, personal lifestyles. In Blade Runner we see characters smoking cigarettes just like they did in 1982. Yet it’s only a small minority of people who smoke anymore, and less will in 2019. A cartoon like The Jetsons, set in the future, also made the mistake of thinking the nuclear family and gender roles would be exactly the same as they were in the early 1960s, when the cartoon series was made…..BTW I didn’t finish watching Blade Runner. Despite all the hype surrounding this movie I found it almost insufferably boring. 

It's worth watching on the big screen

I never quite did – and now I never will – equate the experience of watching a movie on a television screen with that of a movie theatre. Such was the case when I ventured into the Devonshire Mall Cineplex theatre the other night, on a whim, to catch 1957’s Funny Face (Stanley Donen) starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. Yes, I’d seen this movie two or three times over the years but only on DVD or video. Wow, what a difference watching on the big screen with sets and costumes just brimming with colour and exuberance! The movie also is about the fashion industry and takeoff on famed Harper's Bazaar editor Diana Vreeland. Think The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel 2006) but with song and dance by some of the greatest actors ever to grace the silver screen (no offence Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway). Funny Face seems the epitome of the Fifties musical. It has it all. Donen – dubbed “the king of the Hollywood musical,” also directed Singin’ in the Rain. George and Ira Gershwin wrote the songs. Moreover, one of America’s greatest still photographers, Richard Avedon, supplied the sets’ fashion photos. This movie has it all, from Astaire and Hepburn’s singing and dancing to some of the greatest songs ever recorded (“How Long Has This Been Going On” or “S Wonderful”). The movie confirms Astaire’s amazing talent as actor, singer and dancer. And Hepburn wasn’t bad in all three roles either. How many actors these days are that versatile? Maybe I’m reading too much into it but beyond the 1950s candy floss the film had a few things to say about the world of fashion versus bohemianism where one, seemingly crass and the other deep, can both be just as artificial. It’s also a great movie about Paris, playing on every Parisian stereotype - and why not? (That’s when the French loved America.)…..Cineplex Odeon has more films over the next month in its classic series, such as The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille 1956), on Easter weekend, and The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming 1939). Take the kids to see The (original) Wizard in mid-April. If any movie should be seen on the silver screen it’s Dorothy, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion. A bonus: tickets are just $6 adults. 

 

They promised, but I never did manage to get an interview with one of the directors of Burn (post below), the well-made documentary by Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez about a beleaguered fire company on Detroit’s east side. But it’s worth a night out to catch this flick in limited engagement March 22 – 28 at Silver City in Windsor. The “embedded” filmmakers with Engine Company 50 spend days and nights with the crew as they eat, sleep and are called to numerous fires – 95 per cent of which are arsons – in one of the Motor City’s most benighted areas. Yet these firefighters exhibit grit, brotherhood and a caring for the citizens in their neighborhoods. Says one: “I’m a product of Detroit, I’m not one of those persons who’s not going to turn my back on Detroit.” The movie also has a terrific rock and roll soundtrack. It’s no dull documentary.

 

And one final thing. Last night I caught the late great Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku’s final film (he died in 2003), Battle Royale (2003). You know the story Lord of the Flies? Well, this is Lord of the Flies on steroids. This class of high school students won the wrong lottery when they were chosen for a diabolical game on a remote island.