CINE-FILE SELECTS: FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO
In partnership with film distributor Cinema Guild, Cine-File is presenting a virtual screening of independent/experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs’ 2020 documentary feature FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO. The film is available to rent at the link below for $12, with half the proceeds going to Cine-File (funds will be used for general expenses, future programming, and to provide honoraria to our contributors).
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Lynne Sachs’ FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through Cine-File here
In Horace’s Odes, one among many texts where this sentiment endures, the Roman poet wrote, "For the sins of your fathers you, though guiltless, must suffer." It’s hardly an esoteric dictum, but nevertheless it’s duly reflected in experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs’ wholehearted documentary portrait of her father, Ira Sachs Sr. Something of a longstanding work-in-progress, the film draws from decades of footage shot by Sachs, her father, and her filmmaker brother, Ira Sachs Jr. (whose own 2005 film FORTY SHADES OF BLUE was inspired by the same so-called “Hugh Hefner of Park City”), plus others, documenting not just the sybaritic “hippie-businessman” patriarch, but also his numerous descendants. Sachs’ knotty chronicle reveals that her father has a total of nine children with several different women, two of whom the other siblings found out about only a few years back. (The film opens with Sachs brushing her elderly father’s hair, working out a particularly unpleasant snarl. “Sorry, dad,” she says. “There’s just one part that’s very tangly.” The irony is faint and benevolent, but present even so.) Sachs considers the enveloping imbroglio from her own perspective, but also takes into account the viewpoints of her eight siblings, her father’s ex-wives (including her own mother) and girlfriends, plus Ira’s mother, a gracefully cantankerous old woman in a certain amount of denial over her son’s wanton predilections and the role she played in his dysfunction. FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO—the title an homage to Yvonne Rainer's FILM ABOUT A WOMAN WHO...—is comprised of footage recorded between 1965 and 2019 and shot on 8mm, 16mm, VHS, Hi8, Mini DV, and digital; the fusion of all this material (by editor Rebecca Shapass) ranks among the most astounding use of personal archives that I’ve ever seen. It all exists in a state between documentary and home-movie footage, a paradigm that aptly reflects the conflict between reality and perspective, and the uncomfortable middle-ground that bisects the two. Sachs’ work often features her family, but this feels like an apotheosis of her autobiographical predisposition, likewise a question—why do the sins of the father linger?—and an answer. Among the most affecting scenes are roundtable discussions between the siblings where they consider revelations about their father and the implications of his actions. These scenes are heartrending not for their sadness, but rather for their naked honesty; it’s not just a film about a father who, but also a film about a love that defines a family. Sachs’ filmography is centered on infinite poetic quandaries (in voice over, she explores some of them here, such as when she muses on her father’s profession as a developer in Utah: “What happens when you own a horizon?”) and this feels like a logical conclusion to a lifetime of such profound impasses, though I’ve no doubt she’ll continue to probe life and its enigmas in a similarly masterful fashion. For all the suffering on display, Sachs has created an indelible work that, like those within it, perseveres by way of honesty and love. (2020, 74 min) [Kathleen Sachs]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Ousmane Sembène’s MANDABI (Senegal)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
By the time Ousmane Sembène directed his second feature at the age of 45, he was already a legend. Sembène had been a war veteran, a labor organizer, the author of several book-length works of fiction, and the first sub-Saharan African to release a feature film. One might expect a movie by such an accomplished individual working at the height of his renown to display a certain grandeur or sweeping perspective, yet the greatness of MANDABI (as with most of Sembène’s films) lies in its humility. The story unfolds so plainly that it could be understood by a child, while the imagery, however bright and engaging, tends to be organized around such basics as character and locale. In short, MANDABI feels like a folktale; and like many folktales, the apparent simplicity serves as a conduit to deep wisdom. Dieng, the film’s put-upon hero, is an unemployed, but big-talking man who lives on the outskirts of Dakar with his two wives and seven children. Near the start of the story, Dieng receives a money order from a nephew living in Paris (in a bittersweet montage, Sembène illustrates what the young man has had to do to earn the money), who asks his uncle to cash the order, set aside most of the money, and keep some for himself. Dieng sees this windfall as a chance to pay off his debts, but cashing the money order (or mandabi in Wolof) opens up all sorts of new problems. He learns he lacks the proper documentation required for any banking transaction—and that acquiring this documentation means tangling with an especially messy local bureaucracy. Dieng also finds himself besieged by strangers and acquaintances coming out of the woodwork and asking for loans. But the biggest setback of all comes in the form of a “New African” businessman who promises to help Dieng solve his problems. Sembène characterizes the businessman with the same bitter, satirical sensibility he’d later flesh out in his novel Xala (and his film adaptation of it), but for the most part, the writer-director reserves his anger for institutions rather than individuals. MANDABI condemns the societal factors that keep people in poverty while maintaining, against all odds, an ingratiatingly cheery tone. When seen from the proper perspective, Sembène asserts, injustice is nonsensical enough to seem funny. (1968, 92 min) [Ben Sachs]
Lee Isaac Chung's MINARI (US)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
The title of Lee Isaac Chung's wonderful semi-autobiographical film refers to an edible, parsley-like plant cultivated throughout Asia. It only makes a brief onscreen appearance in this early-1980s-set family drama—when an elderly Korean woman (the legendary Youn Yuh-jung) plants it on the banks of a creek in rural Arkansas after immigrating to America to live with her daughter—but, on a metaphorical level, the title has a powerful resonance: This is a uniquely American movie about the Korean diaspora and what traditions do and do not take root when its members attempt to transplant their culture into new and unfamiliar terrain. The Korean-American family at the center of MINARI, the Yis, have recently moved from California to a farm in the Ozarks when the film begins. The parents, Jacob (Steven Yeun) and Monica (Han Ye-ri), get menial jobs at a chicken hatchery where they are tasked with determining the sex of baby chicks while Jacob simultaneously attempts to make a more substantial living as a farmer on their newly purchased plot of land. Monica is less than thrilled by their modest new trailer home and is worried about the heart condition of David, their seven-year-old son. There is a palpable sense that most of this narrative is being filtered through the consciousness (even if not always seen through the eyes) of David and his older sister Anne; as in Terrence Malick's DAYS OF HEAVEN, the problems of the adult world that drive the movie are not fully grasped by the child protagonists who frequently bear witness to them. Yeun, so effective as the creepy, moneyed sociopath in Lee Chang-dong's BURNING, shows off an entirely different set of colors on his acting palette in the creation of Jacob, a down-to-earth working man whose admirable ambition and problematic stubbornness seem inextricably intertwined. Han likewise imbues the not-so-quietly suffering Monica, a woman visibly struggling against the confines of her narrowly defined social role, with a novelistic complexity. The scenes of conflict between the two of them, often patiently captured by Chung in widescreen master-shots, blow something like Noah Baumbach's contrived MARRIAGE STORY out of the water. Equally good are the more humorous scenes of the Yis attempting to assimilate into the broader community. Their interactions with members of the local church, and Paul (Will Patton), a religious zealot who works for Jacob, are wryly funny precisely because they're devoid of the stereotypes that usually plague American films set in "the deep South" (undoubtedly because the script was based in part on Chung's own childhood memories of growing up in Arkansas). The Reagan-era period details, from Jacob's slightly ill-fitting red trucker's cap to the fake wood-paneling in the interior of his trailer home, likewise impress for their subtle but potent authenticity. (2020, 115 min) [Michael Glover Smith]
Filippo Meneghetti’s TWO OF US (France)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here and the Gene Siskel Film Center here
TWO OF US eerily opens with a game of hide-and-seek between two young girls, during which one of them suddenly vanishes. A traumatic memory or a nightmarish omen, this prologue summarizes the predicament of the two septuagenarian women we’re about to meet, whose decades-long, closeted lesbian relationship has never progressed beyond the “hide” part of the game. Living across from each other in an old Parisian apartment complex, Madeleine (Martine Chevallier) and Nina (Barbara Sukowa) have become accustomed to carrying out their romance in secret, Nina routinely crossing the hallway for a meal or late-night rendezvous with her beloved. The two agree to sell Madeleine’s apartment and move to Rome; it seems the couple will finally find the freedom they’ve been looking for. But obstacles loom, particularly in the form of Madeleine’s children, who guilt their mother into staying put. The situation becomes even more fraught when a stroke leaves Madeleine in a semi-catatonic state, and the installment of a live-in caretaker augurs the end of the women’s apartment-hopping trysts. Rather than hit the obvious keys of melodrama, first-time filmmaker Meneghetti unfolds this ripe scenario using a cinematic language more allied with a psychological thriller, making especially unnerving use of peepholes, reflections, and pregnant silences punctuated only by the churn of a washing machine or the sizzle of a frying pan. Implacably driven to get her Madeleine back, Nina ends up taking matters into her own hands, Sukowa expertly and scarily conveying the mania that can grow from a love denied. The horror and tragedy of TWO OF US lie not so much in her increasingly unhinged behavior, but in the suppression of desire that fosters it, the absence reflected in the sad, hollow eyes of a mute Madeleine, forced to listen to her children prattle on about her nonexistent devotion to her late husband. Meneghetti invests so strongly in the women’s indestructible bond that he has the tendency, intentionally or not, of belittling his other characters, while too easily waving away Nina’s ruthless actions. Yet the performances from Chevallier and Sukowa are so powerful, you can’t help but root for them to find their way back to each other. “I will follow him / follow him wherever he may go,” goes the Little Peggy March song. An Italian translation of the earlier version of this song, Petula Clark’s “Chariot,” plays throughout TWO OF US as the women’s theme. Here, in lieu of “him” or any sexist declarations of obedience, there is only the mountains-moving force of love. (2020, 95 min) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Thomas Vinterberg’s ANOTHER ROUND (Denmark)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Reuniting with leading man Mads Mikkelsen, Danish writer and director Thomas Vinterberg’s (THE HUNT) newest film, ANOTHER ROUND, reaches for a full bottle of vodka and lands in a drunken state of elation, depression, and mid-life difficulty. Denmark’s submission to the 2021 Oscars for Best International Feature Film, ANOTHER ROUND finds Mikkelsen in an acting showcase, surrounded by other steady and solid counterparts in Magnus Millang, Thomas Bo Larsen, and Lars Ranthe, playing four high school teachers that enter into an odd experiment: keeping themselves at a blood alcohol content of .05 at all times. Vinterberg directs the film like a drunken night on the town, from the joy of dancing on tables with great friends to waking up disoriented, broken, and desperate to either never see alcohol again or grab the nearest bottle and take a swig. ANOTHER ROUND’s tonal shifts work, mostly with ease, due to Mikkelsen’s performance, one in which every look, smirk, and curling of his lips is measured and intentional. It’s not a film filled with speeches or fights that last longer than a couple of minutes. ANOTHER ROUND becomes a snapshot into life at its most middling, in which characters reexamine their place in the world, and the oft overwhelming dreams they feel they haven’t accomplished. Though the structure of the film, especially its third act, falters in finishing this wild idea (and experiment), ANOTHER ROUND should satisfy one’s thirst for high-quality acting, careful and considerate storytelling, and a chance to remember, forget, or attempt to capture the supposed “good ole days.” (2020, 117 min) [Michael Frank]
Valentyn Vasyanovych's ATLANTIS (Ukraine)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here and the Music Box Theatre here
Every now and again a film appears that gets compared to Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic STALKER. More often than not the comparisons are facile at best, using only the basic plot points as comparison—think 2018’s ANNIHILATION. But Valentyn Vasyanovych’s ATLANTIS falls so precisely into that slow cinema sci-fi micro-genre that it feels like it could be taking place in the same universe at STALKER. ATLANTIS is set in a near future Ukraine of 2025, where, after a prolonged war with Russia, the country, and its people, have been devastated. Serhiy is a former soldier with PTSD who loses his job as a smelter when the local works is closed due to automation. The world he once knew is so far in the past that it’s almost unrecognizable. Water now has to be shipped in. A giant wall is being built along the border. As he tries to cope with this new normal, Serhiy takes on a job exhuming corpses. Here he meets Katya, one of the rare individuals who can see past the immediate. Serhiy’s world in ATLANTIS has the same kind of meditative expanse as Tarkovsky’s STALKER and Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES. It’s a sci-fi film only in that it presumes a near future; it could very well be in a contemporary setting—I can think of at least one American city that has lost its metalwork economy and requires bused-in drinking water. ATLANTIS has a poetic ugliness to it that is an absolute joy to revel in. The psychic devastation of a post-war society, resigned into submission of duty, is rendered nearly physical as we watch the quietly mundane pace of people’s lives. With nearly nothing left, the past literally becomes the future: the exhuming and examining of the dead has become one of the only reliable means of employment. Filmed with nearly all wide-angle stationary shots, the film immerses us as voyeurs in this world. We have no choice but to examine everything, including ourselves. Vasyanovych’s framing both creates a sense of claustrophobia with its tight borders and a pronounced sense of agoraphobia, from an inescapable emptiness that threatens to go on forever. Despite its darkness, ATLANTIS is a gorgeous film, and a must see for anyone interested in slow cinema, speculative sci-fi, or explorations of existentialism. As the official Ukrainian entry for the 2021 Academy Awards, I very much hope this becomes Ukraine’s first ever film nominated for Best International Feature Film. (2019, 106 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Andrei Konchalovsky’s DEAR COMRADES! (Russia)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, DEAR COMRADES! is writer-director Andrei Konchalovsky’s fraught depiction of the Novocherkassk massacre that occurred June 2, 1962, in Soviet Russia. We follow the labor strike leading to the massacre, the pandemonium of the massacre itself, and the chaos and uncertainty of its aftermath. Yuliya Vysotskay, is Lyudmila, a committed Communist still reeling from the death of Stalin. When her daughter disappears in the anarchy of the massacre, she frantically has to search for her, threatening not only her own safety, but that of those around her. She begins to question not only the methods of the Party but the idea of faith itself. DEAR COMRADES! is filmed in black and white, giving it a gorgeous patina of false historicity that allows us to fall deep inside of it, forgetting that this is a period drama, confusing it for a film of the time. Konchalovsky plays with the perception of the Soviet government quite cleverly through Lyudmila and her family. While she openly laments Stalin’s death, her nameless father gets drunk and wears his pre-Soviet military garb and expresses his wish that JFK would just nuke them all. Lyudmila’s daughter is a product of the era of de-Stalinization and is willing to go against the Party and participate in the strike and demonstrations that lead to the massacre. Konchalovsky pulls off the feat that so many filmmakers attempt and rarely, if ever, achieve, successfully taking a single moment or event and turning it into a true microcosm of the greater political zeitgeist. While I wouldn’t be so brash as to say he thoroughly dissects the entirety of Soviet Russia through this single film, Konchalovsky does manage to leave his fingerprints across it in a way that shows a deft handling. All this, through a story of desperation and mystery; a mother searching for her missing daughter, in the face of the government she has worked her whole life for. DEAR COMRADES! is a dramatic political thriller of the most personal nature. Where faith in government, self, others, God, and oneself all come into question. Films reflect the times in which they are made. Right now, across the globe, we’re seeing a rise of a type of politics that feeds on unquestioning faith, DEAR COMRADES! utilizes the framework of history to unfold today, and warn us about tomorrow. (2020, 120 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Fernanda Valadez’s IDENTIFYING FEATURES (Mexico/Spain)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here and the Music Box Theatre here
Watching Fernanda Valadez’s auspicious debut feature, I was struck by how a film about something so ugly—the ugliness of pain, of an exodus spurred and eventually terminated by a too-cruel world—could also be so beautiful; each shot wringed for a certain visual ecstasy is at odds with the disquieting subject matter. Claudia Becerril Bulos’ cinematography is extraordinary, but the true achievement is how the visual sublimity complements the story of a middle-aged mother in Mexico seeking her teenage son, Jesus (Juan Jesús Varela), who’s left their small town for the southern U.S. border. The film begins as Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández, outstanding) recounts in voiceover the circumstances of her son’s departure while the memory is realized onscreen. Valadez then cuts to Magdalena and her friend, the mother of another boy with whom Jesus left for the border, in a sterile office, attempting to locate their children after months without contact. The friend discovers that her son was found dead, while Jesus is still missing. This begins what Valadez describes as a road movie, with Magdalena traversing the countryside to discover the whereabouts of her child. At a facility where she’s nearly coerced into having her son declared dead (on the basis of authorities having found just his duffle bag), she meets another mother in a similar situation; she encourages Magdalena to continue searching. Along her journey to find a man who’d allegedly been on the same bus as her son, she meets a young man, Miguel (David Illescas), himself a migrant who had been compelled to self-deport from the U.S. back to Mexico. The film is deliberately ambiguous, though it’s clear that the ongoing presence of Mexican drug cartels is to blame for the lingering violence and chaos; the threat of disappearance and senseless murder, especially among the migrant population, looms large. Valadez and cowriter Astrid Rondero aren’t explicit in their indictment of this culture. Instead they consider the phenomenon on a metaphorical level, with Magdalena representing all those impacted by the brutality, her journey a modern-day odyssey as regrettable as it is epic. Some elements of the film are disturbing—early on, we see someone cutting into an eyeball, and, later, rotting animal corpses and people being murdered by what appears to be the devil incarnate—and others are reminiscent of the thriller genre, but in general it’s breathtakingly beautiful. Valadez renders transcendent such mundane images as a makeshift office formed out of plastic and the crack in a windshield, to say nothing of the verdurous landscapes that the protagonists tread. The beauty serves to lay bare the ugliness that Magdalena and others like her suffer. Other techniques (such as not subtitling the dialogue over a pivotal flashback, a recurring motif of people speaking to the protagonists not shown in full) convey a sensation of uncertainty that plagues not just the characters, but a society in crisis. (2020, 95 min) [Kathleen Sachs]
Robin Lutz’s M.C. ESCHER: JOURNEY TO INFINITY (Netherlands/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here and the Music Box Theatre here
This documentary about M.C. Escher hangs on a clever conceit: all the narration comes from Escher’s letters and diaries, so the film proceeds as if the great Dutch artist is telling his own life story. Recited with delicious hamminess by Stephen Fry, the narration allows for a more intimate portrait than one usually gets from contemporary biographical docs; you come away from the movie having learned not just about Escher, but how Escher saw himself. One of the more interesting insights is that Escher didn’t see himself as an artist, but rather as a mathematician who worked in visual design to realize various logical puzzles. Apparently, Escher described the whole creative project of his mature period as one of depicting infinity within defined spaces—a paradox to describe a series of paradoxes! He also claimed to have less interest in achieving beauty with his work than a sense of wonder, which reveals his creative intentions as well as his modesty. Much of the personal information presented in JOURNEY TO INFINITY supports the film’s characterization of Escher as self-effacing: he maintained a low profile, spent much of his adulthood caring for his mentally ill wife, and gently disparaged the individualist youth counterculture that popularized his designs in the 1960s. The movie really sings when it gets into the designs themselves, often deploying animation to illustrate Escher’s lucid explanations of his work. (2018, 81 min) [Ben Sachs]
Andrei Tarkovsky's THE MIRROR (USSR)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Long before the great TREE OF LIFE euphoria of 2011, another film (from another director's famously sparse oeuvre) went off uncharted into the space between memories past and present, mapping onto them a universal significance. Andrei Tarkovsky's THE MIRROR may lack dinosaurs and metaphorical doors in the desert, but it does set a mean precedent for everything a passion project can be when an auteur is working on such an intensely personal level. Long a dream project of Tarkovsky's, it was only in the wake of SOLARIS that he was able to secure funding, and armed with a meager allotment of film stock, he began production in late 1973. Given the non-linear, dreamlike progression of the film, such obstacles aren't hard to comprehend, and they perhaps explain why this is his most fleeting film outside his debut, IVAN'S CHILDHOOD. Drawn across the middle of the 20th century, THE MIRROR takes a stream of consciousness journey through familial memories, with actors in dual roles as father and son, as wife and mother. Woven in are poems penned by Tarkovsky's own father, assorted clips of wartime newsreel footage, and the quiet, ethereal imagery characteristic of all his films. It all makes for a hazy dream of cinema, one from which you tragically wake too early. But lest the length should fool you, this is not Tarkovsky for beginners. No surprise that at his most personal he's also at his most esoteric, so an afternoon spent with one of his aforementioned films would be a good primer. As for those already in his thrall, this is imperative viewing. (1975, 108 min) [Tristan Johnson]
Stéphanie Chuat’s and Véronique Reymond’s MY LITTLE SISTER (Germany)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Through and through, Stéphanie Chuat’s and Véronique Reymond’s MY LITTLE SISTER is about the twin pairing of Lisa (Nina Hoss) and Sven (Lars Eidinger). Born two minutes prior, Sven is battling a brutal bout of leukemia, though the majority of the film exists to service Lisa’s journey. More often than not, the writer-director duo focus on this younger sister, mom of two, and dutiful wife to her private-school-running husband. Once a playwright, Lisa serves others throughout this German drama, showing her willingness to compromise, to care, and, finally, to drop everything to live solely for her dying brother and her family’s well-being. MY LITTLE SISTER hits a familiar rhythm in its depiction of cancer within the family, complete with marital fights, relapses, and one wild night in which Sven is able to let loose, despite the obvious repercussions. Still, the film strikes a chord, as Hoss gives a gut-wrenching, full-body performance, causing the emotion to well up inside of you, even if you know it might not be wholly warranted. MY LITTLE SISTER remains compelling due to the strength of its performances and the sheer emotional punch it has the ability to produce, especially if, as many of us do, you have seen the pained depths that cancer can instill into a once-healthy person. (2020, 99 min) [Michael Frank]
Gianfranco Rosi's’s NOTTURNO (Italy/France/Germany)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
The latest work from FIRE AT SEA director Gianfranco Rosi extends that documentary’s poetic approach and humanitarian concern to look at the scarred Middle East that many refugees have fled. Rosi never narrates or editorializes, trusting the grief and strength of civilians—as well as his haunting, sumptuous, carefully-composed imagery—to speak for themselves. Children traumatized by unspeakable ISIS atrocities engage in art therapy; mothers visit cells where the regime killed their sons; a mother plays voicemails from her kidnapped daughter; a Ramadan drummer wanders deserted streets, singing; a boy ekes out a living acting as a spotter for hunters; patients at a psychiatric institute stage a play about their fractured homeland. Though his film ranges across Iraq, Kurdistan, Lebanon, and Syria, Rosi says he wants it to chronicle a “psycho-geographical, not physical” place—a state of mind. He embedded himself for three years along colonially-carved borders, achieving a remarkable intimacy. This is a hushed, disorienting cinematic experience to remember, a heartbreaking vision of hell and resilience. (2020, 100 min) [Scott Pfeiffer]
Lili Horvát's PREPARATIONS TO BE TOGETHER FOR AN UNKNOWN PERIOD OF TIME (Hungary)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Feeling middle age encroaching, brilliant neurosurgeon Dr. Marta Vizy (Natasa Stork) returns to her native Budapest after 20 years of practicing in America. Dr. Janos Drexler (Viktor Bodo), a visionary in her field, is the man she met a month earlier at a conference in New Jersey; as she recalls, they arranged a rendezvous at her favorite bridge back home. Yet at their next encounter Janos claims not to know her, and Marta begins to wonder if she wanted love so badly she dreamed up the whole thing. Lili Horvát wrote and directed this intriguing, poignant story about loneliness and tricks of perception. Her well-made film is worth a look for its sensitively handled treatment of love’s dark, obsessive, potentially destructive side. Horvát keeps Marta framed closely as she glides through the city in cabs and trams, and Stork gives her a shaky self-possession, a secretive expression encompassing Marta’s angst and hope. (2020, 95 min) [Scott Pfeiffer]
Philippe Garrel’s THE SALT OF TEARS (France)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
THE SALT OF TEARS is distinctive among Philippe Garrel’s narrative films in that it doesn’t center on intellectuals or creative types; as such, it feels less immediately autobiographical than much of the great French director’s other work. Yet this distance between the author and his subjects doesn’t result in a sense of coldness or impersonality. Rather, Garrel (writing, again, with the venerable Arlette Langmann and Jean-Claude Carrière) seems downright rejuvenated, more curious about people than he has in years. The life lessons of his post-REGULAR LOVERS work open onto universal wisdom here, reflecting the callousness and impetuousness of young people everywhere. The protagonist is a 20-ish carpenter named Luc, who arrives in Paris at the start of the film to take an admissions exam at an elite woodworking school; before the test, he crosses paths with Djemila, a young working-class woman about his age. The two fall in love, but Luc returns home before things can get serious. Back in his home town, Luc chances upon his first love, Geneviève, for the first time in several years. They enter into a hot and heavy romance, and Luc begins to neglect Djemila when she calls or texts from Paris. This chain of events repeats several months later when Luc, accepted into the woodworking school, goes back to Paris, takes up with a nurse named Betsy, and gives Geneviève the cold shoulder. Only too late does he learn how wrong he was to reject women who cared for him deeply. As usual, Garrel is less interested in generating suspense than he is in capturing delicate states of being (erotic fascination, romantic yearning, regret) and finding endless nuance in the physicality of his performers and the textures of black-and-white 35mm widescreen. There is, however, a compelling spikiness beneath the movie’s gentle surfaces, and it becomes especially prominent once you realize that Garrel and his co-writers have placed a villain in a position normally occupied by the hero of a story. Luc doesn’t see himself as a villain (but, then, who does?) because he doesn’t open up to the people around him and thus doesn’t get close enough to people to really hurt them. He may successfully lie to himself, but as the film’s abrupt, devastating conclusion reminds us, one can succeed on this front for only so long. (2020, 100 min) [Ben Sachs]
Lance Oppenheim’s SOME KIND OF HEAVEN (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here, and Facets Cinémathèque here
I’m not sure when I first heard about The Villages, but my curiosity about this vast Disneyland for retirees in South Florida clearly was shared by director Lance Oppenheim, himself a South Floridian. Designed for faux nostalgia built around a faux history complete with a bronze statue of its founder, land speculator Harold Schwartz, The Villages has become a haven for its almost entirely white residents who want to retreat from the world into the country’s most elaborate summer camp, where custom golf carts are the vehicles of choice. Oppenheim emphasizes the pursuit of conformity at The Villages in the opening scene, which features a synchronized golf cart team, a rowing team, and a synchronized swimming team. But we learn all is not fun and games once Oppenheim introduces us to four people in this bubble—married couple Reggie and Anne Kincer, recent widow Barbara Lochiatto, and Dennis Dean, who lives in his van and is not an official resident of The Villages. None of them looks particularly happy, and we learn why as Oppenheim unfolds their stories. Reggie seems like an old hippie, indulging in polydrug abuse and yoga to find enlightenment, much to the unhappiness of his neglected wife. Barbara works in The Villages’ healthcare system, yearning to return to her native Boston but unable to because her savings are gone after 11 years on the property. Dennis is on the run from a California warrant related to a DUI conviction; he’s a restless man whose credo is to live fast, love hard, and die poor. All four of them face their troubles and different varieties of loneliness in ways that seem to demonstrate that our essential character remains relatively fixed throughout our lives. David Bolen’s gorgeous cinematography and ability to capture facial emotions in unguarded moments contrast the heaven of the South Florida landscape with the frenetic activity of the seniors who are determined, as the song goes, to live till they die. It’s tempting to think Oppenheim cherry-picked outliers from this community to feature, but nothing is as idyllic as it seems at first glance, nor is enduring one’s hardships as hopeless at it sometimes seems. Exposing these truths in such an affecting way does all of us—and especially the residents of The Villages—a service we all need. (2020, 81 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Gwendolen Cates’ WE ARE UNARMED (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
The recent January 6th domestic terrorist attacks on the U.S. Capitol sharply contrasts with the Indigenous-led resistance of the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock and other such peaceful protests that were met with violence from law enforcement, highlighting the government’s tolerance of white supremacy and the systemic racism in its policies. Gwendolen Cates’ WE ARE UNARMED is an emotionally powerful and extremely timely look at the DAPL protests through the lens of the current political climate. The film also places significance on framing the present moment through an understanding of the historical context; as Kelly Morgan, a Standing Rock Lakota and Tribal Archaeologist states, “there is so much to tell and so few who know the true history of the United States.” Morgan and two other Lakota women are featured as noteworthy and eloquent figures of the movement, including a longtime activist, Phyllis Young, and a camp leader, Holy Elk Lafferty. WE ARE UNARMED follows the stand they took against the treaty violations of the DAPL from the beginning of the protests in September 2016 to a forced evacuation which occurred the following February. The inspiring struggle to protect culture and land, including water rights, is juxtaposed against the unjust and violent—both current and historical—treatment of Indigenous peoples. Cates’ camera lingers on flags and signs and sounds of prayer, music, and song are featured throughout, creating a collage of visual and aural symbols that emphasize the power in collective words and voices—as one sign reads, “no spiritual surrender.” Morgan profoundly observes, “Every day that we breathe as Native people—that is a political act.” WE ARE UNARMED will always be an essential watch, but right now, it is critical. (2020, 77 min) [Megan Fariello]
Amjad Abu Alala’s YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY (Sudan)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Stunning from its opening shot, YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY is a fully realized, flowing visual examination of faith and mourning life before it’s fully lived. Set in a small Sudanese village on the Nile, the film was the winner of Lion of the Future Award at the Venice Film Festival and is Sudan’s first-ever Oscar submission. After being told by a Sheikh that her newborn son will die before he reaches age twenty, Sakina (Islam Mubarak) shelters the boy throughout his life, protecting what little time he has left—his father (Talal Afifi), takes off immediately, unable to cope with the anticipation of death. Muzamil (Mustafa Shehata), grows up fully aware of his predicted fate and, like his mother, is preoccupied by the knowledge that he’ll die young. As he reaches closer to twenty, however, Muzamil begins to question both his belief in the prophecy and his faith in general, prompted by those in his life who are unconvinced, including his frustrated childhood sweetheart (Bunna Khalid) and a local (Mahmoud Maysara Elsarraj) who’s back from spending years travelling abroad. Individual shots are strikingly composed, as director Amjad Abu Alala contrasts the beige, rocky, static spaces of the village with mindful, colorful movement of life, including people, wind, and water; in addition, sounds of life—breath, heartbeat, and even the recurrence of a buzzing fly—all work subtly yet effectively to reflect Muzamil’s strange position as a young person expecting death. The remarkable and sometimes dreamlike visuals are complimented by a series of earnest performances, particularly by Mubarak as a mother mourning her son his whole life. The film does miss some opportunities in its more grounded moments to directly speak to suggested themes surrounding the political backdrop and even sexual abuse—a few scenes stand out as completely unaddressed, but particularly unsettling is one towards the end between Muzamil and an older woman. Overall, however, YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY artistically threads its themes on life and death through both its gorgeous visuals and thoughtful performances. (2019, 102 min) [Megan Fariello]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Also Screening/Streaming
Asian Pop-Up Cinema
Asian Pop-Up Cinema presents seven Chinese films for free online viewing between February 12-18. They can be accessed here.
Conversations at the Edge
SAIC’s Conversations at the Edge series continues screenings of two works by video artist Wendy Clarke: ONE ON ONE: KEN AND LOUISE (1994, 79 min) streams through this Sunday; and ONE ON ONE: ARNOLD AND AHNEVA (1991, 47 min) streams through Wednesday. Additional info and links here.
Video Data Bank
The Video Data Bank presents Zach Blas’ 2016 experimental short CONTRA-INTERNET INVERSION PRACTICE #3: MODELING PARANODAL SPACE (3 min). No ending date listed. Viewable here.
Facets Cinémathèque
Rodney Ascher’s 2020 documentary A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX (108 min) is available for rent beginning this week. Check the Facets website for hold-over titles.
Gene Siskel Film Center
The shorts program Our Right to Gaze: Black Film Identities (95 min total) is available for rent this beginning this week. Check the Siskel website for hold-over titles.
Music Box Theatre
Noah Hutton’s 2020 film LAPSIS (108 min) and Freida Lee Mock’s 2019 documentary RUTH: JUSTICE GINSBURG IN HER OWN WORDS (89 min) are both available for rent beginning this week. Check the Music Box website for hold-over titles.
ADDITIONAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
Costa-Gavras’ THE CONFESSION (France)
Available for rent on Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu, and YouTube
It may seem the height of perversity to watch a film in which men innocent of the crimes for which they are tried are found guilty while the United States is in the midst of a trial in which the defendant, whose guilt has been argued persuasively by the prosecutors with damning evidence of the eyes, is sure to be acquitted. Yet, Costa-Gavras is always a good choice when questions of ideology, politics, and power are at their most urgent. The Greek-French director has often argued for leftist ideas in his films, and THE CONFESSION, closely based on the memoir of Lise and Artur London, does not represent a departure for him as he assays the fate of high government officials and propagandists in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist purges of the 1950s. The husband-and-wife team of Yves Montand and Simone Signoret were committed leftists, and they play committed communists Gérard and Lise, whose faith in the party puts them off their guard when the political winds start blowing against them. As is characteristic of Costa-Gavras, the film plays close to the ground, watching Czech communist leader Anton Ludvik, called Gérard after his code name in the French Resistance, as he leaves work, gets into his luxurious, government-issued car and makes a fraught trip home to his spacious villa, a car full of trench-coated enforcers trailing him all the way. He and his comrades in government, many of whom fought beside him in the Spanish resistance to Franco, meet at his home for drinks and to discuss the precarious situation in which they find themselves. They have only a few days of freedom left. We see Gérard ambushed on another drive home from work and observe all of the humiliating and frightening details of his detention—forced to strip to his boxers and don prison garb, blindfolded, tossed in a cell and ordered to walk, deprived of rest and food, and angrily interrogated under bright lights. Eventually, he is moved to what looks like a ruin of a house, where interrogations continue; we get the sense that his comrades are also in the facility and undergoing the same treatment. Eventually, he is returned to the prison, where a former Nazi interrogator (Gabriele Ferzetti) assigned to rooting out communists works a kind of magic in getting Gérard to sign one confession after another in preparation for the show trial that will see 11 men condemned to death and three, including Gérard, to life imprisonment. The slow accretion of detail reveals so much about the mechanics of oppression, often victimizing those who believe in the cause most fervently, including Lise, who denounces her husband when she hears his confessions on the nationwide broadcast of the trial. The trial itself is tightly stage-managed, as the defendants are ordered to memorize their self-incrimination, and audio technicians are ready to play their taped confessions should they recant or forget their lines. One is reminded of the House Un-American Activities Committee’s charge of “premature antifascism” among their largely Jewish targets as these loyal party members are accused of being Trotskyists, Titoists, and Zionists—the antisemitism of the proceedings highlighted by Costa-Gavras as their sentences are meted out. The palette of cinematographer Raoul Coutard subtly contrasts the color and warmth of a life in the party’s good graces with the cold darkness of the Czech gulag, but the film doesn’t generally traffic in symbolism. The realism and the final disillusionment of Gérard that ends the movie serve as violent indictments of the strongman ethos of authoritarian rule. This film couldn’t be more timely for the world in which we live today. (1970, 139 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
John Huston’s THE DEAD (Ireland/UK/US/West Germany)
Available to stream for free on Tubi
I was around 19 when I first read James Joyce’s beautiful novella The Dead in a college class surveying the modernists. It’s the first time I can recall a work of art making me aware of mortality, including my own. In my memory, after we discussed the story we watched John Huston’s warm, festive 1987 film version, which was only a few years old then. This coincided with the period when I was first really beginning to approach film in a historical and critical sense, hitting up the Ohio University library’s VHS collection in an effort to make my way through the oeuvres of all the important directors, including Huston (THE MALTESE FALCON, of course, and BEAT THE DEVIL, THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, and many more). It was the confluence of all of this that made THE DEAD a deeply moving experience for me, even as a callow youth: its vision seemed to mix Joyce and Huston in ideal proportions. Recently I watched it again for the first time in over three decades, and I found it speaking to me in ways it simply couldn’t have then. This was a profoundly personal project for Huston: he was 80 and tethered to an oxygen tank when he made it (mainly in California, with exteriors shot in Dublin); he passed away the year it was released. It features his daughter Angelica in a pivotal role, and the script was written by his son Tony. The occasion is a lively dinner-dance for the Feast of the Epiphany—the annual bash thrown by the elderly Morkan sisters, Julia (Cathleen Delany) and Kate (Helena Carroll), and their niece Mary Jane (Ingrid Craigie). The setting is Dublin, 1904. Huston assembled a wonderful cast of Irish stage and screen actors; there’s not a plot so much as an atmosphere, an evening of bonhomie and “Irish hospitality.” Donal McCann plays the central character Gabriel Conroy, a middle-aged journalist and teacher, a slightly condescending man of the world. He’s nephew to the Morkan sisters and cousin to simpleminded drunkard Freddy Malins (Donel Donnelly), whose banter with his fed-up mother (Marie Kean) is a hoot. During the social ritual of the dance, which is also a means of conversing, his friend Molly Ivors (Maria McDermottroe), an Irish nationalist, playfully chides Gabriel for penning a column for an English-run newspaper, calling him a “West Briton.” Mr. Grace (Sean McClory) performs a recitation of Lady Gregory’s translation of “Broken Vows” to a rapt room. The Morkans are a musical family: Mary Jane is a piano teacher; Aunt Julia was a concert singer in her youth. As she gamely agrees to sing, the camera steals away; we go up the stairs to the sisters’ private chambers, where we see family photos, rosary beads, knickknacks, embroidered prayers about love and tolerance. In such ways does Huston’s film illumine the inner life of Joyce’s story. What’s more, the film provides a dimension the printed page simply can’t: it gives us the music itself. After the goose has been picked clean, Gabriel toasts the three hosts in a scene that almost bursts with affection. Then there’s the one moment emblazoned in my memory as if it were yesterday: the party is over and Gabriel is putting on his galoshes when he gazes up to see his wife, Gretta (Angelica Huston) transfixed on the stairs as she listens to ”The Lass of Aughrim” sung from above by Mr. D’Arcy (portrayed by Frank Patterson, “Ireland’s Golden Tenor”). The shot represents the wonder and mystery of Gabriel looking at his wife, but also Huston at his daughter. There follows the beautiful, heartbreaking final scene in the hotel bedroom and Gretta’s revelation that hearing the song made her think of a young man who used to sing it—Michael Furey, her first (only?) true love, who died at 17. She believes “he died for me”—that is, out of his love for her. As sobbing Gretta falls to sleep, Gabriel realizes he’s never really been close to anyone in his life—not even to the person with whom he thought he’d been the closest. As he reflects upon the secret his wife kept “locked in her heart” until that very night, he thinks, “Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.” These words make sense, in a way: Joyce was only 23 when he wrote them—not much older than I was when I first read them, and heard them embodied in the voice of Donal McCann, as Gabriel gazes out that snowy window. I remember thinking, yes, quite right. Now approaching 50, I find I’ve changed sides: considering the alternative, it’s far better to age. “One by one we are all becoming shades,” muses Gabriel. Thinking of my own friends and loved ones, I realized it was true; and I felt a surge of sadness, but also a kind of joyousness—or rather a sense of gratefulness for all the time we’ve been blessed to have together. More than ever it gives me goosebumps, that preternatural sense Joyce had, even as a young man, of this truth: all that is solid melts into air, but no one is ever truly gone. As an old man, Huston recognized the generosity of this vision, and chose it as his final statement. (1987, 83 min) [Scott Pfeiffer]
SUPPORT LOCAL THEATERS AND SERIES
As we wait for conditions to improve to allow theaters to reopen, consider various ways that you can help support independent film exhibitors in Chicago weather this difficult time. Memberships, gift cards, and/or merchandise are available from the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Music Box Theatre, and Facets. Donations can be made to non-profit venues and organizations like Chicago Filmmakers, the Chicago Film Society, South Side Projections, and many of the film festivals. Online streaming partnerships with distributors are making films available through the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Music Box Theatre, and Facets; and Facets also has a subscription-based streaming service, FacetsEdge, that includes many exclusive titles.
COVID-19 UPDATES
Most independent, alternative, arthouse, grassroots, DIY, and university-based venues and several festivals continue to have suspended operations, are closed, or have cancelled/postponed events until further notice. Below is the most recent information we have, which we will update as new information becomes available.
Note that venues/series marked with an asterisk (*) are currently presenting or plan to do regular or occasional “virtual” online screenings.
CLOSED/POSTPONED/HIATUS:
Beverly Arts Center – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Closed until further notice
Chicago Film Society – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice*
Chicago Filmmakers – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice*
Comfort Film (at Comfort Station) – Programming cancelled until further notice
Conversations at the Edge (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) – The Spring 2021 season will take place online
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Screenings cancelled until further notice
Facets Cinémathèque – Closed until further notice (see above for “virtual” online screenings)*
Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) – Closed until further notice
filmfront – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Gallery 400 (UIC)*
Gene Siskel Film Center – Closed until further notice (see above for “virtual” online screenings)*
Music Box Theatre – The Music Box has again suspended in-person screenings; it continues to present online-only screenings*
The Nightingale – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
The Park Ridge Classic Film Series (at the Park Ridge Public Library) – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
FESTIVALS:
Postponed with no announced plans yet:
The Cinepocalypse film festival (June) – Postponed with plans to reschedule at a future time
The Windy City Horrorama festival (April 24 - 26) – Cancelled; will possibly be rescheduled or reconfigured at a future date
The Chicago Critics Film Festival (May 1 - 7) – Postponed until further notice
CINE-LIST: February 12 - February 18, 2021
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITOR // Ben Sachs, Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Tristan Johnson, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Raphael Jose Martinez, Scott Pfeiffer, Michael Glover Smith